Part 2

That the Natural Sweetness and Modesty which so well became their Sex, and so much recommended them to the Love and Esteem of the Men is (by many) exchanged for a Careless Indecent, Masculine Air [imitating] the Rakeish, Milder sort of Gentlemen in the Excess in Love of Gaming, Snuff-Taking, Habit, and a Modish Neglect of their Husbands, Children and Families.

As for his daughter’s verses, of the tone of which he is proud, he says affectingly:

We found most of them in her Scrittore after her death, written with her own Hand, little expecting, and as little desiring, the Publick shou’d have any Opportunity of either Applauding or Condemning them.

It might be possible to find some women writers of the age to whom Lord Molesworth’s strictures might be held, in part, to apply: Mrs. Centlivre, De la Rivière Manly, and Lady Mary Montagu. But it gives us a shock to hear them applied to the generality of early Georgian women, and they certainly would not apply to the poetesses (with whom we are specially concerned) of the rest of the century. Most of them were extremely severe and models of propriety, proud to display what learning they really had, but studious to exhibit a decorous modesty about publication.

The first edition (1696) of the poems of Philomela (Mrs. Elizabeth Singer Rowe) was published pseudonymously: her ‘Name had been prefixed, had not her own Modesty absolutely forbidden it’. The preface was written (from Harding’s Rents) by Elizabeth Johnson, who stoutly defended her sex:

We are not unwilling to allow Mankind the Brutal Advantages of Strength, they are Superior to ours in Force, they have Custom on their Side, and have Ruled, and are like to do so; and may freely do it without Disturbance or Envy; at least they should have none from us, if they could keep quiet among themselves. But when they would Monopolize Sense too, when neither that, nor Learning, nor so much as Wit must be allow’d us, but all over-ruled by the Tyranny of the Prouder Sex; nay when some of them will not let us say our Souls are our own, but would persuade us we are no more Reasonable Creatures than themselves, or their Fellow-Animals; we then must ask their Pardons if we are not yet so Compleatly Passive as to bear all without so much as a Murmur: We complain, and we think with Reason, that our Fundamental Constitutions are Destroyed; that here is a plain and open Design to render us mere Slaves, perfect Turkish Wives, without Properties or Sense or Souls; and are forced to Protest against it, and Appeal to all the World, whether these are not notorious Violations on the Liberties of Freeborn Englishwomen? This makes the meekest Worm amongst us all, ready to turn again when we are thus trampled on; But alas! What can we do to Right ourselves? Stingless and Harmless as we are, we can only Kiss the Foot that hurts us. However, sometimes it pleases Heaven to raise up some Brighter Genius than ordinary to Succour a Distressed People; an Epaminondas in Thebes; a Timoleon for Corinth; (for you must know we read Plutarch, now he is translated) and a Nassau for all the World: Nor is our Defenceless Sex forgotten! we have not only Bonducas and Zenobias; but Saphos and Daciers; Schurmans, Orindas and Behns, who have humbled the most haughty of our Antagonists, and made them do Homage to our Wit as well as to our Beauty.

Forty years passed before her poems were reprinted by Curll with a note from the author desiring him ‘to own, that it’s his Partiality to my Writings, not my Vanity, which has occasioned the Re-publishing of them’. Curll himself wrote the preface, telling the story of Mrs. Rowe’s life and marriage in the strain of ‘Long had this Lady been the Wish and Hope of many desiring Swains’. He addressed himself to Pope; said that Prior had praised Philomela; and quoted Dr. Watts as saying that ‘the Honour of Poetry is retrieved by such Writers, from the Scandal which has been cast upon it, by the Abuse of Verse to loose and profane Purposes’. Philomela’s diffident reserve was the common thing. Mary Jones, one of the best known, a friend of Dr. Johnson and author of verses respectably polished and pointed, prefaced her fat volume with the apologetic statement that her poems were ‘the product of pure nature only, and most of them wrote at a very early age’. She had for long shrunk from publication out of respect for ‘them [her friends], the world and myself’ and only resorted to it at last (under the patronage of the Dutch Stadtholder) in order to raise money for an aged and indigent relative. She must have raised a good deal: her subscription list (Christopher Smart and Horace Walpole appear in it) is a huge one. Her opening lines are unpromising:

How much of paper’s spoil’d, what floods of ink! And yet how few, how very few can think.

