The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760
by Myra Reynolds · English · Gutenberg #49867 · 1,125,213 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760
Author: Myra Reynolds
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Vassar Semi-Centennial Series
ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ITALIAN. By MARY AUGUSTA SCOTT,
Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1876), Professor of English Literature in
Smith College.
SOCIAL STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By LAURA J. WYLIE, Ph.D.
(A.B. Vassar, 1877), Professor of English in Vassar College.
THE LEARNED LADY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By MYRA REYNOLDS,
Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1880), Professor of English Literature in
Chicago University. [_In preparation._]
THE CUSTOM OF DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENT IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. By
ORIE J. HATCHER, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1888), Formerly Associate
Professor of Comparative Literature in Bryn Mawr College. [_In
preparation._]
INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF VARIABLE STARS. By CAROLINE E.
FURNESS, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1891), Professor of Astronomy in
Vassar College.
MOVEMENT AND MENTAL IMAGERY. By MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN, Ph.D.
(A.B. Vassar, 1891), Professor of Psychology in Vassar College.
BRISSOT DE WARVILLE: A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION. By ELOISE ELLERY, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1897),
Associate Professor of History in Vassar College.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE LEARNED LADY IN ENGLAND
1650-1760
[Illustration: LADY JANE GREY
From an engraving in Edmund Lodge's _Portraits of Illustrious
Personages of Great Britain_ London, 1823, Vol. II]
Vassar Semi-Centennial Series
THE LEARNED LADY
IN ENGLAND
1650-1760
BY
MYRA REYNOLDS
_Professor of English Literature in the University of Chicago_
WITH PORTRAITS
[Illustration: (Publisher's colophon)]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY MYRA REYNOLDS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PUBLISHED IN HONOR OF THE
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE
FOUNDING OF VASSAR COLLEGE
1865-1915
TO
E. E. L.
CONTENTS
I. LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650 1
1. Prefatory Statement 1
2. Period of Henry VIII and Elizabeth 4
3. Period from 1603 to 1650 23
4. Schools for Girls before 1660 37
II. LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 46
1. An Introductory Group in the Years 1650-1675 46
2. The Century following the Restoration 81
Actresses 81
Artists 84
Authors 88
Writers on Practical Subjects 89
Writers on Religion and Theology 92
Writers on Practical Beneficence 118
Dramatic Writers 127
General Learning and Literary Work 137
III. EDUCATION 258
1. Boarding-Schools for Girls 258
2. Charity Schools 268
3. Higher Education 271
IV. MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN IN SOCIAL AND
INTELLECTUAL LIFE 316
V. SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNED LADY
IN COMEDY 372
SUMMARY 420
BIBLIOGRAPHY 457
INDEX 477
ILLUSTRATIONS
LADY JANE GREY _Frontispiece_
THE FAMILY OF SIR THOMAS MORE 10
MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE 22
ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND
MONTGOMERY 32
MARY WARD 38
MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE 46
From Horace Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_
MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE 52
From _The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle,
and of his Wife, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle_
MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS 56
MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND HER SON 70
LADY FANSHAWE 74
MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW 86
MRS. APHRA BEHN 130
ELIZABETH ELSTOB 170
THE SUPPOSED EDITORS OF _THE FEMALE SPECTATOR_,
BY MRS. ELIZA HAYWOOD 216
MISS ELIZABETH CARTER 256
MRS. BATHSUA MAKIN 276
THE LEARNED LADY IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650
1. PREFATORY STATEMENT
The theme to which this volume is specifically limited is the
position and achievements of learned women in England in the period
between 1650 and 1760. But before entering upon this detailed
study it seems desirable to give a preliminary sketch of the work
of learned women in England before 1650. In such a sketch it is,
indeed, a temptation to go farther back along the path of history
than a single volume would allow. It is difficult, for instance,
to avoid some account of the women of genius notable in the great
days of Greece and Rome.[1] More fascinating still would be a close
study of the learned nuns of the Middle Ages.[2] St. Radegunde,
Abbess of Poitiers, a poet of considerable distinction; St. Hilda,
who governed her double monastery at Whitby so successfully as to
put it "in the forefront of intellectual agencies in Great Britain";
the group of learned nuns who corresponded with St. Boniface, chief
among them being St. Lioba, who made of her convent at Bischopsheim,
Germany, "the most important educational center in that part of
Europe"; Hroswitha of Gandersheim, whose seven dramas "caused the
tragic muse to emerge once more from the midnight gloom of the Middle
Ages";[3] St. Hildegard, "the most voluminous woman writer of the
Middle Ages"; St. Herrad, author of an encyclopædic work entitled
_Hortus Deliciarum_, or _Garden of Delight_--these are but a few of
the women whose lives and works offer a field for profitable and
interesting investigation.
Emily James Putnam, in her acute study, _The Lady_, says of this
convent life:
No institution of Europe has ever won for the lady the freedom
and development that she enjoyed in the convent in the early
days. The modern colleges for women only feebly reproduce it,
since the college for women has arisen when colleges in general
are under a cloud. The lady-abbess, on the other hand, was part
of the two great social forces of her time, feudalism and the
Church. Great spiritual rewards and great worldly prizes were
alike within her grasp. She was treated as an equal by men of
her time as is witnessed by letters we still have from popes
and emperors to abbesses. She had the stimulus of competition
with men in executive capacity, in scholarship, and in artistic
production, since her work was freely set before the general
public: but she was relieved by the circumstances of her
environment from the ceaseless competition in common life of
woman with woman for the favor of the individual man. In the
cloister of the great days, as on a small scale in the college
for women to-day, women were judged by each other as men are
everywhere judged by each other, for sterling qualities of head
and heart and character.[4]
From mediæval poems and romances also come glimpses, tantalizingly
brief and casual, to be sure, yet glimpses indicative of a tendency
to count learning as one of the possible charms of a heroine.[5] The
delightful lady in _Cursor Mundi_, who was described as "learnyd,
ware and wise," was also said to be "of much price lovéd." A later
maid, likewise of "grete prys," could vie with a modern college girl
in the variety and extent of her knowledge:
Wyse sche was and curtes of mowthe,
All the vii arse sche cowthe.
She had maystures at hur honde,
The wysest men of that londe,
And taght hur astronomye,
Arsmetryck and gemetrye.
That mayde was of grete prys
For sche was bothe warre and wyse.[6]
In _Floris and Blanchefleur_, Floris refused to study unless
Blanchefleur was taught with him, and she prospered so at her books
that her lore was a wonder to all. When she and Floris had been in
school five years together, they knew Latin and could write well on
parchment. When Floris went to visit his aunt she set him to learn
many things, as other children did, "bot maydons and grome."[7] The
wife of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun was taught "fysik and sirgerie" by great
masters from Bologna.[8] Melior, the fair mistress of Partonope of
Blois, since she was the only heir to the kingdom, was sent to school
that she might get great wisdom. She says, "A hundred mastres I had
and mo," and adds that God graciously inclined her to learning so
that she came to know "the seven sciences" perfectly. She was also
trained in herbs and "phisike," in "Divinite and Nygromancy."[9]
Thaise, in _Apollonius of Tyre_, combined the "wisdom of a clerk" with
every lusti werk,
Which to a gentlewoman longeth.
She was wel kept, sche was wel loked
Sche was wel tawht, sche was wel boked
So wel sche spedde hir in hire yowthe
That sche of every wisdom cowthe.[10]
Medea, in Lydgate's _Troy Book_, had so passionate a desire for
knowledge that she became in all the "artis called liberal" as expert
and knowing as the best. She was powerful in logic, astronomy, and
necromancy.[11]
But the highly prized ladies of romance, the abbesses with all their
pomp and influence, the women poets, philosophers, and orators of
Greece and Rome, all lose interest when compared with the story of
the learned women in Italy during the Renascence. When we come to
the actual flowering time of their genius the list is so long as to
make selection difficult. "Never in history," says Mozans, "had they
greater freedom of action in things of the mind; never were they,
except probably in the case of the English and German abbesses of the
Middle Ages, treated with more marked deference and consideration
or fairness; never were their efforts more highly appreciated or
more generously rewarded.... Everywhere the intellectual arena was
open to them on the same terms as to men. Incapacity and not sex was
the only bar to entrance."[12] When the great Cardinal Bembo said,
"Little girls should learn Latin; it completes their charm," he was
expressing the attitude of the best Italian scholars towards learning
for women. Intellectual attainments were not only counted appropriate
for women, but they were recognized as a distinct added attraction.
Every city of importance had women whose renown was a source of civic
pride. Women not only studied under tutors, but they apparently
attended classes in the great universities, and even occupied
important chairs in the most distinguished faculties.[13]
The outcome of a general investigation along the lines indicated
would doubtless go to prove that in all civilized nations, in all
ages of their progress, there have been individual women who by
force of native endowment and through some favorable conjunction of
circumstances, have risen into prominence in realms not ordinarily
open to the women of their time, and that there have been various
interesting epochs when women have responded in fairly large numbers
to some exceptional intellectual stimulus.
2. PERIOD OF HENRY VIII AND ELIZABETH
The first woman author in the English language is probably Juliana
Barnes (or Berners), whose delight in hunting, hawking, and fishing,
along with a surprising amount of technical knowledge on these
subjects, led her to write, in 1481, a book for "the gentill men and
honest persones" whose tastes coincided with hers. But this lady was
prioress of Sopewell Nunnery and comes under the list of learned
nuns.[14] Genuine interest in books on the part of women in secular
life in England received one of its earliest manifestations in the
will of the Duchess of Buckingham who left to her daughter-in-law,
Margaret, the Countess of Richmond,[15] "a book of English, being
a legend of Saints; a book of French, called Lucun; another book
of French, of the Epistles and Gospels; and a Primmer with clasps
of silver gilt, covered with purple velvet." This legacy was an
important recognition of the literary tastes of the Countess of
Richmond who had, says Ballard, "a fine library stored with Latin,
French and English books, not collected for ornament, or to make a
figure (as is frequently the case) but for use." The Countess knew
French and had some knowledge of Latin. She also entered the field
of authorship, publishing before 1509 _The mirroure of golde for the
sinfull soule_, "translated at Parice out of Laten into Frenshe ...
and now of late translated out of Frenshe into Englishe by the right
excellent Princess Margaret." This right noble Margaret was likewise
a patroness of literature and a guardian of learning. She established
lectureships in divinity, maintained scholarships for poor students,
founded two colleges, and in other ways manifested her interest in
the progress of education.
The Countess of Richmond as a lover of books, as a translator of
religious works, and particularly as an intelligent and ardent
patron of learning, foreshadowed feminine activities of a later
day. But the learned lady as a recognized factor in social life had
no real place in England till the time of Henry VIII. Renascence
ideas concerning the education of women came into England from
Spain through Catherine, the first wife of Henry VIII. She was in
England from 1501 to 1531. Under the influence of her mother, Queen
Isabella,[16] she had been given remarkable educational advantages.
Queen Isabella was interested in all that pertained to learning.
She was a collector of books and contributed important accessions
to Spanish libraries. She knew several modern languages and had a
"critically accurate" knowledge of Latin. Learning for women was
encouraged at her court. The queen had herself a lady teacher,
Beatrix Galindo, who was professor of rhetoric at the University
of Salamanca, and who was called, for her knowledge of the Latin
language, _La Latina_. Other learned ladies of Spain were doubtless
known at the court, as Francisca de Lebrixa who often took the place
of her father, professor of history in the University of Alcala;
or Doña Maria Pacheco de Mendoza and her sister, who are mentioned
by Mr. Foster as the parallels of Sir Thomas More's daughters in
England.[17] In this eager, ambitious, intellectual atmosphere
the daughters of Isabella were brought up. She gave them personal
instruction, and secured for them foreign teachers of eminence.
Erasmus said that Catherine had been happily reared on letters from
her infancy, that she loved literature, and that she was _egregie
docta_. In the English court Queen Catherine's influence was all
on the side of learning. Mr. Watson says that all the treatises on
the education of women that appeared in England between 1523 and
1538 were under the spell of Catherine.[18] In the education of her
own daughter, the Princess Mary, she kept to the traditions of the
Spanish court and secured the most learned tutors for the young girl.
Dr. Lynacre wrote for the child Princess a _Rudiments of Grammar_.
His successor was Juan Luis Vives, who came to England in 1523 on the
invitation of Henry VIII. Whether Vives actually taught the Princess
or not, he wrote, in 1523, as director of her studies, two Latin
treatises, both dedicated to Queen Catherine. The first of these,
_De Institutione Fæminæ Christiannæ_, was translated into English
by Richard Hyrde before 1528 (though not printed till 1540) under
the title, _The Instruction of a Christian Woman_. Hyrde dedicated
his translation to Catherine because of her gracious zeal "to the
virtuous education of the womankind of this realm." Vives's second
treatise, _De Ratione Studii_, an account of the studies appropriate
for a young girl, appeared in 1524, and many editions are listed.
Still another treatise is by subject-matter and chronology closely
connected with the two essays by Vives. In 1524 there appeared a
translation by Margaret Roper of Erasmus's _Treatise on the Lord's
Prayer_. The Introduction was by Mr. Hyrde, and its importance is
indicated by Mr. Watson when he calls it "the first reasoned claim of
the Renascence period, written in English, for the higher education
of women." These treatises by Vives and Hyrde have much in common
and they express the most advanced contemporary ideas on woman's
education. That the place of woman is in the home is emphatically
stated. Housewifery is imperative. Vives has a charming passage on
the handling of wool and flax, "two crafts yet left of that old
innocent world," crafts of which no woman, be she princess or queen,
may be rightly ignorant.[19] Almost equal in quaint interest is
his defense of the kitchen: "Nor let nobody loathe the name of the
kitchen: namely, being a thing very necessary, without the which
neither sick folks can amend nor whole folks live." The lady should
also be mistress of a closet of medicaments which she must be able to
administer with skill. Occupations that involve any sort of publicity
are counted inappropriate for women, hence Vives gives "no license
to a woman to be a teacher."[20] The essential feminine virtues are
piety and modesty. Obedience to parents and to husbands is enjoined.
This obedience, if born of inner concord, might be a voluntary and
ideal thing. The mother of Vives is given as an example of the true
wifely attitude: "My mother Blanche when she had been fifteen years
married unto my father, I could never see her strive with my father.
There were two sayings that she had ever in her mouth as proverbs.
When she would say she believed well anything, then she used to
say, even as though Luis Vives had spoken it. When she would say
that she would [wished] anything, she used to say, even as though
Luis Vives would it."[21] In all these points Vives and Hyrde were
quite in accord with their age. The new element in their creed was
that learning could make women more attractive, companionable, and
efficient in these home relationships.[22] Hyrde considers the man
that "had leaver have his wife a fool than a wise woman" as "worse
than twice frantic." Maids must be good, says Vives, but learning
will fortify them and make them more truly good. In fact, according
to Vives and Hyrde, there are no bounds to be set to the learning of
women except those involved in the one general prescription that all
their studies must tend to the development of character. Romances,
for instance, are forbidden because they give false ideals, while
ethical and religious books are strongly commended.[23]
The Princess Mary was too young to know the significance of the
essays in her behalf, but she profited by the training accorded her.
When she was but nine she was addressed by commissioners from Holland
in the Latin tongue and responded in the same language "with as much
assurance and facility as if she had been twelve years of age."[24]
Her parents were proud of her achievements and planned to have her
learn modern languages. Later in life, at the solicitation of Queen
Catherine Parr, she translated Erasmus's _Paraphrase on the Gospel of
St. John_, and her work was highly praised.
The example set at court was followed in many noble families. There
is in the realm of education no single picture more entertaining
and attractive than that of Sir Thomas More and his daughters. Our
knowledge of this family comes from various sources, the chief of
which are a description written by Erasmus in a letter to John Faber,
and the letters written by Sir Thomas to the tutors and to his
daughters, especially to his daughter Margaret.[25] Sir Thomas could
not see why learning was not as suitable for girls as for boys. In a
letter to Gunnel he wrote:
Neither is there anie difference in harvest time, whether it was
man or woman, that sowed first the corne: for both of them beare
name of a reasonable creature equally, whose nature reason only
doth distinguish from bruite beastes, and therefore I do not
see why learning in like manner may not equally agree with both
sexes; for by it, reason is cultivated, and (as a fielde) sowed
with wholesome precepts, it bringeth excellent fruit. But if the
soyle of woman's braine be of its own nature bad, and apter to
beare fearne then corne (by which saying manie doe terrifye women
from learning) I am of opinion therefore that a woman's witt
is the more diligently by good instructions and learning to be
manured, to the ende, the defect of nature may be redressed by
industrie.[26]
In describing the ideal wife he said: "May she be learned, if
possible, or at least capable of being made so,"[27] and he gave
the same training to Margaret and her sisters as to his son John.
The fame of these daughters went far. Symon Grinæus, in dedicating
his Plato to John, speaks of the young man's sisters as those "whom
a divine heat of the spirit, to the admiration and a new example
of this our age, hath driven into the sea of learning so far, and
so happily, that they see no learning to be above their reach, no
disputation of philosophy above their capacity."[28] Margaret, the
daughter "most like her father both in favour and wit," and "a rare
woman for learning, sanctity, and secrecy,"[29] was especially the
source of his pride. His delight in her overflows in his charming
response to a letter from her asking for money: "You aske monye,
deare Megg, too shamefully and fearefully of your father, who is
both desirous to giue it you, and your letter hath deserued it,
which I could find in my heart to recompence, not as Alexander did
by Cherilus, giuing him for every verse a Philipine of golde; but if
my abilities were answerable to my will, I would bestowe two Crownes
of pure golde for euery sillable thereof."[30] He found her Latin
letters written in so pure a style that "Momus, his censure though
never so teastie," could find no fault in them. Sir Thomas took
occasion to show these letters and other compositions by Margaret to
the Bishop of Exeter and to Reginald Pole, both good judges of any
literary performance; and Margaret's attainments seemed to both "as a
miracle." Of Mr. Pole's amazement Sir Thomas wrote:
I could scarce make him believe, but that you had some help
from your maister, until I told him seriously that you had not
only never a maister in your house, but also never another man,
that needed not your help rather in writing anie thing, than
you needed his. In the mean time I thought with myself how true
I found that now, which once I remember I spoke unto you in
jeaste, when I pittied your hard happe, that men that read your
writings would suspect you to have had help from some other man
therein; which would derrogate somewhat from the praises due to
your workes; seeing that you of all others deserve least to have
such a suspition had of you, for that you never could abide to be
decked with the plumes of other birds.[31]
But sweet Meg is praised because she studies for love of learning,
not for fame, and contents herself with her husband and father as a
sufficient audience. When Margaret married the best wish her father
could make was that her children should be most like to herself,
"except only in sex," yet he adds that a daughter who could imitate
her mother's learning and virtues would be of more worth than "three
boys."[32]
[Illustration: THE FAMILY OF SIR THOMAS MORE
Hans Holbein pinxit. W. Parsons sculp. 1815
From an engraving in _Effigies Poeticae_, London, 1824, Vol. II]
Margaret had three sons and two daughters and she took the same care
of their education as had been taken of hers. Dr. John Morwen, a
noted Greek scholar, was preceptor in Greek and Latin to her daughter
Mary. Other tutors were Dr. Cole and Dr. Christopherson, also famous
for Greek. Mary seems to have followed in her mother's footsteps so
far as attention to learned pursuits is concerned, but without her
mother's ability and charm. Her Latin orations were, however, so much
admired that her tutor, Dr. Morwen, translated them into English. Sir
Thomas More's other daughters, Elizabeth Dancy (b. 1509) and Cecilia
Heron (b. 1510), and Margaret, a talented kinswoman who married her
tutor, Dr. John Clement, in 1531, were given the same educational
advantages as Margaret. A characteristic eulogy of the three sisters
was by Mr. John Leland, its Latin being thus Englished in Ballard's
_Memoirs_:
Forbear too much t' extoll, great Rome, from hence,
Thy fam'd Hortensius' Daughter's Eloquence;
These boasted names are now eclips'd by Three
More learned Nymphs, Great More's fair Progeny;
Who over-pas'd the Spinster's mean Employ;
The purest Latin Authors were their Joy;
They loved in Rome's political Style to write,
And with the choicest Eloquence indite,
Nor were they conversant alone in these,
They turn'd o'er Homer and Demosthenes;
From Aristotle's Store of Learning too
The mystic Art of Reasoning well they drew.
