Wife to Mr. Milton Page 10

  Of the nobility and gentry, our neighbours, most were very hot against the Scots, but hotter still against the English traitors who had been in league with them: for it was common knowledge that those in. England who hated Bishops and did not love the King had encouraged the Scots to march.

  The King, being then petitioned by the Scots to call an English Parliament, was in no posture to deny them, and Parliament was called; which is the same Parliament of which I wrote in my first chapter that Sir Robert Pye the Elder was a member. Indeed, it is the same Parliament whereof a poor remnant still rules at Westminster, after twelve years, having since done great and terrible things. In those days Parliament was generally well disposed to the Scots, and liked that they should remain in England until a treaty could be signed agreeable to both nations; and most members did not grudge that they should be paid at the rate of £850 a day while they remained, if so the King might be over-awed into obedience to the will of Parliament. Yet there was this inconveniency, that a residue of the English army remained at York which for shame’s sake they could not disband, and must pay likewise; this army they were not careful to pay so regularly as the Scots. Then they busied themselves with providing for the security and perpetuation of the Parliament; with abolishing the Courts that had been the instruments of the King’s arbitrary power; with asserting again the ancient right of the People not to be taxed without the common consent of Parliament; with abolishing monopolies and patents; and finally with restraining and limiting the power of the Bishops.

  Mun continued with the broken army in York, ill at ease and out of pocket; and he was there in that Christmas season of 1641–1642 when, as related in my first chapter, my godmother, Aunt Moulton, gave me my vellum book. Here at last I have caught up with the beginning of my story, where I made too hasty a start, and will undertake never to go backward in it again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I Fall into Piety and Out Again

  In the spring of that year, 1641, when I was recovered of my supposed plague and went about the house again, I fell in a dump of melancholy, for I had loved my warm pampered life in bed, and could find little gust or appetite for my customary tasks.

  My mother said that I had fared too sumptuously during my sickness, and resolved that I must be cupped of half a pint of blood each day for ten days to restore me; and now that I was no longer under Trunco’s care there was no denial, but I must submit patiently. Which loss of blood weakened me much and made me more melancholic yet. My father called in Dr. Bates, an Oxford physician, who was confident that I had a scurvy and prescribed me acrimonious medicaments: boiled scurvy grass, wormwood beer and mustard at every meal, which my stomach loathed.

  Moreover, I had the spring as an enemy to contend with. Our poets pretend that spring is a jocund season, but doubtless they borrow this conceit thoughtlessly from the Italians and Spanish, in whose gardens almond trees are in firm fruit, while ours are scarcely in flower. At Forest Hill in that year the east wind blew very bitter throughout Lent, a wind which, according to the proverb, is good neither for man nor beast; and our house, being an old one, was not tight against the blast. The primroses were backward in blooming and gave me little pleasure, with no Mun at my side to gather them; yet in recollection of him I still ordered and tied my nosegays as he had showed me.

  The season was further overcast by the coming trial, in Parliament, of the Earl of Strafford, the King’s principal adviser and most skilful commander, on the charge of illegal and treasonable acts done by him in Ireland. It was evident to all who considered his case that he had been a most faithful servant to His Majesty, and that if he were a traitor to England, why, then, so was his Master who approved his acts—unless it were that a King could do no wrong. Yet those in Parliament were bent upon condemning the Earl to death, as an exemplary warning, and not any lesser penalty would satisfy them, for “stone-dead hath no fellow”, as they said. Nobody could think so ill of His Majesty as to believe that he would suffer a faithful servant to die; on the other hand it was said that if he offered the least interference with the course of Parliamentary justice the Kingdom would hardly escape a tumble into civil war. There was a saying quoted by the Parliamentarians—for already the parties were thus ranged, Parliamentarians against King’s men or Royalists: “No man can well say how many hair’s-breadths make a tall man, and how many a short man; yet we all know a tall man, when we see him, from a short man; and how many illegal acts make a traitor is not to be said, yet we all know a traitor, when we see him, from a man who is true and loyal.”

