diverses sortes des Lettres, par Esther Anglois, Francoise. A
Lislebourge en Escosse, 1599." This delicate performance gains the
admiration of all who see it; every chapter is wrote in a different
hand, as is the dedication, and some other things at the beginning of
the book, which makes near forty several sorts of hands. The beginnings
and endings of the chapters are adorned with most beautiful head and
tail pieces, and the margins are elegantly decorated with the pen, in
imitation, I suppose, of the elegant old manuscripts. The book is
dedicated to the Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's great favourite. At
the beginning are his arms, neatly drawn, with all its quarterings, in
number fifty-six. In the fifth leaf is her own picture, done with the
pen, in the habit of that time. In her right hand a pen, the left
resting upon a book opened, in one of the leaves of which is written,
"Del eternal le bien. De moi le mal, ou rien." On the table before her
there is likewise a music-book lying open, which perhaps intimates that
she had some skill in that art. Under the picture is an epigram in
Latin, written by Andrew Melvin, and, in the next page, another composed
by the same author in Latin, of which the following is a translation:--
"One hand Dame Nature's mimic does express
Her larger figures, to the life in less;
In the rich border of her work do stand
Afresh, created by her curious hand,
The various signs and planets of the sky,
Which seem to move and twinkle in our eye;
Much we the work, much more the hand admire,
Her fancy guiding this does raise our wonder higher."
It appears that she lived unmarried till she was about forty; and then,
I find by a memorandum made by my late friend Mr Hearne, in a spare leaf
at the beginning of her manuscript of the Proverbs of Solomon, that she
was married to Mr Bartholomew Kello [Kelly?], a Scotchman, by whom she
had a son, named Samuel Kello, who was educated in Christ Church
College, Oxon.
MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE.
[1620.]
BALLARD.
The youngest daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and the wife of the Marquis
of Newcastle, had, from her infancy, a natural inclination to learning,
and spent so much of her time in study and writing, that it is much to
be lamented she had not the advantage of an acquaintance with the
learned languages, which would have extended her knowledge, refined her
genius, and have been of infinite service to her in the many
compositions and productions of her pen.
In 1643, she obtained leave of her mother to go to Oxford, where the
court then resided, and was made one of the maids of honour to Henrietta
Maria, the royal consort of King Charles I.; and when the queen, by her
rebellious subjects, was unhappily forced to leave England and go to her
native country, she attended her thither. At Paris she met with the
Marquis of Newcastle, then a widower, who, admiring her person,
disposition, and ingenuity, was married to her in that place in the year
1645. She was said to be the most voluminous dramatic writer of our
female poets, that she had a great deal of wit, and a more than ordinary
propensity to dramatic poetry. Mr Langbaine tells us that all the
language and plots of her plays were her own, which is a commendation
preferable to fame built on other people's foundation, and will very
well atone for some faults in her numerous productions. [A catalogue of
this lady's works, "tragicomical, poetical, romancical, philosophical,
and historical," both in prose and verse, would occupy pages.]
Her person was very graceful, her temper naturally reserved, and she
seldom said much in company, especially among strangers. She was most
indefatigable in her studies and contemplations; truly pious,
charitable, and generous; an excellent economist; very kind to her
servants, and a perfect pattern of conjugal love and duty.
LADY PAKINGTON.
[1679.]
BALLARD.
Daughter of Thomas, Lord Coventry, Keeper of the Great Seal, and wife of
Sir John Pakington, was well known to, and celebrated by, the best and
most learned divines of her time. Yet hardly my pen will be thought
capable of adding to the reputation her own has procured to her, if it
shall appear that she was the author of a work which is not more an
honour to the writer than a universal benefit to mankind.
The work I mean is, "The Whole Duty of Man;" her title to which has been
so well ascertained, that the general concealment it has lain under will
only reflect a lustre upon all her other excellences by showing that she
had no honour in view but that of her Creator, which, I suppose, she
might think best promoted by this concealment. [The claims of other
authors are not difficult to be disposed of.] If I were a Roman
Catholic, I would summon tradition as an evidence for me upon this
occasion, which has constantly attributed this performance to a lady.
