It’s In the Blood

What follows is a “teaser” for a bigger story.

Thirza Eagle Nash was seventy-six years old when she passed away. Her faculty yielded to the wilderness of dementia. It was 1962 and I was six years old. Her novels remain the inherited testament to a “shining one.”

A distant land of scrub and aridity upon calcite hills witnessed the rise of Thirza Eagle Nash and her sense of atmosphere, character and humanity. Her birth certificate dated November 18, 1885 read Leliefontein, Namaqualand, South Africa, a place inspired by a lily-ringed spring.

Missionaries end up in such places spreading seeds of faith, and so it was with her parents. Together, Willem Carel Goch and Louisa Ann Charleston had seven children.

Her father must have looked to the scriptures to name this daughter. In the Old Testament book of Numbers, Chapter 27, he would have found Zelophehad’s daughter Tirzah, meaning delightful and pleasant (in Scottish Gaelic Thursa is ‘The shining one’). Perhaps he also looked to Revelations 12:14: “…the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time…” If names create reality then Thirza Eagle, whose name was so different from her siblings was destined to an unusual life.

Thirza attended the Normal College of Pretoria which later became the Education Faculty of The University of Pretoria. She became a teacher and taught for may years. It seems probable that by the age of twenty-three she was in a classroom engaging her pupils. Her education likely inspired her literary abilities.

At the age of thirty-two she married a mining geologist, William Benjamin Nash, and assumed her life in the wilderness of South West Africa where they travelled and camped widely. My mother tells the story of when one night they were in their tent. In the lamplight they saw a snake crawling up the leg of the table. The blast from the shotgun took the leg of the table off.

Thirza was a suffragette, a voice for women’s rights and very much a feminist.

In the three years after their marriage, while traveling and camping she wrote and published her first novel, Oh, Miss Maginty[1]. It is written in the first person in the form of letters addressed to her dog Miss Maginty. Drawing on her own experience of dusty tents and travel, Thirza tells tales of her character’s camping life.

In the book she speaks of the conventions of marriage: “…church bells, wreathed and veiled maidens, a half-hidden blushing young woman, in white silk, lace and orange blossoms…” This was not for her as she goes on to describe her characters experience,

Jerry and I had not seen each other for a year until the train hissed into the little station and I saw him in the crowd on the platform. And when I had hold of his hand and looked into his face the whole long year shriveled up into nothing. It was good to know we need never again be away from each other, but would be together ‘always and beyond always.’

She goes on to describe how she dressed herself in the hotel bedroom with,

“…no flittering, solicitous maids about me and no need of them since I wore a plain tailored suit.”

My mother, an only child, was born a year later in Windhoek, South West Africa. It was 1921 and Thirza was thirty-six.

All Thirza’s novels are set in South Africa’s past, a time when both my mother’s and my father’s great grandparents came there to settle with so many others, shaping a wilderness of warring factions and a rush for diamonds and gold.

She published The Ex-Gentleman in 1925 but it wasn’t until 1947 that The Geyer Brood took shape. William Benjamin had passed away in 1944 and in a need to support herself she returned to her passion. Witchweed and Passion is Darkness followed; the latter was published in 1951.

My sisters, Thirza (Granny’s namesake) and Judy, who were young at the time and before I was born remember Granny’s delight and pleasure when they entertained her with performances, especially of Hans Christian Anderson and Gilbert and Sullivan. Thirza would listen for hours to recordings and write out the lyrics so they could sing too. They would dress up and line up two chairs as a stage in the lounge for their shows. Mum was hurried and trying to prepare dinner, but Granny, always one for a bit of theatre was their best and most enthusiastic audience. She never ever told them they couldn’t hold a note. There were ballet performances and lots of dress-up clothes. At dinner all of us were made to eat every scrap off our plates and Judy sometimes found that difficult so that when a chewed up fish ball in her mouth made her retch it was Granny, always an ally, rescuing her a few times on the quiet.

I often remember Granny in her bedroom where she is sitting in front of the dressing table and I standing next to her. She is staring at the face looking back at her. Did she wonder if it was Alice? Now I imagine slipping through that looking glass and into her life.

In a letter dated June 22, 1962 addressed to my mother by Mary Morison Webster[2] wrote of Thirza’s “humanity, literary facility, sound craftsmanship, a keen sense of atmosphere and character…” and that “…I am sure her literary powers have been restored to her elsewhere and in different circumstances.”

And so as I stand in reflection holding four of Thirza’s five novels[3], her legacy from a trip through the looking glass that leaves me in her shadow with an assurance from a distant stranger.

[1] The illustrated copy I have has a picture of a lily pond. Could this be a reference to Leliefontain? Is Jerry her character in the book a nickname for Benjamin her husband?

[2] Mary Webster ((1894–1980), was a Scottish born novelist and poet who came to South Africa. She lived in Johannesburg where she was an influential book reviewer for The Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Times for 40 years. She wrote five novels, including one in collaboration with her sister, novelist Elizabeth Charlotte Webster and several collections of poetry).

[3] I am missing “The Ex-Gentleman” first published in 1925 by Jarrold’s in London, England