A Georgian Marriage Gone Bad

One of the reasons I like setting love stories in the past is that the stakes were so high. When couples married two hundred years ago, it was for life. I was recently reading about the Georgian/regency novelist, Matthew "Monk" Lewis (a brief mention of Lewis and his most famous work, the lurid and bestselling The Monk, can be found in this earlier post on gothic horrors). The story of his parents' disastrous marriage is almost as colorful as Lewis's fiction.

Matthew Lewis (not the actor who played Neville Longbottom, but the father of the author of the same name) married Frances "Fanny" Maria Sewell in 1773, when both were twenty-three. Lewis had already earned a master's degree from Oxford and was the Chief Clerk in the War Office; in just two years, he would be the Deputy-Secretary at War. His family was wealthy, as was hers. Both owned neighboring estates in England as well as substantial property in Jamaica. The couple had four children together, of which the novelist, Matthew Gregory Lewis, was the eldest and heir. The senior Matthew Lewis seems to have been dedicated and hard-working; Maria, on the other hand, was admired, artistic, and injudicious.

The lurid plot of Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk manages to outdo the drama of his family life. ("A Monk with a Beguine," 1591, by Dutch painter Cornelis van Haarlem.)

By 1781, when little Matthew was only six, his parents' marriage wasn't going well, owing to their mismatched temperaments--and to his mother's interest in a music master named Samuel Harrison. After sleeping apart for some time, the couple decided to separate, with Lewis agreeing to generous terms that gave his wife the use of one of his houses, full custody of the children (legally, they were his to take away), and six hundred pounds a year. Before the separation was finalized, however, Lewis returned from a visit to the Duke of Dorset to discover Fanny had been flagrantly carrying on in his house with Harrison the music master, sending him into a "phrenzy."

Fanny Lewis fled. She began changing addresses and using a false name, Mrs. Langley, to avoid her husband. He was able to track her down, however, and came to confront her on July 3, 1782--which, inconveniently for Fanny, happened to be the same day she was giving birth to an illegitimate child by the music master.

Lewis sought a separation--not a private one, but a judicial separation of the sort obtained as a precursor to divorce. On February 27, 1783, Lewis was awarded his separation on the grounds of adultery. Divorces, however, were as complicated and expensive to obtain as they were rare. Lewis petitioned Parliament, and his counsel presented the facts of Fanny's adultery, but the House of Lords refused to grant the divorce.

And here's the part that's most surprising to me as a citizen of the twenty-first century: Lewis supported Fanny until his death in 1812. Why did he agree to such generous terms? Probably because it was the thing to do. A husband was expected to "keep" his wife, which meant everything from seeing that she didn't go hungry to paying her gambling debts. It was one of the fundamental expectations underlying marriage--just as wives had a duty to have sex with their husbands whether they liked it or not, husbands had a duty to support their wives financially whether they liked it or not. And since marriage was a sacrament, adultery and even separation couldn't completely erase that expectation.

Though it's slightly off-topic, I'll close with an anecdote from James Boswell's 1791 Life of Samuel Johnson that provides a little more insight into the Georgian view of marriage as immutable and permanent, no matter how messy: 

I repeated to him an argument of a lady of my acquaintance, who maintained, that her husband's having been guilty of numberless infidelities, released her from conjugal obligations, because they were reciprocal. Johnson: "This is miserable stuff, Sir. To the contract of marriage, besides the man and wife, there is a third party -- Society; and, if it be considered as a vow -- GOD: and, therefore, it cannot be dissolved by their consent alone.

Samuel Johnson was no fan of divorce. (Painting by Joshua Reynolds.)

Laws are not made for particular cases, but for men in general. A woman may be unhappy with her husband; but she cannot be freed from him without the approbation of the civil and ecclesiastical power. A man may be unhappy, because he is not so rich as another; but he is not to seize upon another's property with his own hand." Boswell: "But, Sir, this lady does not want that the contract should be dissolved; she only argues that she may indulge herself in gallantries with equal freedom as her husband does, provided she takes care not to introduce a spurious issue into his family. You know, Sir, what Macrobius has told us of Julia."*  Johnson: "This lady of yours, Sir, I think, is very fit for a brothel."

*Boswell's reference to "what Macrobius has told us of Julia" concerns a report that Augustus Caesar's daughter supposedly indulged in adultery only if she was pregnant with her husband's child: "To certain persons who knew of her infidelities and were expressing surprise at her children’s likeness to her husband Agrippa, since she was so free with her favors, she said: "Passengers are never allowed on board until the hold is full."

Alyssa Everett's upcoming regency romance, A Tryst With Trouble, will be released on September 23. It will join her current release, Lord of Secrets, and her debut regency, Ruined by Rumor. Alyssa hopes you'll visit her website and follow her on Twitter and Facebook, where she promises not to spam you.

Finding Love in Ancient Rome

The modern idea of romantic love, as the most causal of history buffs know, has not been well embraced across the ages.  Over the centuries, the inequalities between men and women made ideal romantic relationships virtually unknown. People didn’t marry for love, but for a host of other, more practical reasons.

Life in ancient Rome was no different. Girls stopped receiving formal education around age eleven, and between the ages of twelve and fourteen, were considered 'ready to marry.' Often, economic conditions and inter-family relationships were deemed more important than love, and these young ladies often found themselves pawns in power games beyond their control.

Typically, women in Rome lived their lives under the auspices of a man: father, brother, uncle, husband, son, depending on the season of her life. He controlled the money (until late in the Roman Empire) and thereby controlled the women in his care. When a woman married, a dowry went from her pater familia to her new husband in a symbolic transfer of power over her. Even when defining relationships, women never won. They were legally forbidden from adultery, though men were not, and while homosexuality among men was tolerated, lesbianism never found any such equal footing. 

All this is not to say women had no power. Power is gained where one can find it. A wife and mother was the power behind the family and home, and could wield considerable strength. She saw to the education and upbringing of any children, and while she didn't earn a salary, she often decided how and where money was spent.  

We can intuit that true love did blossom between men and women, that spouses who were forced together grew to love one another, that pairings to groom political favor or gain economic advantages did not necessarily exclude the woman from a good quality of life or a loving spouse.   

And, as you may know, many of our traditional wedding symbols come from ancient Rome.  The wearing of a ring on the third finger of the left hand symbolized an engagement. The bride wore a white gown and veil and was attended by a ‘bridesmaid.’ And the month of June was favored by the gods for pairing, and so continues to be the highlighted month for modern weddings. 

I’m interested to hear your take on this question: have we romanticized the past to bring it more in line with modern views…or do modern marriages still look to create advantages, whether economic, political, or personal?

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