Wedlock (51 page)

In an age notorious for scandal and eccentricity, the Delavals were a class apart. Devoted to amateur dramatics, Sarah’s profligate uncle Francis had once hired Drury Lane theatre to stage a family performance for which the House of Commons adjourned early so that MPs could enjoy the spectacle. Later running his own private theatre he persuaded his friend, the playwright Samuel Foote, to undertake an ill-advised stunt on horseback in which poor Foote lost a leg. Sarah’s father, who had assumed the family estate in return for settling Francis’s debts, had only recently taken a sixteen-year-old mistress following the death of his wife. And Sarah, known in the family as ‘Hussey’, had reputedly once appeared at dinner on a hot day naked to the waist.

Stunningly beautiful, with white-gold hair which fell in voluminous curls to her waist, 27-year-old Sarah had just ended her affair with the duke, whose marriage had been arranged with a Prussian princess, with a very public renunciation. Having persuaded her father to stage Nicholas Rowe’s
The Fair Penitent
at Seaton Delaval, Sarah gave a virtuoso performance as the unfaithful wife atoning for her adultery by killing herself. Taken to a performance by his friend, the travel writer Henry Swinburne, Lord Strathmore was bewitched. When Swinburne returned to the north-east a few weeks later he was somewhat peeved to discover ‘that my introduction of Lord Strathmore at Seaton Delaval had been followed up, and that he was now completely
domicilié
with the family’. Meeting this extended family for supper in Newcastle, Swinburne wrote: ‘I was rather surprised to see the intimacy which had struck up so suddenly; and a fine scene between Lady Tyrconnel and Lord Strathmore afforded me great amusement.’ Ruefully he added: ‘The poor man is desperately smitten.’ With little talent for subtlety, the family next staged
Othello
with Lord Tyrconnel in the lead role, his wife as Desdemona and Lord Strathmore playing Cassio, the loyal friend suspected of an affair with the Moor’s wife.

Captivated by the alluring Lady Tyrconnel and befriended by her broad-minded husband, Lord Strathmore became absorbed into the family’s pleasure-seeking schedule, becoming a regular racing companion for the earl by day and a regular bedtime companion for his wife by night. Inevitably, before the year was out, the young earl found himself the butt of gossip writers and satirists. In December
The Bon Ton Magazine
reported that Lady Tyrconnel had left her husband to live with Lord Strathmore at Gibside. That same month, a cartoon by Isaac Cruikshank, entitled ‘A Strath Spey or New Highland Reel as Danced at Seaton D-l’, depicted Lord Tyrconnel bursting in on his wife as Lord Strathmore hides beneath her bed. Upsetting a chamber pot over a portrait of the Duke of York, the young earl explains his indiscretion in mock Scottish dialect by reference to his mother’s colourful past with the words: ‘My Mither did sa before me.’

Passing no judgement on her son as he embarked on his own tragic journey, Mary kept track of his increasingly indiscreet travels around the country with the Tyrconnels in her scrapbook. The summer of 1791 had seen the threesome visiting the Lakes while December found Lady Tyrconnel in Northumberland; in January 1792 the theatre season had resumed at Seaton Delaval with the entire family performing
The Fair Penitent
and
Othello
.
¹⁵
As Lord Strathmore chased his mother down the bumpy road of society scandal, George and Thomas followed somewhat more staidly in his and their father’s footsteps to Pembroke College, Cambridge.
¹⁶
As soon as George reached twenty-one, in November 1792, Mary handed him ownership of St Paul’s Walden Bury and took for herself a quiet country house, Purbrook Park, near Portsmouth. Writing a poem in honour of George’s birthday, she hoped his future would bring ‘a loving Wife, a faithful friend,/and Children who may fondly pay to you/That filial tribute which is justly due’.
¹⁷

For Mary, domestic contentment now ran personal ambition into a poor second place. This was the first time since her brief widowhood that she was truly at liberty to indulge her twin passions of botany and literature, as well as to enj oy the social whirl, witty conversation and male admiration that she had so loved as a girl. Yet although she composed a few poems, tended her museum, painted occasional flower pictures and corresponded with friends, she would never fulfil her original literary or scientific potential nor fully enter society again. A poignant little note in her album in 1791 recorded that, ‘In sept I heard but did not see a paragraph about my being at Weymouth & in favour with their Majesties there.’
¹⁸
For all that the royal couple might deign to notice her on their seaside jaunt, Mary’s high-profile divorce and the irreparable damage her reputation had suffered ensured that she could never regain her place within society. There would be no more routs or assemblies, no more lovers or suitors. And with her wealth now safely in the hands of the next generation, she was finally free from fortune hunters too.

