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Lesbian Perversity and Victorian Marriage: The 1864 Codrington Divorce Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Martha Vicinus
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How and when did society first recognize women's homoerotic bonds? Were these romantic friendships fully accepted, or were they seen as problematic? Did the women involved see themselves as lesbians? These and other questions have been raised over the past twenty years by historians of lesbian sexuality. When Lillian Faderman in her pioneering survey of European and American lesbians declared the nineteenth century as the golden age of unproblematic romantic friendships, historians quickly responded with evidence to the contrary. Much of this debate has been focused on whether or not women could be considered “lesbian” before they claimed (or had forced on them) a publicly acknowledged identity. But the modern lesbian did not appear one day fully formed in the case studies of the fin-de-siècle sexologists; rather she was already a recognizable, if shadowy, subject for gossip among the sophisticated by at least the 1840s and 1850s. By examining closely a single divorce trial, I hope to show that literary and legal elites acknowledged lesbian sexuality in a variety of complex ways. Their uneasy disapproval encompassed both a self-conscious silence in the face of evidence and a desire to control information, lest it corrupt the innocent. Yet who can define the line between the ignorant and the informed? The very public discussion of the Codrington divorce, and most especially the role of the feminist, Emily Faithfull, in alienating Helen Codrington's affections from her husband, demonstrate the recognition of female homosexual behavior.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1997 , pp. 70 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1997

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References

1 The chief advocate of innocent asexual romantic friendships in the nineteenth century has been Lillian Faderman in Surpassing the Love of Men (New York: Morrow, 1982)Google Scholar, and again in her more recent Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)Google Scholar. Her generalizations have been questioned by numerous critics, including myself, but one still finds the casual assumption that Victorian spinsters were often involved in asexual relationships which were socially acceptable. See also Smith-Rosenberg's, Carroll “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” reprinted in her Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Knopf, 1985), pp. 53–76Google Scholar. Smith-Rosenberg argues for a continuum of erotic and emotional behaviors, a position I share, but I believe she overstates the case when she posits a tension-free compatibility between heterosexual and homosocial relations (and between mothers and daughters). See also the pioneering study of a young woman's intense love for an older woman, McKenzie, K. A., Edith Simcox and George Eliot (London: Oxford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, as well as the other essays mentioned below from the 1980s.

2 Diggs, Marylynne in “Romantic Friends or a ‘Different Race of Creatures’? The Representation of Lesbian Pathology in Nineteenth-Century America,” Feminist Studies 21, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, documents the medical pathologizing of same-sex friendships in mid-century American scientific and literary texts. Evidence of homosexuality certainly exists before this period, but I focus here on the mid-century when medical and popular discourses first came together.

3 For an exception to this generalization, see the excerpted diaries of the early nineteenthcentury gentlewoman, Lister, Anne: I Know My Own Heart (London: Virago, 1988)Google Scholar, and No Priest but Love (London: Virago, 1992)Google Scholar, both edited by Helena Whitbread.

4 Vicinus, Martha, “Lesbian History, All Theory and No Facts or All Facts and No Theory?” Radical History Review 60 (1994): 57–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Castle, Terry, The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

6 Hammerton, A. James, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (London: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See esp. pp. 71–101 on companionate marriage among the middle and upper classes.

7 See Mary Poovey's discussion of Norton and the legislative efforts to broaden English divorce laws in Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

8 The single most influential pamphlet published by the early feminists was Smith, Barbara Leigh [Bodichon]'s A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws of England Concerning Women (London, 1854)Google Scholar. The fact that this pamphlet about married women's legal rights was written by a (then) single woman was not lost on contemporaries but provided further fuel for those opposed to politically active women. See also Holcombe's, Lee account of the sustained efforts to achieve legal reform in Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women's Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

9 See Cobbe, Frances Power, “What Shall We Do With Our Old Maids?” Fraser's Magazine 66 (1862): 594–610Google Scholar; and Boucherett, Jessie, “How to Provide for Superfluous Women,” in Woman's Work and Woman's Culture, ed. Butler, Josephine E. (London: Macmillan, 1869), pp. 27–48Google Scholar.

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11 The details of the debates are analyzed by Shanley, Mary Lyndon, Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850–1895 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 22–48Google Scholar. See also Poovey, pp. 51–61. A good many comments were made about the dangers of “strong-minded women,” meaning the feminists who were lobbying for reform.

