by Wendy Moore
Instead, Mary Eleanor achieved something of much more significant and far-reaching importance. After suffering eight years of barely imaginable brutality, which reduced her to a petrified and cowed spectre of her former self, Mary somehow found the strength to embark on an audacious counter-attack. Despite having once enjoyed the position of Britain’s richest heiress, for all that she had married into the aristocracy, she could rely on neither money nor connections in her struggle. And yet through sheer tenacity and courage, and the kindness of those on the bottom rungs of the Georgian social scale, Mary successfully pitted her wits not only against one of history’s vilest husbands but also the might of the entire legal and religious establishment. At a time when women enjoyed pitifully few rights in law, either in marriage or in general, Mary Eleanor Bowes won an unprecedented series of victories, amounting to a remarkable triumph, which would stand as a beacon of hope to inspire writers and encourage campaigners in the continuing battle for reform.
Unjustly, although she had well and truly outsmarted him, Mary was outlived by Andrew Robinson Bowes. His unpaid debts, including the alimony he never paid to Mary or her descendants, meant that he would remain under the jurisdiction of the King’s Bench, spending the last twenty-two years of his life a prisoner. But following Mary’s death he was allowed to live outside the prison walls, in the area surrounding the jail known as ‘the rules’. And so, with the long-suffering Polly, their two girls and three boys, and a straggle of mangy cats and dogs, Bowes took a house in London Road, close by the jail. Investing his remaining time in evading the lawyers and tradesmen to whom he owed money, Bowes perfected his customary deceit in feigning illness - pretending to suffer fits, loss of memory and deafness - and dressed himself and his offspring in rags. According to Foot, Bowes insisted that the children never wore shoes or stockings. As he refused even to buy a broom to keep the house clean, his daughters had to go down on their knees to collect the dust with their hands.
Despite living outside the prison walls - the family moved to a second house in Lambeth Road by 1807 - Bowes continued to treat Polly as his personal prisoner. He kept her locked in a room, denied her all visitors and allowed her only one meal a day. And so it came as a surprise to Foot, calling at the house on 10 January 1810, when Polly answered the door for the first time in her life. Inside he found Bowes in bed, for once genuinely ill. With his family crowded around him, Foot learned that Bowes’s will left all his worldly goods to William Johnstone Bowes, his only legitimate son. It was only after the pleas of his children, his attorney and Foot himself, that Bowes was finally persuaded to grant Polly a measly £100 a year.33
Six days later, on 16 January 1810, Bowes died. He was buried in the vault of the nearby St George’s Church, where he would spend eternity within the prison rules. His chief apologist during life, his chief mourner in death, Foot dolefully followed Bowes’s coffin to its resting place. Yet just two years later the surgeon published an excoriating exposé of his erstwhile patron’s life in which he cheerfully proclaimed: ‘He was a villain to the backbone!’ Relating the epic tale of his friend’s trickery, violence, sexual assaults and depravity, Foot concluded: ‘To sum up his character in a few words, he was cowardly, insidious, hypocritical, tyrannic, mean, violent, selfish, jealous, revengeful, inhuman and savage, without a countervailing quality.’
None of Mary’s children enjoyed particularly fulfilling lives or found lasting happiness in marriage. William, the youngest, joined the navy and survived one naval disaster, becoming icebound in the Elbe on the Proserpine in 1799, only to perish in another, at the age of twenty-four, when a storm wrecked the Blenheim off the coast of Madagascar in 1807.34 His half-sister Mary settled in Bath and though she never married, she retained her mischievous humour and happy-go-lucky nature to the last, becoming a favourite aunt to her nieces and nephew. She died in 1855, aged seventy-eight.
Maria, the giggling toddler who had once charmed Thomas Gray, lived comfortably in Gloucestershire with her family, but died in 1806 at just thirty-eight. Her brother George died the same year, aged thirty-five, after being married only eighteen months, and since he left no heirs St Paul’s Walden Bury descended to younger brother Thomas. George’s widow, Mary, and Maria’s widower, now Colonel Price, consoled each other in their grief by getting married in 1811.35 Thomas fared better, marrying three times and outliving two of his wives but also his only child. Headstrong Anna, herself a widow after her husband’s early death, lived with her two girls at Bird Hill House, a lodge on the Gibside estate. Never marrying again, she died in 1832, aged sixty-one. But, least lucky of all in marriage, the tenth earl achieved only one day of marital bliss.
