[Illustration]
So little is known of the early life of Spenser, that our notice of his
haunts will be confined almost wholly to his castle of Kilcolman. He is
said to be descended from the ancient family of Spenser; indeed, he says
it himself:
"At length they all to mery London came;
To mery London, my most kyndly nurse,
That to me gave this life's first native sourse,
Though from another place I toke my name,
An house of ancient fame."
_Prothalamion._
This was the house of Althorpe, and now also of Marlborough; but however
this may be, his parentage was obscure enough. He is said by Fenton to
have been born in East Smithfield, near the Tower of London, in 1553;
but the parish registers of that time are wanting, and we have no clew
to trace more accurately the locality. He was admitted as sizer, the
lowest order of students, at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in the year 1569;
he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in January, 1572-3, and that of
Master of Arts in June, 1576, in which year he was an unsuccessful
candidate for a fellowship, according to some of his biographers, though
others deny this. On quitting the University, he went to reside with his
relations in the north of England, but how he was supported does not
appear. These relations, it would appear probable, from the
communication of a Mr. F. C. Spenser, in the Gentleman's Magazine of
August, 1842, quoted by Craik, in his Spenser and his Poetry, were the
Spensers, or Le Spensers, of Huntwood, near Burnley, Lancashire, part of
which lay united on a little property, still called Spenser's, at the
foot of Pendle Hill. This derives confirmation from the fact of Spenser
having a son called Lawrence, and of the names of Edmund and Lawrence
abounding in the registries of this Lancashire family, as well as of
that family only spelling the name with an "s." Here he fell in love
with a lady, whom he celebrates under the name of Rosalind, and who
deserted him; this is said to be the cause of his writing the Shepherd's
Calendar, in which he complains of this faithless mistress. Others,
again, think she was a maiden of Kent, a Rose Lynde, the Lyndes being an
old family in that county, where he went on his acquaintance with Sir
Philip Sidney while in the south; but this can not at all agree with the
letter of his friend, Gabriel Harvey, to him. To Sir Philip he was
introduced by this old college friend, Gabriel Harvey, and dedicated to
him the Shepherd's Calendar. If it be true that the dedication was the
cause of introduction, this must have been solicited and decided upon
while the poem was only in progress; for it appears pretty clearly that
he wrote part of the Calendar at Penshurst; especially the eleventh
eclogue, in which he laments the death of a "maiden of great blood,"
supposed to have been a daughter of the Earl of Leicester. In the tenth
eclogue he lauds the Earl of Leicester as "the worthy whom the queen
loves best;" so that he was now got into the very high-road to
preferment, and does not appear to have been backward to walk diligently
in it. Leicester and Sidney, near kinsmen as they were, were just the
two men of the whole kingdom to push the fortunes of a poet. With this
early and regular introduction to these two powerful men (powerful in
politics and literature, and in favor with the queen), it is difficult
to weave in a belief of the fine story of Spenser's pushing his own way
with the ninth canto of the first book of the Faërie Queene. It is a
pity this should not be true, yet how can it? The story goes thus: One
morning Spenser, determined to try his fortune with Sir Philip Sidney,
the courtier most celebrated of the time for his intellectual
accomplishments, and for his generous disposition, went to Leicester
House, an entire stranger, carrying with him this canto of his great
poem, in which is contained the fine allegory of Despair. He obtained
admission to Sidney, and presented his MS. for his approbation: that
great lover and judge of poetry had not read far before he was so much
struck with the beauty of a stanza, that he ordered fifty pounds to be
given to the author; proceeding to the next stanza, he raised his gift
to a hundred, which sum he doubled on reading a third, and commanded his
steward to pay instantly, lest he should be induced, by a further delay,
to give away his whole estate. Pity so fine a story was not true! some
imaginative person must have pleased himself with fancying how such a
thing might have been.
However, Spenser was now a regular inmate of Leicester House, and at
Penshurst; so that that latter sweet place has the honor of being as
well the haunt of our great romantic poet as of the high-hearted Sidney.
By Leicester and Sidney Spenser was introduced to Queen Elizabeth, who,
it is said, on his presenting some poems to her, conferred on him a
gratuity of a hundred pounds. If this be true, it is so unlike
Elizabeth's parsimony that we must set it down as a wonder. Yet it is to
this fact that Lord Burleigh's dislike to the _rhymer_, as he called
Spenser, is attributed. He deemed the grant so extravagant as to neglect
its payment till he received a repetition of the order from his
mistress, with a reproof for his delay. There were, there is no doubt,
plenty of causes for Burleigh's dislike of Spenser. In the first place,
he had not a spark of poetry in his constitution. To him it was sheer
nonsense, idle and childish nonsense. But, besides this, Spenser was
brought forward by the very party of whom Burleigh was most
jealous--Leicester. He appeared at court as the particular friend of
Leicester and Sidney; and the incautious poet is said to have aggravated
the dislike of Burleigh by some satirical rhymes, which were assiduously
carried to the clever but cold-blooded minister. There has not been
wanting active vindication of Burleigh, and the discovery of a patent
granting him a pension of fifty pounds a year, dated 1590-1, which he
enjoyed till his death in 1598-9, has been said to be sufficient
refutation of all that has been alleged against Burleigh in Spenser's
case. But how does this at all remove the statements of Burleigh's
dislike of Spenser and reluctance to his promotion? Not in the least. It
merely shows that Spenser had friends, and an interest in the queen's
good-will, powerful enough to overrule the minister's opposition. It
may, and most likely is, just as true, that on the grant of this pension
Burleigh declared "the pension was a good example, too great to be given
to a ballad-maker;" and that when the queen ordered him a hundred
pounds, he replied, "What! all this for a song?" These facts are so
entirely in keeping with Burleigh's character that we can by no means
doubt them. Indeed, Spenser himself has put the truth past a doubt. What
means,
"To have thy prince's grace, yet want his peeres'?"
What those lines at the close of the sixth book of the Faërie Queene?
