Chapter 9

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 withinthe 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, inAthenæ 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 raceAnd vertuous, the highest placeNone 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.

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 withthe 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.

Anne Killigrew was but four when Mrs. Philips died, but the spell of the "Matchless Orinda" descended early upon her, and she gives one of the earliest of the many eulogies written by women concerning their distinguished ancestor among British Muses.

Orinda (Albion, and her sex's grace)Ow'd not her glory to a beauteous face:It was her radiant soul that shone within,Which struck a lustre thro' her outward skin;That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye,Advanc'd herheight, and sparkled in her eye.Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame.But high'r 'mongst the stars it fixt her name;What she did write, not only all allow'd,But ev'ry laurel, to her laurel bow'd!

Orinda (Albion, and her sex's grace)

Ow'd not her glory to a beauteous face:

It was her radiant soul that shone within,

Which struck a lustre thro' her outward skin;

That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye,

Advanc'd herheight, and sparkled in her eye.

Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame.

But high'r 'mongst the stars it fixt her name;

What she did write, not only all allow'd,

But ev'ry laurel, to her laurel bow'd!

Mrs. Evelyn (1635-1709) and Mary Evelyn (1665-85)

John Evelyn's flattering letter to the Duchess of Newcastle, already quoted, with its list of learned women, his suggestion to Lord Cornbury that he add two ladies to his gallery of notables, the trouble he took to conduct a party of ladies to see the girls' "colleges" at Hackney, and various references inNumismata(1697) indicate a genuine interest in the intellectual achievements of women. Mrs. Evelyn seems at first to have been of a different temper. She wrote as follows to her son's tutor, Mr. Bohun, in 1672:

Women were not borne to reade authors, and censure the learned, to compare lives and judge of virtues, to give rules of morality, and sacrifice to the Muses. We are willing to acknowledge all time borrowed from family duties misspent; the care of children's education, observing a husband's commands, assisting the sick, relieving the poore, and being serviceable to our friends, are of sufficient weight to employ the most improved capacities amongst us. If sometimes it happens by accident that one of a thousand aspires a little higher, her fate commonly exposes her to wonder, but adds little to esteeme. The distaffe will defend our quarrels as well as the sword, and the needle is as instructive as the penne. A heroine is a kind of prodigy: the influence of a blazing starre is not more dangerous, or more avoyded. Though I have lived under the roofe of the learned, and in the neighborhood of science, it has had no other effect on a temper like mine, but that of admiration.

But these very letters, in which Mrs. Evelyn disclaims learning, would be a capital point in refutation of Macaulay's charge of general feminine illiteracy. In subject-matter, in style, and in the mechanics of writing they show a development not unworthy of that "roofe of the learned" under which she dwelt. At the time Mrs. Evelyn wrote the letter just quoted her daughter Mary was but six years old, but her literary and artistic tastes must have soon become manifest, for when she died of small-pox at nineteen she was an accomplished young woman, on the road, apparently, to be the dangerous "blazing starre" her mother decried, and her training must have been going on for ten or twelve years in the home with the active connivance of her parents. Her father was exceedingly proud, not only of her excellence in dancing and music, but especially, it would seem, of her passion for books. She had, he said, "read abundance of history, and all the best poets, even Terence, Plautus, Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid; all the best romances and modern poems." After her death they found among her papers a commonplace book in which she had entered "an incredible number of selections from historians, poets, travellers." Her piety and her impulse towards expression were both shown in the many "resolutions, contemplations, prayers and devotions" she left in writtenform. Of the extent to which both Mrs. Evelyn and her daughter carried their work in painting and enamel I have already spoken.[202]

The Evelyn household may stand doubtless as one of many where, without any tinge of pedantry or any especial outward manifestations of learning, there was yet a natural interest in arts and letters, an interest shared, in quite a simple, normal way by all the members of the family.

The Honorable Miss Dudleya North (1675-1712)

The Honorable Miss Dudleya North was a niece of the Honorable Roger North, and it is through the memorableLives of the Northsthat we come upon an account of her life. Dudleya and her two younger brothers were brought up together. She learned the same lessons and read the same books as her brothers, and joined in their amusements. When they went to the University, she carried on her studies at home and she became one of the most highly cultured and learned women of her time. After she had conquered Greek and Latin she advanced to Hebrew, and finally, "by a long and severe course of study," she gained "a competent knowledge in the whole circle of Oriental learning." Her uncle Roger laconically described her life as follows: "The eldest sister, Catharine, died ... and the youngest, named Dudleya, having emaciated herself with study whereby she had made familiar to her, not only Greek and Latin, but the Oriental languages, under the infliction of a sedentery distemper, died also."

