Anne Finch’s friendship poetry: those sent to friends & family where the recipient was not a poet herself

Laura Knight, Two Girls on a Cliff (Cornwall), a foremother artist, again quiet female friendship is not a topic readily found in all eras

Eph — What freindship is, Ardelia shew?
Ard — Tis to love, as I love you.
Eph — This account so short, (tho’ kind)
Suites not my enquiring mind.
Therefore farther now repeat.
What is freindship, when compleat?
Ard — ‘Tis to share all joy, and greif,
‘Tis to lend all due releif,
From the tongue, the heart, the hand,
‘Tis to morgage [sic] house, and land,
For a freind, be sold a slave,
‘Tis to dye upon a Grave,
If a freind therein do lye.
Eph — This, indeed, tho’ carry’d high,
This, tho’ more then ‘ere was done,
Underneath the roling [sic] Sun,
This, has all been said before,
Can Ardelia, say no more?
Ard — Words indeed, no more can shew,
But ’tis to love, as I love you.
— Anne Finch to her beloved sister-in-law, Francis Finch Thynne, Lady Weymouth

Dear friends and readers,

I should probably have framed my previous blog with one of the insights in Paula Backscheider’s study of 18th century poetry by women in the context of poetry “through the ages:” she suggests and (I think) demonstrates that friendship poems are used different by women from men. Men often use these politically, to situate themselves publicly. For women they create counter-universes with the friend in which they can explore possibilities, pleasures, identities together.

This is a companion blog to the previous on Anne Finch’s friendship poems to good friends who were also poets, and to her predecessors. Now we come to friendships where the women were not poets, but were willing to enter Anne’s poetic world with her, so, to start, e.g, Catherine Cavendish Tufton (Arminda) and Francis Finch Thynne (Ephelia), two of her closest dearest women friends. The number of poems doesn’t tell us much as there is but one to, e.g., her cousin, Elizabeth Haslewood (d. 1733) who becomes Lady Hatton, daughter of her mother’s brother, Sir William, whom Anne grew up with and with whom she remained close. Elizabeth married Christopher Viscount Hatton.  The list here contains one women who was a reluctant participant. To begin,

“Ephelia” was not the powerful caustic still anonymous female poet, “Ephelia” and glamorous aristocrat that Maureen Mulvihill wants her to be. The last time I looked Ephelia’s identity was still officially not known.  Finch’s Ephelia was Heneage’s sister, Finch’s sister-in-law, Frances Finch Thynne, Lady Weymouth, wife to Heneage’s close friend, companion and support, Thomas Thynne, Lord Weymouth.  Utresia (see below) is Anne’s niece , Lady Weymouth’s daughter, called in the poems also Lady Worseley. Lad Worseley was dragged (so to speak) into a close relationship she apparently was made uncomfortable by. The three poems to Lady Worseley’s mother are deeply felt and include one of Anne’s very best poems, the outstanding:

1) MS Folger, 6-11, “Me, dear Ephelia, me, in vain you court,” Ardelia’s answer to Ephelia, who had invited Her to come to her in Town–reflecting on the Coquetterie & detracting humour of the Age,” as brilliant as that of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, both of which find an ultimate source in Boileau’s Satire III (itself an imitation of Horace’s Satire I, ix). I believe Frances Thynne is also depicted in

2) MS Folger 22, “What freindship is, Ardelia shew?” “Freindship Between Ephelia and Ardelia”. Frances Finch was the muse of the poems addressed to Ephelia because all her life, she played the role of consoler, strengthener: she knew intimately the sources of her “sister’s” psychological problems and we see yet more of their relationship in

3) MS Wellesley 100, “Absence in love effects the same,” “Untitled: These verses were inserted in a letter to the Right Hon: ble the Lady Vicountess Weymouth written from Lewston the next day after my parting with her at Long Leat,” copied out with an apparently frank letter, which, alas, was destroyed. We can say though that unlike Francis’s daughter (see directly below), Francis stayed a satisfyingly long time (over night). It’s a melancholy song written upon awakening after parting from a friend.  Cf earlier brief or one stanza version, presented as translation from a French libertine epigram, found in Ms Folger

