“Sir Robert Drury,” says Isaac Walton, “a gentleman of a very noble estate and a more liberal mind, assigned Donne and his wife a useful apartment in his own large house in Drury Lane, and rent free; he was also a cherisher of his studies, and such a friend as sympathised with him and his in all their joys and sorrows.”[529]
Sir Robert, wishing to attend Lord Hay as King James’s ambassador at his audiences in Paris with Henry IV., begged Donne to accompany him. But the poet refused, his wife being at the time near her confinement and in poor health, and saying that “her divining soul boded some ill in his absence.” But Sir Robert growing more urgent, and Donne unwilling to refuse his generous friend a request, at last obtained from his wife a faint consent for a two months’ absence. On the twelfth day the party reached Paris. Two days afterwards Donne was left alone in the room where Sir Robert and other friends had dined. Half an hour afterwards Sir Robert returned, and found Mr. Donne still alone, “but in such an ecstasy, and so altered in his looks,” as amazed him. After a long and perplexed pause, Donne said, “I have had a dreadful vision since I saw you; I have seen my dear wife pass by me twice in this room with her hair hanging about her shoulders and a dead child in her arms;” to which Sir Robert replied, “Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you, and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake.” Donne assured his friend that he had not been asleep, and that on the second appearance his wife stopped, looked him in the face, and then vanished.
The next day, however, neither rest nor sleep had altered Mr. Donne’s opinion, and he repeated the story with only a more deliberate and confirmed confidence. All this inclining Sir Robert to some faint belief, he instantly sent off a servant to Drury House to bring him word in what condition Mrs. Donne was. The messenger returned in due time, saying that he had found Mrs. Donne very sad and sick in bed, and that after a long and dangerous labour she had been delivered of a dead child; and upon examination, the delivery proved to have been at the very day and hour in which Donne had seen the vision. Walton is proud of this late miracle, so easily explainable by natural causes; and illustrates the sympathy of souls by the story of two lutes, one of which, if both are tuned to the same pitch, will, though untouched, echo the other when it is played.
Far be it from me to wish to ridicule any man’s belief in the supernatural; but still, as a lover of truth, wishing to believe what is, whether natural or supernatural, without confusing the former with the latter, let me analyse this pictured presentiment. An imaginative man, against his sick wife’s wish, undertakes a perilous journey. Absent from her—alone—after wine and friendly revel feeling still more lonely—in the twilight he thinks of home and the wife he loves so much. Dreaming, though awake, his fears resolve themselves into a vision, seen by the mind, and to the eye apparently vivid as reality. The day and hour happen to correspond, or he persuades himself afterwards that they do correspond with the result, and the day-dream is henceforward ranked among supernatural visions. Who is there candid enough to write down the presentiments that do not come true? And after all, the vision, to be consistent, should have been followed by the death of Mrs. Donne as well as the child.
Some verses are pointed out by Isaac Walton as those written by Donne on parting from her for this journey. But there is internal evidence in them to the contrary; for they refer to Italy, not to Paris, and to a lady who would accompany him as a page, which a lady in Mrs. Donne’s condition could scarcely have done. I have myself no doubt that the verses cited were written to his wife long before, when their marriage was as yet concealed. With what a fine vigour the poem commences!—
“By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long-striving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words’ masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten me!”
*****
And how full of true feeling and passionate tenderness is the dramatic close!—
“When I am gone dream me some happiness,
Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess;
Nor praise nor dispraise me; nor bless nor curse
Openly love’s force; nor in bed fright thy nurse
With midnight startings, crying out, ‘Oh! oh!
Nurse! oh, my love is slain! I saw him go
O’er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I,
Assailed, taken, fight, stabbed, bleed, and die.’”
The verses really written on Donne’s leaving for Paris begin with four exquisite lines—
“As virtuous men pass mild away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
‘The breath goes now,’ and some say ‘No!’”