CHAPTER II

LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760

1. AN INTRODUCTORY GROUP IN THE YEARS 1650-1675

The brief running summaries in the preceding chapter have perhaps

served to bring into prominence two sharply contrasted periods.

The first half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the

seventeenth seem even more than a hundred years apart in tone and

temper. We turn from the eager intellectual life of many women in the

Tudor period, from their full and rich opportunities, and we find

that in the time of the earlier Stuarts there were very few women who

took any pride in learning, that there was little or no provision at

home or in schools for any but the most desultory sort of education

for girls, and that there were practically no formulated ideals or

theories of intellectual advancement for women. But at the close of

this barren half-century we come upon what may be considered the real

beginnings of the modern work of women. This era of development may

be appropriately introduced by the presentation of several women who,

while in no sense cohering into a group, are yet alike in that their

home education belongs in the reign of Charles I, that later they had

the stern training incident on Civil War conditions, and that their

published work belongs before 1675.

[Sidenote: Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle (1624-1674)]

The most talked-of learned lady of the Restoration period was the

Duchess of Newcastle.[95] She was brought up by her mother, who was

left a widow with a great fortune and a family of eight children when

Margaret was an infant. The Duchess in her _Autobiography_ describes

a family life conducted with splendor and luxury. She comments

on the elaborate attendance, the rich and costly garments, the many

pleasures, secured for the children by the industrious care and

tender love of their mother. It was a bright, gay, free, affectionate

home life. But we get only slight indications of any educational

advantages. "As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of vertues,

as singing, dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, working,

and the like, yet we were not kept strictly thereto, they were rather

for formality than benefit, for my Mother cared not so much for our

dancing and fidling, singing and prating of severall languages, as

that we should be bred virtuously, modestly, civilly, honourably and

on honest principles." None of these opportunities met Margaret's

needs. She says she had a natural stupidity in learning foreign

tongues, cared little for music, disliked needlework, found cards

and games tiresome, and dancing frivolous. Apparently the freedom

of the family life left her at liberty to follow her real interests

which were in the main intellectual. Here she had the sympathetic

aid of her brother, Lord Lucas. The precocious development of her

mind is shown by the fact that at twelve she had written a book on a

philosophical subject.

[Illustration: MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

From an engraving in Horace Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_,

London, 1806]

At eighteen she was appointed maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria

and accompanied her to France. There, at twenty, she became the

second wife of the Duke of Newcastle, a nobleman thirty-two years

older than herself, but who was, she says, "the onely Person I ever

was in love with." She was with him during the trying years of his

absence from England and it was during this difficult and tedious

period that literature became her resource. Her publications began

with _Philosophical Fancies_ in 1653 and closed with _Grounds of

Natural Philosophy_ in 1668, during which period she wrote nearly

twelve folio volumes. The portions of her work concerning which she

felt the greatest measure of self-congratulation were her studies in

natural philosophy. Her _Philosophical Fancies_ of 1653 was expanded

in 1655, and in 1663 received its final form as _Philosophical and

Physical Opinions_. Of all her books this was "her best beloved and

favourite." But the quality on which she chiefly prides herself is

the very one that nullifies her work. Originality is her great boast,

an originality so pronounced as to refuse to base its deductions on

the writings of previous thinkers. Her husband substantiates her

claim. He says that all her philosophical fancies are spun out of

her own brain, and that, if she does not use the technical terms of

philosophers, it is because her language is her own too. She has

scorned to talk with any "profest scholar" to learn his phraseology.

"She did never impe her high-flying Phancies, with any old broken

Fethers out of any university."[96] She says herself that she could

never "afford board-room to other people's ideas lest the legitimate

offspring of her own brain should be crowded out."[97] In Part IV,

"On the Motion of the Bodie," we find that the Duchess has never

studied anatomy, but this apparent disqualification does not prove

inhibitory. In _An Epistle to the Reader_ she explains the situation:

I am to be pardoned, if I have not the names and tearms that

the Anatomists have or use; or if I have mistaken some parts in

the body, or misplaced any: for truly I never read of Anatomie,

nor never saw any man opened, much less dissected, which for my

better understanding I would have done; but I found that neither

the caurage of nature, nor the modesty of my sex would permit

me. Werefore it would be a great chance, even to a wonder I

should not erre in some; but I have seen the intrals of beasts,

but never as they are placed in their bodies, but as they are

cut out to be drest ... which intrals I have heard are much like

mans, especially a hogs, so that I know man hath a brain, a

heart, a stomach, liver, lights, spleen, and the like; yet these

I never viewed with a curious and searching eye, but as they

have laien in some vessels; and as for bones, nerves, muscels,

veines and the like, I know not how they are placed in the body,

but as I have gathered several times from several relations, or

discourses: here a bit and there a crum of knowledge, which my

natural reason hath put together.[98]

From any modern standpoint of scientific excellence the inaccuracy

and amazing self-confidence of these studies render them worse than

futile. But it was not ignorance that was charged against the Duchess

by her critics. The experimental method was having its triumphs, but

doubtless a good deal of the scientific writing of the first half

of the century was marked by a dogmatic tone and an uncertainty as

to facts, so the Duchess was not attacked on that score. The common

report that irritated the Duke of Newcastle to a spirited defense of

his wife was that she could not have written these books, for "no

lady could understand so many hard words." The Duke takes up various

kinds of hard words such as terms of divinity, philosophy, astronomy,

and geometry, and shows that natural wit, common sense, and some

observation could compass most of them. He gives the following

account of the way he and the Duchess acquired a medical vocabulary:

"But would you know the great Mystery of these Physical terms, I am

almost ashamed to tell you; not that we have been ever sickly, but

by melancholy often supposed ourselves to have such diseases as we

had not, and learned Physitians were too wise to put us out of that

humour, and so these terms cost us much more than they are worth, and

I hope there is nobody so malicious as to envie us our bargain."[99]

At the end of his Preface the Duke comes to what he considers the

real cause of the aspersions on his Lady's books: "But here's the

crime, a Lady writes them, and to intrench so much on the male

prerogative, is not to be forgiven." The Duchess, in her _Address to

the Two Universities_, recurs to this idea. She hopes her book may be

received

for the good incouragement of our sex, lest in time we should

grow irrational as idiots, by the dejectednesse of our spirits,

through the carelesse neglects, and despisements of the masculine

sex to the effeminate, thinking it impossible we should have

either learning or understanding, wit or judgement, as if we

had not rational souls as well as men, and we out of a custom

of dejectedness think so too, which makes us quit all industry

towards profitable knowledge ... so as we are become like worms

that only live in the dull earth of ignorance, winding ourselves

sometimes out, by the help of some refreshing rain of good

educations which seldom is given us; for we are kept like birds

in cages to hop up and down in our houses ... we are shut out of

all power, and Authority by reason we are never imployed either

in civil nor marshall affaires, our counsels are despised, and

laught at, the best of our actions are troden down with scorn,

by the over-weaning conceit men have of themselves and through a

despisement of us.[100]

But she presents her book with some confidence to the universities as

places where are to be found right judgment and respectful civility.

And at any rate she would rather "lie intombed under the dust of an

University" than be "worshipped by the Vulgar as a Deity."

One of the Duchess's most curious books is _Orations of Divers Sorts

accommodated to Divers Places_. Among the "orations" is a "collection

of speeches for a convivial meeting of country gentlemen in a market

town, ending with 'a speech of a quarter-drunk gentleman,' and 'a

speech of a half-drunk gentleman.' Another little collection headed

'Female Orations' reports the speeches delivered at a meeting of

women on the great question of combining together to make themselves

'as free, happy, and famous as men.'"[101]

When the Duke and Duchess returned to England after the Restoration

they lived for the most part at one of their country estates,

but they made occasional visits to London. It was then that the

Duchess's beauty, wealth, eccentric dress and manners, and literary

and scientific pretensions made her a conspicuous and, to some, a

ridiculous figure. Sir Walter Scott, in _Peveril of the Peak_,[102]

makes Charles II say of the Duchess, "Her Grace is an entire

raree-show in her own person--a universal masquerade--indeed a sort

of private Bedlam hospital"; and this sums up the attitude that found

expression in the phrase, "Mad Madge of Newcastle." In 1653 Dorothy

Osborne wrote to Sir William Temple: "Let me ask you if you have

seen a book of poems newly come out, made by my Lady Newcastle? For

God's sake if you meet with it send it to me; they say 't is ten

times more extravagant than her dress. Sure, the poor woman is a

little distracted, she could never be so ridiculous as to venture at

writing books, and in verse too." A little later she wrote: "You need

not send me Lady Newcastle's book at all, for I have seen it, and am

satisfied that there are many soberer people in Bedlam."[103] Mrs.

Evelyn called on the Duchess in 1667 and wrote to Mr. Bohun:

I was surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any

person not confined within four walls. Her habit particular,

fantastical, not unbecoming a good shape, which truly she may

boast of. Her face discovers the facility of her sex, in being

yet persuaded it deserves the esteem years forbid, by the

infinite care she takes to place her curls and patches. Her mein

surpasses the imagination of poets, or the descriptions of a

romance heroine's greatness: her gracious bows, seasonable nods,

courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and

various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from

her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical and rambling

as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions,

terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.[104]

On May 30, 1667, the Duchess made a formal visit to the Royal

Society, and Pepys says she was all admiration at the fine

experiments they showed her, but he did not hear her say anything

that was worth hearing. There had been much objection to admitting

her to the rooms of the Society, some of the members fearing that the

town would be "full of ballads of it," but the visit seems to have

passed off mildly and with the respectful observance to which she was

accustomed.

[Illustration: MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

From an engraving in _The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of

Newcastle, and of his wife Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle_, edited by

Mark Antony Lower, London, 1872]

In spite of the stream of private criticism already indicated, the

almost unmixed adulation of which the Duchess was the subject is

indicated by the _Letters and Poems, in Honour of the incomparable

Princess Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle_, published in 1676, two

years after her death. In her lifetime, too, the praise was equally

extravagant. Resounding Latin titles, such as _Illustrissima

Heroina_, _Excellentissima Dux_, _Eminentissima Princeps_, came to

her from high sources. The Rector Magnificus of the University of

Leyden called her not only _Princeps fæminini sexus_, but _Princeps

terrarum_. And the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge in a complimentary

address said that the great women of old could not contend with her

for the palm of learning, but rather would they, with bent knee,

adore this _solam Margaretam Consumatissimam Principem_. Even so sane

a man as Evelyn wrote her a most flattering letter when she sent him

her works in 1674. Beginning with Zenobia he assembled the great

women of ancient times, the learned ladies of more modern days in

France, Spain, Italy, and Holland, and concluded with

Mary de Gournay, & the famous Anna M. Schurman: and of our owne

country, Queene Elizabeth, Queene Jane, the Lady Weston, Mrs.

