CHAPTER FOUR

The Family Business

Artistic Families

When we consider the idea of networks, a very clear group emerges from the artists of the Regency. Both in fine art and on the stage, the same names appear again and again. That is because artistic families reigned supreme in Regency England, passing their craft down through the generations.

While there are any number of networks of women in the Regency to discover, the network of female artists is unique for several reasons. First, they are literally connected by blood and marriage. These are networks brought together by genetics. But they also share their art. The successive generations of female artists grow these networks, so the women are building their careers in two very literal ways: through motherhood and through work. Having fought for their own careers and place in the art world, the artistic mothers of the Regency do not try to dissuade their daughters from following in their footsteps. Rather they encourage and facilitate their careers, often arranging for the highest level of private tutoring from artist friends, or teaching them themselves.

Networks of patronage are nothing new in the artistic world. But the strong maternal line in these Regency families is noteworthy. Here we see women passing their trade and talent on to the next generation. These family networks were useful for both consistency and growth. Many artists made their livings off commissions, and a familiar name helped secure customers. Daughters trained in simple tasks from a young age also made useful assistants, who could then try their hand at larger projects.

In these artistic family networks we are treated to a rare sight: ambitious women. Many of these artists helped to build their families’ reputations and were keenly aware of their place in that mythos. This pride in successive generations can be seen in a number of ways, from private journals to commissioned paintings, like that of a young Fanny Kemble shortly after her stage debut and her much more famous and retired aunt Sarah Siddons. [Figure 8]

And these women were also forward thinking, aware that it takes several generations to truly build a family legacy. To achieve their ambitions they carefully passed their craft on to their daughters, nieces, granddaughters, and daughters-in-law. In each successive generation the women had the opportunity to improve upon that which their foremothers taught them.

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS: THE SHARPLES AND THE BEETHAMS

At the end of the eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth we are presented with two fascinating examples of mothers and daughters who worked together and separately building successful careers as professional and critically respected artists, across generations.

Ellen Sharples married her art teacher and raised two children with him, both of whom became artists. Ellen trained her daughter Rolinda herself, recording the process in her diaries. She was thrilled when her daughter’s talent surpassed her own and Rolinda began taking on more ambitious projects, including one of the paintings more closely visually associated with the Regency period, The Cloakroom, Clifton Assembly Rooms (1817–1818). [Figure 9]

Isabella Beetham is considered one of the greatest silhouette artists of her time. She founded her own studio on Fleet Street in London where she made her much-sought-after portraits. Isabella’s eldest daughter, Jane, began working for her mother in the 1790s. She quickly developed her own style, and as with Rolinda Sharples her ambition exceeded her mother’s. While her marriage curbed her career for a short while, she reappeared in the professional art world in 1805 and exhibited at the Academy until her death in 1815.

THE SHARPLES

Already established as a successful artist, John Sharples married his pupil Ellen Wallace in 1787, shortly after the birth of their first son, James, in 1785. Not much is known of Ellen’s early life, except that she lived in Bath and was raised Quaker. Her husband and his family were Catholic but it doesn’t seem to have been a problem for the new couple. They were married in St. Mary’s Church, a Church of England parish church. John had two sons from two previous marriages, George and Felix, and in 1793 daughter Rolinda joined the family. Shortly thereafter they packed up and moved to America.

Along the way, their ship was captured by French pirates, and the family was imprisoned in France for several months before gaining their release. Ellen wrote about the ordeal in her diary: “War! how dreadful the sound, whichever way contemplated misery precedes, accompanies, and follows in its train. Our family have experienced; severely experienced much of its misery, and much did we witness during our seven months captivity in France, too heart rending to red [sic].”¹

They arrived in New York in 1796 and set up shop as portraitists to the founding fathers and mothers of America. John quickly rose to prominence after painting George Washington. Ellen, and the rest of the family, acted as copyists and assistants to John while also painting themselves. This included their daughter Rolinda, who was educated alongside her brothers and a full member of the family business. Ellen in particular took an interest in her daughter’s education, keeping a careful record of Rolinda’s steady improvement in her journal:

It is very delightful to me to see her always cheerful and happy, ardently engaged in various intellectual pursuits, particularly that of painting, for which she has a decided taste. Exercising it as a profession she views as attended with every kind of advantage. The employment itself is a positive pleasure; It procures in exchange many articles of utility & luxury that otherwise wd be regarded as extravagance the persons she draws entertain her whilst sitting, become her friends and continue to be so, ever after meeting her with smiling countenances and kind greetings, and invarious [sic] ways show her attention, and contribute to her amusement.²

Around 1800 the family returned to England, and Ellen began encouraging Rolinda in earnest, paying her small amounts to complete drawings. It’s important to note that Ellen instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in her daughter, at least in regard to her art. Rolinda learned early that art could produce income.

Rolinda’s talent surpassed that of both her parents and her brothers. As Ellen pointed out, Rolinda was “pursuing her profession with the greatest ardour, most desirous to attain excellence.”³ She worked at her painting every day. Like many other artists, Rolinda painted portraits on commission, which was her bread and butter. Many of her friends and social circle sat for her. But she also tackled larger, more prestigious projects like large-scale group scenes and history paintings. She displayed at the Royal Academy in 1820, 1822, and 1824. Paintings hung at the Royal Academy had to be submitted, and it was extremely prestigious to be chosen. Few women received the honor. Rolinda’s paintings were critically well received, and in 1827 she was unanimously elected a member of the newly formed Society of British Artists, the highest honor bestowed on a female artist.

Rolinda’s painting The Cloakroom, Clifton Assembly Rooms (1817–1818) is one of the most enduringly iconic images of the Regency. She captured the crowd preparing for an evening, flirting and bowing and fixing their shoes. Unlike so many of the famous caricatures of this period, Rolinda has rendered the crowd with warmth and grace. It’s also important that Rolinda portrayed a wide range of ages and characters, including the servants integral to the aristocratic Regency way of life. Perhaps her unique position as a female artist, and one who had traveled so widely and seen so much, encouraged her to shine a light on everyone in the scene rather than those we usually see.

This warmth can also be seen in her self-portrait with her mother, painted in 1816. [Figure 10] Rolinda sits at an easel, wearing a fashionable if impractical white dress, her hands full of the tools of her trade: brushes and a leather stick she used to keep her hand off the paint. Her mother, Ellen, stands next to her, dressed in black, leaning over to look at the painting her daughter is working on. While Rolinda looks at the viewer with a gentle expression, her mother views her work. We’re reminded of the maternal pride she must feel in her daughter’s accomplishments. We’re also, in no uncertain terms, told who taught Rolinda. Ellen is given the privileged position of a revered teacher.

John and Ellen traveled back to America in 1809 to continue building their business, but tragedy struck the family when John died in 1811. Ellen chose to return to Bristol with Rolinda, while George and Felix stayed in America.

Rolinda was elected an honorary member of the Society of British Artists in 1827 in recognition of her talent and impressive career. She lived with her mother at the end of her life, and died from breast cancer in 1838.

Ellen experienced one tragedy after another, losing first her beloved daughter and then her son James just a year later to pneumonia. She spent her final years helping to establish the Bristol Academy for the Promotion of Fine Art. When she died in 1849 she left her considerable estate to the academy.

Included in that estate were the meticulous journals that Ellen kept throughout much of her life. The journals provide us an intimate look at the daily life of a family of artists in the nineteenth century. Unlike some other journals or diaries, these were written for personal use, not with an eye for publication. They include many personal musings on the health and happiness of Ellen’s family including her husband, her sons, and her daughter. Ellen carefully copied earlier journals, letters, and other miscellaneous papers into new journals, as well as including excerpts from Rolinda’s own journals.

In 1814 the family visited London and Ellen wrote about attending the Royal Exhibition with Rolinda and James, then in their early twenties. “The pleasure with which James & Rolinda viewed the pictures, and the advantage they would probably derive from attentively observing them, gave me an additional interest to seek out the various beauties in the works of the most distinguished artists.”⁴

Intergenerational careers are nothing new. But rarely do we have such an intact record of the internal feelings of both a mother and a daughter as they embark upon and achieve successful careers as artists in the nineteenth century.

