Emmeline could be painfully shy of any sort of artistic or emotional expressive-
ness. She was once overcome by nervousness at a school concert, unable to play
a few bars alone on the piano; the embarrassing situation was saved by a quick
thinking teacher who leant across the young woman’s shoulders and played the
necessary notes.^24
As a middle-class daughter at home, involved in her family’s domestic
routine, Emmeline missed the variety and excitement of her Paris schooldays
and longed to return to the city she had taken to her heart. An opportunity
came the following year when Mary, in her turn, was sent to the Ecole Normale
de Neuilly and Robert Goulden allowed Emmeline to accompany her. As what
was termed a ‘parlour boarder’,^25 Emmeline had plenty of free time to renew her
friendship with Noémie, now the wife of the Swiss painter, Frederic Dufaux,
and the mother of a baby girl. Noémie was keen for her dear friend to marry and
live near her in Paris, where they could both be mistresses of their own house-
holds and cultured hostesses, entertaining well-known literary and political
figures. Emmeline shared the dream and, as was typical of the later Victorian
age, saw a husband as ‘her door of opportunity’.^26 Noémie approached a suitable
man of literary distinction who declared himself willing to marry the charming
young Englishwoman, provided she brought to the marriage a dowry. Emmeline
readily agreed. She had felt embarrassed by the breakfast table scenes at home
when her mother had presented to her father the outstanding household bills
and was determined that, if ever she married, she must have an income of her
own; in a society where wives were not paid, but financially dependent upon
their husbands, a dowry could bring ‘self-respecting security’.^27 However, when
she approached her father on the matter, he was outraged. He stormed that he
would not sell his daughter for money, did not approve of a foreigner for a
husband nor of living abroad and promptly demanded that Emmeline return
home immediately, to act as his housekeeper, since her mother and all her
brothers and sisters were on holiday and the housekeeper was ill.^28 Without a
dowry, her suitor now withdrew his offer of marriage. An indignant Emmeline,
furious at being abandoned so casually, despite the fact that her heart had not
been engaged, was angry with her father who, she believed, had deprived her of
a happy and fulfilling life in Paris.
It was the summer of 1879 when Mary and a dejected Emmeline returned
home to Manchester. The house and garden were quiet without the chatter of
the younger children and the two sisters wondered about their future. Robert
Goulden now took a firm line with Mary and stubbornly refused to yield to her
plea to become an actress, an occupation considered not respectable, especially
for the daughter of a prosperous factory owner.^29 Mary concentrated on her
painting and displayed some of her work for sale in a local shop which caused
another row with her father. People would think he was short of money, he
pointed out, to allow his daughter to demean herself in this way, and such a
rumour could ruin his business. When Sophie Goulden returned home with the
other children, there were further scenes as the two eldest daughters
CHILDHOOD AND YOUNG WOMANHOOD