Title: The Romance of Biography (Vol 2 of 2)
Author: Mrs. Jameson
Release date: February 27, 2011 [eBook #35416]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Julia Miller, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
LONDON:
PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
SERIES OF ANECDOTES INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE THE INFLUENCE WHICH FEMALE BEAUTY AND VIRTUE HAVE EXERCISED OVER THE CHARACTERS AND WRITINGS OF MEN OF GENIUS.
Authoress of the Diary of an Ennuyée; Lives of Celebrated
Female Sovereigns; Female Characters of Shakespeare's Plays; Beauties of the
Court of Charles the Second.
THIRD EDITION,
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY.
MDCCCXXXVII.
Page
CHAPTER I.
Carew's Celia.—Lucy Sacheverel 1
CHAPTER II.
Waller's Sacharissa 15
CHAPTER III.
Beauties and Poets in the Reign of Charles I. 33
CHAPTER IV.
Conjugal Poetry.
Ovid and Perilla—Seneca's Paulina—Sulpicia—Clotilde de Surville 43
CHAPTER V.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
Vittoria Colonna 60
CHAPTER VI.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
Veronica Gambara—Camilla Valentini—Portia Rota—Castiglione 81
CHAPTER VII.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
Doctor Donne and his Wife—Habington's Castara 94
CHAPTER VIII.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
The Two Zappi 131
CHAPTER IX.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
Lord Lyttelton—Prince Frederick—Doctor Parnell 139
CHAPTER X.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
Klopstock and Meta 154
CHAPTER XI.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
Bonnie Jean—Highland Mary—Loves of Burns 182
CHAPTER XII.
Conjugal Poetry (continued.)
Monti and his Wife 209
CHAPTER XIII.
Poets and Beauties from Charles II. to Queen Anne.
Cowley's Eleonora—Maria d'Este—Anne
Killegrew—Lady Hyde—Granville's Mira—Prior's
Chloe—Duchess of Queensbury 218
CHAPTER XIV.
Swift, Stella and Vanessa 240
CHAPTER XV.
Pope and Martha Blount 274
CHAPTER XVI.
Pope and Lady M. W. Montagu 287
CHAPTER XVII.
Poetical old Bachelors.
Gray—Collins—Goldsmith—Shenstone—Thomson—Hammond 308
CHAPTER XVIII.
French Poets.
Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet—Madame de Gouverné 317
CHAPTER XIX.
French Poets (continued.)
Madame d'Houdetot 333
CONCLUSION.
Heroines of Modern Poetry 342
From the reign of Charles the First may be dated that revolution in the spirit and form of our lyric poetry, which led to its subsequent degradation. The first Italian school of poetry, to which we owed our Surreys, our Spensers, and our Miltons, had now declined. The high contemplative tone of passion, the magnanimous and chivalrous homage paid to women, gradually gave way before the French taste and French gallantry, introduced, or at least encouraged and rendered fashionable, by Henrietta Maria and her gay household. The muse of amatory poetry (I presume there is such a Muse, though I know not to which of the Nine the title properly applies,) no longer walked the earth star-crowned and vestal-robed, "col dir pien d'intelletti, dolci ed alti,"—"with love upon her lips, and looks commercing with the skies;"—she suited her garb to the fashion of the times, and tripped along in guise of an Arcadian princess, half regal, half pastoral, trailing a sheep-hook crowned with flowers, and sparkling with foreign ornaments,
Then in the "brisk and giddy paced times" of Charles the Second, she flaunted an airy coquette, or an unblushing courtezan, ("unveiled her eyes—unclasped her zone;") and when these sinful doings were banished, she took the hue of the new morals—new fashions—new manners,—and we find her a court prude, swimming in a hoop and red-heeled shoes, "conscious of the rich brocade," and ogling behind her fan; or else in the opposite extreme, like a bergère in a French ballet, stuck over with sentimental common-places and artificial flowers.