Ellen was proud of Rolinda. She writes as much and often in her journals and she took special care to preserve Rolinda’s own journals and correspondence after her untimely death.

But Rolinda was also proud of Ellen. It’s clear in her self-portrait as, in the place of honor where a beloved teacher and mentor might stand, she has painted her mother, the woman who taught her to paint and to dream about where her painting might take her.

THE BEETHAM/READS

Isabella Beetham, née Robinson, was born circa 1754. Isabella’s family was Catholic, royalist, and firmly well off. Little is known of her upbringing or education, but her grandfather was an architect so perhaps art and design were included.

In early 1773 Isabella met and eloped with Edward Beetham. That year also saw the addition of the couple’s first daughter, Jane, who would be followed by five more siblings.

As if the elopement wasn’t scandalous enough, the two had also decided to pursue artistic professions. Edward worked as an actor at Sadler’s Wells and Haymarket Theatres in London. He also invented a curtain for the front of the stage that rolled up, minimizing the risk of it catching on fire. Unfortunately, Edward was not in a position to patent the invention so he didn’t receive the bulk of the profits. But he was undeterred and continued inventing, eventually landing on a new kind of washing machine that used wooden rollers to wring excess water out of fabric.

Meanwhile, Isabella embarked on an artistic career. While she initially started with the traditional method of cutting silhouettes, after she studied with successful miniature portraitist John Smart, her work became far more complicated as she mastered the art of painting, a new method for creating the coveted profiles.

Edward and Isabella supported their growing family jointly. In 1785 the family established themselves at 27 Fleet Street where they lived and sold Edward’s washing machines. Isabella set up a studio on the upper floor where she worked on her silhouettes. This involved a painstaking and intensive process of painting directly on glass. Isabella was successful enough to employ at least two assistants, along with help from her daughter Jane. She also took out advertisements to bring in new customers.

Mrs. BEETHAM, who has ever been distinguished as one of the most eminent who ever attempted PROFILE LIKENESSES, continues to execute them with that Taste and Elegance which remains unrivalled. She paints them on Chrystals, ornamented with gold and silver, displaying the hair and drapery in a manner more beautiful than can be conceived till seen: and if not the most striking likeness, no gratuity will be expected. She likewise finishes them on IVORY, COMPOSITION, AND PAPER, for RINGS, LOCKETS, BRACELETS, &c.

Time of Sitting, One Minute.⁵

She wasn’t exaggerating. Isabella was one of the most famous silhouette artists of her time. She had a distinct style and a unique talent for rendering details like hair and lace with hatching and crosshatching that was widely sought after.

Like Ellen Sharples, Isabella seems to have passed on everything she knew to her daughter. She also arranged for Jane to receive tutelage from close family friend and celebrated painter John Opie. Opie was a good teacher, and Jane had clearly inherited natural talent from her mother. She exhibited for the first time at the Academy in 1794, when she was just twenty years old.

John Opie’s first marriage was an unhappy one, and his close relationship to his student Jane seems to have caused a bit of gossip in the close-knit artistic community in London. After Opie divorced his wife in 1796 he quickly asked Edward for Jane’s hand in marriage, but was roundly rejected.

SPOTLIGHT ON AMELIA ALDERSON OPIE

John Opie didn’t remain single after being rejected by Jane Beetham. He fell in love at first sight with Amelia Alderson at a party in Norwich sometime in 1797.

Amelia Alderson is a fascinating figure in her own right, irrespective of her marriage.

Born on November 12, 1769, to wealthy Norwich doctor James Alderson and his wife, Amelia Briggs, Amelia was raised in a liberal household. Her mother passed away in 1784, and Amelia took over the duties of housekeeper and hostess. She became friends with many leading liberal thinkers of the day including William Godwin, who nursed a crush on her, and his eventual wife Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most famous feminists of all time, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

Amelia initially resisted John Opie’s charms and marriage proposals. Finally, after he assured her that her father would be welcome to live with them in their marital home, she assented. The pair were married in 1798.

