On 25 June Dr Marsden and his mother arrived at London’s Euston Square railway station with Mademoiselle Doudet and the five girls. They booked into the Drummond Hotel, located on the western side of the busy terminus. John Rashdall was already in town with his brother Robert and Granny Rashdall, and the two families met at the Drummond at 8 p.m. to say goodbye. Rashdall then saw his nieces and their governess safely stowed aboard the Dunkerque steamer, accompanied by their many trunks and travelling boxes.1 One of Mademoiselle Doudet’s English cousins, Mr Frederick Baker, also arrived to wish Célestine well in her new venture. He and his wife were planning a visit to Paris and promised to call on their cousin and her young pupils.

Dr Marsden’s farewell gifts to his daughters included a framed portrait of himself and a handsome, silver-cornered Bible which he hoped might improve their morals. For the rest, he hoped the zeal and perseverance of their governess would eventually change their behaviour. He instructed Doudet to maintain his daughters’ strict homeopathic diet and to take whatever other corrective measures she deemed necessary.

There is a possibility that Dr Marsden’s reaction to the girls’ alleged vice was intensified by feelings of guilt. His first wife Lucy had been pregnant almost her entire married life and one of the prevailing water-cure theories was that sexual intercourse during pregnancy and breastfeeding had dire consequences. Dr Marsden’s fellow physician Mary Gove Nichols wrote:

I speak what I know, and testify what I have seen in a long and varied medical practice, when I assert that masturbation in children, and every evil of sensuality, spring from the polluted hot-bed of a sensual and unloving marriage, where a woman is subjected to a destroying sensualism during pregnancy and lactation…I have also known cases where subsequent children, born in a second marriage which was loving and healthy, had no such tendency. They were pure from birth, as the first were impure.2

Having crossed the Channel, Paris-bound travellers and their baggage were transferred to a public stagecoach known as a diligence for the long, bone-shaking journey south. The vehicle was drawn by five or six horses and consisted of three compartments. Mademoiselle Doudet and the children would have taken up the whole of the middle carriage, known as the intérieur.

No. 1 Cité Odiot, Paris, with the Porter’s Lodge on the right. Célestine Doudet’s apartment was on the first floor

In Paris, the Doudet apartment was located on the first floor of No. 1 Cité Odiot, a private allée of terraced houses with a portered entrance leading off Rue Washington, a convenient and highly desirable location just a short walk from the Champs-Elysées. It was named in 1847 in honour of silversmith Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot (1763–1850), who once owned a mansion on the site. Monsieur Odiot was one of the finest craftsmen of his day, and a favourite of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1852 Cité Odiot and the surrounding neighbourhood formed part of a close-knit community which included a number of genteel English ladies. Small cliques had formed, but Célestine Doudet was favoured with immediate entrée due to the friendships already formed by her mother and sisters. A few months after settling in, she realized she needed more space for her school. With Dr Marsden’s approval she organized the lease of additional space on the ground floor of the building.

The introduction of five lively youngsters must have had quite an impact on the quiet, mainly middle-aged residents of Cité Odiot, but the French nation’s love of children ensured Mademoiselle Doudet’s pupils were embraced rather than resented. They would also enjoy a rich cultural environment. At No. 6 lived the inventor Monsieur Faulion, who was about to exhibit a wonderful model steamboat in New York. Occupying No. 1’s third floor was the poet and lyricist Désirée Pacault, and in the apartment directly above Mademoiselle Doudet was a kindly, cultivated widow by the name of Madame Espert. This lady had recently witnessed a phenomenon guaranteed to leave the children wide-eyed with wonder. On an oppressively hot summer evening she looked out of her window at Cité Odiot and saw a giant golden balloon in the sky. As she watched, it exploded into jagged streaks of lightning. In an article published soon after the young Marsdens arrived she wrote, ‘Paris resounded with this terrible thunderbolt, but perhaps I am the only person who happened actually to see it.’3 Her cook collapsed, three men in the street were knocked down, and a governess in a nearby school was injured. One lightning bolt struck the wall of No. 4 Cité Odiot, leaving a crater the children were still able to inspect.

