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of her husband was known by many people and there were frequent requests in the eighteenth century that so valuable a historical document should be made accessible to the public.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."