Part 2

Before Mary Sidney was twenty years of age her hand was sought in marriage by Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, to whom she was married in the year 1576. This match afforded considerable satisfaction to her father, as we see from a letter by him to his kinsman, the Earl of Leicester, whose good offices he was obliged to ask for the purpose of raising a dowry for his daughter. This letter rather painfully reminds us that it is not always the most deserving who, even in high places, receive their deserts. A servant less conscientious and faithful than Sir Henry would have found means of making his claims known, and would not have been allowed to endure the privations of poverty. After referring to the pleasure which the alliance would afford him, he says: "I have so joyfully at heart this happy advancement of my child that I would lie a year in prison rather than it should break. But, alas! my dearest lord, mine ability answereth not my hearty desire. I am poor; mine estate, as well in livelod and movable, is not unknown to your lordship, which wanteth much to make me able to equal that which I know my Lord of Pembroke may have. Two thousand pounds, I confess, I have bequeathed her, which your lordship knoweth I might better spare her when I were dead than one thousand living; and, in troth, my Lord, I have it not; but borrow it I must, and I will: and if your Lordship will get me leave, that I may feed my eyes with that joyful sight of their coupling, I will give her a cup worth five hundred pounds. Good, my Lord, bear with my poverty; for, if I had it, little would I regret any sum of my own, but would willingly give it, protesting before Almighty God, that if He and all the powers on earth would give me my choice for a husband for her, I would choose the Earl of Pembroke."

The Earl of Leicester very generously provided his young kinswoman with a handsome dowry, and, the desired marriage taking place, Wilton House, the seat of the Pembrokes, thenceforth became the principal home of the young Countess.

The life of Mary Sidney had hitherto been one of influence rather than event. Her marriage did not tend to alter its character, so much as to widen its circle and extend its sphere. Exemplary and dutiful as a daughter, loving and helpful as a sister, she could hardly fail to be a devoted and faithful wife. Although her rank entitled her to a prominent place at Court, where she was ever a favourite, her inclination and tastes led her to prefer the retirement of the study, and the society of the learned rather than the great. If history is silent as to a large portion of her life, we may be sure it is a silence which speaks of "duties well performed and days well spent."

On the return of Mr. Philip Sidney from the Continent, in 1577, he made it one of his first duties to pay a visit to his sister in her new home, before entering more fully into public life, which his station and family interests demanded. It is, however, in his character as a scholar and patron of letters that he will be the most lovingly remembered. The friend of Raleigh, Spenser, Dyer, and others of not much less renown, it has been also said of him that "there was not a cunning painter, a skilful engineer, an excellent musician or any other artificer of extraordinary fame, that did not make himself known to this famous spirit, and found in him his true friend without hire."

A temporary retirement of Mr. Philip Sidney from Court in the year 1580, has been assigned to different causes. During the previous year the Duke of Anjou had so far pressed his suit for the hand of Elizabeth that she had shown an inclination to accept it. Opinions at Court were divided on the subject. Mr. Sidney, amongst others, was decidedly opposed to the alliance, as being likely to endanger the religious and civil liberty of the country. He had even the boldness to address to the Queen a strong, though courteous and elegant, remonstrance. To this some have attributed the fact that the negotiations for the match were broken off. It has been said that this action of Sidney did not give the smallest offence to the Queen; and that the reason for his subsequent early retirement is to be found in his quarrel with the Earl of Oxford. Others have fixed an earlier date for the last-named event, and trace the removal from Court to the resentment of the Queen at Sidney's interference with her proposed marriage. Whether Elizabeth openly resented the conduct of Sidney or not, she was hardly likely to forget it. The probability seems to be that the letter would arouse the secret indignation of the Queen, which only waited a suitable opportunity for showing itself. The opportunity arose for the Royal favour to be for a time withdrawn on the occasion of a misunderstanding between Sidney and the Earl of Oxford. In the early part of the last-mentioned year, however, Sidney retired from the Court, going to reside at the seat of his brother-in-law, the Earl of Pembroke. Here he regained the society of his beloved and like-minded sister; their happy intercourse was renewed, and mutual help afforded. In the solitudes of the Wilton Woods, at this time, their joint literary work was planned, and in great part performed. The extent of their mutual aid, and the exact part performed by each, will never be known. Although the whole of the beautiful romance, _The Arcadia_, is attributed to Philip, it is certain that his sister had no insignificant part in advising and directing it, so much so that he gave to it the name of "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia." The introduction is a pleasing record of their loving devotion and a testimony of fraternal gratitude:--