Unperturbed by society gossip, John and the beautiful Sarah had remained inseparable yet powerless to cement their union. While their families condoned their affair as long as it remained covert, any move to make the relationship public or legal was immediately frowned upon. So the devoted pair continued to live in perfect harmony out of wedlock. When Sarah began to exhibit the tell-tale signs of tuberculosis, John spared no expense in bringing the best doctors to Gibside. Sadly, nothing the Georgian medical fraternity had to offer could help Sarah and she died in October 1800, aged thirty-seven, with her lover at her side. Having lost his mother and his lover within six months, the distraught earl arranged Sarah’s long hair, painted her face, dressed her in lace and adorned her with jewels then accompanied her body for burial in Westminster Abbey.36
It would be nine more years before Lord Strathmore could face another entanglement. Confounding social conventions once again, he fell for Mary Milner, a 22-year-old maid who worked at his Yorkshire hunting lodge, Wemmergill Hall.37 Living together at Streatlam Castle, the earl treated Mary as his wife and when she gave birth to their son, baptised John Bowes, in 1811, he instantly acknowledged him as his heir. With his health precarious, the earl married Mary on 2 July 1820 in a last-minute effort to legitimise their son. The following day Lord Strathmore died. Yet although John Bowes duly inherited Gibside and Streatlam, by virtue of his father’s will, his claim to the Strathmore title and Scottish estate was immediately challenged by his father’s younger brother, Thomas. Backed by the redoubtable James Farrer, John’s claim was based on the principle in Scottish law that his parents’ marriage legitimised him retrospectively. Yet Uncle Thomas, as sharp as his namesake, successfully argued in the House of Lords the following year that since the tenth earl had not lived in Scotland his son must abide by the English principle that, despite his parents’ marriage, he remained illegitimate. So Thomas, Mary Eleanor’s third son, became the eleventh Earl of Strathmore, the great-great-grandfather of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the late Queen Mother.38
It was John Bowes, however, who maintained the Bowes family estate and upheld the family traditions, ultimately creating a remarkable legacy, the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, to house his fine art collection along with Mary’s botanical cabinet. It was also John Bowes who continued Mary’s literary connections. In the summer of 1841 he invited a friend, the young writer William Makepeace Thackeray, to stay at Streatlam Castle.39 Hearing the story of John’s grandmother, imprisoned in the castle by her husband more than fifty years earlier, Thackeray was entranced. Here was the perfect subject for a book. Soon afterwards Thackeray began writing his first significant work of fiction, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which spun the tale of a wily, brutish and philandering Irish soldier who was ultimately outwitted by the titled heiress he had duped into wedlock. An outlandishly fantastical story, only the truth could be more astonishing.
Acknowledgements
It is only through the unstinting help and generous advice of numerous people and institutions that this book has been possible. Firstly, for his kind permission in allowing me access to the Strathmore archives at both Glamis Castle and Durham County Record Office, I would like to thank the eighteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. For permission to view Mary Eleanor Bowes’s album, portrait and other materials at St Paul’s Walden Bury, and fo
r their hospitality during my visits, my thanks are due to Simon and Caroline Bowes Lyon. I would like to thank His Grace the Duke of Norfolk for permission to use the Arundel Castle archives. My thanks are due to the Bowes Museum for permission to view archives and other materials there, and to William Baker Baker and Durham University Library for permission to access the Baker Baker archive at that library. I wish to acknowledge the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to quote from material in the Royal Archives.
