Women of History Part 8

BALLARD.

Daughter of Thomas, Lord Coventry, Keeper of the Great Seal, and wife of Sir John Pakington, was well known to, and celebrated by, the best and most learned divines of her time. Yet hardly my pen will be thought capable of adding to the reputation her own has procured to her, if it shall appear that she was the author of a work which is not more an honour to the writer than a universal benefit to mankind.

The work I mean is, "The Whole Duty of Man;" her t.i.tle to which has been so well ascertained, that the general concealment it has lain under will only reflect a l.u.s.tre upon all her other excellences by showing that she had no honour in view but that of her Creator, which, I suppose, she might think best promoted by this concealment. [The claims of other authors are not difficult to be disposed of.] If I were a Roman Catholic, I would summon tradition as an evidence for me upon this occasion, which has constantly attributed this performance to a lady.

And a late celebrated writer observes, that "there are many probable arguments in 'The Whole Duty of Man' to back a current report that it was written by a lady." And any one who reads "The Lady's Calling," may observe a great number of pa.s.sages which clearly indicate a female hand.

That vulgar prejudice of the supposed incapacity of the female s.e.x, is what these memoirs in general may possibly remove. And as I have had frequent occasion to take notice of it, I should not now enter again upon that subject, had not this been made use of as an argument to invalidate Lady Pakington's t.i.tle to those performances. It may not be amiss, therefore, to transcribe two or three pa.s.sages from the treatise I have just now mentioned. "But waiving these reflections, I shall fix only on the personal accomplishments of the s.e.x, and peculiarly that which is the most princ.i.p.al endowment of the rational nature--I mean the understanding--where it will be a little hard to p.r.o.nounce that they are naturally inferior to men, when it is considered how much of intrinsic weight is put in the balance to turn it to the men's side. Men have their parts cultivated and improved by education, refined and subtilised by learning and arts; are like a piece of a common, which, by industry and husbandry, becomes a different thing from the rest, though the natural turf owned no such inequality. We may therefore conclude, that whatever vicious impotence women are under, it is acquired, not natural; nor derived from any illiberality of G.o.d's, but from the ill managery of His bounty. Let them not charge G.o.d foolishly, or think that by making them women He necessitated them to be proud or wanton, vain or peevish; since it is manifest He made them to better purpose, was not partial to the other s.e.x; but that having, as the prophet speaks, 'abundance of spirit,' He equally dispensed it, and gave the feeblest woman as large and capacious a soul as that of the greatest hero. Nay, give me leave to say farther, that, as to an eternal well-being, He seems to have placed them in more advantageous circ.u.mstances than He has done men. He has implanted in them some native propensions which do much facilitate the operations of grace upon them."

And having made good this a.s.sertion, she interrogates thus: "How many women do we read of in the gospel, who in all the duties of a.s.siduous attendance on Christ, liberalities of love and respect, nay, even in zeal and courage, surpa.s.sed even the apostles themselves? We find His cross surrounded, His pa.s.sion celebrated by the avowed tears and lamentations of devout women, when the most sanguine of His disciples had denied, yea, forswore, and all had forsaken Him. Nay, even death itself could not extinguish their love. We find the devout Maries designing a laborious, chargeable, and perhaps hazardous respect to His corpse, and, accordingly, it is a memorable attestation Christ gives to their piety by making them the first witnesses of His resurrection, the prime evangelists to proclaim those glad tidings, and, as a learned man speaks, apostles to the apostles."

There are many works of this lady, besides "The Whole Duty of Man,"

enumerated in her biographies.

NOOR MAHAL.

[1512.]

JAMES MILL.