Despite her initial misgivings, the marriage proved to be a happy one. Opie’s art certainly benefited, as he began to receive critical praise for his paintings of women. At least one contemporary attributed the positive change to Opie’s marriage to Amelia.

Amelia’s artistic career also flourished after her marriage. With Opie’s encouragement she published her first acknowledged novel in 1801, Father and Daughter.⁶ The year after, she published a collection of poetry so popular it went through six editions. She followed this with another collection of poetry, and then thirteen more novels.

In 1807 John Opie died. Amelia retreated to Norwich and channeled her grief into working on a memoir about him, which was published in 1809.

She returned to London and her former social life in 1810. Ten years later she left once more for Norwich, to nurse her ailing father. He passed away in 1825, and Amelia turned for comfort to Quaker friends—a religion she was familiar with due to her friendship with the Gurney family, old neighbors from Norwich.

Amelia’s official conversion to become a Quaker caused a stir among her old circle in London. But she was committed deeply to the religion and especially its connection to the abolition movement. Amelia did not allow her new religion to impede her lifestyle. She continued to travel, especially to Paris where she met Queen Marie Amélie and Georges Cuvier. She did, however, cease publishing fiction, as it was frowned upon by Quakers.

In 1840 Amelia attended the first World Anti-Slavery Convention and was important enough to be one of several women included in Benjamin Robert Haydon’s painting The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, painted a year later. [Figure 11]

Women, such as Amelia, were not officially invited to the convention, much to their consternation, but many showed up anyway. Much of the first day was spent discussing their inclusion. Eventually they were allowed to sit in the balcony and watch the proceedings, but not allowed to speak. Attendees Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were so incensed by their exclusion that they went home and organized their own convention, the Seneca Falls Convention, where they, in turn, excluded Black women from attending.

(BACK TO JANE BEETHAM)

Jane married a solicitor, John Read, soon after Opie’s failed proposal. And she stopped exhibiting for several years.

This has led to speculation that she was in love with John Opie, that her marriage was an unhappy one, and that one or both of these things contributed to her break from her public career. We have no concrete evidence indicating anything of the sort, and Jane returned to exhibiting in 1805, continuing to do so until 1815.

Jane and John Read had one daughter, Cordelia. Jane and Cordelia lived together after John’s death. Cordelia appears to have never married, and it’s thanks to her slight hoarding tendencies that we have so much of her mother’s art still extant.

Upon her death, Cordelia left her collection of her family’s paintings and £100,000 to the Brompton Consumption Hospital. The paintings were in poor condition and many needed restoration, but Cordelia still ensured that the legacy of the artistic women in her family remained intact.

ANNE MEE

Born circa 1775 to John Foldsone and Elizabeth Fell, Anne was the oldest of eight children. Educated at Madam Pommier’s in Bloomsbury, Anne felt the heavy weight of supporting her family on her shoulders in 1787 when her father passed away.

Luckily, John had been a miniaturist of middling talent, and his daughter had inherited all of it and then some. She began painting in earnest and received royal patronage and recognition, painting many of the leading society ladies. She even received a commission from the notoriously picky Horace Walpole, who then complained bitterly in subsequent letters when she was late delivering the paintings.

In 1793 Anne married Joseph Mee, an Irish barrister with an estate in Armagh. They had eight children between 1795 and 1807. Anne continued her painting career under her married name, Mrs. Joseph Mee. She appears to have only painted women, but whether this was due to her husband’s purported jealousy or simply coincidence is unknown.

Anne displayed at the Royal Academy, indicating the technical proficiency of her miniatures. She was also a frequent visitor in court after 1790, when she drew Queen Charlotte. George IV, as Prince Regent, commissioned Anne to paint miniatures of the leading beauties at court, which she eventually published in 1812 as Gallery of Beauties of the Court of George III. She included her own portrait at the front.

Gallery of Beauties references past similar projects, like Peter Lely’s Windsor Beauties from the mid-1660s. These series of portraits captured the favored and famous beauties in aristocratic circles. Many of Anne’s beauties are depicted as Greek goddesses or other classical beauties, complete with gauzy veils and blowing hair.

