by Wendy Moore
The purpose of the visit was most probably a desire by Bowes to capitalise on the lands he still owned in Ireland; exacting an advantageous price for them from his relatives had plagued him for several years. It was nevertheless a first opportunity for Mary Eleanor to meet her in-laws and their ever-expanding family in Tipperary. Elizabeth Stoney, her mother-in-law, had given birth to her eleventh child, George Stoney junior, just four years earlier. Despite the haughty letters that Mary had been forced by Bowes to write to his father, she made a favourable impression on the family - an affection which proved mutual, especially between Mary and her namesake, Bowes’s twenty-year-old sister. When the Bowes retinue returned to England the following month, Mary Stoney accompanied them, encouraged by her ambitious mother in the face of heartfelt objections from her father. The chance to enjoy the English social scene, under the escort of her handsome big brother and his well-connected wife, seemed too tempting an opportunity for a lively young woman of marriageable age. Before leaving Ireland Bowes promised his father that he would send his sister home within six months. He had no such intention.
Back at Gibside in time for the Newcastle races in June, Bowes introduced his sister into polite northern society, taking pains as always to present himself to his potential electorate as the courteous husband, brother and benefactor. One society belle, Judith Milbanke, delightedly reported partnering Bowes at the city’s splendid new assembly rooms. ‘I . . . had the honour to open the Ball with a double Minuet, Lady Strathmore & Lord Fielding at Top, your humble servant & Mr Bowes at bottom.’18 Cutting a commanding figure on the dance floor, Bowes never lost his touch with the ladies; a generous subscriber to the new assembly rooms, he knew just as effectively how to charm the city’s dignitaries.19
Yet the seemingly cosy family scenario belied the bleak truth. Well aware that his play-acting would not pass muster with the shrewd Mrs Bowes, Bowes forbade Mary from any private conversation with her mother and scrutinised their correspondence. Nevertheless, rumours of his ill-treatment and scandalous conduct had already reached Mrs Bowes’s ears and she now urged Mary to leave him - despite the inevitable social outcry this would generate - even if she refused to believe the tales of physical violence. Knowing the grief it would cause her mother to hear the truth and hopeful she could still reform her abuser, Mary denied that Bowes mistreated her.20 But just as Bowes curtailed her connections with her immediate family, so the law now conspired to sever all links with her children.
That June, just after her return from Ireland, Mary was forced to surrender her five children by Lord Strathmore to their three other guardians, as Chancery made them wards of court.21 Not bothering even to consult their mother, Thomas Lyon immediately removed six-year-old George and five-year-old Thomas from their grandmother’s home and sent them to join their brother John, now nine, at his school in Neasden. The two girls, Maria, now ten, and Anna, just turned eight, were summarily packed off to a girls’ boarding school in Queen’s Square, London. Distraught at being forced to give up all rights to her children, Mary consoled herself with the belief that the other guardians would grant her reasonable access; in reality, she hoped, she would see them scarcely less than she already did. Her optimism was sorely misguided. From the moment that Lyon gained charge of his nephews and nieces - and the funds set aside to maintain them - he enacted a vice-like control over their daily lives. Dictating every aspect of their education and their leisure time, austere Uncle Thomas moulded the children to his demanding ideals, while poisoning their minds against their mother. And not only would they rarely be granted visits to their mother, separated by their schooling they would hardly see each other. When Lyon, at the family home in County Durham he had now inherited from his late mother, was unable to oversee their activities, he dragooned his sister, Lady Anne Simpson, to supervise the youngsters in London. As parsimonious as his brother had been profligate, Lyon maintained meticulous accounts of the children’s expenses which survive even now: their bills for shoes, clothes, medicine, haircuts, books and lessons, their accounts for tuition, board and pocket money, all folded and bound in tiny bundles as sad mementoes of their carefully monitored and catalogued young lives.
