5 minute read
The Lady Eve
Trish MacEnulty, a retired college professor, has published several novels, a memoir and a short story collection. She is currently working on a novel set in 1913.
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BY BETHANY LATHAM
Evelyn Herbert and Tutankhamun's Tomb
The 100th anniversary of Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb approaches, and fascination with the find endures. There was another present when Carter and his patron, George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon saw “wonderful things” in the flickering light at the tomb’s breach – Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. Evelyn’s story centers Gill Paul’s The Collector’s Daughter.
Paul was inspired by two photos of Evelyn: one outside the tomb with Carter and her father in November 1922; the other with Tutankhamun’s funeral mask at the British Museum 50 years later. Inspiration is well and good, but starting the novel was a challenge; Paul tried no less than seven different openings: “The first draft began with Eve at the age of eight greeting Carter when he arrived at Highclere Castle with an artifact for her father’s collection, and it ran chronologically. That was too slow, and there was no narrative hook. Eventually I switched into dual timeline and realized I felt much more comfortable that way.”
The bookend structure features an elderly Evelyn reflecting on her life: “Memory is one of the themes of the book, so it made sense to have an old woman looking back at the period when she was a young girl on the cusp of womanhood and making the decisions that would shape her future.”
Paul’s vision was to detail how Evelyn was shaped by Egyptology, but also by her upbringing and the disparate parenting styles of her father and mother – the former offering freedom, the latter always attempting to rein her in. Her mother, Almina, “the kind of woman who aroused fury,” is a complicated character – high society, at once philanthropic, authoritarian and petty. “I’m sure she wasn’t the easiest person to have as a mother,” Paul notes. By contrast, the Earl was “a quiet man with many hobbies, who spent much of his time motoring around, gambling in casinos, taking photographs, hunting and shooting.” He and his wife were “virtual opposites.”
Paul understands marriages of opposite. She had a party girl for a mother and a shy academic for a father: “I was thinking of my own upbringing when I developed the character of Eve, but I also had to be aware that she came from the very top echelon of the English aristocracy and her responsibilities as a young lady would have been drummed into her from an early age – in particular, to marry well. Family was important to her, and she wasn’t the type to rebel against the hierarchy.”
This multifaceted portrayal is refreshing in a historical fiction landscape that too often defenestrates historicity in favor of molding heroines to embody every tenet of modern feminism. Paul points out the tendency to distort historical personality through a contemporary lens when discussing Evelyn’s relationship with Howard Carter: “Her letters to him are chatty and affectionate. In one she writes ‘I am panting to return to you,’ which has been interpreted by some as evidence of an affair.” Yet Paul explains that Evelyn was an exuberant young girl, described by those who knew her as “slangy.” To Paul, “The endearments in that letter are throwaway, in tune with the way young people spoke in the early 1920s.” Paul pegs Evelyn and Carter as good friends. “Eve had known Carter as a friend and business associate of her father’s since she was a child. He was not a suave or charming man; he could be rather brusque, but he was extremely knowledgeable about Egyptology, and Eve was infected by his obsession. Howard never married or had a romantic relationship, to our knowledge. Egypt was his life, from when he went there at the age of eighteen as an artist copying items from tombs, through to the 1920s, which he devoted to excavating and cataloging the tomb of Tutankhamun.”
The contemporary lens also presents a different view when it comes to the disposal of archaeological artifacts. Paul explains that, up until the 1920s, the primary mindset was one of “finders keepers.” Egyptian independence fundamentally changed that: “Tutankhamun’s tomb was uncovered nine months after Egypt gained independence from its British protectorate status, and it marked a turning point in attitudes towards artifacts dug up on foreign soil. Until then, archaeologists felt entitled to a substantial share of their finds, if not all, as recompense for their investment of finance and expertise. But the Egyptian independence movement had been militant in its demands that Egypt be respected as a sovereign nation and allowed to retain its own rich culture and heritage. Carter and Carnarvon negotiated their Valley of the Kings concession carefully, hoping to take home at least some of their finds, but Egyptian law was tightened during the 1920s to prevent that. There is understandable ill feeling in Egypt that significant artifacts still reside in overseas museums.”
This idea – of taking something that belongs where it lies – fueled the infamous “curse” of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Paul explores this mythology as an outgrowth of the resurgence of spiritualism that occurred after so much loss during the Great War. No less than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intoned that the curse was caused by “elementals” from the spiritual realm. Carnarvon had held seances at Highclere, the family seat, and Evelyn grew up in an atmosphere where spiritualism was taken seriously. After her father’s death, there is historical documentation of Evelyn’s nervousness about the possibility of a curse; newspapers reported that she offered to release Brograve, her future husband, from their engagement to spare him from its repercussions. Paul notes that anxiety about the curse was “an important element of Eve’s experience and one I had to explore.”
Another element of Evelyn’s experience explored with sensitivity in the novel is her struggle to overcome the effects of multiple strokes. She approaches this obstacle – the impairment of memory, speech, basic motor function – with the same strength as the rest of her life. Paul says, “When I researched Eve, I found she was a courageous and very popular woman. She came from a sheltered, privileged upbringing yet she stepped outside her expected role as daughter of an earl and was brave enough to crawl inside the tomb in November 1922. We see that courage again in her seventies when she was determined to overcome the effects of a stroke.”
In her portrayal of the way Evelyn’s life was shaped, the events to which she was crucial, Paul illuminates the woman, and “especially the important discovery in 1922 that she was part of yet was not given credit for in the history books.”
