The love that never dared
March 2008
Bessie Craigmyle: In 1899 she gained a new interest with the formation of the Girls’ High School Former Pupils Club, becoming president of its Literary branch.
by Alison McCall
Bessie Craigmyle was born in Aberdeen in 1863, at a time when women were allowed no academic ambition. Despite this, she gained a degree of LLA (Lady Literate in Arts) and in 1895 appeared in a list of ‘notable Men and Women of Aberdeenshire’. The entry begins: “The daughter of a scholarly and cultured gentleman, she soon became literary herself…”
Bessie’s father, Francis, who was born in Kincardine o’Neil in 1800, had studied at Aberdeen University and become a teacher. Francis remained a bachelor until 1856 when he married Emma Bearham, 30 years younger than him. Bessie was the fourth of their five daughters, one of whom died in infancy. The family lived in Strawberry Bank, at the top of the Hardgate, and were comfortably off, with a live-in servant. The house no longer exists.
Bessie had an unusual childhood in that her father, who was 63 when she was born, retired while she was still a toddler. Much of his retirement was devoted to the education of his four daughters, three of whom excelled academically. He had reputedly the best private collection of books in the area, to which his daughters had free access. He also shared with them his love of botany and many of Bessie’s later poems demonstrate her love of flowers and her garden.
Bessie attended the High School for Girls, the most academic of Aberdeen’s girls’ schools. There she formed close friendships, and became known as a child prodigy, with a talent for poetry and languages.
In her late teens she met Maggie Dale, three years her senior. To quote Bessie’s obituary: “…she fell in love with Miss Dale, whose ambitions became hers”.
Like Bessie, Maggie Dale was a schoolmaster’s daughter; her father taught at Robert Gordon’s. Her ambition was to become a doctor – not an easy matter in the early 1880s, as none of the Scottish universities admitted women. Mary Anderson, the first Aberdonian woman to become a doctor, had gained her degree in Paris. To fulfil her ambition, Maggie knew that she not only need high qualifications, but she would have to be sufficiently fluent in a second language to study abroad – and have the wherewithal to support her living away from home.
Women’s wildest dreams
At that time, many people scorned women who were academically ambitious. Maggie had few role models, and was planning a future beyond most women’s widest dreams. Charles Murray’s poems give an insight into prevailing opinion – the Packman who saw his daughter’s education as an investment which would help her snare a good husband; the Braw Lass who “gabbit in German, but whaur was the need?” but who found true happiness only in domesticity; the “queyn that was teachin” who “couldna say ‘Na’ till a laad wi’ a gig.”
Maggie Dale planned to work as a teacher to finance herself through a medical degree. She and Bessie became close friends, planning a future as doctors, sharing a joint practice. Bessie could visualise their life together – down to the brass plaque on their door. This friendship became the subject of many of Bessie’s poems. It appears that whereas Maggie valued Bessie’s intellectual companionship, Bessie wanted something more from the relationship. Her poems refer to quarrels, reconciliations and the passionate love she felt for Maggie.
In the Morning
Love, I am here.
Wild words passed yesterday ‘twixt me and you,
My careless hands wrought the deep wrong I rue,
You swore I should repent it. Was it true?
Close, come more near.
Shuddering and white?
Why? Let your lips press close and warm to mine.
Ah, sweetheart! has my beauty lost its shine?
Was not this woman pledged for ever thine
Who died last night?
So. Turn away.
We did not think to meet again like this.
A lover’s quarrel should end in after-bliss:
Last night our lips were hungering for a kiss,
Give it today!
Both women studied for the only degree available to women in Scotland – the LLA (Lady Literate in Arts) and gained it in 1882. Maggie qualified as a teacher at Aberdeen’s Church of Scotland Teacher Training College in George Street, and Bessie followed suit. (Incidentally, the Free Church Teacher Training College was close by, in Charlotte Street. There is still an arch where it used to be.)
In 1885s Maggie travelled to Buenos Ayres to take up a three-year teaching post at St Andrews School. Argentina had been hit by a yellow fever outbreak two years earlier, and premium salaries were on offer to those willing to work there. Here was Maggie’s opportunity to earn enough to finance her medical education. Bessie took over Maggie’s post as infant teacher at the Church of Scotland Practising School, and in her spare time wrote and translated poetry. This may have been Bessie’s strategy to raise money for her own career plans.
Then terrible news arrived from Argentina; Maggie Dale had fallen in love and was to be married. Bessie saw her dreams of a life with Maggie crumble.
Her first volume, Poems and Translation, was published in Aberdeen in 1886. It contained a mixture of Bessie’s own poetry, and her translations of poems from German, Greek and French. Fourteen of the poems were asterisked as having been, “written between my eighth and fourteenth year.”
