Significant Sisters
Page 3
To some extent Henrietta Sheridan must have agreed because she chose to send Caroline away to school. Why Caroline was selected and not the other two girls is not clear but Caroline herself gave a clue when she confessed to Lord Melbourne, “When I was whipped in days of yore I always defied consequences, bit the fingers of the whipper, and rushed to repeat my crime . . .”11 Presumably Mrs Sheridan grew tired of bitten fingers. She despatched Caroline, aged fifteen, to a small school in Surrey, for her own good. This school, merely a house presided over by a governess without any training and offering a curriculum no better than Mrs Sheridan could offer herself, was near Wonersh Park, the home of Lord Grantley. Fletcher Norton, the third Lord Grantley (the peerage was very recent) was an unpleasant gentleman who also owned family estates in Yorkshire. He was married but had no children. His heir was his younger brother George whom he had put to the law, and over whom he exerted great influence. But one thing he could not influence was George Norton’s infatuation for Caroline Sheridan who was brought, with other pupils, on a visit by her governess, the sister of Lord Grantley’s agent. With George, aged twenty-five at the time, it was a case of love at first sight. He was instantly captivated by the young Caroline. She, on the other hand, barely noticed him. He was slow and heavy where she was quick and light, a country bumpkin figure whereas she was already a town sophisticate. He stood dull and speechless in the background while she sparkled and performed in the foreground. His sister Augusta, an eccentric lady with decidedly masculine habits, was also captivated by Caroline. George hung about admiring the young visitor while Augusta praised her singing and poetry reading extravagantly. The only one not bowled over was Lord Grantley himself. His plans for George did not include marriage to an impoverished Sheridan.
But George, though normally in great awe of his brother, was for once adamant. He wished to marry Caroline. An offer for her hand was made which Mrs Sheridan did not emphatically decline. She said George Norton must wait three years until Caroline had “come out” and then his proposal would be considered. Caroline, who maintained she had not exchanged six sentences with her suitor, was “astonished”, but it was quite a pleasant astonishment. The offer was, she hoped, the first of many. She knew she was beautiful and her beauty gave her expectations (“perhaps I should say what I expected when I first began to look in the glass with satisfaction”12 she once wrote to Lord Melbourne). There seemed no reason to be falsely modest. If she could catch George Norton without even trying what might she not achieve in the marriage stakes if she set her mind to it? In the season of 1826, when she came out with her elder sister Helen, she had her first try. She was chosen to be one of the twelve prettiest debutantes who took part in the Dance of the Months at Almack’s (she was August) and attracted great admiration. But the admiration led nowhere. Helen, on the other hand, received an offer from Lord Dufferin’s heir and accepted him. The season ended with Caroline, although only eighteen, feeling distinctly let down. She had not had quite the solid success Helen had had and next season there would be Georgiana at her heels. At that point, plodding old George Norton repeated his offer.
In another letter to Lord Melbourne years later Caroline tried to analyse her own attitude at that time. “The only misfortune I ever particularly dreaded,” she confessed “was living and dying a lonely old maid . . . An old maid is never anyone’s first object therefore I object to that situation.”13 She saw everywhere that married women had status, a definite sphere, a protector. Unmarried women did not. They were despised and pitied, especially by other women. To get married was the pinnacle of every girl’s ambition and the sooner it was reached the better. Caroline was impatient and self-willed, always leaping before she looked, entirely impervious to restraint or “advice”. She knew perfectly well that she did not love George Norton but then how much did love matter? Nothing that she saw led her to believe it mattered at all. Even her sister Helen, who had not loved her husband when she accepted him, now wrote from Italy that she adored him, that love had grown instantly after their marriage. Why should she not learn to love George Norton in the same way? The more she considered him the better he seemed. He had been called to the Bar since he met her and had also been elected Member of Parliament for Guildford. He was the childless Lord Grantley’s heir. He had been constant and patient for three years. So, for all the wrong but easily understandable reasons, Caroline married George Norton on July 30th, 1827 and spent the rest of her life regretting it. As she said of one of her characters (in her novel Stuart of Dunleath) “She had married a man she did not love; whom she did not profess to love; for certain advantages – to avoid certain pressing miseries.” The misery, in her case, was the ludicrous belief that her beauty had failed her and that she must snatch her one offer in case no other ever materialized and she died of mortification.