The fine collection of Oriental books left by Miss North was given by her brother, Lord North and Grey, to the parochial library at Rougham in Norfolk. Her uncle wrote: "I have had a design to build a parochial library at Rougham, and now shall finish it this summer, and placing my niece's books there, entitle the CatalogueEx dono, etc.,e libris eruditissimæ virginis, etc., which will be a monument more lasting than marble."[203]

Anne Lee, Lady Wharton (1632?-1685)

Anne Lee, the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee, married in 1673 Thomas Wharton, whose chief interest in her was based on the large dowry she brought him. The unhappiness of her married life received some alleviation from the wise and steadfast friendship of Dr. Gilbert Burnet. In 1680-81, she was in France for her health and during this time she corresponded regularly with Dr. Burnet. He addressed to her various poems with titles such asThe Secrets of Friendship,Friendship's Mysteries,Pure Love, andLove's Magnetism. She wrote a tragedy in blank verse on the love of Ovid for Julia, a number of Scripture paraphrases, and some occasional poems.[204]Some of these poems drew approving verses from Dryden in hisEleonora, a panegyrical poem on the death of Mrs. Wharton's elder sister, Lady Abingdon, in 1691, and from Waller, who, in his old age, was still equal to flattering a new "Chloris," under which name he celebrated her learning and her poetry.

Ann Baynard (1672-1697)

Ann Baynard had a natural propensity to learning and her father Dr. Edward Baynard, Fellow of the College of Physicians, London, gave her a very liberal education. Dr. Prude[205]says of her:

As for learning, whether it be to know and understand natural causes and events, to know the courses of the sun, moon, and stars; the qualities of herbs and plants; to be acquainted with the demonstrable verities of the mathematicks; the study of philosophy; the writings of the antients; and that in their own proper language, without the help of an interpreter: These and the like are the most noble accomplishments of the human mind, and accordingly do bring great delight and satisfactionalong with them, these things she was not only conversant in, but mistress of, and that to such a degree, that very few of her sex did ever arrive at. She had from her infancy been trained up in the knowledge of these things, and had made a great progress therein; and even in her green years, at the age of 23, was arrived to the knowledge of a bearded philosopher.[206]

She was a "nervous and subtle disputant" in the "hard and knotty arguments of metaphysical learning." She was always coveting more knowledge, saying that it was a sin to be contented with but a little. She was exceedingly religious and learning was to her but a handmaid of piety. Her last words were a recommendation to women to study philosophy and the great book of nature which would give them a sound basis for wisdom in practical life. Women, she said, are capable of such study, and could accomplish much if they would "spend of that time in study and thinking, which they do in visits, vanity and folly." Mr. Collier, in theGreat Historical Dictionary, says of her that it is doubtful whether the first Ralph Baynard, who for his conduct at the battle of Hastings was rewarded with eighty-five lordships, did more honor to the name of Baynard or the last Anne.

Mrs. Alicia D'Anvers (fl. 1691)

Academia: or the Humours of the University of Oxford in burlesque verseis a thin quarto by Mrs. Alicia D'Anvers. It was printed in May, 1691, and again with a fuller descriptive title in June of the same year. The poem is an account given to his fellow-servants by John who has recently visited Oxford. Mrs. D'Anvers puts herself in John's place. She uses his crude and even rough language, she gives his point of view, and relishes the misconceptions due to his ignorance. Heavy and clumsy as the poem is there is something refreshing and original in its tone. As an attempted realistic portrayal of a servant's experiences it stands quite by itself, except in comedies, in the decades before the novel widened human interests. Mrs. D'Anvers isneither patronizing nor didactic. She simply finds genuine humor and entertainment in the comic juxtaposition of John's mind and the ancient customs and glories of Oxford.

