These Lovers Fled Away by Morgan Graham

These Lovers Fled Away

Morgan Graham

This book is a historical romance based on the ten-year period during the lives of two real women in mid-eighteenth-century Ireland. Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were members of the upper class of Irish society. Although privileged by birth to enjoy the frivolous pursuits and social amenities of fashionable life, they are entirely enslaved by financial dependence upon the charitable whims of their families. In consequence of the disesteem in which women were held, the only “career” open to Eleanor and Sarah was marriage. Their problem was how to escape that fate.

Running away together, they placed themselves in grave physical and moral danger. But not only did the runaway women bodily jeopardise themselves, far more importantly they risked placing themselves socially beyond the moral pale. When at last Sarah and Eleanor did make good their escape and settle in Wales, the following article was printed about them in the “General Evening Post” in 1790:

Miss Butler, who is of the Ormonde family had several offers of marriage, all of which she rejected. Miss Ponsonby, her particular friend and companion, was supposed to be the bar to all matrimonial union, it was thought proper to separate them, and Miss Butler was confined.

Miss Butler is tall and masculine, she wears always a riding habit, hangs her hat with the air of a sportsman in the hall, and appears in all respects as a young man, if we except the petticoats which she still retains.

Miss Ponsonby, on the contrary, is polite and effeminate, fair and beautiful.

Miss Ponsonby does the duties and honors of the house, while Miss Butler superintends the gardens and the rest of the grounds.

The women were the subject of poems and novels during their own time as their elopement with one another scandalized contemporises. Anna Seward and William Wordsworth praised them in poetry. Ridiculous stories circulated. Other spinsters impersonated them. They house where they eventually lived in Wales remains a tourist draw to this day.

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