Philips our late Orinda, the daughters of S^r Tho: More; the

Queene Christina of Sweden, & Elizabeth, daughter of a queen also

to whom the renowned Des Cartes dedicated his learned worke, &

the profound researches of his extraordinary talent. But all

these, I say, sum'd together, possesse but that divided, which

yr Grace retaines in one; so as Lucretia Marinella, who writ a

book (in 1601) _dell' Excellenzia delle Donne, con difetti è

mancamenti de gli huomini_, had no neede to have assembled so

many instances and arguments to adorne the work, had she lived

to be witnesse of Margarite, Dutchess of Newcastle, to have read

her writings, & to have heard her discourse of the science she

comprehended.[105]

Praise could hardly go further.

The best modern judgment discards the encomiums, but yet gives the

Duchess a fairly high place. Sir Egerton Brydges, the editor of her

_Autobiography_, says:

That the Duchess was deficient in a cultivated judgment; that

her knowledge was more multifarious than exact; and that her

powers of fancy and sentiment were more active than her powers

of reasoning, I will admit; but that her productions, mingled as

they are with great absurdities, are wanting either in talent or

in virtue, or even genius, I cannot concede.[106]

The Duchess was buried in Westminster Abbey with this inscription on

her monument:

Here lies the loyal Duke of Newcastle and his Duchess, his second

wife, by whom he had no issue. Her name was Margaret Lucas,

youngest sister to Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble family, for

all the brothers were valliant, and all the sisters virtuous.

This Duchess was a wise, witty, and learned Lady, which her many

books do well testify; She was a most virtuous, and loving,

and careful wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his

banishment and miseries; and when they came home never parted

with him in his solitary retirements.

The two books by the Duchess that one would not willingly let die

are her _Life_ of her husband and her _Autobiography_. These are

of permanent value as pictures of the life of a great, rich family

like that of her girlhood home, and the straitened life in exile,

with the later affluent and splendid life of a noble high in royal

favor such as was the Duke of Newcastle. All the personal portions of

both books are told with an air of genuineness, a naïveté, that make

delightful reading. The Duchess summed up her life as that of a woman

"honourably born, carefully bred, and nobly married to a wise man,"

and it was out of these happy domestic relations that her best work

came.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Katherine Philips (1631-1664)]

Contemporary with the Duchess of Newcastle was Katherine Fowler,

better known as Mrs. Katherine Philips, and better still as the

"Matchless Orinda." She was the daughter of John Fowler, "an eminent

merchant in Bucklersbury," and Katherine Oxenbridge. Aubrey gives a

quaint account of her precocious childhood as it was described to him

by "her cosen Blacket who lived with her from her swadling cloutes

till eight, and taught her to read." Aubrey says: "When a child she

was mighty apt to learn, and ... she had read the Bible through

before she was full four yeares old; she could have sayed I know not

how many places of Scripture and Chapters. She was a frequent hearer

of sermons; had an excellent memory and could have brought away a

sermon in her memory."[107]

Her further education was carried on at Hackney at the school of

"Mris Salmon, a famous schoolmistress, Presbyterian.... Loved poetrey

at schoole, and made verses there. She takes after her grandmother

Oxenbridge ... who was an acquaintance of Mr. Francis Quarles, being

much inclined to poetrie herself." As a child Katherine evidently was

as ardent a Presbyterian as her school-mistress and her Oxenbridge

ancestors. "She was very religiously devoted when she was young;

prayed by herself an hower together, and tooke sermons verbatim when

she was but ten yeares old.... She was when a child much against

the bishops, prayd to God to take them to him, but afterwards was

reconciled to them. Prayed aloud, as the hypocritical fashion then

was, and was overheared."

At sixteen she married Mr. James Philips, Esquire, of Cardigan

Priory, Wales. Her published work includes numerous brief poems,

most of them of a personal nature, two plays translated from the

French, and several letters to Sir Charles Cotterell. This is rather

scanty productivity to serve as a basis for the great vogue Mrs.

Philips certainly had, nor to the modern reader does the quality of

the work sufficiently account for the enthusiasm it excited. Yet we

have abundant testimony that the last ten years of her life were made

brilliant by praise from the most authoritative sources. Sir Charles

Cotterell, her intimate friend and the editor of her _Works_, said

of her: "We might well have call'd her the English Sappho, she of

all the Poets of former Ages, being for her Verses and her Virtues

both, the most highly valued; but she has call'd herself ORINDA, a

name that deserves to be added to the Muses, and to live with honour

as long as they. Were our language as generally known to the world,

as the Greek and Latin were anciently, or as the French is now, her

Verses could not be confined within the limits of our Islands, but

would spread themselves as far as the Continent has Inhabitants, or

as the Seas have any Shore." Something must be allowed here for the

enthusiasm of a friend and an editor, but other estimates were almost

as extreme. The Earl of Orrery had thought that the high praise of

her poems at court must be exaggerated, but when he came to know

her and her writings the court eulogies were to him but "Imperfect

Trophies," and he exclaimed, "If there be Helicon, in Wales it is."

Henry Lawes and Dr. Coleman, the best composers of the day, set some

of her poems to music. Cowley in two poems to her praised her for her

spirit "so rich, so noble, and so high," her "inward Virtue," her

"well-knit Sence," and for her poems in which were united all the

excellences of both sexes. When her translation of _Pompey_ appeared

in the Smock-Alley Theater, Dublin, the Earl of Roscommon wrote the

Prologue and Sir Edward Dering the Epilogue, and the success of the

play was assured by the enthusiastic support of the aristocracy of

Dublin. In 1659 Jeremy Taylor dedicated to her his _Discourse of the

nature, offices and measures of friendship_. Though she does not

exactly fulfill the prophecy of Mr. Thomas Rowe, that "Orinda should

be an ever-glorious name to ages yet to come," yet her fame was by no

means confined to her own brief day. We hear echoes of it far down in

the eighteenth century. The highest praise that could be given to any

woman poet was to bracket her with Orinda.

By the nineteenth century her vogue was almost extinct, but chance

appreciation came from an unexpected quarter. Keats wrote to Reynolds

in September, 1817:[108]

The world, and especially our England, has, within the last

thirty years, been vexed and teased by a set of Devils, whom

I Detest so much that I almost hunger after an Acherontic

promotion to a Torturer, purposely for their accomodation. These

devils are a set of women, who having taken a snack or Luncheon

of Literary scraps, set themselves up for towers of Babel in

languages, Sapphos in Poetry, Euclids in Geometry, and everything

in nothing. Among such the name of Montague has been preëminent.

The thing has made a very uncomfortable impression on me. I had

longed for some real feminine Modesty in these things, and was

therefore gladdened in the extreme on opening the other day, one

of Bailey's Books--a book of poetry written by one beautiful Mrs.

Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor's and called "The Matchless

Orinda"--you must have heard of her, and most likely read her

Poetry--I wish you have not, that I may have the pleasure of

treating you with a few stanzas.

Whereupon he quotes the ten stanzas written by Orinda on parting

with her friend "Rosania," a poem of genuine feeling and quaintly

charming in expression. "In other of her poems," says Keats, "there

is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher kind--which we will con over

together."

[Illustration: MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS

"From an original Picture in the Collection of her Grace the Dutchess

of Dorset." Drawn by J. Thurston. Engraved by W. Finden. From an

engraving in _Effigies Poeticae_. London, 1824]

Thus the magic of Orinda's name reasserts itself, and she is again

praised as a lady of "delicate fancy," "feminine modesty," and

unmatched in friendship. A reintroduction to a general public was

given by Mr. Gosse's delightful essay in _Seventeenth Century

Studies_ (1885). And in 1904 a selection from her poems was published

with an acute "Appreciation."

In her own day Orinda was not only prized as a poet, but she was

considered the highest example, the prophet and expounder, of true

friendship. Much of her verse was called forth by her Society of

Friendship. The chief members of this circle were "Antenor" (Mr.

Philips), "Lucasia" (Miss Anne Owen), "Rosania" (Miss Mary Aubrey),

"Regina" (Mrs. John Collier), "Palæmon" (Jeremy Taylor), "Silvander"

(Sir Edward Dering), "Policrite" (Lady Margaret Cavendish),

"Celimena" (Miss E. Boyl), "Cassandra" (Mrs. C. P., her dear sister),

and "Critander" (Mr. J. B.). "Ardelia," "Phillis," and "Pastora"

remain unidentified. There were doubtless others in the circle,

but these we know because they all received poetical tributes from

Orinda. There were over thirty-five private individuals intimately

addressed in her poems.

It is undoubtedly the personal character of her poems that secured

her so wide and favorable an audience while her writings were still

in manuscript and known only as they passed from hand to hand. Each

person addressed was the center of a new circle of readers. But the

intimacy of the poems is one reason for the actual agony Orinda

suffered when an unauthorized edition of her poems appeared in 1662.

"Their Names expos'd in this Impression without their leave" was the

burden of her grief. And she was likewise injured in her modesty. The

publication seemed to put her in the position of a woman bold and

masculine enough to send her writings into the world. A thousand

pounds, she says, would not have bought her consent. To Sir Charles

Cotterell she wrote:

To me (Sir) who never writ any line in my life with any intention

to have it printed.... This is a most cruel accident, and hath

made so proportionate an impression upon me, that really it hath

cost me a sharp fit of sickness since I heard it.

If the garbled version makes a true version a necessary reparation

of the misfortune she will yield, "but with the same reluctancy as I

would cut off a Limb to save my Life."

I am so far from expecting applause for anything I scribble, that

I can hardly expect pardon; and sometimes I think that employment

so far above my reach, and unfit for my Sex, that I am going to

resolve against it for ever; and could I have recovered those

fugitive Papers that have escaped my hands, I had long since made

a sacrifice of them all. The truth is, I have an incorrigible

inclination to that folly of riming, and intending the effects of

that humour, only for my own amusement in a retir'd life; I did

not so much resist it as a wiser woman would have done.[109]

She had been planning a visit to London, but she wrote in despair to

Dorothy Osborne (then Mrs. Temple):

I must never show my face there or among any reasonable people

again, for some dishonest person hath got some collection of my

Poems as I heare, and hath deliver'd them to a Printer who I

heare is just upon putting them out and this hath soe extreamly

disturbed me, both to have my private folly so unhandsomely

exposed and ye belief that I believe the most part of ye world

are apt enough to believe yt I connived at this ugly accident

that I have been on ye rack ever since I heard it, though I have

written to Col. Jeffries who first sent me word of it to get ye

Printer punished, the book called in, and me someway publicly

vindicated yet I shall need all my friends to be my champions

to ye criticall and mallicious that I am soe innocent of this

pittiful design of a knave to get a groat that I never was more

vexed at anything and yt I utterly disclaim whatever he hath so

unhandsomely expos'd. I know you have goodness and generosity

enough to doe me right in your company and to give me your

opinion too how I may best get this impression supressed and

myself vindicated and therefore I will not beg your pardon for

troubling you with this impertinent story.[110]

Her pride of authorship would, however, almost certainly have

triumphed over her modesty if she could have lived to see the

sumptuous volume with its bravery of eulogistic verse in which Sir

Charles Cotterell enshrined her work. Her letters to him, under the

title _Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus_, were published in 1705 and

add distinctly to her fame.

