Thursday 8 April 2021

EDMUND MARTIN GELDART (1844-1885)

 

THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF

EDMUND MARTIN GELDART

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

The Norwich born ‘Evangelist’ Edmund Martin Geldart (1844-1885) will be familiar to admirers of the poet G. M. Hopkins as they were good friends at Oxford and Hopkins mentions him several times in his correspondence. As a child, Geldart, born on 20th January 1844 (he was Christened late in life on 26th January 1859 at Bowden in Cheshire), was so pale he came to be known as ‘ghost’; he had the usual boyhood, delighting in cruelty and enjoyed trapping frogs in flower pots before skewering them with a pointed stick until his older brother, William (1842-1858) came and cut them in half with his hatchet (‘A Son of Belial’. 1882. p. 8); he lived a sort of church and chapel existence with his parents Thomas Geldart (1809-1877) and Hannah Ransome Geldart nee Martin (1820-1861); Edmund was the second born child to the Geldarts after William, and other siblings were: Henrietta Maria (1846-1847), Ernest (1848-1929), Mary Constance (1850-1925), Emma Agnes Helen (1852-1874) and Francis (1857-1932). The family were living in Greenwich until they moved to Waterfield Terrace in Blackheath where they stayed two years before moving to Reigate in Surrey, a place young Edmund came to love and call ‘home’ where they had a ‘doll’s cemetery in the garden’ and where he symbolically executed his Governess, Miss Atkinson, known as ‘mad Atky’ by beheading an effigy of her – apparently she witnessed it and took it all in good spirits!

At Reigate he attended an Independent chapel while harbouring a deep ‘fear of hell’ yet, ‘no love of God’ and ‘no sorrow for sin’ (‘A Son of Belial’. p. 53). Edmund attended the Merchant Taylor’s School in London when he was eleven before leaving London for Manchester, or Altrincham to be precise, where he became a great enthusiast of bug hunting and ancient Greek as opposed to Latin. He won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford in 1863 matriculating on 26th March at the age of 19 and there are some marvellous descriptions of life at Balliol, or Belial, as he insists on calling it in his veiled autobiographical sketch, ‘A Son of Belial’ published in 1882 by Nitram Tradleg, which backwards reveals the author’s name, Martin Geldart, and portraits of his friends and masters alike, such as the great Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), Professor of Greek and Master of Balliol, to whom he gives the name Professor Jewell – many of the stories of Jowett are familiar to those who have read wide on such subjects connected to Balliol and its scholars; there are also sketches of the theologian Canon Henry Parry Liddon (1829-1890), referred to as Canon Parry, and Vincent Stuckey Stratton Coles (1845-1929), the scholar, librarian and Anglican priest, Principle of Pusey House, Oxford from 1897-1909, given the name Vicentius Staccato, and of course Geldart’s ‘ritualistic friend’, Gerard Manley Hopkins known as Gerontius Manley – Hopkins rather unkindly described the ‘hagard hideousness’ of Geldart in a letter to his mother dated 22nd April 1863 as having ‘grey goggle eyes’ a ‘shuddering gait or shuffle’ and a ‘pinched face’ and famously added that he ‘would not have had twenty Balliol scholarships to change places with him’, but despite this they became intimate friends (Hopkins spent time at Geldart’s family home in the summer of 1865 and was quite taken by Edmund’s younger brother, Ernest, born 1848, saying in a letter that he was ‘looking at temptations, esp, at E. Geldart naked’, see Robert Bernard Martin’s ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life’. 1991. p. 114)

Geldart, who regarded himself as an Evangelical, graduated from Balliol with his B.A. in 1867 (M.A. 1873) and took a teaching role at Manchester Grammar School and he seems to have suffered in 1868 some sort of nervous breakdown and so he went to recuperate in Corfu and spent three months in Athens. The account described in ‘A Son of Belial’ reveals something of Geldart’s mind at the time: ‘I had forgotten for the time that the British schoolboy regards his schoolmaster as his natural enemy; that he only respects the man who can and will thrash him; that it is war to the knife, or at least to the cane, in the majority of cases, until one or other is worsted. As I utterly and solemnly abjured the use of any hostile weapon, and was, moreover, of an exceedingly sensitive and nervous temperament, it is not, perhaps, much to be wondered at that in three days from my assuming office I was utterly and completely unhinged and broken down. The fiend like faces of my little tormentors (who meant no harm, God forgive them!) danced before my eyes.’ (p. 193-194) Geldart goes on to tell us that he spent three months undergoing the ‘torture of hydropathic treatment’ at Malvern. By New Year he was feeling well enough to travel back home to Bowdon, Cheshire, before embarking, in February, on the ‘Sidon’ for Corfu, where he suffered the ‘fear of getting drowned, and a few hours’ sea-sickness in the Bay of Biscay’ (p. 194). Strangely, Geldart was the only passenger onboard the Sidon on his fifteen day voyage in which he ‘learnt what solitude meant’, while ‘standing alone upon the deck, when the crew were partly asleep and partly withdrawn to the distance, out of sight of the man and officer on watch, and face to face with the winds and the waves.’ (p. 194-195) His sea-sickness began on the third day of the voyage, and ‘thanks to a glass of porter, I was soon myself again, having paid my tribute to Neptune for the first and only time in my life’. (p. 195-196). The next day he was fully recovered.

