THE AUTHOR INTRODUCES HIS READERS TO A RETIRED DUCHESS, AND SUGGESTS A
PARALLEL BETWEEN HER GRACE AND THE RETIRED TOBACCONIST.
In midst of plenty only to embrace
Calm patience, is not worthy of your praise;
But he that can look sorrow in the face
And not be daunted, he deserves the bays.
This is prosperity, where'er we find
A heavenly solace in an earthly mind.
HUGH CROMPTON.
There is a very pleasing passage in a letter of the Duchess of
Somerset's, written in the unreserved intimacy of perfect friendship,
without the slightest suspicion that it would ever find its way to the
press. “'Tis true my dear Lady Luxborough,” she says, “times are
changed with us, since no walk was long enough, or exercise painful
enough to hurt us, as we childishly imagined; yet after a ball, or a
masquerade, have we not come home very well contented to pull off our
ornaments and fine clothes, in order to go to rest? Such methinks is
the reception we naturally give to the warnings of our bodily decays;
they seem to undress us by degrees, to prepare us for a rest that will
refresh us far more powerfully than any night's sleep could do. We
shall then find no weariness from the fatigues which either our bodies
or our minds have undergone; but all tears shall be wiped from our
eyes, and sorrow and crying and pain shall be no more: we shall then
without weariness move in our new vehicles, and transport ourselves
from one part of the skies to another, with much more ease and
velocity, than we could have done in the prime of our strength, upon
the fleetest horses, the distance of a mile. This cheerful prospect
enables us to see our strength fail, and await the tokens of our
approaching dissolution with a kind of awful pleasure. I will
ingenuously own to you, dear Madam, that I experience more true
happiness in the retired manner of life that I have embraced, than I
ever knew from all the splendour or flatteries of the world. There was
always a void; they could not satisfy a rational mind: and at the most
heedless time of my youth I well remember that I always looked forward
with a kind of joy to a decent retreat when the evening of life should
make it practicable.”
“If one only anticipates far enough, one is sure to find comfort,”
said a young moralizer, who was then for the first time experiencing
some of the real evils of life. A sense of its vanities taught the
Duchess that wisdom, before she was visited with affliction. Frances,
wife and widow of Algernon seventh Duke of Somerset, was a woman who
might perhaps have been happier in a humbler station, but could not
have been more uncorrupted by the world. Her husband inherited from
his father the honours of the Seymour, from his mother those of the
Percy family: but Lord Beauchamp,—
Born with as much nobility as would,
Divided, serve to make ten noblemen
Without a herald; but with so much spirit
And height of soul, as well might furnish twenty,—[1]
Lord Beauchamp I say, the son thus endowed, who should have succeeded
to these accumulated honours, died on his travels at Bologna of the
small-pox, in the flower of his youth. His afflicted mother in reply
to a letter of consolation expressed herself thus: “The dear lamented
son I have lost was the pride and joy of my heart: but I hope I may be
the more easily excused for having looked on him in this light, since
he was not so from the outward advantages he possessed, but from the
virtues and rectitude of his mind. The prospects which flattered me in
regard to him, were not drawn from his distinguished rank, or from the
beauty of his person; but from the hopes that his example would have
been serviceable to the cause of virtue, and would have shown the
younger part of the world that it was possible to be cheerful without
being foolish or vicious, and to be religious without severity or
melancholy. His whole life was one uninterrupted course of duty and
affection to his parents, and when he found the hand of death upon
him, his only regret was to think on the agonies which must rend their
hearts: for he was perfectly contented to leave the world, as his
conscience did not reproach him with any presumptuous sins, and he
hoped his errors would be forgiven. Thus he resigned his innocent soul
into the hands of his merciful Creator, on the evening of his
birthday, which completed him nineteen.”
[Footnote 1: SHIRLEY.]
