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By
(preface)
Lord Campbell,--in his brilliant and interesting work, "The Lives of the
Chancellors,"--tells us that in the session of 1758
reference was made to the Judges on the motion of ex-Chancellor Hardwicke, respecting a bill for amending the law of Habeas Corpus; and it was proposed to introduce a new bill in the ensuing session. "But I am sorry to say,"--observes Lord Campbell,--"that when the next session arrived, nothing was thought of except the taking of QUEBEC; and the subject was not again resumed, till the very close of the reign of George III."
Now it is certainly possible, that in like manner the Law-reforms so confidently
promised for this session, may be set aside; and some future writer of Chancellors' Lives,
may express his regret, that "in the Session of 1854 little was thought of except the taking
of SEBASTOPOL."
But, if another half century should glide away without reform in our Ecclesiastical and other
Courts (as more than half a century elapsed, between the motion of ex-Chancellor
Hardwicke and the amendment of the Habeas Corpus Act) shall we set it all down to the
overwhelming interest taken in Quebec and Sebastopol?
Shall we not rather look for the solution of these delays, in a certain supineness on the part of
those who work the machinery of justice? and in fact (also stated by Lord Campbell) that
"it is very difficult to draw the notice of the representatives of the people to measures for
the Amendments of the Law"? Difficult to draw attention to such measures; not difficult
to find "time," either for their discussion, or the consideration of any examples
which may prove the necessity of change.
(body)
To publish comments on my own case for the sake of obtaining sympathy; to prove merely
that my husband has been unjust, and my fate a hard one, would be a very poor and barren
ambition. I aspire to a different object. I desire to prove, not my suffering or his injustice, but that
the present law of England cannot prevent any such suffering, or control any such injustice. I
write in the hope that the law may be amended; and that those who are at present so
ill-provided as to have only "Truth and Justice" on their side, may
hereafter have the benefit of "Law and Lawyers."
I know all that can be said on my interference with such a subject; all the prejudice and
contempt with which men will receive arguments from a woman, and a woman personally
interested. But it is of more importance that the law should be altered, than that I should be
approved. Many a woman may
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live to thank Heaven that I had courage and energy left, to attempt the task: and, since no one can foretel the future, even men may pause ere they fling down my pamphlet with masculine scorn; for a day may come,--however improbable,--to some one of my readers, when he would give his right hand, for the sake of sister, daughter, or friend, that the law were in such a condition as to afford a chance of justice; without the pain of a protracted struggle, or the disgrace of a public brawl. What I write, is written in no spirit of rebellion; it puts forward no absurd claim of equality; it is simply an appeal for protection. Such protection, in degree, as is accorded to servants, to apprentices, to the sailor on the high seas, to all whom the law admits to be in a subordinate and helpless position. Such protection, in degree, as has lately been extended to women in the lower classes, by the more stringent laws enacted in their behalf.
In arguing my case from my own example, I am not ignorant that there are persons who think
such argument blameable on other grounds; who deem a husband's right so indefeasible,
and his title so sacred, that even a wronged wife should keep silence. How far will they carry that
principle? A few years ago, a French nobleman, the Duc de Praslin, assassinated his wife in the
midst of her slumbering household. When morning broke, she was dead; but many a proof
remained of the desperate resistance and agonized efforts to escape, made by that wretched
woman before her doom was completed. Do the advocates of the doctrine of
non-resistance consider that her duty would have been to submit tranquilly to the fate
pre-determined for her? If not, let them waive judgment in my case; for if choice were
allowed me, I would rather be murdered and remembered by friends and children with love and
regret, than have the slanders believed, which my husband has invented of me. It is he, who has
made silence impossible. With HIM rests the breaking of
those seals which keep the history of each man's home sacred from indifferent eyes.
He has declared himself my deadliest foe, whose dagger has too near an aim to miss my heart,--and, of the two, I hold his stab to be worse than that of the Duc de Praslin, for he would assassinate even my memory.
I resist.
For the shallower rebuke, that mine is an exceptional case; that the law need scarcely be
disturbed to meet a solitary instance of tyranny; there is a ready and reasonable answer.
ALL cases requiring legal interference, are exceptional
cases; and it will scarcely be argued that a balance must first be struck in numbers, and instances
of wrong be reckoned by the dozen or the gross, before justice will condescend to weigh the
scales. But it does not follow that mine is a solitary example of injustice, because it may possibly
happen, from a combination of peculiar circumstances, to be the instance which shall call attention
to the state of the law. Hundreds of women are suffering at this moment, whose cases are not
less hard, but more obscure: and it consists with all experience, that although wrong and
oppression may be repeated till they become almost of daily occurrence, they strike at last on
some heart that revolts instead of enduring; or are witnessed by men whose indignant sympathy
works out reform and redress. In either case, oppression is brought to a halt not by a multitude of
instances, but by some single example; which example may be neither more nor less important
than others, though it be made the argument and opportunity of change. We are not told that any
extraordinary perfection marked for defence the peasant child of William Tell; nor Wat
Tyler's daughter; nor even that virgin girl of Rome, for whom her sire chose death rather
than degradation: the doom had fallen, perhaps, on other victims
quite as worthy. But it was resisted for them by hearts that beat high in
defence of honest right; and therefore (and not for the value of the victims) we read in the records
of history, of a pagan father who took his child's life; of Christian fathers who perilled
their own; and of those convulsions, changes, and
tumults, which had their proximate and apparent cause in the desire to avenge a tyrannous act done to a peasant's son,--to punish insult offered to a craftsman's daughter,--to keep from defilement one weak girl, claimed by a despotic ruler, in the market-place of superb Rome;--but whose root was in this established certainty; that in all human societies, great general injustice shall be checked, sooner or later, by individual resistance.
If, as I have said, it does not necessarily follow that the example of resistance is also the
example of crowning wrong; so neither does it follow that there is tyranny greater than usual
enacted, when the benefactor arises, whose chivalrous nature sees cause for exertion, where other
men saw none. Not even then, in the merit of the sufferers, or the degree of their suffering, lies the
prospect of change; but in the spirit of him who will not tamely contemplate any misery he thinks
he might relieve. He follows in the track of those who have all
"passed by on the other side;" but he differs from them in
this, that he pauses to know what wounded and moaning thing is flung across his path, and
forthwith accepts as his business, that task of rescue which more selfish and careless men have
declined. The good Samaritan in Scripture, addressed himself to no peculiar case; he lifted no
bleeding hero from a disastrous battle-field; nor king, writhing under the
assassin's stroke. A man lay groaning, who had fallen among thieves. That is all we shall
ever know of the example of help, given as a lesson of charity eighteen hundred years ago, to the
fleeting generations of the world!
In these later days of more complicated social wrong; when HOWARD
rose amongst us, apostle of compassion to sufferers barred out of sight; our prisons were no
worse than they had been, nor our prisoners better men; their dungeons were not darker, nor their
food more scant, nor their sighing louder, nor their case more pitiful than theirs who had gone
before. Circumstance was the same, but the hazard of help had arrived.
The sighing was heard, the darkness was perceived, the hunger for human pity was satisfied, not for the sake of those especial prisoners, but because HOWARD was come. So in ERSKINE'S time; the laws were not more oppressive, nor their operation more unequal, than in a generation foregone; nor were the men who had to abide by the legal decisions of the day, unusually notable and important. They were the common clients of common causes, suffering under common and established grievances, arising from those defects in our patched-up system, which no one yet had cared to examine, or had found sufficient energy to correct. But ERSKINE came; and when men told him that such defects were part of the law "before he was born," he answered, that it was "because he was not born, that it was law," for that he would see it altered before he died.
So with ROMILLY: it was no new thing that roused his earnest
nature to struggle for reforms in the science of that profession which he at once
adored and detested. Many a prisoner without counsel, had
stood wistfully at the bar before ROMILLY'S time; listening to
learned accusations dimly understood, destitute of defence. Many a long-staining blur
and blot lay unremoved on the great scroll of our national code; when his warm eloquence,
enlarged views, profound thought, and keen comparison with the universal law of nations, worked
together for its amendment. He did not plead (for he could not so have pleaded) that the men of
his day who found no help from that code, were peculiar martyrs; of higher desert, with more
atrocious injuries to redress, and with less chance of redressing them, than heretofore. He knew
that this was not the case. All was common, usual, inevitable; and because being common, usual,
and inevitable, it was also UNJUST, and not for merit in
the sufferers, or excess in any one case of suffering, he strove for change, and effected it.
We need the heart of a ROMILLY amongst us now. That strenuous
heart, whose energetic pity made no compromise with custom; nor ever flagged or fainted in the
life-long effort
to serve his fellow-men, till, in an hour of delirious regret, its strong pulse was stilled for ever.*
If HE were here--if he were here, who so
valued the wedded companion of his own home, that when she died he sank, scathed by her loss
as by lightning,--he would not answer with contented apathy,
"IT IS THE LAW," when women
complain of injustice! He would stand for the right now, as he stood in those other days, when he
nobly strove, and patiently planned, to make Law what it should be, a means of protection, not an
engine of oppression, to the weak. Is there no one with heart great enough to fill his place ?
IT IS THE LAW. Can anything be more curious
than the crabbed obstinacy or despairing sigh with which this reply is made? as though we had for
our guidance the edicts of the Medes and Persians, of which it was fabled that they involved no
principle of change. Yet changes are perpetually made in the most stringent edicts we have. That
which was law to the generation of yesterday, is not law to us; and that which is law to us, may be
reversed for the generation of tomorrow: why should unjust laws for women be more
permanent than other unjust laws? We know that LAW
was mapped and planned among civilised nations as the great Highway to
JUSTICE. Where the road leads astray, it should be
mended or altered; and it is one of the boasts of our ever-boastful England, that she does
this. Not indeed of a sudden, with the stroke of some magic wand; but after fitful struggle and
delay, as all things are done on this travailing earth; a delay proportioned to the strength of
ancient prejudices, the jealousy of contending interests, the energy or slackness of the hands that
do the work.
Neither my space,--nor my bounded knowledge,--will permit
___________________
that I should follow, in detail, even the most recent of those changes; but take such instances as the hazard of memory, or the very shallowest chance-reference can supply; take them entirely from among facts within the cognizance of living men; and you shall crowd into a few pages, such reversal of mercantile, political, social, and religious rights, as have altered the destinies of the entire population of England. Our children are born to the tranquil inheritance of privileges that were struggled for in our time, with fury, ferment, and heart-break. They stand on conquered ground; ground that was inch by inch a battle-field to their fathers. They exchange among themselves as current and common coin, those treasures of Liberty that freighted our argosies in stormier days; when they who watched the doubtful chance, knew not if they should witness the sinking of the wreck, or cheer our entrance to the haven. Some of the captains of those days are at rest; but some are yet among us; witnesses of the folly of those who would set a changeless limit, to that which of all things is most susceptible of change in the onward progress of a nation--the code by which its social interests are governed.
