An Unconventional Wife

by Mary Hoban

  Although Tom may have thought William Yelverton an unprincipled rip, and the lady an artful schemer, neither he nor any of the interested spectators could know as they soaked up the hysteria surrounding the case, that it would lead, only ten years later, to legalising mixed marriages in Ireland. Nor did Tom acknowledge — it was something that Julia already understood — that beyond exposing the bitter landscape of religious intolerance in Dublin, the Yelverton Affair also revealed the precarious state of women, regardless of their religious views and regardless of their marital status.

  Responding in kind to Tom’s interest in religious matters, Julia wrote of her own experiences, saying she was a happy participant in religious ceremony providing none of it was Roman Catholic or had any vestige of Roman Catholicism. On one of her Sundays in London, she told Tom, she attended three church services: the Vere Street Chapel to hear F.D. Maurice, the controversial English theologian and Christian Socialist; a service at St Paul’s; and, in the evening, a service at All Saint’s Margaret Street, a newly built High Anglican Gothic Church. Although she found the latter the most exquisite thing she had ever seen in her life, and the music very beautiful, she thought the clergymen were evidently Roman Catholics in disguise as they all bowed to the altar when they came in and made signs of the cross.

  As Julia began to recover from the shock of her father’s loss, she started writing to Tom in a playful, yearning manner — I hope all the darlings are well and that I will find you looking none the worse for Lent. I am longing to see you again. Kiss the chicks for me and with much love to your dear old self — which, in turn, caused him to express his regret that he was not to have my darling back till Saturday: well I must ‘grin & bear it’. If only these two could have lived and loved apart, they would have had the perfect marriage.

  But the past, with its spectres of her mother’s abandonment and her misery in Catholic Brussels, was not quite ready to release Julia. Her step-grandmother, Mrs William Sorell, the former Mrs Kent, made a morning call with one of her daughters while she was in London. Julia had not seen Governor Sorell’s widow since she had left Brussels as a young girl of fifteen to return to her father in Hobart. Strangely, the meeting did something to soothe her memories of that time, and she came away from it puzzling over Mrs Sorell’s reputation for being a fascinating woman, somewhat bemused by how old age had changed her into something almost childish.

  It was fortunate for Julia that her encounter with the past had been in the form of her step-grandmother. Shortly after she returned to Dublin, her own mother, Elizabeth, arrived in London. Since her escape into the arms of her lover George Deare, Elizabeth had been living with him in India, where she had had four children with him — Louisa, George, Elizabeth, and Julia. With the death of William Sorell, Elizabeth and George, who had risen to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, were now free to marry. The service was performed at St Martin in the Fields on 19 August 1861, a few weeks after their arrival in London. Had Julia wished it, she could have reconnected with her mother at any time — the sweep of her extended family and the concentric and ever-moving ex-colonial circle of which she was a member would have allowed her to know where her mother was and how to reach her. Instead, Julia remained silent.

  11

  Adrift

  Even in Julia’s relatively carefree days in England, the stress of the family’s financial position was ever present, and on her return to Dublin, she threw caution to the wind and sought help from her brother-in-law James Dunn. She wanted James to lend her £200 to buy furniture, in the belief that renting an unfurnished house would be much cheaper than renting a furnished one. Julia’s desperation, and her humiliation, leap from the pages of her letter to James. This is the first promissory favour I have ever asked from any of my relations, and I have been a long time before I could make up my mind to do this, but it is so very difficult with our small means to make the two ends meet. She wanted James to understand that any loan would be just that, and not a gift. At his mother’s death, Tom could expect to have £2000 — at which point they could easily repay the loan. In a distraught tone, she told James of her desire to educate her children and her expectation when she had married that she would have the means to do this. She also told him that it would be very likely that Polly would, like her siblings, need to turn her education to account at some future time. Julia had learned that marriage was an inadequate path to economic security and she was clearly determined that her daughters would not make the same mistake.

  On her return home, Julia had also recognised immediately how unhappy Tom had become with his life there and her anxiety rose in parallel with his eagerness for change. His numerous job applications — he had even applied for a Factory Inspectorship — had come to nothing and her fear of where Tom’s restlessness might take them hardened into dread when he received a letter from her old nemesis John Henry Newman. Industrial unrest had hit Newman’s Oratory School in Birmingham when the headmaster, Nicholas Darnell, resigned in protest after clashing with Newman. The bulk of the staff followed Darnell, leaving Newman with no masters, only one matron, and a school of more than fifty boys. Instead of seeking a compromise, Newman decided to replace the departing staff. Knowing the advantage of the Arnold name for his beset school, he asked Tom to become the Classical Master at the Oratory, offered him £150 for the term, and said he would organise three months’ leave for him from the Catholic University. As a further inducement, he offered a place for his sons in the Oratory School and the use of a pretty four-bedroom home — all nice on a small scale — if Julia and the children came with him. There was a rider, though. Tom would be required to pay his substitute lecturer at the university. Even so, in their impecunious state, a rent-free house for several months was irresistible. Tom did not hesitate and left Dublin for Birmingham in January 1862 with his three older sons.

