Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady

by Kate Summerscale

  They discussed an essay by Edward … ‘Pronouncers’, an unsigned article collected in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, Vol. 17 (1852).

  She and Edward talked … Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Dejection: An Ode’. This poem included a reference to the dramatist Thomas Otway, after whom Isabella may have named her second son.

  ‘My mind is a chaos … I weary of my very self, yet cannot die.’ Isabella’s words echoed a line in Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Mariana’ (1830), in which the lonely maiden pines for her lover: ‘I am aweary, aweary,/ I would that I were dead!’.

  This was one of a series of talks … See Anna M. Stoddart’s John Stuart Blackie (1895).

  an ‘elastic and buoyant’ public speaker … Quoted in Stuart Wallace’s John Stuart Blackie: Scottish Scholar and Patriot (2006), p. 142.

  At the party at Royal Circus … swathes of wavy hair. Engraving of Robert Chambers in the 1840s by D. J. Pound, after John Jabez Edwin Mayallin, in the NPG.

  The next May … young actress Isabella Glyn. For IHR’s social engagements with RC, see RC’s diary, RC papers, NLS.

  ‘Lines Addressed to a Miniature, By a Lady,’ appeared under the initials ‘IHR’. Collected in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, Vol. 16 (1852).

  CHAPTER 2: POOR DEAR DODDY

  Edward Wickstead Lane … Terrebonne, Quebec. His parents, Elisha Lane and Harriet Wickstead, married at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal on 27 Mar 1819.

  When Edward was nine … Arthur Benjamin Lane was born on 28 Jan 1828, and christened at the Holy Trinity Church in Quebec. Harriet Lane died on 19 Apr 1832, aged thirty. See The Lower Canada Jurist, Vol. 8 (1864).

  Elisha Lane … built up a business … In 1851 he clubbed together with three other Presbyterian wholesalers to build a Free Church in Montreal, an offshoot of the reformed Church established in Edinburgh by the Rev. Thomas Guthrie. See www.eglisesdequebec.org.

  Within a decade his company had assets … The company was Gibb & Lane; see entry on James Gibb in Frances G. Halpenny and Jean Hamelin’s Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 8 (1985).

  The Lane boys lodged … They and nine other boys were lodging with a Mr and Mrs Morrison at 24 Northumberland Street in 1841, according to the census returns.

  Edward won prizes for his achievements … Prizes listed in the Caledonian Mercury, 1 Aug 1840.

  Afterwards … he won six prizes in his first year. See Caledonian Mercury, 7 May 1842.

  Edward read Law at Edinburgh University … EWL was elected to the Speculative Society on 15 Nov 1842, and granted extraordinary membership in 1845. See The History of the Speculative Society 1764–1904 (1905).

  George’s parents, Sir William … William Drysdale was knighted in 1842.

  These concerned George … George Drysdale’s biography is drawn from Tomoko Sato’s ‘George and Charles Drysdale in Edinburgh’ in Journal of Tsuda College Tokyo, Vol. 12 (1980) and Benn’s Predicaments of Love. Sato first wrote about George’s crisis of the 1840s in ‘George Drysdale’s Supposed Death and The Elements of Social Science’ published in Japanese of the Hitotsubashi Ronsu, Vol. 78, (1977). His story is also discussed in Gowan Dawson’s Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability (2007) and Michael Mason’s The Making of Victorian Sexuality (1994). First-hand accounts of George’s life are in his The Elements of Social Science and Charles Drysdale’s ‘Memoir of the Author’ in the edition of 1904.

  George was at university in Glasgow … Letter from William Copland (Lady Drysdale’s son from a previous marriage) to John Murray, 5 Dec 1843. Murray archive, NLS.

  George suffered a breakdown … George and Charles were the subject of a photograph taken at this period by the pioneering Edinburgh photographers Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. George, aged about eighteen, is plumply handsome, curly-haired, brooding, leaning on a chair with a hand on his hip; he looks down and away from the camera. Charles, aged about sixteen, is sitting in front of him, thin-faced, with a high white forehead, a long lick of hair across his scalp, legs tight in checked trousers, gazing into the middle distance (calotype in the NPG).

  ‘The deceased’s mother and friends … I almost ever knew.’ Letter from Cockburn to Francis Jeffrey, 26 Mar 1846, in Lord Cockburn:Selected Letters (2005), ed. Alan Bell. He was Henry Thomas Cockburn, 1779–1854, a Lord of Session and of Justiciary; not to be confused with Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn, 1802–80, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1856 and later Lord Chief Justice of England, before whom the Robinsons’ divorce case was heard in 1858.