Then blush you Men if you neglect to trace
These Heights of Learning which the Female grace.[33]
Erasmus and Sir Thomas More were close friends and it was through
this friendship that Erasmus was converted to the idea of advanced
studies for women. In his _The Abbot and the Learned Woman_,
Magdalia defends learning against the Abbot Antronius. The monk uses
the well-worn argument that woman's place is in the home, that it is
her business to conduct the affairs of the family and to instruct the
children. Magdalia does not contest this position, but urges that so
weighty a business needs all possible wisdom and that through books
she gains wisdom. In a sharp attack on the ignorance of the monks she
says: "In Spain and Italy there are not a few women belonging to the
noblest families who are a match for any man. In England there are
the Mores; in Germany the Pirckheimers and the Blaurers. And if you
don't take care, it will soon come to this, that we shall preside in
the schools of divinity, preach in the churches, and take possession
of your mitres.... If you go on as you are doing it is more likely
that the geese will begin to preach than that such dumb shepherds as
you will be any longer endured."[34] Antronius is reduced to the weak
argument that popular opinion does not favor Latin for women, and
Magdalia closes the discussion with the classic defense of new ideas:
"Why do you tell me of popular opinion, which is the worst example
in the world to be followed? What have I to do with custom, that is
the mistress of all evil practices? We ought to accustom ourselves to
the best things, and by that means that which was uncustomary would
become habitual, and that which was unpleasant would become pleasant,
and that which seemed unbecoming would look graceful."[35]
The daughters of Sir Thomas More were not the only girls trained
in the best learning of the day. Another important family where
particular stress was laid on the education of the daughters was
that of Sir Anthony Coke, one of the tutors of King Edward VI.[36]
Mildred, the eldest daughter (1526-1589), who married Lord Burleigh,
was celebrated for her knowledge of Latin and Greek. Two other
daughters, Elizabeth, Lady Russel (b. _cir._ 1529), and Katharine,
Mrs. Killigrew (b. _cir._ 1530), had fine natural abilities and
a learned education, and were distinguished both socially and
intellectually. But the most noted of the sisters was Anne (b. _cir._
1527), who married Sir Nicholas Bacon, and became the mother of two
remarkable sons, Anthony Bacon, and Francis Viscount St. Albans,
the great Lord Bacon. She was said to be "exquisitely skilled in
the Greek, Latin, and Italian tongues." In 1550 she translated
twenty-five sermons from the Italian. In later life she did a much
more important piece of translation. Bishop Jewel had written in
Latin _An Apology for the Church of England_. The book had made
so great a stir that an English translation seemed desirable and
Lady Bacon undertook the task. She sent her translation to the
Archbishop and to the author, with a letter written in Greek, that
they might correct any errors, but they found it so accurate that
they changed not the least word. In 1564 the Archbishop had the book
published without consulting Lady Bacon because he said he knew her
modesty would be abashed by any such publicity. He praised her clear
translation saying that she "had done honour to her sex and to the
degree of ladies." Lady Bacon was associated with her father in his
duties as tutor to Edward VI. She also conducted the early education
of her sons and they owed much to her wise care and great ability.
Sir Anthony Coke believed that women should be educated on the same
lines as men, and that they were quite as capable of acquiring
knowledge, and his own daughters brilliantly sustained this theory.
A third distinguished family in which the daughters were liberally
educated was that of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Three of
them, Anne, Margaret, and Jane, were joint authors of _A Century of
Distichs upon the Death of Queen Margaret of Navarre_, printed in
1550 and later translated into Greek, French, and Italian.[37] Henry
Fitz Allan, Earl of Arundel, had both his daughters well trained
in the classics and they had the advantage of the notable library
he had collected. The eldest, Lady Joanna Lumley[38] (d. 1576),
translated four of the _Orations_ of Isocrates from Greek into
Latin, and the _Iphigenia_ of Euripides from Greek into English.
Most of her writings were dedicated to her father. Her manuscripts
were preserved in his library and so passed into royal possession
in the time of James I. Another learned lady was Mary, Countess of
Arundel.[39] She translated from Greek and Latin and collected a book
of similes from Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and other classic authors.
She, too, dedicated her works to her father, Sir Thomas Arundel.
Sir Thomas Parr, "following the example of Sir Thomas More and
other great men," bestowed on his daughter Catherine[40] a learned
education, as "the most valuable addition he could make to her other
charms." She was interested in all matters pertaining to learning,
and successfully used her influence with the King in behalf of the
universities. She wrote a letter in Latin to the Princess Mary to
induce her to translate Erasmus's _Paraphrase of St. John_, and wrote
many psalms, prayers, and meditations, beside _Queene Katherine
Parre's lamentation of a sinner_, published in 1548. Jane, Countess
of Westmoreland, was placed by her father, the Earl of Surrey, under
the tuition of Mr. Fox, the Martyrologist, who reported her skill in
Latin and Greek as such "that she might well stand in competition
with the greatest men of that age."[41]
Most interesting and most pathetic of all the young women known
for learning in Tudor times was Lady Jane Grey.[42] Ascham, in
a well-known passage in _The Scholemaster_ (1570), describes an
interview he had with her at Bradgate where she was pursuing her
studies under John Aylmer, her tutor. This was in 1550 when Lady Jane
was but thirteen.
Before I went into _Germanie_, I came to Brodegate in
Le(i)cestershire, to take my leaue of that noble Ladie _Iane
Grey_, to whom I was exeding moch beholdinge. Hir parentes,
the Duke and Duches, with all the houshold, Gentlemen and
Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the Parke; I founde her, in her
Chamber, readinge _Phædon Platonis_ in Greeke, and that with as
moch delite, as som ientlemen wold read a merie tale in _Bocase_.
After salutation, and dewtie done, with som other taulke, I asked
her, whie she wold leese soch pastime in the Parke! smiling
she answered me; I wisse, all their sporte in the Parke is but
a shoadoe to that pleasure, that I find in _Plato_: Alas good
folke, they neuer felt what trewe pleasure ment. And howe came
you Madame, quoth I, to this deepe knowledge of pleasure, and
what did chieflie allure you vnto it: seinge, not many women, but
verie fewe men haue attained thereunto. I will tell you, quoth
she, and to tell you a troth, which perchance ye will meruell
at. One of the greatest benefites, that euer God gaue me, is,
that he sent me so sharpe and seuere Parentes, and so ientle a
scholemaster. For when I am in the presence of either father or
mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate,
drinke, be merie, or sad, be sowyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing
anie thing els, I most do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure,
and number, euen so perfitelie, as God made the world, or else I
am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presentlie
some tymes with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies,
which I will not name, for the honor I bear them, so without
measure mis-ordered, that I think my selfe in hell, till tyme
cum, that I must go to _M. Elmer_, who teacheth me so ientlie,
so pleasantlie, with soch faire allurements to learning, that
I thinke all the tyme nothing, whiles I am with him. And when
I am called from him, I fall on weeping because, what soeuer
I do els, but learning, is ful of grief, trouble, feare, and
whole misliking unto me: And thus my booke, hath bene so moch
my pleasure, and bringeth dayly to me more pleasure and more,
that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in vere deede be but
trifles and troubles vnto me. I remember this talke gladly, bothe
bicause it is so worthy of memorie, and bicause also, it was the
last talke that euer I had, and the last tyme, that euer I saw
that noble and worthie Ladie.
Mr. Elmer said she understood perfectly both kinds of philosophy,
and could express herself very properly at least in the Latin and
Greek tongues. Sir Thomas Chaloner said that she was "well versed in
Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, French and Italian," that she "played well
on instrumental music, writ a curious hand, and was excellent at
her Needle." Ballard quotes a contemporaneous opinion that she was
superior to King Edward VI in learning and in the languages. "If her
fortunes [says he] had been as good as her bringing up, joyned with
fineness of wit: undoubtedly she might have seemed comparable not
only to the house of the Vespasians, Sempronians, and mother of the
Gracchies; yea, to any other women besides that deserveth high praise
for their singular learning; but also to the university men, which
have taken many degrees of the Schools."
So far as accessible records go it was only in royal or noble
families that a learned education was counted suitable for women. It
is rare indeed to come upon an account like that of Elizabeth Lucar
(1510-1537), the daughter of a Mr. Paul Withypoll, and the wife of a
merchant-tailor, Mr. Lucar. In her accomplishments she seems to have
vied with the best ladies in the land. She was excellent in music,
being able to play on the viol, the lute, and the virginal, and she
could sing in various tongues.
She wrought all Needle-works that Women exercise,
With Pen, Frame, or Stoole, all Pictures artificial,
Curious Knots, or Trailes, what fancy could devise,
Beasts, Birds, or Flowers, even as things natural.
She wrote "three manner hands," was especially cunning in accounts
and "Algorism" (Arithmetic), and she could speak, write, and
read Latin, Spanish, and Italian, and she "won the garland" in
English.[43] Our knowledge of Elizabeth Withypoll's rare attainments
comes by chance from the information on her monument. Probably there
were other highly educated women in the wealthy middle classes but
their learned tastes were not counted worthy of any definite record.
In addition to the many instances of girls trained in the best
learning of their times during the first half of the sixteenth
century, we have striking contemporary testimony as to the prevalence
of the custom, and the high esteem in which such learning was held.
Richard Mulcaster (1530-1611), first head-master of a school founded
by the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1561, in discussing principles
of education, expressed advanced ideas concerning the ability and
training of girls.[44] He declared himself "for them toothe and
naile." He says that their "natural towardnesse" is such that they
should be well brought up, and he summarizes the elements of this
training. A young gentlewoman is thoroughly educated, he says, if she
can "reade plainly, and distinctly, write faire and swiftly, sing
cleare and sweetly, play wel and finely, understand and speak the
learned languages, and the tongues also which the time most embraseth
with some logicall helpe to chop, and some rhetoricke to brave." And
he asks whether it is likely that the children of a woman so trained
will be "eare a whit the worse brought up" for this learning. The
places wherein girls may study may be at home with tutors or they may
go forth to the elementary school. And the teacher may be either a
man or a woman. Mulcaster was himself in favor of sending girls to
the public grammar schools, and even to the universities, but he said
it was "a thing not used" in his country, there was no "president"
therefor. But he is enthusiastic about the attainments of women.
In languages, he says, "they compare favourably with our kinde in
the best degree." Some of them are so excellently trained and so
rarely qualified that they could be preferred to "the best Romaine
or Greekish paragones be they never so much praised: to the Germaine
or French gentlewymen by late writers so wel liked: to the Italian
ladies who dare write themselves and deserve fame for so doing."
Nicholas Udall, in 1548, in a Preface to Princess Mary's translation
of the _Paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John_ by Erasmus, comments
on the great number of noble women at that time in England given not
only to human sciences and strange tongues, but
also so throughly expert in the Holy Scriptures that they were
able to compare with the best writers as well in enditeing and
penning of Godly and fruitful treatises to the instruction
and edifying of realmes in the knowledge of God, as also in
translating good books out of Latin or Greek into English....
It was now no news in England to see young damsels in noble
houses and in the courts of princes, instead of cards and other
instruments of idle trifling, to have continually in their hands
either psalms, homilies, or other devout meditations ... and
as familiarly both to read or reason thereof in Greek, Latin,
French or Italian, as in English. It was now a common thing to
see young virgins so trained in the study of good letters, that
they willingly set all other vain pastimes at naught for learning
sake. It was now no news at all, to see Queens and ladies of most
high estate and progeny, instead of courtly dalliance, to embrace
virtuous exercises of reading and writing, and with most earnest
study both early and late, to apply themselves to the acquiring
of knowledge.[45]
Puttenham, in his _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589), indicates the
prevalence of women poets in the sixteenth century when he says:
Darke word or doubtfull speach are not so narrowly to be looked
vpon in a large poeme, nor specially in the pretie Poesies and
deuises of Ladies and Gentlewomen-makers, whom we would not haue
too precise Poets least with their shrewd wits, when they were
maried they might become a little too fantasticall wiues.[46]
One of the influential foreign books of the first half of the
sixteenth century was Baldasar Castiglione's _Il Cortegiano_, written
in 1514, published in 1528, and translated into English in 1561 by
Thomas Hoby. The book is a conversation supposed to take place in the
drawing-room of the Duchess of Urbino, with the Duchess, her friend
Emilia Pia, Pietro Bembo, Bernardo Bibbiena, Giuliano de Medici, and
others, among the speakers. In the chapter on the attributes of the
perfect Court Lady, Count Gaspar Pallavicino says, "Since you have
given women letters and continence and magnanimity and temperance I
only marvel that you would not have them govern cities, make laws,
and lead armies, and let the men stay at home to cook or spin."[47]
Giuliano de Medici replies, laughing, "Perhaps even that would not be
amiss." There follows a discussion of woman as essentially imperfect,
an accident or mistake of nature, and consequently of less dignity
than men and not capable of those virtues to which men attain. But
the Magnifico held the doctrine that physical weakness does not
constitute inferiority, and that mentally women are equal to men:
"All the things that men can understand the same can women understand
too; and where the intellect of the one penetrates there also can
that of the other penetrate."
It is but natural that the praise of learning for women should extend
through the reign of Elizabeth. The Queen herself was an admirable
linguist. She spoke and wrote Latin with ease; she was a student
of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon; and she made translations into
English from French and Italian, even translating from Latin into
Greek. According to Ascham she read more Greek every day than some
Prebendaries read Latin in a week, and bestowed more regular hours
on learning than six of the best given gentlemen in the court. It
was also in accordance with the ideals of the age that the Queen
should wish to shine as a poetess. Dyce, in his _Specimens of British
Poetesses_, says that except for the speech of the Chorus in the
_Hercules Acteus_ of Seneca (printed in Park's edition of Walpole's
_Royal and Noble Authors_) he gives, and for the first time in
collected form, all the poems by this "Flower of Troynovant." It is
all occasional verse, such as a sonnet on that lovely "daughter of
debate," Mary Queen of Scots, a _Rebus_, an _Epitaph_, and a few
other stanzas. One little poem beginning
I grieve but dare not show my discontent,
with much that is conventional in expression, seems yet to have a
genuine note of personal feeling. Taken as a whole the brief sum of
the Queen's verse indicates no poetic aptitude. It merely goes to
show that verse writing was counted an agreeable accomplishment, and
one to be cultivated by a queen.
Probably the most highly gifted woman during Elizabeth's reign
was Jane Weston (1582-1612).[48] And she was of high repute. When
Evelyn went to dine with Lord Cornbury at Clarendon House (December
20, 1668) to see the new house "now bravely furnished, especially
with the pictures of most of our ancient and modern wits, poets,
philosophers, famous and learned Englishmen," he greatly commended
his lordship's collection, but suggested additional names of the
learned. Among these new names were Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth
Jane Weston. In _Numismata_ Evelyn praised Jane Weston's Latin poem
on typography. Farnaby "ranked her with Sir Thomas More and the best
Latin poets of the day." She was reputed to speak and write English,
Greek, German, Latin, Italian and Czech. John Philips praised her
in his _Theatrum Poetarum_. "Weston's fair daughter," "the tenth
muse," "the fourth grace," received, indeed, very high contemporary
English recognition, and even more extravagant praise came from
foreign critics. Her collected works were published in 1602 by Georg
Martin von Baldhoven at his own cost. At the end of the book there
was a list of learned women beginning with Deborah and ending with
Elizabeth Weston.
The only woman before 1603 in Aubrey's _Lives_, besides the Countess
of Pembroke, was Elizabeth Danvers. His notes on her are: "A great
politician; great witt and spirit, but revengefull. Knew how to
manage her estate as well as any man; understood jewells as well
as any jeweller." He calls her "an Italian," probably because she
understood that language, and he says "she had prodigious parts for a
woman." Her learning was certainly unusual, for "she had Chaucer at
her fingers' ends." The only date given for her is 1568, the year in
which her son, Sir Charles Danvers, was born.[49]
To show that Scotland was not unrepresented, mention may be made of
Elizabeth Melville, supposed to be identical with Elizabeth Colville,
Lady Colville of Culross. In 1599 Alexander Hume dedicated to her his
_Hymns_, or _Sacred Songs_, and he says of her: "I know ye delite in
poesie yourselfe; and as I vnfainedly confes, excelles any of your
sexe in that art, that ever I heard within this nation. I have seene
your compositions so copious, so pregnant, so spirituall, that I
doubt not but it is the gift of God in you."[50] The one poem by
which she is known, _Ane Godlie Dreame compylit in Scottish Meter by
M. M. (Mistress Melville) Gentlewoman in Culross, at the request of
her freindes_, was published in 1603. It appeared again in a volume
of _Various Poetry_ in 1644, and in David Laing's _Early Metrical
Tales_ in 1826. Dyce gives a few stanzas in his _Specimens_. The poem
is a Bunyan-like narrative in which the horrors of hell are painted
with a vigorous brush. In fact hell is made so distinct that even the
mitigating and finally saving presence of Christ as guide can hardly
soften the pictures of "puir damnit saullis ... frying wonder fast in
flaming fire."[51]
The one lady of Elizabethan days whose fame justly exceeds that of
any of her predecessors is Mary Sidney (1561-1621),[52] sister of
Sir Philip Sidney. At sixteen she married Henry Herbert, Earl of
Pembroke, and the twenty-four years of her married life were passed
at his estate, Wilton House, in Wiltshire. Her brother Philip was
often at Wilton and her more important literary accomplishments are
closely bound up with his work. It was at Wilton that he wrote _The
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_ which he dedicated to his "dear ladie
and sister." The brother and sister translated together the whole
book of Psalms into English verse. Psalms 44-150 are attributed
to Lady Pembroke. In 1592 she published two translations from the
French, Du Plessis Mournay's _Le Excellent Discours de la Vie et de
la Mort_; and Robert Garnier's _Marc Antonie_, a tragedy. Before 1600
she had also translated _The Triumph of Death_ from the Italian.
In 1593 she brought out her brother's _Arcadia_ on which she had
done most careful editorial work. She had also a taste for science.
Aubrey, in his _Brief Lives_, says of her: "She was a great chymist,
and spent yearly a great deale in that study.[53] She kept for her
laborator in the house Adrian Gilbert (vulgarly called Dr. Gilbert),
half brother to Sir Walter Ralegh, who was a great chymist in those
dayes.... She also gave an honourable pension to Dr. Thomas Mouffett,
who hath writ a booke _De insectis_. Also one ... Boston, a good
chymist ... who did undoe himself by studying the philosopher's
stone."
But while Lady Pembroke takes undoubtedly a high rank as translator
and editor, her fame does not rest chiefly on this work. When
Nicholas Breton compared her to the Duchess of Urbino he brought
forward her essential claim to distinction, which is that she
understood, valued, and befriended the literati of her day. Aubrey
says: "In her time Wilton House was like a College, there were so
many learned and ingeniose persons. She was the greatest patronesse
of witt and learning of any lady in her time." The most extravagant
eulogies were addressed to her from girlhood to old age. No such
chorus of praise had been accorded any other woman except the queen.
But it must be noted that this adulation is mainly for Lady Pembroke
as the patroness of letters. Only incidentally are her own scholastic
attainments commended. It was as a lover of wit and learning, as a
dispenser of favors, that Lady Pembroke, the typical great lady of
Elizabethan days, expressed her interest in learning, rather than
as herself a scholar; and it was as an intelligent and open-handed
patroness that she received highest recognition.
Wotton, about a century later, gives the following summary of the
learning of this period: "It was so very modish, that the fair Sex
seemed to believe that _Greek_ and _Latin_ added to their Charms:
and _Plato_ and _Aristotle_ untranslated, were frequent ornaments of
their Closets. One would think by the Effects, that it was a proper
Way of Educating of them, since there are no Accounts in History of
so many truly great Women in any one age, as are to be found between
the years 15 and 1600."[54]
[Illustration: MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
From an engraving in Horace Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_,
London, 1806]
Though Wotton counts the century as one period, a closer study of
dates shows that most of the learned women of the century belong in
the first half of it, or at least obtained their education in the
first half of it. The woman most noted for classical attainments
during Elizabeth's reign was Lady Bacon. Her sisters also were of
considerable importance intellectually, and they lived well into the
reign of Elizabeth. But their education and their establishment as
women of exceptional learning belong before the coming of Elizabeth
to the throne.
