“Tell me, sir,” I broke in. “Am I, though a woman, expected to go a-wooing this Mr. Milton, of whom I have (as it happens) heard some account from his chamber-fellow at Cambridge, the Reverend Robert Pory, or will he come to me?”
“Hearken to me, my dainty girl,” he answered, smiling now: “you must not suspect me of any fraud or unkindness. John Milton sincerely loves you and came to me, as honestly as Jacob in the Scripture came to Laban, Rachel’s father, to demand your hand in marriage.”
I expostulated: “How should this man love me when he knows not even my name?”
“That is easily told,” said he. “Your Uncle Jones went to London, a week or two ago, to present his compliments to Mr. Milton upon a little book which you will confess to have yourself seen, and found him in his commodious house in Aldersgate Street, and liked him well. It came into his mind to tell Mr. Milton how at the house of his wife’s brother, Esquire Powell, there had been some disputation between his niece Marie and his nephew Richard—Richard railing against the said book, but she defending it. Mr. Milton, who had been a little unceremonious and off-hand with your Uncle Jones, then asked him sharply: ‘Do you speak of Marie Powell, of Forest Hill, a young girl remarkable for the glory of her hair?’ Your uncle confessed that you were the very she; and upon Mr. Milton’s eagerly desiring it he spoke of you at length, and praised you. He knew from your sister Zara that you had read an English poem of Mr. Milton’s and spoken of it admiringly to your brother James, though he had slighted it. What poem was that?”
“It was the Ludlow masque,” I answered. “I misliked James’s judgment upon it, which was a raw one.”
“I think it a fine piece, mighty fine,” said my father. “But to come to the matter: when Mr. Milton heard that you had admired his poem he nodded his head once or twice and cried aloud: ‘Now, is this not marvellous? Is this not marvellous?’ Forthwith he told your Uncle Jones that he had heard enough, and asked whether you were promised in marriage to another. Your Uncle Jones answered that he believed not, but that your mother and I were exceeding grieved at a lying, heedless report put about against you (doubtless by a certain rich young gentleman whom you had flouted when he addressed his love to you), and added that he would wager his head that you were certainly a virgin. Mr. Milton then laughed shortly with: ‘Bishop Hall and that losel Bachelor of Art, his son, have made a similar scandalous report of me and put it about in print. But that to me is so much bird-shot discharged against a strong tower; for my honest manner of life is known to all, and being a man I can defend my honour with a sword, if need be, or with a pen if that cut the deeper; however, for a maid to be so bespattered with filth is very hard, and I commiserate her.’”
I asked: “Did Mr. Milton, then, remember me from the day, long ago, when he saw me with the old Lady Gardiner at Woodstock Town End, and again conversing with the Queen at Enstone, where the waterworks were?”
My father answered: “Exactly, so he told me yesterday when, by appointment, we met at your Uncle Jones’s house at Sandford. He said that he had heard your name from your own lips when you told it boldly to the Queen and presently, leaving French and returning to your mother tongue, you announced your descent from the ancient Prince of Wales.”
“I had forgotten that particular!” said I.
“Yet he has not,” said my father. “Nor has he forgotten the respectful yet easy way in which you conducted yourself with Royalty. His heart was so warmed, as he tells me, that he determined, when you were of a ripe age for marriage, to seek you out for his wife. To that end he had ridden after your coach from Enstone and observed at what house you were set off, and then inquired from the inn-keeper whose house it might be.”
“Here is a strange working together of accidents,” said I, “and I know not what to answer. I confess myself flattered that a gentleman of his nice discrimination should have fixed his heart and mind upon me for a wife: and I have no fault to find with his person, as I remember it. But, sir, do you not think me too young to marry? Is it well that a woman should breed children while her own bones are yet green?”
“Why, you are already past your sixteenth birthday, Marie!” said he. “My mother had borne and buried two children by the time she reached your years.”
“Aye, poor soul!” I cried, “and I understand that she died in childbirth of her fifth before ever she was twenty. Hers was no fortunate life, I dare say.”
