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| william_rosa_morres_lizzie_hervey_redmond_weeta_hugh_lodge_matilda_egerton_m-p [2022/04/28 10:33] – judith | william_rosa_morres_lizzie_hervey_redmond_weeta_hugh_lodge_matilda_egerton_m-p [2022/04/28 10:34] – judith |
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| {{:rosie_m-p.jpg?200|}} Rosa Praed {{:campbell_praed_ca_1867.jpg?150|}} Campbell Praed c. 1867, photo at State Library of Queensland:\\ | {{:rosie_m-p.jpg?200|}} Rosa Praed {{:campbell_praed_ca_1867.jpg?150|}} Campbell Praed c. 1867, photo at State Library of Queensland:\\ |
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| Rosa made what seemed the ideal marriage for an Anglophile colonial writer when she married Arthur Campbell Bulkley Mackworth Praed on 29 October 1872. As she later wrote, her family and friends 'all wanted to be English', and Praed seemed a particularly dashing member of the English gentry, with a lifestyle bankrolled by his father's interests in a bank and brewery in London. | Rosa made what seemed the ideal marriage for an Anglophile colonial writer when she married Arthur Campbell Bulkley Mackworth Praed on 29 October 1872. As she later wrote, her family and friends 'all wanted to be English', and Praed seemed a particularly dashing member of the English gentry, with a lifestyle bankrolled by his father's interests in a bank and brewery in London. Perhaps the clinching detail to the aspiring writer was that his uncle was a well-known poet [[wp>Winthrop_Mackworth_Praed]]. Other current and future members of the family were also artistic, as indicated by a well-executed portrait of Rosa in the SLNSW attributed to an Emily Praed.((SLNSW, ML1039)) To the young Rosa, her suitor embodied cultured English gentry. Sadly, neither of the couple lived up to the other's ideal. Divorce then was very difficult, expensive, condemned by churches and entailed social disgrace, so the unhappy couple did not divorce. They separated in 1899. Today it is probable that Rosa would identify as a lesbian; as it was, she wrote to her friend and co-author Justin McCarthy that (by implication, heterosexual) sex was 'a side of life that has always repelled me.'((Patricia Clarke, 'Rosa Praed's Irish Connections', //The Australian Journal of Irish Studies//, vol. 1, 2001, p.120 citing Rosa Praed to Justin McCarthy, typescript extracts, Praed papers 8/13/1.)) It did not help that Campbell Praed had a reputation for unfaithfulness. The heroine who was reared in the Victorian ideal of female innocent/ignorance, and then married someone unsuitable, became a common theme in Rosa's books. That theme resonated with many women's experiences as well as Rosa's.\\ |
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| Perhaps the clinching detail to the aspiring writer was that his uncle was a well-known poet [[wp>Winthrop_Mackworth_Praed]]. Other current and future members of the family were also artistic - for example, there is a well-executed portrait of Rosa in the SLNSW attributed to an Emily Praed.((SLNSW, ML1039)) To the young Rosa, her suitor embodied cultured English gentry. Sadly, neither of the couple lived up to the other's ideal. Divorce then was very difficult, expensive, condemned by churches and entailed social disgrace, so the unhappy couple did not divorce. They separated in 1899. Today it is probable that Rosa would identify as a lesbian; as it was, she wrote to her friend and co-author Justin McCarthy that (by implication, heterosexual) sex was 'a side of life that has always repelled me.'((Patricia Clarke, 'Rosa Praed's Irish Connections', //The Australian Journal of Irish Studies//, vol. 1, 2001, p.120 citing Rosa Praed to Justin McCarthy, typescript extracts, Praed papers 8/13/1.)) It did not help that Campbell Praed had a reputation for unfaithfulness. The heroine who was reared in the Victorian ideal of female innocent/ignorance, and then married someone unsuitable, became a common theme in Rosa's books. That theme resonated with many women's experiences as well as Rosa's.\\ | |
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| The marriage did not start well. Their first home was the romantically named 'Monte Christo', a 500 square mile property on Port Curtis Island near [[wp>Gladstone,_Queensland|Gladstone]]. The property was a joint venture by Campbell Praed and a former veterinary surgeon, Dr Samuel Joseph Wills.((__ BROKEN-LINK:https://www.secretbrisbane.com.au/home/2017/7/13/suburban-dentist-a-salt-works-and-one-of-queenslands-most-important-female-novelists))LINK-BROKEN__ Rosa's romantic dreams were dashed by the reality of scrubby land and hordes of mosquitoes.((Roderick, //In Mortal Bondage//, p.65.)) Four years later, they left the island with Praed's hopes of making a colonial fortune ended.((Roderick, //In Mortal Bondage//, pp.102-03, 115.))\\ | The marriage did not start well. Their first home was the romantically named 'Monte Christo', a 500 square mile property on Port Curtis Island near [[wp>Gladstone,_Queensland|Gladstone]]. The property was a joint venture by Campbell Praed and a former veterinary surgeon, Dr Samuel Joseph Wills.((__ BROKEN-LINK:https://www.secretbrisbane.com.au/home/2017/7/13/suburban-dentist-a-salt-works-and-one-of-queenslands-most-important-female-novelists))LINK-BROKEN__ Rosa's romantic dreams were dashed by the reality of scrubby land and hordes of mosquitoes.((Roderick, //In Mortal Bondage//, p.65.)) Four years later, they left the island with Praed's hopes of making a colonial fortune ended.((Roderick, //In Mortal Bondage//, pp.102-03, 115.))\\ |