Lady Chudleigh (1656-1710)

Lady Chudleigh[207]was a lady of much repute in the eighteenth century for her writings in both prose and verse. HerPoemswere published in 1703 and herEssaysin 1710, but her chief literary activities belong in the late seventeenth century. HerEssaysare disquisitions on Pride, Humility, Self-love, Friendship, Death, Anger, Avarice, Solitude, and kindred themes. Mr. Ballard says of them: "They appear to be, not the excursions of a lively imagination ... so much as the deliberate results of a long exercise in the world, improv'd with reading, regulated with judgment; softened by good breeding, and heightened with sprightly thoughts and elevated piety." Her prose style is fluent, energetic, and, for the most part, correct. In her Preface to herSong of Three Children Paraphrasedshe makes several points that indicate mental independence. In the height of the dominance of the heroic couplet she chooses Pindaric verse because she does not wish to be tied up to the rules of the couplet, and because she desires to give her fancy greater scope. She begs pardon for introducing into her poem ideas "not generally received," such as Dr. Burnet's conception of the "Ante-diluvian Earth as Smooth, regular, and uniform; without Mountains or Hills." Concerning her poetic use of the doctrine of preëxistence she says, "To me 't is indifferent which is true, as long as I know I am by the Laws of Poetry allow'd the Liberty of chusing that which will sound most gracefully in Verse." In regard to the stars she adopts "the Cartesian Hypothesis" because it makes the universe "appear infinitely larger, fuller, more magnificent." Her imagination is as genuinely excited as was Tennyson's by her conception of the "boundless Spaces" of the heavens and the splendor of the "huge Globes which roll over our Heads." She believes alsoin a millennial existence on "a new habitable earth." The poem itself is an unbroken ecstasy ninety long stanzas in duration, and becomes undeniably wearisome. But the woman who could spend months in a lonely country place absorbed in such religious and scientific reflections, who could maintain for so long a time so rapt and energetic a mental attitude towards abstract subjects, was far enough removed from the traditionalhausfrau.

Though Lady Chudleigh rejoices in these learned topics she modestly disclaims any accurate knowledge. "But 't is not reasonable to expect that a Woman should be nicely skill'd in Physics: We are kept Strangers to all ingenious and useful Studies, and can have but a slight and superficial Knowledge of things." Two poems,ResolutionandTo Mr. Dryden on his excellent Translation of Virgil, give evidence of Lady Chudleigh's wide reading in poetry, history, drama, and divinity. Her literary dicta are of little value, for they do hardly more than echo the judgments of the day. According to her it was the poet Waller who, coming after the "transient Glimm'rings of Chaucer" and the "Lunar Beams of Spenser," announced the dawn of a new Morn, and with Dryden came "The Triumphs of refulgent Day." Taken as a whole the poems bitterly inveigh against life with its blighting sorrows, its fleeting, unreal joys, its injustice, its black despairs. The only break in the gloom comes in short periods of absorption in books, or in occasional religious ecstasies.

The first poem by which Lady Chudleigh became known isThe Ladies' Defence: a sudden, angry outburst caused by a sermon onConjugal Dutyby a Mr. Sprint, a nonconformist in Sherbourn, Dorsetshire.[208]The personal animus in a littlepoemTo the Ladieswarning them against marriage, apparently grew out of her own matrimonial infelicities. AndThe Ladies' Defencehas the same ring of indignant sincerity. The poem is in the form of a conversation between the parson who preached the sermon; Sir William Loveall, who, out of the ignorance of his unmarried state, endeavors to reconcile the warring parties; Marissa, Lady Chudleigh herself; and Sir John Brute, who thanks the parson for preaching against "those Terrors of our Lives, those worst of Plagues, those Furies call'd our Wives." The parson replies:

Not led by Passion, but by Zeal inspir'd,I've told the Women what's of them requir'd:Taught them their Husbands to Obey and Please,And to their Humours sacrifice their Ease:Give up their Reason, and their Wills resign,And ev'ry look, and ev'ry thought confine.Sure, this Detraction you can't justly call?'T is kindly meant, and 't is address'd to All.If you wou'd live as it becomes a Wife,And raise the Honour of a marry'd Life,You must the useful Art of wheedling try,And with his various Humours still comply;Whate'er he is, you still must think him best,And boast to all that you are truly blest;Also, to him you inward Reverence owe;If he's a Fool, you must not think him so;Nor yet indulge one mean contemptuous Thought,Or fancy he can e'er commit a Fault.Nor must your Deference be alone confin'dUnto the hid Recesses of your Mind,But must in all your Actions be display'd,And visible to each Spectator made.[209]

Not led by Passion, but by Zeal inspir'd,

I've told the Women what's of them requir'd:

Taught them their Husbands to Obey and Please,

And to their Humours sacrifice their Ease:

Give up their Reason, and their Wills resign,

And ev'ry look, and ev'ry thought confine.

Sure, this Detraction you can't justly call?

'T is kindly meant, and 't is address'd to All.

