The Petticoat Patrimony project in Wakefield looks at the hidden stories and legacy of Eliza, Anne-Mary and Helen Edmonstone. The sisters were direct descendants of the indigenous peoples of Demerara and, as curators and enablers of Charles Waterton’s life, were victims of historical patrimony. Petticoat Patrimony seeks to redress this and challenge existing perceptions of Waterton, slavery, gender and racial stereotypes.
Previous articles in this series are available here.
Eliza and Helen Edmonstone become ‘proprietresses’
Throughout his long life, Charles Waterton wrote and received thousands of letters. While some have been lost, many have been used in various publications to give an insight into his eccentric and entitled life. There are also thousands that remain unread and untranslated across various sites with many of them being in the Wakefield Archives.
It is there, nestled within folios of papers, both photocopied and original, that letters to and from Eliza and Helen Edmonstone exist. These letters give a tantalising glimpse into their lives, the challenges they faced and their own interests and accomplishments in a world dominated by their brother-in-law and nephew.
Their sister Anne-Mary died of puerperal fever in 1830, after the birth of her son, Edmund. Both events were announced in local newspapers at the time. The newly converted Catholics, Eliza (22) and Helen (17) then moved to Walton Hall to raise the child. They become unofficial housekeepers and companions to Waterton enabling him to continue his life of travel and exploration.
By 6 August 1835 when their father’s will was proved (Charles Edmonstone being one of Scotland’s most successful slave traders), Eliza and Helen were able to access the £5,000 each left to them. They both invested in property which benefited the Waterton Estate, and by the 1851 census are both “proprietresses”.
Lynx eyes and hawk eyes
Certainly, when Waterton writes to Eliza on 9 May 1849, with a letter full of gossip about the birds on the estate and an update on ‘Simpson’ (the owner of the soap works next to Walton Hall), he refers to the mills the girls own:
“I have no doubt, from what I hear, that Simpson is going to leave Walton and establish his pestilent factory somewhere else. I saw Mr Nettleton yesterday – he thinks the same: and he told me he is sure Simpson is nibbling at your mills.”
As his eyesight began to fail and his levels of patience with them, Waterton would rely on the women to read letters he received. In his replies he would often attribute his sisters-in-law the qualities of the most exotic of animals. Here he writes on 25 October 1844 from Scarborough to an unknown recipient:
“My dear Sir,
With the addition of two pairs of Lynx Eyes borrowed from Eliza and Helen I have been enabled to read the whole of your.”
In other letters, Helen has “hawk eyes”but elsewhere, both women are attributed with “bright hawk eyes”:
“My dear Sir,
You need not have lost more of your precious time in assuring us that you were writing in a ‘hurried movement’ – your handwriting bears sufficient testimony. Miss Helen rubbed her hawk eyes twice as she was trying to read the contents.”
Women’s beautiful things
Within the surviving letters there is only a hint of the women’s academic interest in the kind of naturalist work Waterton did. That interest only becomes clear when reading their wills, but it is clear from within those letters that Eliza, at least, was a lover and owner of beautiful things.
“I bought Eliza’s large Italian table (?) into her room but Downing could not satisfy me as to its position so, it will be in the old nursery ‘till your return.”
Waterton’s casual entitlement towards the women’s ‘things’, is smattered through his letters and is a constant reminder that, despite the fondness they all have for one another, he is very much in charge and will do and say whatever he wishes.
Both Eliza and Helen’s lynx eyes saw many different things during the years they lived at Walton Hall and witnessed constant deliveries of all types of animals including rattle snakes which, once ‘preserved’, were displayed as a permanent reminder of Waterton’s conquests over nature from the women’s homeland of Demerara, on the staircase at Walton Hall.
“On Thursday last I had four and twenty members of the York Naturalist Club here. They were perfectly enraptured with the staircase and declared that it was the finest exhibition of paintings and Natural History they had ever seen.” – Charles Waterton
A gorilla arrives from western Africa
Perhaps the most dramatic and arguably most gothic and disturbing incident experienced by the Edmonstone women must have been the arrival and subsequent unpacking of a gorilla from the coast of western Africa that had been sent in a cask of rum to the Manchester Museum. Waterton had offered to preserve the animal and it had been sent onto Walton Hall.
