The post originally appeared upon Austen Authors. I know you find it an exceptionally well researched and compelling tale.
It’s clear from Jane Austen’s novels and letters that female friendships played a very important role in her life. In Northanger Abbey, inexperienced Catherine Morland is delighted when she makes a new friend, Isabella Thorpe, so soon after she arrives in Bath: ‘Catherine and Isabella, arm in arm…tasted the sweets of friendship in an unreserved conversation’.
When Jane Austen was a little girl, a passionate female friendship shocked the families involved and caused much gossip.
On 30 March 1778, in the dead of night, 23-year-old Sarah Ponsonby, disguised in men’s clothes and armed with a pistol, jumped from a downstairs window and left her home.
An elopement was not an uncommon event in those days of arranged marriages and strict parents. But Sarah was hurrying to meet 39-year-old Eleanor Butler, her intimate friend. The two Irish ladies hoped to escape to England, but their relatives, soon in hot pursuit, found them hiding in a barn. Their plan to live together seemed doomed.
Both ladies had problems at home. Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831), was related to the powerful Bessboroughs, who formed part of Ireland’s Protestant ruling class. Sarah was a penniless orphan. A kind relative, Lady Betty Fownes, and her husband Sir William, of Woodstock, took charge of the lonely girl and sent her to Miss Parke’s boarding school, Kilkenny. Here in 1768 she met Eleanor Butler – an event which changed her life.
Eleanor (1739–1829) was the daughter of Catholic aristocrats, Sir Walter and Madam Eleanor Butler of Kilkenny Castle. Eleanor, who had been educated at the English Benedictine Convent in Cambrai, France, was extremely well-read. She loved the works of writers like Rousseau and Voltaire. Her family thought she was a ‘blue-stocking’. Eleanor felt isolated and lonely.
Sarah and Eleanor’s friendship blossomed at school. Eleanor’s knowledgeable conversation and fondness for French literature made her an object of awe to Sarah. They discussed living together in peaceful retirement, à la Rousseau. When Sarah finished school and went back home, they wrote to each other secretly.
At first Sarah was happy at home; she attended balls and assemblies at Dublin Castle. But Sarah was pestered by Sir William. His wife was poorly, and he wanted a male heir.
Meanwhile Eleanor was being pressured by her family to ‘take the veil’. They did not want to maintain a spinster. Eleanor’s letters to Sarah became increasingly frantic.
Their thwarted escape in spring 1778 left Eleanor distraught and Sarah ill after sleeping in the barn. Eleanor’s parents were more determined than ever to send their daughter to a convent abroad. Sarah was very poorly, and terrified she would never see Eleanor again.
Sarah gradually recovered. In desperation, Eleanor fled her family again and hurried to Sarah’s home at Woodstock, where she was smuggled into her room by a sympathetic housemaid Mary Caryll.
After many arguments, the families surrendered; Sarah got her wish to live with Miss Butler. Eleanor’s family arranged a small financial allowance for her. In May 1778, they sailed from Ireland and began a tour of North Wales, with Mary Caryll in tow.
After exploring Crow Castle on the summit of Dinas Bran, and the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey, they continued their jaunt. The ladies originally planned to settle in England, but the beautiful Welsh countryside and the cheap cost of living there changed their minds. After lodging in the post office in Llangollen, in spring they were offered the tenancy of Pen-y-Maes cottage. Renaming it Plas Newydd (New Hall), they at last began their new life together.
The Ladies of Llangollen lost no time in beautifying their house and gardens; improvements they could ill afford on their tiny income. Luckily a friend obtained an annual pension from the King for Sarah; but they had constant money worries and often borrowed from friends. They kept four servants, their ‘family’: Mary Caryll, more friend than servant, who drew no wages; a kitchen-maid, footman and a gardener.
The two friends adopted a singular mode of dress. They wore blue riding habits, men’s neckcloths, cut their hair very short, and wore tall hats. But they were free to enjoy their ideal life of seclusion and self-improvement. They studied Latin and Italian; collected a huge library; stitched and sketched, and wrote to friends.
Inevitably, complete isolation was impossible. As their acquaintance grew, they visited the Myddletons at Chirk Castle and friends the Barretts at Oswestry, borrowing the carriage from the nearby Hand inn. The restoration of the Ormonde family titles meant Miss Butler became Lady Eleanor in 1791, but her unforgiving family kept all their money to themselves. To make ends meet, the Ladies kept cows and chickens, grew fruit and vegetables, and rented land for growing crops.
