From Family to Philosophy Letter-Writers from the Pastons to Elizabeth Barrett Browning Henry Summerfield FROM FAMILY TO PHILOSOPHY FROM FAMILY TO PHILOSOPHY LETTER-WRITERS FROM THE PASTONS TO ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Henry Summerfield 2019 © Henry Summerfield 2019 Published by ePublishing Services, University of Victoria Libraries Victoria, British Columbia V8P 5C2 Canada [email protected] Book design by Yenny Lim, ePublishing Services, University of Victoria Libraries. Cover image: Alfred Walter Bays. 1889. Image from page 638 of “Stories for the house- hold”. Courtesy of Internet Archive on flikr, flic.kr/p/ovpvxp. No known copyright restrictions. This publication, unless otherwise indicated, is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License. This means that you may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, and make derivative works and remixes based on it only for non-commercial purposes. Distribution of derivative works may only be made under an identical license that governs the original work. Properly attribute the book as follows: Summerfield, Henry. From Family to Philosophy: Letter-Writers from the Pastons to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. University of Victoria Libraries, 2019. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Download this book: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/3859 References to Internet website URLs were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the authors nor the University of Victoria is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The publisher and contributor make no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that it may contain. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: From family to philosophy : letter-writers from the Pastons to Elizabeth Barrett Browning / Henry Summerfield. Names: Summerfield, Henry, author. Description: Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190190221 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190190264 | ISBN 9781550586473 (softcover) | ISBN 9781550586480 (PDF) | ISBN 9781550586497 (EPUB) Subjects: LCSH: English letters—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PR911 .S86 2019 | DDC 826/.009—dc23 “… the Three Regions immense Of Childhood, Manhood & Old Age” William Blake, Jerusalem 98:32-33 “And catch the Manners living as they rise” Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, I, 14 CONTENTS Preface ix PROLOGUE 1 A Philosopher in Interesting Times and an Emperor’s 3 Benevolent Servant - Cicero and Pliny the Younger PRELUDE 2 Naked Ambition - The Pastons 9 3 Victims of Power - The Lisles 13 4 Blinkered Nobleness - Sir Thomas More 17 5 A Scholar Abroad - Roger Ascham 19 6 Jacobean Gossip - John Chamberlain 23 7 Spymaster, Poet, Provost of Eton - Sir Henry Wotton 27 8 A Troubled Life - John Donne 31 9 In Time of Civil War - James Howell 35 10 On the Cusp of Modernity - Sir Thomas Browne 41 FORETASTE 11 An Early Charmer - Dorothy Osborne 47 INTERLUDE 12 The Self and the Modern World 55 FRUITION 13 He Loves His Friends - Jonathan Swift 59 14 Putting a Spin on It - Alexander Pope 73 15 No One’s Obedient Servant - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 81 16 Wandering Down Byways - John Byrom 99 17 All-accomplished Gentleman - Lord Chesterfield 103 18 He Fears Madness - Samuel Johnson 117 19 Lockean Sentimentalist - Laurence Sterne 127 20 Not Quite a Recluse - Thomas Gray 137 21 He Gathers It All In - Horace Walpole 149 22 He Has Escaped from Slavery - Ignatius Sancho 197 23 Heaven Is Not for Him - William Cowper 205 24 A Marriage Fails in India - Eliza Fay 227 25 Farmer, Poet, Lover, Exciseman - Robert Burns 235 26 He Loves Liberty—But Not Too Much of It - Sydney Smith 249 27 Often Down, but Never Out - Samuel Taylor Coleridge 263 28 She Obeys the Fourth Commandment - Mary Russell Mitford 289 29 What Is His Vocation? - Lord Byron 313 30 Seeker of Beauty, Victim of Passion - John Keats 349 31 A Sharp Tongue and a Hungry Heart - Jane Welsh Carlyle 365 32 Not an Elopement—Just a Private Marriage - Elizabeth Barrett 399 Browning EPILOGUE 33 What a Literature is Here! 437 Notes 439 Further Reading 511 PREFACE t is a truism that writing letters is talking on paper, and millennia before the invention of the telephone, literate people learnt to assuage their Ineed to exchange information, thoughts and feelings through written messages carried by travellers. The illiterate could, as they still can, engage the services of amanuenses. Letters transcend the distance between correspondents, and when they are preserved, they transcend time, carrying to posterity the experi- ence of earlier generations with an immediacy that is not often shared with other forms of literature except the diary. While a diary is usually kept for perusal by the writer’s future self, a letter