Miss Weston's learning is unquestioned, but it can hardly be credited
to England. She lived much abroad, her works were published in
Holland, and the praise accorded her in England was but an echo of
the eulogies uttered by foreign critics. In spite of Queen Elizabeth
and Lady Mary Sidney, and Lady Bacon and Jane Weston, it becomes
apparent by a study of dates and names that there were in Elizabeth's
reign fewer eulogies of liberal education for girls and fewer records
of women distinguished by learning than in the preceding period. In
point of fact, when we speak of the sixteenth century as a century of
learned women, the emphasis should be on the first sixty years of the
century.
3. PERIOD FROM 1603 TO 1650
With the death of Elizabeth we come practically to the end of the
favor accorded learned women. The changed tone of public opinion may
be fairly indicated by a few scattered utterances from contemporary
poems and essays.
Sir Thomas Overbury, in his _Characters_ (1614), describes "A Good
Woman" as one "whose husband's welfare is the business of her
actions." Her chief virtue is that "Shee is Hee." In _A Wife_ he says
that "Books are a part of Man's Prerogative." He praises a "passive
understanding" in women and deprecates learning since
What it finds malleable it maketh frail
And doth not add more ballast, but more sail.
Powell, in _Tom of All Trades_ (1631), is emphatic in his plea
for the domestic as against the learned lady: "Let them learne
plaine workes of all kinds, so they take heed of too open seaming.
Instead of Song and Musicke, let them learn Cookerie and Laundrie.
And instead of reading in _Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia_, let them
reade the grounds of good huswifery. I like not a female Poetresse
at any hand."[55] William Habington, in _Castara_ (1634), a series
of poems in honor of Lucy Herbert, his wife, gave a comprehensive
description of the ideal wife's attitude towards her husband: "Shee
is inquisitive onely of new wayes to please him, and her wit sayles
by no other compass then that of his direction. Shee lookes upon
him as Conjurers upon the Circle, beyond which there is nothing but
Death and Hell; and in him shee beleeves Paradice circumscrib'd. His
vertues are her wonder and imitation; and his errors, her credulitie
thinkes no more frailtie, then makes him descend to the title of
Man."[56] Richard Brathwait, in _The English Gentleman_, comments
with apparent approval on the ancient seclusion of women. He says,
"_The Ægyptians_, by an especiall decree (as _Plutarch_ reports)
injoined their Women to weare no shooes, because they should abide
at home. The _Grecians_ accustomed to burne, before the doore of the
new married, the axletree of that coach, wherein she was brought to
her husbands house, letting her understand that she was ever after to
dwell there."[57]
Sir Ralph Verney said of his own daughter: "Pegg is very backward....
I doubt not but she will be schollar enough for a Woeman." With
regard to little Nancy Denton he wrote: "Let not your girl learn
Latin nor short hand: The difficulty of the first may keep her from
that vice, for soe I must esteem it in a woeman; but the easinesse
of the other may be a prejudice to her; for the pride of taking
sermon noates hath made multitudes of women unfortunate." Miss Nancy
was quite in advance of her godfather in her conception of the
studies appropriate for her. She wrote to him: "I know you and my
coussenes wil out rech me in french, but i am a goeng whaar i hop
i shal out rech you in ebri grek and laten." Sir Ralph answered:
"I did not think you had been guilty of soe much learning as I see
you are; and yet it seems you rest unsatisfied or else you would
not threaten Lattin, Greeke, and Hebrew too. Good sweet harte bee
not soe covitous; beleeve me a Bible (with y^e Common prayer) and a
good plaine cattichisme in your mother tongue being well read and
practised, is well worth all the rest and much more sutable to your
sex; I know your Father thinks thise false doctrine, but be confident
your husband will bee of my oppinion. In French you can not be too
cunning for that language affords many admirable books fit for you
as Romances, Plays, Poetry, Stories of illustrious (not learned)
Woemen, receipts for preserving, makinge creames and all sorts of
cookeryes, ordring your gardens and in Breif, all manner of good
housewifery."[58]
The general opinion was quite in accord with Luther when he said:
"Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and
bring up children";[59] or, at the best, with Milton's "He for God
only, she for God in him."[60]
Mr. Baldwyn, it is true, in 1619, in his _New Help to Discourse_,
praises England as the place where women had the greatest
prerogatives. In England, he says, women "are not kept so severely
submiss" as in France, nor so jealously guarded as in Italy.
"England is termed by foreigners the Paradise of Women as it is by
some accounted the Hell of horses and the Purgatory of Servants.
And it is a common byword among the Italians that if there were a
bridge built over the narrow seas all women in Europe would run into
England."[61] But this favorable opinion must be discounted as being
a retrospective estimate based mainly on the attitude towards women
in the sixteenth century; and further, as being an Englishman's
attempt to exalt English as against continental customs.
Of more curious interest is the ingenious attempt of the Bishop of
London to interpret the account of the creation of Eve from Adam's
rib as an intention on the part of the Creator to teach the equality
of woman with man. The Bishop says: "The species of this bone is
exprest to be _costa_, a rib, a bone of the side, not of the head: a
woman is not _domina_, the ruler; nor of any anterior part; she is
not _prælata_, preferred before the man; nor a bone of the foote;
she is not _serva_, a handmaid; nor of any hinder part; she is not
_post-posita_, set behind the man; but a bone of the _side_, of a
middle and indifferent part, to show that she is _socia_, a companion
to her husband. For _qui jungunter lateribus, socii sunt_, they that
walke side to side, cheeke to cheeke, walke as companions."[62]
One book definitely in honor of the ladies came out rather late
in the period. This was Charles Gerbier's _Elogium Heroinum. The
Ladies' Vindication: or, The Praise of Worthy Women._ The threefold
dedication to the Princess of Bohemia, "whose marvellous wisdom and
profound knowledge in Arts, Sciences, and Languages, is admired by
all men," to the Countess Dowager of Claire, "a Patroness of the
Muses, a general Lover of the Languages, and Knowledge"; and to the
"Vertuous Accomplisht Lady Anne Hudson," is justified by the three
principles in natural philosophy, the three theological virtues,
and the three graces. "Woman," says Mr. Gerbier, "is capable of
as high improvement as man," an assertion which he proceeds to
establish by the following arguments: "Does not _Sophia_ signify
wisdom? Are not Faith, Hope and Charity represented as Women? Are not
the Seven Liberal Arts exprest in Women's Shapes? Are not the Nine
Muses Daughters of Jupiter? Is not Wisdom called the Daughter of the
Highest?" His list of worthy women begins with the Queen of Sheba who
disputed with Solomon, goes enthusiastically through the famous dames
of Greece and Rome, including the Muses and the Sibyls, and touches
upon later learned women such as "Christine de Pisan, Margaret of
Vallois, Lady Jane Grey, the Countess of Pembroke, the daughters of
Sir Anthony Cooke," and a few other outstanding personages of Tudor
times. Praise so heterogeneous and uncritical was perhaps of little
value, but such as it is, it stands alone in England in the period
between Elizabeth and Charles II as a defense of learned women. And
no defense or protest comes from the pen of a woman.
It should, however, be noted that in European countries women were
more vitally concerned in their own destinies. Between 1600 and 1641
there appeared at least three significant books by women dealing
with the intellectual emancipation of their sex. The earliest of
these came from Italy in 1608 with a second edition in 1621. It was
written by a young Venetian widow, Lucrecia Marinelli (1571-1653),
and was entitled _Della notabilità e della eccellenza delle donne
e dei difetti degli uomini_. A second and better known book was by
Marie de Jars, the _fille d'alliance_ of Montaigne, usually known as
Mlle. de Gournay.[63] Her book, entitled _L'Egalité des Hommes et des
Femmes_, appeared in 1604 when "the Pride of Gournay," "the French
Siren," as she was called, had become well known in the cultivated
circles of Paris through her definitive edition of Montaigne's
works in 1595. Mlle. de Gournay's thesis as to the dignity and
capacity of women is established by divine authority and by citations
from the church fathers and ancient philosophers. She follows up
these expressions of opinion by a thorough résumé from sacred and
profane history of the women who have worthily held high places. M.
Feugère[64] voices what must be the opinion of any modern reader
when he says that _L'Egalité_ would be _plus piquant_ without the
pedantic form in which it is cast, without _les citations fréquentes
et les raisonnements scholastiques qui le surchargent_. But however
cumbersome we may find her method, it apparently suited her public,
for the book was enthusiastically received.
The third and by far the most important book on the position and
desirable training of women was by Anna van Schurman of Utrecht.
The extremes to which Mlle. de Gournay carried her doctrines were
distasteful to Anna van Schurman, yet many of her ideas were
doubtless based on the work of her French predecessor, _la mère
du féminisme moderne_. Anna van Schurman's book was translated
into English and had a direct influence on the progress of English
educational ideals for women. It is taken up in detail later in this
discussion.
The low estimate of learning, in the first half of the seventeenth
century, as an appropriate pursuit for women, had as its natural
outcome a great decrease in the number of women who devoted
themselves to any form of scholarship. The names that remain to us
from this period as in any way connected with literature or learning
form a singularly inchoate list, interesting, for the most part,
because of the oddities it represents rather than because of any
solid achievements. Of considerable importance are several ladies
in the early years of the Stuarts who followed in the footsteps of
Lady Pembroke as patronesses of learning. The first of these was
Lady Bedford, who held her "graceful and brilliant little court"
at Twickenham Park between 1608 and 1618. Daniel, Drayton, Donne,
and Jonson were among those who celebrated her munificence. Though
Lady Bedford wrote verses she had no pronounced literary pursuits
of her own. Her "considerable and varied learning" went preferably
along antiquarian and horticultural lines. She collected medals
and pictures, and she designed a garden highly praised by Sir
William Temple. She is of importance chiefly because, in an age
when learning lived only as it found patrons, she was magnificent
in her hospitality to the poets.[65] Lady Mary Wroth was a niece
of Lady Pembroke and carried on the traditional family attitude
towards poets. Jonson's _Alchemist_ (1610) was dedicated to her, and
Chapman's _Iliad_ (1614) had a prefatory sonnet addressed to her.
She wrote _The Countess of Montgomerie's Urania_ (1621), in four
books, a work modeled on her uncle's _Arcadia_. A third patroness was
Elizabeth Spencer, wife of Sir George Carey. She was a kinswoman of
Edmund Spenser and he commemorated her for "the excellent favors" she
had granted him.
One of the most notable young women of the time of James I was
Elizabeth Jocelyn (1596-1622). She was brought up by her grandfather,
William Chaderton, Bishop of Lincoln. He was a friend of Sir
Anthony Coke and Lord Burleigh and naturally shared their ideas as
to education. The quick wit and remarkable memory of this little
granddaughter greatly pleased him and he took the utmost pains with
her education, training her carefully in "languages, history, and
some arts," but principally in "studies of piety." She died nine days
after the birth of her first child to whom she left _The Mother's
Legacie to her Unborne Childe_. The third edition came out in 1625,
an incorrect impression in 1684, and a reprint of the 1625 edition in
1852.[66] The little book contains a letter to her husband in which
she indicates her wishes in case the child should be a girl:
I desire her bringing up to bee learning the Bible, as my sisters
doe, good housewifery, writing and good workes: other learning a
woman needs not; though I admire it in those whom God hath blest
with discretion, yet I desired not so much in my owne, having
seene that sometimes women have greater portions of learning than
wisdome, which is of no better use to them than a main saile to a
flye-boat, which runs under water. But where learning and wisdom
meet in a vertuous disposed woman, she is the fittest closet of
all goodnesse. She is, indeed, I should but shame myself, if I
should goe about to praise her more. But, my dear, though she
have all this in her, she will hardly make a poore man's wife:
Yet I leave it to thy will. If thou desirest a learned daughter,
I pray God give her a wise and religious heart, that she may use
it to his glory, thy comfort, and her owne salvation.
Nearly all of the book is given up to cautions and plans for a
boy's education. And for boy or girl there is great emphasis on
religion, on attending services, reading the Bible, and keeping up
habits of daily devotion. Of the prayers definitely recommended,
one for morning is one hundred and eighty lines, and one suitable
for all times is three hundred and fifty-nine lines. In the brief
portion addressed directly to the girl, "Devout Anna, Just Elizabeth,
Religious Ester, and Chaste Susanna" are held up as exemplars.
Self-effacement seems the chief duty enjoined on the girl: "If
thou beest a Daughter, remember thou art a Maid, and such ought
thy modesty to bee, that thou shouldst scarce speak, but when thou
answerest." The book was deservedly popular because it was so genuine
in its forecast of sorrow, so pathetically eager in plans and hopes
for her husband and child. No other work so personal and human in its
appeal comes to light in this period.
There are during the first half of the century a few books by women
on practical subjects. They could hardly take rank as learned
productions, but they are significant as early attempts on the part
of women to put into some sort of readable form, and to print for
the instruction of other women, the wisdom garnered through years of
experience. One of these books appeared in 1628 and was entitled _The
Countess of Lincoln's Nurserie_.[67] The Countess was the mother
of seven sons and nine daughters and wrote this little treatise
particularly for the guidance of her daughter-in-law Bridget. It
is described as "a well-wrote piece full of fine arguments, and
capable of convincing anyone that is capable of conviction, of the
necessity and advantages of mothers nursing their children." A
second book transmitted information of another sort. Before 1651
Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent (1581-1651), the granddaughter of
Bess of Hardwick, wrote or compiled _A Choice Manuall, or Rare and
Select Receipts in Physick and Chyrurgery_. A second part, entitled
_A True Gentlewoman's Delight Wherein is contained all manner of
Cookery_, reached its nineteenth edition in 1687. _The Legacie_,
the _Nurserie_, the _Choice Manuall_, were the direct outcome of
interests considered appropriate for women, and such publicity as
they involved would not be challenged.
Letter-writing is also a realm ascribed without question to women,
and when chance has rescued from oblivion any group of their letters,
social history has been thereby enriched. The earliest Englishwoman,
any large number of whose letters have been preserved and published,
is Lady Brilliana Harley (1600-43) who wrote to her son Edward while
he was at Oxford in the years 1638-40. She was a woman of pronounced
religious and political opinions, observant, domestic, and with
a ready pen for picturesque detail, and her letters are of more
interest than most of the contemporary published work.[68]
A few women have more directly to do with learning than those already
mentioned. Occasionally in some great family Tudor traditions were
maintained. Margaret, Countess of Cumberland (1560-1616), for
instance, held to the idea that maidens of noble houses must be nobly
educated, and she induced the poet Daniel to live at Skipton Castle
as tutor to Anne, her nine-year-old daughter. Bishop Rainbow, who
knew the family well, gives the following account of Anne:
She could discourse with virtuoso's, travellers, scholars,
merchants, divines, statesmen, and with good housewives in any
kind: insomuch that a prime and elegant wit, Dr. Donne, well seen
in all human learning ... is reported to have said of this lady,
in her younger years to this effect; that she knew well how to
discourse of all things from predestination to slea-silk. Meaning
that although she was skilful in her housewifery, and such things
in which women are conversant, yet her penetrating wit soared
up to pry into the highest mysteries, looking at the highest
example of female wisdom. Although she knew _Wool_ and _Flax_,
fine _Linen_ and _Silk_, things appertaining to the spindle and
the distaff: _yet she could open her mouth with wisdom_.... If
she had sought fame rather than wisdom, possibly she might have
been ranked among those wise and learned of her sex, of whom
_Pythagoras_ or _Plutarch_, or any of the ancients have made such
honourable mention.[69]
A portrait of Anne at thirteen represents the books supposedly read
by her under her tutor, Mr. Daniel, and her governess, Mrs. Ann
Taylor, whose heads appear in the picture. The books are "Eusebius,
St. Augustine, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Godfrey of Boulogne,
The French Academy, Cambden, Ortelius, and Agrippa on the Vanity of
Occult Sciences."[70]
[Illustration: ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE AND
MONTGOMERY
From an engraving in Pennant's _Tour in Scotland_, 1790, Part II]
At nineteen Anne married the Earl of Dorset. Her second marriage,
in middle life, was to Philip Herbert, Fourth Earl of Pembroke and
Montgomery. In alliance with these noble houses she was extremely
unhappy. In her Journal she says: "The marble pillars of Knowle in
Kent and Wilton in Wiltshire, were to me often times but the gay
arbor of anguish. A wise man, that knew the insides of my fortune,
would often say, that I lived in both these my lords' great families
as the river Roan runs through the lake of Geneva, without mingling
its streams with the lake; for I gave myself up to retiredness
as much as I could and made good books and virtuous thoughts my
companions."[71] A portrait, belonging to this period of middle life,
indicates as the books then most favored, "the Bible, Charron on
Wisdom and pious treatises." Lady Pembroke's pursuit of abstract
and theological learning was, however, largely the outcome of her
repressed and unhappy life. On her second widowhood, in 1650, she
forsook learning and gave free reign to her "master-passion for
bricks and mortar." But most of this energetic work, during which she
rebuilt or restored her six castles and several churches, belongs
after the Restoration. As a woman of affairs Lady Pembroke made a
remarkable impression on her age. Bishop Rainbow, who says she had
"a clear soul shining through a vivid body," emphasizes also "her
great understanding and judgment." Pennant, in his _Tour_, said
that she was regarded as "the most eminent character of her times,
for intellectual accomplishments, for spirit, magnificence, and
benevolence."
Another lady who carried over into this period the liberal training
of Tudor days was Elizabeth Tanfield (1585-1639), who, at the age of
fifteen, married Henry Carey, later Viscount Falkland. Our knowledge
of her very interesting life and character is derived mainly from a
_Life_ written by one of her daughters. She was a lover of books from
her childhood and learned languages--French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
and Transylvanian--practically without a teacher. Her daughter said
of her:
When she was but four or five years old they put her to learn
French, which she did about five weeks, and not profiting at all
gave it over; after, of herself, without a teacher, whilst she
was a child she learned French, Spanish and Italian; ... she
learned Latin in the same manner.... Hebrew she likewise, about
the same time, learned with very little teaching.... She then
learned also of a Transylvanian his language, but never finding
any use of it forgot it entirely. She read so incessantly at
night that her mother forbade the servants to give her candles.
But she bought candles at half a crown apiece of the servants and
at twelve was £100 in their debt, a debt which she paid on her
wedding day.
Her work as an author began early, for her first play was written
about the time of her marriage. It was dedicated to her husband. A
second play, _The Tragedy of Mariam the Faire Queene of Jewry_, was
written when she was eighteen or nineteen, though not printed till
1613.[72] She was early recognized as one of the most intellectual
women of her time. In 1612 she was one of the three "Glories of
Women" to whom John Davies dedicated his _Muses Sacrifice_. Later, in
1633, the publisher of Marston's Works dedicated them "To the Right
Honourable the Lady Elizabeth Carey, Viscountess Falkland," because
she was so "well acquainted with the Muses." That Lady Falkland's
appetite for learning never abated is apparent from her daughter's
testimony:
She had read very exceedingly much: poetry of all kinds ancient
and modern in several languages, all that ever she could meet;
history very universally, especially all ancient Greek and Roman
histories; all chronicles whatsoever of her own country, and
the French histories very thoroughly: of most other countries
something, though not so universally, of the ecclesiastical very
much, most especially concerning its chief pastors. Of books
treating of moral virtue or wisdom (such as Seneca, Plutarch's
_Morals_, and natural knowledge, as Pliny, and of late ones, such
as French, Mountaine, and English, Bacon) she had read very many
when she was young. Of the fathers and controversial writers on
both sides a great deal even of Luther and Calvin.[73]
Lady Falkland was converted to Catholicism in 1605 and she devoted
all her learning to the service of the Church. She translated
Cardinal Perron's _Works_ and wrote lives of the saints in verse.
