Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, 1827 - 1891
There is no doubt that Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an atypical Victorian woman both in her circumstances and in her temperament. Indeed, she pronounced herself with some satisfaction as one of the cracked people.
Born in 1827, she was the illegitimate daughter of Benjamin Leigh Smith, a radical Unitarian and the MP for Norwich, and Anne Longden, a milliner. She was the eldest of five, in a family where girls and boys received an equal and liberal education, and enjoyed a close relationship with their father, who took a personal interest in their welfare. BLSB received private tuition from James Buchanan, a teacher from Robert Owen’s Lanark school and a Swedenborgian to boot. Private study included some nature rambles and painting trips, her father piling all the children into their own horse-drawn bus.
At her majority in 1848 her father settled on BLSB an annual income of £300 and the title deeds of Westminster school in Vincent Square; a Victorian version perhaps, of Virginia Woolf’s requisite £500 and a room of one’s own. This endowment was to provide the basis for her first educational venture, Portman Hall. Based on Owenite principles the school was secularist and coeducational and ran successfully for 10 years. At its height it attracted 113 pupils.
BLSB was a flamboyant and spontaneous character “Ah if only you were like Miss Barbara Smith!” Dante Gabriel Rossetti complained to Christina. Her friends assigned to her the image of romantic heroine, Queen Bab, Boadicea or (for George Eliot) the figure of Romola. In any event she was full of physical energy and bravura, still jumping five-barred gates in her forties.
Among the early female friendships which were to play a crucial part in her life were those with Bessie Rayner Parkes, Anna Mary Howitt and George Eliot. From her friendship with Bessie Parkes BLSB derived her first experiences of journalism. Their writing for the Hastings and St. Leonard’s News was to lead later to The Waverley and the establishment of The Englishwoman’s Journal. They first met in 1847 and shared holidays together, ranging from sojourns in Hastings to an un-chaperoned exploration of Europe during 1850, still an unsettled period of European history.
With Bessie she discussed literature, moral philosophy and politics; they urged each other on in the pursuit of a career, eschewing the conventional option (for their class) of philanthropy. Anna Mary Howitt was a fellow painter. One of the Pre-Raphaelites, she was inspired by contemporary German art, and, in 1850, travelled to Munich to study with Kaulbach, accompanied by Jane Benham (Hay). BLSB visited her there and consequently featured as the figure of Justina in Howitt’s An Art Student in Munich. 1854 saw Anna Mary Howitt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal together at Scalands, Barbara’s home near Hastings where all three drew Lizzie Siddal with an iris in her hair. Scalands with its rustic simplicity and free life-style, became a centre for many such meetings of artists, although it was slightly too spartan for Rossetti: Barbara does not indulge in bell-pulls, hardly in servants to summon thereby so I have brought my own. What she does affect is any amount of thorough draught.
At about this time the Portfolio Club was formed, and although it is a common belief that the club was an organ of the PreRaphaelites, it was in fact founded by BLSB.
Yet by far the most important of these early friendships was that with George Eliot. This alliance was to last some 30 years and was based on mutual respect and a sense of fellow-travelling. They were both women who flew in the face of social convention and Eliot was deeply moved when BLSB recognised the authorship of Adam Bede: “You are the first friend who has given any symptom of knowing me – the first heart that has recognised me in a book that came from my heart of hearts”. BLSB in her turn acknowledged the very particular power and influence that George Eliot could and would exercise: “I feel you of all women I have ever met are called to influence most widely”.
It is hardly surprising that BLSB was politically active at an early stage. She was to criticise John Stuart Mill’s Political Economy for not adequately addressing the question of marital law, and herself discussed the advantages of marriage contracts in A brief summary of the most important laws of England concerning women. This work formed the basis of the petition in support of the Married Women’s Property Bill, which was drawn up by the Blandford Square group in 1855. The petition boasted 26,000 signatories including such notable women as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Martineau, Jane Carlyle and George Eliot. Although the movement towards reform was undoubtedly influenced by the notorious case of Caroline Norton, for BLSB the question of illegitimacy and the whole tenor of her upbringing would predispose her to champion the disadvantaged, particularly where that disadvantage resulted from the inadequacy of marital law.
In BLSB‘s own case there were several early liaisons: Philip Kingsford in the early 1850’s, an offer of marriage from J.J.Sylvester in 1854, Herbert Spencer, whom she considered for marriage but pronounced unlovable, and, in the summer of 1854, John Chapman, editor of The Westminster Review who offered her the arts editorship of the paper. Only Chapman’s side of their correspondence remains and his letters are of a frank and intimate nature but they stop, suddenly and inexplicably, in September 1855. In the period that followed BLSB wrote her Women and Work, published in 1857 but probably completed while she was in Algiers over the preceding winter. This was published in The Waverley. The essay argues for the economic independence of women and the efficacious nature of work for healthy minds and healthy bodies.
BLSB was excited by Algiers in terms of its visual attraction to her painterly eye and its exoticism, which appealed to her adventurous spirit; and indeed it was here that she met Eugene Bodichon, anthropologist and physician. They were engaged in April 1857 and married in the July. One may gauge something of her strength of feeling by observing the caution or even downright opposition of friends and family. Eugene was pronounced “eccentric” and “indifferent to the opinions of others”; George Eliot declared herself “not quite satisfied”; but Bessie Parkes observed that to have tried to hold Barbara back from the marriage would have been akin to stopping the Niagara Falls. It would seem that BLSB expected to set up home in England, and indeed, they were married here. However, the pattern of their life was to be that they would live six months of the year together in Algiers and six months apart, with BLSB in England.
