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by Francesca Susanna

     That spring, none of the three friends had much in the way of funds. Isabella may have had a small allowance from her father, but Doddy had not published anything for several years. Mary relied on what she made as a writer, and a small, unreliable allowance from her father-in-law. She borrowed ten pounds from a friend so that she and Isabella could leave London for Kent. Isabella began to call herself "Mrs. Douglas" whose "husband" was away on business in London.
     Mary did all she could for the little family. She nursed Isabella through a post-partum illness and wrote to her publisher urging him to publish some of David Lyndsay's work. She remained a staunch and supportive friend when the death of Doddy's father left them uncertain about their financial future.
     Doddy and her sister Georgiana were the 'reputed' daughters of a Scottish earl. The sisters had been raised and educated as aristocrats, but were kept out of sight. Doddy was not close to her father, but there was hope that he had remembered them in his will. When, in the summer of 1827, the will was read, Doddy and her widowed sister were each to receive 100 pounds a year, free and clear of any debtors or husbands.
     Now Mary, Doddy and Isabella began to formulate another scheme. Mary wrote to a friend that, much to Isabella's relief, Doddy was "seriously considering les culottes," meaning trousers. In the fall Mary wrote to another friend in London, J.H. Payne, asking him to go to the passport office in London and obtain passports for her friends, Walter Sholto Douglas and his wife Isabella Douglas. She enclosed samples of both signatures and a description of the couple in the letter. Payne's job was to find a woman who matched Isabella's description, impersonate the Douglases at the passport office and forge their signatures. Payne obliged, thinking it was only to save Mary and the Douglases the time and expense of traveling to London.
     Several months later, Walter Douglas (Doddy) with his wife Isabella, baby daughter Adeline, and sister Georgiana left England for Paris, where nobody knew them. When Doddy put on those trousers, she became as much a man as any other of the period: she was the head of the household, her sister deferred to her as a brother, and the baby called her papa. Dods/Douglas could speak and write as the educated person s/he was without being considered a freak. He and Isabella were regarded as a couple — though not a very compatible one, for the relationship was always stormy.
     In the Spring of 1828, Mary went to Paris with Isabella's father and sister to visit the Douglases for a month. She observed Isabella's "matchless suffering" in the marriage. "One only trusts that the diseased body acts on the diseased mind," Mary wrote about Doddy, who had a long history of liver ailments. Other accounts by those who knew the Douglases in Paris, and who were less bedazzled by Isabella than Mary was, depicted a very young and flirtatious beauty married to an older, ugly, and unwell man. She flirted openly with other men, arousing her husband's jealousy.
     In November of 1829, Dods/Douglas was thrown into debtors' prison and may have died there. It is the last mention of David Lyndsay, Walter Douglas or Mary Diana Dods anywhere. A year later, Isabella returned to England without Douglas. Mary found her friend much changed in the two-and-a-half years since they'd last seen each other — since Isabella had no more use for Mary. "She surely is not the being she once was," Mary wrote, and she could have just as well written the same about Doddy.

For more details:
Mary Diana Dods; A Gentleman and a Scholar, by Betty T. Bennett, William Morrow and Company, 1991.

The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, volumes I and II, ed. Betty T. Bennett, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Francesca Susanna is a lesbian interested in women in history who lives in Burlington. This is her last "Women Like That" column, by her choice, although she will continue to write on other subjects for OITM.