"Ne may this homely verse, of many meanest,
Hope to escape his venomous despite,
More than my _former writs_, all were they clearest,
From blamefull blot, and free from all that wite
With which some wicked tongues did it backbite,
And bring into a mighty peere's displeasure
That never so deserved to indite."
Again, in the fourth book of the Ruines of Time, written subsequently to
the first edition of the Faërie Queene:
"The rugged foremost that with grave foresight
Wields kingdom's causes, and affairs of state,
My looser verses, I wote, doth sharply wite
For praising love," &c.
Thus, whether Spenser, as alleged or not, gave cause of offense by his
satire, one thing is clear, that Burleigh was his bitter and
unchangeable enemy. That Spenser had suffered at court is fully shown in
his oft-cited verses in his "Mother Hubbard's Tale," the most lively
picture of court attendance and its consequent chagrins that ever was
painted.
"Full little knowest thou that hast not tryd,
What hell it is in suing long to byde;
To lose good days that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy prince's grace, yet want his peers';
To have thy asking, yet wait many years;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy bread with comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
Spenser's sole reliance was on Leicester, Sidney, and Raleigh, with whom
he became soon acquainted. He is said to have been employed by the Earl
of Leicester on a mission to France in 1579; and though this has been
questioned, yet his own assertion, in a letter to Gabriel Harvey,
confirms it. In 1580 he accompanied Arthur, lord Grey of Wilton, who
went as lord-lieutenant to Ireland, as his private secretary. In this
post he is said to have displayed great talents for business. He wrote a
"Discourse on the State of Ireland," containing many decided plans for
the improvement of that country.
In 1581, the first year of his being in Ireland, he was also made clerk
to the Irish Court of Chancery, and Mr. Craik has pointed out the fact
given in Collins's Peerage, in the account of the Earls of Portsmouth,
that in this same year, too, he received from the queen a grant of a
lease of the Abbey of Iniscorthy, or Enniscorthy, and the attached
castle and manor, in the county of Wexford, at an annual rent of £300,
6_s._, 8_d._; and that he conveyed this property, on the 9th of December
of the same year, to Richard Synot. This leasehold, by another sale,
came into the hands of the family of the Earls of Portsmouth, and is
rated by G. Wakefield, in his "Account of Ireland," at £8000 a year.
Lord Grey was recalled in 1582, and Spenser returned with him. But his
fate was bound up with Ireland. After hanging about court for four
years, during which time there can be little doubt that he experienced
much of the bitterness expressed in the lines just quoted, he obtained,
through the interest of his friends, Lords Grey and Leicester, and Sir
Philip Sidney, a grant of 3026 acres of land in the county of Cork, part
of the forfeited estate of the great Earl of Desmond. Scarcely was his
patent made out, when his best friend and patron, Sidney, was killed at
the battle of Zutphen. This was the death of his hopes in England, and
he set out to reside on and cultivate his newly-acquired estate in
Ireland; having lamented Sir Philip's death in the pastoral elegy of
Astrophel. This was in 1586. In three or four years, 1590 or 1591,
Spenser returned to England with Raleigh, published his first three
books of the Faërie Queene, and was presented by Raleigh to Elizabeth,
who at this time conferred on him his pension. Spenser, it seems, now
returned to Ireland, wrote his second three cantos, and bringing them
over in 1596, published them; and also printed and published his
Discourse on the State of Ireland, as a defense of his patron Lord
Grey's policy there. From the condition of Ireland at that time, and the
sense of insecurity which Spenser felt at his lonely castle of
Kilcolman, it is not to be wondered at that his plan abounds with
earnest recommendations of a coercive nature, and especially for the
stationing of strong garrisons numerously. In 1597, he returned to
Ireland, where almost immediately the great rebellion of Tyrone breaking
out, he was chased from his castle, and, retiring to London, died there,
heart-broken, in 1598.
Such is a brief outline of the life of Spenser. Let us now take a nearer
view of his Irish home. One of the best accounts of it is contained in
the Dublin University Magazine of November, 1843. The writer, evidently
not only a genuine lover of the poetry of Spenser, but well acquainted
with the scene he describes, goes at much length into the characters and
allusions of the poem of the Faërie Queene. He shows us that Spenser
draws a noble portrait of his benefactor, Lord Grey, in the second book
of that poem. It is the warrior seen by Britomart in the mirror of
Merlin, as her future husband.
"A comely knight, all armed in complete wize,
Through whose bright ventayle lifted up on hye
His manly face, that did his foes agrize,
And friends to termes of gentle truce entize,
Looked forth, as, Phoebus' face out of the east
Betwixt two shady mountaynes doth arise," &c.
The portrait is certainly a noble one, and limned with the colors of
divine poetry. The anonymous but able author leads us justly to notice
that, in the Legend of Artegall, the thirteen stanzas opening the first
canto of the fifth book "relate to the hapless condition of the Ladye
Irena--her tears and her troubles; tears that, alas! have not yet
ceased to flow down, and troubles that to the present hour are
convulsing her bosom. For Irena is Ireland; and she sends her
supplications across the ocean to Gloriana, the Queen of Faërie, the
great and good Elizabeth of England, beseeching her to come over and
help her. Artegall is the personification of equity and justice; and
this is the boon which poor Irena looks for, and hopes to receive at her
sister's hand."
Artegall, or, in other words, Lord Grey, passes over to Ireland, and
encounters Pollentè, or Gerald, earl of Desmond, "who was in rebellion
against Elizabeth at the time of Lord Grey's appointment to the chief
authority in Ireland, and perished miserably in consequence. His
prodigious wealth and power would amply bear out such an appellation.