As painter for this project, Anne joined an important lineage of formerly all-male artists asked to codify the women approved by royal choice. George IV, a notorious womanizer and lover of women, commissioned the project and wanted some record of the women at his father’s court. It was an expansive project, with Anne painting over eighteen full-size oil portraits of women such as Georgiana Augusta Frederica Seymour, the daughter of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, and possibly George IV himself.

Joseph died in 1849 and left his estate in Armagh to Anne, with bequests to their three sons. Anne wrote her will in 1850, leaving everything to her son Arthur Patrick, an architect who had followed in his mother’s footsteps and exhibited at the Royal Academy. She died a year later in 1851.

THE ACTRESSES

Actresses are one of those groups that have gotten a truly terrible, all-encompassing reputation over the years, accumulated from rumor and innuendo. But many actresses in the early nineteenth century were firmly a part of the middle class, achieving financial and critical success in a way that was rare for women of the time.

That is not to absolve the profession of its more scandalous associations entirely. A number of high-profile mistresses trod the boards before, after, and during their assignations with royalty and aristocrats. Indeed, several of them were so successful in their amatory pursuits that their paramours married them. These marriages had varying levels of success in social settings, particularly depending on the birth of the actress in question.

The nineteenth century saw the founding of a number of famous theatrical families, the most famous of which is the Kembles. Much like the artistic families described above, these theatrical families passed their talents down through the generations, supporting their successors whenever possible. There was an added difficulty encouraging young women to pursue careers in the theater, especially if parents wanted their daughters to make respectable marriages, but ambitious young actresses found unique ways around this and managed to continue their family legacies.

Sarah Siddons and the Kembles

No actress was more famous during the Regency than Sarah Siddons. Her talent was unmatched, and her powerful family helped cement her place on the stage, where she ruled the Regency theater scene. Sarah Siddons was a celebrity and an it-girl long before the term was even in popular use.

Born on July 5, 1755, to the actor and theater manager Roger Kemble and his wife, Sarah Ward, Sarah was the first of twelve children. Seven of the twelve became actors, with varying degrees of success.

Sarah was initially educated on the road traveling with her parents, but eventually attended Mrs. Harris’s School for Young Ladies where she felt out of place due to her lowborn status—which she quickly made up for by displaying her acting talents in school plays. At the same time she appeared in her family’s theatrical performances. Her first recorded performance was in 1766 as Ariel in The Tempest.

Sarah’s career was self-chosen and -directed. Her parents opposed her entering their profession and encouraged her to marry a local squire. Despite this, Sarah fell in love with fellow actor William Siddons. To discourage the relationship (and possible future profession) Sarah’s parents sent her to work for Lady Mary Greatheed at Guy’s Cliffe, Warwick, where she was first a lady’s maid and then a companion to Lady Mary.

Sarah and William continued to communicate and in 1773 her parents finally relented and the couple were married. They joined the Kembles’ company for a year and then traveled to Cheltenham, where Sarah’s performances started receiving particular attention.

Multiple people informed the famous David Garrick of Sarah’s talents, but it wasn’t until 1775 that he engaged her to perform with his Drury Lane company. Sarah was pregnant with her second child at the time, but she didn’t let that slow her down, continuing to rehearse while pregnant. Her daughter was born November 4 and Sarah was already in London and performing on December 29 as Portia in The Merchant of Venice.

This debut was a disaster. Her performance was widely panned by critics and theatergoers alike.

Sarah retreated to Birmingham for the summer season, where she was informed that Garrick wouldn’t be reengaging her contract. Devastated but determined to continue building her career, she spent six long years doing just that in theaters outside London.

In 1778 Sarah was engaged to perform at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Bath had become an increasingly popular and important vacation spot, and it was here that Sarah began to finally reclaim her reputation as an actress. Here she also befriended a number of important aristocratic women—including Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and Fanny Burney—who would become important champions for her work.

After years of working on her craft, Sarah finally returned to the London stage on October 10, 1782, in the title role of Isabella, or, The Fatal Marriage.

