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Article Excerpt
An editor of literary letters sometimes needs a bit of luck, as well as the persistence of a detective, to track down a "missing person." When I began to collect the letters of Thomas Love Peacock, I naturally wanted to identify the Mrs. Jenkins mentioned by his granddaughter Edith Nicolls as "a very old friend" and as one of his few correspondents in his last years. (1) But how was I to find a lady with a common surname about whom I knew next to nothing? The case seemed all but hopeless until I came across a bookseller's catalogue listing, among other Peacock first editions, a presentation copy of his last little book, Gl'Ingannati: The Deceived ... and Aelia Laelia Crispis, inscribed to Cecilia Jenkins. Once I knew Mrs. Jenkins's given name, it was an easy matter, the next time I was in London, to check the indexes of wills at Somerset House for some twenty years following the date of the inscription. Of the two Cecilia Jenkinses listed, one turned out to be Peacock's friend, and her will enabled me to connect her with his early circle at Englefield Green. But the real payoff came when, to my surprise, I found her name in the index of applicants for assistance from the Royal Literary Fund, a charity for impoverished authors that still flourishes today. Cecilia Jenkins's case file in the Fund's archives not only contained details of her disastrous marriage but also revealed that she was the anonymous author of eight books, one of which proved to be an autobiographical novel in which she relates otherwise unrecorded anecdotes of Shelley and Peacock, quotes the full text of an otherwise unknown love poem that Peacock sent her, and even describes how, one summer day, Peacock proposed to her.
What began as a search for a missing person turned out to involve a case of mistaken identity. Not only have Mrs. Jenkins's books been forgotten, but her very existence as an author has been unknown to bibliographers. Prior to the indexing of Bentley's privately printed Lists by Michael Turner (2) and the cataloguing of the archives of the Royal Literary Fund by Nigel Cross, (3) Cecilia Jenkins's novels were attributed in a number of standard reference works, including the Supplement to Allibone's Dictionary and the British Museum's General Catalogue of Printed Books, to another woman writer with a similar Welsh surname: Henrietta Camilla Jenkin, whose novels were sometimes published under the name of Mrs. C. Jenkin. (4) The British Library has since corrected its listings for the novels, but the misattribution persists in numerous catalogues and reference works, including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The present article thus has two interrelated purposes: first, to provide an account of the life and writings of a hitherto unrecognized Victorian novelist whose work is noteworthy for its critique of the institution of marriage in early nineteenth-century England, and second, to examine the hitherto unnoticed passages relating to Shelley and Peacock in Mrs. Jenkins's three-decker Wedlock; or, Yesterday and To-day, which collectively constitute the only extensive personal reminiscence we have of Peacock as a young man.
Cecilia Jenkins was the second of three daughters of James Knowles and his wife Hannah Warren, of St. Agnes Cottage, Englefield Green, Surrey. (5) Although she did not give her year of birth on her applications to the Literary Fund, she was born at Englefield Green on 30 January, probably around 1792, though possibly as late as 1796. (6) Her older sister, Anna Maria Knowles, was born on 27 September 1789 and was married at Egham on 1 May 1809 to Joseph Gulston, a former schoolfellow of Peacock's who lived for the next few years at Poplar Lodge, Englefield Green. (7) A brother, Francis Edward Knowles, was born on 27 April 1794 and baptized at Croydon, Surrey, on 20 June of that year. (8) Cecilia's younger sister, Clarinda Knowles, was baptized at Sutton, Surrey, on 12 May 1797 and was married to the Reverend John Atkyns at All Saints, Southampton, on 26 August 1834. (9) Peacock is likely to have known the Knowles family from his schooldays at Englefield Green or his residence at Chertsey in his early twenties. (10) After the death of James Knowles in February 1809, his widow remained at Englefield Green with her two unmarried daughters for more than five years, but she later resided at Brighton and at Albourne, Sussex. Sometime around 1823, Cecilia married James Gidoin (or Gedoin) Jenkins, solicitor, of Sidmouth, Devon, with whom she had at least five children:
1. Cecilia Mary Gidoin Jenkins, born in 1824/25, unmarried in 1867.
2. James Gidoin Jenkins, born 26 June 1826, passed as a cadet for the Bengal Infantry 29 June 1842, died at Umballa 14 October 1843.
