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Charlotte Workman (nee Slade)

Charlotte was born in 1816.  She  married John Woodroffe Workman, one of the medical incumbents, in April, 1836.  Two years later, they baptise their first child.  Charlotte Workman writes three of the surviving letters to Henry Junior.

Charlotte seems to have suffered from bad health or nerves, because a number of her references touch on this.  Early on we learn that she plans to have no more children for a while, if not at all.  She worries about the state of her house - apparently a Slade characteristic - and she exhibits concerns in particular about her husband’s expensive tastes.  For a while they considered emigrating to Australia.  Charlotte perhaps unconsciously criticises this lifestyle by remarking that if he could without [the three] horses, we should not want to come to Australia, but we must be content.  Eventually, Dr Workman decides to leave and sells the practice to John Breach.  The Workman’s befriend the temporary curate, perhaps needless to say one of Trollope’s ‘hunting parsons’, Mr Crowdy.  Charlotte makes it quite clear to her brother that Mr Crowdy’s mother has the status of a wealthy widow and helps find a post at Cricklade.  In 1841 Charlotte takes a trip to Reading, apparently to get away from things and recharge batteries.  She most likely stays with her brother-in-law Dr Skeete Workman, the eventual partner of her husband when they leave Cricklade.

Because Charlotte has married and left home, inevitably her mother sees less of her than Fred and, when they leave school, Anne and Benjamin, even though Charlotte brings the grandchild Willy up everyday.  Accordingly, we tend only to see Charlotte on the periphery of what happens in the village.  She attends the gypsy parties and evening festivities at people’s houses, but, all in all, we do not get as tight a picture of her as for the others.  Nevertheless, she does give us an elder sister’s view of Kezia and the seemingly endless number of suitors she carries in her wake.  She treads carefully, even in the letters, aware that her standpoint causes offence.

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