Queer Places:
Lecropt Kirk
Bridge of Allan, Stirling, Scotland
_society_beauty_and_author_by_GH,_Chatsworth_Coll..jpg)
Caroline
Elizabeth Sarah Norton (née Sheridan;
22 March 1808 – 15 June 1877) was the first woman Instigating equal rights
legislation (Custody of Infants Act) in 1839. Some novels in the XIX century
presented relationship between women in positive and central terms, such as
that between Diana Warwick and Emma Dunstane in
George Meredith's Diana of the
Crossways (1885). Set in the 1830s and 1840s, the novel was loosely based on
the experiences of Caroline Norton, a society hostess whose husband tried and
failed to diveroce her for an alleged affair with Whig Prime Minister Lord
Melbourne and who was subsequently accused of passing a Cabinet secret,
learned for an admirer, to The Times. However, the central relationship in the
novel is one between two women, Diana Warwick (Caroline Nortone) and Emma
Dunstane.
She was an English social reformer and author active
in the early and mid-nineteenth century.[1] After
marriage, Caroline Clive began to keep a
diary jointly with her husband, in which she wrote of an 1845 meeting with
poet Caroline Norton in lengthy detail only excerpted here: “Perfect beauty,
eyes with long eye-lashes on both lids, the lower touching her cheek, a mouth
that opens in a way like ideal mouths . . . lovely skin and shape, a flowing,
glowing silk gown and cashmere shawl edged with gold”.
Caroline Norton left her husband in 1836, following which he sued her close
friend Lord
Melbourne, the then Whig Prime
Minister, for criminal
conversation (i.e. adultery). The jury threw out the claim, but she was
unable to obtain a divorce and was denied access to her three sons. Norton's
intense campaigning led to the passing of the Custody
of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial
Causes Act 1857 and the Married
Women's Property Act 1870. Norton modelled for the fresco of Justice in
the House of Lords by Daniel
Maclise, who chose her because she was seen by many as a famous victim of
injustice.
Caroline Norton was born in London to Thomas
Sheridan and the novelist Caroline
Henrietta Callander.[2][3] Her
father was an actor, soldier, and colonial administrator, and the son of the
prominent Irish playwright and Whig statesman Richard
Brinsley Sheridan and his wife Elizabeth
Ann Linley.[4][5][6] Caroline's
mother was Scottish, the daughter of a landed gentleman, Col. Sir James
Callander of Craigforth and Lady Elizabeth MacDonnell, the sister of an Irish
peer, the 1st Marquess
of Antrim.[7][8] Mrs.
Sheridan authored three short novels described by one of her daughter's
biographers as "rather stiff with the style of the eighteenth century, but
none without a certain charm and wit..."[9]
In 1817, her father died in South Africa, where he was serving as the colonial
secretary at the Cape
of Good Hope.[10] His
family was left virtually penniless.[11] Prince
Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, an old friend of her grandfather's,
arranged for the family to live at Hampton
Court Palace in a "grace
and favour" apartment, where they remained for several years.[9]
The combined beauty and accomplishments of the Sheridan sisters led to their
being collectively referred to as the Three
"Graces".[12] The
eldest sister, Helen,
was a songwriter who married Price
Blackwood, the 4th Baron
Dufferin and Claneboye. Through her, Norton became the aunt of Frederick
Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, who later
served as the third Governor
General of Canada and eighth Viceroy of
India. Her younger sister, Georgiana,
considered the prettiest of the three, later became the wife of Edward
Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset. In 1827, she married George
Chapple Norton, barrister, M.P. for Guildford,
and the younger brother of Lord
Grantley.[1][13] George
was a jealous and possessive husband, given to violent fits of drunkenness,
and the union quickly proved unhappy due to his mental and physical abuse of
Caroline.[4][14] To
make matters worse, George was unsuccessful in his chosen career as a
barrister, and the couple fought bitterly over money.[15]
During the early years of her marriage, Norton used her beauty, wit, and
political connections, to establish herself as a major society hostess.[5][15] Norton's
unorthodox behaviour and candid conversation raised more than a few eyebrows
among 19th-century British high society; she made enemies and admirers in
almost equal measure.[5] Among
her friends she counted such literary and political luminaries as Samuel
Rogers, Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward
Trelawny, Abraham
Hayward, Mary Shelley, Fanny
Kemble, Benjamin Disraeli, the future King Leopold
I of Belgium and William
Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire.[13][16][17]
In spite of his jealousy and pride, George encouraged his wife to use her
connections to advance his career. It was entirely due to her influence that
in 1831 he was made a Metropolitan Police Magistrate.[18] During
these years, Norton turned to prose and poetry as a means of releasing her
inner emotions and earning money. Her first book, The Sorrows of
Rosalie (1829), was well received.[13][19] The
Undying One (1830), a romance founded upon the legend of the Wandering
Jew, soon followed.[20]
In 1836, Norton left her husband.[1][21] She
managed to subsist on her earnings as an author, but George claimed these as
his own, arguing successfully in court that, as her husband, her earnings were
legally his.[1][22] Paid
nothing by her husband, her earnings confiscated, Norton used the law to her
own advantage.[23] Running
up bills in her husband's name, she told the creditors when they came to
collect, that if they wished to be paid, they could sue her husband.[23]
Not long after their separation, George abducted their sons, hiding them with
relatives in Scotland and later in Yorkshire,
refusing to tell Caroline anything of their whereabouts.[14][24][25][26] George
accused Caroline of being involved in an ongoing affair with her close
friend, Lord
Melbourne, the then Whig Prime
Minister.[14][21] Initially,
George demanded £10,000 from Melbourne, but Melbourne refused to be
blackmailed, and George instead took the Prime Minister to court.[1][5]
Lord Melbourne wrote in a letter to Lord
Holland that, "The fact is [George] is a stupid brute, and she had not
temper nor dissimulation enough to enable her to manage him."[21] Despite
this admission, hoping to avert an even worse scandal, he pleaded with
Caroline to return to George, insisting that "a woman should never part from
her husband whilst she can remain with him."[21] Lord
Melbourne relented a few days later, stating that he understood her decision
to leave: This conduct upon his part seems perfectly unaccountable...You know
that I have always counselled you to bear everything and remain to the last. I
thought it for the best. I am afraid it is no longer possible. Open breaches
of this kind are always to be lamented, but you have the consolation that you
have done your utmost to stave this extremity off as long as possible.[27]
The trial lasted nine days, and in the end the jury threw out George's claim,
siding with Lord Melbourne.[28] However,
the resulting publicity almost brought down the government.[29] The
scandal eventually died away, but not before Norton's reputation was ruined
and her friendship with Lord Melbourne destroyed.[30][31] George
continued to prevent Caroline from seeing her three sons, and blocked her from
receiving a divorce.[1] According
to English law in 1836, children were the legal property of their father, and
there was little Norton could do to regain custody.[22]
Norton was soon faced with an additional tragedy; the death of her youngest
son, William, in 1842.[18][32] The
child, out riding alone, suffered a fall from his horse and was injured.[14] According
to Norton, the child's wounds were minor; however, they were not properly
attended and blood-poisoning set in.[32] George,
realising that the child was near death, sent for Caroline. Unfortunately,
William died before she arrived in Scotland.[18][33] Caroline
blamed George for the child's death, accusing him of neglect.[18] After
William's death, George allowed Caroline to visit their sons, but he retained
full custody, and all of her visits were supervised.[14]
Due to her dismal domestic situation, Norton became passionately involved in
the passage of laws promoting social justice, especially those granting rights
to married and divorced women.[1][4][22][25] Her
poems "A Voice from the Factories" (1836) and "The Child of the Islands"
(1845) centred on her political views. When Parliament debated the subject of
divorce reform in 1855, Norton submitted to the members a detailed account of
her own marriage, and described the difficulties faced by women as the result
of existing laws. An English wife may not leave her husband's house. Not only
can he sue her for restitution of "conjugal rights," but he has a right to
enter the house of any friend or relation with whom she may take refuge...and
carry her away by force... If her husband take proceedings for a divorce, she
is not, in the first instance, allowed to defend herself...She is not
represented by attorney, nor permitted to be considered a party to the suit
between him and her supposed lover, for "damages." If an English wife be
guilty of infidelity, her husband can divorce her so as to marry again; but
she cannot divorce the husband, a vinculo, however profligate he may be....