In another letter she says, “when I lost my dear, and by me
ever-lamented son, every faculty to please (if ever I were possessed
of any such) died with him. I have no longer any cheerful thoughts to
communicate to my friends; but as the joy and pride of my heart
withers in his grave, my mind is continually haunting those mansions
of the dead, and is but too inattentive to what passes in a world
where I have still duties and attachments which I ought to be, and I
hope I may truly say, I am, thankful for. But I enjoy all these
blessings with trembling and anxiety, for after my dear Beauchamp,
what human things can appear permanent? Youth, beauty, virtue, health,
were not sufficient to save him from the hand of death, and who then
can think themselves secure? These are the melancholy considerations
which generally entertain my waking hours; though sometimes I am able
to view the bright side of my fate, and ask myself for whom I grieve?
only for myself? how narrow an affection does this imply! Could he
have lived long as my fondest wish desired, what could I have asked at
the end of that term more than the assurance that he should be placed
where I humbly hope, and confidently trust, he is, beyond the reach of
sorrow, sin, or sickness?”
I have said that this Duchess, the Eusebia of Dr. Watts' Miscellanies,
and once more known as the Cleora of her then famous friend Mrs.
Rowe's Letters, might perhaps have been happier in a humbler station;
but she could not have been more meek and more amiable, nor have
possessed in a greater degree the christian virtue of humility. She
was one of the daughters and coheiresses of the Honourable Henry
Thynne, and was of the bed-chamber to the Princess of Wales, in which
office she continued after that Princess became Queen Caroline. It was
through her intercession that Savage's life was spared. When the Queen
being prejudiced against that wretched man had refused to hear any
application in his behalf, “she engaged in it,” says Johnson, “with
all the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal that is
kindled by generosity; an advocate,” he calls her, “of rank too great
to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to be heard without
being believed.” Her husband's father was commonly called the proud
Duke of Somerset,—an odious designation, which could not have been
obtained unless it had been richly deserved: but there are some evil
examples which incidentally produce a good effect, and Lord Beauchamp
whose affability and amiable disposition endeared him to all by whom
he was known, was perhaps more carefully instructed in the principles
of Christian humility, and more sensible of their importance and their
truth, because there was in his own family so glaring an instance of
the folly and hatefulness of this preposterous and ridiculous sin. “It
is a most terrible thing for his parents,” says Horace Walpole, “Lord
Beauchamp's death; if they were out of the question, one could not be
sorry for such a mortification to the pride of old Somerset. He has
written the most shocking letter imaginable to poor Lord Hartford,
telling him that it is a judgment upon him for all his undutifulness,
and that he must always look upon himself as the cause of his son's
death. Lord Hartford is as good a man as lives, and has always been
most unreasonably ill-treated by that old tyrant.” The Duke was brute
enough to say that his mother had sent him abroad to kill him. It was
not his mother's fault that he had not been secured, as far as human
precautions avail against the formidable disease of which he died.
Three years before that event she said in one of her letters,
“Inoculation is at present more in fashion than ever; half my
acquaintance are shut up to nurse their children, grandchildren,
nephews or nieces. I could be content notwithstanding the fine weather
to stay in town upon the same account, if I were happy enough to see
my son desire it; but that is not the case, and at his age it must
either be a voluntary act or left undone.”
The proud Duke lived to the great age of eighty-six, and his son died
little more than twelvemonths after him, leaving an irreproachable
name. The Duchess survived her son ten years, and her husband four.
Upon the Duke's death the Seymour honours were divided between two
distant branches of that great and ancient house; those of the Percys
devolved to his only daughter and heiress the Lady Elizabeth, then
wife of Sir Hugh Smithson, in whom the Dukedom of Northumberland was
afterwards revived. The widow passed the remainder of her days at a
seat near Colnbrook, which her husband had purchased from Lord
Bathurst, and had named Percy Lodge: Richkings was its former
appellation. Pope in one of his letters calls it “Lord Bathurst's
_extravagante bergerie_,” in allusion to the title of an old
mock-romance. “The environs,” says the Duchess, “perfectly answer to
that title, and come nearer to my idea of a scene in Arcadia than any
place I ever saw. The house is old but convenient, and when you are
got within the little paddock it stands on, you would believe yourself
an hundred miles from London, which I think a great addition to its
beauty.” Moses Brown wrote a poem upon it, the Duke and Duchess having
appointed him their laureate for the nonce; but though written by
their command, it was not published till after the death of both, and
was then inscribed to her daughter, at that time Countess of
Northumberland. If Olney had not a far greater poet to boast of, it
might perhaps have boasted of Moses Brown. Shenstone's Ode on Rural
Elegance, which is one of his latest productions, related especially
to this place. He inscribed it to the Duchess, and communicated it to
her in manuscript through their mutual friend Lady Luxborough, sister
to Bolingbroke, who possessed much of her brother's talents, but
nothing of his cankered nature.
