eclaiming

 

Mary Diana Dods

known author of Frankenstein, had

a dear friend staying with her in
London for a time. Mary Diana Dods.
called Doddy by her friends, was by
all accounts a bizarre creature.
Contemporaries describe her as hav-
ing grotesque features and a mis-
shapen, out-of-proportion body. She
almost looked like a man in a poorly
fitted dress at first glance, and in one
respect she was a man: she had pub-
lished several books and many stories
using the name David Lyndsay. It was
hard for her contemporaries not to
laugh at Doddy. but her critics were
‘quickly won over by her wit and
charm.

“n 1825, Mary Shelley, the well-

At about the same time,

‘ another friend came into Mary

Shelley’s circle, the very young and

i beautiful Isabella Robinson. Isabella

was sixteen, the daughter of friends of
friends. Mary was a widow of 27 or
28 at the time, learned and well trav-

Doddy 

had seen
some success
as a writer,
but only
under a male
pseudonym.

eled. Doddy was a little older, also
well educated and intelligent, while
Isabella had little to offer beyond her
extraordinary beauty. Nonetheless, the
three women formed an intense, close
bond.
The next spring found
Isabella pregnant and unmarried and
hvmg with Doddy. Two unmarried
Women living together in the 18205
was a rare but not unheard-of situa-
tion. One or both had to have an inde-
pendent means of support. The
Victorian age was closing in on
England, and the only careers open to
“PP€r-class women were those of wife
and mother, in that order. Doddy had
seen some success as a writer, but
gnly under a male pseudonym. Mary
bh_°“5}’ Was herself an oddity for
°_”‘€ a successful woman writer
“"18 her own name.
It is hard to know the exact

nature of Isabella’s and Doddy’s rela- ,

C

V -3!

tionship, but their arrangement of liv-
ing together was marriage-like in that
they pooled their resources and set up
housekeeping together, for better or
worse.
That spring, none of the

three friends had much in the way of

funds. Isabella may have had a small
allowance from her father, but Doddy
had not published anything for several
years. Mary relied on what she made
as a writer, and a small, unreliable
allowance from her father-in-law. She
borrowed ten pounds from a friend so
that she and Isabella could leave
London for Kent. Isabella began to
call herself “Mrs. Douglas” whose
“husband” was away on business in
London.

Mary did all she could for
the little family. She nursed Isabella
through a post-partum illness and
wrote to her publisher urging him to
publish some of David Lyndsay’s
work. She remained a staunch and
supportive friend when the death of
Doddy’s father left them uncertain -
about their financial future.

7 Doddy and her sister
Georgiana were the ‘reputed’ daugh-
ters of a Scottish earl. The sisters had
been raised and educated as aristo-
crats, but were kept out of sight.
Doddy was not close to her father, but
there was hope that he had remem-
bered them in his will. When, in the
summer of 1827, the .will was read,
Doddy and her widowed sister were
each to receive IOQ pounds a year,
free and clear of any debtors or hus-
bands.

Now Mary, Doddy and
Isabella began to formulate another
scheme. Mary wrote to a friend that,
much to Isabella’s relief, Doddy was
“seriously considering les culottes,”
meaning trousers. In the fall Mary
wrote to another friend in London,
J.H. Payne, asking him to go to the
passport office in London and obtain
passports for her friends, Walter
Sholto Douglas and his wife Isabella
Douglas. She enclosed samples of
both signatures and a description of V
the couple in the letter. Payne’s job
was to find a woman who matched

Isabella’s description, impersonate the i’

 

Douglases at the passport office and
forge their signatures. Payne obliged,
thinking it was only to save Mary and
the Douglases the time and expense of
traveling to London.

Several months later, Walter

‘Douglas (Doddy) with his wife

Isabella, baby daughter Adeline, and
sister Georgiana left England for
Paris, where nobody knew them.
When Doddy put on those trousers,
she became as much a man as any
other of the period: she was the head i
of the household, her sister deferred to
her as a brother, and the baby called
her papa. Dods/Douglas could speak
and write as the educated person s/he
was without being considered a freak.
He and Isabella were regarded as a
couple — though not a very compatible
one, for the relationship was always
stormy. -
In the Spring of 1828, Mary
went to Paris with Isabella’s father
and sister to visit the Douglases for a
month. She observed Isabella’s
“matchless suffering” in the marriage.
“One only trusts that the diseased
body acts on the diseased mind,”
Mary wrote about Doddy, who had a
long history of liver ailments. Other
accounts by those who knew the
Douglases in Paris, and who were less
bedazzled by Isabella than Mary was,
depicted a very young and flirtatious
beauty married to an older, ugly, and
unwell man. She flirted openly with
other men, arousing her husband’s
jealousy.

In November of 1829,
Dods/Douglas was thrown into
debtors’ prison and may have died
there. It is the last mention of David
Lyndsay, Walter Douglas or Mary
Diana Dods anywhere. A year later,
Isabella returned to England without
Douglas. Mary found her friend much
changed in the two-and-a-half years
since they’d last seen each other —
since Isabella had no more use for .
Mary. “She surely is not the being
she once was,” Mary wrote, and she
could have just as well written the
same about Doddy. V

For more details:

Mary Diana Dods; A Gentleman and
a Scholar, by Betty T. Bennett,
William Morrow and Company, 1991.

The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley, volumes 1 and 11, ed. Betty T.
Bennett, The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1980.

Francesca Susanna is a lesbian inter-
ested in women in history who lives in
Burlington. This is her last “Women
Like That" column, by her choice,
‘although she will continue to write on

i other subjects for OITM.

 

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