An early advocate of freedom from the stultifying restraints of high Victorianism, Mona invited Edith Wingate and Frank Rinder to London, adopted them for a time into her household, and facilitated their marriage, which took place not at a church, as was customary, but at a London Registry Office on February 27, 1890.Ģ The Sharps knew Edith and Frank Rinder in London before and after their marriage. Mona Caird, Frank Rinder’s first cousin, had married in 1887 a wealthy Scottish Laird – James Alexander Henryson Caird of Cassenary, Creeton, Kirkendbrighten – and settled into a substantial house in South Hampstead. Back in Lincolnshire, feeling isolated, deprived of culture, without prospects, and unable to overcome their parents’ opposition to their marrying, the young couple set their sights on London. During his first year – 1883–84 – he became ill with cerebral meningitis which left him somewhat crippled and in ill-health for the rest of his life. Frank was also educated in Lincolnshire and sent to Fettes College, a well-established boarding school in Edinburgh. Educated at home and locally, Edith spent a year studying in Germany and worked for a time as a governess in Lincolnshire upon returning home. Edith and Frank were childhood sweethearts who had grown up as landed gentry on neighboring farms in the north of England. In mid-December, Edith Wingate Rinder came from London to spend three weeks with Mona Caird, a close friend of the Sharps who was wintering in Rome “for her health.” A beautiful and intelligent young woman of twenty-six, Edith had married Mona’s cousin, Frank Rinder, less than a year earlier, on February 17, 1890. He reveled in the sunshine and the beauty he was in perfect health his imagination was quickened and worked with great activity” ( Memoir 173). Elizabeth recalled those months as “one long delight” for her husband, which “amply fulfilled even his optimistic anticipation. 1 The Sharps arrived in Rome in early December of 1890 and stayed until March.
0 kommentar(er)
