Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, died 1673, was as fond of authorship as her noble lord proved himself to be. Lord Orford speaks disparagingly of her ladyship’s talents, but it is well known that Horace Walpole spared no man (or woman) in his humour. “Philosophical Fancies,” Lon., 1653, 12mo. “Poems and Fancies,” 1653, fol. “The World’s Olio,” 1655, fol. “Nature’s Picture drawn by Fancie’s Pencil, to the Life,” 1656, fol. “Philosophical and Physical Opinions,” 1655, fol. “Orations,” 1662, fol. “Playes,” 1662, fol. She wrote 26 Plays, and a number of Scenes. “Sociable Letters,” 1664, fol. “Observations upon Experimental Philosophy,” 1666, fol. “Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle,” 1667, fol. The same in Latin, 1668, fol:—The Crown of her Labours. “Grounds of Natural Philosophy,” 1668, fol. “Letters and Poems,” 1676, fol. “Select Poems,” edited by Sir E. Brydges, 1813, 8vo. Her “Autobiography,” edited by Brydges, 1814, r. 8vo.
Personal
Why hath this lady writ her own life? since none cares to know whose daughter she was, or whose wife she is, or how she was bred, or what fortunes she had, or how she lived, or what humour or disposition she was of? I answer that it is true that ’tis to no purpose to the reader, but it is to the Authoress, because I write it for my own sake, not theirs; neither did I intend this piece for to delight, but to divulge; not to please the fancy, but to tell the truth, lest after-ages should mistake, in not knowing I was daughter to one Master Lucas of St. John’s near Colchester in Essex, and second wife to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle; for my lord having had two Wives, I might easily have been mistaken, especially if I should die and my Lord Marry again.
They received me with great kindnesse, and I was much pleased with the extraordinary fanciful habit, garb, and discourse of the Dutchess…. In the afternoone I went againe with my Wife to the Dutchess of Newcastle, who received her in a kind of transport, suitable to her extravagant humour and dresse, which was very singular.
After dinner I walked to Arundell House, the way very dusty,… where I find much company, indeed very much company, in expectation of the Duchesse of Newcastle, who had desired to be invited to the Society; and was, after much debate pro and con., it seems many being against it; and we do believe the town will be full of ballads of it. Anon comes the Duchesse with her women attending her; among others, the Ferabosco, of whom so much talk is that her lady would bid her show her face and kill the gallants. She is indeed black, and hath good black little eyes, but otherwise but a very ordinary woman, I do think, but they say sings well. The Duchesse hath been a good, comely woman; but her dress so antick, and her deportment so ordinary, that I do not like her at all, nor did I hear her say anything that was worth hearing, but that she was full of admiration, all admiration. Several fine experiments were shown her of colours, loadstones, microscopes, and of liquors…. After they had shown her many experiments, and she cried still she was full of admiration, she departed, being led out and in by several Lords that were there.
She talks like a Nell Gwynne, and looks like her too, though all within bounds.
“The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does is romantic,” wrote Pepys of the subject of this paper, whom some of her contemporaries irreverently styled “Mad Madge of Newcastle,” while later critics thought so highly of her that, in “A Vision of Female Poets,” Shakespeare and Milton are represented as respectfully helping her to alight from her Pegasus. The imputation of insanity probably troubled the Duchess but little; she would console herself with the reflection that “great wits are sure to madness near allied;” and if, as some of her biographers assert, her devoted loyalty to her husband, in the extremely disloyal Court of Charles II., earned her the nickname of “Mad Madge,” it becomes a title of honour.
General
A Lady worthy of Mention and Esteem of all Lovers of Poetry and Learning. One, who was a fit Consort for so Great a Wit, as the Duke of Newcastle. Her Soul sympathising with his in all things, especially in Dramatick Poetry; to which she had a more than ordinary propensity. She has publisht six and twenty Plays, besides several loose Scenes…. I know there are some that have but a mean Opinion of her Plays; but if it be consider’d that both the Language and Plots of them are all her own: I think she ought with Justice to be preferr’d to others of her Sex, which have built their Fame on other People’s Foundations: sure I am, that whoever will consider well the several Epistles before her Books, and the General Prologue to all her Plays, if he have any spark of Generosity, or Good Breeding, will be favourable in his Censure.
Her Grace’s literary labours have drawn down less applause than her domestic virtues: nor can it be denied that she wrote too much to be expected to write well, had her taste or judgment been greatly superior to what we find them. That she displayed poetical talent, however, when it was not clouded by obscure conceits, or warped by a witless effort to engraft the massy trunk of philosophy on the slender wilding of poesy, will be seen … from “The Pastime and Recreation of the Queen of Fairies, in Fairy-land, the Centre of the Earth.”
If her merit as an author were to be estimated from the quantity of her works, she would have the precedence of all female writers, ancient or modern. There are no less than thirteen folios of her writing; ten of which are in print: They consist chiefly of poems and plays. The life of the duke, her husband, is the most estimable of her productions. This has been translated into Latin…. We are greatly surprised that a lady of her quality should have written so much; and are little less surprised that one who loved writing so well, has writ no better.
A dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one—the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous,—but again somewhat fantastical, and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.
The labors of no modern authoress can be compared, as to quantity, with those of our indefatigable duchess, who has filled nearly twelve volumes, folio, with plays, poems, orations, philosophical discourses, &c. Her writings show that she possessed a mind of considerable power and activity, with much imagination, but not one particle of judgment or taste.
Indisputable evidence of a genius as high-born in the realms of intellect as its possessor was exalted in the ranks of society; a genius strong-winged and swift, fertile and comprehensive, but ruined by deficient culture, by literary dissipation, and the absence of concatenation and the sense of proportion.
Heroic romance proved as ephemeral in England as the cloaks and feathers with which it had crossed the Channel, and we may pass over such trivial literary attempts as those of the Duchess of Newcastle to the writings of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Behn.
She had a conceit that rose to an amazing and amusing serenity; yet the artless candour of its utterances disarms criticism of contempt, and positively creates out of her self-esteem a pleasantry of character that half resembles a virtue. She possesses abundance of sense, but very little of it common sense. Humour and wit are native in her; even genius can be claimed for portions of her best work; but so woefully did she lack consistency of taste and that species of literary judgment which has been termed the power of selecting the significant, that her works are the oddest medleys ever hurried through a printing press. Each of her volumes reminds one of a lady’s overturned work-basket, into which had crept all kinds of consequent and inconsequent things, with even a jewel or two among the mass. She possessed a perfect frenzy for writing. At twelve she was fond of scribbling on philosophical subjects; and in the deepest distress of her chequered life, as in its brightest moments, the sight of mere wet ink on the page seems to have solaced her beyond anything else. She never revised what she had thus once committed to paper, being of the opinion that the work of revision would have hindered her productive powers, as, indeed, it often would, had she duly considered the quality of the matter thrown off so hastily. There is no method either in her arrangement of subjects or in her style. One of the sentences in her autobiography is twelve pages long. Yet the bizarrerie of her modes of working frequently produces powerful effects, and at times you will come on smooth passages of her works in which the diction is almost as perfect as that which the most fastidious artifice could have devised.
She wrote a great deal; and not without feeling a somewhat deep and naïvely expressed admiration for her own performances. The epithet “restless” which she applies to her ambition, well fits her whole mind; there is restlessness about everything she did and wrote. She is never satisfied with one epistle to the reader; she must have ten or twelve prefaces and under-prefaces, which forcibly remind us of her contemporary, Oronte, in his famous sonnet scenes with Alceste…. Ideas are scattered here and there which were destined to live, and through which she anticipated men of true and real genius.
