The Life of the Honourable Mrs. Norton
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
I MBi MiUJPJMii THE LIFE OF MF PERKINS LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Class r^ J UHl^5 , '""> O/ ^ V O^sUOTAtcrit^ e J THE LIFE OF THE HONOURABLE MRS. NORTON BY JANE GRAY PERKINS WITH PORTRAITS ^ OF UNiVF NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1909 ; M5 P4 NOTE For the materials which make the foundation of this biography my thanks are due first to members of Mrs. Norton's own family—her grandson, Lord Grantley, whose permission made it possible for me to use her letters, both those already published and those which appear for the first time in these pages her granddaughter, the Hon. Carlotta Norton ; her niece, Lady Guendolen Ramsden ; and Mrs. Sheridan of Frampton Court; whose personal recollections of Mrs. Norton and kind hospitality in letting me see certain scrap-books and MSS. and family pictures have greatly aided me in my work. I must also thank the directors of the Library in the British Museum for their courtesy in allowing me the privileges of this invaluable collection, at a time when the condition of the building, while undergoing repairs, might have furnished adequate excuse for denying those privileges to the passing stranger certainly, if not to the regular reader. I wish also to express my obligations to Mr. Murray, who kindly allowed me to use several hitherto unpub- lished letters from Mrs. Norton to his grandfather written between the years 1834-8. For the great mass of my material, however, I find it difficult to make any adequate acknowledgment, so rich and so varied is the treasure which English 194223 vi NOTE writers of biography and letters have expended upon the period and personages especially included in this biography. But I can at least thank those publishers who have been most zealous to provide the supply from which I have obtained the greater number of the letters and an even greater part of the facts on which this book depends. I wish especially to mention in this connec- tion my own publisher (Mr. John Murray of Albemarle Street), Messrs. Longman, Green & Co., Messrs. Mac- millan, Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., and Sir Isaac Pitman. J. G. P. August, 1909. CONTENTS PAGE NOTE v INTRODUCTION xiii CHAPTER I BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS—GEORGE NORTON . I CHAPTER II MARRIAGE II CHAPTER III "THE SORROWS OF ROSALIE"—"THE UNDYING ONE " — " SOCIAL SUCCESSES " 21 CHAPTER IV LITERATURE AND POLITICS 37 CHAPTER V GEORGE NORTON—FAMILY LETTERS .... 48 vii b CONTENTS CHAPTER VI PAGE TRIP ABROAD—BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE . -58 CHAPTER VII THE WIFE—MRS. NORTON LEAVES HER HUSBAND . JO CHAPTER VIII THE MELBOURNE TRIAL—HER STRUGGLE FOR THE POSSESSION OF HER CHILDREN . CHAPTER IX EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING—A VOICE FROM THE FACTORIES IO4 CHAPTER X THE ENGLISH LAW—ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA I 19 CHAPTER XI THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL 130 CHAPTER XII INFANT CUSTODY BILL—HER LETTER TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR—VISIT TO ITALY . 1 48 CHAPTER XIII PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR—DEATH OF WILLIAM 159 — 5 CONTENTS CHAPTER XIV THE DREAM—THE CHILD OF THE ISLANDS—FISHERS DRAWING-ROOM SCRAP BOOK . .174 CHAPTER XV NEW FRIENDS—KINGLAKE—THE DUFF GORDONS SIDNEY HERBERT—THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS—RELATIONS WITH HER CHILDREN . 19] CHAPTER XVI NEW QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND—FLETCHER'S ILLNESS—DEATH OF LORD MELBOURNE . 2o6 CHAPTER XVII — " STIRLING OF KEIR " STUART OF DUNLEATH . 21 CHAPTER XVIII LIFE ABROAD—LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND 225 CHAPTER XIX PAMPHLET ON " ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN " AND " " LETTER TO THE QUEEN .... 238 CHAPTER XX BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE—A LONDON SEASON . .252 CHAPTER XXI DEATH OF FLETCHER—" THE LADY OF LA GARAYE " —" LOST AND SAVED " 264 x CONTENTS CHAPTER XXII PAGE LAST YEARS—DEATH OF GEORGE NORTON— SECOND MARRIAGE—DEATH 283 LIST OF MRS. NORTON'S WRITINGS . 299 LIST OF MRS. NORTON'S SONGS . .300 INDEX 303 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MRS. Norton Frontispiece After the painting by John Hayter (photogravure). FACING PAGE MRS. NORTON 2 ° From a lithograph at Chatsworth. MRS. NORTON 4^ After the portrait by John Hayter. MRS. NORTON 7^ From a pen-and-ink sketch. MRS. NORTON 174 From an engraving by F. C. Lewis, after the drawing by Sir Edwin Landseer, R. A. MRS. SHERIDAN 214 From the drawing by John Hayter (photogravure). MRS. NORTON .... 