WORDS IN PAIN: Letters on Life and Death

By Trevor Moore and Jocelyn Catty

First published anonymously in 1919, these letters from a dying woman to her doctor display an attitude to death which is fiercely independent of religion but full of hope. The book will appeal to diverse readers: it is a picture of family life and love, interspersed with clear-headed musings on the nature of illness, loss and death; it illuminates the development of rationalist thought, humanism and liberal education and the history of adoption; and it provides
comfort for those who try to come to terms with dying, without religion to cushion the blow. As her dialogues with
the doctor, a Christian, show, Jacoby is witty and erudite, and rails against the dogmas of organised religion while
espousing a passionate morality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyscraper Publications
• Release date: Mar 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781911072447

Book preview

Praise for Words in Pain: Letters on Life and Death

This remarkable book charts the difficult journey of an intelligent and enlightened young woman, as she approaches her inevitable death with optimism, generosity and wit. It is stimulating, moving, profound, and extremely enjoyable.

Mike Leigh

These wonderful letters prove that true immortality lies in what we leave behind. For those of us who cannot accept the consolation of religion, they provide a sane and comforting view of how to live and, more importantly, die. They bear reading and re-reading and teach us how to live even when in the shadow of death. A feminist, rational and heartening voice about the big stuff—life and death.

Sandi Toksvig

"Words in Pain is an epistolary treasure trove. By turns funny, touching, and intensely sad, Olga’s letters muse on timeless questions about the nature of life, love and death—questions which resonate powerfully today."

Cathy Newman, broadcaster and author of Bloody Brilliant Women

At a time of widespread truth decay, here is a glimpse into the distilled soul of a woman who prized honesty above everything. In the shadow of death, her resonant words make their way to our intellects via our hearts. The freshness, courage and insight of Olga Jacoby help us come to terms with human collage and complexity. This is a marvellous book.

Rev’d Canon Mark Oakley, Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge

Olga Jacoby was a rare creature who found the ability to rationalise her situation and reflect on it. She is particularly moving in describing her belief in the transformative power of love. I feel privileged to have had access to the innermost thoughts of such a likeable, clever and courageous woman as she confronts her own mortality. Her words feel as relevant today as they must have when written in the early 20th century. Reading them makes me wish I could have been her friend.

Gill Paul, author of The Lost Daughter

In this remarkable, moving and erudite glimpse of a life lived in the shadow of death, the reader encounters a rare story. With modesty and passion, the letters engage with many of the issues that belonged centrally to this ‘age of transition’, especially in relation to debates about science and its relation to religion. Olga was what she calls a Rationalist—a fearless explorer of her own mind and of those of many others. For this meticulous and deeply personal new edition, all future readers will be extremely grateful.

Margot Waddell, author of Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality

"Words in Pain is the first account of what we would now call assisted dying. The book is a poignant and erudite reminder that human nature does not change, and that this is one arena where our governance over ourselves has got harder and not easier in contemporary times. This is a book to read and read time and again."

Dr Martin Scurr, FRCP, FRCGP

"Profoundly moving, profoundly thought-provoking, Words in Pain brings alive Olga’s intelligence and humour and above all her vivid awareness of life, death, and what it means to be human."

Emma Darwin, author of This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin

"Written in the form of letters that are both intensely personal and clearly turned towards posterity, Words in Pain is a fascinating record of the attitudes towards suffering and death of its period. But the distinctive voice ringing out in this text also feels profoundly contemporary in its frank description of states of despair and rigorous refusal of the consolations of religion. Words in Pain bears compelling witness to the author’s commitment to communicating experiences that, both in her period and now, are very frequently left unvoiced."

Professor Laura Salisbury, author of Samuel Beckett: Laughing Matters, Comic Timing

For

Jon Catty

and in memory of Olga Jacoby

and her children Ivan, Kathleen, Robert and Olga

Words in Pain

Published by Skyscraper Publications Limited

20 Crab Tree Close, Bloxham, OX15 4SE

www.skyscraperpublications.com

First published 2019

Afterword copyright © 2019 Jocelyn Catty

Foreword and Supplementary Notes

copyright © 2019 Trevor Moore

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-911072-44-7 eBook

ISBN-13: 978-1-911072-35-5 printed edition

Cover concept, design and typesetting by chandlerbookdesign.com

CONTENTS

Foreword to the Centenary Edition

Editorial Notes

Acknowledgements

Foreword to the First Edition, 1919

Preface to the Second Edition, 1920

Words in Pain

The Eulogy

by Mr Russell

Olga in life, death and writing

An afterword by her great-granddaughter

Supplementary Notes

By Trevor Moore

FOREWORD TO THE CENTENARY EDITION

SOMETIMES A VOICE FROM the past captures our imagination through the written word. We perhaps think of the diaries of Samuel Pepys or Anne Frank. These have left a powerful legacy that we still appreciate today.