"TO MY DEAR LADY AND SISTER, THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE. Here have you now, most dear, and most worthy to be most dear, Lady, this idle work of mine, which I fear, like a spider's web, will be thought fitter to be swept away than worn to any other purpose. For my part, in very truth, as the cruel fathers among the Greeks were wont to do to the babes they would not foster, I could well find in my heart to cast out in some desert of forgetfulness this child, which I am loath to father. But you desire me to do so; and your desire to my heart is an absolute commandment. Now it is done only for you, only to you. If you keep it to yourself, or to some friends who will weigh errors in the balance of goodwill, I hope for the father's sake it will be pardoned, perchance made much of, though in itself it have deformities; however, indeed for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled. Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent to you as fast as they were done.... Read it, then, at your idle times, and the follies your good judgment will find in it blame not, but laugh at; and so, looking for no better stuff than, as in a haberdasher's shop, glasses or feathers, you will continue to love the writer, who doth exceedingly love you, and most, most heartily prays you may long live to be a principal ornament to the family of the Sidneys.

Your loving Brother,

PHILIP SIDNEY."

If the work was roughly completed by Philip, the duty remained for his sister, with loving melancholy, to revise and prepare it for the press after his death.

It appears to have been, also, at this time that Sidney and his sister commenced their joint work of translating the Psalms into English verse, to which it will be necessary to refer later.

Before alluding to the other literary labours of the Countess of Pembroke, reference may be made to the few remaining years of the life of her brother. Towards the close of the year we find him again at Court, and sitting in Parliament for his native county. Although holding the office of Cup Bearer to the Queen, he does not seem to have received any distinct marks of the Royal favour for some years. In fact, his family was neglected, and especially so his father, who had become impoverished through his disinterested devotion to the Crown. In the early part of 1583, however, Philip received from Her Majesty the honour of knighthood, together with benefits of a more substantial character. About the same time he married the daughter of the distinguished statesman, Sir Francis Walsingham.

It was about two years later, when Sir Philip was yet only in the flower of his manhood and the height of his fame, that he received the appointment which led to his early death. The President of the Netherlands, having applied to the English Queen for help against the Duke of Alva, she sent an expedition under the Earl of Leicester, Sir Philip being appointed General of the Horses and Governor of Flushing. Thither he repaired in the month of November, 1585, leaving his young and devoted wife (who had only shortly before given birth to a daughter) in England. In his character as a soldier, Sir Philip was as conscientious and brave as he was distinguished as a scholar and diplomatist; but he was not therein so happy. Entering with marked zeal and energy upon his duties, he conducted the campaign with considerable success in spite of many difficulties.

The year 1586 proved to be one of successive sorrows to the Countess of Pembroke. Her earliest affections had never waned. Blessed with such parents and brothers as she was, life without them could never be the same to her; and the rapidity with which the strokes of bereavement followed each other gave no room for Time's healing power to intervene. The first shock was sustained in the month of May by the death of her father. But three months later her mother finished her brave, devoted, and self-sacrificing life. However opinions may have differed as to her husband, no word seems to have been spoken or written of Lady Mary but in terms of the highest praise. "Born," says a competent authority, "of the noblest blood, surviving ambitious relatives who reached at royalty and perished, losing health and beauty in the service of an exacting Queen, suffering poverty at Court, supporting husband and children through all trials with wise counsel and sweet hopeful temper, she emerges with pale lustre from all the actors of that time to represent the perfect wife and mother in a lady of unpretending, but heroic, dignity."[1] This is the mother whom we find mirrored in her illustrious daughter.

[1] "Sir Philip Sidney." By J. A. Symonds, p. 180.

This double bereavement, whilst her brother was still at Flushing, could not fail to have fallen heavily on the Countess. But this was not all. The close bonds which bound together brother and sister, not only in the most loving sympathy, but in interests and pursuits they both loved best, were destined to be rudely broken. Within two months came tidings of the disastrous events attending the siege of Zutphen and the scene of generous chivalry, which from its solitary grandeur has become familiar history. It was on the 22nd September, when Sir Philip was endeavouring to stop a reinforcement of the enemy on the way to Zutphen, that he received a wound in the thigh which subsequently proved fatal. He had displayed great valour, having twice had his horse shot under him and a third time returned to the charge. Here occurred the incident that, so well known, cannot be too often repeated. As Sir Philip was being taken from the field, weak and exhausted through loss of blood, he wished some water to be brought to him. As he was, however, in the act of raising the precious flask to his lips, his attention was drawn to a dying soldier, whose gaze was fixed longingly upon it. To this poor soldier he instantly handed the coveted beverage, saying, "Thy necessity is greater than mine."

As all the world knows, Sidney's wound proved fatal. After much suffering, borne with exemplary fortitude and resignation, he died in the arms of his faithful wife, who had joined him some time before, on the 7th October, 1586, while still only in the thirty-third year of his age. So greatly was his loss felt that the whole country went into mourning for him. His remains were brought to England and interred in St. Paul's Cathedral. It is said that no gentleman appeared in any gay or gaudy dress, either in the City or at the Court, for many months.

