Life
Member of the Ponsonby family and dynasty [viz., John Ponsonby - q.v.]; with Eleanor Butler, known as the ‘ladies of Llangollen’, who escaped from their families in Co. Kilkenny in 1778, respectively aged thirty-nine and twenty-six, attracting charges of lesbianism [Sapphism]; at first prevented from proceeding at the boat in Dublin but escaped again disguised as men, with a servant Mary Caryle; unable to reach London, they rented a oak-panelled cottage (named Plas Newydd) in Llangollen, in Wales, remaining there for almost fifty years; wore men’s riding clothes and beaver hats; later visited by all the notables, including Wordsworth, Southey, Wellington, Mme de Genlis and Pamela [Fitzgerald], Wilberforce, Josiah Wedgewood, and Walter Scott in 1825, giving rise to an account of them in old age by Lockhart.
Criticism
Mrs. G. H. Bell, ed., The Hamwood Papers (1930); Melosina Lenox-Conyngham, in Kilkenny Anthology, ed. Macdara Wood (1991); also mentioned in Mary Campbell, Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson (1988).
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