His lands extended one hundred and fifty miles in the south of the
kingdom, stretching from sea to sea, and comprising the greater portion
of the counties of Waterford, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. We read of his
being able to bring together, by his summons, six hundred cavalry and
two thousand footmen; and of these, nearly five hundred were gentlemen
of his own kindred and surname. His castles were numerous, and scattered
over this large tract of country in well-chosen places, for its defense
and protection; and it is curious that attached to one of them is a tale
of blood not unlike what you will find Spenser describing. A few miles
above the sea, on a bold cliff overhanging one of the deepest parts of
the beautiful River Blackwater, stand the battered remains of the earl's
Castle of Strancally. Attached to this strong-hold is a murderous
device, which we had often previously heard of, but never till then
beheld. The solid rock had been pierced with a large well-like aperture,
communicating with the river; and the neighboring peasants will tell
you, that the unwary, when decoyed within the castle, were tied hand and
foot, and flung down the _murder-hole_: the rapid river hurried by, and
soon carried away their gasping shrieks, and the dead told no tales. We
have every respect for these local traditions, and esteem them in a
thousand instances valuable guides; notwithstanding, we place no faith
in the present horrible legend, which is wholly at variance with the
received character of the Earl of Desmond. It may be that such things
were told to him, even in Spenser's days; and it is certain that, about
the close of the year 1579, his Castle of Strancally was taken by the
Earl of Ormond, the president of Munster; a capture which could be
easily transferred to the poet's hero, Artegall."
Lord Grey was recalled, in consequence of representations of cruelty and
oppression in his administration. "The queen was persuaded by these
insinuations, and his recall took place when he had scarcely completed
his second year. With this event the fifth book of the Faërie Queene
concludes: and the poet there enters at large into the facts of the
case. Artegall is summoned away to Faërie Court, and on his way thither
meets with two ill-favored hags--'superannuated vipers,' as Lord
Brougham would term them--whom he knows to be Envy and Detraction. These
are painted in language that makes the grisly creatures live before you.
Every hue and feature of their vile countenances is preserved--their
slavering lips, their tireless tongues, their foul and claw-like hands.
We remember nothing in Milton or Dante that surpasses this powerful
personification."
Spenser, as we have already stated, accompanied Lord Grey home, and here
came in for a share in the partition of the vast estates of the
vanquished Earl of Desmond. The plan now devised for more securely
attaching Ireland to the British crown was called the Plantation of
Munster. The scheme, which was first put in operation on this vast
confiscated territory of the Earl of Desmond, is thus described in
Smith's History of Cork:
"All forfeited lands to be divided into manors and seigniories,
containing 12,000, 8000, 6000, and 4000 acres each, according to a plot
laid down. The undertakers (those who got these grants) to have an
estate in fee-farm, yielding for each seigniory of 12,000 acres, for the
first three years, £33, 6_s._, 8_d._ sterling, viz., from 1590 to 1593,
and from Michaelmas, 1593, £66, 13_s._, 4_d._ sterling, and ratably for
every inferior seigniory, yielding upon the death of the undertaker the
best beast as an heriot; to be discharged of all taxes whatsoever,
except subsidies levied by Parliament. Bogs, mountains, &c., not to be
included till improved, and then to pay a half-penny for each English
acre. License to the undertakers to transport all commodities, duty
free, into England for five years. That none be admitted to have more
than 12,000 acres. No English planter to be permitted to convey to any
mere Irish. The head of each plantation to be English; and the heirs
female to marry none but of English birth; and none of the mere Irish to
be maintained in any family there.
"Each freeholder, from the year 1590, to furnish one horse and horseman,
armed; each principal undertaker for 12,000 acres, to supply three
horsemen and six footmen, armed; and so ratably for the other
seigniories; and each copyholder one footman, armed. That, for seven
years to come, they shall not be obliged to travel out of Munster upon
any service; and after that time, no more than ten horsemen and twenty
footmen out of one seigniory of 12,000 acres, and so ratably; and such
as serve out of Munster to be paid by the queen.
"That the queen will protect and defend the said seigniories, at her own
charge, for seven years to come. All commodities brought from England
for the use of the same seigniories to be duty free for seven years."
There was to be a complete English population established on these lands
in this manner: "For any seigniory containing 12,000 acres, the
gentleman was to have for his own domain 2100 acres; six farmers, 400
acres each; six freeholders, 100 acres each; and lands to be
appropriated for mean tenures of 50, 25, and 10 acres, to the amount of
1500 acres; whereon thirty-six families, at least, must be established.
The other seigniories to be laid out in like proportion. Each undertaker
was to people his seigniory in seven years." These articles received the
royal signature on the 27th of June, 1586. The following list of
undertakers presents some curious particulars. In the first place, Sir
Walter Raleigh and Arthur Robbins by some means managed at once to
overleap the grand provision, that no undertaker should be permitted to
have more than 12,000 acres: Sir Walter Raleigh getting 42,000, and poor
Spenser, poet-like, only 3029! He is just tacked on at the end like an
after-thought.
Acres.
Sir Walter Raleigh 42,000
Arthur Robbins, Esq. 18,000
Fane Beecher, Esq. 12,000
Hugh Worth, Esq. 12,000
Arthur Hyde, Esq. 11,766
Sir Thomas Norris 6,000
Sir Richard Beacon 6,000
Sir Warham St. Leger 6,000
Hugh Cuff, Esq. 6,000
Thomas Jay, Esq. 5,775
Sir Arthur Hyde 5,774
Edmund Spenser, Esq. 3,029
The difference did not consist merely in the quantity either. Some of
their lands, like Sir Walter's at Youghal, on the Blackwater, were
splendid lands; those of Spenser were wild moorlands, facing the wilder
mountains, where the Irish, yet smarting under defeat and expulsion, the
destruction of their great chief, and this plan, which was to continue
that expulsion forever, and plant on their own soil the hated Saxon,
were looking down, ready to descend and take sanguinary vengeance. Such
was the lot which Spenser chose in preference to the degrading slavery
of court dependence. No doubt he pleased himself with the idea of a new
English state, established in this newly-conquered region; where,
surrounded by English gentlemen, and one of the lords of the soil, he
should live a life of content and happiness, and hand down to his
children a fair estate. But in this fond belief how much of the poet's
self-delusive property was mixed! Hear what the authority I have already
made such use of, because I know it to be good, says: "It was a wild and
lonesome banishment at best, for one who had lived so much in courts,
and in companionship with the rich and high-born. Mountains on all sides
shut in the retreat, and in the midst of the long and level plain
between them stood a strong fortalice of the Earl of Desmond, which was
to be the poet's residence, Kilcolman Castle. Hard by the castle was a
small lake, and a mile or two distant, on either side, a river descended
from the hills. In position, likewise, it was insecure, forming, as it
did, the frontier of the English line in the south, and the contiguous
hills affording lurking-places for the Irish kerns, whence they could
pour down in multitudes to plunder. In the insurrectionary warfare that
shortly succeeded, these mountain passes became the scene of many a
skirmish; and the first object of the commander of the English forces,
when he heard of any partial outbreak, was to send off a detachment of
light-armed troops to occupy them in the name of the queen."