The Duchess was a great admirer of Shenstone's poetry, but though
pleased with the poem, and gratified by the compliment, she told him
that it had given her some pain, and requested that wherever her name
or that of Percy Lodge occurred, he would oblige her by leaving a
blank, without suspecting her of an affected or false modesty, for to
that accusation she could honestly plead not guilty. The idea he had
formed of her character, he had taken, she said, from a partial friend
whose good nature had warped her judgment. The world in general since
they could find no fault in his poem, would blame the choice of the
person to whom it was inscribed, and draw mortifying comparisons
between the ideal lady, and the real one. “But I,” said she, “have a
more impartial judge to produce than either my friend or the
world,—and that is my own heart, which though it may flatter me I am
not quite so faulty as the world would represent, at the same time
loudly admonishes me that I am still further from the valuable person
Lady Luxborough has drawn you in to suppose me. I hope you will accept
these reasons as the genuine and most sincere sentiments of my mind,
which indeed they are, though accompanied with the most grateful sense
of the honour you designed me.”
I have said something, and have yet more to say of a retired
Tobacconist; and I will here describe the life of a retired Duchess,
of the same time and country, drawn from her own letters. Some of
Plutarch's parallels are less apposite, and none of them in like
manner equally applicable to those of high station and those of low
degree.
The duchess had acquired that taste for landscape gardening, the
honour of introducing which belongs more to Shenstone than to any
other individual, and has been properly awarded to him by D'Israeli,
one of the most just and generous of critical authors. Thus she
described the place of her retreat when it came into their possession:
“It stands in a little paddock of about a mile and a half round; which
is laid out in the manner of a French park, interspersed with woods
and lawns. There is a canal in it about twelve hundred yards long, and
proportionably broad, which has a stream continually running through
it, and is deep enough to carry a pleasure-boat. It is well stocked
with carp and tench; and at its upper end there is a green-house,
containing a good collection of orange, myrtle, geranium, and oleander
trees. This is a very agreeable room, either to drink tea, play at
cards, or sit in with a book on a summer's evening. In one of the
woods (through all which there are winding paths), there is a cave;
which though little more than a rude heap of stones, is not without
charms for me. A spring gushes out at the back of it; which, falling
into a basin (whose brim it overflows), passes along a channel in the
pavement where it loses itself. The entrance to this recess is
overhung with periwinkle, and its top is shaded with beeches, large
elms, and birch. There are several covered benches, and little arbours
interwoven with lilacs, woodbines, seringas and laurels; and seats
under shady trees, disposed all over the park. One great addition to
the pleasure of living here, is the gravelly soil; which after a day
of rain (if it holds up only for two or three hours), one may walk
over without being wet through one's shoes: and there is one gravel
walk that encompasses the whole. We propose to make an improvement, by
adding to the present ground a little pasture farm which is just
without the pale, because there is a very pretty brook of clear water
which runs through the meadows to supply our canal, and whose course
winds in such a manner that it is almost naturally a serpentine river.
I am afraid I shall have tired you with the description of what appear
to me beauties in our little possession; yet I cannot help adding one
convenience that attends it:—this is, the cheap manner in which we
keep it: since it only requires a flock of sheep, who graze the lawns
fine; and whilst these are feeding, their shepherd cleans away any
weeds that spring up in the gravel, and removes dry leaves or broken
branches that would litter the walks.”
“On the spot where the green-house now stands, there was formerly a
chapel, dedicated to St. Leonard; who was certainly esteemed as a
tutelar saint of Windsor Forest and its purlieus, for the place we
left was originally a hermitage founded in honour of him. We have no
relics of the saint; but we have an old covered bench with many
remains of the wit of my lord Bathurst's visitors, who inscribed
verses upon it. Here is the writing of Addison, Pope, Prior, Congreve,
Gay, and, what he esteemed no less, of several fine ladies. I cannot
say that the verses answered my expectation from such authors; we have
however all resolved to follow the fashion, and to add some of our own
to the collection. That you may not be surprized at our courage for
daring to write after such great names, I will transcribe one of the
old ones, which I think as good as any of them:
Who set the trees shall he remember
That is in haste to fell the timber?