  My father was discreet, and offered no opinion, but would say to the contenders of either party: “I cannot dispute the truth of what you say, yet I hold this to be a very ill business, and dangerous.” And to one who sought to inflame matters by violent speech he would say: “Softly, sir, softly! Remember that he who will blow the coals with his mouth must not wonder if some sparks fly into his face!” But my mother, being born a Moulton of Worcestershire, which is a very loyal county, was all for the King and ranted against “the currish dogs and traitors led by that rogue Pym.”

  In Passion Week my Aunt Jones came again to our house with my Uncle Jones, a very austere man, who took advantage of my continuing dark mood to converse very earnestly with me about my immortal soul; asking shrewdly, did my conscience prick me, had I fallen into carnal faults, did I hope to be numbered among the elect of God? etc., etc. In our house we were as light-hearted in religious performance as my father was in his execution of justice: we did as others did, and as the Law required us to do, in the matter of church observance—no less and no more—making no dismal burden of our mortality. I hardly knew, indeed, that I possessed an immortal soul of my very own; for the curate in his sermons touched little upon questions of individual salvation. He treated rather of the large bounty of God and of the generous love that is found between good neighbours, crying in the words of the Psalmist: “Brethren, what a joyful thing it is to dwell together in unity!” and he often promised us that, if we walked in meekness and good cheer and charity together, and avoided any offence against the Law, our whole congregation of St. Nicholas parish would march together at last into the bliss of Paradise, in due order of rank and substance, and there all become blessed angels together, to sing Hosannas for everlasting ages.

  My Uncle Jones now told me that I must remember my Creator in the days of my youth, that the evil days might not come (as they had come to him and to my aunt) when I should say “I have no pleasure in them.” This was something new, which I heeded because of its strangeness and sharpness, and when my Uncle went away again he left two books with me, Dr. Sibbes’ Bruised Reed and Mr. Robert Bolton’s Four Best Things, and Instruction for the Right Comforting of Afflicted Consciences, which last was a new edition imprinted in that same year.

  The Bruised Reed I could not stomach; but Mr. Bolton wrote very comfortably, and convinced me that I had a quick, tender conscience; and searching this new-found, quick, tender conscience well, I found it afflicted by an innumerable of sins that I had not known before by so black a name; and I instantly resolved to repent and to amend all and to walk before God with a perfect heart. Then a watery light of holiness seemed to shine about me, and I was licked, as I thought, by the tongues of that hopeful fire whereof the books made promise.

  This was a short-lived mood, for soon the light of holiness dimmed, and the flames languished, and before night came I had returned into the old mire of my errors—the dog to his vomit, as the Scripture says—and called myself a miserable, hard-hearted sinner, a wretched back-slideress, a filthy beast. I turned my vellum book upside down and began to write at the other end, keeping a very precise inventory of blessings and crosses for every day; and another of temptations that had beset me, with an addition sign or a subtraction sign to signify whether I had overcome or fallen; and another of resolutions taken and whether performed. The signs that I most noted were: of gluttony, for I had a passion for sweetmeats of every sort and for the tender brea
st of chicken; of vanity, which was cockered up by my new dress made of red and green flowered chintz, bought in London at thirty shillings a yard; of sloth, for I would never be the first, of Zara and myself, to rise from our bed, but would wait until she was fully attired and had her hand on the door to go out; of lying and glozing, with which I covered myself when my mother asked me questions that I would not answer; of anger, how I fumed and chafed when I was ruled by an elder person; of cruelty, to Trunco, when I was out of patience but dared not vent my evil humour upon anyone else, for I let fly at her, knowing that in her great love for me she would not long resent it.

