Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn, a white woman wearing a long jacket and skirt. She is smoking. There is a dog beside her.
“Perhaps the strangest feature in a woman’s character is the way she can fall in love with another woman & be true to that love. I have made a fool of myself that way & I can see other women do it—& there’s an inconsistency in that falling in love—it is weak & foolish but the steadfastness of the affection is strong.”
– Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn
Within the study of queer history, the subject of family is a touchy one. Even in the best circumstances, families of queer people can have mixed reactions. Throughout history, queerness has meant many different things. In the time and place about to be discussed, the idea of queerness as an identity was not popular. Queerness was not seen as an aspect of a person; it was an action. Because of this, the idea of coming out as queer to one’s family did not exist as it does today, viewed as almost a rite of passage by some in the queer community. Due to this, the story of some queer figures’ families do not often get looked that deeply into by this project. However, in the case of Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn, that is not possible.
Born into a family of Quakers, the religious and cultural upbringing of the Dillwyn family was very different from many of their contemporaries. In a time that encouraged only particular religious dogmas, the Quaker religion is among a long list of belief systems that have experienced discrimination throughout the United Kingdom’s bloody history. However, it is also worth noting that it is a religion that encouraged social equality and ideals that were very progressive for the time. Class difference, in particular, was something Amy was taught to look beyond in social situations.
Believing children were to be heard as well as seen, the Dillwyn family encouraged subversive thought from a young age, and many different members of the family went on to live radical lives. With an abolitionist great grandfather fighting against the practice of enslaving other races as practiced in the United States of America, Wale’s first female photographer, a woman who assisted in taking some of the first pictures of the moon, and a long line of feminist women, Amy was born to a family that encouraged her daring and outspoken nature.
David Painting described the way the Dillwyn family lived, saying:
“A lifestyle that converted almost unlimited leisure into quite exceptional creativity. [A family that] chose [...] to explore every avenue of scientific enquiry open to an intelligent and cultivated
Mind.”
This is necessary context before looking at Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn as an individual so as to make clear the weight of the widely held belief that she was among the most interesting and notable members of the Dillwyn family. She was not without her competition.
Born in Wales on the 16th of May, 1845, as could be assumed from the above description of her family, she was encouraged to become an independent and free thinker. Much of her early life is less well known; she came into public consciousness upon the death of her father.
Having disdain for the ‘Victorian cult of death’ that encouraged long and elaborate periods of mourning that had placed people within the lower class in debt due to expensive requirements, she protested by showing up to her father’s funeral in colourful clothing, including a purple skirt, a yellow rose in her vest, and flowers on her hat. This would be the first, but not the final time Amy’s way of dressing would be commented upon by newspapers.
Preferring more traditionally masculine clothing, she was most often noted for the cigar she kept in her mouth, which became somewhat a signature statement piece that went along with most of her outfits. This look went well with the role she was forced to take on after the death of her father.
Inheriting his debts as well as spelter works, Amy soon discovered that while her respect for people of other classes might have been passed down to her through family, fortunately, she had been spared their business sense. She was able to save three-hundred jobs and found a passion for the work.
Working for years, she prioritized the needs of the people who worked for her, standing by the rhetoric she was espousing in politics. She had lost her family home due to it being left to the male line after her brother’s death, but she wrote of this saying:
“I’m still at the same lodgings as before because I have determined to take no profits out of the Spelter Works for myself until I have paid off all Papa’s creditors. But it’s rather queerly incongruous to me to be paying perhaps £200 to £300 a week to my workmen, and yet living in these small cheap lodgings. However incongruous or not, it’s honest.”
Though it took time for her to see the fruits of her successes when the time came, she did, and though she was attached to the idea of herself as a ‘man of business, she was eventually able to sell the company.
It is worth noting now that while the use of she/her/hers pronouns might suggest otherwise, Amy’s own gender is not confirmed. Within her diaries, she wrote of experiencing a disconnect with the gender assigned to her at birth, writing:
“My own belief is that I’m half a man & the male half of my nature fell in love with her years ago & can’t fall out of it again.”