And a late celebrated writer observes, that "there are many probable
arguments in 'The Whole Duty of Man' to back a current report that it
was written by a lady." And any one who reads "The Lady's Calling," may
observe a great number of passages which clearly indicate a female
hand.
That vulgar prejudice of the supposed incapacity of the female sex, is
what these memoirs in general may possibly remove. And as I have had
frequent occasion to take notice of it, I should not now enter again
upon that subject, had not this been made use of as an argument to
invalidate Lady Pakington's title to those performances. It may not be
amiss, therefore, to transcribe two or three passages from the treatise
I have just now mentioned. "But waiving these reflections, I shall fix
only on the personal accomplishments of the sex, and peculiarly that
which is the most principal endowment of the rational nature--I mean the
understanding--where it will be a little hard to pronounce that they are
naturally inferior to men, when it is considered how much of intrinsic
weight is put in the balance to turn it to the men's side. Men have
their parts cultivated and improved by education, refined and subtilised
by learning and arts; are like a piece of a common, which, by industry
and husbandry, becomes a different thing from the rest, though the
natural turf owned no such inequality. We may therefore conclude, that
whatever vicious impotence women are under, it is acquired, not natural;
nor derived from any illiberality of God's, but from the ill managery of
His bounty. Let them not charge God foolishly, or think that by making
them women He necessitated them to be proud or wanton, vain or peevish;
since it is manifest He made them to better purpose, was not partial to
the other sex; but that having, as the prophet speaks, 'abundance of
spirit,' He equally dispensed it, and gave the feeblest woman as large
and capacious a soul as that of the greatest hero. Nay, give me leave to
say farther, that, as to an eternal well-being, He seems to have placed
them in more advantageous circumstances than He has done men. He has
implanted in them some native propensions which do much facilitate the
operations of grace upon them."
And having made good this assertion, she interrogates thus: "How many
women do we read of in the gospel, who in all the duties of assiduous
attendance on Christ, liberalities of love and respect, nay, even in
zeal and courage, surpassed even the apostles themselves? We find His
cross surrounded, His passion celebrated by the avowed tears and
lamentations of devout women, when the most sanguine of His disciples
had denied, yea, forswore, and all had forsaken Him. Nay, even death
itself could not extinguish their love. We find the devout Maries
designing a laborious, chargeable, and perhaps hazardous respect to His
corpse, and, accordingly, it is a memorable attestation Christ gives to
their piety by making them the first witnesses of His resurrection, the
prime evangelists to proclaim those glad tidings, and, as a learned man
speaks, apostles to the apostles."
There are many works of this lady, besides "The Whole Duty of Man,"
enumerated in her biographies.
NOOR MAHAL.
[1512.]
JAMES MILL.
One of the circumstances which had the greatest influence on the events
and character of the reign of Jehangire, was his marriage with the wife
of one of the omrahs of his empire, whose assassination, like that of
Uriah, cleared the way for the gratification of the monarch. The history
of this female is dressed in romantic colours by the writers of the
East. Khaja Aiass, her father, was a Tartar, who left poverty and his
native country to seek the gifts of fortune in Hindustan. The inadequate
provision he could make for so great a journey failed him before its
conclusion. To add to his trials, his wife, advanced in pregnancy, was
seized with the pains of labour in the desert, and delivered of a
daughter. All hope of conducting the child alive to any place of relief
forsook the exhausted parents, and they agreed to leave her. So long as
the tree, at the foot of which the infant had been deposited, remained
in view, the mother supported her resolution; but when the tree vanished
from sight, she sank upon the ground, and refused to proceed without
her. The father returned, but what he beheld was a huge black snake
convolved about the body of the infant, and extending his dreadful jaws
to devour her. A shriek of anguish burst from the father's breast; and
the snake, being alarmed, hastily unwound himself from the body of the
infant, and glided away to his retreat. The miracle animated the parents
to maintain the struggle; and before their strength entirely failed,
they were joined by other travellers, who relieved their necessities.