  This keeping of accounts I found a great inconveniency, for either I had to hold the items constantly in my head, saying them over to myself for dread of forgetting them before night when I should write them down; or else, many times a day, to fly up to my chamber and unlock the book, and get out my pen and ink-pot and write the tale down, and then sprinkle the ink with the sand-caster, and wait until it was dried and then lock the book again. This, with the watchful guard that I kept upon my tongue and hands, put a constraint upon me wherein I might have gloried, but that it was so irksome and unnatural. I could, thus far, regard myself as merely in the condition of Preparatory Grace, and not yet having that Special Grace which is vouchsafed to saints; and my awakened soul, the more I searched it, appeared in a very dreadful and passionate plight. To check my vanity, I cultivated a negligence of my hair and apparel which ill became me; and when my mother observed that I ate and drank more sparingly than usual and that I went about softly and answered her submissively, she concluded that I had done something mightily amiss, which I wished to hide from her. She called me to her chamber on the morning of the second day of my new life and tried to draw a confession from me, but I had nothing to confess beyond small things which to her were not worth the confessing; so that she thought that I deceived her, and railed at me. I humbly cast down my eyes to the floor, but said no word to her of my Preparatory Grace—if Grace at all it was, and no illusion—lest she should rail the louder.

  My mother often taunted at my Uncle Jones, though never to his face or in the presence of my father, for his canting, puritanical, hypocritical ways. She called him a fox who had lost his tail in a trap, and who would persuade all other foxes (and vixens, too) to lose theirs, so that he might not feel abominable in his tailless condition. I felt myself strong enough in the faith, but was not of the stuff that martyrs are made of, and would do nothing that would provoke my mother to mock me as a she-disciple of my Uncle Jones with his plain collared bands and absurd hat. However, one day after dinner, my mother watched how I crept up to my chamber, thinking myself unobserved; and came softly after me and broke in upon me just as I was unlocking my book to write. She did not give me the he when, trembling at the alarm, I told her faintly that I was keeping a private account of my sins, which I intended only for my own eye and that of my Maker. Instead, she burst out laughing in my face. She said that it had been just so with her when she was of an equal age with me and had fallen in love with my father—she had eased her afflicted heart by writing her longings in a book like mine, some of them in plain prose, but some turned into indifferent good verse. Then she kissed me, and laughed again, and told me to love whom I would, but to be as discreet as she had been, and to guard my maidenhead well, which was a valuable commodity, a pearl of price, not to be thrown away on any handsome rogue, but to be preserved for a good match. And she said that she hoped I would not marry a poor man, as she herself had done; for though the fortune that she had brought my father had caused him to treat her with unusual kindness, yet because of the leanness of his purse she must constantly deny herself of pleasures that she had thought never to be without.

  I had a mind to cut the lecture short by assuring her that my only love was for the Lord Jesus; but I refrained. For, in the first place, she would have thought that I added the fault of blasphemy to that of deception and would have pulled my ears for me; and, in the second, I could not conceal the truth from myself, which was that in the perversity of my heart I loved Mun, a sinful man, as dearly as anything else whatsoever.

  My mother thereafter, if I chanced to be remiss or behind-hand with my household tasks, would twit me light-heartedly, and before my brothers and sisters, with being love-sick, and would propose the most improbable persons as the objects of my love with “Confess, daughter—surely it cannot be he?”

  I was discomposed and abashed, and knew not how I should answer if she named Mun. To avoid this peril, I strove to forget him and to give my heart wholly to God; but I could not pluck him out from the chief seat. Then my sins mounted, for I could not show myself meek, try as I might. Zara twitted and taunted me to distraction, playing my mother’s game, yet in a silly, spiteful manner.

  At last, five or six days after Easter, as we sat together in the hall at our needlework, she cried suddenly: “I have it, I have it—it is Mr. Tiresias, him whom we met that day at Woodstock! I overheard you when you asked our brother James to tell you all that he knew about the other Tiresias.” Then I dropped the band that I was stitching and flew at Zara and scratched her cheek with my nails and thumped her in the belly.

  Yet even in her shrieks and tears she exulted, crying: “So it is he! it is he! I have guessed it. Marie languishes for love of Mr. Tiresias.”

  Oh, I mauled her so savagely with my teeth that my brother Richard had to pluck me from her, wrenching me back by the hair with both his hands.

  Then ensued a great repentance, with a heinous sin to mark down in my book, for (as I wrote) had not my brother Richard by the Grace of God passed by the hall and heard the hubbub, I should have murdered my own sister, who truly meant no great harm. Yet I comforted myself a little by writing that though temptation at that time had prevailed against the spirit and the love of God, yet it was not to the setting up in me of the contrary habit in predominancy. I had been tripped up by the Devil, yet by God’s grace would rise again refreshed.

