Writing the Adulterous Affair in England, C.1740–1830* Sally Holloway Richmond, the American International University in London
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‘You know I am all on fire’: writing the adulterous affair in England, c.1740–1830* Sally Holloway Richmond, The American International University in London Abstract This article analyses rare surviving adulterous love letters alongside published epistles and trial reports to reveal the practical and emotional importance of letter-writing in conducting an affair in England c.1740–1830. While attitudes to adultery have received widespread scholarly attention, illicit letters remain largely overlooked. The article is the first to outline distinguishing features of adulterous letters, and the language of infidelity. It distinguishes missives from courtship letters as a secretive genre carefully shielded by writers. By scrutinizing the letters which sustained affairs, the article rediscovers the happiness, jealousy and desire of illicit love in the words of lovers themselves. When the Quaker gentleman Richard How II (1727–1801) came to the aid of his fellow Friend Silena Ramsay (d. 1779)from1758, her husband Robert was ‘much straitend [sic] for money’ and struggling to pay the rent. Richard expressed sympathy for Silena’s distress, making a number of visits to her, her infant son Tommy, and her parents. Soon he was writing long melancholy letters describing his affection for her, proclaiming that ‘my most ardent Desire is thy Happiness’ and ‘thy Letters alone preserve me from plunging into Despair’.1 The couple embarked on an illicit affair, which caused a great scandal in the tight-knit Quaker community of Aspley Guise in Bedfordshire. Robert tried ‘all methods rough & smooth’ to keep Silena, including threatening to seize their infant Tommy, which was within his legal rights as her husband and could be enforced by the common law courts.2 However his resistance had little effect, and the couple signed a deed of separation in January 1761, with Richard acting as Silena’s trustee. As Richard wrote to Silena proclaiming his unalterable love, Robert set off in March 1761 to recover his fortunes * This article is based on a doctoral thesis funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, supervised by Amanda Vickery and advised by Jane Hamlett. The thesis is available via Royal Holloway’s research information system, Pure. The author would like to thank Donna Andrew, Miche`le Cohen, Penelope Corfield, Sarah Lloyd and Susan Whyman for commenting on drafts, and this journal’s anonymous reviewers. Searching questions and invaluable feedback were also provided by attendees of the British History in the Long Eighteenth Century seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. The quotation in the title is from John King to Mary Robinson, 16 Nov. 1773 (Letters from Perdita [the first signed M. H. R-] to a certain Israelite, and his answers to them (1781), answer to letter VI, p. 38). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1 Bedford, Bedfordshire Archives Service (hereafter B.A.S.), HW88/5, Silena Ramsay to her mother Sarah Moore, 71mo [Jan.] 1760. Richard had previously praised how Robert had ‘acted with great Honor, & been cruelly treated’ by his friends (B.A.S., HW87/254, Richard How II to Richard How I, 13 March 1758;HW88/6, How II to Ramsay, 7 Jan. 1761). 2 On the legal custody of children, see L. Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 153, 170–80. VC 2016 The Authors DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.12130 Historical Research, vol. 89, no. 244 (May 2016) Historical Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Institute of Historical Research 318 Writing the adulterous affair in England, c.1740–1830 trading on the perilous Gold Coast in Africa. Richard scoured the newspapers with ‘dread’ for news of Robert’s return, which could deprive his life ‘of its only charm’. The unfortunate lace dealer had died at James Fort in Gambia by August 1762, finally allowing Richard and Silena to marry on 3 November that year.3 This article analyses the letters exchanged by adulterous couples to establish the indispensable role they played in conducting an affair during the long eighteenth century. Engaging with scholarship on adultery, letter-writing and emotions, it asks, what defines adulterous letters as a genre? How did they shape an affair? What do they reveal about emotional experiences of adultery? What motivated their writers? The article is divided into three sections, the first of which locates illicit letters within the historiography of adultery and romantic epistles exchanged during courtship and marriage. Second, it positions illicit love letters as a secretive genre shielded by burning and secret codes, compared to courtship letters which were routinely shared. Finally, it is the first study to analyse distinct features of the language of infidelity, including men’s descriptions of jealousy and desire, and women’s attempts to replicate a wifely concern over health, or seek