"My great desire," says the duchess, "is to be had in remembrance in after-ages. All I desire is fame; I would rather venture an indiscretion, than lose the hopes of a fame." This is lengthy and pompous enough; but no one page is free from vanity, from folly, affectation, and good sense. "Such a book, for instance," says Charles Lamb," as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle by his Duchess; no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe such a jewel."* "When I first intended," says the duchess, to write this history, knowing myself to be no Unfortunately, her knowledge was more multifarious than exact; and her reason, overruled by an overflowing fancy, controlled by no kind of judgment or taste. She was indebted to herself for all her thoughts, reading little, and talking but with her lord or her attendants. Yet this masculine-scholar, and ignorant of the rules of writing minded but misdirected woman lived on in the belief-the pleasing belief that she would stand high with posterity as an authoress. "Perchance," she says, "many that read this book will hardly understand it. . . . . . I verily believe that ignorance and present envy will slight my book, yet I make no question, when envy is worn out by time, but understand ing will remember me in after-ages." histories, I desired my lord, that he would be pleased to let me have some elegant and learned historian to assist me; which request his grace would not grant me; saying, that having never had any assistance in the writing of my former books, I should have no other in the writing of his life, but the informations from himself and his secretary, of the chief transactions and fortunes occurring in it, to the time he married me. I humbly answered, that without a learned assistant the whole history would The work by which the duchess is best not be defective. I said again, that rhetoric be defective; but he replied, that truth could known is the Life of her husband, the ridic-did adorn truth; and he answered, that rhetoulous history to which Pepys, as we have ric was fitter for falsehoods than truths. Thus seen, alludes. Nor is the title the least cu- was I forced by his grace's commands to write rious part of this curious compilation; this history in my own plain style, without eleJones's magnificent portico to St. Paul's gant flourishings or exquisite method." was not more stately or taking than this doorway of the duchess : THE LIFE Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle; WRITTEN By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excel- MARGARET, Duchess of Newcastle, Printed by A. Maxwell, in the year 1667. Her grace went resolutely to work at once "I am resolved to write in a natural, plain style, without Latin sentences, moral instructions, politic designs, or feigned orations." "I write it," she says, "whilst my noble lord is yet alive, and at such a time wherein truth may be declared and falsehood contradicted; and I challenge any one (although I be a woman) to contradict any thing I have set down, or prove it to be otherwise than truth." But for the composition and style, she says:-"Nobody can certainly be more ready to find faults in this work than I am to confess them." We Of the principal passages of his life his lordship himself informed her; other intelligence she had from Rolleston, his secretary. It is not our intention to inquire into these; "they are as full of truth as of words," she herself says, and at this distance of time it would be unfair to question or impugn in any way her statements. are told, and there can be no doubt of the fact, that the annual rental of his lordship's estates was about 22,2931. 10s. 1d. (for stewards' accounts deal always in pence,) and that in three entertainments to Charles I. he had spent the income of a year. Lord Detached Thoughts on Books and * ELIA. Reading. Clarendon bears testimony to the magnificence of these feasts. A pound then was equal to five pounds of our money. "As for dancing, although it be a graceful art, and becometh unmarried persons well, yet, for those that are married it is too light an action, disagreeing with the gravity thereof."... I am as fearful as a hare; for I start at the noise of a pop-gun, and shut my eyes at the The duchess's admiration of her husband, whom she had looked up to from the first, is perhaps pardonable,-it certainly is amus-sight of a sword, and run away at the least ing. "His behavior," she says, "is manly alarm." . . . . "I speak but little, because I without formality, and free without con- am given to contemplation; and though I have straint." "I have observed," she says in seen much company, I have conversed with another place, that many, by flattering few, for my nature being dull and heavy, and poets, have been compared to Cæsar, with my disposition not merry, makes me think myself not fit for company; for I take conversaout desert; but this I dare freely, and with-tion to be in talking, which I have not practised out flattery, say of my lord, that though he very much, unless it be to particular friends, had not Cæsar's fortune, yet he wanted not for naturally I am so wedded to contemplation, Cæsar's courage, nor his prudence, nor his that many times, when I have been in comgood-nature, nor his wit. Nay, in some pany, I had not known one word they have said, by reason my busy thoughts had stopped particulars he did more than Cæsar ever the sense of my hearing." did." After this we may expect to hear her say, as say she does, that "he was the best lyric and dramatic poet of his age!" without wonder. Nor can one refrain from a smile when they read that Archbishop Laud (who had left her husband a diamond pin of the value of 2007.) once said to King Charles, and the bequest confirmed the observation, "That my lord was one of the wisest and prudentest persons that ever he was acquainted with." In learning languages she had a natural stupidity. "I understand no other language than my own; not French, although I was in France five years. Neither do I understand my own native language very well; for there are many words I know not what they signify." . . . "I think it against nature," she says in another place, "for a woman to speak right; for my "As for the part, I confess, I cannot. All this is, as Lamb thought, exquisitelyMy fancy is so quick, that it is quicker than grammar part, I confess I am no scholar."... delightful. But the duchess is not always the pen with which I write; insomuch, that in the vein of exorbitant panegyric, but lets my ideas are many times lost through the us see at times a little of domestic portrait- slowness of my hand, and yet I write so fast, painting in words. "In short," she says, as I stay not so long as to make perfect letters." "I knew him not addicted to any manner of vice, except that he has been a great lover and admirer of the female sex; which, whether it be so great a crime as to condemn him for it, I'll leave to the judgment of young gallants and beautiful ladies." She then enlarges on the elegance of his exterior, the becomingness of his dress, on his diet, and discourse. Of his diet, she writes, "He makes but one meal a-day, at which he drinks two good glasses of smallbeer,-one about the beginning, the other at the end thereof, and a little glass of sack in the middle of his dinner; which glass of sack he also uses in the morning for his breakfast, with a morsel of bread. His supper consists of an egg and a draught of small-beer." The duchess herself lived on boiled chickens and water; her mind, she says, was so active, that her appetite became passive. There is much of what Fanny Kemble calls dear good little me in all her ladyship's writings. Thus, she tells us (and how desirable is the information) that she cared not for cards or for revellings: What she was writing, she tells us, she uttered audibly, and that her waiting-maids deciphered her hieroglyphics, and at times took down the wisdom that fell from her lips. Many times," she confesses, "I did not peruse the copies that were transcribed, lest they should distract my following concep tions; by which neglect many errors have slipt into my works." She has defended her own authorship, however, and ably, too. "Instead," she says, “of running, like other wives, from church to church, from ball to ball, from collation to collation, gossiping from Muses, feast with the Sciences, and sit and dishouse to house, I dance a measure with the course with the Arts. Our sex takes so much delight in dressing and adorning themselves, as we, for the most part, make our gowns our books, our laces our lines, our embroideries our letters, and our dressings are the time of our study; and instead of turning over solid leaves, we turn our hair into curls."... "Sure this kind of work," she apologetically adds, "is better than to sit still and censure my neighbor's actions, which nothing concerns me, or to condemn their humors because they do not sympathize with mine, or their lawful recrea- It is well known by the copies, that those faults that kind, is all the book damned for it ?-No mercy, gentlemen? When, for the numbers, every schoolboy can make them on his fingers, and for his rhymes, Fenner* would have put down Ben Jonson; and yet neither the boy nor Fenner so good poets! No, it is neither of those that either makes or condemns a poet; it is new-born and creating fancies that glorifies a poet; and in her book of poems I am And to the reader of her Poems and Fan-not been writ by any; and that it was only sure there is excellent and new fancies, as have cies she says writ by her is the greatest truth in the world. It is said she has not the experience or the terms. But here's the crime,-a lady writes them, and to intrench so much on the male prerogative is not to be forgiven; but I know "Igownmen will be more civil to her, because she is of the gown too, and therefore, I am confident, will defend her and truth." "Pray be not too severe in your censures, For had my brain as many fancies in't A determined authoress, indeed! "This is to let you know," she says at another time, "that my book is neither wise, witty, nor methodical, but various and extravagant. I doubt it will never gain applause." There were many in the duchess's day who affirmed that her