50. The interminable question of dowries

With Hermione's wedding planning in train, and Caroline and Henry's engagement - which was agreed quietly between us, it was now time to start thinking about dowries.

When a woman marries, she gives up any right to ownership of property or monies of her own. This state of affairs continues as long as she is married. If she becomes a widow for whatever reason, then that prohibition is ended - as in the case of Elizabeth Dorrington, who retained everything from her last marriage, and who would only give that up if she re-married - if she ever did so, which I doubted she would.

However, when a woman marries for the first time, assuming that she is not wealthy to begin with, she usually brings a sum of money to the partnership which is hers and hers alone. The interest on that money is hers by right, to be her 'pin' or spending money. It will also provide an income if she finds herself widowed with no other support, or it becomes an inheritance for her children if she and her husband died together.

The presence of a dowry or not, or the amount of one, can be the making or the breaking of a successful match. So, dowries are both a plague and blessing. They can be a blessing as long as the woman can keep them apart from her husband. They're a plague on the father, or as in my case, the brother, who settles them. The dowries for my sisters are supposed to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed for the rest of their lives. They will be arrived at by splitting my mother's dowry into five parts.

This would not be enough.

Helena's dowry was a relatively small one, coming as she did from a family which had seen hard times. Marriage to my father had been seen as a good thing for Helena's parents and they had provided as big a dowry as they could, even though it was actually quite a modest sum. If she had married a well-off grocer, it would have been adequate; as the wife of a duke, and mother to his daughters, it was far from it.

Splitting that dowry would only leave a modest sum for each girl, far too modest to meet their needs. It would have to be topped up, and quite substantially too. I think that this was one of the issues that my father had with this, (and incidentally, why he had preferred sons to daughters) which was most unfair on all concerned because he was the one who settled Helena's marriage agreement to begin with. He was not prepared to top up my sisters' dowries and this was part of the reason that they were excluded from the Season. No woman of quality would ever marry without a dowry. Rectifying this was the promise that I had made to Helena.

If agreeing dowries was a thorny and complex problem, at least I needed to have no part in the prenuptial agreements with James's family. Hermione and I met with Mr Langton our lawyer, and an associate of his, who specialised in these things and laid out what we wanted - correction, what she wanted - to be included in her side of the contract.

It was amusing (and more than a little frightening) to see my eighteen-year-old sister lay down chapter and verse to the lawyers with the assurance and authority of someone twice her age.

My sister had taken my advice to heart. She had created a large number of conditions that she could pare back, as and when she wanted, but all the time it would appear to Eugenie Barthomley that my sister was prevailing upon me to moderate my demands, when in actual fact Hermione would be the one making changes to her own stipulations. At one point Mr Langton's associate looked at me for confirmation of something that Hermione required. I just smiled and pointed him back to her. At the end of it, they went away to start their meetings with the Barthomley's lawyers with a very full brief.