Some Diversions of a Man of Letters - Edmund Gosse

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was once more living in that city, however, from May 1703 to March 1704, making a special study of geography. "My strength," she writes to George Burnet, "is very much impaired, and God knows whether I shall ever retrieve it." Her thoughts turned again to the stage, and in the early months of 1703 she composed her fifth and last play, the tragedy of The Revolution in Sweden; "but it will not be ready for the stage," she says, "till next winter." Her interest in philosophy did not flag. She was gratified by some communications, through Burnet, with Leibnitz, and she would have liked to be the intermediary between Locke and some philosophical "gentlemen" on the Continent, probably Malebranche and Leibnitz, in a controversy. But this was hopeless, and she writes (March 16th, 1704):—

      "Mr. Locke is unwilling to engage in controversy with the gentlemen you mention; for, I am informed, his infirmities have obliged him, for some time past, to desist from his serious studies, and only employ himself in lighter things, which serve to amuse and unbend the mind."

      Locke, indeed, had but six months more to live, and though he retained his charming serenity of spirit he was well aware that the end approached. Never contentious or desirous of making a sensation, he was least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into discussion with foreign philosophers. It does not appear that Catharine Trotter ever enjoyed the felicity of seeing in the flesh the greatest object of her homage; but he occupied most of her thoughts. She was rendered highly indignant by the efforts made by the reactionaries at Oxford and elsewhere to discourage the writings of Locke and to throw suspicion on their influence. She read over and over again his philosophical, educational, and religious treatises, and ever found them more completely to her taste. If she had enjoyed the power to do so she would have proclaimed the wisdom and majesty of Locke from every housetop, and she envied Lady Masham her free and constant intercourse with so beautiful a mind. Catharine Trotter watched, but from a distance, the extinction of a life thus honoured, which came to a peaceful end at Oates on October 28th, 1704. The following passage does not appear—or I am much mistaken—to have attracted the attention of Locke's biographers:—

      "I was very sensibly touched with the news of Mr. Locke's death. All the particulars I hear of it are that he retained his perfect senses to the last, and spoke with the same composedness and indifference on affairs as usual. His discourse was much on the different views a dying man has of worldly things; and that nothing gives him any satisfaction, but the reflection of what good he has done in his life. Lady Masham went to his chamber to speak to him on some, business; when he had answered in the same manner he was accustomed to speak, he desired her to leave the room, and, immediately after she was gone, turned about and died."

      She records that, after the death of Locke, Lady Masham communicated with Leibnitz, and Catharine is very indignant because a doubt had been suggested as to whether the writer's thoughts and expressions were her own. This was calculated to infuriate Catharine Trotter, who outpours in forcible terms her just indignation:—

      "Women are as capable of penetrating into the grounds of things, and reasoning justly, as men are, who certainly have no advantage of us, but in their opportunities of knowledge. As Lady Masham is allowed by everybody to have great natural endowments, she has taken pains to improve them; and no doubt profited much by a long intimate society with so extraordinary a man as Mr. Locke. So that I see no reason to suspect a woman of her character would pretend to write anything that was not entirely her own. I pray, be more equitable to her sex than the generality of your's are, who, when anything is written by a woman that they cannot deny their approbation to, are sure to rob us of the glory of it by concluding 'tis not her own."

      This is the real voice of Catharine Trotter, raised to defend her sex, and conscious of the many intellectual indignities and disabilities which they suffered.

      The first draft of The Revolution in Sweden being now completed, she sent it to Congreve, who was living very quietly in lodgings in Arundell Street. He allowed some time to go by before, on November 2nd, 1703, he acknowledged it. His criticism, which is extremely kind, is also penetrating and full. "I think the design in general," he says, "very great and noble; the conduct of it very artful, if not too full of business which may run into length and obscurity." He warns her against having too much noise of fighting on the stage in her second act, and against offending probability in the third. The fourth act is confused, and in the fifth there are too many harangues. Catharine Trotter has asked him to be frank, and so he is, but his criticism is practical and encouraging. This excellent letter deserves to be better known.

      To continue the history of Miss Trotter's fifth and last play, The Revolution in Sweden was at length brought out at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, towards the close of 1704. It had every advantage which popular acting could give it, since the part of the hero, Count Arwide, was played by Betterton; that of Constantia, the heroine, by Mrs. Barry; Gustavus by Booth; and Christina by Mrs. Harcourt. In spite of this galaxy of talent, the reception of the play was unfavourable. The Duchess of Marlborough "and all her beauteous family" graced the theatre on the first night, but the public was cold and inattentive. Some passages of a particularly lofty moral tone provoked laughter. The Revolution in Sweden, in fact, was shown to suffer from the ineradicable faults which Congreve had gently but justly suggested. It was very long, and very dull, and very wordy, and we could scarcely find a more deadly specimen of virtuous and didactic tragedy. Catharine was dreadfully disappointed, nor was she completely consoled by being styled—by no less a person than Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia—"The Sappho of Scotland." She determined, however, to appeal to readers against auditors, and when, two years later, after still further revision, she published The Revolution in Sweden, she dedicated it in most grateful terms to the Duke of Marlborough's eldest daughter, Henrietta Godolphin.

      How Miss Trotter came to be favoured by the Churchills appears from various sources to be this. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Inglis, was now physician-general in the army, and was in personal relations with the General. When the victory at Blenheim (August 1704) was announced, Catharine Trotter wrote a poem of welcome back to England. It is to be supposed that a manuscript copy of it was shown by Inglis to the Duke, with whose permission it was published about a month later. The poem enjoyed a tremendous success, for the Duke and Duchess and Lord Treasurer Godolphin "and several others" all liked the verses and said they were better than any other which had been written on the subject. George Burnet, who saw the Duke in Germany, reported him highly pleased with her—"the wisest virgin I ever knew," he writes. She now hoped, with the Duke's protection, to recover her father's fortune and be no longer a burden to her brother-in-law. A pension of £20 from Queen Anne gave her mother now a shadow of independence, but Catharine herself was wholly disappointed at that "settlement for my life" which she was ardently hoping for. I think that, if she had secured it, George Burnet would have come back from Germany to marry her. Instead of that he sent her learned messages from Bayle and from Leibnitz, who calls her "une Demoiselle fort spirituelle."

      Catharine Trotter now left London and Salisbury, and took up her abode at Ockham Mills, close to Ripley, in Surrey, as companion to an invalid, Mrs. De Vere. She probably chose this place on account of the Locke connection and the friendship of Peter King, since there is now much in her correspondence about Damaris, Lady Masham, and others in that circle in which George Burnet himself was intimate. But great changes were imminent. Although her correspondence at this time is copious it is not always very intelligible, and it is very carelessly edited. Her constant interchange of letters with George Burnet leaves the real position between them on many points obscure. In 1704, when he thought that he was dying in Berlin, he wrote to Catharine Trotter that he had left her £100 in his will, and added: "Pray God I might live to give you much more myself." He regrets that he had so easily "pulled himself from her company," and suggests that if she had not left London to settle in Salisbury he would have stayed in England. Years after they had parted we find him begging her to continue writing to him "at least once a week." She, on her part, tells him that he well knows that there is but one person she could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing (Catharine Trotter's) friendship."

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