lasting financial stability. These tropes reveal how couples strove to recreate licit relationships in an adulterous setting, which could wither under monetary pressures once the veneer of romance had faded. Adultery and divorce have been the subject of sustained analysis by historians. Trial literature and the perceived ‘mode’ for adultery within the beau monde have been analysed at length by Donna Andrew, Katherine Binhammer, Faramerz Dabhoiwala, Sarah Lloyd, Gillian Russell, Susan Staves and David Turner, among others.4 These scholars have revealed how attitudes to sexual morality shifted in the post-Restoration period, where adultery was ‘felt to be more predominant and more dangerous’ than before. The flood of detailed newspaper reports of criminal conversation (crim. con.) cases after 1770 saw adultery suffuse ‘all the venues of popular discourse’, as seemingly private affairs were transformed into public concerns. By the French Revolution, the rise in divorce cases involving crim. con. fuelled a ‘sex panic’ about female sexuality and society’s perceived moral degeneracy.5 Among this burgeoning scholarship, the letters which adulterers used to sustain their affairs remain largely overlooked. Clare Brant’s Eighteenth-Century Letters and British 3 B.A.S., HW88/11 and 48, How II to Ramsay, 28 Jan. 1761, 18 March 1762. For further details, see M. Ashcroft, ‘The courtship of Richard How’, Bedfordshire Magazine,x(1965), 50–4, also reproduced in B.A.S., HW catalogue. 4 D. T. Andrew, Aristocratic Vice: the Attack on Duelling, Suicide, Adultery, and Gambling in 18th-Century England (2013), esp. ch. 4, and ‘“Adultery a-la-mode”: privilege, the law and attitudes to adultery 1770–1809’, History, lxxxii (1997), 5–23; K. Binhammer, ‘The sex panic of the 1790s’, Jour. History of Sexuality,vi(1996), 409–34; F. Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: a History of the First Sexual Revolution (2012); S. Lloyd, ‘Amour in the shrubbery: reading the detail of English adultery trial publications of the 1780s’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, xxxix (2006), 421–42; C. McCreery, ‘Keeping up with the Bon Ton: the T^ete-a-T^ete series in the Town and Country Magazine’, in Gender in 18th-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. H. Barker and E. Chalus (1997), pp. 207–29; G. Russell, ‘The theatre of crim. con.: Thomas Erskine, adultery, and radical politics in the 1790s’, in Unrespectable Radicals? Popular Politics in the Age of Reform, ed. M. T. Davis and P. A. Pickering (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 57–70; S. Staves, ‘Money for honour: damages for criminal conversation’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, xi (1982), 279–97; D. Turner, Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660–1740 (Oxford, 2002). 5 Andrew, Aristocratic Vice, pp. 129, 147, 154, 244; Binhammer, p. 414. Parliamentary divorces were extortionately expensive and therefore incredibly rare. On the whole, the church courts held key jurisdiction over adultery, granting ‘divorce’ with no right to remarry. Crim. con. cases were increasingly required to secure a successful verdict, with 30% of divorces in 1700–49 preceded by crim. con. actions, rising to 96%in1800–19 (see Stone, pp. 184–6, 326–7, 424–34). VC 2016 The Authors Historical Research, vol. 89, no. 244 (May 2016) Historical Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Institute of Historical Research Writing the adulterous affair in England, c.1740–1830 319 Culture (2006) unusually categorizes these epistles under ‘Writing as a criminal’ (chapter four) rather than ‘Writing as a lover’ (chapter three), which removes adulterous love letters from the context in which they were first written. The letters of ‘guilty lovers’ are situated within notions of criminality rather than romantic love, excluding innumerable undiscovered affairs which did not enter the court system.6 A rare piece considering epistolary interactions outside the courtroom is Clara Tuite’s article ‘Tainted love’ (2007) analysing Lord Byron’s four-month affair with Lady Caroline Lamb in 1812.Tuite situates the affair within ‘Romantic celebrity culture’ and ‘Byronic fandom’, with Lamb acting as the bohemian poet’s dutiful fan, lover and stalker. While Lamb luxuriated in the relationship’s ‘exclusivity’, Byron copied out passages of her love letters for the entertainment of a ‘tightly circumscribed’ group of elite whigs.7 This article expands its remit to encompass a wider number of affairs beyond the courtroom context. It adopts the terminology of Brant and Tuite in treating adulterous letters as ‘personal’ and ‘exclusive’ rather than strictly ‘private’, a term which Lawrence Klein has unravelled to reveal a ‘mobility of meanings’ in different spaces.8 It adds the term ‘secret’ to indicate that knowledge of an affair was ‘studiously hidden’ and ‘not revealed’, while letters were further restricted, and their contents even more so.9 Adulterous love letters as a genre can be contextualized using romantic missives exchanged during courtship and marriage.