Anna Seward.
by Stapleton Martin.
PREFACE.
Literature and music and science have been found this year amazingly prolific in centenary commemorations of their great exemplars, as a leading article in the "Times," for April, 1909, has lately reminded us.
Yet the death in 1809 of Anna Seward, who "for many years held a high rank in the annals of British literature," to quote the words of Sir Walter Scott, has generally pa.s.sed unnoticed. It is the aim of this book to resuscitate interest in the poetess, and in the literary circle over which she reigned supreme.
ANNA SEWARD
Anna Seward, a daughter of the Rev. Thomas Seward, destined to become, by universal a.s.sent, the first poetess of her day in England, was born 12th December, 1747. Her mother was Elizabeth, one of the three daughters of the Rev. John Hunter (who was in 1704 appointed Head Master of Lichfield Grammar School), by his first wife, Miss Norton, a daughter of Edward Norton, of Warwick, and sister of the Rev. Thomas Norton, of Warwick.
Anna Seward"s parents were married at Newton Regis Church, Warwickshire, in October, 1741. The poetess was born at Eyam in Derbyshire, where her father was then the Rector. She was baptized Anne, but she generally wrote her name Anna. Her pet name in her own family was "Nancy," and also often "Julia."
Mr. Seward attained some literary fame, and was co-adjutor to an edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. When Anna Seward was seven years old, the family removed to Lichfield, and when she was thirteen they moved into the Bishop"s Palace, "our pleasant home" as she called it, where she continued to live after her father"s death, and for the remainder of her days.
The derivation of the word "Lichfield" has excited a good deal of controversy. In Anna Seward"s time, it was generally thought to mean "the field of dead bodies," _cadaverum campus_-from a number of Christian bodies which lay ma.s.sacred and unburied there, in the persecution raised by Diocletian. A reference to "Notes and Queries," in the Sixth and Eighth Series, will show an inquirer that later search throws some doubt on such derivation. St. Chad, or Ceadda (669672) founded the diocese of Lichfield, and was its patron saint.
The Cathedral, the Venus of Gothic creation, as now existing, was built piecemeal during the 13th and early part of 14th centuries. The present Bishop"s Palace is of stone, and was erected in 1687, by Thomas Wood, who was Bishop from 1671 to 1692, on the site of the old palace, built by Bishop Walter de Langton (12961321). The Bishops of Lichfield had a palace at Eccleshall, and this was the one used by these dignitaries down to the time of Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, who, it may be mentioned, was born 5th April, 1809. The latter sold it, and with part of the net proceeds added two ugly wings and an ugly chapel to the palace when he came to dwell there, in order to make it a centre of religious activity in the diocese. The body of the palace is, however, to this day little changed from its state when inhabited by the Sewards.
Anna Seward had several sisters, and one brother, all of whom died in infancy, except her second sister, Sarah. She, almost on the eve of marriage in her nineteenth year, to Mr. Porter, brother to Mrs. Lucy Porter of Lichfield, and son-in-law to Dr. Samuel Johnson, died in June, 1764. She is described as having been "lovely."
A stanza in "The Visions," an elegy, the first of the poems in Anna Seward"s "Poetical Works," having reference to the sad event, runs thus:-
The bridal vestments waited to array, In emblematic white, their duteous maid; But ne"er for them arrived that festal day; Their sweet, crush"d lily low in earth is laid.
John Hunter was Samuel Johnson"s schoolmaster, and Johnson declared that he was very "severe, and wrong-headedly severe." He once said, "My master whipt me very well. Without that, sir, I should have done nothing." Mrs. Hunter died in July, 1780, aged 66. She had been very beautiful, from all accounts, insomuch that Dr. Green, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and Dr. Newton, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield ("the learned and lucky pair") were once, Anna Seward tells us, rivals in their attachment to her.
Miss Honora Sneyd was the youngest daughter of Edward Sneyd, who was the youngest son of Ralph Sneyd of Bishton, in Staffordshire. She was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Seward and brought up by them as one of their own children.