On the whole, Orinda becomes a personage to us and an agreeable one.

There is a note of sincerity through even her most unrestrained

poems; the ardor of her affections is unmistakable; her loyalty to

the King, to her friends, to her ideas, is genuine. She does not

labor compliments. Her praise pours forth from the abundance of her

feeling. Perhaps one reason for her ready popularity was that she

aroused no antagonisms. Though a literary woman there was nothing

about her that was masculine, strident, or assertive. Her outlook on

life was gracious and tolerant. She loved simplicity and retirement

and was never dazzled by wealth or titles.

At any rate, there is one interesting and significant fact about her

and that is her success. It was a kind of success new in English

literary history. A woman without any commanding advantages of birth

or fortune, only moderately good-looking, without any compelling

fascination, unstimulated by parental or tutorial ambitions, with but

the scantiest schooling, married to an ordinary, rather dull man;

a virtuous, sane, orderly, thrifty woman, excellent in business,

housewifely, with no eccentricities, simply follows her feelings in

friendship and the bent of her mind towards authorship, and attains

in a few years a position notably high.

[Sidenote: Mary North (d. 1662)]

Two interesting young women who belong chronologically to this group

are not exactly learned ladies, but they had intellectual piquancy

and alertness. One of them, Mary North, was the eldest of the

fourteen children of Dudley, the fourth Lord North. The mother of

this large family was evidently a remarkable woman. Her son Roger

says of her: "The Government of us was In generall severe, but

tender; our mother maintained her authority, and yet condiscended to

Entertain us. She was learned (for a lady) and Eloquent. Had much

Knoledg of History and readyness of witt to express herself, in the

part of Reproof, wherein she was fluent and pungent.... But without

occasion given to the Contrary, she was debonair, familiar, and very

liberall of hir discourse to entertain all." This combination of the

pungent and the debonair made an effective family discipline, for it

was said that there was not a son or daughter whose abilities were

not of a very high order, and that the daughters were hardly less

cultured than their brothers. And of this group Mary was, says Roger,

"by far the most brilliant--a woman of real genius." A charming

picture is given of the ladies of the North family, gathered together

according to the custom of the time for endless tasks of tapestry

and embroidery, listening entranced to Mary who recited romances for

hours together, giving not only the story, but the conversations,

the substance of letters, and the general reflections. She had "a

superiour wit, a prodigious memory, and was most agreeable." "She

instituted a sort of order of the wits of her time and acquaintance,

whereof the symbol was a sun with a circle touching the rays,

and upon that in blue ground were wrote αὐτάρκης in proper Greek

characters, which her father suggested. Divers of these were made in

silver and enamel, but in embroidery plenty, which were dispersed to

those wittified ladies who were willing to come into their order;

and for a while they were formally worn, until the foundress fell

under the government of another, and then it was left off."[111] Mary

North was married to Sir William Spring of Pakenham and died in 1662

in her twenty-fourth year. Her feminine "Order of Intellect," her

quaint badge, "the symbol of a community of taste and interest in

literature, science, and art,"[112] offer an attractive and hopeful

prospect. It was an inconspicuous little organization, springing up

gayly and spontaneously, and its scope of learning may not have gone

beyond the French romances the gifted young leader knew by heart, but

it was at any rate an association of young women with some pronounced

literary aspirations and tastes, and as such it stands out alone, a

charming picture set in the framework of the anxious years before the

Restoration.

[Sidenote: Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (1627-1694)]

When Dorothy Osborne had been Lady Temple some years her husband

wrote from London a "sweet scrip full of reproaches" at the

businesslike tone and brevity of her letters. She answered with a

touch of her old sauciness: "Pray what did you expect I should have

writ, tell me that I may know how to please you next time. But now I

remember me you would have such letters as I used to write before we

were marryed, there are a great many such in your cabinet yt I can

send you if you please, but none in my head I can assure you."[113]

The love letters thus preserved in Sir William Temple's cabinet

have had a narrow escape from oblivion. They were found among the

Temple papers when Mr. Courtenay was preparing his elaborate _Life

of Sir William Temple_, and forty-two extracts from the letters were

put by Mr. Courtenay apologetically in an appendix. He could not

be sure that they would not seem trivial in comparison to matters

of state. This book was published in 1836. Macaulay reviewed it

in the _Edinburgh Review_ for October, 1838, and took occasion to

give a vivid sketch of Dorothy and her lover. Macaulay's article

led Mr. Edward Abbot Parry to read Courtenay's extracts from the

letters and to weave them together into a kind of story, which was

published in April, 1886, in _The English Illustrated Magazine_. This

magazine fell into the hands of Mrs. S. R. Longe who had had access

to the original letters and had copied them with minute accuracy.

These letters were offered to Mr. Parry for publication and were

accordingly brought out, though with omissions, in 1888.[114] In

1903 the letters were published in full. Thus, after escaping the

vicissitudes of nearly two and a half centuries, these letters became

a delight accessible to all.[115]

When Dorothy was twenty-one she went with her brother to France. At

the Isle of Wight they were joined by young Mr. William Temple who

promptly fell in love with Dorothy because of the spirited way she

met a difficult situation. Her brother had written on the window pane

at the inn some phrases objectionable to the Puritans, and the whole

party was arrested. Then Dorothy, relying upon the general chivalrous

attitude towards women, took the blame upon herself, and they were

set free. The courtship thus begun was destined to last seven years.

There were few meetings and the correspondence was carried on with

all possible secrecy, for both the Osbornes and the Temples had

other plans for the young people. It was a difficult seven years for

Dorothy. The Osbornes lived at Chicksands Priory in Bedfordshire,

a lonely and not very interesting region. Dorothy's mother died

in 1650. After a long illness, during which she was his constant

attendant, her father died in 1654. During these years her brother

was the only one of the family with her in the strange old house. And

from him came her chief trial, for it was the effort of his life to

see her well married. Young men, middle-aged men, old men, aspired

to be Mistress Dorothy's "servants." The ancient Priory saw a train

of lovers sent away unsatisfied. Dorothy gave all sorts of reasons

for her fastidious and critical attitude towards her suitors--all

reasons but the real one. Mr. Temple had no assured income, Dorothy

but a small dowry, and no families in their rank of life could be

expected to sanction so imprudent a choice. In the meantime silence

and faithfulness was the only resource of the impecunious lovers. It

was a hard fate, but not without compensations for later generations,

for if they had married happily on coming out of France there would

have been no bundle of letters in the old cabinet at Sheen.

There are various indications that Dorothy had numerous

correspondents. That they did not save her letters is our great

loss, for we can imagine few more delightful ways of being inducted

into the life of the times than through the letters of Mistress

Dorothy. The "Matchless Orinda" was one of her correspondents, but

only one letter arising out of this friendship has been preserved.

It may justly be quoted entire because it serves to unite the two

most interesting women of the time, and because it shows how Mrs.

Philips, in the plentitude of her fame, with Dublin dramatic triumphs

fresh upon her, with the aristocracy of London adding leaves to her

laurel crown, courted the quiet Mrs. Temple living the most retired

and domestic of lives at Sheen. This letter has the further pathetic

interest of being one of the last Orinda wrote, for when she reached

London on this visit she had so longed for she fell a victim to that

most dreaded scourge, the small-pox:

_Deare Madam_,--You treat me in your letters so much to my

advantage and above my merit that I am almost affray'd to tell

you how exceedingly I am pleased with them lesst you should

attribute yt contentment to ye delight I take in being praised

whereas I am extreamely deceived if that be ye ground of it,

though I confess it is not free from vanity. I can not choose

but be proud of being owned by soe valuable a person as you are,

and one whom all my inclinations carry me to honour and love at

a very great rate, and you will find by the trouble I last gave

you of this kind how impossible it will be for you to be rid of

an importunity which you have much encourag'd and how much your

late silence alarm'd one yt is soe much concern'd for ye honour

you doe her in allowing her to hope you will frequently let her

know she hath some room in ye particular favour, I hope you

have pardon'd me that complaint and allow'd a little jealousy

to that great passion I have for you and that I shall with some

more assurance come to thank you for this last favour of 12th

instant, and must beg you to believe that if my convent were in

Cataya and I a recluse by vow to it, yet I should never attain

mortification enough to be able willingly to deny myself the

great entertainment of your correspondance, which seems to remove

me out of a solitary religious house on ye mountains and place

me in the most advantageous prospect upon both court and town

and give me right to a better place than of either, and that

madam is your friendship, which is so great a present, that there

is but one way to make it more valuable and yt is by making it

less ceremonious and by using me with a freedom that may give me

more access into your heart and this beg from you with a great

earnestness, and will promise you that whatsoever liberties

of that kind you allow me, yt I will never so much abase that

goodness as to press mine own advantages further than you shall

permit or lessen any of the respect I ow you, by the less formal

approaches I desire to make to you who though I esteem above most

of the world yet I love yet more.[116]

Orinda was a letter-writer of no mean ability herself, but she wrote

with something of a professional tone, and possibly with an eye to

numerous readers. It was only Dorothy that could make town and court

live again. Macaulay's philippics against "the dignity of history"

and his eulogy of the social value of such letters as Dorothy's must

find approval from every one who tries to revivify a forgotten era.

Dorothy was an acute observer. If the novel of domestic life had

been in existence in her day she would have found the natural place

for her clever and slightly caustic pen. The successive suitors and

various dull visitors at Chicksands could have had little suspicion

of the merry and facile wit that was serving up their oddities for

the amusement of her lover. Furthermore, Dorothy was an inveterate

reader, and a reader with mental reactions, an independent judgment,

and a skill in witty comment. The general tone of the letters is a

delightful mixture of humor, tenderness, and coquetry. No writing

of the time was more unaffectedly human. And there were counsels of

prudence and of good sense, bits of worldly wisdom and penetrating

knowledge of human foibles. And with it all was the charm of style.

When Mr. Temple wishes to know how she spends her day she outlines

the slow-moving hours and closes with this delicate picture of

evening:

The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six

or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the

house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and

sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare

their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I

have read of, and find a vast difference there: but, trust me,

I think these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them

and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in

the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly when

we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and

spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as

if they had wings to their heels. I, that am not so nimble, stay

behind; and when I see them driving home their cattle, I think

't is time for me to return too. When I have supped, I go into

the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it,

when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this

is not kind neither). In earnest, 't is a pleasant place, and

would be much more so to me if I had your company. I sit there

sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some

cruel thoughts of the crossness of our fortunes that will not let

me sleep there, I should forget that there were such a thing to

be done as going to bed.[117]

Dorothy's easy, natural tone was quite in accord with her theory of

letter-writing. She writes to Mr. Temple:

All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's

discourse, not studied like an oration, nor made up of hard words

like a charm. 'T is an admirable thing to see how some people

will labour to find terms that will obscure a plain sense, like

a gentleman I knew who would never say "the weather grew cold,"

but that "winter begins to salute us." I have no patience for

such coxcombs, and cannot blame an old uncle of mine who threw

the standish at his man's head because he writ a letter for him,

where instead of saying (as his master bid him) that "he had the

gout in his hand" he said "that the gout would not permit him to

put pen to paper." The fellow thought he had mended it mightily,

and that putting pen to paper was much better than plain writing!