If you wou'd live as it becomes a Wife,And raise the Honour of a marry'd Life,You must the useful Art of wheedling try,And with his various Humours still comply;

If you wou'd live as it becomes a Wife,

And raise the Honour of a marry'd Life,

You must the useful Art of wheedling try,

And with his various Humours still comply;

Whate'er he is, you still must think him best,And boast to all that you are truly blest;

Whate'er he is, you still must think him best,

And boast to all that you are truly blest;

Also, to him you inward Reverence owe;If he's a Fool, you must not think him so;Nor yet indulge one mean contemptuous Thought,Or fancy he can e'er commit a Fault.Nor must your Deference be alone confin'dUnto the hid Recesses of your Mind,But must in all your Actions be display'd,And visible to each Spectator made.[209]

Also, to him you inward Reverence owe;

If he's a Fool, you must not think him so;

Nor yet indulge one mean contemptuous Thought,

Or fancy he can e'er commit a Fault.

Nor must your Deference be alone confin'd

Unto the hid Recesses of your Mind,

But must in all your Actions be display'd,

And visible to each Spectator made.[209]

After this sarcastic summary of Mr. Sprint's irritating sermon Lady Chudleigh in the person of Marissa, depicts the general condition of women and her own loftier ambitions:

'T is hard we should be by the Men despis'dYet kept from knowing what would make us priz'd.Debarr'd from Knowledge, banish'd from the Schools,And with the utmost Industry bred Fools.Laugh'd out of Reason, jested out of Sense,And nothing left but Native Innocence:Or that my Sex would all such Toys despise;And only study to be Good, and Wise:Instead of Novels, Histories peruse,And for their Guides the wise Ancients chuse,Thro' all the Labyrinths of Learning go,And grow more humble as they more do know.Beauty's a Trifle merits not my Care.I'd rather Æsop's ugly Visage wear,Joyn'd with his Mind, than be a Fool, and Fair.But spite of you, we'll to ourselves be kind:Your censures slight, your little Tricks despise,And make it our whole business to be wise.The mean low trivial Cares of Life disdain,And read and Think, and Think and read again,And on our Minds bestow the utmost Pain.

'T is hard we should be by the Men despis'd

Yet kept from knowing what would make us priz'd.

Debarr'd from Knowledge, banish'd from the Schools,

And with the utmost Industry bred Fools.

Laugh'd out of Reason, jested out of Sense,

And nothing left but Native Innocence:

Or that my Sex would all such Toys despise;And only study to be Good, and Wise:

Or that my Sex would all such Toys despise;

And only study to be Good, and Wise:

Instead of Novels, Histories peruse,And for their Guides the wise Ancients chuse,Thro' all the Labyrinths of Learning go,And grow more humble as they more do know.

Instead of Novels, Histories peruse,

And for their Guides the wise Ancients chuse,

Thro' all the Labyrinths of Learning go,

And grow more humble as they more do know.

Beauty's a Trifle merits not my Care.I'd rather Æsop's ugly Visage wear,Joyn'd with his Mind, than be a Fool, and Fair.

Beauty's a Trifle merits not my Care.

I'd rather Æsop's ugly Visage wear,

Joyn'd with his Mind, than be a Fool, and Fair.

But spite of you, we'll to ourselves be kind:Your censures slight, your little Tricks despise,And make it our whole business to be wise.The mean low trivial Cares of Life disdain,And read and Think, and Think and read again,And on our Minds bestow the utmost Pain.

But spite of you, we'll to ourselves be kind:

Your censures slight, your little Tricks despise,

And make it our whole business to be wise.

The mean low trivial Cares of Life disdain,

And read and Think, and Think and read again,

And on our Minds bestow the utmost Pain.

Anne Kingsmill, Lady Winchilsea (1661-1720)

