Significant Sisters

by Margaret Forster

  Caroline still did not have her children but she had come out of her slough of despair and was also solvent, at least temporarily, once she was paid for her new book of poems (The Dream and Other Poems) which earned her the title “Byron of modern poetesses.” In 1840 she was received at court for the first time since the trial of 1836. Everyone, including Queen Victoria, saw how terribly pale and nervous she was. It seemed for a moment that she might faint but she managed to retain her dignity even when she trembled as she made her curtsey. She was, at thirty-two, if anything more beautiful than she had ever been. She wore Isle of Wight lace over white satin and had a train of palest lilac. Suffering had given her beauty a poignancy it had never had, calming down the flamboyancy of her style. Admiration for her was open, but Caroline drew no comfort from this. It no longer excited her to be praised. “Oh, depend upon it, there is no treadmill like the life of a woman of the world and you see it on the expression of the face,”58 she wrote to a friend. Nothing mattered beside the fact that she did not have her children and they were growing up fast. Her heart leapt not at compliments but at the news that her sons had been moved to Yorkshire to George’s estate and were therefore now technically accessible to her. “Do not drive me to seek (justice)” she wrote to George “but let me owe it to you at last.”59 He replied offering her portraits of the boys. She refused the offer disdainfully. She wanted no further reminders of what she was deprived of. Every night she had a fire lit in the room that would be her sons’ if and when they returned but she wrote to her sister that she feared they never would as children. Even if she fought a case in the Lord Chancellor’s court it would take forever, resisted at every step by George, and her children were already twelve, ten and eight. The most she was ever going to be allowed was to have them in their school holidays, which she did for one week at Christmas in 1841.

  It was the last time she ever had them together. In July 1842 William, aged eight, fell off his pony while riding, alone, round his father’s estate in Yorkshire. He contracted blood-poisoning and became seriously ill. Caroline was sent for but was told upon her arrival that her son was dead. “It is not in the strength of human nature,” she wrote to her sister, “not to think this might not have happened had I watched over them!”60 Nobody, in fact, had watched over them. All three roamed the estate doing exactly what they pleased. “Half of what is now so lavishly expended in ceremony and ‘decoration of the coffin’ would have paid some steady manservant to be in constant attendance.”61 But there were no ugly recriminations. Caroline knew that George was as distraught as she and that to his burden was added guilt. He was in “a state of bitter distress” and she had only kind words for him even though, she wrote to her mother, “horror is the main feeling with me – horror and bitterness – and in my quieter moments I feel stunned.”62 Hardest of all to bear was the attitude of her husband when the first shock was over. “Yesterday,” she wrote to her mother before the funeral, “it was my wish that we should all read prayers together . . . Norton first said that he could not because he had so many people in the house – I said ‘perhaps you could in the afternoon’ – This was settled but in the morning he came late and hurried and said he had agreed to go to Grantley . . .”63 And so it went on. George’s grief, although real, did not produce the state of mind Caroline looked for. He could still think of other things, make other plans. She could not. She was haunted not just by memories of her dead child but by the realization of how bleak the last five years of his short life had been. That law which had given him to his father’s care had robbed him of the real meaning of the word: care was exactly what had been missing. All three boys were neglected both physically and emotionally. “They have none of them learnt a new prayer, or said a prayer to anyone, since they left me,”64 wrote Caroline to her mother. They were like little orphans, provided with food by the servants and not much else.

