Ian Handford on Edmund Gosse

Edmund Gosse was born at Trafalgar Terrace, De Beauvoir Square Hackney on September 21st 1849. Confined as a child to a small dark room where religious fervour was more important than food or drink, Philip his father was a writer, naturalist and friend of Charles Darwin until Darwin's conversion after which Philip clung to the "Vestiges of Creation” a tome committed to revelation.

Philip and Emily Gosse were besotted with religion and discussion at every meal  completely centred round Christian beliefs and their child came to believed his father “knew everything and saw everything” about an Omniscient God. Even after being taken seriously ill Phillip father announced it was the Lords will and “we must acquiesce”. When Edmund became really ill Emily his mother recorded in her diary  “Should we be called upon to weep over the early grave of the dear one whom now we are endeavouring to train for heaven, may we be able to remember we never ceased to pray for and watch over him”.

Fortunately, Edmund survived and by age seven mourned the loss of his mother who died of breast cancer. Philip then recorded “his wife thought Rome doomed - in 1857 not impossible continuing - it irradiated her dying hours with an assurance that was like the light of the Morning Star”. No sorrow just an acceptance. Growing in such strange circumstances Edmund never played, fun being absent and he received no formal education. After a Governess was hired Philip immediately, as directed by God left to seek a new sanctuary and on horseback found Villa Sandhurst in Torquay. At age just eight Edmund was in Torquay where his father remained until death.  

The Governess, maid and Edmund would enjoy the wildness of Babbacombe Downs while viewing the ocean yet on a return as an adult Edmond found he had to "turn away in anger and disgust” due to the new Babbacome development seen as - “obscuring and taming the beauty of this most natural maze of wilderness”. Having left Torquay in his late teens, with Philip's help he found work at a London museum. There his ideas on religion were changed concluding that Evangelical religion divided the heart and set up a barren pursuit where "all the tender, indulgent affections, all the genial play of life, all the exquisite pleasures and soft resignations of the body, are exchanged for what is harsh and void and negative”. 

By now a writer of significance Edmund mixed with poets and the famous including Theo Marzials, Arthur O’Shaughnessy and Richard Garnett and even Madox Brown of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. With rent provided by his father he lodged with two devout women until meeting Madox-Brown who introduced him to Miss Ellen Epps a pupil to the master painter, They would marry in August 1875 before moving to Delamere Terrace and in 1901 moving over to Hanover Terrace Regents Park London where entertainment became a pastime. 

Devoted they wrote to each other daily when apart while in Torquay Philip's religious convictions were sorely tested as academics like - Hooker, Wallace and Lyell and friend Darwin questioned - "why and how was man on earth".  Natural selection seemed an answer although to traditionalists like Gosse this was sacrilegious - how would Genesis and an Omnipotent God fit in.

Edmund published dozens of books before being librarian at the House of Lords in 1904. Later he later confirmed a biographer’s role was to satisfy the reader "Ideally be sympathetic and never blind or over indulge" yet his most famous work concerned his parents “Father and Son" published in 1907. The King would eventually award him a Knighthood while in France they made him Commander of Legion’ d’honneur at age 70.

Sir Edmund Gosse died in a London Nursing Home on May 16th 1928 leaving an estate of £26,255.16.10d to his children - Emily, Philip and Sylvia.