One of the circ.u.mstances which had the greatest influence on the events and character of the reign of Jehangire, was his marriage with the wife of one of the omrahs of his empire, whose a.s.sa.s.sination, like that of Uriah, cleared the way for the gratification of the monarch. The history of this female is dressed in romantic colours by the writers of the East. Khaja Aia.s.s, her father, was a Tartar, who left poverty and his native country to seek the gifts of fortune in Hindustan. The inadequate provision he could make for so great a journey failed him before its conclusion. To add to his trials, his wife, advanced in pregnancy, was seized with the pains of labour in the desert, and delivered of a daughter. All hope of conducting the child alive to any place of relief forsook the exhausted parents, and they agreed to leave her. So long as the tree, at the foot of which the infant had been deposited, remained in view, the mother supported her resolution; but when the tree vanished from sight, she sank upon the ground, and refused to proceed without her. The father returned, but what he beheld was a huge black snake convolved about the body of the infant, and extending his dreadful jaws to devour her. A shriek of anguish burst from the father's breast; and the snake, being alarmed, hastily unwound himself from the body of the infant, and glided away to his retreat. The miracle animated the parents to maintain the struggle; and before their strength entirely failed, they were joined by other travellers, who relieved their necessities.

Aia.s.s, having arrived in Hindustan, was taken into the service of an omrah of the court; attracted after a time the notice of Akbar himself; and, by his abilities and prudence, rose to be treasurer of the empire.

The infant who had been so nearly lost in the desert was now grown a woman of exquisite beauty; and, by the attention of Aia.s.s to her education, was accomplished beyond the measure of female attainments in the East. She was seen by Sultan Selim, and kindled in his bosom the fire of love. But she was betrothed to a Turkman omrah, and Akbar forbade the contract to be infringed. When Selim mounted the throne, justice and shame were a slight protection to the man whose life was a bar to the enjoyments of the king. By some caprice, however, not unnatural to minds pampered and trained up like his, he abstained from seeing her for some years after she was placed in his seraglio, and even refused an adequate appointment for her maintenance. She turned her faculties to account; employed herself in the exquisite works of the needle and painting, in which she excelled; and her productions were disposed of in the shops and markets, and thence procured the means of adorning her apartments with all the elegancies which suited her condition and taste. The fame of her productions reached the ear and excited the curiosity of the emperor. A visit was all that was wanting to rekindle the flame in his heart; and Noor Mahal (such was the name she a.s.sumed) exercised from that moment an unbounded sway over the prince and his empire. Through the influence of the favourite sultana, the vizirit was bestowed on her father; her two brothers were raised to the first rank of omrahs, by the t.i.tles of Aetibad Khan and Asopha Jah; but their modesty and virtues reconciled all men to their sudden elevation. And though the emperor, naturally voluptuous, was now withdrawn from business by the charms of his wife, the affairs of the empire were conducted with vigilance, prudence, and success; and the administration of Khaja Aia.s.s was long remembered in India as a period of justice and prosperity.

POCAHONTAS.

[BORN 1594. DIED 1617.]

DR HUGH MURRAY.

On a signal from their leader, they, the natives of Virginia, laid down their bows and arrows, and led Captain Smith [of the Expedition, 1607]

under strict guard to their capital. He was there exhibited to the women and children, and a wild war-dance was performed round him in fantastic measures, and with frightful yells and contortions. He was then shut up in a long house, and supplied at every meal with as much bread and venison as would have dined twenty men; but receiving no other sign of kindness, he began to dread that they were fattening in order to eat him. At last he was led to Pamunkey, the residence of Powhatan, the king. It was here his doom was sealed. The chief received him in pomp, wrapped in a s.p.a.cious robe of rac.o.o.n skins, with all the tails hanging down. Behind appeared two long lines of men and women, with faces painted red, heads decked with white down, and necks quite encircled with chains of beads. A lady of rank presented water to wash his hands, another a bunch of feathers to dry them. A long deliberation was then held, and the result proved fatal. Two large stones were placed before Powhatan, and, by the united efforts of the attendants, Smith was dragged to the spot, his head laid on one of them, and the mighty club was raised, a few blows of which were to terminate his life. In this last extremity, when every hope seemed past, a very unexpected interposition took place. Pocahontas, the youthful and favourite daughter of this savage chief, was seized with those tender emotions which form the ornament of her s.e.x. Advancing to her father, she in the most earnest terms supplicated mercy for the stranger; and though all her entreaties were lost on that savage heart, her zeal only redoubled.