Having ardently maintained his attentions throughout Mary’s kidnap ordeal and subsequent courtroom dramas, Captain Farrer had faded from the scene. Whether the revelations about his marriage had tarnished Mary’s interest or the adventurer had simply decided to seek his fortune elsewhere, in December 1790 the captain resumed his position at the helm of the
True Briton
and set sail for Madras.
¹⁹
On his return, in 1792, he paused in Britain long enough to sue his wife successfully in the ecclesiastical court for separation on the grounds of her adultery; after a further two-year absence at sea he would win a full divorce in the House of Lords in 1796. In any case, even if the captain would eventually free himself from his marital ties sufficiently to marry again, Mary Eleanor would never be granted that privilege; while Bowes was alive, she was not permitted to remarry. Her captain having disappeared over the horizon, there would be nobody to replace him. Instead, Mary relished the quiet triumph of her newfound independence in the carefree company of her two youngest children, her indispensable companion Mary Morgan, a small band of faithful servants and an assortment of pets. In her last portrait, painted by an unknown artist in the grounds of St Paul’s Walden Bury in 1791, she stands relaxed and smiling wearing an elaborate gown and sporting an improbably tall hairstyle, with a favourite dog at her feet and a flowering sprig in her hand.
²⁰
Yet if Mary hoped to fade quietly from public scrutiny, Bowes would make sure that she did not.

 

Losing his liberty, his income and his children had done nothing to improve Bowes’s temper. Since losing his claim to Mary’s fortune, he had sunk into a ‘complete state of despondency’, according to Foot, still pandering to his patient’s pretended ailments.
²¹
The final divorce decision had been ‘another deadly blow’ and he had then been ‘stunned with the thunder of excommunication’, the surgeon recorded. Yet for all his genuine or feigned melancholy, Bowes still commanded the best room in the prison where he divided his time between corrupting vulnerable young women and enticing gullible young attorneys into continuing his legal battles.

Having abandoned Mary Gowland shortly after she had given birth to his latest offspring, Bowes had soon found a new target for his lust. The teenage daughter of a fellow prisoner, who happened to own a considerable estate, Mary or ‘Polly’ Sutton had caught Bowes’s eye when she visited her father. Applying his customary seduction technique, he charmed his prey with flattery and presents. When Polly fell ill with a fever, he sent Foot to tend her; the surgeon found her ‘feeding a pigeon with split peas out of her mouth’ and described her as ‘a girl of perfect symmetry, fair, lively, and innocent’. Making no attempt to preserve Polly’s innocence by warning her of her admirer’s depravity, Foot observed silently as Bowes duly seduced the girl and brought her to live with him in jail. If his treatment of Mary had made Bowes notorious, his most pitiful victim must surely have been young Polly whose voice would never be heard. Hiring a room for her, to which Bowes alone had a key, he kept Polly confined day and night; she was, effectively, the prisoner of a prisoner. In her lonely cell, she bore Bowes five children, all of whom shared her confinement. Never permitted to attend the dinners Bowes threw for fellow inmates, she lived the life of a recluse. Occasionally Foot caught a glimpse of her, when Bowes called him to treat one of the children, but found it impossible to speak to her since ‘Bowes was always present, hurried the visit as much as possible, locked the door, and took the key in his pocket’. Polly, who would remain with Bowes for the rest of his life, effectively became his third wife and was treated accordingly - subject to extreme domestic violence and blatant infidelity. But Bowes had not yet forgotten his second wife.