Eleanor was fiercely protective of their lifestyle. Imperious and haughty, she could be downright rude; the more tranquil Sarah often smoothed over her outbursts. But as reports of their Romantic friendship, ‘Gothick’ home and wonderful gardens (with over forty kinds of roses) spread, lots of eminent people came to see them.
Sheridan and Lady Caroline Lamb arrived at their door; Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) became a firm friend; writer Madame de Genlis stayed, her slumbers disturbed by the Aeolian harp positioned under her window.
Harriet Bowdler, (writer and sister of Thomas, the ‘improver’ of Shakespeare) visited, and corresponded frequently. She gave the Ladies a cow, named Linda; this redoubtable animal walked (the only affordable method) all the way from Bristol to Llangollen. Another literary friend was Anna Seward, ‘the Swan of Lichfield’, who. wrote many gushing letters to them, and composed Llangollen Vale in their honour.
Other literary stars who came to the Vale were Thomas De Quincey, Robert Southey, and Wordsworth and his family, who came to tea in 1824. Wordsworth wrote a sonnet on the Ladies’ Romantic retreat, and declared that Llangollen was ‘the Vale of Friendship’.
Eleanor and Sarah took great care of the parish’s poor people, despite their own limited means. In their turn, the people of Llangollen repaid their kindness. One old man nursed their sick cow; a little boy brought them white foxgloves for their garden; the whole village helped when their chimney caught fire. John Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott’s son-in-law, accompanied the writer on a visit to the Ladies. Lockhart wrote unkindly about their eccentric mode of dress, but confessed: ‘They have long been the guardian angels of the village, and are worshipped by man, woman and child’.
Eleanor and Sarah died two years apart. But they are forever united in the peaceful churchyard. The exact nature of Eleanor and Sarah’s romantic friendship is still controversial. But it was no-one else’s business, and it took great courage to defend their love and pursue their ideals despite the family pressures and conventions of their day.
Meet Sue Wilkes
Born in Lancashire and now living in Cheshire (since 1981), Sue Wilkes has been a fan of Jane Austen’s works since she was a little girl. At school, Sue read Physics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is a member of the Society of Authors. Her latest release, Regency Spies( Pen & Sword, 2015) uncovers the world of state spies, informers and secret societies in late Georgian Britain.
Sue’s first book Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives (History Press, 2008) recreates everyday life for working families in Victorian Lancashire during the Industrial Revolution. Regency Cheshire (Robert Hale, 2009), tells the story of county life during the age of Beau Brummell, Walter Scott and Jane Austen. The Children History Forgot (Robert Hale, 2011) explores children and young people’s working lives during the late Georgian and Victorian eras.
Tracing Your Ancestors’ Childhood (Pen & Sword, 2013), Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors (Pen & Sword, 2012) and Tracing Your Canal Ancestors (Pen & Sword, 2011) are guides for family historians.
A Visitor’s Guide to Jane Austen’s England (Pen & Sword, 2014) explores daily life for the middle and upper classes in late Georgian and Regency England.
Sue writes for adults and children and contributes regularly to magazines in the UK and USA. Her specialities are social and industrial history, literary history, and family history. Sue is also a creative writing tutor specialising in non-fiction. She is married, with two grown-up children. Sue is a Jane Austen fan. She loves country walks and exploring Britain’s history.
Read Sue’s blogs at http://suewilkes.blogspot.com/ and http://visitjaneaustensengland.blogspot.co.uk/
Follow her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sue.wilkes.94) and Twitter: @austensengland and @SueWilkesauthor.
Immerse yourself in the vanished world inhabited by Austen’s contemporaries. Packed with detail, and anecdotes, this is an intimate exploration of how the middle and upper classes lived from 1775, the year of Austen’s birth, to the coronation of George IV in 1820. Sue Wilkes skillfully conjures up all aspects of daily life within the period, drawing on contemporary diar
ies, illustrations, letters, novels, travel literature and archives.
Were all unmarried affluent men really ‘in want of a wife’?
Where would a young lady seek adventures?
Would ‘taking the waters’ at Bath and other spas kill or cure you?
Was Lizzy Bennet bitten by bed-bugs while traveling?
What would you wear to a country ball, or a dance at Almack’s?
Would Mr Darcy have worn a corset?