She ran to Smith, took his head in her arms, laid her own upon it, and declared that the first death-blow must fall upon her. The barbarian's breast was at length softened, and the life of the Englishman was spared.

Smith was afterwards liberated and sent to Jamestown, where he was installed as president. As Powhatan's favour was to be courted, there had been sent handsome presents, with materials to crown him with splendour, in the European style. With only four companions he courageously repaired to the residence of the monarch, inviting him to come and be crowned at Jamestown. The party were extremely well received, though once they heard in the adjoining wood outcries so hideous as made them flee to their arms; but Pocahontas a.s.sured them they had nothing to fear. Subsequently, Smith was repeatedly in danger; and again, on one occasion, was saved by a second interposition of Pocahontas, who, at the risk of her father's displeasure, ran through the woods on a dark night to give him warning. But the kindness of this princess was ill repaid by the English, to whom she was so much attached; for Argall, an enterprising naval commander, afterwards contrived, through an Indian who had become his sworn friend, to inveigle on board his vessel the fair Pocahontas. Regardless of her tears and entreaties he conveyed her to Jamestown, where she was well treated; but in a negotiation for her ransom, exorbitant terms were demanded, which her father indignantly rejected, and the breach seemed only widened. Happily, the chains of the princess's captivity were lightened by others of a more pleasing nature. Mr John Rolfe, a respectable young man, was smitten with her dignified demeanour, and found no difficulty in gaining her affections. They were afterwards married, and she was converted and baptised under the name of Rebecca, to which the English prefixed the t.i.tle of Lady, and her subsequent conduct is said to have adorned her profession.

Soon after, in company with her husband, she visited England; and Captain Smith wrote a letter to his majesty, recounting her good deeds, declaring that she had a great spirit though a low stature, and beseeching for her a reception corresponding to her rank and merits. She was accordingly introduced at court, and into the circles of fas.h.i.+on, where, as a novelty, she was for some time the leading object, and is said to have deported herself with suitable grace and dignity. Purchas mentions his meeting with her at the table of his patron, Dr King, Bishop of London, where she was entertained with "festival and pomp."

The king took an absurd apprehension that Rolfe, on the ground of his wife's birth, might advance a claim to the crown of Virginia. This idea being at length driven out of his mind, he appointed him secretary and recorder-general of the colony. The princess, early in 1617, went to embark at Gravesend, but Providence had not destined that she would revisit her native sh.o.r.e. She was there seized with an illness which carried her off in a few days, and her last hours are said to have extremely edified the spectators, being full of Christian resignation and hope. She had left a son in the colony, whose offspring, carefully traced, is now numerous; and this descent is the boast of many Virginian families.

LUCY HUTCHINSON.

[BORN 1620. DIED 1659.]

JEFFREY.

The daughter of Sir Allan Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and wife of Colonel Hutchinson, so well known in the Civil War, was in all respects a remarkable woman. If it were allowable to take the portrait she has given of herself as a just representation of her fair contemporaries, we should form a most exalted notion of the Republican matrons of England. Making a slight deduction for a few traits of austerity borrowed from the bigotry of the age, we do not know where to look for a more n.o.ble and engaging character than that under which this lady presents herself to her readers; nor do we believe that any age of the world has produced so worthy a counterpart to the Valerias and Portias of antiquity. With a highminded feeling of patriotism and public honour, she seems to have been possessed by the most beautiful and devoted attachment to her husband, and to have combined a taste for learning and the arts with the most active kindness and munificent hospitality to all who came within the sphere of her bounty.