But, overlooking all these hazards, Spenser came hither full of bright
views of the future. "The sunshine of the years to come," says the
author we have been quoting, "were to atone for the darkness and the
gloom of life's morning." His poetry, which had been previously of a
pastoral cast, became now imbued with the wildness of the sylvan
solitude around him: wood-nymphs and fairies were inhabitants he could
summon up at will, and with them the hill-tops about him were peopled.
Such names of places and things as his musical ear pronounced
inharmonious were exchanged for others which quaint fancy suggested, and
which read more sweetly in his tender verse. He sang sweet strains of
the bridal or separation of his rivers; told how their stern sires, the
mountains, ofttimes forced their unwilling inclinations, and brought
about a union which the water-nymph detested; and how sometimes she, in
her faithful attachment to the one she loved, effected her wish by a
circuitous course, or even sought beneath the earth's surface the waters
dear to her bosom. Before an imagination so vivid the iron desolateness
of Kilcolman vanished; and in its stead a fairy world arose to gladden
the eyes of the dreamer with its bowers of bliss, and enchanted palaces,
and magnificence more gorgeous than the luxuries of Ind.
"The Ballyhowra Hills, which formed the northern boundary of the poet's
retreat, appeared in this new world under the feigned title of the
Mountains of Mole; while the highest of them, which, like Parnassus, has
a double summit, was dignified by the name of "Father." Sometimes
Spenser seems to have extended the name of Mole to the entire range of
hills which run along the northern and eastern limits of the county of
Cork, and divide it from Limerick and Tipperary. In one place he speaks
of a river rising from the Mole, and thence styled by him Molana; which
undoubtedly takes its origin from the Tipperary Hills. The plain in
which his castle stood was rebaptized in Helicon by the name of Armulla
Dale. Of his two streamlets, one was suffered, for a special purpose, to
retain its original name of Bregoge, _i. e._, false, or deceitful:
"'Bregog hight
So hight became of his deceitful traine;'
and the other, the Awbeg, was specially appropriated to himself by the
name of Mulla:
"'And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.'
"The rivers here mentioned flowed at some distance on each side of
Spenser's castle. The Bregoge on the east, at the distance of a mile;
the Mulla on the west, at about two miles. Both rise, as the poet sings,
in the Mole Mountain. They spring from wells, in glens about a mile and
a half asunder, on the opposite sides of _Corringlass_, the highest
mountain in the range. The Bregoge proceeds, in a winding course, to the
southwest, and falls into the Mulla a mile above the town of Doneraile.
It is a very inconsiderable stream, forcing itself with difficulty among
the rocks with which its channel is encumbered; and, like many mountain
rivulets, is dry during the summer heats. When we saw it, in the course
of the present year, its bed was a mass of dusty sand.
"The Mulla rises on the remote side of the hill from the Castle of
Kilcolman, but has a more northerly head in Annagh bog, five miles from
Anster's birth-place, Charleville, which perhaps, in strictness, should
be deemed its source. Spenser, in the foregoing passage, describes it as
springing out of Mole. It proceeds to Buttevant, and receives a branch a
little above that town, at Ardskeagh; it then winds away toward
Kilcolman, and meets the Bregoge near Doneraile. Directing its course
thence, it turns to the south, and flows through a deep romantic glen to
Castletown Roche, after which it enters the Blackwater at Bridgetown
Abbey. It is now called the Awbeg, in contradistinction to the Awmore or
Avonmore, one of the names of the Blackwater."
I have been the more particular in quoting from one well acquainted with
the scene the geography of Spenser's domain, because those who have not
been on the spot can really form no idea of the proportion of matter
drawn hence, and from Ireland generally, in his poems. The Faërie
Queene, Colin Clout, and his two cantos on "Mutabilitie," abound with
allegorical or actual descriptions of his Irish life, and of the
scenery, and especially the rivers, about his estate here. I must now
trace my own visit to it.
Starting from Fermoy with a car, I ascended the Valley of the
Blackwater, a river which for beauty of scenery is worthy of all its
fame. About six miles up, I was told that Spenser had lived at a place
called Rennie. I found it a gentleman's house, standing at a field's
distance from the highway, and drove up to it. It is the property of Mr.
Smith, a merchant and magistrate of Fermoy. He was there with his lady,
come out to see their splendid dairy of cows which they kept there,
forty in number. They were at luncheon, and would insist on my going in
and partaking; after which they both set out, most hospitably, to show
me the place. The house stands on a lofty rock, overlooking the valley
of the river, but at a field's distance from it. It is one of the places
of exuberant vegetation, where vegetation in grass and trees seems
perfectly exhaustless. The richest pastures, the most abundant and
overshadowing trees, every where. In the little garden close to the
house, and lying on the verge of the precipice, all glowing with
dahlias, still remains a wall of the castle, which was undoubtedly
inhabited by Spenser. There is an old oak on the river bank, at some
distance above the house, under the precipice, which is called Spenser's
Tree, and where he is said to have written part of the Faërie Queene.
This property was inherited by Spenser's eldest son Sylvanus, who
married a Miss Nagle, of Monanimy, in Cork, and lived at this Rennie.
