Title: The Rev. William Hall and Miss Elizabeth Clare Lambert: in love in early-Victorian England.
Subject: The ten-year engagement of Hall and Lambert, and the possibility of female empowerment within an evangelical relationship.
William Hall and Elizabeth Clare Lambert were engaged in Manchester, England in 1838. They married in 1848, and migrated to Australia. During their ten-year engagement, they mainly communicated by correspondence. A deeply religious Anglican couple, they self-consciously tried to construct a relationship in which they were committed to ‘mutual edification’ as a means to salvation. Their surviving correspondence reveals the daily struggles and successes involved in this process.
photograph, Michelle Leberber
‘It is in my heart as I love you and value you to improve you and be improved by you, that you may not only be a companion to me but I to you, and that we may be a mutual source of edification to each other and that we may assist each other in every way we can.’
William Hall, 7 August 1839.
‘I am sure you never say what you do not think, and therefore I shall not hesitate to tell you what I wish.’
Elizabeth Clare Lambert, 12–15 December 1839.