Lady Eleanor Butler was born into the Catholic branch of one of Munster’s oldest and most prestigious families, whose lineage in Ireland stretched back to Norman times. She was the third girl to be born in her family, a worrying event for parents who were obsessed with succession. Eighteen months after Eleanor’s birth, however, her mother gave birth to the long-awaited son, and Eleanor was quickly relegated to the sidelines. To make matters worse, she was not very pretty and, when she was old enough to converse, she proved somewhat sharp-tongued and ‘satirical’.
In due course Eleanor was packed off to a convent education in Cambrai, France, after which she was expected to come home to the family seat at Kilkenny Castle and make a decent marriage. But Lady Eleanor had other ideas. She objected to the idea of giving herself a master, and instead gave her heart to the person she regarded as her soulmate: Sarah Ponsonby.
Sarah was a slight, fair, but rather morose and over-sensitive girl, some sixteen years younger than Eleanor. Orphaned early, she had been brought to the home of her grand, wealthy relations who lived at Woodstock, near Inistioge, twelve miles away from Kilkenny Castle. They sent her to a nearby boarding school and, because she had no money of her own, she was effectively forgotten. She first met the twenty-nine-year-old Eleanor when Eleanor paid a duty visit to her school. Sarah hated school, being quiet and naturally melancholic, so Eleanor took the miserable girl under her wing and a friendship developed. When Sarah was eighteen she left the boarding school and returned to her guardians at Woodstock. Sarah and Eleanor were now able to spend a lot of time together at Kilkenny Castle, and their relationship became more meaningful.
Nineteenth-century society did not decree that the idea of a ‘romantic friendship’ among females was as subversive and threatening as such a connection between males. Nonetheless, the two women encountered strong family opposition to their growing attachment – after all, there was no point to girls unless they married advantageously and swelled the family coffers.
It was at this point that Eleanor and Sarah decided to run away together. Various myths came to surround their elopement: it was said that Eleanor’s family was forcing her into an engagement; that both sets of families were heartlessly cruel; that Sarah’s guardian was showing an unhealthy interest in her, and so on. The truth was more prosaic. There was no place in grand houses for unmarried or unmarriageable women, and all Eleanor and Sarah wanted was to make a home with each other.
The first time they ran away it was a fiasco. They disguised themselves as men but, after spending the night in a barn, they were found and brought back. They were forbidden to communicate with each other, and Eleanor’s family threatened to place her in a convent in France. But the audacious Sarah sent for Eleanor to come and visit her at Woodstock, and then hid her ladyship in a cupboard. When they were discovered, about a week later, they boldly faced down their families, booked a passage on a small boat leaving from Waterford, took their maid, Mary Carryl, and left for good.
Looking for somewhere where they could retire from the world and be themselves, the pair happened upon the small village of Llangollen on the beautiful River Dee in Denbighshire, North Wales. They built a cottage there named Plas Newydd, and lived there together in man-free bliss for the next fifty years.
Their way of life being rather insular and unusual, the ladies soon became known locally and were regarded as eccentric though kindly. For a start, there was their style of dress. A contemporary comedian, Charles Mathews, claimed that, when seated, ‘there [was] not one point to distinguish them from men’. At a time when it was plainly indecent for women – and ladies, in particular – to wear anything even remotely resembling men’s clothing, Lady Eleanor and Miss Ponsonby sported identical habits made exactly like men’s coats and finished with ‘well-starched neckcloths’. They also had cropped hair, powdered in the (men’s) fashion of the day so that it was ‘rough, bushy and white as snow’. Their outfits were topped with black fur hats.
The ladies lived in extreme simplicity and made their thirteen acres at Plas Newydd very productive. They were charitable and always employed local poor people in preference to outside help. Despite their seclusion, they were well-educated and cultured – they spoke several modern languages and kept up an excellent library. They collected old carved oak and covered Plas Newydd with it. Miss Ponsonby was an artist while Lady Eleanor was a musician, and they both produced exquisite embroidery. Their maid, Mary Carryl, was just as happy. She was treated more as a member of the family than as a servant, and she had immense status among the other working folk in the area. She was to stay with the ladies until her death.
The ladies travelled around Wales and to London occasionally, but preferred instead for friends to come and visit them. The famous French children’s author Mme de Genlis, who visited them in 1788, was utterly charmed by the unconventional set-up and felt the ladies were not as well-known as they ought to be. She was won over by the ‘grace, cordiality and kindness’ she received, and by the ‘mutual attachment’ the ladies exhibited.
Since Llangollen was on the main Dublin–London route, many other famous visitors came to witness this charming arrangement, including Charles Darwin, William Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke and the Duke of Wellington. Most visitors only got as far as the garden; the ladies were sticklers for good manners, and if they looked through the window and thought their approaching visitor might be uncouth or unrefined, they simply sent down a message to say they were not at home.
Lady Eleanor died, aged ninety, on 2 June 1829. Although so much younger, Sarah Ponsonby could not bear life without her companion and duly followed on 9 December 1831. They are both buried, along with faithful Mary Carryl, in Llangollen’s churchyard.