KNOCKING ON LESBIAN HEAVEN`S DOOR
The ladies of Llangollen
Eleanor Charlotte Butler (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1832)

November 2011

 

I knew it hadn’t been a dream. I had been in Lesbian Heaven and couldn’t wait to go back. Who would I meet next? To return to that wonderful place full of dykes with nothing to lose, I just had to swim around the same spot as the first day. Sure enough, the eerie jellyfish didn’t take long to come and electrocute me. I found myself knock, knock, knocking on Lesbian Heaven’s door.

“Come in, dear,” Jane Addams patted my back and held my hand to pull me from Limbo, softly but firmly. “They’ve been waiting for you.”

“They? Wasn’t I supposed to interview you all one by one?”

“Oh, Eleanor and Sarah just have to be together. It’s always been like that. You either have both or forget about it. But there they are. Hey, ladies!”

Miss Addams waved her hand toward two old women who looked like twins. They wore very old-fashioned black gowns and tall men hats.

“I’d like to introduce you to Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, best known as the Ladies of Llangollen, which is the place in Wales where they lived together for over fifty years at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th.” She looked at both women and added: “She’s the correspondent I told you about. And now you’ll have to excuse me, dears, I’m playing cards with Raddclyffe Hall and Audre Lorde, and they really hate having to wait.”

Jane Addams left and I smiled shyly at the two women.

QUESTION: So, er, you lived so long ago!

ELEANOR CHARLOTTE BUTLER: Indeed! But my memories are still fresh. My childhood days, for instance. I loved to read and my family mocked me and called me a bookworm. Nevertheless, I was happy then. Problems came when I was a teenager. They became obsessed with marriage. They told me that I was going to become a spinster and would be a shame for the family.

SARAH PONSONBY: Shame on them! My family was cruel to me too. Because I wasn’t married and therefore no man would avenge me, a friend of the family, the Baronet Sir William Fownes, tried to rape me.

Q: What did you do, then? The ladies looked at each other and smiled naughtily.

SP: We ran away together.

ECB: Yes! We planned it carefully, it took us years to arrange everything, but we finally left England and moved to our dear house in Llangollen, Wales, where we lived together for over fifty years.

SP: Oh, happy days! People were definitely scandalized by our relationship, but it also attracted those who didn’t want to live by the norm, like the poets of our time: Wordsworth, Byron…

ECB: And that silly man, the Poet Laureate, what was his name?

SP: You mean, Robert Southey?

ECB: Of course, Southey! He must be in the Sexist Heaven now, if such a place exists. If it does, it must be crowded. But anyway, he was the one who told Charlotte Brontë that women shouldn’t write. Thank God she ignored him! We always served him bad tea when he came to visit.

Q: Why did you have to run away? Couldn’t you have just told your families that you were going to live together? Just as close friends, I mean, without letting them know that you were lovers.

SP: No way, darling. They wanted to force us into marrying men that we didn’t even like, let alone love. We had no other option.

ECB: And to think that our families introduced us to each other so we could search for husbands together!

Q: Was your life very hard? I mean, did you have to confront bigotry, did your neighbors ostracize you?

ECB: We experienced some of that, of course, but we kept ourselves to our house and our private studies of literature and languages. We were very happy indeed, weren’t we, my dear Sarah?

SP: Yes, we were. And you know what we did? We transformed our dear little cottage into a striking gothic house! We loved been eccentric and dark. People in Llangollen simply called us The Ladies. Everybody knew who we were.

Q: But where did you get the money to live like that?

SP: Our way of life definitely led to significant debt, but the generosity of a few friends saved us on many occasions.

ECB: We outlived most of the people we knew. I tell you, my dear, the best remedy for old age is love and insubordination.

You can visit the Ladies of Llangollen amazing gothic house, or at least look at the pictures on its website by clicking here.

Next month on KOLHD: Our correspondent attends a pagan Christmas party in Lesbian Heaven!