The response could not have been more different from her disastrous debut. She was met with rapturous reviews and a number of articles detailing the wild, emotional reaction she elicited in her audiences, especially women. There were “sobs and shrieks… literally the spectators were too ill to use their hands in her applause.”⁷ One woman had to be carried out. Or as Byron said simply, “Nothing ever was or can be like her.”⁸

In 1783 Sarah was invited to perform in front of the king and queen, and the queen appointed her official reader to the princesses. This level of royal approval was reflected in Sarah’s continuing professional success. Her picture was painted by leading artists of the day, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, and engravings were published in every newspaper. In short, Sarah Siddons had become a star.

Unfortunately, Sarah’s personal life was much more complicated. Her husband, William Siddons, was an alcoholic and terrible money manager. His own acting career had long been eclipsed by his wife’s, which led to great resentment. William was also unfaithful, and Sarah believed that her ill health for much of her later life was due to a venereal disease he gave her.

Sarah’s daughters, Sally and Maria, also enacted their own drama, which took an additional toll on their mother’s health, in the late 1790s as they went back and forth over the painter Thomas Lawrence who first proposed to Sally in 1796 and then transferred his affections to the younger sister, Maria, when Sarah and William Siddons opposed the first match. Thomas Lawrence and Maria were engaged, against parental inclinations, in 1781. Maria’s health began to deteriorate soon after the engagement, and Thomas went back to Sally. On her deathbed Maria made Sally promise not to enter a relationship with Thomas after her death, which she faithfully saw out. Sadly, Sally died five short years after Maria. The loss of her beloved daughters left Sarah’s mental and physical health in shambles.

As a famous member of a famous family, Sarah was at the heart of the in-real-life drama surrounding the English theatrical world of the nineteenth century. Her career was at the whim of jealous and competitive theater managers, who played her against her competitors, trying to ensure that their theater had the best actress for the cheapest price.

Sarah and William Siddons maintained the careful veil of a happy marriage until 1804, when they informally separated. This was only after years of rumors surrounding Sarah and her former fencing instructor Mr. P. Galindo, resulting in Mrs. Galindo publishing her accusations against the couple in 1809. Sarah’s role as a faithful wife and devoted mother was absolutely integral to her meteoric rise and eventual rule of the British stage, and any hint of impropriety could seriously damage that image. Unlike many of her contemporary actresses, Sarah was not a scandalous figure (at least for the better part of her career), as best seen in her connections to the royal family and especially the princesses, who were known to be extremely sheltered and protected by their royal parents. Luckily for Sarah, the Galindo episode, while unpleasant, didn’t affect her celebrity status.

Sarah played her final season at Covent Garden in 1811–12. Her final performance as Lady Macbeth led to a stunning moment when the audience refused to allow the performance to continue after the sleepwalking scene, demanding Sarah’s return to the stage. She did so in her own clothes, addressing the crowd in an emotional eight-minute speech.

Sarah maintained her retirement, except for the occasional benefit or family performance. She died on June 8, 1831.

Fanny Kemble

Born on November 29, 1809, to Sarah Siddons’s brother Charles Kemble and his Viennese-born wife, Marie Thérèse de Camp, Fanny was the daughter, and niece, of noted actors. As such she received an enviable education in the arts, even studying in Paris for a time.

Fanny first appeared on the London stage as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in 1829. The London Times wrote in a review, “Upon the whole, we do not remember to have ever seen a more triumphant debut. That Miss Kemble has been well and carefully instructed, as, of course, she would be is clear; but it is no less clear that she possesses qualifications which instructions could not create, although it can bring them to perfection.”⁹

After her triumphant debut, Fanny toured around Great Britain, receiving accolades for her performances and securing her position as a leading actress of the time. Soon after she left for a planned two-year theatrical tour of the United States, accompanied by her father and her aunt Dall. While on tour Fanny attracted the attention and affections of Pierce Butler, heir to a number of plantations and scion of an important American family.

Fanny and Pierce were married in 1834 in Philadelphia. The couple had two daughters, Sarah and Frances. Upon their wedding, Fanny retired from her stage career. However, she wanted to continue to write, which her husband strongly discouraged.

While Pierce had courted Fanny assiduously, he treated her very differently after their marriage. He expected her to put aside her past life and everything associated with it and become a perfect society matron. Fanny rebelled against these expectations every way she could.

