|IN the year 1718, and presumably after Mr. Matthew Prior had already
printed his tall and extremely miscellaneous _folio_ of 'Poems on
Several Occasions,' there was published separately a little _jeu
d'esprit_ by the same 'eminent Hand,' which has not been regarded as the
least fortunate of his efforts. In its first fugitive form, now so rare
as to be known only to a few highly-favoured collectors, it is a single
page or leaf of eight quatrains; and of this there are two issues, both
attributing the verses to Prior, both claiming to be authentic,
both unauthorised. The earlier, which is dated, is headed 'Upon Lady
_Katherine H--des_ first appearing at the _Play-House_ in _Drury-Lane_;'
the other, 'from Curll's chaste press,' bears the title of 'The Female
Phaeton,' by which the piece is now known. The person indicated was the
second daughter of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and Rochester, and the
grandchild of the great Lord Chancellor and historian of the Rebellion.
As she was born in 1700, she must at this time have been eighteen. She
was 'beautiful,' says the poet; 'she was wild as Colt untam'd;' she was,
besides,=
```'Inflam'd with Rage at sad Restraint,
````Which wise Mamma ordain'd.'=
Her elder sister, Jane--the 'blooming _Hide,_ with Eyes so rare,' of
whom John Gay had sung in the 'Prologue' to 'The Shepherd's Week'--was
already married to the Earl of Essex. Why should not She, too, be a
Toast, and 'bring home Hearts by Dozens'?=
```'Dearest Mamma, for once let me,
````Unchain'd, my Fortune try;
```I'll have my Earl, as well as She,
````Or know the Reason why.'=
And so the stanzas, eternally human and therefore eternally modern,
dance and sparkle to their natural ending:=
```'Fondness prevail'd, Mamma gave way;
````Kitty, at Heart's Desire,
```Obtains the Chariot for a Day,
````And set the World on Fire.'=
Apart from the reference to Drury Lane Theatre supplied by the title,
there is no clue to the incident recorded. But two years after Prior
wrote these playful verses, which were sent to the lady through Mr.
Harcourt, Catherine Hyde verified her poet's words by securing a suitor
of even higher rank than her sister's husband. In March, 1720, she
married Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensberry, an amiable and
accomplished nobleman, who, it has been hinted, must sometimes have been
considerably 'exercised' by the vagaries of the charming but impetuous
'child of Nature' whom he had selected for his helpmate. Indeed, despite
her ability, many of her less sympathetic contemporaries did not scruple
to suggest that her Grace's eccentricities almost amounted to a touch
of insanity. Bolingbroke called her '_Sa Singularité_;' Walpole spoke
of her roundly as 'an out-pensioner of Bedlam.' But neither the Abbot of
Strawberry nor Pope's 'guide, philosopher, and friend' had any right
to set up for a Forbes-Winslow or a Brouardel; and there is in reality
little more in what is related of her than might be expected of one who,
at once a spoiled child, a beauty, and a woman of parts, deliberately
revolted against the tyrannous conventionalities of her time. To the
last she persistently declined, as she told Swift, to 'cut and curl her
hair like a sheep's head,' in accordance with the reigning fashion; and
she affected in her dress a simplicity and youthfulness which nothing
but the good looks she contrived to retain so long, could possibly have
justified. She had a fancy for idyllic travesties, appearing now as a
shepherdess, now as a peasant, now as a milkmaid. *
* In this last character Charles Jervas painted her. The
picture is in the National Portrait Gallery. She has hazel
eyes and dark-brown hair.
Upon one occasion she scandalized the court-usher soul of Horace Walpole
by masquerading at St. James's in a costume of red flannel. As a rule,
she carried her innovations triumphantly; but now and then she was
forced to yield to a will more imperative than her own. Once the
fantastic old King of Rath tore off her favourite white apron in the
Pump Room, flinging it contemptuously among the 'waiting gentlewomen' in
the hinder benches. 'None but abigails wore white aprons,' he declared;
and the grande dame _de par la monde_ made a virtue of necessity, and
submitted. In her own entertainments, however, she seems to have been
as despotic as Nash, insisting that people should come early and leave
early, and declining to provide the profuse refreshments then expected.
