Read Ebook: The Romance of Biography (Vol 2 of 2) or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets from the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed. 2 Vols. by Jameson Mrs Anna

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Waller's Sacharissa was the Lady Dorothea Sydney, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and born in 1620. At the time he thought fit to make her the object of his homage, she was about eighteen, beautiful, accomplished, and admired. Waller was handsome, rich, a wit, and five-and-twenty. He had ever an excellent opinion of himself, and a prudent care of his worldly interests. He was a great poet, in days when Spenser was forgotten, Milton neglected, and Pope unborn. He began by addressing to her the lines on her picture,

Such was Philoclea and such Dorus' flame.

Then we have the poems written at Penshurst,--in this strain,--

Ye lofty beeches! tell this matchless dame, That if together ye fed all one flame, It could not equalise the hundredth part Of what her eyes have kindled in my heart, &c.

The lady was content to be the theme of a fashionable poet: but when he presumed farther, she crushed all hopes with the most undisguised aversion and disdain: thereupon he rails,--thus--

To thee a wild and cruel soul is given, More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven; Love's foe profest! why dost thou falsely feign Thyself a Sydney? From which noble strain He sprung that could so far exalt the name Of love, and warm a nation with his flame.

His mortified vanity turned for consolation to Amoret, the intimate companion of Sacharissa. He describes the friendship between these two beautiful girls very gracefully.

Tell me, lovely, loving pair! Why so kind, and so severe? Why so careless of our care Only to yourselves so dear?

Not the silver doves that fly Yoked to Cytherea's car; Not the wings that lift so high, And convey her son so far, Are so lovely, sweet and fair, Or do more ennoble love, Are so choicely matched a pair, Or with more consent do move.

And they are very beautifully contrasted in the lines to Amoret--

If sweet Amoret complains, I have sense of all her pains; But for Sacharissa, I Do not only grieve, but die!

'Tis amazement more than love, Which her radiant eyes do move; If less splendour wait on thine, Yet they so benignly shine, I would turn my dazzled sight To behold their milder light.

Amoret! as sweet and good As the most delicious food, Which but tasted does impart Life and gladness to the heart. Sacharissa's beauty's wine, Which to madness doth incline, Such a liquor as no brain That is mortal, can sustain.

But Lady Sophia, though of a softer disposition, and not carrying in her mild eyes the scornful and destructive light which sparkled in those of Sacharissa, was not to be "berhymed" into love any more than her fair friend. She applauded, but she repelled; she smiled, but she was cold. Waller consoled himself by marrying a city widow, worth thirty thousand pounds.

The truth is, that with all his wit and his elegance of fancy, of which there are some inimitable examples,--as the application of the story of Daphne, and of the fable of the wounded eagle; the lines on Sacharissa's girdle; the graceful little song, "Go, lovely Rose," to which I need only allude, and many others,--Waller has failed in convincing us of his sincerity. As Rosalind says, "Cupid might have clapped him on the shoulder, but we could warrant him heart-whole." All along our sympathy is rather with the proud beauty, than with the irritable self-complacent poet. Sacharissa might have been proud, but she was not arrogant; her manners were gentle and retiring; and her disposition rather led her to shun than to seek publicity and admiration.

Such cheerful modesty, such humble state, Moves certain love, but with as doubtful fate; As when beyond our greedy reach, we see Inviting fruit on too sublime a tree.

You the soft season know, when best her mind May be to pity, or to love inclined: In some well-chosen hour supply his fear, Whose hopeless love durst never tempt the ear Of that stern goddess; you, her priest, declare What offerings may propitiate the fair: Rich orient pearl, bright stones that ne'er decay, Or polished lines, that longer last than they.

But since her eyes, her teeth, her lip excels All that is found in mines or fishes' shells, Her nobler part as far exceeding these, None but immortal gifts her mind should please.