258 From a drawing by Mrs. Munro-Ferguson. MRS. NORTON 296 From a bust. INTRODUCTION Mrs. Norton is a personage whose reputation as a poetess and a writer stood much higher among our grandmothers than it does to-day. To-day, in- deed, the greater part of her writing is so much out of fashion as to be nearly out of print, and she herself is considered less as an author than as a beautiful, unfortunate woman, the target of a great deal of cruel scandal, ill remembered, but never quite forgotten. Her poetry, perhaps, deserves its fate ; it is, indeed, too intimate a part of herself, too dependent on the passing glamour of her beauty, to be expected to survive her. But her novels deserve another chance ; and on this score more consideration is due to her than has been accorded by her own generation. And the lyric touch, too often wanting in her verses, is never lacking in her life ; her own story, told in her own dramatic words, is her real contribution to the literature of her century. This story, though often told in part, and too often obscured or exaggerated by half-truths or whole scandals, has never yet been fairly or adequately narrated. And yet it would seem that no survey of English social and literary conditions during the first fifty years of the nineteenth century could be complete xiv INTRODUCTION without it. The generous, woman's influence has left too deep a mark, not only on the men and manners, but upon the very laws of her time, to let her be entirely forgotten. She can never be forgotten, if only because the mere tradition of her is so deeply embedded in the literary remains of the nineteenth century. It is only fair, then, that she should be adequately remembered, not only for her misfortunes, but for the real service she rendered to her own kind, the gallant fight she waged against most cruel con- ditions—conditions which her own extraordinary experience, her passionate energy of resistance, did much to make impossible, almost inconceivable to-day. The following pages are an effort to render justice to her ; to give her something like her real value among people to whom her name and the poorest part of her fame are already vaguely familiar. LIFE OF MRS. NORTON CHAPTER I BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS—GEORGE NORTON The subject of this biography was the third child of Tom Sheridan ; and therefore a granddaughter of the great Sheridan by his first wife, the beautiful Miss Linley, whose almost impossible loveliness has been preserved for us to this day by some of the most beautiful paintings of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Tom Sheridan's wife was a Scotswoman ; her parents were James Callander of Craigforth, after- wards Campbell of Ardkinglass, Argyllshire, and his third wife, the Lady Elizabeth Macdonnell, sister of the Earl of Antrim, an Irish peer. She had probably met her young husband first in Edinburgh, where he was stationed for some years on the staff of the Earl of Moira, but on their marriage, in November 1805, they came to live in London (Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square), where their elder children were born. The great Sheridan was then at the height of his fortune, having passionately mourned but quickly recovered from the loss of his beautiful first wife, and married again, in 1795, a woman much younger than himself, Miss Esther Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester, by whom he had a second son, Charles, born January 14, 1796. This second connection, however, did not interfere with his 1 " 2 BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS [chap, i interest in his " grandchicks," as he called Tom's children. The eldest of these was a boy, named Richard Brinsley, after him. Next came Helen, born 1807, followed by Caroline, the second daughter, born March 22, 1808. This date, at least, seems to me most likely to be the correct one, though there are two others given by family authority: 1809, according to Lord Dufferin in his Life of his mother, Helen Sheridan, and 18 10, found in records left by Mrs. Norton's second husband, Sir William Stirling- Maxwell. The family tradition has it that Mrs. Norton was a queer, dark-looking, little baby, with quantities of black hair. There is a story of her, at three years old, brought in and set up on a table to be shown off to her grandfather, the great Sheridan ; sitting there frightened out of her wits, staring at him with enor- mous black eyes, with her hair half concealing her " face, till at last he gave utterance upon her : Well, that is not a child I would care to meet in a dark wood ! By that time, however, her family's fortune was somewhat in eclipse. On February 24, 1809, the old Drury Lane Theatre was destroyed by fire, and with it the greater part of her father's income and her grandfather's possessions. And very soon after she was born, Tom Sheridan began to show signs of the fatal disease inherited from his beautiful mother. All the later years of his life were spent in a vain search for health, a winter in Ireland, a year in Malta, till at last, in the autumn of 1813, he was appointed, through the influence of his father's old friend, the Duke of York, to a colonial secretaryship at the Cape of Good Hope, which he accepted in a vain belief that the climate would save, or at least prolong, his life.