She was the first child of James and Maria Sparks and the eldest sibling of Tryphena Sparks, who, it is generally agreed, had a romantic connection to Thomas Hardy, although there is little agreement about how serious the affair with Hardy was or how long it lasted. Hardy was a cousin of the Sparks children; his mother was Maria Sparks’ sister, Jemima.
In 1962 Lois Deacon contributed Tryphena’s Portrait Album to the Monographs on the Life, Times and Works of Thomas Hardy series and in it asserts “Rebecca Payne (nee Sparks,) the supposed eldest sister of Tryphena, but almost certainly her mother.” Ms Deacon also claims that Rebecca was herself the illegitimate daughter of Jemima Hand, the mother of Thomas Hardy. Then there is her sensational claim repeated in her book written with Terry Coleman: Providence and Mr Hardy, that Tryphena and Thomas Hardy had a child. We have not been able to find any documentary evidence to support this and Hardy biographers give it no credence.
Lois Deacon is right to point out that Tryphena Sparks was baptised when she was about six years of age and uses this to hint there may be reason to wonder about who her mother was. Maria Sparks registered Tryphena’s arrival in this world just a week after her birth in 1851. As for Rebecca being anyone other than the child of James and Maria Sparks it is worth noting that her parents married on Christmas Day 1828 and Rebecca was baptised on the 25th of October 1829.
By all accounts Rebecca Sparks was a very good seamstress and dressmaker. In 1871 she was living in Puddletown with her widowed father, James Sparks. Tryphena was at a teachers’ training college in London. The following year Tryphena left the college and moved to Plymouth where she had accepted a position as headmistress of a school and, at the age of 43, Rebecca married Frederick Payne of Puddletown , a man several years younger than herself and, puzzlingly, she immediately left him.
Rebecca probably returned home to live with her father who died in 1874. It is thought that at some time she was with her sister at the school in Plymouth teaching needlework. On the 15th of December 1877 Tryphena married Charles Gale and gave up teaching ; we know from the 1881 census that Rebecca was living with her sister and her family in Devon.
In the Gale household Rebecca was known as aunt Bessie because there was a Gale relative named Rebecca. Her niece, Tryphena’s daughter, Eleanor, described her aunt as “a very quiet, prim and proper ladybody”. Eleanor was only six years-old when her aunt Rebecca died in Devon in 1885.
There is a photo of Rebecca Payne in the photo section.