One of the important women of letters in the late seventeenth century was Anne Kingsmill.[210]Of her early life we have no definite details. That it was a gay and happy life may be inferred from one of her retrospective poems in which she says that in her youth "Pleasure's tempting Air" blew soft about her, and that she dedicated her "Prime" to "vain Amusements." Later she coveted a place at court which to her ambitious eye seemed "Paradice below." At what time this desire was realized we have no record, but in 1683 we find her listed as one of the maids of honor to Mary of Modena. Miss Strickland says that Anne Killigrew and Anne Kingsmill were "ladies of irreproachable virtue, members of the Church of England, and alike distinguished for moral worth and literary achievements," and she adds that Anne Kingsmill was "well-known as the beautiful and witty maid of honour." In 1684 Anne married Mr. Finch, gentleman of the bedchamber to the Duke of York. At the coming of William and Mary, Mr. and Mrs. Finch went to the family place at Eastwell Park where they spent the rest of their uneventful lives in a retirement, embittered at first, doubtless, by their grief over Stuart disasters, but, as the years passed, rendered more and more delightful by the joys of country life, of books, and of friends. Mrs. Finch's best poems are those inspired by Eastwell and its associations. The Elizabethan house at Eastwell was set in a park of old yew trees and majestic beeches, forming "the very ideal of an ancestral park of the ancient noblesse," and it was by the extraordinary dignity and beauty of this park that Mrs. Finch's most imaginative work was inspired. Within doors the gathering ofantiquities, the illuminating of books, the formation of a great library, and free literary productivity were the family interests. There were also many and close ties of friendship founded on natural causes of union such as loyalty to the Stuarts, devotion to the Church of England, high and even austere ideals of life. And family ties and ties of friendship received ardent acknowledgment. No woman of this period was more happily circumstanced in her home for the unhampered pursuit of literary tastes than was Lady Winchilsea. She began to write when she was a maid of honor, but it was with a nervous sense of the ridicule that would probably follow any disclosure of that fact. But at Eastwell the case was different. There are charming pictures of evening sessions when the authoress presented her work to an enthusiastic circle. A scribe entered her writings in a fair and clerkly hand in a majestic folio. With such encouragement the lady kept sedulously and joyfully to her task. And when her husband's accession to the title gave her a new position of dignity and authority she even ventured, in 1713,[211]to publish a selection from her verse, first under the pseudonym "Ardelia," and then, in a later impression, with her full name and title.

Lady Winchilsea's poems were composed between 1683 and 1720, and during this period she tried nearly all poetic forms. Songs, satires, fables, tragedies, translations, are fully represented. She was the most voluminous of the minor poets of her time, and in vigor and scope she outranks most of them. But her literary importance to-day rests not so much on the amount or variety of her work, as on the fact that in an age of didacticism and satire she delicately foreshadowed tastes that ruled in the romanticism of a century later. It was herNocturnal Reverie, with its minute accuracy of observation, its sense of the mystery of nature and of the mystic union between man and nature, that secured Wordsworth's praise, gave her an honorable place in Ward'sEnglish Poets, and finally established her in the heaven of literary fame as, in Mr. Gosse's phrase, "a minor excelsitude."

In the present study quite other points are to be made concerning Lady Winchilsea. She is particularly interesting when considered as a heretic against certain prevailing social and educational ideals. In the gay dissipations of court life under Charles II she maintained a conception of life serious and even austere. In close association with Mary of Modena and James II she yet maintained her devotion to the Church of England. With the world of fashion flocking to the comedies of the Restoration dramatists she yet condemned the immoralities of the stage with the bitterness of a Jeremy Collier. There was, then, in Lady Winchilsea an independence of judgment, a stoutness of fiber in forming and defending her own views, which would lead one to expect some trenchant remarks on the contemporary attitude towards women. It is much to be regretted that the letters of Lady Winchilsea, if any are extant, have never been published. Her interests were so varied, her friendships so ardent, her hours of country leisure so numerous, her pen so facile, that she must have found, in what Anne Seward called"epistolary solicitudes," one of the most convenient outlets for a spirit often kicking against the pricks of social conventions, and her keenness of insight, her caustic phrasing, would make her letters worth many pages of pindarics. But in default of such letters we turn to the one prose essay and to the poems. From scattered passages we can build up the elements of her heresies. Though she loved her home and was the most devoted of wives, she utterly rejected thehausfrautheory of life. She declared that she, at least, was never meant for "the dull manage of a servile house." She asked little of her table except that it should be "set without her care." Rich food and elaborate service could be dispensed with, but leisure and a free mind she must have. The frivolous occupations of the town lady, the endless discussions of laces and brocades, the rivalries as to dishes and screens from China, the gossip and ill-natured jests at fashionable tea-tables, she found unendurable. Feminine accomplishments, such as embroidery, amateurish drawing and painting, awakened her active hostility.

This definite rejection of all that ordinarily filled the feminine mind, and a rejection, moreover, in the interests of books and writing, of course made Ardelia the unhappy victim of many a sneer. The attack on her by Pope and Gay, inThree Hours after Marriage, in 1717, may be taken as an extreme example of the indignities to which "a petticoat author" might be subjected, but there must have been many lesser evidences of social disapproval or the irritating theme would not so often recur in her poems. In "The Introduction" she says:

Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,Such an intruder on the rights of men,Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem'd,The fault, can by no vertue be redeem'd.They tell us, we mistake our sex and way;Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, playAre the accomplishments we should desire;To write, or read, or think, or to enquireWould cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time,And interrupt the Conquests of our prime.

Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,

Such an intruder on the rights of men,

Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem'd,

The fault, can by no vertue be redeem'd.

They tell us, we mistake our sex and way;

Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, play

Are the accomplishments we should desire;

To write, or read, or think, or to enquire

Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time,

And interrupt the Conquests of our prime.

She congratulates herself that she had at least had the good sense to keep her rhymes a secret while at court, where a "Versifying Maid of Honour" would have been looked upon "with prejudice, if not with contempt." During a visit to London she heard the young gossip Almeria describe a certain lady as "A Poetess! a woman who writes! A common jest!" Conscious of her growing folio at Eastwell, Ardelia resented the implied censure. What law, she asks, forbids women to think? Women, she protests, are "Education's and not Nature's fools." Ardelia had high praise from noted contemporaries and cordial appreciation at home. But these did not avail to conquer her morbid sensitiveness to criticism. She seemed to embody in herself two warring tendencies, a demand for complete intellectual freedom and the author's inevitable desire to spread his wares abroad, with the shrinking modesty of the lady to whom any sort of publicity was hateful.

The "Matchless Orinda," Lady Winchilsea tells us, was the model on whom, from her early girlhood she formed herself. The first verses she wrote were in honor of Orinda. By Orinda's example she justified the efforts and aims of her own muse, but she is in no sense a copyist. It was Orinda's fame as a noted and virtuous woman poet that inspired her rather than any close study of Orinda's work. Lady Winchilsea, in that small portion of her work on which her fame rests, is very delicately and truly original. Her spirit reacted against court life as definitely as did Anne Killigrew's, but she found no satisfaction in satiric comment. She shrank from any sort of contest. She argued and protested only when pushed to the wall. She was shy and easily intimidated, and her best work does not come from the heat of conflict or from bitterness of spirit. She is essentially contemplative. The poems on which her fame rests blossomed out quietly, exquisitely, under the gentle stimulus of a happy home life in the midst of lovely natural surroundings. She is typically a lady of letters because, without the spur of necessity, urged on by no popular applause, she yet, for more than thirty years, made the readingof books and the writing of books the central occupation of her life.

The Honorable Mrs. Monck (d. 1715)

The honorable Mrs. Monck[212]was the daughter of Lord Molesworth, a nobleman of Ireland. Mr. Ballard says of her learning: "She, purely by force of her own natural genius, acquired a perfect knowledge of the Latin, Italian and Spanish tongues: and by a constant reading of the finest authors in those languages, became so great a mistress of the art of poetry, that she wrote many poems for her own diversion." In 1716, after her death, Lord Molesworth published her poems under the titleMarinda. Poems and Translations on Several Occasions.In his dedication to Caroline, the Princess of Wales, he says that the book represents the works of the leisure hours of a young gentlewoman in a remote country solitude, with no assistance but that of a good library, and with the daily care of a large family on her hands. In commending her character he says, "I loved her morebecause she deserved it, than because she was mine." Various slight poems show Marinda's knowledge of Italian and Spanish. Better than all these are two cleverly turned epigrams on "a lady of pleasure," and some affecting farewell lines written in her last sickness to her husband. Mrs. Monck's repute for learning comes largely by hearsay, her printed memorials are slight and unimportant, but she nevertheless gives an impression, elusive but real, of a most interesting personality.

Martha, Lady Giffard (1639-1722)

Lady Giffard was Sir William Temple's sister. She was twelve years younger than Dorothy. After her marriage and almost immediate widowhood, in 1661, she made her home with the Temples. HerLife and Correspondencehas been published by Mrs. Longe as a sequel to theLetters of Dorothy Osborne. The volume contains letters from Lady Chesterfield, from Lady Sunderland("Saccharissa"), and others, to Lady Giffard. The letters by Lady Giffard are few in number and are all written to her niece Lady Berkeley, later Lady Portland, and belong in the years 1697-1722. These letters have none of the sparkle and humor and literary charm of Dorothy's. But we get indications that Lady Giffard was a woman of intellectual interests. We find her reading Turkish history daytimes with recourse to Virgil, "as less exacting," for evenings. She knew Spanish and French, and one of the specific items in her will is a bequest of the books she had collected in these two languages.