12 Lord Cranworth is quoted by Shanley, p. 43.

13 Holmes, Anne discusses these details in “Hard Cases and Bad Laws: Divorce Reform in England, 1909–1937” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1986), pp. 12–42Google Scholar. Only with the passage of the Married Women's Property Act of 1870 were wives given partial control of their own earnings.

14 Horstman, Allen, Victorian Divorce (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 85Google Scholar. Horstman shows that far more women sued for divorce than had been anticipated, and like Hammerton, he documents the small but steady number of working-class divorces.

15 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (July 30, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar. Anne Holmes points out that Helen Codrington's response hints at connivance on the admiral's part in her adultery; if this were so, the judge could deny him the divorce. In his allocation of court costs, the judge does seem to have had some doubts about this; see the Law Journal Reports, n.s., 34 (1864–1865): 60–64Google Scholar.

16 Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Stephen, Leslie and Lee, Sidney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921–1922), 4:664Google Scholar.

17 Deposition filed on behalf of Helen Jane Codrington by Few, Robert, her attorney. “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” January 20, 1864, Public Record Office, London, XPO984CL J77/11/142Google Scholar.

18 Crookenden, Arthur, Twenty-Second Footsteps, 1849–1914: An Account of the Life of the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment in those Years (London, privately published, 1956), p. 32Google Scholar. He goes on to say, “Under him the Second Battalion gained the name of ‘Peep O'Day boys’ on account of its smartness. The old inspection reports bear witness to the high state of efficiency which the Battalion maintained throughout his long Command.” Anderson had one son. Warren Hastings Anderson, born in 1871 when he was stationed at Aldershot. In The Times, Anderson is identified as a lieutenant colonel in the 26th Regiment of Foot, which was later renamed.

19 The low moral tone of military life in Malta is excoriated by Grand, Sarah, the estranged wife of an army doctor, in The Heavenly Twins (London: Heineman, 1893)Google Scholar.

20 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (November 18, 1864), p. 9Google Scholar. See also “The Codrington Divorce Case,” Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper (November 20, 1864), p. 7Google Scholar, which gives a more favorable version of her: “She was also artless, and the most guiltless and the most deceitless person who was ever placed in such a position. She talked rodomontade about her own affairs, being one of those persons who always use superlatives when they should use positives, and who were always endeavouring to create a sensation amongst themselves. There was no one better acquainted with that fact than her husband himself.”

21 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (August 1, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar.

22 Victorian attitudes toward Italy are explored in Pemble, John, The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; and Aldrich, Robert, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy (New York: Routledge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the Dorrits' trip to Italy and the account of Henry Gowan's slapdash art in Dickens, Charles, Little Dorrit (London, 1855–1857), chap. 2, sec. viGoogle Scholar. See also Eliot's, GeorgeRomola (Edinburgh, 1863), set in the time of SavonarolaGoogle Scholar.

23 Women of all social classes claimed a loss of traditional wifely privileges in divorce cases. See Hammerton (n. 6 above), pp. 102–3.

24 Lady Bourchier, Henry's sister, obliquely justifies his unwillingness to accompany his wife to parties by describing his conscientious overwork while in Malta: “At moments he worked so hard, and so much at undue hours, that his health would quite have given way, if his doctor had not interfered and insisted on a change of system and of hours.” Bourchier, Lady, Selections from the Letters of Sir Henry Codrington, Admiral of the Fleet (London: Spottiswoode, 1880), p. 476Google Scholar. She makes no comment whatsoever about the divorce trial, only stating, “His last years—after his second marriage were very happy” (p. 484).

25 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (November 18, 1864), p. 9Google Scholar. The admiral “denied having used the least violence to her, but had admitted that he had removed her from his bedroom … one night after she had been dancing.” The denial of conjugal rights was an issue that flared up again in the early 1880s with the trials of Georgina Weldon, who defended herself against her husband for wrongful imprisonment in a mental institution. See Walkowitz, Judith R., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 171–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 The Daily Telegraph (in “The Codrington Divorce Case” [November 24, 1864], p. 4Google Scholar), was especially outraged by the suggestion of birth control, commenting in its editorial at the end of the trial, “If the judge forgot the conversation with Captain STRICKLAND, the outside world did not. Even neglecting that indicent [sic], there was proof enough that, if the wife had become shameless, the husband had been repelling.”

27 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (November 18, 1864), p. 8Google Scholar.

