Absolutely fascinating biography of the famed Ladies of Llangollen- two 'romantic friends' who fled Ireland in 1770s and set up home in Wales. Both had a difficult home life- orphaned Sarah Ponsonby was being brought up by a well-meaning aunt - and an uncle who was making unwelcome advances to the 17 year old. Meanwhile Eleanor Butler (scion of the wealthy Ormonde family) was a disappointment to her mother - 'masculine' and unmarriageable - and was being urged to enter a convent.
Facing considerable opposition, they eventually escaped to Wales where, on a very limited income (many of their relatives cut them off) they nonetheless established a charming rural retreat (which they rarely left), their days devoted to culture, walking, self-improvement - and later farming. Many famous folk came to visit, charmed by their life. "Their system bound them never to leave home, to devote hearts and minds to self-improvement, to eschew the vanity of society, to beautify their surroundings and to better, in so far as they could, the lot of the poor and unfortunate." Lest they sound improbably saintly, Mavor's biography certainly makes mention of fallings out with acquaintances, the rather acerbic personality of Miss Butler and the sometimes excessive numbers of visitors. Highly interesting and a rather lovely life. ( )

The elopement was an immediate scandal. On the night of 30 March 1778, Sarah Ponsonby – then aged 23 – climbed from the window of her guardians’ house near Inistioge, County Kilkenny, dressed as a man and carrying a pistol and her pet dog. In a nearby barn, her dear friend Eleanor Butler – aged 39 – was waiting for her, having likewise escaped from her family at Kilkenny Castle. The two women were tracked down by their panicking relatives two days later at Waterford, on the brink of boarding the ferry to England. Swept back home in disgrace, Sarah promptly fell desperately ill, while Eleanor was threatened (not for the first time) with dispatch to a French convent. As the locality buzzed with rumours, the two friends were driven by desperation to another madcap act, and Eleanor managed to evade her family once again in order to join Sarah at her guardians’ house. After ignoring all appeals of propriety and ‘reason’, the two women announced that they were determined to go away and make a life together. By early May, their exhausted families had accepted this decision and, in early May, they once again travelled to Waterford and thence to Wales. An initial tour of the country led them to the pleasant vale at Llangollen in northern Wales, where they rented a cottage which would remain their home – and bring them increasing notoreity – for the next six decades...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2017/03/16/the-ladies-of-llangollen-elizabeth-mavor/ ( )

Quite interesting -- the story of two ladies in the late eighteenth century who "eloped" and lived together for 50 years in a cottage in Wales. ( )

Mrs Radcliffe could have written the early lives of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, the subjects of Elizabeth Mavor’s joint biography. There are gothic persecutions and plot twists aplenty. The imperious Butlers, ruined Irish Catholic grandees, threatened Lady Eleanor with incarceration in a mouldering French convent because no suitor wanted her (the feeling was reciprocated by Lady Eleanor). Miss Ponsonby was harassed by an obsessed guardian tired of his middle-aged wife. They eloped together dressed as men and set up home together in a pretty gothic cottage in the Vale of Llangollen. It doesn’t matter, although Mavor worries, whether they were friends or lovers, chaste as St Ursula or as busy as Sappho, or what went on in the four-poster bed they shared for the rest of their lives. They were good, genteel, a trifle snobbish, faithful to each other for over half a century, voracious readers and rural bluestockings. There are cats, dogs, famous friends, lovely gardens, a fantastic comic cook-housekeeper and not a man in the house. Well, apart from Wordsworth, who wrote a dull poem about them, and the strapping young Duke of Wellington who carved his name on their kitchen fireplace. Delightful women, delightful lives and a delightful book.