To a quick perception of character, she appears to have united a masculine force of understanding and a singular capacity for affairs, and to have possessed and exercised all those talents without affecting any superiority over the rest of her s.e.x, or abandoning for a single instant the delicacy and reserve which were then its most indispensable ornaments. Education is certainly far more diffused in our days, and accomplishments infinitely more common; but the perusal of this lady's Memoirs has taught us to doubt whether the better sort of women were not fas.h.i.+oned of old by a better and more exalted standard, and whether the most eminent female of the present day would not appear to disadvantage by the side of Mrs Hutchinson. There is for the most part something intriguing, and profligate, and theatrical in the clever women of this generation; and if men are dazzled by their brilliancy and delighted with their talent, we can scarcely even guard against some distrust of their judgment, or some suspicion of their purity. There is something, in short, in the domestic virtue, and the calm and commanding mind of our English matron, that makes the Corinnas and Heloises appear small and insignificant.

The admirers of modern talent will not accuse us of choosing an ign.o.ble compet.i.tor if we desire them to weigh the merits of Mrs Hutchinson against those of Madame Roland. The English revolutionist did not, indeed, compose weekly pamphlets and addresses to the munic.i.p.alities, because it was not the fas.h.i.+on of her day to print every thing that entered into the heads of politicians. But she shut herself up with her husband in the garrison with which he was entrusted, and shared his counsels as well as his hazards. She encouraged the troops by her cheerfulness and heroism, ministered to the sick, and dressed with her own hands the wounds of the captives as well as of the victors. When her husband was imprisoned on groundless suspicions, she laboured without ceasing for his deliverance, confounded his oppressors by her eloquence and arguments, tended him with unshaken fort.i.tude in sickness and in solitude, and after his decease dedicated herself to form his children to the example of his virtues, and drew up the memorial, which is now before us, of his worth and her own genius and affection. All this, too, she did without stepping beyond the province of a private woman, without hunting after compliments to her own genius or beauty, without sneering at the dulness or murmuring at the coldness of her husband, without hazarding the fate of her country on the dictates of her own enthusiasm, or fancying for a moment that she was born with talents to enchant and regenerate the world. With equal power of discriminating character, with equal candour, and eloquence, and zeal for the general good, she is elevated beyond her French compet.i.tor by superior prudence and modesty, and by a certain simplicity and purity of character, of which it appears to us that the other was unable to form a conception.

England, we should think, should be proud of having given birth to Mrs Hutchinson and her husband; and chiefly because their characters are truly and peculiarly English, according to the standard of their times, in which national characters were most distinguishable. Not exempt, certainly, from errors and defects, they yet seem to us to hold out a lofty example of substantial dignity and virtue, and to possess most of those talents and principles by which public life is made honourable, and privacy delightful. Bigotry must at all times debase, and civil dissension embitter our existence; but, in the ordinary course of events, we may safely venture to a.s.sert, that a nation which produces many such wives and mothers as Mrs Lucy Hutchinson, must be both great and happy.

LADY FANSHAWE.

[BORN 1625. DIED 1680.]

JEFFREY.

Lady Fanshawe was, as is generally known, the wife of a distinguished cavalier, in the heroic age of the Civil Wars and the Protectorate, and survived till long after the Restoration. Her husband was a person of no mean figure in those great transactions; and she, who adhered to him with the most devoted attachment, and partic.i.p.ated not unworthily in all his fortunes and designs, was consequently in continual contact with the movements that then agitated society. Since it may be said with some show of reason that Lady Hutchinson and her husband had too many elegant tastes and accomplishments to be taken as fair specimens of the austere and G.o.dly republicans, it certainly may be retorted, with at least equal justice, that the chaste and decorous Lady Fanshawe, and her sober, diplomatic lord, shadow out rather too favourably the general manners and morals of the cavaliers.