This, in general terms, was the progress of the lyric muse, from the poets of Queen Elizabeth's days down to the wits of Queen Anne's. Of course, there are modifications and exceptions, which will suggest themselves to the poetical reader; but it does not enter into the plan of this sketch to treat matters thus critically and profoundly. To return then to the days of Charles the First.
It must be confessed that the union of Italian sentiment and imagination with French vivacity and gallantry, was, in the commencement, exceedingly graceful, before all poetry was lost in wit, and gallantry sunk into licentiousness.
Carew, one of the first who distinguished himself in this style, has been most unaccountably eclipsed by the reputation of Waller, and deserved better than to have had his name hitched into line between Sprat and Sedley;
As an amatory poet, he is far superior to Waller: he had equal smoothness and fancy, and much more variety, tenderness, and earnestness; if his love was less ambitiously, and even less honourably placed, it was, at least, more deep seated, and far more fervent. The real name of the lady he has celebrated under the poetical appellation of Celia, is not known—it is only certain that she was no "fabled fair,"—and that his love was repaid with falsehood.
From the irregular habits of Carew, it is possible he might have set the example of inconstancy; and yet this is but a poor excuse for her.
Carew spent his life in the Court of Charles the First, who admired and loved him for his wit and amiable manners, though he reproved his libertinage. In the midst of that dissipation, which has polluted some of his poems, he was full of high poetic feeling, and a truly generous lover: for even while he wooes his fair one in the most soul-moving terms of flowery adulation and tender entreaty, he puts her on her guard against his own arts, and thus sweetly pleads against himself;
And his admiration of female chastity is elsewhere frequently, as well as forcibly, expressed.—With all his elegance and tenderness, Carew is never feeble; and in his laments there is nothing whining or unmanly. After lavishing at the feet of his mistress the most passionate devotion, and the most exquisite flattery, hear him rebuke her pride with all the spirit of an offended poet!
The identity of his Celia is now lost in a name,—and she deserves it: perhaps had she appreciated the love she inspired, and been true to that she professed, she might have won her elegant lover back to virtue, and wreathed her fame with his for ever. Disappointed in the object of his idolatry, Carew plunged madly into pleasure, and thus hastened his end. He died, as Clarendon tells us, with "deep remorse for his past excesses, and every manifestation of Christianity his best friends could desire."
Besides his Celia, Carew has celebrated several other ladies of the Court, and particularly Lady Mary Villars; the Countess of Anglesea; Lady Carlisle, the theme of all the poets of her age, and her lovely daughter, Lady Anne Hay, on whom he wrote an elegy, which begins with some lines never surpassed in harmony and tenderness.
Here Carew has fallen into the vulgar error, that poetry and fiction are synonymous.
Lady Anne Wentworth,[2] daughter of the first Earl of Cleveland, who, after making terrible havoc in the heart of the Lord Chief Justice Finch, married Lord Lovelace, is another of Carew's fair heroines. For her marriage he wrote the epithalamium,
As Carew is not a popular poet, nor often found in a lady's library, I add a few extracts of peculiar beauty.
The gallant and accomplished Colonel Lovelace was, I believe, a relation of the Lord Lovelace who married Lady Anne Wentworth, and the friend and contemporary of Carew. His fate and history would form the groundwork of a romance; and in his person and character he was formed to be the hero of one. He was as fearlessly brave as a knight-errant; so handsome in person, that he could not appear without inspiring admiration; a polished courtier; an elegant scholar; and to crown all, a lover and a poet. He wrote a volume of poems, dedicated to the praises of Lucy Sacheverel, with whom he had exchanged vows of everlasting love. Her poetical appellation, according to the affected taste of the day, was Lucasta. When the civil wars broke out, Lovelace devoted his life and fortunes to the service of the King; and on joining the army, he wrote that beautiful song to his mistress, which has been so often quoted,—
The rest of his life was a series of the most cruel misfortunes. He was imprisoned on account of his enthusiastic and chivalrous loyalty; but no dungeon could subdue his buoyant spirit. His song "to Althea from Prison," is full of grace and animation, and breathes the very soul of love and honour.