How in 1652-54 did Dorothy escape the grand style? She was steeped in

romances and she read Jeremy Taylor with delight. But there are no

preciosities, no attempted elaborateness or ornamentation or splendor

in her style. She might have written after the moderns had won their

victory so direct and straightforward is her speech. But the infinite

charm of her letters belongs to no age. It is the expression of a

personality.

We cannot leave Dorothy Osborne's letters without feeling defrauded

that there are so few of them. After their marriage in 1655 the

Temples lived five years in Ireland. Sir William's importance in

state affairs led to a later residence in Brussels and at The Hague.

After 1681 they lived in retirement at Moor Park and Swift and Stella

were of their household. What opportunities for letters if Dorothy

had only been as indefatigable as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! But

except for a few personal notes from Sheen in 1665-67, Dorothy fades

from our sight. Did accumulated sorrows sap her energy and dim her

joyous courage? She had nine children. Seven of them died in infancy.

Her daughter died of small-pox. Her son committed suicide because of

fancied inability to perform a diplomatic mission. It is said that

at some time during the years 1689-94 Queen Mary and Dorothy kept up

a continuous correspondence. If such letters were written there is

now no trace of them. The latest published letter from Dorothy is in

1689 in response to some expression of condolence for the death of

her son. It is difficult to recognize in this subdued and dignified,

almost cold and stately lady, the sparkling and mischievous Dorothy

of the earlier letters.

[Sidenote: Lady Pakington (d. 1679)]

Just about contemporary with Mrs. Philips and the Duchess of

Newcastle was a remarkable woman of quite another type. This was

Lady Pakington, the daughter of Lord Coventry. If, as was long

supposed, she wrote the series of books of which _The Whole Duty of

Man_ was one, that fact would place her very high in the ranks of

seventeenth-century authors. With the consensus of expert opinion

now against the ascription of these books to her, she yet holds an

important place among learned women.[118] Dr. George Hickes, whose

deanery was near Westwood, the home of Sir John Pakington, and who

was intimate with the family, in the Preface to his _Thesaurus_ which

was inscribed to Sir John, gives a "character" of Lady Pakington

in which he says she was trained in her youth by "the excellently

learned Sir Norton Knatchbull," and that later in life she was

mistress of all the learning, good judgment, sound thinking, and

piety necessary to have been the author of the famous _Whole Duty

of Man_. He says that noted divines declared her as learned in the

history of pagan and Christian systems of thought as were they

themselves; and that she knew concerning the antiquities of her own

county "almost as much as the greatest proficients in that kind of

knowledge." Especially did Dr. Hickes comment on her "talent for

speaking correctly, pertinently, clearly, and gracefully," and on

"her evenness of style and consistent manner of writing." No woman

of the period came nearer being the tutelary deity of a coterie

than did Lady Pakington. Her loyalty to the Church of England and

to the Stuart cause made of her beautiful home at Westwood during

the Protectorate a natural resort for royalist divines. Dr. Hammond,

Bishop Fell, Bishop Morley, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Henchman, Bishop

Gunning, were among those whose friendship and esteem she had

acquired by her "great virtues and eminent attainments in knowledge."

Before the Restoration she held a kind of Church of England salon,

and though most of the men who frequented it were given benefices

by Charles II and so scattered through England, Lady Pakington, by

letter and occasional personal intercourse, kept up the friendships

of the earlier days, through the nineteen years that she lived after

the Restoration. And even if she did not write _The Whole Duty of

Man_ (1657) and the series that followed it, these books arose from

the discussions held at Westwood.

[Sidenote: Mary Boyle, the Countess of Warwick (1624-1678)]

The Countess of Warwick is best known from her _Diary_, her

_Autobiography_, and the sermon preached at her funeral by Dr.

Anthony Walker, rector of Fyfield in Essex. The _Diary_ was

kept from July, 1666, till 1678. The part from 1666 to 1672 was

published in 1847 by the Religious Tract Society with a memoir. The

remainder is among the manuscripts in the British Museum.[119] Her

_Autobiography_, under the title, _Some Specialties in the Life

of M. Warwicke_, was published by the Percy Society in 1848.[120]

Dr. Walker's sermon, entitled _The Virtuous Woman found, her loss

bewailed, and character exemplified_, etc., was published in 1678 and

1687.[121]

Mary Boyle was married to Mr. Rich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, when

she was but fifteen. Her life before that time she thus describes:

"I was married into my husband's family, as vain, as idle, and as

inconsiderate a person as possible, minding nothing but curious

dressing and fond and rich clothes, and spending my precious time

in nothing else but reading romances, and in reading and seeing

plays, and in going to court, and Hide Park and Spring Garden; and

I was so fond of the court, that I had taken a secret resolution

that if my father died, and I was mistress of myself, I would become

a courtier."[122] But by the time she was twenty-one a complete

change was manifest. She became exceedingly devout. There is no more

romance reading. The books on her chosen list are "St. Bernard,

George Herbert, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Samuel Rutherford Clarke, the

_Confessions_ of St. Augustine, John Janeway's _Dying_, Foxe's _Book

of Martyrs_, Cayley's _Glimpses of Eternity_."[123] Her writing was

all religious in tone. Rules for a Holy Life, Occasional Meditations,

and Pious Reflections were among the topics she found most congenial.

The _Specialties in the Life of M. Warwicke_ shows the intensity of

her struggle after spiritual perfection and her genuine aloofness

from the gay and splendid scenes in which her rank compelled her

to bear a part. The most ordinary occurrences, such as "lighting

many candles at once," or "drawing the window-curtains to prevent

the sun's putting out the fire," suggested pious reflections. At a

glorious banquet at Whitehall "the trumpets sounding in the midst

of all that great show" put mortifying thoughts into her mind and

made her consider "what if the trump of God should now sound?" In

a meditation entitled "Upon looking out of my window at Chelsea,

upon the Thames," her delight in the sweet river when it is calm and

serene, and her dislike of it--so that she shut her window and ceased

to look--when it was rough, is moralized into the charm of calm and

patient people as against those of turbulent passions.[124]

Lady Warwick's writings exhibit none of the joyous or fervent aspects

of religion. In the midst of domestic trials, surrounded by an alien

life, she was steadily tutoring her own heart, subduing her sins,

following a high ideal. Dr. Walker in his sermon gives an example

of seventeenth-century pulpit oratory in his effort adequately to

praise this great lady, as conspicuous for goodness as for her rank

and wealth: "An hundred mouths, and a thousand tongues though they

all flowed with nectar, would be too few to praise her." "Oh," he

exclaims, "for a Chrysostom's mouth, for an angel's tongue, to

describe this terrestrial seraphine; or a ray of light condensed into

a pencil, and made tactile, to give you this glorious child of light

in _viva effigie_."

[Sidenote: Lucy Apsley, Mrs. Hutchinson (1620-?)]

That Lucy Hutchinson had written a life of her husband was known

by many people and there were frequent requests in the eighteenth

century that so valuable a historical document should be made

accessible to the public. Mrs. Catherine Macaulay was one of those

urgent in this matter, but without avail.[125] It was not till the

manuscript came into the possession of the Reverend Julius Hutchinson

that it was published. After the first edition in 1806 three editions

appeared in four years. Some other writings besides the _Memoirs_

were found among the papers of Mrs. Hutchinson. Of these the precious

_Autobiography_ was but a fragment. It not only closed abruptly, but

leaves had been torn out. But from what remains we get one of the

few accounts of the home education of girls in the first half of the

seventeenth century. Her father and mother, extremely glad to welcome

a girl after three sons, "applied all their cares and spared no cost"

in her education. She describes this education as follows:

By the time I was four years old I read English perfectly, and

having a great memory, I was carried to sermons; and while I was

very young could remember and repeat them exactly, and being

caressed, the love of praise tickled me, and made me attend more

heedfully. When I was about seven years of age, I remember I

had at one time eight tutors in several qualities, languages,

music, dancing, writing and needle-work; but my genius was quite

averse from all but my book, and that I was so eager of, that

my mother, thinking it prejudiced my health, would moderate me

in it; yet this rather animated me than kept me back, and every

moment I could steal from my play I would employ in any book I

could find, when my own were locked up from me. After dinner and

supper I still had an hour allowed me to play, and then I would

steal into some hole or other to read. My father would have me

learn Latin, and I was so apt that I outstripped my brothers who

were at school, although my father's chaplain, that was my tutor

was a pitiful dull fellow. My brothers, who had a great deal of

wit, had some emulation at the progress I made in my learning,

which very well pleased my father; though my mother would have

been contented if I had not so wholly addicted myself to that

as to neglect my other qualities. As for music and dancing, I

profited very little in them, and would never practise my lute or

harpsichords but when my masters were with me; and for my needle

I absolutely hated it. Play among other children I despised, and

when I was forced to entertain such as came to visit me, I tired

them with more grave instructions than their mothers, and plucked

all their babies to pieces, and kept the children in such awe,

that they were glad when I entertained myself with elder company;

to whom I was very acceptable, and living in the house with many

persons that had a great deal of wit, and very profitable

serious discourses being frequent at my father's table and in my

mother's drawing-room, I was very attentive to all, and gathered

up things that I would utter again, to great admiration of many

that took my memory and imitation for wit. It pleased God that,

through the good instructions of my mother, and the sermons she

carried me to, I was convinced that the knowledge of God was the

most excellent study, and accordingly applied myself to it, and

to practise as I was taught. I used to exhort my mother's maids

much, and to turn their idle discourses to good subjects: but I

thought, when I had done this on the Lord's day, and every day

performed my due tasks of reading and praying, that then I was

free to anything that was not sin.[126]

[Illustration: MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND HER SON

From an engraving in _Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson_,

1808]

Elsewhere she notes other elements of her education. She says that as

soon as she was weaned, a Frenchwoman was taken to be her dry-nurse

and she was taught to speak French and English together. At the

siege of Nottingham Castle Mrs. Hutchinson is represented as acting

the part of a surgeon. This knowledge may doubtless be referred to

instructions by her mother. Sir Allen Apsley, Lucy's father, was

lieutenant of the Tower of London during her youth, and Mrs. Apsley

was very generous and humane to the prisoners. Her daughter says of

her:

What my father allowed her she spent not in vanities, although

she had what was rich and requisite upon occasions, but she

laid most of it out in pious and charitable uses. Sir Walter

Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and

addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make rare

experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor

prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments,

and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to

seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of

skill, which was very profitable to many all her life.[127]

The love story of Lucy Apsley and Colonel Hutchinson is curiously

interwoven with her learning. When Lucy was sixteen her mother took

her into Wiltshire in pursuance of a contemplated marriage contract

and left a younger sister at a house where she was "tabled for the

practice of her lute." Mr. Hutchinson, "tabled" at the same house,

was attracted by the vivacious child, and frequently accompanied her

when she went over to her mother's house. On one of these occasions

he saw some Latin books and was much interested to find that they

belonged to Lucy. Then he heard that this Lucy was "reserved and

studious," then that she composed songs above "the ordinary reach

of a she-wit," then that she had "sense above the rest," but that

she "shunned the converse of men as a plague." Strangely enough,

these accounts, or some magic, or the hand of Providence, plunged

Mr. Hutchinson into the despairs and ardors of love even before he

had seen the lady. On her return, the proposed marriage contract

not having been completed, he daily frequented her mother's house,

and for six weeks "in the sweet season of the spring" they had

opportunity for converse with each other. During this period some

envious ladies endeavored to break the friendship by telling him that

Lucy neglected her dress and all womanish ornaments, giving herself

up wholly to study and writing. But since his love had owed its

inception to a sight of her Latin books, and had been stimulated by

hearing her poetry, these insinuations did not interfere with what

his wife calls "a more handsome management of love than the best

romances describe."[128]

Somewhat later Lucy Hutchinson's love of learning led her to at least

a slight knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. That she kept up her Latin

is shown by the fact that she translated part of the _Æneid_. In

her early married life she found scholastic means to mitigate the

monotony of the needlework she loathed. Out of a "youthful curiosity

to understand things she had heard so much of at second-hand" she

translated six books of _Lucretius_ into verse, accomplishing this

task, she says, "in a room where my children practised the several

qualities they were taught with their tutors, and I numbered the

syllables of my translation by the threads of the canvas I wrought

in, and set them down with a pen and ink that stood by me."

There was not, however, in Mrs. Hutchinson's life much opportunity

for scenes so domestic as this. She was married to Mr. Hutchinson

in 1638. By 1642 her husband was definitely committed to the side

of the Puritans, and the rest of their life till his death in 1664

was one of anxiety, conflict, and baffled high endeavor. But it was

also a life of achievement and excitement, and constantly sweetened

and stimulated by extraordinary affection between husband and wife.

When at his death she retired to the family home at Owthorpe the days

must have looked very blank and empty to the heroine of Nottingham

Castle. Not even the care of her eight children could keep her mind

from dwelling on the past. The message her husband sent her from

his death-bed in the prison, "Let her, as she is above other women,

show herself, on this occasion, a good Christian, and above other

women,"[129] helped her to restrain extreme signs of grief, but her

heart and mind were with him. And the mechanic exercise that dulled

her grief was the writing of his _Life_. She had kept a rough sort

of diary and this was the basis for the longer work. The writing

was done between 1664 and 1671 when Mrs. Hutchinson herself died.

The work was addressed "To my Children" and its purpose was to make

them know the character and deeds of their father. But the narrative

goes much farther than that. It is a minute account of the persons

and events of that portion of the Civil War especially connected

with Nottingham. She writes as an eye-witness and a participant.

She wields a pen vigorous, racy, and unafraid. She had a genius

for picturesque characterization, and her scornful descriptions of

cowards and traitors are veiled by no feminine softness of phrase.

When describing such treacherous members of the Parliament Party as

Charles White and Chadwick and his wife her vocabulary of abuse is

unstinted. But she is equally fluent in her account of heroes such as

Colonel Thornhagh. The intrigues, the factions, the cross-currents,

within the Puritan Party are as minutely analyzed and laid open as

is the general contest between King and Parliament. Furthermore, the

book is readable from beginning to end. It moves with the rapidity

of a novel of adventure. Mr. A. H. Upham[130] has analyzed Mrs.

Hutchinson's work to show that it was probably suggested by the

Duchess of Newcastle's _Life_ of her husband, and that, further,

the general plan and even the choice of detail were guided by the

Duchess's _Memoir_. The _Life_ of the Duke of Newcastle, though

not published till 1667, was written in 1665, and since the two

families were neighbors, and knew each other well, it might easily

be that Mrs. Hutchinson was acquainted with the work of the Duchess

in manuscript. This ingenious theory is maintained by citations of

passages showing numerous similarities. But the fact remains that

Mrs. Hutchinson's _Memoir_ moves forward as from the force of an

original impulse, nobly religious, shrewd, caustic, affectionate, and

naïve. It was, in subject-matter and style, a notable achievement,

and while succeeding in the amplest measure in its purpose of

exalting Colonel Hutchinson's memory, quite as deservedly gives to

Mrs. Hutchinson her own unsought and higher pinnacle of fame.

[Sidenote: Ann Harrison, Lady Fanshawe (1625-1680)]

A few years before her death Lady Fanshawe wrote for her son a

narrative of her life. Of her own education she says: "Now it is

necessary to say something of my mother's education of me, which was

with all the advantages that time afforded, both for working all

sorts of fine works with my needle, and learning French, singing,

(the) lute, the virginals, and dancing; and, notwithstanding I

learned as well as most did, yet I was wild to that degree that

the hours of my beloved recreation took up too much of my time;

for I loved riding in the first place, and running, and all active

pastimes; and in fine I was what we graver people call a hoyting

girl. But to be just to myself I never did mischief to myself or

other people, nor one immodest action or word in my life; but

skipping and activity was my delight. But upon my mother's death

and as an offering to her memory I flung away those little

childishnesses that formerly possessed me and by my father's

command took upon me the charge of his house and family, which I

so ordered by my excellent mother's example as found acceptance in

his sight."[131] At her mother's death Ann was "fifteen years and

three months" old, and the household she took charge of was one "of

plenty and hospitality," her father having a very great estate. In

1644 she married Sir Richard Fanshawe to whom she was passionately

devoted during the twenty-six troubled years of their life together.

She says: "Glory be to God, we never had but one mind throughout our

lives, our souls were wrapped up in each other, our aims and designs

one, and our resentments one. We so studied one the other that we

knew each other's mind by our looks; whatever was real happiness God

gave it me in him."[132]

[Illustration: LADY FANSHAWE

From an engraving in _Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe_, London, 1830]

When Lady Fanshawe wrote her _Memoirs_, her son Richard, her youngest

child, was about ten or twelve years old. Her purpose apparently

was to recount all the facts of the eventful family career. The

narrative, except for an occasional outburst, was uncolored by

emotion. One series of events recorded is the births and deaths of

children. In a period of twenty years Lady Fanshawe had fourteen

children and she records the deaths of nine of them. This would seem

to be suffering and sorrow enough for one life. But we get an added

conception of the family vicissitudes when we discover that no two

of the fourteen children were born in the same house, and no two

of the nine who died were buried in the same churchyard. Madrid,

Lisbon, Paris, Yorkshire, Kent, Hertfordshire, Oxford, were places

of sad memory to the bereaved mother. Yet, except in the cases of

"little Nan" and the first Richard, there is simply a recital of

facts and dates. Lady Fanshawe was but fifty-five when she died,

but she had gone through so much that a re-living of past emotions

as well as a recalling of facts would have made the writing of the

_Memoirs_ an impossibility. As a narrative of the externals of life

the story has singular interest. It abounds in striking contrasts.

Money stringency, mishaps by land and sea, sicknesses, imprisonments,

deaths, mingle strangely with official splendors, royal gifts, rich

furnishings, gorgeous apparel. It is personal in tone, with as little

historical detail as was consistent with carrying the narrative

forward. And for that reason it is of importance to-day as a closer

record of life than historians of the Civil War or of the reign of

Charles II are likely to give.

[Sidenote: Margaret Blagge, Mrs. Godolphin (1652-1678)]

The most interesting personality in this early group is the beautiful

Mrs.[133] Margaret Blagge. She is the supreme example of a developed

religious sense in the court of Charles II. She was not driven

to a life of devotion through a grief-enshrouded heart. Religion

was to her joy and ecstasy. John Evelyn recorded in his Diary a

determination to consecrate the worthy life of Margaret Blagge to

posterity, and when he died in 1706 he left a list of "things I

would write out fair and reform if I had leisure," among them being

the _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_. This manuscript was first published

in 1847. It records a life of singular charm and interest. Yet the

facts of Margaret Blagge's life are meager enough. She was born

in 1652; was early in France with the Countess of Guildford; when

scarcely twelve became maid of honor to the Duchess of York; and then

on the death of the Duchess in 1671 entered into the same service

with Queen Catherine; in 1674, after a nine-year courtship, married

Sidney Godolphin; and in 1678 died in child-birth. It is her inner

life that counts, and that life would have left small record had not

the beautiful young maid of honor chosen the wise and religious John

Evelyn as her friendly counselor in her difficult attempt to maintain

a life of purity and piety in the most dissolute court of Europe.

Evelyn recounts the success of her devout life in these words:

"Arethusa pass'd through all those turbulent waters without soe much

as the least staine or tincture in her Chrystall; with her Piety grew

up her Witt, which was soe sparkling, accompanyed with a Judgment

and Eloquence so exterordinary, a Beauty and Ayre soe charmeing and

lovely, in a word, an Address soe universally takeing, that, after

a few years, the Court never saw or had seen such a Constellation

of perfections amongst all their splendid Circles."[134] But though

she was regarded as "a little miracle" at court, her heart was never

there. To no young woman of the time were the pomp and glory of the

world more alluringly open, but she turned instinctively from all

such joys. She counted her beauty a snare and would never "trick and

dress herself vpp ... to be fine and ador'd." Lovers crowded about

her, but she avoided the vain converse of gallants. Evelyn records

her particular gift for mimicry, recitation, acting, but such talents

she held in abeyance. At sixteen she acted in a court play, probably

Dryden's _Indian Emperor_, with great success, but her growingly

devout spirit came to abhor such recreations, so that when she was

summoned by royal request to act in Crowne's _Calisto_, in 1674, even

though the play was to be given all by ladies, and those the most

illustrious in the land, it was a matter of almost tragic grief to

her that her duty forbade a refusal. "To be herselfe an Actoresse ...

cost her not only great reluctancy but many teares."[135] Though she

was decked with jewels worth £20,000, though she "trode the Stage

with a surprizeing and admirable Aire," and though the whole theater

was extolling her, she felt no transport, but, when an interval came,

"retired into a Corner, reading a book of devotion." Not even the

fact that she played the part of "Diana, the Goddess of Chastity,"

consoled her.