Lady Fanshawe seems to have followed, like a good wife and daughter, where her parents or her husband led her, and to have adopted their opinions with a dutiful and implicit confidence, but without being very deeply moved by the principles or pa.s.sions which actuated those from whom they were derived; while Lady Hutchinson not only threw her whole heart and soul into the cause of her party, but, like Lady Macbeth or Madame Roland, imparted her own fire to her own phlegmatic helpmate; "chastened him," when necessary, "with the valour of her tongue," and cheered him on, by the encouragement of her high example, to all the ventures and sacrifices, the triumphs or the martyrdoms, that lay visibly across their daring and lofty course. The Lady Fanshawe, we take it, was of a less pa.s.sionate temperament. She begins in her Memoirs, no doubt, with a good deal of love and domestic devotion, and even echoes from that sanctuary certain notes of loyalty; but, in very truth, is chiefly occupied, for the best part of her life, with the sage and serious business of some nineteen or twenty _accouchements_, which are happily accomplished in different parts of Europe, and seems at last to be wholly engrossed in the ceremonial of diplomatic presentations, the description of court dresses, state coaches, liveries, and jewellery, the solemnity of processions and receptions by sovereign princes, and the due interchange of presents and compliments with persons of wors.h.i.+p and dignity. But in her Memoirs there is enough, both of heart and sense and observation, at once to repay gentle and intelligent readers for the trouble of perusing them, and to stamp a character of amiableness and respectability on the memory of their author.

DOROTHY OSBORNE.

[1620.]

MACAULAY.

One who, for constancy in love against temptations to change, deserves commemoration. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome, and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her s.e.x. Sir William Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume opposed their wishes. When the courts.h.i.+p commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles.

Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for his son.

Dorothy Osborne was in the meantime besieged by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Dest.i.tute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his ill.u.s.trious father, dest.i.tute also of the meek and placid virtues of his elder brother, this young man was perhaps a more formidable rival than either of them would have been. Mrs Hutchinson, speaking the sentiments of the grave and aged, calls him an "insolent foole," and "a debauched unG.o.dly cavalier." These expressions probably mean that he was one who, among young and dissipated people, would pa.s.s for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie on modern hearthrugs, and Henry Cromwell promised that the highest functionaries in Dublin should be set to work to procure for her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions as very flattering, though his father was then only Lord General, and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over ambition, and the young lady appears never to have regretted her decision; though in a letter written just at the time when all England was ringing with the news of the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament, she could not refrain from reminding Temple, with pardonable vanity, "how great she might have been if she had been so wise as to have taken hold of the offer of Henry Cromwell."

Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his mistress. We would willingly learn more of the loves of these two. In the seventeenth century, to be sure, Louis XIV. was a much more important person than Temple's sweetheart. But death and time equalise all things. Neither the great king nor the beauty of Bedfords.h.i.+re, neither the gorgeous paradise of Marli nor Mrs...o...b..rne's favourite walk "in the common that lay hard by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads," is anything to us. Louis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill stands on the ruins of Marli, and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the ancient roof of Chicksands.

When at last the constancy of the lovers triumphed over all the obstacles which kinsmen and rivals could oppose to their union, a yet more serious calamity befell them. Poor Mrs...o...b..rne fell ill of the small-pox, and though she escaped with life, lost all her beauty. To this most severe trial, the affection and honour of the lovers of that age was not unfrequently subjected. Our readers will probably remember what Mrs Hutchinson tells us of herself. The lofty Cornelia-like spirit of the aged matron seems to melt into a long forgotten softness when she relates how her beloved Colonel "married her as soon as she was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted to look on her. But G.o.d," she adds, with a not ungraceful vanity, "recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her as well as before." Temple showed on this occasion the same justice and constancy which did so much honour to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage is not exactly known. But Mr Courtenay supposes it to have taken place about the year 1654. From this time we lose Dorothy, and are reduced to form our opinion of the terms on which she and her husband were, from very slight indications, which may easily mislead us.