Ford Madox Brown was a widower with a small daughter when
Emma Hil , the illiterate daughter of a bricklayer, began working as his
model in the late 1840s. The two were living together by 1850, since Emma
was pregnant by early 1850.49 Yet Ford hesitated to marry her. He was not
financial y secure, and he also had to consider his daughter, Lucy. After
Emma gave birth to a daughter in November 1850, then, Ford registered
the birth in the name of ‘Ford and Matilda Hil ’, and they lived in a cottage
together unmarried.50 Despite his hesitation, Ford educated Emma, and
she studied hard while also serving tirelessly as a model for the next three
years. Perhaps as result of this loyalty, Brown married her on 5 April 1853.
Ford had, then, made Emma into an acceptable wife, but her transformation
was incomplete. Unfortunately, Emma was an alcoholic, and her drinking
was a running battle between them for the rest of their marriage.51 Emma
never entirely managed to become a lady, and Ford had to accept and make
the best of her shortcomings.
Gabriel Rosetti and Lizzie Siddall had an equal y tangled courtship.
They met after she had become a model for the Pre-Raphaelites, rescued
from a milliner’s shop. Eventual y Rosetti monopolised her time, but the
Rosettis did not approve of a union with a milliner, even one whose father
owned two cutlery shops and a warehouse. Siddall had, after al , agreed to
model, which made her suspect. Nevertheless, Lizzie had advantages; she
was soft-spoken, literate, and creative, and she was soon painting pictures
and writing poetry. Dante encouraged this self-improvement, hoping her
new career would make her acceptable.52
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Gabriel moved into his own home in 1852 so that he could have more
time with Lizzie, and she eventual y lived with him there, though on what
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living in sin
terms it is impossible to say. At one time or another, she was described as
his fiancée, his mistress, and his pupil. At any rate, they were emotional y
intimate. She met many of his friends, including Barbara Leigh Smith,
and some of them were supportive, but she was not their equal. She was
an object of patronage, since she was both sickly and a struggling artist,
and also because she and Rosetti did not marry for years. Gabriel had an
insecure income and was unsure about Lizzie’s health, so their relationship
dragged on, satisfying no one.53 When Siddall gained a patron in John
Ruskin, and thus some independence, she became harder to placate with
vague promises. As a result of these factors, and her discovery of Rosetti’s
infidelities, the relationship grew stormy.54 They final y married in 1860,
when she seemed to be dying and Rosetti felt guilty. But the marriage did
not provide a happy ending. Siddall gave birth to a stil born child in 1861,
slipped into depression, and took an overdose of laudanum in 1862 at the
age of thirty-two.55
The third pairing, that of Hunt and Annie Miller, was even less
successful. Miller was from a poverty-stricken background before she
became a model, but she had a strong will of her own. The two never lived
together, and probably did not have a sexual relationship, but Hunt was
obsessed with her for years. He paid for various types of education for her to
make her ‘respectable’. Annie, for her part, used his absences to have (at the
least) flirtations with both Rosetti and Lord Ranelagh, a notorious rake.56
Miller was simply too independent to tolerate Hunt’s long apprenticeship.
He final y gave up on her altogether, and she went back to modeling. Not
long after, she made Hunt pay to get his letters back, and then began a
relationship with Thomas Ranelagh Thompson, Lord Ranelagh’s cousin.57
None of these unions turned out quite as either party expected. Hunt
was so disil usioned by his failure with Miller that he never tried with a
poor woman again. Ford and Emma lived together until her death in 1890,
but Ford had to watch her careful y. In 1880, he discovered that her friend,
Mrs Pyne, brought alcohol to her, and he admitted, rueful y, ‘“Emma does
talk people over in an astonishing way.”’58 Gabriel and Lizzie married too
late to be successful. As a result, when he turned to a new lover, Fanny
Cornforth, a former prostitute, he did not try to make her an acceptable
wife; both of them had realistical y low expectations for their union.59
Indeed, one cannot help but conclude that the women who resisted
being moulded gained the most from these unions. Emma was happy in her
marriage, but Lizzie’s was not fulfilling, though a life as a milliner probably
would not have satisfied her either. The assertive Miller, on the other hand,
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
achieved the Cinderel a dream. In 1863 she married Thompson, had several
children, and eventual y lived to the age of ninety. Similarly, Cornforth
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cross-class cohabitation
looked after her own interests. When Gabriel became il , he wrote to her ‘“to
take the best step in life that you can for your own advantage, and quite to
forget about me”’. Fanny took him at his word; she used her savings to buy
a pub, and a Mr Schott moved in with her. They later married, and Fanny
proudly told Rosetti that she employed three servants and an accountant.60
Galateas who stayed themselves – and took advantage of their chances
– were the most likely to be successful.
