'Sunshine': Remembering Clara Stephens

Note: The information in this post is derived from my PhD research into F. G. Stephens; more is available in my completed thesis, now with Oxford Brookes University.

As women in the Pre-Raphaelite circle go, Rebecca Clara Stephens (née Dalton) has been more overlooked than others. On International Women's Day, it feels appropriate to call attention to this forgotten woman who was affectionally nicknamed 'Sunshine' by her husband, Frederic George Stephens.

Clara Stephens (with fabulous hat) photographed by William Housley, probably September 1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (album of photographs of the family and friends of Lawrence Alma-Tadema). Source.

Her marriage to Frederic has had a knock-on effect over time: the husband was overlooked by scholars, so the wife remained even deeper in the shadows. Their marriage, like any other, had its highs and lows, but it was stable and happy – which doesn't fit the template of the tumultuous, 'bohemian' relationships of the other Pre-Raphaelites which audiences often like to hear about (looking at you, Rossetti). Everyone loves a scandal, but with Clara and Frederic there was little in the way of that – indeed, Frederic deplored the way people gossiped about their relationship in the early 1860s, prior to their marriage. In her memoir about the Victorian art world, Jane Allen Panton (née Frith) recalled seeing the couple often at the London exhibitions in the 1890s:

Mr. Stephens was a man one always saw at all of the Private Views, and no doubt elsewhere […] He wore his hair very long, and was usually attired in a wide ‘artistic’ hat and cloak, while his wife, in an old-fashioned bonnet and shawl, accompanied him and looked after him in a manner touching to behold. He was very lame and plain, and we, as young people, looked upon him as the old gentleman himself, and believed the lameness came from an ill-concealed cloven hoof.[1]

Clara and Frederic George Stephens photographed in May 1894, image courtesy of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum.

But what about the woman herself?

She was born, evidently, in 1832 in Iver, Buckinghamshire[2] – I say evidently, because when she married Frederic in 1866 she said she was 32 years old, which would mean she was born in 1834. Furthermore, her death certificate in 1915 gives her age as 85, which suggests a birth year of around 1830. Nineteenth-century registers are notoriously unreliable, so perhaps we shouldn't rely on them too much. At any rate, little is known about Clara's early life, making her upbringing and education difficult to pin down. Her parents were Riley and Sarah Dalton. The 1861 census shows them living in Eagle Cottage in the parish of St Mary the Boltons, West Brompton, with their three sons, Clara's brothers: Samuel (aged 23), John (19) and William (16). They were working class: Riley was a building contractor, Samuel was a carpenter and her other brother John was a ‘carman’. In 1851, Clara was working as a servant, aged 18, in the house of Gilbert-Louis Duprez, a notable French tenor, in Albert Place, Kensington.[3]

I have no space here to discuss the mysteries surrounding Clara's two children born in the 1850s, Clara Adelaide Charles (nicknamed 'Lottie) and 'Charlie'. At this time Clara was evidently married to a man named William Charles, the father of Clara and Charlie, although the circumstances are shadowy and require further research – a good subject for a future post!

Decorated card by Clara Stephens to her husband Frederic, 1897, image courtesy of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

Another mystery is exactly how and when she met Frederic George Stephens. There is a touching card decorated by her and given to her husband in 1897, 'In remembrance of a windy May morning in Cheny [sic] Walk 1859' (pictured above) – evidently an event of some significance for the couple, and an indication that they knew each other as early as 1859. At that time, Clara was a student at the National Art Training School in South Kensington – another aspect of her life that needs more research. Her early letters to Frederic occasionally mention her art lessons, such as in July 1861: 'I know darling it will delight you to hear of any thing that I have done well, after all the time that you have spent for my advantage[,] they gave me an apple to shade and Mr Slocomb said it was very well done'.[4] However, it seems very little of her work, if anything, has survived.

Handwriting practice by Clara, in the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

A distinctive characteristic of Clara and Frederic's relationship in the early 1860s is that Frederic became obsessed – too much so, in my opinion – with improving her handwriting, spelling and grammar. There are many letters exchanged between them on this matter. Pictured above is an example of the handwriting exercises which Frederic sent to her: she had to copy the words 'seventeen', 'near', 'marry', 'altho[ugh]', 'forty' and 'manner' repeatedly in order to improve her cursive lettering.

Frederic George Stephens, Rebecca Clara Stephens (née Dalton), ca. 1860s (1866?), watercolour and gouache on paper, 40 x 34.1 cm, collection of Dennis T. Lanigan.

Frederic painted this watercolour portrait of Clara some time after they met; it's undated, but it could have been made around the time of their marriage on 6 January 1866, as a sort of love token. The peacock feathers in her hair could be a reference to the contemporary Aesthetic Movement.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Rebecca Clara Stephens (née Dalton), 1873, oil on panel, 11 1/4 x 16 inches, location unknown. Reproduced in J. B. Manson, Frederick George Stephens and the Pre-Raphaelite Brothers (1920). Source.

Clara also sat to Lawrence Alma-Tadema – a close friend of the Stephenses – for this portrait in 1873, which sadly is now untraced.

Clara was very much in love with Frederic. During my PhD research, I read through many of her letters in the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, in which she pours out her heart to him. When, in September 1866, they moved into their first proper home, 10 Hammersmith Terrace, Clara enjoyed playing the role of hostess to Frederic's circle of friends. She enters suddenly into the Pre-Raphaelite social scene, mentioned affectionately in D. G. Rossetti's letters to Frederic and floating in and out of Frederic's letters to Holman Hunt, W. M. Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. Apparently, Oliver Madox Brown called her a 'Roman matron' owing to her hospitality and jovial, down-to-earth personality.

Clara and Frederic on holiday in Cornwall, 1890s, image courtesy of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

In writing this, I realised I have a lot more to say about Clara than I first thought. I would like to write more about her in future, and sometimes a blog post isn't enough. If people are interested to know more, I will certainly continue the subject!

For now, on International Women's Day, let's remember the forgotten women in the shadows behind the famous – or not so famous, in Frederic's case – Pre-Raphaelite Brothers.

Notes

[1] Jane Ellen Panton, Leaves from a Life (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1908), pp. 171–72.

[2] Information found by Philip Shaw of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent.

[3] Many thanks to Bob Clifford of the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum for this information (email, 11 June 2018).

[4] Letter from Clara to Frederic, 12 July 1861, Colonel Stephens Railway Museum.