In the first instance, they embarked on an extended honeymoon, first visiting the Lewes’ household, and then travelling to America. They crossed the Atlantic third class, characteristically giving the balance from a first class ticket to a woman who approached them for help. Equally characteristic was their chosen itinerary. They visited the marginalised sectors of society, the slave states, and the public schools, and held many informal meetings with American feminists. Throughout the trip, which lasted six months, BLSB wrote articles on abolition for The Englishwoman’s Journal which she had funded and which was registered in 1858. Indeed, most of the material which BLSB wrote en route was to form the basis of her book An American Diary.
Barbara kept her maiden name as a prefix to her married one – Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon – “for I have earned a right to Barbara Smith”. Such a statement tends to reveal how the question of legitimacy was always with her, but it also suggests the way in which she wished to define the basis for that legitimacy in her own terms, both highly moral and highly unconventional.
The Englishwoman’s Journal never achieved BLSB‘s radical ambitions for it, but it was a successful public platform in launching several initiatives and in establishing networks which were to prove influential. For example, it gave rise to the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and the establishment of Langham Place as a centre for feminist activity. In 1862, Emily Davies took over the editorship from Bessie Parkes, and in the same year, BLSB joined Davies’ committee, which at that time was campaigning for women to be admitted to university local examinations and would go on to champion a woman’s right to sit examinations at university level, having achieved its first object in 1869. This was the heyday of the Kensington Society, a female debating society, and with these vital platforms for discussion and organisation, the support for women’s suffrage blossomed over the next five years. The Langham Place group campaigned for John Stuart Mill’s election to parliament in 1865, and in his election address Mill argued that women should indeed have the vote. Later that year BLSB submitted a paper on the subject to the Kensington Society, but the response from Emily Davies is indicative of the differences between the two women; BLSB enthusiastic and radical, Davies cautious and conventional. BLSB presented another version of her view to the Social Science Association conference in October 1867 entitled Reasons for the enfranchisement of women. However, fundamental cracks in the committee were to cause its final split in 1867 over the issue of whether men could be admitted as members. It was generally felt that at the present time, the issue of education was the best way to further the women’s cause. Although BLSB threw herself into this new direction she kept in touch with the chief protagonists of the suffrage movement. Davies,on the other hand, adopted the stance of Caesar’s wife and had nothing more to do with issue until the end of the century when her central ambition had been achieved.
Indeed, it was this project, the establishment of Girton College, which was to consume BLSB‘s energies until the end of her life. She did not consider herself orthodox enough to share Davies’ belief in the superiority of a Cambridge education; nevertheless, she predicted that Davies was going to achieve something exceptional, and education had always been an abiding interest, particularly as a means for any disadvantaged group to improve its lot. Therefore, when Davies visited BLSB at Scalands in 1867, BLSB agreed to give £1000 towards the foundation of the College, by far the largest individual contribution.
BLSB was heavily involved in propaganda for the College during the run-up to its opening at Hitchin; her brief was to target the higher echelons of society. Yet Davies did not ask her to serve on the first committee because she was too well known for her involvement in controversial causes and Davies was ever anxious that no such taint should prejudice her campaign. BLSB wanted the College established in Cambridge itself and neither appreciated nor sympathised with Davies’ insistence on the propriety of keeping her young ladies away from the men.
With good grace, however, she conceded to the wisdom of Davies’ strategy. Candidates for the College were examined at Blandford Square, she was involved in the appointment of the Mistress, served on both the executive and building committees in 1869, and was herself Acting Mistress in the Spring of 1872: Clear and firm, and, at the same time winning and bright… her influence is about the most useful we can have Davies pronounced in 1873.
BLSB was a frequent visitor to the College, particularly concerned with questions of health, and personally supportive of the students. Although sometimes called in on matters of discipline she was not always appreciative that any misdemeanour had been committed. Indeed it is fair to say that she and Davies complimented each other most successfully, the one providing the strengths that the other lacked.
In 1877, whilst on a painting holiday in Cornwall, BLSB suffered a stroke from which she only partly recovered. Yet the final period of her life was filled with activity: the renewal of old acquaintances, like Jessie White Mario, and the ‘bringing-on’ of the next generation. The first five Girton students were guests at Scalands, and BLSB personally encouraged many women, in particular Hertha Marks (Ayrton) whose later invaluable research would not have been possible without the assistance of a legacy from BLSB. She continued to campaign actively for the support of Girton College, notably (and at Davies’ request) for the memorial of 1880 which advocated the official admission of women to Tripos. It was only in 1885 that she relinquished her membership of the executive committee.
When Davies visited Scalands in 1878 BLSB told her the details of her will. Her legacy was to go to her family, but a large proportion of her savings was to go to Girton. It should be noted that these savings were derived from the sale of her paintings and are therefore a measure of her success as an artist. When BLSB died at Scalands in 1891 she left £10,000 to the College thereby ensuring once and for all its stability for the years ahead.
The diversity of her talents, her fierce energy and her propensity to dare the impossible were brought together in the founding of Girton College. She once said that she wished she possessed three immortal lives, one dedicated to art, one to Eugene and one to society. In an age when women’s life choices, if they existed at all, were mutually exclusive this was a rich and remarkable life.