The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760

by Myra Reynolds

1. An Introductory Group in the Years 1650-1675

The brief running summaries in the preceding chapter have perhaps served to bring into prominence two sharply contrasted periods. The first half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth seem even more than a hundred years apart in tone and temper. We turn from the eager intellectual life of many women in the Tudor period, from their full and rich opportunities, and we find that in the time of the earlier Stuarts there were very few women who took any pride in learning, that there was little or no provision at home or in schools for any but the most desultory sort of education for girls, and that there were practically no formulated ideals or theories of intellectual advancement for women. But at the close of this barren half-century we come upon what may be considered the real beginnings of the modern work of women. This era of development may be appropriately introduced by the presentation of several women who, while in no sense cohering into a group, are yet alike in that their home education belongs in the reign of Charles I, that later they had the stern training incident on Civil War conditions, and that their published work belongs before 1675.

Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle (1624-1674)

The most talked-of learned lady of the Restoration period was the Duchess of Newcastle.[95] She was brought up by her mother, who was left a widow with a great fortune and a family of eight children when Margaret was an infant. The Duchess in her Autobiography describes a family life conducted with splendor and luxury. She comments on the elaborate attendance, the rich and costly garments, the many pleasures, secured for the children by the industrious care and tender love of their mother. It was a bright, gay, free, affectionate home life. But we get only slight indications of any educational advantages. "As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of vertues, as singing, dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, working, and the like, yet we were not kept strictly thereto, they were rather for formality than benefit, for my Mother cared not so much for our dancing and fidling, singing and prating of severall languages, as that we should be bred virtuously, modestly, civilly, honourably and on honest principles." None of these opportunities met Margaret's needs. She says she had a natural stupidity in learning foreign tongues, cared little for music, disliked needlework, found cards and games tiresome, and dancing frivolous. Apparently the freedom of the family life left her at liberty to follow her real interests which were in the main intellectual. Here she had the sympathetic aid of her brother, Lord Lucas. The precocious development of her mind is shown by the fact that at twelve she had written a book on a philosophical subject.

MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From an engraving in Horace Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, London, 1806

At eighteen she was appointed maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria and accompanied her to France. There, at twenty, she became the second wife of the Duke of Newcastle, a nobleman thirty-two years older than herself, but who was, she says, "the onely Person I ever was in love with." She was with him during the trying years of his absence from England and it was during this difficult and tedious period that literature became her resource. Her publications began with Philosophical Fancies in 1653 and closed with Grounds of Natural Philosophy in 1668, during which period she wrote nearly twelve folio volumes. The portions of her work concerning which she felt the greatest measure of self-congratulation were her studies in natural philosophy. Her Philosophical Fancies of 1653 was expanded in 1655, and in 1663 received its final form as Philosophical and Physical Opinions. Of all her books this was "her best beloved and favourite." But the quality on which she chiefly prides herself is the very one that nullifies her work. Originality is her great boast, an originality so pronounced as to refuse to base its deductions on the writings of previous thinkers. Her husband substantiates her claim. He says that all her philosophical fancies are spun out of her own brain, and that, if she does not use the technical terms of philosophers, it is because her language is her own too. She has scorned to talk with any "profest scholar" to learn his phraseology. "She did never impe her high-flying Phancies, with any old broken Fethers out of any university."[96] She says herself that she could never "afford board-room to other people's ideas lest the legitimate offspring of her own brain should be crowded out."[97] In Part IV, "On the Motion of the Bodie," we find that the Duchess has never studied anatomy, but this apparent disqualification does not prove inhibitory. In An Epistle to the Reader she explains the situation:

I am to be pardoned, if I have not the names and tearms that the Anatomists have or use; or if I have mistaken some parts in the body, or misplaced any: for truly I never read of Anatomie, nor never saw any man opened, much less dissected, which for my better understanding I would have done; but I found that neither the caurage of nature, nor the modesty of my sex would permit me. Werefore it would be a great chance, even to a wonder I should not erre in some; but I have seen the intrals of beasts, but never as they are placed in their bodies, but as they are cut out to be drest ... which intrals I have heard are much like mans, especially a hogs, so that I know man hath a brain, a heart, a stomach, liver, lights, spleen, and the like; yet these I never viewed with a curious and searching eye, but as they have laien in some vessels; and as for bones, nerves, muscels, veines and the like, I know not how they are placed in the body, but as I have gathered several times from several relations, or discourses: here a bit and there a crum of knowledge, which my natural reason hath put together.[98]

From any modern standpoint of scientific excellence the inaccuracy and amazing self-confidence of these studies render them worse than futile. But it was not ignorance that was charged against the Duchess by her critics. The experimental method was having its triumphs, but doubtless a good deal of the scientific writing of the first half of the century was marked by a dogmatic tone and an uncertainty as to facts, so the Duchess was not attacked on that score. The common report that irritated the Duke of Newcastle to a spirited defense of his wife was that she could not have written these books, for "no lady could understand so many hard words." The Duke takes up various kinds of hard words such as terms of divinity, philosophy, astronomy, and geometry, and shows that natural wit, common sense, and some observation could compass most of them. He gives the following account of the way he and the Duchess acquired a medical vocabulary: "But would you know the great Mystery of these Physical terms, I am almost ashamed to tell you; not that we have been ever sickly, but by melancholy often supposed ourselves to have such diseases as we had not, and learned Physitians were too wise to put us out of that humour, and so these terms cost us much more than they are worth, and I hope there is nobody so malicious as to envie us our bargain."[99] At the end of his Preface the Duke comes to what he considers the real cause of the aspersions on his Lady's books: "But here's the crime, a Lady writes them, and to intrench so much on the male prerogative, is not to be forgiven." The Duchess, in her Address to the Two Universities, recurs to this idea. She hopes her book may be received

for the good incouragement of our sex, lest in time we should grow irrational as idiots, by the dejectednesse of our spirits, through the carelesse neglects, and despisements of the masculine sex to the effeminate, thinking it impossible we should have either learning or understanding, wit or judgement, as if we had not rational souls as well as men, and we out of a custom of dejectedness think so too, which makes us quit all industry towards profitable knowledge ... so as we are become like worms that only live in the dull earth of ignorance, winding ourselves sometimes out, by the help of some refreshing rain of good educations which seldom is given us; for we are kept like birds in cages to hop up and down in our houses ... we are shut out of all power, and Authority by reason we are never imployed either in civil nor marshall affaires, our counsels are despised, and laught at, the best of our actions are troden down with scorn, by the over-weaning conceit men have of themselves and through a despisement of us.[100]

But she presents her book with some confidence to the universities as places where are to be found right judgment and respectful civility. And at any rate she would rather "lie intombed under the dust of an University" than be "worshipped by the Vulgar as a Deity."

One of the Duchess's most curious books is Orations of Divers Sorts accommodated to Divers Places. Among the "orations" is a "collection of speeches for a convivial meeting of country gentlemen in a market town, ending with 'a speech of a quarter-drunk gentleman,' and 'a speech of a half-drunk gentleman.' Another little collection headed 'Female Orations' reports the speeches delivered at a meeting of women on the great question of combining together to make themselves 'as free, happy, and famous as men.'"[101]

When the Duke and Duchess returned to England after the Restoration they lived for the most part at one of their country estates, but they made occasional visits to London. It was then that the Duchess's beauty, wealth, eccentric dress and manners, and literary and scientific pretensions made her a conspicuous and, to some, a ridiculous figure. Sir Walter Scott, in Peveril of the Peak,[102] makes Charles II say of the Duchess, "Her Grace is an entire raree-show in her own person—a universal masquerade—indeed a sort of private Bedlam hospital"; and this sums up the attitude that found expression in the phrase, "Mad Madge of Newcastle." In 1653 Dorothy Osborne wrote to Sir William Temple: "Let me ask you if you have seen a book of poems newly come out, made by my Lady Newcastle? For God's sake if you meet with it send it to me; they say 't is ten times more extravagant than her dress. Sure, the poor woman is a little distracted, she could never be so ridiculous as to venture at writing books, and in verse too." A little later she wrote: "You need not send me Lady Newcastle's book at all, for I have seen it, and am satisfied that there are many soberer people in Bedlam."[103] Mrs. Evelyn called on the Duchess in 1667 and wrote to Mr. Bohun:

I was surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any person not confined within four walls. Her habit particular, fantastical, not unbecoming a good shape, which truly she may boast of. Her face discovers the facility of her sex, in being yet persuaded it deserves the esteem years forbid, by the infinite care she takes to place her curls and patches. Her mein surpasses the imagination of poets, or the descriptions of a romance heroine's greatness: her gracious bows, seasonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical and rambling as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions, terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.[104]

On May 30, 1667, the Duchess made a formal visit to the Royal Society, and Pepys says she was all admiration at the fine experiments they showed her, but he did not hear her say anything that was worth hearing. There had been much objection to admitting her to the rooms of the Society, some of the members fearing that the town would be "full of ballads of it," but the visit seems to have passed off mildly and with the respectful observance to which she was accustomed.

MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From an engraving in The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and of his wife Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, edited by Mark Antony Lower, London, 1872

In spite of the stream of private criticism already indicated, the almost unmixed adulation of which the Duchess was the subject is indicated by the Letters and Poems, in Honour of the incomparable Princess Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle, published in 1676, two years after her death. In her lifetime, too, the praise was equally extravagant. Resounding Latin titles, such as Illustrissima Heroina, Excellentissima Dux, Eminentissima Princeps, came to her from high sources. The Rector Magnificus of the University of Leyden called her not only Princeps fæminini sexus, but Princeps terrarum. And the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge in a complimentary address said that the great women of old could not contend with her for the palm of learning, but rather would they, with bent knee, adore this solam Margaretam Consumatissimam Principem. Even so sane a man as Evelyn wrote her a most flattering letter when she sent him her works in 1674. Beginning with Zenobia he assembled the great women of ancient times, the learned ladies of more modern days in France, Spain, Italy, and Holland, and concluded with

Mary de Gournay, & the famous Anna M. Schurman: and of our owne country, Queene Elizabeth, Queene Jane, the Lady Weston, Mrs. Philips our late Orinda, the daughters of S^r Tho: More; the Queene Christina of Sweden, & Elizabeth, daughter of a queen also to whom the renowned Des Cartes dedicated his learned worke, & the profound researches of his extraordinary talent. But all these, I say, sum'd together, possesse but that divided, which yr Grace retaines in one; so as Lucretia Marinella, who writ a book (in 1601) dell' Excellenzia delle Donne, con difetti è mancamenti de gli huomini, had no neede to have assembled so many instances and arguments to adorne the work, had she lived to be witnesse of Margarite, Dutchess of Newcastle, to have read her writings, & to have heard her discourse of the science she comprehended.[105]

Praise could hardly go further.

The best modern judgment discards the encomiums, but yet gives the Duchess a fairly high place. Sir Egerton Brydges, the editor of her Autobiography, says:

That the Duchess was deficient in a cultivated judgment; that her knowledge was more multifarious than exact; and that her powers of fancy and sentiment were more active than her powers of reasoning, I will admit; but that her productions, mingled as they are with great absurdities, are wanting either in talent or in virtue, or even genius, I cannot concede.[106]

The Duchess was buried in Westminster Abbey with this inscription on her monument:

Here lies the loyal Duke of Newcastle and his Duchess, his second wife, by whom he had no issue. Her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister to Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble family, for all the brothers were valliant, and all the sisters virtuous. This Duchess was a wise, witty, and learned Lady, which her many books do well testify; She was a most virtuous, and loving, and careful wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his banishment and miseries; and when they came home never parted with him in his solitary retirements.

The two books by the Duchess that one would not willingly let die are her Life of her husband and her Autobiography. These are of permanent value as pictures of the life of a great, rich family like that of her girlhood home, and the straitened life in exile, with the later affluent and splendid life of a noble high in royal favor such as was the Duke of Newcastle. All the personal portions of both books are told with an air of genuineness, a naïveté, that make delightful reading. The Duchess summed up her life as that of a woman "honourably born, carefully bred, and nobly married to a wise man," and it was out of these happy domestic relations that her best work came.

Mrs. Katherine Philips (1631-1664)

Contemporary with the Duchess of Newcastle was Katherine Fowler, better known as Mrs. Katherine Philips, and better still as the "Matchless Orinda." She was the daughter of John Fowler, "an eminent merchant in Bucklersbury," and Katherine Oxenbridge. Aubrey gives a quaint account of her precocious childhood as it was described to him by "her cosen Blacket who lived with her from her swadling cloutes till eight, and taught her to read." Aubrey says: "When a child she was mighty apt to learn, and ... she had read the Bible through before she was full four yeares old; she could have sayed I know not how many places of Scripture and Chapters. She was a frequent hearer of sermons; had an excellent memory and could have brought away a sermon in her memory."[107]

Her further education was carried on at Hackney at the school of "Mris Salmon, a famous schoolmistress, Presbyterian.... Loved poetrey at schoole, and made verses there. She takes after her grandmother Oxenbridge ... who was an acquaintance of Mr. Francis Quarles, being much inclined to poetrie herself." As a child Katherine evidently was as ardent a Presbyterian as her school-mistress and her Oxenbridge ancestors. "She was very religiously devoted when she was young; prayed by herself an hower together, and tooke sermons verbatim when she was but ten yeares old.... She was when a child much against the bishops, prayd to God to take them to him, but afterwards was reconciled to them. Prayed aloud, as the hypocritical fashion then was, and was overheared."

At sixteen she married Mr. James Philips, Esquire, of Cardigan Priory, Wales. Her published work includes numerous brief poems, most of them of a personal nature, two plays translated from the French, and several letters to Sir Charles Cotterell. This is rather scanty productivity to serve as a basis for the great vogue Mrs. Philips certainly had, nor to the modern reader does the quality of the work sufficiently account for the enthusiasm it excited. Yet we have abundant testimony that the last ten years of her life were made brilliant by praise from the most authoritative sources. Sir Charles Cotterell, her intimate friend and the editor of her Works, said of her: "We might well have call'd her the English Sappho, she of all the Poets of former Ages, being for her Verses and her Virtues both, the most highly valued; but she has call'd herself Orinda, a name that deserves to be added to the Muses, and to live with honour as long as they. Were our language as generally known to the world, as the Greek and Latin were anciently, or as the French is now, her Verses could not be confined within the limits of our Islands, but would spread themselves as far as the Continent has Inhabitants, or as the Seas have any Shore." Something must be allowed here for the enthusiasm of a friend and an editor, but other estimates were almost as extreme. The Earl of Orrery had thought that the high praise of her poems at court must be exaggerated, but when he came to know her and her writings the court eulogies were to him but "Imperfect Trophies," and he exclaimed, "If there be Helicon, in Wales it is." Henry Lawes and Dr. Coleman, the best composers of the day, set some of her poems to music. Cowley in two poems to her praised her for her spirit "so rich, so noble, and so high," her "inward Virtue," her "well-knit Sence," and for her poems in which were united all the excellences of both sexes. When her translation of Pompey appeared in the Smock-Alley Theater, Dublin, the Earl of Roscommon wrote the Prologue and Sir Edward Dering the Epilogue, and the success of the play was assured by the enthusiastic support of the aristocracy of Dublin. In 1659 Jeremy Taylor dedicated to her his Discourse of the nature, offices and measures of friendship. Though she does not exactly fulfill the prophecy of Mr. Thomas Rowe, that "Orinda should be an ever-glorious name to ages yet to come," yet her fame was by no means confined to her own brief day. We hear echoes of it far down in the eighteenth century. The highest praise that could be given to any woman poet was to bracket her with Orinda.

By the nineteenth century her vogue was almost extinct, but chance appreciation came from an unexpected quarter. Keats wrote to Reynolds in September, 1817:[108]

The world, and especially our England, has, within the last thirty years, been vexed and teased by a set of Devils, whom I Detest so much that I almost hunger after an Acherontic promotion to a Torturer, purposely for their accomodation. These devils are a set of women, who having taken a snack or Luncheon of Literary scraps, set themselves up for towers of Babel in languages, Sapphos in Poetry, Euclids in Geometry, and everything in nothing. Among such the name of Montague has been preëminent. The thing has made a very uncomfortable impression on me. I had longed for some real feminine Modesty in these things, and was therefore gladdened in the extreme on opening the other day, one of Bailey's Books—a book of poetry written by one beautiful Mrs. Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor's and called "The Matchless Orinda"—you must have heard of her, and most likely read her Poetry—I wish you have not, that I may have the pleasure of treating you with a few stanzas.

Whereupon he quotes the ten stanzas written by Orinda on parting with her friend "Rosania," a poem of genuine feeling and quaintly charming in expression. "In other of her poems," says Keats, "there is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher kind—which we will con over together."

MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS
"From an original Picture in the Collection of her Grace the Dutchess of Dorset."
Drawn by J. Thurston. Engraved by W. Finden. From an engraving in Effigies Poeticae. London, 1824

Thus the magic of Orinda's name reasserts itself, and she is again praised as a lady of "delicate fancy," "feminine modesty," and unmatched in friendship. A reintroduction to a general public was given by Mr. Gosse's delightful essay in Seventeenth Century Studies (1885). And in 1904 a selection from her poems was published with an acute "Appreciation."

In her own day Orinda was not only prized as a poet, but she was considered the highest example, the prophet and expounder, of true friendship. Much of her verse was called forth by her Society of Friendship. The chief members of this circle were "Antenor" (Mr. Philips), "Lucasia" (Miss Anne Owen), "Rosania" (Miss Mary Aubrey), "Regina" (Mrs. John Collier), "Palæmon" (Jeremy Taylor), "Silvander" (Sir Edward Dering), "Policrite" (Lady Margaret Cavendish), "Celimena" (Miss E. Boyl), "Cassandra" (Mrs. C. P., her dear sister), and "Critander" (Mr. J. B.). "Ardelia," "Phillis," and "Pastora" remain unidentified. There were doubtless others in the circle, but these we know because they all received poetical tributes from Orinda. There were over thirty-five private individuals intimately addressed in her poems.

It is undoubtedly the personal character of her poems that secured her so wide and favorable an audience while her writings were still in manuscript and known only as they passed from hand to hand. Each person addressed was the center of a new circle of readers. But the intimacy of the poems is one reason for the actual agony Orinda suffered when an unauthorized edition of her poems appeared in 1662. "Their Names expos'd in this Impression without their leave" was the burden of her grief. And she was likewise injured in her modesty. The publication seemed to put her in the position of a woman bold and masculine enough to send her writings into the world. A thousand pounds, she says, would not have bought her consent. To Sir Charles Cotterell she wrote:

To me (Sir) who never writ any line in my life with any intention to have it printed.... This is a most cruel accident, and hath made so proportionate an impression upon me, that really it hath cost me a sharp fit of sickness since I heard it.

If the garbled version makes a true version a necessary reparation of the misfortune she will yield, "but with the same reluctancy as I would cut off a Limb to save my Life."

I am so far from expecting applause for anything I scribble, that I can hardly expect pardon; and sometimes I think that employment so far above my reach, and unfit for my Sex, that I am going to resolve against it for ever; and could I have recovered those fugitive Papers that have escaped my hands, I had long since made a sacrifice of them all. The truth is, I have an incorrigible inclination to that folly of riming, and intending the effects of that humour, only for my own amusement in a retir'd life; I did not so much resist it as a wiser woman would have done.[109]

She had been planning a visit to London, but she wrote in despair to Dorothy Osborne (then Mrs. Temple):

I must never show my face there or among any reasonable people again, for some dishonest person hath got some collection of my Poems as I heare, and hath deliver'd them to a Printer who I heare is just upon putting them out and this hath soe extreamly disturbed me, both to have my private folly so unhandsomely exposed and ye belief that I believe the most part of ye world are apt enough to believe yt I connived at this ugly accident that I have been on ye rack ever since I heard it, though I have written to Col. Jeffries who first sent me word of it to get ye Printer punished, the book called in, and me someway publicly vindicated yet I shall need all my friends to be my champions to ye criticall and mallicious that I am soe innocent of this pittiful design of a knave to get a groat that I never was more vexed at anything and yt I utterly disclaim whatever he hath so unhandsomely expos'd. I know you have goodness and generosity enough to doe me right in your company and to give me your opinion too how I may best get this impression supressed and myself vindicated and therefore I will not beg your pardon for troubling you with this impertinent story.[110]

Her pride of authorship would, however, almost certainly have triumphed over her modesty if she could have lived to see the sumptuous volume with its bravery of eulogistic verse in which Sir Charles Cotterell enshrined her work. Her letters to him, under the title Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, were published in 1705 and add distinctly to her fame.

On the whole, Orinda becomes a personage to us and an agreeable one. There is a note of sincerity through even her most unrestrained poems; the ardor of her affections is unmistakable; her loyalty to the King, to her friends, to her ideas, is genuine. She does not labor compliments. Her praise pours forth from the abundance of her feeling. Perhaps one reason for her ready popularity was that she aroused no antagonisms. Though a literary woman there was nothing about her that was masculine, strident, or assertive. Her outlook on life was gracious and tolerant. She loved simplicity and retirement and was never dazzled by wealth or titles.

At any rate, there is one interesting and significant fact about her and that is her success. It was a kind of success new in English literary history. A woman without any commanding advantages of birth or fortune, only moderately good-looking, without any compelling fascination, unstimulated by parental or tutorial ambitions, with but the scantiest schooling, married to an ordinary, rather dull man; a virtuous, sane, orderly, thrifty woman, excellent in business, housewifely, with no eccentricities, simply follows her feelings in friendship and the bent of her mind towards authorship, and attains in a few years a position notably high.

Mary North (d. 1662)

Two interesting young women who belong chronologically to this group are not exactly learned ladies, but they had intellectual piquancy and alertness. One of them, Mary North, was the eldest of the fourteen children of Dudley, the fourth Lord North. The mother of this large family was evidently a remarkable woman. Her son Roger says of her: "The Government of us was In generall severe, but tender; our mother maintained her authority, and yet condiscended to Entertain us. She was learned (for a lady) and Eloquent. Had much Knoledg of History and readyness of witt to express herself, in the part of Reproof, wherein she was fluent and pungent.... But without occasion given to the Contrary, she was debonair, familiar, and very liberall of hir discourse to entertain all." This combination of the pungent and the debonair made an effective family discipline, for it was said that there was not a son or daughter whose abilities were not of a very high order, and that the daughters were hardly less cultured than their brothers. And of this group Mary was, says Roger, "by far the most brilliant—a woman of real genius." A charming picture is given of the ladies of the North family, gathered together according to the custom of the time for endless tasks of tapestry and embroidery, listening entranced to Mary who recited romances for hours together, giving not only the story, but the conversations, the substance of letters, and the general reflections. She had "a superiour wit, a prodigious memory, and was most agreeable." "She instituted a sort of order of the wits of her time and acquaintance, whereof the symbol was a sun with a circle touching the rays, and upon that in blue ground were wrote αὐτάρκης in proper Greek characters, which her father suggested. Divers of these were made in silver and enamel, but in embroidery plenty, which were dispersed to those wittified ladies who were willing to come into their order; and for a while they were formally worn, until the foundress fell under the government of another, and then it was left off."[111] Mary North was married to Sir William Spring of Pakenham and died in 1662 in her twenty-fourth year. Her feminine "Order of Intellect," her quaint badge, "the symbol of a community of taste and interest in literature, science, and art,"[112] offer an attractive and hopeful prospect. It was an inconspicuous little organization, springing up gayly and spontaneously, and its scope of learning may not have gone beyond the French romances the gifted young leader knew by heart, but it was at any rate an association of young women with some pronounced literary aspirations and tastes, and as such it stands out alone, a charming picture set in the framework of the anxious years before the Restoration.

Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (1627-1694)

When Dorothy Osborne had been Lady Temple some years her husband wrote from London a "sweet scrip full of reproaches" at the businesslike tone and brevity of her letters. She answered with a touch of her old sauciness: "Pray what did you expect I should have writ, tell me that I may know how to please you next time. But now I remember me you would have such letters as I used to write before we were marryed, there are a great many such in your cabinet yt I can send you if you please, but none in my head I can assure you."[113]

The love letters thus preserved in Sir William Temple's cabinet have had a narrow escape from oblivion. They were found among the Temple papers when Mr. Courtenay was preparing his elaborate Life of Sir William Temple, and forty-two extracts from the letters were put by Mr. Courtenay apologetically in an appendix. He could not be sure that they would not seem trivial in comparison to matters of state. This book was published in 1836. Macaulay reviewed it in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1838, and took occasion to give a vivid sketch of Dorothy and her lover. Macaulay's article led Mr. Edward Abbot Parry to read Courtenay's extracts from the letters and to weave them together into a kind of story, which was published in April, 1886, in The English Illustrated Magazine. This magazine fell into the hands of Mrs. S. R. Longe who had had access to the original letters and had copied them with minute accuracy. These letters were offered to Mr. Parry for publication and were accordingly brought out, though with omissions, in 1888.[114] In 1903 the letters were published in full. Thus, after escaping the vicissitudes of nearly two and a half centuries, these letters became a delight accessible to all.[115]

When Dorothy was twenty-one she went with her brother to France. At the Isle of Wight they were joined by young Mr. William Temple who promptly fell in love with Dorothy because of the spirited way she met a difficult situation. Her brother had written on the window pane at the inn some phrases objectionable to the Puritans, and the whole party was arrested. Then Dorothy, relying upon the general chivalrous attitude towards women, took the blame upon herself, and they were set free. The courtship thus begun was destined to last seven years. There were few meetings and the correspondence was carried on with all possible secrecy, for both the Osbornes and the Temples had other plans for the young people. It was a difficult seven years for Dorothy. The Osbornes lived at Chicksands Priory in Bedfordshire, a lonely and not very interesting region. Dorothy's mother died in 1650. After a long illness, during which she was his constant attendant, her father died in 1654. During these years her brother was the only one of the family with her in the strange old house. And from him came her chief trial, for it was the effort of his life to see her well married. Young men, middle-aged men, old men, aspired to be Mistress Dorothy's "servants." The ancient Priory saw a train of lovers sent away unsatisfied. Dorothy gave all sorts of reasons for her fastidious and critical attitude towards her suitors—all reasons but the real one. Mr. Temple had no assured income, Dorothy but a small dowry, and no families in their rank of life could be expected to sanction so imprudent a choice. In the meantime silence and faithfulness was the only resource of the impecunious lovers. It was a hard fate, but not without compensations for later generations, for if they had married happily on coming out of France there would have been no bundle of letters in the old cabinet at Sheen.

There are various indications that Dorothy had numerous correspondents. That they did not save her letters is our great loss, for we can imagine few more delightful ways of being inducted into the life of the times than through the letters of Mistress Dorothy. The "Matchless Orinda" was one of her correspondents, but only one letter arising out of this friendship has been preserved. It may justly be quoted entire because it serves to unite the two most interesting women of the time, and because it shows how Mrs. Philips, in the plentitude of her fame, with Dublin dramatic triumphs fresh upon her, with the aristocracy of London adding leaves to her laurel crown, courted the quiet Mrs. Temple living the most retired and domestic of lives at Sheen. This letter has the further pathetic interest of being one of the last Orinda wrote, for when she reached London on this visit she had so longed for she fell a victim to that most dreaded scourge, the small-pox:

Deare Madam,—You treat me in your letters so much to my advantage and above my merit that I am almost affray'd to tell you how exceedingly I am pleased with them lesst you should attribute yt contentment to ye delight I take in being praised whereas I am extreamely deceived if that be ye ground of it, though I confess it is not free from vanity. I can not choose but be proud of being owned by soe valuable a person as you are, and one whom all my inclinations carry me to honour and love at a very great rate, and you will find by the trouble I last gave you of this kind how impossible it will be for you to be rid of an importunity which you have much encourag'd and how much your late silence alarm'd one yt is soe much concern'd for ye honour you doe her in allowing her to hope you will frequently let her know she hath some room in ye particular favour, I hope you have pardon'd me that complaint and allow'd a little jealousy to that great passion I have for you and that I shall with some more assurance come to thank you for this last favour of 12th instant, and must beg you to believe that if my convent were in Cataya and I a recluse by vow to it, yet I should never attain mortification enough to be able willingly to deny myself the great entertainment of your correspondance, which seems to remove me out of a solitary religious house on ye mountains and place me in the most advantageous prospect upon both court and town and give me right to a better place than of either, and that madam is your friendship, which is so great a present, that there is but one way to make it more valuable and yt is by making it less ceremonious and by using me with a freedom that may give me more access into your heart and this beg from you with a great earnestness, and will promise you that whatsoever liberties of that kind you allow me, yt I will never so much abase that goodness as to press mine own advantages further than you shall permit or lessen any of the respect I ow you, by the less formal approaches I desire to make to you who though I esteem above most of the world yet I love yet more.[116]

Orinda was a letter-writer of no mean ability herself, but she wrote with something of a professional tone, and possibly with an eye to numerous readers. It was only Dorothy that could make town and court live again. Macaulay's philippics against "the dignity of history" and his eulogy of the social value of such letters as Dorothy's must find approval from every one who tries to revivify a forgotten era. Dorothy was an acute observer. If the novel of domestic life had been in existence in her day she would have found the natural place for her clever and slightly caustic pen. The successive suitors and various dull visitors at Chicksands could have had little suspicion of the merry and facile wit that was serving up their oddities for the amusement of her lover. Furthermore, Dorothy was an inveterate reader, and a reader with mental reactions, an independent judgment, and a skill in witty comment. The general tone of the letters is a delightful mixture of humor, tenderness, and coquetry. No writing of the time was more unaffectedly human. And there were counsels of prudence and of good sense, bits of worldly wisdom and penetrating knowledge of human foibles. And with it all was the charm of style. When Mr. Temple wishes to know how she spends her day she outlines the slow-moving hours and closes with this delicate picture of evening:

The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there: but, trust me, I think these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings to their heels. I, that am not so nimble, stay behind; and when I see them driving home their cattle, I think 't is time for me to return too. When I have supped, I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it, when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this is not kind neither). In earnest, 't is a pleasant place, and would be much more so to me if I had your company. I sit there sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some cruel thoughts of the crossness of our fortunes that will not let me sleep there, I should forget that there were such a thing to be done as going to bed.[117]

Dorothy's easy, natural tone was quite in accord with her theory of letter-writing. She writes to Mr. Temple:

All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's discourse, not studied like an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm. 'T is an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find terms that will obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I knew who would never say "the weather grew cold," but that "winter begins to salute us." I have no patience for such coxcombs, and cannot blame an old uncle of mine who threw the standish at his man's head because he writ a letter for him, where instead of saying (as his master bid him) that "he had the gout in his hand" he said "that the gout would not permit him to put pen to paper." The fellow thought he had mended it mightily, and that putting pen to paper was much better than plain writing!

How in 1652-54 did Dorothy escape the grand style? She was steeped in romances and she read Jeremy Taylor with delight. But there are no preciosities, no attempted elaborateness or ornamentation or splendor in her style. She might have written after the moderns had won their victory so direct and straightforward is her speech. But the infinite charm of her letters belongs to no age. It is the expression of a personality.

We cannot leave Dorothy Osborne's letters without feeling defrauded that there are so few of them. After their marriage in 1655 the Temples lived five years in Ireland. Sir William's importance in state affairs led to a later residence in Brussels and at The Hague. After 1681 they lived in retirement at Moor Park and Swift and Stella were of their household. What opportunities for letters if Dorothy had only been as indefatigable as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! But except for a few personal notes from Sheen in 1665-67, Dorothy fades from our sight. Did accumulated sorrows sap her energy and dim her joyous courage? She had nine children. Seven of them died in infancy. Her daughter died of small-pox. Her son committed suicide because of fancied inability to perform a diplomatic mission. It is said that at some time during the years 1689-94 Queen Mary and Dorothy kept up a continuous correspondence. If such letters were written there is now no trace of them. The latest published letter from Dorothy is in 1689 in response to some expression of condolence for the death of her son. It is difficult to recognize in this subdued and dignified, almost cold and stately lady, the sparkling and mischievous Dorothy of the earlier letters.

Lady Pakington (d. 1679)

Just about contemporary with Mrs. Philips and the Duchess of Newcastle was a remarkable woman of quite another type. This was Lady Pakington, the daughter of Lord Coventry. If, as was long supposed, she wrote the series of books of which The Whole Duty of Man was one, that fact would place her very high in the ranks of seventeenth-century authors. With the consensus of expert opinion now against the ascription of these books to her, she yet holds an important place among learned women.[118] Dr. George Hickes, whose deanery was near Westwood, the home of Sir John Pakington, and who was intimate with the family, in the Preface to his Thesaurus which was inscribed to Sir John, gives a "character" of Lady Pakington in which he says she was trained in her youth by "the excellently learned Sir Norton Knatchbull," and that later in life she was mistress of all the learning, good judgment, sound thinking, and piety necessary to have been the author of the famous Whole Duty of Man. He says that noted divines declared her as learned in the history of pagan and Christian systems of thought as were they themselves; and that she knew concerning the antiquities of her own county "almost as much as the greatest proficients in that kind of knowledge." Especially did Dr. Hickes comment on her "talent for speaking correctly, pertinently, clearly, and gracefully," and on "her evenness of style and consistent manner of writing." No woman of the period came nearer being the tutelary deity of a coterie than did Lady Pakington. Her loyalty to the Church of England and to the Stuart cause made of her beautiful home at Westwood during the Protectorate a natural resort for royalist divines. Dr. Hammond, Bishop Fell, Bishop Morley, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Henchman, Bishop Gunning, were among those whose friendship and esteem she had acquired by her "great virtues and eminent attainments in knowledge." Before the Restoration she held a kind of Church of England salon, and though most of the men who frequented it were given benefices by Charles II and so scattered through England, Lady Pakington, by letter and occasional personal intercourse, kept up the friendships of the earlier days, through the nineteen years that she lived after the Restoration. And even if she did not write The Whole Duty of Man (1657) and the series that followed it, these books arose from the discussions held at Westwood.

