ABSTRACT
Fourteen years later, she agreed to become his second wife: Ί should be very apt to say - unmaidenly as it may sound - the sooner the better - It is no use to stand shivering and shilly shallying under the shower Bath - Best pull the string, and get the shock over ... ’ (Letter to her aunt, Lady Burrard, in late 1838 or early 1839; BL MSS adds 45185, 17-18). This reference to her forthcoming marriage was clearly made in light-hearted mood. Yet it was exactly this generous impetuosity that she would later have to thank for plunging her into a catastrophic situation. The mar riage duly took place, at Boldre Church on 5 June 1839. This was the church whose vicarage Caroline had visited as a child, when William Gilpin gave her lessons. The wedding was very quiet: the pair drove through the lanes from Buckland in a pony carriage to the old stone church of Boldre on the edge of the New Forest, described in one of her early sketches: ‘The church itself, nearly in the midst of a very beautiful churchyard, rich in old carved headstones, and bright verdure roofing the nameless graves - the church itself stands on the brow of a finely wooded knoll, commanding a diversified expanse of heath, forest, and cultivated land ... ’,1
The service was conducted by the bride’s uncle, the Reverend Sir George Burrard, and the bride was given away by another relative, Admiral Sir Harry Burrard Neale (reputed to be the last commander to hang a sailor from the yard-arm and, coincidentally, also a friend of Robert Southey’s). Southey had been staying at Buckland Cottage since March, and apparently the newspapers jumped the gun and reported the marriage before it took place. Caroline refused to be too embar rassed by this lapse: she wrote in response to a question from a friend, that at her age (she was now 52) she was not likely to fall under
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