  Julia, left with her two youngest children, Lucy and Frank, began packing up their lives in Dublin. She was well practised in the art of moving house, but this time it was even more difficult. Tom had left her without any money, and she could do nothing but write letters to him detailing the expenditure involved and pleading for the money she required. She hated writing these letters — and she knew Tom hated receiving them — afraid that he would think she wrote about nothing but money but indeed dearest I cannot help it. Eventually the money arrived, and Julia was able to leave Ireland. She went first to Fox How, where she was greeted with the news that Newman had offered Tom a permanent place at the Oratory, and he was struggling with the dilemma it presented him. He preferred working in a university, rather than a school — his stammer was more of a curse in the schoolroom — and he was puzzled as to which might be the better option.

  Julia was practical and realistic, urging Tom to think beyond what suited him to what might be best for them financially and for their children. She asked him to consider whether his wage would cover the cost of living and the house rent, whether he would be able to continue doing his Civil Service work, which paid well and which he enjoyed, whether he would be engaged in work that he liked, and, crucially, whether he would get on permanently with Newman. She felt everything else could be dealt with if Tom answered yes to both these last questions. She knew Newman was desperate for the Arnold name, and she was anxious that Tom understand this and negotiate himself into a position of strength. Mrs Arnold agreed with her. Together, the two women proposed the minimum terms he should seek — £350 a year and a house, with the addition of the boys’ schooling, which would take his whole package to about £400 a year — a much more attractive salary than the one he had in Dublin.

  As to her own preference, Dublin or Birmingham, Julia was almost indifferent. Apart from the awful prospect of an ongoing and close proximity to Newman, she liked the promise of the economic stability that a permanent position at the Oratory offered. She liked the prospect of living in England. It would bring her so much closer to Polly. And she preferred her sons be raised in Eng
land for although

  it is and always will be a source of bitterness their being … being brought up as Roman Catholics but if this is inevitable of course I would much rather that they go to a good school where they would be associated with the sons of gentlemen than that they should go to such schools as they would be likely to go to in Ireland, and your means are never as far as I see likely to enable you if you live in Dublin to send them over to England. And certainly if they are to be brought up by priests at all I should much prefer their being brought up by English priests, who would be likely to be gentlemen.

  On the other hand, she had grown accustomed to Ireland, she had made many friends there, and if Tom wished to return to Dublin, she would not object. She was happy for him to make the decision, but she did want to see the house and discuss the offer with him more fully before he gave Newman a final answer. Tom, fearful that she might dislike Birmingham and the house, did nothing to encourage her to come, nor would he be hurried into making up his mind.

  Julia was unusually gentle with him while he grappled with yet another life-changing decision, despite being deeply unhappy herself — unusual because Julia was never gentle when she was unhappy. She missed Tom and the boys, she was anxious to know where she was to live, and she felt stranded in Fox How with her two youngest children, but she was gripped by a more profound malaise. Her instinctive joie de vivre had deserted her, as had her fortitude. Staying with Mrs Arnold, free from all domestic responsibilities and free, too, from Tom’s religion permeating the house, Julia had the time to confront the deep fracture in her marriage and her role in its creation and continuation. But her despair went beyond this. It was as if, for the first time since her marriage to Tom, she looked at her life and found it utterly daunting:

  God knows dearest Tom I wish as ardently as you that there was not the difference of opinion between us that there is, but I cannot see any prospects of its being done away with. I often feel that I am not happy myself and that I certainly do not make you happy, & I also often think that it would be for your happiness eventually and for the children’s good if I were to die. I feel bitterly that I am not fit to be the mother of a large family, and I know not how to become so.

  When her weeks of uncertainty ended with Tom’s decision to remain in Birmingham and to accept Newman’s offer of £400 a year — she and Mrs Arnold had clearly done their sums — Julia was so overcome with relief and with apprehension, she went straight to her room and prayed to God. She prayed for help to conquer what she saw as her wicked temper. She prayed for help to make her home a happier one, and she prayed for help to set a better example to her children. When she had finished her pleas to God, Julia poured out her heart to Tom. She acknowledged a little of the turmoil and insecurity she felt and asked him why, with the love they had for each other, they could not be happier. She revealed, too, how his often-expressed view that her unwillingness to follow his chosen religious path set a poor example to their children found fertile ground. This sense of unworthiness, an abiding disquiet, had settled in her core and would not be stilled. If she was unfit to be a wife or a mother, what purpose did she have?

  I often feel when I see mothers with their children how much I lost as a child in having no loving, gentle mother to guide me and teach me to love God, and how unless it should please God to change my heart, I am utterly unfit to be a mother myself. I have been very unhappy for some months past. I cannot help seeing that my example has done the children harm, and unless God’s goodness enables me to do differently for the children’s sake I hope I may not live long. It is the feeling of my own unworthiness often makes me so irritable and violent, anything seems better than calm.

  She felt so rudderless in the great sea of motherhood she believed that even God could not hear her pleas.

