“The question is not, my dear Sir, whether you and I can mutually esteem each other as friends, but whether we are calculated to live together in the closest domestic union.… There is yet one moment to hesitate and only one.”
Eleanor Porden to John Franklin, July, 1823
Back in the security of Britain, between accepting his honours, planning a new expedition, and writing up the volume of his previous exploits, Franklin found the time to resume his courtship of Eleanor Ann Porden, the young poet who had first visited his ship four-and-a-half years before as he prepared to set out for the North Pole with Buchan.
After his return from Spitzbergen, Franklin had become a frequent visitor at the Porden home, where the young Eleanor kept house for her invalid mother and father, the famous architect, William Porden. Apparently, Franklin even considered proposing marriage, but decided against it because of the dangers of the expedition he was undertaking. Nevertheless, Eleanor was not far from his mind in the far north and he named the Porden Islands near Point Turnagain for her.
Franklin was thirty-six in 1822 and Eleanor was eleven years his junior. She had a cultured upbringing and was interested in science and the arts. She surrounded herself with young, like-minded artists, who called themselves “The Attic Chest,” and met on Sunday afternoons after church to discuss each other’s literary work. These friends undoubtedly took their literary dabbling seriously, but Eleanor had some justification for doing so. At the age of sixteen, she had written “The Veils; or The Triumph of Constancy. A Poem in Six Books.”
The work runs to almost three hundred pages and is a romantic treatment of scientific discovery. It was inspired by a series of lectures the young poet attended and the loss of her veil in a wind while she strolled on the beach one day. This poem seems overly romantic and very long-winded today, and it is filled with obscure literary and scientific references, but it was well received at the time.
The Knight, in prime of youthful vigour, joined
Undaunted courage, and a courteous mind;
Black were his arms – the painting on his shield
The strange occasion of their grief revealed:
Lo ! on the foamy ocean’s shingly sands,
Reft of her Veil, a weeping damsel stands,
Beside a yawning gulf a Gnome appears,
Who waves the ravished veil and mocks her tears;
While forms ethereal lightly float in air,
And weep in pity o’er the injured fair.
Because of this poem, Eleanor was admitted to the French Institute, a remarkable honour for a teenage girl in those days. Her father encouraged her to continue to write poetry.
One of Eleanor’s young friends, Jane Griffin, wrote that “she makes all her own clothes, preserves, pickles, dances quadrilles con amore, belongs to a poetical book club, pays morning visits, sees all the sights, never denies herself to anybody at any hour, and lies in bed or is not dressed till nine o’clock in the morning.” It is difficult to tell what of the above is intended as a compliment and what is not. Certainly Jane’s physical description of Eleanor could have been kinder. She wrote that her friend was a, “plain, stout, short young woman, having a rather vulgar though very good-natured countenance.” But then, Jane herself was a notable beauty.
Eleanor seems a strange choice for someone of Franklin’s background. His was a life of action, with little time for cultural pursuits. They probably admired each other’s achievements, but it is hard to imagine what they had in common to talk about. Whatever the reason, Franklin took the relationship seriously and proposed to Eleanor within two months of his return.
Eleanor had not considered marriage while she felt responsible for her father, but in 1822 he was dying and encouraged her to pick a husband. Whom this should be seems to have been a topic for debate and her literary group drew up a list of ten suitable names. The leading candidate appears to have been a Mr. Elliott, the private secretary to the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. Elliott had much in common with Eleanor and they had been friends for many years. But Eleanor was determined to wait until Franklin returned from Canada. No one knows what happened between the players of this scene. Letters hint at undercurrents of emotion and doubt. Only a month before the wedding, Eleanor felt timid about the upcoming event. She wrote to Mr. Elliott that, “I sometimes feel as if I had in some respects made an odd choice.” Elliott replied, “I hope and wish to become his friend for your sake.”
Perhaps Franklins proposal of marriage, coming as it did so soon after her father’s death and in the midst of Franklin’s fame as a returning hero, appealed to Eleanors romantic sensibilities. Despite whatever misgivings she had, Eleanor accepted Franklin’s proposal, and Mr. Elliott turned away to marry someone else.
John Franklin and Eleanor Porden were married on August 19, 1823. Differences between the two became apparent almost immediately. Eleanor set up their home in the house in which she had been born in London. Here she could keep in touch with her literary friends and the arts scene in the city. Franklin’s father had died in the spring of 1823, and John spent increased amounts of time in Spilsby.
