Authors: Kate Summerscale
Several of the earliest petitioners to the court were solicitors. As lawyers, they were quick to see the possibilities of the new Act; and, like Henry Robinson, they were modern middle-class men, more interested in revenge than reputation, more
eager to secure their freedom than to preserve their families’ honour. The evidence was necessarily tawdry. On 12 May, a solicitor called Tourle accused his wife of seducing their neighbour’s son. His witnesses were his nephew, who had happened upon Mrs Tourle and the neighbour’s son in her drawing room, ‘red and confused’; his servant, who claimed to have seen the young man with his arm around Mrs Tourle’s waist in her dining room one afternoon in November 1856; a coachman, who said he saw the pair kissing in the woods in the summer of 1857; and the staff of a hotel in Albermarle Street, London, who testified that they had shared a room. On the basis of these sightings of a couple on the edge of sex, the divorce was granted.
As the judges rattled through their roster, they were setting out what constituted cruelty, how to prove adultery, the limits of a man’s dominion over his wife and children. In doing so, they besieged the public with tales of domestic misery. ‘Everybody with whom one speaks of any wretched marriage,’ ran an editorial in the
Daily News
at the end of May, ‘at once matches the case with another, which brings up the mention of a third; so that the imagination becomes haunted with images of cursed homes.’ Even Queen Victoria seemed suddenly worried about the institution: ‘I think people marry far too much,’ she wrote to her newlywed daughter Vicky in May; ‘it is such a lottery after all, and to a poor woman a very doubtful happiness.’ Charles Dickens, whose novels had done much to glorify the middle-class Victorian home, had himself slipped into domestic crisis. On Friday 11 June, three days before the Robinson case began, he issued a statement in which he announced that he and his wife, Catherine, had signed a deed of separation. By drawing up a private agreement, Dickens at least avoided the publicity of the courtroom. In the newspapers, he denied rumours that he had committed adultery, either with a young actress or with his wife’s sister. The ‘breath of these slanders,’ he said, had assailed his readers ‘like an unwholesome air’.
9
Burn that book, and be happy!
Westminster Hall, 15 June 1858
By Tuesday 15 June, news of the Robinson trial had spread. When the court convened at 11 a.m., several eminent lawyers pressed into the stifling courtroom to watch the proceedings. Among them was the former Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham, famous for successfully defending Queen Caroline on a charge of adultery when George IV tried to divorce her in the 1820s. Lord Brougham may have been aware of Isabella’s ancestry, which was not mentioned in the course of the trial: in the 1820s he had sat in the House of Commons alongside her grandfather John Christian Curwen, a fellow landowner in the north-west of England. The first reports of
Robinson v Robinson & Lane
appeared in that day’s press.
Of the three judges at the bench, Sir Cresswell Cresswell was the most au fait with the intricacies of the new law, having been in charge of the Divorce Court since January, but Sir Alexander Cockburn was to dominate the proceedings. He enjoyed the limelight, and the Robinson trial was already attracting more attention than any yet heard by the court. He also had a special interest in allegations of madness, having made his name at the bar in 1843 by securing an acquittal on the grounds of insanity: he had called nine doctors to the Old
Bailey to testify that his client, Daniel M’Naghten, had been in thrall to ‘a fierce and fearful delusion’ when he tried to assassinate the Prime Minister, Robert Peel. The verdict revolutionised ideas on mental delusion and criminal responsibility, making the insanity plea commonplace in the criminal courts. A lawyer could now argue that his apparently sane client had committed a crime in a moment of madness – or, as the barristers in Isabella’s case would suggest, had falsely confessed to a crime while prey to insanity.
Forsyth, for Edward Lane, began. Usually, it was counsel for the respondent rather than for the co-respondent who addressed the judges first, but Isabella had agreed to let Edward’s counsel lead; this meant that his lawyers would be able to cross-examine her witnesses, but hers could not cross-examine his. Their hope was that the case against Edward would quickly collapse, and with it the case against Isabella.
‘My learned friend has admitted,’ said Forsyth, ‘that he has not sufficient evidence to fix the co-respondent, but the consequences of suspicion are so serious to Dr Lane that I would not feel justified in foregoing the opportunity of addressing your Lordships and calling evidence. Dr Lane’s honour, reputation, domestic happiness, and means of existence are all at stake in the inquiry.’
