THE FAIR GERALDINE.
In the reign of the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, of Lorenzo's family,
(Cosmo I.) Florence, it is said, beheld a novel and extraordinary
spectacle: a young traveller, from a court and a country which the
Italians of that day seemed to regard much as we now do the
Esquimaux,[63] combining the learning of the scholar and the amiable
bearing of the courtier, with all the rash bravery of youthful romance,
astonished the inhabitants of that queenly city, first, by rivalling her
polished nobles in the splendour of his state, and gallantry of his
manners, and next, by boldly proclaiming that his "lady love" was
superior to all that Italy could vaunt of beauty, that she was "oltre le
belle, bella," fair beyond the fairest,--and maintaining his boast in a
solemn tourney held in her honour, to the overthrow of all his
opponents.
This was our English Surrey; one of the earliest and most elegant of our
amatory poets, and the lover of the Fair Geraldine.
It must be admitted that the fame of the Earl of Surrey does not rest
merely on title, and that if the fair Geraldine had never existed, he
would still have lived in history as an accomplished scholar, soldier,
courtier, and been lamented as the noble victim of a suspicious tyrant.
But if some fair object of romantic gallantry had not given the impulse
to his genius, and excited him to try his powers in a style of which no
models yet existed in his native language,[64]--it may be doubted
whether his name would have descended to us with all those poetical and
chivalrous associations which give a charm and an interest to his
memory, far beyond that of a mere historical character. As for the
fair-haired, blue-eyed Geraldine, the mistress of his fancy and
affections, and the subject of his verse, her identity long lay
_entombed_, as it were, in a poetical name; but Surrey had loved her,
had maintained her beauty at the point of his lance--had made her
"famous by his pen, and glorious by his sword." This was more than
enough to excite the interest and the inquiries of posterity, and lo!
antiquaries and commentators fell to work, archives were searched,
genealogies were traced, and at length the substance of this beautiful
poetical shadow was detected: she was proved to have been the Lady
Elizabeth Fitzgerald, afterwards the wife of a certain Earl of Lincoln,
of whom little is known--but that he married the woman Surrey had loved.
Surrey has ingeniously contrived to compress, within the compass of a
sonnet, some of the most interesting particulars of the personal and
family history of his mistress. The Fitzgeralds derive their origin
from the Geraldi of Tuscany,--hence
From Tuscan came my ladye's worthy race,
Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat.
She was born and nurtured in Ireland--
Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast.
Her father was the Earl of Kildare, her mother allied to the blood
royal.
Her sire an Earl, her dame of Prince's blood.
She was brought up (through motives of compassion, after the misfortunes
of her family,) at Hunsdon, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth,
where Surrey, who frequently visited them in company with the young Duke
of Richmond,[65] first beheld her.
Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyes.
She was then extremely young, not above fourteen or fifteen, as it
appears from comparative dates; and Surrey says very clearly,
She wanted years to understand
The grief that he did feel.
But even then her budding charms made him confess as he beautifully
expresses it--
How soon a look can print a thought
That never may remove!
It was during the festivals held at Hampton Court, whither she
accompanied the Princesses, that her conquest was completed; and Surrey
being afterwards confined at Windsor,[66] was deprived of her society.
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight;
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine,
Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.
Hampton Court was the scene of their frequent interviews. Surrey
mentions a certain recessed or bow window, in which, retired apart from
the gay throng around them, they held "converse sweet." Here she gave
him, as it seems, some encouragement; too proud of such a distinguished
suitor to let him escape. He in the same moment confesses himself a very
slave, and betrays an indignant consciousness of the arts by which she
keeps him entangled in her chain.
In silence tho' I keep to such secrets myself,
Yet do I see how she sometime, doth yield a look by stealth;
As tho' it seemed, I wis,--"I will not lose thee so!"
When in her heart so sweet a thought did never truly grow.
He accuses her expressly of a love of general admiration, and of giving
her countenance and favour to unworthy rivals. In "The Warning to a
Lover how he is abused by his Love," he thus addresses himself as the
deceived lover:--
Where thou hast loved so long, with heart and all thy power,
I see thee fed with feigned words, &c.
I see her pleasant cheer in chiefest of thy suit:
When thou art gone, I see him come who gathers up the fruit;
And eke in thy respect, I see the base degree
Of him to whom she gives the heart, that promised was to thee![67]
The fair Geraldine must have been a practised coquette to have sat for a
picture so finished and so strongly marked: yet before we blame her for
this disdainful trifling, it should be remembered that Lord Surrey, at
the time he was wooing her with "musicke vows," was either married or
contracted to another,[68]--a circumstance quite in keeping with the
fashionable system of Platonic gallantry introduced from Italy--
O Plato! Plato! you have been the cause, &c.
and so forth. I forbear to continue the apostrophe.
According to the old tradition, repeated by all Surrey's biographers, he
visited on his travels the famous necromancer Cornelius Agrippa, who in
a magic mirror revealed to him the fair figure of his Geraldine, lying
dishevelled on a couch, and, by the light of a taper, reading one of his
tenderest sonnets.
Fair all the pageant, but how passing fair
The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!
O'er her white bosom strayed her hazel hair,
Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined.