Eleanor was not one to keep her opinions to herself. Franklin was deeply religious, refusing even to write letters on a Sunday. Eleanor and he had many misunderstandings and disagreements on this topic. On one occasion she told her new husband, “I cannot agree with you respecting Sunday.… Shall I tell you the truth? I have studied you much, and have thought that on some points of this subject you seemed to be guided by an impulse foreign to your general nature. Mild as you usually are, your looks and voice have actually terrified me, and the first time left an impression from which I cannot recover.”
This suggests a level of anger in Franklin’s temperament which is not seen elsewhere. He is universally portrayed as a gentle man. Eleanor’s sister even called him that and criticized Eleanor for being too overbearing in forcing her opinions on John. Certainly, Franklin did not consider himself Eleanor’s intellectual equal. He regarded her mind as “higher and more richly endowed” than his own. In response to her accusations of religious intolerance, he replied, “If I know my own heart I am no bigot on these points, but on the contrary am willing to permit everyone to cherish their own sentiments.”
In June 1824, the couple had a daughter, Eleanor, a child “so like her father, that it’s like looking at Captain Franklin through the wrong end of a telescope.”
Family life did not bring the couple closer and they still spent much time apart, Eleanor in her house in London surrounded by her literary friends, and John either in Spilsby or arranging his return to the Canadian wilderness. What the birth of little Eleanor did do, however, was exacerbate her mother’s illness.
Eleanor Franklin had consumption. Called pulmonary tuberculosis today, consumption was a major killer in the days before antibiotics. There was no cure. Neither of the Franklins seem to have taken the disease too seriously early in their marriage. “I am not very ill,” Eleanor wrote in early 1824. But her condition deteriorated rapidly after her child was born, and by the end of the year she was bedridden. Even so, she tried to maintain her cheerfulness and encouraged Franklin to continue preparations for his upcoming expedition. The strain on Franklin was immense as he prepared for a major exploration while watching his wife die. He also received word that his brother, Willingham, had died of cholera in India. Jane Griffin recalled that Franklin was so preoccupied at this time that he did not reply to letters and notes or even acknowledge presents she sent him.
There was some gossip and scandal that Franklin should be preparing so assiduously to leave his dying wife, but it had always been their agreement that the marriage should not interfere with his career, and Eleanor was adamant: she wanted him to go. She stated strongly that his departure was not a factor in her worsening state. Indeed, when possible, Franklin kept vigil at his sick wife’s bedside, and described her condition in one of his letters: “The disease has continued its rapid progress, and she is now to all appearance nearly at her last extremity; but such has been her muscular strength that she has rallied frequently and it is not improbable that she may linger even through this day I seize an interval of repose to commence this letter to you in this room, where I have been watching all the night.”
Although at times it looked like she might not live to see her husbands departure, Eleanor did linger. She even showed some signs of improvement, and when Franklin said goodbye on February 16, 1825, he still had some faint hopes that she might recover.
On the evening of Friday, 22 April, 1825, on the shore of Lake Huron, Franklin composed a letter to Eleanor. Lightheartedly, he told her about the social circumstances at the naval station where he was staying. He described his visit to New York and wished she had been with him to see the industry of the Americans. After expressing his disappointment that there was not a letter waiting for him, he went on, “I shall embark, however, with every hope that the Almighty has been pleased to restore you to health before this, and that you are now in the enjoyment of every comfort. I daily remember you and our dear little one in our prayers, and I have no doubt yours are offered up on my behalf. She must be growing very entertaining, and I sincerely trust she will be a source of great comfort to us, especially to you in my absence. With what heartfelt pleasure shall I embrace you both on my return!… Mr. Back and the men have arrived…”
His letter stops here in mid-sentence. Mr. Back had brought the mail. At the bottom of the never-finished letter, Franklin scrawled in a shaky hand, “7 p.m. The distressing intelligence of my dear wife’s death has just reached me.”
Eleanor had only outlived Franklin’s departure by six days. All the hopeful letters he had written in the previous two months had been addressed to a dead woman.
Franklin was distraught by the news and doubted if he could go on. Nevertheless, he was a pragmatist; he did continue, and the following summer he named Port Griffin at the mouth of the Mackenzie River for his dead wife’s beautiful friend Jane.