Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were two Irish upper-class women who lived together as a couple in late 1800s.
Butler was from an upper class family, her father was the 16th Earl of Ormonde. Her family considered her to be a bookworm and she was educated at a convent in France.
While Ponsonby, who was sixteen years younger than Butler, was the daughter of a politician, and second cousin to Frederick Ponsonby, the third Earl of Bessborough. Sarah was orphaned as a child, and raised by relatives.
Their families lived near each other and when the two women met in 1768 they quickly became close. Over a number of years they hatched a plan to to create a private retreat where they could live together.
Rather than be married off to men in arranged marriages the pair moved to Wales where they established a home in the town of Llangollen.
Moving with them was Sarah’s servant Mary Caryll, who lived with them for the rest of her life. They became well known in the town where they were simply referred to as ‘The Ladies’ and they hosted events to discuss literature and slowly built up their home with a dairy and a garden.
Many famous people visited them including writers Anna Seward, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott. After William Wordsworth visited he dedicated a sonnet to the couple. Anne Lister, often dubbed the first modern lesbian, also met the couple.
The ladies became well known throughout Britain and they even got the attention of the royal family with Queen Charlotte reportedly persuading King George III to grant them a pension.
The couple signed their correspondence together and had matching glassware with their initials, but there is no evidence in their correspondence that there relationship was sexual. It was however noted that they had a succession of dogs, who were always named Sappho.
Mary Caryll died on 22 November 1809. Eleanor Butler died on 2 June 1829 at the age of 90. Sarah Ponsonby died two years later on this day in 1831, she was 76 years old. All three women are buried together.
