of peace is departed." He would have | of extraordinary bitterness (one of his had all controversial books written in "merry evenings" must have been folLatin, "that none but the learned may lowed by a more than usually sad mornread them, and that there should be no ing), calls the duchess's best-known disputations but in schools;" and em- work "the ridiculous history of my phatically asserted that "no offices or Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, commands should be sold . . . all mag- which shows her to be a mad, conceited, istrates, officers, commanders, heads, ridiculous woman, and he an ass to and rulers, in what profession soever, suffer her to write what she writes to both in Church and State, should be him and of him." 2 No doubt the pubchosen according to their abilities, wis-lication of so laudatory a biography as dom, courage, piety, justice, honesty, that of the duke, during its subject's and loyalty; and then they'll mind life, has its ludicrous side, and his the public good more than their par- wife's sketch of herself, though she ticular interest. The duchess amply honestly tries to set down her failings supports her statement that "my lord as well as her gifts, is not without a hath an excellent wit and judgment; " certain calm, self-complacency provocathough conjugal affection blinds her tive to the flippant commentator. when she adds, "I may justly call him |torians differ over the career of the the best lyric and dramatic poet of this duke as critics do over the mental age." calibre of the duchess. But taken as a whole the biographies are fine studies of fine characters, without which the world would have been poorer. His On their occasional visits to London, the duke and duchess excited interest and curiosity, not always sympathetic, in all beholders. Evelyn frequently mentions them in his "Diary;" his But this is an amiable error, and testifies to the strength of the affection which, having made her, as Sir Egerton Brydges says, "the companion of the duke's misfortunes, the solace of his exile, the sharer of his poverty," led her to over-estimate the value of his works. After their return to England, when mother-in-law, Lady Browne, of Sayes political changes and the duke's wise | management had restored them to affluence, they continued to live principally in the country. on Court, had been a friend to Margaret in her early days of attendance Henrietta Maria,3 and she and the duke took much grateful notice of the Evelyns. On April 27th, 1667, he writes: In the afternoon I went again with my wife to the Duchess of Newcastle, who received her in a kind of transport, suitable to her extravagant humor and dress, which was very singular, They received me with great kindness, and I was much pleased with the extraordinary fanciful habit, garb, and discourse of the duchess. ... 1 ident at the door of our meeting-room, the was : The most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote, but yet she and her lord mightily pleased with it, and she at the end made her respects to the players from her box and did give them thanks. There is as much expectation of her coming to court that so people may come to see her, as if she were the Queen of Sweden. The duke pleases this captious critic better as a dramatist : My wife and I to the duke's play-house where we saw "The Feign Innocence; or, Sir Martin Mar-all," a play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as everybody says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirtli, a complete farce from one end to the other, that certainly ever was writ. I never laughed so in all my life, and at very good wit, not fooling. 8 At Welbeck the duke established a racecourse, drawing up rules for races to be run every month during six months of the year, and completed his second work on horsemanship, entitled, "A New Method and Extraor 4 After dinner I walked to Arundel House, the way very dusty, where I find very much company in expectation of the Duchess of Newcastle, who had desired to be invited to the Society and was; after much debate pro and con, it seems many being against it, and w we do believe the town will be full of ballads of it. Anon comes the duchess with her women attending her, among others the Ferabosco, of whom so much talk is that her lady would bid her show her face and kill the gallants. She is in-dinary Invention to Dress Horses and deed black, and hath good black little eyes, Work them according to Nature; as but otherwise a very ordinary woman I do also to Perfect Nature by the Subtlety think, but they say sings well. The duchess of Art; which was never found out but hath been a good, comely woman, but her by the thrice noble, high, and puissant dress so antic and her deportment so ordi- Prince," etc. One might imagine that nary that I do not like her at all, nor did I the duchess wrote the title-page. She hear her say anything that was worth hear- and her husband worked together with ing, but that she was full of admiration, all perfect sympathy and mutual admiraadmiration. Several fine experiments were tion. Some writers have suggested a shown her of colors, loadstones, micro- touch of satire in the duke's high-flown scopes, and of liquors; among others of panegyrics on his wife, but remembering the tone of the age, and glancing at the volume of extravagant laudation called "Letters and Poems in Honor of the Incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle," to which Eth ... one that did, while she was there, turn a He was even more scornfully impa- To see the silly play of my Lady New- 1 Diary of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S. (Chandos 