Aubrey's Brief Lives

by John Aubrey

  Aubrey had now begun to reap the reward of his sensible recognition that to be good and agreeable company is a vertue. For though he had lost his fortune, he never lost a friend, and the warmth with which he continued to be regarded everywhere is shown by the following poem, which has been accidentally preserved amongst his papers. “To his most honourd frend John Aubrey Esquire in imitation of Mr. Greaves verses, etc.” runs the heading, but the author’s name is missing:

  “If thou, my dearest Friend, in whose safe breast

  I store my joys, and make my greifes take rest;

  Who art alone to me instead of all

  This World doth Wit, or Mirth, or Pleasure call:

  If thou should’st ask, why I so little care

  What interest or repute with most I beare?

  Why with so very few my selfe I mate?

  To th’ rest regardless of their love or hate?

  In short I’ll tell the, ’tis ’cause I would be

  From noise of businesse and all troubles free.

  Lies, False News, impertinence I hate,

  And all things else which contradict my Fate,

  With losse of Knowledge, truth and liberty

  By affording every fool my company.

  Yet what I love, with whom I would converse.

  And freely consort, I’le unask’d rehearse:

  One, whome by experience I truly find

  To be my friend, and suited to my mind:

  Reserv’d to others, but open unto me,

  And has a Soul from base dissembling free,

  And modest too; who thinks the greatest wit

  Consists in the wise government of it:

  Utters no secrets, constant to his friend,

  Nor can his thoughts to wicked fallsehood bend:

  One that Flies sadnesse, hates to be severe,

  But with facetiousnesse unbends his care.

  Yet one that’s studious too, whose boundlesse mind

  Scarce within Learning’s limits is confin’d,

  But chiefly Nature loves; and farre does pry

  Into her secrets with his piercing eye.

  These and like things I love; but to say true

  I’ve all this while been but describing You.

  You are the Man, my friend, whome I can love,

  The love of others I do not much approve.”

  One disadvantage did arise, however, from Aubrey’s dependence on his friends. Edmund Wyld lives in the great square in Bloomsbery, he wrote, on the south side, next dore to the Blackmons head, and by the most unfortunate chance his stomach, which he said had been till then so tender that I could not drinke claret without sugar, nor white wine, but would disgorge, chose this very moment to recover. And Aubrey was never one for half measures, with the result that his writing became even more untidy and more inaccurate. If I had but either one to come to me in a morning with a good Scourge, came the familiar lament, or did not sett-up till one or two with Mr. Wyld, I could doe a great deal of businesse.

  That no blame really attaches to Edmund Wyld for his guest’s incurable sociability is made only too clear by the Diaries of the period, where Aubrey constantly appears, drinking in taverns, talking in coffee-houses or helping his friends in their work. “Mr. Aubery and I observed the Resistance of air to be duplicate to the velocity or rather in a musicall proportion,” Robert Hooke wrote in 1674, and four years later he added, “Observed with Aubery the Moon Eclipsed.” The same source provides us with more details of Aubrey’s life in London. “With Mr. Aubery at Lord Brounkers, Mr. Colwalls, Sir Jo: Moors, Cap. Sherbourns”, Hooke says on one day, and nearly every night he notes, “At Garways with Mr. Hill, Mr. Hoskins, Mr. Wild, Mr. Aubery, Godfry, Blackburn, Lodowick, &c.” Then there were frequent excursions to Knightsbridge to see the Bishop of Salisbury or to visit his other friends. “I dind with Boyle, it agreed well,” says Hooke, “then with Aubery visited Harrington and Gadberry. Both mad but of Divers humours.” And every Thursday there was the Royal Society to attend, with the promise of some drinking afterwards. “Agreed upon new clubb to meet at Joes,” wrote Robert Hooke on December the tenth, 1675. “Mr. Hill, Mr. Lodowick, Mr. Aubery and I and to joyn to us Sir Jo: More, Mr. Wild, Mr. Hoskins. We now began our New Philosophicall Clubb”, he added on New Year’s Day, “and Resolvd upon Ingaging ourselves not to speak of any thing that was then reveald sub sigillo to any one nor to declare that we had such a meeting at all. We began our first Discourse about light upon the occasion of Mr. Newton’s Late Papers,” and it was Aubrey who led off the discussion. All this activity cost money though, and poor bankrupt Aubrey was soon reduced to borrowing from his friends. “Lent Aubery 1osh. and before 2osh. and since 5: he promised to repay it,” run the entries, but when the time of reckoning came, no cash was forthcoming. “Bought of Mr. Aubery, Euclides Works Greek and Latin 1osh., Plunia Purpur 1s., Censorinus de mensura Anni 8d., Duret Histoire des Langues, and Scaliger Contra Caldanum 6s. 4d., Baytins de re Navali 2sh.,” wrote Robert Hooke, “acquitted the former 20sh. lent.” But five days later another entry occurs in the Diary, “Lent Aubery 20sh. more.”