The girls found playmates in the local area and were soon sharing their lessons with Mademoiselle Doudet’s day pupils. Through their Uncle John, they may also have befriended the daughters of William Thackeray. Rashdall was closely acquainted with the novelist’s elderly mother, Mrs Carmichael-Smyth, then living in Paris with Thackeray’s daughters Anny and Minny. Then, as now, the city was a magical place in the eyes of young girls. On 2 December 1852 15-year-old Anny wrote to her friend Laetitia Cole:

In the same letter Anny said her Granny liked to give small parties, adding ‘…there are some little girls coming this evening’.4 Could these young guests have been the Marsden sisters?

While Anny and Minny Thackeray were able to enjoy all that Paris had to offer, Cité Odiot was becoming an unhappy place for the young Marsdens. Within weeks of their arrival, Mademoiselle Doudet was sending extremely negative reports to their father. The doctor responded by urging the governess to instil strict discipline:

It upsets me that Lucy has been so bad, she must be treated like a small girl. [Lucy was then fifteen years old.] As for Alice, make her obey you and the instant she refuses, put her over your knee and smack her hard. I assure you she will not refuse a second time…I am pleased to hear they are learning to jump rope like the little Parisiennes, but I beg of you not to forget that morals are above all else.5

What a relief it must have been for the girls to escape the slaps and rebukes of the schoolroom, swirling their rope in the courtyard as they skipped and jumped with their little French amies, reciting age-old rhymes instead of times tables, French verbs, and the dates of long forgotten battles:

   Dis-moi oui,

   Dis-moi non,

   Dis-moi si tu m’aimes.

   Dis-moi oui

   Dis-moi non

   Dis-moi oui au non.

   Oui, non, oui, non.

John Rashdall was the first family member to visit the children, spending ten days in Paris prior to embarking on a European tour in mid-September. While there, he took his nieces shopping with their governess and on an excursion to the Louvre. In 1852 the museum’s star attraction was not Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but Murillo’s painting of the Virgin Mary, Immaculate Conception. It had been purchased by the French government in May that year for the record price of 615,000 francs (about £24,000). The portrait provided the perfect model of purity for the minister’s impressionable young nieces.

Rashdall’s diary records a hint of concern regarding Célestine Doudet. After examining the girls on their French he commented that she lacked ‘the power of instruction’. When the children dutifully recited French poetry and played the piano for their uncle, it was Emily alone who shone, with Rashdall noting that she would clearly make a good musician. All five girls appeared happy and healthy, but nevertheless he wrote:

Mademoiselle Doudet’s chequered opinion of her pupils included her insistence that they were continuing to indulge in their unfortunate sexual habits, which the pious Rashdall could not bring himself to mention, even in his ‘diary of the soul’. However, his comments convey the feeling that he doubted the truth of the governess’s claims. Presumably he communicated his uneasiness to his brother-in-law, but by now Dr Marsden was totally preoccupied with his love life and resistant to any criticism of the person he hoped would ‘cure’ his daughters. On 15 October he wrote asking if Mademoiselle Doudet would allow Emily to sleep with her as a means of increasing surveillance over the girl. His request illustrates the then widespread disregard for a governess’s privacy. Mademoiselle Doudet was expected to relinquish the sanctity of her own bed without a murmur.

By the time John Rashdall arrived home from Europe in mid-November Dr Marsden had proposed to Mary Campbell, who was about to return home to organize her wedding. On 17 November Rashdall suppressed the painful memories of his dead sister and escorted the bride-to-be north as far as Carlisle, from where Mary continued on to Edinburgh by train. The minister’s unfailing willingness to do his brother-in-law’s bidding is difficult to fathom. Certainly Marsden was overbearing, but Rashdall was five years his senior, articulate, well educated, and highly respected within the clergy. The most logical explanation is that he feared offending Dr Marsden and becoming estranged from his nephew and nieces. At this point Rashdall and his siblings were all over forty and unlikely to marry, making their sister Lucy’s children that much more precious.

