Bell in Campo and the Sociable Companions PDF
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01 front (1-4) 1/7/02 12:06 PM Page 1 Review Copy This electronic material is under copyright protection and is provided to a single recipient for review purposes only. BELL IN CAMPO THE SOCIABLE COMPANIONS 01 front (1-4) 1/7/02 12:06 PM Page 2 Review Copy 01 front (1-4) 1/7/02 12:06 PM Page 3 Review Copy BELL IN CAMPO THE SOCIABLE COMPANIONS Margaret Cavendish edited by Alexandra G.Bennett broadview literary texts 01 front (1-4) 1/7/02 12:06 PM Page 4 Revi©ew CAolepxyandra G.Bennett All rights reserved.The use of any part of this publication reproduced,transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,orother- wise,or stored in a retrieval system,without prior written consent of the publisher – or in the case of photocopying,a licence from (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency) One Yonge Street,Suite , Toronto, – is an infringement of the copyright law. National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Newcastle,Margaret Cavendish,Duchess of,1624?-1674 Bell in Campo,and,The sociable companions (Broadview literacy texts) Includes bibliographical references. --- . Newcastle,Margaret Cavendish,Duchess of,-. Bell in Campo. . Newcastle,Margaret Cavendish,Duchess of,-. Sociable companions. . Newcastle,Margaret Cavendish,Duchess of,-—Criticism and interpre- tation..Great Britain—Civil War,-. I.Bennett,Alexandra G.,- II. Title. III.Title:Sociable companions. IV.Series. . ’. -- Broadview Press Ltd.is an independent,international publishing house,incorporated in . 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Text design and composition by George Kirkpatrick PRINTED IN CANADA 01 front (1-4) 1/7/02 12:06 PM Page 5 Review Copy 02 frontend (5-22) 1/7/02 12:01 PM Page 5 Review Copy Contents Acknowledgements • Introduction • Margaret Cavendish:A Brief Chronology • A Note on the Texts • Bell in Campo • The Sociable Companions • Appendix A:Selections from Margaret Cavendish’s Auto- biography • Appendix B:The Purposes of Plays:Selections from Prefaces to Playes () • Appendix C:Warrior Women and Royalist Disorder:Letters from the Front • Appendix D:Warrior Women:The Queen and the War • Appendix E:Marriage Markets:Selections from Margaret Cavendish’s Sociable Letters () • Selected Bibliography • 02 frontend (5-22) 1/7/02 12:01 PM Page 6 Review Copy Acknowledgements I am indebted to several colleagues, particularly Anne Shaver, Gweno Williams,Sophie Tomlinson,and Stephen Clucas,who have been generous in sharing their work and ideas in various forums,as well as to Mical Moser at Broadview Press for think- ing that the vague suggestion I made for an edition of Cavendish plays three years ago was a good idea. I am also grateful to Mrs.Mary Clapinson,Keeper of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library,Oxford,for permission to quote from the Bodleian’s manuscript collec- tions. Most of all,I would like to thank my father,Greg Ben- nett,for his help in transcribing The Sociable Companionsand for clarifying several obscure classical references therein;my moth- er,Gaynor Bennett,for her patience and continued interest in what may have seemed like an endless project;and both of my parents together for their boundless support. 02 frontend (5-22) 1/7/02 12:01 PM Page 7 Review Copy Introduction Life,Career,and Reputation Among English women writers prior to Aphra Behn,few have become so provocative to scholars in the past twenty years as Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Proto-feminist, semi-scientist, philosopher, poet, playwright, fantasist—her seemingly endless inventiveness has provided modern readers with a wealth of material. A staunch Royalist and lady-in- waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria during the years of the English Civil War,she lived for sixteen years in exile,married a man considerably higher in the social scale than herself despite the disapproval of her royal mistress, and ultimately became famous (or infamous) for her self-designed clothing, for her flamboyant personal style,and (not least) for her prolific writ- ing and publishing. Unlike those of many of the women who took up the pen during the seventeenth century,Cavendish’s personal history is remarkably well detailed, thanks to her having composed A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life, an autobio- graphy appended to the first edition of her collected stories and poems, Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life (). According to this account,the earliest years of her life do not appear to have been presciently fraught with excite- ment. Born in ,Margaret Lucas was the youngest of eight children. Her father, Thomas Lucas of St. John’s, near Col- chester,was a gentleman who had to go into exile temporarily after killing a man in a duel.He died during Margaret’s infancy, leaving her mother, Elizabeth Lucas, daughter of John Leighton,gentleman of London,to raise her three sons and five daughters herself. The Lucas girls were accordingly given a basic education in the skills expected of seventeenth-century gentlewomen: reading, writing, sewing, music, and dancing, while their mother enjoyed indulging their “honest pleasures, and harmless delights” with the proceeds from the substantial 02 frontend (5-22) 1/7/02 12:01 PM Page 8 Review Copy family estate.¹ Margaret writes that she and her siblings “were bred virtuously, modestly, civilly, honourably, and on honest principles: as for plenty, we had not only, for necessity, con- venience, and decency, but for delight and pleasure to a superfluity;’tis true,we did not riot,but we lived orderly”and in apparently mutual concord throughout her childhood.² By her late teens, however, Margaret was determined to become a lady-in-waiting at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria,who had removed herself to Oxford at the outset of the struggles that had turned into civil war by . Despite the fears of her mother and misgivings of her siblings,she moved to the Queen’s court in . Almost immediately,her brothers’ and sisters’reservations about the possible consequences of her inexperience of the world outside of their home proved justi- fied:terrified that she might inadvertently say or do something immodest,Margaret was so timid she barely opened her mouth in her new surroundings. Not surprisingly,such shyness earned her the reputation of a fool in a world of courtiers and patrons where wit ruled supreme. At the same time, the idyllic envi- ronment of her childhood was devastated as her mother and brothers, staunch Royalists all, were “sequestered from their estates,and plundered of all their goods”by the Parliamentary government.³ Faced with familial ruin amid the tempestuous life of a royal servant, she must have felt adrift in more ways than one when she took ship for exile in France with the rest of the Queen’s household in . Rescue from at least some of her miseries,however,was to come in Paris,where she met William Cavendish,then Marquis (later Earl and Duke) of Newcastle.Unlike his fellow courtiers, who ignored or mocked the bashful girl in their midst,New- castle took a fancy to her, writing her flirtatious letters and poems and ultimately falling in love with her. His first wife having recently died, the Marquis proposed to the deeply A True Relation ofMy Birth,Breeding,and Life,as appended to Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life(London:),.It is interesting to note that A True Relationwas omitted from the second edition of Natures Picturesin . A True Relation,. A True Relation,. 02 frontend (5-22) 1/7/02 12:01 PM Page 9 Review Copy smitten lady-in-waiting; she married him in despite the disapprobation of the Queen, who felt that the differences of thirty years and several social ranks between them were too much of an impediment to be overcome easily. The couple lived in Paris and then in Antwerp during the years of the English Interregnum;since Newcastle’s estates,like those of the Lucas family,had been appropriated and looted by the Parlia- mentary army,they were forced like so many other exiled gen- try to live mostly on credit, with occasional monetary relief smuggled over from home. This precarious financial situation ultimately gave rise to Margaret Cavendish’s public literary career. In , she returned temporarily to England in an attempt to retrieve her husband’s sequestered lands and to raise some money to allevi- ate the costs of living on the Continent. Though the trip was financially unsuccessful (her shyness once again entrapped her tongue,rendering her unable even to address the Parliamentary committee meeting she attended),her publication of Poems and Fancies and Philosophicall Fancies that year gained her the atten- tion of some members of the London reading public. Hungry for fame,from that point onwards she continued to produce— and, unusually, to publish—her works, writing both while in exile and once she returned to England after the Restoration of Charles II in . She and her husband took up residence at his family home of Welbeck,with the notable exception of her visit to London in ,during which she became the first woman ever to be invited to visit a session of the recently- founded Royal Society. She managed to compose fourteen printed folio volumes of generically diverse writings by the time of her death in ;fittingly,the inscription on the tomb she shares with her husband in Westminster Abbey proclaims that “This Dutches was a wise,wittie,and Learned Lady,which her many Bookes do well testifie.” Margaret Cavendish was one of the most prolific writers of any genre or gender in the seventeenth century, expounding her views and extending her creative reach into prose fiction, poetry, plays, scientific and philosophical treatises, biography, autobiography,orations,and letters. Moreover,she was one of
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