Lovelace afterwards commanded a regiment at the siege of Dunkirk, where he was severely, and, as it was supposed, mortally wounded. False tidings of his death were brought to England; and when he returned, he found his Lucy ("O most wicked haste!") married to another; it was a blow he never recovered. He had spent nearly his whole patrimony in the King's service, and now became utterly reckless. After wandering about London in obscurity and penury, dissipating his scanty resources in riot with his brother cavaliers, and in drinking the health of the exiled King and confusion to Cromwell, this idol of women and envy of men,—the beautiful, brave, high-born, and accomplished Lovelace, died miserably in a little lodging in Shoe Lane. He was only in his thirty-ninth year.
The mother of Lucy Sacheverel was Lucy, daughter of Sir Henry Hastings, ancestor to the present Marquis of Hastings. How could she so belie her noble blood? I would excuse her were it possible, for she must have been a fine creature to have inspired and appreciated such a sentiment as that contained in the first song; but facts cry aloud against her. Her plighted hand was not transferred to another, when time had sanctified and mellowed regret; but with a cruel and unfeminine precipitancy. Since then her lover has bequeathed her name to immortality, he is sufficiently avenged. Let her stand forth condemned and scorned for ever, as faithless, heartless,—light as air, false as water, and rash as fire.—I abjure her.
[1] Pope.
[2] The only daughter of this Lady Anne Wentworth, married Sir W. Noel, and was the ancestress of Lady Byron, the widow of the poet.
The courtly Waller, like the lady in the Maids' Tragedy, loved with his ambition,—not with his eyes; still less with his heart. A critic, in designating the poets of that time, says truly that "Waller still lives in Sacharissa:" he lives in her name more than she does in his poetry; he gave that name a charm and a celebrity which has survived the admiration his verses inspired, and which has assisted to preserve them and himself from oblivion. If Sacharissa had not been a real and an interesting object, Waller's poetical praises had died with her, and she with them. He wants earnestness; his lines were not inspired by love, and they give "no echo to the seat where love is throned." Instead of passion and poetry, we have gallantry and flattery; gallantry, which was beneath the dignity of its object; and flattery, which was yet more superfluous,—it was painting the lily and throwing perfume on the violet.
Waller's Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea Sydney, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and born in 1620. At the time he thought fit to make her the object of his homage, she was about eighteen, beautiful, accomplished, and admired. Waller was handsome, rich, a wit, and five-and-twenty. He had ever an excellent opinion of himself, and a prudent care of his worldly interests. He was a great poet, in days when Spenser was forgotten, Milton neglected, and Pope unborn. He began by addressing to her the lines on her picture,
Then we have the poems written at Penshurst,—in this strain,—
The lady was content to be the theme of a fashionable poet: but when he presumed farther, she crushed all hopes with the most undisguised aversion and disdain: thereupon he rails,—thus—
His mortified vanity turned for consolation to Amoret, (Lady Sophia Murray,) the intimate companion of Sacharissa. He describes the friendship between these two beautiful girls very gracefully.
And they are very beautifully contrasted in the lines to Amoret—
But Lady Sophia, though of a softer disposition, and not carrying in her mild eyes the scornful and destructive light which sparkled in those of Sacharissa, was not to be "berhymed" into love any more than her fair friend. She applauded, but she repelled; she smiled, but she was cold. Waller consoled himself by marrying a city widow, worth thirty thousand pounds.