Cross-dressing was a common theme throughout her work, and all of this suggests her to be not entirely cisgender.
That being written, there is little to confirm one way or the other. Though she wrote of feeling a connection to masculinity, that discussion is well in line with the understandings of same-sex love from the time. It was believed that same-sex attraction in itself was a form of gender variance, and the lines that are clear now simply did not exist at the time. Still, while she may have been influenced by the rhetoric or sexologists of her time, that does not erase any queerness in relation to her gender.
To put out a decision one way or the other is only not accurate, but it is also not necessary. While the step of calling her transgender or using different pronouns would require a bit more evidence for this project, that does not mean cisgender is correct either. Though she discussed herself often as a woman, the binary from cis-to-trans has enough space between it and outside of it for her to reside.
What is much more clear-cut is Amy’s queerness in terms of attraction. Having been encouraged to build relationships regardless of class, when she was fifteen and Welsh aristocrat Olive Talbot was seventeen, the two met and began a friendship.
Completing the quote above, Amy wrote in her diary:
“My own belief is that I’m half a man & the male half of my nature fell in love with her years ago & can’t fall out of it again. I care for her romantically, passionately, foolishly, & try as I may, I cannot get over it.”
It was as clear as it was queer, Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn was in love with Olive Talbot.
Olive Talbot is remembered as a deeply generous woman. That is likely part of what drew Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn to her. As an author as well as an activist and ‘business man,’ Amy wrote their love story over and over. Explicitly queer at times, and at others not, she would write books with love stories that mirrored her own, with deep sympathy for the love that goes unrequited.
These books would be published and gain a significant amount of success. Her first and most popular book was The Rebecca Rioters, which was a retelling of the Rebeca Riots, which were raised against unfair taxation, and of which her father played a part in trying to quash. What was particularly interesting and revolutionary about this work is that it was written from the perspective of the rioters themselves and was sympathetic to them, critiquing class in a way that was very radical for the time.
Class dynamics would remain an essential part of each of her novels as it was in her life—supporting the strikes of seamstresses and being well known as an avidly political person. Within her books, she also wrote of romances between women, and the pages of her diaries contained the same. She wrote of Olive:
“When she’s in the room with me I can’t do anything hardly because all my senses seem given up to attend to her—not outwardly—outwardly I sit quiet & pretend to read perhaps, but really I know every movement & every word of hers the whole time.”
She would refer to Olive as her ‘wife’, though the two are often remembered as ‘close friends. Beyond the queerness, there was a thread of commonality between the characters she wrote and herself and Olive, which has been noted by many who study her works.
Both of the women were religious, and Amy wrote of how her spirituality intersected with her love for another woman, writing:
“The unseen & immaterial world is such a strange & mysterious reality altogether—have spirits an effect or power on each other? Does my spirit, which is constantly seeking for Olive and yearning for her, exercise any influence over hers or ever meet hers—so to speak—in that strange world?”
Concluding:
“The thought of her seems like a good spirit to me sometimes— helping me on—helping me on to the time when we may perhaps meet & know each other in Christ— when in Heaven there will be no more inequality. . . . Then perhaps she will know how she has helped me on—whether consciously or unconsciously I do not know—but I do know that my love for her has led me always to be better & never to be worse.”
Her writing was not exclusive to novels though, she also wrote as a form of advocacy, and she wrote reviews of books, one such review critiquing a novel that followed a woman trying and failing to maintain a business, something she herself had somehow managed to do despite the genitals she happened to be born with. She wrote of the woman’s difficulty:
“One obstacle is her author, who enunciates opinions as to the worthlessness of women’s work which evidently makes it impossible that he should allow her to succeed. Indeed, the book might, not inaptly, have been entitled, “Struggles of a Young Lady to Earn her Own Living, related by a Gentleman who is firmly convinced that she could do nothing of the kind.”