The first poem was dedicated to ‘MGD’ (Margaret Glassford Dale)
Friend, no longer are we together:
Now, in this sweet September weather,
You stand in the shade of the Pampas sunflowers,
My feet are crushing the Scottish heather.
Here, on the hill where the wind blows keen,
I remember only what once hath been,
I forget the change of the changing seasons,
And the thousand miles of sea between.
Two years have passed of the dreary three.
If they strive to stay you across the sea,
It may be the love that breathes in my verses
Will bring you back to home and to me.
Only through your sweet favour and grace,
Was I ever worthy to hold the place
I held with you. But, though you may alter,
In the heart of my heart I keep your face.
And if, in your distant Southern clime,
You care not for feeble and faulty rhyme,
You will care, at least, for the gift I bring you,
A love more strong than distance or time._
Many of the other poems were also addressed to Maggie. However, Craigmyle showed her command of language and sheer ability by addressing a range of styles, from the humorous My Bookcase, and the macabre In the Dissecting Room, to the playful Catullian Hendecasyllabics. She also wrote about religious doubt, autobiography and historical fiction.
There was no unfavourable comment in Aberdeen about these poems. Indeed, Bessie’s old school recommended its pupils buy the book.
Bessie herself was moving on. She taught at Dr Williams School in North Wales, near her elder married sister, then was appointed a lecturer at Bishop Otter’s College in Chichester.
Then came the news that Maggie had contracted a fever and died in Argentina. Bessie suffered a nervous breakdown, which she described in her poem Chained Tigers. She wrote a series of poems lamenting Maggie, including _Before and After.
Say that the next spring sunshine will bring you back to us, Sweet,
All the wood-ways grow weary, waiting the touch of your feet:
Primroses pale already, violets are past for a year,
When they blossom again shall my lady surely be here.
I send my heart to you over the sea,
I know as I love you, you love me.
What shall we reck of the three years flown
When your arm again curves round my own?
O my own soul’s heart! does our parting seem
Like the phantasm of some ghastly dream?
We shall meet again, that is all I know;
For I love you so, I love you so!”
There are watchers grouped round a white death-bed,
And I hear a whisper, ‘She is dead’.
A long, soft lock of dark brown hair,
A grave I can neither see nor share,
Where the woman I loved is left alone,
A dead thing, lying beneath a stone:
This is the end of a ten years’ love,
What comfort of hope avails thereof?
Between us stretches the dark Unseen,
Far better it all had never been.
Bessie had formed a close friendship with another woman, but her devotion to Maggie’s memory cast a pall over the relationship; Bessie returned to her family home in Aberdeen to live with her widowed mother and two unmarried sisters.
She published a second volume of poetry.
A Handful of Pansies in Aberdeen in 1888, was dedicated to My dead friend, Margaret Glassford Dale.
By the time she was 26, Bessie’s career as a poet was poised to take off. Although her two volumes of poetry were probably only available in the North-East of Scotland, her work had appeared in national anthologies. She was commissioned to edit an edition of Faust and was teaching part-time at schools for girls in Aberdeen.
Her obituary suggests that she published more poems following a visit to Florence, but these have disappeared. In 1892, the year that Aberdeen University finally admitted women, she was commissioned to translate a volume of German ballads.
In 1895, she appeared in a list of ‘notable Men and Women of Aberdeenshire’. The entry begins: “The daughter of a scholarly and cultured gentleman, she soon became literary herself…”
Other Aberdonians, such as William Carnie, were described as minor poets – but Bessie was a poet of national significance. Charles Murray was missing from this list; Hamewith was not published until 1900.
Elegy to William Minto
Bessie did not fulfil her early promise. Occasionally her poems were published, but she gradually faded from public view. She continued to teach, and enjoy foreign travel.
In 1899 she gained a new interest with the formation of the Girls’ High School Former Pupils Club. Bessie became president of its Literary branch, and opened the first meeting with a paper on Robert Browning’s life and work. In 1903-4 she was president of the Former Pupils Club.
World War 1 was difficult for her. Her friend, Herr Hein, the German teacher at the High School for Girls, was interred. Bessie and others campaigned for his release, but he died shortly after being freed. Bessie’s only war poem was an elegy for a former pupil, William Minto, who died in 1919 when a shell misfired during victory celebrations at the Torry Battery.
On 26 February 1933 Bessie sadly marked the 46th anniversary of the death of her beloved Maggie Dale. The following day, she was reading a newspaper by her fireside, when the paper caught fire. She attempted to extinguish the flames, but was seriously burnt in the attempt. She was taken to the Northern Nursing Home where she died of heart failure in the early hours of 28 February. Her death certificate was signed by Dr Mary Esslemont.
Alison McCall loves finding out about forgotten women – many of whom appear in her snappily-titled book Aberdeen School Board Female Teachers 1872-1901. She lives in Kintore with her husband, two children, two cockatiels and Agnes, her 17-year-old cat.
This is an article from the March 2008 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.