High-spirited and whimsical no doubt she was; but the stories told
of her are probably exaggerated. Those who praise her, praise her
unreservedly. Her character was unblemished. She was truthful; she was
honest; she was not a flatterer. And she was certainly fearless, for she
dared, even in the rudimentary epoch of the two-pronged fork, to rally
the terrible Dean of St. Patrick's for that deplorable habit--so justly
deprecated by the Historian of Snobs--of putting his knife in his mouth.
When she saw any one 'administer the cold steel,' as Thackeray calls it,
she would shriek out in affected terror lest they should do themselves a
mischief. She seems, although they never really met after her girlhood,
to have wholly subjugated Swift, whose final tone to her comes
perilously close to that fulsome adulation which, in others, stirred his
fiercest scorn. 'I will excuse your blots upon paper,' he says, writing
to her after Gay death, 'because they are the only blots you ever did,
or ever will make, in the whole course of your life.' Further on he
refers 'to the universal, almost idolatrous esteem you have forced from
every person in two kingdoms, who have the least regard for virtue.' It
is her peculiar art, he tells her again, to bribe 'all wise and good
men to be her flatterers.' Swift was no paragon; but the praise of Swift
outweighs the sneers of Walpole.
She was the friend of men of letters--this capricious great lady, and
they have judged her best. To Swift in particular it was an attraction
that she loved and befriended his favourite Gay. The earlier part of the
brief correspondence from which the above quotation is borrowed, shows
the Duchess in her most amiable light; and it was with Gay that it
originated. From the days of her marriage she had protected and petted
that fat and feckless fabulist; she had championed him in the matter of
his second ballad-opera in such a way as to procure her own exile from
Court; and at the time she began to write to Swift, Gay was domiciled at
the Duke's country house at Ambresbury, or Amesbury, near Salisbury, in
Wiltshire. Gay begins by sending Swift the Duchess's 'services,' and by
wishing on his own account that Swift could come to England,--could
come to Amesbury. Swift replies with conventional acknowledgment of
the civility of the lady, whom he had not seen since she was a girl. He
hears an ill thing of her, he says'--that she is _matre pulchrâ filia
pulchrior_, and he would be angry she should excel her mother (Jane
Leveson Gower), who, of old, had long been his 'principal goddess.'
In the letter that succeeds, the Duchess herself adds a postscript to
confirm Gay's invitation. 'I would fain have you come,' she writes. 'I
can't say you'll be welcome; for I don't know you, and perhaps I shall
not like you; but if I do not (unless you are a very vain person), you
shall know my thoughts as soon as I do myself.' No mode of address could
have suited Swift's humour better; and part of his next epistle to Gay
replies to her challenge in the true Swiftian style. He begins very low
down on the page--'as a mark of respect, like receiving her Grace at the
bottom of the stairs.' He goes on with a protest for form's sake against
the imperious manner of her advances; but he argues ingeniously that
she must like him, since they are both unpopular with the Queen. If he
comes, 'he will,' he adds, 'out of fear and prudence, appear as vain as
he can, that he may not know her thoughts of him.' His closing sentences
are in Malvolio's manner. 'This is your own direction, but it was
needless. For Diogenes himself would be vain, to have received the
honour of being one moment of his life in the thoughts of your grace.'
After this, _les épées s'engagent_. As to the correspondence that
ensued, opinions differ widely. Warton discovered 'exquisite humour
and pleasantry' in Swift's 'affected bluntness,' and compares him to
Voiture,--to Waller writing to Sacharissa on her marriage. Later editors
are less enthusiastic, regarding the whole series of letters as 'empty,
laboured, and childish on both sides.' Each of these verdicts is
extreme. Swift tempering candour by compliment, is an unusual but not
an impossible spectacle; while the Duchess writes exactly as one would
expect her to write with Swift's fast friend at her elbow. Gay, knowing
that she will probably follow him, warns Swift playfully that she has
her antipathies,--that she likes her own way,--that she is very frank,
and that in any dispute he must be on her side. Thereupon her Grace
takes up the pen herself:
'Write I must, particularly now, as I have an opportunity to indulge
my predominant passion of contradiction. I do, in the first place,
contradict most things Mr. _Gay_ says of me, to deter you from coming
here; which if you ever do, I hereby assure you, that, unless I like
my own way better, you shall have yours; and in all disputes you
shall convince me if you can. But, by what I see of you, this is not
a misfortune, that will always happen; for I find you are a great
mistaker. For example, you take prudence for imperiousness:'tis from
this first that I determined not to like one, who is too giddy-headed
for me to be certain whether or no I shall ever be acquainted with
[him]. I have known people take great delight in building castles in the
air; but I should choose to build friends upon a more solid foundation.