Although Dr Marsden had been courting Mary Campbell since the early months of 1852, John Rashdall made no mention of her in his diary prior to the journey to Carlisle. The only inference that can be drawn from this omission is that he resisted acknowledging the relationship until there was no other option.

In Paris, the Marsden girls were told they were to have a stepmother. The news could only have increased their anxiety, already sky high due to their father’s fury over Lucy’s blotted, misspelled letters and Doudet’s continued reports of their collective ‘bad habits’. It would later be alleged that the governess forced the girls to write letters of confession to their father:

Dr Marsden said he burned the letters, not in disbelief but in disgust. It was widely believed in Victorian times, even by the medical profession, that masturbation led to emaciation and debility. On 6 August, two months after his daughters left Malvern, he had sent the following letter to Emily:

I beg you in your own interest to make every effort to follow the advice and instructions I gave you before you left. If you have not done so, I shall be deeply disappointed when I see you again. Neither French nor music, nothing in a word will compensate if you neglect to do what I recommended in this matter. And illness – a goitrous neck, a crooked back, tender feet – as well as this moral illness, drying up all self-esteem, which will destroy every good quality you have, will cause you to feel personally, and oh how bitterly when you grow older, just how you have forced the laws of nature to your own destruction, and how you have disobeyed my wishes to your complete ruin.8

How different were the warmly humorous letters Thackeray sent to his daughters in Paris that same autumn. From on board ship in Nova Scotia he joked, ‘I thought I would say good day to two young ladies: who are no doubt in their best bonnets walking in the Shomdeleesy: for Law bless you, its 4 o’clock where you are.’9

Emily was mature beyond her years, attractive and intelligent. However, Mademoiselle Doudet’s allegations fuelled her father’s paranoia and he was determined to crush the girl’s spirit. In a letter to the governess dated 15 October 1852 he wrote:

But letters of confession from the girls and bad reports from their teacher continued to arrive at Great Malvern. On 12 November Dr Marsden told Mademoiselle Doudet that he had reached the end of his tether and that if his daughters’ conduct did not immediately change for the better his own conduct towards them would change. The governess was to impress upon her charges that he was sick of making personal sacrifices and would soon simply stop arguing and place them in a cheap boarding house where they could indulge their habits at their own risk.

The doctor also enlisted his brother-in-law’s help in frightening the girls into changing their behaviour. One can almost feel the doctor’s presence at Rashdall’s elbow when the minister wrote to his nieces in December, threatening not to visit them again:

I do not know how to tell you how much all this has cooled the interest which I had in you. One of the main reasons I moved to Malvern was to be closer to all of you, but since then your conduct has demonstrated that I would be better off by being far away from nieces who give me so little satisfaction.11

After telling them to pray to God for forgiveness he increased their burden of guilt by chiding them for their ingratitude towards a father who had given them so much. The children, in a foreign country and at the complete mercy of their governess, had now been rejected by the two people closest to them.

Rashdall’s habitual subservience to Dr Marsden did a grave disservice to his nieces. It was impossible for them to stand up to their father’s emotional and intellectual bullying when their beloved Uncle John fell in with his wishes so meekly.

On 4 December 1852 John Rashdall and James Marsden travelled to Edinburgh together for the doctor’s wedding. In the days before the ceremony they were entertained at Westcoates House, the home of Mary’s widowed mother. They were introduced to legions of the bride’s relatives and Rashdall betrayed the ingrained English prejudice against the Scots by commenting, ‘Found Jura and his brother James much more companionable and gentlemanlike than we expected.’12 Mary must have been thankful that Lachlan Macquarie Jr, the ‘morally insane’, alcoholic brother-in-law she had been accused of sleeping with was not alive to disrupt proceedings.

