Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/213

 (April 1831) a metropolitan police magistracy upon Norton without very strong inducement from some quarter: Melbourne being thought to be a man of easy morals, and Norton being notoriously unsuited to his brilliant wife, a very delicate situation was created. Miserable domestic jars, of which, it is just to remember, we have only Mrs. Norton's account, followed in the Norton household, and terminated in an open rupture between husband and wife and a crim. con. action against Lord Melbourne. The trial took place on 23 June 1836, and resulted in the triumphant acquittal of the accused parties, who were not called upon for their defence. Sir William Follett [q. v.], the plaintiff's advocate, was careful to make it known that he had not advised proceedings; and in fact the evidence adduced, being that of servants discarded by Norton himself, and relating to alleged transactions of long previous date, was evidently worth nothing. Some notes of Lord Melbourne, to which it was sought to affix a sinister meaning, gave Dickens hints for ‘Bardell v. Pickwick.’ The one point which will never be cleared up is whether the action thus weakly supported was bona fide, or was undertaken at the instance of some of the less reputable members of the opposition in the hope of disabling Melbourne from holding the premiership under the expected female sovereign. Mrs. Norton, of course, strongly asserts the latter view, and it certainly was very generally held at the time. ‘The wonder is,’ says Greville, writing on 27 June, ‘how with such a case Norton's family ventured into court; but (although it is stoutly denied) there can be no doubt that old Wynford was at the bottom of it all, and persuaded Lord Grantley to urge it on for mere political purposes.’ Lord Wynford, however, formally denied this to Lord Melbourne, and the Duke of Cumberland, who had been accused of having a hand in the matter, made a similar disclaimer [see ].

Mrs. Norton had vindicated her character, but she had not secured peace. Her overtures for a reconciliation with her husband were rejected, and for several years to come her life was passed in painful disputes with him respecting the care of their children and pecuniary affairs. She nevertheless continued to write, contributing much to the periodical press. Her powers continued to mature. ‘The Undying One,’ a poem on the legend of the ‘Wandering Jew,’ with other pieces, had already appeared in 1830, and ‘The Dream and other Poems’ was published in 1840. Both were warmly praised in the ‘Quarterly Review’ by Henry Nelson Coleridge, who hailed the authoress as ‘the Byron of poetesses.’ A passage quoted from ‘The Dream’ rivals in passionate energy almost anything of Byron's; but there is no element of novelty in Mrs. Norton's verse, any more than there is any element of general human interest in the impassioned expression of her personal sorrows. Mrs. Norton had already (1836) proclaimed the sufferings of overworked operatives in ‘A Voice from the Factories,’ a poem accompanied by valuable notes. In ‘The Child of the Islands’ (i.e. the Prince of Wales), 1845, a poem on the social condition of the English people, partly inspired by such works as Carlyle's ‘Chartism’ and Disraeli's ‘Sybil,’ she ventured on a theme of general human interest, and proved that, while purely lyrical poetry came easily to her, compositions of greater weight and compass needed to be eked out with writing for writing's sake. Much of it is fine and even brilliant rhetoric, much too is mere padding, and its chief interest is as a symptom of that awakening feeling for the necessity of a closer union between the classes of society which was shortly to receive a still more energetic expression in Charles Kingsley's writings.

In August 1853 Mrs. Norton's affairs again became the subject of much public attention, in consequence of pecuniary differences with her husband, who not only neglected to pay her allowance, but claimed the proceeds of her literary works. These disputes ultimately necessitated the appearance of both parties in a county court. Driven to bay, Mrs. Norton turned upon her persecutor, and her scathing denunciation produced an effect which Norton's laboured defence in the ‘Times’ was far from removing. Mrs. Norton replied to this in a privately printed pamphlet, ‘English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century,’ which, with every allowance for the necessarily ex parte character of the statements, it is impossible to read without pity and indignation. The story of her wrongs, and her pamphlets on Lord Cranworth's Divorce Bill, 1853, with another, privately printed, on the right of mothers to the custody of children, no doubt greatly contributed to the amelioration of the laws respecting the protection of female earnings, the custody of offspring, and other points affecting the social condition of woman. From a pungent passage in Miss Martineau's autobiography, however, it may be inferred that she did not always commend herself personally to her fellow workers in similar causes.

In 1862 Mrs. Norton produced the best of her poems, considered as a work of art. In