She published her private journals in 1835, against her husband’s wishes and much to his horror and embarrassment. A Journal of America was an instant bestseller. Her family in England was distressed at the scandal, but no one was more distraught than Pierce Butler. The couple continued to fight, and Fanny even ran away several times.

In 1838 Fanny made her first trip to the plantation her husband had inherited on St. Simon’s Island. She wrote her observations of the trip in a series of letters that she eventually published in 1863, once again over her husband’s objections. In her diary Fanny paints a horrible picture, but she’s quick to point out she’s simply telling the truth: “I do not wish to add to, or perhaps I ought to say take away from, the effect of such narration by amplifying the simple horror and misery of their bare details.”¹⁰

Slavery was the defining issue of Fanny and Pierce’s marriage. They both thought they could convince the other of the rightness of their position, but neither budged. Their daughters split between them, with Sarah siding with her mother and Frances siding with her father.

The marriage was damaged irrevocably by the visit and Fanny left for England without her daughters in 1845. To support herself, she returned to the stage for a successful career as a reader of Shakespeare’s plays.

In 1849 Pierce sued Fanny for divorce, with him retaining custody of their daughters. He also published a rebuttal to what he saw as her lies, 188 pages called Mr. Butler’s Statement, in which he laid out why he and Fanny divorced, blaming the fact that “she held that marriage should be companionship on equal terms.”¹¹ He also recklessly gambled and spent his massive fortune, leading to financial ruin. In 1859 his slaves were sold in what was the single largest slave auction in US history. He died in 1867.

In her later years Fanny settled back in England with her daughter Frances and her family. She published a series of memoirs starting in 1878, which provide historians an inside look at the theatrical world of the nineteenth century. She also paid careful attention to her ex-husband’s business dealings, always with an eye to protecting her daughters and ensuring their futures.

CONCLUSION

In her Capital Theater Series (Somewhere I’ll Find You and Because You’re Mine) Lisa Kleypas harnesses all the drama and intrigue of the Regency theater world.

In Somewhere I’ll Find You, the heroine Julia Wentworth ran away from her arranged marriage to follow her passion for the stage. But her fiancé shows up, determined to end their engagement and free himself, before he quickly falls in love with her. Julia’s fiancé is Damon Savage, the Duke of Leeds, and while the pair fight about Julia’s determination to continue her career after their marriage, they eventually come to an agreement. Julia continues as a director and actress even after she becomes a duchess.

In Because You’re Mine, Miss Madeline Matthews is also trying to escape an arranged marriage, and decides the best way to do that is to ruin her reputation by sleeping with leading actor Logan Scott. Unfortunately, her plan goes awry and Madeline and Logan end up married to each other, trying to figure out how they fit into each other’s worlds.

Both books bring us into the intimate, chaotic world of Regency theaters, full of characters like chatty dressers, ambitious aspiring actresses, clever set designers, and domineering directors—all of whom we could easily find real-life counterparts to in the pages of history. While Julia and Madeline are both running away from their families, and therefore devoid of a familial network to help with their careers, they find community within the theater. Both make friends with other aspiring actresses and actors while finding their way, including with each other. Julia even helps Madeline find housing with her old friend Nell Florence, a long-retired actress.

Through these different generations of actresses, Kleypas draws on the very real history of the Regency theater world to show the difficulties and the joys of life as an actress in the early nineteenth century.

Regency romance novels have also plumbed the depths of the art world, finding inspiration in the female artists of the Regency, like River of Fire by Mary Jo Putney, with heroine Rebecca Seaton who is not only an artist herself, but also the daughter of famous artist Sir Anthony Seaton. Or Sophia Hathaway from Tessa Dare’s Surrender of a Siren, who leaves her life and advantageous marriage behind to secure the life she wants, as an artist.

These artists, much like the actresses from Kleypas’s books, are drawn to art from somewhere deep within. It’s innate in their character that they are artists who create.

In the words and art of the real female artists of the Regency we see this same passion and drive. And in the consecutive generations we see the fires of that passion fanned until each woman gets a chance to set the Regency world ablaze with her art.