So the girls’ first outings to the opulent West End shops to choose the colourful silks and satins for their first grown-up gowns, to be fitted for their first stays, to buy dancing pumps, gloves and fans for their first balls and theatre trips, were supervised not by their mother but by Aunt Anne with the bills forwarded to Uncle Thomas.22 When George, always a sickly child, fell ill that autumn, his tutors sent for the apothecary to bring his ineffectual potions to the boy’s bedside in Neasden - and forwarded the medical bill to Lyon - rather than let his mother mop his fevered forehead. When Maria visited the dentist four times within twelve months, always an excruciating experience before the advent of anaesthesia, it was without her mother’s hand to squeeze. And as all five children progressed at their lessons in reading, writing, French, drawing, music and history, their mother - who placed such importance on her own education - was denied any opportunity to encourage, praise or take pride in their achievements. Each of the children would cope in their own way. Maria, the eldest and most conscious of social correctness, readily conformed to her uncle’s exacting regime and grew close to her socially adept aunt, while wayward Anna remained alert for opportunities to rebel. For the two youngest boys, having scarcely seen their mother since infancy, there would be little lasting memory of her. And John, the quiet and thoughtful head of the little family, simply tried his best to appease both sides.
As appeals and counter-appeals against the Chancery decision lumbered on over the ensuing years, Mary’s efforts to see her children would become more and more desperate. In all her attempts to gain access, Bowes would be solidly supportive; naturally it suited his purposes to exert control over the young Gibside heirs. That December, therefore, Bowes wrote to Lyon on Mary’s behalf asking that the children be allowed to stay with them over the Christmas holidays.23 Offering no reason, for he saw no cause to explain his actions to the children’s mother, Lyon bluntly replied that he and his fellow guardians ‘cannot agree to your Ladyship’s request’. Knowing that the children were still allowed visits to their grandmother, who would at least ensure that they remembered their mother, Mary reluctantly accepted the decision.
It was another lonely Christmas at Gibside. As William Paterson set out on his third expedition at the height of the Cape summer that December, Mary watched helplessly from her windows as Bowes destroyed swathes of winter woodland in an effort to raise funds from the valuable timber. Once more beset by debts, Bowes insisted that they stay in the north to avoid his creditors and save money. ‘I have given up all idea of going this winter to London,’ he told his financial agent, William Davis, ‘as I can live here for half the expence; beside I can never be happy TILL I GET OUT OF DEBT, and have money, if possible, to the good’.24 Besieging Davis with instructions to take out insurance policies on Mary’s life, in order to guarantee the numerous annuities he was arranging to raise extra funds, Bowes drove a hard bargain over interest rates.
Perpetually irritated over money matters, Bowes vented his frustrations on the captive little group within the Gibside walls. Markham’s religious cloth afforded him no protection from his employer’s wrath, for later he would testify that Bowes worked himself into ‘the most violent passions upon the most frivolous occasions’ and often behaved ‘in a very cross savage manner without any Provocations’.25 On one occasion, towards the end of January 1779, as the elderly chaplain dutifully said grace before dinner, Bowes retorted: ‘Damn your Mercies. I want none of mercy.’ A few evenings later, Bowes walked into the parlour to find the parson engrossed in conversation - probably with Mary and her sister-in-law - and lunged at the poor man with a barrage of blows for the simple reason that he had remained chatting too long after dinner. The Markhams promptly packed their bags and left. For the two Marys there was no such hope of escape.
No soo
ner had Mary Stoney passed through the gates of the Gibside estate than she realised her error in leaving her happy Irish home. From the moment that she set foot in Gibside Hall, she became subject to the obsessive rule with which her brother governed the entire household. When her approved six months’ leave expired in December, Mary was forbidden from returning home and prevented from writing to her parents while any letters her parents sent to her were immediately intercepted by her brother.26 When Mary came of age a few days before Christmas, there had been few celebrations and little prospect of liberty. Indeed, now that Mary no longer required her parents’ consent for marriage, it soon became plain that Bowes was concocting a plan to engage her to a wealthy suitor in return for rich pickings for himself. Yet despite her youth and familial allegiance, Mary Stoney’s free spirit could not be so easily crushed.