She had one real calling and that was to a religious life. As a

child of seven, in France with the Countess of Guildford, though

often "tempted by that By-Gott proselitesse to goe to Masse and be a

papist,"[136] she yet could maintain her own faith. Because of her

spiritual precocity she was "admitted to the holy Sacrament when she

was hardly Eleaven years of age." Though she disliked Catholicism,

she praised nunneries, and would have chosen a retired life of

devotion and good works, had not her love for Mr. Godolphin and the

urgent advice of Mr. Evelyn restrained her. Nearly all her writing

and reading were along religious lines. Mr. Evelyn says on this point:

She has houres alsoe for reading historye and diversions of

that nature; butt allwayes such as were choice, profitable and

instructive, and she had devoured an incredible deale of that

solid knowledge, and could accompt of it to admiration; soe as

I have even beene astonished to find such an heape of excellent

things and material observations collected and written with her

owne hand, many of which (since her being with God) came to myne;

for, besides a world of admirable prayers and pieces of flagrant

devotion, meditations, and discourses on various subjects (which

she compos'd), there was hardly a booke she read that she had not

common placed, as it were, or taken some remarkable note of; add

this to the Diary of her owne life, actions, resolutions, and

other circumstances, of which I shall give some specimen. She had

contracted the intire historye of the Scriptures, and the most

illustrious examples, sentences, and precepts, digested under

opposite and proper heads; and collected togeather the result of

every Article of the Apostles' Creed, out of Bishop Pearson's

excellent Treatise. I have allready spoken of her Sermon Notes:

butt to give a just Account of her Letters, they are so many and

in so excellent naturall and easy a style, that, as for their

number, one would believe she did nothing else butt write, soe,

for their weight and ingenuity, that she ought to doe nothing

else; and soe easyly did her Invention flow, that I have seen her

write a very long letter without once takeing off her pen (butt

to dip it), and that with exterordinary Judgment.[137]

Her _Diary_ is a delightfully spontaneous document. Here is one

Resolution:

June the 2d.

I will nere play this halfe year butt att 3 penny omber, and then

with one att halves. I will not I doe not vow, but I will not doe

it;--what, loose mony att Cards, yet not give (to) the poore! 'T

is robbing God, misspending tyme, and missimploying my Talent:

three great Sinns. Three pounds would have kept three people from

starveing a month: well, I will not play.[138]

Equally genuine and charming, but in more decorous and solemn

fashion, is the letter in which she consecrated John Evelyn

her friend. Indeed, the whole quaint and formal episode of the

establishment of this remarkable friendship, seems incredibly pure

and lovely when thought of as occurring in the court of which

Grammont's _Memoirs_ is a fair record. Evelyn wrote "a little

master-piece of biography," partly because of his intimate knowledge

of Mrs. Godolphin's spiritual experience and his personal affection

for her, but also, in part, because his imagination was inevitably

stimulated by the vision of a life so crystal clear in an environment

so murky.

The versatility and intellectual energy of the Duchess of Newcastle,

the quick wit and instinct for style in Dorothy Osborne's letters,

the grave and sincere religious feeling coupled with considerable

theological learning on the part of women in influential positions

like Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, and Lady Warwick, the vivid

social and political pictures in the biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson

and Lady Fanshawe, the gay playing with _belles lettres_ in Mary

North's little society, and especially the extraordinary vogue of

Mrs. Philips, are sufficient indications, as we look back over the

period, that a new spirit was awake. It reads now almost as if there

were a general and brilliant opening of literary pursuits to women.

But it is also significant to recall that Mrs. Philips and the

Duchess of Newcastle were the only two women whose ability or learned

tastes were known at the time beyond their own small private circle.

In reality the work was sporadic, secluded, uninfluential. And the

fame even of the Duchess of Newcastle and Mrs. Philips is hardly

established before 1660. It is with the Restoration that the more

varied and public activities begin.

2. THE CENTURY FOLLOWING THE RESTORATION

The period to be here presented in detail is the century following

the Restoration. During this period the work of women spreads out

in new directions. Not only is there a greater variety in the kinds

of writing, but other forms of self-expression are entered upon.

In this more complicated era the strictly chronological method

becomes confusing. It seems more desirable to take up the work under

different species, keeping to chronological development within each

species.

Two kinds of new work by women, acting and painting, demand brief

preliminary notice. Though possibly not within the category of

learned occupations they must yet be recognized as of great

importance in the new life opening before women.

ACTRESSES

Charles II had in France been familiar with the custom of having

women on the stage, and when he issued his two patents to Davenant

and Killigrew he inserted the famous clause, "We do permit and

give leave from this time to come that all women's parts be acted

by women." Mrs. Coleman had taken the part of Ianthe in Davenant's

_Siege of Rhodes_ in 1656, but this was not a regular play. It was

more of the nature of an opera or spectacle. The first woman to

act on the public stage in England was probably the actress who

played Desdemona, December 8, 1660. "J. Jordan" wrote a prologue to

introduce her as "the first woman that came to act on the stage," but

he did not give her name.[139]

The theatrical novelty initiated by this unknown actress was

far-reaching in its effects. Through the ensuing years a constantly

increasing number of women followed the lure of the stage. No

other opportunity open to the ambition of women met with so eager

a response, or could number so many aspirants, or could register

success so unqualified. Yet as we read of these early English

actresses we hardly think of acting as a profession or of them as

artists. They were in no sense students of the parts they played.

Beauty, youth, high spirits, a certain native endowment of wit or

boldness, ability to sing a song or dance a jig, seemed to meet all

the demands of audiences too much delighted with the mere fact of

seeing women on the stage to be over-critical of their technique

or interpretation. Moreover, the runs of plays were short, three

days being about the average, so there was hardly time to work up

finished productions. The stage tenure of most of the actresses was

also brief, hardly more than a prelude to the social and domestic

irregularities of their later lives. Cunningham names Mrs. Betterton

as the only actress of Charles II's day who was not mistress to some

man at court. "Frailties," as they were euphemistically called,

became so normally associated with actresses that Anne Bracegirdle

excited incredulous surprise by her reputed purity of life, and

she was presented by the noblemen of her day with a purse of eight

hundred guineas in recognition of her virtue.[140] The immorality of

these early actresses, girls of no rigorous professional training

and no professional standards, is quite intelligible. In appearing

before the public at all they broke so many conventions, defied the

feminine ideal so completely, that a few steps further in pursuit of

flattery and luxurious living hardly seemed to count. As actresses

they were at once under a moral stigma anyhow, so far as the soberer

part of the community was concerned, and they naturally followed the

path of least resistance and accepted the morality of the court of

the merry monarch, a court where virtue with her "lean and scare-crow

face" seldom intruded. The unfortunate outcome of the turpitude of

the Restoration actresses is that they built up in the public mind a

prejudice against actresses as a class, a prejudice which affected

later even such women as Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs.

Cibber, or Mrs. Siddons. But it must not be forgotten that they

served the cause of women by opening the way to a new and important

profession, a profession in which women have no handicaps. The stage

has been represented by more women of genius, and has given to women

more unstinted recognition in fame and money, than have any of the

other forms of public activity into which women have so far been

admitted, except, possibly, in late years, administrative work in

social service.

It is unnecessary, in this study, to carry the account of the

actresses into further detail, or further down the century. The

history of the part women took on the seventeenth and eighteenth

century stage would make a volume of itself. And since it was many

years before acting was connected with any critical or intellectual

conception of the plays represented, it may suffice here to leave

this portion of the new work of women with the mere announcement of

its inception.

ARTISTS

To acting we may add another new realm, that of painting. The

earliest woman portrait-painter on record in England is Anne

Carlisle, who died about 1680. In 1658 Sir William Sanderson, in his

_Graphice_, commenting on the artists then in England, said, "And in

Oyl Colours we have a vertuous example in that worthy Artist, Mrs.

Carlisle." In the notes left by Vertue to Walpole was a statement

that he had seen in about 1730 the portrait Mrs. Carlisle had painted

of herself. Her chief work was in copying the paintings of Italian

masters, or, according to a fashion of the times, reproducing them in

miniature. It is said that Charles I admired her work so warmly that

he presented to her and Van Dyck ultramarine to the value of five

hundred pounds.[141]

Of more distinguished ability was Mary Beale (1637-1697),[142] who

is said to have studied either with Sir Peter Lely or Robert Walker.

At least she watched Lely paint and thereby gained some of his

technique. She worked in oils, water-colors, and crayons. Through

Sir Peter Lely she was given access to some of the best works of Van

Dyck and in copying these gained a training somewhat similar to that

given most artists by sojourns in Italy or Holland. There are in the

English National Portrait Gallery portraits by her of Charles II and

Abraham Cowley. At Knole is her portrait of John Milton; at Woburn

Abbey, one of the Duke of Monmouth; Archbishop Tillotson, Henry, Duke

of Norfolk, Dr. Sydenham, Dr. Croone, Bishop Wilkins, are among those

who sat to her. No other English portrait-painter of the period had

so distinguished a clientèle or is represented by so many canvases

in English galleries. Her success may be measured, in part, by her

financial returns. In a pocket-book kept by her husband in 1672 is

this entry: "Received this year, for pictures done by my dearest

heart, 202_l._ 5_s._" The receipts for 1674 were 216_l._ 5_s._; and

for 1677, 429_l._ She was still painting important portraits in

1691, for we find in the _Term Catalogue_ for Michaelmas of that

year the announcement of "The true Effigies of his Grace, John, Lord

Archbishop of Canterbury. Engraven by Rob. White on a large sheet of

Paper, from the Original lately painted by Mrs. Mary Beale."

According to the manuscript of Mr. Oldys, Mrs. Beale was also

celebrated for her poetry. He styles her, "that masculine poet, as

well as Painter, the incomparable Mrs. Beale." Dr. Woodford included

in his translations of the Psalms several versions by Mrs. Beale whom

he eulogizes as "an absolutely compleat Gentlewoman," and to whom he

wrote several poems under the name "Beliza."[143]

Anne Killigrew (1660-1685), a maid of honor to Mary of Modena, died

at twenty-five, but she had already attained considerable repute

as a portrait painter. There is a tradition that she studied with

Sir Peter Lely. If so she must have taken these lessons before she

was twenty, for Lely left England in 1680. Dryden says that her

portrait of James II expressed "not only his outward part, but

drew forth the very image of his heart," and that she was equally

successful in depicting the bright beauty and peerless majesty of

Mary of Modena. Her portrait of herself was engraved by Becket and

prefaces the volume of her poems issued the year after her death.