But the rest of the poem (printed in this volume) is amusing and explains her pretty well. Her reluctance to set out a dedication

With lies enough to make a lord asham’d!

was not shared by her contemporary Mary Masters, whose verses (alleged to have been corrected by Dr. Johnson) were dedicated to the Earl of Burlington. She prostrates herself in the most approved Grub Street mode. He is exalted; she lowly and untuneful:

Yet when a _British Peer_ has deign’d to shed His gen’rous favours on my worthless Head; Silent shall I receive the welcome Boon?

Boon indeed:

He spoke; he prais’d, I hearken’d with delight And found a strong Propensity to write.

The humility of the women authors and the implied condescension of the men were at their acutest during the eighteenth century. Poetesses, however, were far more numerous than before. There were (though Scotswomen wrote some immortal songs) no very notable ones; and the spread of authorship did not greatly affect women of the upper classes. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was an exception: but her salutation to the Alps will certainly not be reprinted by me. The cultivated relatives of dons and clergymen, widows driven to a subscription for a living, elderly spinsters, aspiring housekeepers and governesses composed and published volumes of respectable couplets. Now and then a considerable financial success was made. Mrs. Barber, the pushing widow of a Dublin tradesman, published in 1733 a handsome, even luxurious quarto, which is still very common. The most noticeable thing in the book is the prefatory poem by Constantia Grierson: ‘To Mrs. Mary Barber, under the name of Sapphira, occasioned by the encouragement she met with in England to publish her poems by subscription’.

Provincial ladies began to have volumes locally printed, and talent by poverty depressed was studiously unearthed. Mary Leapor, who had a strain of genius, was a domestic servant. Stephen Duck, the inspired Thresher, had his analogue, though not his equal, in Mrs. Yearsley, the Bristol Charwoman. This woman ought to be remembered for the most astounding apostrophe on record. She addressed a poem to the Bristol Channel in which she broke forth with

Hail! useful Channel....

The phrase, unique as it is, was significant of the age. It might be used as a text for that prevailing (though, of course, not universal) complacency of the middle Georgians, who often seemed to regard the Universe as a laudably well-meaning branch of the lower orders, and were quite capable of ‘Hail, gamesome Thunder’ and ‘Hail, pleasing Lightning’. For prosiness and bathos Mrs. Yearsley was surpassed by another lady whose work will not be found on succeeding pages. This was Miss Jane Cave, whose _Poems on Various Subjects, Entertaining, Elegiac and Religious_ were printed at Winchester in 1783, with a remarkable frontispiece showing the author quill in hand and wearing a sort of beribboned tea-cosy on top of a towering coiffure. Her volume is dedicated to the Subscribers: ‘Ye gen’rous patrons of a female muse.’ And with some reason. There were nearly two thousand of them, grouped by localities, ‘Oxford’, ‘Southampton’, ‘Bath’, &c. She, or the family which employed her in some unnamed capacity, must have systematically scoured the South of England for victims. Her character was evidently forcible, if unattractive; but her powers did not justify her evident self-complacency. She was especially fond of writing obituary poems on deceased clergymen. Here are characteristic extracts from two of these:

Hark! how the Heav’nly Choir began to sing, A song of praise, when _Watkins_ entered in.

Let ev’ry heart lift up a fervent pray’r, That old Elijah’s mantle may be there, That God from age to age may carry on The amazing work which _Harris_ hath begun.