3. Claire Maria Gidoin Jenkins, born in 1828/29, unmarried in 1867.
4. Henry Gidoin Jenkins, baptized 5 July 1830, passed as a cadet for the Bengal Cavalry 7 June 1848, married Lucy Jane Miller of Sidmouth 14 April 1857, retired as a major 12 December 1872.
5. Robert Gedoin Jenkins, born 26 December 1835, baptized 15 January 1836, passed as a cadet for the Madras Infantry 1 October 1856, promoted captain 13 December 1868, married Alice Mary 30 July 1872.
The eldest son was nominated for his cadetship on the recommendation of Sir David Scott, an old family friend and one of Hannah Knowles's executors, while the two younger sons were both nominated on Peacock's recommendation. Cecilia Jenkins's two applications for assistance from the Royal Literary Fund were made in April 1848 and November 1855 to help defray the expense of their outfitting and passage. The applications were necessary because, "through a perverted and mistaken judgment," her husband became bankrupt in 1842 and was again insolvent a few years later. By 1848, she and her children were living apart from her husband in a cottage known as Radway at Fort Field, Sidmouth, and receiving no financial assistance from him. (11) Her husband died in 1861, after having been "pronounced of unsound mind" sometime between 1848 and 1855. In 1840, Cecilia Jenkins inherited St. Agnes Cottage and some of her mother's other property in Surrey, which altogether produced less than 100 [pounds sterling] a year in rent. She died at Sidmouth on 17 September 1868, leaving a will dated 29 March 1867. The value of her estate was sworn under 200 [pounds sterling].
To support herself and her family as her husband's financial affairs worsened, Cecilia Jenkins turned to writing and eventually produced four novels, a travel book, a historical tale for children, and translations of two seventeenth-century French memoirs, all of which were published anonymously: (12)
1. Miss Aylmer; or, The Maid's Husband. 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1840. Reissued as The Maid's Husband. 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1844. (13)
2. Wedlock; or, Yesterday and To-day. By the Author of "The Maid's Husband." 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1841. (14)
3. The Smiths: A Novel. By the Author of "The Maid's Husband," "Wedlock; or, Yesterday and To-day." 3 vols. London: T. C. Newby, 1843. [Also contains a short story, "Sir Paul Crespigny" (3:228-314).]
4. Cardinal de Retz: A Literary Curiosity. From the Original Memoirs. By the Author of "The Maid's Husband," "The Smiths." 2 vols. London: T. C. Newby, 1844. (15) [The second English translation, considerably abridged, containing no preface or introduction, only a few notes and a brief conclusion dated "Radway, March 12th, 1844" (2:391-96).]
5. Economy; or, A Peep at Our Neighbours. London: John Ollivier, 1845. Reissued as The Channel Islands; or, A Peep at Our Neighbours. London: John Field, 1847. (16) [A travel book, based on a residence of several months in Guernsey, for the sake of economy, in the summer of 1844.]
6. King Edwin and Northumbria: A Tale of Old English Times. London: James Burns, 1845. Reissued London: J. & C. Mozley, 1850. (17) [A children's book.]
7. Lost and Won; or, The Love Test. By the Author of "The Maid's Husband." 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1846.
8. Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Grand-Daughter of Henri Quatre, and Niece of Queen Henrietta Maria. Written by Herself Edited from the French. 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1848. [The first English translation, containing an "Introduction by the Editor" (1:1-32), a list of "Personages Mentioned in This Work" (1:33-45), and a "Continuation and Conclusion of Mademoiselle's History; with Reflections, and an Inquiry into the Evidence of Her Marriage with the Duke of Lauzun" (3:256-84), as well as a fair number of notes.]
Mrs. Jenkins's 1855 application adds: "Desultory literature, and two M.S. works in hand, of 3 vols each;... a little leisure will see them ready for publication--." (18) However, no further works of hers have been identified. Except for the two translations, all of her books are now extremely rare.