  But Mary … strengthened by the trials he has undergone’. Letter MD to Jane Williams, 19 Mar 1846, in the ‘Journals of Jane Williams (née Reid)’ at the State Library of Tasmania, NS213/1/1/2.

  The theory of his chosen branch of medicine … Simpson described homeopathy as ‘a creed which ninety-nine out of a hundred medical men deem to be utterly false’. J. Y. Simpson’s Homeopathy, its Tenets and Tendencies, Theoretical, Theological and Therapeutical (1853).

  Mary reported to her friend … till he shd see us all once more’. Letter MD to Jane Williams, undated but probably May 1846, State Library of Tasmania, NS213/1.

  In his study of involuntary ejaculation … In French, Des pertes seminales involontaires; in English, A Practical Treatise on the Causes, Symptoms and Treatment of Spermatorrhea.

  The work of Lallemand … For the spermatorrhea panic, see Ellen Bayuk Rosenman’s Unauthorised Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experience (2003).

  Masturbation was the dark corollary … See analysis of Victorian attitudes to masturbation in Thomas Laqueur’s Solitary Sex: a Cultural History of Masturbation (2003).

  ‘been obliged to hurry home … he should himself forget it poor fellow’. Letter MD to John Murray, Murray archive, NLS.

  ‘A bystander saw … flames hid him from sight’. See Sir James MacPherson Le Moine’s Quebec Past and Present: a History of Quebec, 1608–1876 (1876).

  The ceremony took place … Mary Drysdale was born at 8 Royal Circus on 24 Mar 1823, according to Blackwood’s Magazine.

  Mary said that she had never seen her brother look better … Undated letter from Jane Drysdale to John Murray, Murray archive, NLS.

  He was later remembered … like a vast mountain or a granite wall’. Typescript by Florence Fenwick Miller, quoted in Benn’s Predicaments of Love, p. 30.

  Mary became pregnant in Dublin … Letter from Lady D to James Young Simpson, 30 Mar 1848, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Library and Archive. It did not become common to administer chloroform at childbirth until after Queen Victoria gave birth to Prince Leopold with the help of chloroform in 1853.

  In Dublin in 1848 … Scottish census return of 1851.

  The Royal Infirmary … as a result of this practice. EWL’s thesis, ‘Notes on Medical Subjects, Comprising Remarks on the Constitution and Management of British Hospitals, etc.’, (1853).

  One patient … an overdose of aconite. For account of the practices in the Royal Infirmary, see Bill Yule’s Matrons, Medics and Maladies: Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in the 1840s (1999).

  To combat this evil … Both agreed. Letter of 23 Oct 1852 in The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 6 (1988), ed. Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson.

  During his time on the wards … best human skill can furnish’. In his belief in ‘self-cure’, Edward drew on the ideas of his friend Andrew Combe, the brother of George Combe and a celebrated physician who had died of tuberculosis in Edinburgh in 1847. Dr Combe, wrote Edward in his thesis, ‘probably did more by his writings and his practice than any man of his time, to inculcate a trust in nature and natural agents in the treatment of disease as well as the preservation of health’. James Young Simpson, who secured the Chair of Obstetrics at Edinburgh with the help of Sir William Drysdale, was also a fierce advocate of hygiene in hospitals (ODNB).

  John, the homeopath … he claimed, great success. See John Henry Clarke’s The Life and Times of James Compton Burnett (1904).

  He was not
the only object of her affections … Letter GC to Sir James Clark, 19 Dec 1857.

  He lived in the New Town with his wife … Combe was forty-five when he married the thirty-nine-year-old Cecilia Siddons in 1837; the £15,000 that she brought to the marriage allowed him to retire from the law, and instead devote himself to phrenology.

  ‘quite filial in its character’. Letter IHR to GC, 21 Feb 1858.

  ‘the exponent of a clearer …’. Letter IHR to GC, 17 Nov 1854.

  ‘a man of singular integrity … human beings I have ever known’. In Fanny Kemble’s Record of a Girlhood, Vol. 1 (1879).

  ‘I often think of you … with my own nature.’ Letter from Marian Evans to GC, Mar 1852, in The George Eliot Letters, Vol. VIII, 1840–70 (1978), ed. Gordon S. Haight.

  Combe’s book … published by Robert Chambers. A volume of sales exceeded only by Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress and the Bible, according to Harriet Martineau’s obituary of Combe in the Daily News in Aug 1858.

  The cerebellum … fatter necks than other creatures. See Combe’s A System of Phrenology (1843).

