Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/363

 since she could not have stolen them. Her characters are mere abstractions figuring certain virtues or vices. In a scene in the second part of ‘Youth's Glory and Death's Banquet,’ she appears under the character of Lady Sanspareile, and gives what may be supposed to be a picture of her own reception at court. As the Lady Contemplation in the play of that name, as the Lady Chastity of the ‘Matrimonial Trouble,’ and in a score other characters, the duchess is recognisable. Not seldom the speeches assigned the characters in her plays are as scholastic and as voluminous as her letters or her philosophical opinions. She does not hesitate to introduce wanton characters and to employ language which goes beyond coarseness. Her philosophy is the dead weight which drags her to the ground. In these deliveries an occasional piece of common sense is buried in avalanches of ignorance and extravagance. Her life of the duke is in its way a masterpiece. With it may be classed her autobiographical sketch, the naïveté and beauty of which are equal. Not easy is it to find a picture so faithful and attractive of an English interior. Not all the respect due to her husband's services to the crown, and to her own high position, could save her from some irreverence in the court of Charles II. Her occasional appearance in theatrical costume, and her reputation for purity of life, together with her vanity and affectation, contributed to gain her a reputation for madness. Horace Walpole, in ‘Royal and Noble Authors,’ sneers at her as a ‘fertile pedant.’ The duchess has been, however, the subject of the most unmixed adulation to which an author has often listened. A folio volume, entitled ‘Letters and Poems in Honour of the incomparable Princess Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle, Written by several Persons of Honour and Learning. In the Savoy, 1676,’ consists of poems and letters, in English and Latin, written chiefly in acknowledgment of the receipt of presentation copies of her works by various people, including the senate of the university of Cambridge. Among those who are guilty of the most fulsome adulation are Henry More, Jasper Mayne, Jn. Glanville, G. Etherege, and Thomas Shadwell. Adulatory poems in plenty are also prefixed to her various volumes, a curious feature in which is the number of dedications to her husband, her companion the reader, philosophers in general, and others. Among her encomiasts are also Hobbes and Bishop Pearson. Portraits of the duchess, sometimes alone and at other times in the midst of her family, were appended to many of her volumes. These are ordinarily absent, however, and are scarcer than the volumes themselves, the rarity of some of which is excessive. A portrait of her by Diepenbeke in a theatrical habit, which she constantly wore, is still (1887) in existence at Welbeck. In the early catalogues of the gallery it is erroneously ascribed to Lely. An engraved portrait by Van Schuppen from Diepenbeke, prefixed to the second volume of her plays, exhibits her as a tall and strikingly handsome woman. Her description may indeed be read in that previously given of her family. Pepys gives an amusing account of the performance of her ‘silly play,’ ‘The Humourous Lovers,’ 30 March 1667, describes her, 12 April 1667, making ‘her respects to the players from her box,’ dwells upon her ‘footman in velvet coats and herself in an antique dress,’ and adds: ‘The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does is romantic.’ Three folio volumes of her poems are said to remain in manuscript, and volumes of her works, with manuscript notes in her handwriting, are in the British Museum Library. Her husband's poems are so mixed up with hers that it is not always easy to separate them. The married life of the duke and duchess seems to have been exceptionally happy. A story that the duke, in answer to congratulations upon the wisdom of his wife, replied, ‘Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing,’ rests upon no very trustworthy authority—the ipse dixit of a Mr. Fellows, preserved by Jonathan Richardson. Walpole's charge, that she did not revise the copies of her works, lest it should disturb her later conceptions, rests on her own authority, and must accordingly be accepted. An attempt to render into Latin some of her works, other than her life of the duke, was commenced but abandoned. 

CAVENDISH, RICHARD (d. 1601?), politician and author, was the second son of Sir Richard Gernon, alias Cavendish, by his wife Beatrice, daughter of — Gould (Harleian MS. 1449, f. 96). He was a native of Suffolk, and was for some time a member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (, Hist. of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, pt. i. Append. p. 11). In 1568 and 1569 he was engaged in conveying to Mary Queen of Scots letters and tokens to further her marriage