“Your grandfather doted upon her,” he said.
“Aye, sir, so it seems,” I answered, “if filling her with untimely babes be any proof. However, Mr. Milton would perhaps treat me with civility if I pleaded with him to withhold the consummation of the marriage for a short term.”
“But otherwise you will agree to it?” he asked, his face shining with joy.
“How could I otherwise, sir?” I replied. “I see that your affairs are in a difficult and almost desperate condition; and if I could save from ruin those whom I love it would be my duty to give my life, even, as a ransom; for I am no ungrateful child. In the matter of the lying report put out against me by your curate, you used me very well and have never once reproached me for my imprudence which occasioned this report; nor did you alter your countenance towards me, though the malice of my enemies made my name a by-word. Well, well, I will do what you wish, and cheerfully. I cannot undertake to love Mr. Milton, for love requires an equality of feeling which cannot be commanded; yet if he treats me well, I shall treat him well again. I have read enough of his writings, I think, to judge what manner of man he is, and I believe that we can fadge well together, being both proud spirits who love liberty above all false submissiveness. Make the best marriage bargain with him that you may (as Laban did with Jacob) but do not tell me what you have settled. I care not for money and will confide my affairs wholly to you. The one condition that I dare to impose upon you is that our maid Trunco goes with me; and I cannot think that you will deny me this.”
He thanked me heartily and exclaimed that he was indeed fortunate in his children; and undertook that Trunco should continue at my side through thick and thin. Then I asked him: “When am I to meet my husband?”
“This very afternoon, if you wish,” he answered.
“That will content me, sir,” said I, “for this afternoon my mother was to have bled me of a pint of blood and given me a strong purge to cure my ill-humour, as she said. Perhaps that may now be excused me.”
“I undertake that it will,” he said. “And see, here is a gift from your Uncle Jones—another pamphlet, very fine (so he says), from the pen of Mr. Milton.”
As I went out of my father’s study, I was overtaken by a sort of giddiness and sat down upon a chest that stood against the wall. As I sat, I wondered suddenly what foreign spirit had entered into me to make me answer my father as I had done. I seemed as one who had been bewitched into signing away her body and soul, and with no merry compensations, neither. I cast down the book I held in my hands and arose from the chest, and began walking back to the study. I would tell my father that I had spoken too soon, and thoughtlessly and foolishly; that I loved another man and that I could never love any but him; that I had been drawn into a defence of Mr. Milton’s books not by any affectionate admiration of him but by a disputatious desire to take the contrary side to my brothers; that, in short, I felt rather antipathetically than sympathetically inclined towards the husband who was offered to me; and that some newer means must be found to pay old debts than yielding me to the creditor after the Turkish or Tangerine manner with women.
Yet, after all, I found I had not the heart to rob my father, a poor shipwrecked mariner, of the one plank with which he hoped to bear up his head and keep his mouth from sea-water. Moreover, I thought again of Doll Leke and of the ring of hair which Mun had given her; so I shrugged up and returned again to the chest, while outside the church bells began tolling for some holy day or other.
Then along came Trunco, and cried that Madam my mother was seeking for me everywhere. “Why, dea
r Trunco,” said I, “here I am and will go to her now; but I shall not be here to be commanded for many weeks longer.”
Trunco held up her hands and cried: “Oh, Mistress Marie, you fright me! Are you sick? ‘Not for many weeks longer,’ you say. That is a sorrowful way for my dear mistress to speak in the time of Spring flowers.”
“Ah, Spring flowers, the Spring flowers!” I cried. “The Lord deliver me from the deceitful primroses and violets and cowslips and cuckooflowers! And I wish that those two church bells were stilled for ever, they ring so foolishly with their ‘We two, we two.’”
“Tell your Trunco what ails you,” she pleaded.
“Why, nothing, Mother Smutty-Face,” I answered. “Only that I am to be married soon to Mr. John Milton of Cambridge University and London, Esquire, a poet. Yet the affair is a secret as yet: keep it close for my sake.”
