Mrs Box by Dora Carrington

Dora Carrington (1893-1932), Mrs Box, 1919 © Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery

I have written about this painting many times. It is one of my favourites in the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery Collection. It is Dora Carrington at her finest, projecting her own feelings onto the portrait of the Cornish farmer, Mrs Box.

Carrington first met Mrs Box in 1917. She was on holiday in Cornwall with Lytton Strachey and friends. After finding their initial accommodation a real ‘pigsty of a farm’ and enduring multiple flea bites, they contacted neighbouring farms to find somewhere else to stay. Mrs Box at Home Farm, Welcombe responded and the party moved to her ‘simply perfect’ farm. 

Carrington writes to her friend Barbara ‘I am so happy here. Almost a headache every morning because I get so tired and exhausted. Simply loving so hard! The sea has yellow sands and big rocks and there are valleys such as you never saw with rivulets which flow down to the sea and green forests on the hills. It is surely one of the best places in England. I am painting old Mere Box who is 70, an amazing old Lady, who wears a pink bonnet and curious garments. Miss Box and her sister and brother keep the farm. I have swum in the sea twice with Noel.’

Carrington was to return to Mrs Box again over the years. In 1919 she took her future husband Ralph whom Mrs Box ‘thought was the most lovely young man’.

I have always written about the painting and Mrs Box from Carrington’s perspective, always using Carrington’s explanation of who she was. As part of the research into the Body & Soul exhibition, in which the painting is currently on display, I started to look into who Mrs Box was. Professor Christiana Payne and Dr Mary O’Neill, who are co-curators of the exhibition, set me off on the task of finding out about her. I went to my usual source for all things ancestry, Higgins volunteer Melissa, who swiftly gave me all the information she could on Mrs Box, including her name, Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth was born in 1847, most likely in the Bideford workhouse to Elizabeth Colwill and Thomas Box, who were married a few years later. She spent most, if not all, of her childhood living with her maternal grandparents, Richard (a thatcher) and Betty in Down, Welcombe. When she was 18, she had her first child, Mary Grace; two years later she had another daughter, Elizabeth Ann. Throughout this time Elizabeth remained unmarried and the girls were given their great grandparents surname, Colwill. She moved to several homes around Welcombe over the years, her grandmother died and her grandfather retired, but remained living with Elizabeth wherever she moved. She had several jobs: charwoman, housekeeper and church caretaker. When she was 36, she had another daughter, Emma Jane followed by a son William, both children were given her name, Box. When Carrington knew her, she was living at Mead Farm with her farmer son and her eldest daughter. Home Farm, where Carrington and her friends stayed, was next door and must have been let out by the Box family.

All this information found by Melissa gave us much more insight into the woman we knew as Mrs Box, but also left us puzzled as to who the children’s father was, and why they were given Elizabeth’s surname. Ancestry could give us nothing, there is no marriage record for Elizabeth and each of the children have no known father. The youngest child, Elizabeth’s only son William, gave us a clue. His name was William Richard Oke Box, a name that couldn’t have been too common in the 1890s and might help us to find out more; and indeed it did. 

William can be found in three articles from 1895, in Devon newspapers reporting on a paternity case brought by Elizabeth Box of Welcombe for her two children; ten-year-old Richard and 13-year-old Emma Jane. The defendant is Titus Oke who owned a cottage on his family’s farm that Elizabeth had briefly lived in. A witness testified that Titus visited Elizabeth ‘frequently’ and continued to do so after the birth of both their children. Titus had regularly given Elizabeth money to help care for both children as well as ‘a suit of clothes and rabbits’ but when he got married the payments stopped, leading to Elizabeth taking him to court. The judge ruled in her favour and ordered Titus to pay 2s a week for each child until they were sixteen. One of the articles gave us a bit more information about Elizabeth’s life, her two older children are also mentioned, not by name but by arrangements with their fathers. It seems that Elizabeth accepted a settlement of £20 from the father of her eldest child, Mary Grace, born when she was 18. Before she could do the same with the father of her daughter, Elizabeth Ann, born two years later ‘the father went away’.

From all of this, it is impossible to know what Elizabeth Box was like but what I find particularly heartening is that she kept all four of her children with her and remained living with her grandparents until their deaths. So many stories from history of illegitimate children end with shame and sadness for the women involved, but not so for ‘Mrs’ Box, whom Carrington describes as ‘an amazing old lady’ who ‘is still full of vigour’ and whom on Carrington’s last visit to the farm ‘appeared driving the cows; she held up both her arms and waved them, with a stick in one hand and then ran towards me!’. When I told Christiana what I had found out, she wondered if Carrington had asked Mrs Box to tell her about her life as she painted her. Maybe that is why she paints her so beautifully, two women from very different backgrounds, but both finding common ground with their unconventional lives.

You can see Mrs Box by Dora Carrington's on display in the Body & Soul exhibition.

Written by Victoria Partridge, Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art