On the third and final day of the trial, Monsieur Pinard, the Deputy Imperial Prosecutor, delivered a memorable closing speech. He told the magistrates that Mademoiselle Doudet’s accusers included neighbours, servants, shopkeepers and, above all, her own sister. While acknowledging Zéphyrine’s retraction of her allegations, he maintained that witnesses had clear memories of what she originally said.

Monsieur Pinard suggested that the governess had acted from vengeance or simply cold-blooded cruelty. He rejected the possibility that she was insane, though many saw this as the only explanation as to why a woman of previously impeccable character would suddenly become a monster. The hypothesis of madness was canvassed in a piece published a few weeks later in the New York Times:

On the recent extraordinary trial of a French governess in Paris for unheard-of cruelties towards her pupils, two young English ladies, a case was cited of a young man who committed suicide last November, and who left in writing the following explanation of the act. ‘Ever since I came to years of discretion, I have been possessed by a mania for assassination. I strove against it, but some day or other I may be overcome, and I would rather die than dishonour my family.’1

The Prosecutor dismissed the Chaillot letters as being dictated. He stressed that even if the girls had been guilty of bad habits, the accused’s cruelty could in no way be justified. Allowing, as he put it, his heart to speak under his legal robes, he also referred to Doudet’s disrespectful behaviour in asking the dying Marian for pardon. There was a sensation in the courtroom when he said: ‘Célestine Doudet may receive the pardon of the dead, and the pardon of God, but human justice must not pardon her.’2 Finally, he contrasted Doudet’s cruel treatment of her sick pupils with the consideration she had been shown by the judiciary during her own illness prior to the manslaughter trial. It was said that the Prosecutor’s address flowed like clear water, and that as they listened the accused’s supporters felt the chill wind of defeat.

Summing up for the defence, Monsieur Nogent-Saint-Laurens returned to Doudet’s passionate and highly reputable supporters, including her connections with English royalty and the nobility. He reminded the court that not one claim of mistreatment had been made prior to the governess joining the Marsden household. While admitting there was reason for suspicion that his client had been too severe, he contended there was no proof: ‘Doubt exists everywhere. I search in vain for proof of a crime, or even a misdemeanour.’ He completely rejected the charge of deliberate physical abuse: ‘That she corrected these children, I will allow; but it is impossible to believe in the cruelties imputed to her. It is so difficult to prove them that recourse is had to some idea of vengeance or jealousy [yet] Dr Marsden has with all loyalty declared that Célestine Doudet never made advances to him.’ But the advocate then made an ill-judged comment that betrayed a crack in his confidence: ‘Gentlemen, I believe in the innocence of Célestine Doudet; you will smile perhaps at my credulity – at my weakness; I persist nevertheless in my belief, and I never will believe her guilty.’3

In expectation of a verdict, spectators had filled the stairs leading to the courtroom and crammed into surrounding corridors. After retiring for about an hour, President Martel returned and read the tribunal’s judgement. It was found that in 1852 and 1853 Célestine Doudet had been guilty of cruelty towards Lucy, Emily, Rosa and Alice Marsden. She was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of 200 francs plus costs. Informed that she was to be conveyed to St Lazare prison, she reportedly said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I expected it.’4

The trial launched Pierre Pinard’s career. Two years later he was appointed chief prosecutor in the famous obscenity trial against Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary. He would also enter politics, serving as France’s Minister for the Interior.

The verdict against the governess was an important and long-awaited victory for Dr Marsden, who felt his honour had been restored. Mademoiselle Doudet had been condemned as a defamer and a liar, perpetrator of extreme acts of cruelty against his daughters. In the eyes of the world (if not his own), the children had been judged morally pure. However, the sentence of two years was viewed as totally inadequate. There was also the prospect of the judgement being overturned on appeal.

In Great Malvern’s Priory Church one of the most arresting carvings on the ancient misericords is of three mice hanging a cat, symbolizing the victims of oppression rising up against their tormentor. Two owls flank the gallows, representing the wisdom of the judicial system. But for the surviving Marsden sisters, the conviction against Célestine Doudet would never erase their psychological scars. More to the point, when they looked at the carving in years to come, who would they most clearly identify as the cruel cat: their governess or their father?

Such had been the publicity surrounding the two trials in Paris that Emily and her sisters became minor celebrities. Before leaving the city they were presented (at her express wish) to Princess Mathilde, niece of Napoleon Bonaparte. At her chateau outside Paris the princess conducted a lavish literary and artistic salon. The occasion would have been an unforgettable experience for the girls. Princess Mathilde had a passion for roses and her rooms were decorated with Ming vases full of perfect blooms, cultivated within the grounds of the chateau. The princess also owned a fabulous collection of jewellery. Since Célestine Doudet had enjoyed the privilege of handling the Queen of England’s jewels it would be lovely to think her young victims were shown Princess Mathilde’s spectacular, newly commissioned corsage ornament. It was a life-size, 200 carat Tudor rose made of over two and half thousand diamonds.

There was another affirming moment for the girls when they returned to Great Malvern a few days later. The townspeople expressed their support by ringing the bells of St Mary’s Priory Church in welcome. But lurid newspaper accounts of the trials aroused primitive instincts and there was intense anger towards those perceived as having turned against their own. John Rashdall reported that on the night of his nieces’ homecoming, effigies of Miss Hester Candler and her sister Annabella were paraded through the streets and then ceremoniously burned on the Common. Wild celebrations continued long into the night. On 24 March an editorial in Berrow’s Worcester Journal confirmed the effigy burning, though it stopped short of naming the Candlers. In the same issue, the Journal published a lengthy letter to the editor from Dr Marsden. By now, the girls’ father was aware that if Mademoiselle Doudet had been labelled a monster, he too was being judged harshly in the court of public opinion, and his lucrative medical practice could suffer.