Prior to the wedding, a formal marriage settlement had been drawn up and signed, then common practice among well-to-do families. Mary’s dowry of £6,500 was to be invested in a trust fund. Throughout her married life she would be at liberty to enjoy the annual dividends and interest for her ‘sole and separate use’, independent of her husband. The trust fund guaranteed her financial independence long before the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870. The settlement also provided Mary with a life interest in her future husband’s valuable real estate at Great Malvern. To protect the interests of the children from his first marriage, the doctor reserved the right to dispose of the properties as he saw fit in the event of Mary’s death. John Rashdall agreed to become one of Mary’s three trustees, a responsibility that would lead to awkwardness several years later.

It was of course the Reverend John Rashdall who performed the wedding service in the drawing room of Westcoates House on 8 December. The happy couple then drove off, en route to Italy for a two-month honeymoon. Celebrations continued in their absence, with the minister enjoying a ‘splendid dinner’ and ‘diverse toasts’, for which he was called on to reply for the bride and groom. Given the Scots’ reputation for the consumption of whisky on such occasions, he did well to remain upright.

The newlyweds broke their journey in Paris, spending three days at the elegant Hotel Mirabeau in the Rue de la Paix. During this period Dr Marsden did not bother to visit Cité Odiot. He saw his daughters on only one occasion, when they were taken to the hotel for tea by Mademoiselle Doudet. It was not a happy meeting. The girls reacted very badly to their stepmother and by comparison appeared almost abnormally attached to the governess. Their attitude hurt Mary’s feelings, increasing Dr Marsden’s frustration and annoyance with them. The initial arrangement with Doudet was about to expire, but it was mutually agreed that it would be extended for another six months.

When Christmas came, the young Marsdens remained in Paris. In Malvern, their brother Jimmy spent the holiday at St Mary’s vicarage with his Uncle John, Granny Rashdall and Aunt Elizabeth. Fanny Rashdall was spending time on the Continent with friends.

Following their tour of Italy, the Marsdens made another, much longer, visit to Paris. The decision to do so was Mary’s and it was she who advised Rashdall of their plans: ‘Feb 14 1853 Letter from Mrs J Marsden, Paris, announcing thr. arrival from Italy & intent to stay some weeks.’13 Dr Marsden, whose impatience to return to his clients was no doubt matched by his reluctance to spend time with his morally corrupt daughters, was forced to suppress his irritation and humour his wife. Mary was hoping to develop a better relationship with the girls.

By now the novelty of all things foreign had palled and the doctor booked a suite of rooms at the prestigious Hotel Windsor, decorated in the English style and considered a home from home for wealthy British travellers. The food and wine were said to be of the highest quality, which begs the question as to whether the doctor maintained the bland diet he recommended for his children and patients. Located in Rue de Rivoli, the Windsor was close to the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées, and in convenient proximity to Cité Odiot.

The Marsdens remained in Paris until the end of March. Mademoiselle Doudet took the opportunity to show off her school, her musical accomplishments and her social standing by inviting the couple to several soirées. Madame Espert was among the guests and, as Doudet played the piano, her upstairs neighbour obliged by singing romantic songs the governess thought would appeal to the newlyweds. We might suppose that the young Marsdens were also called upon to entertain the company, although their father still felt his daughters’ social graces left a lot to be desired.

When the girls were taken to cafés and restaurants their parents were horrified at the unladylike way they devoured their food. Dr and Mrs Marsden would later say that Lucy and Emily appeared rather thin, but their father refused to consider the possibility that the children may have been hungry; to do so would have cast doubt on the homeopathic diet he had prescribed. According to Mary Marsden, her husband instructed the governess to take the girls to the pastry-cooks every day until they sickened themselves and were cured of their gluttony. She said he was in despair over his daughters, who remained strangely subdued and diffident in their parents’ company. They stood with their hands clasped, and whatever one of them said the others solemnly repeated, like trained parrots. When the couple mentioned this to Mademoiselle Doudet she told them the girls were simply shy and awkward, prompting Dr Marsden to give her an extra 300 francs to pay for a dancing instructor.

