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Hey guys, heres the picture that Rosie and Dani have been using in our meetings! Just found it on the interent for us.

The 'Real' Miss Havisham

Eliza Emily Donnithorne

Eliza Emily Donnithorne may have been the inspiration for the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, although no concrete link between the two has ever been proved. Eliza showed an unusual defiance for young ladies of her age by spurning all the men to whom her domineering father attempted to marry her, insisting she would only marry for love. She did fall in love, with a shipping company clerk, George Cuthbertson, and accepted his proposal. The wedding was to be at the Donnithorne fanily home, Camperdown Lodge, in the Sydney, Australia hamlet of Newton

But on the wedding day, George failed to appear. As her father announced that the wedding was postponed, Eliza descended the stairs in her wedding dress, and was horrified to see those guests who hadn't already left beginning to pick at the wedding feast. Eliza screamed at them to leave the feast alone so that it would be perfect when the groom arrived, then fainted and had to be carried to her room. She demanded that the wedding finery be left untouched; her father, fearing for her mental health, acquiesced and the doors to the dining room were locked, leaving the wedding feast to the cockroaches and mice.

Eliza never again left Camperdown Lodge. When she was 26, her father died, and she ordered all the windows to be closed with drapes drawn and shutters nailed shut, dismissed all but two servants (Sarah and Elizabeth Bailey) and abandoned most of the interior to fall to decay in total darkness while she waited patiently for George to return. Discharged servants remembered Eliza wandering the house clad in her wedding dress and allowing the wedding feast to rot on the table. Visiting ministers, who were the few people that the deeply religious Eliza would allow in, described furniture that fell apart at the touch, and swathes of dust and decay.

Unlike the bitter and twisted Miss Havisham, however, Eliza Donnithorne was a gentle soul who "possessed a truly kind heart, the great troubles which darkened her life and wrecked her hopes for happiness could not sour the natural sweetness of her disposition. She was long remembered by the people of Newtown for her many acts of kindness."

Mumford & Son's lyrics

Hello all,
Some of the lyrics in this song made me think of Havisham
"You must know life to see decay, but i wont rot, I wont rot, not this mind and not this heart"
But she is decaying and she is rotting.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCE9pTJeFzY