I would fain know you; for I often hear more good likable things [of
you] than 'tis possible any one can deserve. Pray, come, that I may
find out something wrong; for I, and I believe most women, have an
inconceivable pleasure to find out any faults, except their own. Mr.
_Cibber_ is made poet laureate. * I am, Sir, as much your humble servant
as I can be to any person I don't know.
'C. Q.
'P.S. Mr. _Gay_ is very peevish that I spell and write ill; but I don't
care: for neither the pen nor I can do better. Besides, I think you have
flattered me, and such people ought to be put to trouble.'
That this fashion of writing, so new to him, should not have captivated
Swift, is impossible. He could not accept the invitation; but at least
he could prolong the correspondence. In his next letter he enters upon
preliminaries. He is old, dull, peevish, perverse, morose. Has=
````* 'Harmonious Cibber entertains
````The Court with annual Birth-day Strains;
````Whence Gay was banish'd in Disgrace.'
`````Swift, On Poetry: a Rhapsody, 1733.=
she a clear voice?--and will she let him sit at her left hand, for
his right ear is the better? Can the parson of the parish play at
backgammon, and hold his tongue? Has she a good nurse among her women,
in case he should fancy himself sick? How long will she maintain him and
his equipage if he comes? A week or two later, in the form of another
postscript to Gay, follows the reply of the Duchess:
'It was Mr. _Gay's_ fault that I did not write sooner; which if I had,
I should hope you would have been here by this time; for I have to tell
you, all your articles are agreed to; and that I only love my own way,
when I meet not with others whose ways I like better. I am in great
hopes that I shall approve of yours; for to tell you the truth, I am at
present a little tired of my own. I have not a clear or distinct voice,
except when I am angry; but I am a very good nurse, when people don't
fancy themselves sick. Mr. _Gay_ knows this; and he knows too how to
play at backgammon. Whether the parson of the parish can, I know not;
but if he cannot hold his tongue, I can. Pray set out the first fair
wind and stay with us as long as ever you please. I cannot name my fixed
time, that I shall like to maintain you and your equipage; but if I
don't happen to like you, I know I can so far govern my temper as to
endure you for about five days. So come away directly; at all hazards
you'd be allowed a good breathing time. I shall make no sort of
respectful conclusions; for till I know you, I cannot tell what I am to
you.'
And so the correspondence, always conducted on the one side by Gay
and his kind protectress, or Gay and the Duke, protracts itself until
arrives to Swift that fatal missive from Pope and Arbuthnot announcing
Gay's sudden death,--a missive which, overmastered by a foreboding of
its contents, he kept unopened for days. At a later date some further
communications followed between Swift and the Duchess. But he liked best
her postscripts to his dead friend's letters. 'They made up,' he told
Pope unaffectedly, 'a great part of the little happiness I could have
here.'
Swift survived Gay for nearly fifteen years, and the Duchess lived
far into the reign of George the Third. In the changing procession of
Walpole's pages one gets glimpses of her from time to time, generally
emphasized by some malicious anecdote or epithet. At the coronation she
returned to Court, appearing with perfectly white hair. Yet, four years
before her death, Walpole says of her that (by twilight) you would
sooner 'take her for a young beauty of an old-fashioned century than
for an antiquated goddess of this age.' Indeed her all-conquering charms
seduced him into panegyric; and one day in 1771, she found these verses
on her toilet-table, wrung from her most persistent detractor:=
````'To many a Kitty, Love his car
`````Will for a day engage,
````But Prior's Kitty, ever fair,
`````Obtained it for an age!'=
She was then seventy-one. In later life she was often at her seat of
Drumlanrig, in Dumfriesshire (where she was visited by Mr. Matthew
Bramble and his party *); and Scott in his 'Journal,' under date of
August, 1826, speaks of the 'Walk' by the river Nith which she had
formed, and which still went by her name. Her peculiarities, over which
her friend Mrs. Delany sighs plaintively, did not abate with age; but
her kind heart remained. She died in Savile Row in 1777, of a surfeit of
cherries, and was buried at Durrisdeer.
* 'Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' (Letter to Dr. Lewis,
September 15).