Women of History Part 11

He prevailed upon her to remove her residence from the bosom of her own family in England to his immediate neighbourhood in Ireland, where she took lodgings with an elderly companion of the name of Mrs Dingley--avowedly for the sake of his society and protection, and on a footing of intimacy so very strange and unprecedented, that, whenever he left his parsonage-house for England or Dublin, these ladies immediately took possession and occupied it till he came back. A situation so extraordinary and undefined was liable, of course, to a thousand misconstructions, and must have been felt as degrading by any woman of spirit and delicacy; and, accordingly, though the master of this Platonic seraglio seems to have used all manner of paltry and insulting practices to protect a reputation which he had no right to bring into question,--by never seeing her except in the presence of Mrs Dingley, and never sleeping under the same roof with her,--it is certain both that the connection was regarded as indecorous by persons of her own s.e.x, and that she herself felt it to be humiliating and improper.

Accordingly, within two years after her settlement in Ireland, it appears that she encouraged the addresses of a clergyman of the name of Tisdal, between whom and Swift there was a considerable intimacy, and that she would have married him, and thus sacrificed her earliest attachment to her freedom and her honour, had she not been prevented by the private dissuasions of that false friend who did not choose to give up his own claims to her, although he had not the heart or the honour to make her lawfully his own. She was then a blooming beauty of little more than twenty, with fine black hair, delicate features, and a playful and affectionate character. It seems doubtful to us whether she originally felt for Swift anything that could properly be called love; and her willingness to marry another in the first days of their connection, seems almost decisive on the subject; but the ascendancy he had acquired over her mind, and her long habit of submitting her own judgment and inclinations to his, gave him at last an equal power over her, and moulded her pliant affections into too deep and exclusive a devotion.

Even before his appointment to the deanery of St Patrick's, it is utterly impossible to devise any apology for his not marrying her, or allowing her to marry another; the only one he ever appears to have stated himself, viz., the want of a sufficient fortune to sustain the expenses of matrimony, being palpably absurd in the mouth of a man born to nothing, and already more wealthy than nine-tenths of his order; but after he obtained that additional preferment, and was thus ranked among the well-beneficed dignitaries of the Establishment, it was plainly an insult upon common sense to pretend that it was the want of money that prevented him from fulfilling his engagement. Stella was then twenty-six, and he near forty-five, and both had hitherto lived very far within an income that was now more than doubled. That she now expected to be made his wife appears from the care he took in the Journal indirectly to destroy that expectation; and though the awe in which he continually kept her probably prevented her either from complaining or inquiring into the cause, it is now certain that a new attachment, as heartless, as unprincipled, and as fatal in its consequences as either of the others, was at the bottom of this cruel and unpardonable proceeding.

During his residence in London, from 1710 to 1712, regardless of the ties that bound him to Stella, he allowed himself to be engaged by the amiable qualities of Miss Esther Vanhomrigh; and, without explaining the nature of those ties to his new idol, strove by his a.s.siduities to obtain a return of affection, while he studiously concealed from the unhappy Stella the wrong he was consciously doing her. [The consequences of this double connection form one of the most tragic stories in our language--the formal ceremony by which he made Stella his wife, under the cloud of secrecy, and still keeping her from the enjoyment of her rights; the death of Miss Vanhomrigh of a broken heart, and the miserable fate of Stella.] Vanessa (so he called Miss Vanhomrigh) was now dead. The grave had heaped its tranquillising mould on her agitated heart, and given her tormentor a.s.surance that he should no more suffer from her reproaches on earth; and yet, though with her the last pretext was extinguished for refusing to acknowledge the wife he had so infamously abused, we find him, with this dreadful example before his eyes, persisting to withhold from his remaining victim that late and imperfect justice to which her claim was so apparent, and from the denial of which she was sinking before his eyes in sickness and sorrow to the grave. For the sake of avoiding some small awkwardness or inconvenience to himself,--to be secured from the idle talking of those who might wonder why, since they were to marry, they did not marry before, or perhaps merely to retain the object of his regard in more complete subjection and dependence,--he could bear to see her pining year after year in solitude and degradation, and sinking at last to an untimely grave, prepared by his hard and unrelenting refusal to clear her honour to the world even at her dying hour.