Other paintings were religious in subject, as in her portrayal of

incidents in the life of John the Baptist; or mythological, as in her

representation of Diana's nymphs. Of far more possible significance

is her landscape work. During 1660-1685 Robert Streater is the only

English landscape-painter of whom we have record. Charles II brought

over a number of Italian and Flemish artists who painted English

landscapes in the style of Ruysdael, Poussin, or Salvator Rosa, and

their work would be the pictures chiefly known at court. It is not

improbable that Miss Killigrew's landscapes were copies or imitations

of these foreign artists. Dryden says she painted ruins of Greece and

Rome, and forest glades in which were nymphs and shaggy satyrs. Such

pictures must have been copies. But Dryden also enumerates sylvan

scenes of herds and flocks; clear, shallow little brooks; deep rivers

reflecting as in a mirror the trees on their banks. Such pictures

are truly English in tone and whatever their intrinsic value such a

choice of subjects would put her with Robert Streater at the very

inception of English landscape art. And though the scanty records

concerning her painting do not substantiate Dryden's description

of her landscapes, it could hardly be supposed that he would have

been so explicit in a poem written for the family and immediately

after her death had there not been some pictures at least moderately

correspondent to his lines.[144]

Other seventeenth-century names of less importance show an aspiration

in art somewhat above that countenanced by the boarding-schools.

Mrs. Pepys and Miss Margaret Pen may serve to indicate the sort

of work being done in amateurish fashion in various homes. Both

ladies were "learning to limn" with one Mr. Browne. Pepys was

tremendously interested in his wife's progress. In the midst of

terrifying accounts of the plague and the fire there come in 1665

and 1666 frequent notes on her pictures. Once after a week's absence

on exhausting work he records, "To my wife, and having viewed her

last piece of drawing since I saw her which is seven or eight days,

which pleases me beyond anything in the world, to bed with great

content, but weary." The next day, on being importuned to buy her a

pearl necklace, he promises it, but only "if she pleases me in her

painting." On one occasion he called on Lady Pen and says of the

visit, "Talking with Mrs. Pegg Pen, and looking at her pictures,

and commended them; but, Lord! so far short of my wife's as no

comparison." A month later is the note, "I took my Lady Pen home,

and her daughter Pegg and, after dinner I made my wife show them

her pictures, which did mad Pegg Pen, who learnes of the same man."

In September, 1665, Pepys had just seen his wife's picture of our

Saviour and thought it so pretty that he boasted of it to Evelyn,

at which Evelyn paid him in kind by telling him that "the beautiful

Mrs. Middleton is rare (in painting) and his own wife do brave

things."[145]

[Illustration: MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW

From a painting by herself engraved by T. Chambars]

The Evelyn family seems to have been instinctively artistic. In

Mr. Thoresby's account of a visit to Evelyn, he said he was shown

"many drawings and paintings of his own and his lady's doing; one

especially of enamel was surprisingly fine, and this ingenious lady

told me how she wrought it." Both Mr. Evelyn and his son Draper were

proud of Mary's work in painting. Sixteen years after her death Mr.

Thoresby wrote: "He afterwards carried me in his coach to his son

Draper's at the Temple, and showed me many curious pieces of his

ingenious daughter's performances, both very small in miniature,

and as large as the life in oil colours, equal it is thought to the

greatest masters of the age. He gave me a specimen of some prospects

he took in Italy, and etched upon the copper by his own hand."

At the end of the century is Sarah Curtis (d. 1743) who was married

in 1701 to Bishop Hoadly. Before her marriage she had been a pupil

of Mary Beale, and she is now represented in the National Portrait

Gallery by three canvases, portraits of Burnet, Winston, and Hoadly.

Mrs. Rowe's paintings were likewise highly prized by discriminating

friends. Of greater interest is Mrs. Delany (1700-1788). She copied

at least seventy-two pictures by old masters and painted many

portraits. Her work is not represented in public galleries, but many

of her pictures are still preserved in private collections. Susan

Penelope Gibson was a successful miniature painter. Elizabeth Creed

was also an artist of at least local repute. She did sacred subjects

as altar-pieces for neighboring churches and she painted numerous

portraits. She also gave free lessons to the girls living near her.

Her daughter Elizabeth, who inherited her artistic tastes, is said to

have ornamented a hall in a Tudor mansion near Oundle.

Short and insignificant as this list appears, it yet assumes real

importance when we realize not only that these were the earliest

English women to enter this field, but that the list shows up

surprisingly well when compared with a similar list of the native

English painters among the men of the period. Charles I was a great

lover of art and he summoned many artists, some of the first rank, to

England, and he bought pictures with a far-sighted munificence, and

Charles II was ambitious of following along the same distinguished

path. But a list of the pictures painted in England before 1700 shows

hardly an English name. Hence the presence of any successful women

artists is doubly significant.

The amateurish quality of the painting may be in part explained by

the fact that in but one case, that of Mary Beale, was there any

impetus or training such as are necessarily associated with work

adopted as a profession. The painting was an accomplishment, a

pleasant occupation for leisure hours, a resource, rather than a life

purpose ardently pursued. The only external reward for the many hours

at the easel was the praise of a small circle of friends. The real

incentive was an inner demand for some form of self-expression, and

the mere number of pictures painted, quite apart from the question

of their excellence, is indicative of the eagerness with which women

welcomed any sort of opportunity for the free play of their own

individuality.

AUTHORS

It was not, however, acting or painting that occupied most of the

women whose natures craved something out of the ordinary routine.

Writing was a much more natural and feasible resource. Acting

implied a public, and even painting, especially portrait-painting,

was likely to be semi-public. But writing could be carried on in

retirement and the results submitted only to the partial criticism

of a home or social circle. It did not bring women before a carping

public or necessarily into competition with men, for even if plays

were produced and books published, the name of the writer could be

veiled, as it usually was, under a decent anonymity. Hence women who

respected the obvious conventions could yet indulge themselves in

authorship.

WRITERS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

When women entered upon writing as a career, it might be thought that

they would at first take up subjects familiar to them, but such was

not the case. For instance, most of the books for children, before

the venture of the Newberys about the middle of the eighteenth

century, were by men.[146] It was James Janeway whose maxim, "A child

is never too little to go to Hell," resulted in works so popular as

_A Looking Glass for Children_ and _A Token for Children_ (1676);

John Bunyan's _A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rimes for

Children; being Divine Poems on the Creed, Commonwealth and Several

other Subjects_ (1690); Mr. Mason's _A Little Catechism with little

Verses and little sayings, for little children_ (1693). _The Divine

and Moral Songs for Children_, by Isaac Watts in 1720, carried on the

religious instruction. There were also various accounts of the "Life

and Saintly Death" of children of tender years, which were published

with the avowed purpose of influencing other children of like tender

years, but none of these are by women. The first women I have come

upon who wrote professedly for children are Sarah Fielding and Mrs.

Collyer in 1749.[147]

In a somewhat less degree the same condition exists in relation

to medicine, especially in the realms most definitely in the hands

of women. Mrs. Pilkington tells us that her father was the first

man midwife in England, but nearly all the books on midwifery were

written by men. Two women, however, appear in print, in a discussion

of their professional work. Mrs. Jane Sharp's book is entitled _The

Midwives' Book, or the whole Art of midwifery discovered, directing

Child-bearing Women how to behave themselves in their Conception,

Breeding, Bearing, and Nursing, of Children. In Six Books. By Mrs.

Jane Sharp, Practitioner in the Art of Midwifery above thirty

years_.[148]

Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, a second writer on midwifery, is known

perhaps chiefly because she was supposed to have some connection

with the Meal Tub Plot. After her acquittal from treason charges she

wrote a pamphlet called _Malice Defeated_, in which she courageously

expressed her adherence to an unpopular cause in the words, "I do not

yet so much fear the smell of Newgate as to be frighted for telling

the truth; nor is death so great a terror to me, but that I am still

ready to seal the same with my blood."[149] She must have been a

woman of substance as well as courage, for she was fined a thousand

pounds because of certain passages in this pamphlet. She was also

condemned to stand in the pillory three times, a punishment which,

according to Lady Russell, she bore with intrepidity and nonchalance,

protecting her head from missiles by means of a battledore which she

held up with one hand, while with the other she gathered up and put

into her pocket all the stones that fell within her reach.

In her profession of midwifery Mrs. Cellier was of high repute, but

her interests were not circumscribed by her own practice. One of

her schemes was the establishment of a "Colledg of Midwives" where

the best possible training should be given. Though her pamphlet,

entitled _A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital and raising

a revenue of 5000 l or 6000 l a year by and for the Maintenance of a

Corporation of Skilful Midwives_, did not result in the establishment

of her proposed college, the idea and the formulation of the plan do

credit to her foresight and intelligence, and sound quite in line

with modern forms of woman's civic enterprise.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could show a long list

of interesting and elaborately worked-out books on housewifery in

general and cooking in particular, but it seldom happens that one

of these books is by a woman. It is, to be sure, not impossible

that more of the material was furnished by women than is apparent

on the surface. Very many of the books on housekeeping matters were

anonymous and were probably mere publishers' compilations from

unacknowledged sources, and in such cases the actual material may

have come from various housewives. But during the century I have

come upon but three women who published under their own names the

results of their experiences as cooks. The earliest of these was Mrs.

Hannah Woolley. She was born about 1623. Her mother and elder sisters

are said to have been "very well skilled in physick and chirurgery"

and they taught her in her youth. She was twice married, the first

time to a schoolmaster named Woolley, and then to a Mr. Francis

Challinor. She is known usually as Mrs. Woolley. One of her books,

_The Queen-like Closet, or A rich Cabinet stored with all manner of

rare Receipts for preserving, Candying, and Cookery. Very pleasant

and beneficial to all ingenuous persons of the Female Sex_, reached

its eleventh edition by 1696. Mrs. Woolley had been governess in two

noble families and had acquired definite ideas as to polite behavior.

This knowledge also she committed to the printed page. On manners,

but especially on household management, she wrote as an authority and

received due recognition.

Another book, by a woman whose initials I have not been able to

expand into a name, is the following: _The Cook's New Years Gift,

Cookery refined, or The Lady, Gentlewoman and Servant-maid's

Companion: containing the Art of dressing all sorts of Flesh, Fish,

and Fowl, various ways, after the newest Mode; with their proper

seasonings, sauces, Garnishes, serving up and carving, etc. By Mrs.

A. M. a long practiser of this curious Art._ (_Term Catalogues_,

Mich. 1697. Mich. 1700.)

The work of Mrs. Woolley in the seventeenth century found its most

worthy counterpart in the eighteenth century in Hannah Glasse's _The

Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds any Thing of

the kind ever yet Published.... By a Lady. London. Printed for the

Author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn's, a China-Shop, the Corner of Fleet

Ditch, 1747._ The book was issued with about two hundred subscribers.

A fourth edition in octavo came out in 1751, a ninth edition in 1759,

and many later editions. In her Preface Mrs. Glasse said, "If I have

not wrote in the high polite Stile I hope I shall be forgiven, for

my Intention is to instruct the lower Sort, therefore treat them in

their own Way. For Example: when I bid them lard a Fowl, if I should

bid them lard with large Lardoons, they would not know what I want:

But when I say they must lard with small Pieces of Bacon, they know

what I mean." The new element in her book was this attempt to write

out receipts that were simple enough to come into general use.