The Norton marriage from the very beginning was a disaster. Everything was wrong with it, except perhaps a degree of sexual attraction which hardly survived the honeymoon. Far from quickly learning to love her husband, as her sister Helen had done, Caroline just as quickly learned to hate hers. She had thought that at least he was quiet, sober, dependable and patient if rather dull but discovered before her honeymoon was over that none of these characteristics was his. On the contrary, he was frequently drunk, had an appalling temper and his patience had only been to get his hands on her. Once she was his, all pretence was over. He did not care what she thought of him and had no intention of being reformed. He was going to do exactly as he pleased and she, his wife, was bound to let him. But of course Caroline was an equally strong character. She did not react by turning pale at his excesses or sitting silently weeping or by accepting her lot and putting a brave face on it. Instead, she attacked him with her tongue and used her greatly superior brain to think of ways to outwit him. Nor did she try to conceal her dissatisfaction but exposed him at every opportunity to her family and friends as a brute. It is hard to decide whether George was a brute because Caroline goaded him beyond endurance or whether Caroline was driven to goading him as her only defence against his brutality. But whatever the interpretation the result was the same: George beat Caroline savagely.
This kind of physical violence was difficult to conceal even if Caroline had wanted to conceal it, which she did not. The moment the couple returned from their honeymoon to George’s bachelor chambers in the Temple an old woman who was a servant there saw the young husband fling “an inkstand and most of his law books” with unerring aim at his terrified young wife. She excused it on the grounds that Mr Norton was drunk. The Sheridan family were the next to realize what was going on. George and Caroline went to stay occasionally with her various brothers and sisters all of whom reported to each other their horror at hearing Caroline’s screams in the night and the roars and thuddings of George hitting her. Naturally, they rushed to protect her and to remonstrate with George but he soon learned to lock his bedroom door in any Sheridan household. Mrs Sheridan, appalled and distressed, was also even angrier than her children because she believed herself duped. She would never, she said, have given her consent to the marriage if she had not been assured Caroline was going to be well provided for but she now found that not only could George not provide for her adequately, he was actually looking to her to provide for him. If his violence made nonsense of his marriage vows as a sacred undertaking, his failure to provide made nonsense of them as a contract.
But there was nothing Caroline could do. She had made a mistake and had to live with it. This she set about doing with admirable determination. Firstly, she got the two of them out of George’s chambers and into a small house in Storeys Gate overlooking Birdcage Walk. This home she made into a pretty, bowery sort of place in which George was ill-at-ease and not quite so confident and dominant. To it she invited her family and friends, none of whom were to her husband’s boorish tastes. She also began to invite the literati of London soon after the publication (anonymously) of her 200 verse poem The Sorrows of Rosalie eighteen months after her ma
rriage. Because she was beautiful and a Sheridan and tremendously amusing the literary set came, some famous figures among them. Bulwer Lytton, Samuel Rogers, Abraham Hayward, even the young Disraeli all came and stayed and came again. George was damned if he was going to be turned out of his own home so he was there among the glittering company too. Caroline was not at all put out. She made a feature of George’s awfulness and did not spare her mockery or hold her guests back from it. The biggest joke of all was that George actually thought he was being complimented when he was being subtly despised – he had not the wit to recognize an insult when it was offered. On one occasion when Disraeli politely said the wine was excellent, George boasted that he had “stuff twenty times better” in his cellar to which Disraeli smoothly murmured, “My dear fellow, this is quite good enough for such canaille as you have got here today.”14 George was perfectly satisfied with this answer and failed to appreciate the mirth of Caroline and her guests.
