ABSTRACT
The autobiographical sketch ‘A True Relation’ added by Margaret Cavendish to the end of her collection of tales in verse and prose, Nature’s Pictures (1656), is on the surface a homey piece of writing. It would appear that Cavendish wanted to use the addendum to reinforce the picture of harmonious family life that she had conjured up with the frontispiece at the beginning of that volume. The frontispiece, as explained in one prefatory poem, presents a warm and loving woman who reads her stories aloud for the entertainment of her husband and stepchildren. The fire burns brightly and the family is content. Nevertheless, a closer look at ‘A True Relation’ reveals there were the same rivalries, tensions and irritations in the Cavendish family that obtain in ordinary life. She was, for example, a little uneasy about the relationship between money and status where she and her husband were concerned. Her husband, then a marquis, had considerable status. Many in the court of Henrietta Maria – at least at the time of the wedding – felt that Margaret’s family, the Lucases, was not sufficiently noble to make such a match desirable for him. Margaret, on the other hand, had been raised in an environment where money was abundant and is not afraid to say so in ‘A True Relation’. Sociable Letters (1664) is not an autobiography, but it also contains a large amount of autobiographical detail – detail that is always obliquely presented and sometimes veiled under the guise of anagrams. Sociable Letters often deals with even more personal and intimate problems than does ‘A True Relation’: problems such as its author’s medical condition and the difficulties that arise when married men are attracted to women other than their wives. William, the Marquis, had such a history with women, and while the couple got along very well, that history always seemed to be lurking in the back of Margaret’s mind.
