Foulkes, Philippa

Submitted by edpope on

29.12.1794 Godwin calls on Mrs Foulkes nah (not at home) / 27,7.1795 adv at Holcroft's / 6.9.1795 P Foulkes adv at Holcroft's / 29.8.1798 adv at Holcroft's / 30.9.1798 Godwin calls on / 17.3.1799 at Holcroft's / 30.4.1800 Godwin calls on / 1.5.1800 calls / 5.6.1800 Godwin calls on / 20.5.1801 meet / 23.11.1805 (Ht &) mrs Foulkes adv at theatre

from my article Godwin,the Reveleys & the Jenningses, see blog/articles section and notes 13 & 14 of that article

There was also a sub-plot around the Foulkeses: on 25th October 1794 Godwin supped at Foulkes' and noted "demele de me" (Missus kicking off); on 29th December, just as the intrigues were coming to a head, he called on her but she wasn't in; on 27th July and 6th September 1795 (as P Foulkes, i.e. Philippa) she turned up at Holcroft's, as she did again on 29th August 1798; Godwin called on her 30th September; she was at Holcroft's on 17th March 1799, Godwin called on her on 30th April 1800 and she returned the call the next day. She obtained a legal separation from her husband on the grounds of his great cruelty and adultery in December 1802 on appeal to Doctors Commons , so this seems to be another case of Godwin (and perhaps Holcroft) consoling ladies in "intellectual distress", as Mary Wollstonecraft put it.

The depositions in the Bishop of London's court (London Metropolitan Archives DL/C/288 f239) show that Mrs Foulkes moved out of her husband's house on 6th October 1800 after a long period of sleeping separately and communicating only by hostile notes. According to the artist John Raphael Smith's deposition, Mrs Foulkes was "peevish, fretful and quarrelsome" and used to harrass and provoke Foulkes for what Smith thought very trivial causes; they had nearly parted in 1798, and from 1799 she began to complain of his absence from home. Smith and others had intervened to settle disputes, usually at her entreaty, but it turned out that from about 1799 Foulkes was keeping a mistress in Kentish Town where they went by the name of Mr and Mrs Fox. His mistress, as his will implied, became the mother of his five children and lived with him till his death in 1821. Mrs Foulkes seems to have had no children and lived till 1840.