CHAPTER VI. Robyn Goes Abroad

ROBYN GOES ABROAD

O ye windes of God, blesse ye the Lord: praise him and magnifie him for ever.

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O ye fire and heat, blesse ye the Lord: praise him and magnifie him for ever.

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O ye ice and snow, blesse ye the Lord: praise him and magnifie him for ever.

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O ye lightnings and clouds, blesse ye the Lord: praise him and magnifie him for ever.

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O ye Children of men, blesse ye the Lord: praise him and magnifie him for ever.

Benedicite omnia opera: Black Letter Prayer Book of 1636.

The little party—five in all—Francis and Robert, and M. Marcombes, with their two French servants, “took post for Rye in Sussex; and there, though the sea was rather rough, they hired a ship,” and “a prosperous puff of wind did safely, by next morning, blow them into France.” They were a day and night at sea, and “a little tossed att night”; they had escaped the perils of the deep and of “yᵉ Donkirks”; and after stopping for a short refreshment at Dieppe, they set off towards Rouen and Paris. They enjoyed the company of several French gentlemen on the road, of which they were glad; for a robbery had been “freshly committed in a wood” between Rouen and Paris, through which the travellers would be obliged to pass by night. Marcombes sensibly observed that the very next day after the robbery would be the very safest time to ride through the wood; and accordingly they continued their journey. At Rouen, Robyn was fascinated by the great floating bridge, which rose and fell with the tide water; and in one of his “pretty conceits,” such as had so amused Sir Henry Wotton at Eton, the boy compared this bridge at Rouen to the “vain amorists of outward greatnesse, whose spirits resent” (i.e. rise and fall with) “all the flouds and ebbs of that fortune it is built on.” And this so soon after Frank’s gay wedding in Whitehall!

Arrived in Paris on November 4, unmolested by brigands on their journey, Marcombes and the two boys spent some days in “that vast chaos of a city,” where they were shown most of the “varieties,” and met several English friends—among them one whom M. Marcombes heartily disliked, Frank’s new brother-in-law, Tom Killigrew, with the honeyed tongue, brother of the little bride who had been left behind in the House of the Savoy. They also called on the English Ambassador; but the great event of their visit to Paris has been described in Marcombes’s first letter to the Earl.

Mr. Francis, he says, had been so troubled at the moment of his departure from the Savoy on account of his father’s anger against him, that he had quite forgotten where he had put his own sword and the case of pistols which the Earl had given the boys; and Marcombes had been obliged, when they arrived at Paris, to buy them “a kaise of pistolles a piece”, not only because of the dangerous state of the roads in France (witness the robbery freshly committed in a wood), but because it was “yᵉ mode” in France for every gentleman to ride with pistols; and people would “Laugh att” the Earl’s hopeful sons if they were without them. A sword also had been bought for Mr. Francis, and “when Mr. Robert saw it he did so earnestly desire me to buy him one, because his was out of fashion, that I could not refuse him that small request.”

They left Paris, with their new swords and pistols, a little company, “all well-horsed,” numbering some twenty altogether, and including two delightful “Polonian” Princes, who were “Princes by virtue and education as well as birth.” It was a nine days’ journey to Lyons, and on the way they rested, among other places, at Moulins, which the future experimentalist remembered for its “fine tweezes.” But romance was at this time nearer to the boy’s heart than chemistry; their way had lain through a part of the French Arcadia, “the pleasant Pays de Forest, where the Marquis d’Urfé had laid the scene of the adventures and amours of that Astrea with whom so many gallants are still in love, long after both his and her decease.”

Lyons itself, where they stayed for a time, seemed to Robert Boyle “a town of great resort and trading, but fitter for the residence of merchants than of gentlemen.” They crossed the mountains that had formerly belonged to the Duke of Savoy, but were now in the territory of the French king, and they saw the Rhone in its narrowest part, between the rocks, “where it is no such large stride to stand on both his banks”; and after three days’ journey from Lyons, they reached Geneva, a little Commonwealth whose quick and steady prosperity under the “reformed religion” had made it the theme “not only of discourse but of some degree of wonder.” There, for nearly two years, the boys were to board with M. Marcombes and his wife and family, and to find themselves in a little ready-made circle of friends; for Barrymore and Kynalmeaky had been there together, and boarded at the Villa Diodati. Philip Burlamachy, the former Lord Mayor of London, who did so much business with the Earl of Cork, and who, it will be remembered, had recommended Marcombes to the Earl, belonged to Geneva, and was related by marriage to the Diodati family there; and Mr. Diodato Diodati, the banker, and Dr. John Diodati, the famous Italian Protestant preacher, were among the chief Genevan residents. “The church government,” wrote John Evelyn about Geneva, only a year or two later, “is severely Presbyterian, after the discipline of Calvin and Beza, who set it up; but nothing so rigid as either our Scots or English sectaries of that denomination.”

