Honoria Lawrence was born on 25 December 1808 at Cardonagh, Donegal, the twelfth of fifteen children of the Revd George Marshall and his wife, Elizabeth. She was brought up by her uncle Admiral Heath, who lived nearby, and was educated in a devoutly protestant environment; her literary tastes and love of nature were both encouraged. She first met her future husband, Henry Montgomery Lawrence (1806–1857), who was a cousin, on his return from India in 1827. Despite their mutual attraction, he was deterred from proposing by his lack of prospects; they finally married in Calcutta on 21 August 1837. She bore four children, of whom two sons and one daughter survived. She was slight and lithe, with fair hair and blue eyes, but her attraction lay in more than her looks: ‘She was not beautiful in the ordinary sense of the term; but harmony, fervour and intelligence breathed in her expression, emanating from a loving heart and cultured mind’ (Diver, 78).

Honoria Lawrence's maturity, independence, flexibility, and sense of humour helped her face the demands of her husband's career as a soldier–administrator. She was always on the move in north-western India, and was the first European woman to live in several areas, including Kashmir and the independent state of Nepal. The difficulties of life in these remote areas were considerable, particularly with regard to the birth and upbringing of children. She recorded her life with perception and enthusiasm in voluminous letters and journals, including those written for her two young sons at school in England, selections from which were subsequently published. In these she also reflects her ever-deepening appreciation and love of India.

However, while Honoria Lawrence later became known as a writer, contemporaries singled out her invaluable role in supporting her husband in his career and other activities. Her view of marriage and of the role of women marked her life in India. She was deeply romantic, quoting Coleridge's view that an individual found his or her completion only in another being. Nevertheless, as she wrote in an article in the Calcutta Review in 1845, she believed that a husband played the dominant role: ‘a wife is useful and happy just in proportion as she can … identify herself with her husband … He has a profession as well as a family; her profession is that of being a wife’ (Lawrence, ‘English women in Hindustan’, 100–01). She carried out her precepts with dedication and enthusiasm. In the early months of their marriage she revelled in Henry Lawrence's camp life as a surveyor, and assisted in his work. When he was placed in civil charge of Ferozepore, she spent long hours helping run the post office, while in 1849–50 she threw herself wholeheartedly into the professional demands of his life in Lahore, where he was president of the board of administration for the Punjab. The Lawrences shared a deep commitment to philanthropy, and Mrs Lawrence played a valuable part in helping establish near Simla the Lawrence Asylum for the children of soldiers, to provide a boarding education in a healthy hill climate.

Writing became an important medium for the expression of Henry Lawrence's views on Indian affairs, and here, too, Honoria Lawrence played an essential collaborative role. She edited many of his articles on military and political matters for the Delhi Gazette, which paper also published in instalments The Adventurer in the Punjaub, a novel which she helped write, composing some of the romantic sections, including poetry. More influential were the articles Henry Lawrence contributed from 1844 to the newly formed Calcutta Review; these his wife edited, and in some cases co-authored. Though she published little independently, several of her own articles dealing with the female ‘profession’ of marriage and motherhood appeared anonymously in the Calcutta Review and the Friend of India. She was sceptical about the performance of British women in India, and was critical of their lack of concern for Indians and the wives and children of British soldiers. Her success in fulfilling her own role was attested by many. Her friend Lady Login commented:

I have never met a woman quite like Honoria, never a wife who more entirely shared in, and helped, her husband in his work, yet without in any way bringing that fact to the knowledge of the world at large. (Login, 63)

She became Lady Lawrence when her husband was knighted in 1848, following the First Anglo-Sikh War. She died at Mount Abu in Rajputana on 15 January 1854, and was buried there two days later.

Rosemary Cargill Raza