Aiass, having arrived in Hindustan, was taken into the service of an
omrah of the court; attracted after a time the notice of Akbar himself;
and, by his abilities and prudence, rose to be treasurer of the empire.
The infant who had been so nearly lost in the desert was now grown a
woman of exquisite beauty; and, by the attention of Aiass to her
education, was accomplished beyond the measure of female attainments in
the East. She was seen by Sultan Selim, and kindled in his bosom the
fire of love. But she was betrothed to a Turkman omrah, and Akbar
forbade the contract to be infringed. When Selim mounted the throne,
justice and shame were a slight protection to the man whose life was a
bar to the enjoyments of the king. By some caprice, however, not
unnatural to minds pampered and trained up like his, he abstained from
seeing her for some years after she was placed in his seraglio, and even
refused an adequate appointment for her maintenance. She turned her
faculties to account; employed herself in the exquisite works of the
needle and painting, in which she excelled; and her productions were
disposed of in the shops and markets, and thence procured the means of
adorning her apartments with all the elegancies which suited her
condition and taste. The fame of her productions reached the ear and
excited the curiosity of the emperor. A visit was all that was wanting
to rekindle the flame in his heart; and Noor Mahal (such was the name
she assumed) exercised from that moment an unbounded sway over the
prince and his empire. Through the influence of the favourite sultana,
the vizirit was bestowed on her father; her two brothers were raised to
the first rank of omrahs, by the titles of Aetibad Khan and Asopha Jah;
but their modesty and virtues reconciled all men to their sudden
elevation. And though the emperor, naturally voluptuous, was now
withdrawn from business by the charms of his wife, the affairs of the
empire were conducted with vigilance, prudence, and success; and the
administration of Khaja Aiass was long remembered in India as a period
of justice and prosperity.
POCAHONTAS.
[BORN 1594. DIED 1617.]
DR HUGH MURRAY.
On a signal from their leader, they, the natives of Virginia, laid down
their bows and arrows, and led Captain Smith [of the Expedition, 1607]
under strict guard to their capital. He was there exhibited to the women
and children, and a wild war-dance was performed round him in fantastic
measures, and with frightful yells and contortions. He was then shut up
in a long house, and supplied at every meal with as much bread and
venison as would have dined twenty men; but receiving no other sign of
kindness, he began to dread that they were fattening in order to eat
him. At last he was led to Pamunkey, the residence of Powhatan, the
king. It was here his doom was sealed. The chief received him in pomp,
wrapped in a spacious robe of racoon skins, with all the tails hanging
down. Behind appeared two long lines of men and women, with faces
painted red, heads decked with white down, and necks quite encircled
with chains of beads. A lady of rank presented water to wash his hands,
another a bunch of feathers to dry them. A long deliberation was then
held, and the result proved fatal. Two large stones were placed before
Powhatan, and, by the united efforts of the attendants, Smith was
dragged to the spot, his head laid on one of them, and the mighty club
was raised, a few blows of which were to terminate his life. In this
last extremity, when every hope seemed past, a very unexpected
interposition took place. Pocahontas, the youthful and favourite
daughter of this savage chief, was seized with those tender emotions
which form the ornament of her sex. Advancing to her father, she in the
most earnest terms supplicated mercy for the stranger; and though all
her entreaties were lost on that savage heart, her zeal only redoubled.
She ran to Smith, took his head in her arms, laid her own upon it, and
declared that the first death-blow must fall upon her. The barbarian's
breast was at length softened, and the life of the Englishman was
spared.
