Part 2

“When first this month, stealing from half-blown bowers, Bathed the young cowslip in her sunny showers, Pensive I travell’d, and approach’d the plains, That met the bounds of Severn’s wide domains. As up the hill I rose, from whose green brow The village church o’erlooks the vale below, O! when its rustic form first met my eyes, What wild emotions swell’d the rising sighs! Stretch’d the pain’d heart-strings with the utmost force Grief knows to feel, that knows not dire remorse; For there—yes there,—its narrow porch contains My dear Honora’s cold and pale remains, Whose lavish’d health, in youth, and beauty’s bloom, Sunk to the silence of an early tomb.”

Edgeworth is to be remembered as having been a good Irish landlord; he had a property at Edgeworthstown.

In 1802 Anna Seward wrote, “The stars glimmered in the lake of Weston as we travelled by its side, but their light did not enable me to distinguish the Church, beneath the floor of whose porch rests the mouldered form of my heart—dear Honora,—yet of our approach to that unrecording, but thrice consecrated spot, my heart felt all the mournful consciousness.”

It is not easy to agree with Mr. E. V. Lucas, the author of a very entertaining book, entitled “A Swan and her Friends” (Methuen & Co.), when he says, “of Honora’s married life little is known, but she may have been very happy,” for she left a letter, written a few days before her death, which cannot easily be construed as applying merely to her death-bed state. Here is a paragraph from it:—

“I have every blessing, and I am happy. The conversation of my beloved husband, when my breath will let me have it, is my greatest delight, he procures me every comfort, and as he always said he thought he should, contrives for me everything that can ease and quiet my weakness.”

“Like a kind angel whispers peace, And smooths the bed of death.”

Her husband records that she was the most beloved as a wife, a sister, and a friend, of any person he had ever known. Each member of her own family, unanimously, almost intuitively, preferred her.

Anne Hunter, the eldest sister of Mrs. Seward, married a few days before her, viz., in October, 1741, at Newton Regis Church, the Rev. Samuel Martin, the Rector, who was formerly a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He afterwards became the Rector of Gotham, Notts., where he remained for 27 years, until his death, in 1775. In a letter dated 23rd June, 1764, written from Gotham, while visiting “her excellent Uncle and Aunt Martin,” as she styled them, soon after the death of Sarah Seward, Anna Seward says, “pious tranquility broods over the kind and hospitable mansion, and the balms of sympathy and the cordials of devotion are here poured into our torn hearts,” and “my cousin, Miss Martin, is of my sister’s age, and was deservedly beloved by her above all her other companions next to myself and Honora.”

It was Dr. Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Robert Darwin, the naturalist, who died in 1882, author of the “Origin of the Species”) who first discovered Anna Seward as a poetess. Happening to peruse some verses apparently written by her, he took an opportunity of calling at the Palace when Anna Seward was alone, and satisfied himself that she could write good poetry unaided, and that her literary abilities were of no common kind.

Dr. Darwin (who was a native of Nottinghamshire) in either the year 1756 or 1757, arrived in Lichfield to practise as a Physician there, where he resided until 1781. Darwin was a “votary to poetry,” a philosopher, and a clever though an eccentric man. He wrote “The Botanic Garden,” which Anna Seward pronounced to be “a string of poetic brilliants,” and in which book Horace Walpole noted a passage “the most sublime in any author or in any of the few languages with which I am acquainted.” He inserted in it, as his own work, some lines of Anna Seward’s,—which was ungallant, to say the least. Anna Seward’s mother repressed her early attempts at poetry, so for a time she contented herself with reading “our finest poets,” and with “voluminous correspondence.” On her mother’s death, being free to exercise her poetical powers, she forthwith produced odes, sonnets, songs, epitaphs, epilogues, and elegies, in profusion.

Anna Seward visited Bath, and her introduction into the literary “world” was made by Anna, Lady Miller, a verse writer of some fame, who instituted a literary salon at Bath-Easton, during the Bath season. An antique vase, which had been dug up in Italy in 1759, was placed on a modern altar decorated with laurel, each guest being invited to place in the urn an original composition in verse. When it was determined which were the best three productions, their authors were crowned by Lady Miller with wreaths of myrtle. Lady Miller died in 1781, and a handsome monument in the Abbey at Bath marks the spot where she was buried. It is stated in the D.N.B. that the urn, after her death, was set up in the public park in Bath.

Fanny Burney met Lady Miller, whom she describes with her usual candour: “Lady Miller is a round, plump, coarse-looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on. Her habits are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her manners very inelegant.”

Once a year the most ingenious of the vase effusions was published, the net profits being applied to some Bath charity. Four volumes of the compositions appeared. The prize poem was written several times by Anna Seward, and on one occasion was awarded for her monody on the death of David Garrick.

Macaulay says, in his essay on Madame D’Arblay, that Lady Miller kept a vase “wherein fools were wont to put bad verses.” Dr. Johnson also said, when Boswell named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase, “He was a blockhead for his pains”; on the other hand, when told that the Duchess of Northumberland wrote, Johnson said, “Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases: nobody will say anything to a lady of her high rank.” Remembering who were ranked among the contributors to the “Saloon of the Minervas,” these criticisms seem rather absurd, for

“Bright glows the list with many an honour’d name.”

