Jesse,
Many thanks for your feedback on 'Finding the Lost Daughter of Lady Hamilton' and your beautifully nuanced thoughts on the daughter (and her mother's) situation.
You're right, I think, to consider contemporary attitudes on one side, and fear of consequences on the other, as the guiding motivator in keeping the secret. The word 'ruin' sums it up for me in a short post - it's an important factor that runs powerfully and fearfully (albeit in the background) through both their lives. Not a chapter or an article, as such - that wouldn't do it justice, but a continuous thread from the beginning to the end of their story.
Theirs wasn't an uncommon situation. Here are a few lines from a similarly afflicted mother, addressed (but never sent) to her daughter. She, the Duchess of Devonshire, explains the fatal conundrum well:
Quote:
Unhappy child of indiscretion,
poor slumberer on a breast forlorn
pledge of reproof of past transgression
Dear tho' unfortunate to be born
For thee a suppliant wish addressing
To Heaven thy mother fain would dare
But conscious blushes stain the blessing
And sighs suppress my broken prayer
But in spite of these my mind unshaken
In present duty turns to thee
Tho' long repented ne'er forgotten
Thy days shall lov'd and guarded be
And should th' ungenerous world upbraid thee
for mine and for thy father's ill
A nameless mother oft shall assist thee
A hand unseen protect thee still
And tho' to rank and wealth a stranger
Thy life a humble course must run
Soon shalt thou learn to fly the danger
Which I too late have learnt to shun
Meanwhile in these sequested vallies
Here may'st thou live in safe content
For innocence may smile at malice
And thou-Oh ! Thou art innocent