But it was a dangerous game Caroline played and she reaped the consequences in full. George used his strength to get his revenge and his beatings left her weak and miserable for days. The only thing they were united in was love for their children. George loved animals and children and was loved by them. The birth of Fletcher in 1829 and of Brinsley in 1831 gave him as much pleasure as they gave Caroline. He doted on his sons and Caroline, recognizing this, felt he could not be all bad. In fact, for the three years following Fletcher’s birth they were as happy together as they were ever to be. She was presented at Court, had a play put on at Covent Garden (Fanny Kemble said it was atrocious) and published another long poem, The Undying One, under her own name to considerable praise. George was pleased with her because she earned money. He was even more pleased when, through her new friendship with Lord Melbourne, Caroline also secured for him a lucrative and undemanding post as a judge in the Lambeth division of the Metropolitan Police Courts at a salary of £1,000 a year. It did not worry him a bit that he was accepting this sinecure from a Whig when he was a Tory, but then points of principle never disturbed George Norton. In fact, getting him that post had not only been vital to stabilize the Norton economy but also to stave off a fate Caroline regarded as worse than death: moving to the country. In the election of 1830 George had lost his seat at Guildford (“he assures me,” Caroline wrote contemptuously to her sister, “that although thrown out he was the popular candidate . . . that all those who voted against him did it with tears”).15 His brother, Lord Grantley, said he had lost it because he had not been around enough for the voters to see him and proposed that George should move to a little cottage on his estate. George didn’t see why not but Caroline was panic-stricken (“Norton assures me . . . that I shall easily change my delight in society for pride and pleasure in my dairy! . . .”).16 she redoubled her efforts to find a plum job for George and was immensely relieved when he accepted the judgeship. Between them, they were now earning enough to stay in London in comfort and if George needed to go down to Guildford often to placate Grantley, then so much the better.
The house in Storeys Gate was refurbished and extended and Caroline went off to Margate for a holiday with her children. From there, she wrote a revealing letter to George. “Dearest George,” she wrote, “I dreamed last night that you were dying and two old maids told stories of me and then persuaded you that you would not see me; but I rushed into your room and found it was a lie and that you were dying for my company; and then I thought, as I was sitting by you and explaining, I saw you grow quite unconscious and die wherefore I woke up with a flood of tears . . .”17 In another fond note she wrote, “I cannot bear sleeping alone: ’hem!”18 and in yet another later in the year when he had gone to Scotland, “Come back darling I am wishing for you.”19 Perhaps these endearments are merely rare, fleeting instances of Caroline forgetting how much she hated George but they at least show that, at that juncture, all was not lost between them, that there was some slim hope of avoiding a real breakdown of their marriage. But it is also true that Caroline, who had a warm and demonstrative nature, may not have attached the same weight to her tender words as others, including George, did. She was often inconsistent and saw nothing strange in that. She could write affectionately to her husband and yet at the same time write to Georgiana, “I have walked up and down the new walk by the seaside but the only visible effect is elephantiasis in my left leg and the gout in my right. I have stood looking at the sunset on the sea with Clarence Pigeon at my side but the results are merely a red nose and a hatred of my companion (together with some shame at being seen with him because he wears a tail-coat of a morning).”20 George, in public, made her squirm. He was gauche and a philistine and loud. But in private, as well as the quarrels, there were undeniably some happier times.
