Once upon a time there were two Victorian women who were best friends. Eleanor was, at 39, considered doomed to be a spinster by her aristocratic family, who vowed to send her to a nunnery. Sarah, age 23, was an orphan who was being pursued by her married and much older guardian. The women escaped from their homes dressed as men, and headed off to live a life of independence. Thus begins the Real Life Friendship and Presumably Romance between Eleanor and Sarah, the Ladies of Llangollen.
Eleanor Charlotte Butler was born into a highly-placed Irish family. They lived in Kilkenny Castle. Her family worried that she was much too brainy for a woman. Her brother had horrified the family by becoming a Protestant, and Eleanor’s family threatened to send the too-bookish-to-be marriageable Eleanor to a convent as a way to atone for the brother’s conversion as well as get a spinster daughter off their hands.
Eleanor’s friend Sarah Ponsonby lived nearby. Sarah and Eleanor met when Sarah was thirteen and became best friends – in fact, the families had introduced the girls to each other hoping that they would help one another land husbands.
Sarah was an orphan who was living with a male guardian. He was married but his wife was ill and he evidentially had his eye on Sarah for wife #2. Faced with a nunnery and an unwanted marriage respectively, Eleanor and Sarah escaped. They disguised themselves as men, took Sarah’s dog and a gun, and made it as far as the Waterford Ferry – but they were caught and taken home.
Sarah came down with a fever right after the thwarted escape. Eleanor managed to get away from her family and hid in Sarah’s room, with the help of a maid, Mary Carryll. When she was found out, her family refused to take her back. Faced with the prospect of having to deal with Sarah and Eleanor, Sarah’s family finally let both women leave. They settled in a house which they named Plas Newydd, just outside Llangollen Village in Wales.
Eleanor and Sarah began expanding and decorating Plas Newydd as soon as they moved in. They were constantly in debt, but they couldn’t resist adding to their gardens and their collection of antiques furniture and art. Their dishes and linens were monogrammed with their paired initials and were of the finest quality, Mary Carryll stayed on as their servant. They did not travel, but spent their time planning improvements to their home and studying literature.
Something about the two women and their dream of living in beautiful, academic seclusion struck the imagination of the public. Visitors described Eleanor as being more masculine while Mary was more stereotypically feminine in appearance. Everyone who was anyone wanted to correspond with and visit the ladies – their visitors included Caroline Lamb (she was related to Sarah), William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. Eventually they even reconciled (sort of) with their families.
In discussing Regency and Victorian sexuality, it is important to note that the Victorians (and their Regency predecessors) thought about sexuality differently than people do today. It was illegal for men to commit “sodomy,” but perfectly acceptable for men to hold hands, kiss each other publicly, and write passionate letters to each other – this was known as ‘passionate friendship’ or ‘romantic friendship.’
Women were also allowed to engage in “passionate friendships” that included bedsharing, as long as these friendships did not interfere with the business of marrying men and having babies. The issue is complicated by the fact that the Victorian Era proper lasted for eight years, and during that time people like Havelock Ellis began researching and writing more about different kinds of sexuality. Attitudes and language in the Regency and in the early Victorian periods were quite different from that of the later Victorian period.
Regardless of whether The Ladies felt sexual attraction towards each other, they saw themselves, and were recognized by others, as a married couple. They referred to each other as “Husband” and Wife.” They stayed together for fifty years, avoiding any marital relationship other than the one they had with each other, until Eleanor died in 1829. Sarah stayed at Plas Newydd until her own death a few years later, in 1831. Their home is now a museum run by the Denbighshire County Council – so you can visit if you wish!
Sources
“The Ladies of Llangollen” on Women’s History Blog
“The Ladies of Llangollen”, by Phil Carradice, for bbc.co.uk
“Wales: A Tale of Two Ladies Ahead of Their Time” by Anne Campbell Dixon for Telegraph.co.uk
The following three books have a lot of information about Regency and Victorian sexuality and romantic friendship:
Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America by Rachel Hope Cleves
The Bronte Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, by Deborah Lutz
Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism: by Deborah Lutz
Call me a pedant, but the ladies themselves were not even alive in Victorian times. I’ve just been reading the Diaries of Anne Lister, and she went to visit the ladies around 1822 when they were getting very elderly and infirm.
Oh! Oh! I heartily reccomend “Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis” by Alexis Coe. It’s true crime, of course, but if takes a hard look at the societal expectations, limitations, and desperation around “passionate friendships” of the Victorian/Gilded Age.
Lillian Faderman has written a lot, although her gender and sexuality politics in her work can be dated.
Like Gillian B, I was confused by the references to the age of Victoria, when the dates are clear that the Ladies lived in the Georgian age (and later in the Regency). But the inclusion of the Ladies in this series is spot on: they were brave and resourceful and it is fascinating how they made such a public and social success of their relationship.
