Victorian Secrets

Independent press dedicated to publishing books from and about the nineteenth century

Weeds by Jerome K. Jerome

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Cover of Weeds by Jerome K. JeromeJerome K. Jerome is famous, of course, for writing one of the funniest books in the English language: Three Men in a Boat. What is less well known is that he desperately tried to reinvent himself as a serious author. Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters was published anonymously in 1892, Jerome hoping that the novella would be judged on its own merits, rather than compared unfavourably with his comic tales of irascible terriers and tinned pineapple. Unfortunately for him, his publisher Arrowsmith was nervous about the story’s frank portrayal of adultery and it was never made available for general sale during the author’s lifetime.

While the Victorians’ moral squeamishness can be difficult to fathom for the modern reader, it’s not difficult to see why the edition was pulled. This disturbing narrative of sexual corruption shows marital fidelity as a perpetual struggle, with anti-hero Dick Selwyn falling for the attractions of his wife’s nubile young cousin. The link between his mental and physical corruption is sustained through a central metaphor of a weed-infested garden, which perishes through neglect (as predicted by the lugubrious narrator). Although there is the occasional comedic flash, this is a powerful evocation of fin-de-siecle society and its fears of degeneration.

Now, Jerome K. Jerome was no friend of the New Woman, but what really attracted me to Weeds was its radical ending (I shan’t spoil it), which embodies a clear challenge to the prevailing sexual double standard and casts an important light on late-Victorian gender ideology. I discovered when publishing Jerome’s biography that he was a complex and often contradictory man, and this story epitomises it more than any other.

Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters is available in print and Kindle editions. It includes Mona Caird’s brilliant essay ‘Does Marriage Hinder a Woman’s Self-Development’.

 

Effie by Suzanne Fagence Cooper

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Cover of Effie by Suzanne Fagence CooperHistory has not been kind to Effie Gray. Her first husband, John Ruskin, was supposedly terrified by her lower portions on their wedding night, while exasperated historians have blamed her for ruining the career of her second husband, John Millais. In this moving biography, Suzanne Fagence Cooper puts Effie centre stage, and we see her for the first time as an individual, as well as within the context of her two famous marriages.

Euphemia Chalmers Gray (1828-97) was the oldest of fifteen children, of whom only eight survived. What might have been an idyllic childhood in Scotland was punctuated by premature death and continual grief. This sadness notwithstanding, the Grays were a lively and close family, and Effie was happiest when with them. She was just twelve when John Ruskin first set eyes on her, and he was nearly twice her age at twenty-one. It is fair to say that his taste was for prepubescent girls – a taste more socially acceptable in those days, but unutterably creepy in our own. For most middle-class Victorian girls, marriage provided the only opportunity for leaving the family home and seeing something of the world.  In marrying an up-and-coming art critic, Effie envisaged a life of glittering parties and international travel, never imagining the reality of what being Mrs Ruskin might entail.

After a long and bumpy courtship, the couple married on 10 April 1848, the very day the Chartists marched on Hyde Park, and during a tumultuous period that saw Europe gripped by revolutionary fever. This unrest set the keynote for the Ruskins’ unhappy six-year marriage, notorious for Ruskin’s inability to stage his own uprising. Their wedding night is, of course, legendary, and it is handled with great deftness by the author. Cooper makes a convincing argument that it is unlikely Ruskin was repelled by his young wife’s pubic hair. As an art critic, he was used to viewing salacious images and must have been prepared for the spectacle of a naked woman. What he hadn’t anticipated was menstruation, and Cooper believes he was revolted by this bodily function. He eventually confessed to her “that the reason he did not make me his Wife is that he was disgusted with my person the first evening”.

It was as though Effie had lost her enigma and thereafter Ruskin had no interest in her, other than as an attractive possession.  When she suffered another family loss, he became irritated by the interruption to his studies. Furthermore, his elderly and pernickety parents always came first, and they were equally protective of their son. Any visible marital problems were quickly ascribed to Effie’s faults. His mistake was in confusing art with life, commenting cruelly that “the Alps will not wrinkle … but her cheeks will”. As Cooper writes, “Sadly, he was so bound up with the big picture, he failed to see what was needed on a domestic scale,” acknowledging his brilliance as an art critic, but not accepting this as an excuse for his failings as a husband.

Effie wrote heartbreaking letters to her parents, imploring them to help her escape this “unnatural” relationship. Meanwhile, Ruskin’s advocacy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood brought the dashing John Everett Millais into their circle. This talented young artist was troubled by Ruskin’s neglect of his wife, becoming close to her when she sat as his model. It was clear to all that the marriage was doomed and both sides were focused on damage limitation. Ruskin bragged to his young sister-in-law Sophy that he could get rid of Effie whenever he wanted – an early lesson in masculine privilege that possibly affected her later life. He incorrectly assumed that his wife would do anything to avoid the ignominy of a medical examination, thinking he could have her declared insane and locked away. However, the evidence showed that Mrs Ruskin was still a virgin, nearly six years after her marriage.  The courts annulled the marriage, ruling that “John Ruskin was incapable of consummating the same by reason of incurable impotency.” Understandably embarrassed, he offered to prove his virility (goodness knows how), but this was declined. We’ll never know whether it would have stood up in court (so to speak).