Where is the great question of Roman Catholic Emancipation? Where are the restrictions on
trade? The first, already seems to our children almost a matter of History; yet there are living men
who heard CANNING give BROUGHAM the lie direct
in the English Senate, when that question trembled in the balance; and the brilliant Advocate of
many causes, in the keen anxiety of the hour, taunted the new Minister with exchanging for the
triumphs of office the support he had previously afforded it. The other is a change of yesterday.
Fresh, in the mourning memory of friends, is the death of that leader who moored the vessel of the
State in an untried anchorage, with the scornful words that he refused to direct its course
"by observations taken in 1842," and that he would feel
less humiliated by the charge of inconsistency than by any supposed fear of acknowledging that he
had altered his opinions.
Whether it be contended that our rulers were enlightened or struck blind when they projected
such changes,--the changes were made: every portion of those two systems remains
for our children, a law reversed or a barrier broken down.
Where are the grosser corruptions of our Parliamentary representation? Swept away one
morning in a storm of cheers. Yet it is not so long since Lord John Russell attempted to sow the
first fragile seed of the Reform Bill, by proposing that rotten boroughs should be purchased by the
nation; their owners to receive compensation from an indebted country, for the extinguished right
of selling shares in what is supposed to be the aggregate Voice of the People. It is not so long
since the same Minister of Liberty urged the claim of those great capitals of mercantile
interest, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, to be represented in the lower house, and urged
that claim in vain: since he complained of national apathy on the subject which afterwards
shook England to its centre: and beheld that great measure of Reform which, like the
burden of Sisyphus, he had heaved up so often only to see it roll back to its former
position,--allowed at length to rest in the English Senate,--by favour of a majority
of ONE.
These are changes, affecting political rights; struggled for by political men; opposed or upheld
by the whole mass of the people: but there are others, affecting sections of the community,
in which an equal or even greater amount of alteration has been effected, and in which the
value and power of individual effort is more distinctly visible. Our Schools, our Prisons, and our
Mad-houses, are all under Government supervision. Their occupants form classes set
apart--by helplessness of age, by error of conduct, and by the visitation of
God--from those that have free control of their destiny: and we point with pride to
the model regularity of system and of architecture which we have recently introduced for the
better management of their interests. How was it before the change could be effected? How was
it, first, with the most miserable of those classes, the
insane? Obscure struggles, half measures, renewed efforts, mark the progress from 1763 till, in the year 1788, Mason the Poet wrote a pamphlet, finding bitter fault with the management of the York Asylum. The tone of his pamphlet was condemned. There is nothing society resents so much as having the duckweed on the still pond of its surface disturbed by the under-current of struggling lives. Society did not want to hear about such horrors; society was of the opinion they could not be helped. Mr Mason was loudly blamed for his interference, and he and his pamphlet were thrust aside. About three years afterwards, the relatives of an insane Quaker being discontented with the regulations of the same Asylum, renewed the complaints Mason had made; and followed them up with considerable perseverance. Little was done however, except that the 'Retreat' at York was established by the Quakers themselves. Every sort of obstacle was thrown in the way of public inquiry. At length (with praiseworthy ingenuity), thirteen gentlemen qualified as Governors of the York Asylum by paying twenty guineas each, for the express purpose of getting a committee of the House of Commons appointed to examine into this matter. They did get the Committee appointed; the expenses of most of the witnesses being paid by a subscription raised among the ladies of York: and thus began that interference with a monstrous evil, which is now a matter of regular government control. In the particular instance of the York Asylum, the most horrible abuses were discovered. There were but two servants to one hundred and twenty male patients; the funds had been misapplied; the books and registries burned; the grossest immorality practised; and in the report of deaths, 144 out of 365 had been suppressed. As the inquiry spread to other asylums, more and more horrors were made known. When Mr Wakefield visited Bethlem, among countless other instances of cruelty one man was found with an iron ring round his neck, an iron bar round his waist, and iron pinions on his arms, fastened to the wall; and this had
endured twelve years at the pleasure of one of the keepers. In the House of Correction at Kendal a man had been in solitary confinement ten years, though he had intervals of sanity of nine and ten months' duration. As to the condition of the insane women, it was one to shudder at, not to speak of. In private mad-houses (in spite of an act passed in 1774 *) matters were as bad, or worse; and one of the visiting physicians declared he was ill with the atmosphere of their filth, "although accustomed to the dissecting room." At length, in 1816 a bill passed the Commons (and was lost in the Lords) "for the better Regulation of Mad-houses;" and gradually that came to be a public and redressed wrong, which had been an obscure grievance.
Of our prison discipline, much the same history may be told. Long after Howard's
time (who declared in 1773, that so miserably off were those kennelled sufferers, that "to
rot in jail," was an exact and not a figurative expression, and that more persons perished
thus than by public execution), our prisons remained, for the most part, dens of corruption,
disease, and torture. In 1804, Mr Neild, a magistrate of Aylesbury, (Secretary to a Society for the
relief and discharge of poor Debtors), published, in the 'Gentlemen's
Magazine,' observations on Chelmsford and Colchester Bridewells. He afterwards
published an account of all the jails in this island; which he had visited unauthorised and unaided,
Government doing nothing to help him in his self-imposed task, and obstacles having
been thrown in his way which would have wearied out any less benevolent patience. From 1804
to 1812, he appears to have been ceaseless in his endeavours to procure some
amendment; and though, when Fowell Buxton followed in 1818, and when Mrs Fry devoted
herself to the female prisoners of Newgate, very little general improvement was perceptible; yet
much
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was done in Neild's time to make progress almost certain, and a retrograde movement impossible. The jail of Aylesbury (with which he was more immediately connected), and other prisons, controlled in their management by men like himself, became what it is the cant term of the day to call 'Model Prisons.' The abuses of those he could not control, were exposed by him. It became known that in the Borough Compter prison the debtors lay upon boards; in filth, damp, and discomfort; felons and debtors all huddled together; no classification, no comfort, no decency. That in Ayr jail, the prisoners lay on straw, till Mr Neild supplied blankets from his own private charity. That in Edinburgh jail, the same miseries and even greater were endured; no employment was permitted; and felons (with an enlightened regard for the state of their souls) were absolutely excluded by rule, from attendance on divine service. In the privileged prison of Dover Castle, when its warder was the great Minister Lord Liverpool (who had been preceded by Mr Pitt), the prison-fees were so enormous that prisoners might remain twenty months in the Castle at the suit of the Crown, for sums totally irrespective of the real debt for which they were incarcerated. The prison was in a state of shameful dilapidation; and a Quaker gentlemen gave 800l. in the three per cents, to pave the court yard of this royal jail, and make permanent provision to aid the poorer debtors in obtaining their release. These were merely samples of the condition of most of the prisons in Great Britain. In Fowell Buxton's time the Borough Compter was little altered; dirt, confusion, and misery; cold, sickness, and gambling; and twenty prisoners sleeping on eight straw beds. This, again, a mere sample of the condition of other jails. In Mrs Fry's time, Newgate, which was built to hold 480, held from 800 to 1200; no classification, no employment, no instruction; filth that sickened and turned the heart faint; instances of debtors actually starving in jail; the accused and convicted, sick and well, abandoned women, and children
young enough to be in the nursery, all huddled together; prisoners employed in gambling, and complaining that they had nothing else to do. Idleness, contamination, riot, sickness, and blasphemy; no rest by night, and no peace by day; only corruption, mental and physical, hourly leavening among neglected swarms of fellow-creatures, with bodies to care for and souls to be saved.
To the efforts, first of one earnest individual, and then of another, must be attributed the
attention slowly granted by successive Governments to these great abuses; until at length the
greater part of our prisons have become a triumph and a show; from the regulations of
which it needs only that some future Neild should expunge the barbarous mistake of prolonged
solitary confinement, to make them as perfect as places of the kind can be.
To the efforts of earnest individuals, must also be attributed that control now exercised over
the education of the poor. Where was England in this respect fifty or sixty years since? In 1798 a
Mr Lancaster opened a school in the Borough road, which in seven years became a free
school for one thousand children. The expenses of Mr Lancaster's plan outran his means,
and a Mr Joseph Fox gave bills for 3,600l. to take the
school out of debt; risking this sum without any very clear prospect of repayment, for the sake of
the cause. Other generous and public spirited men then came forward, and Mr Lancaster travelled
through the country giving lectures and explaining his scheme. In consequence of those lectures,
forty-five schools, educating 11,300 children were established; in the year 1809, fifty
schools, educating 14,200 children were organised; and at length, at a meeting held at the
Freemason's Tavern on the 11th of May, 1811,--two Royal Princes (the Duke of
York and the Duke of Sussex), moved and seconded a resolution, that Mr Lancaster deserved the
thanks and support of all England, for that in four years he had been the means of causing some
25,000 children to be educated; and Mr Francis Horner at the same
meeting declared, that of the 7,000 children educated in Lancaster's own school in the Borough road, not one had ever been charged in a court of justice with any criminal offence.
With the great educational movement which afterwards took place, and the endeavour to
make the state in some degree responsible for the training of the people, Lord
BROUGHAM'S name must for ever be nobly associated. With him
(one of the most scientifically educated men of his day), rested the task of arguing away the
absurd prejudice that if the lower classes were instructed, they would disdain to
work; with him rested the long struggle against the abuses of charitable trusts, and bequests for
educational purposes; the sacredness of which was so little understood, that Lord Kenyon
remarked of the grammar schools, that "everything was neglected
except the receipt of salaries and emoluments;" and Lord Eldon, that
"all over the Kingdom, charity estates were dealt with
in a manner amounting to the most direct breach of Trust." There was no such
tranquil admission on all sides as exists to-day, that the State is bound to watch over and
secure to its poorer millions the inestimable blessing of education. Lord Brougham was flouted
and opposed; and in nothing did he encounter more opposition or greater odium, than in his
attempt to prevent this embezzlement of the property of the poor. With most pertinacious energy
he made himself their pioneer to knowledge; and most assuredly, when the balance of usefulness
is struck in his dazzling and eccentric career, the triumph can never be denied him of having been
a main means of securing to future generations of Englishmen, the first of life's blessings
both in date and degree; that early and orderly training which lifts a toiling man above the
level of a toiling brute; which teaches him to use the powers of his soul in addition to the powers
of the body; which makes slumber and food no longer the sole refreshment of the intelligent
artisan, and throws a light into the labourer's cottage beyond the common light of
day.