I don’t think it’s being pedantic at all, when the article makes so much of this being a ‘Victorian’ relationship and is even making statements about the distinctions between Regency, early-Victorian and late-Victorian views on sexuality. I’d have thought it was quite important to establish which era(s) these ladies actually did live through.
In fact, they moved in together in 1780. That’s more than 30 years before the Regency. So I’m not sure what any of the background information has to do with their story at all?
Also, I think you meant to say that the Victorian Era lasted eighty years, not eight.
Soooo spooky – I actually recommended nearby Bala as a great designation when Sarah W was visiting the UK recently.
I’m going back (to Bala) in October and am now determined to go and look around Plas Newydd since the TV adaptation of VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER was filmed there (who knew?) and it’s always been my favourite of the Narnian Chronicles.
Thanks for this fascinating article.
Sharon
Sharon the restored steam railway is worth a look too. We have a friend who lives in Llangollen, well to be accurate she lives at the top of Llangollen which is spread down the steep hillside into the valley below. We like to visit the weekend they have a beer festival on the railway 😉
Ummm. As others have noted, some oddities in the dates. Victoria ruled 1837-1901, a period of sixty-three years (and seven months): neither eight nor eighty. Eleanor’s death was eight years before Victoria’s accession; she died during the reign of George IV (after George III had died and the Regency ended), and Sarah died in the reign of William IV (who is most notable for not having an era named after him, I suppose). The ladies were both born in the reign of George II, but lived most of their lives under George III (1760-1820, though his son George IV was Regent from 1811). At the time of their move to Wales, fashion for the upper classes mandated things like powdered wigs, still.
Georgian morality was somewhat different from that of the Regency or of the Victorian era. Some of Georgette Heyer’s oeuvre are set in the Georgian era (The Black Moth, Powder and Patch, These Old Shades, The Masqueraders, Devil’s Cub, The Convenient Marriage, The Talisman Ring, and Faro’s Daughter, per Wikipedia).
You are all correct in that The Ladies lived during the late Regency. In the post, I mention Regency and Victorian attitudes for two reasons. One is that while in general the Regency and Georgian periods had very different attitudes towards sexuality than the Victorian, the attitudes towards friendship and homosexuality were pretty similar, with the caveat that there was a considerable different in language and attitude between the late Regency/early Victorian and the late Victorian.
I also refer to the Victorian period quite a bit (as well as the Regency) because while the Ladies were famous in their own time, they also had an influence on Victorian attitudes towards women living together.
As far as referring to The Ladies as “Victorian” and the Victorian as being eight years long – that’s entirely my bad. You are all correct, they were not Victorian, and the Victorian period officially lasted from 1837 – 1901. Nothing pedantic at all about pointing out such significant errors!
Jazzlet – where do you live – in the US?
I have met Julian Birley who has been such a passionate force behind the restored steam engine and I’m sure he’d be delighted to learn that news of the railway has travelled all the way to the Smart Bitches site! 🙂
I just tweeted this to y’all, but: this lovely story really makes me want to rewrite/adapt this wonderful song: https://youtu.be/lo05meaz97I
Might I point out at this instance that every part of this discussion has been polite, aimed to help and without rancour. I do love a civilised discussion with the aim of furthering knowledge, and I have this one bookmarked with a star for the excellent information and links contained therein.
I am dusappointed though that when we visited Llangollen in 2000, we visited the Model Train and Dr Who museum but did not go to these fine ladies’home. Next trip…
It’s kinda of interesting that to the layman and the academic, both Sharpe and Downton Abbey are basically Victorian, but to the educated interested in the middle both are way out. Some academics would count everything up to the independence of India as Victorian, because they consider British colonialism as the defining element of Victorianism. Others don’t start counting anything as Victorian until the 1850s because that’s when people starting claiming Victorian as an identity for themselves. Because, to be honest, defining an era by the longevity of a rich white woman when you’re talking about global social changes is a symptom of Victorian attitudes in itself!
And, let’s be honest, neither William nor Edward are markedly different enough to their ends of Victoria’s reign that studying either in isolation makes sense.
(guess who hangs out with the Victorian Studies department researchers?)
This is such an interesting story, and the comments are even better! How appropriate, too, as my cousin and her wife just got married yesterday after being together for thirty years! 🙂
Sharon, no I not the US, I live in Stockport! The friend used to work with my OH many years ago and bred our first German Shepherd 🙂
There’s another book on this general subject that I dipped into for my master’s thesis – still in print: Companions Without Vows by Betty Rizzo. 🙂
On a side note if anyone listens to Stuff You Missed In History Class they did an episode on “Boston Marriages” which is the US version of the Ladies of Llangollen. It was really interesting
There is also the fascinating “Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America” (previously reviewed on this site).