Charles Edward de Coetlogon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Died | 16 September 1820 |
| Occupation | Divine |
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, writes Tolstoy, and in their own way the de Coetlogons excelled. A thesis could be written trying to make sense of them and I have to resist even though I started down the path by asking a professional researcher to examine archival material held in London. The anguished letter transcribed below is disturbing and disturbed. The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott when asked how he recognised that someone had serious mental health problems replied that it was when he became bored listening to them. Overlong, overwrought and eventually boring, this letter nonetheless convinced me that more than one tragedy would reveal itself if I could establish more context than the obvious.
The obvious
tragedy is that the woman who signs herself E. Dormer but who was born
Elizabeth de Coetlogon had for a long time been estranged from her father,
Charles Frederick de Coetlogon (1776-1836), who has now forgiven her and to
whom in 1829 she writes this letter, sent to him care of a London Navy Agents
who look after his affairs. But the letter contains no clue to the nature of
her original offence.
I establish some
dates: born December 1800, married 1821.
She is using her married name and Mr Dormer turns out to be a Charles Dormer
who she married just before her twenty first birthday and without parental
consent. In fact, she married Dormer twice: first at Bath on the 18 September
1821 before Thomas Brindle, a Roman Catholic clergyman whose performance had no
legal status, and second on 23 September at Gretna Green where under Scottish
law girls could marry at twelve, with or without consent. She was a runaway
bride, an obvious candidate for causing parental offence. But why do it?
I turned to her
father with his exotic surname to which the internet initially responded with
the Wikipedia page for his own father. That proved to be a lucky break.
Wikipedia is brisk: Charles Edward de Coetlogon (1746- 1820) “was an English
divine”. His brand of divinity can be gathered from the titles of two of his
Works, one published at the end of his life, The Protestant Reformation of
the Sixteenth Century, Briefly Celebrated as a Motive to National Gratitude (1820)
and the other much earlier, A Seasonable Caution Against the
Abominations of the Church of Rome (1779, second edition).
Like father, like
son. Elizabeth’s father was not going to consent to her marriage to a Roman
Catholic, almost indecent in its haste just a year after her divine
grandfather’s death. And Charles Frederick still had the law entirely on his
side: it was not until April 1829 that the Royal Assent was given to a Catholic
Relief Act which removed most of the civil disabilities to which Catholics were
subject, though leaving intact those that barred them until 1871 from the
universities of Cambridge, Durham, and Oxford.
Both the passage
of time and the imminence of emancipation may have influenced Elizabeth’s
father’s change of heart in 1829. But
marrying without consent just a few months before her twenty first birthday
would only have compounded his original anger, though it does raise the
question, Why rub salt in the wound? Was she pregnant?
The letter
suggests the opposite. She writes of consulting a doctor, C.M. Clarke of Savile
Row, who turns out to be Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke, the top man in his field
– a field we would now call gynaecology. If Charles Dormer wanted an heir – and
the Catholic Dormers had managed to reproduce themselves for centuries and were
already up to the tenth Baron Dormer - he was to be disappointed. He had no
children with Elizabeth; after her death he re-married and there were children.
Elizabeth’s
Wikipedia-d grandfather had a son and two daughters by his wife Mary;
Elizabeth’s father also had a son and two daughters by his wife Emeline. But
Elizabeth’s letter contains no reference at all to her mother, siblings, aunts,
uncle, or husband. That may have been partly out of prudence. Her mother had
angered her father by at least condoning Elizabeth’s relationship with Charles
Dormer and possibly worse. In a December 1822 diary entry Elizabeth’s father
writes that "scarcely a week passes when I am not annoyed by some
application from, or on behalf of my daughter and her husband; her conduct
and the infamous connexion, I am informed he had with her mother, have
determined me in admitting them no intercourse with me. What can I ever
hope or expect from such characters. What faith or confidences in promises.
What a fruitful science is this to embitter tranquility, and peace, which
in the seclusion in which I had, I seek to enjoy. But praise be thy name
oh God”. Plenty more where that came from.
Elizabeth died in
1833; her father in 1836; her mother in 1853 at Aix-la-Chapelle where her son
and Elizabeth’s brother, Charles Frederick James, became a chaplain; the fact
is rather reluctantly confirmed by an undated local English-language guide
book, “In the Anna-street we finally have to name the protestant church St Ann,
where divine service is held for the English by the English Chaplain the Rev.
de Coetlogon every Sunday at noon”.