It is not because I undervalue the help thus given at a later
stage of the cause, that I endeavoured to mark the moment when national progress was set on
foot by individual energy.* I know that
when Lancaster's theory was made public, the Duke of Bedford and Lord Somerville
became eager supporters of his scheme; that the King and all the Royal Family warmly assisted
him (as they afterwards did his sometime rival, Dr Bell); and that in process of time, the liberality
of the public became so general, that the Lancastrian schools seemed supported rather by the
levying of a national tribute, than by the payment of collected subscriptions. But that which I
insist upon, is the small beginning from which these great results were evolved. Not by national
acclamation of an all-pervading plan, but by the resolute and patient struggle of a private
individual--that great scheme of National Instruction was begun. When it appeared likely
to fail for want of funds, a private individual (Mr JOSEPH
___________________
FOX) risked his 3,600l. to save it from evil chance. To him joined five other private gentlemen (Mr JACKSON, Mr ALLEN, Mr CORSTON, Mr STURGE, and Mr FOSTER), who subscribed, and obtained subscriptions from others, and formed themselves into a committee to manage Mr Lancaster's affairs. When that brilliant meeting of the 11th of May 1811, was held, it was rather to applaud what had been achieved, than to rouse to action: to congratulate on foregone victories; and to obtain fresh subsidies for the successful general who had carried on the battle against ignorance with an army of volunteers. Before those Royal Princes the Duke of KENT and Duke of SUSSEX,--or the Chancellor of the Prince Regent,--or the Duke of BEDFORD, Marquis of LANSDOWNE, Lord KEITH, FRANCIS HORNER, and HENRY BROUGHAM,--proposed resolutions at the Freemason's Tavern as "Friends of the Royal Lancastrian System for the Education of the Poor,"--Mr LANCASTER had laboured in his vocation for thirteen years. When his school was first opened in the Borough road, probably his very name was unknown to most of these great personages, and many a name less notable and less remembered had given substantial aid to the cause, before they became its patrons.
And now let me ask,--is there any reason why attention should not be called to the
defective state of Laws for Women in England, as attention has been called to other
subjects:--namely, by individual effort? Is there any reason why (attention being so
called to the subject) Women alone, of the more helpless classes,--the classes set apart as
not having free control of their own destinies,--should be denied the protection which in
other cases supplies and balances such absence of free control? Are we to believe that the
gentlemen of Great Britain are so jealous of their privilege of irresponsible power in this one
respect, that they would rather know redress impossible
in cases which they themselves admit to be instances of the grossest cruelty and baseness, than
frame laws of control for themselves such as they are willing to frame for others?
Will they eagerly restrict the labourer or mechanic from violence and brutality in his wretched home, and yet insist on their own right of ill-usage as a luxury fairly belonging (like the possibility of divorce) to the superior and wealthy classes? Is there,--in the disposition of those who are to legislate,--an insurmountable barrier to fair legislation on this subject? and if not, is there any reason why (to plead the cause of the inferior sex as humbly as possible) the laws and enactments for their protection should not undergo as much revision, with as fair a chance of beneficial alteration, as the regulations affecting the management of pauper children,--insane patients,--and the tried and untried prisoners who occupy our gaols?
I forget; I might plead yet more humbly; I might drop yet one great step in the social scale, to
find a more exact parallel with the legal position of women in this country.
England has lately made a sort of ovation to an American lady, whose graphic and
impassioned appeal on the anti-slavery question, reached Europe in the guise of a
romance; a romance which has since been translated into most modern languages,--so that
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" has become everywhere a "household
word." Had I been in England at the time Mrs Beecher Stowe visited us, I
too, would have considered it a privilege and joy to see one whose genius glorified that solemn
and gloomy argument, and sent it amongst us clothed in light. I wish her success. I desire
heartily for her that her name may hereafter be remembered with a blessing, among the names of
those who were early labourers in a day now dawning, that shall bring help to the helpless. I hold
her task to be a holy one, and slavery an accursed thing.
But, meanwhile, it may not be uninteresting to those Americans who are of a contrary
opinion, and who have felt wounded at the manner in which we have called across the Atlantic to
bid America renounce the error of her way,--to look back to the time,--when so
new and unwelcome was our conversion to the creed of mercy, in our own colonies, that Lord
Seaforth
wrote home to Ministers in 1802, to say he had offended the whole island of Barbadoes by endeavouring to persuade them that the wilful murder of a slave should be made felony, instead of being compounded for by a fine of 11l. 4s. The time when WILBERFORCE was a struggling enthusiast in an uncertain cause; when our King, Prince of Wales, and the whole of the Royal Family (with the single exception of the Duke of Gloucester), were opposed to the Abolition Bill; when Pitt despaired of carrying that measure, and it was a hot angry war among Englishmen whether it should pass or not. A war which continued through years of debating and pamphleteering, before the victory was won by our Abolitionists.
It may not be uninteresting to Americans to know, also, that if they will examine the reports
of our House of Commons,--after that struggle was fairly ended, and the new law had been
passed,--they will find the prototype of "LEGREE" in
the person of "ARTHUR HODGE, Esq., one of the Members of his
Majesty's Council for the Virgin Islands,"--who, in the
year 1811, was brought to trial and condemned for the murder of a slave named Prosper on his
estate in the island of Tortola,--when his countless cruelties were exposed, in sworn
depositions preserved in those records. There, Americans may find the original of
UNCLE TOM, in "TOM BOILER, a stout, hale,
hearty man," who in the year 1807 was laid down and flogged without
intermission for more than an hour by order of HODGE, and being unable to
rise after the flogging, was carried to the
sick-house; lingered a few days; and then died. There, they will find it computed that
sixty of Hodge's slaves had perished in
three years from severity of punishment, and not more than three, in that period, had died a
natural death. About a dozen of these wretched
victims are named in the affidavits reported to our House of Commons; among them are women
and children: one child of ten years old, named TAMSEN, having
been dipped (by order) into a copper of boiling liquor, and two of the women
having had boiling water
poured down their throats. Yet when this subject of King George of England was tried, it was pleaded for him in open court that a negro being property, it was no greater offense in law for his owner to kill him than to kill a dog: the jury, though they returned a verdict of "guilty," by a majority of their number recommended Hodge to mercy: and Governor Elliot wrote home in his despatches, that he was obliged to be present, as Commander-in-chief,--to call out the militia,--and to proclaim martial law,--in order to secure the execution of the sentence. It is a remarkable additional fact, and shows the state of feeling at that time, that although these and a thousand other horrors were perfectly well known, ARTHUR HODGE, Esq., was well received in the society of the island, and retained his rank as "one of the Members of his Majesty's Council" up to the day of his arrest.
But these are things of the past: horrible shadows, remembered like bad
dreams: events that never can occur again where England's law has sway. For
England is just and merciful; and if she is also a little proud and preaching, it is no more than all
converts to good causes are apt to be, in the fresh earnestness of their desire that truths lately
brought home to themselves, should be brought home to others; and if she finds fault with the
laws that permit oppression in the code of other countries, it is that she has no law which permits
oppression in her own.
I beg the attention of both my American and English readers to a case I find copied, from a
report in a "Cincinnati Gazette," into the columns of our own
"Times" newspaper, in the month of November, 1853. It was a case tried in the
Covington Circuit Court, and by the report it appears, that a slave named Sam Norris, belonging
to a Mr J.N. Patton, of Virginia, had been permitted to work in Covington, on condition of paying
each year a certain sum to his master; which sum was accordingly paid: that two years
ago, Mr Patton proposed that the slave should purchase his freedom by the payment of
a certain additional sum, which sum was nearly paid up when Mr Patton changed his mind, rescinded the contract, and claimed Sam Norris as his slave. The case was argued with much ability; but at the close of the argument the judge decided for Mr Patton against Sam Norris, on this principle, that by the law of Kentucky "a slave cannot make a contract, nor can he have monies of his own." The contract, therefore, was null and void; and the money, though received and expended by the master, could not be held legally to have been paid. The report concludes with this consolatory admission, that the Hon. Judge Pryor, before whom the case was tried, "characterised it as one of great hardship and cruelty; and every one in the court-room seemed to sympathise deeply with the poor negro." In that sympathy I most truly share; but the case has besides a peculiar interest for me,--inasmuch as I find, in the slave law of Kentucky, an exact parallel of the law of England for its married women; and in this passage in the life of the poor slave Sam Norris, an exact counterpart of what has lately occurred in my own.
I, too, had a contract. My husband being desirous to raise money settled on me and my sons,
to employ on his separate estate, and requiring my consent in writing before that could be done,
gave me in exchange for such consent a written contract drawn up by a lawyer, and signed by that
lawyer and himself. When he had obtained and employed the money he was desirous to raise, like
Mr Patton of Virginia he resolved to "rescind the
contract." When I, like the slave Norris, endeavoured to struggle against this gross
breach of faith,--I was informed that by the law of England, "a
married woman could not make a contract, or have monies of her own." When I
complained of it,--I was punished by a flood of libellous accusations, published in all the
English newspapers; libels for which, though proved falsehoods, I could
obtain no redress, because they were published by my husband. The circumstance
that Mr Norton, like Mr Patton, had obtained
all the advantage he sought when he went through the formality and pretence of making a contract with me, made no difference; and as to money, even that which I earned by literature was subject to the claim of my husband, as the manual labour of the slave was subject to the claim of his master,--because a married woman is, by the code of England, (as Sam Norris by the code of Kentucky) non-existant in law. It is fit that I should add, in behalf of English hearts and English love of justice, that when I stood, with that vain contract in my hand, in the Westminster County Court; (I, an intelligent educated woman, grand-daughter of a man sufficiently distinguished to have obtained sepulture in Westminster Abbey, hard by,) and when the law was shown to be, for me, what it is for the slave of Kentucky, there was, in the court-room of the Westminster County Court, as there was in the court-room of the Covington Circuit Court, evidence of strong sympathy. My case,--which opened up a history of wrong, treachery, libel, and injustice endured for years without redress--was evidently considered like that of Norris, to be "one of great hardship and cruelty," and the concluding words with which Mr Norton vehemently attempted to address the court, were drowned in the groans and hooting of an excited crowd. But sympathy could do no more for me than for Mr Patton's slave. It could not force open for me the iron gates of the LAW which barred out justice. It could not prevent libel, and torment, and fraud; the ripping up of old wounds, or the infliction of new. The LAW alone could do that, if fit laws of protection existed for women. That they do not exist, is my complaint.
That they do not exist, might point a scornful answer from nations we imperiously lecture on
the internal economy of their own governments. We have rebuked America, taunted Naples,
complained of Sweden, remonstrated with Tuscany, condemned
Portugal, and positively shuddered at Austria (in the person of HAYNAU),
because slavery in the one, the treatment of political prisoners in another,
religious intolerance in
third, and above all, the treatment of WOMEN in the last, offends our very souls. Is England then incapable of any but a BORRIOBOOLA mission? Is she for ever to prefer making a sort of "Sterne's Sentimental Journey" into other countries, to fulfilling her duties at home? The foreigners we are so fond of reproving, see with disgust and abhorrence our own method of dealing with certain laws. To them, our mercantile and uncertain speculation of "damages,"--the wonderful indecency of our divorce trials,--the incredible fact that the woman accused is allowed no direct defence, and cannot appear by counsel on such occasions--the loth and reluctant admission (and that of very recent date) of the right of a mother to her infant children,--are alike odious and incomprehensible. I will venture to say that in no country in Europe, is there, in fact, so little protection of women as in England. England the fault-finder; England the universal lecturer; England--where to add to the absurd anomaly of this state of things, the Salique law is considered a barbarism, and offence against a female Sovereign is treason. The contrast between that which we permit, and that which we disallow, borders almost on the burlesque. If Mr Norton, a magistrate and member of the aristocracy, had cheated at a game of cards played by a few idlers in one of the clubs of London, all England would have been in a ferment. Accusers would have risen; friends would have hung their heads; and for the sake of some dandy's purse, the invocation to justice would have been made in such a stern universal shout, as would have sent an echo through all Europe. Or if I, while visiting foreign lands, had invested myself with the dignity of a self-appointed messenger of God; if I had broken down the fence that guards other men's consciences, and trespassed there to sow what I considered "the good seed;" if I had forced on reluctant Roman Catholics, tracts of instruction in my own form of faith, and had been arrested for that trespass,--then indeed, I might hope to attract the attention of the Government of my own country, and my case might be warmly advocated at
some such meeting as stood advertised in the English newspapers for Nov. 29, 1853, headed, "Persecuting Laws in Portugal, Tuscany, and Malta; the Earl of Shaftesbury in the chair." But in the English laws which wreck a woman's whole destiny; in the law which permits the most indecent and atrocious libel against her, without a chance of legal defence,--in the law which countenances and upholds far worse than cheating at cards, and renders null and void a contract signed by a magistrate, because that contract was made with his wife,--in the law which gives a woman's earnings even by literary copyright, to her husband,--in the whole framework, in short, of those laws by which her existence is merged in the existence of another, (let what will be the circumstances of her case;) and by which Justice in fact divests herself of all control and responsibility in the matter--England sees nothing worthy of remark.