Knowing the identities of the authors adds to the appeal of their works, because we gain a fuller sense of the person, further embellished by available paintings or photographs and an understanding of the social and historical setting of the times in which they lived. How would our appreciation be diminished if we did not know anything about the author?

When I, by chance, came across a faded copy of Words in Pain on a shelf of the Conway Hall Library, its curious title drew me in. I first intended to spend just a few minutes browsing through the collection of letters, written between 1909 and 1913. But they were so packed with profound and moving insights that they had an immediate effect on me and I pored over them for hours. Discovering that the anonymous writer knew her life would shortly come to an end added to their poignancy. Yet not knowing her identity nagged at me.

I hunted down and bought my own copy of this rare book from a specialist bookseller, giving me the freedom to read and re-read the letters at leisure—essential, since it is impossible to absorb their full richness from just one reading.

The more familiar I became with their content, the greater the impact the letters had on me. I grew determined to establish the identity of the engaging, often challenging, woman who wrote them. The letters threw up a considerable number of clues, sufficient to allow me to assemble a jigsaw puzzle that provided a picture with which to work, albeit missing a few key pieces.

After time spent at the National Archives in Kew and copious use of many online resources, the eureka! moment came when I tracked down, in the 1911 Census, an entry for a household that matched the family composition and likely locale described in the letters (Hampstead and Golders Green). The writer’s name was Olga Jacoby. She lived in Crediton Road (later Crediton Hill) in north west London with her husband Jack and her three adopted children (eventually to be joined by a fourth).

Now that I had a name, I could set about the intriguing tasks of trying to discover more about this determined woman and, above all, tracing her descendants. The latter task held a particular importance; I had already decided to bring the letters to the attention of a modern-day audience, come what may. However, I felt that to do so without at least trying to contact Olga’s family would be a sort of betrayal, given the family’s wish for privacy at the time of the original anonymous publication of the letters.

Several paths led nowhere, explicable in hindsight by the family events (explained in the afterword) that followed in the decades after Olga’s death in 1913. But perseverance paid off when one fork in the road led me to discover the whereabouts of Olga’s grandson Jonathan Catty and of her great-granddaughter, Jocelyn.

With considerable delight I received a welcoming response from Jocelyn to my initial contact. I learned that she and her father had become aware of the existence of Words in Pain only in November 2016, following the death of another family member; and that she too had determined on re-publishing the letters.

Jon Catty holds a copy of the memorial booklet for Olga, produced after her funeral in May 1913. This not only includes the impressive eulogy, delivered by a Mr Russell (reproduced in this volume at the end of the letters), but also, on its cover, displays an example of Olga’s handwriting, setting out the lines she refers to in the letters as being her choice for this very purpose:

And all my life, I must confesse,

The lesse I love, I live the lesse.

This motto appears on the dust jacket to this book, providing a clear picture of the script in which the letters would have been written—alas, the originals have not been found.

In the afterword to this volume, Jocelyn Catty draws on Jack Jacoby’s memoirs and other sources to piece together the story of Olga and Jack’s background, their marriage and the adoption of their children. She also relates aspects of the fascinating and poignant family story that followed Olga’s death, as well as reflecting on the significance of Words in Pain today.

Further online research brought more information to light, including, somewhat enticingly, that a pastel portrait of Olga, painted in Hamburg in 1899 when she was 24, had come up for auction in 2016 but had not sold. After tracing the owner, I acquired the painting in the summer of 2017—reassuringly, on the verso of the portrait someone had inscribed "Wrote Words in Pain". A reproduction of the portrait appears on the cover of this book. Despite her unfortunate circumstances at the time of writing the letters that make up Words in Pain—indeed, the first edition foreword solemnly pronounced, she was under sentence of death—much of the vivaciousness apparent in the portrait shines through in her writing.

Olga insists that the doctor to whom most of the letters are addressed treat her as a sensible being, not ‘a weak-minded woman,’ which I claim not to be… but likens the deep friendship she enjoyed with him to a kind of lighthouse to which I look up often so as to keep my bearing. Thanks to that beacon, and the letter-writing to him that she describes from the depths of her illness as a soothing occupation, Olga committed her deepest thoughts to paper.

She self-deprecatingly refers to her letters as disconnected prattle, yet they provide just as great an inspiration today as they must have when originally written. The unknown doctor clearly honoured a pledge, referred to in the letters, to return them to Olga’s husband Jack: [I]t is pleasant to think that my children will get to know me better through these letters.

