Victorian Surveillance

Blackwall, Monday Night,

My Beloved Maria,

I have just finished your Aunt’s ….. and hope dear Maria you got home quite safe and from all surveillance from those at home. I hope dear aunt was not hurt at my not going… but you know dearest my reasons for not doing so………… I hope you will be able to come on Wednesday to my brother’s. They dine about 2… so will meet you a little before 2 by Bromley Church. I think you know the way dearest – get down at Byford Corner – at the side of Bow Church – thro’ the gates – to the left …. Where I hope to meet you dear Maria – could, dear you let me know if you can come… in the meantime believe me in haste my affectionate tho’ saucy (?) little Ria.. Your own affectionate and faithful Henry.

Maria Robinson and her family in the 1841 census for Poplar

Henry, it appears, was keeping up his contacts with elder brother, Thomas Edward, the baker, and one may guess that with the baker’s ovens fired up, a good meal was always to be had over with brother Thomas and his family. Of course, all these issues of surveillance remain quite intriguing, and Henry and Maria’s pre-marital relationship was certainly conducted in cloak and dagger fashion. But for now, Maria was to be introduced to Thomas Edward, his wife, Ann Jane Chapman, and approval and comfort sought.

Strange to consider too as Henry and Maria sat down for their dinner with Thomas Edward and Ann, that their son, Thomas Edward junior, aged just six, and gazing with fascination up at the young and perhaps beautiful Maria, would, before too many years had passed, be treading the aisle with Maria’s sister, Rosetta, herself, a mere child safely monitored at this very moment no doubt under the keen eye of Elizabeth Parker, Harriett Wombwell’s house servant and factotum.

Not that Maria was precisely a fountain of wisdom, maturity and experience at this point, and it is worth just reminding ourselves that as Maria took her place at Thomas Edward’s dining table on that Wednesday afternoon in 1848 most probably she was not yet twenty years old. If so, there may indeed have been good reasons for the surveillance that Henry snarls at, and one wonders even more what Maria, the silent and enigmatic Maria, whose replies to these letters have never come down to us, made of all Henry’s effusive communications. She was after all still just a teenager.

It may be then that Harriett Wombwell’s major concern was that Maria was in the time-honoured phrase simply ‘too young’. However, you can’t help but feel that there was more to it than this. Harriett herself had married young, and all the evidence suggests she was extremely keen on finding good husbands for her children. Henry, as he seems to have been resentfully aware, somehow did not fall into that category.

1851 Census Record for 65 Four Mills Lane in Bow, where Henry’s brother Thomas Edward ran his bakery business and provided refuge to Henry, and periodically, Maria.