Geneva was, as Marcombes had pointed out to the Earl when he took the boys there, not only a very convenient place for himself—for his home and family were there—but “by reason of the pure air and the notable Strangers always passing through it, and the conveniences for all kinds of Learning there, a very good place for the two boys to be educated in.” They would be among those who though “farr from puritanisme” were very orthodox and religious men, and they would be in no danger from conversation with “Jesuits, friars, priests, or any persons ill-affected to their religion, king or state.” In a word, Frank and Robyn were to be bred in a commonwealth of educated toleration; and its fine influences were to remain with Robert Boyle—who lived there a little longer than his brother—all through his life.

From time to time, Marcombes wrote comfortable letters to the Earl in London. Supplies of money had, so far, come regularly; but as yet no letters had arrived from the Earl of Cork, who was, as will be seen later, beset by family cares and public anxieties. Marcombes and the boys had settled down to regular lessons at set hours. The lessons were to include rhetoric and logic, arithmetic and Euclid, geography, the doctrine of the spheres and globe, and fortification. They were to take lessons with a fencing-master and a dancing-master, and they played at mall and tennis—this last a sport that Robert Boyle “ever passionately loved.” And they read together in a “voluminous but excellent work” called Le Monde; but above all Robyn, if not Frank, was indulged in the reading of romances, which not only “extreamely diverted” him, but also taught him French. And as they talked no English, but “all and allwayes French,” Robert became very soon “perfect” in the French tongue, while Frank could “express himself in all companies.”

Marcombes was evidently very proud of having a second batch of the Earl of Cork’s sons put under his care; and Frank and Robyn proved pupils more to his taste than Kynalmeaky and Broghill had been. For one thing, they had come to him fresh from school; and he found the very young bridegroom and the younger philosopher, “noble, virtuous, discreet and disciplinable.” “I think”, he wrote to the Earl, “I neede not much Rhetorike for to persuade your Lordship that Mr. Robert Loves his booke with all his heart.” And Robert also danced extremely well; and so anxious was he to excel in fencing, that the good-natured Marcombes was “almost afraid yᵗ he should have left a quarell unperfect in England.” As for Frank, he was taking to his lessons with a “facilitie and passion” that surprised Marcombes, seeing that the boy had “tasted a little drope of yᵉ Libertinage of yᵉ Court.” Francis had been well provided with clothes in London; but Master Robert had been furnished in Geneva with a complete black satin suit, the cloak lined with plush; and Marcombes gave the boys every month “a piece yᵉ value of very neare two pounds sterlings for their passe time.”

That first winter in Geneva was an exceptionally cold one, and a great deal of snow had fallen “on yᵉ grounde.” The Governour’s letters to the Earl reported the boys to be growing apace. Mr. Francis’s legs and arms were considerably bigger than when he left England. The mountain air and the dancing and fencing were doing both boys good, though Mr. Robert still preferred sitting by himself, “with some book of history or other”—the romances are not mentioned—and required some persuasion “to playe at tennisse and to goe about.” He was, however, in excellent health. “I never saw him handsomer,” wrote Marcombes to the Earl; “for although he growes so much, yet he is very fatt and his cheeks as red as vermilion.” The frosty air had brought them “to such a stomacke that your Lordship should take a great pleasure to see them feed.

“I doe not give them Daintys,” he wrote: “but I assure your Lordship that they have allwayes good bred and Good wine, good beef and mouton, thrice a week, good capons and good fish, constantly disches of fruit and a Good piece of cheese: all kind of cleane linen twice and thrice a weeke, and a Constant fire in their chamber, where they have a good bedd for them and another for their men.”

Marcombes describes in detail the order of their days in the Genevan household. Every morning during their first months in Geneva he taught them rhetoric and Latin; and after dinner they read two chapters of the Old Testament—with “expositions” from Marcombes on those points they did not understand; and before supper they read Roman history in French, and repeated “yᵉ catechisme of Calvin with yᵉ most orthodox exposition” of difficult points; and after supper they read two chapters of the New Testament. And they said their prayers morning and evening, and twice a week they went to church. “There is, my Lord,” ended Marcombes, with a little flourish of self-satisfaction, “a Compendium of our employment!”

But all these months no answers to their various letters had come from the Earl in London. They had left London on October 28, and it was apparently the middle of February before the boys heard from their father; and then two packets of his long-expected letters, both written in January, arrived together. The formal, reverential little letters which the boys were in the habit of penning to the Earl were letters chiefly remarkable for their beginnings and endings. They usually began “My most honoured Lord and Father,” and ended with some such peroration, as “with my dayly prayers to God for your Lordship’s long life, health and happiness, and with the desire to be esteemed all my life, My Lord, your most dutiful and obedient Son and humblest Servant.”

