Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore

Wendy Moore certainly gets one thing right in the title of her non-fiction work Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore (#156); it is a truly remarkable story.  It's amazing to me that Mary Eleanor Bowes survived not one, but two abusive marriages, and in the late eighteenth century, had the guts to file for a divorce in the British courts to regain her freedom, her fortune, and her children and the persistence to stay the course and win her suits.

Mary Eleanor had everything.  She was the indulged and highly educated only child of a doting father who died when she was eleven, leaving her the richest heiress in England, if not the European continent.  But without sensible adults to guide her choices of companions and pastimes, you might as well have painted a bullseye on her person since she immediately became the target of every fortune hunting male in the kingdom.  At age eighteen she marries the Count of Strathmore and begins eight years of married misery with his hostile family firmly in control of her money and ultimately her five children.  With the Count's death, Mary Eleanor had the freedom for the first time to enjoy spending her own fortune.  She was a merry widow indeed, until the fateful evening when one of her numerous admirers fights a duel for her honor, and begs her on his deathbed to let him die a happy man as her husband.  Thinking that she will be widowed in just a few days, Mary Eleanor consents, and the bridegroom is carried to the church on a makeshift cot.  When her new husband Andrew Robinson Stoney makes a miraculous recovery that same evening, Mary Eleanor realizes that she has made yet another marital mistake.

Beaten, starved and imprisoned for more than twelve years by the man who now has total legal control over her person and her finances, Mary Eleanor is in fear for her life when she meets a most unexpected ally who gives her the courage to escape from her husband.  With the aid of a sympathetic lawyer, she files suit against Andrew Bowes, as he has become.  With the knowledge that his fortune will be lost if Mary Eleanor wins her case, Bowes will literally stop at nothing to win.  Yet in successfully standing up for herself and her rights and her children, Mary Eleanor wins an opening round in the battle for equal legal rights of all married women that will not come to full fruition until the latter part of the Twentieth Century. 

Ms. Moore writes this harrowing tale of misery and abuse with suspense worthy of a novel.  Just when you think things can't possibly be worse, one of the principals in the case does something even more brutal or ill-advised.  The story leaves you wondering if there were any decent men at all in Mary Eleanor's Georgian social circles.  It certainly doesn't appear that she met many of them!  The press  had a field day with Mary Eleanor's reputation as the entire British world avidly followed the transcripts of the divorce trials.  It is every bit as interesting to read today as the juciest gossip, even though we know the eventual outcome.

And if you need an additional reason to read about this marriage in Georgian times, consider the fact that Queen Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of Mary Eleanor Bowes.  Would our world be a different place if things hadn't turned out as they did for the Countess of Strathmore?  You be the judge...