Monsieur Emile MontÉgut, in his essay[187] on the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, has dealt with the question of the Duchess’s religion, at some length; and the following is a very free translation of a part of what he has written on the subject. A certain author has “belauded the great piety of the Duchess; but, after studying all the available evidence on this point, we are inclined to think that her piety must have been but moderate and we feel doubtful as to the nature of her faith and the extent of her religious fervour. This much is certain, that she was not devout enough for a Catholic or interior enough for a Protestant.... When she writes of religion, she is dignified, but dry, without the least affection in her language or humility in her mind. She shows no liking for any particular ceremony, or pious rite or practice; nor does she seem to attach any importance to things connected with exterior worship; although she belonged to that Anglican Church in which controversies over such matters have always occupied so important a place. She had some disposition towards mysticism; but prayer, the most natural of all religious actions, was almost distasteful to her. She liked prayers to be short and few, and anything like repetitions in devotion she considered irreverent if not impious; but it should be remembered that, in those times, the Puritans made prayers of prodigious length, far longer than any made by Catholics.” Her “cool calculation of the relative values of prayer and good works at any rate exhibits considerable originality and piquancy”.

Be all this as it may, she attained that Highest Heaven of British ambition, a grave and a monument in Westminster Abbey, and who can doubt that one who was so very much a Duchess has gone where Duchesses go?

Certainly the readers, and as certainly the compiler, of this book must be deeply conscious that it is now high time to let fall the curtain. And we will let it fall without fatal illnesses or deathbed scenes. That people who lived considerably more than two hundred years ago are dead by this time may be taken for granted; and it should be enough to say that the Duchess of Newcastle was buried in Westminster Abbey on 17 January, 1673; and that the Duke was laid beside her on 22 January, 1677.

The scribe who has collected and copied out the evidence concerning this illustrious pair, while deeply conscious of the many faults in his work, is not aware that excessive flattery of his subjects is one of them. The characters of both the Duke and the Duchess were certainly open to criticism, perhaps also to ridicule. Yet much may be said in favour of each.

Newcastle was a dignified, cultivated, and courageous English gentleman. He was a most loyal subject; he cheerfully bore greater financial losses, for the sake of his King, than perhaps any other cavalier; and he fought bravely in the civil war. He excelled in horsemanship and he was a fine swordsman. Although not a scholar, he wrote a standard work; and he was an appreciative and critical patron of art, science, and literature. If only a very minor poet, he could write verses of considerable spirit; if not a great playwright, he could write plays which succeeded.

No sensible reader would take Shadwell’s dedication of “The Libertine” to Newcastle as pure gospel; but there may be a few grains of truth in it. He says: “By the great honour I had to be daily admitted into your Grace’s private and public conversation, I observed that admirable experience and judgment surmounting all the old, and that vigorousness of wit and smartness of expression, exceeding all the young, I ever saw, and not only in sharp and apt replies, but, which is much more difficult, by giving easy and unforced occasions, the most admirable way of beginning one, and all this adapted to men of all circumstances and conditions”.

The great misfortune of Newcastle’s life was to be suddenly forced into the position of a Commander-in-Chief, without any previous training, or personal inclination; and perhaps the great error of his life may have been his flight to Holland after the battle of Marston Moor; but, as was shown on the pages dealing with the incident, a good deal has been urged, and may justly be urged, in defence of his conduct on that occasion.

If he made many mistakes as a General, he never showed want of courage as a soldier. If he asked for appointments and honours from the King, he amply paid for them, both with money and with services. If his wife said that he was too great an admirer of the fair sex, there is nothing to show that he was immoral. If he was somewhat eccentric, he had a good deal of originality. If he was extravagant when young, he was economical when old. If he was ambitious, he never intrigued. If his literary work is open to criticism, he himself is said to have been an excellent critic.

Although a loyal, a stately, a polished and a handsome courtier, he was no hanger-on at Court; and his dignified retirement to Welbeck, when the licentious Court of Charles II had been established, showed at least good taste. He always appears to have had enemies near the King, both in the reign of Charles I and in that of Charles II; but he must have been very popular in the country, or he would not have been able to raise such large forces for the army of the North, during the civil war.