During 1869 he was ordained deacon in the Anglican priesthood by the Bishop of Manchester, James Prince Lee (1804-1869) and became curate of All Saints, Manchester and in 1871 curate of St. George’s, Everton, Liverpool (he became a Unitarian the following year). Geldart wrote much on Greek and religious matters publishing such books as: The Modern Greek Language in its relation to Ancient Greek’ (1870) and ‘A Guide to Modern Greek’ (1883) and married Charlotte Frederika Sophia Andler (1841-1923) on 26th June 1868 at Thorpe-Next-Norwich, Norfolk but she doesn’t get a mention by name in the volume, just the casual fact that he got married (they had three children: William Martin 1870-1922, Mary Charlotte 1872-1940 and Edmund Thomas, born 1873 who sadly did not live past his first year). Geldart, whose socialistic-style sermons disagreed with his congregation, was asked to resign from his position as minister of the Free Christian Church in Croydon and in a nervous state of health once more, he decided to go to France to stay with an old friend but was reported missing from the night boat to Dieppe, assumed drowned after committing suicide on Friday 10th April 1885, he was 41 years old, the same age that his own mother, Hannah had died in 1861, in fact, on her 41st birthday, on 29th September after a mental and physical breakdown, suffering epileptic fits. Edmund was no stranger to death, he saw his younger sister, Henrietta, born in 1846 die in 1847 and his older brother William, born in 1842, whither away and die in 1858; three years later his mother departed in 1861, not to mention his own son, Edmund Thomas who died in 1873.

 I suppose it was suicide’, writes Hopkins to his friend Alexander W. M. Baillee (1843-1921) on 24th April 1885, saying that ‘his mind, for he was a self tormentor, having been unhinged, as it had been once or twice before, by a struggle he had gone through.’ Hopkins, who heard of Geldart’s death in the 20th April edition of the Pall Mall Gazette, is referring to Geldart’s previous nervous breakdown of 1868; Hopkins also suffered from his own ‘struggles’ and thoughts of suicide, and he thought ‘A Son of Belial’ an ‘amusing and sad book’ and perhaps it is no coincidence that his darker poems such as ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’ were composed during this period, but for Geldart, the struggles ended just three years after ‘A Son of Belial’ was published which makes it all the more poignant for the reader.

Many of the newspapers carried the news of Geldart’s ‘Mysterious Disappearance’ such as ‘The Manchester Weekly Times’, on page six of its Saturday 25th April 1885 edition which reports that the ‘Rev. Edward Martin Geldart, M.A. oxon, who was until a fortnight ago the minister in charge of the Free Christian Church, Wellesley Road, Croydon’ and who ‘formerly held a curacy in Liverpool – as an English Churchman, but entertained broad views, he went over to the Unitarians, and at the close of 1883 became the pastor of the above mentioned church.’ The article goes on to say that ‘his opinions on many subjects were regarded as strictly socialistic, and on many occasions he expounded those principles both in lectures and in the columns of the local newspapers. In consequence of the tone of his discourses he recently incurred the displeasure of his congregation and was allowed by the committee to resign. This is said to have preyed on his mind and owing to his depressed condition he was persuaded by his relations to go on the Continent for a while.’ Geldart had decided on a Mediterranean journey to visit Constantinople, ‘but his wife was averse to his going so far.’ And so Geldart made his mind up to go and visit a friend in France, M. Reiman who had been twenty tears a French Master in various colleges in Croydon. On the evening of Friday 10th April, Geldart left home and travelled to East Croydon station and purchased a single ticket to Paris. He was ‘very unwell’ and his wife Charlotte accompanied him to the station and placed him in a carriage, asking a kindly gentleman who was travelling in the same carriage to accompany Geldart to the station. He travelled on the 8.19 p.m. boat train to Newhaven (which left London Bridge at 8 p.m.). At Newhaven Geldart gave up the first portion of his ticket. The following day, Saturday 11th April, a telegram arrived at Geldart’s home in Croydon to say that a gentleman’s luggage (a portmanteau, umbrella, and walking stick) had been found on the tidal boat at Dieppe – these items left by Geldart show that he embarked on the boat at Newhaven and certainly did not arrive at Dieppe.

On Wednesday 15th April Mrs Geldart set out on a search of the various places around the south-coast to look for her husband but to no avail. She reported the circumstances to Scotland Yard and on Friday 17th April she travelled to Dieppe (the Brighton Railway gave her a free first-class pass). The article goes on to say that ‘Mrs Geldart has two sons, both promising scholars at Whitgift College. He himself was Balliol scholar.’ The description of Geldart given by Scotland Yard reads: ‘Edmund Martin Geldart, age 41 years; height 5ft, 7 in, complexion fair, hair curly light brown, turning grey. Whiskers full and reddish; wears spectacles; clerical dress, soft felt hat, side-spring boots, flannel shirt, had in his possession a large gold watch, and black leather portmanteau, containing wearing apparel.’

On the afternoon of Saturday 18th April Mrs Geldart returned to Croydon from Dieppe by the mid-day train. ‘She was painfully distressed and feared that the worst had happened. She brought with her her husband’s luggage including his walking stick and umbrella.

And so the disappearance of Edmund Martin Geldart will continue to remain a mystery.

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