Catherine .fllaria

(1765-1834)

Catherine Maria Fanshawe grew up in genteel and cultured circumstances in and around London. She was born in Shabden, in Chipstead, Surrey, on 6 July 1765, to Penelope Dredge of Reading and John Fanshawe, a Surrey squire employed by George III.1 Her two brothers died young, leaving the poet and her two sisters, Penelope and Elizabeth Christiana, to inherit the family fortune. Catherine Maria traveled to Italy many times in pursuit of health and suffered from some sort of physical disability. All three sisters were artists, part of a small literary, artistic, and scien­ tific coterie, and lived together throughout their lives at 15 Berkeley Square, London, and at Midhurst House, Richmond. Some of their contemporaries found their manners too "cold and formal"; 2 but found Catherine Maria "dazzling," while John Gibson Lockhart, Scott's biographer, said she was "a woman of rare wit and genius, in whose society Scott greatly delighted." 3 Fanshawe corresponded with Anne Grant of Laggan, was a friend of Mary Berry (who laid "half her formality ... upon the family to which she belongs") 4 and ofJoanna Baillie, who published several of her poems in the collection she edited in 1823. Fanshawe's drawings and etchings were admired for their variety as well as for their virtuosity.5 She was, moreover, an accomplished letter writer and reader of Shakespeare as well as a poet. Mitford ranked her literary talent on

l . He was the first clerk of the board of green cloth. 2. See Mary Somerville, Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville (Boston, 1876), 222. 3. Mitford, Recollections, 158; John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 5 vols. (Boston, 1901), 4:124-25. 4. Mary Berry, Extracts of the journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the Year 1783to1852, ed. Lady Theresa Lewis, 3 vols. (London, 1865), 2:45r. 5. Fanshawe illustrated Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" in large watercolors. Her sketch­ books include English landscapes, portraits, and scenery from her Italian travels (DNB; Mitford, Recollections, 157-58). Catherine Maria Fanshawe 247 a par with that of Scott, Wordsworth, Edgeworth, and Siddons. What distin­ guished Fanshawe from the others, Mitford thought, was that she abstained from being a published author, while she threw out "here and there such choice ... bits as prove that nothing but disinclination to enter the arena debar[red] her from winning the prize." 6 When Fanshawe is remembered today, it is usually in a footnote, for a popular poem widely, though mistakenly, attributed to - ''A Riddle," retitled in many sources "Enigma" or "Riddle on the Letter H." 7 Inspired by a conversation on the misuse of the letter H at a houseparty at Deepdene, Surrey, Fanshawe composed the poem late one night and read it to the assembled guests at breakfast the next morning. James Smith altered the first line to read" 'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell." 8 Fanshawe was accomplished enough at parody to fool the experts. In his note to "Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth," William Harness records that "when the . . . lines were read to a distinguished friend and admirer of Wordsworth, she thought them beautiful, and wondered he had never shown them to her." 9 Many of Fanshawe's occasional verses have perished. But their character-their spontaneity and wit-survive in some fragments, such as Fanshawe's skillful parody of Pope's "Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow,/ Here the first roses of the year shall blow." On the occasion of the first opening of Regent's Park in London, Fanshawe altered a word in one line and a letter in the next to observe, "Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow,/ Here the first noses of the year shall blow." Fanshawe died at Putney Heath on 17 April 1834, after a long and painful illness. The Reverend William Harness, to whom she left her etchings and literary manuscripts, had the Memorials ef Miss C. W Fanshawe printed in 1865 for private circulation; it contained many of her poems, her description of a dinner party at the home of Sir Humphrey Davy, attended by Lord Byron and