28 Details about Faithfull's life are found in Fredeman, William E., “Emily Faithfull and the Victoria Press: An Experiment in Sociological Bibliography,” Library, 5th ser., 29 (1974): 139–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the corrections of Stone, James S., “More Light on Emily Faithfull and the Victoria Press,” Library, 5th ser., 33 (1978): 63–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (August 1, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar. Deposition of Giovanni Battista Scichma, a boatman.

30 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (July 30, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 Joseph Parkes to Bessie Rayner Parkes, August 2, 1864, Girton College, Cambridge. In contrast, see an earlier comment (September 28, 1858) to his daughter, “Young English women will not believe, till older, in the natural distinctions of the two sexes; & that the Males will never allow the Females to wear their clothes—much less to usurp their natural sexl [sic] superiority.”

33 Parkes, Joseph to Bessie Rayner Parkes, August 4, 1864, Girton College, CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

34 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (November 21, 1864), p. 11Google Scholar.

35 Parkes, Joseph to Bessie Rayner Parkes, November 23, 1864, Girton College, CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

36 Ibid. Parkes refers to the fact that the Victoria Press published the annual Transactions of the reform-minded National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. There is no evidence that any of her customers broke their contracts with her.

37 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” Law Journal Reports, n.s., 34 (1864–1865): 62Google Scholar.

38 Crookenden (n. 18 above), p. 32.

39 Parkes, Joseph to Bessie Rayner Parkes, November 19, 1864, Girton College, CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

40 See her comments on easy American divorces in Faithfull, Emily, Three Visits to America (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1884), pp. 262–74Google Scholar.

41 “The Extraordinary Codrington Case,” Reynolds's Newspaper (November 27. 1864), p. 4Google Scholar.

42 See Victoria Magazine 25 (1875): 758Google Scholar. I am indebted to Marion Diamond for this citation.

43 Victoria Magazine 21 (November 16, 1871): 620Google Scholar.

44 Fredeman (n. 28 above), p. 146.

45 See Banks, Olive, The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists, 1800–1930 (Brighton: Harvester, 1985), 1:74–75Google Scholar.

46 Stone (n. 28 above), p. 65. Stone believes Faithfull's claim to youth and inexperience, even though in 1864 she was an experienced and effective organizer. Although he documents her later successes, he still claims “Mrs. Codrington, Mr. Few, and, indeed, Victorian society as a whole had proven ‘too much for her’”(p. 65). In my opinion, no evidence for this conclusion exists.

47 Mrs.Elmy, E. C. Wolstenholme to Harriet Mcllquham, November 30, 1898, British Museum, London, Additional MSS. 47451, fol. 271Google Scholar. I am indebted to Barbara Caine for this reference.

48 Will made on October 18, 1892; probate granted to Charlotte Robinson on August 30, 1895. Somerset House, Division of Probate. I am indebted to Kali Israel for this citation.

49 James M. Saslow points out that Rosa Bonheur “did anticipate protests about her relationships from her own family and Klumpke's … [in] her last will.” See his “‘Disagreeably Hidden’: Construction and Constriction of the Lesbian Body in Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, ed. Braude, Norma and Garrard, Mary D. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 202, n. 4Google Scholar.

50 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (November 21, 1864). p. 11Google Scholar.

51 Dowsett, Gary, “Class and Sexual (Dis)order in Nullangardie” (Canberra: Australian National University, Humanities Research Institute, 1993)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Gary Dowsett for discussing issues of sexual identity and sexual disorder in Australia with me when we were at the Humanities Research Institute, Australian National University, 1993.

52 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (July 30, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar.

53 Faithfull, Emily, A Reed Shaken in the Wind: A Love Story (New York: Adams, Victor, 1873), p. 14Google Scholar. I have used the American edition here, with the different title.

54 Ibid., p. v.

55 Ibid., pp. 20, 39. Stone also identifies Tiny as a version of Helen Codrington. He links her with Faithfull's feminist mission to improve education, arguing that Tiny is an example for Faithfull of “the unfortunate middle-class, female ‘butterfly’ of the Victorian period: poorly educated (morally and intellectually) to deal with the real world.” See Stone, p. 65. As my summary of the novel indicates, all of the characters except Wilfred are upper-class.