What then shall of thy woods remain,
Except the box that threw the main?
There has been only one added as yet by our company, which is
tolerably numerous at present. I scarcely know whether it is worth
reading or not:
By Bathurst planted, first these shades arose;
Prior and Pope have sung beneath these boughs:
Here Addison his moral theme pursued,
And social Gay has cheer'd the solitude.
There is one walk that I am extremely partial to, and which is rightly
called the Abbey-walk, since it is composed of prodigiously high
beech-trees, that form an arch through the whole length, exactly
resembling a cloister. At the end is a statue; and about the middle a
tolerably large circle, with Windsor chairs round it: and I think, for
a person of contemplative disposition, one would scarcely find a more
venerable shade in any poetical description.”
She had amused herself with improving the grounds of Percy Lodge
before her husband's death, as much for his delight as her own.
“Those shady elms, my favourite trees,
Which near my Percy's window grew,
(Studious his leisure hours to please)
I decked last year for smell and shew;
To each a fragrant woodbine bound,
And edged with pinks the verdant mound.
Nor yet the areas left ungraced
Betwixt the borders and each tree;
But on them damask roses placed,
Which rising in a just degree,
Their glowing lustre through the green
Might add fresh beauties to the scene.”
Afterwards when it became her own by the Duke's bequest, and her home
was thereby fixed upon the spot of earth which she would have chosen
for herself, the satisfaction which she took in adding to it either
beauty or convenience was enhanced by the reflection that in adorning
it she was at the same time shewing her value for the gift, and her
gratitude to the lamented giver. “Every thing,” said she, “both within
and without the house reminds me of my obligations to him; and I
cannot turn my eyes upon any object which is not an object of his
goodness to me.—And as I think it a duty while it pleases God to
continue us here, not to let ourselves sink into a stupid and
unthankful melancholy, I endeavour to find out such entertainments as
my retirement, and my dear Lord's unmerited bounty will admit of.”
And oh the transport, most allied to song,
In some fair villa's peaceful bound,
To catch soft hints from nature's tongue
And bid Arcadia bloom around:
Whether we fringe the sloping hill,
Or smoothe below the verdant mead;
Whether we break the falling rill,
Or thro' meandering mazes lead;
Or in the horrid bramble's room
Bid careless groups of roses bloom;
Or let some sheltered lake serene
Reflect flowers, woods, and spires, and brighten all the scene.
O sweet disposal of the rural hour!
O beauties never known to cloy!
While worth and genius haunt the favoured bower,
And every gentle breast partakes the joy.
While Charity at eve surveys the swain,
Enabled by these toils to cheer
A train of helpless infants dear,
Speed whistling home across the plain;
Sees vagrant Luxury, her handmaid grown,
For half her graceless deeds atone,
And hails the bounteous work, and ranks it with her own.[2]
[Footnote 2: SHENSTONE.]
The Duchess was too far advanced in life to find any of that enjoyment
in her occupations, which her own poet described in these stanzas, and
which he felt himself only by an effort of reflection. But if there
was not the excitement of hope, there was the satisfaction of giving
useful employment to honest industry. “When one comes,” said she, “to
the last broken arches of Mirza's bridge, rest from pain must bound
our ambition, for pleasure is not to be expected in this world. I have
no more notion of laying schemes to be executed six months, than I
have six years hence; and this I believe helps to keep my spirits in
an even state of cheerfulness to enjoy the satisfactions that present
themselves, without anxious solicitude about their duration. As our
journey seems approaching towards the verge of life, is it not more
natural to cast our eyes to the prospect beyond it, than by a
retrospective view to recall the troublesome trifles that ever made
our road difficult or dangerous? Methinks it would be imitating Lot's
wife (whose history is not recorded as an example for us to follow) to
want to look back upon the miserable scene we are so near escaping
from.”