6. Mitford, Recollections, 157-58. 7. The misattribution occurs especially in the album books and in pirated editions of Byron's works. See, e.g., The Miscellaneous Poems of Lord Byron, Consisting of Hours of Idleness, English Bards, Curse of Minerva, &c. &c. (London, 1828); see also Samuel C. Chew, Byron in England: His Fame and After-Fame (London, 1924), I8J. I am grateful to William St. Clair for showing me many examples of this interesting misattribution in his collection of album books and Byron pirates. 8. The popular consciousness so insisted on the alteration that it is not uncommon to find, as in my copy of Baillie's Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript (1823), that a former owner has drawn through Fanshawe's first line to "correct" it to Smith's version. The DNB refers to Smith's line as the "accepted" reading. 9. The Literary Remains of Catherine Maria Fanshawe, with Notes by the Late Reverend William Harness (London, 1876), 71. Catherine Maria Fanshawe

Germaine de Stael, and nine photographs of Fanshawe's etchings. Pickering reissued the book in 1876, after Harness's death, in an edition of 250, without the illustrations. How it was that Fanshawe, who, as Mitford believed, had "powers to command the most brilliant literary success," could have been content to stay on the sidelines, offering "a warm and unenvying sympathy in the success of others," 10 remains, like her most famous poem, an enigma.

MAJOR WORKS: Memorials of Miss C. W. Fanshawe, ed. W. Harness (n.p., [1865]); The Literary Remains of Catherine Maria Fanshawe, with Notes by the Late Reverend William Harness (London, 1876).

TEXTS USED: Text of ''A Riddle" from A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript, from Living Authors, ed. (London, 1823). Text of "Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth" from The Literary Remains ef Catherine Maria Fanshawe.

A Riddle

'Twas in heaven pronounced, and 'twas muttered in hell, And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell: On the confines of earth 'twas permitted to rest, And the depths of the ocean its presence confest; 'Twill be found in the sphere when 'tis riven asunder, Be seen in the lightning, and heard in the thunder. 'Twas allotted to man with his earliest breath, Attends at his birth, and awaits him in death, Presides o'er his happiness, honor, and health, IO Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth. In the heaps of the miser 'tis hoarded with care, But is sure to be lost on his prodigal heir. It begins every hope, every wish it must bound, With the husbandman toils, and with monarchy is crown'd. Without it the soldier, the seaman may roam, But wo to the wretch who expels it from home! In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found, Nor e'en in the whirlwind of passion be drown'd.

IO. Mitford, Recollections, 158. Catherine Maria Fanshawe 249

'Twill not soften the heart; but though deaf be the ear, It will make it acutely and instantly hear. 20 Yet in shade let it rest like a delicate flower, Ah breathe on it softly-it dies in an hour. (1823)

Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth

There is a river clear and fair, 'Tis neither broad nor narrow; It winds a little here and there­ It winds about like any hare; And then it takes as straight a course As on the turnpike road a horse, Or through the air an arrow.

The trees that grow upon the shore, Have grown a hundred years or more; So long there is no knowing. IO Old Daniel Dobson does not know When first those trees began to grow; But still they grew, and grew, and grew, As if they'd nothing else to do, But ever to be growing.

The impulses of air and sky Have reared their stately stems so high, And clothed their boughs with green; Their leaves the dews of evening quaff, - And when the wind blows loud and keen, 20 I've seen the jolly timbers laugh, And shake their sides with merry glee­ Wagging their heads in mockery.

Fix'd are their feet in solid earth, Where winds can never blow; But visitings of deeper birth Have reached their roots below. Catherine Maria Fanshawe

For they have gained the river's brink, And of the living waters drink.

30 There's little Will, a five years' child­ He is my youngest boy; To look on eyes so fair and wild, It is a very joy: - He hath conversed with sun and shower, And dwelt with every idle flower, As fresh and gay as them. He loiters with the briar rose, - The blue belles are his play-fellows, That dance upon their slender stem.

40 And I have said, my little Will, Why should not he continue still A thing of Nature's rearing? A thing beyond the world's control­ A living vegetable soul, - No human sorrow fearing.

It were a blessed sight to see That child become a willow tree, His brother trees among. He'd be four time[s] as tall as me, 50 And live three times as long. (wr. bef. r834; pub. r876)