ESTHER VANHOMRIGH.

[1723.]

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

This unfortunate lady, when she first became acquainted with Swift, was in her twentieth year, and joined to all the attractions of youth, fashion, and elegance, the still more dangerous gifts of a lively imagination, a confiding temper, and a capacity of strong and permanent affection. Conscious of the pleasure which Swift received from her society, and of the advantages of youth and fortune which she possessed, and ignorant of the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which he stood with respect to another, naturally (and surely without offence either to reason or virtue) Miss Vanhomrigh gave way to the hope of forming a union with a man whose talents had first attracted her admiration, and whose attentions, in the course of their mutual studies, had by degrees gained her affections, and seemed to warrant his own. The friends continued to use the language of friendship, but with the a.s.siduity and earnestness of a warmer pa.s.sion, until Vanessa (the poetical name bestowed upon her by him) rent asunder the veil, by intimating to Swift the state of her affections; and in this, as she conceived, she was justified by her favourite, though dangerous maxim, of doing that which seems in itself right, without respect to the common opinion of the world. We cannot doubt that he actually felt the "shame, disappointment, guilt, surprise," expressed in his celebrated poem, though he had not courage to take the open and manly course of avowing those engagements with Stella, or other impediments which prevented him from accepting the hand and fortune of her rival. Without therefore making this painful but just confession, he answered the avowal of Vanessa's pa.s.sion in raillery, and afterwards by an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem. Vanessa seems neither to have been contented nor silenced by the result of her declaration, but to the very close of her life persisted in endeavouring, by entreaties and arguments, to extort a more lively return to her pa.s.sion than this cold proffer was calculated to afford.

Upon Swift's return to Ireland, we may guess at the disturbed state of his feelings, wounded at once by ungratified ambition, and harra.s.sed by his affection being divided between two objects, each worthy of his attachment, and each having great claims upon him, while neither was likely to remain contented with the limited return of friendship in exchange for love, and that friendship, too, divided by a rival. Time wore on. Mrs Vanhomrigh was now dead. Her two sons survived her but a short time; and the circ.u.mstances of the young ladies were so embarra.s.sed by inconsiderate expenses, as gave them a handsome excuse for retiring to Ireland, where their father had left a small property near Celbridge. The arrival of Vanessa in Dublin excited the apprehensions of Swift and the jealousy of Stella. She importuned him with complaints of neglect and cruelty; and it was obvious that any decisive measure to break their correspondence would be attended with some such tragic consequence as, though late, at length concluded their story.

About the year 1717, she retired from Dublin to her house and property near Celbridge, to nurse her hopeless pa.s.sion in seclusion from the world. Swift seems to have foreseen and warned her against the consequences of this step. His letters uniformly exhort her to seek general society, to take exercise, and divert as much as possible the current of her thoughts from the unfortunate subject which was preying upon her spirits. Until the year 1720, he never appears to have visited her at Celbridge; they only met when she was occasionally in Dublin. But in that year, and down to the time of her death, Swift came repeatedly to Celbridge.

But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of an union with the object of her affections, to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connection with Mrs Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had doubtless long excited her secret jealousy; although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him, then in Ireland, "If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, _except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine_." Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly perhaps to the weak state of her rival's health, which from year to year seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connection. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the dean; and, full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right on him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogation, and, without seeing him or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence.

Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer pa.s.sions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter upon the table, and, instantly leaving the house, mounted his horse and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death-warrant; she sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed yet cherished hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived this last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks.

MARY ASTELL.

[BORN 1668. DIED 1731.]

BALLARD.

This great ornament of her s.e.x, the daughter of a merchant in Newcastle, and born about the year 1668, was taught all the accomplishments which were usually learned by young women of her station; and although she proceeded no further in the languages at that time than the learning of the French tongue, yet she afterwards gained some knowledge of the Latin. And having a piercing wit, a solid judgment, and tenacious memory, she made herself a complete mistress of everything she attempted to learn with the greatest ease imaginable. At about twenty years of age she left Newcastle and went to London, where, and at Chelsea, she spent the remaining part of her life, and where she prosecuted her studies very a.s.siduously, and in a little time made great acquisitions in the sciences.