Edward Sneyd was a Major of the Royal Horse Guards (blue), and became a widower early in life. The death of his wife was a great affliction, but his relations and friends, who were numerous, proved eager to take charge of his daughters. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and care with which Mrs. Seward executed the trust that she had undertaken. Indeed, none could have singled out Honora from Mrs. Seward"s own daughters by the light of anything in Mrs. Seward"s treatment or conduct. Honora was very beautiful and accomplished, and had attracted many admirers, as well as lovers. Anna Seward relates a whimsical story of an "oddity," an "awkward pedantic youth, once resident for a little time at Lichfield, who, when asked how he liked Honora, replied, "I could not have conceived that she had half the face she has," adding that Honora was finely rallied about this imputed plenitude of face. The oval elegance of its delicate and beauteous contour made the exclamation trebly absurd." But her first real lover was the "ill-fated" Major Andre. He first met Honora at Buxton, or Matlock, and, falling deeply in love with her, became a frequent visitor at the Palace. He writes, "How am I honoured in Mr. and Mrs. Seward"s attachment to me!" An engagement followed, but the marriage was prohibited. The reason, it would seem, was that Andre had not sufficient means to support a wife. Andre wrote to Honora, "But oh! my dear Honora! it is for thy sake only I wish for wealth," which wealth, indeed, he called "vile trash" in another of his letters.
The story of the young soldier is truly a sad one. In 1780, while serving in America, Andre was entrusted with secret negotiations for the betrayal of West Point to the British forces, but was captured by the Americans. In spite of his pet.i.tion that General Washington would "adapt the mode of death to his feelings as a man of honour," he was hanged as a spy at Tappan. General Washington was unable to listen to strong appeals for clemency, for, though commander of the American armies, his voice counted but one on the court martial. Andre was of French descent, and has been described as high-spirited, accomplished, affectionate and merry-hearted. Anna Seward tells us that he appeared to her to be "dazzled" by Honora, who estimated highly his talents; but the poetess adds that he did not possess "the reasoning mind" Honora required. In 1821 his body was, on the pet.i.tion of the Duke of York, brought to England. "The courtesy and good feeling," remarks Dean Stanley of the Americans, were remarkable. The bier was decorated with garlands and flowers, as it was transported to the ship. On arrival in England the remains were first deposited in the Islip Chapel, and subsequently buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, where the funeral service was celebrated, and where a monument was erected to his memory.
Washington, Anna Seward records, did her the honour to charge his aide-de-camp to a.s.sure her that no circ.u.mstances of his life had given him so much pain as the necessary sacrifice of Andre"s life.
Thomas Day, the author of "Sandford and Merton," who spent a good deal of his life in hunting for a wife, made love to Honora. She, however, refused to marry him; and small wonder, for the conditions he wished to impose on her were ridiculously stringent and restrictive, and she, not unnaturally, refused to entertain the prospect of the unqualified control of a husband over all her actions, implied by his requirements. Later on Day wished to marry Honora"s sister, but she also refused his offer. It may be added that he eventually succeeded in marrying a Yorkshire lady, who became devoted to him, and was inconsolable on his death, in 1789, from a kick by a horse.
The Earl of Warwick, when Lord George Greville, met Honora at some race-meeting, and was, we read, much fascinated with her. A Colonel Barry also was her lover, and once stated, "she was the only woman he had ever seriously loved."
Honora supplied the place of Sarah Seward, after the latter"s death, in Anna Seward"s affections, and numbers of her poems and letters testify how ardently the poetess admired and loved her.
In 1765 Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the well-known author, visited Lichfield. He had been a wild and gay young man, and had eloped with his first wife, who died in March, 1773. His personal address was "gracefully spirited, and his conversation eloquent." He danced and fenced well, was an ingenious mechanic, and invented a plan for telegraphing, consequent on a desire to know the result of a race at Newmarket. Becoming very intimate with the Sewards, and the addresses he had made to and for Honora, "after some time being permitted and approved," Edgeworth married her on 17th July, 1773, as his second wife, in the beautiful ladies" choir in Lichfield Cathedral. Mr. Seward, who had become a Canon Residentiary of Lichfield Cathedral, performed the ceremony, and shed "tears of joy while he p.r.o.nounced the nuptial benediction," and Anna Seward is recorded to have been really glad to see Honora united to a man whom she had often thought peculiarly suited to her friend in taste and disposition.
