HistoryAn enduring image of the Crimean War is Roger Fenton's photograph of Fanny Duberly seated on her (Irish) horse, with her husband standing in front. Mrs Duberly was the only British officer's wife to witness the entire campaign and report on it. She can be compared to William Howard Russell, who has taken the credit for being the first modern war reporter.
Fanny was plucky, intelligent and ambitious. Unsurprisingly, therefore, she became a lively diarist. A new edition of her journal, first published in 1855, rescues her from the condescension of history. At heart Fanny was an adventurer, Christine Kelly observes perspicaciously in her introduction, and for a brief time she experienced an independence that few Victorian women ever achieved. Despite the hard life and the suffering around her, which upset her deeply, she revelled in the freedom she had found to "go where you like, do what you like, say what you like and have such heaps of friends", and in the "intelligent or quick-witted conversations" she had with those friends.
Although the Duberlys were a devoted couple, Fanny's easy friendships with men were so misconstrued that she has gone down in history as a hard-hearted flirt and the mistress of Lord Cardigan. In reality she despised Cardigan, who was subject to fits of uncontrollable rage and instructed the Light Brigade to charge up the wrong valley into Russian guns. The myth was perpetuated in the film The Charge of the Light Brigade and in the Flashman novels.
Fanny did prefer the company of educated men, particularly the French, to that of the women who were in the war zone with her. Moreover, she considered the great social reformer, Florence Nightingale, "has had her full share of praises. The nurses who had all the drudgery and hard work and especially the [ Irish] Catholic Sisters of Mercy have not had anything approaching to their share".
She wrote vividly about the chaos, butchery, courage and self-sacrifice associated particularly with the Crimean War. Her reference to "imbecility and death" is redolent of the Irish Famine of the previous decade. While Britain spent nearly £70 million on the war, compared with £9.5 million on famine relief, "shameful mismanagement" resulting in terrible suffering characterised both operations.
Fanny had no fear of death and retained her zest for life. Her reaction to riding through the ruins of Sebastopol gives an insight into the dehumanising effect of war: "I could not think at such a moment of the destruction and desolation of war. I could only remember that the long-coveted prize was ours at last, and I felt no more compunction for town or for Russian than the hound, whose lips are red with blood, does for the fox which he has chased through a hard run."
This edition should ensure that Fanny receives the place in history she deserves. It is edited skilfully by Christine Kelly, who studied history at Trinity College Dublin. Extracts from Fanny's letters to her sister illuminate the diary text. The letters are more intimate than the journal, which was written for publication.
The Crimean conflict was a war in which women found an active role that would make nursing a respected profession. It was also the last war in which British army wives were allowed to accompany their husbands on campaign.
In her book, No Place for Ladies, Helen Rappaport admires the devotion of women such as Elizabeth Evans, who for two years never slept in a bed and, along with the men of her husband's regiment, endured indescribable privations. Rappaport adopts a conventional and, in the light of Kelly's research, inaccurate view of Fanny, accusing her of "failing to take any note of the exhausted women tramping along with her", being concerned mainly for the welfare of her horse.
Rappaport goes on to dismiss Fanny's "fanciful literary meanderings" while quoting them extensively. None the less, No Place for Ladies provides an overview of a fascinating subject, and the inclusion of Russian sources is an interesting feature of the book.
Brendan Ó Cathaoir is a historian
Mrs Duberly's War: Journals and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6 Edited with Introduction and Notes by Christine Kelly Oxford University Press, 355pp. £16.99 No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War By Helen Rappaport Aurum, 272pp. £18.99