3 "Sir Martin Mar-all" was translated by the duke from Molière's "L'Etourdi," and was entered in the "Stationers' Register" in the duke's name, but published in that of Dryden in 1697. Perhaps Pepys would have thought more leniently of "The Humorous Lovers" had he known that that also was by the duke! 4 Walpole, in his "Royal and Noble Authors" describes the duke as "a man extremely known from the course of life into which he was forced, and who would soon have been forgotten in the walk of fame which he chose for himself. Yet as an author he is familiar to those who scarce know any other author-from his work on horsemanship." eredge, Sir Kenelm Digby, and many | founders, if not the originator, of this other contemporary writers contrib-class of literature. One can quite imuted,1 and that critics so far removed agine the delight she experienced in from her personal influence as Sir inventing a world of her own, where Egerton Brydges and Leigh Hunt, all no restraint need be laid on her fancy, owned her "genius," the aspersion on and the base limitations of possibility the duke's good faith seems quite su- were cast aside. Her narrative begins perfluous. with charming vagueness: "A merchant travelling into a foreign country, fell extremely in love with a young lady," and resolved to steal her away," which he does when she is gathering shells upon the shore. He conveys her to "a little, light vessel, not unlike a packet-boat, manned with some few seamen and well victualled " -the duchess cunningly mixes some 66 At Welbeck they were surrounded by literary admirers. "The duke had always been so generous a patron of literary men as to have earned the title of 6 our English Mæcenas.' I have heard Mr. Waller say that Newcastle was a great patron to Gassendi and Descartes, as well as to Mr. Hobbes, and that he had dined with them all three at his table in Paris."2 After homely matter-of-fact in her romance his return to England, Dryden, Shadwell, and Flecknoe, each dedicated plays or poems to him or the duchess, and dedications in those days were expensive compliments. The duchess on her part surrounded herself with a sort of staff of secretaries: for the relief of literal-minded readers; but Heaven, frowning at his theft, raises a tempest which drives the boat to the North Pole, where every one on board is frozen to death amongst the blocks of ice, except the young lady.” 4 She is rescued by bear and fox-men, who lead her across a plain of ice, after which geese and bird-men, and unpleasant persons of a grassgreen complexion, conduct her to paradise, the island seat of the emperor of the Blazing World, so called because Being now restored to the sunshine of prosperity, she dedicated her time to writing poems, philosophical discourses, orations, and plays. She was of a generous turn of mind, and kept a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally his palace is of gold, and its floors of wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her Grace lay, and were ready at the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night, to write down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory.3 diamonds, whilst between every diamond-studded pillar supporting the roof is an arch of the same brilliant stones. Of course the emperor marries the young lady, and then she begins to educate herself by putting a series of One of the results of their labors distractingly varied questions to her was a romance called "The Blazing new subjects. the magpie and jackWorld." Recent years have seen daw-men ("her professed orators and many imaginary descriptions not only logicians," says the author cruelly); of this present world as it is to be thou- the spider-men, her mathematicians; sands of years hence, but of mysterious the fly-men and the earth-men- such regions in some other planet, realms as whence the saltness of the sea did wholly governed by electricity, lying beneath the seas or floating in the air. Our duchess was certainly one of the 1 It contains one truly descriptive couplet (p. 172): "Whene'er she spoke, the winged crew Of pretty notions straight about her flew." 2 Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii., p. 602. 3 Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, by Theophilus Cibber, and other hands. London, vol. ii., p. 164. proceed; whether fishes possess the circulation of the blood; how frost is made; whether gold can be manufac "It was no wonder that they died," says the duchess gravely. "They were not only driven to the very end or point of the Pole of this world, but even to another Pole of another world which joined close to it" [obviously she pictured them as two good stout sticks], "so that the cold, having a double strength at the conjunction of those two poles, was insupportable." and every little flower," she says, "is a tutor in nature's school to instruct the understanding. The four elements are the four great volumes wherein lie nature's works." She strongly advocated temperance. "Every superfluous bit and every superfluous cup is digging a grave to bury life in." 2 tured; besides insulting them by a vention and pearls of wisdom. The transparent quibble about a supposed duchess's characterization of herself relationship between cheese and mag-as a "plain and rational" writer is gots. They are wonderfully patient. charming. But when she proceeds to theology, In "The World's Olio " there are they inform her that she must consult many quaint and graceful thoughts. the immaterial spirits on such points." Every little fly and every little pebble, She summons them; they appear"in what shapes or forms I cannot