Honora died of consumption in 1780, and, in accordance with her dying wish, Edgeworth married her sister Elizabeth on Christmas Day in the same year. Honora, who was buried at King"s Weston, had issue two children.
In Anna Seward"s elegy, ent.i.tled "Lichfield," written in 1781, we read:-
"When first this month, stealing from half-blown bowers, Bathed the young cowslip in her sunny showers, Pensive I travell"d, and approach"d the plains, That met the bounds of Severn"s wide domains.
As up the hill I rose, from whose green brow The village church o"erlooks the vale below, O! when its rustic form first met my eyes, What wild emotions swell"d the rising sighs!
Stretch"d the pain"d heart-strings with the utmost force Grief knows to feel, that knows not dire remorse; For there-yes there,-its narrow porch contains My dear Honora"s cold and pale remains, Whose lavish"d health, in youth, and beauty"s bloom, Sunk to the silence of an early tomb."
Edgeworth is to be remembered as having been a good Irish landlord; he had a property at Edgeworthstown.
In 1802 Anna Seward wrote, "The stars glimmered in the lake of Weston as we travelled by its side, but their light did not enable me to distinguish the Church, beneath the floor of whose porch rests the mouldered form of my heart-dear Honora,-yet of our approach to that unrecording, but thrice consecrated spot, my heart felt all the mournful consciousness."
It is not easy to agree with Mr. E. V. Lucas, the author of a very entertaining book, ent.i.tled "A Swan and her Friends" (Methuen & Co.), when he says, "of Honora"s married life little is known, but she _may_ have been very happy," for she left a letter, written a few days before her death, which cannot easily be construed as applying merely to her death-bed state. Here is a paragraph from it:-
"I have every blessing, and I am happy. The conversation of my beloved husband, when my breath will let me have it, is my greatest delight, he procures me every comfort, and as he always said he thought he should, contrives for me everything that can ease and quiet my weakness."
"Like a kind angel whispers peace, And smooths the bed of death."
Her husband records that she was the most beloved as a wife, a sister, and a friend, of any person he had ever known. Each member of her own family, unanimously, almost intuitively, preferred her.
Anne Hunter, the eldest sister of Mrs. Seward, married a few days before her, viz., in October, 1741, at Newton Regis Church, the Rev. Samuel Martin, the Rector, who was formerly a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.
He afterwards became the Rector of Gotham, Notts., where he remained for 27 years, until his death, in 1775. In a letter dated 23rd June, 1764, written from Gotham, while visiting "her excellent Uncle and Aunt Martin," as she styled them, soon after the death of Sarah Seward, Anna Seward says, "pious tranquility broods over the kind and hospitable mansion, and the balms of sympathy and the cordials of devotion are here poured into our torn hearts," and "my cousin, Miss Martin, is of my sister"s age, and was deservedly beloved by her above all her other companions next to myself and Honora."
It was Dr. Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Robert Darwin, the naturalist, who died in 1882, author of the "Origin of the Species") who first discovered Anna Seward as a poetess. Happening to peruse some verses apparently written by her, he took an opportunity of calling at the Palace when Anna Seward was alone, and satisfied himself that she could write good poetry unaided, and that her literary abilities were of no common kind.
Dr. Darwin (who was a native of Nottinghamshire) in either the year 1756 or 1757, arrived in Lichfield to practise as a Physician there, where he resided until 1781. Darwin was a "votary to poetry," a philosopher, and a clever though an eccentric man. He wrote "The Botanic Garden," which Anna Seward p.r.o.nounced to be "a string of poetic brilliants," and in which book Horace Walpole noted a pa.s.sage "the most sublime in any author or in any of the few languages with which I am acquainted." He inserted in it, as his own work, some lines of Anna Seward"s,-which was ungallant, to say the least. Anna Seward"s mother repressed her early attempts at poetry, so for a time she contented herself with reading "our finest poets," and with "voluminous correspondence." On her mother"s death, being free to exercise her poetical powers, she forthwith produced odes, sonnets, songs, epitaphs, epilogues, and elegies, in profusion.