Just under a year later, in July 1854, Effie was married to Millais. Although the Ruskin business was behind her, she wasn’t allowed to forget it. Queen Victoria refused to receive her at court, which seems remarkably hypocritical given the monarch’s own love of sex. That, at least, was not a problem in Effie’s second marriage, and she spent much of it pregnant, producing eight surviving children. Having such a large family to provide for turned Millais from the avant-garde to more commercial ventures, a decision that has been unfairly blamed on Effie. She might have encouraged him to become a portrait painter, but how else would he earn a living? Mr and Mrs Millais were not prepared to endure the grinding poverty experienced by Ford Madox Brown, the couple craving the position in society that his talent deserved. Going from one extreme to the other was a shock to Effie and family life brought more challenges, not least Millais’s Dickensian obsession with his sister-in-law Sophy, whose determination to remain his aesthetic ideal contributed to an early death from anorexia. After the artist’s death in 1896, Effie was able to return to her family in Scotland, the only place where she had ever felt truly at home.

Effie shines out from these pages as a strong and intelligent woman who deserved to become recognised in her own right, rather than as the wife of an eminent man. We see sixty years of Victorian life through her eyes, and she is a lively and engaging correspondent. Thanks in part to fifteen bundles of letters lent to the Tate Archive, the biographer has provided an intimate portrait of this fascinating character and it is difficult not to become completely absorbed in her world. Part of Cooper’s considerable skill is in not allowing her heroine to become overshadowed by her husbands’ achievements, or to be seen as a necessary sacrifice to their art. Effie is presented unapologetically as an ordinary middle-class woman, albeit one who led an extraordinary life.

Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, Ruskin and Millais is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Lady Worsley’s Whim by Hallie Rubenhold

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Cover of Lady Worsley's Whim by Hallie RubenholdThere’s not much that surprises me these days, but Lady Worsley’s Whim managed to repeatedly elevate the papal eyebrows. The story centres around an infamous crim-con trial that took place on 21 February 1782 between Sir Richard Worsley, Governor of the Isle of Wight, and George Bisset, an officer (but not a gentleman) and one-time friend of Worsley. Despite having encouraged a close relationship between Bisset and his wife, Worsley thought it outrageous when the pair ran off together, and claimed £20,000 in damages. Already a wealthy man, the astronomical sum was designed to reduce his enemy to penury.

Sir Richard’s willingness to assign a purely financial value to the loss of his wife was entirely in character. He was a decidedly cold fish who was far more interested in collecting artefacts and bolstering his social status. Impervious to the charms of young heiress Seymour Dorothy Fleming, he had eyes only for her £70,000 fortune (equivalent to around £66m today). Once she had become Lady Worsley and divested herself of both identity and assets, Sir Richard was no longer interested in her. Lady Worsley remained a virgin until three months after their marriage, when her husband reluctantly did his duty and sired an heir.

Bored witless with little to distract her, Lady Worsley made her own entertainment. On one occasion she and two friends went on a three-day rampage, culminating in setting fire to a room in an inn:

‘How do you think they quenched the flame their own fair selves had caused? They did not call water! Water!, it was more at hand …’ these three well-bred young ladies, who had been taught to dance, embroider and lisp sweetly in French, lifted their silk skirts ‘and fairly pissed it out …’

Even this distinctly unladylike behaviour was insufficient to attract her husband’s attention.

When Sir Richard met Bisset, he thought his prayers had been answered. Here was a dashing officer who fulfilled his homosocial needs and his wife’s sexual appetites. Bisset was invited to live with the couple in a bizarre ménage à trois, with Sir Richard acting as voyeur while the other two amused themselves. He even seemed nonplussed when his wife became pregnant with Bisset’s child. This phlegmatic husband made little attempt to disguise his complicity in his wife’s liaison – at one crucial point he allowed Bisset to stand on his shoulders so he could watch the naked Lady Worsley getting dressed after a swim. This was to become ‘the most regrettable day of his life’, as we shall see.

Bisset and Lady Worsley’s relationship blossomed into love and they decided it would be quite nice to enjoy one another without her husband peering at them. They crept off into the night on 19 November 1781, taking up residence in a London hotel. Sir Richard finally discovered some virility at this point. Adultery was one thing, but his wife had destroyed the sanctity of marriage and his friend had thumbed his nose at the fraternal bond. Humiliated by his cuckold’s horns, Sir Richard invoked the full force of husbandly privilege, denying his estranged wife both money and any of her personal effects. She had only the clothes she wore on the night of the elopement and was entirely reliant on her lover, despite having provided an impressive dowry. As a wife, she had no right to her other clothes and jewels, worth an astonishing £15 million in today’s money.