Smith was afterwards liberated and sent to Jamestown, where he was
installed as president. As Powhatan's favour was to be courted, there
had been sent handsome presents, with materials to crown him with
splendour, in the European style. With only four companions he
courageously repaired to the residence of the monarch, inviting him to
come and be crowned at Jamestown. The party were extremely well
received, though once they heard in the adjoining wood outcries so
hideous as made them flee to their arms; but Pocahontas assured them
they had nothing to fear. Subsequently, Smith was repeatedly in danger;
and again, on one occasion, was saved by a second interposition of
Pocahontas, who, at the risk of her father's displeasure, ran through
the woods on a dark night to give him warning. But the kindness of this
princess was ill repaid by the English, to whom she was so much
attached; for Argall, an enterprising naval commander, afterwards
contrived, through an Indian who had become his sworn friend, to
inveigle on board his vessel the fair Pocahontas. Regardless of her
tears and entreaties he conveyed her to Jamestown, where she was well
treated; but in a negotiation for her ransom, exorbitant terms were
demanded, which her father indignantly rejected, and the breach seemed
only widened. Happily, the chains of the princess's captivity were
lightened by others of a more pleasing nature. Mr John Rolfe, a
respectable young man, was smitten with her dignified demeanour, and
found no difficulty in gaining her affections. They were afterwards
married, and she was converted and baptised under the name of Rebecca,
to which the English prefixed the title of Lady, and her subsequent
conduct is said to have adorned her profession.
Soon after, in company with her husband, she visited England; and
Captain Smith wrote a letter to his majesty, recounting her good deeds,
declaring that she had a great spirit though a low stature, and
beseeching for her a reception corresponding to her rank and merits. She
was accordingly introduced at court, and into the circles of fashion,
where, as a novelty, she was for some time the leading object, and is
said to have deported herself with suitable grace and dignity. Purchas
mentions his meeting with her at the table of his patron, Dr King,
Bishop of London, where she was entertained with "festival and pomp."
The king took an absurd apprehension that Rolfe, on the ground of his
wife's birth, might advance a claim to the crown of Virginia. This idea
being at length driven out of his mind, he appointed him secretary and
recorder-general of the colony. The princess, early in 1617, went to
embark at Gravesend, but Providence had not destined that she would
revisit her native shore. She was there seized with an illness which
carried her off in a few days, and her last hours are said to have
extremely edified the spectators, being full of Christian resignation
and hope. She had left a son in the colony, whose offspring, carefully
traced, is now numerous; and this descent is the boast of many Virginian
families.
LUCY HUTCHINSON.
[BORN 1620. DIED 1659.]
JEFFREY.
The daughter of Sir Allan Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and
wife of Colonel Hutchinson, so well known in the Civil War, was in all
respects a remarkable woman. If it were allowable to take the portrait
she has given of herself as a just representation of her fair
contemporaries, we should form a most exalted notion of the Republican
matrons of England. Making a slight deduction for a few traits of
austerity borrowed from the bigotry of the age, we do not know where to
look for a more noble and engaging character than that under which this
lady presents herself to her readers; nor do we believe that any age of
the world has produced so worthy a counterpart to the Valerias and
Portias of antiquity. With a highminded feeling of patriotism and public
honour, she seems to have been possessed by the most beautiful and
devoted attachment to her husband, and to have combined a taste for
learning and the arts with the most active kindness and munificent
hospitality to all who came within the sphere of her bounty.
To a quick perception of character, she appears to have united a
masculine force of understanding and a singular capacity for affairs,
and to have possessed and exercised all those talents without affecting
any superiority over the rest of her sex, or abandoning for a single
instant the delicacy and reserve which were then its most indispensable
ornaments. Education is certainly far more diffused in our days, and
accomplishments infinitely more common; but the perusal of this lady's
Memoirs has taught us to doubt whether the better sort of women were not
fashioned of old by a better and more exalted standard, and whether the
most eminent female of the present day would not appear to disadvantage
by the side of Mrs Hutchinson. There is for the most part something
intriguing, and profligate, and theatrical in the clever women of this
generation; and if men are dazzled by their brilliancy and delighted
with their talent, we can scarcely even guard against some distrust of
their judgment, or some suspicion of their purity. There is something,
in short, in the domestic virtue, and the calm and commanding mind of
our English matron, that makes the Corinnas and Heloises appear small
and insignificant.
