The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

"Never, my friend, are you forgotten, when my soul seeks communion with our common Father; and when I strive most earnestly to overcome some evil propensity, or to make some generous sacrifice, the thought of you gives me strength not my own."

There is something especially attractive, solacing, and noble in such a relation as the foregoing. It covers a large class of friendships existing between Protestant clergymen and the women who, blessed by their instructions and personal interest, have formed an attachment to them of grateful reverence and sympathy. Such an attachment is often a communication of profit and pleasure most precious to both parties.

Several instances are recorded in the memoirs of Theodore Parker. His friendship with Miss Frances Power Cobbe is particularly worthy of notice. She wrote her gratitude to him for the benefits her mind had derived from his writings. Gratefully appreciating her worth and high aims, he continued to correspond with her by letter until his death. How cordial their relation became; what kind deeds went across it; what delights it yielded; what a deep and pure blessing of encouragement, joy, and peace it was to them both—appears in the few letters given to the public. When they first met, the titanic toiler, outworn with his cares and battles, was at the edge of death. "Do not," said the expiring athlete, "do not say what you feel for me; it makes me too unhappy to leave you." During those lingering days of transition from the earthly state to the heavenly, he dared not trust himself to see her often. As he said, "it made his heart swell too high." A class of friendships of extreme moral value, and often of great attractiveness, results from the relations of noble and royal women with the scholars and philosophers chosen to serve them as tutors or advisers. The names of Zenobia and Longinus give us an example of it in antiquity. If the annals of the crowned houses of Europe, imperial and provincial, were searched with reference to this point, a large number of admirable instances would be brought to light. On the one side power, rank, grace, patronage, every courtly charm; on the other side, learning, experience, gratitude, devoted service, eminent personal worth—could not fail in many instances to give birth to the most cordial esteem, and lead to a charming intercourse. Such was the case with both Wieland and Herder, and those queenly ladies, the Duchess Mother and the reigning Duchess of the court of Weimar. The relation between Columbus and Queen Isabella, after her chivalrous confidence and patronage—must have drawn their souls towards each other with a romantic interest, only needing better opportunities for personal intimacy to warm into a fervent sympathy.

The Countess of Pembroke, wife of that Philip Herbert who was the brother of Shakespeare's friend, showed how tenderly she remembered her old instructor, Daniel, the poet-laureate, by erecting a handsome monument to him in Beckington Church, bearing this inscription: "Here lies, expecting the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the dead body of Samuel Daniel, Esq., who was tutor to the Lady Anne Clifford in her youth. She was that daughter and heir to George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, who, in gratitude to him, erected this monument to his memory, a long time after, when she was Countess Dowager of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery." One of the most beautiful recorded friendships of this kind is that revealed in the long correspondence of Descartes and his pupil, the Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. Her charming character and distinguished attainments add largely to the gratification with which we trace her ardent esteem and attachment for her instructor and friend, whose brilliant genius and adventurous career are of themselves fascinating. A pleasing little volume by M. de Caren was published at Paris so lately as the year 1862, under the title, "Descartes and the Princess Palatine, or the Influence of Cartesianism on the Women of the Seventeenth Century." An example of a kindred friendship is also given by Leibnitz and his pupil, Caroline of Brunswick. Soon after the electoress became Queen of Prussia, she invited him to visit her, saying, "Think not that I prefer this greatness and this crown, about which they make such a bustle here, to the conversations on philosophy we have had together in Lutzenburg." Frederick the Great relates that the queen, in her last hours, mentioned the name of Leibnitz. One of the ladies in waiting burst into tears, and the queen said to her, "Weep not for me; for I am now going to satisfy my curiosity respecting the origin of things, which Leibnitz has never been able to explain to me, respecting space, existence and non- existence, and the Infinite." Frederick adds, that, as "those persons to whom Heaven vouchsafes gifted souls raise themselves to an equality with monarchs, this queen esteemed Leibnitz well worthy of her friendship." The philosopher was affected deeply and long by the loss of her who had been his closest and best friend. He wrote, being absent at the time, to one of her favorite maids, who was also a friend of his own, "I infer your feelings from mine. I weep not; I complain not; but I know not where to look for relief. The loss of the queen appears to me like a dream; but when I awake from my revery, I find it too true. Your misfortune is not greater than mine; but your feelings are more lively, and you are nearer to the calamity. This encourages me to write, begging you to moderate your sorrow. It is not by excessive grief that we shall best honor the memory of one of the most perfect princesses of the earth; but rather by our admiration of her virtues. My letter is more philosophical than my heart, and I am unable to follow my own counsel: it is, notwithstanding, rational." Ascham relates, in his "Schoolmaster," a conversation he once held with Lady Jane Grey. She said that the sports of the gentlemen and ladies in the park were but a shadow of pleasure compared with that which she found in reading Plato. And, in explaining how she came to take such delight in learning, she said, "One of the benefits that ever God gave me is that he sent so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, or dancing, or any thing else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened; yea, presently sometimes, with pinches, nips, bobs, and other ways, which I will not name, for the honor I bear them, so without measure misordered that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teaches me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing while I am with him." Elizabeth Robinson, afterwards the famous Mrs. Montague, the attracting centre of a noted and memorable association of friends, both men and women, had an exemplary friendship, full of good offices and pleasure, and undisturbed by any thing until death, with her preceptor, the distinguished scholar and writer, Conyers Middleton. Hester Lynch Salusbury, at thirteen, formed a most affectionate attachment to Dr. Collier, a guest of her father, who had volunteered to supervise her education. "He was just four times my age; but the difference or agreement never crossed my mind. A friendship more tender, or more unpolluted by interest or by vanity, never existed. Love had no place at all in the connection, nor had he any rival but my mother." The young Hester afterwards became the famous Mrs. Thrale, to all the varied incidents of whose long and close friendship with Dr. Johnson the world-Wide renown of that great man has given a universal publicity. The relation of patroness, sustained with such signal grace and generosity, and with such soothing and inspiring effect, by many queenly ladies in former times, is virtually obsolete now. But it has left memorials never to die; and it is hard to imagine any office which at this day should be more grateful and gracious, more full of happiness and good to a woman of noble heart and mind, blessed with position, wealth, and culture, than that of extending appreciative sympathy, aid, and encouragement, to young men of genius, in their unbefriended, early struggles. It has been strikingly said by that noble woman, Sarah Austin, with reference to Madame Récamier, "All who were admitted to her intimacy, hastened to her with their joys and their sorrows, their projects and ideas; certain not only of secrecy and discretion, but of the warmest and readiest sympathy. If a man had the rough draught of a book, a speech, a picture, an enterprise, in his head, it Was to her that he unfolded his half-formed plan, sure of an attentive and sympathizing listener. This is one of the peculiar functions of women. It is incalculable what comfort and encouragement a kind and wise woman may give to timid merit, what support to uncertain virtue, what wings to noble aspirations." Chaucer was thus patronized by Philippa, queen of Edward III; by Anne of Bohemia, for whom he composed his "Legend of Good Women;" and most of all by Blanche of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt, whose courtship he celebrated allegorically in the "Parliament of Birds," whose epithalamium he sang in his "Dream," and whose death he lamented in his "Book of the Duchess." The beautiful and kindly Lady Venetia Digby patronized and befriended Ben Jonson. The attentions of so fair and gentle a creature as she was, according to the description of her in his two poems, called, "The Picture of the Body," and "The Picture of the Mind,"—could not have been otherwise than most soothing, grateful, and inspiring to him. She was found dead in her bed one morning, her cheek resting on her hand.