The truth is, that with all his wit and his elegance of fancy, of which there are some inimitable examples,—as the application of the story of Daphne, and of the fable of the wounded eagle; the lines on Sacharissa's girdle; the graceful little song, "Go, lovely Rose," to which I need only allude, and many others,—Waller has failed in convincing us of his sincerity. As Rosalind says, "Cupid might have clapped him on the shoulder, but we could warrant him heart-whole." All along our sympathy is rather with the proud beauty, than with the irritable self-complacent poet. Sacharissa might have been proud, but she was not arrogant; her manners were gentle and retiring; and her disposition rather led her to shun than to seek publicity and admiration.
The address to Sacharissa's femme-de-chambre, beginning, "Fair fellow-servant," is not to be compared with Tasso's ode to the Countess of Scandiano's maid, but contains some most elegant lines.
These lines impress us with the image of a very imperious and disdainful beauty; yet such was not the character of Sacharissa's person or mind.[6] Nor is it necessary to imagine her such, to account for her rejection of Waller, and her indifference to his flattery. There was a meanness about the man: he wanted not birth alone, but all the high and generous qualities which must have been required to recommend him to a woman, who, with the blood and the pride of the Sydneys, inherited their large heart and noble spirit. We are not surprised when she turned from the poet to give her hand to Henry Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, one of the most interesting and heroic characters of that time. He was then only nineteen, and she was about the same age. This marriage was celebrated with great splendour at Penshurst, July 30, 1639.
Waller, who had professed that his hope
pressed forward with his congratulations in verse and prose, and wrote the following letter, full of pleasant imprecations, to Lady Lucy Sydney, the younger sister of Sacharissa. It will be allowed that it argues more wit and good nature than love or sorrow; and that he was resolved that the willow should sit as gracefully and lightly on his brow, as the myrtle or the bays.
"To my Lady Lucy Sydney, on the marriage of my Lady Dorothea, her Sister.
"Madam.—In this common joy, at Penshurst, I know none to whom complaints may come less unseasonable than to your Ladyship,—the loss of a bedfellow being almost equal to that of a mistress; and therefore you ought, at least, to pardon, if you consent not to the imprecations of the deserted, which just Heaven, no doubt, will hear.
"May my Lady Dorothea, if we may yet call her so, suffer as much, and have the like passion, for this young Lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had for her; and may this love, before the year come about, make her taste of the first curse imposed on womankind—the pains of becoming a mother. May her first-born be none of her own sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her Lord as much as herself.
"May she, that always affected silence and retiredness, have the house filled with the noise and number of her children, and hereafter of her grand-children, and then may she arrive at that great curse, so much declined by fair ladies,—old age. May she live to be very old, and yet seem young—be told so by her glass—and have no aches to inform her of the truth: and when she shall appear to be mortal, may her Lord not mourn for her, but go hand-in-hand with her to that place, where, we are told, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, that being there divorced, we may all have an equal interest in her again. My revenge being immortal, I wish that all this may also befall their posterity to the world's end and afterwards.
"To you, Madam, I wish all good things, and that this loss may, in good time, be happily supplied with a more constant bedfellow of the other sex.
"Madam, I humbly kiss your hands, and beg pardon for this trouble from your Ladyship's most humble Servant,
Lady Sunderland had been married about three years; she and her youthful husband lived in the tenderest union, and she was already the happy mother of two fair infants, a son and a daughter,—when the civil wars broke out, and Lord Sunderland followed the King to the field. In the Sydney papers are some beautiful letters to his wife, written from the camp before Oxford. The last of these, which is in a strain of playful and affectionate gaiety, thus concludes,—"Pray bless Poppet for me![7] and tell her I would have wrote to her, but that, upon mature deliberation, I found it uncivil to return an answer to a lady in another character than her own, which I am not yet learned enough to do.—I beseech you to present his service to my Lady,[8] who is most passionately and perfectly yours, &c.
