Only three short quotations shall be given from her plays; and first we have a fair specimen of her heavy, wearisome style in a few sentences from her play, “The Presence”.

Act II. Scene I.

In the next extract, taken from her play, “The Bridals,” we have an example of her attempts to be comic.

Act III. Scene II.

Enter Mimick.

In our third and last quotation, we have a specimen of what she considered wit. It is from “The Wit’s Cabal”.

Act II. Scene V.

Enter Captain, Harry, Will, Dick, Lieutenant and Cornet, as in the Tavern.

Possibly the reader may think that a little of this sort of wit goes a long way. Unfortunately, in the Duchess’s plays, there is a vast amount of it.

It is a remarkable sign of the times in which she lived, especially of the moral tone and the taste of those times, that, although the Duchess of Newcastle was a most virtuous woman, and one of high principles—Ballard[178] says that she was “truly pious, charitable and generous: was an excellent economist, very kind to her servants, and a perfect pattern of conjugal love and duty”—yet her plays were of such a character that, as they stand, the most lenient official censor of our generation would certainly refuse to allow them to be acted: nor is it too much to say of them that they combine indecency and obscenity with the stagnate dullness so usually the accompaniment of literary ditch-water. Yet in the Preface to one of her books she says: “I hope this work of mine will rather quench amorous passions than inflame them, and beget chaste thoughts,” etc.

The critics of the plays and other works of the Duchess were very far from being of one and the same mind. Some half century after her death, Horace Walpole, in his Royal and Noble Authors, says that “though she had written philosophy it seems she had read none,” and that she had an “unbounded passion for scribbling”.

During her life, in fact in the year 1667, the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge, addressed her in the language of fulsome flattery quoted at the opening of the first chapter of the present volume. But all the critics of her own day were not of their opinion and M. Emile MontÉgut, in his excellent essay on the Newcastles, writes:[179] “this very high and mighty lady” was “very maliciously ridiculed by her contemporaries and scornfully neglected by the succeeding generations”.

On the other hand, the Vice-Chancellor and the Senate of the University of Cambridge, fairly excelled the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College in flattery, and Ananias in mendacity, when they exclaimed:—[180]

“Most excellent Princess, you have unspeakably obliged us all; but not in one respect alone, for whensoever we find ourselves nonplus’d in our studies, we repair to you as to our oracle: if we be to speak, you dictate to us: if we knock at Apollo’s door, you alone open to us: if we compose an History, you are the remembrancer: if we be confounded and puzzled among the philosophers, you disentangle us and assoil our difficulties”.

Grainger says that “these monstrous strains of panegyrics relate chiefly to that wild philosophy which would have puzzled the whole Royal Society”.

Pearson, Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge (“Pearson On The Creed”), afterwards Bishop of Chester, could lie so grossly as to exclaim to the Duchess:[181] “What shall we think of your Excellency, who are both a Minerva and an Athens in yourself, the Muses as well as an Helicon, Aristotle as well as his Lycaeum?”

Another Bishop, Bishop Wilkins, was more honest. He had been talking to the Duchess about his book on the possibility of a journey to the moon. “Doctor,” she said, “where am I to find a place for waiting in the way up to that Planet?” “Madam,” he replied, “of all people in the world, I never expected that question from you, who have built so many castles in the air, that you may be every night at one of your own.” [182]

M. MontÉgut says that, during her later years she was often spoken of as “That fool, Mad Madge of Newcastle”. Yet Kippis states that the Rev. Knightly Chatwood, afterwards Dean of Gloucester, “wrote a preposterously over-laudatory elegy” on her death, “in whose guilt the author of this note would be involved, were he to produce any quotation from so impious a performance”.

Of course the Duchess has much to say about her own literary powers. Here is a specimen of it:—

“But it pleased God to command his Servant Nature to indue me with a Poetical and Philosophical Genius, even from my Birth: for I did write some Books in that kind, before I was twelve years of Age”.

One very precious and very touching criticism of our Duchess has happily been preserved. It was made by her devoted husband, the Duke himself. A friend had congratulated him on having such a very wise woman as his wife; whereupon, he exclaimed with genuine emotion: “Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing”.[183]

It is consoling to learn that the Duchess could sometimes condescend to lower matters than literature. We have Her Grace’s own authority for stating that she was fond of dress. She says:—

“I took great delight in attiring, fine dressing, and fashions, especially such fashions as I did invent myself, not taking that pleasure in such fashions as was invented by others: also I did dislike any should follow my Fashions, for I always took delight in a singularity, even in accoutrements of habits, but whatsoever I was addicted to, either in fashion of Cloths, contemplation of Thoughts, actions of Life, they were Lawful, Honest, Honourable, and Modest, of which I can avouch to the world with a great confidence, because it is a pure Truth”.

Next, let us hear what Pepys has to say about her dress and other matters, in an entry in his Diary containing another notice of “The Humorous Lovers”.

“1667, April 11th. To White Hall, thinking there to have seen the Duchesse of Newcastle’s coming this night to Court to make a visit to the Queene, the King having been with her yesterday to make her a visit since her coming to town. The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does is romantic. Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself in an antique dress, as they say, and was the other day at her own play ‘The Humourous Lovers’; the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote, but yet she and her Lord mightily pleased with it; and she, at the end, made her respects to the players from her box, and did give them thanks. There is as much expectation of her coming to Court, that so people may come to see her, as if it were the Queene of Sweden, but I lost my labour, for she did not come this night.”

On the 26th of the same month, Pepys was more fortunate.

“Met my Lady Newcastle going with her coaches and footmen 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 extravagancies), with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears; many black patches, because of pimples about her mouth; naked-necked, without any thing about it, and a black just-au-corps. She seemed to me a very comely woman: but I hope to see more of her on May-day.”

The Duchess seems to have “got upon his brain,” to make use of a phrase which came into use long after his own days; for on 1 May he wrote:—

“That which we and almost all went for, was to see my Lady Newcastle: which we could not, she being followed and crowded upon by coaches all the way she went, that nobody could come near her: only I could see she was in a large black coach adorned with silver instead of gold, and so white curtains, and everything black and white, and herself in her cap”.

Pepys fairly hunted the poor Duchess through the streets of London. A week later he made the following entry:—

“Drove hard towards Clerkenwell, thinking to have overtaken my Lady Newcastle, whom I saw before us in her coach, with 100 boys and girls running looking upon her; but I could not: and so she got home before I could come up to her. But I will get a time to see her.”

And he did “get a time to see her”.

“30th. After dinner I walked to Arundell House, the way very dusty, (the day of meeting of the Society)[184] ... where I find 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 a very ordinary woman I do think, but they say sings well. The Duchesse hath been a good, comely woman; but her dress is 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 shewn her of colours, loadstones, microscopes, and of liquors: among others, of one that did while she was there turn a piece of roasted mutton into pure blood, which was very rare. After they had shown her any experiments, and she cried still she was full of admiration, she departed, being led out and in by several Lords that were there; among others, Lord George Barkeley and Earl of Carlisle, and a very pretty young man, the Duke of Somerset.”

Here is some evidence from another source.

There was a masquerade at Court and that very smart and amusing courtier, Count Grammont,[185] was talking to the King. “As I was getting out of my chair,” he said, “I was stopped by the devil of a phantom in masquerade.... It is worth while to see her dress; for she must have at least sixty ells of gauze and silver tissue about her, not to mention a sort of a pyramid upon her head, adorned with a hundred thousand baubles.”

“I bet,” said the King, “that it is the Duchess of Newcastle.” [186]