Introduction
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Chapter One INTRODUCTION This book sets out to explore a series of biographies of a woman whose extraordinary story arouses powerful reactions in most people who hear it: Cornelia Connelly, an American who died in England in 1879. But because we live today in a culture that values the visual as least as highly as the written text, I want to begin by looking, not at the details of her story, but at five pictures—glimpses of Cornelia at different moments in her life. This, the earliest extant picture of Cornelia, is dated 1831, when she was 22, and probably marks her marriage in Philadelphia to Pierce Connelly, the curate of an Episcopalian parish. She has a complicated hairstyle and her dress looks expensive (a good deal of material has been needed for the sleeves and the bodice, and a shawl or wrap is draped over the balustrade behind her). But she wears no jewellery of any kind, no earrings, brooches, necklace or rings. She sits sideways-on to the artist, and has turned her head to gaze directly out of the painting. Her expression and body language are subject to conjecture: certainly her biographers have not been unanimous in their reading of them. But we know for sure that the young woman in this picture is deeply in love with a man who will eventually cause her a great deal of suffering. 2 Cornelia Connelly and Her Interpreters This second drawing was executed between 1836 and 1837 whilst Pierce and Cornelia were resident in Rome, meeting senior clergymen, exploring classical ruins, learning Italian, appreciating art, and wining and dining with the English-speaking Catholic aristocracy. Yet it does not immediately communicate that here is a young wife, the mother of two small children, whose cultural and religious horizons are being rapidly expanded. Cornelia’s face is only lightly sketched; it is the ornate mantilla-like veil, with its religious connotations, which dominates the picture. Whatever is happening in Cornelia’s life at this time seems controlled and suppressed. Some years later, about 1845, a portrait of Cornelia was painted, again in Rome, during her second stay in that city. The artist was a woman, a postulant at Trinità dei Monti, the Sacred Heart convent. Cornelia was living in seclusion at the convent with her youngest son, Frank, whilst Pierce explored his calling to the Roman Catholic priesthood, and whilst she herself contemplated the possibility of joining the Society of the Sacred Heart. She commissioned the painting for her children. It is unfinished, and one of Cornelia’s biographers, Mary Francis Bellasis, wrote on the back of a copy that it was “not like” Cornelia; nevertheless, it reveals something of the major changes that had taken place in her life since the last picture. Gone are the expensive dress of the wedding portrait and the ornate veil of her earlier Roman stay. In this picture she is wearing a plain black outfit with a small white collar and a very simple black veil; she is not presented as a wife and mother, but as an aspirant to religious life. Indeed, she seems to have intended this painting as something by which her children could remember her. Introduction 3 A later representation of the mature Cornelia shows her in the habit of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, the religious congregation that she founded in 1846. This portrayal is immediately differentiated from the pictures we have already looked at because it is not a painting but a photograph, taken on the sands at Blackpool in 1874 whilst Cornelia was visiting her communities in north-west England. So, either Cornelia herself was interested in this new medium, or someone else prevailed upon her to sit for her photograph. This portrait of Cornelia as an older woman, her face marked by the events of her life, was used on the dust-cover of Marie Thérèse Bisgood’s 1963 biography, where it was encircled in ivy, a symbol of fidelity. Finally we have a photograph which was probably taken in St Leonards- on-Sea in 1877, a couple of years before Cornelia’s death. Cornelia is looking into the middle distance, her right hand resting on a prayer book. The religious habit is more fully revealed, though we know that the silver cross round Cornelia’s neck has been superimposed on the photograph: it was not adopted by members of the Society until after the founder’s death. That in itself should give us pause for thought: looking even at a nineteenth-century photograph we cannot be sure that it has not been doctored, made to look as people wanted it to look. 4 Cornelia Connelly and Her Interpreters All visual images, like written accounts, offer an interpretation of the subject; through these five