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In May 1821 Mary Ellen Peacock was born to Thomas Love Peacock.
In January 1844 Edward Nicolls and Mary Ellen Peacock (age 22) were married.
On 11th March 1844 [her husband] Edward Nicolls, a naval officer in command of the HMS Dwarf, drowned in the Shannon estuary while rescuing people in distress. His wife of two moths Mary Ellen Peacock (age 22), who was with Edward aboard the vessel, had encouraged him to undertake the rescue attempt in which he lost his life. She was pregnant at the time of her husband's death.
On 9th August 1849 George Meredith (age 21) and Mary Ellen Peacock (age 28) were married at St George's Church, Hanover Square. Their honeymoon was to the Rhine Valley where George had been to school.
In 1857 Mary Ellen Peacock (age 35), wife of [her husband] George Meredith (age 28), eloped with Henry Wallis (age 26).
1857. Henry Wallis (age 26). Portrait of Mary Ellen Peacock (age 35).
On 29th September 1857 Mary Ellen Peacock (age 36) wrote to Henry Wallis (age 27):
"If we have to stay in England let us be at Clifton. I have no answer from [her husband] George (age 29). I imagine he wants to see Darvall [Henry Darvall] before writing. If he gives no reply in a week I shall take his silence for freedom and go abroad without another word, if you will like it, and where you will… I am always dreading to lose you because I feel I have no right to you, and I love you so really, so far beyond anything I have known of love, that there are ways in which I believe I could bear to lose you. God knows how hard it would be; but I believe I could bear it. Not by Death or weariness or anger. By Death I could not lose you
The love where Death has set his seal
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal
Nor falsehood disavow, (Lord Byron, Elegy on Thyrza)
But I do not fear your Death, because I feel how much you owe to Life, how much Life has for you, and surely I shall in no shape lead you Delilah-like to Death, since it is my one aim to add to your strength, my one prayer 'God grant that I may do this man no harm'. And for weariness or anger, if we begin to thread either of those paths we will part before they possess us."
1858. Henry Wallis (age 27). Portrait of Mary Ellen Peacock (age 36), wife of [her husband] George Meredith (age 29), with whom Henry Wallis had eloped the previous year.
In October 1861 Mary Ellen Peacock (age 40) died.
On 18th May 1909 [her former husband] George Meredith (age 81) died.