The Pre-Raphaelites were an unusual group or they would not have
tried to marry their models at al . But their experiences were echoed by
those of other men who tried to ‘redeem’ poor women. George Gissing
married an ex-prostitute, Nell Harrison, after living with her in London.
This marriage was a disaster, since Nell was an alcoholic. Gissing’s tendency
to self-punishment was part of the reason he married her, but also his many
sacrifices for her would have been pointless unless he ‘saved’ her. Morley
Roberts argued that his friend ‘built up a kind of theory of these things as
a justification for himself … he considered an affair of that description as
sacred as any marriage.’61 Nevertheless, after four years, George gave up
any hope of reforming her, and Nell died, poverty-stricken and alone, in
1888.62Not all cross-class matings were this miserable, but even the happier
ones had stresses. For one thing, the couples were not always able to
reconcile the husband
s’ families to a marriage across class lines. Frith
waited over a year after the death of his wife before he married Alford, his
mistress. His daughter, Jane Panton, was estranged from her father from
that time on.63 For another, working-class mistresses who became wives
had to be secretive about their backgrounds. Marie Corelli’s father, Dr
Charles Mackay, had probably been having an affair with ‘“an imperfectly
educated young woman”’, Mary Mil s, since at least 1853, when his wife Rosa
left him. Mackay supported her and their daughter (born c. 1855) until a
year after his wife’s death, in 1861, when they married. Despite this, Corelli
always asserted that her parentage was unknown, and that Mackay adopted
her out of kindness.64 In both these cases, the secrecy was partial y because
of the adultery, but it cannot have been easy for a second wife to know that
her husband and children considered her past shameful and her family
unsuitable. When poor women married their wealthier cohabitees, they
had security, but not without costs.
Conclusion
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
Cross-class cohabitees defied two conventions of Victorian life: they had
sexual relations outside of their social strata and without marriage. In
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living in sin
doing so, they followed conventions in some ways, while challenging them
in others. For instance, few cross-class couples openly cohabited. They
lived in secrecy or, if they eventual y married, covered up the women’s
pasts. Also, traditional gender power remained or got even stronger. In
contrast to these disadvantages, some women lived a life of higher status
than they could have hoped for in their own class. The complications of
this relationship, though hardly typical, should warn against making
simplistic assertions about exploitation by leering millowners or gentleman
flaneurs. Nevertheless, the cross-class tensions in these relationships show
the difficulties of making an unequal relationship work. Unless the two
had a financial settlement, the lower-class party could be left with little. In
addition, for a working-class woman to become an acceptable spouse, she
had give up parts of herself. Though some couples made their unions work,
the Victorian disapproval of cross-class matings, married or otherwise,
becomes understandable in this context.
As with so many types of cohabitation, cross-class unions got limited
support from the state. The civil courts upheld bonds and wil s in favour
of mistresses and their families, and written annuities to mistresses were
an accepted part of the equation. In addition, women further down the
social scale could get some compensation for their sacrifices through
breach of promise suits. The courts again agreed that a man who entered
an unmarried union with a woman owed her support, another partial
acknowledgement of cohabitation.
Cross-class couples resembled those who could not marry, since
many of the men did not believe they could reconcile their families to
marriages with unsuitable women. On the other hand, women preferred
marriage and married gladly when men offered. A few women and men
in all classes, however, chose cohabitation purposely and openly, because
they dissented from its laws, rites, or gender inequality. These couples took
the most risks of al , defending their unions as more moral than marriages,
refuting the role of the state in adjudicating relationships, and making their
rebellion public with wide consequences for themselves and their families.
Their strategies had limited success, but they led far more open lives than
the other cohabitees, as Chapters 8 and 9 make clear.
Notes
1 E. Gaskel , Mary Barton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 154–62; 187–93.
2 The case with small class difference involved a business owner with her manager, found
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
in Liverpool Mercury, 26 June 1860, p. 3; 29 June 1860, p. 7; 30 June 1860, p. 4; 28 July
1860, p. 4; 30 July 1860, p. 3; 31 July 1860, p. 3; 21 August 1860, p. 3; 22 August 1860, p. 3;
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cross-class cohabitation
23 August 1860, p. 3; 24 August 1860, p. 6. The couple who could not marry involved a
wealthy woman with a man pretending to be a gentleman, found in R. Huson (ed.), Sixty
Famous Trials (London: Daily Express Publications, 1938), pp. 259–72; The Times, 23
May 1903, p. 8; 30 May 1903, p. 8; 19 June 1903, p. 11; 23 June 1903, p. 11; 24 June 1903, p. 4;
13 July 1903, p. 6; 15 July 1903, p. 11. Both of these are murder cases.
3 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, IV, 215–16, 355–6, quote from p. 215.