With what a scornful retort might the nations we undertake to lecture, answer our
busy-body meddling! "Protect your own women.
Look at home, for instances of tyranny, persecution, and unavailing appeals for justice. Do not
trouble yourselves yet, about the denial of
social rights to slaves, or those laws of Kentucky which seem in such harmony with your own; do
not even pretend to shudder at the disgraceful
chastisement inflicted on Austrian women, for what in their land is treason. Come to us when
your magistrates do not make a profit of the law
they administer; when your aristocracy are not guilty of violence and brutality to their wives,
which they excuse by libels in your gazettes;
when the daughters of your statesmen do not stand in your courts of law, ignobly baited for
asserting just claims. That such things should
occur, in your vain-glorious land, may be only a private and individual wrong; but that
such things should occur, with impunity,--uncontrolled and
unpunished by law,--is no longer a private wrong, but a national disgrace."
I shall now give a narrative of my own case, as an example of what can be done under the
English law of 1853. If the
publication fail to draw any permanent attention to the law itself, at least it will remain a curious record of injustice, in a country especially boastful of its liberal and magnanimous enactments. If the record appear unimportant as the mere history of a woman's wrongs, it may have interest as involving a passage in the life of one of England's Prime Ministers.
I have endeavoured to make the narrative as clear as possible, by dividing into three
outlines,--1st, the strange mutual position of Mr
Norton and myself with respect to money-matters, both before and after our
separation,--2dly, the treatment I received as a wife;
taken from the papers submitted at the time to lawyers employed for
me--and,--3dly, Lord Melbourne's opinion of the affairs in
which his name was involved; copied word for word from his own letters. I have had that, and all
other correspondence, printed in Italics; that
the interruptions may be more distinct, and that such persons as are already familiar with some of
the letters, may omit them at pleasure and
continue the narrative. I have taken counsel of no one; and no one is responsible for the mention
of names, or of the part taken by friends in
these miserable affairs. If any see cause to regret what I have done, let them blame the
LAW. This pamphlet
addresses itself, not to private sympathy, but to English justice: it is an attempt to argue
the reform which ought to be, from the abuse
that has been:--a complaint of the exercise of irresponsible power, to the source of
power:--an
appeal from THE LAW, as it stands, to the Legislature
which frames and alters laws.
I begin by an explanation of our mutual position as to money-matters; because Mr
Norton has brought our disputes to a crisis on a
pecuniary claim; because he has falsified the whole history of those matters; and because, from the
first, our position in this respect was
extraordinary and anomalous; inasmuch as instead of Mr Norton being, either by the exercise of
his profession or patrimonial property, what
Germans call the
"Breadfinder," it was on my literary talents and the interest of my family, that our support almost entirely depended, while I still had a home.
Mr Norton has lately spoken (in the fabulous histories he has given to the public through the
medium of the newspapers) of the profound and
patient attachment he entertained for me previous to our union. I do most solemnly declare that
at the time he first demanded me of my mother in
marriage, I had not exchanged six sentences with him on any subject whatever. Mr Norton was
brother to Lord Grantley; and the governess to whose
care I was confided, happening to be sister to Lord Grantley's agent, the female members
of the Norton family, from courtesy to this lady,
invited her and such of her pupils as she chose to accompany her, to Lord Grantley's
house. A sister of Mr Norton's, an eccentric
person who affected masculine habits and played a little on the violin, amused herself with my
early verses and my love of music, and took more
notice of me than of my companions. The occasions on which I saw this lady were not frequent;
and still more rare were the occasions on which I
had also seen her brother; it was therefore with a feeling of mere astonishment, that I received
from my governess the intelligence that she
thought it right to refuse me the indulgence of accompanying her again to Lord Grantley's
till she had heard from my mother; as Mr Norton
had professed his intention of asking me in marriage. This lady is still living, and can answer for
the exact truth of my statement.
Almost the first step Mr Norton took, after he had made my mother's acquaintance,
was to beg her interest with a member of the royal
family, whose good word with the Chancellor Eldon was to procure him a small legal
appointment; and from the day we were married he never ceased
impressing upon me, that as I brought him no present fortune (my portion being only payable on
my mother's death), I was bound to use every
effort with the political friends of my
grandfather, to get him lucrative promotion in his profession. I found this more difficult than I expected. The memory of Mr Sheridan among the Whig party, was not held in that affection which in my inexperience I had fancied; and if it had been, I do not know that it would have been a sufficient plea for serving Mr Norton, who could put forward no personal claims for employment. I did, however, what my husband requested. I besieged, with variously worded letters of importunity, the friends whom I knew as the great names linked with the career of my grandfather; and while waiting the result of the petitions I had sown on so wide a field, I turned my literary ability to account, by selling the copyright of my first poem to Messrs Ebers of Bond street. It is not without a certain degree of romantic pride that I look back and know that the first expenses of my son's life were defrayed from the price of that first creation of my brain; and before that child was two years old, I had procured for my husband,--(for the husband who has lately overwhelmed me, my sons, and his dead patron with slander, rather than yield a miserable annuity)--a place worth a thousand a year; the arduous duty of which consisted in attending three days in the week, for five hours, to hear causes tried in the simplest forms of law. From that day to the present, my husband has always considered that I ought to assist him--instead of his supporting me. The dependance upon my literary efforts for all extra resources, runs, as a matter of course, through all the letters I received from him during our union. The names of my publishers occur as if they were Mr Norton's bankers. If Murray of Albemarle street will not accept a poem,--if Bull of Holles street does not continue a magazine,--if Heath does not offer the editorship of an Annual,--if Saunders and Otley do not buy the MS. of a novel,--if Colburn's agreement is not satisfactory and sufficient,--if Power delays payment for a set of ballads,--if, in short, the WIFE has no earnings to produce, the HUSBAND professes himself to be "quite at a loss to know"
how the next difficulty of payment is to be got over. On one occasion, when I had been employed to write words to Spanish music, by an officer of some distinction, and was extremely loth to express to this gentleman the opinion Mr Norton wished conveyed to him,--namely, that payment was too long delayed,--Mr Norton himself undertook the task of dunning him, for the stipulated sum by which he was to profit. I worked hard, and was proud of my success. I brought to my many tasks all the energy which youth, high spirits, ambition, good health, and the triumph of usefulness could inspire; joined to a wish for literary fame, so eager, that I sometimes look back and wonder if I was punished for it by unenviable and additional notoriety.
I believe that Foreigners,--and even our own mercantile classes,--have little
idea of the very narrow provision which the usual
"Right of the Eldest Son" leaves for the younger members of noble English houses.
The rule is excellent, as a means of perpetuating
a powerful and wealthy Aristocracy; the Chief never being impoverished by that perpetual
subdivision which takes place in other countries. But
one result is, that the younger brothers and sons of Peers, (the habits of whose childhood and
youth naturally were to enjoy an equality of
luxury with the Heir,) are often embarrassed by the slenderness of their means: and this
was our case. Luckily for me, light serial
literature was the express fashion of the day. Nor did the greatest authors we had, disdain to
contribute their share to the ephemeral
'Annuals' and Periodicals, which formed the staple commodity of the
book-sellers at that time.
I rejoiced, then, at finding,--woman though I was,--a career in which
I could earn that which my husband's
profession had never brought him. Out of our stormy quarrels I rose undiscouraged, and worked
again to help him and forward the interests of my
children. I have sat up all night,--even at times when I have had a young infant to
nurse,--to finish tasks for
some publisher. I made in one year a sum of 1,400l. by my pen; and I have a letter from Mr Norton's own brother, proving that even when we were on terms of estrangement, I still provided, without grudging, money that was to be spent on his pleasures.
As time went on, Mr Norton, still unsatisfied, urged upon me the task of obtaining for him
something more valuable than his magistracy, and of
which the duties should be more agreeable. The petitioning recommenced; Lord Lyndhurst
became Chancellor, and the hope of a legal appointment
was again indulged. Nothing however was yet obtained, when a woman, to whose interference
about my children our final quarrel was owing, began
to rule entirely in my home. She has since left Mr Norton two thousand a year; and he openly
entreated my patience with her, on account of her
money. Lord Melbourne, for whose interest we had again applied, showed great reluctance to
use it on Mr Norton's behalf; and had already
expressed, in no measured terms, his regret at having made the former appointment. Undaunted
by this fact, Mr Norton merely observed that if
Lord Melbourne would not obtain a place, he could privately oblige him; and
he applied accordingly to the patron he has lately
reviled, for the loan of 1,500l.
Mr Norton considered that this loan was declined. Lord Melbourne told me that he merely
demurred, as he doubted whether in reality it would
be a loan. The condition of our affairs was not exactly known to me until
that time; though the irritation arising from
non-success, was visited upon me. One of the bitter quarrels which blighted our home
arose. Its record will be found with others; the
present outline being confined to pecuniary matters. After that quarrel was made up, and I had
returned to Mr Norton, he entered more fully upon
a statement of his affairs; urging upon me most strenuously, to endeavour, as I had done before,
to assist him, either by getting a more
lucrative appointment or a loan of money. I expressed my astonishment that his own patrimonial
resources never seemed to
yield us anything; and received the information that there were no proceeds forthcoming from the hereditary estates. I doubted the correctness of this assertion; but wrote the very unwelcome intelligence, both to my mother and to one of the trustees of my marriage settlement. From my mother I received a letter containing the following passage:--
"Hampton Court Palace.
"Nothing could be more painful and
surprising to me, than your statement of Norton's
money-affairs. Had not D.K. vouched for the respectability of Mr P., and consequently
for the fidelity of his statement of the property
destined for the younger brothers and sisters of Lord Grantley, I never should have suffered you
to marry N. He (Mr P.) distinctly stated that
property to be land, to the value of 30,000l., and if I get his
direction from you, I will expostulate with him on the
monstrous untruth then advanced; which may perhaps induce him, in his own vindication, to show
how you have been cheated; which it is evident you
have been. If Charles and James Norton join you, this affair might be cleared a little, and it is a
manifest duty that you should exert
yourself, for your poor CHILDREN."