Sarah Byng, Mrs. Osborne (1693-1775)

A third series of letters, published under the titlePolitical and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Century, though belonging later in the century, may be brought in here because they carry on the series of Osborne letters. Sarah Byng, the daughter of Admiral Byng, Viscount Torrington, married, in 1710, John Osborne of Chicksands Priory, the old home of Dorothy and the place from which she wrote most of her letters. Mr. John Osborne was Dorothy's grand-nephew. He died in 1719 and his father in 1720, leaving to Sarah Osborne an infant son, Danvers, the heir to the title and a heavily burdened estate. Her letters fall in several series, the first set from 1721 to 1739 being to her brother George on business matters concerning the property. Most interesting are the letters to Danvers from 1733 to 1751. When he came of age in 1736 she was able to turn over to him an unincumbered estate, and on his marriage in 1740 she superintended the establishment of the new household at Chicksands. A third set of letters has to do with the sentence and execution of her brother Admiral Byng, in 1757. Through the death of the wife of Danvers in 1743 and the death of Danvers in 1750 Mrs. Osborne was left with two grandsons to bring up, and her last letters are to John, one of these grandsons, who was traveling in Holland.

Through two generations Mrs. Osborne bore heavy administrative and financial burdens. She was both father and motherto her son, and then to her grandsons. And she was left single-handed to conduct the defense of her brother Admiral Byng. It is not strange that the letters are frequently hurried and harassed in tone. She is constantly vexed and baffled because, as a woman, she cannot conduct affairs directly. Some man must be her intermediary. She lays plans, foresees difficulties, writes explicit directions, and then she must urge and cajole her representative to due interest and prompt action. The especial interest in her letters is their abundant and exact account of social life and especially of domestic economy. Energetic, courageous, resourceful, keenly observant, and with a clear head for business, Mrs. Osborne shows herself to be. Perhaps if we had her letters before the burdens of life fell so heavily upon her we might find some hint of the charm in Dorothy's letters, for even Dorothy's letters after marriage became "tame and flat to what was before." As it is, Mrs. Osborne's letters are valuable for scattered social detail, not for any permanent charm of expression.

Elizabeth Singer, Mrs. Rowe (1674-1737)

Mr. Walter Singer, a dissenting minister of Frome, was early left a widower with three daughters. Two of these daughters showed while still young exceptionally good minds and a natural interest in study. One daughter, who died at nineteen, was devoted to medicine and collected books on that subject. Elizabeth preferred drawing and poetry. She began drawing when her fingers could hardly hold the pencil, and she squeezed out the juices of plants to make colors. Her father furnished her an excellent master, and she attained sufficient skill so that throughout her life her work was highly prized by her friends. She also loved music "to excess." But poetry was her chief delight. She began writing at twelve, and by the time she was twenty-two she had on hand a store of verse so pleasing to her friends that they insisted on its publication, and there accordingly appeared a thin little volume in 1696 under the titlePoems on Several Occasions. Written by Philomela.The"Preface to the Reader," by one Elizabeth Johnson, is another of many contemporary indications of feminine irritation at the limitations imposed upon them. Miss Johnson allows "Mankind theBrutal Advantages of Strength," but when they "wou'd MonopolizeSencetoo, when neither that, nor Learning, nor so much asWit" is granted the women, they are forced to protest against such "notoriousViolations on theLiberties of Free-born English Women." "This makes theMeekest Wormamongst us all, ready to turn agen when we are thustrampledon; But alas! What can we do toRightour selves?stinglessandharmlessas we are, we can onlyKisstheFootthathurtsus." But it sometimes pleases Heaven to succor a distressed people by sending them some bright genius, "an Epaminondas, a Timoleon, a Nassaw." "Nor is ourDefenceless Sexforgotten—we have not onlyBanduca'sandZenobia's, butSappho's, andBehn's, andSchurman's, andOrinda's, who havehumbledthe most haughty of our Antagonists, and made 'em do Homage to ourWit, as well as ourBeauty." Miss Singer's consent to the publication of this volume was gained only by a promise of strict anonymity, and the "Philomela," then chosen as a pen-name through a naïve adaptation of "Singer," became her permanent appellation.

One interesting fact with regard to these early poems is the indication we have of a kind of poetical commerce maintained among the members of a group of persons similarly inclined to verse. Philomela writes aPindarick Poem on Habbakukwhich she sends to "The Athenians" and they respond with a poem beginning,

We yield! we yield! the Palm, bright Maid! be thine!

