‘queer’ and sunk in ‘the miserables’, Sam did something quite unheard of for him and went on holiday. Taking refuge with various Beetons in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, he refused to budge until he had formulated a strategy for dealing with the second half of what had by now become a kind of purgatory.
The first two surviving letters that Isabella wrote to Sam come from the closing days of 1855, just before he left for Suffolk, and give a flavour of their relationship during the first half of the engagement. Writing to Sam on Boxing Day Isabella laments the fact that she has been tied up with domestic duties – mopping up after her poorly half-siblings Walter, Frank and Lucy in the Grandstand – rather than flirting with her husband-to-be: ‘I cannot say I spent a happy Christmas day, you can well guess the reason and besides that Frank being so poorly, we were not in spirits to enjoy ourselves.’ Still, there is something to look forward to: Sam has suggested coming down to Epsom that very evening to escort her up to London to see Jenny Lind in concert. For many a young Victorian woman a trip to hear the Swedish Nightingale – in this case for the second time – might seem like a sort of polite bore. Isabella, though, is genuinely musical and therefore genuinely thrilled: ‘I do not know how to thank you enough for your kind invitation, the more delightful because so unexpected.’
The next letter, again from Isabella to Sam, is written a few days later, on New Year’s Eve. Still in role as mother hen to a brood of sickly siblings, Isabella is inclined to fuss over her fiancé: ‘I was very glad to hear your cold was so much better, only mind and take proper care of yourself, as you promised me you would, for I certainly was terribly afraid you were going to be seriously ill when I left you on Friday night.’ Next she makes sure to let Sam know how well she got on with his taciturn Uncle Thomas on her last brief visit to the Dolphin after the Lind concert: ‘seldom has he been so agreeable to me before’. Then comes the pang of realization that, despite the fact that their lives are soon to be united, they are at present running on divergent tracks. Sam is about to set off for his holiday in East Anglia while she is obliged to stay in Epsom and continue on the same round of dreary duties and doubtful pleasures. Particularly grim is the thought of having to attend a looming New Year’s dinner party – ‘that terrible ordeal’ – given by the middle-aged solicitor Mr White: ‘I am very sorry you will not be able to go,’ writes Isabella ruefully, although as it turned out the meal was followed by ‘a good dance … which exactly suited me’. Isabella’s brother John, by contrast, will be celebrating New Year with Sam’s sisters at a black-tie party held by some cousins of the Beetons in Mile End. Penned up in a world of provincial domesticity, the only thing Isabella can think to do is ask Sam: ‘When do you start for Suffolk? I should like to know because then I can fancy what you are doing.’
The next letters in the sequence are, even now, 150 years later, painful to read. Isabella, unaware that Sam might be embarking on anything other than a short break of a few days, makes excited plans for a romantic reunion, which she believes will come any day now. Sam, meanwhile, stays pointedly entrenched in East Anglia, deliberately missing each deadline that she sets for their next meeting, which has the effect of sending her frantic with frustration. On 3 January, only a couple of days after Sam has left for Suffolk, Isabella is already writing to say that she had hoped that he would be home by next Saturday as ‘I intended writing to invite you to join our family circle … as we are going to the Stand to keep Christmas now the small ones are recovered,’ apparently unaware that a room full of other people’s children is hardly the sort of thing to tempt a young man about town. Sam, though, has evidently already written to explain that he has extended his stay in East Anglia, so instead Isabella floats the idea of meeting on the 11th, after her next lesson with Benedict. ‘It will then be a fortnight since I have seen you. Absence &c &c &c. I don’t know whether you have found that out. I for one have.’ But Sam, clearly, does not feel Absence &c &c &c quite as urgently, since he writes back explaining that, sadly, he still won’t be home by the 11th.
Here was the signal for Isabella to swing into action. She wanted Sam back, and she wanted him back now. In her letter of 8 January she is careful to let him know what he has been missing: ‘We spent a very merry evening at the Stand on Saturday. I was very sorry you were not present, for I am sure you would have enjoyed yourself,’ apparently unaware how unlikely this was. Having spent a couple of routine sentences saying how pleased she was to hear that Sam was feeling better, she launches into her plan.
Now for business. Will you be so kind to arrange your affairs, so that you will be home by Monday night or Tuesday morning as we are going to have a few friends to dinner and you are to be one of the dozen if you can manage to be home by then. I hope you will not disappoint me because you know very well these formal feeds I abominate, and if you come of course it will be much pleasanter for me. I am the only one of the girls going to dine with them, so pray do not leave me to sit three or four hours with some old man I do not care a straw about.
After a few more limp courtesies Isabella signs off before adding what Sam would come to know and joke about as the crucial postscript, the one in which the real purpose of her letter was revealed: ‘Let me have a letter soon telling me how you have been amusing yourself, and bear in mind Tuesday, Jany 15th.’
Notwithstanding the peremptory postscript, Sam’s response was to send a note explaining that, alas, he was not coming home until Thursday evening and so would be obliged to miss the Dorlings’ dinner party. This made Isabella redouble her efforts. Determined to get Sam down to Epsom by hook or by crook, she contrived to get the dinner party set back a couple of days. What was the point of having a fiancé, if you never got to show him off?
My dear Sam,
You say you intend returning home on Thursday evening, but as our dinner party is put off till that day perhaps you will have the kindness to favour us with your company. One day I am sure cannot make much difference to you, and besides you have had such a nice long holiday you will be quite ready to come home by that time. Mama sends her kind regards and says she cannot hear of a refusal, and the girls say they are quite sure you would not think of refusing now you have been pressed so much.
I cannot tell you how disappointed I was in reading in your last letter that you were not coming home so soon as I expected. We do not dine till 6 o.c. so I beg once more that you will come, and if you do not I shall begin to think you are a little bit unkind … Hoping you will not refuse my first request, with love of the very best quality,
Believe me, dearest Sam,
Yours devotedly,
ISABELLA
I hope you will reach your journey’s end safely and that I shall see you on Thursday. I think I shall feel desperate if you refuse to come.
Whether or not Sam did finally make it to Epsom in time for dinner at six o’clock sharp on Thursday the 17th is unclear. Certainly the atmosphere between the young couple remained watchful for the next few weeks. Over the next five months Sam would contrive to have as little contact with the Dorlings as possible. Isabella must be enticed up to London, or possibly to Brighton, a town that she considered an ‘earthly paradise’ and which they both visited regularly. And wherever possible his easy-going stepmother rather than her hawk-eyed mama should be pressed into service as chaperone. It was now, too, that Sam made a decision about where they were to live once they were married. Two months after returning from Suffolk he took a lease on a house in Pinner, a village well to the north of London. A southerly suburb like Croydon or Beckenham would have been the obvious place for the young couple to settle: both were a short shift from Epsom yet also a mere half-hour from Fleet Street and the Dolphin. Instead Sam pointedly chose a place that was about as far away from the Dorlings as it was practically possible to be.
All this made perfect sense, but unfortunately Sam did not feel able to share his ponderings and strategies with Isabella. They were not yet on terms where they could giggle together over her ghastly parents