Exert myself, God knows I did; both to understand, and to avert, the mismanagement (or
worse) that was taking place. The letter I addressed
to my trustee, produced the following reply.
"31st August, 1835.
"As I was on the point of
leaving London, Norton applied to me for my consent to raise a
portion of the trust fund and to place the principal at his disposal. I told him I could do nothing of
this kind without legal advice, and I
could give no consent without the previous sanction of my solicitors. About a fortnight ago he
applied to me to sign an order on Coutts and Co.
with reference to this same trust fund. I returned it unexecuted, to await the sanction of those in
whose
legal advice I could confide. Your statement of the present circumstances of the case, proves the precaution to have been necessary. As relates to Norton's power of raising money, he is clearly restrained by the terms of his own marriage settlement; and no personal debts of his, incurred subsequently to that settlement, can defeat rights which were vested by it; in other words, his CHILDREN have a better claim than his creditors to the principal sum secured under his marriage settlement."
I beg attention to the date of these letters; which were written but six months before our final
separation, followed by the trial, attributed
to Lord Melbourne (as will be seen in his correspondence) to another pecuniary endeavour on Mr
Norton's part. I was already mother of
three children, and it must be confessed that our prospects were rendered discouraging by the
extreme reluctance of powerful friends to do
anything more for Mr Norton; and by the total and scornful alienation from him of all the male
members of my family. I explained our position
very fully to one of the kindest friends I had,--the Right Honourable Edward Ellice; and he
drew out a paper of conditions, in which it was
expressly stipulated, that, if the difficulties in which Mr Norton found himself could be lightened,
and any arrangement come to, our current
income in future, and the whole management of our affairs, should be left in
my hands; a stipulation significant enough as to Mr
Norton's conduct in money-matters.
Our separation took place a few months after these discussions. Mr Norton did not at first
speculate on divorcing me; he notified to me that
my family might support me, or that I might write for my bread; and that my children were by law
at his sole disposal. Colonel Leicester
Stanhope (now Earl of Harrington), who was commissioned, as a mutual friend, to announce this
determination, appended to it the following
comment:--"N.'s proposal about your income is
too bad, too shabby, too mean, too base; he grafts you on
your brother." And the trustee I had previously consulted,
observed;--"The proposi-
tions (which I return) are no less absurd than contemptible; and you could not hesitate one instant
in rejecting them. They must think you have
lost your brains, when they call on you to subsist by them, if they think you are fool enough to be
gulled or bullied into such terms."
Mr Norton, however, soon proved what measures are at an English husband's disposal,
whose wife demurs to any terms he chooses to impose.
Those who saw their own advantage in our quarrel, advised him to make Lord Melbourne an
object of attack; and under our mercantile law of
"Damages," Mr Norton saw his advantage in adopting the
suggestion. Lord Erskine, in one of his divorce cases, had
obtained a verdict of 7,000l.; (a sum which, in that
particular case, was said to involve the whole fortune of the
defendant) and Sir W. Follett did his best to emulate Lord Erskine, in urging this main object on
the jury. He repeated, in every form, his
argument for aggravated compensation to his client. Sometimes he put it as a simple and
inevitable legal result,--"If you are satisfied (as satisfied I think
you must be, of the facts stated), it remains for you to consider what
DAMAGES you will give." Sometimes
with a skilful and business-like allusion to the wealth which made a large sum a natural
and proper award,--"Of course," he says, "Of
course, the position of the parties in this case, the rank of one of the parties, and the mode in
which they lived being considered, it is for you, Gentlemen, under all circumstances, to say what
may appear to you a proper amount of
principle, by the amount of the penalty enforced,--"I call upon
you to mark by your verdict,--in the only way in
which the law allows,--your sense of the conduct of the defendant." Nothing
was omitted to be urged that could be urged, on this
point; and no doubt,--if the accusation had been believed,--very heavy damages
would have been awarded; but the jury pronounced against
Mr Norton, without even retiring to discuss their verdict, and the speculation failed; both as
regarded political and pecuniary interests.
when I found that a part of my lot was that which generally belongs to a lower sphere--and
that, when angry, Mr Norton resorted to personal violence.
stood over me, declaring no one should enter. I could not speak,--I only moaned. My
brother-in-law burst the door open, and
carried me down stairs. I had a swelling on my head for many days afterward, and the shock
made my sister exceedingly ill.
room he had broken into, and my literary tasks and the furniture scattered over the ground.
again," and that he hoped my brother also would "forget and forgive."
form, and did not perform. I was never allowed to go out, even for a walk. I was permitted,
occasionally, to dine at the table
d'hôte; and sent for, more than once, in the midst of my dinner, to be told that the
meal was inconceivably long; or to be desired to
put leeches that had been used, into fresh water. More than one person in the hotel expressed
doubts as to my being really Mr Norton's
wife, in consequence of his strange treatment of me; and, at length, after some explanations with
me, the German doctor volunteered to
remonstrate with my husband. He told him that I was ill from over-exertion and want of
fresh air; that some of the tasks imposed upon me
were not only too fatiguing but positively injurious; he advised Mr Norton to employ a
"garçon des bains" to wait on him
instead of me, and asked permission for me to visit his wife and sister, and walk with them. I
wrote to "complain," as usual, to my
family, and my brother came back to me. It will scarcely be believed that after all this, I having, as
I have stated, acted as Mr Norton's
servant; having defrayed the whole expence of the dreary residence with was substituted for our
tour; and being quite ill and worn out at last,
with the way in which my days had passed; he took the first opportunity of again resorting to
personal violence. I objected to his smoking in
our little travelling carriage, especially as he smoked a hookah. I was irritated and suffocated by
the volume of tobacco in so confined a
space. I begged Mr Norton several times to wait till we arrived at the hotel. He did not answer
or desist. At length I impatiently snatched at
the pipe, and flung the mouth-piece out of the window. The carriage was then slowly
ascending a hill, and Mr Norton alighted and
recovered the missing portion of the pipe. He then seized me by the throat, and pinned me back
with a fierce oath against the hood of the
carriage. I thought then, and I think now, that I should have been strangled in a minute or two
more, but that I struggled from his grasp, and
without even attempting to have the carriage stopped, slipped down
through the door, (which he had not closed,) into the road. I ran after the other carriages, and
entreated with some one of my family to travel
with us to protect me, which was accordingly done. The marks of his fingers were in bruises on
my throat; and from the date of this foreign tour
there existed an alienation from my husband on the part of my family, which his subsequent
conduct completed.
reputation was unsullied. I was with my sister; and I returned, in answer to his imploring prayers,
only to be rewarded with attempted ruin and disgrace! He said "no words could prove his
remorse." He said, "As there is a God above us, who will judge our actions, I
think I have a right to ask you to trust to me for the future. If I cannot make you happy, let us
then quietly and rationally separate, I declaring to the world that the cause of it was not any
imputation on you." He implored me by all that was dear and holy to grant a
"complete" forgiveness--a "real" pardon--to write it
the moment I had read his letter--to seal and send it by the post, and not let anyone see it,
for fear they should advise against it. He said, "You shall never repent of this; you shall
not--you shall not." He adjured me not to "crush" him, and he
ended his letter with the words, "I go on my knees to you! Have pity--have
compassion on me!" I answered him: I pitied him: I went back to
him: I believed then that he really repented, and grieved to lose me; I am convinced now,
that it was part of a scheme: of a determination, at least, that if we were to
part, he would make me rue the day on my own account. After my return, he treated me as he
had done before. As to the conditions, they were broken before I had been two days in my
home: and during a very severe illness which followed the agitation and misery to which I
had been exposed, and in which I prematurely lost my infant, he behaved with the utmost
harshness and neglect, leaving me to be nursed by my brother, and refusing to be answerable for
the expenses incurred. Scarce a month after his last penitent and touching letter to me, my
brother was again compelled to remind him that he appeared to have forgotten the reasons that
made "interference on my behalf a duty," and that totally prevented his presuming
to question the authority by which my brother interfered. This was in August, 1835. Things were
fast driving to ruin. My family remained on the most formal and distant terms with Mr Norton,
the male members
of it scarcely acknowledging his acquaintance. I can call them to witness that, after our
reconciliation, I pleaded for him; but it was not only on my account, that they
chose to withdraw from his intimacy. I saw less of him than usual during the few months that
intervened before our final separation. He went alone for the shooting season to Scotland, as I
was not well enough to travel, and after his return he
spent nearly all the time he could command with Miss Vaughan, through whom he hoped at least
to right the disorder in his pecuniary affairs.
Lord Melbourne declined to make any attempt to obtain a better appointment than the one he had
already bestowed, and while I was with my sister
in the country, wrote to complain of a strange attempt on Mr Norton's part to interfere
with the appointment of another magistrate (in
which I afterwards found he was to have a personal advantage). I returned to town when matters
were in this condition; my stay there was to have
been brief, for I had settled to pass the Easter with my children at my brother's house in
Dorsetshire. I was then on perfectly friendly
terms Mr Norton, in spite of his discontent in other matters. He had written me coaxing and
flattering letters, urging me to try, both with Lord
Melbourne and Lord John Russell, to get this appointment given to his friend, and praising Lord
M.'s "kindness on all
occasions." He never opposed in any way my plans for the Easter, but, on the contrary,
urged me, now we were friends, to over-rule
my brother's objections to receive him, and get him also invited--in which attempt I
did not succeed. On the day previous to that on
which I was to leave town, I returned from my drive, and found Miss Vaughan had called in my
absence, and remained closeted with my husband for some time. Lord Melbourne was with him
when I came in, and they were talking together. After Lord M. left, Mr Norton talked
discontentedly of the appointment, and angrily of my not getting that and pecuniary interests
arranged for him. He also said Miss Vaughan had told him, if he himself
was not noticed by my brother, he ought not to submit to my going to his house with my children.