She sends aPoetical Questionto the Athenians and gets a long answer.The Vanity of the WorldandThe Wishare likewise addressed to the Athenians and have similar responses. In aPindarick to the Athenian Societyshe brings as "Zealous Tribute," "The early products of a Female muse," praising especially their piety and heroic sentiments and the courage with which they have lashed the darling vices of the times.

A friendship so exalted and immense,Afemale breastdid ne'er before commence.

A friendship so exalted and immense,

Afemale breastdid ne'er before commence.

A little poem in humorous vein,To one that persuades me to leave the Muses, gives some account of her school-days. "I fairly bid the Boarding Schools farewell," "Old Governess farewell with all my heart," are lines indicative of her attitude.

Spite of her heart,Old Pussshall damn no moreGreatSedley'sPlays, and never look 'em o're;Affront myNovels, no, nor in a Rage,ForceDryden'slofty Products from the Stage,Whilst all the rest of themelodious crew,With thewholeSystem ofAthenianstoo,For Study's sake out of the Window flew.But I, to Church, shall fill her Train no more,And walk as if I sojurn'd by the hour.

Spite of her heart,Old Pussshall damn no more

GreatSedley'sPlays, and never look 'em o're;

Affront myNovels, no, nor in a Rage,

ForceDryden'slofty Products from the Stage,

Whilst all the rest of themelodious crew,

With thewholeSystem ofAthenianstoo,

For Study's sake out of the Window flew.

But I, to Church, shall fill her Train no more,

And walk as if I sojurn'd by the hour.

In like vein she bids adieu to "dancing days," singing lessons, Japan work, and even her "esteemed Pencil," and vows to give herself to poetry. And true it is that the rest of her life is mainly of literary and pious significance. When young her beauty and charm had resulted in "a train of lovers," but no one of them, not even Mr. Prior, the poet, could lure her from her serene solitude—possibly because she was "destined by heaven for the possession of another gentleman." At any rate, she went smoothly on with her chosen literary life till she was thirty-six, when she married Mr. Thomas Rowe, thirteen years younger than herself, but of like tastes and himself an author. Their extraordinarily happy life together was brought to a close by his death in 1715, and, after this five years of happiness, she spent the twenty-seven years of her widowhood in a stricter solitude, a more absorbed religious communion, a completer devotion to literary pursuits, than before her marriage. Her essays, her poems, her letters, were the events of her life. She had early come to know the family of Lord Weymouth at Longleate. Mr. Thynne had taught her French and Italian; various members of the family and various family events were celebrated in her verse. She was on most intimate terms with theCountess of Hertford and corresponded with her for many years. Over a hundred of her letters to the Countess were published inThe Works of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe and Mr. Thomas Rowe, and though they make dull and monotonous reading now were highly esteemed at the time. In fact, the modest and anonymous Philomela had great eighteenth-century vogue. She had the friendship of many in the great world, she was abundantly praised by poets and divines, and her works went through numerous editions. Her husband said that she combined the fire and passion of Aphra Behn with the chaste purity of Mrs. Katherine Philips. But Astræa's passion underwent some strange alchemy when it was transmuted into Philomela's religious ecstasy. Orinda's purity was fatal to the combination. Yet Mrs. Rowe's "divine transports" have—Mr. Watts admits it—sometimes a soft and passionate sound, even an amorous note, capable of misinterpretation, but evidently reminiscent of theSongs of Solomon, beloved of her youth. It was not an age for enthusiasms and ecstasies. That her "flights" were so popular may possibly be explained by the fact that through them all she was curiously prosaic and intellectually commonplace.

Mrs. Bland (1660?-1765?)

Mr. Ballard speaks of "Mrs. Bland,[213]a Yorkshire gentlewoman so well skilled in Hebrew that she taught it to her son and daughter." Mrs. Bland was born about 1660 and married Mr. Nathaniel Bland in 1681. Her instructor in Hebrew was Lord Van Helmont from whom she learned to write the language with great exactness. At the request of Mr. Thoresby she wrote a Phylactery in Hebrew and presented it to the Royal Society, where it was preserved among their curiosities. Mr. Bland became Lord of the Manor at Beeston and Mr. Thoresby visited him there. To the astonishment of the guest Martha Bland, the young daughter of the house, was translating Hebrewinto English, having been taught by "that ingenious gentlewoman," her mother. Four years later Mr. Thoresby took his son Ralph to see "Mrs. Bland, the Hebrician." She had also studied Anglo-Saxon, for she borrowed Elizabeth Elstob's book from Mr. Thoresby and kept it long enough to copy out the grammar part.

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