than themselves. The rigidity of English marriage law received scorn, since
it shackled unhappy spouses together for life. Gissing, for example, raged,
‘What vile, what an insensate law, is the law of divorce in England. A man
is moulted, outraged, ill-used day after day, month after month, year after
year … final y, he is driven from home, with every brutality that can be
uttered – and the law refuses to break such a marriage!’13 Gissing’s cry was
common to those unhappily yoked; since the law was unjust, rebellion was
the only moral choice.
As Gissing’s anger shows, most cohabitees would have preferred to
marry; similarly to all the cohabitees in this section, they did not revolt
against marriage per se. In fact, most tried to find ways to marry before
settling for cohabitation. Evans and Lewes explored the option of divorce
in 1860, though they found that they could not do so (because Lewes had
‘condoned’ his wife’s adultery).14 Ford went to Germany to obtain German
citizenship so that he could divorce his wife, ignoring his lawyers’ opinion
that the English courts would not accept it. Gissing tried for months to
find a way to marry Fleury, though he had the same problem as Ford.15
Moreover, when couples became free to marry, they did so readily,
including Labouchere and Hodson and Braddon and Maxwel . They were
thrilled to be able to regularise their unions, despite their claims that they
were ‘already’ married in every important sense. Clearly, they contradicted
themselves with this reaction, but it was, in part, the result of the legal and
social, rather than emotional, benefits of marriage.
Consequences
However much these relationships resembled a ‘true’ marriage, they were
legal y nul , and the consequences were considerable. Adulterous cohabitees
experienced the difference from the start. When a couple married, they sent
out wedding invitations and a public announcement. When a couple lived
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
together, they had to be more discreet. They wrote to friends and family
first, an anxiety-producing experience, especial y for the women. Most
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adulterous cohabitation
received mixed responses; some friends stayed loyal, while others refused
to see them again. Marian Evans lost touch with her family, especial y her
censorious brother Isaac. He did not communicate with her again until
she married legal y after Lewes’s death, twenty-five years later.16 Braddon’s
brother disapproved of her union with Maxwell and so natural y snubbed
Mary and John, but he also ostracized his own mother, who had accepted
it. Hunt’s sisters never approved of Ford. When their relationship became
a scandal, her sister Sylvia forbade her daughter to visit her aunt, and she
also sued Violet over the care of their mother.17
The women’s families were the most dismayed, knowing that the
main scorn would fall on them. Women who chose to accept the social
costs, then, tended to be unusual y independent. In fact, many middle-
class women involved in free unions had lost their fathers, including
Flower, Evans, Hunt, Fleury, and Boyd. The loss of their fathers meant that
these women had to make their own ways in the world, but also that they
were freer to make their own decisions. Women who supported themselves
were also more liberated, even if their fathers were alive. For instance,
Gillies had left home to become an artist when she met Southwood Smith.
These women had more negotiating room for setting up unconventional
households, though they still took the brunt of disapproval from kin and
society.Men’s families might be more sympathetic than women’s, since men
had more sexual freedom. Unless the family was religious or had close ties to
the first wife, they were not devastated. In addition, many men already had
children with the first wife, so issues of inheritance did not occur. Gissing’s
siblings were general y pleased when he told them about his relationship
with Fleury. One brother wrote, ‘I can’t enough rejoice that you have had
this solace … Pray give my sincerest greetings to your good, brave more-
than-wife.’18 The sexual double standard also meant that kin might blame
the wife more than the husband for marital col apses. H. G. Wel s delayed
telling his family that he was leaving his first wife, his cousin Isabel, for
Amy Catherine Robbins until the divorce was in progress. But his relatives
did not cut him, because, he claimed, his mother ‘was so amazed at Isabel
“letting me go,” and so near indignation about it that she quite forgot to be
shocked at the immorality of my situation.’19
More often, though, men’s families were appalled, and this could have
financial consequences for the couple. Thomas Chapman (T. E. Lawrence’s
father) had to sign over his estate to his brother in order to support his
second family and never saw his four daughters again. In addition, because
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
his sons were all illegitimate, his title passed out of his branch of the
family.20 Jefferson Hogg’s family refused to accept his cohabitation with
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living in sin
Jane Williams, though the two lived together from 1826 until Hogg’s death
in 1862. He had to leave his work as a barrister and instead get a position as
a professor, and he was financial y insecure for years.21
Economic woes were particularly a problem for those with two
households. Harold Frederic, an American novelist, had grown apart
from his wife Grace when the family moved to England in the 1880s. He
met Kate Lyon in the early 1890s, and persuaded her to live with him, but
he did not leave his wife. Instead, he lived with his wife in the suburbs at
weekends, and spent the rest of the week with Kate and, eventual y, their
three children. Keeping up two wives and seven children cost him £1400
per year, an amount he could ill afford.22 Frederic was not alone in his
money worries. The cost of eloping could get men into serious trouble.
