Mary De Morgan
WHO WAS SHE?
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Who was Mary De Morgan and why should she be dragged out of the shadows cast be her illustrious parents, her male siblings and the members of the Arts and Crafts circle in which she moved; why should the academic spotlight be shone onto her life and works?
De Morgan (1850-1907) was undoubtedly a woman of her time: she was unmarried and therefore one of the million or so “odd” women who had to earn their own living, which she did mainly by writing; she was one of the many who took part in the great effort to “improve” the lives of the poor in the East End of London; she was caught up in the spiritualist phenomena, not only because her mother was an ardent supporter and practitioner, but also because De Morgan herself was considered to be a “seer;” she, like many Victorians, suffered from the curse of tuberculosis but despite going to live in Egypt for health reasons, she then became the directress of a girls’ reformatory until her death.
Through the analysis of her fairy tales, her sole novel, her non-fictional articles and her unpublished short stories, De Morgan is revealed to be an early feminist and “New Woman,” an advocate of William Morris’s philosophies and a social reformer, but also a rather disappointed and disillusioned woman. Letters to and from her family and friends paint a colourful picture of family life during the second half of the nineteenth century, and extracts from well-known people’s biographies, reminiscences and diaries flesh out De Morgan’s character and help explain why George Bernard Shaw considered her to be a “devil incarnate.”
I wrote a blog about Mary for the De Morgan Foundation. You can read it here.
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Mary's mother
SOPHIA ELIZABETH DE MORGAN (NÉE FREND, 1809-1892)
Sophia was the eldest of seven children of William Frend and Sarah Blackburne, who was the daughter of a clergyman of the Established Church but whose “traditions,” according to Mary De Morgan in her introduction to her mother’s reminiscences, were similar to those of her husband. This being the case, it is not surprising that Sophia’s upbringing was, by her own account, totally unlike that of a conventional lady due, in the main, to the influence of her father on her education. He supervised her training throughout her youth, teaching her Hebrew, a language which allowed her to follow with greater understanding questions of theology and history, in which she was particularly interested. She also learned a little Greek and Latin, and her father encouraged her to read metaphysical and philosophical texts―little wonder she never acquired the more expected, and accepted, proficiency in playing a musical instrument
Although Sophia subsequently rejoiced in her learning, she recalls that in her early twenties she suffered humiliation when she realised that she did not know the rules of grammar as did her female companions. Sophia, like her husband, recognised that the learning of knowledge for its own sake was not of any benefit.
Because―or perhaps despite―of her own up-bringing, Sophia De Morgan supported the movement to enable women to receive higher education. Between 1848-1849 she was secretary of the Ladies Committee, being those interested in the establishment of a Ladies College. Elizabeth Jesser Reid (1789-1866) is considered to be the founder of Bedford College, the first women’s college, but she was obviously supported by a group of like-minded women, who had the energy and foresight to make a vision into reality.
As well as the education of women, Sophia supported women’s suffrage. In 1866 Barbara Bodichon formed the first ever Women’s Suffrage Committee, which organised the women’s suffrage petition, to which Sophia De Morgan added her signature.
Another trait passed on by her mother was Mary’s involvement in social work in the East End of London. In her introduction to Three Score Years and Ten, Mary summarises only some of her mother’s various social activities over no more than four pages, but it is nevertheless clear that her daughter was immensely proud of her mother and had a lot of respect for her endeavours. There was, for instance, the creation of the Workhouse Visiting Association in 1857, which was a direct result of Sophia’s interest in workhouse reform. In the De Morgan archives, there is a copy of a letter (believed to have been written around 1850), which resulted in the formation of a small committee of ladies who visited the wards and made suggestions to the Board for improvements to the comfort and welfare of the “inmates.” For instance, a footnote in Workhouses and Women’s Work refers to a paper sent to the Meeting for Social Science at Birmingham by Mrs De Morgan, in which she suggests that tailors and shoemakers superintend the work of the inmates, bread for the workhouse is made on site and wood-chopping is provided as an occupation. She also suggests a small remuneration for work done and industrial training for the young, so that the workhouse becomes the first step in an upward climb to success, rather than a downward fall into prison. (Workhouses and Women’s Work 1858, 35).
This involvement in workhouses was followed a few years later by Sophia, along with a few female friends, setting up a society for the provision of playgrounds for the poor slum children. Sophia was asked to join the Rev. David Mr Laing’s committee in 1858, which attempted to obtain waste land throughout London where poor children could play “harmlessly and happily, uncontaminated by street influences”.