Lady Falkland's son Lucius married Letice Morrison, another "undue
lover of books," who abridged herself of sleep that the hours of
reading might be prolonged. This daughter-in-law of Lady Falkland
was not only eager for learning, but she had independent views along
social lines. One of her schemes was the foundation of houses "for
the education of young gentlewomen and the retirement of widows with
the belief that through such houses learning and religion might
flourish more than heretofore in her own sex." Her early death in the
time of the Civil War frustrated her plans, but they have an especial
interest as forecasting the ideas set forth by Mary Astell later in
the century.[74]
Anna Hume, the daughter of David Hume, was carefully educated by her
father at Godscroft, a property to which he retired that he might be
unmolested in his devotion to literature. Anna joined in his pursuits
with eagerness and intelligence, and after his death she did much
to complete his work. In 1644 she superintended the publication
of his _History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus_. She
translated Latin poems, and in 1644 she also published _The Triumph
of Love, Chastity and Death_, translated from Petrarch. Drummond
of Hawthornden speaks highly of her learning and of her "rare and
pregnant wit."
Esther Kello (1571-1624) is often spoken of as one of the notable
women of the Stuart period. Her works were counted worthy gifts for
kings, and are preserved in royal libraries. Calligraphy was one of
the fine arts in the seventeenth century. To write many different
hands, to make flourishes, to decorate margins, to illuminate
titles and capital letters, to make elaborate head or tail pieces
to chapters, and to write the alphabets of many languages, were
the elements of this art. No other accomplishment was so often
advertised.[75] It was in this art that Esther Kello excelled. _Les
Proverbes de Salomon_ (1599), written in forty hands, and with all
possible ornamental detail, was one of her most famous books. It was
preserved in "Bodley's Library." In exactness, fineness, and beauty
her books are said to rival the old illuminated manuscripts.[76]
There was published in 1630 a twelve-page tract entitled _A Chain
of Pearl, or a Memorial of the Peerless Graces and heroic Virtues
of Queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory, composed by the noble lady,
Diana Primrose_. The Pearls of the Chain are Religion, Chastity,
Prudence, Temperance, Clemency, Justice, Fortitude, Science,
Patience, and Bounty. A preliminary address to the author by one
Dorothy Berry greets Diana as "the _Prime-rose_ of the Muses nine."
The Pearls are in the style of exaggerated compliment always
associated with the name of Queen Elizabeth, but they could not have
been inspired by any interested motives, for Elizabeth had been dead
nearly a generation when they came from the press. Save the date of
publication I have no facts about either Diana Primrose or Dorothy
Berry. Perhaps their youth was spent during the "blest and happy
years" when the Heroine they praised was on the throne.
She, she it was that gave us golden days,
And did the English name to heaven raise.
If so, and if they wrote when trouble was brewing between the King
and the people, we can well understand the ardor of Diana Primrose's
eulogy of the days when the Prince and People agreed "in sacred
concord and sweet sympathy."
A very curious book is by Mary Fage. It is entitled _Fame's Roule_
and appeared in 1637.[77] It is a collection of the most ingenious
anagrams and acrostics on the names of four hundred and twenty
persons of the "hopeful posterity" of Charles I. John Weymes, for
instance, is anagrammed into "Show men joy" and John Hollis into "Oh!
on my hills." The amplification of the anagram is mainly compliment
with now and then a trace of exhortation. This was an age when
playing with words gave undoubted pleasure, but four hundred and
twenty anagrams on royal names would seem an undue tax on even the
most agile manipulator of the alphabet.
Katherine Chidley wrote and spoke on questions of Church and State.
In 1641 she published a quarto volume entitled _The Justification
of the Independent Churches of Christ_, in which she maintained
that the congregations of the Saints should receive "no direction
in worship from any other than Christ their head and lawgiver." She
is described as "a most violent independent who talked with so much
bitterness and with so clamorous a tongue as to vanquish opposing
divines, and who wrote as furiously in behalf of her cause as if she
were the Amazonian Queen in defence of the Trojans."
A literary oddity of the Cromwell period, a fertile writer whose
half-mad and often unintelligible prophetic writings yet came true
often enough to secure her a troublesome reputation as a "Cunning
Woman," was Lady Eleanor Davies, the wife of Sir John Davies of
Hereford. She was twice married and both husbands had burned her
manuscripts, but finally, in 1651, there was printed a pamphlet, _The
Restitution of Prophecy; that Buried Talent to be revived. By the
Lady Eleanor._[78] The Lady Eleanor was as devoted to anagrams as was
Mary Fage. The change of Eleanor Davies into "Reveal O Daniel" was
her mystic authorization as a prophet, until some wit shattered her
anagram by producing "Never so mad a lady."
4. SCHOOLS FOR GIRLS BEFORE 1660
Of schools for girls during the period before 1660 we get but vague
hints. John Whitgift, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1583,
protested against having schools for "maiden children" within the
precincts of the church. And he added in a note, "Especially seeing
they may have instruction by women in the town."[79] In the statutes
of Harrow School, made in 1590, there is a statement to the effect
that "no girls shall be received or taught," hence the subject had
at least been under discussion.[80] _Love's Labour's Lost_ seems
to indicate that Holofernes taught girls as well as boys,[81] and
Helena comments on the "school-days' friendship" between her and
Hermia.[82] But these references belong to late Elizabethan times and
are too indefinite to serve as evidence.
The best-known schools for girls in the first half of the seventeenth
century were apparently religious in origin. One of these is the
"Institute" founded by Mary Ward (1585-1645).[83] She was a brilliant
and beautiful young Catholic who made it the aim of her life to
influence young women to an acceptance of the Catholic faith. This
she endeavored to accomplish through educational agencies. It was
her plan to have an organization of uncloistered nuns who should not
wear habits, who should be free to come and go, and who should adapt
themselves in manner and dress to their surroundings in such ways as
might be most advisable in the pursuance of their spiritual aims.
Conditions in England made it useless to attempt such a school or
community there. So the first establishment of the Institute was at
St. Omer. This was in 1609. Five gentlewomen crossed the sea at that
time with Mary Ward. The one she loved and trusted most was Winifred
Wigmore, a descendant of the Throgmortons of Warwickshire, and so
well educated that she spoke five languages fluently. She had a keen
intellect, was wise, sympathetic, courageous, and very devout. Mary
Poyntz, "gifted with all that can be most highly esteemed in person,
birth or fortune," the youngest of the group, was scarcely sixteen
when she cast her lot in permanently with Mary Ward. Of Jane Browne,
Catharine Smith, and Susanna Rookwood fewer details are given. Later
on Miss Ward was joined by Barbara Babthorpe, "highly educated and
very well read ... with a striking gift of eloquence," and by her
own sister Barbara Ward. Each of these ladies had a companion, so it
was quite a household that assembled at St. Omer, and they entered
at once upon the life they had planned. They practiced rigid
self-denial, living on one meal a day and sleeping on straw beds, and
submitting themselves to other austerities. Their time was given over
to good works, especially to education. They established a school for
French and English girls, receiving the English girls as boarders.
In 1612 Miss Ward said that they had already received two nieces of
the Earl of Shrewsbury, and another young lady from the family of the
Earl of Southampton, and that many Catholic nobles were planning to
send their daughters to be brought up in the Faith and good manners,
by the ladies of St. Omer.
[Illustration: MARY WARD
From an engraving in _The Life of Mary Ward_, by Mary Elizabeth
Chambers of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin]
The Institute finally received the sanction of the pope and was
successful in various countries. But Miss Ward's efforts to establish
it in England in 1638 met with so much hostility that she was
obliged to carry on her work secretly and by subterfuge, changing
the location of her little band of followers from time to time as
suspicion centered upon them. The Institute was finally broken up
by the Puritans in 1642. Little is known of the actual work of the
school. The members of the Institute were always so anxious and
harried that there could have been no really systematic instruction
except in the articles of faith. There are in the Convent of the
Institute at Augsburg fifty large oil paintings dating from the
seventeenth century, and representing events in its history. In these
pictures Mary Ward's life is seen to be one of dramatic interest from
her childhood to her death. And her personality is one of compelling
charm. She was a heroine and a pioneer, an executive of first-rate
ability, an extremely acute woman of business, and yet without loss
of the graces and amenities of human intercourse. The St. Omer school
shows genius. Within the limits of her church she was promulgating
ideas the full fruition of which would not come for many years. She
believed that sound mental training would establish women in their
faith, and that women, if given opportunity and education, would
prove to have powers not generally ascribed to them. To establish a
school on this basis was an enterprise bolder, more original, and
more hazardous than was the opening of the first colleges for women
in America.
Another religious school was that known as Little Gidding,[84]
founded by Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637). The life of Ferrar is one
of great interest. He was a man of wide experience. He had known
academic life at Cambridge, he had traveled in Holland, Germany,
Italy, and Spain, he had conducted extensive business enterprises
in connection with the Virginia Company, and had taken an important
place in political life as a member of Parliament. But while
still under forty he turned definitely to a life of religious
sequestration. He and his mother bought the Manor of Little
Gidding in Huntingdonshire in 1624 and there they set up the new
establishment. He was joined by his brother John with his wife and
three children, and by Mrs. Collet, his favorite sister, with her
husband and sixteen children. To the children of these two families
were added such children of the neighboring gentry as cared to come.
In this household the girls were carefully educated. They had one
master in Music, one in Arithmetic and Writing, one in English and
Latin. They formed themselves into a little society called "The
Academy" which had regular meetings for discussion of topics set for
them. They took fanciful names, and had many quaint and elaborate
little formalities. The topics discussed by "Patient" and "Cheerful"
and "Moderator" and "Visitor," and even by little four-year-old
"Humble," were nearly always religious or ethical, and the purpose
of the discussions was always moral improvement. So strong was the
religious element, so rigid were the forms of fasting, feasting, and
worshiping, that the school came under suspicion as a Protestant
nunnery. In 1641 it was attacked in a pamphlet entitled _The Armenian
Nunnery, or a Brief Description and Relation of the newly erected
Monasticall Place called the Armenian Nunnery at Little Gidding_.
The school at Little Gidding has had its fame as a religious
organization perpetuated in Mr. Shorthouse's _John Inglesant_,
but it is even more famous in the annals of fine book-binding. It
was the belief of Nicholas Ferrar that every one should be taught
some hand-work, and he determined upon book-binding as a part of
the regular school work at Little Gidding. Dr. Jebb says that "a
Cambridge book-binder's daughter that bound rarely" was procured as
an instructor. She came, he says, either from the University printers
themselves or from some Cambridge bindery which they patronized where
she herself had been trained. She brought some of her own stamps with
her, and some of her own ideas as to how they should be arranged.
Even this activity was the handmaid of religion, and was, indeed,
probably undertaken primarily in order to preserve the concordances
of the four gospels so carefully worked out by Nicholas Ferrar.
The girls learned to do all the mechanical parts with extreme
nicety, joining the many tiny slips and putting in the illustrative
engravings with great deftness. The name of the binder is not usually
given in the book, but there is one exception. A book bound by the
youngest of the workers bears the inscription:
Thanks be to God.
Done at Little Gidding. Anno Domino 1640
by Virginia Ferrar, an. 12.[85]
The curious little "histories" composed by "The Academy" were written
out in three manuscript volumes and bound. They have been lately
acquired by the British Museum. "The volumes measure 13½ x 9 inches
and are bound in black morocco, with a small double gold line running
along the edge, finished with a little ornamental spray at each
corner." The Concordances were more sumptuous. The _Bibliographica_
gives full-page colored illustrations of these fine bindings and says
of them:
The beautiful effect which Mary Collet, who seems to have done
much of the binding herself, was able to produce by different
arrangements of the stamps I have described shows that she was
undoubtedly a lady of much taste and originality ... and it may
fairly be considered that the velvet-bound volumes, of great
size, gorgeous in color and rich in decoration, which were
eventually produced under her supervision, must take the highest
rank among amateur decorative book-bindings.
Unequalled in size, original in design, and rich in execution,
these volumes must be seen to be appreciated; then indeed the
expressions which Charles I used concerning them, which sound
extravagant, can be well understood. Although much faded, and
sometimes re-backed and the sides relaid, with the silken ties
all gone, enough of their old magnificence still remains to make
us feel that we should indeed be proud that English binders could
have produced such works.[86]
Aside from these religious schools, which were very small, there were
undoubtedly some fashionable boarding-schools, such as Mrs. Salmon's
school in Hackney where Katherine Fowler went.[87] Another fully
organized private school at Hackney was that kept by Mrs. Perwick in
1643, where as many as eight hundred girls had been educated.[88] The
existence of a school for girls in Richmond is shown by a curious
document found among a large number of miscellaneous papers in
Warwickshire. It is entitled "Account for Peggy's Disbursements since
her going to schoole at Richmond, being in Sept. 1646":
_s. d._
Payd for a louehood 2. 6
For carriing the truncke to Queenhive 0. 8
For carriing it to Hammersmith 1. 0
Payd for two pair of shoes 4. 0
Payd for a singing booke 1. 0
Given to M^{rsis} Jervoises mayd 1. 0
Payed for a hairlace and a pair of showstrings 1. 0
For an inckhorne 0. 4
For faggots. 2_s._8_d._; and cleaving of wood, _12d._ 3. 8
For 9^{li} of soape 2_s._ 4_d._; and starch 4_d._ 2. 8
For hooks and a bolte for the doore 0. 9
For sugar and licorich 1. 4
For silke and thread 0. 6
For 3^{li} of soape, 11_d._; and starch 4_d._; and carrying
letters 6_d._ 1. 9
For 3^{li} of soape, 12_d._; and starch 4_d._ 1. 4
For sugar, licorich and coultsfoot 1. 6
For a necklace, 12_d._; for a m. of pins, 12_d._ 2. 0
For a pair of cands (candles?) 6_d._; for muckadine 4_d._;
for wormsend (worsted), 2_d._ 1. 0
For shostrings, 6_d._; for going on errands, 6_d._ 1. 0
For 3^{li} of soape, 12_d._; for starch 4_d._; thread and
silk 4_d._ 1. 8
For a bason, 4_d._; for carrying letters, 6_d._; for
tape 4_d._ 1. 2
For soape, 12_d._; for starch, 4_d._; for going on errands,
6_d._ 1.10
For a pair of pattins, 16_d._; for three pair of shoes,
6_s._ 7. 4
For callico to line her stockins, 2_d._; for showstrings
4_d._ 0. 6
For 3^{li} of soape, 12d.; for a pint of white wine 4d. 1. 4
For ale, 3_d._; for 1/2^{li} of sugar, 8_d._ 0.11
For a m. of pins, 12_d._; for a corle and one pair of
half-handed gloves, 8_d._ 1. 8
Given to the writing mr. 2. 6
For silke, 12_d._; for silver for the tooth-pick case,
4_d._ 1. 4
For a sampler, 12_d._; for thread, needles,
paper, pins, and parchment, 30_d._ 3. 6
For a pair of shoes, 2_s._ 2_d._; for ribbon, 3_d._ 2. 5
For soape, 12_d._; for starch, 4_d._; for carriing a letter,
4_d._ 1. 8
To the waterman bringing the (box?) to Richmond 1. 0
For shoestrings, 6_d._; for purge, 18_d._ 2. 0
For bringing the box from Richmond 1. 0
For a coach from Fleetestreete 1. 0
For wood to this time 15.10
------
Totall of disbursements to this 15th day of Aprill, 1647
is £3.18.5[89]
Peggy's clothing and her board and tuition must have been paid for
by her father. The accurate little list represents only her personal
and incidental expenses. The writing-master's fee, the purchase of an
inkhorn, a singing-book, and materials for a sampler are the only
suggestions that Peggy was being educated. But several of the items
are indicative of general school conditions. For instance, if a girl
had a fire she evidently had to pay extra for it, Peggy's largest
single item being for wood, "cleaving of wood," and "faggotts." The
next largest sum goes for "soape" and starch. Peggy apparently did
her own laundry, or at least bought the materials used; and she
bought them in amounts suggestive of disproportionate emphasis on
clean linen. In clothing the most surprising purchase is of six pairs
of shoes and one pair of "pattins" in six months. It is a pity we
have not the letters for the carrying of which Peggy paid ten pence.
They might serve to throw light on her expense account.
In May, 1649, Evelyn records in his _Diary_, "Went to Putney by
water, in the barge with divers ladies, to see the schools, or
Colleges, of the young gentlewomen." These Putney schools may have
been under the charge of Mrs. Makin. In that case they were the
forerunners of the more advanced school she established at Tottenham
High Cross in 1673.
One interesting point occurs in the foundation of a school for boys
by Balthasar Gerbier in 1648. This school was an academy wherein
the sons of noble families could be taught classics, mathematics,
drawing, painting, carving, music, behavior, etc. The novel element
in the school is Gerbier's advertisement December 21, 1649, in which
he says that ladies are to be admitted to his lectures.[90]
If girls were educated at all during the period from 1603 to 1660
it must have been, in the main, at home under parents and tutors.
But even of such education the records are meager. Little Gidding
was practically a home school, but it stands as an isolated attempt.
The few little pictures of more secular home education that have
been by chance preserved to us indicate no very valuable training.
Mrs. Alice Thornton (1626-1707), Lady Anne, daughter of the Earl of
Strafford, and Lady Arabella Wentworth, were brought up in Ireland
and were given "the best education that Kingdome could afford." They
were taught to write and speak French; singing, dancing, playing on
the lute and theorboe, and such other accomplishments as "working
silkes, gummework, sweetmeats, and other sutable huswifery" such as
was necessary for girls of their social position.[91]
We get some further light from autobiographical sketches by the
Duchess of Newcastle,[92] Lady Fanshawe,[93] and Mrs. Hutchinson,[94]
women whose mature work belongs in the Restoration period or not many
years before it, but whose childhood and early youth belong in the
period under consideration, and serve in a measure to illustrate its
methods. The educational advantages afforded these young daughters
of the best families were like those of an eighteenth-century
finishing-school, and were far removed from the stern mental
discipline in the school of Sir Thomas More.
CHAPTER II
LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760
1. AN INTRODUCTORY GROUP IN THE YEARS 1650-1675
The brief running summaries in the preceding chapter have perhaps
served to bring into prominence two sharply contrasted periods.
The first half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the
seventeenth seem even more than a hundred years apart in tone and
temper. We turn from the eager intellectual life of many women in the
Tudor period, from their full and rich opportunities, and we find
that in the time of the earlier Stuarts there were very few women who
took any pride in learning, that there was little or no provision at
home or in schools for any but the most desultory sort of education
for girls, and that there were practically no formulated ideals or
theories of intellectual advancement for women. But at the close of
this barren half-century we come upon what may be considered the real
beginnings of the modern work of women. This era of development may
be appropriately introduced by the presentation of several women who,
while in no sense cohering into a group, are yet alike in that their
home education belongs in the reign of Charles I, that later they had
the stern training incident on Civil War conditions, and that their
published work belongs before 1675.
[Sidenote: Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle (1624-1674)]
The most talked-of learned lady of the Restoration period was the
Duchess of Newcastle.[95] She was brought up by her mother, who was
left a widow with a great fortune and a family of eight children when
Margaret was an infant. The Duchess in her _Autobiography_ describes
a family life conducted with splendor and luxury. She comments
on the elaborate attendance, the rich and costly garments, the many
pleasures, secured for the children by the industrious care and
tender love of their mother. It was a bright, gay, free, affectionate
home life. But we get only slight indications of any educational
advantages. "As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of vertues,
as singing, dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, working,
and the like, yet we were not kept strictly thereto, they were rather
for formality than benefit, for my Mother cared not so much for our
dancing and fidling, singing and prating of severall languages, as
that we should be bred virtuously, modestly, civilly, honourably and
on honest principles." None of these opportunities met Margaret's
needs. She says she had a natural stupidity in learning foreign
tongues, cared little for music, disliked needlework, found cards
and games tiresome, and dancing frivolous. Apparently the freedom
of the family life left her at liberty to follow her real interests
which were in the main intellectual. Here she had the sympathetic
aid of her brother, Lord Lucas. The precocious development of her
mind is shown by the fact that at twelve she had written a book on a
philosophical subject.