What hidden horrors lurked in elegant Regency houses?
Put on your dancing gloves and embrace a lost era of corsets and courtship!
This is an ingenious volume. The author, who has written extensively on social history and on genealogy, provides us with a detailed guide book to the habits, facilities, sights and values of Southern England in the early 19th century. Her walk-through of the territory is attractively supported by extensive quotations from the works of Jane Austen herself and from contemporaries. The text is lively and well arranged and the anecdotes relevant and illuminating. This is a book which Janites will enjoy and which will provide an informative context to the novels.
An Age of Revolutions:Sue Wilkes reveals the shadowy world of Britain’s spies, rebels and secret societies from the late 1780s until 1820. Drawing on contemporary literature and official records, Wilkes unmasks the real conspirators and tells the tragic stories of the unwitting victims sent to the gallows. In this ‘age of Revolutions’, when the French fought for liberty, Britain’s upper classes feared revolution was imminent. Thomas Paine’s incendiary Rights of Man called men to overthrow governments which did not safeguard their rights. Were Jacobins and Radical reformers in England and Scotland secretly plotting rebellion? Ireland, too, was a seething cauldron of unrest, its impoverished people oppressed by their Protestant masters. Britain’s governing elite could not rely on the armed services – even Royal Navy crews mutinied over brutal conditions. To keep the nation safe, a ‘war chest’ of secret service money funded a network of spies to uncover potential rebels amongst the underprivileged masses. It had some famous successes: dashing Colonel Despard, friend of Lord Nelson, was executed for treason. Sometimes in the deadly game of cat-and-mouse between spies and their prey suspicion fell on the wrong men, like poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. Even peaceful reformers risked arrest for sedition. Political meetings like Manchester’s ‘Peterloo’ were ruthlessly suppressed, and innocent blood spilt. Repression bred resentment – and a diabolical plot was born. The stakes were incredibly high: rebels suffered the horrors of a traitor’s death when found guilty. Some conspirators’ secrets died with them on the scaffold…
In 1914, a young Swedish minor named Car Eric Wickman left his job as a diamond drill operator in the rugged Mesabi Iron Ore Range in Hibbing, Minnesota, to open a Hupmobile (Goodyear Tire) franchise. The venture cost him $3000. Except to himself, young Wickman failed to make a single sale, so the enterprising young Swede abandoned his dealership dreams. 
The “jitney bus” proved popular with the miners. By moving things about with the bus, Wickman managed to add two extra seats. Passengers also rode on the running boards and fenders of the vehicle. Realizing he required more vehicles, Wickman convinced a blacksmith friend to go into partnership with him. Together, they purchased another Hupmobile. The car was enlarged to seat ten. The two men also expanded their routes. 
Eventually, Greyhound became part of the name of the company. A one-man, four-miles route in Minnesota became the world’s largest inter-city passenger carrier. “Wickman, it turns out, pretty much invented intercity bus travel—which for most Americans equals Greyhound, the company that emerged from that long-ago Hupmobile ride. ‘Greyhound has become generic for bus travel,’ says Robert Gabrick, author of Going The Greyhound Way. ‘Like Kleenex for tissues.’ Indeed, this classic American business icon—which, as it happens, is now owned by a British conglomerate—today has more than 7,300 employees, with estimated yearly sales of $820 million and 2,000 buses serving 3,800 destinations in 48 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces. ‘I’m amazed at Greyhound’s brand recognition,’ says DePaul University professor Joseph Schwieterman, an authority on intercity bus travel. ‘It’s an American success story.'” (
Princess Helena (Helena Augusta Victoria; Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein by marriage; 25 May 1846 – 9 June 1923) was the third daughter and fifth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Like the queen’s other children, Helena was educated by private tutors chosen by her father and his close friend and adviser, Baron Stockmar. At her birth, Albert reported to his brother, Ernest II, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, that Helena “came into this world quite blue, but she is quite well now”. He added that the Queen “suffered longer and more than the other times and she will have to remain very quiet to recover.”
After, Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria went into a profound depression that affected the remainder of her reign. Her children still under her care were expected to abandon their youthful pursuits and grieve for their beloved father, as did the Queen. At age sixteen, Helena was barely from the schoolroom, but Victoria’s few thoughts beyond her grief at Albert’s loss turned to finding an appropriate husband for a daughter that she had termed as the “least promising.” Victoria had written that “poor dear Lenchen, though most useful and active and clever and amiable, does not improve in looks and has great difficulty with her figure and her want of calm, quiet, graceful manners.” (Rappaport, Helen. Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO. Oxford. page 189.)