In another letter to the same old friend she says, “I have a regular,
and I hope a religious family. My woman, though she has not lived with
me quite three years, had before lived twenty-three betwixt Lord
Grantham's and Lady Cowper's: my housekeeper has been a servant as
long: the person who takes in my accounts, pays my bills, and
overlooks the men within doors, has been in the family thirteen years;
and the other, who has lived ten, has the care of the stables and
every thing without. I rise at seven, but do not go down till nine
when the bell rings and my whole family meet me at chapel. After
prayers we go to breakfast; any friend who happens to be there,
myself, and my chaplain, have ours in the little library; the others
in their respective eating rooms. About eleven if the weather permits,
we go to walk in the park, or take the air in the coach; but if it be
too bad for either we return to our various occupations. At three we
dine, sit perhaps near an hour afterwards, then separate till we meet
at eight for prayers; after which we adjourn again to the library,
where somebody reads aloud (unless some stranger comes who chooses
cards), until half past nine, when we sup, and always part before
eleven. This to the fine would sound a melancholy monastic life; and I
cannot be supposed to have chosen it from ignorance of the splendour
and gaiety of a court, but from a thorough experience that they can
give no solid happiness; and I find myself more calmly pleased in my
present way of living, and more truly contented, than I ever was in
the bloom and pomp of my youth. I am no longer dubious what point to
pursue. There is but one proper for the decline of life, and indeed
the only one worth the anxiety of a rational creature at any age: but
how do the fire of youth, and flattery of the world blind our eyes,
and mislead our fancies, after a thousand imaginary pleasures which
are sure to disappoint us in the end!”
The Duchess was a person whose moral constitution had not been injured
by the atmosphere of a court. But though she kept aloof from its
intrigues and had acquired even a distaste for its vanities, she
retained always an affectionate regard for Queen Caroline's memory. “I
should have been glad,” she says to Lady Pomfret, “to have shared your
reverence and have indulged my own at Blansfelden, whilst you were
overlooking the fields and the shades where our late mistress had
passed the first scenes of her life, before the cares of royalty had
clouded the natural vivacity of her temper, or the disguise which
greatness is often forced to wear had veiled any of her native
goodness; and certainly she had a greater stock of both than is often
found in any rank.” She could never think of her without a sigh, she
said. The most amiable mistress she calls her that ever adorned a
court, and so fitted to charm in society, that it was impossible not
to grudge her to that life which involved her in cares and encompassed
her with such a cloud of different people, that her real lustre could
not always reach those who perhaps had the most pleasure in it.
Before the loss of her son (from which the Duchess never entirely
recovered), her spirits had been affected by the state of her
husband's health. “The many solitary hours I pass in a day,” she says,
“and the melancholy employment of attending a person in his
sufferings, to whom I owe every happiness I enjoy, cannot furnish me
with many smiling ideas relating to this world.” The country in its
wintry appearances accorded with her feelings, “where,” said she,
“every thing around instructs me that decay is the lot of all created
beings; where every tree spreads out its naked arms to testify the
solemn truth, which I thank heaven I feel no pain in assenting to. It
has long been my fixed opinion, that in the latter part of life, when
the duties owing to a family no longer call upon us to act on the
public stage of life, it is not only more decent, but infinitely more
eligible to live in an absolute retirement. However this is not the
general opinion of the world, and therefore I conclude that it is
better it is not so, since Providence undoubtedly orders better for us
than we are able to do for ourselves.”
During the latter years of her life, however, she enjoyed that
absolute retirement which was her heart's desire. But the peaceful
mansion in which this wise and amiable woman passed her latter years
was, after her decease, inhabited by one of those men who insulted
public decency by the open and ostentatious profligacy of their lives.
Mrs. Carter writing from the Castle Inn at Marlborough, which had not
long before been one of the residences of the Seymour family, says,
“this house I consider with great respect and veneration, not without
a strong mixture of regret, that what was once the elegant abode of
virtue and genius, and honoured by the conversation of the Duchess of
Somerset and Mrs. Rowe, should now resound with all the disorderly and
riotous clamour of an inn. And yet its fate is more eligible than that
of Percy Lodge, as it stands the chance of receiving indifferently
good and bad people, and is not destined to be the constant reception
of shocking profligate vice.”