Christopher Anstey, a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, remembered as having written the “New Bath Guide,” and as having been deemed worthy a cenotaph in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, and William Hayley, appear to have been among the best-known to fame at “the fanciful and romantic institution at Bath-Easton.” The latter was a friend of Cowper, Romney and Southey, and published the lives of the two former. In “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” occur these lines:—

“Triumphant first see Temper’s Triumph shine, At least I’m sure they triumphed over mine. Of ‘Music’s Triumphs’ all who read may swear That luckless music never triumphed there.”

The poems “Triumphs of Temper” (1781) and “Triumphs of Music” (1804) were Hayley’s chief productions. He was the most ardent of all of those who paid their homage to Anna Seward. Mr. Lucas informs us that David Garrick appears also in the list. To the foregoing names may be added Edward Jerningham, the friend of Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, a dramatist as well as a poet; George Butt, the divine, and chaplain to George III.; William Crowe, “the new star,” as Anna Seward calls him, a divine and public orator at Oxford; and Richard Graves, a poet and novelist, the Rector of Claverton, who wrote “Recollections of Shenstone” in 1788. These, and Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, were perhaps the most learned of the vase group. The latter, Fanny Burney says, was one of its best supporters. He was a Prebendary of Wells Cathedral, and corresponded a good deal with Anna Seward. Wilberforce’s description of him is worth recalling, viz., “the true picture of a sensible, well-informed and educated, polished, old, well-beneficed, nobleman’s and gentleman’s house-frequenting, literary and chess-playing divine.”

Anna Seward’s “Elegy on Captain Cook,” and her “Monody on Major André,” were contributed to the Vase, and immediately brought her into great repute.

Anna Seward made friends with, and had a great admiration for, the celebrated recluses, “the ladies of Llangollen Vale,”—Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby. They were so called because when they arrived their names were unknown. It is said that they never left their home for 50 years, and were so absolutely devoted as to be inseparable from each other. They adopted a semi-masculine attire. These curious ladies,—“extraordinary women,”—are described as ladies of genius, taste and knowledge—who were “sought by the first characters of the age, both as to rank and talents.”

She kept up a considerable correspondence with both of them. Their house at Plas Newydd is described minutely and at great length in one of her letters. It is still standing, and continues to be visited by scores of tourists. Lady Eleanor Butler died in 1829, and Miss Sarah Ponsonby in 1831. One of Anna Seward’s poems is entitled “Llangollen Vale,” and was inscribed to these ladies, as likewise were some more of her verses.

In 1782 Anna Seward produced “Louisa,” a poetical novel in four epistles. It ran through five editions. She says that she received the highest encomiums upon the poem “by the first literary characters of the age.” It is now rarely read. However, the writer of an article in “The Lady’s Monthly Museum” for March, 1799, vol. 2, wrote that, “the story, though interesting enough, is but a secondary object. It is told in strains, which, for energy, voluptuousness, and dignity of description, are rarely found in our language.” The writer further states that “our readers will be amply gratified by a perusal of the whole poem, which is everywhere equally replete with genius and taste, happy invention, and a luxury of glowing description.”

She found another writer of the time ready to defend her against a reviewer who had brought a charge of “accumulating in her dramatic characters glaring metaphors,” and of aiming “to dazzle by superfluity of ornaments.”

In 1790 Canon Seward died. He was deeply beloved by his daughter, who most dutifully nursed him for some ten years before his death.

Twelve years later Dr. Darwin died suddenly, in the very act of writing a letter to Richard Lovell Edgeworth; and in 1804 Anna Seward published a biographical Memoir of Darwin, in reference to which Sir Walter Scott wrote, “he could not have wished his fame and character entrusted to a pen more capable of doing them ample and, above all, discriminating justice.” She called Darwin her “bright luminary.” On his death she wrote thus:—“His extinction is universally lamented, from the most operative cause of regret; and while disease may no longer turn the eyes of hope upon his rescuing and restoring skill, the poetic fanes lose a splendid source of ornament; philosophic science, an ingenious and daring dictator; and medicinal art, a pillar of transcendent strength.” The Memoir she called, “The woman’s mite in biography.” This book, notwithstanding Sir Walter Scott’s praise, is, nowadays, considered but a poor piece of writing.

The Lichfield literary circle in Anna Seward’s time included many learned people, for, besides Dr. Darwin, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and Thomas Day, may be mentioned the two Canons of the Cathedral—Archdeacon Vyse and Canon Sneyd Davies, a poet; the Rev. William Robinson (nicknamed “The Rector” amongst his friends), a great wit, one who could “set the table in a roar”; Sir Brooke Boothby, a poet and politician; her cousin, the Rev. Henry White {20}, Sacrist of Lichfield Cathedral (who married Lucy, the daughter of the Rev. John Hunter by his second wife); and sometimes Dr. Johnson, but his presence was not much appreciated. “There was,” wrote Sir Walter Scott, “some aristocratic prejudice in their dislike, for the despotic manners of Dr. Johnson were least likely to be tolerated when the lowness of his origin was in fresh recollection.”

How came Anna Seward to dominate and reign as the Queen over the literary society in Lichfield? The great “magnetic” power she must have possessed accounts to a large extent for the popular adulation bestowed upon her. Still, the circumstances of her residence in the Episcopal Palace, and her being by birth a lady and endowed with a certain amount of wealth, added to an attractive presence, must have greatly helped her to attain the position.

Anna Seward certainly hated, and hated venomously, Dr. Johnson, who was afraid of her, and he, she says, “hated me.” She could not endure his mannerisms, but mimicked his gestures and curious demeanours; calling him “a despot,” “the old literary Colossus,” an “envious calumniator,” “surly Samuel Johnson,” “the massive Being,” “the old elephant,” and “a growler.”