Barton, Catherine

CATHERINE BARTON (AKA CONDUITT)

Catherine Barton was the half-niece of Isaac Newton - daughter of Newton's

half-sister Hannah Smith, who married Robert Barton, a cleric in

Northamptonshire, in December 1677. Catherine born in 1679, and brother

Robert followed afterwards (became an army officer, and was killed in 1711

in Quebec). Her father died suddenly in 1693, leaving Hannah almost

destitute with young son and daughter, and Newton purchased an annuity for

her in 1695. Then, once he had settled into his house on Jermyn Street, he

made arrangements for Catherine to live with him - remains no evidence

establishing exactly when she joined Newton, although Newton's biographers

suggest around end of 1696, few months after he had bought the house, when

she was 17. By every account, Catherine Barton possessed unlimited charm and

was a woman of great beauty and wit: was the one member of Newton's family

who seemed to share his talents.

Catherine of quite different temperament from her uncle: she was gregarious

and confident, excitable and flirtateous, plus highly intelligent and

curious. Her role in Newton's life was one of companion and housekeeper

(though he had several servants, so can't have been much actual work for her

to do) in his new London home, and this in part would have been in order to

give her chance to broaden her sphere and afford her opportunity of meeting

a suitable husband. Newton and she had apparently never met before, but

immediately took to each other and soon became close. Only surviving letter

between them is dated summer 1700, when Newton wrote to Catherine when she

was in the country, convalescing after smallpox.

No portraits survive of her, but descriptions of her appeared in work of

Jonathan Swift, whom she met through her uncle c. 1710. At this time, Swift

was a celebrated author and one of linchpins of London society and, although

there is no evidence they were ever lovers (Swift devoted to Esther Johnson,

the real-life Stella), they quickly became close, prompting him to write in

1711, "I love her better than anybody here, and see her seldomer."

Catherine's name appears frequently in Swift's 'Journal to Stella' -

collected letters he addressed to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley, and

refs reveal that she enjoyed a rich social life and met a wide range of

influential people: one day would be dining with Lady Worsley or the great

beauty Anne Long, the next with Swift and Lady Betty Germain, daughter of

Earl of Berkeley. But was also a coarser country-girl aspect to character

that Swift loved: would encourage her to gossip over tea, and would then

filter her tales into literary history - but this others found less

appealing: elsewhere in 'Journal to Stella' he rebuts criticisms of her by

Stella after she had heard scandalous tales about her, joking, "I'll break

your head in good earnest, young woman, for your nasty jest about Mrs.

Barton." (30 Nov 1710) Was also suggestion of hardness: on evening in 1711

when Catherine learned of her brother's death during ill-fated attempt to

take Quebec, she was at private dinner with Swift - he wrote, "I made her

merry enough . . . we were three hours disputing on Whig and Tory. She

grieved for her brother only for form, and he was a sad dog." (14 Oct 1711)

However, although intense, relationship between Catherine and Swift was

short-lived: 4 yrs after moving to London he returned to native Ireland, and

in subsequent yrs they corresponded only rarely. Of far greater significance

was her relationship with Newton's close friend Charles Montagu - Montagu

around 40 in late 1790s when he first met Catherine; from his portraits he

was plump and not handsome, but as Chancellor of the Exchequer and

politician close to William II, he was one of most powerful men in England,

and in 1700 was created Baron Halifax. Newton was so fond of him that he,

according to a visiting French abbÈ, he kept a portrait of him in his room.

As well as possessing both wealth and charm, he had a reputation as a wit

and womanizer who took his pleasures as seriously as his work: a decade

earlier, he had married a woman twice his age, the wealthy Countess Dowager

of Manchester, who had recently left him a rich widower. As many others had

been before him, Montagu was smitten by Catherine the first time he saw her.

How and when they first met is unknown, but he visited the house in Jermyn

Street frequently, and so is probable that they met v. soon after Catherine

had settled in London - perhaps during a dinner party at Newton's house.