[Illustration: MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From an engraving in Horace Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_,
London, 1806]
At eighteen she was appointed maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria
and accompanied her to France. There, at twenty, she became the
second wife of the Duke of Newcastle, a nobleman thirty-two years
older than herself, but who was, she says, "the onely Person I ever
was in love with." She was with him during the trying years of his
absence from England and it was during this difficult and tedious
period that literature became her resource. Her publications began
with _Philosophical Fancies_ in 1653 and closed with _Grounds of
Natural Philosophy_ in 1668, during which period she wrote nearly
twelve folio volumes. The portions of her work concerning which she
felt the greatest measure of self-congratulation were her studies in
natural philosophy. Her _Philosophical Fancies_ of 1653 was expanded
in 1655, and in 1663 received its final form as _Philosophical and
Physical Opinions_. Of all her books this was "her best beloved and
favourite." But the quality on which she chiefly prides herself is
the very one that nullifies her work. Originality is her great boast,
an originality so pronounced as to refuse to base its deductions on
the writings of previous thinkers. Her husband substantiates her
claim. He says that all her philosophical fancies are spun out of
her own brain, and that, if she does not use the technical terms of
philosophers, it is because her language is her own too. She has
scorned to talk with any "profest scholar" to learn his phraseology.
"She did never impe her high-flying Phancies, with any old broken
Fethers out of any university."[96] She says herself that she could
never "afford board-room to other people's ideas lest the legitimate
offspring of her own brain should be crowded out."[97] In Part IV,
"On the Motion of the Bodie," we find that the Duchess has never
studied anatomy, but this apparent disqualification does not prove
inhibitory. In _An Epistle to the Reader_ she explains the situation:
I am to be pardoned, if I have not the names and tearms that
the Anatomists have or use; or if I have mistaken some parts in
the body, or misplaced any: for truly I never read of Anatomie,
nor never saw any man opened, much less dissected, which for my
better understanding I would have done; but I found that neither
the caurage of nature, nor the modesty of my sex would permit
me. Werefore it would be a great chance, even to a wonder I
should not erre in some; but I have seen the intrals of beasts,
but never as they are placed in their bodies, but as they are
cut out to be drest ... which intrals I have heard are much like
mans, especially a hogs, so that I know man hath a brain, a
heart, a stomach, liver, lights, spleen, and the like; yet these
I never viewed with a curious and searching eye, but as they
have laien in some vessels; and as for bones, nerves, muscels,
veines and the like, I know not how they are placed in the body,
but as I have gathered several times from several relations, or
discourses: here a bit and there a crum of knowledge, which my
natural reason hath put together.[98]
From any modern standpoint of scientific excellence the inaccuracy
and amazing self-confidence of these studies render them worse than
futile. But it was not ignorance that was charged against the Duchess
by her critics. The experimental method was having its triumphs, but
doubtless a good deal of the scientific writing of the first half
of the century was marked by a dogmatic tone and an uncertainty as
to facts, so the Duchess was not attacked on that score. The common
report that irritated the Duke of Newcastle to a spirited defense of
his wife was that she could not have written these books, for "no
lady could understand so many hard words." The Duke takes up various
kinds of hard words such as terms of divinity, philosophy, astronomy,
and geometry, and shows that natural wit, common sense, and some
observation could compass most of them. He gives the following
account of the way he and the Duchess acquired a medical vocabulary:
"But would you know the great Mystery of these Physical terms, I am
almost ashamed to tell you; not that we have been ever sickly, but
by melancholy often supposed ourselves to have such diseases as we
had not, and learned Physitians were too wise to put us out of that
humour, and so these terms cost us much more than they are worth, and
I hope there is nobody so malicious as to envie us our bargain."[99]
At the end of his Preface the Duke comes to what he considers the
real cause of the aspersions on his Lady's books: "But here's the
crime, a Lady writes them, and to intrench so much on the male
prerogative, is not to be forgiven." The Duchess, in her _Address to
the Two Universities_, recurs to this idea. She hopes her book may be
received
for the good incouragement of our sex, lest in time we should
grow irrational as idiots, by the dejectednesse of our spirits,
through the carelesse neglects, and despisements of the masculine
sex to the effeminate, thinking it impossible we should have
either learning or understanding, wit or judgement, as if we
had not rational souls as well as men, and we out of a custom
of dejectedness think so too, which makes us quit all industry
towards profitable knowledge ... so as we are become like worms
that only live in the dull earth of ignorance, winding ourselves
sometimes out, by the help of some refreshing rain of good
educations which seldom is given us; for we are kept like birds
in cages to hop up and down in our houses ... we are shut out of
all power, and Authority by reason we are never imployed either
in civil nor marshall affaires, our counsels are despised, and
laught at, the best of our actions are troden down with scorn,
by the over-weaning conceit men have of themselves and through a
despisement of us.[100]
But she presents her book with some confidence to the universities as
places where are to be found right judgment and respectful civility.
And at any rate she would rather "lie intombed under the dust of an
University" than be "worshipped by the Vulgar as a Deity."
One of the Duchess's most curious books is _Orations of Divers Sorts
accommodated to Divers Places_. Among the "orations" is a "collection
of speeches for a convivial meeting of country gentlemen in a market
town, ending with 'a speech of a quarter-drunk gentleman,' and 'a
speech of a half-drunk gentleman.' Another little collection headed
'Female Orations' reports the speeches delivered at a meeting of
women on the great question of combining together to make themselves
'as free, happy, and famous as men.'"[101]
When the Duke and Duchess returned to England after the Restoration
they lived for the most part at one of their country estates,
but they made occasional visits to London. It was then that the
Duchess's beauty, wealth, eccentric dress and manners, and literary
and scientific pretensions made her a conspicuous and, to some, a
ridiculous figure. Sir Walter Scott, in _Peveril of the Peak_,[102]
makes Charles II say of the Duchess, "Her Grace is an entire
raree-show in her own person--a universal masquerade--indeed a sort
of private Bedlam hospital"; and this sums up the attitude that found
expression in the phrase, "Mad Madge of Newcastle." In 1653 Dorothy
Osborne wrote to Sir William Temple: "Let me ask you if you have
seen a book of poems newly come out, made by my Lady Newcastle? For
God's sake if you meet with it send it to me; they say 't is ten
times more extravagant than her dress. Sure, the poor woman is a
little distracted, she could never be so ridiculous as to venture at
writing books, and in verse too." A little later she wrote: "You need
not send me Lady Newcastle's book at all, for I have seen it, and am
satisfied that there are many soberer people in Bedlam."[103] Mrs.
Evelyn called on the Duchess in 1667 and wrote to Mr. Bohun:
I was surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any
person not confined within four walls. Her habit particular,
fantastical, not unbecoming a good shape, which truly she may
boast of. Her face discovers the facility of her sex, in being
yet persuaded it deserves the esteem years forbid, by the
infinite care she takes to place her curls and patches. Her mein
surpasses the imagination of poets, or the descriptions of a
romance heroine's greatness: her gracious bows, seasonable nods,
courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and
various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from
her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical and rambling
as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions,
terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.[104]
On May 30, 1667, the Duchess made a formal visit to the Royal
Society, and Pepys says she was all admiration at the fine
experiments they showed her, but he did not hear her say anything
that was worth hearing. There had been much objection to admitting
her to the rooms of the Society, some of the members fearing that the
town would be "full of ballads of it," but the visit seems to have
passed off mildly and with the respectful observance to which she was
accustomed.
[Illustration: MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From an engraving in _The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of
Newcastle, and of his wife Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle_, edited by
Mark Antony Lower, London, 1872]
In spite of the stream of private criticism already indicated, the
almost unmixed adulation of which the Duchess was the subject is
indicated by the _Letters and Poems, in Honour of the incomparable
Princess Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle_, published in 1676, two
years after her death. In her lifetime, too, the praise was equally
extravagant. Resounding Latin titles, such as _Illustrissima
Heroina_, _Excellentissima Dux_, _Eminentissima Princeps_, came to
her from high sources. The Rector Magnificus of the University of
Leyden called her not only _Princeps fæminini sexus_, but _Princeps
terrarum_. And the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge in a complimentary
address said that the great women of old could not contend with her
for the palm of learning, but rather would they, with bent knee,
adore this _solam Margaretam Consumatissimam Principem_. Even so sane
a man as Evelyn wrote her a most flattering letter when she sent him
her works in 1674. Beginning with Zenobia he assembled the great
women of ancient times, the learned ladies of more modern days in
France, Spain, Italy, and Holland, and concluded with
Mary de Gournay, & the famous Anna M. Schurman: and of our owne
country, Queene Elizabeth, Queene Jane, the Lady Weston, Mrs.
Philips our late Orinda, the daughters of S^r Tho: More; the
Queene Christina of Sweden, & Elizabeth, daughter of a queen also
to whom the renowned Des Cartes dedicated his learned worke, &
the profound researches of his extraordinary talent. But all
these, I say, sum'd together, possesse but that divided, which
yr Grace retaines in one; so as Lucretia Marinella, who writ a
book (in 1601) _dell' Excellenzia delle Donne, con difetti è
mancamenti de gli huomini_, had no neede to have assembled so
many instances and arguments to adorne the work, had she lived
to be witnesse of Margarite, Dutchess of Newcastle, to have read
her writings, & to have heard her discourse of the science she
comprehended.[105]
Praise could hardly go further.
The best modern judgment discards the encomiums, but yet gives the
Duchess a fairly high place. Sir Egerton Brydges, the editor of her
_Autobiography_, says:
That the Duchess was deficient in a cultivated judgment; that
her knowledge was more multifarious than exact; and that her
powers of fancy and sentiment were more active than her powers
of reasoning, I will admit; but that her productions, mingled as
they are with great absurdities, are wanting either in talent or
in virtue, or even genius, I cannot concede.[106]
The Duchess was buried in Westminster Abbey with this inscription on
her monument:
Here lies the loyal Duke of Newcastle and his Duchess, his second
wife, by whom he had no issue. Her name was Margaret Lucas,
youngest sister to Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble family, for
all the brothers were valliant, and all the sisters virtuous.
This Duchess was a wise, witty, and learned Lady, which her many
books do well testify; She was a most virtuous, and loving,
and careful wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his
banishment and miseries; and when they came home never parted
with him in his solitary retirements.
The two books by the Duchess that one would not willingly let die
are her _Life_ of her husband and her _Autobiography_. These are
of permanent value as pictures of the life of a great, rich family
like that of her girlhood home, and the straitened life in exile,
with the later affluent and splendid life of a noble high in royal
favor such as was the Duke of Newcastle. All the personal portions of
both books are told with an air of genuineness, a naïveté, that make
delightful reading. The Duchess summed up her life as that of a woman
"honourably born, carefully bred, and nobly married to a wise man,"
and it was out of these happy domestic relations that her best work
came.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Katherine Philips (1631-1664)]
Contemporary with the Duchess of Newcastle was Katherine Fowler,
better known as Mrs. Katherine Philips, and better still as the
"Matchless Orinda." She was the daughter of John Fowler, "an eminent
merchant in Bucklersbury," and Katherine Oxenbridge. Aubrey gives a
quaint account of her precocious childhood as it was described to him
by "her cosen Blacket who lived with her from her swadling cloutes
till eight, and taught her to read." Aubrey says: "When a child she
was mighty apt to learn, and ... she had read the Bible through
before she was full four yeares old; she could have sayed I know not
how many places of Scripture and Chapters. She was a frequent hearer
of sermons; had an excellent memory and could have brought away a
sermon in her memory."[107]
Her further education was carried on at Hackney at the school of
"Mris Salmon, a famous schoolmistress, Presbyterian.... Loved poetrey
at schoole, and made verses there. She takes after her grandmother
Oxenbridge ... who was an acquaintance of Mr. Francis Quarles, being
much inclined to poetrie herself." As a child Katherine evidently was
as ardent a Presbyterian as her school-mistress and her Oxenbridge
ancestors. "She was very religiously devoted when she was young;
prayed by herself an hower together, and tooke sermons verbatim when
she was but ten yeares old.... She was when a child much against
the bishops, prayd to God to take them to him, but afterwards was
reconciled to them. Prayed aloud, as the hypocritical fashion then
was, and was overheared."
At sixteen she married Mr. James Philips, Esquire, of Cardigan
Priory, Wales. Her published work includes numerous brief poems,
most of them of a personal nature, two plays translated from the
French, and several letters to Sir Charles Cotterell. This is rather
scanty productivity to serve as a basis for the great vogue Mrs.
Philips certainly had, nor to the modern reader does the quality of
the work sufficiently account for the enthusiasm it excited. Yet we
have abundant testimony that the last ten years of her life were made
brilliant by praise from the most authoritative sources. Sir Charles
Cotterell, her intimate friend and the editor of her _Works_, said
of her: "We might well have call'd her the English Sappho, she of
all the Poets of former Ages, being for her Verses and her Virtues
both, the most highly valued; but she has call'd herself ORINDA, a
name that deserves to be added to the Muses, and to live with honour
as long as they. Were our language as generally known to the world,
as the Greek and Latin were anciently, or as the French is now, her
Verses could not be confined within the limits of our Islands, but
would spread themselves as far as the Continent has Inhabitants, or
as the Seas have any Shore." Something must be allowed here for the
enthusiasm of a friend and an editor, but other estimates were almost
as extreme. The Earl of Orrery had thought that the high praise of
her poems at court must be exaggerated, but when he came to know
her and her writings the court eulogies were to him but "Imperfect
Trophies," and he exclaimed, "If there be Helicon, in Wales it is."
Henry Lawes and Dr. Coleman, the best composers of the day, set some
of her poems to music. Cowley in two poems to her praised her for her
spirit "so rich, so noble, and so high," her "inward Virtue," her
"well-knit Sence," and for her poems in which were united all the
excellences of both sexes. When her translation of _Pompey_ appeared
in the Smock-Alley Theater, Dublin, the Earl of Roscommon wrote the
Prologue and Sir Edward Dering the Epilogue, and the success of the
play was assured by the enthusiastic support of the aristocracy of
Dublin. In 1659 Jeremy Taylor dedicated to her his _Discourse of the
nature, offices and measures of friendship_. Though she does not
exactly fulfill the prophecy of Mr. Thomas Rowe, that "Orinda should
be an ever-glorious name to ages yet to come," yet her fame was by no
means confined to her own brief day. We hear echoes of it far down in
the eighteenth century. The highest praise that could be given to any
woman poet was to bracket her with Orinda.
By the nineteenth century her vogue was almost extinct, but chance
appreciation came from an unexpected quarter. Keats wrote to Reynolds
in September, 1817:[108]
The world, and especially our England, has, within the last
thirty years, been vexed and teased by a set of Devils, whom
I Detest so much that I almost hunger after an Acherontic
promotion to a Torturer, purposely for their accomodation. These
devils are a set of women, who having taken a snack or Luncheon
of Literary scraps, set themselves up for towers of Babel in
languages, Sapphos in Poetry, Euclids in Geometry, and everything
in nothing. Among such the name of Montague has been preëminent.
The thing has made a very uncomfortable impression on me. I had
longed for some real feminine Modesty in these things, and was
therefore gladdened in the extreme on opening the other day, one
of Bailey's Books--a book of poetry written by one beautiful Mrs.
Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor's and called "The Matchless
Orinda"--you must have heard of her, and most likely read her
Poetry--I wish you have not, that I may have the pleasure of
treating you with a few stanzas.
Whereupon he quotes the ten stanzas written by Orinda on parting
with her friend "Rosania," a poem of genuine feeling and quaintly
charming in expression. "In other of her poems," says Keats, "there
is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher kind--which we will con over
together."
[Illustration: MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS
"From an original Picture in the Collection of her Grace the Dutchess
of Dorset." Drawn by J. Thurston. Engraved by W. Finden. From an
engraving in _Effigies Poeticae_. London, 1824]
Thus the magic of Orinda's name reasserts itself, and she is again
praised as a lady of "delicate fancy," "feminine modesty," and
unmatched in friendship. A reintroduction to a general public was
given by Mr. Gosse's delightful essay in _Seventeenth Century
Studies_ (1885). And in 1904 a selection from her poems was published
with an acute "Appreciation."
In her own day Orinda was not only prized as a poet, but she was
considered the highest example, the prophet and expounder, of true
friendship. Much of her verse was called forth by her Society of
Friendship. The chief members of this circle were "Antenor" (Mr.
Philips), "Lucasia" (Miss Anne Owen), "Rosania" (Miss Mary Aubrey),
"Regina" (Mrs. John Collier), "Palæmon" (Jeremy Taylor), "Silvander"
(Sir Edward Dering), "Policrite" (Lady Margaret Cavendish),
"Celimena" (Miss E. Boyl), "Cassandra" (Mrs. C. P., her dear sister),
and "Critander" (Mr. J. B.). "Ardelia," "Phillis," and "Pastora"
remain unidentified. There were doubtless others in the circle,
but these we know because they all received poetical tributes from
Orinda. There were over thirty-five private individuals intimately
addressed in her poems.
It is undoubtedly the personal character of her poems that secured
her so wide and favorable an audience while her writings were still
in manuscript and known only as they passed from hand to hand. Each
person addressed was the center of a new circle of readers. But the
intimacy of the poems is one reason for the actual agony Orinda
suffered when an unauthorized edition of her poems appeared in 1662.
"Their Names expos'd in this Impression without their leave" was the
burden of her grief. And she was likewise injured in her modesty. The
publication seemed to put her in the position of a woman bold and
masculine enough to send her writings into the world. A thousand
pounds, she says, would not have bought her consent. To Sir Charles
Cotterell she wrote:
To me (Sir) who never writ any line in my life with any intention
to have it printed.... This is a most cruel accident, and hath
made so proportionate an impression upon me, that really it hath
cost me a sharp fit of sickness since I heard it.
If the garbled version makes a true version a necessary reparation
of the misfortune she will yield, "but with the same reluctancy as I
would cut off a Limb to save my Life."
I am so far from expecting applause for anything I scribble, that
I can hardly expect pardon; and sometimes I think that employment
so far above my reach, and unfit for my Sex, that I am going to
resolve against it for ever; and could I have recovered those
fugitive Papers that have escaped my hands, I had long since made
a sacrifice of them all. The truth is, I have an incorrigible
inclination to that folly of riming, and intending the effects of
that humour, only for my own amusement in a retir'd life; I did
not so much resist it as a wiser woman would have done.[109]
She had been planning a visit to London, but she wrote in despair to
Dorothy Osborne (then Mrs. Temple):
I must never show my face there or among any reasonable people
again, for some dishonest person hath got some collection of my
Poems as I heare, and hath deliver'd them to a Printer who I
heare is just upon putting them out and this hath soe extreamly
disturbed me, both to have my private folly so unhandsomely
exposed and ye belief that I believe the most part of ye world
are apt enough to believe yt I connived at this ugly accident
that I have been on ye rack ever since I heard it, though I have
written to Col. Jeffries who first sent me word of it to get ye
Printer punished, the book called in, and me someway publicly
vindicated yet I shall need all my friends to be my champions
to ye criticall and mallicious that I am soe innocent of this
pittiful design of a knave to get a groat that I never was more
vexed at anything and yt I utterly disclaim whatever he hath so
unhandsomely expos'd. I know you have goodness and generosity
enough to doe me right in your company and to give me your
opinion too how I may best get this impression supressed and
myself vindicated and therefore I will not beg your pardon for
troubling you with this impertinent story.[110]
Her pride of authorship would, however, almost certainly have
triumphed over her modesty if she could have lived to see the
sumptuous volume with its bravery of eulogistic verse in which Sir
Charles Cotterell enshrined her work. Her letters to him, under the
title _Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus_, were published in 1705 and
add distinctly to her fame.
On the whole, Orinda becomes a personage to us and an agreeable one.
There is a note of sincerity through even her most unrestrained
poems; the ardor of her affections is unmistakable; her loyalty to
the King, to her friends, to her ideas, is genuine. She does not
labor compliments. Her praise pours forth from the abundance of her
feeling. Perhaps one reason for her ready popularity was that she
aroused no antagonisms. Though a literary woman there was nothing
about her that was masculine, strident, or assertive. Her outlook on
life was gracious and tolerant. She loved simplicity and retirement
and was never dazzled by wealth or titles.
At any rate, there is one interesting and significant fact about her
and that is her success. It was a kind of success new in English
literary history. A woman without any commanding advantages of birth
or fortune, only moderately good-looking, without any compelling
fascination, unstimulated by parental or tutorial ambitions, with but
the scantiest schooling, married to an ordinary, rather dull man;
a virtuous, sane, orderly, thrifty woman, excellent in business,
housewifely, with no eccentricities, simply follows her feelings in
friendship and the bent of her mind towards authorship, and attains
in a few years a position notably high.