Three years later on another visit to Germany, Helena met another Prince Christian, this one of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg. On the maternal, Prince Christian held ties to a Danish noble family, as well as to the British royal family. His grandmother was the granddaughter of Frederick, King George II’s son. He was 15 years Helena’s senior. Unfortunately, the prince appeared older than he actually was, a fact that Victoria remarked upon on numerous occasions. Moreover, Christian was not the most intelligent of men (certainly nothing in the manner of Victoria’s “dear Albert”). He was not sophisticated or ambitious or very amiable. Nor did he possess a fortune worthy of Victoria’s daughter. Moreover, he had recently left his military post in the Prussian army. 
In my books, I often have my characters address their personal needs. For example, in A Touch of Grace, my heroine is working in the ladies’ retiring room as a seamstress at a ball, but as she is pregnant, she must sneak around to use the chamber pot that was meant for titled ladies. The heroine, Grace is married to a marquis, but she has run away from her husband and cannot let anyone know her identity. 
Born in Kirby Wiske (a village in the North Riding), Yorkshire, in 1515, Roger Ascham was the third son of John and Margaret Ascham. Ascham was the steward to Baron Scrope of Bolton. Roger Ascham was a scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education. In 1530, Ascham entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he studied Greek among other challenging subjects. He received his degree at the age of eighteen on 18 February 1534 and became a fellow of the college in March. At the age of twenty-one, Ascham became master of arts and began tutoring younger students. Ascham became reader in Greek around 1538 until Henry VII founded a lecture to take his place.
Ascham was educated at the house of Sir Humphrey Wingfield, a barrister, Ascham tells us, in the Toxophilus under a tutor named R. Bond. His preferred sport was archery, and Sir Humphrey “would at term times bring down from London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to see them shoot.” In 1545 Ascham published the treatise Toxophilus or the Schole or Partitions of Shooting partly in defense of archery against those who found the sport unbefitting a scholar. The work was dedicated to Henry VIII, who enjoyed the treatise so much that he granted Ascham a pension: ten pounds a year. Ascham was further honored by being assigned to tutor Prince Edward. 
Ladies in a country house were expected to practice the “correct” moral, social, and religious customs of the day. Not only were them women judged by these standards, but so were the rest of their family, especially if they acted from character. When Lydia Bennet elopes with George Wickham, she is considered a fallen woman, and by association her sisters were also considered of low morals. Such is the reason Darcy sets out to force a marriage between his old school chum and Elizabeth Bennet’s younger sisters. There would be those who criticized his marriage to Elizabeth because of her connections to trade, but the idea of marrying a woman who sister was of such low morals would not be easily overcome, even by a man of Darcy’s stature in Society. He cannot risk ruining his sister Georgiana’s Come Out by bringing a woman into her life who has relations of such low moral fiber. 
Facilities for the children were often quite sparse in comparison to the rest to the household. Girls’ toys were dolls and doll houses, perhaps a rocking horse or a small ball. Pamela Horn in Ladies of the Manor (page 32) tells us, “The clothing worn by well-to-do children for much of the Victorian and Edwardian period was cumbersome and uncomfortable. Little girls wore numerous petticoats – flannel in winter and stiffly starched cotton in summer. For outdoor excursions there were black-buttoned boots, ornate hats, and coats of pelisses, embellished with tucks, frills or pleats. There was also a large amount of ‘dressing up’ to cope with. According to Sarah Sedgwick, who was a nanny in several large households, winter clothing were retained, irrespective of the temperature, until late September. In winter, girls wore a vest, ‘a woollen binder, drawers, a bodice, a flannel petticoat and on top flannel dresses.’ Summer saw the flannel petticoat exchanged for one of lighter weight, ‘the binder was cotton instead of wool, and the frocks cotton, linen or muslin.’ The same clothes were never worn both morning and afternoon and a further complete change was required before the youngsters went downstairs for the ‘children’s hour.'”
These fabulous Thespians have brought us hours of viewing fun in Austen-inspired films. 
rtrayed Colonel Brandon in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility (21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016)
trayed Mr Weston in 2009’s Emma
28 February
Every Woman Dreams... 