One such passionate friendship was born in Ireland, though the parties to it are universally known as “the Ladies of Llangollen,” the picturesque valley in Wales where they spent the greater part of their lives. The journal kept for forty years by the elder of the two is now all that survives of their writing, though references to them in the work of friends suggest that both wrote some nature essays and verses. The younger was something of an artist as well. Both Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby came of titled families. They met first at a school in Kilkenny, probably when Eleanor was nearing twenty and Sarah entering her teens, for there seems to have been about seven or eight years’ difference in their ages. Their friendship apparently flourished for nearly a decade before Eleanor’s harsh and prudish mother tried to force the boyish young woman into either a distasteful marriage or a convent. Sarah’s mother, a second wife, had died in the girl’s infancy. After a third wife increased the already large family, Sarah lived with a cousin whose husband made advances which were disgusting and gravely disturbing to the adolescent girl. Her older and more independent friend, given to wearing men’s clothes, proposed an “elopement,” but the two were without resources, and after spending several nights in a barn they were apprehended and brought back in disgrace. Sarah at once fell gravely ill. Eleanor was forbidden to see her, and Sarah’s cousin accused Eleanor of having a debauched mind, with no ingredients for friendship which ought to be founded on virtue, whereas hers every day more and more ... was acting in direct opposition to it, as well as to the interest, happiness and reputation of one she professed to love.[2] This cousin also attempted to keep Sarah from receiving Eleanor’s long letters, which she said only aggravated the girl’s illness. The romantic pair had an ally, however, in a servant, Mary Caryll, known as “Molly the Bruiser” because of her marked masculinity. With this girl’s help, Eleanor was hidden in Sarah’s bedroom closet for several days, whereupon the latter promptly recovered, and as soon as she was well enough the pair staged a rebellion—they simply refused to live any longer at home or apart from one another. Both families being by now worn down, the girls were given a small allowance and invited to remove themselves permanently from the neighborhood. They managed to get as far as Wales, and, once established, they sent back for Molly, who remained their servant until her death many years later.