June 2, 1995 - Episode 308 - Women of Achievement and Herstory

      On June 2, 1829, Lady Eleanor Butler died. 
      Sarah Ponsonby lived but two more years before again lying
next to Lady Eleanor as she had every night for 51 years - two
women who had "felt themselves bound to give to the world, an
example of perfect friendship..." (*)
      What was that "perfect friendship" between the "Ladies of
LLangollen?"
      Butler, 39, and Ponsonby, 23, had run away together in 1778
over the violent objections of their fashionable Irish families when 
Sarah had announced she would "live and die with Miss Butler." 
      The couple settled in Llangollen, Wales, creating a home and
garden of such reputation that even the Queen of England asked for
its plans.  Dozens of the major figure of the era visited them
including Charles Darwin, Lady Caroline Lamb, and Sir Walter Scott. 
The Duke of Wellington was a close friend.  William Wordsworth wrote
while staying in their cottage. 
      Butler and Ponsonby, voracious readers and intellectual giants,
created a place of peace, of intellectual and aesthetic stimulation that
was famous throughout Europe. It was almost a requirement that
celebrities visiting England venture into Wales to visit "the ladies."
      Yet it was their friendship, the legend of the Ladies of
Llangollen, that is remembered most today as the cottage and its
gardens are but memories and the subject of a few drawings.
      In Elizabeth Mavor's painstakingly researched and respected
book  _The Ladies of Llangollen_, she writes: "I have preferred the
terms of romantic friendship (a once flourishing but now lost
relationship) as more liberal and inclusive and better suited to the
diffuse feminine nature.  Edenic it seems such friendships could be
before they were biologically and thus prejudicially defined (by
Freud).  Depending as they did upon time and leisure, they were
aristocratic, they were idealistic, blissfully free, allowing for a
dimension of sympathy between women that would not now be
possible outside an avowedly lesbian connection.  Indeed, much that
we would now associate solely with a sexual attachment is contained
in romantic friends: tenderness, loyalty, sensibility, shared beds,
shared tastes, coquetry, even passion."
      A number of books have been written about the couple, most
not very accurate, in fact, some are downright insulting.  Mavor
says, "Thus by the mysterious operation of time upon the popular
imagination have two spinsters of no great beauty, of uncertain age,
little money, living in a remote cottage, become a paradigm of the
heart's desire ... the perfect friends ."
      (The Ladies of Llangollen, Penguin Books, copyright 1971 by
Elizabeth Mavor.  For reasons of copyright, the book is not sold in
the U.S.)  The Lady Eleanor Butler 1739-1829, Miss Sarah Ponsonby 
1755-1831.  
      (*) Memoirs of Mrs. Caroline Hamiltom. a contemporary.

06-02 Anniversaries ...............................................

      B. June 2, 1731, Martha Custis Washington, wealthy widow who
married an unsuccessful military man George Washington and whose
wealth allowed him to become a man of leisure - and then purpose.

      B. June 2, 1861, Helen Herron, decided in a visit to White House
at 17 she wanted to be the First Lady.  Studious and ambitious, she
married William Howard Taft and helped him - some say drove him -
to become president.  She sponsored the planting of the Japanese
cherry trees in Washington.  

      B. June 2, 1875, Dame Winifred C. Cullis, British physiologist
and educator lectured throughout the U.S. during WW II on all
aspects of what British women were doing to advance the war effort. 
Taught for 40 years as instructor and finally professor in
physiology, first woman examiner of the Board of Medicine, London
University (1913), served as chair of adult education at BBC as well
as broadcasting shows on hygiene and physiology.  She advised
American woman to wait until their particular field of endeavor was
needed by the military rather making the mistake of that British
women did in rushing to help and being assigned to jobs they were
not best at. As a result when the jobs came open the British women
were trained for, they couldn't get transferred which hurt both them
and the war effort.
      
>>>(C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com, fax 501-624-5262, voice mail 624-5262, x
300.  Distribute verbatim copies freely with copyright notice for non-
profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there weren't notable and
effective women throughout history.  They were always there, but
historians failed to note them in our histories so that each generation
of women has had to reinvent themselves. <<<