  It was not surprising that Julia’s expression of pain at her mother’s absence and her lack of confidence in her own capacity as a mother should emerge while she was staying in Mrs Arnold’s peaceful household. At Fox How all orders and commands emanated from a woman who was in control of her own destiny and from a mother who was at the centre of a deeply unified family. It presented a stark contrast to Julia’s own domestic landscape where she had no authority, where she was wretchedly divided from her husband, and where her daughter was separated from her. Polly was now the same age that Julia had been when her mother had abandoned her, making Julia feel like an orphan in the maternal cosmos. She no longer had any maternal guidelines. She was on her own and she was daunted.

  She kept grappling with what a ‘good mother’ might be, restlessly examining her own behaviour and its impact on her children. The boys squabbled and Polly, when home, bullied the younger ones and was increasingly impertinent, but was this because of her behaviour? Julia was the disciplinarian in the household — Tom always retreated rather than confronted — but why did this cause her to always turn a critical gaze inwards, to label herself a ‘bad mother’ when Tom never doubted his own capacity as a father? It diminished her confidence and built her resentment. And the religious divide in the household only exacerbated matters. Tom had insisted that while the boys were in the nursery, she had to choose a Catholic nurse. He did not want a Protestant servant confusing their young minds. But now that Lucy, at four years of age, was the oldest child in the nursery, she hoped that he would allow her to employ a Protestant nurse, and she couched her request in practical terms, arguing that it was almost impossible to get good Catholic servants in England.

  In what could not have been a coincidence, while Tom was equivocating over Julia’s request, he received a letter from his mother asking if he and Julia would allow Lucy to live with her at Fox How. It was an exact replay of her request to have Polly live with her six years earlier. Mrs Arnold even used a similar argument saying that Lucy would get the attention she needed, attention unlikely to be obtained in a crowded nursery. When Matthew also urged Tom to agree to their mother’s request, it was clear that Tom’s family were eager, as was Julia, to do all they could to shield his daughters from Catholicism. Tom refused his mother’s request, but when he was approached later in the year by his sister Susy and her husband, John Cropper, he agreed to Lucy going to live with them at Dingle Bank. Julia had lost her second daughter to Tom’s conscience and her own ongoing resistance to it.

  If Julia’s resentment was growing, so, too, was her fear when a widespread furore erupted over the case of Edgardo Mortara. An Italian Jewish boy living in Bologna, Edgardo became seriously ill and was baptised a Catholic by one of the family’s domestic servants, who believed that he was dying. Papal States Law forbade non-Catholics raising a Catholic, so when the Papal authorities discovered that Edgardo had been baptised, he was immediately removed from his parents, made a ward of the state, and taken to Rome. His parents were not permitted to take him home until and unless they converted to Catholicism. They refused to convert, and despite several audiences with the Pope, they were unable to retrieve their son. An international outcry ensued as prominent people, organisations, and governments protested against the continued confinement of the child. Even Tom expressed a certain amount of involuntary sympathy towards the parents. But the case reverberated deeply inside Julia. She was a non-Catholic parent with no rights over her baptised sons and forced to send her daughters from her.

  When Julia eventually left Fox How for Birmingham in March 1862, she did so with a troubled heart. She was thirty-six years of age and had been married for less than twelve years. She had given birth to seven children. One was dead, one was living apart from her, and another would shortly follow. The house in Birmingham — a house she had never seen — would be her eighth home since her marriage. Before she began her journey, she had her photograph taken, a rare visual pointer marking her journey through life and the impact of her twelve years with Tom. Gone was any comparison with Aurora Raby. Her portrait sent a pang to Tom’s heart and would, she knew, shock Gussie and Ada. She looked twenty years older than sh
e was.

  12

  A Dark World

  Julia was delighted to be with Tom again, and he with her. If nothing else, their lengthy time apart had caused them both to recognise the strong bond between them. He had been deeply grateful for her temperate, loving tone in their discussions about his future in Birmingham and he had yearned to be with her:

  I suppose this will be the last letter I shall write to you, my own darling, and it seems to me that when I have once got you back I shall not let you be parted from me again in a hurry. I hope it will be long before we have such another lengthened correspondence. How sweet it is to have some one whom one can love with all one’s heart, and to feel, in spite of all things, justified and borne out in such love … Oh my darling wife how I long for you.

  He acknowledged her life with him might not be one that she would have chosen:

  My thoughts travel back to certain morning walks taken years ago with one Julia Sorell, when she and I had all our troubles before us, and she thought more hopefully of her marriage than experience has borne her out in, poor dear!

  But he was grateful that she was with him and he loved her all the more for it. And she responded with love. I count the hours until I see you again my darling… A few weeks after her arrival, she was pregnant again.

  Birmingham was, after London and Liverpool, the third largest city in Britain, with a population of more than a quarter of a million people and growing. Its abundant employment opportunities and its religious tolerance acted as a magnet for hopeful immigrants, whether they were escaping the limitations of rural life in England, the ravages of famine in Ireland, or the violence of pogroms in Europe. It was a booming place, blessed and blighted by its industrial base.