As well as supporting initiatives to improve life for the poor, Sophia also campaigned to prevent harm or abuse to the powerless and was a keen member of the anti-slavery lobby. In Threescore Years and Ten, Sophia recalls seeing Harriet Beecher Stowe at Mrs Reid’s, when Stowe visited England in 1852 during a European speaking tour to promote Uncle Tom’s Cabin; she did not manage to speak to her, however, due to the throng of people.
As well as supporting the anti-slavery lobby, Sophia was also a keen anti-vivisectionist.
As well as being a committed campaigner, Sophia also found time to write children’s stories, not fairy stories as her youngest daughter would later write, but ones with a moral. She wrote “The Printing Press; or, Use and Abuse,” which was included in a collection of short stories called Tales for All Ages published in 1863. Sophia also wrote a full-length children’s book called Algy’s Lesson, which was published in 1868.
As we have seen, Sophia De Morgan was interested and involved in many of the key nineteenth-century concerns and preoccupations prevalent during her life-time―education, the poor, slavery and animal cruelty―and she applied her keen, sensitive and intelligent mind to them all. Her interest, however, was not just in the physical but also in the spiritual.
Sophia’s determination to investigate―rationally―the possibility of life after death, increased after the death of her beloved sister Harriet (1814-1836) and her daughter Alice (1838-1853). From Matter to Spirit: The Result of Ten Years’ Experience in Spirit Manifestations, Intended as a Guide to Enquirers was published anonymously in 1863 by C.D, with a Preface by A.B. Certainly by 1864, however, it was known that the author was Sophia De Morgan, and that Augustus had written the Preface―his reputation as an intelligent, rational investigator giving great credence to the book.
De Morgan describes so many personal experiences in From Matter to Spirit, that the reader gets the impression that Sophia’s life was divided equally between the world of the living and the world of the spirits, and this cannot but have had an effect on her children. Stirling reports that the younger De Morgan generation remained interested in the uncanny and the spiritual world into their adulthood, but did not “regard such investigations with the profound seriousness exhibited by their mother, and indeed they inherited from their father an absence of bias and a keen sense of humour in which she was perhaps lacking” (Stirling 1922, 107).
Mary's father
AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN (1806 - 1871)
Lieutenant-Colonel John De Morgan (1772-1816) and his wife Elizabeth (1798-1856) had seven children in all, although two sons died in a shipwreck on the way from India to England in 1804, and a daughter died in England in 1807 when only two years old. Augustus was born in 1806 in Madura in the Madras Presidency, but when he was only seven months old the family moved to Worcester, England, due to the continued unrest in India.
At birth Augustus had suffered from a common infection in India called “sore eye,” and it is perhaps the affliction of losing the sight in his right eye that led him to prefer studying to more physical pursuits. His mathematical ability, however, was not discovered until he was fourteen or so, but although it was this field that he loved and excelled in, it was to read Classics that he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1823 on the recommendation of his schoolmasters. His mother, a widow since 1816, initially wished her eldest son to become an Evangelical clergyman, little realising that the compulsory attendance, rigid doctrines and formal observances enforced on the boy throughout his childhood had done little to feed his spiritual needs and had in fact “become a source of misery”. During his last year at University, as ordination was out of the question due to his refusal to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles—these were produced in 1563 and attempt to define and codify Anglican beliefs and doctrines—Augustus considered medicine, but was quickly dissuaded by his mother and friends, who suggested that he was perhaps not “pliant enough” nor that he was “sufficiently ready to adapt himself to the fancies and peculiarities” of his patients, both being attributes necessary to becoming a “popular” doctor. In 1827 he took the degree of fourth wrangler, having been expected to be senior or second wrangler—until 1909 Cambridge University ranked the highest-scoring student who had taken an honours examination as senior wrangler, then second, third, fourth etc.—his “failure” being due, according to his colleagues, to his reading of mathematical books outside of those prescribed for the examination. Augustus was never a great believer in examinations being a true test of someone’s ability, as proven when he was eventually recognised as being a mathematical genius.
Having taken his degree, Augustus conceded to his mother’s wishes, rather than his own preference, and started legal studies. It was over the following few years that he became friends with William Frend, one of whose daughters, Sophia, would later become Mrs De Morgan. Frend was also a mathematician, although not in the same league as Augustus despite being second wrangler in 1780, but it was their common religious scruples which created the strongest bond. Frend had started his working life as a clergyman of the Church of England but left after only four years, his conviction being that, a propos the different Churches that abounded―of Rome, of England, of Scotland―
"Our Saviour and His Apostles do not countenance such establishments; the religion they taught is founded on conviction; it requires no external pomp, no proud parade of worship."