Confined together for hours during the northern winter, effectively prisoners in the Gibside mansion, the two Marys grew close. Mary Eleanor confided in her young sister-in-law, whom she described as ‘gentle, compassionate and generous’ in complete contrast to her sadistic brother. Appalled by the stories of her brother’s abuse as well as by the indubitable evidence in the marks on Mary Eleanor’s face, Mary Stoney boldly attempted to stand up to her brother. On one occasion in 1779, when he spotted his wife leaving his sister’s bedchamber, Bowes grabbed his horsewhip and lashed Mary Eleanor on the arms and legs on the grounds that she was not permitted to leave her sister-in-law alone. Fearful that his sister might try to escape, he had ordered Mary Eleanor to watch her at all times - a prisoner guarding another prisoner. When she heard about the attack, young Mary declared that she ‘wished his hands would rot off’. She was soon to experience her brother’s violence for herself.
Preparing for an outing to the theatre in Newcastle, the two women were dressing together when Bowes stormed in, found his sister not yet ready and viciously set about her with his ever-handy whip. When Mary Eleanor shrieked at him to stop, he thrashed her too. The wheals that he caused on young Mary’s neck were so swollen and painful that the theatre excursion had to be cancelled and she spent the ensuing day in bed. Forced the following evening to get up, under the threat that Bowes would beat her again, she was made to attend the postponed theatre trip with her neck chastely muffled to hide the raw wounds. It was no isolated incident. Now that he had two victims under his command, Bowes abused both his wife and his sister mercilessly; according to Mary Eleanor her sister-in-law was ‘beaten & used by him almost as dreadfully as myself’. With no prospect of her brother’s ill-treatment relenting and no way of alerting her parents to her plight, 21-year-old Mary was desperate to return home. It would be another eighteen months before she saw her chance.
Financially, at least, circumstances were looking up. In May, Bowes’s humour improved when he found a buyer for Mary’s beloved Stanley House in Chelsea. Just as William Paterson was preparing to set off on his fourth and final expedition at the Cape, in search of fresh novelties to boost his patron’s prized collection, Bowes callously sold the villa complete with its extensive gardens, conservatories and hothouses. Writing to a friend, Bowes announced: ‘I HAVE SOLD CHELSEA HOUSE, but have not got the money; which, however, when I do, must go to—, the banker.’27 Only the conservatory and hothouse at Gibside remained, their exotic blooms and tropical fruits a tantalisingly short stroll away. Even though Bowes frequently sent the produce, including pineapples and melons, to the influential neighbours and city dignitaries he sought to cultivate, the greenhouse had begun to suffer from the neglect that he inflicted on the entire estate. Rather than ploughing his windfall into much-needed maintenance, Bowes paid off his most urgent creditors and in June sank the remainder into a racehorse.
Just like Mary’s father and her first husband, Bowes had been bitten by the eighteenth-century obsession for the Turf. Horse racing had long been enjoyed as a popular British entertainment whether on designated race courses or village greens but, as skills in selective breeding advanced, so the competing steeds became bigger, stronger and faster and interest in the sport flourished.28 Some of the most famous races, including the Epsom Derby and the St Leger at Doncaster, were run for the first time and the Jockey Club was founded to set rules and govern practices by a band of aristocratic fanatics in 1752. As the racing calendar expanded and the value of prizes soared, so meetings became magnets for all manner of side-shows including cock-fights and freak shows as well as their corollaries of ruinous betting and drinking. Naturally, Bowes could not resist the thunder of the horses’ hooves nor the attendant charms.
With the race weeks at Durham and Newcastle essential fixtures in the northern social diary, Bowes regarded the meetings as ideal opportunities to flaunt his civic benevolence to the gathered crowds. Shortly after marrying Mary, in July 1777 he had sponsored a £50 prize for one of the events at Durham races in an act of clearly calculated philanthropy.29 Now he laid out £750 to buy a six-year-old racehorse, named Icelander, so that he could compete on equal terms with the aristocratic owners of the day. Making her first appearance at Hexham races that June she did not disappoint him. ‘My mare walked over,’ he gloated to a friend, reporting her victory by half a neck over the favourite in ‘the finest race I ever saw’.30 To Bowes’s delight, Icelander went on to win major prizes that summer at Durham, Nottingham and Morpeth. Evincing more pride in his mare than he would ever bestow on his wife - and doubtless treating her with greater kindness - Bowes would hang on to Icelander until the end of her days.
