The Irish Wife

So many of our writers in London in the 1890s were terrible lovers, cheating on their spouses and harbouring secret loves for another, but not all were so.

The Irish-born writer, Katherine Tynan seems to have shared a long and happy life with her Irish-born husband, Henry Hinkson, even if little seems to be said about it.

A literary biography of the couple, Katherine Tynan, states that:

A well-bred woman of her class cannot speak to openly of love, even conjugal love. If Mrs. Tynan Hinkson had for her husband feelings comparable to Elizabeth Barrett's for Robert Browning, she was too inhibited to write them down.

And...

I could never prove that her romance was not so tender and satisfying, but she was too inhibited, too well-bred by her own definition, to verbalize it.

She did, however, publish a collection of love songs. I like to imagine her looking on and smiling as Henry Hinkson sang this one for her.

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