“Love Not!” - Caroline Norton and Poetry of Child Custody Disputes

What other poet used poetry as a weapon to win custody of their children?

Love not, love not, ye hapless sons of clay!
Hope’s gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers, —
Things that are made to fade and fall away
Ere they have blossomed for a few short hours.
Love not!

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan (Hon. Mrs. Norton)

Love not! Love not, forgotten sons of anarchy!
Hope’s gayest wreaths made by a drag queen racer.
Things engraved will fail to multiply massively,
Blossom for a microsecond, stream on then sing Erasure!
Love not!

Love not! That which ye love shall change
What once you dreamt was yours to love,
With time becomes estranged.
With time, and as toxic whisper’s judge.
Love not!

© 2022, Tom Tordillo. All rights reserved.

Wikipedia tells me Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, Lady Stirling-Maxwell (22 March 1808–15 June 1877) lived a provocative life.

Her poetry tells me she lived an anguished one.

Crop of Daniel Maclise, “The Spirit of Justice” from Wikimedia, featuring Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton as “Lady Justice,” a woman denied custody and access to her own children when her husband accused her of adultery.

When she was 28, she left her abusive husband and tried to live off her earnings as an author. Her husband, an otherwise lousy barrister, succeeded in confiscating her earnings, then barred her from accessing her sons, then sued her friend, Prime Minister Lorde Melbourne for ‘criminal conversation’ (aka, adultery).

After striving for decades to divorce her husband, after her children started dying of neglect or tuberculosis, she finally obtained liberation from that marriage on the death of her husband — remarried — then died three months later.

Here’s the full size fresco by Irish artist, Daniel Maclise, as commissioned for the UK House of Lords:

Daniel Maclise, “The Spirit of Justice,” from Wikimedia.

My response to Caroline Sheridan’s poem attempts to shift from personal anguish of a Victorian era to the modern anti-anguish dull of cognitive overload in the 21st century. Sheridan used her poetry to change the world. Today, poets undress their wounds, display their pain, and maybe change themselves, or if not, record a series of deep personal challenges overcome that resonate beyond them with the same meaninglessness of every other stream of what once seemed dramatic, joyful, or despairing.

• Random references to ‘forgotten’ Sons of Anarchy and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” both relate to random imagery flipping across screens of millions of people, pretending to matter immensely, even as they are designed to flit into oblivion for most of us. Or was that random?
• Reference to “singing Erasure,’ for me involves “Oh L’Amour,” an adolescent anthem — “Oh l’amour — broke my heart and now I’m aching for you!” Quite a hook! Joyful/not joyful.

Daniel Maclise’s uncropped painting, “Spirit of Justice,” overwhelms the poor Lady with a Scale with more than a dozen other anguishes. Personal story is buried: our gaze is routed. We do not have the time we thought we would to love those children we hoped to love.