Many of the socio-historical references in the letters hold up a mirror to the events of today: tariff reform (against cheap American and German imports), workers’ rights and jingoistic headlines in the Daily Mail are just some of the topical issues on which Olga comments. Looking back, the threat of war overshadowed the first thirteen years of the century, yet these were heady times—dubbed The Vertigo Years by Philipp Blom in his enlightening book of that name.

Although Olga lived in comfort, with a loving family around her, she endears herself to the reader by never taking that, or the excellent medical care she received, for granted. On the contrary, she torments herself: Have I a right to buy an extension of my life which, from sheer lack of money, could not be granted to a poor, perhaps far more useful, person? I feel crushed by the greatness of the debt imposed on me…

This disarming sense of humility motivated the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement of 23rd October 1919 to write that we cannot fail to rise from reading these letters calmed, strengthened and urged forward to a truer altruism.

Many flashes of light dazzle the eye as we read the pages. Here is one striking glint:

Love, like strength and courage, is a strange thing; the more we give the more we find we have to give. Once given out love is set rolling for ever to amass more, resembling an avalanche by the irresistible force with which it sweeps aside all obstacles, but utterly unlike in its effect, for it brings happiness wherever it passes and lands destruction nowhere.

Trevor Moore

London, August 2018

EDITORIAL NOTES

THE EDITORS HAVE SO far been unable to identify the doctor to whom most of the letters were written.

As was the convention at the time, many names and places are represented in the early editions of the letters by ____. The editors have completed the many blanks, to avoid the reader being brought up short. For non-family members whose identities are not known, they have simply chosen possible names that do not purport to be the real ones. Some place names are educated guesses. They have also unobtrusively re-ordered some of the letters to reflect better the chronology of the narrative.

For those readers interested in the many literary, historical and other references in the letters, the Supplementary Notes, following the Afterword, contain brief explanations.

The first two editions of the letters contain a small number of explanatory footnotes. As they are mostly quite brief, many have been incorporated into the text [in square brackets]. Occasional explanatory notes by the editors (such as to identify a family member) are indicated as such [in italics within square brackets]. Common hyphenations of the time (such as to-day) and contractions (such as O’strand) have been silently modernised but the common use of 5/6 for five shillings and sixpence has been retained. Occasional idiosyncrasies of expression have been left unchanged.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MANY PEOPLE HAVE SUPPORTED us in bringing this project to fruition and our researches into Olga Jacoby and the Iklé and Jacoby families have also been aided by a number of texts, published and unpublished. The Iklé family tree was compiled in the latter part of the twentieth century by Hans Iklé, son of Olga and Jack Jacoby’s uncle Adolf Iklé. For information on adoption in the early twentieth century, we have been indebted to A History of Adoption in England and Wales 1850-1961 by Gill Rossini (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2014) and Relative Strangers: A history of adoption and a tale of triplets by Hunter Davies (London: Time Warner Books, 2003).

We are grateful to Paul Kingsley, Eliot Kingsley and Jon Catty for permission to quote from the unpublished memoirs of John Jacoby. Jocelyn is also indebted to Jon, Barbara and Benet Catty for information on the Jacoby family history, and for checking and advising on successive drafts; she is grateful to them and to Julius Gladwell for their support and encouragement.

Trevor would like to thank the staff at the National Archives in Kew and at the British Library for their guidance in finding Olga and in his research for many of the supplementary notes. He also thanks his wife Lucy and daughter Pippa for their constant enthusiasm and valuable suggestions.

We are also grateful to Karl Sabbagh of Skyscraper Publications for his support and vision.

WORDS IN PAIN

...... the tongues of dying men

Enforce attention like deep harmony;

Where words are scarce, they are

seldom spent in vain;

For they breathe truth, that breathe

their words in pain.

King Richard II, II. i. 5-8

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1919

THE WRITER OF THESE letters was under sentence of death when she wrote them. The sentence had been pronounced by her Doctor, an intimate friend, to whom, in her trouble, she had unburdened her soul. He was an orthodox Christian, and he hoped that she would find support and comfort in his creed. But her mind was cast in a different mould. The doctrines of orthodox Christianity did not appeal to her. But she found support and comfort in a religion of her own—a religion which she called Rationalism, though it may be doubted if that title was worthy of it—a religion of submission to Nature’s laws, of joy in the beauty and glory of the world, of trust in human nature, of loving service to her fellow-men. The glow which this religion irradiated was strong enough to subdue the gloom of approaching death; and even when the shadow of death had enveloped her, her soul was cheered and sustained by its own inward light.