The learning and knowledge which she had gained, together with her great benevolence and generosity of temper, taught her to observe and lament the loss of it in those of her own s.e.x, the want of which, as she justly observed, was the princ.i.p.al cause of their plunging themselves into so many follies and inconveniences. To redress this evil as much as lay in her power, she wrote and published the two parts of her ingenious treatise, ent.i.tled, "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies." Afterwards came her "Letters, concerning the Love of G.o.d, between the author of the Proposal to the Ladies and Mr John Norris." Notwithstanding her great care to conceal herself, her name was soon discovered and made known to several learned persons, whose restless curiosity would hardly otherwise have been satisfied. These letters have been much applauded for their good sense, sublime thoughts, and fine language.

Afterwards she acquired a more complete knowledge of many cla.s.sic authors,--Xenophon, Plato, Hierocles, Tully, Seneca, Epictetus, and Antoninus. In 1700 she published her "Reflections on Marriage," which was followed by her book against the sectaries, "Moderation truly Stated,"--a work of which, notwithstanding all the arts she used to conceal herself, she was soon discovered to be the author. Afterwards came her "Religion of a Church of England Woman;" and her "Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War."

As her notions and sentiments of religion, piety, charity, humility, friendship, and all the other graces which adorn the good Christian, were most refined and sublime, so she possessed these rare and excellent virtues in a degree which would have made her admired and distinguished in an age less degenerate and profane; and though from the very flower of her age she lived and conversed with the fashionable world, amidst all the gaiety, pomp, and pageantry of the great city, yet she well knew how to resist and shun those infatuating snares. To know G.o.d, and to be like Him, was her first and great endeavour. Though easy and affable to others, to herself she was often over-severe. In abstinence, few or none ever surpa.s.sed her; for she would live like a hermit a considerable time together, with a crust of bread and water, with a little small beer.

And at the time of her highest living, she very rarely eat any dinner till night, and then it was by the strictest rules of temperance.

She seemed to enjoy an uninterrupted state of health till a few years before her death, when, having one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s cut off, it so much impaired her const.i.tution that she did not long survive it. This was occasioned by a cancer, which she had concealed from the world in such a manner that even few of her most intimate acquaintances knew anything at all of the matter. She dressed and managed it herself, till she plainly perceived there was an absolute necessity for its being cut off; and then, with the most intrepid resolution and courage, she went to the Rev. Mr Johnson, a gentleman very eminent for his skill in surgery (with only one person to attend her), entreating him to take it off in the most private manner imaginable, and would hardly allow him to have persons whom necessity required to be at the operation. She seemed so regardless of the sufferings or pain she was to undergo, that she refused to have her hands held, and did not discover the least timidity or impatience, but went through the operation without the least struggling or resistance, or even so much as giving a groan or a sigh.

Soon after this her health and strength declined apace; and at length, by a gradual decay of nature, being confined to bed, and finding the time of her dissolution drawing nigh, she ordered her coffin and shroud to be made and brought to her bedside, and there to remain in her view as a constant memento to her of her approaching fate, and that her mind might not deviate or stray one moment from G.o.d, its proper object.

MADAME DES URSINS.

[BORN 1640. DIED 1722.]

ST SIMON.

When this extraordinary woman was appointed camarera-mayor to the queen of Philip V. of Spain, she was a widow without children. No one could have been better suited for the post. A lady of the French court would not have done: a Spanish lady was not to be depended on, and might have easily disgusted the queen. The Princess des Ursins appeared to be a middle term. She was French, had been in Spain, and she pa.s.sed a great part of her life at Rome and in Italy. She was of the house of Tremoille,--Anne Maria de la Tremoille. She first married M. Talleyrand, who called himself Prince de Chalais. She followed her husband to Spain, where he died. Her second husband was chief of the house of Ursins, a grandee of Spain, and Prince of the Soglio.

