A Unique Combination of Proposals

Abstract

Howard’s article for the Contemporary Review was effectively a summary of his book; if he added anything thereafter it was no more than an expansion or clarification of passages in a virtually complete manuscript. Indeed, the demands of his profession and the needs of the family can have left him little time for more than revision of that kind. Lizzie’s health was deteriorating and ‘sea air’ appears to have been the only prescription that afforded her any relief from a debility the precise cause of which was, it seems, never diagnosed. In the August of 1896 she and the younger children took lodgings in Southend and the house in London was shut; Howard probably moved in with his elderly parents who lived nearby. In a poignant letter, written before Lizzie returned home at the end of the month, he urged her to travel first class on the railway and arranged to meet her with a carriage at Liverpool Street station. He was engaged on a lengthy case at the Law Courts and had recently been appointed official reporter to the London County Council. ‘Besides that I have a back order on which I shall make a fiver. So I shall be able to take you when you have rested awhile for a really splendid holiday. I feel such joy in my solicitations for you all, I mean to be a really good house-band … [sic]’¹ But the holiday together never materialised.