pictures we have in some way already read Cornelia’s life. Yet, as we look at drawings, paintings and photographs of Cornelia, we are seeing her through the lens of the person who created each image. A particular aspect of her personality, a particular moment in her life, is being called to the notice of the viewer and presented as significant. Portraiture, like biography, involves a three-way relationship between the subject, the painter or photographer or writer, and the viewer or reader. So questions asked of visual representations may validly be asked of written life accounts too. What aspect of the sitter is being emphasized? What assumptions about women, about nuns, are reflected in the picture? What are we being invited to believe about the subject? And why? Questions such as these lie at the heart of this examination of the biographies of Cornelia Connelly. But before it is possible to address them, a brief outline of Cornelia’s complex story must be provided. Aspects of the traditional account will be challenged in the chapters to come, but some grasp of the facts is necessary if the arguments that follow are to be appreciated. The extraordinary twists and turns of her life are not easily summarised, and sometimes beggar belief. Cornelia Connelly (1809-1879) Cornelia was born in Philadelphia on 15 January 1809, the daughter of Mary Swope Bowen, and Ralph Peacock, a Yorkshire-born property speculator who became an American citizen in 1797. Cornelia’s mother, a Philadelphian of German descent, was a widow with two children at the time of her marriage to Ralph Peacock; her first husband, John Bowen, another Englishman, had owned a plantation in Jamaica. The Peacocks had a further seven children, of whom Cornelia was the youngest. Cornelia’s father died when she was nine, and her mother died when she was fourteen; after that she lived with her half-sister, Isabella Bowen Montgomery. In 1831, in spite of family opposition, Cornelia married Pierce Connelly, an Episcopalian minister, and the couple set up home in Natchez, Mississippi, where Pierce had accepted the rectorship of Trinity Church. Two of the Connellys’ children were born in Natchez—Mercer in 1832, and Introduction 5 Adeline in 1835. By the time Adeline was born, Pierce was contemplating conversion to Catholicism, and in August 1835 he resigned his living. The Connellys spent the next two years in Europe, mainly in Rome. Cornelia was received into the Catholic Church in New Orleans before they sailed, but Pierce waited until they reached Rome because, even at this stage, he was exploring the possibility of the Catholic priesthood for himself. In Rome they became friends with the Earl of Shrewsbury and his family. A third child, John Henry, was born in Vienna in 1837; and the Connellys, having lost a good deal of money in a US financial crisis, returned to Natchez later that year. In the spring of 1838 they moved to Grand Coteau, Louisiana, at the invitation of the Jesuits. In this remote outpost, Pierce taught English at the Jesuit college, and Cornelia taught piano, singing and guitar at the Sacred Heart convent. Both Connellys received spiritual direction from members of the Jesuit community. A fourth child, Mary Magdalen, was born in July 1839 and died six weeks later. At the end of 1839 Cornelia joined the Sacred Heart nuns for the first three days of their retreat. She said that she was “converted” during this retreat, and that all other retreats in her life built on this experience.1 On 2 February 1840 the two-year-old John Henry died of burns. He had fallen into a vat of hot sugar, and Cornelia nursed him for 43 hours before he died. This event is perceived as seminal in Cornelia’s spirituality. On 13 October 1840, whilst Pierce was making an eight-day retreat, he told Cornelia that he was certain God was calling him to pursue priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church. Cornelia was four months pregnant. The Connellys agreed that, from that day forward, they would abstain from sexual intercourse—a promise they both agree was faithfully kept. Their fifth child, Frank, was born the following March, 1841. Pierce left for Europe in May 1842, with Mercer (aged nine), who was to go to school in England, initially at Oscott and later at Stonyhurst, his fees being paid by Lord Shrewsbury. Cornelia and the two younger children remained at Grand Coteau. In April 1843 Pierce, in Rome, presented his request for matrimonial separation. He was informed that it could not be 1 D63:65. 6 Cornelia Connelly and Her Interpreters granted unless Cornelia gave her consent in person. In July, therefore, Cornelia left Grand Coteau to return to Philadelphia, where Pierce met her to accompany her to Europe.