A small book
would be needed to track how the de Coetlogons failed to cohere as a family,
how they fell out with each other, and how they scattered, but how the name
somehow managed to survive the century with a Charles Frederick de Coetlogon
Roupell born in 1897.
My hunch is that
a shadow from the man with a Wikipedia page hung over them all. But it is there that I will stop and someone
may like to go deeper into the archives and perhaps prove me wrong.
*
Transcription
Addressed and
dated on the outside: Monday
February twenty-three 1829
Charles de
Coetlogon Esqre Care of Messrs
Maude 13 Great George Street
Westminster London
No dateline but
postmarked: OSWESTRY Feb 23 1829, arrival mark in London Feb 24
I should vainly
attempt any expression of the emotions that the sight of your letter created –
its very form even at this distance of time was recognised at one glance – and
before it could be put into my hands. I could scarcely take my eyes from the
superscription, until the gathering tears disarmed their sight, and I pressed
it to my lips – for I saw that the letter which I had presumed to address to
you could not be enclosed, and I blessed God that I was once more written to,
by my father! As I had not dared to admit even the faintest degree of positive
hope that I should be ever more be permitted in your presence, and, as, from
the moment I had adventured my letter I did the utmost to repress anything like
a sanguine feeling, I know not why it is – but the sentence of banishment that
you have passed on me in those two marked lines, struck witheringly upon
my heart – and I experienced the sudden pang – only like that which may be
supposed to pass across the breast of a criminal, who hears pronounced the final sentence of condemnation – that which
can not be prepared for, notwithstanding that he never anticipated any
other! – But it is past – the years are gone that will never return – the ties
severed, that never will be reunited – Even the shadow of delusion has passed
away – the future – if there be any long future can be but grief without hope –
grief for that which will never be restored sorrow for that which is
irreversible! – But I have praised God and, here, I offer to you the unfeigned
fervent acknowledgments of a grateful though heavy heart, for the blessed
assurance that I am forgiven! – It has removed the most blighting, and tortured
of those feelings which cling to every remembrance of the past!
It was by the
urgent and melancholy circumstances of my most distracting situation that I was
induced, not to wish for since such a wish could be dependent on no
contingencies, but to once more solicit a father’s forgiveness. I thought that
if long and thorough conviction that I had deeply erred towards you, as a
parent and not weeks or months, but years of severe suffering could expiate my
offence, that I was authorised to renew an intreaty for pardon – anticipating withal, those, possibly not far
distant hours that would find me on the couch of death. I was willing not to
forego another effort, for that blessing which, if obtained would shed one ray
over the gloomy scene, and be indeed “a moon beam in the midnight storm of
death”. [She
has been reading Fugitive Poetry of the XIX Century, of which there are
two volumes, The Lyre and The Laurel].
You can form
little idea of the dreariness that surrounds, and has long been the character
of all connected with me: - bereaved, of every earthly tie – my health,
requiring everything but what I can provide – the recurrence of surmises to
which my situation, joined to bearing a name known, where I should most wish it
unknown, so often exposes me, even amid the rugged hills of Wales, where, I
have chiefly resided: - the torturing questions that my unhealthy appearance
perpetually gives rise to, as “Who is she? Has she no friends? Why does she not
let her relations know?” et cet – and then, this sordid fear of rendering the
commonest attentions of humanity for which payment is not immediately bestowed!
– these are one or two out of a thousand
miseries that have combined to break my heart; almost to destroy every feeling
that should unite me to my species, and have, I dare say, rendered me as
disgustful to the people about me, as they, and all, and everything are become
to me.