  Another of Combe’s subjects … will soon give trouble.’ They consulted him during the royal visit to Edinburgh in 1850, and again in 1852, when Combe made his observation about Amativeness. See David Stack’s Queen Victoria’s Skull:George Combe and the Mid-Victorian Mind (2007).

  ‘wild freshness of morning’ … GC’s journal, 25 Jul 1857. This and all subsequent quotations from GC’s journal are taken from manuscripts in the Combe Collection, NLS.

  Combe declined to go into further detail … a veritable ecstasy.’ See Combe’s translation from the French of Josef Franz Gall’s On the Functions of the Cerebellum (1838). See also Michael Shortland’s ‘Courting the Cerebellum: Early Organological and Phrenological Views of Sexuality’, in British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 20 (1987).

  The novelists … agitated me to pain sometimes.’ See Sally Shuttleworth’s Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology (1996).

  They took walks in the city or to the sea … RC’s diary, NLS.

  All three sailed from Hull to Sweden … a candle to read the time. Ibid., and William Swan’s ‘On the Total Eclipse of the Sun on Jul 28, 1851, observed at Goteborg; with a description of a new Position Micrometer’ in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. 3 (1857).

  Vestiges was condemned by many … and all sprung from apes.’ See James A. Secord’s Victorian Sensation: the Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (2000).

  The authorship of Vestiges had been the subject of speculation … Ibid.

  In his journal of 1839 … motions of a confined leech’. GC’s Notes on the United States of North America, During a Phrenological Visit in 1838–40, Vol. 2 (1841).

  ‘a natural history of myself’. Herbert Spencer’s An Autobiography (1904).

  CHAPTER 3: THE SILENT SPIDER

  Albert and Richard Robinson were pulling out … Letter IHR to GC, 24 Oct 1852.

  ‘His advertising material … and then too much’. See the advertising pamphlet ‘A Description of Robinson’s Steam Cane Mill’ (1845) and ‘Robinson’s Patent Sugar Cane Mills’ in The Mechanics’ Magazine, 2 October 1841.

  in Tirhoot, India … The Robinsons persuaded the indigo growers of Tirhoot to succumb to the sugar craze in 1845, but the planters sustained heavy losses when they discovered that their soil was not conducive to the cultivation of cane. By 1850 they had reverted to indigo. ‘The Lion King stretched out his hand,’ ran a local poem, ‘Speaking of the cheapness of labour and the richness of land …/ Then things went on right jolly/ Till the district was dotted o’er with monuments of folly.’ See Minden Wilson’s History of Behar Indigo Factories (1887).

  For three months in 1852 … Welsh landscapes.’ Letter IHR to GC, 16 Aug 1852.

  A railway station had opened in April … The line from Shrewsbury to Ludlow was completed in Apr 1852. According to Phyllis M. Ray’s A Peculiar Parish, a station was opened at Ashford Bowdler but remained in operation for just a few years – in the census of 1861 only a crossing keeper was listed in the village. The Shrewsbury & Hereford Railway Company promised the Walker family £2,500 for five acres of land on which they built a section of railroad. See Report of Cases Decided in the High Court of Chancery (1853).

  Two of Isabella’s younger siblings … Julia Walker was five years younger than Isabella. According to the records of St Mary’s Church, Ashford Carbonel, she was born on 22 Dec 1818, and married Albert in Jan 1849. Charles Henry died aged twelve, in 1834, according to a memorial stone in St Mary’s. Caroline was buried at St Mary’s in 1838, aged twenty-one. One other sister – Harriet, born in 1815 – had probably also died. She was not mentioned in either of her parents’ wills nor does her name seem to appear in census or marriage records.

  ‘There is so much bias from self-love …’ From ‘Pronouncers’, Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, Vol. 17 (1852).

  Many upper-middle-class families … Andrea Broomfield’s Food and Cooking in Victorian England (2007), pp. 65–66.

  Reading lay in a … See Post Office Directory of Berkshire (1854) and Murray’s Guide to Berkshire (1860).

  ‘like a river of blood’. See Grace Greenwood’s Haps and Mishaps of a Tour of Europe (1853).

  Isabella and the children … three times a week. Letters IHR to GC, 24 Oct and 11 Dec 1852.

  Although her eldest … some amount of obstinacy’. Letters IHR to GC, 16 Aug and 24 Oct 1852.

  Henry planned to establish … theology. Letter HOR to GC, 25 Dec 1853.

