The Romantic Duchess of Newcastle
More than two centuries ago, when Clerkenwell was a sort of court-quarter of the town, its most distinguished residents were William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and his wife, Margaret Lucas, both of whom are remembered by their literary eccentricities. The Duke, who was a devoted royalist, after his defeat at Marston Moor, retired with his wife to the Continent; and with many privations, owing to pecuniary embarrassments, suffered an exile of eighteen years, chiefly in Antwerp, in a house which belonged to the widow of Rubens. Such was their extremity that they were both forced at one time to pawn their clothes to purchase a dinner. The Duke beguiled his time by writing an eccentric book on horsemanship. During his absence Cromwell’s parliament levied upon his estate nearly three-quarters of a million of money. Upon the Restoration, he returned to England, and was created Duke of Newcastle; he then retired to his mansion in Clerkenwell; he died there in 1676, aged eighty-four.
The duchess was a pedantic and voluminous writer, her collected works filling ten printed folios, for she wrote prose and verse in all their varieties. “The whole story,” writes Pepys, “of this lady is a romance and all she does is romantic. April 26th, 1667.—Met my Lady Newcastle, with her coach and footman all in velvet, herself, whom I never saw before, as I have heard her often described, for all the town talk is now-a-days of her extravagances, with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears, many black patches because of pimples about her mouth, naked-necked without anything about it, and a black just-au-corps. May 1st 1667.—She was in a black coach, adorned with silver instead of gold, and snow-white curtains, and everything black and white. Stayed at home reading the ridiculous history of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him.” On the 10th of April, 1667, Charles and his Queen came to Clerkenwell, on a visit to the duchess. On the 18th John Evelyn went to make court to the noble pair, who received him with great kindness. Another time he dined at Newcastle House, and was privileged to sit discoursing with her grace in her bedchamber after dinner. She thus describes to a friend her literary employments:—“You will find my works like infinite nature, that hath neither beginning nor end, and as confused as the chaos, wherein is neither method nor order, but all mixed together, without separation, like light and darkness.” “But what gives one,” says Walpole, “the best idea of her passion for scribbling, was her seldom revising the copies of her works, lest it should disturb her following conceptions. Her servant John was ordered to lie on a truckle-bed in a closet within her grace’s bedchamber; and whenever, at any time, she gave the summons, by calling out ‘John,’ I conceive poor John was to get up, and commit to writing the offspring of his mistress’ thoughts. Her grace’s folios were usually enriched with gold, and had her coat-of-arms upon them. Hence, Pope, in the Dunciad, Book I:—
“Stamp’d with arms, Newcastle shines complete.”
In her Poems and Fancies, 1653, the copy now in the British Museum, on the margin of one page is the following note in the Duchess’ own handwriting:—“Reader, let me intreat you to consider only the fancyes in this my book of poems, and not the language of the numbers, nor rimes, nor fals printing, for if you doe, you will be my condeming judg, which will grive me much.” Of this book she says:—
“When I did write this book I took great paines,
For I did walk, and thinke, and break my braines;
My thoughts run out of breath, then down would lye,
And panting with short wind like those that dye;
When time had given ease, and lent them strength,
Then up would get and run another length;
Sometimes I kept my thought with strict dyet,
And made them fast with ease, rest, and quiet,
That they might run with swifter speed,
And by this course new fancies they could breed;
But I doe feare they are no so good to please,
But now they’re out my braine is more at ease.”
At page 228 occurs this strange fancy:—
“Life scums the cream of beauty with Time’s spoon,
And draws the claret wine of blushes soon.”
Again, she tells us that—
“The brain is like an oven, hot and dry,
Which bakes all sorts of fancies, low and high;
The thoughts are wood, which motion sets on fire;
The tongue a peele, which draws forth the desire;
But thinking much, the brain too hot will grow,
And burns it up; if cold, the thoughts are dough.”
To a volume of the Duchess’ plays is prefixed a portrait of her Grace, and this couplet under it:—
“Her beauty’s found beyond the skill
Of the best paynter to embrace.”
There is a story current that the Duke being once, when in a peevish humour, complimented by a friend on the great wisdom of his wife, made answer, “Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing.”
Another eccentric inhabitant of Newcastle House was Elizabeth, Duchess of Albemarle, and afterwards of Montague. She was married in 1669 to Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albemarle, then a youth of sixteen, whom her inordinate pride drove to the bottle and other dissipation. After his death, in 1688, at Jamaica, the Duchess, whose vast estate so inflated her vanity as to produce mental aberration, resolved never again to give her hand to any but a sovereign prince. She had many suitors; but true to her resolution, she rejected them all, until Ralph Montague, third Lord and first Duke of that name, achieved the conquest by courting her as Emperor of China: and the anecdote has been dramatized by Colley Cibber, in his comedy of The Double Gallant, or Sick Lady’s Cure. Lord Montague married the lady as “Emperor,” but afterwards played the truant, and kept her in such strict confinement that her relations compelled him to produce her in open court, to prove that she was alive. Richard Lord Ross, one of her rejected suitors, addressed to Lord Montague these lines on his match:—
“Insulting rival, never boast
Thy conquest lately won:
No wonder that her heart was lost,—
Her senses first were gone.
“From one that’s under Bedlam’s laws
What glory can be had?
For love of thee was not the cause:
It proves that she was mad.”
The Duchess survived her second husband nearly thirty years, and at last “died of mere old age,” at Newcastle House, August 28th, 1738, aged ninety-six years. Until her decease, she is said to have been constantly served on the knee as a sovereign; besides keeping her word, that she would not stoop to marry anyone but the Emperor of China.