In a life of Spenser, the following scanty information, which has been
collected relative to his descendants, is given, and may help us to a
clearer conception of the matter. Sylvanus had, by the marriage with
Miss Nagle, two sons, Edmund and William. Peregrine Spenser, the third
son of the poet, the second being Lawrence, is described, in a MS.
deposition relative to the rebellion in 1641, as a Protestant resident
about the barony of Fermoy, and so impoverished by the troubles as to be
unable to pay his debts; and a part of the estate had been assigned to
him by his elder brother, Sylvanus; this part of the estate is
distinctly stated to have been Rennie. Hugoline, the son of Peregrine,
opposed the designs of the Prince of Orange, and after the Revolution
was outlawed for treason and rebellion; his cousin, William Spenser, the
son of Sylvanus, became a suitor for the forfeited property, and
obtained it. Dr. Birch has described him as a man somewhat advanced in
years, and as unable to give any account of the works of his ancestor
which are missing. His case, as he presented it to Parliament, has been
printed by Mr. Todd in his Life of Spenser, from the copy in the British
Museum, presented by Mr. George Chalmers. In this document Hugoline is
described as "very old and unmarried." Dr. Birch informs us that, in
1751, some of the descendants of Spenser were living in the country of
Cork; and Mr. Todd, coming later down, observes, that "a daughter of a
Mr. Edmund Spenser, of Mallow, the last lineal descendant of the poet,
is now married to a Mr. Burne, of the English custom-house." A Mr.
Price, in a MS. in the British Museum, states that he was told by Lord
Cartaret, that when he was Lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1724, a true
descendant of Edmund Spenser, who bore his name, had a trial before
Baron Hall, and he knew so little of the English tongue that he was
forced to have an interpreter.
Now Mr. Smith informed me that not only was it the fixed tradition that
this house at Rennie was inhabited by Spenser the poet, but that it was
also as positively asserted that one of his descendants was murdered in
it in a very extraordinary manner. The story was that of two brothers;
one, banished for high treason, and the other, who succeeded him,
murdered by his housekeeper out of jealousy. That this woman had been
led to hope that her master would marry her, but finding that he was
going to marry another lady, proposed, one morning as he was shaving, to
do it for him, and being permitted, cut his throat with the razor. There
seemed, however, some suspicion that the cousin of the murdered man, who
was next heir, the elder brother being outlawed, had instigated or urged
upon the woman to commit this act; but such was the state of the times,
that, notwithstanding this suspicion, his cousin came in for the
property.
Wild and terrible as this tradition is, it is there; and what is
curious, we see in the above slight tracing of the descent of the
Spensers, that Hugoline, a son of Peregrine, was outlawed for treason
and rebellion, and that William, a cousin, and the son of Sylvanus,
became a suitor for the forfeited property, and obtained it. In
O'Flanagan's Guide to the Blackwater, this is stated to have happened to
the last descendant of Spenser at Rennie, and that "in the small antique
dwelling at Rennie is pointed out the room in which she did the deed."
This is very different to the account I received from the present
proprietor, which is that given above: nor does the house at Rennie
prove to be "a small antique one." It is a good modern mansion. The
property of Rennie continued in the family long after it had lost
Kilcolman; in fact, till about 1734, when, on the death of Nathaniel
Spenser, the then possessor, it was sold; the family became landless,
and soon after extinct.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith set out with me to explore the scene. The house is
modern; the land on the level of the house of the richest quality, and
beautified with fine trees; the views up and down the river, and over it
into the woods of Lord Listowell, with the tower of his castle peeping
over them, are rich and beautiful. We descended into the meadows below
the house, attended by four of the finest greyhounds ever seen, one of
them as white as snow, and three or four terriers; and the dogs were
soon in full chase of rabbits, up among the rocks and trees. We were
soon below the house, and at the foot of the precipice on which it
stands. The place was fit for Spenser's Pan, with all his fauns and
sylvans. In the meadow, which extended to the banks of the river, grazed
the fine herd of cattle, and amid them the sturdy bull; and all around
us, above us on the rocks, in the meadow itself, and on the banks and
green slopes on the other side of the river, grew the most prodigal
trees. The whole scene told of ancient possession and a most affluent
nature. At the foot of the precipice under the house, laurels and
filberts, which must have been planted long ago, and probably by Spenser
himself, had attained the most enormous size; the laurels were as large
as forest-trees; they had, some of them, stems, I suppose, half a yard
in diameter, and had assumed a shape of sylvan massiveness and woodland
rudeness, such as before I had no conception of in laurels. Some had
been blown down by the winds and grew half prostrate; others had been
sawed off, and had left huge stumps, knit, as it were, into one mass
with the foot of the rocks. All was one scene of Arcadian greenness, and
excess of growth.
Beneath the rock there was a sort of damp cave, where water stood as if
oozing through from the river, and the plants above hung down their long
arms, and made a fitting retreat for Spenser's satyrs. Around, seen from
the shadow of this spot, lay the deep-green meadow, the swift, broad
river, the rich masses of trees, closing in a little world of solitude;
and as if to mark it for a spot in which the poet of fairy-land had
sojourned, and left the impress of his spirit, in his own words:
"Beside the same a dainty place there lay,
Planted with myrtle-trees and laurels green,
In which the birds sung many a lively lay
Of God's high praise, and of their sweet loves' teene,
As it an earthly paradise had been."
Perhaps Spenser might revel here till his castle was fitted up for his
reception; perhaps it might be a retreat at times from the more open
perils of the desolate Kilcolman; and a sweet change from moorland
wildness to a sort of Italian richness and softness of scenery.
The way was still enchanting. Now down into the Valley of the
Blackwater, among mills and rocks, and resounding waters; now aloft
again, overlooking the white house of Rennie on its precipice, and
opposite to it spreading out the woods and mountains of Ballynahoolly.
