Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, Lady Stirling-Maxwell (néeSheridan; 22 March 1808 – 15 June 1877)[1] was an active English social reformer and author.[2] She left her husband, who was accused by many of coercive behaviour, in 1836. Her husband then sued her close friend Lord Melbourne, then the Whig Prime Minister, for criminal conversation (adultery).
Watercolour sketch of Caroline Norton by Emma Fergusson 1860, National Portrait Gallery of ScotlandPortrait engraving of Caroline Norton from the frontispiece of one of her books
Caroline Norton was born in London to Thomas Sheridan and the novelist Caroline Henrietta Callander.[3][1] Her father was an actor, soldier and colonial administrator, the son of the prominent Irish playwright and Whig statesman Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his wife Elizabeth Ann Linley.[4][5][6] Caroline's Scottish mother was the daughter of a landed gentleman, Col. Sir James Callander of Craigforth and Lady Elizabeth MacDonnell, sister of an Irish peer, the 1st Marquess of Antrim.[7][8] 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...."[9]
In 1827, she married George Chapple Norton, barrister, Member of Parliament for Guildford, and the younger brother of Lord Grantley.[2][13] George was a jealous and possessive husband given to violent fits of drunkenness. The union quickly proved unhappy due to his mental and physical abuse.[4][14] To make matters worse, George was unsuccessful as a barrister, and the couple fought bitterly over money.[15]
Despite his jealousy and pride, George encouraged his wife to use her ties to advance his career. It was through her influence that in 1831 he was made a Metropolitan Police Magistrate.[19] During these years, Caroline turned to prose and poetry as means of releasing her inner emotions and earning money. Her first book, The Sorrows of Rosalie (1829), was well received.[13][20]The Undying One (1830), a romance founded on the legend of the Wandering Jew, soon followed.[21] From 1832 to 1837, she edited The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée.[22] In 1843, she petitioned Sir Robert Peel for the post of Poet Laureate after the death of Robert Southey, but was unsuccessful.[23]
Separation and Melbourne scandal
In 1836, Caroline left her husband.[2][24] She managed to subsist on her earnings as an author, but George claimed these as his, arguing this successfully in court.[2][25] Paid nothing by her husband and her earnings confiscated, Norton used the law to her own advantage.[26] Running up bills in her husband's name, she told the creditors when they came to collect, that if they wished to be paid, they could sue her husband.[26]
Not long after their separation, George abducted their sons, hiding them with relatives in Scotland and later in Yorkshire, refusing to tell Caroline their whereabouts.[14][27][28][29] George accused Caroline of involvement in an ongoing affair with a close friend, Lord Melbourne, then Whig Prime Minister.[14][24] Initially, George demanded £10,000 from Melbourne, but Melbourne refused to be blackmailed and George instead took the Prime Minister to court.[2][5]
Lord Melbourne wrote to Lord Holland, "The fact is [that George] is a stupid brute, and [Caroline] had not temper nor dissimulation enough to enable her to manage him."[24] Despite this admission, hoping to avert an even worse scandal, he pleaded with Caroline to return to George, insisting that "a woman should never part from her husband whilst she can remain with him."[24] Lord Melbourne relented a few days later, stating that he understood her decision to leave:
This conduct upon his part seems perfectly unaccountable...You know that I have always counselled you to bear everything and remain to the last. I thought it for the best. I am afraid it is no longer possible. Open breaches of this kind are always to be lamented, but you have the consolation that you have done your utmost to stave this extremity off as long as possible.[30]
At the end of a nine-day trial, the jury threw out George's claim, siding with Melbourne,[31] but the publicity almost brought down the government.[32] The scandal eventually died, but not before Caroline's reputation was ruined and her friendship with Melbourne destroyed.[33][34] George continued to keep Caroline from seeing her three sons and blocked her from receiving a divorce.[2] Under English law in 1836, children were the legal property of their father and there was little Caroline could do to regain custody.[25]
Political activity
Caroline Norton, detail of a portrait by Frank Stone, c. 1845
Caroline soon faced an additional tragedy; the death of her youngest son, William, in 1842.[19][35] The child, out riding alone, fell from his horse and was injured.[14] According to Caroline, the child's wounds were minor, but they were not properly treated and blood-poisoning set in.[35] George, realising that the child was near death, sent for Caroline. Unfortunately, William died before she arrived in Scotland.[19][36] Caroline blamed George for the child's death, accusing him of neglect.[19] After William's death, George allowed Caroline to visit their sons, but he retained full custody and all of her visits were supervised.[14]
Due to her dismal domestic situation, Caroline became deeply involved in the passage of laws promoting social justice, especially those granting rights to married and divorced women.[2][4][25][28] Her poems "A Voice from the Factories" (1836) and "The Child of the Islands" (1845) centred on her political views.
When Parliament debated divorce reform in 1855, Caroline submitted to members a detailed account of her own marriage, and described the difficulties faced by women as the result of existing laws.
An English wife may not leave her husband's house. Not only can he sue her for restitution of "conjugal rights," but he has a right to enter the house of any friend or relation with whom she may take refuge...and carry her away by force...
If her husband take proceedings for a divorce, she is not, in the first instance, allowed to defend herself...She is not represented by attorney, nor permitted to be considered a party to the suit between him and her supposed lover, for "damages."
If an English wife be guilty of infidelity, her husband can divorce her so as to marry again; but she cannot divorce the husband, a vinculo, however profligate he may be....
