REMEMBERING
CAROLINE NORTON
In Honour of the Woman
Who Fought the Law for the Rights of Married Women Today
By
VARIOUS
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"He that deals blame, and yet forgets to praise,
Who sets brief storms against long summer days,
Hath a sick judgment.
And shall we all condemn, and all distrust,
Because some men are false and some unjust?"
Caroline Norton ,
The Dream, 1840
Contents
Illustrations
CAROLINE, LADY STIRLING-MAXWELL
By Frank Stone
ENGRAVING OF CAROLINE SHERIDAN NORTON
By John Cochran after a portrait by George Hayter
THE AUTHOR OF "THE UNDYING ONE."
By Daniel Maclise
THE HON. MRS. CAROLINE NORTON
By George Hayter
CAROLINE
ELIZABETH SARAH
NORTON (SHERIDAN)
By John W. Cousin
Grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley S., married in 1827 the Hon. G. C. Norton, a union which turned out most unhappy, and ended in a separation.
Her first book, The Sorrows of Rosalie (1829), was well received. The Undying One (1830), a romance founded upon the legend of the Wandering Jew, followed, and other novels were Stuart of Dunleath (1851), Lost and Saved (1863), and Old Sir Douglas (1867).
The unhappiness of her married life led her to interest herself in the amelioration of the laws regarding the social condition and the separate property of women and the wrongs of children, and her poems, A Voice from the Factories (1836), and The Child of the Islands (1845), had as an object the furtherance of her views on these subjects.
Her efforts were largely successful in bringing about the needed legislation.
In 1877 Mrs. Norton married Sir W. Stirling Maxwell.
A Biography from
A Short Biographical Dictionary
of English Literature , 1910
CAROLINE, LADY STIR LING-MAXWELL
By Frank Stone
CAROLINE ELIZABETH
SARAH NORTON
Born, 1809.
Died, June 15, 1877
One lived for grace one lived for good; so runs,
In brief, the record of two women's claims,
Whose lives, unlike, closed with close-following suns,
Bequeathing memories diverse as their fames.
One, the famed daughter of a famous line,
With grace and charm, with wit and beauty dowered,
Yet on whose power to please, and will to shine,
Some adverse star malignant influence showered.
Her bridal wreath was blent with weeds of strife:
An ill world's ill report, by party aimed,
Fleshed its foul shafts in her unguarded life,
Until fair-weather friendship shrank afraid,
And hate and envy gave their tongues free play
On the proud soul that would not be o'erborne,
But strove to show brave face to bleakest day,
And hid her wounds, and gave back scorn for scorn:
And sang her song, and smiled her smile, and staunched
Her tears to strain her children to her breast,
But death's pale blight her hope's bright blossom blanched,
And left her all but lone in dark unrest.
Till time and fair life bore down ill-report,
And grief in patience, if not peace, was lost;
And she lived on, and sang, and held her court,
And dwelt in memories of the loved and lost.
Still beautiful, still graceful, with her voice
Of low, sweet music, and her gift of song;
Tenacious of the friendships of her choice,
Fast because wisely made as cherished long.
Truest of all, the friend who, at the last,
Gave her marred life the shelter of his name,
And a short sunshine o'er her evening cast,
Denied her in the morning of her fame.
Noble of soul as beautiful, endowed
With all that should have crowned a life with joy,
Well for her she has passed beyond the cloud,
Tended by faithful love, to join her boy.
A Poem from
Littell's Living Age,
Volume , Issue 1728
E NGRAVING OF
CAROLINE SHE RIDAN NORTON
By John Cochran after a portrait by G eorge Hayter
CAROLINE
ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON
By Richard Garnett
Poetess, was born in London in 1808, and was the second daughter of Thomas Sheridan and granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Her mother, Caroline Henrietta, daughter of Colonel Callander, afterwards Sir James Campbell (17451832), was a highly gifted and very beautiful woman, and author of Carwell and other novels. The father having died in the public service at the Cape of Good Hope in 1817, the widow found herself in somewhat straitened circumstances, which were, however, mitigated by the king giving her apartments in Hampton Court Palace, whence she subsequently removed to Great George Street, Westminster.
Caroline and her two sisters were distinguished for extraordinary beauty, and in at least two instances for remarkable intellectual gifts. You see, said Helen, the eldest, afterwards Lady Dufferin, to Disraeli, Georgy's the beauty, and Carry's the wit, and I ought to be the good one, but I am not; which modest disclaimer, however, was far from expressing the fact.
During the lifetime of her sisters Caroline filled much the most conspicuous position in the public eye. After numerous slight productions, published and unpublished, of which The Dandies' Rout, written at the age of thirteen, seems to have been the most remarkable, she definitely entered upon a literary career in 1829 with The Sorrows of Rosalie: a Tale, with other Poems. This little volume, enthusiastically praised by the Ettrick Shepherd in the Noctes Ambrosian, obtained considerable success, and is typical of all that the author subsequently produced, except that the imitation of Byron is more evident than in the works of her maturity. It has all Byron's literary merits, pathos, passion, eloquence, sonorous versification, and only wants what Byron's verse did not want, the nameless something which makes poetry. The first expenses of my son's life, she says, were defrayed from that first creation of my brain; and the celebrity it obtained made her a popular writer for, and editor of, the literary annuals of the day, which lived by a class of literature to which her powers were exactly adapted. It is stated by herself that she earned no less than 1,400l. in a single year by such contributions. Some of the most characteristic were collected and published at Boston as early as 1833; they are in general Byronic, but include two,