By this time (1831) Caroline was quite famous in London and being famous made her happy. Everyone who saw her commented on her vitality and beauty. The Boston jurist, Charles Sumner, described how she combined “the grace and ease of a woman with a strength and skill of which any man might be proud.”21 The dark wildness of her younger days had matured into exotic good looks which made her stand out in any crowd. In her twenties the wildness had been replaced by a confidence and control observers found remarkable. The truth was, Caroline was unusual and original. She did not fit into the contemporary pattern of beauty or behaviour. She was bold in her opinions and brilliant in her arguments and never held back from either. Then there was her talent. She was a lady authoress par excellence and people found her acknowledged ability exciting. Wherever she went (and, like Thackeray, she went everywhere, adoring social life) she was admired and talked about. But she was also watched with envy and suspicion. She herself was acutely aware of what a splendid target she made. “A young bride,” she wrote, excited “hard, unindulgent speculation.”22 She knew she invited that speculation by her unconventional attitudes. She went alone to a great many parties because George found them boring or was away, and she entertained when he was out. Naïvely, she assumed that since she was innocent of anything but enjoying herself she could come to no harm and need fear no idle gossip. She was in her element and refused to withdraw from it.
This might have continued to be the pattern of the Norton marriage, with Caroline using her married status to enable her to move freely in society, enduring occasional violence from George, and carving out a separate existence for herself as far as possible. It was a bargain many women then made because there was no alternative. Divorce for a woman was impossible and a separated wife had no status, innocent or guilty. Socially, she might as well be dead. But in 1832 certain events precipitated a crisis in the Norton marriage which smashed the whole precarious arrangement upon which it rested. The crisis partly arose out of Caroline becoming too successful. She became editor that year of one of the very lucrative society magazines of the time – La Belle Assemblée and Court Magazine for which she herself wrote satirical essays with provocative titles like The Invisibility of London Husbands. This took up a great deal of time and put her under great pressure just as she became pregnant for the third time. George, instead of being sympathetic or appreciative of how she was supporting their household, resented not only the time her writing and editing took but also what he thought was the self-importance of his wife. The quarrels which had rocked the marriage from the beginning began to get worse. As ever, they started over something trivial and rapidly escalated, always ending with George attacking Caroline. Once, it was over a letter she was writing to her mother: George said he could tell by the expression on her face that she was complaining about him and when she refused either to show him the letter or stop writing it he set fire to her writing materials with his cigar. Another time it was over whether she was deliberately sitting in a chair he said was his favourite and they then fought, in a room filled with chairs, over the possession of that particular one. Augusta Norton, George’s sister who had originally been so infatuated with Caroline, chose this time to come on a long visit. Caroline loathed her. She was ugly and mannis
h and simply embarrassing to have about. She also interfered in the running of the household and encouraged George to believe that Caroline was not being “a proper wife” to him. This caused more quarrels until in the summer of 1833 the Nortons had their most spectacular yet.
It began, as usual, over very little. Caroline, who had been writing late into the night the day before, went into the dining-room after dinner the next day to begin writing yet again. George followed. She asked him to leave. He refused. Up Caroline got and swept out of the room in a fury, locking the door behind her with George pointlessly holding his ground inside. She settled herself in the drawing-room, with her maid, and locked that door too. George meanwhile had climbed out of the window and re-entered his own house by the front door. He tore up the staircase roaring that he was damned if he would be locked out of any room in his own house, and began kicking and hammering on the drawing-room door. The terrified servants clustered at the bottom of the stairs not knowing what to do. Inside the drawing-room Caroline calmed her own maid and refused to open the door. Enraged beyond endurance George hurled himself at the door like a battering ram until it not only caved in but the whole framework of the door came away from the wall. Then he went for Caroline. Although she was pregnant, he manhandled her down the stairs, punching and slapping her, all the time releasing a string of oaths, until the servants overcame their fear at the sight of the beating Caroline was taking and rushed forward to restrain him forcibly. This time Caroline escaped to the nursery, where she spent the night. Her family, summoned to her aid, arrived to find her a pitiable sight. They urged her to leave George at once: the limit had been not just reached but passed and they could not bear her to spend another night under his roof. But somehow, the quarrel was patched up. Even George was shocked at the sight of his bruised and battered pregnant wife. She was ill and listless all summer and not in a position to provoke or goad anyone. It was easy for George to leave her alone, which he did. In August, when their third son William was born, they were once more fleetingly reconciled and enjoyed a little temporary happiness.