A Profound Secret

by Josceline Dimbleby

A chance encounter with Andrew Lloyd Webber at a summer party sent Josceline Dimbleby on a quest to uncover a mystery in her own family's past. Her great-aunt Amy Gaskell was the subject of a beautiful dark portrait by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, but all that was known about Amy, according to family lore, was that she had 'died young of a broken heart'. In her search, Josceline discovered a cache of unpublished letters from Burne-Jones to her great-grandmother May Gaskell, Amy's mother.They formed a passionate and prolific correspondence, of up to five letters a day, from the last six years of the painter's life. As she read, more and more questions were why did Burne-Jones feel he had to protect May from an overwhelming sadness? What was the deep secret she had confided to him? And what was the tragic truth behind beautiful Amy's wayward, wandering life, her strange marriage and her unexplained early death?

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Art, History, Biography Memoir, 19th Century, British Literature

369 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Kate Forsyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Josceline Dimbleby has been one of Britain’s favourite food writers for a long time. A PROFOUND SECRET is a departure for her – it is the story of how an old portrait inspired her to dig deeper into her family’s past and its many secrets and mysteries. The portrait was of her great-aunt Amy Gaskell, and it was painted by the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones.

As a girl, Josceline was told her great-aunt had died young of a broken heart. Deciding to find out more, Josceline uncovered a box of secret love letters between the famous artist and Amy’s mother, May. Both were married to others. Josceline also discovered the tragic truth of Amy’s early demise. The book is as much about Josceline’s search as it is about what she discovered, and so it is as much a detective story as it is a story of a secret love affair.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to come to a conclusion about this book, which makes more promises than it can keep but is nonetheless full of nuggets for those interested in the nexus of relationships and interests of Victorian and Edwardian society. It is essentially the biography of the author's great-grandmother May Gaskell, interspersed with the histories of May's family and above all her daughter Amy, who died young. It's also the story of the author's quest to discover the secret of Amy's death, and: she doesn't. All she ends up with is speculation, so readers who like conclusions are going to be disappointed.

But what the author does discover, and publish (I think) for the first time, are the love letters to May from the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. Given that he often wrote several letters a day to May, we are only given a glimpse of that correspondence—a tantalizing glimpse, since EBJ was an entertaining writer who often illustrated his letters with amusing cartoons of himself, the people he knew, and a variety of humorous subjects. Digitizing the letters would be a great service to Victorian scholars.

May and EBJ probably didn't have a physical affair, not least because he was sixtysomething to her thirtysomething when they met. But Dimbleby's account strongly suggests that this was the love of May's life, if not necessarily the married Burne-Jones's, who seems to have had a penchant for falling in love with young (or young-looking) and intelligent society women (often, rather creepily, when they were quite young, although he didn't desert them as they grew older—unless, presumably, they got fat as he was generally cruel about obese women).

But Burne-Jones dies halfway through the book, and the focus passes to Amy, who appears to have drifted around the world without her soldier husband getting men to fall in love with her. Was she really the angel her family portrays, or simply a willful, bored socialite who turned to drugs in the end? She was a very early adopter of what we'd now call the selfie and appears frequently in the book in carefully posed photographs—the one on the cover is of a teenage Amy in what was, for those days, a fairly daring and provocative swimsuit pose. This obsession with her own beauty—Burne-Jones painted her at nineteen, which must have made an impression on her—might have been inherited from her mother, also a "stunner" who kept her looks into old age.

It's a tale of unhappy marriages, too, with the probable exception of Amy's much younger sister Daphne (not a beauty, and very aware of the fact; how dreadful to grow up comparing yourself to a gorgeous mother and sister!) who married one of Amy's former admirers. If you take this book as a family memoir, what you have is a fairly interesting portrait of an era; if you're looking for a profound secret, you might be disappointed. Good title though.

[Helen Carolan · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a dreadful read. slow and boring. this lady normally writes cookery books and columns and perhaps she should stick with that. one of the worst books i've read this year.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the book under the title "A profound secret: May Gaskell, her daughter Amy, and Edward Burne-Jones". But I noticed it was also published under the title "May and Amy: A True Story of Family, Forbidden Love, and the Secret Lives of May Gaskell, Her Daughter Amy, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones". I am not sure the latter one is a good title, to me it makes it sound like the book would be much more gossip-y than it is. That really isn't what this book does, it tells the story of a Victorian woman, May, her family - including her daughter Amy, and her friendship with Edward Burne-Jones.

And as that, it is personal (more so than I generally like, but it works here) story of the author's search for her relatives and their stories. A book more about the enigmas than the answers.

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Irritating. 😠

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

From around page 80 until Edward Burne-Jones' death, I give this book 5 stars. The description of his correspondence with May Gaskell and her family was just riveting, and the exerpts of the actual letters made me nearly giddy. He was not just an amazing painter, but apparently quite lyrical with his pen. A vast amount of this book, however, reads like a family history that would (sorry) only be interesting to relatives of the author.