is addressed to a contemporary and is written from the perspective of one who cannot certainly know what the morrow will bring. This relation to time can be complemented, in the case of a chronologically arranged collection of one writer’s letters, by the way that the collection follows the arc of the writer’s development from youth through maturity to old age. The study of epistolary literature invites the reader to make a ten- tative judgment as to whether there is truth in either Dr. Johnson’s view (expressed through his character Imlac) that “Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed” or Horace Walpole’s assertion, “I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happi- ness than misery.” The composition of letters equal to Walpole’s is not an easily won accomplishment. From the fifteenth through the late seventeenth centuries, English letter-writing goes through what may be regarded as an appren- ticeship during which no correspondences to match the best bequeathed by ancient Rome appear. Earlier chapters of this book highlight both the mer- its and limitations of letters written during this period. The more detailed chapters that follow are devoted to the productions of British epistolary art in its maturity, when they are no longer surpassed by those of antiquity. Walpole maintains that news and anecdotes are the soul of a letter, and from the point of view of the immediate recipient this may be true, but for letters to constitute a distinguished category of literature, more is required. In the most satisfying correspondences, all the elements of a self- portrait are accompanied by lively observation of the writer’s social and material environment, and by a record of his or her quest for fulfilment. This fulfilment may be sought, to cite some examples, through romantic love, FROM FAMILY TO PHILOSOPHY family, arts, sciences, worldly advancement, religion, politics, philanthropy, or patriotism. The play of emotions and the unrolling of events in relation to the quest for fulfilment is what letters, at their richest, reveal. The body of distinguished British letters is too large to be surveyed in one book of moderate size, so a choice must be made. Some of the writers almost select themselves: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Horace Walpole, Lord Byron, and John Keats could hardly be omitted. Others, both well and little known, help to demonstrate the range of content and style to be found within a great literature’s epistolary heritage. For reasons of copyright, all quotations of any length are taken from older editions. The dates given are in certain cases the products of later research. In some quotations, the spelling and capitalization have been mod- ernized. It should also be noted that Elizabeth Barrett Browning frequently uses a sequence of two periods as a punctuation mark. I would like to acknowledge the help and encouragement I have re- ceived from Patrick Grant, who has listened most patiently while I have talked about the progress of this book and has offered useful advice. x PROLOGUE 1 A PHILOSOPHER IN INTERESTING TIMES AND AN EMPEROR’S BENEVOLENT SERVANT CICERO AND PLINY THE YOUNGER (106-43 BCE AND C. 61-C. 113 CE) ore than two thousand years ago, be- fore the nations of modern Europe ex- Misted, the upper class citizens of a highly civilized empire sustained their friendships and advanced their careers through the art of letter writing. Friends, servants, and slaves carried mis- sives between Rome’s imperial provinces and the country villas and urban mansions of Italy. Two major bodies of correspondence from Roman an- tiquity have survived: the letters of Cicero and those of Pliny the Younger. Reading Cicero’s ef- fusions and following the course of his rending emotions through turbu- lent times, one can readily understand how Renaissance scholars found his society had a strong appeal for their own changing world. Europe, moving on from the fading civilization of the Middle Ages, was ready to learn from the architecture, landscape gardening, legal system, political constitution, and love (for a time) of liberty of ancient Rome. Cicero is renowned as the great orator of his era. Often he is torn between the pride he feels in his triumphant pleading in difficult cases in the law courts and his desire for a retired life devoted to literature. In his correspondence, the personal and the political intermingle. We learn of his family relationships, his difficulties with debtors and creditors, and his delight in buildings, sculpture, books, friendship, and dinner parties. His professed allegiance to Stoicism and contempt for Epicureanism clash with his pride, with his enjoyment of wealth, and with his disproportionate wailing when the machinations of the blasphemer and demagogue Publius FROM FAMILY TO PHILOSOPHY Clodius force him into temporary exile.