24 JUNE 1893, Page 36

THE CAVALIER AND HIS LADY.* A Life of the Duke

of Newcastle, written by his Duchess, has appeared in five different editions. Originally printed as a thin folio in 1667, it was translated the next year into Latin, then published as a quarto in 1675, carefully edited by Mr. M. A. Lower in 1872, and as carefully re-edited by Mr. C. H. Firth in 1886. It was of this " Life " that Charles Lamb wrote, "No casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel;" and elsewhere he calls the author "the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous,—but again somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle;" but Pepys speaks of it as "the ridi- culous history of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman,

* The Cavalier and his Lady. Selections from the Works of the First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle. Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Edward Jenkins. London Macmillan and 00.

and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him." In these two opinions, opposite as they are, it is quite possible to concur. There is much that is absurd, and very much that has been long ago forgotten, in her writings ; but those who are curious in treading the somewhat over- grown byways of seventeenth.century literature, will agree with another biographer, Mr. Edward Jenkins, when he says

"Wherever one reads in the Duchess's books, he finds the tokens of a lively, vigorous, exuberant fancy, and an ingenious wit ; here and there good strokes of dry, sarcastic humour ; often thoughts of great force and beauty ; and anon many felicitous turns of expression I believe, had the mind of this woman been disciplined and exercised by early culture and study, it would have stood out remarkable among the feminine intellects of our history."

The Duchess, Charles Lamb's "dear Margaret Newcastle," wrote her own biography also, and this Mr. Jenkins calls "the happiest relic of her authorship." In it she gives "A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life." We learn that she was the youngest child of Sir Charles Lucas, born somewhere about 1625, that she was a quiet, precocious little maiden, writing on philosophy before she was twelve, a dutiful, loving daughter and sister, caring only for the com- pany of her brothers and sisters, and preferring her fine clothes and ornaments to playthings or books. She cannot have been remarkably well-educated, for she says : "As for my study of books, it was little ; yet I chose rather to read than to employ my time in any other work or practice. But my serious study could not be much by reason I took great delight in attiring, fine dressing and fashions, especially such fashions as I did invent myself, not taking that pleasure in such fashions as were invented by others. Also I did dislike any should follow my fashions, for I always took delight in a singularity, even in accoutrements of habits." In these words we find the germ of that passion for singularity that is spoken of by all her chroniclers. Walpole, in his Noble Authors, says there is a "whole-length portrait of the Duchess at Welbeck in a theatric habit, which tradition says she generally wore." This portrait must be the one painted by Diepenbeke in 1667, of which an engraving illustrates the two editions of Lower and Firth ; but in the gossiping Memoirs of Count Grammont is another portrait of the Duchess, that presents her as a comely peeress in ermine robe and small coronet, with the inevitable "Henrietta Maria" curls immortalised by Vandyck and Sir Peter Lely. The Count incidentally throws a side-light on the Duchess's reputation for peculiarity at Court. A prac- tical joke had been planned by Miss Hamilton, maid of honour to Catharine of Braganza, on her cousin, Lady Muskerry, whom she persuaded to come to the Queen's masquerade dressed in "the Babylonian fashion." Count Grammont, when he arrived at the masquerade, mentioned having met a lady as he got out of his chair, clothed in at least sixty ells of gauze and silver tissue, with a sort of pyramid on her head adorned with a hundred thousand baubles. As all the invited guests had arrived, the King having paused some minutes, "I bet," said he, "that it is the Duchess of Newcastle." "And I," said Lord Muskerry, "will bet it is another fool ; for I am very much mistaken if it is not my wife."

Evelyn notes in his Diary in 1667:—" I went to make court to the Duke and D atchess of Newcastle at their house at Clerken- well They received me with great kindnesse, and I was much pleased with the extraordinary fanciful habit and garb, and discourse of the Dutchess." And again :—" Went againe with my wife to the Dutchess of Newcastle, who received her in a kind of transport, suitable to her extravagant humour and dresse, which was very singular." Pepys declines to admire her at all. "She hath been a good and seemly woman, but her dress so antick, and. her deportment so ordinary, that I do not like her at all; nor did I hear her say anything that was worth hearing." Dyee, in his Specimens of British Poetesses, says : "The labours of no modern authoress can be compared, as to quantity, with those of our indefatig- able Duchess, who has filled nearly twelve [Mr. Jenkins says thirteen] folios with plays, poems, orations, philosophical dis- courses, &c. Her writings show that she possessed a mind of considerable power and activity, with much imagination, but not one particle of judgment or taste." lie gives as the best specimens of her poetry, the "Dialogue between Mirth and Melancholy," and "Pastime and Recreation of the Queen of Fairies," remarking of the latter, "perhaps it would be difficult to point out a composition which contains a more extraordi. nary admixture of imagination and coarse absurdity." It is this mixture of wisdom and folly, delicacy and want of ta,ste,

that makes the task of criticism a difficult one. Budges says the Pastime was worthy of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and

that Milton might have envied her song "Of a Sea-Goddess," of which two lines are especially happy :—

" On silver waves I sit and sing, And then the fish lie listening."

