RALEGH AND SPENSER
Rise of Essex--Ralegh retires to Ireland--At Kilcolman--At
Youghal--Friendship with Spenser--Brings Spenser to Court--
Their dreams.
In 1588 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, died. His influence with the
Queen had for some years been decreasing, and there is a report, which
bears the likelihood of truth, that he had summoned to Court his
step-son Robert, the young Earl of Essex, in order that he might
counteract the growing influence of Ralegh. Be that report true or
false, young Essex came to Court about the year 1587, and his youth and
spirit took the Queen's fancy mightily. Essex was as arrogant as his
stepfather. Elizabeth was now an old woman in years and in appearance.
She felt that her power as a woman was leaving her, and that drove her
to make a last effort to regain it, defying age then as she defied death
later. She cared for decorum less than she cared for life. That is the
pathetic side of her immense vitality, if the word pathetic can ever be
used of such a woman. She felt that she could take something of the
youth which had left her, from the boy: he was little more than a boy.
To his natural arrogance was added the arrogance of youth. He, too, was
capricious and wilful, even as the old Queen was capricious; but he
gained charm, and the Queen lost dignity thereby.
There was rivalry between Essex and Ralegh, who could not endure this
spoiled boy. His impertinence to the Queen was distasteful to one who,
like Ralegh, knew the meaning of reverence, and was able to understand
greatness. This abasement of his sovereign lady hurt him, and he had no
faith in Essex, neither in his character nor in his ability.
Small wonder, then, that Ralegh fell into disgrace, and in 1589 he went
to Ireland to attend to his Irish estates. Gossip said, My Lord of Essex
had chased him from the Court. The boy took his position with
intolerable seriousness: he had even challenged Ralegh to mortal combat,
and it was necessary to hush the matter up that the Queen might not hear
of it. Ralegh went. Destiny led him to Kilcolman Castle, where Edmund
Spenser was living.
But first he probably went to the Warden's house of the College of
Youghal: the house was dear to him because it resembled the manor-house
at Budleigh-Salterton, where he was born. The house was long and low;
and the rooms were lined with small panels of Irish oak.[B] A large
dining-room is on the ground floor, from which runs a subterranean
passage connecting the house with the old tower of St. Mary's Church. In
one of the kitchens the ancient wide arched fireplace remains. Sir
Walter Ralegh's study had fine dark wainscot, deep, projecting windows,
and a richly carved oak mantelpiece, which rose to the full height of
the ceiling. The cornice rested upon three figures--of Faith, Hope, and
Charity, and the rest of the structure was covered with dexterous
carving, circular-headed panels, and strangely wrought emblematical
devices. His bedroom adjoined the study: in it, too, was a carved
mantelpiece of oak, and in the fireplace Dutch tiles, four inches
square. Behind the wainscoting of this room was a recess, in which a
part of the old monkish library was hidden at the time of the
Reformation. Here Ralegh worked, taking notes, perhaps, for the great
history which he was to write later: here he read Peter Comestor's
"Historia Scolastica;" and a black-letter book, printed at Mantua in
1479, which tells of the events of the world from the Creation to the
days of the Twelve Apostles. It is pleasant to brood upon the change
from the turbulent Court life to the quiet of this monastic retreat at
Youghal--the little town in Ireland of which the illustrious courtier
was mayor. Not only in black-letter quartos was he interested, but also
in the garden. He planted great yellow wallflowers and cedars and
tobacco and Affane cherry trees: potatoes he introduced, and they were
cultivated all through Munster. You can read, too, in a _Gentleman's
Magazine_ of some ninety years ago: "Potatoes were first planted here
(that is, in Lancashire), having been brought from Ireland to England by
the immortal Ralegh." The writer must have had a tooth for potatoes, he
is spurred to such enthusiasm over the matter. _Il faut cultiver le
jardin._
[B] From the description by Rev. Samuel Hayman, historiographer
of Youghal, 1852.
And at Kilcolman Castle Edmund Spenser was living, conscious of the
loneliness of the country.
"One day (quoth he) I sat (as was my trade)
Under the foote of Mole, that mountain hore
Keeping my sheepe amongst the cooly shade
Of the greene alders by the Mullaes shore:
There a strange shepheard chaunst to find me out,
Whether allured with my pipes delight,
Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about
Or thither led by chaunce, I know not right:
Whom when I asked from what place he came,
And how he hight, himself he did ycleepe
The Shepheard of the Ocean by name,
And said he came far from the main-sea deepe.
He sitting me beside in that same shade,
Provoked me to plaie some pleasant fit;
And when he heard the musicke which I made,
He found himselfe full greatly pleased at it:
Yet, oemuling my pipe, he took in hond
My pipe, before that oemuled of many,
And played thereon; (for well that skill he cond;)
Himself as skilfull in that art as any.
He piped, I sung; and, when he sung, I piped.
By chaunge of turnes, each making other mery;
Neither envying other, nor envied,
So piped we, untill we both were weary."
That is Spenser's account--a very pretty account--of the time which he
spent with Ralegh. It is written in "Colin Clouts Come Home Againe."
They had, of course, met before, as young men and soldiers by Smerwick,
when Spenser was secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton. But now many years
had passed by: they met again, and knew that they were friends. The
movement of a leaf is enough to show the direction of a large wind: and
a phrase may point the attitude of a friendship between two men. A
sentence thus pregnant occurs in Spenser's dedication to his pastoral
account of his visit to London. With a whimsical humour, which is
characteristic of him, he writes to the right worthy and noble knight,
Sir Walter Ralegh, Captain of her Majesties Guard, Lord Warden of the
Stannaries, and Lieutenant of the County of Cornwall.
