Deaths, illnesses and misfortunes that seem to be natural, accidental, unavoidable or just coincidences – after all, stuff happens and such things are part of life – may seem less innocent when other, similar incidents are taken into account and patterns start to emerge.
Reading about the convenient (for J. M. Barrie) death of the Llewelyn Davies boys’ father has reminded me of another death, which I learned about from biographies of the Victorian novelist Ouida.
Thinking about the curse that Biddy Iremonger put on the man she hoped to marry when he chose someone else and the Kathleen Raine/Gavin Maxwell affair, not to mention the Brontë family’s misfortunes and the jilted woman in Patrick Brontë’s past, makes me wonder whether Ouida could have been indirectly responsible for the death of an Italian nobleman, someone she was infatuated with and hoped to marry.
Ouida first met the Marchese della Stufa in Italy in 1871.
They spent time together on and off during the next ten years. She expected him to propose marriage, but he never reached that point. It ended when, having had enough of her pursuit and behaviour towards him in public, he ‘cut’ i.e. looked straight through her without acknowledging her presence when she spoke to him. Ouida was devastated: this was the collapse of all her wishes, dreams, fantasies, expectations and hopes for the future.
Ouida’s relationship with della Stufa is described in detail in The Fine and the Wicked by Monica Stirling and Ouida the Passionate Victorian by Eileen Bigland. These books and some online memoirs contain some speculation about whether or not the Marchese ever seriously intended to marry Ouida, and possible reasons why he might or might not have considered doing so. The important aspect is that she genuinely believed that he intended to make her his wife.
Ouida became embittered, vindictive, even more self-absorbed and very witch-like in old age. She never married.
The Marchese della Stufa never married either; he died from cancer of the throat after a long and painful illness eight years after his final rejection of Ouida.
Maria Brontë, the mother of Charlotte and her siblings, died agonisingly of some internal cancer; she was 38 years old. Arthur Llewelyn Davies died horribly from cancer of the face; he was 44 years old; Gavin Maxwell died of lung cancer at 55; della Stufa was 60 years old when he died.
Are these deaths to be attributed to natural causes or to unseen influences? Who can tell.
Ouida in 1865:
Reading about the convenient (for J. M. Barrie) death of the Llewelyn Davies boys’ father has reminded me of another death, which I learned about from biographies of the Victorian novelist Ouida.
Thinking about the curse that Biddy Iremonger put on the man she hoped to marry when he chose someone else and the Kathleen Raine/Gavin Maxwell affair, not to mention the Brontë family’s misfortunes and the jilted woman in Patrick Brontë’s past, makes me wonder whether Ouida could have been indirectly responsible for the death of an Italian nobleman, someone she was infatuated with and hoped to marry.
Ouida first met the Marchese della Stufa in Italy in 1871.
They spent time together on and off during the next ten years. She expected him to propose marriage, but he never reached that point. It ended when, having had enough of her pursuit and behaviour towards him in public, he ‘cut’ i.e. looked straight through her without acknowledging her presence when she spoke to him. Ouida was devastated: this was the collapse of all her wishes, dreams, fantasies, expectations and hopes for the future.
Ouida’s relationship with della Stufa is described in detail in The Fine and the Wicked by Monica Stirling and Ouida the Passionate Victorian by Eileen Bigland. These books and some online memoirs contain some speculation about whether or not the Marchese ever seriously intended to marry Ouida, and possible reasons why he might or might not have considered doing so. The important aspect is that she genuinely believed that he intended to make her his wife.
Ouida became embittered, vindictive, even more self-absorbed and very witch-like in old age. She never married.
The Marchese della Stufa never married either; he died from cancer of the throat after a long and painful illness eight years after his final rejection of Ouida.
Maria Brontë, the mother of Charlotte and her siblings, died agonisingly of some internal cancer; she was 38 years old. Arthur Llewelyn Davies died horribly from cancer of the face; he was 44 years old; Gavin Maxwell died of lung cancer at 55; della Stufa was 60 years old when he died.
Are these deaths to be attributed to natural causes or to unseen influences? Who can tell.
Ouida in 1865:
