“Whether Fate or Art untwin’d his thread
Remains in doubt.”[1]
The doubt has now been dissipated by the research of an accomplished physician, Dr. Gee, who in 1874 communicated to the Athenæum (March 7, 1874) an extract from Richard Morton’s Πυρετολογἱα (1692), containing a full account of Marvell’s sickness and death. Art “untwin’d his thread,” but it was the doctor’s art. Dr. Gee’s translation of Morton’s medical Latin is as follows:—
“In this manner was that most famous man Andrew Marvell carried off from amongst the living before his time, to the great loss of the republic, and especially the republic of letters; through the ignorance of an old conceited doctor, who was in the habit on all occasions of raving excessively against Peruvian bark, as if it were a common plague. Howbeit, without any clear indication, in the interval after a third fit of regular tertian ague, and by way of preparation (so that all things might seem to be done most methodically), blood was copiously drawn from the patient, who was advanced in years.” [Here follow more details of treatment, which I pass over.] “The way having been made ready after this fashion, at the beginning of the next fit, a great febrifuge was given, a draught, that is to say, of Venice treacle, etc. By the doctor’s orders, the patient was covered up close with blankets, say rather, was buried under them; and composed himself to sleep and sweat, so that he might escape the cold shivers which are wont to accompany the onset of the ague-fit. He was seized with the deepest sleep and colliquative sweats, and in the short space of twenty-four hours from the time of the ague-fit, he died comatose. He died, who, had a single ounce of Peruvian bark been properly given, might easily have escaped, in twenty-four hours, from the jaws of the grave and the disease: and so burning with anger, I informed the doctor, when he told me this story without any sense of shame.”
Marvell was buried on the 18th of August, “under the pews in the south side of St. Giles’s Church in the Fields, under the window wherein is painted on glass a red lion.” So writes the invaluable Aubrey, who tells us he had the account from the sexton who made the grave.
In 1678 St. Giles’s Church was a brick structure built by Laud. The present imposing church was built on the site of the old one in 1730-34.
In 1774 Captain Thompson, so he tells us, “visited the grand mausoleum under the church of St. Giles, to search for the coffin in which Mr. Marvell was placed: in this vault were deposited upwards of a thousand bodies, but I could find no plate of an earlier date than 1722; I do therefore suppose the new church is built upon the former burial place.”
The poet’s grand-nephew, Mr. Robert Nettleton, in 1764 placed on the north side of the present church, upon a black marble slab, a long epitaph, still to be seen, recording the fact that “near to this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esquire.” At no great distance from this slab is the tombstone, recently brought in from the graveyard outside, of Georgius Chapman, Poeta, a fine Roman monument, prepared by the care and at the cost of the poet’s friend, Inigo Jones. Still left exposed, in what is now a doleful garden (not at all Marvellian), is the tombstone of Richard Penderel of Boscobel, one of the five yeomen brothers who helped Charles to escape after Worcester. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in 1648, and Shirley the dramatist, in 1666, had been carried to the same place of sepulture.
Aubrey describes Marvell “as of middling stature, pretty strong-set, roundish faced, cherry-cheeked, hazell eye, brown hair. He was, in his conversation, very modest, and of very few words. Though he loved wine, he would never drink hard in company, and was wont to say that he would not play the good fellow in any man’s company in whose hands he would not trust his life. He kept bottles of wine at his lodgings, and many times he would drink liberally by himself and to refresh his spirit and exalt his muse. James Harrington (author of Oceana) was his intimate friend; J. Pell, D.D., was one of his acquaintances. He had not a general acquaintance.”
Dr. Pell, one may remark, was a great friend of Hobbes.
In March 1679 joint administration was granted by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Mariæ Marvell relictæ et Johni Greni Creditori. This is the first time we hear of there being any wife in the case. A creditor of a deceased person could not obtain administration without citing the next of kin, but a widow was entitled, under a statute of Henry viii., as of right, to administration, and it may be that Mr. Green thought the quickest way of being paid his debt was to invent a widow. The practice of the court required an affidavit from the widow deposing that she was the lawful relict of the deceased, but this assertion on oath seems in ordinary cases to have been sufficient, if the customary fees were forthcoming. Captain Thompson roundly asserts that the alleged Mary Marvell was a cheat, and no more than the lodging-house keeper where he had last lived—and Marvell was a migratory man.[1] Mary Marvell’s name appears once again, in the forefront of the first edition of Marvell’s Poems (1681), where she certifies all the contents to be her husband’s works. This may have been a publisher’s, as the affidavit may have been a creditor’s, artifice. As against this, Mr. Grosart, who believed in Mary Marvell, reminds us that Mr. Robert Boulter, the publisher of the poems, was a most respectable man, and a friend both of Milton’s and Marvell’s, and not at all likely either to cheat the public with a falsely signed certificate, or to be cheated by a London lodging-house keeper. Whatever “Mary Marvell” may have been, “widow, wife, or maid,” she is heard of no more.