A modern reader would scarcely credit, from such a peroration, the existence of a deep natural affection; and there was certainly not the kind of untrammelled love of the modern child for the modern parent. And yet the ornate solemnity of these little seventeenth-century letters only cloaked the tender humanity beneath. It was but a literary form; and under it, in spite of the foster-parentage of babyhood, the subservience of youth, and the rigour of parental authority, the strong human love was there in the seventeenth century as now. When the long-expected packets arrived at M. Marcombes’s house in Geneva, and the boys gathered about their governour to receive their father’s letters, so overjoyed and excited was the “Spiritay Robyn” that his hesitation of speech—which had almost disappeared—returned in full force; and for some minutes he stammered and stuttered so atrociously that Frank and Marcombes could scarcely understand what he was saying, and had much ado to “forbeare Laughing.”

And what was the Earl’s news? Much had been happening in London, both inside and outside the House of the Savoy, since October 1639; but evidently only an abridged edition reached Marcombes and the boys in Geneva.

Lady Barrymore had been very ill, but was recovering. Lady Dungarvan, whose second little girl had died at Salisbury House, in London, before the boys left London, had a little son at last; but “lyttle Franck,” the Dublin-born daughter, remained the old Earl’s pet. The heir was born on November 17 in the House of the Savoy, and christened in the Savoy Chapel by the name of “Charles,” the King himself standing sponsor, while the Countess of Salisbury was godmother, and the other godfather was the Marquis of Hamilton. But the great news of all was the news of Kynalmeaky’s marriage—a very splendid marriage it had been—with the Lady Elizabeth Fielding, one of the ladies of the Queen’s privy chamber, and daughter of the Earl and Countess of Denbigh. Their other daughter was married to the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Countess of Denbigh herself was a sister of the King’s favourite, the murdered Buckingham.

The marriage of Lord Kynalmeaky and the Lady Elizabeth Fielding had been arranged under royal auspices. The King had dowered the lady, and the wedding, like Frank’s, had been in the Royal Chapel of Whitehall. The King had given away the bride, and “put about her neck” the Queen’s gift of a rich pearl necklace, “worth £1500.” There was much revelling, dancing and feasting afterwards, and the King and Queen “did the young couple all honour and grace.” The Earl of Cork, always a strange mixture of generosity and thrift, had supplied £100 for Kynalmeaky’s wedding garments, and lent him “my son Franck’s wedding shoes” for the occasion.

Broghill also was to be married. “Your friend Broghill,” the Earl wrote to Marcombes, “is in a fair way of being married to Mrs. Harrison, one of the Queen’s maids of honour, about whom a difference happened yesterday between Mr. Thomas Howard, the Earl of Berkshire’s son and him, which brought them into the field; but thanks be to God, Broghill came home without any hurt, and the other gentleman was not much harmed; and now they have clashed swords together they are grown good friends. I think in my next I shall advise you that my daughter Mary is nobly married, and that in the spring I shall send her husband to keep company with my sons in Geneva.”

The old Earl, when he wrote to Marcombes in January 1640, did not guess the sequels to these two little romances. For though the wedding clothes were making, Broghill was never to marry Mrs. Harrison, whom he, like many other gallants, had “passionately loved.” On the contrary, it was Mr. Thomas Howard, “not much harmed,” who was to be the happy man; and the lady whom Broghill was presently to marry was the Lady Margaret Howard, the beautiful daughter of the Earl and Countess of Suffolk, and a cousin of Mr. Thomas Howard. The two young men had clashed swords to some purpose; but Lord Broghill’s marriage with Lady Margaret Howard comes into another chapter.

Nobody exactly knows who was the noble suitor that was to marry Mary Boyle and be packed off to Geneva like a schoolboy immediately afterwards. For Mary Boyle had once more expressed her “very high averseness and contradicon” to the Earl’s counsels and commands. She had again refused Mr. James Hamilton, though all her brothers and sisters and several of her brothers-in-law, and all her best friends—poor little unruly Mary!—“did entreat and persuade,” and the old Earl “did command.” Vanquished for once, the Earl of Cork had been in treaty with more than one other youthful suitor for Mary’s hand. But Mary Boyle has told her own story. “Living so much at my ease,” she says, “I was unwilling to change my condition.” After Frank’s marriage, his wife Betty lived with the Earl in the House of the Savoy, where she and Mary Boyle became close friends and “chamber fellows.” Betty obtained “a great and ruling power” over Mary, “inticing her to spend” (as she did) “her time in seeing and reading plays and romances, and in exquisite and curious dressing.” Betty Boyle had many of the young gallants of the Court at her beck and call, and one of them was Mr. Charles Rich, second son of the Earl of Warwick. Charles Rich was “a very cheerful and handsome, well-bred and fashioned person, and being good company, was very acceptable to us all, and so became very intimate in our house, visiting us almost every day.” Charles Rich also had been in love with Mrs. Harrison, but not so deeply as to prevent his acting as Mr. Thomas Howard’s second in the duel; and after that for a time he had considered it only civil to absent himself from the House of the Savoy. When he did come again it was to transfer his attentions to the Lady Mary; and Frank’s wife played go-between. “A most diligent gallant to me,” says Mary of Charles Rich, many long years after their forbidden love-making and runaway marriage; “applying himself, when there were no other beholders in the room but my sister, to me; but if any other person came in he took no more than ordinary notice of me.” And every night when Mary laid her little unruly head upon the pillow she resolved that Charles Rich must be given his dismissal, and that Betty must be told never again to mention him to her as a husband. And somehow every morning it seemed impossible to carry out her resolution; and she made her toilet, and put on her most exquisite and curious dress, and looked the proud and charming little lady that she was.