  Aubrey had hoped that the completion of his ruin would allow him to increase the work which he had been carrying on all through the crisis of his fortunes. Notwithstanding all these embarassments, he had said, I did pian piano (as they occur’d) take notes of Antiquity; and having a quick draught, have drawne landskips on horse-back symbolically. For Aubrey was still only forty-five when he lost his fortune and, being in the prime of life, he thought that he would be able to concentrate on his work at last, now that he was free from the continual distraction of trying to control his obstreperous accounts and to wriggle out of the lawsuits by which he had always been entangled in the past. Anno 1671, he says happily, having sold all and disappointed as aforesaid of moneys I received, I had so strong an Impulse to (in good part) finish my Description of Wilts, two volumes in folio, that I could not be quiet till I had donne it, and that with danger enough, tanquam canis e Nilo [like a dog at the Nile] take a lap and away for feare of the Crocodiles, i.e. Catchpolls—And indeed all that I have donne and that little that I have studied have been just after that fashion, so that had I not lived long my want of Leisure would have afforded but a slender Harvest. My head was alwaies working; never idle, and even travelling (which from 1649 till 1670 was never off horseback) did gleane some observations, of which I have a collection in folio of 2 quiers of paper plus a dust basket, some whereof are to be valued.

  As if to disprove still further his theory that a man’s Spirit rises and falls with his fortunes: makes me lethargique, Aubrey had branched off in yet another direction. In a letter to Anthony Wood at this time, he says: I am writing a Comedy for Thomas Shadwell, which I have now almost finished since I came here. And I shall fit him with another, The Country Revell, both humours untoucht, but of this, Mum! for ’tis very satyricall against some of my mischievous enemies which I in my tumbling up and down have collected. About the worth of his plays, Aubrey had no illusions, for he saw that the Civil War had utterly destroyed the English stage. By forbidding the performance of any play, the Puritans successfully broke the link with the great days of Shakespeare and Jonson, while the bigotry of their rule during the Commonwealth was largely responsible for the licentiousness of the early Restoration drama. As Professor Trevelyan has pointed out in his ‘English Social History’: “These unhappy conditions were peculiar to England: the age of Wycherley over here was the age of Molière, Corneille and Racine in France. There the drama, comic as well as tragic, was decent and was serious, and the French have ever since taken their drama seriously, as the Elizabethan English took theirs, regarding it as a civilising influence and a criticism of life.” But although Aubrey sadly noted: Now our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and coxcombeities, that twenty yeares hence they will not be understood, he followed the popular model, and sketched (between the lines of some old legal documents) the design for a grossly obscene farc
e. For the Countrey RevelI was written to expose both the coarseness of the simple country people (amongst whom was Squeaker, a shee-Balladsinger) and the vices of the gentry, and amongst the latter Aubrey included many thinly disguised portraits of his acquaintances, Courtoise, a Knight of the Bath and Protector of distressed Ladies, was really old Thomas Tyndale, Aubrey’s Wiltshire neighbour, Justice Wag-staffe was Sir John Dunstable, and Aubrey’s great enemy, Gwyn, the Earl of Oxford’s secretary, appeared as Sir Fastidious Overween. Sir Surly Chagrin, Captain Exceptious Quarrelsome, Squire Fitz-Ale and Sir Libidinous Gourmand are also recognisable portraits of his contemporaries, and in the notes for these characters, Aubrey has left a scathing comment on the efficiency of his times. Plato saies perpetuall drunkenness is the Reward of virtue, says Squire Fitz-Ale at one point, and Sir Hugh the Vicar confesses to be one of the old red-nosed Clergy, orthodox and canonic all. All the Parsons hereabout in Wiltshire, Aubrey noted after this, are Alehouse-hunters. James Long, Esq., hunted Sir Hugh driefoote to the Alehouse with his pack of hounds to the griefe of the revered Divine. And of Sir John Dunstable, he says: The Cellar he calls his Library, and he continues, Parliament men prepare themselves for the businesse of the Nation with Ale in the morning. Some Justices doe sleepe on the Bench every assizes. One final note about this character shows that the Army was no less corrupt than the Church and the Law. At Chippenham, the Deputye Lieutenants mett to see the Order of the Militia. After a taedious setting (at dinner, and drinking after dinner) the Drummes beate and the Soldiers began to march before the windowe to be seen by the Deputy Lieutenants. Justice Wagstaffe (Colonell) had not marcht before ’em many yardes but downe a falls all along in the dirt. His Myrmidons, multâ vi, heav’d him up, and then a cryed out, Some drinks, ho! and so there was an end of the Businesse.