The doctor defended himself against accusations that he displayed a lack of care and affection for his daughters, particularly after Marian’s death:

The newspaper’s readers might well have asked whose fault it was that Dr Marsden had spent so little time in Paris?

Fortunately, the Marsdens and the Candlers were no longer living side by side, but Great Malvern was still a relatively small town and reports of the vengeful ‘witch-burning’ episode increased tension between the families. John Rashdall and the Misses Candler served together on the local school committee, but at the next meeting the Candlers were conspicuous by their absence. Nevertheless, the ladies were unwilling to lose face completely and as the Priory Church was the centre of the community, Rashdall found himself in an almost impossible position: ‘Sunday 23rd March 1855 – The children & their papa appd at church, and Miss Candler [presumably Hester] in her pew!’ As vicar, Rashdall could not avoid acknowledging one of his parishioners, galling though it must have been. It would be interesting to know the subject of that day’s sermon. Somehow the minister managed the situation without alienating his prickly brother-in-law, but several weeks later the relationship between the two men would fall apart under different circumstances.

The Doudet case was the cause of painful self-examination in England, shaking the nation’s smug confidence in its moral superiority. Following the governess’s conviction for cruelty, the illustrated Sunday newspaper Lloyd’s Weekly published ‘THE ROD IN ENGLAND: AS SEEN IN PARIS (From our own correspondent)’. It was a long and passionate essay on the damaging contrast between French and English domestic life. The support of Célestine Doudet by so many upper-class English women, including the well-intentioned Mrs Schwabe and her friends, was of special concern to the author:

In addition to the long list of bad qualities for which we enjoy a reputation in this country [France], another may now be added. We are conspicuous among the nations for cruelty to our children. We are barbarians with faith only in the birch. To us kindness is unknown as a governing power. If we spoil our children it is not by sparing the rod…They [the French] find that Mademoiselle Doudet has for supporters – English ladies: and that Dr Marsden’s children have for support French people of rank. The French think Mademoiselle Doudet should be torn to pieces: the English protect her, and spend money to shield her from the legitimate consequences of her crimes…We all know how fond the French people are of drawing general conclusions from isolated facts. From this trial they will be quite ready to write us down cruel. Their impressions will help them to this verdict. The coldness which we exhibit, in contrast with the effervescence which they call life, will appear to them as the results of hearts steeled against all the tender emotions of human nature. For this trial has created a deep impression here. It has long been the talk of the Salons:– already it is being carried about the country for the enlightenment of the provincial intellect. A description of Mademoiselle Doudet is given, in which black is the only colour used; and then this hideous figure is presented as the protégé of the Queen, and a select circle of English ladies. In contrast to these patrons, the Princess Mathilde, and the French ladies are shown as lavishing kindness upon the little English victims! The contrast is, at the very least, unfortunate for us. It is capable of the widest extension – and the French will push it as far as it possibly can be pushed…5

Attempts were made by the British press to dismiss Queen Victoria’s testimonial to Mademoiselle Doudet as fraudulent:

Of course, we know that John Rashdall investigated the character reference at Buckingham Palace at the earliest opportunity. His subsequent silence on the subject suggests it was indeed genuine.

That the French courts paid Dr Marsden’s costs in the first trial despite Doudet having been acquitted was cause for further discomfort. The London Daily News described the payment as an act of chivalry, ‘which we would do well to recognize and emulate’.7 Adding salt to English wounds, Paris’s Exposition Universelle was due to open on the Champs-Elysées on 15 May, an attempt by the French to surpass London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Ambassador Lord Cowley was accused by the press of paying more attention to the exhibition than to defending his country’s reputation by addressing the issues raised by the Doudet case.

The Daily News also attacked the British system of education for young girls: ‘It is hard for an English girl, educated in the orthodox way, to be an original thinker. Expensive, mindless, unpractical, and useless, our schools turn out accomplished machines whose minds are, like Chinese feet, cramped out of all symmetry, power and normal use.’8 The article criticized the practice of sending young children to school in foreign countries in the care of strangers, stating that it had been this ‘fatal facility’ that had allowed Célestine Doudet to perpetrate her cruelties.

Not surprisingly, the experience of the Marsden sisters had an enduring, adverse effect on French boarding schools catering to the English middle classes. A piece written by the proprietor of one such establishment appeared in Charles Dickens’s Household Words two years later, assuring readers its pupils were happy and healthy and that a monster such as Mademoiselle Doudet would never be tolerated:

Unhappily, evidence that children continued to suffer in the schoolroom was provided years later by Lord Curzon, who grew up to become Viceroy of India. He and his siblings endured a reign of terror in the 1860s that had striking similarities to the Marsden case. Of their terrifying governess Miss Paraman, Curzon wrote:

I have often thought since that she must have been insane. She persecuted us and beat us in the most cruel way and established over us such a reign of terrorism that not one of us ever mustered up the courage to walk upstairs and tell our father or mother. The governess tied the children to chairs, locked them up in darkness and, forced us to confess to lies which we had never told, to sins we had never committed, and then punished us severely as being self-condemned.10

Notes

1 New York Times, 16 April 1855.

2 Petites Causes Célèbres du Jour, vol. 4, April 1855.

3 Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 31 March 1855.

4 Morning Chronicle, 15 March 1855.

5 Lloyd’s Weekly, 1 April 1855.

6 The Examiner, 24 March 1855.

7 London Daily News, 3 April 1855.

8 Ibid.

9 Household Words, vol. 15, May 1858, pp. 477–8.

10 Rose, Kenneth, Superior Person: a Portrait of Curzon and his Circle in Late Victorian England (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), p. 20.