[Sidenote: Mary North (d. 1662)]
Two interesting young women who belong chronologically to this group
are not exactly learned ladies, but they had intellectual piquancy
and alertness. One of them, Mary North, was the eldest of the
fourteen children of Dudley, the fourth Lord North. The mother of
this large family was evidently a remarkable woman. Her son Roger
says of her: "The Government of us was In generall severe, but
tender; our mother maintained her authority, and yet condiscended to
Entertain us. She was learned (for a lady) and Eloquent. Had much
Knoledg of History and readyness of witt to express herself, in the
part of Reproof, wherein she was fluent and pungent.... But without
occasion given to the Contrary, she was debonair, familiar, and very
liberall of hir discourse to entertain all." This combination of the
pungent and the debonair made an effective family discipline, for it
was said that there was not a son or daughter whose abilities were
not of a very high order, and that the daughters were hardly less
cultured than their brothers. And of this group Mary was, says Roger,
"by far the most brilliant--a woman of real genius." A charming
picture is given of the ladies of the North family, gathered together
according to the custom of the time for endless tasks of tapestry
and embroidery, listening entranced to Mary who recited romances for
hours together, giving not only the story, but the conversations,
the substance of letters, and the general reflections. She had "a
superiour wit, a prodigious memory, and was most agreeable." "She
instituted a sort of order of the wits of her time and acquaintance,
whereof the symbol was a sun with a circle touching the rays,
and upon that in blue ground were wrote αὐτάρκης in proper Greek
characters, which her father suggested. Divers of these were made in
silver and enamel, but in embroidery plenty, which were dispersed to
those wittified ladies who were willing to come into their order;
and for a while they were formally worn, until the foundress fell
under the government of another, and then it was left off."[111] Mary
North was married to Sir William Spring of Pakenham and died in 1662
in her twenty-fourth year. Her feminine "Order of Intellect," her
quaint badge, "the symbol of a community of taste and interest in
literature, science, and art,"[112] offer an attractive and hopeful
prospect. It was an inconspicuous little organization, springing up
gayly and spontaneously, and its scope of learning may not have gone
beyond the French romances the gifted young leader knew by heart, but
it was at any rate an association of young women with some pronounced
literary aspirations and tastes, and as such it stands out alone, a
charming picture set in the framework of the anxious years before the
Restoration.
[Sidenote: Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (1627-1694)]
When Dorothy Osborne had been Lady Temple some years her husband
wrote from London a "sweet scrip full of reproaches" at the
businesslike tone and brevity of her letters. She answered with a
touch of her old sauciness: "Pray what did you expect I should have
writ, tell me that I may know how to please you next time. But now I
remember me you would have such letters as I used to write before we
were marryed, there are a great many such in your cabinet yt I can
send you if you please, but none in my head I can assure you."[113]
The love letters thus preserved in Sir William Temple's cabinet
have had a narrow escape from oblivion. They were found among the
Temple papers when Mr. Courtenay was preparing his elaborate _Life
of Sir William Temple_, and forty-two extracts from the letters were
put by Mr. Courtenay apologetically in an appendix. He could not
be sure that they would not seem trivial in comparison to matters
of state. This book was published in 1836. Macaulay reviewed it
in the _Edinburgh Review_ for October, 1838, and took occasion to
give a vivid sketch of Dorothy and her lover. Macaulay's article
led Mr. Edward Abbot Parry to read Courtenay's extracts from the
letters and to weave them together into a kind of story, which was
published in April, 1886, in _The English Illustrated Magazine_. This
magazine fell into the hands of Mrs. S. R. Longe who had had access
to the original letters and had copied them with minute accuracy.
These letters were offered to Mr. Parry for publication and were
accordingly brought out, though with omissions, in 1888.[114] In
1903 the letters were published in full. Thus, after escaping the
vicissitudes of nearly two and a half centuries, these letters became
a delight accessible to all.[115]
When Dorothy was twenty-one she went with her brother to France. At
the Isle of Wight they were joined by young Mr. William Temple who
promptly fell in love with Dorothy because of the spirited way she
met a difficult situation. Her brother had written on the window pane
at the inn some phrases objectionable to the Puritans, and the whole
party was arrested. Then Dorothy, relying upon the general chivalrous
attitude towards women, took the blame upon herself, and they were
set free. The courtship thus begun was destined to last seven years.
There were few meetings and the correspondence was carried on with
all possible secrecy, for both the Osbornes and the Temples had
other plans for the young people. It was a difficult seven years for
Dorothy. The Osbornes lived at Chicksands Priory in Bedfordshire,
a lonely and not very interesting region. Dorothy's mother died
in 1650. After a long illness, during which she was his constant
attendant, her father died in 1654. During these years her brother
was the only one of the family with her in the strange old house. And
from him came her chief trial, for it was the effort of his life to
see her well married. Young men, middle-aged men, old men, aspired
to be Mistress Dorothy's "servants." The ancient Priory saw a train
of lovers sent away unsatisfied. Dorothy gave all sorts of reasons
for her fastidious and critical attitude towards her suitors--all
reasons but the real one. Mr. Temple had no assured income, Dorothy
but a small dowry, and no families in their rank of life could be
expected to sanction so imprudent a choice. In the meantime silence
and faithfulness was the only resource of the impecunious lovers. It
was a hard fate, but not without compensations for later generations,
for if they had married happily on coming out of France there would
have been no bundle of letters in the old cabinet at Sheen.
There are various indications that Dorothy had numerous
correspondents. That they did not save her letters is our great
loss, for we can imagine few more delightful ways of being inducted
into the life of the times than through the letters of Mistress
Dorothy. The "Matchless Orinda" was one of her correspondents, but
only one letter arising out of this friendship has been preserved.
It may justly be quoted entire because it serves to unite the two
most interesting women of the time, and because it shows how Mrs.
Philips, in the plentitude of her fame, with Dublin dramatic triumphs
fresh upon her, with the aristocracy of London adding leaves to her
laurel crown, courted the quiet Mrs. Temple living the most retired
and domestic of lives at Sheen. This letter has the further pathetic
interest of being one of the last Orinda wrote, for when she reached
London on this visit she had so longed for she fell a victim to that
most dreaded scourge, the small-pox:
_Deare Madam_,--You treat me in your letters so much to my
advantage and above my merit that I am almost affray'd to tell
you how exceedingly I am pleased with them lesst you should
attribute yt contentment to ye delight I take in being praised
whereas I am extreamely deceived if that be ye ground of it,
though I confess it is not free from vanity. I can not choose
but be proud of being owned by soe valuable a person as you are,
and one whom all my inclinations carry me to honour and love at
a very great rate, and you will find by the trouble I last gave
you of this kind how impossible it will be for you to be rid of
an importunity which you have much encourag'd and how much your
late silence alarm'd one yt is soe much concern'd for ye honour
you doe her in allowing her to hope you will frequently let her
know she hath some room in ye particular favour, I hope you
have pardon'd me that complaint and allow'd a little jealousy
to that great passion I have for you and that I shall with some
more assurance come to thank you for this last favour of 12th
instant, and must beg you to believe that if my convent were in
Cataya and I a recluse by vow to it, yet I should never attain
mortification enough to be able willingly to deny myself the
great entertainment of your correspondance, which seems to remove
me out of a solitary religious house on ye mountains and place
me in the most advantageous prospect upon both court and town
and give me right to a better place than of either, and that
madam is your friendship, which is so great a present, that there
is but one way to make it more valuable and yt is by making it
less ceremonious and by using me with a freedom that may give me
more access into your heart and this beg from you with a great
earnestness, and will promise you that whatsoever liberties
of that kind you allow me, yt I will never so much abase that
goodness as to press mine own advantages further than you shall
permit or lessen any of the respect I ow you, by the less formal
approaches I desire to make to you who though I esteem above most
of the world yet I love yet more.[116]
Orinda was a letter-writer of no mean ability herself, but she wrote
with something of a professional tone, and possibly with an eye to
numerous readers. It was only Dorothy that could make town and court
live again. Macaulay's philippics against "the dignity of history"
and his eulogy of the social value of such letters as Dorothy's must
find approval from every one who tries to revivify a forgotten era.
Dorothy was an acute observer. If the novel of domestic life had
been in existence in her day she would have found the natural place
for her clever and slightly caustic pen. The successive suitors and
various dull visitors at Chicksands could have had little suspicion
of the merry and facile wit that was serving up their oddities for
the amusement of her lover. Furthermore, Dorothy was an inveterate
reader, and a reader with mental reactions, an independent judgment,
and a skill in witty comment. The general tone of the letters is a
delightful mixture of humor, tenderness, and coquetry. No writing
of the time was more unaffectedly human. And there were counsels of
prudence and of good sense, bits of worldly wisdom and penetrating
knowledge of human foibles. And with it all was the charm of style.
When Mr. Temple wishes to know how she spends her day she outlines
the slow-moving hours and closes with this delicate picture of
evening:
The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six
or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the
house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and
sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare
their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I
have read of, and find a vast difference there: but, trust me,
I think these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them
and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in
the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly when
we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and
spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as
if they had wings to their heels. I, that am not so nimble, stay
behind; and when I see them driving home their cattle, I think
't is time for me to return too. When I have supped, I go into
the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it,
when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this
is not kind neither). In earnest, 't is a pleasant place, and
would be much more so to me if I had your company. I sit there
sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some
cruel thoughts of the crossness of our fortunes that will not let
me sleep there, I should forget that there were such a thing to
be done as going to bed.[117]
Dorothy's easy, natural tone was quite in accord with her theory of
letter-writing. She writes to Mr. Temple:
All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's
discourse, not studied like an oration, nor made up of hard words
like a charm. 'T is an admirable thing to see how some people
will labour to find terms that will obscure a plain sense, like
a gentleman I knew who would never say "the weather grew cold,"
but that "winter begins to salute us." I have no patience for
such coxcombs, and cannot blame an old uncle of mine who threw
the standish at his man's head because he writ a letter for him,
where instead of saying (as his master bid him) that "he had the
gout in his hand" he said "that the gout would not permit him to
put pen to paper." The fellow thought he had mended it mightily,
and that putting pen to paper was much better than plain writing!
How in 1652-54 did Dorothy escape the grand style? She was steeped in
romances and she read Jeremy Taylor with delight. But there are no
preciosities, no attempted elaborateness or ornamentation or splendor
in her style. She might have written after the moderns had won their
victory so direct and straightforward is her speech. But the infinite
charm of her letters belongs to no age. It is the expression of a
personality.
We cannot leave Dorothy Osborne's letters without feeling defrauded
that there are so few of them. After their marriage in 1655 the
Temples lived five years in Ireland. Sir William's importance in
state affairs led to a later residence in Brussels and at The Hague.
After 1681 they lived in retirement at Moor Park and Swift and Stella
were of their household. What opportunities for letters if Dorothy
had only been as indefatigable as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! But
except for a few personal notes from Sheen in 1665-67, Dorothy fades
from our sight. Did accumulated sorrows sap her energy and dim her
joyous courage? She had nine children. Seven of them died in infancy.
Her daughter died of small-pox. Her son committed suicide because of
fancied inability to perform a diplomatic mission. It is said that
at some time during the years 1689-94 Queen Mary and Dorothy kept up
a continuous correspondence. If such letters were written there is
now no trace of them. The latest published letter from Dorothy is in
1689 in response to some expression of condolence for the death of
her son. It is difficult to recognize in this subdued and dignified,
almost cold and stately lady, the sparkling and mischievous Dorothy
of the earlier letters.
[Sidenote: Lady Pakington (d. 1679)]
Just about contemporary with Mrs. Philips and the Duchess of
Newcastle was a remarkable woman of quite another type. This was
Lady Pakington, the daughter of Lord Coventry. If, as was long
supposed, she wrote the series of books of which _The Whole Duty of
Man_ was one, that fact would place her very high in the ranks of
seventeenth-century authors. With the consensus of expert opinion
now against the ascription of these books to her, she yet holds an
important place among learned women.[118] Dr. George Hickes, whose
deanery was near Westwood, the home of Sir John Pakington, and who
was intimate with the family, in the Preface to his _Thesaurus_ which
was inscribed to Sir John, gives a "character" of Lady Pakington
in which he says she was trained in her youth by "the excellently
learned Sir Norton Knatchbull," and that later in life she was
mistress of all the learning, good judgment, sound thinking, and
piety necessary to have been the author of the famous _Whole Duty
of Man_. He says that noted divines declared her as learned in the
history of pagan and Christian systems of thought as were they
themselves; and that she knew concerning the antiquities of her own
county "almost as much as the greatest proficients in that kind of
knowledge." Especially did Dr. Hickes comment on her "talent for
speaking correctly, pertinently, clearly, and gracefully," and on
"her evenness of style and consistent manner of writing." No woman
of the period came nearer being the tutelary deity of a coterie
than did Lady Pakington. Her loyalty to the Church of England and
to the Stuart cause made of her beautiful home at Westwood during
the Protectorate a natural resort for royalist divines. Dr. Hammond,
Bishop Fell, Bishop Morley, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Henchman, Bishop
Gunning, were among those whose friendship and esteem she had
acquired by her "great virtues and eminent attainments in knowledge."
Before the Restoration she held a kind of Church of England salon,
and though most of the men who frequented it were given benefices
by Charles II and so scattered through England, Lady Pakington, by
letter and occasional personal intercourse, kept up the friendships
of the earlier days, through the nineteen years that she lived after
the Restoration. And even if she did not write _The Whole Duty of
Man_ (1657) and the series that followed it, these books arose from
the discussions held at Westwood.
[Sidenote: Mary Boyle, the Countess of Warwick (1624-1678)]
The Countess of Warwick is best known from her _Diary_, her
_Autobiography_, and the sermon preached at her funeral by Dr.
Anthony Walker, rector of Fyfield in Essex. The _Diary_ was
kept from July, 1666, till 1678. The part from 1666 to 1672 was
published in 1847 by the Religious Tract Society with a memoir. The
remainder is among the manuscripts in the British Museum.[119] Her
_Autobiography_, under the title, _Some Specialties in the Life
of M. Warwicke_, was published by the Percy Society in 1848.[120]
Dr. Walker's sermon, entitled _The Virtuous Woman found, her loss
bewailed, and character exemplified_, etc., was published in 1678 and
1687.[121]
Mary Boyle was married to Mr. Rich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, when
she was but fifteen. Her life before that time she thus describes:
"I was married into my husband's family, as vain, as idle, and as
inconsiderate a person as possible, minding nothing but curious
dressing and fond and rich clothes, and spending my precious time
in nothing else but reading romances, and in reading and seeing
plays, and in going to court, and Hide Park and Spring Garden; and
I was so fond of the court, that I had taken a secret resolution
that if my father died, and I was mistress of myself, I would become
a courtier."[122] But by the time she was twenty-one a complete
change was manifest. She became exceedingly devout. There is no more
romance reading. The books on her chosen list are "St. Bernard,
George Herbert, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Samuel Rutherford Clarke, the
_Confessions_ of St. Augustine, John Janeway's _Dying_, Foxe's _Book
of Martyrs_, Cayley's _Glimpses of Eternity_."[123] Her writing was
all religious in tone. Rules for a Holy Life, Occasional Meditations,
and Pious Reflections were among the topics she found most congenial.
The _Specialties in the Life of M. Warwicke_ shows the intensity of
her struggle after spiritual perfection and her genuine aloofness
from the gay and splendid scenes in which her rank compelled her
to bear a part. The most ordinary occurrences, such as "lighting
many candles at once," or "drawing the window-curtains to prevent
the sun's putting out the fire," suggested pious reflections. At a
glorious banquet at Whitehall "the trumpets sounding in the midst
of all that great show" put mortifying thoughts into her mind and
made her consider "what if the trump of God should now sound?" In
a meditation entitled "Upon looking out of my window at Chelsea,
upon the Thames," her delight in the sweet river when it is calm and
serene, and her dislike of it--so that she shut her window and ceased
to look--when it was rough, is moralized into the charm of calm and
patient people as against those of turbulent passions.[124]
Lady Warwick's writings exhibit none of the joyous or fervent aspects
of religion. In the midst of domestic trials, surrounded by an alien
life, she was steadily tutoring her own heart, subduing her sins,
following a high ideal. Dr. Walker in his sermon gives an example
of seventeenth-century pulpit oratory in his effort adequately to
praise this great lady, as conspicuous for goodness as for her rank
and wealth: "An hundred mouths, and a thousand tongues though they
all flowed with nectar, would be too few to praise her." "Oh," he
exclaims, "for a Chrysostom's mouth, for an angel's tongue, to
describe this terrestrial seraphine; or a ray of light condensed into
a pencil, and made tactile, to give you this glorious child of light
in _viva effigie_."
[Sidenote: Lucy Apsley, Mrs. Hutchinson (1620-?)]
That Lucy Hutchinson had written a life of her husband was known
by many people and there were frequent requests in the eighteenth
century that so valuable a historical document should be made
accessible to the public. Mrs. Catherine Macaulay was one of those
urgent in this matter, but without avail.[125] It was not till the
manuscript came into the possession of the Reverend Julius Hutchinson
that it was published. After the first edition in 1806 three editions
appeared in four years. Some other writings besides the _Memoirs_
were found among the papers of Mrs. Hutchinson. Of these the precious
_Autobiography_ was but a fragment. It not only closed abruptly, but
leaves had been torn out. But from what remains we get one of the
few accounts of the home education of girls in the first half of the
seventeenth century. Her father and mother, extremely glad to welcome
a girl after three sons, "applied all their cares and spared no cost"
in her education. She describes this education as follows:
By the time I was four years old I read English perfectly, and
having a great memory, I was carried to sermons; and while I was
very young could remember and repeat them exactly, and being
caressed, the love of praise tickled me, and made me attend more
heedfully. When I was about seven years of age, I remember I
had at one time eight tutors in several qualities, languages,
music, dancing, writing and needle-work; but my genius was quite
averse from all but my book, and that I was so eager of, that
my mother, thinking it prejudiced my health, would moderate me
in it; yet this rather animated me than kept me back, and every
moment I could steal from my play I would employ in any book I
could find, when my own were locked up from me. After dinner and
supper I still had an hour allowed me to play, and then I would
steal into some hole or other to read. My father would have me
learn Latin, and I was so apt that I outstripped my brothers who
were at school, although my father's chaplain, that was my tutor
was a pitiful dull fellow. My brothers, who had a great deal of
wit, had some emulation at the progress I made in my learning,
which very well pleased my father; though my mother would have
been contented if I had not so wholly addicted myself to that
as to neglect my other qualities. As for music and dancing, I
profited very little in them, and would never practise my lute or
harpsichords but when my masters were with me; and for my needle
I absolutely hated it. Play among other children I despised, and
when I was forced to entertain such as came to visit me, I tired
them with more grave instructions than their mothers, and plucked
all their babies to pieces, and kept the children in such awe,
that they were glad when I entertained myself with elder company;
to whom I was very acceptable, and living in the house with many
persons that had a great deal of wit, and very profitable
serious discourses being frequent at my father's table and in my
mother's drawing-room, I was very attentive to all, and gathered
up things that I would utter again, to great admiration of many
that took my memory and imitation for wit. It pleased God that,
through the good instructions of my mother, and the sermons she
carried me to, I was convinced that the knowledge of God was the
most excellent study, and accordingly applied myself to it, and
to practise as I was taught. I used to exhort my mother's maids
much, and to turn their idle discourses to good subjects: but I
thought, when I had done this on the Lord's day, and every day
performed my due tasks of reading and praying, that then I was
free to anything that was not sin.[126]
[Illustration: MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND HER SON
From an engraving in _Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson_,
1808]
Elsewhere she notes other elements of her education. She says that as
soon as she was weaned, a Frenchwoman was taken to be her dry-nurse
and she was taught to speak French and English together. At the
siege of Nottingham Castle Mrs. Hutchinson is represented as acting
the part of a surgeon. This knowledge may doubtless be referred to
instructions by her mother. Sir Allen Apsley, Lucy's father, was
lieutenant of the Tower of London during her youth, and Mrs. Apsley
was very generous and humane to the prisoners. Her daughter says of
her:
What my father allowed her she spent not in vanities, although
she had what was rich and requisite upon occasions, but she
laid most of it out in pious and charitable uses. Sir Walter
Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and
addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make rare
experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor
prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments,
and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to
seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of
skill, which was very profitable to many all her life.[127]
The love story of Lucy Apsley and Colonel Hutchinson is curiously
interwoven with her learning. When Lucy was sixteen her mother took
her into Wiltshire in pursuance of a contemplated marriage contract
and left a younger sister at a house where she was "tabled for the
practice of her lute." Mr. Hutchinson, "tabled" at the same house,
was attracted by the vivacious child, and frequently accompanied her
when she went over to her mother's house. On one of these occasions
he saw some Latin books and was much interested to find that they
belonged to Lucy. Then he heard that this Lucy was "reserved and
studious," then that she composed songs above "the ordinary reach
of a she-wit," then that she had "sense above the rest," but that
she "shunned the converse of men as a plague." Strangely enough,
these accounts, or some magic, or the hand of Providence, plunged
Mr. Hutchinson into the despairs and ardors of love even before he
had seen the lady. On her return, the proposed marriage contract
not having been completed, he daily frequented her mother's house,
and for six weeks "in the sweet season of the spring" they had
opportunity for converse with each other. During this period some
envious ladies endeavored to break the friendship by telling him that
Lucy neglected her dress and all womanish ornaments, giving herself
up wholly to study and writing. But since his love had owed its
inception to a sight of her Latin books, and had been stimulated by
hearing her poetry, these insinuations did not interfere with what
his wife calls "a more handsome management of love than the best
romances describe."[128]
Somewhat later Lucy Hutchinson's love of learning led her to at least
a slight knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. That she kept up her Latin
is shown by the fact that she translated part of the _Æneid_. In
her early married life she found scholastic means to mitigate the
monotony of the needlework she loathed. Out of a "youthful curiosity
to understand things she had heard so much of at second-hand" she
translated six books of _Lucretius_ into verse, accomplishing this
task, she says, "in a room where my children practised the several
qualities they were taught with their tutors, and I numbered the
syllables of my translation by the threads of the canvas I wrought
in, and set them down with a pen and ink that stood by me."