Mary Boyle, the Countess of Warwick (1624-1678)

The Countess of Warwick is best known from her Diary, her Autobiography, and the sermon preached at her funeral by Dr. Anthony Walker, rector of Fyfield in Essex. The Diary was kept from July, 1666, till 1678. The part from 1666 to 1672 was published in 1847 by the Religious Tract Society with a memoir. The remainder is among the manuscripts in the British Museum.[119] Her Autobiography, under the title, Some Specialties in the Life of M. Warwicke, was published by the Percy Society in 1848.[120] Dr. Walker's sermon, entitled The Virtuous Woman found, her loss bewailed, and character exemplified, etc., was published in 1678 and 1687.[121]

Mary Boyle was married to Mr. Rich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, when she was but fifteen. Her life before that time she thus describes: "I was married into my husband's family, as vain, as idle, and as inconsiderate a person as possible, minding nothing but curious dressing and fond and rich clothes, and spending my precious time in nothing else but reading romances, and in reading and seeing plays, and in going to court, and Hide Park and Spring Garden; and I was so fond of the court, that I had taken a secret resolution that if my father died, and I was mistress of myself, I would become a courtier."[122] But by the time she was twenty-one a complete change was manifest. She became exceedingly devout. There is no more romance reading. The books on her chosen list are "St. Bernard, George Herbert, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Samuel Rutherford Clarke, the Confessions of St. Augustine, John Janeway's Dying, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Cayley's Glimpses of Eternity."[123] Her writing was all religious in tone. Rules for a Holy Life, Occasional Meditations, and Pious Reflections were among the topics she found most congenial. The Specialties in the Life of M. Warwicke shows the intensity of her struggle after spiritual perfection and her genuine aloofness from the gay and splendid scenes in which her rank compelled her to bear a part. The most ordinary occurrences, such as "lighting many candles at once," or "drawing the window-curtains to prevent the sun's putting out the fire," suggested pious reflections. At a glorious banquet at Whitehall "the trumpets sounding in the midst of all that great show" put mortifying thoughts into her mind and made her consider "what if the trump of God should now sound?" In a meditation entitled "Upon looking out of my window at Chelsea, upon the Thames," her delight in the sweet river when it is calm and serene, and her dislike of it—so that she shut her window and ceased to look—when it was rough, is moralized into the charm of calm and patient people as against those of turbulent passions.[124]

Lady Warwick's writings exhibit none of the joyous or fervent aspects of religion. In the midst of domestic trials, surrounded by an alien life, she was steadily tutoring her own heart, subduing her sins, following a high ideal. Dr. Walker in his sermon gives an example of seventeenth-century pulpit oratory in his effort adequately to praise this great lady, as conspicuous for goodness as for her rank and wealth: "An hundred mouths, and a thousand tongues though they all flowed with nectar, would be too few to praise her." "Oh," he exclaims, "for a Chrysostom's mouth, for an angel's tongue, to describe this terrestrial seraphine; or a ray of light condensed into a pencil, and made tactile, to give you this glorious child of light in viva effigie."

Lucy Apsley, Mrs. Hutchinson (1620-?)

That Lucy Hutchinson had written a life of her husband was known by many people and there were frequent requests in the eighteenth century that so valuable a historical document should be made accessible to the public. Mrs. Catherine Macaulay was one of those urgent in this matter, but without avail.[125] It was not till the manuscript came into the possession of the Reverend Julius Hutchinson that it was published. After the first edition in 1806 three editions appeared in four years. Some other writings besides the Memoirs were found among the papers of Mrs. Hutchinson. Of these the precious Autobiography was but a fragment. It not only closed abruptly, but leaves had been torn out. But from what remains we get one of the few accounts of the home education of girls in the first half of the seventeenth century. Her father and mother, extremely glad to welcome a girl after three sons, "applied all their cares and spared no cost" in her education. She describes this education as follows:

By the time I was four years old I read English perfectly, and having a great memory, I was carried to sermons; and while I was very young could remember and repeat them exactly, and being caressed, the love of praise tickled me, and made me attend more heedfully. When I was about seven years of age, I remember I had at one time eight tutors in several qualities, languages, music, dancing, writing and needle-work; but my genius was quite averse from all but my book, and that I was so eager of, that my mother, thinking it prejudiced my health, would moderate me in it; yet this rather animated me than kept me back, and every moment I could steal from my play I would employ in any book I could find, when my own were locked up from me. After dinner and supper I still had an hour allowed me to play, and then I would steal into some hole or other to read. My father would have me learn Latin, and I was so apt that I outstripped my brothers who were at school, although my father's chaplain, that was my tutor was a pitiful dull fellow. My brothers, who had a great deal of wit, had some emulation at the progress I made in my learning, which very well pleased my father; though my mother would have been contented if I had not so wholly addicted myself to that as to neglect my other qualities. As for music and dancing, I profited very little in them, and would never practise my lute or harpsichords but when my masters were with me; and for my needle I absolutely hated it. Play among other children I despised, and when I was forced to entertain such as came to visit me, I tired them with more grave instructions than their mothers, and plucked all their babies to pieces, and kept the children in such awe, that they were glad when I entertained myself with elder company; to whom I was very acceptable, and living in the house with many persons that had a great deal of wit, and very profitable serious discourses being frequent at my father's table and in my mother's drawing-room, I was very attentive to all, and gathered up things that I would utter again, to great admiration of many that took my memory and imitation for wit. It pleased God that, through the good instructions of my mother, and the sermons she carried me to, I was convinced that the knowledge of God was the most excellent study, and accordingly applied myself to it, and to practise as I was taught. I used to exhort my mother's maids much, and to turn their idle discourses to good subjects: but I thought, when I had done this on the Lord's day, and every day performed my due tasks of reading and praying, that then I was free to anything that was not sin.[126]

MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND HER SON
From an engraving in Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, 1808

Elsewhere she notes other elements of her education. She says that as soon as she was weaned, a Frenchwoman was taken to be her dry-nurse and she was taught to speak French and English together. At the siege of Nottingham Castle Mrs. Hutchinson is represented as acting the part of a surgeon. This knowledge may doubtless be referred to instructions by her mother. Sir Allen Apsley, Lucy's father, was lieutenant of the Tower of London during her youth, and Mrs. Apsley was very generous and humane to the prisoners. Her daughter says of her:

What my father allowed her she spent not in vanities, although she had what was rich and requisite upon occasions, but she laid most of it out in pious and charitable uses. Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make rare experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of skill, which was very profitable to many all her life.[127]

The love story of Lucy Apsley and Colonel Hutchinson is curiously interwoven with her learning. When Lucy was sixteen her mother took her into Wiltshire in pursuance of a contemplated marriage contract and left a younger sister at a house where she was "tabled for the practice of her lute." Mr. Hutchinson, "tabled" at the same house, was attracted by the vivacious child, and frequently accompanied her when she went over to her mother's house. On one of these occasions he saw some Latin books and was much interested to find that they belonged to Lucy. Then he heard that this Lucy was "reserved and studious," then that she composed songs above "the ordinary reach of a she-wit," then that she had "sense above the rest," but that she "shunned the converse of men as a plague." Strangely enough, these accounts, or some magic, or the hand of Providence, plunged Mr. Hutchinson into the despairs and ardors of love even before he had seen the lady. On her return, the proposed marriage contract not having been completed, he daily frequented her mother's house, and for six weeks "in the sweet season of the spring" they had opportunity for converse with each other. During this period some envious ladies endeavored to break the friendship by telling him that Lucy neglected her dress and all womanish ornaments, giving herself up wholly to study and writing. But since his love had owed its inception to a sight of her Latin books, and had been stimulated by hearing her poetry, these insinuations did not interfere with what his wife calls "a more handsome management of love than the best romances describe."[128]

Somewhat later Lucy Hutchinson's love of learning led her to at least a slight knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. That she kept up her Latin is shown by the fact that she translated part of the Æneid. In her early married life she found scholastic means to mitigate the monotony of the needlework she loathed. Out of a "youthful curiosity to understand things she had heard so much of at second-hand" she translated six books of Lucretius into verse, accomplishing this task, she says, "in a room where my children practised the several qualities they were taught with their tutors, and I numbered the syllables of my translation by the threads of the canvas I wrought in, and set them down with a pen and ink that stood by me."

There was not, however, in Mrs. Hutchinson's life much opportunity for scenes so domestic as this. She was married to Mr. Hutchinson in 1638. By 1642 her husband was definitely committed to the side of the Puritans, and the rest of their life till his death in 1664 was one of anxiety, conflict, and baffled high endeavor. But it was also a life of achievement and excitement, and constantly sweetened and stimulated by extraordinary affection between husband and wife. When at his death she retired to the family home at Owthorpe the days must have looked very blank and empty to the heroine of Nottingham Castle. Not even the care of her eight children could keep her mind from dwelling on the past. The message her husband sent her from his death-bed in the prison, "Let her, as she is above other women, show herself, on this occasion, a good Christian, and above other women,"[129] helped her to restrain extreme signs of grief, but her heart and mind were with him. And the mechanic exercise that dulled her grief was the writing of his Life. She had kept a rough sort of diary and this was the basis for the longer work. The writing was done between 1664 and 1671 when Mrs. Hutchinson herself died. The work was addressed "To my Children" and its purpose was to make them know the character and deeds of their father. But the narrative goes much farther than that. It is a minute account of the persons and events of that portion of the Civil War especially connected with Nottingham. She writes as an eye-witness and a participant. She wields a pen vigorous, racy, and unafraid. She had a genius for picturesque characterization, and her scornful descriptions of cowards and traitors are veiled by no feminine softness of phrase. When describing such treacherous members of the Parliament Party as Charles White and Chadwick and his wife her vocabulary of abuse is unstinted. But she is equally fluent in her account of heroes such as Colonel Thornhagh. The intrigues, the factions, the cross-currents, within the Puritan Party are as minutely analyzed and laid open as is the general contest between King and Parliament. Furthermore, the book is readable from beginning to end. It moves with the rapidity of a novel of adventure. Mr. A. H. Upham[130] has analyzed Mrs. Hutchinson's work to show that it was probably suggested by the Duchess of Newcastle's Life of her husband, and that, further, the general plan and even the choice of detail were guided by the Duchess's Memoir. The Life of the Duke of Newcastle, though not published till 1667, was written in 1665, and since the two families were neighbors, and knew each other well, it might easily be that Mrs. Hutchinson was acquainted with the work of the Duchess in manuscript. This ingenious theory is maintained by citations of passages showing numerous similarities. But the fact remains that Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoir moves forward as from the force of an original impulse, nobly religious, shrewd, caustic, affectionate, and naïve. It was, in subject-matter and style, a notable achievement, and while succeeding in the amplest measure in its purpose of exalting Colonel Hutchinson's memory, quite as deservedly gives to Mrs. Hutchinson her own unsought and higher pinnacle of fame.

Ann Harrison, Lady Fanshawe (1625-1680)

A few years before her death Lady Fanshawe wrote for her son a narrative of her life. Of her own education she says: "Now it is necessary to say something of my mother's education of me, which was with all the advantages that time afforded, both for working all sorts of fine works with my needle, and learning French, singing, (the) lute, the virginals, and dancing; and, notwithstanding I learned as well as most did, yet I was wild to that degree that the hours of my beloved recreation took up too much of my time; for I loved riding in the first place, and running, and all active pastimes; and in fine I was what we graver people call a hoyting girl. But to be just to myself I never did mischief to myself or other people, nor one immodest action or word in my life; but skipping and activity was my delight. But upon my mother's death and as an offering to her memory I flung away those little childishnesses that formerly possessed me and by my father's command took upon me the charge of his house and family, which I so ordered by my excellent mother's example as found acceptance in his sight."[131] At her mother's death Ann was "fifteen years and three months" old, and the household she took charge of was one "of plenty and hospitality," her father having a very great estate. In 1644 she married Sir Richard Fanshawe to whom she was passionately devoted during the twenty-six troubled years of their life together. She says: "Glory be to God, we never had but one mind throughout our lives, our souls were wrapped up in each other, our aims and designs one, and our resentments one. We so studied one the other that we knew each other's mind by our looks; whatever was real happiness God gave it me in him."[132]

LADY FANSHAWE
From an engraving in Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, London, 1830

When Lady Fanshawe wrote her Memoirs, her son Richard, her youngest child, was about ten or twelve years old. Her purpose apparently was to recount all the facts of the eventful family career. The narrative, except for an occasional outburst, was uncolored by emotion. One series of events recorded is the births and deaths of children. In a period of twenty years Lady Fanshawe had fourteen children and she records the deaths of nine of them. This would seem to be suffering and sorrow enough for one life. But we get an added conception of the family vicissitudes when we discover that no two of the fourteen children were born in the same house, and no two of the nine who died were buried in the same churchyard. Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Yorkshire, Kent, Hertfordshire, Oxford, were places of sad memory to the bereaved mother. Yet, except in the cases of "little Nan" and the first Richard, there is simply a recital of facts and dates. Lady Fanshawe was but fifty-five when she died, but she had gone through so much that a re-living of past emotions as well as a recalling of facts would have made the writing of the Memoirs an impossibility. As a narrative of the externals of life the story has singular interest. It abounds in striking contrasts. Money stringency, mishaps by land and sea, sicknesses, imprisonments, deaths, mingle strangely with official splendors, royal gifts, rich furnishings, gorgeous apparel. It is personal in tone, with as little historical detail as was consistent with carrying the narrative forward. And for that reason it is of importance to-day as a closer record of life than historians of the Civil War or of the reign of Charles II are likely to give.