In her dedication she disclaims any pretension to be a ‘Seward, Steele, or Moore’. The list is a sign of the times. Well-known poetesses now existed in large numbers, and as the century drew to a close both their fame and the claims to eminence of the best of them steadily increased. There was Helen Maria Williams, whose _Ode on the Peace_, competently written but now unreadable, was highly praised by Dr. Johnson, and one of whose sonnets was committed to heart by Wordsworth. There was Elizabeth Carter, translator of Epictetus, and a blue-stocking whose learning really commanded respect. There was Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer, in whose writing we can still find the vigour and grace that made her celebrated in her own day. Anna Seward was equally well known. She did not deserve it. Occasionally there is a faint trace of reality in her work, as in the Sonnet on a December morning, 1782:

I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light, Winter’s pale dawn;—and as warm fires illume And cheerful tapers shine around the room, Thro’ misty windows bend my musing sight, Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansion white With shutters clos’d, peers faintly thro’ the gloom, That slow recedes;

But most of it is very bad; and I have not considered it necessary to drag her into this book merely because she was once taken seriously. Mrs. Opie, wife of the painter and author of _The Blind Boy_, was another celebrity. Her _Lines Respectfully Inscribed to the Society for the Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts_ are so characteristic of the time that I wish I had space for them.

There were others even better known. Something of the old strangeness still clung to the woman who wrote. Anna Seward was the Swan of Lichfield and Susanna Blamire the Muse of Cumberland. But the age that produced poets and dramatists of the status and popularity of Mrs. Barbauld, Hannah More and Joanna Baillie—the last a poetess of really considerable talents—was becoming reconciled. For a time the Mrs. Radcliffes might prefer to sign their works whilst the Jane Austens remained anonymous; but with the end of the epoch the old air of peculiarity faded, and with the century of the Romantic Revival came an innumerable host of women writers of some distinction, and three poetesses with claims to rank with all but the greatest men. After Mrs. Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Brontë we hear no more, and could hear no more, of ‘a Female Muse’.

* * * * *

That these three were greater poets than any Englishwomen before them goes, I imagine, without saying. Almost all their best predecessors were women who live by one or two poems. Amongst those poems scarcely one is a genuine classic beyond the extraordinary group of great songs written in the eighteenth century by Scotswomen, who seemed to have led more independent lives than the Englishwomen of their time, and certainly sang more boldly, confidently, and musically: the _Werena my Heart’s Licht_ of Lady Grisel Baillie, Mrs. Cockburn’s _The Flowers of the Forest_ and Jane Elliot’s, the stirring lilts of Isobel Pagan the Ayrshire publican, Lady Anne Barnard’s _Auld Robin Gray_, and _The Land of the Leal_ of Lady Nairne.

Until the age of Joanna Baillie, the Matchless Orinda had the greatest repute of them all, but there is more substantial achievement in the work of Lady Winchilsea. The Countess had no fame in her lifetime, she did not (as Orinda did) correspond with the literary men or exchange tributes with the poets of her time. But it was not for nothing that Wordsworth ‘discovered’ and valued her. She kept her eye on Nature at a time when the world in general had a conventional _parti pris_ about nature, and an impressive power comes with her speech. This slight ‘difference’ in her is not peculiar to her.

It may be left to others to discuss the particular aggregate value and characteristics of our women poets, to debate the question as to whether the ‘masculine imagination’ of Emily Brontë was a freak, to look for especially ‘feminine’ characteristics in the contents of this anthology. They are difficult and subtle questions. But I will call attention to one point, and one only: and that is rather to the credit of the poetesses. That they have, and must have, conformed to succeeding fashions in writing is obvious—the poetic style of an age is a fruit of its general civilization and way of thinking. But there is, I think, evidence that when the convention favours highly regularized speech and restricted choice of image, and when the convention favours a repression of personality, women seem to be less prone than men to complete conformity. Women from 1680 to 1750 may have written obediently in couplets or quatrains, but in those of them who have any merit, personal experience and personal passion are always peeping through, and the smooth surface of the stock diction is always being broken by an unexpected word, betraying obstinately individual taste and observation. Lady Winchilsea’s cropping horse in the night has often been quoted. But we are equally surprised to encounter the hot passion, the straightforward confessions of suffering, the open autobiography that are exposed in the poems, however technically imperfect, of Ephelia and Lady Wharton. Mary Mollineux’s verses[1] (5th edition 1761) were read, no doubt by her fellow Quakers, for generations after her death, but have never, so far as I know, been noticed by any critic.

