Letter to Mrs. Sarah Tighe

Letter to Mrs. Sarah Tighe

In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. When the women eloped, Butler’s annuity was cut off by her disapproving sister-in-law. The women now depended on income supplements from the Butlers and from Ponsonby’s cousin Sarah Tighe, as well as gifts from friends. Ponsonby and Tighe corresponded regularly. In this letter Ponsonby approves Tighe’s decision not to sell the house on Dominick Street in Dublin, where Ponsonby once lived with her sexually predatory guardian Sir William Fownes. In it she refers to Butler as “my Betterhalf.” The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection includes over 350 letters to and from the Ladies.

Ponsonby, Sarah

Ladies of Llangollen Collection

1801

30 July 1801

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby — the Ladies of Llangollen

U

3

1800s