I have read also, though I confess my acquaintance with the classics is but limited, of a certain Latin poetess Sulpicia, who celebrated her husband Calenas: and the poet Ausonius composed many fine verses in praise of a beautiful and virtuous wife, whose name I forget.[18]
But I feel I am treading unsafe ground, rendered so both by my ignorance, and by my prejudices as a woman. Generally speaking, the heroines of classical poetry and history are not much to my taste; in their best virtues they were a little masculine, and in their vices, so completely unsexed, that one would rather not think of them—speak of them—far less write of them.
The earliest instance I can recollect of modern conjugal poetry, is taken from a country, and a class, and a time where one would scarce look for high poetic excellence inspired by conjugal tenderness. It is that of a Frenchwoman of high rank, in the fifteenth century, when France was barbarised by the prevalence of misery, profligacy, and bloodshed, in every revolting form.
Marguèrite-Eléonore-Clotilde de Surville, of the noble family of Vallon Chalys, was the wife of Bérenger de Surville, and lived in those disastrous times which immediately succeeded the battle of Agincourt. She was born in 1405, and educated in the court of the Count de Foix, where she gave an early proof of literary and poetical talent, by translating, when eleven years old, one of Petrarch's Canzoni, with a harmony of style wonderful, not only for her age, but for the times in which she lived. At the age of sixteen she married the Chevalier de Surville, then, like herself, in the bloom of youth, and to whom she was passionately attached. In those days, no man of noble blood, who had a feeling for the misery of his country, or a hearth and home to defend, could avoid taking an active part in the scenes of barbarous strife around him; and De Surville, shortly after his marriage, followed his heroic sovereign, Charles the Seventh, to the field. During his absence, his wife addressed to him the most beautiful effusions of conjugal tenderness to be found, I think, in the compass of poetry. In the time of Clotilde, French verse was not bound down by those severe laws and artificial restraints by which it has since been shackled: we have none of the prettinesses, the epigrammatic turns, the sparkling points, and elaborate graces, which were the fashion in the days of Louis Quatorze. Boileau would have shrugged up his shoulders, and elevated his eyebrows, at the rudeness of the style; but Molière, who preferred
J'aime mieux ma mie, oh gai!
to all the fades galanteries of his contemporary bels esprits, would have been enchanted with the naïve tenderness, the freshness and flow of youthful feeling which breathe through the poetry of Clotilde. The antique simplicity of the old French lends it such an additional charm, that though in making a few extracts, I have ventured to modernize the spelling, I have not attempted to alter a word of the original.
Clotilde has entitled her first epistle "Heroïde à mon époux Bérenger;" and as it is dated in 1422, she could not have been more than seventeen when it was written. The commencement recalls the superscription of the first letter of Heloïse to Abelard.
Clotilde, au sien ami, douce mande accolade!
A son époux, salut, respect, amour!
Ah, tandis qu'eplorée et de cœur si malade,
Te quier[19] la nuit, te redemande au jour—
Que deviens? où cours tu? Loin de ta bien-aimée,
Où les destins, entrainent donc tes pas?
'Faut que le dise, hèlas! s'en crois la renommée
De bien long temps ne te reverrai pas?