  When the funeral was over and Brinsley had recovered (he had an attack of “hysterical fits” when he saw William in his coffin), George at last conceded that the two remaining boys could go home with their mother. Caroline, who had hardly dared to breathe when she sensed what was afoot, was so relieved she wept for hours – she had been so terrified that George might demand she came to live with them in Yorkshire. Hurriedly, she packed their few possessions and returned to her uncle’s house, now in Bolton Street. Naturally, there were conditions. She was to have the boys half the year (they were at Eton) but George could order them elsewhere if he so wished (as he proceeded to do very often). Nothing at all was done to make her own position either clear or satisfactory. “I am in fear and trembling,” she wrote, “standing firm for their actual residence under my own roof . . . I am so afraid that . . . I shall be cheated.”65 This fear meant she did not dare mention her own position or her desire for a proper settlement. She had to carry on “married”, as she put it “to a man’s name but never to know the protection of this nominal husband . . . never to feel or show preference for any friend not of (my) own sex.”66 It depressed her to think of the effect this had upon her boys. “I have often felt very downhearted,” she wrote to her brother after they had come to live with her, “as to my human responsibilities for them – and cried over the fire when they have been gone to bed.”67 She worried about the effect on them of seeing “the playgoings and pleasurings in my house and the fireside boozings and snoozings at their father’s.”68 However hard she tried to make up for the lost years (Brinsley’s birthday was celebrated with a whole roast pig to make up for no celebrations at all on the five birthdays before) she felt the want of security and stability in both her sons’ characters. They were not growing up the men they might have been and she felt inadequate to direct them. Mrs Coleridge recommended a curate friend to be a companion-tutor to them in the holidays but Caroline did not deceive herself. Fletcher and Brinsley, although good and kind boys, lacked the standards of a happy homelife in a proper family. No woman on her own could provide them.

  After 1843, Caroline was on her own in every sense. Her beloved Uncle Charles, who had been of such use, died and his house was sold. She moved to Number 3 Chesterfield Street, to a house only fourteen-years-old, and resolved to remain without either a relative or a chaperone living with her. She was alone therefore she would be seen to be alone and hang the consequences. By then, she well knew the consequences: people talked. No gentleman caller’s reputation was safe if he visited Mrs Norton alone at any hour of the day. Even if a gentleman brought a posse of ladies with him she was thought to be suspect. But she did not care so much about tittle-tattle as about her economic state. “I have no furniture in my new house,” she wrote. “I must sit on the floor with a plate in my hand . . .”69 It was an absurd situation. “It is a hard thing,” she wrote to her brother, “to feel legally so helpless and dependent while in fact I am able to support myself as an intelligent man working in a modest profession.”70 Her poems and magazine work earned her good money but she had no right to it: a married woman could not keep her own earnings. She was obliged to resort to all kinds of subterfuges to keep her money from George who was legally entitled to it. The fact that he was also legally obliged to support her did her no good at all.

  Yet Caroline never complained or was aggrieved in company. On the contrary, she held her head high and insisted on leading the life she wanted without a man at her side. She had friendships, close friendships, with many men but no love affairs. Men were “in love” with her but never her lovers. Scandalmongers ignored her innocence. Even when there was no proof of a liaison they invented plenty and were believed. Their theory ran “Mrs Norton is beautiful and lives alone and has many gentlemen friends – do you imagine she is any better than she seems?” Tennyson, who was placed next to her at a dinner-party was terrified and “shuddered” at her proximity. Jane Carlyle, although saying she was “a beautiful, witty, graceful woman” had to spoil the compliment by adding darkly, “Whatever else.” The priggish Rev. William Brookfield, friend of Thackeray (himself an admi
rer of Caroline’s) could find nothing wrong with her but thought her all the same not “suitable” for his wife as a friend. The Duchess of Sutherland, Queen Victoria’s Mistress of the Robes, whose friendship towards Caroline restored her to good society, put what people felt in her charmingly muddled way. “She is so nice,” she wrote of Caroline. “What a pity she is not quite nice: for if she were quite nice she would be so very nice.”71