The poets and scholars of that cultured period vied with each other in speaking in praise of the departed. As he was so entirely one in heart with his twin-souled sister, the more immediate subject of this sketch, one of these may be selected by way of illustration. Camden, writing of him, says: "Philip Sidney, the great glory of his family, the great hopes of mankind, the most lively pattern of virtue, and the darling of the world, nobly engaging the enemy at Zutphen in Guelderland, lost his life bravely and valiantly. This is that Sidney whom, as Providence seems to have sent into the world to give the present age a specimen of the ancients, so did it on a sudden recall him, and snatch him from us, as more worthy of heaven than of earth. Thus when virtue has come to perfection it presently leaves us, and the best things are seldom lasting. Rest, then, in peace, O Sidney! if I may be allowed this address. We will not celebrate thy memory with tears, but with admiration. Whatever we loved best in thee (as the best of authors speaks of the best governor of Britain), whatever we admire in thee continues and will continue in the memories of men, the revolutions of ages, and the annals of time. Many, as being inglorious and ignoble, are buried in oblivion; but Sidney shall live to all posterity. For, as the Greek poet has it, Virtue is beyond the reach of fate."

An elegy, entitled, "The Doleful Lay of Clorinda," included by Spenser in his "Astrophel," and by him ascribed to the Countess of Pembroke, affords an example of her own writing and an intimation of the way in which she bore her irreparable loss. A few stanzas only can be quoted:--

"Ay me, to whom shall I my case complain, That may compassion my impatient grief? Or where shall I unfold my inward pain, That my enriven heart may find relief? Shall I unto the heavenly powers it show, Or unto earthly men that dwell below?

* * * * *

"Woods, hills, and rivers now are desolate, Sith he is gone the which did all them grace; And all the fields do wail their widow state, Sith death their fairest flower did late deface. The fairest flower in field that ever grew, Was Astrophel; that was, we all may rue.

"What cruel hand of cursed foe unknown, Hath cropt the stalk that bore so fair a flower? Untimely cropt, before it well were grown, And clean defaced in untimely hour. Great loss to all that ever him did see; Great loss to all, but greatest loss to me!

"Ah! no; he is not dead, nor can he die; But lives for aye in blissful Paradise.

* * * * *

"There liveth he in everlasting bliss, Sweet spirit! never fearing more to die; Nor dreading harm from any foes of his, Nor fearing savage beasts' more cruelty. Whilst we here, wretches, wail his private lack, And with vain vows do often call him back."

Of the life of the Countess of Pembroke subsequently to the death of her brother there is not much to be gleaned. Her chief immediate care was to complete and prepare for publication the manuscripts left by him. This labour of love she doubtless found to be one of sweet melancholy, which served, if anything could do, to endear still more his memory. It is stated that Sir Philip, on his death-bed, expressed a desire that the _Arcadia_ should be committed to the flames. But, with a greater regard for his reputation than a simple compliance with his desire would have evinced, his sister lovingly undertook the task of revising, correcting, and completing this work. How much we are indebted to the pruning and shaping of the gentler hand we do not know. She carefully removed all blemishes, which, though not uncommon in the literature of the time, could not but offend her more refined sense of delicacy. It is, indeed, probable that the share of the sister in the romance is much larger than has been commonly supposed. In an address prefixed to some earlier editions it is said: "It moved that noble lady, to whose honour consecrated, to whose protection it was committed, to take in hand the wiping away those spots wherewith the beauties thereof were unworthily blemished. But as often repairing a ruinous house, the mending of some old part occasioneth the making of some new, so here her honourable labour began in correcting the faults, indeed in supplying the defects; by view of what was ill done, guided to the consideration of what was not done. Which part, with what advice entered into, most by her doing, all by her directing, if they may be entreated not to divine, which are unfurnished of means to discern, the rest, it is hoped, will favourably censure." "It is now," adds the writer, "by more than one interest, the Countess of Pembroke's 'Arcadia,' done, as it was, for her, as it is, by her. Neither shall these pains be the last (if no unexpected accident cut off her determination) which the everlasting love of her excellent brother will make her consecrate to his memory."