The admirers of modern talent will not accuse us of choosing an ignoble
competitor if we desire them to weigh the merits of Mrs Hutchinson
against those of Madame Roland. The English revolutionist did not,
indeed, compose weekly pamphlets and addresses to the municipalities,
because it was not the fashion of her day to print every thing that
entered into the heads of politicians. But she shut herself up with her
husband in the garrison with which he was entrusted, and shared his
counsels as well as his hazards. She encouraged the troops by her
cheerfulness and heroism, ministered to the sick, and dressed with her
own hands the wounds of the captives as well as of the victors. When her
husband was imprisoned on groundless suspicions, she laboured without
ceasing for his deliverance, confounded his oppressors by her eloquence
and arguments, tended him with unshaken fortitude in sickness and in
solitude, and after his decease dedicated herself to form his children
to the example of his virtues, and drew up the memorial, which is now
before us, of his worth and her own genius and affection. All this, too,
she did without stepping beyond the province of a private woman, without
hunting after compliments to her own genius or beauty, without sneering
at the dulness or murmuring at the coldness of her husband, without
hazarding the fate of her country on the dictates of her own enthusiasm,
or fancying for a moment that she was born with talents to enchant and
regenerate the world. With equal power of discriminating character, with
equal candour, and eloquence, and zeal for the general good, she is
elevated beyond her French competitor by superior prudence and modesty,
and by a certain simplicity and purity of character, of which it appears
to us that the other was unable to form a conception.
England, we should think, should be proud of having given birth to Mrs
Hutchinson and her husband; and chiefly because their characters are
truly and peculiarly English, according to the standard of their times,
in which national characters were most distinguishable. Not exempt,
certainly, from errors and defects, they yet seem to us to hold out a
lofty example of substantial dignity and virtue, and to possess most of
those talents and principles by which public life is made honourable,
and privacy delightful. Bigotry must at all times debase, and civil
dissension embitter our existence; but, in the ordinary course of
events, we may safely venture to assert, that a nation which produces
many such wives and mothers as Mrs Lucy Hutchinson, must be both great
and happy.
LADY FANSHAWE.
[BORN 1625. DIED 1680.]
JEFFREY.
Lady Fanshawe was, as is generally known, the wife of a distinguished
cavalier, in the heroic age of the Civil Wars and the Protectorate, and
survived till long after the Restoration. Her husband was a person of no
mean figure in those great transactions; and she, who adhered to him
with the most devoted attachment, and participated not unworthily in all
his fortunes and designs, was consequently in continual contact with the
movements that then agitated society. Since it may be said with some
show of reason that Lady Hutchinson and her husband had too many elegant
tastes and accomplishments to be taken as fair specimens of the austere
and godly republicans, it certainly may be retorted, with at least equal
justice, that the chaste and decorous Lady Fanshawe, and her sober,
diplomatic lord, shadow out rather too favourably the general manners
and morals of the cavaliers.
Lady Fanshawe seems to have followed, like a good wife and daughter,
where her parents or her husband led her, and to have adopted their
opinions with a dutiful and implicit confidence, but without being very
deeply moved by the principles or passions which actuated those from
whom they were derived; while Lady Hutchinson not only threw her whole
heart and soul into the cause of her party, but, like Lady Macbeth or
Madame Roland, imparted her own fire to her own phlegmatic helpmate;
"chastened him," when necessary, "with the valour of her tongue," and
cheered him on, by the encouragement of her high example, to all the
ventures and sacrifices, the triumphs or the martyrdoms, that lay
visibly across their daring and lofty course. The Lady Fanshawe, we take
it, was of a less passionate temperament. She begins in her Memoirs, no
doubt, with a good deal of love and domestic devotion, and even echoes
from that sanctuary certain notes of loyalty; but, in very truth, is
chiefly occupied, for the best part of her life, with the sage and
serious business of some nineteen or twenty _accouchements_, which are
happily accomplished in different parts of Europe, and seems at last to
be wholly engrossed in the ceremonial of diplomatic presentations, the
description of court dresses, state coaches, liveries, and jewellery,
the solemnity of processions and receptions by sovereign princes, and
the due interchange of presents and compliments with persons of worship
and dignity. But in her Memoirs there is enough, both of heart and sense
and observation, at once to repay gentle and intelligent readers for the
trouble of perusing them, and to stamp a character of amiableness and
respectability on the memory of their author.
DOROTHY OSBORNE.
[1620.]
MACAULAY.