The subsequent court case didn’t reflect well on anyone. As a mere woman, Lady Worsley had no right to defend herself, and the only tactic left to her was to prove she wasn’t worth the £20,000 damages claimed by Sir Richard. A seemingly endless succession of young bucks took to the witness stand to testify to having satisfied Lady Worsley’s whims, thereby branding her a worthless trollope. The judge consequently awarded damages of just one shilling, also denouncing the wronged husband as a foolish pervert. The crux of the case was his encouraging Bisset to watch his naked wife, so it was very clear that he had brought about his own downfall.

Perhaps inevitably, Bisset soon tired of his notorious lover and found himself a respectable wife.  The redoubtable Lady Worsley ended up in revolutionary Paris, embarking upon a new life and many adventures. Fortunately, Sir Richard died young enough for her to reclaim some of her fortune and find happiness with a much younger husband. Lady Worsley’s tenacity is both astonishing and humbling. Although rendered impotent by the law, she refused to tolerate the machinations of her sadistic, calculating husband. At a time when the only thing wives possessed was their virtue, she was willing to sacrifice it in order to extricate herself from an invidious position.

Hallie Rubenhold has done her subject justice by allowing her story to be heard and also setting it carefully in its historical context, thereby emphasising the remarkable nature of Lady Worsley’s actions. Rubenhold’s narrative skill is as remarkable as her subject. I found it impossible to put the book down and my knuckles were white from gripping it so tightly through all the twists and turns. The historical and legal detail is skilfully interwoven with the story, without either dominating or slowing it down. An extraordinary book about an extraordinary woman.

Lady Worsley’s Whim is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy Moore

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Cover of How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy MooreI must confess to having been initially sceptical at the title’s claim of “worst” husband. Having spent much of the last few years rummaging through historical divorce papers, I know there are many ghastly contenders for that dubious honour. Andrew Robinson Stoney was described by his own father as “the most wretched man I ever knew”, and he was to showcase his ghastliness on Mary Eleanor Bowes, the eighteenth century’s richest heiress (and great-great-great-grandmother of the late Queen Mother).

Mary was worth around £100m in today’s money, making her a considerable prize for an intrepid fortune seeker. Although of humble origins, Stoney contrived to fight a duel over Mary’s honour, feigning a fatal injury. In his supposedly final hours, the gallant hero rasped that his dying wish was to marry Mary. Advised by three medical men that the end was nigh, Mary consented, even though she was carrying the child of Stoney’s rival. Shortly after the wedding, Stoney effected a Lazarus-like recovery, and found the strength to regularly beat his wife within an inch of her life.

The violence was relentless, with Stoney regularly pinching, kicking or slapping Mary. He warned her not to tell anyone, forcing her to tell stories of walking into doors or falling down the stairs. When displeased with her appearance, he would hack off her hair with shears. As Moore writes: “Watching her every movement, Stoney exerted control over the clothes Mary wore, the visitors she received, the conversations she held, the food that she ate, the journeys she undertook and every aspect of her daily life from morning until night with a pathological eye for detail.”
Mary’s wealth was tied up in a trust, beyond the reach of her acquisitive brute of a husband. After plotting and scheming, he bullied a befuddled and beaten Mary into signing over her fortune, thereby gaining full dominion. With a full purse, Stoney became a man about town, taking full advantage of his elevated status, while Mary remained at home, repenting her haste at leisure. To mark their first wedding anniversary on New Year’s Day, Stoney chillingly informed Mary that his resolution was to make that year even more miserable than the last.

He was as good as his word, and Mary’s life became increasingly circumscribed. She had been a talented botanist, growing an impressive range of plants and a reputation as a pioneering horticulturist. Stoney deliberately released hares to destroy her flowers, finally selling her beloved gardens and greenhouses to fund his debauched lifestyle. Stoney delighted himself with developing new forms of psychological abuse, but this did not stop him from burning his wife’s face with a candle or stabbing her in the tongue with a pen nib. His cruelty knew no bounds. The servants were powerless to intervene, and many of the maids were repeatedly raped by their depraved master.

Some readers might be incredulous that Mary tolerated such behaviour and didn’t simply remove herself from the situation. There was nothing, however, to prevent Stoney from doing exactly as he pleased. In the eighteenth century, a husband exercised complete control over the household – wife and servants alike were his property. Once Mary had been coerced into signing over her inheritance, she was completely penniless, forced even to borrow underwear from her maid. When she did finally flee the marital home, Mary had no means of supporting herself and had to leave behind her beloved children (also the property of Stoney).