56 Faithfull, , A Reed Shaken in the Wind, p. 285Google Scholar.

57 Ibid., p. 286; my italics.

58 Ibid., p. 61.

59 Recently literary critics have analyzed the construction of the lesbian plot, focusing on twentieth-century novels. See, e.g., Castle, Terry, “Sylvia Townsend Warner and the Counterplot of Lesbian Fiction,” in The Apparitional Lesbian (n. 5 above), pp. 66–91Google Scholar; Abraham, Julie, Are Girls Necessary? Lesbian Writing and Modern Histories (New York: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar; and Jay, Karla and Glasgow, Joanne, eds., Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Radical Revisions (New York: New York University Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Critical discussion of the trope of casting oneself as a male protagonist has focused on the novels of Willa Cather. See O'Brien, Sharon, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Fetterly, Judith, “My Antonia, Jim Burden and the Dilemma of the Lesbian Writer,” in Jay, and Glasgow, , eds., pp. 145–63Google Scholar.

60 Faithfull, , A Reed Shaken in the Wind, p. 247Google Scholar.

61 See Fetterly, pp. 159–60. See also O'Brien, Sharon, “‘The Thing Not Named’: Willa Cather as a Lesbian Writer,” Signs 9, no. 4 (Summer 1984): 576–99CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. I make this comparison to point out long-standing plot alterations in the construction of the lesbian tale, not to argue for the literary value of Faithfull's novel.

62 “The Codrington Divorce Case,” Daily Telegraph (November 24, 1864), p. 4Google Scholar.

63 Faithfull, , A Reed Shaken in the Wind (n. 53 above), p. 251Google Scholar.

64 Parkes, Joseph to Bessie Rayner Parkes, November 10, 1864, Girton College, CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

65 Compare Parkes's comments of August 2, 1864: “this metamorphosis of your Mind is your own affair & freedom—however I & your older & more natural friends may marvel.” Girton College, Cambridge.

66 See Rendall, Jane, “Friendship and Politics: Barbara Lee Smith Bodichon (1827–91) and Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829–1925),” Sexuality and Subordination, ed. Mendus, Susan and Rendall, Jane (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 143Google Scholar. Parkes married the Frenchman Louis Belloc in 1867.

67 Robert Browning to Isa Blagden, January 19, 1865. See Dearest Isa: Robert Browning's Letters to Isabella Blagden, ed. McLeer, Edward C. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), p. 76Google Scholar. Browning incorrectly stated that the queen removed her “Royal Printership at once” from the Victoria Press; she never did so.

68 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 3–5Google Scholar.

69 In this, I disagree with, even as I build on, Miller's, D. A. influential essay, “Secret Subjects, Open Secrets,” in his The Novel and the Police (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 192–220Google Scholar.

70 Emily Faithfull to Miss Phillips, February 22, 1874, Fawcett Library, City of London Polytechnic, London, Fawcett Library Autograph Letter Collection, V12A and V12B. Apparently the letter was forwarded to Hubbard for comment; her penciled note on the margin is undated, but presumably dates from a later period. Hubbard came from a wealthy merchant family; she could well afford to look down on a clergyman's daughter. Exactly what is meant by “considerable eccentricity” is impossible to know, but it may have referred to Faithfull's “mannishness.” I am indebted to Ellen Jordan for this reference.

71 Davies, Emily, “Family Chronicle,” pp. 337–38, Girton College, CambridgeGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to Barbara Caine for this reference. As mentioned previously, the Victoria Magazine continued to thrive under Faithfull's editorship for several years after the trial. Like Browning, Davies seems to have wanted some public punishment of Faithfull for her untoward behavior.

72 “The Codrington Divorce Case,” Daily Telegraph (November 24, 1864), p. 4Google Scholar.

73 Parkes, Joseph to Bessie Rayner Parkes, November 23, 1864, Girton College, CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

74 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (July 30, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar.

75 Parkes, Joseph to Bessie Rayner Parkes, November 23, 1864, Girton College CambridgeGoogle Scholar.

76 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (August 1, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar.

77 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (November 18, 1864), p. 9Google Scholar. These allegations were made by Mrs. Emily Watson in a letter to the admiral; in court she contradicted herself and testified, “I never thought or said that I thought her mind was wandering when she made extravagant statements.”

78 “Codrington v. Codrington and Anderson,” The Times (July 30, 1864), p. 10Google Scholar.

79 I discuss advice books for mothers and teachers which warn against excessive friendships in “Distance and Desire: English Boarding School Friendships, 1870–1920,” Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Duberman, Martin, Vicinus, Martha, and Chauncey, George Jr. (New York: New American Library, 1989), pp. 212–29Google Scholar.

80 Faithfull, , A Reed Shaken in the Wind (n. 53 above), p. 286Google Scholar.