4 K. Hickman, Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century (New York:
William Morrow, 2003), pp. 149–213; H. Blyth, Skittles, The Last Victorian Courtesan:
The Life and Times of Catherine Walters (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1970), pp. 73–102,
245–6.
5 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, IV, 216–17, quote from p. 217; Walkowitz,
Prostitution and Victorian Society, pp. 13–31.
6 Hill v. Spencer (1767), 27 English Reports 416–17; 524–5; Friend v. Harrison (1827), 172
English Reports 265–6; The Times, 14 February 1827, p. 3 (for quote).
7 University College, London, Karl Pearson Papers (hereafter KPP), 840/4, Olive Schreiner
to Karl Pearson, 11 October 1886, fols. 76–9, quote from fols. 77–8; Barret-Ducrocq, Love
in the Time of Victoria, pp. 52–4.
8 Keenan v. Handley (1864), 28 Justice of the Peace 660; The Times, 8 June 1864, p. 12; 11 July 1864, p. 11.
9 NA, ASSI 1/65; Berkshire County Chronicle, 17 July 1869, p. 5.
10 Authentic and Interesting Memoirs of Mrs Clarke (Boston: J. Belcher, 1809); P. Berry, By
Royal Appointment: A Biography of Mary Ann Clarke, Mistress of the Duke of York (London:
Femina, 1970), p. 181; A. Clark, Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 148–76; Hickman, Courtesans, pp.
208–11; 215–75; L. Blanch (ed.), Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs (London: Century Publishing,
1985); Blyth, The Last Victorian Courtesan, pp. 123–7; 202–3; 222–5; Frances Wilson, The
Courtesan’s Revenge: Harriette Wilson, the Woman Who Blackmailed the King (London:
Faber and Faber, 2003), pp. 199–232.
11 Hairs v. El iot, Woman 17 (1890), p. 1; The Times, 18 April 1890, p. 3; 19 April 1890, pp. 5–6; 22 April 1890, p. 10.
12 Berkshire County Chronicle, 7 July 1869, p. 5; 28 Justice of the Peace 660.
; 13 M. Gillen, The Prince and his Lady: The Love Story of the Duke of Kent and Madame de
St Laurent (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1970); Hickman, Courtesans, pp. 105–47; I. M.
Davis, The Harlot and the Statesman: The Story of Elizabeth Armistead and Charles James
Fox (Abbotsbrook, Bucks: Kensal Press, 1986), pp. 53–7, 79–121.
14 Tomalin, Mrs Jordan’s Profession, p. 127.
15 Gore v. Sudley, Cardiff Times, 13 June 1896, p. 6.
16 Tomalin, Mrs Jordan’s Profession, pp. 253–7; 284–304; Gillen, The Prince and his Lady, pp.
230–8.
17 Gore v. Sudley, Cardiff Times, 13 June 1896, p. 6; R. Altick, Deadly Encounters: Two Victorian Sensations (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), p. 94 (for
quote).
18 See Gillis, For Better, For Worse, 201.
19 Barret-Ducrocq, Love in the Time of Victoria, pp. 61–73.
20 Ibid. , 52–4.
Copyright © 2008. Manchester University Press. All rights reserved.
21 For example, Pouget v. Tomkins, falsely cal ing herself Pouget (1812), in 1 Phil imore’s Reports 499–506.
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living in sin
22 Bessela v. Stern (1877), 2 Law Reports, Common Pleas Division, 265–72; The Times, 8
February 1877, p. 10.
23 LMA, A/FH/A8/1/3/49/1, Petition # 3, 9 March 1842; A/FH/A8/1/3/42/1, Petition # 75, 5
August 1835.
24 LMA, A/FH/A8/1/3/57, Petition #85, 27 July 1850.
25 Jennings and Wife v. Brown and Others (1843), 9 Meeson & Welsby’s Reports of the
Exchequer 496–501.
26 W. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Col ins (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1989), pp.
89–106; C. Peters, The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Col ins (London: Secker and
Warburg, 1991), pp. 189–202.
27 Clarke, Secret Life of Wilkie Col ins, pp. 114–28. See also Thomas v. Shirley (1862), 11 Weekly Reporter 21; The Times, 6 November 1862, p. 8; 7 November 1862, p. 9.
28 LMA, A/FH/A8/1/3/42/1, Petition # 116, 9 December 1835; A/FH/A8/1/3/24/1, 8 February
1817 (no number).
29 Berry v. Da Costa (1865–66), 1 Law Reports, Common Pleas Division 331–6; The Times, 15
Living in Sin Page 33