Now arose a bare district of hedgerows without trees, and little brown
huts, with geese, and goats, and swine. Now, again, passing some
gentleman's park, with its ocean of trees, and under a sort of tunnel
rather than avenue of beeches, which are planted on banks, so that they
meet close above, sometimes for half a mile, and which at night are as
dark as a dungeon. Then, again, I passed between hedges of cider-apple,
all grown into trees, and giving the country--for the fields right and
left were inclosed with the same--a very wild look; and I came out on
bare heights, and with view of far-off bleak and brown mountains. Near
Doneraile, I saw the ocean of green woods belonging to Lord Doneraile's
park and domain lying before me in the valley, and passed through it for
a mile or more in highest admiration of the splendid growth and richness
of foliage of its beeches, its superb wayside ashes, and its other
trees. Surely where it is allowed to produce trees, Ireland does exhibit
them in a beauty and prodigality of growth which is almost unrivaled by
those of England. To this contributes, not merely the fertility of the
soil, but the moisture of the atmosphere.
About two miles beyond Doneraile I found, on a wide plain, the ruins of
Kilcolman. These ruins have frequently been drawn and engraved, and the
views we have of them are very correct. Indeed, so vividly were the
features of the scene impressed on my mind by the views, and by reading
of it, that I seemed to know it quite well. Its old black mass of wall
catches your eye as soon as you have passed the woody neighborhood of
Doneraile, standing up on the wild moorland plain, a solitary object
amid its nakedness. A tolerable highway, newly constructed, leads up
near to it, along which you advance amid scattered Irish cabins, and
their usual potato plots. To reach the castle, you have to turn to the
left up one of those stony lanes that threaten to jolt a car to pieces,
and then have to scale a gate belonging to the farm on which the ruin
stands, and advance on foot, through a farm-yard, and along the lake
side. The remains of the castle, which consist only of part of the
tower, at the southernmost corner, stand on a green mound of
considerable extent, overlooking the lake, or rather a winding sort of
pond, overgrown with potamogeton. On one side, masses of limestone rock,
on which the castle, too, stands, protrude from the banks, and on the
other extends the green marsh, and the black peat bogs, with their piles
of peat stacks. To the north, at about a mile's distance, stretch those
brown moorland mountains, called by the natives the Ballyhowra Hills,
but dignified by Spenser with the name of Mole. Of either of these names
the peasants seemed to know nothing, but assured me the one nearest to
the castle eastward was called Slieve Ruark. Southward, at a couple of
miles' distance, stands another somber-looking tower, the remains of an
ancient castle, which they called Castle Pook. On a hill, nearer
Doneraile westward, are also the ruins of an abbey; so that, probably,
in Spenser's time, this scene might be well wooded; these places
inhabited by families of the English settlers; and might form some
society for him; but at present, nothing can be more wild, dreary, and
naked than this scene, and the whole view around. Turn which way you
will, you see nothing but naked moorlands, bare and lonely, or scattered
with the cabins and potato plots of the peasantry. To the northeast
stands, at perhaps half a mile's distance, a mass of plantations,
inclosing the house of a Mr. Barry Harold; and that is the only
relieving object, except the distant mass of the woods of Doneraile
Park, and the bare ranges of mountains that close in this unpicturesque
plain at more or less distance.
As I stood on the top of the massy old keep, whose walls are three yards
thick, and its winding stairs of slippery gray marble, I seemed to be
rather in a dream of Spenser's castle, than actually at it. The sun was
hastening to set, and threw a clear shining light over the whole silent
plain, and thousands of pewets and of rooks from Lord Doneraile's woods
spread themselves over the green fields near the weedy water, and seemed
to enjoy the calm dreamy light and stillness of the scene. The hour and
the scene naturally brought to my mind the melodious stanza of Mickle,
which has special reference to this solitary memorial of the history
both of Ireland and its troubles, and the English poet of fairy-land and
his fate:
"Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy, to thy fairy bower betake;
Even now, with balmy sweetness breathes the gale
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;
Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake
And evening comes with locks bedipped with dew;
On Desmond's mold'ring turrets slowly shake
The withered rye-grass, and the harebell blue,
And ever and anon sweet Mulla's plaints renew."
Looking round over this stripped and lonely landscape, over the "looming
flats," over the dark moorland hills that slumber to the north and east,
and then far away to more distant but equally sterile mountain ranges, a
strange feeling crept over me of the force of events which could compel,
nay, make it desirable for the most imaginative spirit of the age, next
to Shakspeare, to quit the British capital, the wit and intelligence of
Elizabeth's court, to sit down in this wilderness, and in the face of
savage and exasperated foes, the poetical eremite, the exile of
necessity. But, perhaps, the place then was not so shorn of all
embellishment as now. The writer I have quoted seems to imagine that
Spenser, by the sheer force of fancy, not only peopled this waste with
fauns and nymphs, but clothed it with trees, and other charms of nature.
But we must remember that since then, ages of devastation, of desertion,
and of an exhausting system, have gone over this country. Then this
castle stood fair and complete, and no doubt had its due embellishment
and garniture of woodland trees. The green alder not only overhung the
Mulla, but this lake very likely, and a pleasure bark might then add its
grace and its life to the view from the castle windows. Todd calls it
"the _woody_ Kilcolman," on what authority I know not, and supposes that
Spenser calls his first-born son Sylvanus on that account, as its heir.
Here he spent twelve years, and, from every thing that we can learn from
his poetry, to his own great satisfaction. We can not suppose,
therefore, that he found the place without some native charms, far less
that he left it without those which planting and cultivation could give
it. As Sir Walter Raleigh planted and embellished his estate at Youghal
with laurels and other evergreens, there is little doubt that Spenser
would do the same here. He would naturally feel a lively and active
interest in raising that place and estate, which was to be the family
seat of his children, to as high a degree of beauty and amenity as
possible. Though busily engaged on his great poem, the Faërie Queene,
there is evidence that he was also an active and clever man of business;
so much so, that Queen Elizabeth, in preference to all those more
aristocratic and more largely land-endowed gentlemen, who were settled
with him on the plantations of Munster, had, the very year of his
expulsion hence by the Irish rebels, named him to fill the office of
sheriff of the county of Cork. That he asserted his rights, appears from
a document published by Mr. Hardiman, in his Irish Minstrelsy, showing
that he had a dispute with his neighbor, Lord Roche, about some lands,
in which, by petitions to the Lord-chancellor of Ireland, it appeared
that Edmund Spenser had made forcible claim on these plow-lands at
Ballingerath, dispossessed the said Lord Roche, had made great waste of
the wood, and appropriated the corn growing on the estate. And the
decision was given against Spenser. Spenser was, therefore, evidently
quite alive to the value of property.