But Marcombes and the boys in Geneva knew nothing of all this; and for that matter neither as yet did the old Earl. The noble suitor about whom he was in treaty when he wrote to Geneva was certainly not Charles Rich—who was only a second son, “with £1300 or £1400 a year at the most”; and who, if he dared to pay his court to the Earl of Cork’s youngest daughter, must do it clandestinely with the connivance of Betty Boyle.

The spring and summer of 1640 passed uneventfully in the Marcombes household. Spring and summer in Geneva; the peaceful little Calvinist town, basking under a hot sun and a blue sky; the bluer waters of the Lake with the big-winged boats upon it; the vivid greens of the middle distances, and the far-away mountain-peaks white with the everlasting snows! And the lessons went on as usual, the boys giving their governour “all yᵉ satisfaction of yᵉ worlde”.... “I would I was as able to teache as Mr. Robert is able to conceave and to Learne.” It is true that the witty and wicked Tom Killigrew came down on them from Paris, and favoured them with a little of his “sweet and delectable conversation”; but Marcombes told the Earl that he did not think Mr. Killigrew would stay long in Geneva, “which perhaps will be yᵉ better for your Sons.” When he did depart, he left with Marcombes a fine watch and some ruby buttons to be sent to his sister Betty in London. And the little household settled down again—rhetoric and logic to be succeeded by mathematics, history and geography, the chief points of religion, and more dancing-lessons. Mr. Francis was learning to vault. He and Marcombes had received the Sacrament at five o’clock on Easter morning; but Mr. Robert would not receive it, “excusing himself upon his yonge age,” though Marcombes assured the Earl he did not abstain “for want of good instruction upon yᵉ matter.” In June they had gone a little jaunt into the Savoy country. “We were two days abroad,” wrote Marcombes to the Earl, “and were never so merry in our lives.”

But were the boys so merry? Frank, influenced perhaps by Tom Killigrew and the letters which came from his little wife at home, was beginning to be restive, and begging his father to allow them to go on into Italy, and so be the sooner home again. And Robert Boyle?

It was in the very heat of that summer of 1640 that there happened to Robert Boyle “an accident which he always used to mention as the considerablest of his whole life.”

“To frame a right apprehension of this,” he says in his Philaretus, “you must understand that though his inclinations were ever virtuous, and his life free from scandal and inoffensive, yet had the piety he was master of already so diverted him from aspiring unto more, that Christ, who long had lain asleep in his conscience (as he once did in the ship) must now, as then, be waked by a storm.”

About the dead of night, after a long, hot summer day, he had suddenly wakened to find himself in the midst of one of those thunderstorms so indescribably grand and terrible among the Alps. He “thought the earth would owe an ague to the air,” and every clap was both preceded and attended with flashes of lightning so frequent and so dazzling that he began to imagine them “the sallies of that fire that must consume the world.”

The winds almost drowned the noise of the thunder. The rains almost quenched the flashes of lightning. The Day of Judgment seemed at hand; and the consideration of his “unpreparedness to welcome it, and the hideousness of being surprised by it in an unfit condition,” made the boy “resolve and vow that if his fears were that night disappointed, all his further additions to his life should be more religiously and watchfully employed. The morning came, and a serener cloudless sky returned, when he ratified his determination so solemnly that from that day he dated his conversion; renewing, now he was past danger, the vow he had made whilst he believed himself to be in it.”

Afterwards, Robyn blushed to remember that the vow had been made only in fear; but he comforted himself by thinking that “the more deliberate consecration of himself to piety had been made when the earth and sky had regained their equanimity, and with no less motive than that of its own excellence.” The hour of terror had been also the hour of realisation. This trembling child, already a student of Nature, had begun amidst the winds and lightnings to realise dimly the existence of Elemental Mysteries which made the whole world tremble too. And yet, did not even these atmospheric exacerbations flash and thunder out the command to praise Him and magnify Him for ever? Were not the deepest, most terrible of Elemental Mysteries but part of a Universal Benedicite?