Eliza Emily Donnithorne.

This is so interesting. I referenced Charles Dicken's Great Expectations in my last post, and Wiki-ed Miss Havisham so I could find the time of her betrayal (the time at which she stopped her clocks) and I learned that scholars speculate whether Miss Havisham's character was inspired by a certain Eliza Emily Donnithorne (1826-1886). Her story is pretty ridiculous...

Apparently Miss E. E. Donnithorne was the daughter of the former East India Company judge and Master of the Mint, James Onnithorne. She lived with her mother, father and sisters in Camperdown Lodge in King Street Newtown, Sydney, Australia. After her older teenage sisters and her mother Sara died from the Calcutta cholera outbreak of 1832, Eliza fell in love with a shipping clerk named George Cuthberston, much to her matchmaking father's discontent. And to poor Eliza's despair, her beloved Mr. Cuthberston left her waiting at the altar on her wedding day. Miss Donnithorne never left Camperdown Lodge again. The wedding feast was left to rot and after Eliza gave birth to Mr. Cuthberston's son (according to some accounts she got knocked up, lol), she was told the child didn't survive. Myth says that she spent the rest of her life in her wedding gown and that the house was was in such a state of squalor that the "furniture that fell apart at the touch" and that the house was coated in "swathes of dust and decay", but there is speculation on that part. Some say that she lived only by candle-light but did wear normal clothes and did not reside solely in the dining room (where the rotted wedding feast was). Supposedly only certain clergy and one or two servants ever set foot in the house after the incident. And, unlike the twisted wraith (lol, that might have been harsh...) that Miss Havisham was, Miss Donnithorne was claimed to be the essence of a gentle heart.


If anyone ever needed a source of inspiration to not sulk over love lost, I think these two ladies would be it. o_O