Trunco cried: “I do not know the gentleman. You have not told me that you ever exchanged a word with any Mr. Milton.”
“Nor have I,” I said. “Nevertheless marry him I must.”
She saw that I was in no mood to be questioned further, but began to weep and lament loudly at the thought of my departure; but I told her that she would come with me when I was married, for so I had bargained with my father. Then she dried her tears and blessed the day and wished me the greatest happiness imaginable and began cracking her fingers with joy, which was a trick of hers that always vexed me; and I said that, one crack more and I would not take her. Then I rose and went to seek my mother, who drew me into her private chamber and began to enlarge in a serious manner upon the great shame and inconveniency to her of the slanders put about against me by our enemies. She asked me whether I was prepared to be ruled by her and redeem my fault?
I laughed softly and said that I hoped it would not inconvenience her yet more to know that my father, though he had clothed the matter in another dress, had spoken to me in the same strain a few minutes before and had urged me to marry one Mr. John Milton.
This took her aback, for it seems my father had engaged himself not to speak with me in the matter before she did, and she flew into a rage. But I calmed her very soon by saying that my father had put the case very plainly and discreetly and that I was ready to be ruled by him.
“Why, Daughter,” she said. “I never credited your father with a tongue glib enough to talk you over so speedily. What arguments did he use? A child owes perfect obedience to a parent, yet had I been in your shoes I swear I would not have yielded so speedily—unless perhaps he cozened you? Did he cry up Mr. Milton to you as a man of huge wealth and noble family, and of right opinions in ecclesiastics and politics? Did he so? Did he perhaps promise you a rich jointure?”
“No, Madam,” I answered. “He gave me Mr. Milton’s short but sufficient pedigree; promised me the modest comfort of a house in Aldersgate Street, in London; disavowed any good opinion of Mr. Milton’s writings; but told me in a nutshell that marry him I must to keep the duns away from this door. He appeared so sorrowful that rather than he should weep, I promised him to be a dutiful daughter. One condition only I made: that Trunco should go with me. For I shall be lonely without her, and if things go ill she will stand by me.”
My mother clapped my shoulders: “You are a wise girl and can see what is to our common advantage. I do not know the man any better than does the Pope; but your absurd Uncle Jones gives a good report of him, and he will beget healthy children on you, I dare say, and love you well; and he seems a shrewder man with money than your poor father, at least. I will not deny that I am miserably disappointed in the match, but since you have spoilt your cake in the baking by leaving open the oven door, why now you must eat bread; and not the best white bread at that.”
“And Trunco, Madam?” I asked.
“Oh, by God, yes, you may take the baggage with you!” said she.
Nothing of the projected marriage was said to my little brothers and sisters, but that afternoon my mother and I rode in the coach to Sandford, my father and my brother James going ahead on their horses. My Aunt Jones entertained us there in a little house, meagrely furnished, and without any fire on the hearth. She said that my uncle and Mr. Milton were not yet back from the quarries at Headington, where they had ridden to inspect some great bones that had been found there by the stone-hewers. While I waited I read again to myself from Mr. Milton’s new book, over which I had spent an hour or two that morning. I found a passage in praise of male chastity, where it was written that “if unchastity in a woman be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man it must be much more deflowering and dishonourable.” From which I could not but conclude him to be that strange thing, a he-virgin of thirty-four years old! And another passage I found, answering the taunt by Bishop Hall and his son that he was aiming to win a rich widow with his pen. He answered that whoever had written this was more ignorant in the art of divining than any gipsy: “for I care not if I tell him this much, though it be to the losing of my ‘rich hopes,’ as he calls them—that I think with them who, both in prudence and elegance of spirit, would choose a virgin of mean fortunes, honestly bred, before the wealthiest widow.”
There was a deal more written in modest self-esteem, besides the main matter of the pamphlet, which was to abuse his adversaries, extol Parliament, rail against the dry, barren and impertinent English Liturgy then in use, and condemn the clergy in general as illiterate bunglers. I stumbled also upon this passage: “Where my morning haunts are, he wisses not. These morning haunts are where they should be, at home: not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring: in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour or to devotion, in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier—”
“Good,” said I to myself, “I hate to be the first to rise from a bed. I wonder whether he will be a kind enough husband to warm me a cup of milk in winter time, with sugar and cinnamon, to give me resolution to rise up after him?”