Swaggering around the race courses with his rakish friends, Bowes was soon in financial strife again. As he rebuffed one of his weary creditors with a characteristically off-hand response that July, Bowes pleaded temporary poverty while asserting that, ‘At this moment, I declare, I am worth, were all effects sold, above £50,000’.31 It was little wonder that his chief legacy to posterity would be the term ‘stoney broke’.
Among the friends who shared his taste for the licentious lifestyle of the Turf was Charles Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who would later succeed as the eleventh Duke of Norfolk but was better known to his contemporaries as ‘the Jockey of Norfolk’.32 An active supporter of Fox’s Whigs, Howard championed reforms to end electoral corruption but was more than happy to dispense the boroughs in his patronage for exorbitant sums. A huge, shambling, whiskered oaf who was famed for his vulgar habits and unkempt dress, it was said that his servants waited until he was unconscious after one of his regular drinking bouts to plunge him into a bathtub. His rowdy dinners, at which he consumed quantities of beer and claret sufficient to astound even Georgian imbibers, were legendary and his notorious contempt for hygiene did nothing to deter several mistresses. His first wife having died giving birth to their stillborn child exactly nine months after their marriage, Howard had married a wealthy heiress but quickly had her certified mad and confined for life in a private asylum. Hard-drinking and hypocritical, he was, in short, a perfect companion for Bowes.
For all that Bowes could still charm his high-ranking friends and influential acquaintances on the social scene, his behaviour at home was becoming ever more irrational. One morning that same summer, Bowes sauntered into Mary’s dressing room to find her eating breakfast with her long, thick chestnut hair falling over her shoulders. After observing her coldly for a few minutes he flew into a temper then snatched up a pair of scissors yelling, Mary later recorded, that he ‘would spoil my locks, and teach me to dress my head lower than I did’ before hacking off great chunks with the shears.33 Such minute attention to Mary’s hair, her clothes and her accessories, and the recurrent accusations that she was too familiar with her male servants, suggest that Bowes had a powerful sexual obsession with Mary or at least a compulsion to control her sexually. After all, even though Bowes claimed to despise her, the couple were still sharing a bed and he was eager to father an heir.
Yet for all his slurs on her virtue, and despite the pledges Bowes had made in order to extort her confessions, Mary remained suspicious that her h
usband was still finding sexual pleasure outside wedlock. Three letters that she discovered by chance, all sent to Bowes from the surgeon John Hunter at some point between 1778 and 1780, confirmed her doubts.34 Carefully copying their contents before returning them to their place, Mary preserved the texts for future use. Beginning with his customary professional discretion, in the first letter Hunter refers to a ‘friend’ of Bowes for whom he has apparently been treating a woman in lodgings in Fleet Street, London. Complaining mildly that he has called on Bowes several times without success, Hunter states: ‘I am teased & therefore I tease you; I think every Man should know what is going on concerning himself. I therefore apply to you, that you may acquaint your friend how he stands with the Lady in Fleet Street. If something was done in a more frugal way it would be better for all friends.’ The second letter is more persistent, as Bowes had evidently evaded his responsibilities, as well as more revealing while maintaining the fiction of the mutual ‘friend’. Now despairing that Bowes will return to London, Hunter implores him to decide on the future of the woman in his care and - it transpires - her child. ‘My opinion is that she should go to service,’ the surgeon suggests, ‘for keeping her in the idle life, is doing her more hurt, than all that has been done.’ Remembering to send his respects to ‘Lady Strathmore and Miss Stoney’, Hunter gives the game away with his postscript: ‘The small pox was in the house, where the little thing is, should it be innoculated ?’ Reaching the end of his patience in the third and final letter, Hunter exasperatedly urges Bowes to respond. At last dispensing with the pretence of a ‘friend’, the surgeon writes: ‘I have spent all your money, of which I will give you an account of when I have the pleasure of seeing you, or sooner if you would chuse to have the account.’ Having ascertained that the woman in question would be happy to find employment - and save them both running up further bills - Hunter adds: ‘There are some Suspicions that the little thing has got the measles. Should he not be inoculated?’ Enclosed with one of the letters, Mary found a receipt for £113 ‘from Mr B’ and a bill for a further £45 15s and 4d still owing.