I said nothing should prevent my going to my brother; that it was Mr Norton's own fault
he was not on terms with my family; that the doctor had ordered change of air for the elder
child, who was recovering from scarlatina; and that I should give my servants orders to refuse
Miss Vaughan admittance to my house, as she laboured always for mischief, in spite of my
patience with her. We parted angrily--Mr Norton to dine with the chief magistrate, Sir
Frederic Roe, and I to dine with Lady Mary Fox. We spent the evening together at a party at
Lord Harrington's, and returned home together. The dispute was then renewed, whether
under the circumstances I should go to my brother's. Mr Norton's last words
were--"Well, the children shall not, that I have determined;" and as he
entered the house he desired the servants to unpack the
carriage (which had been prepared for starting), and take the children's things out, for that
they were not going. He then went up to the
nursery, and repeated the order to the nurse. It was admitted at the trial that the sole observation
I made on this occasion, when the nurse asked me "what she was to do?" was, that
"Mr Norton's orders must be obeyed." I neither
braved him with useless words, nor complained. I waited till the morning, and then went to my
sister's, to consult with her what was to be done.
answers to my reproaches, and said that if I troubled her further she would give me into the hands
of the police. I left her, and went alone to my brother's house in the country. I wished
him to return immediately to town with me; and so far from having intended, previous to this
outrage, to leave my home, or having made any preparation whatever for such an event, I left
everything that belonged to me (even my wearing apparel) in Mr Norton's house; and he,
who afterwards advertised me as a run-away, though it so probable that I should
reappear next day with my brother, that he gave this order in writing to the man-servant,
dated the morning after my departure:--
lawyers, pledged himself not to interfere, and was not allowed to mention what they thought of
doing; that my family had conspired against him, and they should maintain me; that he was
occupied with enquiries into my conduct towards my male acquaintance in general, and would
"try for a divorce," if a case could be made out.
clique of lawyers and friends, and under their influence, who keep your person and your mind
imprisoned. Put your jailors to the test. Let them
answer the accusations in my letter, and let them answer this additional charge. You are accused
(not by me) of having intended to procure a
Magistracy for a gentleman for a compensation in money. Ask your lawyers and the friends who
influence them, if this charge were proved, whether
you would be allowed to sit on the judgment
seat.'
cabinet, and the Ministry of a moment found themselves again in the ranks of the opposition; an
opposition notoriously in possession of the
sympathy of the Court. In the letters lately published by Mr Norton, he has himself branded the
conduct of the case got up against the unwelcome
Whig Minister, by revealing the minutes of his own lawyer's consultation with Sir William
Follett. By these minutes it is shown, that Sir
W.F. considered the character of the witnesses so bad, that he doubted the probability of a verdict
being obtained, but that, nevertheless, they
thought it worth while to proceed at all hazards, for the sake of the exposure.
It is made perfectly clear that some of those
concerned in this business, were careless what might be the result, so long as there was an
overwhelming public scandal; and as to Mr Norton
himself, his conduct was infinitely less rash and unreasonable than the event would make it
appear; since he has over and over again admitted,
that he had a secret reliance the case would not be defended at all.
He,--who alone knew how miserable my home had
been,--how often I had threatened to leave him,--how but a very few months
before, I had put that threat into execution by withdrawing
to my sister's house, and had only been lured home again, by his exaggerated protestations
of repentance and despair,--he
believed, that I would not unwillingly renounce that bitter union, and existence of personal
struggle, to become the wife of Lord Melbourne. He
thought he saw a golden path out of all his difficulties; freedom from the marriage tie; pecuniary
damages from the Prime Minister; and the power
of avenging, by my disgrace, the scorn formerly shewn him by my family. Those who had
instigated him, came to the trial doubtful of the result,
but confident of the scandal; Mr Norton came to it, careless of the scandal, and confident of the
result. He miscalculated his chances, only
because the trial was defended. The mockery of accusation was gone through; Mr Norton was
represented as an amiable, injured, deceived
husband; Lord Melbourne as a profligate impostor; and I myself as a painted wanton. The time
which had been spent in reading translations of Eschylus--listening to explanations of the
unknown theories of politics,--
defence. They shewed the greatest impatience during the Attorney-General's
speech, and made several attempts to interrupt the
Judge's charge; and at last, when it came to their own turn to take the business in hand,
they exclaimed unanimously, without a quarter of
a minute's consultation or deliberation, that they found for the Defendant.
chambers of his solicitor, or not at all; but I say it is not
DECENT that the father of those children should force
me, their mother, out of the very tenderness I bear them, to visit them at the chambers of the
attorney who collected the evidence, examined the
witnesses, and conducted the proceedings for the intended divorce. I say it is not
decent--nay, that even if I were guilty, it would not be
decent to make me such a proposal. But I am innocent.--I have been pronounced innocent
by a jury of my countrymen--I have been
solemnly and publicly declared innocent by the nobleman against whom that ill-advised
action was brought. Why then, are my children kept
from me?--from me, whom even their own witnesses proved to be a careful and devoted
mother? Mr Norton says, the Law gives him my children.
I know it does, but the Law does no more; it does not compel me to endure more than separation
from them; and sooner than allow them to connect
my visits in their memory with secrecy and shame, I would submit never again to behold them till
they were of an age to visit me without asking
permission of any human being."
a pain to me to look back upon: even now, the hot agony of
resentment and grief rises in my mind, when I think of the
needless tyranny I endured in this respect. Mr Norton held my children as hostages; he felt that
while he had them, he still had a power over me
that nothing could control. Baffled in the matter of the trial and damages, he still had the power
to do more than punish--to
torture--the wife who had been so anxious to part from him. I never saw them; I seldom
knew where they were. Once, when I wrote to ask
after them in illness, my letter to the nurse (which contained no syllable of offence, or beyond the
subject of my inquiry) was turned inside
out, and franked back to me. Miss Vaughan was dead, and I appealed to my
mother-in-law (with whom I heard my husband meant to
place them), entreating her to refuse to take them; which she promised to do, and heard me with
tears of sympathy. But my husband's
sister, Lady Menzies, decided differently: to her, on payment of so much a head, my three
children were consigned; and removed to
Scotland, where neither their father nor I could be with them. There, with one whom I knew to
be haughty and intemperate, those children were
left, who had hitherto been so gently and tenderly treated; and the eldest of whom was delicate in
health, sensitive in disposition, and just
recovering from illness. The first step she made in their education, was to flog this very child (a
child of six years old) for merely receiving
and reading a letter from me (I being in England and he in Scotland), to "impress on his
memory" that he was not to receive letters
from me. Having occasion to correct one still younger, she stripped it naked, tied it to the
bed-post, and chastised it with a
riding-whip. She was a fit sister and colleague to Mr Norton; and I have lived to see the
day when her disputes for money,
with her own sons, have come to Scotch law-pleading; as Mr Norton has brought to
English law-pleading the like disputes with us.
pensation in my home; it was not to be supposed that I would give them up without a struggle,
because it was so "written in the bond"
of English law. Ceaselessly, restlessly, perseveringly, I strove; and, fortunately for me, other
cases of hardship had already drawn attention
to the necessity of some reform on this subject; especially the case of a Mrs Greenhill, in which
Serjeant Talfourd (now Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd) had been professionally concerned. A new
"Infant Custody Bill" was brought forward by the learned Serjeant; and passed,
after a struggle of three years, by a majority of four to one. As soon as it had passed, I prepared
affidavits to lay before the Chancellor; and again Mr Norton narrowly escaped exposure. Among
the persons on whom I depended as a witness of past events, was the Right Hon. Edward Ellice.
When he was applied to for an affidavit, he thought it a merciful wisdom to warm Mr Norton of
what he could prove, and to endeavour to prevent the raking-up of affairs which had
begun to be forgotten by the public. Mr Norton answered boldly:--
his colleague and fellow magistrate, Mr Hardwicke, after this, that Mr H. had permitted me one
evening to be in his box at the play, with my
children. He locked the children themselves up for a whole day; to punish them; and
"impress upon their memories" (after the fashion
of his sister), that they were not to be seen with me at any public place. Their interviews with me,
were to be in private; that no
one might know or guess he had been compelled to yield. The insane injustice of punishing the
children, or quarrelling with the friend who had
catered for their amusement, when no one intended to offend him, never seems to have occurred
to him. He feared only the truth being known; our
appearance in public, was a contradiction of his assertions in private.
turn for the sake of my children and my reputation;" and that I had
said "I never would live with him again." Our
reconciliation was broken off; my children were sent back to Scotland; and the next notice taken
of my existence, by the husband who had wooed my
return; who had begged me to meet him in an empty house, assuring me nothing could be affected
"without mutual confidence;"--who
had signed himself GREENACRE, in familiar and
caressing letters, jesting upon my fears and doubts as to trusting
myself alone at that meeting;--and who had, in the first instance, desired his servant the day
after my departure, to open the door of my
home "with the chain across;"--the next step, I say, taken by the husband
whose real story was so little known to the public,
was to impose on that public by an advertisement respecting his legal liability for me,
commencing,--
abide by whatever decision might be come to, utterly refused to be bound; quarrelled with his
arbitrator; and broke off the negotiation. A year
and a half afterwards, he requested Sir Frederick Thesiger to act as referee; whose opinion I give
in his own words:--"The accommodation proposed by
Norton is one in which you are to give way upon every subject, and he is not to recede upon
one; and it seems to me to be ridiculous to talk of conciliation upon such a footing."
......"It is impossible not to be struck with
the vacillating and vexatious course which N
Page 31
When the woman died, to whom my children had been sent, Mr Norton proposed to me to
"forgive" the public trial, and return to him.
After that, he proposed we should submit to referees; to whom he have a written promise that he
would be abide by their decisions, and then
refused to bound. Then he advertised me as a run-away in the public papers; and he has,
I believe, the unenviable distinction of being
the only English gentleman who ever resorted to such an expedient; on which even my solicitor
remarked: "There are few men in Mr Norton's rank of
life, or in stations under it, who will not know what to think of the measure." For
two years I remained without one farthing of support from the husband who had owed to me the
greater portion of his income. He then made what compulsory
allowance he pleased; till in the year 1848, being desirous of employing the trust-fund
settled on me and my children, in improving the
estate left him by the woman to whom he first sacrificed us, he entered into the written contract
with me, to which I have already alluded. The
history of the breach of that contract will be found in my general narration, and I here close that
portion which relates exclusively to pecuniary matters.
The treatment that I received as a Wife, would be incredible if, fortunately (or unfortunately),
there were not witnesses who can prove it on oath. We had been married but a few weeks
Page 32
After our honeymoon, we lived for a short time in chambers Mr Norton had occupied as a
bachelor; in Garden Court, Temple; and, on the first occasion of dispute, after some high and
violent words, he flung the ink-stand, and most of the law-books, which might
have served a better purpose, at the head of his bride. We had no servants, only an old woman,
who had taken care of these chambers for some years, and who offered me the acceptable
consolation, that her master was not "sober",--and would regret it
"by-and-bye."
After this happy beginning I accompanied my husband to Scotland. We had been married
about two months, when, one evening, after we had all
withdrawn to our apartments, we were discussing some opinion he had expressed; I said, (very
uncivilly,) that "I thought I had never heard
so silly or ridiculous a conclusion." This remark was punished by a sudden and violent
kick; the blow reached my side; it caused great
pain for many days, and being afraid to remain with him, I sat up the whole night in another
apartment.
Four or five months afterwards, when we were settled in London, we had returned home
from a ball; I had then no personal dispute with Mr
Norton, but he indulged in bitter and coarse remarks respecting a young relative of mine, who,
though married, continued to dance,--a
practice, Mr Norton said, no husband ought to permit. I defended the lady spoken of, and then
stood silently looking out of the window at the
quiet light of dawn, by way of contrast. Mr Norton desired I would "cease my
contemplations," and retire to rest, as he had already
done; and this mandate producing no result, he suddenly sprang from the bed, seized me by the
nape of the neck, and dashed me down on the floor.
