ABSTRACT
During the centuries of literary culture through which England has passed, there has never been any want of what, in the absence of a better term, we must call female authors – which is, one cannot tell why, a title somewhat derogatory, although the bearers of it, if never reaching the highest level of literature, have yet made their contributions to the grand stock as well as the majority of their contemporaries. Great genius is confined to a few; and it has very rarely, it must be allowed, fallen to the lot of women to possess it – and never at all in the highest degree. That is, however, a question apart from our subject. Women must put up with the inevitable grievance of being classed as ‘female writers,’ just as Horace Walpole’s ‘royal and noble authors’ 2 must support the classification which seems to point them out as fine amateurs superior to, and scarcely worthy of, the full honours of the literary profession. But from the beginning of the ages, – from the dimness of that early period in which the famous Dame Juliana 3 sent so gallantly out of her nunnery, and with so much authority, her treatises upon hunting and hawking, and the blazonry of arms – strange occupations for a prioress, – until the present time, there has seldom appeared a figure so remarkable as that of the ‘thrice noble, illustrious, and excellent Princess,’ the ‘incomparable Margaret Newcastle,’ as Charles Lamb 4 calls her– ‘Mad Madge,’ 5 as her contemporaries said. Her wonderful pretensions in literature, the books she wrote, the philosophies she gave vent to, have dropped out of mortal ken. Out of the British Museum, or one of the two or three other universal libraries of the nation, it would perhaps be very difficult to find a copy of the ‘World’s Olio,’ or of ‘Nature’s Pictures, drawn by Fancie’s Pencil to the life;’ but a tradition of the writer and of her absurdities has floated down to us, and her sketch of her husband’s life and of her own still keeps a certain knowledge of her in the world. In the portrait which she has painted of herself 6 there is small trace of the absurdities and exaggerations with which she has been credited; and though her speculations may be confused and her poetry irregular, these particulars alone – not at all rare in her time – would be quite insufficient to account for the character of eccentricity given to her. Perhaps the fact that she dressed very quaintly after a fashion of her own, and was very shy, though so great a personage, may have more to do with it. Her life was one of great vicissitude and variety. Trained at Court – in the days when Court was first a wandering community chased about by the hazards of war from one place to another, and then an exiled coterie breathing conspiracy and anxious expectation; living half her life upon credit at the head of a banished household; moving from one Netherlandish town to another, conciliating the keen yet charitable burghers; then ending in state and wealth at home, – she led a changeful existence, never without a certain grandeur and luxury, but often without a penny in her purse. The history of the English exiles and emigrants during the troublous times of our history; the little communities they made in the picturesque old foreign cities; the manner in which their noble training and air of command, or the constant possibilities of change in their country, impressed the people around, and provided help for them; or, more seldom, their own cheerful economies which made the time of waiting possible, – would make an interesting book. From his Grace of Newcastle in Flanders to Sir Patrick Home in Utrecht, there was difference enough – the one awaiting the Restoration, the other the Revolution, to bring him home; but both accompanied by women, helpers alike and historians, from whom the tale of their bravery and sufferings comes to us. Grizel Baillie’s delightful story, 7 however, is told by a third person: Margaret of Newcastle speaks in her own. The book in which this lady’s life is recorded by herself, has the following remarkable title-page:– ‘Nature’s Pictures drawn by Fancie’s Pencil to the life. ‘Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle.