Three days afterwards this tender and gallant heart had ceased to beat: he was killed in the battle of Newbury, at the age of three-and-twenty. His unhappy wife, on hearing the news of his death, was prematurely taken ill, and delivered of an infant, which died almost immediately after its birth. She recovered, however, from a dangerous and protracted illness, through the affectionate and unceasing attentions of her mother, Lady Leicester, who never quitted her for several months. Her father wrote her a letter of condolence, which would serve as a model for all letters on similar occasions. "I know," he says, "that it is to no purpose to advise you not to grieve; that is not my intention: for such a loss as yours, cannot be received indifferently by a nature so tender and sensible as yours," &c. After touching lightly and delicately on the obvious sources of consolation, he reminds her, that her duty to the dead requires her to be careful of herself, and not hazard her very existence by the indulgence of grief. "You offend him whom you loved, if you hurt that person whom he loved; remember how apprehensive he was of your danger, how grieved for any thing that troubled you! I know you lived happily together, so as nobody but yourself could measure the contentment of it. I rejoiced at it, and did thank God for making me one of the means to procure it for you," &c.[9]
Those who have known deep sorrow, and felt what it is to shrink with shattered nerves and a wounded spirit from the busy hand of consolation, fretting where it cannot heal, will appreciate such a letter as this.
Lady Sunderland, on her recovery, retired from the world, and centering all her affections in her children, seemed to live only for them. She resided, after her widowhood, at Althorpe, where she occupied herself with improving the house and gardens. The fine hall and staircase of that noble seat, which are deservedly admired for their architectural beauty, were planned and erected by her. After the lapse of about thirteen years, her father, Lord Leicester, prevailed on her to choose one from among the numerous suitors who sought her hand: he dreaded, lest on his death, she should be left unprotected, with her infant children, in those evil times; and she married, in obedience to his wish, Sir Robert Smythe, of Sutton, who was her second cousin, and had long been attached to her. She lived to see her eldest son, the second Earl of Sunderland, a man of transcendant talents, but versatile principles, at the head of the government, and had the happiness to close her eyes before he had abused his admirable abilities, to the vilest purposes of party and court intrigue. The Earl was appointed principal Secretary of State in 1682: his mother died in 1683.
There is a fine portrait of Sacharissa at Blenheim, of which there are many engravings. It must have been painted by Vandyke, shortly after her marriage, and before the death of her husband. If the withered branch, to which she is pointing, be supposed to allude to her widowhood, it must have been added afterwards, as Vandyke died in 1641, and Lord Sunderland in 1643. In the gallery at Althorpe, there are three pictures of this celebrated woman. One represents her in a hat, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen, gay, girlish, and blooming: the second, far more interesting, was painted about the time of her first marriage: it is exceedingly sweet and lady-like. The features are delicate, with redundant light brown air, and eyes and eyebrows of a darker hue; the bust and hands very exquisite: on the whole, however, the high breeding of the face and air is more conspicuous than the beauty of the person. These two portraits are by Vandyke; nor ought I to forget to mention that the painter himself was supposed to have indulged a respectful but ardent passion for Lady Sunderland, and to have painted her portrait literally con amore.[10]
A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage: the expression wholly changed,—cold, faded, sad, but still sweet-looking and delicate. One might fancy her contemplating with a sick heart, the portrait of Lord Sunderland, the lover and husband of her early youth, and that of her unfortunate but celebrated brother, Algernon Sydney; both which hang on the opposite side of the gallery.
The present Duke of Marlborough, and the present Earl Spencer, are the lineal descendants of Waller's Sacharissa.
One little incident, somewhat prosaic indeed, proves how little heart there was in Waller's poetical attachment to this beautiful and admirable woman. When Lady Sunderland, after a retirement of thirty years, re-appeared in the court she had once adorned, she met Waller at Lady Wharton's, and addressing him with a smiling courtesy, she reminded him of their youthful days:—"When," said she, "will you write such fine verses on me again?"—"Madam," replied Waller, "when your Ladyship is young and handsome again." This was contemptible and coarse,—the sentiment was not that of a well-bred or a feeling man, far less that of a lover or a poet,—no!