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Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes
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I guess we need more background on Julia’s own parents. That was another odd thing. Murphy apparently claimed that Julia was the daughter of a “ruined alcoholic farmer.” Her marriage certificate said she was the 37-year-old daughter of William George Dennis, a deceased veterinary surgeon. Goodman added that her mother was French-born and named Aimée--I don’t know where he got that from--which might account for their naming Julia’s sister “Amy.” And was Amy an older sister, or younger than Julia? Does anyone know? And does that birth certificate show “William” and “Aimée” as Julia’s parents, or someone else?
I certainly agree that Julia was a strange woman from a strange family. I’m not convinced she lied about her age or where she was born; that remains to be proved. But she was remote from her family--or rather, they were remote from her, just as you said.
She was an interesting character anyway. She was neurotic, among other things. When it comes to her health, I read somewhere that Wallace claimed she suffered from “heart attacks.” But I doubt very much that she did, since a heart attack is a serious, disabling business. And MacFall noted in his autopsy that ”The lungs, heart, kidney and spleen were normal.”
This suggests two things--if MacFall did a proper job on her heart, that is; if he took a look inside the arteries. First, that there was nothing wrong with it to cause “heart attacks.” So Julia was probably a hypochondriac who got all fluttery and nervous every time she felt a pain in her chest and had to go and lie down to recover from her “heart attack” that was probably nothing worse than indigestion!
But secondly, that her heart was good enough condition, certainly for a woman MacFall thought was only 55. What, no atherosclerosis? In a woman we’ve been told is 69? That’s another little fragment of evidence suggesting she wasn’t so old after all.
MacFall went on to say:
The stomach contained about four ounces of semifluid food consisting of currants, raisins and unmasticated lumps of carbohydrate. The small bowel was normal, the caecum ascending and transverse colon enormously and chronically distended (typical of constipation bowel).
I guess she and Wallace had currant buns for tea! The autopsy is a point on which Goodman was wrong, because I recall he said somewhere that MacFall had not checked the stomach contents, when in fact he did. At least that proved that she and Wallace did have tea together, just as Wallace stated.
As for the rest, it’s obvious that Julia was not eating her Kellogg’s All-Bran every morning to “keep her regular”! If she also suffered from indigestion, maybe it’s because she wasn’t “eating healthy.” Nor Wallace either. He might have lived longer on a better diet that was kinder to his kidneys!
I’m not convinced that their marriage was “sterile” or “loveless.” It’s not what Wallace expressed in his diary later. He wrote about how much he missed her when she was gone. Mind you, he wasn’t passionate in his earlier diary entries; but that first intense ardor is often tempered after a decade or more of marriage, which by no means excludes genuine warmth, love and affection.
Julia apparently came from a cold family, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was a cold woman herself. On the contrary, she may well have been a very needy woman, a vulnerable woman, never having known much love in her own family, lacking self-confidence and social skills, uncertain how to relate comfortably and naturally to more normal people. Her fussing over her health may have been because she was a nervous type--or it may have been because it was the only way she’d learned to gain attention as a child from her otherwise uncaring family. At any rate I think she needed love, and was more than prepared to give love in return. I think she was a kind, attentive wife who took care of her husband and did her best for him, drying his wet clothes when he came in out of the rain, even doing his rounds for him when he was sick (for which her bossy sister-in-law Amy castigated her), and wanting to get home before her husband did so that she could get his tea ready for him, just like so many wives.
She may have been “peculiar,” but I suspect she was a thoroughly nice woman at heart, and she sure didn’t deserve to get murdered--regardless of who did it.
And what of Wallace? I see no convincing indication that he was hostile toward Julia. One or two skeptical remarks from outsiders perhaps, but apart from what he wrote in his diary, Wallace seems to have been caring toward Julia. He may have paid more attention to her “frailty” than was actually called for. (But did it matter, if it made her feel cared for?) He stayed in on many evenings because she was nervous about being left alone in the house at night.
What stands out to me is that both of them were reserved.Wallace himself was said to be somewhat shy, but Julia may well have been downright inhibited. Perhaps she could chatter about superficial things, but in a cold family any attempt to express her deeper feelings was probably discouraged by repeated rebuffs. Also, much of the bond between them was on an intellectual rather than an emotional level: through music above all (though there is emotion in music), but they also shared interest in Wallace’s experiments and absorption with science. So the couple may well have seemed “cool” or uncommunicative to some outsiders, which need not preclude their sharing a quiet, unspoken understanding and rapport. Theirs was a very private relationship.
I do find it significant that those who had known Wallace best and longest--chiefly the men he worked with at the Pru--were his strongest supporters, while his detractors were those who hardly knew him at all except superficially, and were influenced mainly by uninformed gossip, speculation and prejudice. His friend James Caird and his supervisor, Joseph Crewe had both known the couple together. Caird saw them as a “happy couple,” and agreed that they seemed “devoted” to one another. Crewe went higher, speaking of Wallace in glowing terms and said that the couple were “all in all” to one another.
I really don’t see how Wallace’s diary contradicts this picture in any way. To start with, it’s unfortunate that the original diary seems to be lost, and we don’t know everything he wrote in it. Much of what we seem to know is deficient in two ways, because the single-line entries are just summaries by police officers of what Wallace wrote on certain days.. We don’t know how they may have distorted or exaggerated the meaning of what he actually wrote. And we don’t know what else he may have written, especially on other days, that they chose to omit altogether. Wallace’s writings after Julia’s death refer to many musical evenings, to Julia’s “passion for novelty” and their conversations about science, among other things. These are nearly all missing from the earlier diary extracts that seem to be available to us. Still, there are one or two passages implying times enjoyed together: a walk in Woolton Woods, and the hoar frost that “charmed” Julia just a fortnight before her death.
The entry for August 17, 1928 is particularly suspect since it was a Friday, not a Monday, and anyway Wallace’s birthday was on the 29th, a Wednesday, not the 17th, and would have been his 50th, not his 51st. But did Wallace get his own birth year wrong? Their marriage certificate said he was 36 at a time when he was only 35.
In spite of these shortcomings, what’s notable about the diary is the near-total absence of any hint of contention with Julia. Apparently by coincidence(?) the first entry shown for 1928 is about a minor spat over newspapers--and that’s all! It seems to have been recorded simply because it stood out as an unusual event: a case of “the exception proving the rule” of harmony between the couple that Wallace wrote of after Julia’s death. Their only other disagreement was a purely intellectual one over the meaning of Ibsen’s play The Master Builder. This is hardly surprising, since the play is hard to interpret.
The entries we’re left with do record a great many aches, pains and illnesses afflicting Wallace. This is to be expected, when he was not a well man. He must have had “off days” when he was in a sour mood. His ill-health was his greatest curse. However, this says nothing whatsoever about his relationship with Julia.
Likewise, he records days when Julia was ill. But what does this suggest about their relationship? Some might argue that this made her a “burden” to him, but to me it suggests his genuine concern for her welfare. The entry for December 15, 1930 certainly shows his anxiety about her safety. It’s hard to believe that was written by a man who just five weeks later was plotting to kill her.
He does seem to have forgotten their anniversary in 1930, but that’s not unusual. In decades of marriage I forgot our anniversary once, but my wife forgot it another year. And one year we both forgot it! So the honors were even. We had to laugh at that. There isn’t any gushy language about Julia in this part of Wallace’s diary, but he did express satisfaction with their marriage. After her death it was different of course, and he wrote often of how much he missed her. That contrast may be partly because we’re only reading an “edited Wallace” in the earlier diary fragments, but also because, as Joni Mitchell sang half a century ago, ”You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”
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