If we look at what Doneraile is, a perfect paradise of glorious woods,
we may imagine what Kilcolman would have been if, instead of being laid
waste with fire and sword by the Irish kerns, and left to become a mere
expanse of Irish rack-rent farms and potato grounds, it had been
carefully planted, cultivated, and embellished, as the estate of the
descendants of one of the proudest names of England.
As it is, it stands one more lonely and scathed testimony to the evil
fortunes of poets:
"The poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays!"
yet who, themselves, of all men, are still shown by a wise Providence to
be "pilgrims and sojourners on the earth, having no abiding city" in it.
Their souls have a heaven-aspiring tendency. They can not grasp the
earth; it escapes from their hold, and they leave behind them, not
castles and domains, but golden foot-prints, which, whoever follows,
finds them ever and ever leading him upward to the immortal regions.
"For a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,
If aught be in them of immortal seed,
And reason governs that audacious flight
Which heavenward they direct."--_Wordsworth._
In no situations do we so much as in such as these recall the truth
uttered by the meditative poet just quoted:
"High is our calling, friend! Creative art--
Whether the instrument of words she use.
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned--to infuse
Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And oh! when nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness--
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard."
Let us, then, at this moment, rather endeavor to look at the happiness
which Spenser enjoyed here for ten bright years, than at the melancholy
_finale_. Here he worked busily and blissfully at his great poem. Forms
of glory, of high valor and virtue, of female beauty and goodness,
floated richly through his mind. The imperial Gloriana, the heavenly
Una,
"Whose angel face,
As the great eye of Heaven, shinéd bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;"
the sweet Belphoebe, the gallant Britomart, and the brave troop of
knights, Arthur the magnanimous, the Red-Cross Knight, the holy and
hardly-tried, the just Artegall, and all their triumphs over Archimagos,
false Duessas, and the might of dragon natures. This was a life, a labor
which clothed the ground with golden flowers, made heaven look forth
from between the clouds and the mountain tops, and songs of glory wake
on the winds that swept past his towers. Here he accomplished and saw
given to the world half his great work--a whole, and an immortal whole
as it regarded his fame and great mission in the world--to breathe lofty
and unselfish thoughts into the souls of men; to make truth, purity, and
high principle the objects of desire.
Here, too, he married the woman of his heart, chosen on the principle of
his poetry, not for her lands, but for her beauty and her goodness.
Nothing is known of her, not even her name, except that it was
Elizabeth, that she was eminently beautiful, and of low degree. Some
conjecture her to be of Cork, and a merchant's daughter, but Spenser
himself says she was a country lass. Thus, in the Faërie Queene:
"Such were these goddesses which you did see:
But that _fourth maid_, which there amid them traced
Who can aread what creature may she bee;
Whether a creature, or a goddess graced
With heavenly gifts from heaven first enraced!
But whatso sure she was, she worthy was
To be the fourth with these three other placed:
Yet was she certes but a country lasse;
Yet she all other country lasses far did passe.
So far, as doth the daughter of the day
All other lesser lights in light excell:
So far doth she in beautiful array
Above all other lasses bear the bell:
Ne less in virtue that beseemes her well
Doth she exceede the rest of all her race;
For which the Graces that there wont to dwell
Have for more honor brought her to this place,
And gracéd her so much to be another Grace.
Another Grace she well deserves to be,
In whom so many graces gathered are,
Excelling much the mean of her degree;
Divine resemblance, beauty sovereign rare,
Firm chastity, that spight no blemish dare;
All which she with such courtesie doth grace
That all her peres can not with her compare,
But quite are dimméd when she is in place;
She made me often pipe, and now to pipe apace.
Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky,
That all the earth doth lighten with thy rayes,
Great Gloriana, greatest majesty,
Pardon thy shepherd, 'mongst so many lays
As he hath sung of thee in all his days,
To make one mencine of thy poor handmaid,
And underneath thy feet to place her praise,
That when thy glory shall be far displayed
In future age, of her this mention may be made."
_Faërie Queene_, b. xii., c. x.
These were known in Spenser's days to be an affectionate monument of
immortal verse to his wife, still more nobly erected in his
Epithalamion; and to identify it more, in his Amoretti he tells us that
his queen, his mother, and his wife were all of the same name.
"The which three times thrice happy hath me made
With gifts of body, fortune, and of minde,
Ye _three Elizabeths_ forever live,
That thus such graces unto me did give."
Here, too, he enjoyed the memorable visit of Sir Walter Raleigh, which
he commemorates in Colin Clout. He had now ready for the press the first
three books of his Faërie Queene; and these he read to Raleigh during
his visit, probably as he has described it in pastoral style, as they
sat together under the green alders on the banks of the Mulla.
"I sate, as was my trade,
Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hore,
Keeping my sheep among the coolly shade
Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore.
There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out;
Whether allured with my pipe's delight,
Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about,
Or thither led by chance, I know not right,
Whom when I askéd from what place he came,
And how he hight, himself he did ycleep
The Shepherd of the Ocean by name,
And said he came far from the main sea deep.
He, sitting me beside in the same shade,
Provoked me to play some pleasant fit," &c.
Raleigh was enchanted with the poem. He was just returned from a voyage
to Portugal, and was now bound for England. He was, it appears, himself
weary of his own location, for he soon after sold it to the Earl of
Cork. He pressed Spenser to accompany him, put his poem to press, and by
means of its fame to win the more earnest patronage of Queen Elizabeth.
"When thus our pipes we both had wearied well,
Quoth he, and each an end of singing made,
He 'gan to cast great liking to my lore,
And great disliking to my luckless lot,
That banished had myself, like wight forlore,
Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.
The which to leave, thenceforth he counseled me,
Unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful,
And wend with him, his Cynthia to see;
Where grace was great, and bounty most rewardful.
So what with hope of good, and hate of ill,
He me persuaded forth with him to fare.
So to the sea we came."
Here it comes out that, however much more clothed with trees, and
however much better this spot was in Spenser's days, it was still "a
waste where he was forgot," a place into which Raleigh considered his
friend as banished, and as unfit for any "man in whom was aught
regardful." He left it, published his poem, tried court expectation and
attendance once more, but found them still more bitter and sterile than
his Irish wilderness, and came back.
When we hear Kilcolman described by Spenser's biographers as "romantic
and delightful," it is evident that they judged of it from mere fancy;
and when all writers about him talk of the Mulla "flowing through his
grounds," and "past his castle," they give the reader a most erroneous
idea. The castle, it must be remembered, is on a wide plain; the hills
are at a couple of miles or more distant; and the Mulla is two miles
off. We see nothing at the castle but the wide boggy plain, the distant
naked hills, and the weedy pond under the castle walls. Such is
Kilcolman.
Here the poet was startled at midnight from his dreams by the sound of
horse's hoofs beating in full gallop the stony tracks of the dale, and
by a succeeding burst of wild yells from crowding thousands of
infuriated Irish. Fire was put to the castle, and it was soon in flames.
Spenser, concealed by the gloom of one side of the building, contrived
to escape with his wife, and most probably his three boys and girl, as
they were saved, and lived after him, but the youngest child in the
cradle perished in the flames, with all his property and unpublished
poems. On a second visit to England he had published three more books of
his Faërie Queene; and there is a story of six more being lost by his
servant, by whom they were sent to England. This could not be the fact,
as he had himself but recently returned from the publication of the
second three. Probably the rumor arose from some other MSS. lost in that
manner. Fleeing to England, distracted at the fate of his child and his
property, he died there, heart-broken and in poverty, at an inn or
lodging-house in King-street, Westminster, and was buried in Westminster
Abbey, at the expense of the Earl of Essex, "his hearse attended," says
Camben, "by poets, and mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that
wrote them, thrown into his tomb."
There is much that we naturally are anxious to know connected with the
final fate and family of Spenser. How his children actually escaped.
What became of them and their claim on the property? When was the
property of Kilcolman lost to the poet's descendants? Of all this next
to nothing is known. The literati of that age do not seem to have given
themselves any trouble to preserve the facts of the history of their
illustrious cotemporaries. Shakspeare and Spenser were left to the cold
keeping of careless tradition. The particulars, beyond what we have
already given, are very few.
Spenser's widow returned to Ireland, and there brought up her children.
Of these, Sylvanus, as eldest son, inherited Rennie and Kilcolman. It
appears that he found some difficulty with his mother, Spenser's widow,
who married again, to a Roger Seckerstone, and was obliged to petition
the Lord-chancellor of Ireland, to obtain from his mother and her new
husband documents belonging to his estate, which they withheld. He
married, as already stated, Ellen Nagle, of Monanimy, south of
Kilcolman, of a Catholic family, a circumstance which had a great effect
on the fortunes of their descendants, as connecting them with the
unsuccessful party in the troubles of Ireland. His eldest son died
without issue, and his second son, William, succeeded to Kilcolman. The
property of William, being seized on by the Commonwealth party, was
ordered to be restored to him by Cromwell, but is supposed to have only
been regained at the Restoration. He had three other grants of land in
the counties of Galway and Roscommon, in the latter, the estate of
Ballinasloe. At the Revolution he joined King William, who for his
services granted him the estate of his cousin Hugoline, of Rennie. This
Hugoline was the son of Peregrine, the poet's youngest son, who had
Rennie made over to him by his eldest brother, Sylvanus. Hugoline took
part with his Catholic relatives, and, siding with King James at the
Revolution, was outlawed, and his property at Rennie made over to his
cousin William. Thus the descendants of Sylvanus, or the eldest son of
the poet, became the only known posterity of the poet. The descendants
of William, and therefore of Sylvanus Spenser, the elder male line,
possessed Rennie till 1734, soon after which this line became extinct.
There are still in Ireland persons claiming to be descendants, by the
mother's side, from Spenser; and the Travers, of Clifton, near Cork, are
lineal descendants of Spenser's sister Sarah and John Travers, a friend
of the poet's, who accompanied him to Ireland, and had the town lands of
Ardenbone and Knocknacaple given to him by Spenser as his sister's
marriage dowry. The descendants of this sister number among many
distinguished families of Ireland, those of the Earls of Cork and
Ossary, Earl Shannon, Lord Doneraile, Earl of Clanwilliam, &c.
The fame of Spenser is not quite rooted out of the minds of the
neighboring peasantry. I inquired of an old man and his family, who live
close by the castle, whom that castle formerly belonged to, and they
replied, "To one Spenser."
"Who was he?"
"They could not tell: they only knew that many officers from Fermoy, and
others, came to see the place."
"Ay, I have heard of him," I added. "He was an Englishman, and the Irish
burned him out of the castle, and he fled to England."
"Oh no! nothing of the kind. He lived and died there, and was buried
just below the castle, which used to be a church-yard. Bones are often
dug up, and on the western side of the mound there had been a nunnery."
In fact, they knew nothing accurately, but, like the people at Lissoy,
by Goldsmith, would insist on his death and burial on the spot.
But the desolated spot possesses an interest stronger than the
possession of the poet's dust. It was the scene of his happiest
hours--hours of love and of inspiration. Here the Faërie Queene grew in
heavenly zeal, and here it was suddenly arrested by the howl of savage
vengeance, and the flames which wrapped the poet's heart in ruin.
"Ah! what a warning for a thoughtless man,
Could field or grove, or any spot of earth,
Show to his eye an image of the pangs
Which it hath witnessed; render back the echo
Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod."
_Wordsworth._