Moore describes the subsequent divorce 1786 case as: “A staggering triumph, one of only sixteen cases seeking divorce on grounds of both adultery and cruelty in that decade, the result sent a clear signal to abusive husbands and a message of hope to abused wives everywhere.” Stoney was not a man to accept defeat, and the divorce proved to be only the beginning of the end. The redoubtable Mary was to suffer abduction, further violence, and humiliation.

As the title suggests, Mary ultimately triumphs, although not without enduring unimaginable suffering. I was lost in admiration at her endurance and tenacity in the face of such torture. Her willingness to defy convention and publicly denounce her husband’s abuse resulted in three court rulings that influenced women’s rights campaigns in the nineteenth century. Progress was slow, with protection against violent husbands instituted in 1878 and financial autonomy for wives in 1882, nearly 100 years after Mary’s one-woman struggle.

It is surprising that Mary Bowes is little known outside the annals of marriage law. The man who tormented her has been immortalised as Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon, and his lack of financial acumen has given us the term “stoney broke”. Wendy Moore is to be applauded, therefore, for giving this heroic woman the recognition she deserves. The story is absolutely gripping and I found myself exhausted and slightly stunned when reaching its conclusion. The historical context is well-balanced and impeccably researched: everything is contextualised without losing any of the cracking pace. Stories don’t get much more sensational than this, but Mary’s suffering is handled with great sensitivity. Wendy Moore is undoubtedly one of the very best writers of narrative non-fiction. The harrowing subject matter means that Wedlock is not an easy read, but it’s the story of remarkable woman, brilliantly told.

Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy Moore is available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery by Maureen Waller

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Cover of The English Marriage by Maureen WallerFollowing his umpteenth divorce, Rod Stewart remarked that he wouldn’t get married again – he would simply find a (presumably blonde) woman he didn’t like very much and give her a house. Reading Maureen Waller’s The English Marriage, I can’t say I blame him. There is very little love to be found in these pages, rather an abundance of violence, infidelity, and fraud. Each chapter focuses on a particular marriage and the outrage it embodied, whether it be wife-sale (yes, Hardy wasn’t making it up), bigamy, or old-fashioned adultery. These stories are interspersed with enlightening extracts from conduct manuals. My favourite of these is clergyman William Gouge’s Domesticall Duties (1622), which decrees that a married woman must maintain “an inward, wife-like fear”.

This quote provoked much snorting from my own spouse, but it is easy to forget that no sense of irony was meant at the time. Until 1882, a married woman had no separate legal existence and all that she owned belonged to her husband. Before 1870, she didn’t even have a right to her own earnings. It was a man’s duty to support his family, a responsibility for which he was rewarded with the power to chastise them in any way he saw fit.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the inequitable position of women in the mid-Victorian period is that of Susannah Palmer. Her husband repeatedly used her as a punchbag, regularly blackening her eyes and knocking out her teeth. After years of suffering such relentless brutality, she absconded with the children and managed to support them single-handedly. Once she was settled, her husband tracked them down, seizing and selling all the possessions she had worked hard to acquire. Not content with parasitism, he attacked her while she was preparing her children’s supper. While he was clouting her around the head, she inflicted a slight cut on his hand. Outraged at this insubordination, he immediately summoned her for “cutting and wounding” him and she was sent to Newgate prison (where she expressed perfect contentment, being at a safe distance from her husband’s fists).

The great libertarian J S Mill lamented the fact that theft was punished more severely than wife-beating. But, as Waller glumly acknowledges: “it all came down to property in the end. A man mistreated his wife because he believed she was his possession to do what he liked with.” The passing of the Matrimonial Causes (Divorce) Act of 1857 didn’t make it much easier for women to extricate themselves from a violent husband (he would also have to commit adultery), but the establishment of the Divorce Court did expose abusive marriages to public scrutiny, exploding the myth that wife-beating was confined to the hoi polloi. Queen Victoria complained that it was no longer safe for a family to read the newspaper at the breakfast table, such was the lurid nature of many reports.
Given this impressive book spans more than 500 years, the reader occasionally craves more detail on a particular topic. However, Waller achieves a magisterial sweep through the history of marriage, deftly illustrating its landmarks with seminal cases and the often heart-breaking stories of those who laboured under the considerable weight of an indissoluble union. Waller handles her material with great sensitivity, never forgetting the pain that underlies the sensational headlines. Overall, she argues, access to divorce is vital if the institution of marriage is to survive.
This roll-call of unhappiness notwithstanding, lovers are not shunning matrimony. Despite his earlier cynicism, Rod Stewart is now married for the third time. As Waller concludes: “Love triumphs and hope springs eternal.”

The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery by Maureen Waller is available in both paperback and Kindle editions.