Many archivists, curators, librarians and other staff have been crucial to my research. In particular I wish to thank Jane Anderson, archivist at Glamis Castle, for her diligent and efficient help on my repeated trips to view the Strathmore archives. My thanks are due also to Lady Mary, Dowager Countess of Strathmore, for her interest in my research and to Hamish Howe, guide at Glamis, for his advice. For their unerring hospitality and help, I wish to thank all the staff at Dundee University Archives Department, who provided facilities for me to view the Strathmore archives and always made me welcome during my many visits, keeping me fuelled with biscuits and enthusiasm. I especially wish to thank Dr Mary Young, archivist for the Glamis Project at Dundee University, who has proved my invaluable guide and delightful friend throughout my research, making my trips north an inspiration and a pleasure. In Durham, I wish to thank all the staff of Durham County Record Office and Durham University Library. At the Bowes Museum, I am indebted to the help and advice of curator Howard Coutts and Claire Jones, former keeper of furniture, during my several enjoyable visits. Peter Donnelly, curator of the King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum, Lancaster, provided much appreciated advice on army life. Anne Wheeldon, archivist at Hammersmith and Fulham Archives and Local History Centre, kindly advised me on Craven Cottage. In addition I would like to thank everybody who has helped me at the British Library, National Archives, Royal Society, Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine, Linnean Society, Kew Gardens Library, Westminster Cathedral Library, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Royal Society of Arts, Fitzwilliam Museum, Arundel Castle archives, London Metropolitan Archives, City of Westminster Archives Centre, Guildhall Library, Kensington Library, Hammersmith and Fulham Archives and Local History Centre, and the Huntington Library, California. My thanks are also due to everyone involved with the National Trust at Gibside, especially former property manager Tony Walton and advisers Hugh Dixon and Chris Gallagher.
I have been hugely privileged to benefit from advice in specialist areas from a large number of individual experts. I would particularly like to thank Elizabeth Foyster for sharing her expertise on the history of domestic violence, Michael Bundock for his advice on eighteenth-century law, Caroline Chapman for her insights on John Bowes and her hospitality in Yorkshire, John Brown for his expertise on eighteenth-century economics, Margaret Wills for her advice on Gibside, Alexander Huber for his advice on Thomas Gray, Dr Donald Stevens for information on Priory Church in Christchurch, and Gina Douglas for her botanical help. For sharing their knowledge of Cole Pike Hill and kindness during my visit I am grateful to Alan and Marjorie Hopps, Paul Shepherd and Stuart Wright. For advice on South African geography and culture, my thanks are due to Catherine Goodwin, and for their generous help in checking my Cape botanical references, I am extremely grateful to Peter Goldblatt and Dr John Manning. For help in French translation my thanks are due to Rachel Hall. For his much-appreciated help in technological emergencies, my grateful thanks to Mike Cudmore. And for pointing me towards Mary Eleanor Bowes in the first place, heartfelt thanks to Simon Chaplin, curator of the Hunterian Museum.
As always, I have been extremely lucky to work with some of the best people in publishing. First and foremost, I wish to thank my unbeatable agent Patrick Walsh for encouraging and guiding me throughout the journey of this book. I am grateful to all the staff at Weidenfeld & Nicolson who have welcomed me into their fold as one of the family and especially to my editor Kirsty Dunseath for her expert and sensitive oversight from start to finish. My thanks go also to copy-editor Marian Reid.
Finally, I want to record my enormous gratitude to all my family and friends who are a constant source of support, keeping me generally on the right track and sometimes providing much appreciated diversions. I am only sorry I cannot name everyone individually. And, as ever, I want to thank Peter, my partner, first reader and - despite the subject of my book - now my husband, for his skilful judgement and unwavering faith in me and my work.
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
ARB Andrew Robinson Bowes
ARS Andrew Robinson Stoney
BBP Baker Baker Papers
BL British Library
BM Bowes Museum
CWAC City of Westminster Archives Centre
DCRO Durham County Record Office
DCRO SEA Durham County Record Office, Strathmore Estate Archives
DUL Durham University Library
GL Guildhall Library
HL Huntington Library, San Marino, California
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission
LMA London Metropolitan Archives
MEB Mary Eleanor Bowes
NA National Archives
NT National Trust
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
RA Royal Archives
RS Royal Society
SPG Strathmore Papers, Glamis
SPWB St Paul’s Walden Bury
MONEY
Making comparisons between the purchasing power of money in the eighteenth century and today is far from straightforward. However, since money is obviously a significant factor in this story, some comparisons are clearly helpful. Where I have given comparative figures these have been made using the Bank of England inflation calculator: www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/inflation/calculator/index1.htm
All dates are given according to the new calendar. All descriptions of weather are from the meteorological reports published monthly in the Gentleman’s Magazine or other contemporary accounts.