“…to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary—”
Spelling the passage out to the company, I asked my father: “Sir, what does this mean? What monkish habits has this would-be husband of mine? Will he expect me to arise at cock-crow to read him out from a lectern the Legend of the day?”
My mother interrupted: “Nay, Child, did not your father warn you that this suitor of yours is a whip-arse or, if you will, a schoolmaster in a small way? He has two nephews and I think one or two more urchins whom he teaches. It is these, doubtless, who do the reading for him as a part of their studies.”
“You have set my mind at rest, Madam,” I said. “I cannot abear good authors before I have breakfasted, nor bad ones, neither.” I read on aloud to the company:
“‘…then with useful and generous labours preserving the body’s health and hardiness, to render obedience to the cause of Religion and our Country’s liberty, when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and cover their stations—’
“Mr. Milton writes here as though he were perfecting himself in martial exercises,” I said.
“I should not marvel at that,” said my father. “The City Artillery Garden lies not far from his house, where the officers of the Trained Bands daily instruct citizens in the postures of the pike and in the several exercises of the company.”
“The damned rogues,” cried my mother. “They would sooner discharge their pistols against His Majesty’s officers than they would against the heathen Irish!”
My Aunt Jones was about to make some warm reply, when there came the noise of horses down the street and my father, looking out at the window, told me: “My dear, here comes your husband-to-be. Be advised by me, speak little and listen well.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mr. Milton’s Courtship
My Uncle Jones came into the house and saluted the company and presented Mr. Milton to us; whose apparel was again well cut though of a darker hue than that he had affected when I saw him befor
e; and he was the same vigorous, proper man but that his hair was a little less lustrous, and the whites of his eyes not of so clear a colour. He greeted the company with an affable bow and kissed my mother’s hand, but did not kiss mine when my father presented me to him; only, he looked very hard at me. Though I thought at first to return his stare boldly, yet for the sake of good manners I cast my eyes upon the floor. His words to me were: “Mistress Marie Powell, I am pleased to behold you again, and hope that presently we may become well acquainted.”
The saucy answer that leaped to my lips I swallowed back and was content silently to return him a curtsey; to which he did not, however, reply with a bow, but turned briskly to my father, as it were dismissing me from a mind that was already fully taken up with other business. Said he: “Mr. Jones and I have been disputing a point upon which, I hope, sir, you will consent to give us a decision as arbiter. It concerns this scallop-shaped stone hewn from the quarry at Headington, where we have been this afternoon, and where the workmen say that fossilia similar to it are very often found. Mr. Jones is of opinion that it is a true shell which, having been conveyed here by the Flood in the days of the Patriarch Noah, was filled by the petrifying juices of the Earth and became in tract of time a stone. Per contra I hold that this stone, with others similar to it, which I have seen in the form of oyster-shells, cockles, sea-urchins and the like, are not and were never shells (as he pretends), but are lapides sui generis, naturally moulded by an extraordinary plastic virtue latent in the Earth of those quarries wherein they are discovered, in conscious imitation of the living creatures directly created by the hand of God.”
My Uncle Jones put in his oar: “I believe, sir, that you will find nothing in the Scripture to support your ingenious but fantastical theory, which is something so remarkable that, were it true, a nook or cranny might have been found for it by Moses in his account of the Creation, or at least by some minor prophet in his inspired writings. That God created the World, and that He created the formed gems in the bowels of the Earth: and that He created all living and creeping and growing things and gave them liberty to increase and multiply and procreate after their own kind—this we certainly know. We know also that God rested upon the seventh day, when all was duly created and set in motion by His hand. But that He should have bequeathed to the insensate Earth the power to give secret birth to a second or mock Creation—that notion, sir, I find incredible and well-nigh blasphemous.”
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