The court, he noted, had deemed the journal admissible against Isabella but not against Edward: ‘As against that gentleman it must be taken to be non-existent, as if it had never been written. I will, therefore, dismiss all consideration and allusion to that journal.’
Without the evidence of the diary, said Forsyth, ‘could any case be more meagre upon which to charge adultery against a co-respondent than the present? Here is Dr Lane, a young man with a wife and family, accused of adultery with a woman fifty years of age, because he has been seen walking with her in his own grounds and whispering to her at the dinner table, and because she has been seen in his study, which
was an open thoroughfare to all the household; and he has been once met coming out of her rooms.’
He reminded the court that the doctor consorted with all the lady patients at Moor Park. ‘Dr Lane had been urged by Mrs Lane’s mother to show every attention to Mrs Robinson – to drive with her, and ride and walk with her in the park. Lady patients will be called to prove that they have never seen anything to justify them in supposing there was the slightest shade of suspicion against the parties. I say fearlessly that, with the exception of the evidence of the witness Warren, there is nothing whatever in the case to raise suspicion. The opposite side has not dared to produce one letter from Dr Lane to Mrs Robinson, although many passed between them. It is said that Dr Lane was once seen coming out of Mrs Robinson’s chamber; but the fact is, that gentleman is in the habit of visiting all the lady patients’ chambers. Mrs Robinson might have been unwell, and nothing is more likely that under such circumstances Dr Lane should have extended his visits as far as her room.’ He assured the court: ‘I will get rid of every rag or shred of suspicion against Dr Lane.’
Forsyth’s first witness was Auguste Giet, a former butler at Moor Park whose duties had included the supervision of the pantry near the doctor’s study.
Giet testified that Levi Warren, the stable boy who had given evidence the previous day, made a trip from Moor Park to London in 1856. Afterwards, Giet said, the boy told him that he had had a meeting with ex-Inspector Field and Henry Robinson, whom he had told ‘that he had never seen Dr Lane with his arm around Mrs Robinson’s waist’. Giet added: ‘He also told me that he had never seen them in that position.’
Forsyth produced two letters that Warren had written to Giet and he showed them to the butler, asking him to confirm that the letters were in Warren’s hand. Giet said that they were. Forsyth showed the court one of these letters, in which
Warren asked the butler to keep quiet about what he had confided in him.
The lawyer enquired whether Giet remembered seeing Mrs Robinson at Moor Park. Yes, the butler replied, but he had never noticed her walking with Dr Lane.
Forsyth asked about the location of the study in which Isabella and Edward were alleged to have committed adultery. Giet confirmed that the servants used the study as a shortcut from the pantry to the dining room.
The butler was told that he could step down from the witness box. Even without his evidence, it had been easy enough to dismiss the testimony of a disaffected stable boy; the judges could now disregard it altogether.
Forsyth called Caroline Suckling, the fifty-three-year-old wife of Captain William Suckling, a distant relative of Lord Nelson. The Sucklings were regular guests at Moor Park. George Combe had met them there in 1856, and taken a dislike to their eight-year-old daughter, Florence Horatia Nelson Suckling; Combe described her in his journal as ‘a spoiled only child & heiress, about whom I gave her mother advice’.
Mrs Suckling testified that she was staying at Moor Park in September 1854, and had a clear recollection of Mrs Robinson’s presence there.
‘I never saw any communication between the doctor and that lady. I saw Mrs Robinson in conversation with him, in which conversations I myself often joined; but there was no difference in the treatment by Dr Lane of Mrs Robinson and any other lady there.’
Forsyth asked Mrs Suckling about Mary Lane.
‘Dr and Mrs Lane were on the most excellent terms,’ said Mrs Suckling. ‘She was about twenty-five years of age, and was a friend of Mrs Robinson.’
Questioned further about the intimacy between the doctor and Isabella, Mrs Suckling said that she had once seen Dr Lane walking with her on the public terrace outside
the house. ‘But he was in the habit of walking with every lady patient and every gentleman patient by turns on the terrace and in the park.’
Mrs Suckling stepped down, and Forsyth summoned Lady Drysdale to the witness box. Edward, as the co-respondent, was not entitled to testify in court; nor, as his wife, was Mary. But Lady Drysdale was able to appear as a witness in her son-in-law’s defence.
In answer to Forsyth’s questions, Elizabeth Drysdale told the court that she had lived with her daughter and Edward Lane ever since their marriage. The Lanes, she said, had long been very intimate with the Robinson family. Forsyth asked her about Dr Lane’s behaviour towards Mrs Robinson.