The Duchess abstained on principle from correcting or revising her writings, and kept beside her a bevy of young ladies to jot down the streams of fancy that night and clay flowed from her fertile brain. The difference made by a careful revision and pruning of her poetry can be seen at once in the small volume of selections edited by Mr. Jenkins. In his most interesting introductory essay he says : "I take the liberty in preparing these selections for modern eyes and tastes, to perform for the Duchess the task she should have undertaken for herself." Compare the following lines from Dyce's reprint of the original "Pastime of the Queen of Fairies ":—

" Where this Queen Mab, and all her fairy fry

Arc dancing on a pleasant mole-hill high ; With fine small straw pipes, sweet Music's pleasure, By which they do keep just time and measure ; All hand in band, around, around, They dance upon this fairy ground. And when the Queen leaves off to dance, She calls for all her attendants ;"

—with Mr. Jenkins' revised version :— "Queen Mab and all her fairy fry

Dance on a pleasant mole-bill high : With fine straw pipes sweet music's pleasure, They make and keep just time and measure. All hand in hand, around, around, They dance upon the fairy ground. And when she leaves her dancing-hall Sho cloth for her attendants call."

It would be an infinite labour to toil through the dusty folios in which her Grace's fanciful, philosophical, and dramatic writings are buried. Mr. Jenkins has culled a few of the best poems, essays, aphorisms, and letters, but he says," The two folios of plays written by the Duchess only show how incapable she was of good dramatic writing ; " and that her "philosophi- cal opinions were her worst foible." Her claim to a place in literature, though recognised by few modern writers on that subject, rests on her two biographies and on the poems above mentioned.

She was maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, and followed her to France. There, in 1045, she met the Marquis of New- castle, a Royalist General, also an exile, and married him. Clarendon says he was "a very fine gentleman, active, and full of courage, and most accomplished in those qualities of horsemanship, dancing, and fencing, which accompany a good breeding,—amorous of poetry and music." Whether he was a judicious and successful General is another question, for Warburton adds in his notes :—" Why did he not advance to fight the Scots before he returned to put a check to Fairfax's successes ? But he appears throughout to have been a very poor fantastic General." And he also calls him "a fantastical vertuoso on horseback." After the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor, Newcastle retired to France, married Margaret Lucas, and settled at Antwerp, in a house that belonged to "the widow of a famous picture-drawer, Van Ruben," this " picture- drawer " being no other than Rubens himself, whose museum the Duke afterwards bought for ELMO.

Here the Marquis (as he then was) amused himself with his Spanish horses and his " mannage," and the Duchess occupied herself with her prolific pen. During this period, his Grace wrote his well-known treatise on horsemanship, in which art he was a great proficient, which was published in a magnificent folio, adorned with many curious engravings. At the Restora- tion, he returned to England, retired to his half-ruined estates, with much success built up his impoverished fortune, and in 1664 was granted a dukedom by Charles II., in consideration of his loyal and faithf at services.

Newcastle was always a friend and patron of literary men. Waller mentions having dined at the Marquis's table in Paris in company with Hobbes and Descartes, Ben Jonson was one of his favourites, Dryden's "Evensong" was dedicated to him, and Sir W. Davenant acted as his master of the horse. He wrote four plays and various songs and poems, besides his work on horsemanship ; but we can hardly agree with his Duchess that he was the "best lyric and dramatic poet of this age." In return for her praise, the Duke wrote the following "Eulogy on the Duchess's Poems and Fancies : "—

" I saw your poems, and then wished them mine;

Reading the richest dressings of each line. Your now-born, sublime fancies in such store May make our poets blush and write no more. Nay, Spencer's ghost will haunt you in the night, And Jenson rise, full fraught with venom's spite : Fletcher and Beaumont, troubled in their graves, Look out some deeper and forgotten caves : And gentle Shakespeare weeping, since he must At best be buried now in Chaucer's dust.

Thus dark oblivion covers every name Since you have robbed them of their glorious fame."

This has been said to be ironical ; but it is quite in accordance with the lavish praise bestowed on the "Incomparable Princess" by great and learned men of her day. Pepys calls the Duke's Humorous Lovers "the most silly thing that ever came upon the stage ;" but then he attributed it to the Duchess. Of another play, The Country Captain, he also notes : "So silly a play as in all my life I never saw." But of a third, Sir Martin Mar-all, which he saw in 1667, he writes : "A play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as every-

body says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other, that was ever writ. I never laughed so in all my life, and at very good wit therein, not fooling."

The Duke and Duchess of Newcastle are both buried in Westminster Abbey. On their tomb, in the north transept, is the following inscription, written by the Duke, in words with which Addison was "very much pleased" (Spectator, No. 99) :—

" Here lyes the loyall Duke of Newcastle and his Dutehes, his second wife, by whom he had noe issue : liar name was lelargarett Lucas, yongest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble familie : for all the Brothers wore valiant, and all the Sisters virtuous. This Dutches was a wise, wittie, and learned lady, which her many Bookes do well tostifie ; she was a most virtuous and a lowing, and carefull wife, and was with her Lord all the timo of his banishment and miseries, and when he came home, never parted from him in his solitary retirements."