  When I had written this, I heard my brother James calling my name, and went out to him and he kissed me and said: “Sister, you have not gone riding for ten days or more. It may be that what has put you into such an ill-humour is this: that you have not jogged and jolted yourself sufficiently, so that your blood stands still in your veins and poison scums up. Come out with me now on Roarer and we’ll ride towards Red Hill.”

  I was grateful to him, and made ready, and forth we went. My spirits soared again, so soon as ever I was back in the saddle. The greyhound with us started a fox and, as we coursed after him, half a field behind, he turned his muzzle towards Beckley and ran stoutly. My Roarer was a great unruly sorrel, and because I had not lately exercised him he was mad for the chase and took the bit between his teeth, so that I could no longer manage him. I clung to the pommel of my saddle, and prayed wildly to God to preserve me, for the fox was running to hide in a deep, old pit, called Shepherd’s Pit, which has gorse bushes at the lip. My Roarer swerved aside, avoiding the danger, and leaped over a bank instead, into a narrow lane that led into the pit. He tumbled me over his head, where I lighted up to my elbows in mire, and took no hurt; and he lighted with two feet on one side of me, and two on the other, in a marvellous manner, not hurting me, though he trod the shoe off my foot.

  This was a great mercy, worthy to be recorded in my book; but when we returned home, having killed the fox in the pit, I found that a spark from the hearth had leaped into my sewing-basket, where I had left it in the hall. The fire had scorched a hole in the lace-band that I was stitching, and had spread and burned the brocaded lining of the basket, with a pair of fine lace gloves wrapped in paper, and other small things that I prized, as ribbons and silk thread, and the basket was smouldering with a sour smoke.

  Was this not too much to bear? I knew well that Zara had seen my things burning and purposely let them burn, though she protested that she had not set foot in the hall again after my cruelty to her. That night, though I made up my inventory, I ran two lines
beneath it with my pen, to show that it was now at an end, and that I had struck sail. For Special Grace was long in coming, and too much thought upon sin breeds sin; and I trusted that God would not be severe with me when I owned my incapacity at present to serve Him as faithfully as Mr. Bolton or Dr. Sibbes or my Uncle Jones would have me do.

  The next day I lay in bed ten minutes longer than I needed to lie, and took pleasure in it, and was myself again, and have never since wilfully taken up any book of sermons or other pious writings which might remind me of that most precious but horribly uncomfortable possession, my soul. My family made no more sport of me, and Zara feared my rage; nevertheless, it stuck in the memory of the household how wrathful I had been when Mr. Tiresias was named as the man for whose love I languished. What James could tell me of the other ancient Tiresias, whose name our gentleman had borrowed, was only this, that he was a Theban poet or prophet in ancient days and that he was blind; but when he went to London, as he passed through St. Paul’s Churchyard, he thought to enquire of the booksellers there for a Masque published under the name of Mr. Henry Lawes (whereof Mr. Tiresias had written the poem) and was directed to where the book might be bought, and brought it back as a gift to me.

  I had read poems before, especially the long, pleasant verse-tales by Samuel Daniel and Edmund Spenser, which my mother had, but more for the matter rather than for the art. Now, however, that I had put by my godliness as unseasonable, I turned for the refreshment of my mind to the reading of poems. I was of an age to fancy myself a judge of the art, and read as many of the newer books as James could borrow of his friends at Oxford; and this Masque I judged to be exceeding fine poetry. There were two brothers in the poem, with a sister, who was lost in a wild wood by their negligence. A sorcerer named Comus, with a rabble of tipsy monsters, finds her out and tempts her to wantonness; but she protests that she is chaste and that no sorcerer has any power over chastity. He argues that chastity is no jewel, but a bauble—she still protesting the contrary—and offers her a magic cup to drink, which shall overcome her scruples. At this the brothers rush in with swords drawn, and scatter him and his rabble. The rest of the action is concerned with the difficulty that the brothers meet of oversetting a charm which has fixed the lady fast in her chair, and they call in a Nymph who sings a lovely song and so looses her.