conceptions transcended her capacity, denying her to be the true authoress of them. "As for my being," she says to the duke, "the true and only authoress of them, your lordship knows best, and my attending servants are witness that I have had none but my own thoughts, fancies, and speculations to assist me; and, as soon as I have set them down, I send them to those that are to transcribe them and fit them for the press." She was accused of pilfering from Des Cartes and Hobbes; and, in her vindication of herself, tells us what she knew of these two extraordinary men. "Some say that from my Book of Philosophy, it seems as if I had conversed with Des Cartes or Master Hobbes, or both, or have frequented their studies, by reading their works; but I cannot say but I have seen them both; but, upon my conscience, I never spake to Monsieur Des Cartes in my life, nor even underand I understand no other language, and those stood what he said, for he spake no English, times I saw him, which was twice at dinner with my lord at Paris, he did appear to me as a man of the fewest words I ever heard. And for Master Hobbes, it is true I have had the like good fortune to see him, and that very often, with my lord at dinner, for I conversing seldom with any stranger, had no other time to see those two famous philosophers; yet I never heard Master Hobbes, to my best remembrance, treat or discourse of philosophy, nor I never spake to Master Hobbes twenty words in my life. I cannot say I did not ask him a question; for when I was in London I met him, and told him, as truly I was, very glad do me that honor to stay at dinner; but he with to see him, and asked him if he would please great civility refused me, as having some business which, I suppose, required his absence." "Truly," says the duke, in his justification* The duchess, however, admits that, at of his duchess, "she did never imp her high-times, the duke assisted her, with "this my flying fancies with any old broken feathers out of any university. As for her Poems, where are the exceptions to these! Marry, they miss sometimes in the numbers and in the rhymes. "An Epistle to Justifie the Lady Newcastle and Truth against Falsehood, saying those false and malicious Aspersions of her, that she was not Author of her Books."-Plays, fol. Lond. 1662. lord writ," and such-like acknowledgments: See Gifford's Ben Jonson, vii. 432. glory to me that we are married souls, bodies and brains." "What a picture of foolish nobility," says Walpole, "was this stately poetic couple, retired to their own little domain, and intoxicating one another with circumstantial flattery on what was of consequence to no mortal but themselves!" Welbeck was, at least, as Gifford says, when commenting on this passage, as big as Walpole's baby-house at Strawberry-Hill. her six-and-twenty plays. Langbaine, however, ventured a commendation in their behalf. "I know there are some," he writes, thatTM have but a mean opinion of her plays; but if it be considered that both the language and plots of them are all her own, I think she ought, with justice, to be preferred to others of her sex which have built their fame on other people's foundations." The folio works of this indefatigable woman are stored with prefaces, notices, dedi- Something like this the duchess herself cations, apologies, and advertisements. Ev- says, in the general prologue, where the ery idea she considered of consequence, reader is entreated not to try her performevery fear required its committal to paper; ances by the master-hand of Jonson's the duke interested himself in her pursuits, muse :and why, she thought, should not the public participate in their pleasure? Some of her requests from her readers are characteristic. "Let me entreat you," she says, "to consider only the fancies in this my book of poems, and not the language, numbers, nor rhymes, nor false printing; for if you do you will be my condemning judge, which will grieve my muse." This is before her Poems and Fancies; at page 123 of the same volume, she writes: "I must entreat my noble reader to read this part of my book very slow, and to observe very strictly every word they read; because, in most of these poems, every word is a fancy. Wherefore, if they lose by not marking, or skip by too hasty reading, they will entangle the sense of the whole copy." At page 212 "I know those that are strict and nice about phrases, and the placing of words, will carp at my book, inasmuch as I have chose to leave the elegance of words rather than obstruct the sense of the matter: "What length of time he took those plays to write, Her volume of Philosophical Fancies was written in less than three weeks. In what space of time she composed her plays she has not thought fit to tell us. A lady of the rank, and wit, and wealth of the Duchess of Newcastle could not be without her train of attendant flatterers. "Methinks I behold in you," writes Dryden to the duke, before he had lost the art of praising,* "another Caius Marius, who, in the extremity of his age, exercised himself almost every morning in the Campus Martius, amongst the youthful nobility of Rome; and