The girls’ lack of warmth towards their stepmother contrasted painfully with the frequent hugs and kisses they bestowed on their governess. Mary suspected she was being cast in the role of ‘wicked stepmother’ and that the children were being deliberately turned against her. In an attempt to win them over she ordered silk dresses to be made for them as a gift. By now, only three months of the second six-month agreement between Dr Marsden and Doudet remained. Mary told the governess her services would not be required beyond that period. However, it is unlikely her husband would have agreed to the girls returning home, as Doudet insisted they were still indulging in their immoral habits. It was a matter she discussed openly and almost constantly, even in front of her pupils. Eventually Mary asked the governess to stop talking about the subject because it made her husband so wretched. Surprisingly, the girls did not defend themselves against the charges and Mary accompanied Dr Marsden when he consulted a hypnotist, Madame Gavelle, for advice. The consultation may have been arranged at Mary’s suggestion as her sister Sarah’s husband, William Gordon, happened to be staying at Gavelle’s health establishment.

The hypnotist suggested the use of special caleçons, undergarments, specifically designed to prevent self-abuse. Perhaps Mary considered the garments a less barbaric solution than Doudet’s habit of restraining her pupils with cords. Subsequently, the children were taken to a seamstress to be measured up, another indignity they endured without protest. Given the changes already noted in their demeanour, this unusual passivity should have rung alarm bells, but when their parents returned to Great Malvern they responded to the enquiries of friends and neighbours with assurances that the girls were in good health and spirits. No doubt Mary in particular was anxious to avoid the impression that her stepdaughters had been left in Paris against their will.

Someone who was worried about the children’s welfare was Zéphyrine Doudet, who felt her sister was far too harsh on them. The only reason she had held her tongue during the Marsdens’ stay was because Célestine insisted she was following the doctor’s instructions. However, during the first week of April Zéphyrine packed her bags and left Cité Odiot, expressing her concerns to Madame Espert, who had formed a close attachment to the youngsters. The widow sought the opinion of several other ladies before deciding to have a quiet word with her neighbour. Unfortunately, her efforts to help backfired. Incensed at the criticism of her methods, the proud Doudet cut herself off from her mother’s old friends and banned the children from visiting them.

Zéphyrine took up a position as a governess in Switzerland, but before leaving Paris she made even more startling allegations against Célestine. She told neighbours and shopkeepers that the Marsden girls were being starved, beaten and kept in solitary confinement. However, she did not inform Dr Marsden or, more importantly, the police. That she failed to do so would turn out to be a terrible mistake.

Notes

1 JRD, 25 June 1852.

2 Nichols, Thomas Low and Nichols, Mary Sargeant Gove, Marriage: Its History, Character and Results (Nichols, New York, 1854), pp. 223–4.

3 Arago, François, Meteorological Essays (Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855), p. 37.

4 Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters, biographical commentary and notes by Lillian F. Shankman, ed. by Abigail Burnham Bloom & John Maynard (Ohio State University Press, 1994), p. 38.

5 Causes Célèbres, p. 13.

6 JRD, 12 September 1852.

7 Williamson, William Henry, Annals of Crime; Some Extraordinary Women (Routledge, 1930), p. 245.

8 Causes Célèbres, p. 13.

9 Thackeray, William, The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepiece Thackeray, vol. III, ed. by Gordon Norton Ray (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1946) p. 106.

10 Hartman, Mary S., Victorian Murderesses: The True History of Thirteen Respectable French and English Women Accused of Unspeakable Crimes (Schocken, New York, 1977) p. 284, note 56.

11 Ibid., p. 103.

12 JRD, 8 December 1852.

13 Ibid., 14 February 1853.