PASSING on from the classes of feminine friendships now described, we
come to individual instances of this affection in pairs of women. The
young Beatrice Portinari, and Giovanna, that chosen companion of
hers, who, for the singular freshness of her beauty, was called by
the Florentines, Primavera, the Spring, are immortalized as a pair of
friends by the divine touch of Dante, in his "Vita Nuova," where he
mentions them under the names of Monna Vanna and Monna Bice. Very
likely they were schoolgirls together, who did not suffer the
fondness engendered in their shared studies and painted hopes and
opening dreams of life to cease with the close, of that enchanted
era.
Lady Dorothea Sydney and Lady Sophia Murray were a pair of friends
whom it must have been delightful to contemplate, and is still, in a
paler way, delightful to recall by literary reminiscence. They were
the Sacharissa and Amoret of Waller. He dedicates a graceful poem to
their friendship. These lines Occur in it:
Not the silver doves that fly
Yoked to Cytherea's car;
Not the wings that lift so high,
And convey her son so far,
Are so lovely, sweet, and fair,
Or do more ennoble love,
Are so choicely matched a pair,
Or with more consent do move.
Regina Collier and Katherine Phillips were, for a long period, a
happy pair of friends. Friendship held so large a place in the life
and writings of the latter lady that a brief sketch of her
experience, and of its expression, will be interesting. The Mrs.
Katherine Phillips, to whom Jeremy Taylor dedicated his celebrated
discourse on the "Offices and Measures of Friendship," enjoyed a
great reputation among her contemporaries, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, and in the succeeding generation, as a woman of
accomplishments and genius. Now that she is almost forgotten, it
surprises one to read the extravagant published compliments lavished
on her, in her life-time, by so many distinguished persons. The most
remarkable peculiarity, alike of her character and of her literary
productions, is the extraordinary prominence in them of the sentiment
of friendship. She seems nearly all her life to have been enamored of
this experience. Her affectionate spirit drew people to her by its
strong charms, and still breathes vividly in her neglected pages. The
overcharged and somewhat fantastic ideal of friendship which she
unweariedly strove to realize in her relations with various persons,
was so sincere and earnest in heart, that no one, who appreciates it,
can suffer himself to ridicule, though he may smile at, its apparent
affectation on the surface. Its deep ear nestness is proved in her
life and character, as set forth by her associates: its superficial
fancifullness appears in the sentimental names she was pleased to
give herself and her friends. She was Orinda: her friends were
Palmon, Poliarchus, Philaster, Silvander, Polycrite, Valeria,
Lucasia, Rosania. Friendship is prominently treated in nearly every
thing that she wrote. Her friendships with men, Jeremy Taylor,
Francis Finch, Sir Charles Cotterel, and others, were as happy and
unbroken as they were fervent and pure. Her long correspondence with
Cotterel was published under the title, "Letters from Orinda to
Poliarchus." When Finch had written his treatise on friendship, Mrs.
Phillips addressed to him a poem, inscribed, "To the Noble Palmon, on
his Incomparable Discourse of Friendship:"
Temples and statues time will eat away;
And tombs, like their inhabitants, decay:
But here Palm non lives, and so he must
When marbles crumble to forgotten dust.
There is also in her volume of poems, another one addressed to "Mr.
Francis Finch, the Excellent Palmmon:"
'Twas he that rescued gasping friendship,
when The bell tolled for her funeral with men:
'Twas he that made friends more than lovers burn,
And then made love to sacred friendship turn.
Mrs. Phillips was less fortunate in the sequels to her friendships
with persons of her own sex; though, while they lasted, they were,
at least on her side, moreardent and entire. Her principal female
friends were Regina Collier, whom she named Rosania, and Mrs. Anne
Owen, designated, in all their communications, as Lucasia. Many of
her poems were written to these two idolized friends. She
concludes a most glowing celebration of her union with the former,
thus:
A dew shall dwell upon our tomb,
Of such a quality
That fighting armies, thither come,
Shall reconciled be.
We'll ask no epitaph, but say,
ORINDA and ROSANIA.
The exaggerated pitch of sentiment in Orinda, the sensitive and
absorbing demands of her affection, and, perhaps, some lightness, or
even falsity, on the part of Rosania, led to a rupture. The indignant
and unhappy Orinda expressed her sorrows in several heartfelt poems,
one of which bears the superscription, "To the Queen of Inconstancy,
Regina Collier:"
Unworthy, since thou hast decreed
Thy love and honor both shall bleed,
My friendship could not choose to die
In better time or company.
Another is entitled, "On Rosania's Apostacy and Lucasia's
Friendship." For the injured Orinda tried to find solace for the loss
of an old, in the arms of a new, friend; or, rather, by transferring
to one, in intensified unity, the love and attention she had before
divided between two. She writes "To my Lucasia, in Defence of
Declared Friendship,"
I did not live until this time Crowned my felicity,
When I could say, without a crime,
I am not thine but thee.