The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

The attendants of Queen Elizabeth, on the other hand, detested her. When, in her age and ugliness, she would no longer look in a glass, it is said they used to amuse themselves with powdering her cheeks, and rouging her nose. Elizabeth, as a woman, no doubt hated Mary for her fascinations more than, as a queen, she feared her for her political pretensions; and, in spite of every justifying argument, it must be said, that she treated her with cruel treachery. In their earlier days, Elizabeth sent Mary a most rare diamond ring as a pledge of her friendship, and accompanied it with earnest promises of aid and sympathy. Aubrey describes this ring as consisting of separate parts, which, united, formed the device of two right hands supporting a heart between them, the heart itself being composed of two diamonds held together by a spring. The Queen of Scots, in her final distress, dispatched this token to Elizabeth by a trusty messenger, and in return was ordered to the block. Mrs. Jameson eloquently thinks, we must feel that the scale was set even, when we remember how Mary was loved, how Elizabeth was hated, and died at last in loneliness, writhing on the floor like a crushed spider. However much to be regretted, it is yet natural that the powerful facts and logic of the later historians, like Froude, should find our prejudices so stubbornly set in favor of Mary, and against Elizabeth. They will change slowly; but I suppose they must, in a large degree, change. Sarah Jennings, famous as that Duchess of Marlborough whom Pope so fearfully satirized under the name of Atossa, having been selected as lady in waiting of Queen Anne, was immediately taken to her bosom. The queen asked no subserviency: "Afriend is what I most want," she said. They laid aside all titles, and addressed each other as equals under the assumed names of Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Morley. This lackadaisical relation subsisted for several years. At length Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman disappeared in the Queen and the Duchess. The familiarity and arrogance of "Queen Sarah" became insufferable to Queen Anne, and the quondam friends parted as irreconcilable foes. Swift says of Queen Anne, that she "had not a sufficient stock of amity for more than one person at a time." She would always have a favorite, now, Miss Jennings; afterwards, Miss Hill, better known as Lady Masham, the earnest friend of Locke; then, somebody else.

In the terrible romance of the life of Marie Antoinette, the deserved friendships and the undeserved hatreds that clustered around the stately, affectionate, ill-fated queen, are clothed with exceeding interest. In the memoirs of the Countess D'Adhemar, the most beloved and steadfast of her attendants, who was equally her watchful servant and her trusted friend, all the details of these attractions and aversions may be found, drawn as only a woman would draw them. Madame Geniis, whose overtures for familiarity were repulsed, plotted against her with spiteful vindictiveness. Madame Campan, whom the queen loved and took into her service, in return idolized and sought to shield and bless her. By far the first, however, in the heart of the queen, was the Princess Lamballe, a young widow, whose charms of person and of character made her one of the most universally admired women of that period. The queen revived for the princess the office of superintendent of the household, that she might live at Versailles. Their attachment, based on mutual esteem and tenderness, and nurtured by many events, grew enthusiastic. It became the fashion for every lady to have a friend, who accompanied her wherever she went, to whom morning notes were written, and with whom tea was sipped, and the evening spent, after the pattern of Antoinette and Lamballe. The princess showed herself as heroic in devotion to her friend, amidst the horrible carnival which surrounded the close of their lives, as she had been modest, gentle, and sympathizing in the brilliant season that preceded. A few days before the terrible crisis of the Revolution burst on the head of the queen herself, the princess, who occupied a room in the palace, adjoining that of her friend, that she might share all her tears and dangers, was called for a short time to the Chateau de Vernon, by the illness of her aged father-in-law. Marie seized the opportunity to write a letter to her friend, begging her to take care of herself and not return. "Your heart would be too deeply wounded, you would have too many tears to shed over my misfortunes, you who love me so tenderly. Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of you; and you know I never change."