While Amy was able to succeed in many ways, her time period was still limiting. After running for office and losing, a local newspaper wrote:
“Criticism of Miss Dillwyn is summed up in a single sentence. She is a woman, not a man. The sex discrimination is, however, so real, that her recognised administrative ability and freedom from the feminine idiosyncrasies which might prove embarrassing at gatherings of business men failed to remove it.”
Her limitations chafed against her in other ways; she wrote of her relationship with Olive:
“Six years is a long while to love like this—to go on loving & yet to behave much like other people to the individual I love.”
Amy experienced significant health troubles throughout her life that did keep her from living the adventurous lifestyle she wished to. Still, she lived a full life. Travelling with family, advocating right up to the end in 1935, and writing.
When looking at the past, the place of queer people can often feel almost incongruent. It is tempting to wish them into a Pride parade or simply into a world where there was a common word for their experiences. When looking at Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn in particular, who was seemingly so ahead of her time in so many ways, this is true. But there is no such thing as a person being ahead of their time. It is a myth created to make the study of history simpler, neater. Things on a constant steady upturn, with small exceptions which make the rule tragic.
Though the progression of society’s popular consciousness can be seen as a growth, the exceptions of the past are not exceptions; they are people. They are people who lived, breathed, and loved. This is not the truth of history. The truth of history is that there is truth in history; the truths that are known now have been known before and will be forgotten again.
When Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn wrote and published queer love stories, campaigned for class equality, and advocated feminism, she did so being entirely of her time. Limited by other living, breathing, people, loved by other living, breathing, people.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Amy Dillwyn 1845—1935 Art Print. (n.d.). Saatchi Art. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.saatchiart.com/print/Painting-Amy-Dillwyn-1845-1935/160926/4110662/view
Amy Dillwyn: LGBT History Month - Companies House. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/14/amy-dillwyn-lgbt-history-month/
Amy Dillwyn—Swansea University. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.swansea.ac.uk/crew/research-projects/dillwyn/amy-dillwyn/
Amy Dillwyn—The Forgotten Feminist | History Blog UK. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.theministryofhistory.co.uk/historical-biographies/amy-dillwyn
Amy Dillwyn—’The Pioneer’. (n.d.). National Museum Wales. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://museum.wales/blog/2352/Amy-Dillwyn---The-Pioneer/
Bohata, K. (n.d.). PIONEERS AND RADICALS: THE DILLWYN FAMILY’S TRANSATLANTIC TRADITION OF DISSENT AND INNOVATION. 17.
Bohata, K. (2018). “A Queer-Looking Lot of Women”: Cross-Dressing, Transgender Ventriloquism, and Same-Sex Desire in the Fiction of Amy Dillwyn. Victorian Review, 44(1), 113–130. https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2018.0013
Bohata—PIONEERS AND RADICALS THE DILLWYN FAMILY’S TRANSA.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.cymmrodorion.org/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/2021/01/Pioneers-and-radicals-rlvvah.pdf
Haefele-Thomas, A. (2018). Introduction: Trans Victorians. Victorian Review, 44(1), 31–36. https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2018.0007
IDEATH OF MISS OLIVE TALBOT. I-.—|1894-10-08|The South Wales Daily Post—Welsh Newspapers. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3352191/3352195/37/
The Life and Fiction of Amy Dillwyn. (2016, March 6). https://web.archive.org/web/20160306152948/http://www.swansea.ac.uk/riah/research-projects/thelifeandfictionofamydillwyn/
The Rebecca Rioter—Literary Atlas: Plotting English-Language Novels in Wales. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from http://www.literaryatlas.wales/en/novels/the-rebecca-rioter/explore/#section=hendrefoilan&plotline=lesbian-subplot&figure=
WalesOnline. (2017, March 1). An original thinker and economist who liked to smoke a ‘man’s cigar.’ WalesOnline. http://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/original-thinker-economist-who-liked-12628475