The letters are offered to the public in the hope that they may help other souls, when the same shadow begins to fall on them, to become lamps unto themselves.

The four children’s names are in order of age:—

CHARLES [Ivan], the eldest

MAY [Kathleen],

HENRY [Robert],

BABY [Olga], Joan

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 1920

THESE LETTERS WERE PUBLISHED originally for private distribution. Some copies, however, were sent for review: it was thought by doing so that an idea might be obtained of the impression the letters would make upon those who had no personal acquaintance with the author. In view of the reception by the press and the many requests received for the book, this less expensive edition has been issued.

WORDS IN PAIN

1909

London, April, 1909

DEAR DOCTOR,

But this is not a letter for the Doctor only. I would like to say a few words to the keeper of my conscience, or, better still, simply to a human being who seems to me to have both heart and brains equally developed.

I want to beg of you, once more, to be truthful to me; to treat me as a sensible being, not a weak-minded woman, which I claim not to be; and just as you would tell your man patient that he had better make his arrangements to leave (if he asked that question), I want to be told, when the time comes. I cannot get my husband to understand this, and I blame both you and him for not having trusted me enough up to now. These private talks between you and him while I wait, I feel like a slight to my common sense; besides their worrying effect through the incertitude they leave in me. I am keen that you should see this point, so that another time, in a similar case, you do not err again, meaning well.

On the whole your verdict was not unsatisfactory, but was it true? Do understand that it is as necessary that you should trust me, as that I should trust you. In return for this I promise not to let my thoughts dwell on my illness, to keep up my spirits and courage, even if at times you have to tell me an unpleasant fact. If I feel I can never, and with no one, get at the truth, I feel perfectly lost.

We always fear the unknown. I am not a coward and do not fear death, which to me means nothing more than sleep, but I cannot become resigned to leave this beautiful world with all the treasures it holds for me and for everyone who knows how to understand and appreciate them.

I do not like the idea of dying in the spirit of revolt, which is now my chief feeling, but I think that if I have time to get accustomed to the idea, I may be wise enough to resign myself humbly to the inevitable. I find it more worthy, and would like to leave a good example to those I love, this being my only understanding of immortality. You could help me greatly by showing that you have confidence in me. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner—try to understand, please, dear Doctor, and forgive the liberty I take with your time and thoughts.

London, October

MY DEAR DOCTOR,

Like you I believe in a higher power, but, unlike yours, mine is not a kind fatherly one. It is Nature, who with all its forces, beauties and necessary evils, rules our destinies according to its own irrevocable laws. I can love that power for the beauty it has brought into the world, and admire it for the strength that makes us understand how futile and useless it would be to appeal to it in prayer. But towards a kind and fatherly God, who, being almighty, prefers to leave us in misery, when by his mere wish he could obtain the same end without so much suffering, I feel a great revolt and bitterness. Nature makes us know that it cannot take into individual consideration the atoms we are, and for her I have no blame; no more than I could think of blaming you for having during your walks stepped on and killed many a worm (it was a pity the worm happened to be under your foot); but if during these walks your eyes were resting on the beauties of skies and trees, or your mind was solving some difficult problem, was that not a nobler occupation than had you walked eyes downwards, intent only on not killing. I think that Nature is striving towards perfection and that each human being has the duty to help towards it by making his life a fit example for others and by awaking ideals which will be more nearly approached by coming generations. In this way life itself offers enough explanation for living; and believing our existence to finish with death, we naturally make the most of our opportunities. The thought that the unfortunate cannot look forward towards a compensation (Heaven) should make us all the more helpful and charitable to them. Unable to appeal to a God for help, we find ourselves dependent only on our own strong will— not to overcome misfortune, but to try to bear it as bravely as possible. Religion having for an end the more perfect and moral condition of humanity, I truly think that these ideas are as religious as any dogmatic ones. And see how some religions teach us to misunderstand Nature, even in its grandest manifestations—love and birth. Nature does not wish woman to be punished for giving herself in love to a man, or the result of that love would not be the most beautiful thing in creation, the infant, who comes to us loaded, not with sin, but with a great load of happiness for immediate use in his own circle, and a greater store for humanity at large, when in later years he has learnt to use his abilities to the utmost.

I have thought a good deal about these matters this last year but find it difficult to put my ideas down, and wonder if I have made myself understood. Thank you for trying to understand.

London, November

DEAR DOCTOR,

I thought of asking you for a permit to write from here, but I forgot, and your last, oh so kind, letter to me, seemed to contain one. There are a few things I must tell you. Ever since our chat I felt that I owed it to my Mother’s memory to tell you that she was a strong (not strict) religious woman. Although none of the dogmatic forms of the Jewish religion were kept in our home,