Sustained only by his army half-pay and a paltry income from his Irish property but with mounting debts and more mouths to feed, Bowes was desperate to raise funds. With his usual flair for media exploitation, in April 1793 he published in full Mary’s ‘Confessions’. Reproduced from the original lodged at Doctors’ Commons six years earlier,
The Confessions of the Countess of Strathmore
sold for 2s 6d. Parading Mary’s ‘crimes’ and ‘imprudencies’ for public titillation once again, Bowes’s marketing campaign dug up the names of a host of other characters who would no doubt have preferred their roles in the Bowes drama to have been forgotten. An advertisement in
The Star
announced that the book promised ‘many curious Particulars’ on a cast of notables including the Duke of Buccleuch, Charles Fox, Joseph Planta and Thomas Lyon.
²²

Refusing to rise to the bait, Mary inserted notices in London and regional newspapers attempting to draw a line under the entire sorrowful episode. ‘Having too long trespassed on the Public relative to matters in which I reluctantly intrude myself upon them,’ she wrote, ‘I shall take leave of Mr Bowes and his productions for ever; not thinking it necessary, in future, to take the least notice of any subject which may be introduced into print, either by himself, or through any other channel he may think proper to employ.’
²³
She stayed true to her word. But although Mary tried her utmost to ignore the fresh reminder of her past indiscretions, publication of the unexpurgated ‘Confessions’ fostered an image of her as a licentious, extravagant and flighty fool with which she would be branded for posterity.

For her daughter Mary, who reached sixteen in 1793, the timing could not have been worse. Her illegitimacy and clandestine birth exposed again at the very moment that she was ready to make her debut on the London scene most probably scuppered her chances in the marriage market for good. Young Mary had gone to stay with a family friend, called Mrs Ogilvy, in fashionable Chelsea for the winter season of 1793-4; although her mother eschewed the gossip-driven metropolitan social life, she evidently did not want to deprive her daughter of her introduction into society. The artist Joseph Farington bumped into the debutante at a dance in April 1794 and recorded in his diary: ‘Miss Bowes, a daughter of Lady Strathmore by Mr Bowes, came with Mrs Ogleby [sic] of Chelsea, with whom she resides.’
²⁴
Yet while she would continue to enjoy a party well into her old age, Mary would never marry.

Studiously avoiding city revels and society gossip as incredulous readers pored over her past, Mary Eleanor absorbed her days with her pets and her poems at Purbrook Park. Her eclectic collection of animals included numerous cats and dogs, a donkey, a talking parrot and a tame robin named ‘Bob’ that lived uncaged in her bedroom. With Morgan as her amanuensis, she composed poetry on mundane domestic issues and topical current affairs, ranging from a ditty on Mrs Ogilvy’s four kittens to a translation into poetry of Thomas Erskine’s speech defending Thomas Paine.
²⁵
In early 1794 she struck up a poetical correspondence with Katherine Bentley, whose daughter shared lodgings with young Mary in town, which continued in verse for the next eighteen months. While Mary regaled her new literary friend with news of her family, her animals and her health, Mrs Bentley responded with titbits on their daughters and city affairs - all in light-hearted doggerel. Detached from society, Mary acknowledged her increasing estrangement from contemporary life. Confessing that she no longer took any interest in fashion, she declared: ‘How eccentric I am you can’t think,/(How wide from the Bulk of Mankind,)/At many Great faults you must wink,/And some virtues I trust you will find.’ Instead of binding curls, Mary revealed, her maid was now kept busy binding manuscripts.

Evidently the strain of her past torments was still being felt, exacerbated by a serious coach accident the previous year in which Mary had lost three teeth, Morgan had been badly hurt and a fellow passenger had been killed.
²⁶
Apologising to Mrs Bentley for her indisposition, Mary revealed in April 1794 that her legs were so painful that, ‘I seldom can Walk’. And in an affecting description of the long-term consequences of her abuse, she wrote: ‘I fear you would shrink/Could you only once think/What Object you’ll meet with in
me;
/Who, tho’ not very old,/Am by Blows & by Cold,/More batter’d than Ships come from Sea./Some years ‘twas my potion/to sail on an Ocean/Of Horrors, of Tears, & of Grief,/When I lost my Main-mast/But was landed at last/Too late, though, I found for relief.’

That summer, as Europe was engulfed in war and her sons George and Thomas both enlisted in the army, Mary moved temporarily back to St Paul’s Walden Bury where she was joined by ‘my Girls’ - most probably Mary and Anna. In September Mrs Bentley came to stay, although their lyrical exchange continued throughout the visit and carried on after Mrs Bentley returned to London. When the whole household was stricken by sickness in December, Mary’s physicians feared she would not recover but by Christmas she was sufficiently restored to embrace the New Year with a cheery: ‘Let gay ninety-five with fresh garlands be crown’d.’