Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/47

35 room he had broken into, and my literary tasks and the furniture scattered over the ground.

I intended to have left my home in the morning: but when morning came, I was too ill. I saw no more of Mr Norton till the evening of that day. I was sitting with my two little children in the same room. He did not speak to me,—he spoke to one of the children and went away again. I had written to my brother to state all that had occurred. I said that for the sake of those children and the one unborn, I should be loth to part from my husband; that I bore him no ill-will, but that unless he would undertake to be "gentlemanlike" in his conduct towards me, I must leave him. My brother forwarded a copy of my statement to my husband,—told him there could be but one opinion of his cruel and violent assault, and that unless he received, within twenty-four hours, a written expression of contrition and promises for the future, he would expose Mr Norton. To that letter I owe the miserable satisfaction of holding, under Mr Norton's own hand-writing, proof of every circumstance of this scene; for he undertook to justify himself to my brother; he admitted all the facts; he admitted that I had withdrawn to write for my publishers, and had told him so, but said he broke open the door "on principle; thinking it necessary, as a husband, to resist such extravagant and disrespectful proceedings" as locking him out of any room in the house. That he blew out the candles to prevent my maid remaining and working in the apartment; and that I had not seemed at all angry when I left him in the dining-room. Recently, Mr Norton has spoken of this scene in one of his letters to the 'Times' newspaper, as a "frivolous quarrel." I leave to others to determine what the notions of general conduct towards a woman were likely to be, in the person whose ideas of "frivolous" disputes are thus exemplified. My brother's interference availed, however, for that time. Mr. Norton apologised, adjured me to pardon him, and wrote triumphantly to my brother to say that we "were all right