afterwards, in your retirements, when you do honor to po When that a Book doth from the press come new, etry, by employing part of your leisure in it, I regard you as another Silius Italicus, who having passed over his consulship with applause, dismissed himself from business and from the gown, and employed his age among the shades in the reading and imitation of Virgil. In which," he adds, "lest any thing should be wanting to your happiness, you have, by a rare effect of fortune, found in the person of your excellent lady, not only a lover, but a partner of your studies; a lady whom one may justly equal with the Sappho of the Greeks, or the Sulpitia of the Romans; who, by being taken into your bosom, seems to be inspired with your genius, and by writing the history of your life in so masculine a style, has already placed you in the number of the heroes. It cannot be * See his Dedication to Plutarch's Lives. denied but that your grace has received a double satisfaction, the one to see yourself consecrated to immortality while you are yet alive; the other, to have your praises celebrated by so dear, so just, and so pious an historian." wife and biographer, in the Chapel of St. Mi chael, in Westminster Abbey, where there is to this day a stately monument to their memories (erected at the duke's expense), with an inscription which has called forth the admiration of Addison, and of Mr. Washington Irving : This was the age of flattery, and Shadwell and Flecknoe pursued the duke and the duchess with the same sort of adulatory language; but it cannot be concealed that his Duchess, his second wife, by whom he had "Here lies the loyal Duke of Newcastle and the excellent-minded Evelyn has the better no issue. Her name was Margaret Lucas, of them in the force and variety of his en- youngest sister to Lord Lucas of Colchester, a comiums. Her grace had made him a pre-noble family, for all the brothers were valiant, sent of her works (complete), and of her and all the sisters virtuous. This duchess was husband's very useful book of Horseman- a wise, witty, and learned lady, which her many ship, and Evelyn's acknowledgment is an books do well testify: she was a most virtuous, unrivalled piece of forced and foolish flatte-and loving, and careful wife, and was with her ry; a complete ransacking of the names of illustrious ladies of all countries and of all ages. lord all the time of his banishment and mise ries; and when they came home, never parted with him in his solitary retirements." This is evidently, in part, the composition of the duchess herself; it is very beautiful. centricities of this extraordinary woman, We have as yet but looked upon the ec decry. There is no volume altogether without its good, without a redeeming sentence, without something to praise. The occasional poetry and good sense and wit of the duchess atone for all her whims and oddities of thought and manner. Her verse is "I do not intend," says Evelyn, "to write a panegyric of your virtues, which all the world admires, lest the indignity of my style should prophane a thing so sacred; but to repeat my admiration of your genius and sublime wit, so comprehensive of the most abstracted appear-whom it has been too long the custom to ances, and so admirable in your sex, or rather in your grace's person alone, which I never call to mind but to rank it among the Heroines, and constellate with the Graces. Such of ancient days was Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, that writ the history of her country, as your grace has done that of my lord duke your husband, worthy to be transmitted to posterity. Your eminently characteristic-vigorous at times, grace has title to all her perfections. Such and at times poetical. We select a few was Anna Commena, who called Alexius fa- pieces not generally known :ther, and writ fifteen books of history. Such was St. Catharine of Sienna, St. Bridget, and Therese (for even the greatest saints have cultivated the sciences). Such was Fulvia Morata, Isabella Andreini, Margarite of Valois (sister to Francis I.), whose novels are equal to those of the witty Boccaccio. But all these summoned together possess but that divided which your grace retains in one. For what of sublime and worthy in the nature of things does not your grace comprehend and explain?" Surely the arrow of adulation is here drawn to the head; and this is the mighty pretender, too, to the science, philosophy, and poetry of the Diary of the same individual ! Soothed with a series of letters full of flattery of this description, and buoyed up with "A REQUEST TO MY FRIENDS. Then may my ashes rise that tear to meet, O you that are my dearest friends, do not, Here is what she calls " An Elegy," pret wing, a belief that her fame would stand high, ty and fanciful in the extreme :— and securely high with posterity, the duch-"Her corps was borne to church on gray-goose ess descended quietly to the grave, as Fulman informs us, on the 7th January, 1673-4. The produce of her brain was her only offspring. The duke survived her some three years, when he was laid by the side of his Her sheet was paper-white to lap her in. |