Lastly, he is to be admired for his business-like perseverance in retrieving his ruined fortunes after the Restoration, when they were in a condition which would have broken the heart of a man of meaner spirit.

As to the Duchess of Newcastle, let us at once get rid of the idea, held by M. MontÉgut, and apparently also by other people, that she was the first of the Blue Stockings. The origin of that term is well known. Quite a hundred years after the death of our Duchess, the leader of a coterie of learned ladies invited a clever but ill-clad scholar to attend their social gatherings. He always wore breeches and the usual bluish-grey stockings of the cheaper kind; and when he pleaded lack of suitable attire, his hostess said: “Oh! Come in your blue-stockings”. The little gatherings of these ladies were afterwards called the meetings of the Blue Stockings.

But, even taking the term in its wider sense, as including the learned ladies of any, or of all ages, we might find women far more learned than Margaret Newcastle in the depths of antiquity. As to her own country, a century before her time Erasmus wrote: “The monks, famed in times past for learning, are become ignorant; and women love books. It is pretty enough that this sex should now at last betake it self to antient examples.” In the sixteenth century, very literary ladies were to be found in the families of Sir Thomas More and Sir Anthony Cooke, and to give Henry VIII his due, it must be acknowledged that he took good care his daughters should be thoroughly educated and cultivated women. Nor was our Duchess by any means the first of her sex to rush into print in the seventeenth century; moreover, much as she wrote for the press, little print did she read except her own, and she seems to have been almost entirely devoid of scholarship.

Again, in the first half of the century in which lived the Duchess of Newcastle, unlike that Duchess Lady Jane Grey knew Latin and Greek and studied Plato. At the same time, in Italy, the notorious courtesan, Tullia of Aragon, was a poetess; and, like several of her contemporary courtesans, knew, as says Aretino, “all Petrarch and Boccaccio by heart, beside innumerable fine Latin verses by Virgil, Horace, Ovid, etc.” Any of these ladies could have taught the Duchess lessons and put her in the corner as a dunce.

In another sense, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, was unlike what are generally known as literary ladies; for she was no patroness of literary people; she was not the leader of any literary set, she started no literary school; she led a retired life, was nervous in society, and was so much absorbed in her own writings that she seems to have taken no interest in those of anybody else, either ancient or modern.

Had she but spent a larger proportion of her time in learning instead of in teaching, she might have become a successful author; for undoubtedly she had talent, although not genius. The fatal idea that all her “conceptions,” as she called them, were worthy of paper, and in most cases worthy of print, was the chief cause of her literary ruin.

The finest feature of her character was her devotion to her husband. Although she declares herself to have been devoid of any “passion,” or “amourous love,” a study of her biography of Newcastle inclines one to think that on this point she deceived herself; unless, as is possible, the place of passionate love was supplied by unqualified hero-worship. She had a profound admiration for his talents. Exaggerated as is her praise in the following lines, it at least shows an affectionate devotion. They occur at the end of her book of poems:—

And she did indeed “there gather flowers,” if there is any truth in the pretty general idea that the best lines in her poems were the work of her husband.

Her expedition to England to try to wrest something for Newcastle from his worst enemies was a noble action, and her murmurless endurance of the pawn-shop, where her husband left her when he returned to his own country, was a splendid example of self-sacrifice and patience.

Her lengthy and carefully drawn up statements of her husband’s financial affairs testify to her capacity for business, and suggest the probability that she was of great help in restoring his fortunes. Indeed it may be that her talents were more suited for the high-stool of a clerk than for the arm-chair of a poet.

Walpole’s notice of the later years of the Newcastles’ life is severe. “What a picture of foolish nobility was this stately poetic couple, retired to their own little domain, and intoxicating one another with circumstantial flattery on what was of consequence to no mortal but themselves.” In all this there is a measure of truth; but unless they had retired to their own domain, which, by the way, was not “little,” and unless they had lived there economically, they could never have restored the fortunes of their family. Surely the atmosphere of Welbeck Abbey was more wholesome than that of the vicious and intriguing Court of Charles II; and, if they chose to amuse themselves with pens and paper, it can truly be said of them that how much soever they may have injured their own literary reputations by a rather injudicious use of those dangerous instruments, they did not injure those of other people, which is more than can be said of many other writers, both ancient and modern.