As I closed this beautiful book the last lines of George Eliot’s Middlemarch popped into my mind:

…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

It is true that Miles Franklin may, for some, be a source of attraction to this book because of her notoriety. Like Eliot, Franklin assumed a male nom de plume. But to my patriarchal male gaze the power of Passionate Friends rests in the way Sylvia Martin so respectfully uncovers the fluid relationships between this group of women who are both remarkable and unremarkable at the same time. A quiet biography of life, hedge-folk to quote Mary Fullerton.

At the outset, in the prologue, Sylvia conjures these women alive to give them a living presence so that they are more than objects of enquiry. They become like companions for whom we grow to care and become enthralled although we barely know them. The view from the street, through the window, never feels intrusive and although Mabel’s marriage and the fatherhood of her child is intriguing, I felt quite content to not only leave these matters undiscovered but also to allow any fleshy sexuality its privacy while, at the same time, celebrating the enduring chemistries that drew these women to each other.

Considerable scholarship underlies this intimate story. Poetry is rarely a store of biographical truths. Yet Sylvia deftly extracts emotional truths from Mary’s poems and gently leads us towards the intellectual lights shining on Mable and Mary first, as they meet while working with Vida Goldstein and the Women’s Political Association in Melbourne, and then in London among the Bloomsbury set. It’s difficult not to feel envy for the shared sense of endeavour and the excitement of ideas and possibilities that accompanied this movement.

Good biography leads to personal insights. My closest friends are and always have been women. Too often I’ve lost these friends because they wanted more. So, I was drawn to Sylvia’s description of Edward Carpenter’s ‘intermediate sex’ and how attractive it must have been for these women to feel on a higher plane; advanced souls (the guard) and integral to societal transformation.

Fortunately, I attended the Australian launch of Passionate Friends and was able to hear Dr Peta Murray’s insightful thoughts about the importance of the book. She also mentioned the way in which lesbian history is being dissolved in the LGBTQIA abecedarium and I suddenly realise that I’m in danger of glossing over the fact that this is a lesbian history, or herstory.

With my mother’s foxed copy of Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness beside me, I wonder about her generation’s navigation of sexuality. I also wonder about the fourth woman, Jean Hamilton, with her ‘discreet association’ with Baldwin Spencer and I wonder about the tenacity shown by Miles in pushing Mary’s poetry, along with the curious shared duality where they both fervently wanted to bask in acknowledgement - even fame and yet hid from it behind names.

This book is far more than a lesbian story. I think it's also a story about the erosion of time and the way other people's ideas can shape the way we see ourselves - regardless of sexuality.

Out of the present climate, the notion of a queer perspective has emerged, a diverse concept that is less a new identity than a critique of identity, or at least the politics of identity. p.199

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