On 26th May 1854, Arthur Munby met Hannah Cullwick, the day after her 21st birthday. He was a solicitor, working for the Ecclesiastical Commission, a job he loathed. She was a servant, a maid of all work. The first encounter marked the beginning of a relationsip which was to endure for more than 50 years. Both of them kept diaries and letters were exchanged throughout their clandestine love affair. Drawing on these documents, and Munby's photographs of Hannah, all of which catalogue a tale of sexual obsession - Munby adored seeing Hannah "in her dirt" from scrubbing steps and cleaning chimneys and she reciprocated with a literally slavish devotion - Diane Atkinson paints a picture of the wilder shores of Victorian sexuality. But "Love and Dirt" is much more than that; it is a story of a deep and lasting love between two individuals which breached the barriers of class and intellect that could have divided them and which meant that even after they married they had to keep the relationship hidden from their families and friends.
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About the Author
Diane Atkinson lives in Shoreditch, London, with her husband the artist Patrick Hughes. A historian of women's lives, she is the author of a number of books and has curated several exhibitions at the Museum of London.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was fascinated by the underlying issues that this book took on but was a little disappointed that it didn't quite deliver what I have found to be fundamental to a strong biography: context and understanding of character from the biographer.
There are wonderful details in this book about what really went on 'downstairs' in the various types of households that Hannah worked in, and the fact that those in service could work in so many different households surprised me, but somewhere amongst facts and dates there is some emotional engagement missing.
Thank goodness for the level of interest that Munby took in working women of that time and his insistence that Hannah record the minutae of her working life, and that his thoughts on some of the more unusual aspects of their relationship are recorded. It is a fascinating read and I will pass the book onto a friend but I found it difficult at times to feel a real emotional connection with these characters that I have felt in other biographies. Where are the insights into why Munby found Hannah's dirty work so fascinating? What else was happening in their world outside Fig Tree Court that might have impacted on them? Are there other couples in a similar situation?
Overall very interesting but I felt a little disappointed. Not my favourite book but it proves that Victorian social structures and sexuality was more complex than we have been lead to believe.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A reasonable, if overlong, read but I was hoping for much more. Munby was one of the earliest people to take an interest in and document the lives of labouring women but most of that has been ignored. I suppose I should have expected the narrative to just concentrate on his relationship with Hannah so probably my mistake for buying it.
By KAW
Format:Hardcover
I had heard about this fascinating couple and seen the Channel 4 documentary and was looking forward to reading their story. The book straightforwardly retells this story heavily sourced from their own diaries. The author never speculates about their motivations and this is where it didn't quite work for me. I wanted to know more around the subject. It seems a massive coincidence that a women who likes to be dirty, black up and lick clean a man's boots, meets a man from a higher class in Victorian London, who likes lower class women who do just that. Was this a common obsession? Are there any other similar cases? What do psychologists think about it? I was left with questions and a lack of understanding about the context around their life and love.
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