The princess hastened back to the side of her imperilled mistress. With unfaltering fondness and resolution she clung to her through the sack which filled the palace with ruins and blood; through the tedious and brutal examinations in the Assembly; and through the fearful imprisonment in the Temple, until the jailers violently tore her from the arms of her sobbing friend. In vain the ferocious wretches in power strove to wring from her something prejudicial to the queen. The brave and beautiful woman preferred death; and was delivered over to the crowd to be murdered. Madame de Lebel, to whom the princess had been very kind, was going to inquire after the fate of her beloved benefactress, when she heard the howls of an approaching procession. She ran into the shop of a hairdresser; and was quickly followed by one of the mob, who ordered the master of the shop to dress the head of Madame de Lamballe. The princess was celebrated for the length and richness of her fine, golden locks. At this very moment, concealed among their bright, clustering masses, was found the letter from Antoinette, quoted above. The barber took the poor, disfigured head into his hands, cleansed the face from blood, and arranged and powdered the ringlets. The ruffian said, "Antoinette will recognize it now;" and, replacing it on the point of his pike, moved forward with the mob to the prison of the unhappy queen, before whose windows they elevated the appalling trophy, at the same time shrieking to her to look on it. After this experience, and others scarcely less revolting, we may well believe that the high-souled daughter of Maria Theresa welcomed the executioner's axe as a blessed relief. We see her, clad in the pale royalty of her personal beauty and grief, refusing insult, moving, in the death- cart, through the yelling masses of the populace, to her doom, like a goddess, incapable of degradation, borne in a car above an infuriated herd of apes, who vainly struggle to drag her down to themselves. Madame Salvage de Faverolles had a passionate faculty of admiration. She was fascinated with Madame Weamer, who was not much drawn to her, though she always treated her with kindness. Her unclaimed affection at length found its home in Queen Hortense, the daughter of Josephine, and the mother of Louis Napoleon. She was inseparable from her, and was called, with a touch of satire or humor, her body-guard. She identified herself with every enterprise, hope, or thought of her friend; accompanied her on every journey; watched over her in her last sickness, night and day, with heroic fidelity; and, after her death, executed her will in all particulars. The present Emperor of France has always had the credit of an ardent love for his mother. A just sentiment of gratitude would seem to require him—if he has not already done it—to enshrine, with tributary honor, close beside the ashes of the unhappy queen of Holland, those of Madame Salvage, the most unwearied and inalienable of all her friends.

PAIRS OF FEMALE FRIENDS.

PASSING on from the classes of feminine friendships now described, we come to individual instances of this affection in pairs of women. The young Beatrice Portinari, and Giovanna, that chosen companion of hers, who, for the singular freshness of her beauty, was called by the Florentines, Primavera, the Spring, are immortalized as a pair of friends by the divine touch of Dante, in his "Vita Nuova," where he mentions them under the names of Monna Vanna and Monna Bice. Very likely they were schoolgirls together, who did not suffer the fondness engendered in their shared studies and painted hopes and opening dreams of life to cease with the close, of that enchanted era.

Lady Dorothea Sydney and Lady Sophia Murray were a pair of friends whom it must have been delightful to contemplate, and is still, in a paler way, delightful to recall by literary reminiscence. They were the Sacharissa and Amoret of Waller. He dedicates a graceful poem to their friendship. These lines Occur in it:

Not the silver doves that fly
Yoked to Cytherea's car;
Not the wings that lift so high,
And convey her son so far,
Are so lovely, sweet, and fair,
Or do more ennoble love,
Are so choicely matched a pair,
Or with more consent do move.

Regina Collier and Katherine Phillips were, for a long period, a happy pair of friends. Friendship held so large a place in the life and writings of the latter lady that a brief sketch of her experience, and of its expression, will be interesting. The Mrs. Katherine Phillips, to whom Jeremy Taylor dedicated his celebrated discourse on the "Offices and Measures of Friendship," enjoyed a great reputation among her contemporaries, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and in the succeeding generation, as a woman of accomplishments and genius. Now that she is almost forgotten, it surprises one to read the extravagant published compliments lavished on her, in her life-time, by so many distinguished persons. The most remarkable peculiarity, alike of her character and of her literary productions, is the extraordinary prominence in them of the sentiment of friendship. She seems nearly all her life to have been enamored of this experience. Her affectionate spirit drew people to her by its strong charms, and still breathes vividly in her neglected pages. The overcharged and somewhat fantastic ideal of friendship which she unweariedly strove to realize in her relations with various persons, was so sincere and earnest in heart, that no one, who appreciates it, can suffer himself to ridicule, though he may smile at, its apparent affectation on the surface. Its deep ear nestness is proved in her life and character, as set forth by her associates: its superficial fancifullness appears in the sentimental names she was pleased to give herself and her friends. She was Orinda: her friends were Palmon, Poliarchus, Philaster, Silvander, Polycrite, Valeria, Lucasia, Rosania. Friendship is prominently treated in nearly every thing that she wrote. Her friendships with men, Jeremy Taylor, Francis Finch, Sir Charles Cotterel, and others, were as happy and unbroken as they were fervent and pure. Her long correspondence with Cotterel was published under the title, "Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus." When Finch had written his treatise on friendship, Mrs. Phillips addressed to him a poem, inscribed, "To the Noble Palmon, on his Incomparable Discourse of Friendship:"

Temples and statues time will eat away;
And tombs, like their inhabitants, decay:
But here Palm non lives, and so he must
When marbles crumble to forgotten dust.

There is also in her volume of poems, another one addressed to "Mr.
Francis Finch, the Excellent Palmmon:"