LITMIR.BIZ

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relating to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, privately printed in 1886 by the Earl of Powis, are a few pages which give us invaluable glimpses of the London household. Lady Danvers’s eldest son, who set off upon his travels soon after her second marriage, and who applied himself vigorously to the various diversions of body and mind catalogued in the Autobiography, found himself often pinched for money. In such a strait, not unfamiliar to other fine gentlemen of his day, he invariably appealed to the services of the step-father who was his junior, in England. The latter, writing how “wee are all some what after the olde manner, and doe hartely wish you well,” seems to have busied himself to some avail, in concert with his brother-in-law, Sir Francis Newport (the first Lord Newport), in securing letters of credit to Milan, Turin, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, and in explaining at length, in his long involved sentences, how matters could be bettered. Whether or not the absent Knight of the Bath had reason to suspect Sir John’s disinterested action when it came to the handling of pounds and pence, he does not seem, then or after, to have burdened him with any great harvest of thanks. But Sir John’s faithful wife knew how to defend him, in a script of May 12, 1615, which may be quoted precisely as it stands in the Herbert papers.

      “To my best beloved sonn, S’r Edward Herbert, Knight,

       “My deare Sonn,

      it is straunge to me to here you to complayne of want of care of you in your absence when my thoughts are seldom removed from you which must assuredly set me aworkinge of any thinge may doe you good, & for writinge the one of us yf not both never let messenges pass without letter, your stay abroad is so short in any one place & we so unhappy in givinge you contentment as our letters com not to your hands which we are sorry for. And to tel you further of S’r John Da’vers Love which I dare sweare is to no man more, he is & hath beene so careful to keep you from lake of money now you are abroad as your Baylife faylinge payment as they continually doe & pay no man, he goeth to your Merchaunt, offers him self & all the powers he can make to supply you as your occasions may require, mistake him not, but beleeve me there was never a tenderer hart or a lovinger minde in any man then is in him towards you who have power to com’aund him & all that is his. Now for your Baylifs I must tell you they have not yet payed your brothers all their Anuities due at Midsom’er past & but half due at Christmas last and no news of the rest, this yf advauntage were taken might be preiuditiall to you and it is ill for your Brothers & very ill you have such officers.

      “I hope it will bringe you home & that is all the good can com of this. your sister Johnes hath long beene sicke & within this 8 dayes hath brought a boy she is so weake as she is much feared by those aboute her. my Lady Vachell lyes now adyeinge the bell hath twice gone for her. your wife & sweet children are well & herein I send you little Florence letter to see what comfort you may have of your deare children, let them, my Dear sonn, draw you home & affoorde them your care and me your comfort that desire more to see you then I desire any thinge ells in the world, and now I end with my dayly prayer for your health and safe retorne to Your ever lovinge mother,

      Magd: Da’vers.

“I have received the Pattent of your Br: William, & S’r John hath beene with the ambassatore who stayes for S’r James Sandaline[7] his cominge.”

A sympathizing reader, aware of sequences, may wonder whence Sir John drew “all the powers he can make”! The dignified letter, with its undulating syntax and thrifty punctuation, harmonizes with all we know of this delightful woman, who could so reproach what she deemed a shortcoming, without a touch of temper. How affectionate is the reference to the “little Florence” who died young, and to the other children, sufficiently precious to all that household, except to the wool-gathering chevalier their father, far away! Their innocent faces peer again through a sweet postscript of their grand-uncle: (“Dick is here, Ned and Bettye at Haughmond,”) written in the winter, from Eyton, to the truant at the Hague.[8] This same genial Sir Francis Newport, “imoderately desyring to see you,” confides to his nephew, during what he complains of as “a verye drye and hott time”[9] for Shropshire farmers, that “mye syster your mother is confident to take a iourney into these pts this somer, the rather, I think, because yo’r brother Vaugh’n is dead & if yo’ have a willing harte you maye come tyme enough to acco’pany her heare, & would not then the companye bee much the better?” But we fear the little excursion never came off. Edward Herbert’s next visit to his home, presumably after a four-years’ absence, was in 1619; and in May of that year he accepted the office of Ambassador to France, and spread his ready wing again to the Continent. And the Athenæ Oxoniensis will not let us forget that the too spirited envoy had to be temporarily recalled in 1621, because he had “irreverently treated” De Luynes, the powerful but good-for-nothing Constable of France. It is not insignificant that this was the year in which George Herbert wrote to his mother in one of his consoling moods, bidding her be of good cheer, albeit her health and wealth were gone, and the conduct of her children was not very satisfying!

We know that Lady Danvers had the “honor, love, obedience, troops of friends” which became her, and that she lost none of her influence, none of her serene charm. Her poet was much with her in his advancing age. In July, 1625, while the plague was raging in London, Donne reminded Sir Henry Wotton of the leisure he enjoyed, golden as Cicero’s, by dating his letter “from S’r John Davor’s house at Chelsey, of w’ich house & my Lord Carlil’s at Hanworth I make up my Tusculum.” Many a peaceful evening must they have passed upon the terraces, within sound of the solemn songs always dear to both. Visitors yet more illustrious came there from the city; for the noble hostess had once the privilege of reviving the great Lord Bacon,[10] who had fainted in her garden. We learn, with sympathy, that “sickness, in the declination of her years, had opened her to an overflowing of melancholy; not that she ever lay under that water, but yet had, sometimes, some high tides of it.” Death chose Dr. Donne’s ministering angel before him, after thirty years of mutual fealty. Her restless son Edward, now at home, was already eminent, and wearing his little Irish title of Baron Castleisland; her thoughtful Charles was long dead; her brother, also, was no more; her daughters were matrons, and dwelling in prosperity. With but one unfulfilled wish, that of seeing her favorite George married and in holy orders,[11] and after a life which left a wake of sunshine behind it in the world, very patiently and hopefully Magdalen Newport, Lady Danvers, entered upon eternity, in the early June of 1627. On the eighth day of the month, in St. Luke’s, the parish church of Chelsea, she was buried:

      “Old age with snow-bright hair, and folded palm,”

      the final earthly glimpse of her still traditionally beautiful. On the first of July her faithful liegeman, now Dean of St. Paul’s and Vicar of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, preached her funeral sermon there, before a crowd of the great ones of London, the clergy, and the poor. Izaak Walton’s kind face looked up from a near pew, whence he saw Dr. Donne’s tears, and felt his breaking voice, the voice of one who did not belie his friend, nigh the end of his own pilgrimage. In present grief and among graver memories, he had the true perception not to forget how joyous she had been. “She died,” he said, “without any change of countenance or posture, without any struggling, any disorder, … and expected that which she hath received: God’s physic and God’s music, a Christianly death. … She was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame, … naturally cheerful and merry, and loving facetiousness and sharpness of wit.” His own fund of mirth and strength was fast going; and a haunting line of his youth,

      “And all my pleasures are like yesterday,”

must have reverted to him many and many a time. Morbid and persistent thoughts beset him from this hour, probably, more than ever, until he had the effigy of himself, painted as he was, laid in his failing sight;[12] morbid and persistent thoughts of the ruin which befalls the bright bodies of

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