‘His conduct was always exactly the same to Mrs Robinson as to the other ladies in the house,’ Lady Drysdale said. ‘I often urged Dr Lane to pay kind attention to Mrs Robinson.’
Why was that? asked Forsyth.
‘Because I thought that Mrs Robinson’s home was an unhappy one,’ she replied.
Forsyth asked Lady Drysdale whether she was aware of the doctor’s walks with Mrs Robinson.
‘Mrs Lane and I always knew when the doctor drove or walked out with Mrs Robinson,’ she said. ‘He was accustomed to walk about the grounds with different ladies living in the establishment.’
Did she ever notice any improper familiarities pass between Dr Lane and Mrs Robinson?
No, said Lady Drysdale, she did not.
Forsyth had no further questions.
Jesse Addams, who was assisting Montagu Chambers with Henry’s case, rose to cross-examine Lady Drysdale.
Dr Addams had represented Henry the previous December when he had secured his judicial separation in the Consistory Court. Isabella, too, brought with her to the new court her representative from December’s trial, Dr Phillimore, while a
James Deane had been assigned to Edward Lane’s defence. As former practitioners in Doctors’ Commons, they were Doctors of Civil Law, and as Queen’s Counsel they were also qualified to practise in the new court.
Addams asked Lady Drysdale to describe Mary Lane’s temperament.
‘My daughter is a very sweet-tempered person,’ said Lady Drysdale.
And how old was she at the time of the alleged affair?
‘About twenty-seven years of age,’ said Lady Drysdale.
‘And very unsuspicious?’ asked Addams.
‘She had no suspicions of her husband,’ said Lady Drysdale. ‘She had no cause.’
The barrister asked her the age of Mrs Robinson.
‘The age of most of the lady patients is about fifty,’ replied Lady Drysdale, ‘or perhaps fifty-five. I should say that Mrs Robinson was fifty-five but I am afraid of saying too much.’ At this, some of the spectators in the courtroom laughed.
Isabella had in fact been forty-one at the time of the alleged adultery. Even if Lady Drysdale did not know this, she surely knew that her own daughter, Mary, was thirty-one rather than twenty-seven when her husband was said to have strayed.
One of the judges asked Lady Drysdale how the Robinsons and the Lanes had become so close.
‘Mrs Robinson was remarkably kind to Dr Lane’s children, my little grandchildren,’ said Lady Drysdale, ‘and that led to the intimacy.’
Lady Drysdale was dismissed. Her account of the mutual confidence that existed between her son-in-law, her daughter and herself, said
The Morning Post
, had been ‘most effective and touching’.
Forsyth’s next witness was Mr Reed, a surveyor, who produced a plan of the Moor Park grounds. He pointed out on the plan the location of a summerhouse. He testified that a person standing in the position that Levi Warren had
described could not have seen into the summerhouse at all, let alone have observed Dr Lane’s arm encircling Mrs Robinson’s waist.
The last witness for Edward Lane was Dr Mark Richardson, a former surgeon in the Bengal Army, who had been at Moor Park when Mrs Robinson visited in 1856. Like all the Moor Park patients before him, he testified that Dr Lane had behaved towards her in exactly the same way as towards the other female guests.
For the summing-up, Forsyth handed over to his junior, John Duke Coleridge, a great-nephew of the poet. Coleridge repeated to the court that there was no evidence to inculpate Edward Lane.
Phillimore then rose to put forward Isabella’s case. It seemed a tall order, not least because he had offered no defence at all when he represented her in Doctors’ Commons. But the rules had changed – in particular the rule that required the petitioner to publicly identify his wife’s alleged lover.
‘This is one of the most remarkable cases I have ever heard of,’ said Phillimore. ‘It seems admitted that the case against Dr Lane rests on nothing but Mrs Robinson’s diary, which can not be admitted against him; and it might, therefore, happen that Dr Lane will be dismissed on the ground that no adultery was proved against him; and Mrs Robinson will be divorced on the ground that her adultery with Dr Lane has been proved. I need hardly say what a state of jurisprudence such a state of things would represent.’ To find Mrs Robinson guilty and Dr Lane innocent, as he pointed out, would render the moment of their intimacy at once real and unreal, a fact and a fiction. She might be proven to have had sexual intercourse with him, while he was cleared of having had sexual intercourse with her.