Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/30

 xxvi INTRODUCTION ���of deprivation and anxiety and grief, this marriage was the beginning of Anne Finch's real and permanent happiness. Miss Strickland speaks of Mrs. Finch as " a favorite Maid of Honour of the Queen." This is, however, a mistake. On Domestic the occasion of Anne's marriage she left the �Happiness service of Mary of Modena. But Mr. Finch was still in the retinue of the Duke of York, and Mr. and Mrs. Finch therefore lived in Westminster. It was the pref- erence of both that they should order their lives in as simple and retired a fashion as court demands would permit. Ardelia's poetic aspirations had been no secret to Mr. Finch in her maid of honor days, and now in the independency and privacy of their own home he not only indulged her verse, but even now and then "requir'd her rhymes." When he went away for the day he liked to have a poem waiting for him at night, and he enjoyed versified letters. Ardelia had come into a new freedom. She and her husband were most unfashionably happy together. She was not ashamed to declare that all her hopes and joys were bound in him. Occasional brief separations caused genuine grief to both of them. When Mrs. Finch was at Tunbridge Wells for the waters in the summer of 1685, her husband's loneliness made him urge her to shorten her stay. Only the first stanza of her answer is decipherable in the manuscript, but that in its simplicity and directness of statement shows something of the feeling between them: �Daphnis your wish no more repeat For my return nor mourn my stay, Lest my wise purpose you defeat, And urged by love I come away. My own desires I can resist But blindly yield if you persist. �Ardelia gaily describes the consternation of the Muses when they were called upon for aid in praising her husband. ��� �