There was not, however, in Mrs. Hutchinson's life much opportunity
for scenes so domestic as this. She was married to Mr. Hutchinson
in 1638. By 1642 her husband was definitely committed to the side
of the Puritans, and the rest of their life till his death in 1664
was one of anxiety, conflict, and baffled high endeavor. But it was
also a life of achievement and excitement, and constantly sweetened
and stimulated by extraordinary affection between husband and wife.
When at his death she retired to the family home at Owthorpe the days
must have looked very blank and empty to the heroine of Nottingham
Castle. Not even the care of her eight children could keep her mind
from dwelling on the past. The message her husband sent her from
his death-bed in the prison, "Let her, as she is above other women,
show herself, on this occasion, a good Christian, and above other
women,"[129] helped her to restrain extreme signs of grief, but her
heart and mind were with him. And the mechanic exercise that dulled
her grief was the writing of his _Life_. She had kept a rough sort
of diary and this was the basis for the longer work. The writing
was done between 1664 and 1671 when Mrs. Hutchinson herself died.
The work was addressed "To my Children" and its purpose was to make
them know the character and deeds of their father. But the narrative
goes much farther than that. It is a minute account of the persons
and events of that portion of the Civil War especially connected
with Nottingham. She writes as an eye-witness and a participant.
She wields a pen vigorous, racy, and unafraid. She had a genius
for picturesque characterization, and her scornful descriptions of
cowards and traitors are veiled by no feminine softness of phrase.
When describing such treacherous members of the Parliament Party as
Charles White and Chadwick and his wife her vocabulary of abuse is
unstinted. But she is equally fluent in her account of heroes such as
Colonel Thornhagh. The intrigues, the factions, the cross-currents,
within the Puritan Party are as minutely analyzed and laid open as
is the general contest between King and Parliament. Furthermore, the
book is readable from beginning to end. It moves with the rapidity
of a novel of adventure. Mr. A. H. Upham[130] has analyzed Mrs.
Hutchinson's work to show that it was probably suggested by the
Duchess of Newcastle's _Life_ of her husband, and that, further,
the general plan and even the choice of detail were guided by the
Duchess's _Memoir_. The _Life_ of the Duke of Newcastle, though
not published till 1667, was written in 1665, and since the two
families were neighbors, and knew each other well, it might easily
be that Mrs. Hutchinson was acquainted with the work of the Duchess
in manuscript. This ingenious theory is maintained by citations of
passages showing numerous similarities. But the fact remains that
Mrs. Hutchinson's _Memoir_ moves forward as from the force of an
original impulse, nobly religious, shrewd, caustic, affectionate, and
naïve. It was, in subject-matter and style, a notable achievement,
and while succeeding in the amplest measure in its purpose of
exalting Colonel Hutchinson's memory, quite as deservedly gives to
Mrs. Hutchinson her own unsought and higher pinnacle of fame.
[Sidenote: Ann Harrison, Lady Fanshawe (1625-1680)]
A few years before her death Lady Fanshawe wrote for her son a
narrative of her life. Of her own education she says: "Now it is
necessary to say something of my mother's education of me, which was
with all the advantages that time afforded, both for working all
sorts of fine works with my needle, and learning French, singing,
(the) lute, the virginals, and dancing; and, notwithstanding I
learned as well as most did, yet I was wild to that degree that
the hours of my beloved recreation took up too much of my time;
for I loved riding in the first place, and running, and all active
pastimes; and in fine I was what we graver people call a hoyting
girl. But to be just to myself I never did mischief to myself or
other people, nor one immodest action or word in my life; but
skipping and activity was my delight. But upon my mother's death
and as an offering to her memory I flung away those little
childishnesses that formerly possessed me and by my father's
command took upon me the charge of his house and family, which I
so ordered by my excellent mother's example as found acceptance in
his sight."[131] At her mother's death Ann was "fifteen years and
three months" old, and the household she took charge of was one "of
plenty and hospitality," her father having a very great estate. In
1644 she married Sir Richard Fanshawe to whom she was passionately
devoted during the twenty-six troubled years of their life together.
She says: "Glory be to God, we never had but one mind throughout our
lives, our souls were wrapped up in each other, our aims and designs
one, and our resentments one. We so studied one the other that we
knew each other's mind by our looks; whatever was real happiness God
gave it me in him."[132]
[Illustration: LADY FANSHAWE
From an engraving in _Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe_, London, 1830]
When Lady Fanshawe wrote her _Memoirs_, her son Richard, her youngest
child, was about ten or twelve years old. Her purpose apparently
was to recount all the facts of the eventful family career. The
narrative, except for an occasional outburst, was uncolored by
emotion. One series of events recorded is the births and deaths of
children. In a period of twenty years Lady Fanshawe had fourteen
children and she records the deaths of nine of them. This would seem
to be suffering and sorrow enough for one life. But we get an added
conception of the family vicissitudes when we discover that no two
of the fourteen children were born in the same house, and no two
of the nine who died were buried in the same churchyard. Madrid,
Lisbon, Paris, Yorkshire, Kent, Hertfordshire, Oxford, were places
of sad memory to the bereaved mother. Yet, except in the cases of
"little Nan" and the first Richard, there is simply a recital of
facts and dates. Lady Fanshawe was but fifty-five when she died,
but she had gone through so much that a re-living of past emotions
as well as a recalling of facts would have made the writing of the
_Memoirs_ an impossibility. As a narrative of the externals of life
the story has singular interest. It abounds in striking contrasts.
Money stringency, mishaps by land and sea, sicknesses, imprisonments,
deaths, mingle strangely with official splendors, royal gifts, rich
furnishings, gorgeous apparel. It is personal in tone, with as little
historical detail as was consistent with carrying the narrative
forward. And for that reason it is of importance to-day as a closer
record of life than historians of the Civil War or of the reign of
Charles II are likely to give.
[Sidenote: Margaret Blagge, Mrs. Godolphin (1652-1678)]
The most interesting personality in this early group is the beautiful
Mrs.[133] Margaret Blagge. She is the supreme example of a developed
religious sense in the court of Charles II. She was not driven
to a life of devotion through a grief-enshrouded heart. Religion
was to her joy and ecstasy. John Evelyn recorded in his Diary a
determination to consecrate the worthy life of Margaret Blagge to
posterity, and when he died in 1706 he left a list of "things I
would write out fair and reform if I had leisure," among them being
the _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_. This manuscript was first published
in 1847. It records a life of singular charm and interest. Yet the
facts of Margaret Blagge's life are meager enough. She was born
in 1652; was early in France with the Countess of Guildford; when
scarcely twelve became maid of honor to the Duchess of York; and then
on the death of the Duchess in 1671 entered into the same service
with Queen Catherine; in 1674, after a nine-year courtship, married
Sidney Godolphin; and in 1678 died in child-birth. It is her inner
life that counts, and that life would have left small record had not
the beautiful young maid of honor chosen the wise and religious John
Evelyn as her friendly counselor in her difficult attempt to maintain
a life of purity and piety in the most dissolute court of Europe.
Evelyn recounts the success of her devout life in these words:
"Arethusa pass'd through all those turbulent waters without soe much
as the least staine or tincture in her Chrystall; with her Piety grew
up her Witt, which was soe sparkling, accompanyed with a Judgment
and Eloquence so exterordinary, a Beauty and Ayre soe charmeing and
lovely, in a word, an Address soe universally takeing, that, after
a few years, the Court never saw or had seen such a Constellation
of perfections amongst all their splendid Circles."[134] But though
she was regarded as "a little miracle" at court, her heart was never
there. To no young woman of the time were the pomp and glory of the
world more alluringly open, but she turned instinctively from all
such joys. She counted her beauty a snare and would never "trick and
dress herself vpp ... to be fine and ador'd." Lovers crowded about
her, but she avoided the vain converse of gallants. Evelyn records
her particular gift for mimicry, recitation, acting, but such talents
she held in abeyance. At sixteen she acted in a court play, probably
Dryden's _Indian Emperor_, with great success, but her growingly
devout spirit came to abhor such recreations, so that when she was
summoned by royal request to act in Crowne's _Calisto_, in 1674, even
though the play was to be given all by ladies, and those the most
illustrious in the land, it was a matter of almost tragic grief to
her that her duty forbade a refusal. "To be herselfe an Actoresse ...
cost her not only great reluctancy but many teares."[135] Though she
was decked with jewels worth £20,000, though she "trode the Stage
with a surprizeing and admirable Aire," and though the whole theater
was extolling her, she felt no transport, but, when an interval came,
"retired into a Corner, reading a book of devotion." Not even the
fact that she played the part of "Diana, the Goddess of Chastity,"
consoled her.
She had one real calling and that was to a religious life. As a
child of seven, in France with the Countess of Guildford, though
often "tempted by that By-Gott proselitesse to goe to Masse and be a
papist,"[136] she yet could maintain her own faith. Because of her
spiritual precocity she was "admitted to the holy Sacrament when she
was hardly Eleaven years of age." Though she disliked Catholicism,
she praised nunneries, and would have chosen a retired life of
devotion and good works, had not her love for Mr. Godolphin and the
urgent advice of Mr. Evelyn restrained her. Nearly all her writing
and reading were along religious lines. Mr. Evelyn says on this point:
She has houres alsoe for reading historye and diversions of
that nature; butt allwayes such as were choice, profitable and
instructive, and she had devoured an incredible deale of that
solid knowledge, and could accompt of it to admiration; soe as
I have even beene astonished to find such an heape of excellent
things and material observations collected and written with her
owne hand, many of which (since her being with God) came to myne;
for, besides a world of admirable prayers and pieces of flagrant
devotion, meditations, and discourses on various subjects (which
she compos'd), there was hardly a booke she read that she had not
common placed, as it were, or taken some remarkable note of; add
this to the Diary of her owne life, actions, resolutions, and
other circumstances, of which I shall give some specimen. She had
contracted the intire historye of the Scriptures, and the most
illustrious examples, sentences, and precepts, digested under
opposite and proper heads; and collected togeather the result of
every Article of the Apostles' Creed, out of Bishop Pearson's
excellent Treatise. I have allready spoken of her Sermon Notes:
butt to give a just Account of her Letters, they are so many and
in so excellent naturall and easy a style, that, as for their
number, one would believe she did nothing else butt write, soe,
for their weight and ingenuity, that she ought to doe nothing
else; and soe easyly did her Invention flow, that I have seen her
write a very long letter without once takeing off her pen (butt
to dip it), and that with exterordinary Judgment.[137]
Her _Diary_ is a delightfully spontaneous document. Here is one
Resolution:
June the 2d.
I will nere play this halfe year butt att 3 penny omber, and then
with one att halves. I will not I doe not vow, but I will not doe
it;--what, loose mony att Cards, yet not give (to) the poore! 'T
is robbing God, misspending tyme, and missimploying my Talent:
three great Sinns. Three pounds would have kept three people from
starveing a month: well, I will not play.[138]
Equally genuine and charming, but in more decorous and solemn
fashion, is the letter in which she consecrated John Evelyn
her friend. Indeed, the whole quaint and formal episode of the
establishment of this remarkable friendship, seems incredibly pure
and lovely when thought of as occurring in the court of which
Grammont's _Memoirs_ is a fair record. Evelyn wrote "a little
master-piece of biography," partly because of his intimate knowledge
of Mrs. Godolphin's spiritual experience and his personal affection
for her, but also, in part, because his imagination was inevitably
stimulated by the vision of a life so crystal clear in an environment
so murky.
The versatility and intellectual energy of the Duchess of Newcastle,
the quick wit and instinct for style in Dorothy Osborne's letters,
the grave and sincere religious feeling coupled with considerable
theological learning on the part of women in influential positions
like Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, and Lady Warwick, the vivid
social and political pictures in the biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson
and Lady Fanshawe, the gay playing with _belles lettres_ in Mary
North's little society, and especially the extraordinary vogue of
Mrs. Philips, are sufficient indications, as we look back over the
period, that a new spirit was awake. It reads now almost as if there
were a general and brilliant opening of literary pursuits to women.
But it is also significant to recall that Mrs. Philips and the
Duchess of Newcastle were the only two women whose ability or learned
tastes were known at the time beyond their own small private circle.
In reality the work was sporadic, secluded, uninfluential. And the
fame even of the Duchess of Newcastle and Mrs. Philips is hardly
established before 1660. It is with the Restoration that the more
varied and public activities begin.
2. THE CENTURY FOLLOWING THE RESTORATION
The period to be here presented in detail is the century following
the Restoration. During this period the work of women spreads out
in new directions. Not only is there a greater variety in the kinds
of writing, but other forms of self-expression are entered upon.
In this more complicated era the strictly chronological method
becomes confusing. It seems more desirable to take up the work under
different species, keeping to chronological development within each
species.
Two kinds of new work by women, acting and painting, demand brief
preliminary notice. Though possibly not within the category of
learned occupations they must yet be recognized as of great
importance in the new life opening before women.
ACTRESSES
Charles II had in France been familiar with the custom of having
women on the stage, and when he issued his two patents to Davenant
and Killigrew he inserted the famous clause, "We do permit and
give leave from this time to come that all women's parts be acted
by women." Mrs. Coleman had taken the part of Ianthe in Davenant's
_Siege of Rhodes_ in 1656, but this was not a regular play. It was
more of the nature of an opera or spectacle. The first woman to
act on the public stage in England was probably the actress who
played Desdemona, December 8, 1660. "J. Jordan" wrote a prologue to
introduce her as "the first woman that came to act on the stage," but
he did not give her name.[139]
The theatrical novelty initiated by this unknown actress was
far-reaching in its effects. Through the ensuing years a constantly
increasing number of women followed the lure of the stage. No
other opportunity open to the ambition of women met with so eager
a response, or could number so many aspirants, or could register
success so unqualified. Yet as we read of these early English
actresses we hardly think of acting as a profession or of them as
artists. They were in no sense students of the parts they played.
Beauty, youth, high spirits, a certain native endowment of wit or
boldness, ability to sing a song or dance a jig, seemed to meet all
the demands of audiences too much delighted with the mere fact of
seeing women on the stage to be over-critical of their technique
or interpretation. Moreover, the runs of plays were short, three
days being about the average, so there was hardly time to work up
finished productions. The stage tenure of most of the actresses was
also brief, hardly more than a prelude to the social and domestic
irregularities of their later lives. Cunningham names Mrs. Betterton
as the only actress of Charles II's day who was not mistress to some
man at court. "Frailties," as they were euphemistically called,
became so normally associated with actresses that Anne Bracegirdle
excited incredulous surprise by her reputed purity of life, and
she was presented by the noblemen of her day with a purse of eight
hundred guineas in recognition of her virtue.[140] The immorality of
these early actresses, girls of no rigorous professional training
and no professional standards, is quite intelligible. In appearing
before the public at all they broke so many conventions, defied the
feminine ideal so completely, that a few steps further in pursuit of
flattery and luxurious living hardly seemed to count. As actresses
they were at once under a moral stigma anyhow, so far as the soberer
part of the community was concerned, and they naturally followed the
path of least resistance and accepted the morality of the court of
the merry monarch, a court where virtue with her "lean and scare-crow
face" seldom intruded. The unfortunate outcome of the turpitude of
the Restoration actresses is that they built up in the public mind a
prejudice against actresses as a class, a prejudice which affected
later even such women as Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs.
Cibber, or Mrs. Siddons. But it must not be forgotten that they
served the cause of women by opening the way to a new and important
profession, a profession in which women have no handicaps. The stage
has been represented by more women of genius, and has given to women
more unstinted recognition in fame and money, than have any of the
other forms of public activity into which women have so far been
admitted, except, possibly, in late years, administrative work in
social service.
It is unnecessary, in this study, to carry the account of the
actresses into further detail, or further down the century. The
history of the part women took on the seventeenth and eighteenth
century stage would make a volume of itself. And since it was many
years before acting was connected with any critical or intellectual
conception of the plays represented, it may suffice here to leave
this portion of the new work of women with the mere announcement of
its inception.
ARTISTS
To acting we may add another new realm, that of painting. The
earliest woman portrait-painter on record in England is Anne
Carlisle, who died about 1680. In 1658 Sir William Sanderson, in his
_Graphice_, commenting on the artists then in England, said, "And in
Oyl Colours we have a vertuous example in that worthy Artist, Mrs.
Carlisle." In the notes left by Vertue to Walpole was a statement
that he had seen in about 1730 the portrait Mrs. Carlisle had painted
of herself. Her chief work was in copying the paintings of Italian
masters, or, according to a fashion of the times, reproducing them in
miniature. It is said that Charles I admired her work so warmly that
he presented to her and Van Dyck ultramarine to the value of five
hundred pounds.[141]
Of more distinguished ability was Mary Beale (1637-1697),[142] who
is said to have studied either with Sir Peter Lely or Robert Walker.
At least she watched Lely paint and thereby gained some of his
technique. She worked in oils, water-colors, and crayons. Through
Sir Peter Lely she was given access to some of the best works of Van
Dyck and in copying these gained a training somewhat similar to that
given most artists by sojourns in Italy or Holland. There are in the
English National Portrait Gallery portraits by her of Charles II and
Abraham Cowley. At Knole is her portrait of John Milton; at Woburn
Abbey, one of the Duke of Monmouth; Archbishop Tillotson, Henry, Duke
of Norfolk, Dr. Sydenham, Dr. Croone, Bishop Wilkins, are among those
who sat to her. No other English portrait-painter of the period had
so distinguished a clientèle or is represented by so many canvases
in English galleries. Her success may be measured, in part, by her
financial returns. In a pocket-book kept by her husband in 1672 is
this entry: "Received this year, for pictures done by my dearest
heart, 202_l._ 5_s._" The receipts for 1674 were 216_l._ 5_s._; and
for 1677, 429_l._ She was still painting important portraits in
1691, for we find in the _Term Catalogue_ for Michaelmas of that
year the announcement of "The true Effigies of his Grace, John, Lord
Archbishop of Canterbury. Engraven by Rob. White on a large sheet of
Paper, from the Original lately painted by Mrs. Mary Beale."
