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The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760. Myra Reynolds
Читать онлайн.Название The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760
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isbn 4064066216696
Автор произведения Myra Reynolds
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
If the garbled version makes a true version a necessary reparation of the misfortune she will yield, "but with the same reluctancy as I would cut off a Limb to save my Life."
I am so far from expecting applause for anything I scribble, that I can hardly expect pardon; and sometimes I think that employment so far above my reach, and unfit for my Sex, that I am going to resolve against it for ever; and could I have recovered those fugitive Papers that have escaped my hands, I had long since made a sacrifice of them all. The truth is, I have an incorrigible inclination to that folly of riming, and intending the effects of that humour, only for my own amusement in a retir'd life; I did not so much resist it as a wiser woman would have done.[109]
She had been planning a visit to London, but she wrote in despair to Dorothy Osborne (then Mrs. Temple):
I must never show my face there or among any reasonable people again, for some dishonest person hath got some collection of my Poems as I heare, and hath deliver'd them to a Printer who I heare is just upon putting them out and this hath soe extreamly disturbed me, both to have my private folly so unhandsomely exposed and ye belief that I believe the most part of ye world are apt enough to believe yt I connived at this ugly accident that I have been on ye rack ever since I heard it, though I have written to Col. Jeffries who first sent me word of it to get ye Printer punished, the book called in, and me someway publicly vindicated yet I shall need all my friends to be my champions to ye criticall and mallicious that I am soe innocent of this pittiful design of a knave to get a groat that I never was more vexed at anything and yt I utterly disclaim whatever he hath so unhandsomely expos'd. I know you have goodness and generosity enough to doe me right in your company and to give me your opinion too how I may best get this impression supressed and myself vindicated and therefore I will not beg your pardon for troubling you with this impertinent story.[110]
Her pride of authorship would, however, almost certainly have triumphed over her modesty if she could have lived to see the sumptuous volume with its bravery of eulogistic verse in which Sir Charles Cotterell enshrined her work. Her letters to him, under the title Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, were published in 1705 and add distinctly to her fame.
On the whole, Orinda becomes a personage to us and an agreeable one. There is a note of sincerity through even her most unrestrained poems; the ardor of her affections is unmistakable; her loyalty to the King, to her friends, to her ideas, is genuine. She does not labor compliments. Her praise pours forth from the abundance of her feeling. Perhaps one reason for her ready popularity was that she aroused no antagonisms. Though a literary woman there was nothing about her that was masculine, strident, or assertive. Her outlook on life was gracious and tolerant. She loved simplicity and retirement and was never dazzled by wealth or titles.
At any rate, there is one interesting and significant fact about her and that is her success. It was a kind of success new in English literary history. A woman without any commanding advantages of birth or fortune, only moderately good-looking, without any compelling fascination, unstimulated by parental or tutorial ambitions, with but the scantiest schooling, married to an ordinary, rather dull man; a virtuous, sane, orderly, thrifty woman, excellent in business, housewifely, with no eccentricities, simply follows her feelings in friendship and the bent of her mind towards authorship, and attains in a few years a position notably high.
Mary North (d. 1662)
Two interesting young women who belong chronologically to this group are not exactly learned ladies, but they had intellectual piquancy and alertness. One of them, Mary North, was the eldest of the fourteen children of Dudley, the fourth Lord North. The mother of this large family was evidently a remarkable woman. Her son Roger says of her: "The Government of us was In generall severe, but tender; our mother maintained her authority, and yet condiscended to Entertain us. She was learned (for a lady) and Eloquent. Had much Knoledg of History and readyness of witt to express herself, in the part of Reproof, wherein she was fluent and pungent. … But without occasion given to the Contrary, she was debonair, familiar, and very liberall of hir discourse to entertain all." This combination of the pungent and the debonair made an effective family discipline, for it was said that there was not a son or daughter whose abilities were not of a very high order, and that the daughters were hardly less cultured than their brothers. And of this group Mary was, says Roger, "by far the most brilliant—a woman of real genius." A charming picture is given of the ladies of the North family, gathered together according to the custom of the time for endless tasks of tapestry and embroidery, listening entranced to Mary who recited romances for hours together, giving not only the story, but the conversations, the substance of letters, and the general reflections. She had "a superiour wit, a prodigious memory, and was most agreeable." "She instituted a sort of order of the wits of her time and acquaintance, whereof the symbol was a sun with a circle touching the rays, and upon that in blue ground were wrote αὐτάρκης in proper Greek characters, which her father suggested. Divers of these were made in silver and enamel, but in embroidery plenty, which were dispersed to those wittified ladies who were willing to come into their order; and for a while they were formally worn, until the foundress fell under the government of another, and then it was left off."[111] Mary North was married to Sir William Spring of Pakenham and died in 1662 in her twenty-fourth year. Her feminine "Order of Intellect," her quaint badge, "the symbol of a community of taste and interest in literature, science, and art,"[112] offer an attractive and hopeful prospect. It was an inconspicuous little organization, springing up gayly and spontaneously, and its scope of learning may not have gone beyond the French romances the gifted young leader knew by heart, but it was at any rate an association of young women with some pronounced literary aspirations and tastes, and as such it stands out alone, a charming picture set in the framework of the anxious years before the Restoration.
Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (1627–1694)
When Dorothy Osborne had been Lady Temple some years her husband wrote from London a "sweet scrip full of reproaches" at the businesslike tone and brevity of her letters. She answered with a touch of her old sauciness: "Pray what did you expect I should have writ, tell me that I may know how to please you next time. But now I remember me you would have such letters as I used to write before we were marryed, there are a great many such in your cabinet yt I can send you if you please, but none in my head I can assure you."[113]
The love letters thus preserved in Sir William Temple's cabinet have had a narrow escape from oblivion. They were found among the Temple papers when Mr. Courtenay was preparing his elaborate Life of Sir William Temple, and forty-two extracts from the letters were put by Mr. Courtenay apologetically in an appendix. He could not be sure that they would not seem trivial in comparison to matters of state. This book was published in 1836. Macaulay reviewed it in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1838, and took occasion to give a vivid sketch of Dorothy and her lover. Macaulay's article led Mr. Edward Abbot Parry to read Courtenay's extracts from the letters and to weave them together into a kind of story, which was published in April, 1886, in The English Illustrated Magazine. This magazine fell into the hands of Mrs. S. R. Longe who had had access to the original letters and had copied them with minute accuracy. These letters were offered to Mr. Parry for publication and were accordingly brought out, though with omissions, in 1888.[114] In 1903 the letters were published in full. Thus, after escaping the vicissitudes of nearly two and a half centuries, these letters became a delight accessible to all.[115]
When Dorothy was twenty-one she went with her brother to France. At the Isle of Wight they were joined by young Mr. William Temple who promptly fell in love with Dorothy because of the spirited way she met a difficult situation. Her brother had written on the window pane at the inn some phrases objectionable to the Puritans, and the whole party was arrested. Then Dorothy, relying upon the general chivalrous attitude towards women, took the blame upon herself, and they were set free. The courtship thus begun was destined to last seven years. There were few meetings and the correspondence was carried on with all possible secrecy,