Mary Mollineux the Quaker died (under fifty) in 1695. She had suffered in prison, and her religious poems—_Meditation_ and _Contemplation_, though not those on Nadab and Abihu, might almost have been added to the extracts in this book—are the work of a woman who, although very learned, was primarily concerned with the feelings she was registering. Totally indifferent to the manner of the time, she was strongly under the influence of Donne. Mary Leapor and Mary Masters again illustrate the refusal of even the lesser women to remain on the highest levels of masculine stiffness. The detectives who are always chasing, farther and farther back, into the Augustan Age for ‘heralds of Naturalism’, scraps of really fresh and enthusiastic description of Nature, could find things in both these poetesses. Mary Leapor (a domestic servant who died of measles at 24 after teaching herself to write some very polished verse) looked at Nature directly and keenly. A mere list of things she mentions (_d._ 1746) astonishes the reader accustomed, in the minor poets, to nothing more than groves, enamelled meads, bursting grapes, roses and lilies. If you turn Mary Leapor’s pages you will find kingcups, goldfinches, linnets, thyme, shining cottage tables, primroses, damsons, poppies.... And how, in this passage of Mary Masters, a knowledge of and love for the country struggles with the hoops and corsets of the mode:

Here the green Wheat disposed in even Rows (A pleasing view) on genial Ridges grows, Its clustered heads on lofty Spires ascend, And frequent with delightful wavings bend, There younger Barley shoots a tender Blade, And spreads a level plain with verdant Shade. The wreathing Pea extends its bloomy Pride, And flow’ry Borders smile on either side.

She says, in terms, that whenever she looks at the country it produces an excitement in her which makes her write verse: unfortunately her intelligence was too weak, and only a few lines (not about Nature) were found pointed enough for a representative selection. But she had that touch of informality, and I think that even in the obscurest and worst women poets of the time will almost always be found—what in the men’s work is only sometimes to be found—expressions of personal joy and grief, the healthy instinct to write about the things that the writer most intensely feels.

* * * * *

As for the text, there are a few poems which I have cut. Two of Lady Chudleigh’s are cut and one of Katherine Philips’s, two by Mary Masters and the second of Mary Mollineux’s. The first poem from Lady Mary Montagu is compressed, and Fanny Greville’s _Indifference_ and Mrs. Hemans’s _Dirge_ are truncated as they are in Sir A. Quiller-Couch’s _Oxford Book of English Verse_. I have modernized the spelling and typography of most of the older poems, but have here and there kept it because I didn’t like the look of some poems when I had modernized them.

There are, finally, a few problems to be cleared up on which I should be glad of light. The identity of Fanny Greville, whose _Indifference_ is one of the most poignant lyrics of the eighteenth century, has always baffled historians. Who was Mrs. Taylor who appeared in Dryden’s _Miscellany_ and also in Mrs. Behn’s _Miscellany_ of 1683? Who was _Ephelia_, first given her due in a charming essay by Mr. Gosse? There were two editions of her poems. The first of 1679 is complete, the edition of 1682 being padded out with poems, mostly good, by Rochester and others, including even _Come Lasses and Lads_. A question of even more interest to me personally is, who was Ann Collins? and one of more interest still, where are Ann Collins’s poems? Her _Song_ I found in Dyce (I recommend the reader to refer to it, remembering its date) and the other poem I got out of a forgotten but good anthology of religious verse compiled by James Montgomery. Dyce refers to her _Divine Songs and Meditations_ (1653). Lowndes’s _Bibliographer’s Manual_ states that the copy of the first edition sold at the Sykes and Heber Sales a century ago was said to be unique; but he records also an edition of 1658. I can find no further information, and neither edition is in the British Museum. I should be glad of light on this and also on the other compositions of Mary Oxlie, the friend of Drummond of Hawthornden.

