Footnotes

• The Sheridan sisters, grand-daughters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the playwright and politician, were famous alike for their beauty, intelligence, and high spirits, the last two qualities reflected in these albums: in later life Helen Lady Dufferin, eldest of the three, was to tell Disraeli: "You see, Georgy's the beauty, and Carry's the wit, and I ought to be the good one, but I am not". The album made for Caroline, the second sister, showing scenes with her husband, the Hon George Chapple Norton, must date from soon after their marriage in 1827: for the marriage was soon to deteriorate into extreme rancour with Norton displaying a "coarse nature and violent temper" (DNB). In 1836 Norton was to accuse Caroline of having an affair with the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, resulting in a court case so absurd that Dickens based 'Bardell v. Pickwick' upon it. Later he attempted to seize her literary earnings, while failing to pay her allowance. Not one to take her husband's mistreatment lying down, Caroline became a doughty fighter for female justice and did much to ameliorate the rights of married women, especially as regards custody of children. It is surely not too fanciful to image that some of the pictures from their early married life on display here - such as "St George and the Dragon", showing Norton wielding his meerschaum pipe to fend off the dragon Caroline - foreshadow the storm that was to come.