John Griegg, the married surveyor for Blackpool in 1860, fell in love with
a boarding-house keeper. They eloped, but they were soon apprehended,
since Griegg had embezzled money to pay for the escape.23
Since few men could afford to keep up two establishments, one of the
families usual y suffered, especial y after the man’s death. The cohabiting
family was the most likely to face hardships, as they had few lega
l rights.
Linn Boyd Porter visited the Lyon/Frederic household in 1899 and foresaw
the problems for Lyon’s brood: ‘had they been mine I could never have
closed my eyes in slumber … any moment might plunge them into an Inferno’.
These concerns were not il usory. After Frederic’s death, friends took up a
col ection of £270 for the legitimate family, and Frederic’s family took them in.
Lyon’s children received only £50 when Stephen and Cora Crane tried to
raise money for them. Similarly, Roger Ackerley had drained his finances
by the time of his death in his efforts to support two families. His legal wife
and children got a pension, but his irregular family struggled on alone.24
In addition to economic worries, couples faced severe social sanctions,
especial y the women. Flower, who always insisted that her relationship
with Fox, though emotional y intimate, was sexual y pure, was hurt when
her friends did not believe her. One of them told her ‘she is determined …
to shew by deed and word that she no longer associates with me’, Flower
wrote to a more loyal friend, Harriet Taylor.25 Williams had almost no social
life, due to Hogg’s family’s hostility, and this made her separations from
him much more difficult. Similarly, Evans had years of isolation before her
standing as a novelist (as George Eliot) and her wealth allowed her more
leeway. Lewes lost some of his friends, but he largely went out as he always
had. In contrast, Evans remained at home, though her isolation was, in
part, self-imposed, due to her fear of snubs.26 The only way to avoid this
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
social consequence was to hide the adulterous connection. T. E. Lawrence’s
parents went under assumed names (‘Mr and Mrs Chapman’) and moved
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adulterous cohabitation
frequently to avoid detection. Ironical y, though, this method still left them
isolated, since they were afraid to develop intimate friendships, for fear of
exposing their secret.27
Social ostracism was only one possible negative response to
adulterous unions. Middle-class men needed contacts and references to
be successful; in other words, Victorian professional life depended on
reputation. As a result, marital scandals could be disastrous. Clergymen
faced particular difficulties, for obvious reasons. In 1860, Revd W. Prosser,
a married curate in Durham, ran away with his lover, a servant, when
their ‘improper intimacy’ came to light. Unsurprisingly, he had lost his
curacy as soon as the scandal broke, and his chances of advancement in his
profession were slim indeed after such an episode. In the 1880s, William
Ross, the rector of Belfast, fell in love with the wife of the Commissioner
of Emigration, a Mrs Foy. When she became pregnant, they ran away
together. Two years later, Mr Foy discovered Ross giving a public lecture
in Plymouth. The outraged husband disrupted the talk, denouncing Ross
and causing a near riot. Mrs Foy stood by her second mate, but Ross was
convicted of unlawful wounding and fined £50. Similarly, a married doctor
in Lancashire, Thomas Wardleworth, sold up all of his property and his
practice and ran away with Miss Bel , the daughter of a Wesleyan minister.
He was unable to practice long, however, since he was traced by journalists
and forced to flee again.28
Legal difficulties also abounded. In both 1864 and 1874, Maxwell
misrepresented his marital situation to the press, saying he and Braddon
were married. Both times his brother-in-law, Richard Knowles, contradicted
him publicly, causing great humiliation, and, in 1874, the resignation of
their entire domestic staff.29 Ford (then known as Hueffler) told a reporter
that he had divorced his wife in Germany and married Hunt, when, in
fact, he done neither. Violet then changed her name to Hueffler, and other
publications repeated the falsehood, most notably the Throne. Hueffler’s
wife Elsie promptly sued for libel. The case not only bankrupted the Throne,
but destroyed Violet’s reputation. Her godfather cut her out of his wil , and
her society friends snubbed her.30
Because of these difficulties, couples were touchy and saw slights
where they were not intended, just as some affinal couples did. Charles
Matthews invited Maxwell and Braddon to a party and sent them separate
invitations; Maxwell immediately wrote a reproving letter. Matthews
pleaded ignorance, but the incident showed the sensitivity of many couples.31
Though it was frustrating to cohabitees to have to assert their respectability
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
at every turn, one can have some sympathy with confused friends, since
pseudo-wives made for unusual social problems. Hunt’s name situation,
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living in sin
for instance, caused considerable anxiety. Douglas Goldring, a close friend,
did not know what to call her: ‘“Miss Hunt” sounded unfriendly … while
“Mrs. Hueffer” might lead to further reprisals from the successful litigant.’
As Mr Wild, the defence barrister for the Throne, put it, ‘when a woman
passed as a man’s wife … What on earth were they to cal her?’ Most of Violet’s
friends wrote her as Mrs Hueffler, ignoring the risks. Friends of cohabitees
would be baffled by similar social dilemmas throughout the period.32
Adulterous unions had other, more serious, legal problems. Any
mother who lived in adultery risked losing her children. In a case in 1899,
a widow living with a married man lost her five younger children to her
husband’s brothers, since an adulteress was not a ‘proper’ person to rear
children.33 Even without issues of custody, couples faced difficult legal
choices. Fleury was unwilling to sign documents in her maiden name, so
she gave all of her property to her mother, including her house. She thus
risked losing half of her property to her brother when her mother died.34
The issue of wil s was particularly vexed. As with affinal unions, men had to
call women by their maiden names, which they hated doing. And disputes
over inheritance could be ugly. Frederic left the American copyrights
of his novels and their house to Lyon. He left his legal wife their home
as well as the English copyrights, but the latter were heavily mortgaged.
Grace tried to get Kate to turn over the American copyrights, but Kate
refused. Grace retaliated by prosecuting Lyon for manslaughter, since, as a
Christian Scientist, she had refused medical attention for
Frederic when he
was dying. Though she was acquitted, the trial was so traumatising that the
children would not speak of it decades later.35
Despite social and legal slights, one should not overstate the women’s
isolation. Women who shared irregular pasts stuck together, while broad-
minded friends remained loyal. Williams was close friends with Mary
Shelley after their return to England. Barbara Smith and Bessie Raynor
Parkes remained friends with Evans, in defiance of their families’ wishes,
as did the Bray family. In fact, some women may have preferred life in
the demimonde to a stultifying respectability, particularly if they had an
alternate social group, and better-off couples could also go abroad where
social life was laxer. Mary Costelloe left her husband, a lawyer, for artist
Bernhard Berenson in the 1890s; they lived in Italy most of their lives.36 In
short, ostracism was serious, but rarely unanimous.
Successes and failures
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
The difficulties of making adulterous ‘marriages’ were many; those who
agreed to make them, then, were unusual. Many of the prominent cohabitees
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adulterous cohabitation
were from circles which retained a tinge of unrespectability (such as the
theatre). In addition, some couples, like Gillies and Southwood Smith,
disdained orthodoxy; I will explore their opinions in the final two chapters
of this book. All the same, most were normal y conventional, yet lived in
breach of the law. Why? Of first importance was the emotional attachment.
Leaving with a lover was romantic and exciting, and many women and men
made the decision while still in the first flush of happiness and rebellion.
In addition, as in bigamous unions, most partners believed that the first
marriage was a failure. Women accepted men’s characterisations of their
first wives as adulterous, bad-tempered, or unhelpful; they, then, could
redeem the men’s lives. As Hunt put it, ‘I was ful , not of Love, but of Loving-
Living in Sin Page 21