Like Augustus, then, Frend was an advocate of religious freedom and could not, and would not, profess to the creeds of the established church. Augustus used to visit Frend’s home at Stoke Newington, along with other men and women of every intellectual, religious, and political inclination. Augustus was twenty-one when he first met the nineteen-year old Sophia, who was surprised that this “rising man” could rival the Frend family in “love of fun, fairy tales, and ghost stories”. His sense of humour remained with him all his life, as evidenced by his weekly contribution of puns, puzzles and paradoxes to the Athenæum, which was posthumously edited by his wife and published in 1872 as A Budget of Paradoxes. Augustus was also very musical and used to play the flute, accompanied by Sophia’s sister, much to the chagrin of the musically untalented Sophia.
In 1827 Augustus applied for, and won, the appointment of chair of Mathematics at the newly created University College, allowing him to forgo his much disliked study of law, to follow his love of science―both the teaching and the research. This ideal job did not, however, last for long. In 1831 Granville S. Pattison, the Professor of Anatomy, was dismissed by the Council after a sustained student protest, which questioned his competency and the extent of his knowledge. Although the Council stated that nothing in his conduct, character or professional skill were at fault, they criticised his approach as being old-fashioned and not in tune with that of the new university. To a man of principle such as Augustus De Morgan, this unjustified action could not be countenanced and he resigned forthwith.
In 1836, after the drowning of the incumbent Professor of Mathematics, Augustus agreed to take over the post on a temporary basis, and then, having judged that the management had changed sufficiently such that there would not be a reoccurrence of the event which triggered his resignation a few years earlier, he agreed to resume his post on a permanent footing. In between professorships he had become very involved in the Astronomical Society and the Useful Knowledge Society, and earned his living by his writings and the teaching of private pupils.
In "Memoir of Augustus De Morgan", his wife describes his academic life in some detail.
In an article by Sedley Taylor, a former student, he explains that perhaps De Morgan’s best quality was his “love of scientific truth for its own sake and the utter contempt for all counterfeit knowledge”. This statement is relevant and important when considering Augustus’ involvement in spiritualism. Augustus also apparently abhorred “cramming“ and warned his students one year that there would be no point in revising for a coming examination because he intended to set a paper where cramming would be of no use. Augustus’s intention in teaching was to ensure that his students understood and assimilated the fundamental concepts and principles of mathematics―and perhaps to love and respect science as he himself did―and whether or not they could reproduce their knowledge onto paper within a set time mattered to him not one jot.
For one who obviously worked very hard, one would think that a holiday would be a blessing, but as Augustus’s wife relates, of a five-week holiday in Boulogne in 1839, just after their first son William was born:
"… he soon got tired of it, and felt glad to get back to his work. He bore a few weeks at Blackheath next year with equanimity … After this summer he begged me to take the children without him; and I found that this arrangement, which I disliked, was the best. He required a letter, reporting health, &c., and sent me one in return, every day".
In his article, Taylor also includes an interesting physical description of De Morgan: “A voice of sonorous sweetness, a grand forehead, and a profile of classic beauty…” It is pertinent to include here an amusing anecdote related by Sophia in her own reminiscences, of an occasion when she, her sisters and her father attended a lecture on phrenology, given by a Mr Holmes. At this time Sophia was acquainted with Augustus but not yet married to him. After the lecture, Mr Holmes showed off some plaster-of-Paris casts and because of his very distinctive head-shape Sophia recognised that of her friend, Mr De Morgan. On asking why the cast was there, Mr Holmes looked sorrowful and claimed “‘that is the head of a man who will never do anything. There is every kind of capacity in this head … wonderful endowments in science, in literature, in every way; but they are all lost.’” On being asked “‘Why so?’” he responded, “‘There is no power to make them active. The poor weak temperament cannot sustain any continued effort, so the fine organisation is quite useless.’”
Despite this dire prediction, in 1837, ten years after having first met, Sophia Frend agreed to be Augustus De Morgan’s wife and, as befits their refusal to comply with religious and social conventions, they were married at the Superintendent’s Registrar’s Office, St. Pancras.
One of Mary's brothers, William
MAKER OF TILES AND WRITER OF NOVELS
Work in progress