The "Arcadia" was, according with the intention thus expressed, not the only memorial of the loving sympathy of the Countess of Pembroke and her brother. In addition to their joint translation of the Psalter, Sir Philip, at the time of his death, had almost completed a translation from the French of a work by his friend Philip de Mornay Du Plessis on "The True Use of the Christian Religion." This was completed and published a few months after the death of Sir Philip. The intimacy of her brother with Du Plessis doubtless induced the Countess also to study his works, which so much commended themselves to her that, some years later, she translated and published "A Discourse of Life and Death." The following passage from the preface, written by the Countess, affords a pleasant illustration of her prose writings, and at the same time is strikingly suggestive of her thoughtful character:--

"It seems to me strange," she writes, "and a thing much to be marvelled, that the labourer to repose himself hasteneth, as it were, the course of the sun; that the mariner rows with all his force to attain the port, and with a joyful cry salutes the descried land; that the traveller is never quiet nor content till he be at the end of his voyage; and that we in the meanwhile, tied in this world to a perpetual task, tost with continual tempest, tired with a rough and cumbersome way, cannot yet see the end of our labour but with grief, nor behold our port but with tears, nor approach our home and quiet abode but with horror and trembling. This life is but a Penelope's web, wherein we are always doing and undoing; a sea open to all winds, which, sometime within, sometime without, never cease to torment us; a weary journey through extreme heats and colds, over high mountains, steep rocks and thievish deserts. And so we term it, in weaving this web, in rowing at this oar, in passing this miserable way. Yet, lo! when Death comes to end our work; when she stretcheth out her arms to pull us into port; when, after so many dangerous passages and loathsome lodgings, she would conduct us to our true home and resting-place; instead of rejoicing at the end of our labour, of taking comfort at the sight of our land, of singing at the approach of our happy mansion, we would fain (who would believe it?) retake our work in hand, we would again hoist sail to the wind, and willingly undertake our journey anew. No more then remember we our pains; our ship-wrecks and dangers are forgotten; we fear no more the travails and the thieves. Contrariwise, we apprehend death as an extreme pain, we doubt it as a rock, we fly it as a thief. We do as little children, who all the day complain, and when the medicine is brought them, are no longer sick; as they who all the week long run up and down the streets with pain of the teeth, and, seeing the barber coming to pull them, out, feel no more pain. We fear more the cure than the disease, the surgeon than the pain. We have more sense of the medicine's bitterness, soon gone, than of a bitter languishing, long continued; more feeling of death, the end of our miseries, than the endless misery of our life, and wish for that we ought to fear."

The literary labours of the Countess of Pembroke were not, however, confined to prose. The work by which she is most deservedly remembered as a writer was the unique translation of the Book of Psalms, begun during the latter part of the life of Sir Philip, and completed by his sister after his death. This work is interesting not only as a joint production, the result of a loving unity of thought and pursuit, but also from its remarkable character. It bears at once the stamp of serious thought, scholarship, and rare culture. Composed of various kinds of verse, to suit best the subject and scope of the Psalm, it contains passages of striking power and beauty. It does not seem to be settled with absolute certainty which portions were written by Sir Philip and which by his sister. Unfortunately, the original manuscript, which was for many years preserved in the library at Wilton House, appears to have been lost. Probably the earlier portions were, if written by the brother, so written while he was enjoying much of his sister's society, either at Wilton or at the old residence overlooking Coniston Lake, in which the Countess for a period resided, and whither Sir Philip would come riding over the hills to visit her. The editor of the Chiswick Press edition, issued in 1823, in referring to the various MS. copies in existence, gives a substantial reason for endorsing the opinion of Dr. Woodford, a contemporary of the Sidneys, that the earlier part, as far as the 43rd Psalm, was the work of Sir Philip, and the remainder, much the greater portion, by the sister. Mr. Ruskin has done excellent service in publishing in his "Bibliotheca Pastorum" portions of the first half of the work. He has stated that, in commencing, he had expected to have little difficulty in distinguishing Sidney's work from that of any other writer concerned in the book. "But," he says, "I found, with greater surprise, that, instead of shining out with any recognisable brightness, the translations attributed by tradition to Sidney included many of the feeblest in the volume; and that, while several curious transitions in manner, and occasional fillings and retouchings by evidently inferior writers, were traceable through the rest, the entire body of the series was still animated by the same healthy and impetuous spirit, and could by no criticism of mine be divided into worthy and unworthy portions." This significant and authoritative criticism, however, only strengthens the assumption that the greater portion, and the best, is the work of the sister. There is no reason to suppose that her power as a writer or skill as a versifier was inferior to that of her brother. The objection advanced by some, that she would not be likely to have had the requisite knowledge of Hebrew to undertake such a work, is even of less importance. The period was remarkable for female learning. Her kinswoman, Lady Jane Grey, is said by Sir Thomas Chaloner, a contemporary, to have been well versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, French, and Italian, in addition to Greek and Latin; and, remembering the disposition and pursuits of the Countess, it is not at all improbable that she possessed the necessary learning for the important work attributed to her. Daniel, also a poet of the period, referring to this version of the Psalms, says:--