Anna Seward visited Bath, and her introduction into the literary "world"
was made by Anna, Lady Miller, a verse writer of some fame, who inst.i.tuted a literary salon at Bath-Easton, during the Bath season. An antique vase, which had been dug up in Italy in 1759, was placed on a modern altar decorated with laurel, each guest being invited to place in the urn an original composition in verse. When it was determined which were the best three productions, their authors were crowned by Lady Miller with wreaths of myrtle. Lady Miller died in 1781, and a handsome monument in the Abbey at Bath marks the spot where she was buried. It is stated in the D.N.B. that the urn, after her death, was set up in the public park in Bath.
f.a.n.n.y Burney met Lady Miller, whom she describes with her usual candour: "Lady Miller is a round, plump, coa.r.s.e-looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on. Her habits are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her manners very inelegant."
Once a year the most ingenious of the vase effusions was published, the net profits being applied to some Bath charity. Four volumes of the compositions appeared. The prize poem was written several times by Anna Seward, and on one occasion was awarded for her monody on the death of David Garrick.
Macaulay says, in his essay on Madame D"Arblay, that Lady Miller kept a vase "wherein fools were wont to put bad verses." Dr. Johnson also said, when Boswell named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase, "He was a blockhead for his pains"; on the other hand, when told that the d.u.c.h.ess of Northumberland wrote, Johnson said, "Sir, the d.u.c.h.ess of Northumberland may do what she pleases: n.o.body will say anything to a lady of her high rank." Remembering who were ranked among the contributors to the "Saloon of the Minervas," these criticisms seem rather absurd, for
"Bright glows the list with many an honour"d name."
Christopher Anstey, a fellow of King"s College, Cambridge, remembered as having written the "New Bath Guide," and as having been deemed worthy a cenotaph in Poets" Corner in Westminster Abbey, and William Hayley, appear to have been among the best-known to fame at "the fanciful and romantic inst.i.tution at Bath-Easton." The latter was a friend of Cowper, Romney and Southey, and published the lives of the two former. In "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," occur these lines:-
"Triumphant first see Temper"s Triumph shine, At least I"m sure they triumphed over mine.
Of "Music"s Triumphs" all who read may swear That luckless music never triumphed there."
The poems "Triumphs of Temper" (1781) and "Triumphs of Music" (1804) were Hayley"s chief productions. He was the most ardent of all of those who paid their homage to Anna Seward. Mr. Lucas informs us that David Garrick appears also in the list. To the foregoing names may be added Edward Jerningham, the friend of Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, a dramatist as well as a poet; George b.u.t.t, the divine, and chaplain to George III.; William Crowe, "the new star," as Anna Seward calls him, a divine and public orator at Oxford; and Richard Graves, a poet and novelist, the Rector of Claverton, who wrote "Recollections of Shenstone"
in 1788. These, and Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, were perhaps the most learned of the vase group. The latter, f.a.n.n.y Burney says, was one of its best supporters. He was a Prebendary of Wells Cathedral, and corresponded a good deal with Anna Seward. Wilberforce"s description of him is worth recalling, viz., "the true picture of a sensible, well-informed and educated, polished, old, well-beneficed, n.o.bleman"s and gentleman"s house-frequenting, literary and chess-playing divine."
Anna Seward"s "Elegy on Captain Cook," and her "Monody on Major Andre,"
were contributed to the Vase, and immediately brought her into great repute.
Anna Seward made friends with, and had a great admiration for, the celebrated recluses, "the ladies of Llangollen Vale,"-Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby. They were so called because when they arrived their names were unknown. It is said that they never left their home for 50 years, and were so absolutely devoted as to be inseparable from each other. They adopted a semi-masculine attire. These curious ladies,-"extraordinary women,"-are described as ladies of genius, taste and knowledge-who were "sought by the first characters of the age, both as to rank and talents."