These lines impress us with the image of a very imperious and disdainful beauty; yet such was not the character of Sacharissa's person or mind. Nor is it necessary to imagine her such, to account for her rejection of Waller, and her indifference to his flattery. There was a meanness about the man: he wanted not birth alone, but all the high and generous qualities which must have been required to recommend him to a woman, who, with the blood and the pride of the Sydneys, inherited their large heart and noble spirit. We are not surprised when she turned from the poet to give her hand to Henry Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, one of the most interesting and heroic characters of that time. He was then only nineteen, and she was about the same age. This marriage was celebrated with great splendour at Penshurst, July 30, 1639.

Waller, who had professed that his hope

Should ne'er rise higher Than for a pardon that he dared admire,

pressed forward with his congratulations in verse and prose, and wrote the following letter, full of pleasant imprecations, to Lady Lucy Sydney, the younger sister of Sacharissa. It will be allowed that it argues more wit and good nature than love or sorrow; and that he was resolved that the willow should sit as gracefully and lightly on his brow, as the myrtle or the bays.

"To my Lady Lucy Sydney, on the marriage of my Lady Dorothea, her Sister.

"MADAM.--In this common joy, at Penshurst, I know none to whom complaints may come less unseasonable than to your Ladyship,--the loss of a bedfellow being almost equal to that of a mistress; and therefore you ought, at least, to pardon, if you consent not to the imprecations of the deserted, which just Heaven, no doubt, will hear.

"May my Lady Dorothea, if we may yet call her so, suffer as much, and have the like passion, for this young Lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had for her; and may this love, before the year come about, make her taste of the first curse imposed on womankind--the pains of becoming a mother. May her first-born be none of her own sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her Lord as much as herself.

"To you, Madam, I wish all good things, and that this loss may, in good time, be happily supplied with a more constant bedfellow of the other sex.

"Madam, I humbly kiss your hands, and beg pardon for this trouble from your Ladyship's most humble Servant,

E. WALLER."

Lady Sunderland had been married about three years; she and her youthful husband lived in the tenderest union, and she was already the happy mother of two fair infants, a son and a daughter,--when the civil wars broke out, and Lord Sunderland followed the King to the field. In the Sydney papers are some beautiful letters to his wife, written from the camp before Oxford. The last of these, which is in a strain of playful and affectionate gaiety, thus concludes,--"Pray bless Poppet for me! and tell her I would have wrote to her, but that, upon mature deliberation, I found it uncivil to return an answer to a lady in another character than her own, which I am not yet learned enough to do.--I beseech you to present his service to my Lady, who is most passionately and perfectly yours, &c.

"SUNDERLAND."

Three days afterwards this tender and gallant heart had ceased to beat: he was killed in the battle of Newbury, at the age of three-and-twenty. His unhappy wife, on hearing the news of his death, was prematurely taken ill, and delivered of an infant, which died almost immediately after its birth. She recovered, however, from a dangerous and protracted illness, through the affectionate and unceasing attentions of her mother, Lady Leicester, who never quitted her for several months. Her father wrote her a letter of condolence, which would serve as a model for all letters on similar occasions. "I know," he says, "that it is to no purpose to advise you not to grieve; that is not my intention: for such a loss as yours, cannot be received indifferently by a nature so tender and sensible as yours," &c. After touching lightly and delicately on the obvious sources of consolation, he reminds her, that her duty to the dead requires her to be careful of herself, and not hazard her very existence by the indulgence of grief. "You offend him whom you loved, if you hurt that person whom he loved; remember how apprehensive he was of your danger, how grieved for any thing that troubled you! I know you lived happily together, so as nobody but yourself could measure the contentment of it. I rejoiced at it, and did thank God for making me one of the means to procure it for you," &c.

Those who have known deep sorrow, and felt what it is to shrink with shattered nerves and a wounded spirit from the busy hand of consolation, fretting where it cannot heal, will appreciate such a letter as this.

