When I started investigating Irene Pickard's archive and using it as a lens to see her life and times through, I did not expect to find a story of romance, of emotional entanglement, of trial and tribulation. I had not anticipated that her obvious fascination with Jung as being driven by her own emotional hurts, frustrations, confusions and struggles.
But then I should have guessed. Jung specialised in emotional confusion and distress as a root of mental suffering, but also as the seed bed of maturation, of developing emotional wisdom and integration, of wholeness – the process of individuation as he termed it. It seems that it is only when we are broken open that we are ready to grow.
I knew that Irene had been Rendel Harris's secretary. What I did not anticipate was that their relationship had developed into something far more than a formal employer-employee relationship.
Irene had preserved throughout her life what seems to be most of Rendel Harris's letters to her. Quite an achievement through seven moves, including a last minute escape from Geneva to prevent being trapped in Switzerland by the encircling Nazi forces, and a war time crossing of the Atlantic. The letters clearly meant a great deal to her.
The letters started in 1911 with kindly but business like notes. Irene was regularly travelling out from Birmingham to Woodbrooke to collect work from Rendel Harris to be done at home. The letters got warmer over time, expressing increasing concern for her welfare, convenience and comfort. In 1914, following the death of his wife, Irene moved into Rendel Harris's home as his live-in secretary. By 1917 he was writing to her during his trip to the Middle East in much more affectionate terms:
So many things to talk over with thee. Inshallah, as we say here, which means 'and it please God' we shall be together again soon and walking side by side. I send my love with this.
Rendel Harris
By January 1921 he is opening a letter with:
Chère amie
An expression only normally used between lovers in that period, and continues:
Comme je me trouve desolé, comme un plat sans pain, ou un coupe sans thé, ou un bain sans savon! (How very sorry I find myself, like a meal without bread, a cup without tea, or a bath without soap!) and ending:
Dear child, I miss thee as the days go by.
Surprisingly, by 1922 Irene was attending Woodbrooke as a full time student, financially supported by Rendel Harris, who writes understanding her need to be away "in the present state of things" and saying "what is broken can not be mended". A somewhat strange arrangement for an employer who needed the services of a live-in secretary. He had deprive himself of her services, and was supporting her financially during the college terms. The letters from the period read as if there had been a major rupture in their relationship.
Given the sources I had available whilst writing the book, I was perplexed as to what had caused the rupture – there was little further evidence in the letters beyond a clear change in tone, with Rendel Harris being very solicitous as to her well-being, asserting how much he missed her, and being somewhat placatory. Given the lack of other sources available to me I could only express my confusion as to exactly what had triggered the rupture. That something major had happened to change their relationship could be inferred from the letters, but nothing as to its nature. What I wrote in my text was:
There are question left by reading the letters – questions that can never be answered. One is left reading between the lines, and guessing at the subtext. Had she been Rendel Harris's mistress? Had the relationship been a surrogate father daughter relationship? Had their relationship developed into some kind of bungled love affair, the reaction to which was her needing to spend time away? Has he or she behaved inappropriately towards the other by the strict standards of the day? Was she tormented by a love that she knew could never be consummated? Had she declared herself to the good Doctor only to be rejected? Had he declared himself to her thus confusing their relationship? What is clear is that the relationship was deep and meaningful to them both. Irene's laudation of Rendel Harris in the Memories she wrote about him when she was in her eighties, some 57 years after leaving his household, speaks clearly of the adoration she felt. (From the chapter Well Met at Woodbrooke)
After I had submitted this text to my publisher, a biography of James Rendel Harris was published that provided a the answer to the causes of the rupture: another young woman!
Helen Travers Sherlock, two years Irene's junior, and apparently a brilliant scholar of Ancient Green and Latin, had entered Rendel Harris's life. She was very much of the same social standing as Rendel Harris, unlike Irene, who was only an employee. From 1917 she spent increasing amounts of time with Rendel Harris, becoming something of a protegee, and corresponding with him frequently in conjunction with her studies.
Alessandro Falcetta tells in his biography how Rendel Harris did not want his relationship with Helen to go public, even instructing her to destroy his letter to her as he did not want people to read them in the near future. Was Rendel Harris concerned that Irene, who handled his correspondence, might discover the increasingly intimate nature of the relationship?
In April 1922 Rendel Harris and Helen were spotted walking together in London Zoo, something which was reported to Rendel Harris's brother, who, mistakenly assumed that Harris must have been there with Irene. It was not unusual to see the Irene and Harris together in social contexts, as is indicated by this photography of them side by side whilst on a holiday in Norway.
Now two young women were competing for Rendel Harris's regard and affection. An love triangle had been formed. Did Irene discover the evolving intimacy of the relationship between Rendel Harris and Sheerlock? Did she suffer a crisis? There is evidence of this in the letters. Did she feel betrayed? Was such a discovery the trigger for the apparent alienation and the apologetic tone of Rendel Harris's letters to her, and for his agreeing to her spending a time at Woodbrooke as a student at his expense?
Rather than return to Rendel Harris home to resume her duties as his live-in secretary, Irene agreed to marry a certain Bertram Pickard, not without a lot of hesitation, and following Rendel Harris's refusal to fund a trip to America for her, which seems to have been the final trigger.
In May 1923 Irene and Bertram were married. By August that year Rendel Harris had set up home with Helen Sherlock and her mother.
Falcetta points out the Rendel Harris seemed to have preferred asymmetric relationships. His wife had been eleven years older, and both Irene and Helen about forty years younger.
Although Falcetta does not seemed to have realised the depth of relationship that had grown between Irene and her employer, he does, however, realise the depth of Rendel Harris's relationship with Helen Sheerlock. It is as if our researches have each revealed one side of a love triangle. He does note that some of Helen's letters to Rendel Harris were returned unopened. The thought does occur to me that perhaps Irene intercepted them and returned them? She would have had ample opportunity as Rendel Harris's personal secretary, and the motivation.
In The Way of all Women: Women's Mysteries Ancient and Modern, Esther Harding, one of Carl Jung's early disciples, talks of the hieros gamos (the holy or sacred marriage) which is often a woman's first love, the one which awakens her spiritually and intellectually. A love which is better not fully consummated because the love object should be elevated, idealised, a supreme model of all she values most highly.
Irene's love for Rendel Harris certainly fitted that pattern, and the breaking of the love spell due to being supplanted in Rendel Harris's affections, with all the attendant pain of being the looser in a love triangle, led her not only into her marriage, but ultimately to the feet of Dr Jung.