What is certain, however, is that by 1703 she and Montagu were lovers, and

that this intense relationship continued til Montagu's death in 1715.

Earliest sign of his feelings may be found etched into a toasting-glass at

his gentleman's club, the Kit-Kat Club, where it was customary for members

to inscribe lines of poetry about their muse with a diamond before offering

a toast to the gathering. Halifax took his turn during a Kit Kat Club dinner

in 1703 when he wrote:

Beauty and wit strove each in vain

To vanquish Bacchus and his train

But Barton with successful charms

From both their quivers drew her arms

The roving god his sway resigns

And awfully submits his vines . . .

Stamps with her reigning charms, this standard glass

Shall current through the realms of Bacchus pass;

Full fraught with beauty shall new flames impart,

And mint her shining image on the heart.

Identity of muse is clear, but Halifax's feelings for Newton's beautiful

niece went far deeper than dinner-table banter: in 1706, he changed his will

by adding a codicil to effect that she was to receive all his jewels and

£3,000 "as a small token of the great love and affection I have long had for

her". Six months later he added a lifetime annuity of £200 for her, and on 1

February 1713 he changed his will again - after a bequest of £100 to Newton,

"as a mark of the great honour and esteem I have for so great a man", he

increased Catherine's inheritance to £5,000 and a lifetime wardenship of his

estate of Bushy Park and his house in Surrey, Apscourt Manor, "These gifts

and legacies" (the will reads), "I leave to her as a token of the sincere

love, affection, and esteem I have long had for her person, and as a small

recompense for the pleasure and happiness I have had in her conversation."

Today it is generally accepted that Catherine lived with Halifax for at

least part of the time she was supposed to be her uncle's housekeeper, and

in fact this was a poorly kept secret at the time. Some have taken the

matter further and formalized the whole affair by having Montagu and

Catherine secretly married: in the 1880s, Augustus De Morgan, first prof of

mathematics at University of London, wrote small book entitled 'Newton: His

Friend: And His Niece', in which he took a single line from a letter of

Newton's and constructed a conspiracy theory - letter in question had been

sent to Newton's distant relative Sir John Newton on 23 May 1715, four days

after Montagu's death: apologizing for missing a scheduled meeting, Newton

had written "The concern I am in for the loss of my Lord Halifax & the

circumstances in which I stand related to his family will not suffer me to

go abroad until his funeral is over." However, fact that Newton had been a

friend of Montagu's for some 35 yrs, had helped him draw up his will many

yrs earlier, and was even left small token by M. is certainly enough to

explain his intimate turn of phrase. Furthermore, when Catherine took her

marriage vows and became Mrs Catherine Conduitt only 2 yrs later, she signed

a marriage certificate confirming her status as a spinster. However, seems

clear that Catherine was almost certainly Montagu's common-law wife, and

that he did not marry her cos of social differences; after Halifax's death,

truth had to remain hidden because Newton would have been unwilling to

suffer embarrassment by association. Even after her uncle's death, Catherine

kept her past life private, through desire to preserve family name and to

protect honour of husband John Conduitt.

Clearly, relationship between uncle and niece was not damaged by her

relationship with Montagu - Catherine returned to live with Newton for a

short time after M.'s death, so clear that even if he didn't condone the

affair, he was quite able to tolerate it. As a devout Puritan, Newton would

presumably have set great store by the sanctity of marriage, but had been

able to relax the more taxing demands of his faith before: e.g. during

Newton's early days at the Mint, he had defended drunken workers in his

ongoing battles with Lord Lucas, and had paid expenses to agents for alcohol

consumed during their investigations in public houses. Montagu was not only

one of Newton's closest and oldest friends, he was a v. powerful man who had

facilitated his appointment at the Mint. He was also a widower and Catherine

a single woman - given sufficient cause, Newton was quite able to grant a

certain fluidity to his own moral judgements.