Age and health were also appropriate, and likewise her appearance. She was rather tall than otherwise; a brunette, with blue eyes of the most varied expression; in figure perfect, with a most exquisite bosom; her face, without being beautiful, was charming. She was extremely n.o.ble in air, very majestic in demeanour, full of graces so natural and continual in everything, that I have never seen any one approach her either in form or mind. Her wit was copious, and of all kinds; she was flattering, caressing, insinuating, moderate, wishing to please for pleasing' sake, with charms irresistible when she strove to persuade and win over; accompanying all this, she had a grandeur that encouraged instead of frightening; a delicious conversation, inexhaustible and very amusing, for she had seen many countries and persons; a voice and way of speaking extremely agreeable, and full of sweetness. She knew how to choose the best society, how to receive them, and could even have held a court; was polite, _distingue_, and, above all, was careful never to take a step in advance without dignity and discretion. She was eminently fitted for intrigue, in which, from taste, she had pa.s.sed her life in Rome; with much ambition, but of that vast kind far above her s.e.x and the common run of men--a desire to occupy a great position, and to govern. A love for gallantry and personal vanity were her foibles, and these clung to her until her latest day; consequently, she dressed in a way that no longer became her, and, as she advanced in life, removed further from propriety in this particular. She was an ardent and excellent friend--of a friendship that time and absence never enfeebled, and, consequently, an implacable enemy, pursuing her hatred to the infernal regions. While caring little for the means by which she gained her ends, she tried as much as possible to reach them by honest means.

Secret not only for herself but for her friends, she was yet of a decorous gaiety, and so governed her humours, that at all times and in every thing she was mistress of herself.

From the first moment on which she entered the service of the Queen of Spain, it became her desire to govern not only the queen but the king, and by this means the realm itself. Such a grand project had need of support from our king [Louis XIV.], who, at the commencement, ruled the court of Spain as much as his own court, with entire influence over all other matters.

The young Queen of Spain had been not less carefully educated than her sister, the d.u.c.h.esse de Bourgogne. She had even, when so young, much intelligence and firmness, without being incapable of restraint. Indeed, she became a divinity among the Spaniards, and, to their affection for her, Philip V. was more than once indebted for his crown. Madame des Ursins soon managed to obtain the entire confidence of this queen, and, during the absence of Philip V. in Italy, a.s.sisted her in the administration of all public offices. She even accompanied her to the junta, it not being thought proper that the queen should be alone amidst such an a.s.semblage of men. In this way she became acquainted with everything that was pa.s.sing, and knew all the affairs of the government.

This step gained, it will be imagined that the Princess des Ursins did not forget to pay her court most a.s.siduously to our king and Madame de Maintenon. Little by little she introduced into her letters details respecting public affairs, without, however, conveying a suspicion of her own ambition. She next began to flatter Madame de Maintenon, and to hint that she might rule over Spain even more firmly than she ruled over France, if she would entrust her commands to Madame des Ursins. Madame de Maintenon was enchanted by the siren, and embraced the proposition with avidity. It was next necessary to draw the King of Spain into the same net--not a very arduous task. Soon the junta became a mere show.

Everything was brought before the king in private, and he gave no decision until the queen and Madame des Ursins pa.s.sed theirs.

[This rule Madame des Ursins continued for many years. Ultimately, a quarrel with Madame de Maintenon, the death of the Queen of Spain, and the second marriage of the king, with the cabals of enemies, forced her in her old age into a retreat at Rome.] She was not long there before she attached herself to the King and Queen of England (the Pretender and his wife), and soon governed them openly. What a poor resource! But it was courtly, and had a flavour of occupation for a woman who could not exist without movement. She finished her life there, remarkably healthy in mind and body, and in a prodigious opulence, which was not without its use in that deplorable court. She had the pleasure of seeing Madame de Maintenon forgotten and annihilated at St Cyr, of surviving her, of seeing at Rome her two enemies, Guidice and Alberoni, as profoundly disgraced as she. Her death, which a few years before would have resounded through all Europe, made not the least sensation.

LADY GRIZEL JERVISWOODE.

[1665.]

ANDERSON.