Margaret Blagge, Mrs. Godolphin (1652-1678)

The most interesting personality in this early group is the beautiful Mrs.[133] Margaret Blagge. She is the supreme example of a developed religious sense in the court of Charles II. She was not driven to a life of devotion through a grief-enshrouded heart. Religion was to her joy and ecstasy. John Evelyn recorded in his Diary a determination to consecrate the worthy life of Margaret Blagge to posterity, and when he died in 1706 he left a list of "things I would write out fair and reform if I had leisure," among them being the Life of Mrs. Godolphin. This manuscript was first published in 1847. It records a life of singular charm and interest. Yet the facts of Margaret Blagge's life are meager enough. She was born in 1652; was early in France with the Countess of Guildford; when scarcely twelve became maid of honor to the Duchess of York; and then on the death of the Duchess in 1671 entered into the same service with Queen Catherine; in 1674, after a nine-year courtship, married Sidney Godolphin; and in 1678 died in child-birth. It is her inner life that counts, and that life would have left small record had not the beautiful young maid of honor chosen the wise and religious John Evelyn as her friendly counselor in her difficult attempt to maintain a life of purity and piety in the most dissolute court of Europe. Evelyn recounts the success of her devout life in these words: "Arethusa pass'd through all those turbulent waters without soe much as the least staine or tincture in her Chrystall; with her Piety grew up her Witt, which was soe sparkling, accompanyed with a Judgment and Eloquence so exterordinary, a Beauty and Ayre soe charmeing and lovely, in a word, an Address soe universally takeing, that, after a few years, the Court never saw or had seen such a Constellation of perfections amongst all their splendid Circles."[134] But though she was regarded as "a little miracle" at court, her heart was never there. To no young woman of the time were the pomp and glory of the world more alluringly open, but she turned instinctively from all such joys. She counted her beauty a snare and would never "trick and dress herself vpp ... to be fine and ador'd." Lovers crowded about her, but she avoided the vain converse of gallants. Evelyn records her particular gift for mimicry, recitation, acting, but such talents she held in abeyance. At sixteen she acted in a court play, probably Dryden's Indian Emperor, with great success, but her growingly devout spirit came to abhor such recreations, so that when she was summoned by royal request to act in Crowne's Calisto, in 1674, even though the play was to be given all by ladies, and those the most illustrious in the land, it was a matter of almost tragic grief to her that her duty forbade a refusal. "To be herselfe an Actoresse ... cost her not only great reluctancy but many teares."[135] Though she was decked with jewels worth £20,000, though she "trode the Stage with a surprizeing and admirable Aire," and though the whole theater was extolling her, she felt no transport, but, when an interval came, "retired into a Corner, reading a book of devotion." Not even the fact that she played the part of "Diana, the Goddess of Chastity," consoled her.

She had one real calling and that was to a religious life. As a child of seven, in France with the Countess of Guildford, though often "tempted by that By-Gott proselitesse to goe to Masse and be a papist,"[136] she yet could maintain her own faith. Because of her spiritual precocity she was "admitted to the holy Sacrament when she was hardly Eleaven years of age." Though she disliked Catholicism, she praised nunneries, and would have chosen a retired life of devotion and good works, had not her love for Mr. Godolphin and the urgent advice of Mr. Evelyn restrained her. Nearly all her writing and reading were along religious lines. Mr. Evelyn says on this point:

She has houres alsoe for reading historye and diversions of that nature; butt allwayes such as were choice, profitable and instructive, and she had devoured an incredible deale of that solid knowledge, and could accompt of it to admiration; soe as I have even beene astonished to find such an heape of excellent things and material observations collected and written with her owne hand, many of which (since her being with God) came to myne; for, besides a world of admirable prayers and pieces of flagrant devotion, meditations, and discourses on various subjects (which she compos'd), there was hardly a booke she read that she had not common placed, as it were, or taken some remarkable note of; add this to the Diary of her owne life, actions, resolutions, and other circumstances, of which I shall give some specimen. She had contracted the intire historye of the Scriptures, and the most illustrious examples, sentences, and precepts, digested under opposite and proper heads; and collected togeather the result of every Article of the Apostles' Creed, out of Bishop Pearson's excellent Treatise. I have allready spoken of her Sermon Notes: butt to give a just Account of her Letters, they are so many and in so excellent naturall and easy a style, that, as for their number, one would believe she did nothing else butt write, soe, for their weight and ingenuity, that she ought to doe nothing else; and soe easyly did her Invention flow, that I have seen her write a very long letter without once takeing off her pen (butt to dip it), and that with exterordinary Judgment.[137]

Her Diary is a delightfully spontaneous document. Here is one Resolution:

June the 2d.

I will nere play this halfe year butt att 3 penny omber, and then with one att halves. I will not I doe not vow, but I will not doe it;—what, loose mony att Cards, yet not give (to) the poore! 'T is robbing God, misspending tyme, and missimploying my Talent: three great Sinns. Three pounds would have kept three people from starveing a month: well, I will not play.[138]

Equally genuine and charming, but in more decorous and solemn fashion, is the letter in which she consecrated John Evelyn her friend. Indeed, the whole quaint and formal episode of the establishment of this remarkable friendship, seems incredibly pure and lovely when thought of as occurring in the court of which Grammont's Memoirs is a fair record. Evelyn wrote "a little master-piece of biography," partly because of his intimate knowledge of Mrs. Godolphin's spiritual experience and his personal affection for her, but also, in part, because his imagination was inevitably stimulated by the vision of a life so crystal clear in an environment so murky.

The versatility and intellectual energy of the Duchess of Newcastle, the quick wit and instinct for style in Dorothy Osborne's letters, the grave and sincere religious feeling coupled with considerable theological learning on the part of women in influential positions like Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, and Lady Warwick, the vivid social and political pictures in the biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Fanshawe, the gay playing with belles lettres in Mary North's little society, and especially the extraordinary vogue of Mrs. Philips, are sufficient indications, as we look back over the period, that a new spirit was awake. It reads now almost as if there were a general and brilliant opening of literary pursuits to women. But it is also significant to recall that Mrs. Philips and the Duchess of Newcastle were the only two women whose ability or learned tastes were known at the time beyond their own small private circle. In reality the work was sporadic, secluded, uninfluential. And the fame even of the Duchess of Newcastle and Mrs. Philips is hardly established before 1660. It is with the Restoration that the more varied and public activities begin.