The sound of my fall woke my sister and brother-in-law, who slept in a room
below, and they ran up to my door. Mr Norton locked it, and
Page 33
On another occasion, when I was writing to my mother, Mr Norton (who was sipping spirits
and water, while he smoked his cigar) said he was
sure "from the expression of my countenance," that I was
"complaining." I answered that "I seldom could do
anything else." Irritated by the reply, Mr Norton said I should not write at all, and tore the
letter up. I took another sheet of paper,
and recommenced. After watching and smoking for a few minutes, he rose, took one of the
allumettes I had placed for his cigar, lit it, poured
some of the spirits that stood by him over my writing book, and, in a moment, set the whole in a
blaze. But Mr Norton vouchsafed no other notice
of my alarm, than that it would "teach me not to brave him."
On another occasion, some time before the birth of my youngest son, I being at breakfast, and
my eldest child playing about the room, Mr
Norton entered; he desired me to rise and leave the place I was sitting in, as it faced the park, and
it amused him to see the people pass by. I
demurred, and said I was not well, and that he should have come down earlier if he had any fancy
or choice about places. We had no other word of
dispute. Mr Norton then deliberately took the tea-kettle, and set it down upon my hand;
I started up from the pain, and was both burnt
and scalded. I ran up to the nursery, and the nurse got the surgeon who lived next door to come
in and dress my hand, which remained bound up
and useless for days. When this was over, I enquired where Mr Norton was? and received for
reply, that after I had been hurt, he had simply
desired the servant to "brush the crumbs away," in the place he had desired me to
yield; had then sat down there and breakfasted; and
had since gone out--without one word of apology or enquiry.
Page 34
About the same period, a dispute having arisen after dinner, I said I really was weary of my
life with the perpetual wranglings; that I had a
great deal to do, and would sit no longer with him, but go to the drawing-room and write
for a Periodical, of which I then had the
editorship; that I only asked him to stay where he was, and smoke there, instead of upstairs. He
answered, that the house was his,--not
mine;--that he should sit in what room he pleased; and that I should find I could not carry
things with such a high hand as I desired to do.
I left him; called my maid, desired her to bring her work and remain in the room, as I did not feel
well, and locking the door of the
drawing-room for further security, prepared to write. Mr Norton came and demanded
admittance. I refused, and said I was undressing.
After repeating his demand, and saying, if the door was not instantly opened he would break it
open, he was as good as his word. He forced in
the door, forcing away the framework with it, and rushed forward. He stopped short on seeing
my maid, and desired her instantly to leave the
room. I said she must stay, for I was afraid of being left alone with him. Mr Norton then gave
way to the most frantic rage, blew out the
candles, flung the furniture about, and seized my maid to turn her out of the room by force. I
clung to her, and being extremely frightened, and
naturally at that time less strong than usual, I became very faint, and some of the other servants
entering, Mr Norton desisted. He then lighted
a taper, examined the door, asked where the carpenter lived, and left the room. I thought the
worst was over; but I was mistaken. Mr Norton
returned almost immediately, and seizing me, forced me out of the room and down on the stairs. I
really feared for my life; I shrieked for help,
and said I was sure Mr Norton was "gone mad." The man-servant held
back his arm while he was struggling with the maid, who
was terrified to death,--and at length, assisted by the servants, I retired once again to the
nursery, and slept with the nurse; leaving Mr
Norton master of the
Page 35
I intended to have left my home in the morning; but when morning came, I was too ill. I saw
no more of Mr Norton till the evening of that
day. I was sitting with my two little children in the same room. He did not speak to
me,--he spoke to one of the children and went away
again. I had written to my brother to state all that had occurred. I said that for the sake of those
children and the one unborn, I should be
loth to part from my husband; that I bore him no ill-will, but that unless he would
undertake to be "gentlemanlike" in his
conduct towards me, I must leave him. My brother forwarded a copy of my statement to my
husband,--told him there could be but one opinion
of his cruel and violent assault, and that unless he received, within twenty-four hours, a
written expression of contrition and promises
for the future, he would expose Mr Norton. To that letter I owe the miserable satisfaction of
holding, under Mr Norton's own handwriting,
proof of every circumstance of this scene; for he undertook to justify himself to my brother; he
admitted all the facts; he admitted that I had
withdrawn to write for my publishers, and had told him so, but said he broke open the door
"on principle; thinking it necessary, as a
husband, to resist such extravagant and disrespectful proceedings" as locking him out of
any room in the house. That he blew out the
candles to prevent my maid remaining and working in the apartment; and that I had not seemed at
all angry when I left him in the
dining-room. Recently, Mr Norton has spoken of this scene in one of his letters to the
'Times' newspaper, as a "frivolous
quarrel." I leave to others to determine what the notions of general conduct towards
a woman were
likely to be, in the person whose idea of "frivolous" disputes are thus exemplified.
My brother's interference availed,
however, for that time. Mr Norton apologised, adjured me to pardon him, and wrote
triumphantly to my brother to say that we "were all
right
Page 36
On occasions that really were "frivolous," he was not less
tyrannical. His sister came to stay with us for three or
four months, in London; and he notified me that I should go nowhere unless she was invited with
us. I pleaded that her eccentricities prevented
my friends from inviting her; that she was dressed differently from other ladies; wearing a sort of
Bloomer costume, a short dress with trowsers,
and her hair cropped like a man's; and altogether affected masculine singularities, which
astonished and repelled persons who had the usual
habits of society. Mr Norton, however, held firm to his determination, and declared he would
sooner "cut the traces of the carriage"
than allow me to go without her.
The year after the scene of breaking open the door, my sisters,
brother-in-law, and brother, planned a tour in Germany, and I
was very anxious to be of the party. Mr Norton consented, provided that I would defray the
expense of the tour. I provided for it, by an
agreement with Messrs. Saunders and Otley, for a novel called "The Wife and
Woman's Reward," and we set out and joined my
family at Antwerp. We proceeded, however, no farther than Aix la Chapelle, where Mr Norton
became ill with a lameness which made him unwilling
to travel, and the others went on without us. I defy any wife to have shown more unselfish or
devoted attention to a husband, than I did to Mr
Norton under these circumstances, although assured that there was not the slightest cause for
anxiety in his indisposition. We were without
servants,--the courier and lady's maid having accompanied the main party. Mr
Norton would scarcely permit any attendance from the
domestics of the hotel,--he spoke no foreign language, and the misunderstandings irritated
him. I combined therefore in my own person, by his desire, the functions of sick-nurse,
valet, and chambermaid. I solemnly declare that there was no task, however menial or laborious,
that I was not expected to per-
Page 37
Page 38
Early in the ensuing summer, the quarrel, which divided him from them
for ever, took place. On this occasion I left Mr Norton,
and withdrew to the house of my brother-in-law; and my husband desiring my
return, my brother sent a friend to arrange conditions for that return, in writing, stating that till
that was done he refused to enter into any correspondence whatever with Mr Norton, nor was it
to be thought that any brother would permit his sister to receive the treatment I did. I was
warned and earnestly advised not to go
back, after all that had occurred; and if I had taken that advice,--if I had had more
resolution and less credulity,--I should not now
be summing up the evidence of seventeen years of torment, sorrow, and shame. But it would not
have suited Mr Norton so to let me escape. He
gave the written pledge of good treatment to the friend my brother had sent. He said he was
willing to "make any sacrifice, provided I
returned to my home." He wrote to me, entreating me not to let others divide us. He
wrote to my family in the extremest and most
exaggerated terms of submission. He said he was glad they had avenged me and scorned him, and
he vowed to treat me kindly for the future.
To me, his letters were couched in terms of the most passionate adjuration for pity and
forgiveness. They were letters it was impossible to
read without being touched--they were letters which drew me home again, in spite of past
deceiving, past broken promises, past ill-usage--in spite of the advice to
"hold firm," and not return, which I received from almost every friend I had. I was
safe; I was out of his power: my
Page 39
Page 40
Page 41
While I was with my sister, my children were kidnapped and taken possession of by Miss
Vaughan; as I doubt not had been agreed upon the day before. The man-servant came to
my sister, and said "something was going wrong at home;" that the children, with
their things, had been put into a hackney-coach and taken away, he did not know where.
I had the children traced to Miss Vaughan's house, and followed them. Anything like the
bitter insolence of this woman--who thought she had baffled and conquered me for
life--I never experienced. She gave vent to the most violent and indecent
Page 42
"In case Mrs Norton or her brother should return to town, and call at
Storey's Gate, this is my written authority to you, to refuse admittance, and to open the
house-door only with the chain across."
"G.C.
Norton."
It was thought best that I should not return, and I therefore escaped the
disgraceful reception with the chain across the door of my home, which my husband had prepared
for me. I wrote to Mr Norton's mother, to inform her of what had occurred, and to say
that I must part from him; and Mr Norton, on his side, requested Lord Harrington to write to my
family to say he would part from me,--but make no
provision for me,--nor suffer me to have my children. I did not, at first, know that a
mother had no legal claim to her children, and I answered by defying this injustice. My mother,
my brother, and my brother-in-law, also wrote to Lord Harrington, explaining to
him the truth, and disclosing to him,--with very severe comments on Mr Norton's
character,--the circumstances of our former disputes. Lord Harrington communicated to
Mr Norton the substance of these replies (which contained proofs, extracted from Mr
Norton's own letters), and told him that I utterly refused to accede to his terms. Mr
Norton then said he would not part from me quietly, but endeavour publicly to
disgrace me; that he had put the affair in the hands of
Page 43
In one of the attempts to "make out" a case, Mr Norton resorted to the strange
ruse of engaging the
cab-boy of the gentleman he desired to entrap, and sending the lad to try and get his
master's letters from the Club; and act of
which Lord Harrington observed, that "if attempted at the
Post-office, it would have been felony."
Having reported to Lord Harrington all that could be said to my detriment, Lord H. wrote to
Mr Norton as follows: --
"I have told Mrs N. all the base calumnies uttered against her. I will do the same
by you. They say that you kept a mistress. They say that you wanted to borrow
1400l. from Lord Melbourne; that you accepted favors
from Lord ----, after professing jealousy of him. That you pledged your word of
honour to a falsehood. That your wife made by her writings a sum more than sufficient
to pay all your debts. That you have yourself denied her to visitors, and even to members of her
own family, when Lord Melbourne has been with her. That you have often used personal violence
to your wife. Unless you can disprove these accusations, you are lost in the estimation of the
world. "
Lord Harrington then wrote to me as follows:--
"I called next day. I was received by a Mr Maclean; a lawyer and friend. Mr
Maclean said, it was agreed that Norton should see no
one. I talked over these 'accusations' with Mr M. I challenged him to answer
them. He said, 'This is not the time, and you
are not the person.' I said, 'You cannot answer them.' I wrote afterwards
to Norton as follows:-- 'I now see
clearly that you are surrounded by a
Page 44
"L.S."
To these adjurations Lord Harrington received no more satisfactory reply from Mr Norton
than the following careless allusion in a letter on
the general subject of our quarrel.
"As regards the 'on dits,' stated in yours, this does not appear to be
the time to enter upon that refutation of them
which I would otherwise court an opportunity of obtaining.
Ever yours,
April 14th, 1836
G.C. Norton."
