The Romance of Biography Volume II Part 3

That horrid word, at once like lightning spread, Struck all our ears,--_the Lady Rich is dead_!

[12] See Waller, Carew, D'Avenant: the latter has paid her some exquisite compliments.

[13] Sir Philip Sydney's Works, "Defence of Poesie."

[14] Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 89.

[15] With the exception of the dedication of his Palamon and Arcite to the young and beautiful d.u.c.h.ess of Ormonde (Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort.)

[16] Mrs. Reeves, his mistress: she afterwards became a nun.

[17] Johnson's Life of Addison.

CHAPTER IV.

CONJUGAL POETRY.

If it be generally true, that Love, to be poetical, must be wreathed with the willow and the cypress, as well as the laurel and the myrtle,--still it is not _always_ true. It is not, happily, a necessary condition, that a pa.s.sion, to be constant, must be unfortunate; that faithful lovers must needs be wretched; that conjugal tenderness and "domestic doings" are ever dull and invariably prosaic. The witty invectives of some of our poets, whose domestic misery stung them into satirists, and blasphemers of a happiness denied to them, are familiar in the memory--ready on the lips of common-place scoffers. But of matrimonial poetics, in a far different style, we have instances sufficient to put to shame such heartless raillery; that there are not more, is owing to the reason which Klopstock has given, when writing of his angelic Meta. "A man," said he, "should speak of his wife as seldom and with as much modesty as of himself."

A woman is not under the same restraint in speaking of her husband; and this distinction arises from the relative position of the two s.e.xes. It is a species of vain-glory to boast of a possession; but we may exult, unreproved, in the virtues of him who disposes of our fate. Our inferiority has here given to us, as women, so high and dear a privilege, that it is a pity we have been so seldom called on to exert it.

The first instance of conjugal poetry which occurs to me, will perhaps startle the female reader, for it is no other than the gallant Ovid himself. One of the epistles, written during his banishment to Pontus, is addressed to his wife Perilla, and very tenderly alludes to their mutual affection, and to the grief she must have suffered during his absence.

And thou, whom young I left when leaving Rome, Thou, by my woes art haply old become: Grant, heaven! that such I may behold thy face, And thy changed cheek, with dear loved kisses trace; Fold thy diminished person, and exclaim, Regret for me has thinned this beauteous frame.

Here then we have the most abandoned libertine of his profligate times reduced at last in his old age, in disgrace and exile, to throw himself, for sympathy and consolation, into the arms of a tender and amiable wife; and this, after spending his life and talents in deluding the tenderness, corrupting the virtue, and reviling the characters of women.

In truth, half a dozen volumes in praise of our s.e.x could scarce say more than this.

Every one, I believe, recollects the striking story of Paulina, the wife of Seneca. When the order was brought from Nero that he should die, she insisted upon dying with him, and by the same operation. She accordingly prepared to be bled to death; but fainting away in the midst of her sufferings, Seneca commanded her wounds to be bound up, and conjured her to live. She lived therefore; but excessive weakness and loss of blood gave her, during the short remainder of her life, that spectral appearance which has caused her conjugal fidelity and her pallid hue to pa.s.s into a proverb,--"As pale as Seneca's Paulina;" and be it remembered, that Paulina was at this time young in comparison of her husband, who was old, and singularly ugly.

This picturesque story of Paulina affects us in our younger years; but at a later period we are more likely to sympathise with the wife of Lucan, Polla Argentaria, who beheld her husband perish by the same death as his uncle Seneca, and, through love for his fame, consented to survive him. She appears to have been the original after whom he drew his beautiful portrait of Cornelia, the wife of Pompey. Lucan had left the ma.n.u.script of the Pharsalia in an imperfect state; and his wife, who had been in its progress his amanuensis, his counsellor and confidant, and therefore best knew his wishes and intentions, undertook to revise and copy it with her own hand. During the rest of her life, which was devoted to this dear and pious task, she had the bust of Lucan always placed beside her couch, and his works lying before her: and in the form in which Polla Argentaria left it, his great poem has descended to our times.

I have read also, though I confess my acquaintance with the cla.s.sics is but limited, of a certain Latin poetess Sulpicia, who celebrated her husband Calenas: and the poet Ausonius composed many fine verses in praise of a beautiful and virtuous wife, whose name I forget.[18]

But I feel I am treading unsafe ground, rendered so both by my ignorance, and by my prejudices as a woman. Generally speaking, the heroines of cla.s.sical poetry and history are not much to my taste; in their best virtues they were a little masculine, and in their vices, so completely uns.e.xed, that one would rather not think of them--speak of them--far less write of them.

The earliest instance I can recollect of modern conjugal poetry, is taken from a country, and a cla.s.s, and a time where one would scarce look for high poetic excellence inspired by conjugal tenderness. It is that of a Frenchwoman of high rank, in the fifteenth century, when France was barbarised by the prevalence of misery, profligacy, and bloodshed, in every revolting form.

Margurite-Elonore-Clotilde de Surville, of the n.o.ble family of Vallon Chalys, was the wife of Brenger de Surville, and lived in those disastrous times which immediately succeeded the battle of Agincourt.