  Caroline was well aware of how she stood. She had sinned against convention and that was a crime. Not only had she dared to live on her own but worst of all she had dared to enjoy it, she had refused absolutely to go into retirement. She was not guilty, nor ashamed, and she would not act as if she were. Nor would she conceal how much pride she took in her work. Her writing was no hobby. She was as determined as any of the contemporary male authors to earn good money and to be seen to be serious about her writing as a profession. Throughout all her troubles, it was her writing which kept her sane and gave her satisfaction when nothing else did. “The power of writing has always been to me a source of intense pleasure,” she once wrote. “It has been my best solace in hours of gloom; and the name I have earned as an author in my native land is the only happy boast of my life.”72 She never lacked confidence in her own ability and sometimes over-estimated that “name” of which she was so proud. In March 1843 when Southey died she wrote an extraordinarily arrogant letter to Peel almost demanding the Poet Laureateship not only as her right but as just compensation for the wrongs she had suffered. “I do not know if there be any precedent for appointing a female poet laureate even in a Queen’s reign,” she wrote and then went on to hint that the Queen was a fan of hers and “. . . this seems an easy thing to grant if there be indeed any disposition to befriend me and would be of very great service.”73 Peel, in spite of the harangue that followed about how Caroline had earned more in a month than most husbands in a year, was unimpressed. He replied that he had no power to appoint the Poet Laureate and that the Lord Chancellor, who did, had offered it to Wordsworth. Caroline, whose letter for once had lacked the tact, charm and subtlety, as well as the wit, which usually characterized them, was disappointed and even aggrieved. Women, she was beginning to see, lacked more than standing in the eyes of the law: they lacked it in the eyes of the world.

  Her opportunity to correct this, at least partially, began in 1848 and involved her in another sensational court case. George Norton was, as usual, short of money and wished to have access to a Trust Fund made for Caroline and her sons many years before. He asked Caroline, through Fletcher who was then nineteen, to agree to let him touch it. She quickly saw she had a rare advantage and agreed, on condition he sign an actual deed of separation giving her an income of £600 a year. What was odd about this bargain was that Caroline appeared to have forgotten that, as the law stood, a married woman could not make any kind of contract. George, however slow and stupid, was at least lawyer enough to know this very well. So they both signed a contract which had no validity and George got his money. Caroline, meanwhile, had had a piece of good fortune. Lord Melbourne died, leaving a solemn deathbed declaration that Caroline had always been innocent, and it was found he had left instructions to his relatives to make financial provision for his wronged friend. George was not told this. He paid up the first instalment of Caroline’s agreed allowance (which she used to go to Lisbon to nurse Fletcher who fell ill as soon as he arrived to take up a post there in the diplomatic service). Then, in 1851, Mrs Sheridan also died leaving Caroline £480 a year, secured to her alone. George found out about this and also, rather late, about the Melbourne money and instantly announced that the deed of separation was invalid and the £600 a year allowance would stop. Caroline was furious. Both legacies were made to help her in addition to any other sources of income – neither her mother nor her old friend had intended their money to be a substitute for her husband’s allowance to which she was entitled. She retaliated by referring all creditors to George. These were many since the minute she had any money at all Caroline’s expenditure always got out of hand. Although she denied she was extravagant she admitted to Mary Shelley that she was indeed “reckless (when I am out of spirits or want to be amused or excited) in what I spend for the moment.”74 George was inundated with her debts and instantly began issuing subpoenas to everyone in sight. He took Caroline to court in August 1853. This time, even though it was unusual, Caroline was called as a witness and was therefore present.

  The case opened on August 18th at Westminster Court where there was not even standing-room only. The actual test case was over a bill for repairs to a carriage, a mere matter of £47. Thrupps, the carriage-makers, sued George Norton as liable for the debts of his wife who had defaulted. Caroline had to face George in open court. Her courage sank, she wrote later, and . . . “I felt giddy – the faces of the people grew indistinct – my sentences became confused . . .”75 Her throat felt “full of dust” when she was asked to speak and she faltered in her replies. “What does the witness say?” roared George, coming very close to her and pushing his red, angry face in front of her, “I cannot hear. Let her speak up.” He maintained she was acting, but as Caroline acidly remarked afterwards all emotion was acting to George. Under cross-questioning she managed to revive and began to defend herself. The case hinged, of course, on the 1848 deed of separation. George maintained he had only offered £600 a year on condition Caroline had no money from other sources such as Lord Melbourne. Caroline easily exposed this as a lie. The court burst into cheers and applause when Caroline, finding her voice in her indignation, called out, “I do not ask for my rights. I have no rights; I have only wrongs.”76 But the court decided in George’s favour. As the law stood, married women could not make contracts. When Caroline was again cheered George clenched his fist at her and pandemonium broke out before the court was cleared.