CHAPTER 1: AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR
Information on the Adelphi Tavern is from Allan, passim; London County Council, vol. 18, pp. 99-100. Originally 18 Adam Street, the Adelphi Tavern adjoined the new headquarters of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, now the Royal Society of Arts. In 1957, the RSA absorbed the tavern building. The original first-floor dining room and ground-floor coffee room can still be viewed. Background information on duelling is from Millingen; Melville and Hargreaves; anon, The British Code of Duel (1824); Baldick; and Landale.
1 Details describing the duel and quotes about it are from the statements by J. Hull, John Scott, Caesar Hawkins and Jessé Foot in The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 24 January 1777, and from anon, A full and accurate report of the trial, p. 9 unless otherwise specified. Hull’s first name is given as John, and his post as clerk, in The Royal Kalendar, 1776, p. 121.
2 Boswell, p. 484.
3 Sir Henry Bate Dudley (he adopted the name Dudley from an uncle who left him a large legacy in 1780 and was made a baronet by George IV when Prince of Wales in 1812) was editor of the Morning Post from 1775 to 1780. The Morning Post merged with the Daily Telegraph in 1937. Fyvie, pp. 79-104; Hindle; Aspinall; Barker; all passim.
4 Walpole to Lady Ossory, 13 November 1776, in Lewis, W. S., vol. 32, pp. 331-2.
5 Boswell, p. 1,295.
6 Foot, p. 5.
7 A report of the duel and events leading up to it, agreed between Bate and Stoney, was published in the London Chronicle, 18-21 January 1777. Details were given in shorter form in the Morning Chronicle, 15 January 1777, as well as in other newspapers. The subsequent details describing the duel and its causes are taken from the London Chronicle report.
8 Morning Post, 10 December, 23 December and 24 December 1776, and 11 January 1777.
9 Foot, p. 45.
10 Donellan would elope with and marry the young heiress Theodosia Boughton later in 1777. In 1780 he was accused of poisoning her twenty-year-old brother, Sir Theodos
ius, whose fortune went to his sister if he died before the age of twenty-one. An inquest pointed to Donellan’s guilt, despite objections on scientific grounds by the surgeon John Hunter, and Donellan was hanged for murder in March 1781. Moore, pp. 288-291; ODNB, vol. 16, pp. 521-2.
11 Information on Wogdon is from Atkinson, pp. 33-48.
12 Foot, pp. 27-8; anon, A full and accurate report of the trial, p. 5.
13 Testimony of MEB in copy of evidence for House of Lords appeal 1796: SPG, volume C.
14 Foot, p. 28.
15 Annual Register, 1760, vol. 3, p. 131.
16 Foot, p. 13.
17 Testimony of MEB. . . 1796: SPG, volume C.
18 Fyvie, pp. 118-119.
19 Parish register, St James’s Church, Piccadilly, 17 January 1777, CWAC. Stoney had obtained a licence to marry at short notice from the Bishop of London: Bishop of London’s marriage allegations, GL MSS 10091/138.
CHAPTER 2: DOWNRIGHT GIRLISHNESS
Information in this chapter on the ancestry of the Bowes family is from Wills, and Durham County Council, passim. Biographical details on George Bowes can be found in Wills, and ODNB, vol. 6, pp. 931-4. Background on the history of the north-east England coal industry is from Flinn and Stoker; and Atkinson, both passim. For information on the Gibside estate, now NT, see Wills and Garnett, and Wills, both passim. My thanks to Tony Walton, former NT property manager of Gibside, for kind help and advice during my visit 23 October 2006. The contents of Gibside Hall at the time are from two sources: Inventory of the household goods, etc, at Gibside, 29 Oct 1761: SPG, box 185, bundle 5; and an inventory of the contents of Gibside, listing furniture, linen, plate, china, art and books bequeathed by George Bowes to MEB produced in 1779 in answer to a case in Chancery begun in 1777 by Thomas Lyon on behalf of MEB’s five children by Lord Strathmore: NA Chancery Records, C12/1057/31 (schedule). A list of paintings purchased by George Bowes is preserved as DCRO SEA D/St/E5/2/18.