Lady Sunderland, on her recovery, retired from the world, and centering all her affections in her children, seemed to live only for them. She resided, after her widowhood, at Althorpe, where she occupied herself with improving the house and gardens. The fine hall and staircase of that noble seat, which are deservedly admired for their architectural beauty, were planned and erected by her. After the lapse of about thirteen years, her father, Lord Leicester, prevailed on her to choose one from among the numerous suitors who sought her hand: he dreaded, lest on his death, she should be left unprotected, with her infant children, in those evil times; and she married, in obedience to his wish, Sir Robert Smythe, of Sutton, who was her second cousin, and had long been attached to her. She lived to see her eldest son, the second Earl of Sunderland, a man of transcendant talents, but versatile principles, at the head of the government, and had the happiness to close her eyes before he had abused his admirable abilities, to the vilest purposes of party and court intrigue. The Earl was appointed principal Secretary of State in 1682: his mother died in 1683.

A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage: the expression wholly changed,--cold, faded, sad, but still sweet-looking and delicate. One might fancy her contemplating with a sick heart, the portrait of Lord Sunderland, the lover and husband of her early youth, and that of her unfortunate but celebrated brother, Algernon Sydney; both which hang on the opposite side of the gallery.

The present Duke of Marlborough, and the present Earl Spencer, are the lineal descendants of Waller's Sacharissa.

One little incident, somewhat prosaic indeed, proves how little heart there was in Waller's poetical attachment to this beautiful and admirable woman. When Lady Sunderland, after a retirement of thirty years, re-appeared in the court she had once adorned, she met Waller at Lady Wharton's, and addressing him with a smiling courtesy, she reminded him of their youthful days:--"When," said she, "will you write such fine verses on me again?"--"Madam," replied Waller, "when your Ladyship is young and handsome again." This was contemptible and coarse,--the sentiment was not that of a well-bred or a feeling man, far less that of a lover or a poet,--no!

Love is not love, That alters where it alteration finds.

One would think that the sight of a woman, whom he had last seen in the full bloom of youth and glow of happiness,--who had endured, since they parted, such extremity of affliction, as far more than avenged his wounded vanity, might have awakened some tender thoughts, and called forth a gentler reply. When some one expressed surprise to Petrarch, that Laura, no longer young, had still power to charm and inspire him, he answered, "Piaga per allentar d'arco non sana,"--"The wound is not healed though the bow be unbent." This was in a finer spirit.

FOOTNOTES:

Alluding to Sir Philip Sydney.

Lines on her picture.

His infant daughter, then about two years old, afterwards Marchioness of Halifax.

The Countess's mother, Lady Leicester, who was then with her at Althorpe.

Sydney's Memorials, vol. ii. p. 271.

See State Poems, vol. iii. p. 396.

BEAUTIES AND POETS.

Nearly contemporary with Waller's Sacharissa lived several women of high rank, distinguished as munificent patronesses of poetry, and favourite themes of poets, for the time being. There was the Countess of Pembroke, celebrated by Ben Jonson,

The subject of all verse, Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother.

ON LUCY COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.

There was also the "beautiful and every way excellent" Lady Anne Rich, the daughter-in-law of her who was so loved by Sir Philip Sydney; and the memorable and magnificent--but somewhat masculine--Anne Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, Pembroke, and Dorset, who erected monuments to Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel; and above them all, though living a little later, the Queen herself, Henrietta Maria, whose feminine caprices, French graces, and brilliant eyes, rendered her a very splendid and fruitful theme for the poets of the time.

There was at this time a kind of traffic between rich beauties and poor poets. The ladies who, in earlier ages, were proud in proportion to the quantity of blood spilt in honour of their charms, were now seized with a passion for being berhymed. Surrey, and his Geraldine, began this taste in England by introducing the school of Petrarch: and Sir Philip Sydney had entreated women to listen to those poets who promised them immortality,--"For thus doing, ye shall be most fair, most wise, most rich, most every thing!--ye shall dwell upon superlatives:" and women believed accordingly. In spite of the satirist, I do maintain, that the love of praise and the love of pleasing are paramount in our sex, both to the love of pleasure and the love of sway.

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