She was born in 1405, and educated in the court of the Count de Foix, where she gave an early proof of literary and poetical talent, by translating, when eleven years old, one of Petrarch's Canzoni, with a harmony of style wonderful, not only for her age, but for the times in which she lived. At the age of sixteen she married the Chevalier de Surville, then, like herself, in the bloom of youth, and to whom she was pa.s.sionately attached. In those days, no man of n.o.ble blood, who had a feeling for the misery of his country, or a hearth and home to defend, could avoid taking an active part in the scenes of barbarous strife around him; and De Surville, shortly after his marriage, followed his heroic sovereign, Charles the Seventh, to the field. During his absence, his wife addressed to him the most beautiful effusions of conjugal tenderness to be found, I think, in the compa.s.s of poetry. In the time of Clotilde, French verse was not bound down by those severe laws and artificial restraints by which it has since been shackled: we have none of the prettinesses, the epigrammatic turns, the sparkling points, and elaborate graces, which were the fas.h.i.+on in the days of Louis Quatorze.

Boileau would have shrugged up his shoulders, and elevated his eyebrows, at the rudeness of the style; but Molire, who preferred

J'aime mieux ma mie, oh gai!

to all the _fades galanteries_ of his contemporary _bels esprits_, would have been enchanted with the nave tenderness, the freshness and flow of youthful feeling which breathe through the poetry of Clotilde.

The antique simplicity of the old French lends it such an additional charm, that though in making a few extracts, I have ventured to modernize the spelling, I have not attempted to alter a word of the original.

Clotilde has ent.i.tled her first epistle "Herode mon poux Brenger;"

and as it is dated in 1422, she could not have been more than seventeen when it was written. The commencement recalls the superscription of the first letter of Helose to Abelard.

Clotilde, au sien ami, douce mande accolade!

A son poux, salut, respect, amour!

Ah, tandis qu'eplore et de coeur si malade, Te quier[19] la nuit, te redemande au jour-- Que deviens? o cours tu? Loin de ta bien-aime, O les destins, entrainent donc tes pas?

'Faut que le dise, hlas! s'en crois la renomme De bien long temps ne te reverrai pas?

She then describes her lonely state, her grief for his absence, her pining for his return. She laments the horrors of war which have torn him from her; but in a strain of eloquent poetry, and in the spirit of a high-souled woman, to whom her husband's honour was dear as his life, she calls on him to perform all that his duty as a brave knight, and his loyalty to his sovereign require. She reminds him, with enthusiasm, of the motto of French chivalry, "mourir plutt que trahir son devoir;"

then suddenly breaking off, with a graceful and wife-like modesty, she wonders at her own presumption thus to address her lord, her husband, the son of a race of heroes,--

Mais que dis! ah d'o vient qu'orgueilleuse t'advise!

Toi, escolier! toi, l'enfant des heros Pardonne maintes soucis celle qui t'adore-- A tant d'amour, est permis quelque effroi.

She describes herself looking out from the tower of her castle to watch the return of his banner; she tells him how she again and again visits the scenes endeared by the remembrance of their mutual happiness. The most beautiful touches of description are here mingled with the fond expressions of feminine tenderness.

L, me dis-je, ai reu sa dernire caresse, Et jusqu'aux os, soudain, me sens bruler.

Ici les ung ormeil, cercl par aubespine Que doux printemps j[20] courronnait de fleurs, Me dit adieu--Sanglots suffoquent ma poctrine, Et dans mes yeux roulent torrents de pleurs.

D'autresfois, cartant ces cruelles images, Crois m'enfonant au plus dense des bois, Mler des rossignols aux amoureuse ramages, Entre tes bras, mon amoureux voix: Me semble our, chappant de ta bouche rose, Ces mots gentils, qui me font tressaillir, Ainz[21] vois au mme instant que me suis abuse Et soupirant, suis prte dfailler!

After indulging in other regrets, expressed with rather more navet than suits the present taste, she bursts into an eloquent invective against the English invaders[22] and the factious n.o.bles of France, whose crimes and violence detained her husband from her arms.

Quand reverrai, dis-moi, ton si duisant[23] visage?

Quand te pourrai face face mirer?

T'enlacer tellement mon frment[24] corsage, Que toi, ni moi, n'en puissions respirer?

and she concludes with this tender _envoi_:

O que suives ton roi, ne mets ta douce amie En tel oubli, qu'ignore o git ce lieu: Jusqu'alors en souci, de calme n'aura mie,-- Plus ne t'en dis--que t'en souvienne! adieu!

Clotilde became a mother before the return of her husband; and the delicious moment in which she first placed her infant in his father's arms, suggested the verses she has ent.i.tled "Ballade mon poux, lors, quand tournait aprs un an d'absence, mis en ses bras notre fils enfanon."

The pretty burthen of this little ballad has often been quoted.

Faut tre deux pour avoir du plaisir, Plaisir ne l'est qu'autant qu'on le partage!

But, says the mother,

_Un tiers_ si doux ne fait tort plaisir?

and should her husband be again torn from her, she will console herself in his absence, by teaching her boy to lisp his father's name.