Four stars, however, because as I said...the segments that involved Burne-Jones took my breath away.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story behind one of Burne-Jones' haunting portraits is in itself haunting. Years after the fact I am still referencing the people and places in the book. This is one of those novels that, when it ends, you feel slightly lost and miss the people and places. Very well done. This is "one of those books."

[Susan Liston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edward Burne-Jones is really just one of many characters in this story, which could easily have been written as a novel, I almost forgot at times that it wasn't. The fact that it is true made it much more compelling and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Not for everyone, of course, this has to be the sort of thing you like.

[Charles Stephen]

I needed to stop reading this book around page 150. I wasn’t going to subject myself to any more unhinged ravings of Edward Burne-Jones to his supposed muse, May Gaskell. Burne-Jones had asked May early on to destroy all of his correspondence and was under the impression that she had. When Dimbleby came across the cache of correspondence in the possession of her kinsman, she became determined to make it into a book. In my view, Burne-Jones’s reputation was unharmed by these revelations, while May Gaskell was still just the subject of some lovely photographs. That May Gaskell would cling to such drivel is a comment on the difficulty of many Victorian women who strove to live lives of consequence in a world that belonged to the male sex. I do not think May Gaskell was the best example of this type of Victorian woman.

Meanwhile, Dimbleby failed to develop fully some of the truly remarkable stories from her family’s history. What could a novelist make of the suppressed romance of May Gaskell’s parents, whose nuptials were proscribed and postponed for years. What about documenting the story of May’s brother, Willie Gaskell, who was sent off as a stripling to survive by his own wits in Argentina. I really wanted more details about his struggles and ultimate success away from the Gaskell family. Finally, there was May’s son, Hal, who nurtured his own skills as an artist and was part of the bohemian circle of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. It seems to me that Hal’s creative life screams for some type of development as a story.

If I have missed something in the remaining 200 pages of this book, I invite other readers of this book to take me to task.

This review is not an endorsement of amazon.com or any business owned by Jeff Bezos. Books for my reviews were checked out from a public library, purchased from a local brick-and-mortar book shop, or ordered from my favorite website for rare and out-of-print books.

[Marilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 rating

If you are fascinated by England in the 1890s, especially its artistic aspects, then this is for you. May Gaskell, one of the group of aristocratic "Souls", inspired the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones to write her five times a day. Many of his most interesting writings came from his letters to May, which were meant to be destroyed (how glad they were not). May's daughter Amy, painted by Burne-Jones with sombre darkness, presents a mystery - one that author Dimbleby, Amy's great aunt, partially illuminates. Many famous figures of the day appear in the book, including Henry James.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the story and some of the family history. But what I have a supreme problem is her reliance on the rhetorical questions. Like Kathyrn hughes mentions. They are overly dramatic and make you think something definite will be revealed. And sadly, not so much. Abit torn. It is interesting, but I wanted more Pre-Raph stuff.

From Kathyrn Hughes' review of A Profound Secret.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004...

Are these relentlessly rhetorical questions annoying? They are nothing compared with the endless unanswered queries Dim-bleby throws out in the course of this breathless book. Chapter four, in fact, ends with three on the trot, the final one of which asks urgently "Was it melodramatic of me to wonder if [Burne-Jones] could have had a premonition of [Amy's] fate?" At which point one wants to jump into the text and stamp on the question marks until they lie defeated, unable to perform their annoying trick of gesturing towards openness while stubbornly refusing to take the argument in any particular direction.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish I could remember why this was on my TBR apparently added at the end of 2010. I seem to recall that one of the main characters and this book was mentioned in another book I read but a quick look of books read in 2010 doesn't throw any light on this.

Anyway I couldn't see any point in this book for the general public. Without all the facts, nothing was really revealed that could have been shocking by the standards of the time.

The only reason this is a two-star review and not one star is that I found interesting the information about May Gaskell collecting books for service men.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the book, but have to admit I was put off by May's apparent preoccupation with her looks and her daughter. Burne Jones fueled the fire in a way that made me squirm at times. He seemed always to be looking for the fountain of youth through (young) women's faces and figures, and idealized them much as he did fairy tales and Medieval legends. I finished the book with a sense of gloomy relief.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed it, but feel the author's family will get the most satifaction. Not an exciting read. I think it's a good look at the era but I never felt we really got to the crux of Amy, what she was really about.

[Lora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the victorian period. This is fascinating and intimate geneology.

[Ann Naumann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strangely compelling. I would recommend this for my Anglophile friends interested in a more personal perspective into that cusp of time between the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

[Mithra Birdie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book drags a bit, but it is interesting to read about the lives of the women during this period in history

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book, gripped throughout.

[Paulinlong · Rating 3 out of 5]

You have to be fascinated by the times or you will not be fascinated by this book.