15 November 2004

Romantic Friendship

As we rounded the curve into Llangollen, a picture-postcard kind of town nestled in the beautiful Dee Valley in the North East of Wales, I could hardly wait to see the special house I’d read about the day before we arrived.  

This village, although small in size, hosts the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, an amazing week of singing, dancing and music from all over the world, and it was happening this very week.  But we didn’t come here for music.  We came to see Plas Newydd, the home from 1780 to 1829 to the “Ladies of Llangollen”, or more commonly known as Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby.

These two Irish women were, at the time, famous throughout the country as the story of their friendship spread through British Regency Society. Their Gothic house was of interest, but it was the two women themselves that drew crowds and famous guests.

Plas Newydd is set in the midst of a lush green landscape, surrounded by trees, and lovely gardens that spill down onto a bubbling creek.   Their house, now a museum run by the Denbighshire County Council, is the real marvel. 

The Ladies were obsessed with dark wood. Everywhere throughout the house are bits of intricate carvings, elaborate moldings. and gothic ornaments brought as gifts by many visitors over their 49 years in this place.  The walls are literally covered in a mosaic of wood, bits of medieval churches, sailor’s storage chests, chunks from palaces and manors and places unknown.  The front of the house even includes the font from the nearby Valle Crucis Abbey. 

The inside of the house is dark, mostly because of all of the brown wood, and small windows.  Each room retains a bit of their history, from their bedroom chambers (they had separate ones) to the rooms where they received guests.  Throughout the house there are framed stories telling the history of this place.

But the real story here is about two women, Lady Eleanor Butler (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1831), one 16 years older than the other, who became friends in Ireland. 

Unhappy at home (women lived with their families until they married in those days) they took solace in each other’s company.  Eventually they planned to run away together.  Butler, considerably older, had become Ponsonby’s mentor and intimate friend. 

But their first elopement failed and they were returned to their families.  Butler was sent to a convent, and Ponsonby’s family arranged for her to marry.  But when Ponsonby threatened to go public with allegations of the inappropriate attentions of her guardian’s husband, the families gave in, and the women took their inheritances and moved to Plas Newydd.  Here they lived for the rest of their lives.

According to the museum’s literature “The Ladies' drew many prominent visitors, including Edmund Burke, William Wordsworth, Anna Seward, and Stéphanie de Genlis. Their mutual attachment, and their life of shared reading, writing, walking, and gardening, were celebrated and mythologized in several poems.”

The women shared what they called “romantic friendship”; they dressed similarly in men's waistcoats and women's skirts; signed their correspondence jointly; and refused to spend even one night away from home. Butler's journals refer to Ponsonby as "my Beloved" and "my sweet love," describe physical attentions bestowed for headaches and illnesses, and express the couple's longings, when visitors were too plentiful, to be alone again.  Many of the literary elite of the day felt these two women represented the ultimate in human achievement, a “Romantic” life dedicated to the arts and friendship.

No matter what their relationship (which was a matter of gossip and speculation during their lives as it is today), their home is a legacy.  Their story gives a glimpse into a world 200 years ago that was much more complicated and interesting than our history books tell us.  These famous women were rebels, in that they refused to live a life that was formed for them by society.  And, in their quest for independence, they left a beautiful home that continues to tell the story of two women who exemplified the movement for women to be independent.

This place, Plas Newydd, is but one example of the kind of spirit found all over Wales…a spirit of survival and intellect, much like what I see in some of the people that make up my favorite place on earth…Southeast Ohio.