All in her night-robe loose, she lay reclined,
And pensive read from tablet eburnine,
Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find;--
That favoured strain was Surrey's raptured line,
That fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine![69]
This beautiful incident is too celebrated, too touching, not to be one
of the articles of our poetical faith. It was believed by Surrey's
contemporaries, and in the age immediately following was gravely related
by a grave historian. It shows at least the celebrity which his poetry,
unequalled at that time, had given to his love, and the object of it. In
fact, when divested of the antique spelling, which, at the first glance,
revolts by the impression it gives of difficulty and obscurity, some of
the lyrics of Surrey have not since been surpassed either in elegance of
sentiment, or flowing grace of expression:--for example--
A Praise of his Love, wherein he reproveth them that compare
their Ladies with his.
Give place ye lovers here before,
That spent your boastes and braggs in vain,
My ladye's beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayne,
Then doth the sun the candle light,
Or brightest day the darkest night.
And thereto hath a truth as just,
As had Penelope the fair:
For what she sayeth you may it trust.
As it by writing sealed were;
And virtues hath she many moe,
Than I with pen have skill to show.
The following sonnet is rather a specimen of versification than of
sentiment: the subject is borrowed from Petrarch.
A COMPLAINT, BY NIGHT, OF A LOVER NOT BELOVED.
Alas! so all things now do hold their peace,
Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing;
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,
And the night's car the stars about doth bring:
Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less:
So am not I, whom love, alas! doth wring,
Bringing before my face the great increase
Of my desires, whereas I weep and sing,
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful case.
For my sweet thoughts, some time do pleasure bring;
But by and by, the cause of my disease,
Gives me a pang, that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think, what grief it is again
To live, and lack the thing should rid my pain.
Geraldine was so beautiful as to authorise the raptures of her poetical
lover. Even in her later years, when as Countess of Lincoln, she
attended on Queen Elizabeth, she retained so much of her excelling
loveliness, that the adoration paid to her in youth, was not wondered
at; and her celebrity as Surrey's early love, is alluded to by
cotemporary writers.[70] There can be no doubt that she was an
accomplished woman: the learned education the Princesses received at
Hunsdon, (in the advantages of which she participated,) is well known.
Her father, Lord Kildare, was a man of vigorous intellect and uncommon
attainments for the age in which he lived. He was the eighth Earl of his
noble family, and being engaged in the disturbances of Ireland, then a
scene of eternal dissension and bloodshed between the native princes and
the lords of the English pale, he fell under the displeasure of Henry
the Eighth: his eldest son, and his five brothers, who had been seized
as hostages, were executed on the same day at Tyburn, and the "stout old
Earl," as he is called in history, died broken-hearted in the Tower.
The mother of Geraldine is rendered interesting to us by a little family
trait, related by one of our old Chroniclers.[71] Lord Kildare, he tells
us, "was so well affected to his wife, as he would not at anie time buy
a suite of apparel for himself, but he would suite her with the same
stuffe; the which gentlenesse she recompensed with equal kindnesse; for
after that he, the said Earle, deceased in the Tower, she did not onely
live a chaste and honourable widow, but also nightly, before she went to
bed, she would resorte to his picture, and there, with a solemn _conge_,
she would bid her Lorde good nighte."
This Countess of Kildare was Lady Elizabeth Grey, granddaughter of that
famous Lady Elizabeth Grey, whose virtue made her the queen of Edward
the Fourth. Thus the fair Geraldine was cousin to the young princes who
were smothered in the Tower, and may truly be said to have been of
"Prince's blood."
It must be admitted that the general tone of Surrey's poems does not
give us a favourable idea of the fair Geraldine's manners and character.
She was variable, coquetish, and fond of admiration;--on this point I
have offered some apology for her. She is accused also of marrying
twice, from _mercenary_ motives, and thus forfeiting the attachment of
her noble and poetical lover.[72] This is unfair, I think; there is no
_proof_ that Geraldine married solely from _mercenary_ motives. Surrey
was himself married, and both the men to whom she was successively
united,[73] were eminent in their day for high personal qualities,
though in comparison with Surrey, they have been reduced to hide their
diminished heads in peerages and genealogies.
The Earl of Surrey was beheaded in 1547. The fair Geraldine was living
forty years afterwards: she survived for a short time her second
husband, Lord Lincoln; and with him lies buried under a sumptuous tomb
at Windsor: she left no descendants. Her youngest brother, Edward
Fitzgerald, was the lineal ancestor of the present Duke of Leinster.
The only original portrait of the fair Geraldine, now extant, is in the
gallery of the Duke of Bedford, at Woburn; and I am told that it is
sufficiently beautiful to justify Surrey's admiration.[74]
FOOTNOTES:
[63] "Those bears of English--those barbarous islanders," are common
phrases in the Italian writers of that age.
[64] Surrey introduced the sonnet, and the use of blank verse into our
literature. It is a curious fact, that the earliest blank verse extant
was written by Saint Francis.
[65] Natural brother of the princesses: he was the son of Henry VIII. by
Lady Talbot.
[66] He was imprisoned for eating meat in Lent.
[67] Lady Frances Vere.
[68] Surrey's Works: Nott's Edit. 4to.
[69] Lay of the Last Minstrel.
[70] Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, vol. i.
[71] Holinshed.
[72] See Nott's edition of Surrey's Works.
[73] She was the second wife of Sir Anthony Browne, and the third wife
of the Earl of Lincoln, ancestor to the Duke of Newcastle.
[74] Those who are curious about historic proofs, may consult Anecdotes
of the family of Howard, Memoirs and works of Henry Howard Earl of
Surrey, edited by Dr. Nott, Park's Royal and Noble Authors, and Collins'
Peerage, by Brydges.