WRITERS ON RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

The _Term Catalogues_ for 1670-1713 show how great was the

preponderance during those years of books on "Divinity." That women

should share in this prevailing interest is but natural, for religion

came within the accepted canon of the truly feminine. And there are

evidences of an even greater amount of devotional writing by women

than might be expected. The period 1650 to 1750, and especially the

first half of that period, could show a long list of women noted for

lives of piety and good works.[150] The loose living characteristic

of the court apparently had its reaction towards exceptional

spiritual rigor on the part of many ladies of rank. And of these

devout ladies no small number found in the composition of religious

verse or prose the intellectual and emotional outlet denied them in

other ways. Almost none of this writing was meant for a public. The

reams of meditations, prayers, and reflections left in manuscript

were merely a private resource, and often kept secret even from the

author's family. Such writings were in their nature fugitive, and it

would only now and then happen that some relative or friend would

collect and order the papers and see them through the press. We

accordingly get scattered hints through funeral sermons and casual

notices of an amount of devotional writing greatly in excess of that

published. But to tabulate even all the published material would be

wearisome and to no good end. A few illustrative examples showing the

chief characteristics may suffice.

[Sidenote: Lady Elizabeth Brooke (1601-1683)]

One of the best examples of the persistent and prodigious industry

shown by some of these ladies is the work of Lady Elizabeth Brooke.

She began at thirty to make notes on sermons, to copy extracts from

commentaries, and occasionally to write out some personal opinions,

and she kept at this sedative occupation till her death fifty-two

years later. It is painful to reflect on such a mass of undigested

material, but the significant fact remains that she preferred such

reading and writing to the ordinary interests of her sex. Some of her

"Observations and Rules for Practice" were published as an appendix

to the sermon preached at her funeral. Selections from her writings

were published as late as 1828 in _The Lady's Monitor_.

[Sidenote: Anne Murray, Lady Halkett (1622-1699)]

Anne Murray, Lady Halkett, was even more industrious. Her father,

who was tutor of Charles I and Provost of Eton, died when she was a

child, but her mother, who was governess to the Princess Elizabeth,

gave her "a complete education." Of her early life she says: "My

mother spared no expense in educating all her children in the most

suitable way to improve them ... and paid masters for teaching

my sister and mee to write, speak French, play on the lute and

virginalls, and dance, and kept a gentlewoman to teach us all kinds

of needlework, which shows I was not brought up in an idle life."

After several complicated and long drawn-out love affairs--fully

described in her _Autobiography_--Anne married Sir James Halkett

in 1656. As the years passed her interests finally centered on

two subjects, divinity and medicine. In "physick and surgery" she

gained great repute. She was consulted in difficult cases from the

remotest parts of the kingdom and her fame spread even to Holland.

It was quaintly said of her: "She was ever employed either in doing

or reaping good: in the summer season she vyed with the bee or ant,

in gathering herbs, flowers, worms, snails, etc., for the still or

limbeck, for the mortar or boyling pan, etc., and was ordinarily

then in a dress fitted for her still-house; making preparations of

extracted waters, spirits, ointments, conserves, salves, powders,

etc., which she ministered every Wednesday to a multitude of poor

infirm persons, besides what she dayly sent abroad to persons of all

ranks who consulted her in their maladies."[151] But it was religious

themes only that employed her pen. The catalogue of her writings

includes twenty-one volumes, or a total of about eight thousand pages

of manuscript, some in quarto, some in folio size, and all bound.

Some of these books were printed at Edinburgh in 1701. The title

of one book of three hundred and fifteen pages will indicate the

general character of her writing: _Select Meditations and Prayers

upon the First Week, with Observations on each Days Creation, and

Considerations on the Seven Capital Vices to be opposed, and their

opposite Virtues to be studied and practised_.

_Vices to be subdued_ _Virtues to be learned_

_Pride_ Sunday _Humility_

_Covetousness_ Monday _Contentation_

_Lust_ Tuesday _Chastity_

_Envy_ Wednesday _Charity_

_Gluttony_ Thursday _Temperance_

_Anger_ Friday _Patience_

_Sloth_ Saturday _Diligence_

All but nine of these books were written during Lady Halkett's

twenty-eight years of widowhood when she had much leisure, but under

any circumstances the task was a great one, and becomes the more

amazing when we reflect upon it as really only a private recreation.

To write so much with no urgency of fame or money shows some very

strong inner demand for expression and a very facile pen.

[Sidenote: "Legacies"]

Another type of religious book goes back for its inspiration to

Elizabeth Jocelyn's famous _Legacie_. One of Lady Halkett's books

was _The Mother's Will to an Unborn Child_, written in 1656 before

the birth of her daughter Elizabeth. Books of advice from parents to

children to be read after the death of the parents were not uncommon.

Elizabeth Sadler (1623-1690), the wife of the Reverend Anthony

Walker, was an exceedingly devout woman whose literary instinct and

a prevision of death led her to write a large book in octavo for the

instruction of her two daughters. Two other books will sufficiently

illustrate the type: _The Experiences of God's gracious dealing with

Mrs. Elizabeth White, late wife of Mr. Tho. White of Caldecot in the

County of Bucks; as they were written under her own hand, and found

in her Closet after her decease: she dying in child-bed, December

5th, 1669_;[152] _The Legacie of a Dying Mother to her mourning

children; being the Experiences of Mistress Susanna Bell, who died

March 13, 1672. With an Epistle Dedicatory by Thomas Brookes,

Minister of the Gospel_.

[Sidenote: Rachel Wriothesley, Lady Russell (1636-1723)]

Lady Russell is an example of a woman who definitely set out to be

religious, and whose writings contain an analysis of her methods.

The circumstances of her life give everything pertaining to her a

particular interest. The execution of Lord Russell for treason in

1683 left her broken by the shock. She had, though without avail,

set in motion every possible agency to avert his fate, and she had

devoted herself absolutely to him till his tragic death. Then,

after a period of the deepest despondency, she entered again upon

the duties that lay before her. She conducted the education and

arranged the marriages of her three children. She showed herself an

excellent business woman in the management of her estate. And she

steadily interested herself in securing benefices and other offices

for persons of whom her husband would have approved. Her _Letters_

as published contain a few during the first years of her happy

married life; many written concerning the "judicial murder" of Lord

Russell; and very many concerning family affairs and the candidates

for whom she was seeking favor. As letters they are uninteresting.

The subject-matter is generally too local and temporary to hold the

attention of the modern reader, and the style is dry and hard. Even

the records of her bitter grief and of her struggle to attain a mood

of Christian resignation are less affecting than might be expected.

A kind of apathy seemed to settle down over her spirit. She was too

deeply hurt to find in words any balm for her sorrows. She answered

condolences when she must, but briefly, and with no lightening of the

gloom that encompassed her. Of all her letters the longest and most

valuable as a personal revelation is one written to her children July

21, 1691, "a day of sad remembrances," for it was the anniversary

of her husband's execution eight years before. In 1691, Rachel, the

oldest child, was twenty years old, and Wriothesley, the youngest,

was eleven. The five or six pages in which Lady Russell recounts,

probably especially for the benefit of Rachel, her method of personal

spiritual watch-care, has great value as a religious document,

for she was not alone in her way of seeking salvation, in her

heart-searchings, in her dependence on the external means of grace,

in her sedulous striving after perfection. It was the devout habit of

devout people of the time, but perhaps carried to a meticulous excess

by Lady Russell. She says that she was always provided with a little

piece of paper on which she wrote her faults and temptations as they

occurred during the day. At night a careful review of this record

contributed to a better watch and ward.

And then [she continued], upon Friday morning when I have prayed

my usual daily prayers (which have bin most constantly for

many years those in taler's holy living) before I pray that of

intercession pa: 35. I stop ... and look upon my dayly notes for

that weeke, I recollect my fautes; consider what care I have

taken to correct or forsake them--but alas when we do best we

shall find enof to be humbled for--therefore I chuse some prayer

of confesion most times that in taler's holy living page 302.

When I have done it, I make my resolutions to do better for ye

time to come, and especialy to watch myselfe where i ame most

apt to fal, naming in what I ame so--then I pray some prayer

for grace to keep these promises of better obedience--as in

pa: 31--for grace to spend our time wel, on page 271, for the

grace of faith, hope & charity. Then I pray the dayly prayer of

intercession that I left of at in pa:35--after this I praise

God ... for all the blessings vouchsafed to me both spiritual &

temporal--as that I was born of Christian parents, not suffered

to be strangled in the womb, that I was baptized, and sence,

educated in Christian Religion. I blesse thee for al checks of

Conscience I have had especially those I have profited by....

And then I goe on, I bless thee for our creation, preservation

&c.--close with ye lords prayer.

After this service she went over her faults of the week, making a

summary of them. A similar abridgment for the month was entered in

a book kept for that purpose, the incriminating little pieces of

paper were torn up, and a new record entered upon. She found that a

frequent re-reading of the book "saved much time in looking back"

and contributed to humility. Evidently Lady Russell was as orderly

in religion as she was in her business affairs. She finds her

definite tabulations "hugely more satisfying to her mind, than a more

carelesse loose way of living is, and no settled method." The letter

closes with the admonition, "Be devout & reguler in your dutys

to God--heaven wil be secure, and pleasures innocent."[153] Lady

Russell's letters reveal a devout, difficult, over-burdened life, so

much concerned with the means of grace as never to have any happy

consciousness of grace itself.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth Blake, Mrs. Burnet (1661-1712)]

Elizabeth Burnet (1661-1712), daughter of Sir Richard Blake, married

at seventeen into a Catholic family. Her husband, Robert Berkeley,

was a ward of Bishop Fell, through whom the marriage was brought

about. The firmness and tact necessary to maintain her own views as a

Protestant and hold her husband to that faith, and yet not antagonize

the family, could hardly be expected of so young a girl. But Bishop

Fell had judged her character well and she met all the demands of so

delicate a situation. She took advantage of many leisure hours in

the country to investigate fully the questions at issue between the

Catholics and the Protestants. She did not know the learned tongues,

but she studied the Scriptures, read commentaries, and conversed

with clergymen. When she became a widow in 1693, at thirty-two, she

employed her time in two characteristic ways. In the administration

of her husband's charitable schemes she found congenial activity.

And she gave way to her natural instinct for writing. In 1700 she

became the wife of Bishop Burnet. His approval of her literary work

and his request that it be published led to the production of her

_Method of Devotion_. It was so popular that she revised and enlarged

it and brought out a second edition. And it was republished in 1713

after her death. The book contained "Rules for holy and devout

Living," "Prayers on Several Occasions," "Advices and Devotions on

the Holy Sacrament." Mrs. Trotter said of her in 1701, "She has an

extraordinary clear and solid judgment, the truest goodness and

prudence, and the most charming affability in her behaviour; in

short, I have met with no such perfection in any of my sex."

[Sidenote: Elizabeth Bury (1644-1720)]