exactly tell," says the duchess, with a wise discretion-and "after some few . compliments passed between them," they discourse on faith and reason the origin of the world; the days of creation; if matter was fluid at first; whether the devil was within the serpent when he tempted Eve, and so on. This is all very well; but when the empress, waxing proud of her newly acquired store of knowledge, proclaims It is not always pride, bred by the conher intention of writing a new "Cab-ceit of their rare art and skill, but by the bala," and asks for a spiritual scribe, motion of the music, which is swifter than they strike, and tell her she must send for a human soul, for the excellent reason that they themselves cannot write "except they put on a hand or She proposes to send for Aristotle, Plato, or Epicurus, to which the spirits reply that no doubt they were learned men, but : arm." She theorizes on all subjects, often very fantastically. As to "the madness of musicians," she is kind enough to admit that 1 the ordinary motion of the brain, and by that reason distempers it by increasing the motion of the brain to the motion of the fiddle; which puts the brain so out of tune as it is very seldom tuneable again. And as a ship is swallowed by a whirlpit in the sea, so is reason drowned in the whirlpit of the brain. 8 The duchess's poetry, like her prose, is remarkably unequal. Her fairy verses contain exquisite touches, such as the following: When I Queen Mab within my fancy viewed, be rude. "So wedded to their own opinions that they would never have the patience to be scribes." 'Then," said she, "I'll have the soul of one of the most famous modern writers, either Galileo, Descartes, or Hobbes." The spirits say they were fine ingenious writers, but so self-conceited they My thoughts bowed low, fearing I should would scorn to be scribes to a woman. "But," said they, "there's a lady, the Duchess of Newcastle, which, although she is not one of the most learned, eloquent, I knelt upon a thought, like one that witty, and ingenious, yet she is a plain and rational writer; the principle of her writings is sense and reason, and she will, without question, be ready to do you all the service she can. 11 Kissing her garment thin, which fancy made, prayed. In her "Vision of Sorrow" she says: Her hair untied, loose on her shoulders hung, And every hair with tears like beads was strung. Her opening address "to her readers," describing whence she drew her in 2 And she practised what she preached. In her autobiography she says: "Feasting would agree neither with my humor nor constitution, for my diet is for the most part sparing - -as a little boiled chicken or the like. And my drink commonly water." The World's Olio, pp. 199–200. spiration, breathes the tender devotion At the close of her autobiography which glorified all the duke's accom- the duchess deprecates the censure of plishments in her faithful eyes : readers who will scornfully ask A poet I am neither born nor bred, Whose brain is fresh and pleasant as the spring Where fancies grow and where the muses sing. There oft I lean my head, and listening, hark, To catch his words and all his fancies mark. "Why hath this lady writ her own life, since none cares to know whose daughter she was, or whose wife she is, or how she was bred or what fortunes she had, or what humor or disposition she was of?" I answer that it is true that 'tis of no purpose to the reader, but it is to the authoress. write it for my own sake, not theirs. Neither did I intend this piece for to delight, but to divulge; not to please the I And from that garden show of beauties fancy but to tell the truth, lest after ages take Whereof a posy I in verse may make. should mistake in not knowing I was daughter to one Master Lucas of St. John's, near Colchester in Essex, and second wife to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle for my lord having had two wives I might easily have been mistaken, especially if I should die and my lord marry again. This seems a curious anticipation to have crossed the mind of a wife more than thirty years her husband's junior. But it was doubly fulfilled. The duchess died in January, 1673-4, and Sir Egerton Brydges points out that, although the duke gave her no successor, that répertoire of curiosities of litera The water, murmuring, Ran back with grief to tell it to the spring. But she has the defects of her quali-ture, the "Lounger's Commonplaceties. She runs riot in similes, which Book," confused her with the first wife, not only weary but often provoke by calling her "the daughter of William their fantastic incongruity. Thus, Bassett, Esq." Death is called "the cook of Nature; The duke survived her three years. the Polar circles are "Nature's brace- How lonely must have seemed the lets; "the grass makes her stockings; learned seclusion, the "innocent maggold and silver mines her shoes; for nificence" of Welbeck, without the her breakfast faithful and admiring wife who, in all Life skims the cream of beauty with Time's her flights of fancy, had never even imagined that she loved another; who had made him her hero of romance in the radiance of her youth and beauty; and who, in the prime of life, and when surrounded by all the temptations of rank and luxury, found constant occupation and delight in recording his career and chronicling his sayings ! ... They rest together now in Westminster Abbey, the "Loyal Duke," and his "wise, witty, and learned Lady a most virtuous, loving, and careful wife." And if few out of the thousands who glance at the inscription on their stately monument know how unwontedly true is its commendation, . |