Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
Page 30
In the late 1860s, Henry … The Scottish Commercial List shows HOR in Glasgow in 1869.
In 1869 he patented … Patent listed in Chronological Index of Patents (1869).
‘a splendid … interested for her’. Waters family journal, 13 Apr 1870, WG 10/7.
‘Mrs Robinson … in the evening.’ Waters family journal, 4 Apr 1870, WG 10/7.
On a return visit … Waters family journal, 7 Apr 1870, WG 10/7.
In 1874, Alfred, at thirty-three … According to the marriage certificate, both bride and groom were living in Rupert Street, Westminster when they were married on 21 Sep 1874.
cotton business in the 1860s … Otway is listed as having dissolved a partnership in a firm of Liverpool cotton dealers in the London Gazette, 24 Aug 1867.
joined the Merchant Navy. Otway received his master’s certificate in London on 19 Feb 1873, according to Lloyd’s Captains’ Registers 1851–1947, NA, ref BT 122/86.
Alfred as first engineer. See, for instance, census of 1871, where Otway is listed as the master of a ship docked at Cardiff, and Hamilton as his first engineer. Otway was the captain of the Frascati when it docked at Bute in 1875, according to The Western Mail of 15 Jun that year.
‘He has become quite … his memory.’ Letter from Lucy Gray (née Waters) to her husband Charles, 12 Mar 1876, WG 9/3.
‘He could not stand his idiotic …’ Letter from Lucy Gray to her sister Adelaide, circa May 1877, WG 10/2.
‘poor little “Marie”’ … Letter from Helena Waters to Lucy Waters, 31 Dec 1868, WG 9/6.
bore her husband three sons. Oliver, born in 1867, became a naval surgeon; Arthur, born in 1871, became a shipwright; and Ernest, born in 1877, became a naval engineer. See census returns of 1871, 1881 and 1891.
to a house called Fairlight in Bromley, Kent. Isabella bought a house and land on the corner of Newman Road and Tweedy Road in Bromley from Dorothea Tweedy of Belvedere in the early 1870s, according to schedules of deeds in the Bromley public library; she sold off parts of the land in the early 1880s.
Flaubert’s Emma Bovary. The quotations from Madame Bovary in this book are taken from the first English translation, by Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor, which appeared in 1886, a year before Isabella Robinson’s death. In 1898, Eleanor killed herself with prussic acid after discovering that her lover, the atheist Edward Aveling, had married a young actress.
At her house in Bromley … According to her death certificate, Isabella died of general pyaemia, an often fatal form of septicemia, three days after a suppurating abscess was found on her thumb.
That December … Henry died at 84 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin, on 12 Dec 1887. See ‘Calendars of Probate and Administration’, Dublin.
‘fed up with England’ … Time magazine, 14 Apr 1930. Otway’s will was unsuccessfully challenged by his brother Alfred – see NA, TS27/794. CODA : DO YO U ALSO PAUSE TO PITY ?
‘The address … wd be sufficient.’ Letter EWL to GC, 13 Apr 1858.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, winner of the Galaxy British Book of the Year Award, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Kate Summerscale has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize. She lives in London.
By the Same Author
The Queen of Whale Cay
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
Copyright © 2012 by Kate Summerscale
Title page illustration, A Wife by Sir John Everett Millais, Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library
Family trees by Phillip Beresford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
www.bloomsburyusa.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.
eISBN 978-0-8027-4368-8
U.S. edition published in 2012
This electronic edition published in June 2012
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Prologue
BOOK I: THIS SECRET FRIEND
1 HERE I MAY GAZE AND DREAM
2 POOR DEAR DODDY
3 THE SILENT SPIDER
4 MY IMAGINATION HEATED AS THOUGH WITH REALITIES
5 AND I KNEW THAT I WAS WATCHED
6 THE FUTURE HORRIBLE
BOOK II: OUT FLEW THE WEB
7 IMPURE PROCEEDINGS
8 I HAVE LOST EVERY THING
9 BURN THAT BOOK, AND BE HAPPY!
10 AN INSANE TENDERNESS
11 A GREAT DITCH OF POISON
12 THE VERDICT
13 IN DREAMS THAT CANNOT BE LAID
CODA: DO YOU ALSO PAUSE TO PITY?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FAMILY TREES
LIST OF LAWYERS IN THE ROBINSON DIVORCE TRIAL
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Imprint