On the evidence of her works, Cecilia Jenkins appears to have been well educated and well read, with a broad knowledge of literature, history, and public affairs. (19) She evidently possessed a thorough mastery of French, a good grasp of Italian, and some acquaintance with Latin and Greek. (20) The law reformer Henry Bellenden Ker, who had known her since childhood and was one of her mother's executors, offered the following assessment of her books in a letter of 29 March 1848 to Octavian Blewitt, the Secretary of the Royal Literary Fund:
They are light, & respectable, not of any high order, but if they are not calculated to do great good or afford any very high intellectual enjoyment, they have a good end & object. Some estimate may be framed of their success by her always being able to find a publisher & that she has always received pay for their production.
The "good end & object" of Mrs. Jenkins's novels was to radically reform the English system of marriage by telling the truth about wedlock from a woman's point of view, by teaching young women to respect themselves and value their independence, by urging parents not to pressure their daughters to marry, and by upholding the usefulness and dignity of old maids. In her view, the vast majority of married women would be better off had they remained single.
Mrs. Jenkins's critique of marriage is fully developed in her first novel, Miss Aylmer; or, The Maid's Husband. The heroine, Rosalind Aylmer--whose name obviously recalls Landor's famous lines on Rose Aylmer (21)--is a wealthy young heiress who settles with her companion, Mrs. Milman, at Haveringham Manor, a picturesque Gothic mansion near a fashionable bathing-place on the southwest coast of England--a place much like Sidmouth. Like Anthelia Melincourt in Peacock's Melincourt (1817), Rosalind would like to marry but does hot intend to do so unless she tan find a man who embodies her imaginary ideal of perfection. After rejecting various suitors, she rather unaccountably falls in love with John Bracken, a brilliant but self-absorbed scholar in his early twenties, who is living as the nominal "pupil" of Mr. Strickland, the local curate, whose wife Rosalind has befriended. When Bracken fails to respond to her encouragement, she finds herself gradually attracted to one of her guardians, Philip Waldegrave, a wealthy and refined but melancholy bachelor in his late forties, who pays her a long visit in the course of which they become engaged. Shortly before their wedding day, however, she breaks off the engagement when it transpires that Waldegrave has an illegitimate son, who turns out to be John Bracken. Disillusioned, Rosalind remains single and dies a beloved and respected spinster--the "maid's husband" having proved, in her case, an unattainable ideal.
It is hardly surprising that an anonymous reviewer in the Athenaeum thought Miss Aylmer was "not ... so much a story, as a long and eloquent homily on the laconic warning "Never marry!" (22) Interspersed throughout the three volumes are long didactic passages in which the author/narrator directly addresses her young female readers and their parents, warning them of the dangers of marrying, or allowing a daughter to marry, without due consideration of a prospective husband's character and compatibility. Given the vast preponderance of unhappy marriages, the economic powerlessness of married women, and the burdens of housekeeping and motherhood, she argues that most young women would be well advised to preserve their independence, except in those rare cases where a woman's true happiness depends on marriage to a man of exceptional character whom she loves wisely as well as passionately. If an ample fortune is hot absolutely necessary, it can nevertheless provide insurance against the evils of poverty, or consolation in case the love proves illusory. Even with a good husband, marriage on a limited income can result in domestic slavery for the wife.
The importance of money in marriage is explored in the story of Rosalind's friend Mrs. Strickland, who has married for love and struggles to keep her love alive in a cottage with a husband and six children. The Stricklands are, as the Athenaeum reviewer noted, a study in contrasts--"the woman all prudence and cheerful forbearance, the man all extravagance and selfish indulgence." (23) Despite his small salary as curate, Strickland insists on keeping horses and indulging in the expensive habits of a gentleman, while leaving tradesmen's bills unpaid. Mrs. Strickland, for her part, is a model wife and mother, educating her children herself and attending to some of the parish responsibilities that her husband neglects. The first time her husband is threatened with arrest for debt, Mrs. Strickland not only borrows money from Miss Aylmer to satisfy his creditors but also secures his promotion to the vacant rectory by writing a letter in his name to the noble patron of the living. However, the large increase in his income...
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