According to the manuscript of Mr. Oldys, Mrs. Beale was also
celebrated for her poetry. He styles her, "that masculine poet, as
well as Painter, the incomparable Mrs. Beale." Dr. Woodford included
in his translations of the Psalms several versions by Mrs. Beale whom
he eulogizes as "an absolutely compleat Gentlewoman," and to whom he
wrote several poems under the name "Beliza."[143]
Anne Killigrew (1660-1685), a maid of honor to Mary of Modena, died
at twenty-five, but she had already attained considerable repute
as a portrait painter. There is a tradition that she studied with
Sir Peter Lely. If so she must have taken these lessons before she
was twenty, for Lely left England in 1680. Dryden says that her
portrait of James II expressed "not only his outward part, but
drew forth the very image of his heart," and that she was equally
successful in depicting the bright beauty and peerless majesty of
Mary of Modena. Her portrait of herself was engraved by Becket and
prefaces the volume of her poems issued the year after her death.
Other paintings were religious in subject, as in her portrayal of
incidents in the life of John the Baptist; or mythological, as in her
representation of Diana's nymphs. Of far more possible significance
is her landscape work. During 1660-1685 Robert Streater is the only
English landscape-painter of whom we have record. Charles II brought
over a number of Italian and Flemish artists who painted English
landscapes in the style of Ruysdael, Poussin, or Salvator Rosa, and
their work would be the pictures chiefly known at court. It is not
improbable that Miss Killigrew's landscapes were copies or imitations
of these foreign artists. Dryden says she painted ruins of Greece and
Rome, and forest glades in which were nymphs and shaggy satyrs. Such
pictures must have been copies. But Dryden also enumerates sylvan
scenes of herds and flocks; clear, shallow little brooks; deep rivers
reflecting as in a mirror the trees on their banks. Such pictures
are truly English in tone and whatever their intrinsic value such a
choice of subjects would put her with Robert Streater at the very
inception of English landscape art. And though the scanty records
concerning her painting do not substantiate Dryden's description
of her landscapes, it could hardly be supposed that he would have
been so explicit in a poem written for the family and immediately
after her death had there not been some pictures at least moderately
correspondent to his lines.[144]
Other seventeenth-century names of less importance show an aspiration
in art somewhat above that countenanced by the boarding-schools.
Mrs. Pepys and Miss Margaret Pen may serve to indicate the sort
of work being done in amateurish fashion in various homes. Both
ladies were "learning to limn" with one Mr. Browne. Pepys was
tremendously interested in his wife's progress. In the midst of
terrifying accounts of the plague and the fire there come in 1665
and 1666 frequent notes on her pictures. Once after a week's absence
on exhausting work he records, "To my wife, and having viewed her
last piece of drawing since I saw her which is seven or eight days,
which pleases me beyond anything in the world, to bed with great
content, but weary." The next day, on being importuned to buy her a
pearl necklace, he promises it, but only "if she pleases me in her
painting." On one occasion he called on Lady Pen and says of the
visit, "Talking with Mrs. Pegg Pen, and looking at her pictures,
and commended them; but, Lord! so far short of my wife's as no
comparison." A month later is the note, "I took my Lady Pen home,
and her daughter Pegg and, after dinner I made my wife show them
her pictures, which did mad Pegg Pen, who learnes of the same man."
In September, 1665, Pepys had just seen his wife's picture of our
Saviour and thought it so pretty that he boasted of it to Evelyn,
at which Evelyn paid him in kind by telling him that "the beautiful
Mrs. Middleton is rare (in painting) and his own wife do brave
things."[145]
[Illustration: MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW
From a painting by herself engraved by T. Chambars]
The Evelyn family seems to have been instinctively artistic. In
Mr. Thoresby's account of a visit to Evelyn, he said he was shown
"many drawings and paintings of his own and his lady's doing; one
especially of enamel was surprisingly fine, and this ingenious lady
told me how she wrought it." Both Mr. Evelyn and his son Draper were
proud of Mary's work in painting. Sixteen years after her death Mr.
Thoresby wrote: "He afterwards carried me in his coach to his son
Draper's at the Temple, and showed me many curious pieces of his
ingenious daughter's performances, both very small in miniature,
and as large as the life in oil colours, equal it is thought to the
greatest masters of the age. He gave me a specimen of some prospects
he took in Italy, and etched upon the copper by his own hand."
At the end of the century is Sarah Curtis (d. 1743) who was married
in 1701 to Bishop Hoadly. Before her marriage she had been a pupil
of Mary Beale, and she is now represented in the National Portrait
Gallery by three canvases, portraits of Burnet, Winston, and Hoadly.
Mrs. Rowe's paintings were likewise highly prized by discriminating
friends. Of greater interest is Mrs. Delany (1700-1788). She copied
at least seventy-two pictures by old masters and painted many
portraits. Her work is not represented in public galleries, but many
of her pictures are still preserved in private collections. Susan
Penelope Gibson was a successful miniature painter. Elizabeth Creed
was also an artist of at least local repute. She did sacred subjects
as altar-pieces for neighboring churches and she painted numerous
portraits. She also gave free lessons to the girls living near her.
Her daughter Elizabeth, who inherited her artistic tastes, is said to
have ornamented a hall in a Tudor mansion near Oundle.
Short and insignificant as this list appears, it yet assumes real
importance when we realize not only that these were the earliest
English women to enter this field, but that the list shows up
surprisingly well when compared with a similar list of the native
English painters among the men of the period. Charles I was a great
lover of art and he summoned many artists, some of the first rank, to
England, and he bought pictures with a far-sighted munificence, and
Charles II was ambitious of following along the same distinguished
path. But a list of the pictures painted in England before 1700 shows
hardly an English name. Hence the presence of any successful women
artists is doubly significant.
The amateurish quality of the painting may be in part explained by
the fact that in but one case, that of Mary Beale, was there any
impetus or training such as are necessarily associated with work
adopted as a profession. The painting was an accomplishment, a
pleasant occupation for leisure hours, a resource, rather than a life
purpose ardently pursued. The only external reward for the many hours
at the easel was the praise of a small circle of friends. The real
incentive was an inner demand for some form of self-expression, and
the mere number of pictures painted, quite apart from the question
of their excellence, is indicative of the eagerness with which women
welcomed any sort of opportunity for the free play of their own
individuality.
AUTHORS
It was not, however, acting or painting that occupied most of the
women whose natures craved something out of the ordinary routine.
Writing was a much more natural and feasible resource. Acting
implied a public, and even painting, especially portrait-painting,
was likely to be semi-public. But writing could be carried on in
retirement and the results submitted only to the partial criticism
of a home or social circle. It did not bring women before a carping
public or necessarily into competition with men, for even if plays
were produced and books published, the name of the writer could be
veiled, as it usually was, under a decent anonymity. Hence women who
respected the obvious conventions could yet indulge themselves in
authorship.
WRITERS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS
When women entered upon writing as a career, it might be thought that
they would at first take up subjects familiar to them, but such was
not the case. For instance, most of the books for children, before
the venture of the Newberys about the middle of the eighteenth
century, were by men.[146] It was James Janeway whose maxim, "A child
is never too little to go to Hell," resulted in works so popular as
_A Looking Glass for Children_ and _A Token for Children_ (1676);
John Bunyan's _A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rimes for
Children; being Divine Poems on the Creed, Commonwealth and Several
other Subjects_ (1690); Mr. Mason's _A Little Catechism with little
Verses and little sayings, for little children_ (1693). _The Divine
and Moral Songs for Children_, by Isaac Watts in 1720, carried on the
religious instruction. There were also various accounts of the "Life
and Saintly Death" of children of tender years, which were published
with the avowed purpose of influencing other children of like tender
years, but none of these are by women. The first women I have come
upon who wrote professedly for children are Sarah Fielding and Mrs.
Collyer in 1749.[147]
In a somewhat less degree the same condition exists in relation
to medicine, especially in the realms most definitely in the hands
of women. Mrs. Pilkington tells us that her father was the first
man midwife in England, but nearly all the books on midwifery were
written by men. Two women, however, appear in print, in a discussion
of their professional work. Mrs. Jane Sharp's book is entitled _The
Midwives' Book, or the whole Art of midwifery discovered, directing
Child-bearing Women how to behave themselves in their Conception,
Breeding, Bearing, and Nursing, of Children. In Six Books. By Mrs.
Jane Sharp, Practitioner in the Art of Midwifery above thirty
years_.[148]
Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, a second writer on midwifery, is known
perhaps chiefly because she was supposed to have some connection
with the Meal Tub Plot. After her acquittal from treason charges she
wrote a pamphlet called _Malice Defeated_, in which she courageously
expressed her adherence to an unpopular cause in the words, "I do not
yet so much fear the smell of Newgate as to be frighted for telling
the truth; nor is death so great a terror to me, but that I am still
ready to seal the same with my blood."[149] She must have been a
woman of substance as well as courage, for she was fined a thousand
pounds because of certain passages in this pamphlet. She was also
condemned to stand in the pillory three times, a punishment which,
according to Lady Russell, she bore with intrepidity and nonchalance,
protecting her head from missiles by means of a battledore which she
held up with one hand, while with the other she gathered up and put
into her pocket all the stones that fell within her reach.
In her profession of midwifery Mrs. Cellier was of high repute, but
her interests were not circumscribed by her own practice. One of
her schemes was the establishment of a "Colledg of Midwives" where
the best possible training should be given. Though her pamphlet,
entitled _A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital and raising
a revenue of 5000 l or 6000 l a year by and for the Maintenance of a
Corporation of Skilful Midwives_, did not result in the establishment
of her proposed college, the idea and the formulation of the plan do
credit to her foresight and intelligence, and sound quite in line
with modern forms of woman's civic enterprise.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could show a long list
of interesting and elaborately worked-out books on housewifery in
general and cooking in particular, but it seldom happens that one
of these books is by a woman. It is, to be sure, not impossible
that more of the material was furnished by women than is apparent
on the surface. Very many of the books on housekeeping matters were
anonymous and were probably mere publishers' compilations from
unacknowledged sources, and in such cases the actual material may
have come from various housewives. But during the century I have
come upon but three women who published under their own names the
results of their experiences as cooks. The earliest of these was Mrs.
Hannah Woolley. She was born about 1623. Her mother and elder sisters
are said to have been "very well skilled in physick and chirurgery"
and they taught her in her youth. She was twice married, the first
time to a schoolmaster named Woolley, and then to a Mr. Francis
Challinor. She is known usually as Mrs. Woolley. One of her books,
_The Queen-like Closet, or A rich Cabinet stored with all manner of
rare Receipts for preserving, Candying, and Cookery. Very pleasant
and beneficial to all ingenuous persons of the Female Sex_, reached
its eleventh edition by 1696. Mrs. Woolley had been governess in two
noble families and had acquired definite ideas as to polite behavior.
This knowledge also she committed to the printed page. On manners,
but especially on household management, she wrote as an authority and
received due recognition.
Another book, by a woman whose initials I have not been able to
expand into a name, is the following: _The Cook's New Years Gift,
Cookery refined, or The Lady, Gentlewoman and Servant-maid's
Companion: containing the Art of dressing all sorts of Flesh, Fish,
and Fowl, various ways, after the newest Mode; with their proper
seasonings, sauces, Garnishes, serving up and carving, etc. By Mrs.
A. M. a long practiser of this curious Art._ (_Term Catalogues_,
Mich. 1697. Mich. 1700.)
The work of Mrs. Woolley in the seventeenth century found its most
worthy counterpart in the eighteenth century in Hannah Glasse's _The
Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds any Thing of
the kind ever yet Published.... By a Lady. London. Printed for the
Author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn's, a China-Shop, the Corner of Fleet
Ditch, 1747._ The book was issued with about two hundred subscribers.
A fourth edition in octavo came out in 1751, a ninth edition in 1759,
and many later editions. In her Preface Mrs. Glasse said, "If I have
not wrote in the high polite Stile I hope I shall be forgiven, for
my Intention is to instruct the lower Sort, therefore treat them in
their own Way. For Example: when I bid them lard a Fowl, if I should
bid them lard with large Lardoons, they would not know what I want:
But when I say they must lard with small Pieces of Bacon, they know
what I mean." The new element in her book was this attempt to write
out receipts that were simple enough to come into general use.
WRITERS ON RELIGION AND THEOLOGY
The _Term Catalogues_ for 1670-1713 show how great was the
preponderance during those years of books on "Divinity." That women
should share in this prevailing interest is but natural, for religion
came within the accepted canon of the truly feminine. And there are
evidences of an even greater amount of devotional writing by women
than might be expected. The period 1650 to 1750, and especially the
first half of that period, could show a long list of women noted for
lives of piety and good works.[150] The loose living characteristic
of the court apparently had its reaction towards exceptional
spiritual rigor on the part of many ladies of rank. And of these
devout ladies no small number found in the composition of religious
verse or prose the intellectual and emotional outlet denied them in
other ways. Almost none of this writing was meant for a public. The
reams of meditations, prayers, and reflections left in manuscript
were merely a private resource, and often kept secret even from the
author's family. Such writings were in their nature fugitive, and it
would only now and then happen that some relative or friend would
collect and order the papers and see them through the press. We
accordingly get scattered hints through funeral sermons and casual
notices of an amount of devotional writing greatly in excess of that
published. But to tabulate even all the published material would be
wearisome and to no good end. A few illustrative examples showing the
chief characteristics may suffice.
[Sidenote: Lady Elizabeth Brooke (1601-1683)]
One of the best examples of the persistent and prodigious industry
shown by some of these ladies is the work of Lady Elizabeth Brooke.
She began at thirty to make notes on sermons, to copy extracts from
commentaries, and occasionally to write out some personal opinions,
and she kept at this sedative occupation till her death fifty-two
years later. It is painful to reflect on such a mass of undigested
material, but the significant fact remains that she preferred such
reading and writing to the ordinary interests of her sex. Some of her
"Observations and Rules for Practice" were published as an appendix
to the sermon preached at her funeral. Selections from her writings
were published as late as 1828 in _The Lady's Monitor_.
[Sidenote: Anne Murray, Lady Halkett (1622-1699)]
Anne Murray, Lady Halkett, was even more industrious. Her father,
who was tutor of Charles I and Provost of Eton, died when she was a
child, but her mother, who was governess to the Princess Elizabeth,
gave her "a complete education." Of her early life she says: "My
mother spared no expense in educating all her children in the most
suitable way to improve them ... and paid masters for teaching
my sister and mee to write, speak French, play on the lute and
virginalls, and dance, and kept a gentlewoman to teach us all kinds
of needlework, which shows I was not brought up in an idle life."
After several complicated and long drawn-out love affairs--fully
described in her _Autobiography_--Anne married Sir James Halkett
in 1656. As the years passed her interests finally centered on
two subjects, divinity and medicine. In "physick and surgery" she
gained great repute. She was consulted in difficult cases from the
remotest parts of the kingdom and her fame spread even to Holland.
It was quaintly said of her: "She was ever employed either in doing
or reaping good: in the summer season she vyed with the bee or ant,
in gathering herbs, flowers, worms, snails, etc., for the still or
limbeck, for the mortar or boyling pan, etc., and was ordinarily
then in a dress fitted for her still-house; making preparations of
extracted waters, spirits, ointments, conserves, salves, powders,
etc., which she ministered every Wednesday to a multitude of poor
infirm persons, besides what she dayly sent abroad to persons of all
ranks who consulted her in their maladies."[151] But it was religious
themes only that employed her pen. The catalogue of her writings
includes twenty-one volumes, or a total of about eight thousand pages
of manuscript, some in quarto, some in folio size, and all bound.
Some of these books were printed at Edinburgh in 1701. The title
of one book of three hundred and fifteen pages will indicate the
general character of her writing: _Select Meditations and Prayers
upon the First Week, with Observations on each Days Creation, and
Considerations on the Seven Capital Vices to be opposed, and their
opposite Virtues to be studied and practised_.
_Vices to be subdued_ _Virtues to be learned_
_Pride_ Sunday _Humility_
_Covetousness_ Monday _Contentation_
_Lust_ Tuesday _Chastity_
_Envy_ Wednesday _Charity_
_Gluttony_ Thursday _Temperance_
_Anger_ Friday _Patience_
_Sloth_ Saturday _Diligence_
All but nine of these books were written during Lady Halkett's
twenty-eight years of widowhood when she had much leisure, but under
any circumstances the task was a great one, and becomes the more
amazing when we reflect upon it as really only a private recreation.
To write so much with no urgency of fame or money shows some very
strong inner demand for expression and a very facile pen.
[Sidenote: "Legacies"]
Another type of religious book goes back for its inspiration to
Elizabeth Jocelyn's famous _Legacie_. One of Lady Halkett's books
was _The Mother's Will to an Unborn Child_, written in 1656 before
the birth of her daughter Elizabeth. Books of advice from parents to
children to be read after the death of the parents were not uncommon.
Elizabeth Sadler (1623-1690), the wife of the Reverend Anthony
Walker, was an exceedingly devout woman whose literary instinct and
a prevision of death led her to write a large book in octavo for the
instruction of her two daughters. Two other books will sufficiently
illustrate the type: _The Experiences of God's gracious dealing with
Mrs. Elizabeth White, late wife of Mr. Tho. White of Caldecot in the
County of Bucks; as they were written under her own hand, and found
in her Closet after her decease: she dying in child-bed, December
5th, 1669_;[152] _The Legacie of a Dying Mother to her mourning
children; being the Experiences of Mistress Susanna Bell, who died
March 13, 1672. With an Epistle Dedicatory by Thomas Brookes,
Minister of the Gospel_.
[Sidenote: Rachel Wriothesley, Lady Russell (1636-1723)]
Lady Russell is an example of a woman who definitely set out to be
religious, and whose writings contain an analysis of her methods.
The circumstances of her life give everything pertaining to her a
particular interest. The execution of Lord Russell for treason in
1683 left her broken by the shock. She had, though without avail,
set in motion every possible agency to avert his fate, and she had
devoted herself absolutely to him till his tragic death. Then,
after a period of the deepest despondency, she entered again upon
the duties that lay before her. She conducted the education and
arranged the marriages of her three children. She showed herself an
excellent business woman in the management of her estate. And she
steadily interested herself in securing benefices and other offices
for persons of whom her husband would have approved. Her _Letters_
as published contain a few during the first years of her happy
married life; many written concerning the "judicial murder" of Lord
Russell; and very many concerning family affairs and the candidates
for whom she was seeking favor. As letters they are uninteresting.
The subject-matter is generally too local and temporary to hold the
attention of the modern reader, and the style is dry and hard. Even
the records of her bitter grief and of her struggle to attain a mood
of Christian resignation are less affecting than might be expected.
A kind of apathy seemed to settle down over her spirit. She was too
deeply hurt to find in words any balm for her sorrows. She answered
condolences when she must, but briefly, and with no lightening of the
gloom that encompassed her. Of all her letters the longest and most
valuable as a personal revelation is one written to her children July
21, 1691, "a day of sad remembrances," for it was the anniversary
of her husband's execution eight years before. In 1691, Rachel, the
oldest child, was twenty years old, and Wriothesley, the youngest,
was eleven. The five or six pages in which Lady Russell recounts,
probably especially for the benefit of Rachel, her method of personal
spiritual watch-care, has great value as a religious document,
for she was not alone in her way of seeking salvation, in her
heart-searchings, in her dependence on the external means of grace,
in her sedulous striving after perfection. It was the devout habit of
devout people of the time, but perhaps carried to a meticulous excess
by Lady Russell. She says that she was always provided with a little
piece of paper on which she wrote her faults and temptations as they
occurred during the day. At night a careful review of this record
contributed to a better watch and ward.
And then [she continued], upon Friday morning when I have prayed
my usual daily prayers (which have bin most constantly for
many years those in taler's holy living) before I pray that of
intercession pa: 35. I stop ... and look upon my dayly notes for
that weeke, I recollect my fautes; consider what care I have
taken to correct or forsake them--but alas when we do best we
shall find enof to be humbled for--therefore I chuse some prayer
of confesion most times that in taler's holy living page 302.
When I have done it, I make my resolutions to do better for ye
time to come, and especialy to watch myselfe where i ame most
apt to fal, naming in what I ame so--then I pray some prayer
for grace to keep these promises of better obedience--as in
pa: 31--for grace to spend our time wel, on page 271, for the
grace of faith, hope & charity. Then I pray the dayly prayer of
intercession that I left of at in pa:35--after this I praise
God ... for all the blessings vouchsafed to me both spiritual &
temporal--as that I was born of Christian parents, not suffered
to be strangled in
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