  The plot deals with the fortunes of an adultress, who, pursued by her husband, is following her lover disguised in page’s attire, and the play ends with most of the characters dead on the stage. Raynes, wrote Aubrey, who in his excitement seems to have inserted the real name of the injured husband, comes and invades Sir Fastidious Overween, and is slayne by him; and then Sir Fastidious neglects her; she comes and stabbes him, and then herselfe.

  Naturally enough the play was never finished, for in 1672 Henry Coley wrote “to his much honoured Freind Mr. John Aubrey at the Right Honourable the Earle of Thanet’s house at Hethfield in Kent,” saying “you are much wanted at London, and dayly expected and therefore I hope you will not be long absent. Interest calls for your appearance.” For at last a job was in prospect. Dr. Christopher Wren, my deare friend, without my knowledge contrived an employment for me, which he referred to me to consider of it, Aubrey reported to Anthony Wood. ’Tis this—Mr. Ogilby is writing the History of all England: the map is mending already. Now the Doctor told him that if that were all, it would be no very great matter. He was pleased to tell him that he could not meet with a fitter man for that turne than J. A. Now it’s true it suites well enough with my Genius; but he is a cunning Scott, and I must deale warily with him, with the advice of my friends. It will be February next before I begin, and then between that and November followeing I must scurry all over England and Wales. The King will give me protection and letters to make enquiries.

  In the end Aubrey’s task was limited to a single county only, and he enter’d upon the Perambulation of the County of Surrey July 1 1673, and left off about the middle of September following. In those two and a half months, he wandered about the county, noting with equal interest, here a Ruinated Castle, there a peculiarly ingenious automatic water closet. Oatelands, he says was formerly one of the Palaces belonging to the Crown of England. Here was a Fair Park, well stor’d with Deer, but dispark’d by the late Usurpers. In the Park was once a Paddock, with a Standing, where Queen Elizabeth was us’d to shoot with a Cross-Bow. And in the parish of Godalming, he stumbled upon a Mannour called Catteshulle, held from the King, as Master of his Concubines.

  His main task was the gathering of inscriptions from the parish churches. This searching after Antiquities is a wearisome Taske. I wishe I had gonne through all the Church monuments, he complained. Though of all studies I take the least delight in this, yet methinkes I am carried on with a kind of divine aestrum: for nobody els hereabout hardly cares for it, but rather makes a scorne of it: But, me thinkes, it shewes a kind of gratitude and good nature, to revive the Memories and memorialls of the pious and charitable benefactors long since dead and gonne. And a formidable array of inscriptions he has assembled; for, in his day, tombstones were not so stereotyped as they are now. Poems, jokes, advertisements even, found their place on the walls of the churches, but the design was most often to shock:

  Thus Youth and Age and all Things pass away,

  Thy Turn is now as His was Yesterday;

  To morrow shall another take thy room,

  The next day He a prey for Worms become,

  And ore your dusty Bones shall others tread,

  As you now walk and trample on the Dead;

  ’Till neither Stone nor Memory appear,

  That ever you had Birth or Being here.