In Freud-influenced biography, Frank Manuel suggests that Newton could

tolerate the relationship between Halifax and his niece cos it satisfied a

deep-seated sexual need - Catherine was grand-daughter of Newton's mother,

and by allowing his friend to have sexual relationship with her he was

vicariously making love to his own mother, something his subconscious had

wanted since his desertion as child. However, Freudian or not, validity of

this convoluted hypothesis clearly highly questionable - Newton was

certainly a man driven by childhood pain, but his subconscious method of

dealing with this angst was to accumulate power and gain dominance over

others. His scientific impetus was the need to know - as in his eyes,

knowledge equalled power. Similarly, he was driven to succeed as a civil

servant by acquiring power over those weaker than himself - was clearly

capable of adapting his internal ethical framework for what his inner self

would have considered a higher cause.

Nevertheless, as much as the protagonists tried to maintain complete

secrecy, rumours about the illicit relationship between the niece of

England's most esteemed and puritanical mathematician and the Chancellor of

the Exchequer began to circulate almost as soon as the couple had met.

Rumours became more exaggerated as the relationship continued, fuelled by

those with their own axes to grind: e.g. Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal,

who was in the middle of a fierce battle with Newton at the time of

Halifax's death, openly mocked Montagu's benevolence, declaring spitefully

in a letter to Abraham Sharp, "If common fame be true, Halifax died worth

£150,00; out of which he gave Mrs. Barton, Sir I. Newton's niece for her

'excellent conversation', a curious house, £5,000, with lands, jewels,

plate, money, and household furniture, to the value of £20,000 or more."

Even Voltaire, who was a great proselytiser of Newton's science, was not

above gossip, and while popularizing Newtonian mechanics across the

Continent he also sent rumours he picked up about N. and his family while in

England in 1720s - was Voltaire who publicized the apple story, but he was

also responsible for the vicious and quite unfounded rumour that Newton had

acquired his position at the Mint only because of the relationship between

Montagu and Catherine: "In my youth I thought that Newton had made his

fortune by his great merit. I had supposed that the Court and the City of

London had named him Master of the Mind by acclamation. Not at all. Isaac

Newton had a very charming nice, Madame Conduitt; she greatly pleased the

Lord of the Treasury, Halifax. The infinitesimal calculus and gravity would

have availed nothing without a pretty niece." Statement is almost entirely

false: Newton had been at first appointed Warden, not Master of the Mint -

and this before Montagu and Catherine had ever met - and only succeeded to

mastership on Neale's death in Dec 1699. Furthermore, Newton and Halifax had

been friends for over a decade before the appointment, and the 2 had been

working together to secure a public position for N. for some time during the

1690s.

Voltaire is thought to have been misinformed by a scurrilous book which

appeared in 1710, a roman-ý-clef called 'Memoirs of Europe, Towards the

Close of the Eight Century. Written by Eginardus, Secretary and Favourite to

Charlemagne; and done into English by the Translator of the New Atlantis' -

written by extreme Tory political writer, Mary Delariviere Manley

(1663-1724), daughter of a Cavalier, who loathed the Whig leadership and

Halifax in particular (now considered an early feminist writer). This book

one of a series of immensely popular, racy political prose satires that were

exposÈs of high-society scandals; in 1705 Manley had published 'The Secret

History of Queen Zarah and the Zaraians', and then in 1709 her 'Secret

Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of Both Sexes. From the

New Atlantis', over which she had been arrested and held without bail on

charges of slander - acquitted, she went on to write the even more vitriolic

'Memoirs of Europe' in which, most damaging to Newton, she had assembled a

supporting cast to bolster the debauchery of her leading character, a parody

of Lord Halifax. In an index, she even went so far as to list her chief

characters as 'Bartica - Isaac Newton's niece' and 'Julius Sergius - Lord

H*f-x'. Early in the narrative there is a description of an orgy involving

Bartica and Sergius, and later a character relates how Sergius has described

his affection for Bartica: "'I think my Lord Julius Sergius,' continued I,

addressing more closely to his Lordship, 'It is hard that in al this

heavenly prospect of happiness, your Lordship is the only solitary lover:

what is become of the charming Bartica? Can she live a day, an hour, without

you? Sure, she's indisposed, dying or dead.' 'You call tears into my eyes,

dear Count,' answered the hero sobbing, 'She's a traitoress, an inconsistent

proud baggage, yet I love her dearly, and have lavished myriads upon her,

besides getting her worthy ancient parent a good post for connivance." At

another point, Manley again slanders Catherine through her anti-hero

Sergius: "She has other things in her head, and is grown so fantastic and

high, she wants me to marry her, or else I shall have no more of her, truly:

'She was ever a proud slut' . . . He told me, if he pin'd himself to death,

he was resolved not to marry her whilst she was so saucy." Real-life Halifax

was certainly no saint - he drank and womanized, gambled, and readily

accepted the many pleasures and privileges of office; along with Lord

Somers, the Lord Chancellor, he was impeached for malpractice in 1701, but

was acquitted - nevertheless, portrait Manley paints is obviously grotesque

caricature designed for political ends. As for Catherine's true character,

little survives upon which to base a judgement - but if Swift's letters

anything to go by, she was certainly remarkably modern and liberated woman

for her time, though suggestions that she was stringing Halifax along and

using him for her own ends, and that Newton was doing the same, have no

basis in fact.

On Halifax's death in 1715, Catherine continued living with Newton up to and

just after her marriage to 29-yr-old John Conduitt, on 26 August 1717 (when

she aged 38). Conduitt the son of a wealthy farmer, who had served as

commissary to the British forces in Gibraltar soon after the War of the

Spanish Succession. While in the army he discovered the site of the lost

Roman city of Carteia and had sent news of the find to the RS in London.

Returning to England in 1717, he was invited to deliver a talk before a

meeting of the RS, where he first met Newton, its President. Newton was

still deeply involved in refining his ancient chronology, and invited

Conduitt to his home, where latter then met Catherine Barton, who had

recently completed period of mourning for Charles Montagu. Must have been a

whirlwind romance: Conduitt arrived in England in June, and he and Catherine

were married on 26 August. JC was in part marrying Newton: was completely

bowled over by great man from second he met him, and immediately began keep

a record of their conversations and collecting every available scrap of info

about him. From early stage in their relationship JC also decided to write

Newton's biography, although this ended up as little more than an outline;

plus he wrote short memoir of Newton which he sent to French scientist

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle as an official eulogy for presentation

before the Academie des Sciences in 1728.

The Conduitts remained at Newton's house for short time after the wedding,

but later removed to Conduitt's estate of Cranbury Park, near Winchester.

Catherine was given a large but unspecified sum by her uncle when she

married, but the fortune Halifax had promised her did not survive the legal

battles precipitated by his irate and powerful relatives: Newton had spent

the best part of 1715 and 1716 defending his niece's claims, but had

eventually lost - the country estate and most of the £5,000 inheritance

bequeathed to Catherine remained in the Montagu family. However, JC was a

wealthy man in his own right, plus became MP for Whitchurh and took on many

of Newton's responsibilities at the Mint towards end of N's life, eventually

succeeding him to position of Master of the Mint in 1727. Catherine thus led

v. comfortable married life, divided between family estate in Hampshire and

town house in London. Two yrs after marriage they had a daughter they named

Kitty (Catherine), who in 1740 married the Hon. John Wallop, Viscount

Lymington (eldest son of first Earl of Portsmouth) - their son would become

the second Earl of Portsmouth. Catherine died in 1739, 2 yrs after JC.

Through daughter Catherine Conduitt, Newton's papers - preserved by John

Conduitt - passed into the possession of the Portsmouth family, and most of

them eventually into the Cambridge University Library.