With regard to
the various statements that I have, at various times, made on the subject of my
health, I might indeed wish, for suffering’s sake, that they had been somewhat
less true. But possibly, it would be difficult if not impossible to obtain your
credit – unless I were to refer you to, and you were sufficiently interested to
make the enquiry of, C. M. Clarke, of Saville row London – the only man in whom
I repose confidence – he could inform you in what state of health he found me
when first called in to me – after I had been shockingly mis-treated by
Heaviside, through his utterly mistaking the nature of my complaint, and,
vainly prescribed for, by Dr Warren, and, long previously by Dr Merriman. I was
for months under the care of Chas. Clarke, on my return to England – namely
from the February of that year until July, when, as usual, he left town – and
owing to my being far from convalescent, desired me to continue the system on
which he had treated me, and write to him, at the stated periods. However,
finding myself totally unable to meet the enormous expense of a residence near
Mr Clarke, as I was then in Maddox St. Hanover Square I altogether, gave up, in
despair, the idea of continuing to consult him – even the medicines required
for me being of a most expensive kind; and when I could no longer obtain these,
on credit, I became unable to procure them. I therefore discharged my
servant, gave up the warm bathing, discontinued all my medicines, and,
altogether contrary to his advice, went out of town! – with a very little money
in my pocket I wandered about for some time in search of a place cheap enough,
and subsequently had a severe illness in South Wales, which originated in
fretting and debility, I fancy, and ended with inflammation of the lungs. –
Since this period I was gradually becoming worse, but, the fear of your
displeasure, precludes farther explanations. I could not enter, in fact, in
what is chiefly necessary, for your comprehending my state of health,
unless explicitly assured - that it was desired by you. Possibly,
could I have gone to Town this year and been
again under Clarke’s care I should have been in a very different situation. He
then! – is ignorant of my becoming so much worse – for I could not endure the
mortification of receiving a man so eminent, in inferior circumstances – and,
weak as may be such pride, and after all the stern lessons that adversity has
taught me, I can not overcome my feelings on this point. – I have been led into
so long, and, I fear, to you, uninteresting a detail, by your expressing
a doubt of my veracity in the former statements. Alas! Could you look upon my
wan cheek, and discoloured lips – did you see the wasted hand that now rests
upon this paper, or place your own upon its feeble pulses, you would be
satisfied that no exaggerated, much less false, statement had been foisted upon
you. - -
I know not where
I am going; although I must leave this place; for added to the fear entertained
by the old people of the result of any illness, is my own dislike to a
residence here – the motive of my coming at all I could not fully
explain without going into details that would be objectionable to you – thus,
suffice it to say, I was rather hardly used about some money, which, if I had
received (as I ought to have done) would have enabled me to go to
London, at least, for a few weeks – I am enthusiastically attached to the wild
scenery of Wales – her dark streams, her lofty mountains, have peculiar charms
for me; and the ruggedness, the wild bleakness, in many parts the chief
features, associated with my feelings. – Whilst I had strength , often, by
sun-rise, and until night was veiling the hills, have my dog, and I, pursued
our solitary rambles – he is dead now, - and since I have been here - and this
was the last thing that loved me – the last living thing that I looked upon with tears; you will judge of
my privations, as far as gratification of mind is concerned, when I tell
you that I have no longer strength to pursue
exercise and that I do not posess a single book save a Bible
& prayer book, which I bought myself; and none are to be obtained here
worth reading; still less in any part of Wales. If I could obtain, while
I am alive the privilege of being authorised to address my thoughts, and
feelings, occasionally to you, it would be the only satisfaction that I
can know; and as it is less difficult to me, at present, than heretofore, to
wean myself from visionary ideas of enjoyment; I should become tranquil almost
happy under such circumstances.
I must conclude
this long letter – and perhaps ought not to do so without first intreating your
pardon for the length to which it is extended. I can only promise to observe
any instruction of yours to this effect, if I should receive permission to
address you, hereafter. I do not think I shall be able to get away from this
place in less than a week or it may be ten days. I have already said that I
know not whither I am going – and don’t much care. Like Abraham of old, the
world is before me, where to chuse – but yet circumstances do not, perchance
leave me quite so unfettered – any spot that you would intimate
as desirable – that should decide me
but I can not suppose that you have any disposition to do so – Suffer
me, however, to prefer one request ; that should you condescend to reply
to this letter you afford me some account of your own health – of which, of
course, I have no opportunity to know. –
now fare well my dear, dear Father! The feelings of your own heart I am sure be
a far more valuable recompense, than all the acknowledgments I could utter, for
that forgiveness which you have granted to my errors I pray that God may ever
bless you – and that amid brighter memories I may not be utterly forgotten; -
and subscribe myself your grateful and attached child. E. Dormer
*
1829 Elizabeth, Mrs Dormer
Elizabeth
Pegg located diaries of Charles Frederick de Coetlogon held in the London
Archives as well as relevant birth, marriage and death details, very little of
which information has been deployed here but which would repay another
researcher’s attention.
Wikipedia:
Charles Edward de Coetlogon (1746? - 16 September 1820) was an English
divine.
Wikipedia:
Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke, 1st Baronet, FRS, FRCP (28 May 1782 - 7 September 1857) was a
British surgeon
No comments:
Post a Comment