For permission to reprint copyright works I owe thanks to Mrs. de Bary, Miss Eva Gore Booth, Mrs. Cornford, Mrs. Tynan Hinkson, Mrs. Violet Jacob, Miss Macaulay, and Mrs. Meynell: to Messrs. Wm. Blackwood & Sons (Moira O’Neill, _Songs of the Glens of Antrim_); Mr. R. Cobden-Sanderson (Sylvia Lynd); Mr. John Lane (Mrs. Woods); the Hon. Frederick Lawless and Sir Issac Pitman & Sons (Emily Lawless); Messrs. Macmillan & Co. (three copyright poems by Christina Rossetti); Sir Henry Newbolt and Mr. Elkin Mathews (Mary Coleridge); Mr. John Murray and Mr. A. C. Benson (two copyright poems by Charlotte Brontë); Mr. Clement Shorter (Dora Sigerson Shorter, and one copyright poem by Emily Brontë); Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson (Miss Macaulay); Mr. T. Fisher Unwin (Amy Levy, _A London Plane Tree_).

With this I may conclude the preface to a work which has occupied much of my spare time for seven years. I may echo the words of Dyce in his preface of 1827: ‘The inglorious toils of compilation seldom excite the gratitude of readers, who only require to be amused, and are indifferent as to what passed behind the scenes in the preparation of their entertainment: but we feel an honest satisfaction in the reflection, that our tedious chase through the Jungles of forgotten literature must procure to this undertaking the good-will of our countrywomen’.

Only that ‘must’ looks rather strong.

J. C. SQUIRE.

FOOTNOTES

[1] They were published by her husband, with prefatory notices by him, by her cousin Frances Owen, and by one Tryal Ryder. She was a saint and a scholar, wrote Horatian Latin lyrics on religious subjects, and suffered imprisonment for her faith in company with her husband. I cannot forbear quoting from his account of her death: ‘The next Morning, about the ninth Hour, I again thought she had been departing; but after a little Time, somewhat recovering her Breath, and seeing me express, to Friends that were present, something of my Concern for her, she said to me _Ne nimis sollicitus esto_; that is, in English, _Be not thou overmuch careful, or troubled_; which Advice took Impression in my Heart: And that was the last Latin Sentence that she spake, that I know of, and she never spake in Latin, in this Illness, that I remember except when Company was present, that she would speak only to me: A little after, most of the Company being gone out, I asked her, How she was? She answered, _Drawing nearer and nearer_. And many sweet and loving Sentences she spake to me that Day, and the Day next after; but afterwards was scarcely able to answer to any Question, but continued mostly sleeping as it were, sweetly and quietly: And on the third Day of the Eleventh Month, 1695, in the Evening, she departed without the least Sigh or Groan.’

ANNE ASKEWE

c. 1520-1546 (martyred)

_1. The Balade whych Anne Askewe made and sange when she was in Newgate_

Lyke as the armed knyght Appoynted to the fielde, With thys world wyll I fyght, And fayth shall be my shielde.

Faythe is that weapon stronge Whych wyll not fayle at nede; My foes therfor amonge Therwith wyll I procede.

As it is had in strengthe And force of Christes waye, It wyll prevayle at lengthe, Though all the devyls saye naye.

Faythe in the fathers olde Obtayned ryghtwysnesse, Whych make me verye bolde To feare no worldes dystresse.

I now rejoyce in hart, And hope byd me do so, For Christ wyll take my part, And ease me of my wo.

Thu sayst, Lorde, whoso knocke, To them wylt thou attende; Undo therfor the locke, And thy stronge power sende.

More enmyes now I have Than heeres upon my heed; Lete them not me deprave, But fyght thu in my steed.

On the my care I cast, For all their cruell spyght, I sett not by their hast, For thu art my delyght.

I am not she that lyst My anker to lete fall, For everye dryslynge myst, My shyppe substancyall.

Not oft use I to wryght In prose nor yet in ryme, Yet wyll I shewe one syght That I sawe in my tyme.

I saw a ryall trone Where Justyce shuld have sytt, But in her stede was one Of modye cruell wytt.

Absorpt was ryghtwysnesse As of the ragynge floude; Sathan in hys excesse Sucre up the gyltelesse bloude.

Then thought I, Jesus, Lorde, Whan thee shalt judge us all, Harde is it to recorde On these men what wyll fall.

Yet, Lorde, I the desyre, For that they do to me: Lete them not taste the hyre Of their inyquyte.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

1533-1603

_2. On Her Enemies_