Five people witnessed the opening of the barrel after dinner on the evening of 27 February 1865, three men and two women. The three men were Waterton, Sir Norman Moore and Dr Wright. Dr Wright was the MD to the great and the good of Wakefield at that time. His medical standing across the town transgressed that of religion and political persuasion and he had the ear of, and access to, many men of influence.
Two of those present left a written testimony of the event and it was reported in the paper. Two voices however, are missing: those of the women, Helen and Eliza.
Waterton, in his letter to George Ord dated 27 February 1865 writes:
“You will have read in some of our papers an account of the gorilla. It is from the coast of western Africa and has been sent in a cask of rum to the Manchester Museum. I offered to preserve the ape and it was forwarded here to Walton Hall. But, on opening the barrel, it was found in a state of appalling decomposition, so that the epidermis had separated from the main skin and carried away all the fur with it. It stank horribly, whilst nothing but the bones could be saved.”
The gorilla was in a hopeless condition
Waterton gives more detail in a further letter to an unknown correspondent sent from Walton Hall a month later. Perhaps it the letter accompanied the body of the unfortunate animal to its next owner.
“You will find it utterly impossible to make anything of the unfortunate gorilla, alias the large black ape of western Africa. The epidermis has been entirely destroyed and, of course, the hair adheres no long to the true skin. My young friend, Norman Moore… will have told you how we laboured and laboured in vain at it.”
Moore had a more vivid and unnerving description of the events that took place.
“He told me that the gorilla was in a hopeless condition. After dinner we brought it into the drawing-room in a wooden trough. The Mr Waterton, Dr. Wright of Wakefield examined the skill all though. The beast must have been a large one. The colour of the hair was grize, whitest on the back. It was four inches long in some parts. The head was immense. I could have put my head inside it with ease. The eyes were small. The hands and feet were very large. But this otherwise fine specimen is a complete wreck. The epidermis (and with it the hair) was peeling off all over, especially on the ears, fore and hind feet.”
Echoes of Mary Shelly’s 1813 Frankenstein are hard to shake off when reading these descriptions and one wonders where Helen and Eliza went after dinner that day. Victorian etiquette would have them in the drawing room, and as a traditionally more gentile space, their possessions, books and papers would have been kept there. Gentlemen would normally remain at the table to continue their more political discussions. On that day however, the drawing room had become a scene from within the pages of a gothic horror. Was nowhere sacred?
Wakefield society
Eliza and Helen Edmonstone did escape the oppressive atmosphere of Walton Hall on occasion and visited Wakefield to go see The Swedish Nightingale at the theatre. In 1849 they were at The Corn Exchange to see Jenny Lind Charles wrote, that rather than accompany them, “I stay home, preferring the notes of my wood owls”.
By 1860 the Edmonstone women were well integrated into Wakefield society. According to the diary of Louisa Fennell, they certainly entertained the Fennell family at home. The Fennell family were William and Mary Fennell, prominent wine merchants and parents of Louisa, Wakefield’s Victorian watercolourist whose images of bygone Wakefield can be seen on the streets of the city.
Never too far away from exerting his influence on the women, both physically and psychologically, Waterton’s familiarity makes for uncomfortable reading in many of the letters held in folios across different archives. Waterton’s personal remarks to, and about the women are certainly, at the least insensitive and at their worst coercively controlling.
LLeaving the patrimony behind
We don’t know if the women took offence at his insensitivities, but we do know that mid-1850s, they decided to leave. Perhaps, after years of getting letters such as the one sent to Helen when she was in Madeira (1846) full of gossip and news from Walton Hall, they’d had enough of personal comments and the judgment that came with them. The final line in that particular letter from Waterton reads:
“I hope you don’t gain any more weight. You are fat enough – believe me, my dear Helen.”
Or perhaps the women were tired of being exposed to years of animal dissections in the drawing room, of passing stuffed animals on the stairs, of strange visitors and of being abandoned and ignored. Perhaps they’d seen enough with their ‘lynx eyes’ and had, by 1854, had enough of the patrimony that bound them.
This is part of a series of articles on the Edmonstone sisters, on the run up to International Women’s Day on 8 March. It is based on research by Helga Fox, Sarah Cobham, Catherine Clarke, Abibat Olulode and Zainab Jode. Look out for the final part next Wednesday.