"SIR,
"That you may see that I am not alwaies ydle as yee thinke,
though not greatly well occupied, nor altogither undutifull,
though not precisely officious, I make you present of this
simple Pastorall...."
You can see Spenser smile, as he writes, to think of this "strange
shepheard's" terrific energy: how Ralegh came upon him when he was
oppressed with melancholy and high dreams, which this melancholy did not
allow him to express: how intercourse with Ralegh inspired him with new
life. He would brood, too, of many things, which the memory of those
days stirred up within him. For Ralegh, like Sidney, the friend of
Spenser's earliest youth, was a poet as well as a man of action; and
though Spenser was a bigger poet than either he was not a bigger man.
The poet in Ralegh would draw him in reverence near to Spenser; and then
he would break out into denunciation of the inertia which was inclined
to creep over Spenser, and hold him in its long tentacles. The dreamer
had a certain dependance on others. Yet almost against his will it would
be that he submitted to the journey to Court, catching Ralegh's glow of
admiration for his work--those three books of the "Faerie Queene," which
Gabriel Harvey had told him were rubbish, but which he loved himself. He
was ready to believe in their worth, too, though the dreamer could not
help smiling at his friend's so restless energy, which could not allow
him to sit and dream his life away, but which drove him always on to be
up and doing. Ralegh was the Shepherd of the Ocean, and the Ocean (God
wot) is--
"A world of waters heaped up on hie
Rolling like mountaines in wide wildernesse,
Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse crie.
And is the sea (quoth Coridon) so fearfull?
Fearfull much more (quoth he) than hart can fear:
Thousand wyld beastes with deep mouthes gaping direfull
Therin stil wait poore passengers to teare."
And yet it was good for the dreamer to know that the world wanted to
listen to his dreams. The plaintive whimsical humour of his fancy, which
fascinated Ralegh, has fascinated poets down the generations (even old
Ben Jonson, though his honesty forced him to square those shoulders of
his and pronounce--Spenser, in copying the ancients, writ no language),
for any one who has heard the echo even of the music of the spheres,
hears it again as he reads the strange cadence of Spenser's verse. No
one can realize the homeliness of his insight and his boundless
imagination, without coming under the mysterious spell of the
combination: that homeliness indeed gives a magic strength to the wings
of his magic fancy.
The life of a dreamer is apt to be sad; if the world touches him, he
finds the touch heavy and hurtful. And Spenser could not free himself
from state duties which forced him to live for ever witness of the
misery and savageness of the peasants, and of the country's weird beauty
which made a terrible contrast to their misery. In Ireland he felt
solitary and neglected: but he had time and scope for his dreams. In
England he quickly felt the pettiness of the busy Court life, to which
he could not accustom himself. He never found the life which was most in
harmony with his spirit. He was not the man to grapple effectually with
circumstances: they hurt him. Those must have been halcyon days for him
when he was able to enjoy intercourse with a mind like Ralegh's, in the
peace and beauty of the country. Small wonder that he was encouraged to
proceed with his fairy fashioning of the perfect gentleman, which
Sidney's friendship had encouraged him to begin.
He went with Ralegh to the Court, and both were well received. Spenser
was given a small pension by Elizabeth. But the ways of the Court did
not please him. He had sat too long dreaming by the green alders of
Mulla's stream to take kindly to the bustle and ceremony and coarseness
of that life. He must have returned with gladness to Kilcolman, and to
the work which he now knew the world deemed excellent. But he ever bore
in mind one side of Court life which he describes with vividness,
remembering probably what Ralegh had told him in their first long talks
together.
"Cause have I none (quoth he) of cancred will
To quite them ill, that me demeaned so well:
But selfe-regard of private good or ill
Moves me of each, so as I found, to tell
And else to warne young shepheards wandring wit,
Which, through report of that lives painted blisse,
Abandon quiet home, to seeke for it,
And leave their lambes to losse misled amisse.
For sooth to say it is no sort of life
For shepheard fit to lead in that same place,
Where each one seeks with malice, and with strife,
To thrust down other into foule disgrace,
Himself to raise: and he doth soonest rise
That best can handle his deceitful wit
In subtil shifts, and finest sleights devise."
Ralegh knew this dark side of the Court life as well as Spenser knew it:
he knew how some men were ready to slander a well-deemed name by lies
and by forgery: how some men were pleased to creep into a man's secrecy
and betray him: he knew the frequency of
"A filed toung furnisht with tearmes of art,
No art of schoole, but courtiers schoolery."
For there were many impostors at the Court; men eager to touch a great
man's cloak-hem, and still more eager to raise the cry of _Treason_
which should send that great man to his ruin. Ralegh, when he was well,
was roused by these dangers to grapple with them: it stirred his
fighting instinct and his pride. It proved his knowledge of men and
tested his power of dealing with men. He liked to pass on his way with
his head erect, scorning the clamour of the little men, that he might
stoop the lower in reverence to his great Queen. But Spenser looked
upon this darker side of Court life, and turned away from it in disgust.
He had neither the power nor the instinct to overcome such
circumstances: they merely tired and offended him. He was king of the
land of dreams: a leader of men he could never be. And he did not
complain against his kingdom, though his waking hours were troubled by
care and sorrow.
It is uncommonly pleasant to linger over these quiet months of Ralegh's
life: it is pleasant to think of Ralegh, one of the greatest men that
have ever lived, finding that Edmund Spenser whom he remembered well
enough, was his friend: hearing him read those three books of the
"Faerie Queene," and finding that his new and gentle friend was a very
great poet. Each man had his dream of a kingdom: Spenser, the realm of
Faerie, where he would fashion the allegory of a perfect chivalry:
Ralegh, the kingdom of Guiana, which was to make his Queen mighty and
his country the greatest in the world. Neither dream was wrought out to
its end.