  ‘cold as a garret … every corner of her heart’. Quotes from Madame Bovary are taken from the first English translation, published in 1886. The translator – Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor – retained the original French word ennui, for which there was no direct equivalent in English. Colloquially, though, a sufferer from ennui could be described as plagued by visits from ‘the blue devils’, or ‘the blues’. The narrator of Anna Brownell Jameson’s popular novel The Diary of an Ennuyée (1826) gives her journal the alternative title ‘the Diary of a Blue Devil’. This usage is the origin of the expressions ‘to have the blues’ and ‘to feel blue’. See ‘The Blues’, in Eliza Cook’s Journal of 1 Nov 1851 and Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, ed Paul Beale (eighth edition, 1984).

  Her father, Charles … Charles Walker, who was born in 1775, had been called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1801, according to James Whishaw’s A Synopsis of the Members of the English Bar (1835). Bridget was born at Workington Hall in 1788.

  Charles had inherited some land … Charles’s father, Thomas, had died in London in 1802, leaving most of his land in west Yorkshire and Shropshire to his eldest son, Thomas, along with two houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields (probate granted 16 Feb 1802). But in 1828 the younger Thomas died a bachelor, and left his property to Charles, substantially increasing his holdings (probate granted 28 Feb 1828).

  The Curwens were an ancient … For Curwen and Christian family history, see John F. Curwen’s A History of the Ancient House of Curwen (1928); Edward Hughes’s North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century (1952); A. W. Moore’s Manx Worthies (1901). Information about Bridget’s birth and Charles and Bridget’s first meeting from letter of 1911 by their youngest son, Christian Henry James Walker (private collection, Ruth Walker). In the Cumberland News of 4 Aug 2000, Denis Periam argues that Wilkie Collins used Ewanrigg as the model for Limmeridge Hall, the home of the heroines of The Woman in White (1860). Collins and Dickens toured Cumberland in 1857.

  Bridget’s mother, Isabella … Romney’s portrait of Isabella Curwen, NPG.

  To show his fellow feeling … John Christian Curwen introduced the Suffolk Horse and the Lothian plough to his district, established a herd of Shorthorn cattle and imported Merino sheep to cross with a native breed. See J. V. Beckett’s entry in ODNB.

  Even her mother … was closed to her. In 184
1, when Isabella and most of her siblings had moved out, Ashford Court still housed three male and six female staff, according to the census returns.

  ‘many leisure hours … most women’. Letter IHR to GC, 24 Oct 1852.

  ‘is a pleasant place … to make many agreeable ones.’ Ibid.

  ‘You do not know … if I dared to hint at them.’ Letter IHR to GC, 28 Feb 1854.

  ‘all is dark … once I quit this world’. Ibid. In Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’, composed in about 1851 though not published until 1867, the doubting poet finds himself ‘alone as on a darkling plain’.

  Isabella’s loss of faith … the rest of her life’. Letter EWL to GC, 17 May 1858.

  She said she knew … for avoiding blame’. Letter IHR to GC, 16 Aug and 24 Oct 1852.

  Combe firmly discouraged … need not lead to atheism. The Edinburgh philosopher Sir William Hamilton warned in the 1820s: ‘Phrenology is implicit atheism … Phrenology – Physical Necessity – Materialism – Atheism – are … the precipitous steps of a logical transition.’ ‘Correspondence between Sir William Hamilton and Mr Combe’ in The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, Vol. 5 (1829).

  ‘does away with the usually received … from animal existence?’ Letter IHR to GC, 11 Dec 1852.

  At the very least … & a degree of charity.’ Letter IHR to GC, 10 Feb 1853.

  ‘There are those living … as they may think fit.’ Letter IHR to GC, 24 Oct 1852.

  ‘I arrive at the conclusion … to leave Edinburgh.’ Letter GC to Robert Tait, 16 Apr 1853.

  ‘I can safely promise … inclination for abstract meditations.’ Letters IHR to GC, 10 Feb and 27 May 1853. Having read the draft treatise, Isabella wrote a letter of congratulation to Combe, but she admitted that she was disappointed to find that he had stopped short of atheism. ‘I,’ she explained to him, ‘am obliged to … live without the cheering belief that a great and Beneficent Ruler exists whose mind is in relation with ours. I could not reply with the perfect candor that is natural to me, unless I made this remark in speaking of your book, – & yet, I fear, it is my own fault that I do not see with you on this point.’ Letter IHR to GC, 28 Feb 1854. Another of his trusted early readers, by contrast, was so horrified by the manuscript’s apparent attack on immortality that he begged Combe to suppress it; Combe none the less incorporated the essay in his The Relation between Science and Religion (1857).