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Caroline Norton

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Caroline Norton by Sir George Hayter in 1832

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (22 March 1808 – 15 June 1877) was an English social reformer, and author of the early and mid-nineteenth century.[1] Caroline left her husband in 1836, following which her husband sued her close friend Lord Melbourne, the then Whig Prime Minister, for criminal conversation. The jury threw out the claim, but Caroline was unable to obtain a divorce and was denied access to her three sons. Caroline's intense campaigning led to the passing of the Custody of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and the Married Women's Property Act 1870. Caroline modelled for the fresco of Justice in the House of Lords by Daniel Maclise.

Youth and marriage

Watercolour sketch of Caroline Norton by Emma Fergusson 1860, National Portrait Gallery of Scotland
Portrait engraving of Caroline Norton from the frontispiece of one of her books.

Caroline was born in London to Thomas Sheridan and the novelist Caroline Henrietta Callander.[2] Her father was an actor, soldier, and colonial administrator, and the son of the prominent Irish playwright and Whig statesman Richard Brinsley Sheridan.[3][4] Her mother was Scottish, the daughter of a landed gentleman, Col. Sir James Callander of Craigforth and Lady Elizabeth MacDonnell, the sister of an Irish peer, the 1st Marquess of Antrim.[5][6] Mrs. Sheridan authored three short novels described by one of her daughter's biographers as "rather stiff with the style of the eighteenth century, but none without a certain charm and wit..."[7]

In 1817, her father died in South Africa, where he was serving as the colonial secretary at the Cape of Good Hope.[8] His family was left virtually penniless.[9] Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, an old friend of her grandfather's, arranged for Caroline's family to live at Hampton Court Palace in a "grace and favour" apartment, where they remained for several years.[7]

Her eldest sister, Helen, was a songwriter who married Price Blackwood, the 4th Baron Dufferin and Claneboye. Through her, Caroline became the aunt of Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, who later served as the third Governor General of Canada and eighth Viceroy of India. Her younger sister, Georgiana, considered the prettiest of the three, later became the wife of Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset.

In 1827, Caroline married George Chapple Norton, barrister, M.P. for Guildford, and the younger brother of Lord Grantley.[1][10]

During the early years of her marriage, Caroline tried to establish herself as a major society hostess.[4][11] Caroline's unorthodox behaviour and candid conversation raised more than a few eyebrows among 19th-century British high society; she made many enemies.[4] Among her friends she counted such literary and political luminaries as Samuel Rogers, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Trelawney, Abraham Hayward, Mary Shelley, Fanny Kemble, Benjamin Disraeli, the future King Leopold I of Belgium and William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire.[10][12][13]

Norton encouraged his wife to use her connections to advance his career. In 1831 he was made a Metropolitan Police Magistrate.[14] During these years, Caroline turned to prose and poetry as a means of earning money. Her first book, The Sorrows of Rosalie (1829), was well received.[10][15] The Undying One (1830), a romance founded upon the legend of the Wandering Jew soon followed.[16]

Separation and Melbourne scandal

In 1836, Caroline left her husband.[1][17] Caroline managed to subsist on her earnings as an author, but Norton claimed these as his own, arguing successfully in court that, as her husband, Caroline's earnings were legally his.[1][18] Paid nothing by her husband, her earnings confiscated, Caroline used the law to her own advantage.[19] Running up bills in her husband's name, Caroline told the creditors when they came to collect, that if they wished to be paid, they could sue her husband.[19]

Not long after their separation, Norton took their sons, hiding them with relatives in Scotland and later in Yorkshire, refusing to tell Caroline anything of their whereabouts.[20][21][22][23] Caroline was involved in an ongoing affair with her close friend, Lord Melbourne, the then Whig Prime Minister.[20][17] Initially, Norton demanded £10,000 from Melbourne, but Melbourne refused , and Norton instead took the Prime Minister to court.[1][4]

The trial lasted nine days, and in the end the jury threw out Norton's claim, siding with Lord Melbourne.[24] However, the resulting publicity almost brought down the government.[25] The scandal eventually died away, but not before Caroline's reputation was ruined and her friendship with Lord Melbourne destroyed.[26][27] Norton continued to prevent Caroline from seeing her three sons, and blocked her from receiving a divorce.[1] According to English law in 1836, children were the legal property of their father, and there was little Caroline could do to regain custody.[18]

Political activity

Caroline Norton, detail of a portrait by Frank Stone, circa 1845

Caroline was soon faced with a tragedy; the death of her youngest son, William, in 1842.[14][28] The child, out riding alone, suffered a fall from his horse and was injured.[20] According to Caroline, the child’s wounds were minor; however, they were not properly attended and blood-poisoning set in.[28] Norton, realising that the child was near death, sent for Caroline. Unfortunately, William died before she arrived in Scotland.[14][29] Caroline blamed Norton for the child's death, accusing him of neglect.[14] After William's death, Norton allowed Caroline to visit their sons, but he retained full custody, and all of her visits were supervised.[20]

Caroline became involved in the passage of laws promoting social justice, especially those granting rights to married and divorced women.[1][3][18][22] Her poems "A Voice from the Factories" (1836) and "The Child of the Islands" (1845) centred around her political views.

