Loving Gilbert: An Engagement between a Misogynist and a Feminist Historian

Gilbert Innes of Stowe (1751-1832) lived in the conservative hothouse of Enlightenment Edinburgh. He rose to the highest operative role in the Royal Bank of Scotland, owned a small landed estate, sat on the committees for numerous charities, societies and improving organisations, and was a well-known and extremely wealthy public figure. He never married, but had at least 32 mistresses and 30 illegitimate children; 67 illegitimate children made a claim on his estate when he died. He lived a life of contradictions – perhaps hypocrisies – combining the privileges of wealth, status and the appearance of outward morality with the repeated exploitation of his female servants, poor Edinburgh women, and occasional seduction of women of his own class. He supported a selection of them financially, but payment was intermittent, came with strict conditions that placed limits on his mistresses’ lives, and refused them the social recognition that he personally enjoyed. He is very hard to like, at least if you’re a feminist historian. Trying to write a biography of a dislikeable subject is not a new problem, but the role of ‘dislike’ or ‘love’ in shaping our engagements with our historical subjects is underexplored, often acknowledged but placed aside as largely irrelevant. Without forming an emotional connection with Gilbert, writing a history of his motivations, desires and intimacies was extremely challenging. Yet in learning to love him, this feminist historian wonders what was lost in critical edge, as well as gained. Can we sympathise with misogyny without condoning it?