Anne Killigrew (1660-1685)
Anne Killigrew came of a family prominent in the court of Charles II. Her uncle Thomas, the "court wit," was given a patent for the Theater Royal; her uncle Henry was admiral under James, Duke of York; her father was chaplain to James and Master of the Savoy; and Anne was maid of honor to Mary of Modena. She was born in St. Martin's Lane and died at her father's lodgings within the Cloisters of Westminster. London and the court were her habitat. Ballard says she had "a polite education," but no details are given. She apparently was taught the accomplishments counted necessary for a girl in her social position. That she went beyond mediocrity in painting we have already seen.[200] In poetry, also, according to Dryden, she excelled. The thin volume of her published verse (1686) scarcely justifies his eulogy, but Wood, in Athenæ Oxoniensis, says that Dryden in no way exceeds the truth. Her poems sent anonymously from hand to hand received high praise and were even at first attributed to the best poets of the age. They gradually came to be known as hers, but she gives no evidence of having suffered any contumely as a poetess. She has nowhere any complaint of undue or irritating feminine limitations. She is pessimistic, scornful, rather hard and drastic, in her judgments, but it is greed for gold, ambition for place or power, unbridled love, atheism, war, that are the subjects of her invective. There is not a light or playful, or even a happy, touch in her poems. They have a crude virility, what Dryden calls a "noble vigour," and a contemptuous outlook on "the truly wretched Human Race."
Personally Miss Killigrew must have been attractive. Her epitaph eulogizes her as a daughter and a sister:
In a numerous race
And vertuous, the highest place
None envy'd her: sisters, brothers,
Her admirers were and lovers:
She was to all s' obliging sweet,
All in one love to her did meet.
And she was an acknowledged favorite at court, especially with her royal master and mistress. Dryden emphasizes her beauty and charm. The portrait she painted of herself shows her in no sense averse to pomps and vanities of attire.[201] In actual life she must have moved along in fairly smooth accord with the life about her, but there could have been few ladies within the circle of the court more alien to it in spirit than Anne Killigrew. It is difficult to place her mentally amid the gayeties of London life. She presents an anomaly. To be young, beautiful, gifted, high in social opportunities, praised and loved, and yet to look out upon life with bitterness and distaste, to be conscious at twenty-five that all this world has to offer will turn to dust and ashes in the mouth—such is the curious combination we find in her. While the few accessible details concerning her indicate a considerable degree of lovableness, her poems are those of an implacable moral censor.