10. Relapse and Exile

When Alice died following a brief illness in November 1910, Trix was at her bedside, but when Lockwood suddenly and unexpectedly died two months later, she was neither present nor prepared. While grieving over these losses, Trix became suspicious and accusatory toward Rudyard—unable to control her wild talk, her piercing screams, and her restless pacing and hand-shaking. While Jack and Rudyard argued over the best treatment for Trix, she was sent away to be cared for, first by famous mental professionals and later by a series of private nurses in ever-changing locations in England and Scotland. From time to time, Jack tried to reclaim his wife, but his clumsy attempts were met with violent resistance. It was not a straying husband, a childless marriage, a literary disappointment, or the strain of psychic research that caused Trix to break down, but the almost simultaneous loss of her two parents that finally undid her. Trix’s parents were gone, the house in Tisbury had been broken up, her brother had betrayed her, her husband had abandoned her. The period of thirteen years, from 1911 to 1924, was the darkest period of Trix’s life. Little is known about this time, which Trix referred to as “exile.” No writing survives from this period.