Grizel Hume, born in 1665, was daughter of Patrick Hume, Baron of Polwarth, and became the wife of George Baillie of Jerviswoode. She began her life during the troubles of the Scottish persecution. At the time of her father's liberation from prison, she was little more than ten years of age; and, soon after, those romantic incidents occur in her life which have given her a historical celebrity. From the tact and activity with which, far beyond one of her years, she accomplished whatever she was entrusted with, her parents sent her on confidential missions, which she executed with singular fidelity and success. In the summer of that same year, when Robert Baillie of Jerviswoode, the early and intimate friend of her father, was imprisoned for rescuing his brother-in-law, Mr James Kirkton, from a wicked persecutor, Captain William Carstairs, she was sent by her father from his country-house to Edinburgh, a long road, to try if from her age she could get admittance into the prison unsuspected, and slip a letter of information and advice into his hand, and bring back from him what intelligence she could.

Proceeding on her journey, she succeeded in getting access to Baillie, though we are not informed in what way. But in whatever way young Grizel got access to Baillie, and whatever were the circ.u.mstances of their interview, she successfully accomplished the purpose of her mission. It is also to be observed, that it was in the prison on this occasion that she first saw Mr Baillie's son, and that then and there originated that intimacy and attachment between him and her which afterwards issued in their happy marriage.

When, in October 1683, Robert Baillie was apprehended in London and sent down a prisoner to Scotland, her father, who was implicated in the same patriotic measures for preventing a popish successor to the British throne, for which Baillie was arrested, had too good ground to be alarmed for his own personal safety. But he was allowed, it would appear, to remain undisturbed in his own house till the month of September next year, when orders were issued by the government for his apprehension; and a party of troops had come to his house on two different occasions for that purpose, though they failed in getting hold of him. Upon this he found it necessary to withdraw from home, and to keep himself in concealment till he got an opportunity of going over to the Continent. The spot to which he betook himself for shelter was the family burying-place, a vault under ground at Polwarth Church, at the distance of a mile from the house. Where he was no person knew but Lady Grizel Hume, and one man, James Winter, a carpenter, who used to work in the house, and of whose fidelity they were not disappointed. The frequent examinations to which servants were at that time subjected, and the oaths by which it was attempted to extort discoveries from them, made Grizel and her mother afraid to commit the secret to any of these.

By the a.s.sistance of James Winter, they got a bed and bed-clothes carried during the night to his hiding-place; and there he was concealed for a month, during which time the only light he had was that admitted by means of a c.h.i.n.k at one end, through which n.o.body on the outside could see who or what was in the interior. While he abode in this receptacle of the dead, Grizel, with the most exemplary filial tenderness, and with the most vigilant precaution, ministered to his temporal wants and comforts. Regularly at midnight, when men were sunk in sleep, she went alone to this dreary vault, carrying to him a supply of food and drink, and to bear him company. She stayed as long as she could, taking care to get home before day, to prevent discovery. She had a great deal of humour in telling a story; and during her stay she took a delight in telling him, nor was he less delighted in hearing her tell him, such incidents at home as had amused herself and the rest of the family, and these were often the cause of much mirth and laughter to them both.

[Grizel's adventures were continued into Holland, whither her father retired, and where she showed her natural traits of sagacity, those marks of genius for which she has been celebrated. She wrote many pieces of poetry, and one in particular, "Werna my heart licht I would dee,"

which has been praised as simple, lively, and tender. Her personal appearance is thus described by her daughter, Lady Murray: "She was middle-sized, well made, clever, in her person very handsome, with a life and sweetness in her eyes very uncommon, and great delicacy in all her features; her hair was chestnut; and to her last she had the finest complexion, with the clearest red in her cheeks and lips that could be seen in any one of fifteen, which, added to her natural const.i.tution, might be owing to the great moderation she had in her diet throughout her whole life.... Pottage and milk were her greatest feast, and by choice she preferred them to everything, though nothing came wrong to her that others could eat. Water she preferred to any liquor; and though often obliged to take a gla.s.s of wine, she always did it unwillingly, thinking it hurt her, and did not like it."]

MADAME DE PONTCHARTRAIN.

[1660.]

ST SIMON.