While Caroline fought to extend women's legal rights, she wasn't involved in further social activism, and had no interest in the 19th-century women's movement with regard to issues such as women's suffrage.[30] In fact, in an article published in The Times in 1838, countering a claim that she was a "radical", Caroline stated: "The natural position of woman is inferiority to man. Amen! That is a thing of God's appointing, not of man's devising. I believe it sincerely, as part of my religion. I never pretended to the wild and ridiculous doctrine of equality."[31]

Later life

Caroline had a five-year affair with prominent Conservative politician Sidney Herbert in the early 1840s; however, Herbert married another woman in 1846.[32] In middle age, she befriended the author George Meredith.[33] She served as the inspiration for Diana Warwick, the intelligent, fiery-tempered heroine of Meredith's novel Diana of the Crossways, published in 1885.[32] Caroline finally became free with the death of George Norton in 1875. She married an old friend, Scottish historical writer and politician for moneySir W. Stirling Maxwell in March 1877. Caroline died in London three months later.[34][35][36]

Family and descendants

Her eldest son, Fletcher Norton, died of tuberculosis in Paris at the age of thirty. In 1854, her remaining son, Thomas Brinsley Norton, married a young Italian, Maria Chiara Elisa Federigo, whom he met in Naples.[37] Thomas also suffered from poor health, and spent much of his life as an invalid, reliant upon his mother for financial assistance.[37] Despite his ill health, he lived long enough to succeed his uncle as 4th Baron Grantley of Markenfield.[34]

Lord Grantley also predeceased his mother, dying in 1877. His son, John, inherited the title and estates.[38] The 5th Lord Grantley was a numismatist, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Numismatic Society and the British Numismatic Society. He assembled a large collection of coins and also grew orchids. He caused a scandal in 1879, as his mother did many years earlier, when he ran off with another man's wife, the former Katharine McVickar, daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker.[39] The jilted husband was the 5th Lord Grantley's older cousin, Major Charles Grantley Campbell Norton.[40] Katharine's marriage to Charles was annulled, and they were married that November, five days before the birth of their first child.[41] Despite her scandalous introduction to British society, Katharine went on to become a successful London hostess.[42]

Work

Library resources about
Caroline Norton
By Caroline Norton

Political pamphlets

Poetry collections

Novels

Plays

  • The Gypsy Father (1830)
  • Vathek (based on the novel by William Beckford, 1830)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Perkin pp. 26–28
  2. ^ Perkins, pp. 1–2, 5
  3. ^ a b Strauss, p. 141
  4. ^ a b c d Mitchell, pp. 219–221
  5. ^ Perkins, p. 1
  6. ^ Cokayne, and others, The Complete Peerage, volume I, page 177.
  7. ^ a b Perkins, pp. 5–6
  8. ^ Perkins, pp. 2–3
  9. ^ Perkins, p. 4
  10. ^ a b c Scott-Kilvert, p. 614
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Woodham220 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Perkin, p. 85
  13. ^ Perkins, pp. 19, 26, 48, 84, 178
  14. ^ a b c d Woodham-Smith, pp. 220–221
  15. ^ Perkins, p. 21
  16. ^ Perkins, pp. 23–24
  17. ^ a b Mitchell, pp. 221–223
  18. ^ a b c Yalom, p. 186
  19. ^ a b Perkin, pp. 28, 72–73
  20. ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference Caine, p. 67 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference Stone178 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ a b Kertzer, pp. 125–126
  23. ^ Perkin, pp. 26–28, 96
  24. ^ Mitchell, pp. 223–224
  25. ^ Mitchell, pp. 221–224, 226, 228
  26. ^ Mitchell, pp. 223–224, 226, 228
  27. ^ Caine, p. 68
  28. ^ a b Perkins, p. 166
  29. ^ Perkins, p. 167
  30. ^ Caine, pp. 57, 66, 68
  31. ^ Stone, p. 263
  32. ^ a b Woodham-Smith, p. 221
  33. ^ Mitchell, p. 220
  34. ^ a b Barron, p. 5
  35. ^ Perkins, p. 296
  36. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  37. ^ a b Perkins, p. 253
  38. ^ MacColl pp. 239 and 342
  39. ^ MacColl, pp. 239–240, 342
  40. ^ MacColl, p. 239
  41. ^ MacColl, p. 342
  42. ^ MacColl, p. 240

References

  • Atkinson, Diane. The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton. London, Preface Publishing, 2012.
  • Caine, Barbara. English Feminism, 1780–1980, Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Chedzoy, Alan. A Scandalous Woman, The Story of Caroline Norton. London, 1992.
  • Cousin, John William. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton, 1910.
  • Kemble, Fanny. The Records of a Girlhood. New York: Holt, 1879.
  • Kertzer, David I. Family Life in the Nineteenth Century, 1789–1913: The History of the European family. Volume 2. Yale University Press, 2002.
  • Mitchell, L.G. Lord Melbourne, 1779–1848. Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan. English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century. London: [s.n.], 1854.
  • Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Routledge, 1989.
  • Perkins, Jane Gray. The Life of the Honourable Mrs. Norton. John Murray, 1909.
  • Scott-Kilvert, Diana. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–1844. Volume: 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
  • Stone, Lawrence. Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987. Oxford University Press, 1990.
  • Strauss, Sylvia. Traitors to the Masculine Cause: The Men's Campaigns for Women's Rights. Greenwood Press, 1982.
  • Woodham-Smith, Cecil. Florence Nightingale, 1820–1910. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1951.
  • Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Wife. New York: Harper Perennial, 2002.
Library resources about
Caroline Norton
By Caroline Norton
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
Wikiquote has quotations related to Caroline Norton.

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