Those dear children, the loss of whose pattering steps and sweet occasional voices made the silence of [my] new home intolerable as the anguish of death...what I suffered respecting those children, God knows ... under the evil law which suffered any man, for vengeance or for interest, to take baby children from the mother.[27][37]
Mainly through Caroline's intense campaigning,[38] which included a letter to Queen Victoria,[39] Parliament passed the Custody of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and the Married Women's Property Act 1870,[27][28] which she worked on with the suffragist Barbara Bodichon.[40] One recent biographer, Diane Atkinson, notes that unlike in 1839 and 1857, Caroline played no part in campaigning for the 1870 Act.[41] Under the Custody of Children Act, legally separated or divorced wives, provided they were not found guilty of criminal conversation, were granted the custody of their children up to the age of seven, and periodic access thereafter. The Act applied in England, Wales and Ireland only. While Caroline could have hoped for custody of her youngest son, and access to her older sons who were seven and ten when the Act was passed into law, her husband insisted that they stay in Scotland.
The Act gave married women, for the first time, a right to their children. However, because women needed to petition in the Court of Chancery, in practice few women had the financial means to exert their rights.[42] The Matrimonial Causes Act reformed the law on divorce, among others making divorce more affordable, and established a model of marriage based on contract. The Married Women's Property Act 1870 allowed married women to inherit property and take court action on their own behalf. The Act granted married women in the UK, for the first time, a separate legal identity from their husband.[25][43]
In 1849 Daniel Maclise finished his fresco of Justice in the House of Lords, for which Caroline had modelled. He chose her as one seen by many as a famous victim of injustice.[44] Caroline's old friend Lord Melbourne opposed the reforms she fought for.[45] He was scolded for his opposition by Queen Victoria; the Queen wrote that he defended his actions, stating: "I don't think you should give a woman too much right... there should not be two conflicting powers... a man ought to have the right in a family."[45]
While Caroline fought to extend women's legal rights, she eschewed further social activism and had no interest in the 19th-century women's movement on issues such as women's suffrage.[46] In fact, in an article published in The Times in 1838, she countered a claim that she was a "radical": "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."[47]
Later life
Caroline is said to have had a five-year affair with a prominent Conservative politician Sidney Herbert in the early 1840s, but Herbert married another woman in 1846.[48] In middle age, she befriended the author George Meredith.[49] She served as the inspiration for Diana Warwick, the intelligent, fiery-tempered heroine of Meredith's novel Diana of the Crossways, published in 1885.[48] Caroline finally became free with George's death in 1875. She married an old friend, the Scottish historical writer and politician Sir W. Stirling Maxwell in March 1877. Caroline died in London three months later.[50][51][52]
Family and descendants
Caroline's eldest son, Fletcher Norton, died of tuberculosis in Paris at the age of 30. She was devastated by the loss.[53]
In 1854, her remaining son, Thomas Brinsley Norton, married a young Italian, Maria Chiara Elisa Federigo, whom he met in Naples.[54] Thomas also suffered from poor health, and spent much of his life as an invalid, reliant upon his mother for financial assistance.[54] Despite this, he lived long enough to succeed his uncle as 4th Baron Grantley of Markenfield.[50] Lord Grantley also predeceased his mother, dying in 1877.
Thomas' son, John, inherited the title and estates.[55] 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 grew orchids. John caused a scandal in 1879 by running off with another man's wife, the former Katharine McVickar, daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker.[56] The jilted husband was the 5th Lord Grantley's older cousin, Major Charles Grantley Campbell Norton.[57] Katharine's marriage to Charles was annulled, and Katharine and John were married that November, five days before the birth of their first child.[58] Despite her scandalous introduction to British society, Katharine went on to become a successful London hostess.[59]
Commemoration
In April 2021 English Heritage announced that Caroline was one of six women to be honoured that year with a blue plaque marking her central London home for over 30 years.[60] It was unveiled on 3 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair by Antonia Fraser.[61][62][63]
A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth's Marriage & Divorce Bill, 1855
A Review of the Divorce Bill of 1856, with propositions for an amendment of the laws affecting married persons, 1857
Poetry collections
The Sorrows of Rosalie: A Tale with Other Poems, 1829
I Do Not Love Thee, 1829
The Cold Change, 1829
The Undying One and Other Poems, 1830
The Faithless Knight, 1830
The Dream, and Other Poems, 1840
The Child of the Islands, 1845
Aunt Carry's Ballads for Children, 1847
Bingen on the Rhine, 1847, subsequent printing "Copyrighted 1883 by Porter & Coates, Philadelphia"
The Centenary Festival, 1859
The Lady of La Garaye, 1862
We Have Been Friends Together
Novels
The Dandies Rout, 1825
The Wife, and Woman's Reward, 3 vols, 1835
Stuart of Dunleath, 1851
Lost and Saved, 3 vols, 1863
Old Sir Douglas. 3 vols, 1866
Plays
The Gypsy Father, 1830
Vathek, based on the novel by William Beckford, 1830. In the Notes & Queries issue of March 2017, 86–95 ("The Lost Manuscript of Caroline Norton's Vathek"), Robert J. Gemmett provides compelling evidence that Caroline's manuscript of this play may have survived.
Songs
Juanita, 1855: Notably the first ballad by a woman composer to achieve massive sales.[64]
^Fraser, Antonia (2021). The case of the married woman : Caroline Norton : a 19th century heroine who wanted justice for women (1st ed.). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 42. ISBN9781474610926.
^Fraser, Antonia (2021). The case of the married woman: Caroline Norton: a 19th century heroine who wanted justice for women (1st ed.). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 148–9. ISBN9781474610926.
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