  The newspapers were full of it. What added to the interest of the court report was Caroline’s own letter to The Times pointing out more flaws in George’s case. Her friends begged her to desist but she was adamant – she wanted to be in the full glare of publicity, she wanted every sordid detail gone into. She had completely done with any kind of reticence – let the world know everything and see the injustice of it. George replied of course in eight columns, telling stories going back some twenty years and including little vignettes of his wife “having Lord Melbourne by the neck”. Unfortunately for George his own solicitor, appalled by some of the lies that reflected on him, also wrote in disassociating himself from half of what his client said. Then, to Caroline’s immense satisfaction, Sir John Bayley wrote, too, delivering a telling rebuke to George for his greed and dishonesty. George replied that Sir John was infatuated with his wife. And so it went on. Caroline was more triumphant as each day went on and the correspondence grew, but her family and friends were distressed. It was an unedifying sight, they thought, to see Caroline’s private life spread every day across the newspapers. When they found she was also writing another pamphlet they were even more upset – could she not now leave well alone? No, Caroline said, she could not. Women had ended up where they were through leaving things alone.

  All her energies were concentrated on preparing English Laws for Women in the 19th Century which appeared the following year. She took as her text a quotation from Bleak House. “It won’t do to have TRUTH and JUSTICE on our side; we must have LAWS and LAWYERS.” She began by refuting the idea that law was fixed and unchangeable and said that this view was held only by those who did not like “the duckweed on the still pond” of society ruffled. The time had come to disturb it. To show why, she reviewed her own case, with examples of the physical violence she had endured, and from which she had no legal escape. She made fun of the law for saying that an ill-treated wife should not “condone” that ill-treatment. How, asked Caroline, could she not condone it? By suffering blows without protest? By ignoring letters begging forgiveness? All wives wished to save their marriage, yet the minute they tried to they were accused of “condoning”. W
here was the sense in that? It was England’s archaic divorce laws which made a wife who had fled from a brutal husband forced to “condone”.

  But by then Caroline was no longer alone in demanding changes. Intrigued by the Norton case another woman of quite a different type had also been prompted to collect and examine the laws regarding married women. Barbara Leigh-Smith (later Bodichon) was the eldest daughter of a rich, well-known political family with a Bohemian outlook. Unlike Caroline, whom she does not appear to have met, Barbara certainly believed in equal rights and was not afraid to say so. She had gone through life demanding them. With Mr Matthew Davenport Hill QC, the Recorder of Birmingham, she drew up a comprehensive pamphlet concerning all women (A Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women). But, even more important, she did something which Caroline had not only not done but of which she actively disapproved: she called together a committee of women to collect petitions for a proposed Married Women’s Property Bill. The headquarters was her sitting room at 5 Blandford Square. Here there developed among the women who gathered there (a nucleus of about twelve regulars) a spirit of what can only be called “sisterhood” totally foreign to the likes of Caroline Norton. Within a short time 24,000 signatures had been collected. It was obvious that a deep vein of resentment among the women in England had been successfully tapped. In June 1854, Lord Chancellor Cranworth took heed of it. He proposed the reform of the marriage laws – but afterwards withdrew the proposal. In March 1855 the Solicitor General announced that a Bill was “nearly prepared” but nothing was done. Again, Caroline took up her pen. She wrote A Letter to the Queen,77 going over all the arguments again and tearing to shreds the idea that reforming the marriage laws was “too difficult”. There was no difficulty except the laziness of men terrified to reform laws they admitted were barbarous, because it might open the floodgates to women deserting their husbands in droves. Her Letter was, said Lord Brougham “as clever a thing as ever was written . . . I feel certain that the law of divorce will be amended and she has greatly contributed to it.”78