  And life itself, which was so fleeting, was often held up to scorn:

  This World to her was but a traged Play,

  She came and saw’t, dislikt, and pass’d away,

  cries the epitaph on a ten-year-old child, Susanna Barford, and another answers:

  Wealth, Honour, Bubbles are,

  long life a Blast.

  That Good this Virgin chose

  shall everlast.

  But the walls of the churches did not reflect only the melancholy side of seventeenth-century life: its prosperity and pride appeared too. For when they had made their fortunes, the newly enriched London merchants had begun to retire into the country, and the flamboyant tombstones, commemorating Citizen and Fishmonger or Citizen and Haberdasher, unselfconsciously reflect the prosperity they had attained. But the habits of a lifetime die hard, and some of the epitaphs were used to continue to drum up business even from the grave:

  Here Lockyer lyes interred, enough his Name

  Speakes one hath few Competitors in Fame;

  A Name so great, so gen’ral, it may scorn

  Inscriptions, which do vulgar Tombs adorn;

  His Vertues and his Pills are so well known,

  That Envy can’t confine them under Stone;

  This Verse is lost, his PILL, embalmes him safe

  To future Times without an Epitaph.

  Another feature of Stuart life which stands out from the tombs is the incredible frequency with which both men and women married. At Stretham, Aubrey noted down this epitaph: Here beneath Sleepe in the Lord Jesus, his gracefull Servantes (Wives of Thomas Hobbes, Esq;) and to have been just once wed was considered sufficiently startling to be recorded on one’s tomb: Dame Martha, Daughter to Robert Wilson, Esqr. onely Wife to Sir Edward Grophy of Brendon in the County of Durham, Bart. Nor was the humour of this situation missed by the citizens of that time:

  That you have layd my Body here,

  By that first Side I lov’d so deare,

  I thank you Husband, runs one epitaph.

  But yet I have another Boone,

  When Fates shall come (as come full soon

  It will and will not be deny’d)

  That you would close my other Side.

  Y’have thought it worthy to be Read,

  You once were Second to my Bed;

  Why may you not like Title have,

  To this my Second Bed the Grave.

  This Stone will cover us all Three,

  And under it we shall be free,

  From Love or Hate, or least Distrust Of Jealousy to vex our Dust;

  For here our Bodyes do but wayte

  The Summons for their glorious State.

  This sentiment would have been most unpopular with the occupant of a tomb at Barnes: The best of Husbands, John Squier, late Faithful, and (oh! that for so short a Time) Painful Rector of this
Parish. And the following epitaph would have pleased him even less:

  Here lies a Traveller old madam Besse,

  Honest Charles Hales his wife I guesse.

  She was his dear one, wee’le not belie her;

  And so’s mine too; wou’d she lay by her.

  Aubrey’s time, however, was not taken up wholly by this wearisome Taske. Wandering from church to church, he found time to visit the Spas like Epsom, which were just then achieving popularity and were replacing the mediæval pilgrimages as an excuse for holidays, and also to stay at the country houses on his way: I must not forget my noble Friend, Mr. Charles Howard’s Cottage of Retirement (which he call’d his Castle) which lay in the Middle of a vast Heathy Country, where in the troublesome Times, he withdrew from the wicked World, and enjoy’d himself here, where he had only one Floor, his little Dining Room, a Kitchen, a Chapel and a Laboratory. And in these places Aubrey heard many anecdotes which he was unable to resist introducing quite irrelevantly into his narrative. At Godalming, for instance, he met Mr. Samuel Speed (the famous and valiant Sea Chaplain and Sailor). In a Poem made by Sir John Birkenhead, on the Sea-fight with the Dutch, he takes Notice of our Vicar in this Manner.