Those dear children, the loss of whose pattering steps and sweet occasional
voices made the silence of [my] new home intolerable as the anguish of
death...what I suffered respecting those children, God knows ... under the
evil law which suffered any man, for vengeance or for interest, to take baby
children from the mother.[24][34]
Primarily because of Norton's intense campaigning,[35] which
included a letter to Queen Victoria,[36] Parliament
passed the Custody
of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial
Causes Act 1857 and the Married
Women's Property Act 1870,[24][25] which
she worked on with suffragette activist Barbara
Leigh Smith Bodichon.[37] Her
most recent biographer Diane
Atkinson notes that unlike in 1839 and 1857, Norton played no part in the
campaigning for the 1870 Act.[38] Under
the Custody of Children Act legally separated or divorced wives, provided they
had not been found guilty of criminal conversation, were granted the right to
custody of their children up to the age of seven, and periodic access
thereafter. The Act applied in England, Wales and Ireland only. While Norton
could have hoped for custody of her youngest son, and access to her older sons
who were seven and ten when the Act was passed into law, her husband insisted
that her sons stay in Scotland. The Act gave married women, for the first
time, a right to their children. However, because women needed to petition in
the Court of Chancery, in practice few women had the financial means to
petition for their rights.[39] The
Matrimonial Causes Act reformed the law on divorce, amongst others making
divorce more affordable, and established a model of marriage based on
contract. The Married Women's Property Act 1870 allowed married women to
inherit property and take court action on their own behalf. The Act granted
married women in the UK, for the first time, a separate legal identity from
their husband.[22][40]
In 1849 Daniel Maclise finished
his fresco of Justice in the House
of Lords, for which Norton had modelled. He chose her because she was seen
by many as a famous victim of injustice.[41] Norton's
old friend, Lord Melbourne, opposed the reforms she fought for.[42] He
was scolded for his opposition by Queen
Victoria; the Queen wrote that he defended his actions, stating: "I don't
think you should give a woman too much right...there should not be two
conflicting powers...a man ought to have the right in a family."[42]
While Norton fought to extend women's legal rights, she wasn't involved in
further social activism, and had no interest in the 19th-century women's
movement with regard to issues such as women's
suffrage.[43] In
fact, in an article published in The
Times in 1838, countering a claim that she was a "radical", Norton stated:
"The natural position of woman is inferiority to man. Amen! That is a thing of
God's appointing, not of man's devising. I believe it sincerely, as part of my
religion. I never pretended to the wild and ridiculous doctrine of equality."[44]
Norton is said to have had a five-year affair with prominent Conservative politician Sidney
Herbert in the early 1840s; however, Herbert married another woman in
1846.[45] In
middle age, she befriended the author George
Meredith.[46] She
served as the inspiration for Diana Warwick, the intelligent, fiery-tempered
heroine of Meredith's novel Diana
of the Crossways, published in 1885.[45] Norton
finally became free with George's death in 1875. She married an old friend,
Scottish historical writer and politician Sir
W. Stirling Maxwell in March 1877. Norton died in London three months
later.[47][48][49]
Norton eldest son, Fletcher Norton, died of tuberculosis in
Paris at the age of thirty. She was devastated by the loss.[50]
In 1854, her remaining son, Thomas Brinsley Norton, married a young Italian,
Maria Chiara Elisa Federigo, whom he met in Naples.[51] Thomas
also suffered from poor health, and spent much of his life as an invalid,
reliant upon his mother for financial assistance.[51] Despite
his ill health, he lived long enough to succeed his uncle as 4th Baron
Grantley of Markenfield.[47] Lord
Grantley also predeceased his mother, dying in 1877. His son, John,
inherited the title and estates.[52] The
5th Lord Grantley was a numismatist,
and a Fellow of the Society
of Antiquaries of London, the Royal
Numismatic Society and the British
Numismatic Society. He assembled a large collection of coins and also grew
orchids. Caroline Norton's grandson caused a scandal in 1879, when he ran off
with another man's wife, the former Katharine McVickar, daughter of a wealthy
American stockbroker.[53] The
jilted husband was the 5th Lord Grantley's older cousin, Major Charles
Grantley Campbell Norton.[54] Katharine's
marriage to Charles was annulled, and Katharine and John were married that
November, five days before the birth of their first child.[55] Despite
her scandalous introduction to British society, Katharine went on to become a
successful London hostess.[56]
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