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.