'Madeline Wyndham of Clouds and Mabel Morrison of Fonthill'

This chapter chronicles the parallel lives of neighbouring Wiltshire residents, Madeline Wyndham and Mabel Morrison. The former married into the aristocracy while the latter maried a self-made millionaire. Madeline's social and artistic milieu revolved around Clouds, the home built for the couple by architect Philip Webb. Not only had she been instrumental in its design and decoration, she was a practising artist herself. Mabel Morrison's life was very different. Residing at Fonthill, and twenty-seven years younger than her husband, she gave birth to five children but suffered from ill health and, I argue, acquired something of the status of an object in her husband's collection of art. Widowhood released her from this passive existence and she emerged as a healthy, wealthy, independent figure who set about dismembering Morrison's collection of pictures, books and manuscripts.