She past away
So sweetly from the world, as if her clay
Laid only down to slumber.

Jonson dedicated to her memory the imperishable tribute of his heart in a long poem made up of ten parts. The ninth part is inscribed, "Elegy on my Muse, the truly honored Lady Venetia Digby, who, living, gave me leave to call her so." These lines are from it:

There time that I died too, now she is dead,
Who was my Muse, and life of all I said,
The spirit that I wrote with and conceived
All that was good or great with me, she weaved,
And set it forth: the rest were cobwebs fine,
Spun out in name of some of the old Nine,
To hang a window or make dark the room
Till, swept away, they were cancelled with a broom.

Lucy, the Countess of Bedford, was likewise a great friend of Ben Jonson. He has sung her worth in one of the most magnificent of his shorter poems. She was also a kind and fast friend of Daniel and Donne, both of whom wrote verses in her honor. But Jonson vastly distanced them both. Exquisite and sublime as his praise was, it was agreed, by those who knew her, that she fully deserved it. It is a luxury to recall such a tribute:

This morning, timely rapt with holy fire,
I thought to form unto my zealous Muse
What kind of creature I could most desire
To honor, serve, and love; as poets use,
I meant to make her fair and free and wise,
Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great;
I meant the day-star should not brighter rise,
Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat.
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride:
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside.
Only a learned and a manly soul
I purposed her, that should, with even powers,
The rock, the spindle, and the shears, control,
Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours.
Such when I meant to feign, and wished to see,
My Muse bade, BEDFORD write, and that was She.

Milton had many qualities and tastes fitting him to be the delight of female society, and to delight in it. His natural bent for all the delicacies of sentiment, for every fine and high range of character, thought, and passion, has strewn many choice expressions of itself in his writings, and sprinkles his poems with eulogistic allusions to the virtues and charms of womanhood. These have too much escaped the popular notice, which has fastened on the numerous stinging utterantes wrung from certain bitter passages of his experience. Scores of critics have dwelt on the terrible traits he has given to Delilah in "Samson Agonistes," where one has called attention to the breathing emotion, the celestial coloring, the ineffable sweetness and grandeur he has lavished on the Lady in "Comus." For imperishable monuments of his friendships with the selectest women of that age, behold his Italian lines to Leonora Baroni, his sonnets "To a Virtuous Young Lady," "To the Lady Margaret Ley," "To the Memory of Mrs. Catharine Thomson," and the record of his long and unbroken intimacy with the admirable and all-accomplished Countess Ranclagh, of whom he said, "She was to me in the place of every want."