Mr Norton did not, however, seem to build with certainty on the chance of refutation, for his
next step was to request an interview with Sir
James Graham (who was related to me by my mother's side), and inform him that he
admitted his lawyers could prove nothing amiss in my
conduct, and that, therefore, he was willing to come to such terms of separation as could be
agreed upon. Sir James Graham demanded, as a
preliminary to all negotiations, a written retraction of the slanders against me.
What was Mr Norton's reply? that he
believed them? No: but that "if he retracted what was said of
me, would my family contradict what was said of him,
as otherwise he would be left in his wife's power?"
Sir James Graham would not discuss this condition, but left Mr Norton to his reflections,
promising to see him again. The painful scandal was
supposed to be ended, and Lord Harrington wrote thus to congratulate me:--
Page 45
"22nd April, 1836.
"Thank God your
persecutors have terminated their labours. Their object was not truth or
justice; not to examine into your character, but solely to criminate you. It has ended in your
honour and their disgrace. N.'s conduct is
really disreputable; but far less so than those who have hunted him on. "
Most premature were these congratulations! At the very time when Mr Norton was angrily
wavering between the dread of exposure for himself,
and the desire of vengeance, certain personages, who saw in our quarrel an opportunity for a
stroke in politics, persuaded him to attack Lord
Melbourne.
I know Mr Norton has denied that he was thus advised; especially by his friend and guardian
Lord Wynford. I know that he made the
incredible assertion, that his sole advisor was a stable-helper, whom he himself had
formerly discharged for drunkenness, and who was, at
the time of this quarrel, a rag-seller in Monmouth street; that this man suddenly
appeared, and told him a gross and strange story, on the
strength of which he made up his mind to persecute the Prime Minister of England. Let those
believe this history who can; it is certainly
possible that all that was said of the interference of political leaders, was as
false as what they said of me; but, meanwhile, I
know that the late King considered it a political plot; that Lord Melbourne himself thought so;
that some of the witnesses affirmed they had been
examined in Lord Wynford's house; and that, at all events, the impression of some such
interference obtained sufficiently to make the Duke
of Cumberland anxious to deny it on behalf of the Tory party, as Lord Melbourne's letters
will prove. In the preceding year the Whigs had
been turned out; Sir Robert Peel had been sent for in all haste, from Italy, to form a Tory
administration; and the new Government had been
immediately outvoted on Lord John Russell's Church Temporalities Bill. In May, Lord
Melbourne reconstructed a Whig
Page 46
Page 47
"And search of deep philosophy,
"As I was present during the whole exhibition, I can take it upon me as an
impartial spectator to say, that a more infamous case upon
the part of the plaintiff, never came before a court of justice. All the world--whatever their
politics may be, or whatever their opinions
about the discretion of the behaviour of all or either of the three principal parties,--must
acknowledge that the principal witnesses were
perjured and suborned. I have spoken with almost every person present, and there exists a perfect
unanimity on this point. The jury, upon the
close of the plaintiff's case, intimated, in a manner perfectly intelligible to the initiated, that
it was a mere superfluity to set up any
___________________See
Appendix.
Page 48
The
case presented altogether a combination of ridiculous
driftless futility, with atrocious and incredible perjury, which cannot, I think, be parallelled (in
their combination) in the annals of criminal
jurisprudence."
The printed law reports of the day give the result thus:--
The Learned Judge summed up at considerable length, and the Jury having turned
round, in a moment the Foreman
said,--"My Lord, we are all agreed--we find for the
Defendant."
There was a loud and general burst of
applause at the announcement of the verdict, which was instantly checked by the
court.
The news was communicated outside, and was followed
by loud and general cheering from the anxious crowds assembled.
And in another paper:--
The Learned Judge summed up at some length.
The Jury having turned round,
and conferred a few seconds,--the Foreman
said,--"My Lord, we are agreed,--it is my duty to say that our verdict is for
the Defendant."
The announcement was
received with loud bursts of applause; an expression of feeling which was promptly
re-echoed by shouts from the mob without the doors.
The tumult having been partially suppressed, the Lord Chief Justice said "he was surprised
to hear a verdict received in a court of justice
in so disgraceful a manner."
The court was then cleared.
That impression availed--for Lord Melbourne. For him, the ordeal was happily and
triumphantly over; the sympathy of friends, the
enthusiasm of the public, greeted his acquittal from the false charge which was to wreck him. He
continued Minister to the King, and the dawn of
another reign saw him confirmed in his position, with the added distinction of seeming almost the
guide and guardian of the youthful Sovereign
who was to receive from him her first initiation into the cares and tasks of government.
Page 49
My humbler destiny was not so easily set right. Previous to the trial, I had been strenuously
urged, by some of the truest friends I had, to
be beforehand with Mr Norton; and, knowing what my home had been, to attempt to divorce
him while he was preparing to accuse me.
Others, equally anxious for my welfare, earnestly counselled the exact contrary: to
wait,--to have patience,--to depend on the
truth being shown on the trial, and my justification being then complete. The case being
submitted to Dr Lushington, he advised that I should
remain passive, and I did so; sore against my will.
After the trial was over, I consulted whether a divorce "by reason of cruelty"
might not be pleaded for me; and I laid before my
lawyers the many instances of violence, injustice, and ill-usage, of which the trial was but
the crowning example. I was then told that
no divorce I could obtain would break my marriage; that I could not plead
cruelty which I had forgiven; that by
returning to Mr Norton I had "condoned" all I complained of.
I
learnt, too, the LAW as to my children--that the
right was with the father; that neither my innocence nor his
guilt could alter it; that not even his giving them into the hands of a mistress, would give me any
claim to their custody. The eldest was but
six years old, the second four, the youngest two and a half, when we were parted. I wrote,
therefore, and petitioned the father and
husband in whose power I was, for leave to see them--for leave to keep them, until they
were a little older. Mr Norton's answer was,
that I should not have them; that if I wanted to see them, I might have an interview with them at
the chambers of his attorney. I refused, and
wrote as follows to my solicitor, who had conveyed his decision to me:--
"However bitter it may be to me, I must decline seeing my children in the manner
proposed. I say nothing of the harshness, the
inhumanity of telling me I must either see them at the
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More than once Mr Norton's advisers have shown more feeling for me than my
husband himself; and on this occasion his solicitor
wrote:--"Mr Norton has made the appointment to see
the children here--I cannot but regret it."
Eventually, the children were permitted to come to my brother's house; Mr Norton
expressly limiting the time of
their stay to one half-hour, and sending them with two of the women who had been
witnesses on the trial, who stated that their
"orders" were to remain in the room with me. I was not allowed to see even my
baby of two years old without these
"witnesses."
What I suffered on my children's account, none will ever know or measure.
"The heart knoweth its own bitterness," and God
knew mine! The days and nights of tears and anguish, that grew into the struggle of
years--it is even now
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These boys having been the gleam of happiness and com-
Page 52
"Police Court, Whitechapel, Nov. 27,
1841.
......"I have long looked to the threatened proceedings as the
only mode of obtaining a settlement, and of unmasking the repeated unwarrantable and hitherto
unresisted attacks which have been perseveringly made on my character for some
years."
But when he had an interview with Mr Ellice; and had learned what that
friend was expected to prove, he hastily retracted; and
signified to me through his lawyers that it was unnecessary for me to present a petition on
affidavit, as he yielded the point, and would not defend himself.
He yielded,--simply so far as the law would have compelled him, and as was necessary
to save himself from the threatened and certain
exposure which my appeal under the new law would have entailed. I saw my children in the most
formal and comfortless manner. There was no mercy
or generosity. I expected none. He even made it a personal quarrel with
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His cruel carelessness was afterwards proved, on a most miserable occasion. My youngest
child, then a boy of eight years old, left without
care or overlooking, rode out with a brother but little older than himself, was thrown, carried to
the house of a country neighbor, and died
there of lock jaw, consequent on the accident. Mr Norton allowed the child to lie ill for a
week,--indeed to be at death's
door,--before he sent to inform me. Sir Fitzroy and Lady Kelly were staying with Mr
Norton in the country. Lady Kelly (who was an utter
stranger to me) met me at the railway station. I said--"I am here,--is my boy
better?" "No," she
said--"he is not better,--he is dead." And I found, instead of my
child, a corpse already coffined.
Mr Norton asked my forgiveness then, as he had asked it often before; he sent his elder child
to plead for him,--for well he knew what my
children were to me; he humbled himself, and grieved for an hour, till he changed into pity the
horror and repugnance I had expressed at the idea
of seeing him;--and then he buried our child, and forgot both his sorrow and his
penitence.
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During the years over which my separation from these children extended, several attempts
were made by Mr Norton either to compel me to his own
terms, or to bring about a reconciliation. In the Spring immediately following the Trial (after my
first efforts to obtain my children had been
rejected) I suddenly received from him a most extraordinary note, saying, that he considered our
differences "capable of
adjustment," and hoped I would meet him alone, in an empty house, No. 1 Berkeley
street, where he would wait for me. I received this
communication with doubt and distrust; increased rather than diminished by the impatience shown
by Mr Norton to obtain an answer, for which he
sent twice in the course of the afternoon. He then wrote to say, that "nothing could be
effected without mutual confidence," and as
he could not come to my uncle's house (where I lived) he hoped I would come to his own
residence. This I consented to do. We had a long
wretched interview. He besought me once more, to "forget the past" and return
home. He laid the blame of all that had happened, on
his friends and advisers; said the trial was against his will and judgment, and that he longed to
"take me to his heart again." He
complained of the coldness with which I received these proposals; but I did not refuse. He
recalled my poor children from Scotland; and sent
notes almost daily to my house. Those letters began, "My Carry," "My dear
Carry," and were signed, "Yours
affectionately." Two of them (in allusion to my fear of meeting him) bore the playful
signature of "GREENACRE,"--the
name of a man who had been recently hung, for enticing a woman to his house by promising
marriage, and then murdering and cutting her into pieces.
After a month of this strange correspondence, I received a note from him, to say the
masculine sister had arrived to stay with him. A dispute
followed, as to what I had or had not said to this lady. Mr Norton complained that I had stated to
her I did not intend "honestly"
to return to him; but "to re-
Page 55
"Whereas on 30th March, 1836, my wife, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah, left me, her
family, and home, and hath from thenceforth continued
to separate and apart from me,"
&c.
Angry, and full of scorn, I consulted my solicitor whether I was compelled to bear this fresh
outrage. I showed him the letters Mr N. had
written just before this pretence of being a forsaken husband:-- "have I no
remedy?"--"No remedy in LAW.
The LAW can do nothing for you: your case is
one of singular, of incredible
hardship; but there is no possible way in which the LAW
could assist you." My brother did all that could be
done--he desired his solicitors to publish a letter stating
that "the whole of the statements contained in Mr
Norton's advertisement were false"--an imputation which remains on
it to this day. After the insult of the advertisement,
there was a pause of some weeks; and then Mr Norton wrote to say he wished an arbitration in
our affairs; the arbitrator he named, was Sir John
Bayley; and as the history of the reference is given later, I do not here enter into it; further than to
say that Mr Norton, after solemnly pledging himself in writing, to
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