Ephelia was not Dorothy Ogle either (as surmised by Myra Reynolds), Finch’s beloved step-sister who died young, whom Finch addresses as “Teresa,”

1) MS’s: F-H 283, 18-25; Folger 206-8, “Hither, Ardelia I your Stepps Pursue,” “Some Reflections in a Dialogue between Teresa and Ardelia on the 2d and 3d Verses of the 73d Psalm,” a Biblical paraphrase, in tone and content bearing a strong resemblance to an important as yet unattributed autographical poem,

2) No MS (!), 1701 Gilden Miscellany, pp 288-93, “All flie th’unhappy, and I all wou’d flie,” “The Retirement” are addressed. Dorothy had lived with Anne their sometimes lonely orphaned childhoods in Northamptonshire among the Haslewoods (an affectionate but large household), and with the litigious formidable grandmother Kingsmill in Sidmouth.

Joseph Farrington, The Oak Tree (18th century engraving): See Anne’s “Fair Tree” (scroll down for podcast)

A third close associate and one from her younger years, Elizabeth Haslewood, Lady Hatton (see above). Mock heroic in a delicate way and like “The White Mouses Petition” in the vein of Madame Deshouliers. The poem mentions at least three of Elizabeth’s four sons, and evinces comfortable intimacy

1) MS Wellesley, pp 93995. “Where is the trust in human things,” To the Hon ble Mrs H—n [in Heneage’s hand, pasted over ample space, original heading censured]. Anne identifies with the mouse in both poems, but as that was a custom (in Madame Deshouliers and aristocratic circles), one should not over-read.

Eventually, much to her distress, embarrassment, and irritation, Lady Worseley, another Frances Thynne (it is hard to distinguish these people as individuals since they themselves chose names which placed them as a member of a kinship system of aristocrats), married to Robert Worseley by 1690, found herself chosen by Anne Finch in the way Anne chose Frances Thynne Seymour, the daughter of a beloved friend, Grace Strode into whom Anne wanted to pour her innermost feelings. The poetry to Utresia contains much beauty but also the most painful lines left by Ardelia. There are three poems, which suggest that at first Utresia decided that to accept letters would be the best way to handle the relationship, but eventually found Anne’s intensity too much and then Anne seems to have been unable to accept Lady Worseley’s rejection of her intensity.

1) MS Folger unnumbered page -275, “If from some lonely and obscure recesse,” “To the Honourable The Lady Worsley at Long-leate who had most obligingly desired my Corresponding with her by Letters.” It ends on extravagant praise of Lord Weymouth, Lady Worseley’s father (Heneage’s brother-in-law); Finch imagines them walking together. Longleat itself the focus of what he created. This is a deeply moving poem with much beautiful landscape, but (as is not uncommon), Anne may not have not seen clearly enough the person she wanted to make her companion soul; it may be that Lady Worseley was forced to accept this because not to do would be to reject the praise of her father.

2) Ms Wellesley, pp 77-78. “From the sweet pleasure of a rural seat,” A Letter to the Hon: ble Lady Worseley at Long-Leat, Lewston August the 10th 1704. This is one of those poems in MS Wellesley whose date makes it much earlier than the rest of the poems in the Ms Wellesley; at the same time, it is accompanied by a letter from “Ann Finch” to her niece saying that her mother, Lady Weymouth so easily excused the verses Anne wrote upon waking (see above), she will excuse these. She stopped writing because a messenger who was to carry the poem was about to leave. It seems the visit of mother and daughter over-excited Anne and she showed an intensity or kind of emotionsthat disquieted the daughter.  In her letter she is not aware of this. The last or next poem shows Utresia determined to keep a distance between herself and her poetic aunt.

3) MS Portland 19, pp 304-7, “The long long expected hour is come,” , “On a Short Visit inscrib’d to My Lady Worsley,” copied out in Anne’s own hand, for she needed to write this, wanted it saved but could not apply to anyone else to write it down. Utresia (here also called Celia) had found it hard to put Anne off, Anne would not take a hint, and when Utresia finally showed up, Anne’s behavior was so overwhelming, she had to get away from her. McGovern quotes someone who visiting Anne in London in later years and finding her “ill,” or “melancholic, wrote that she found Lady Winchilsea very amusing. Not everyone can dismiss or frame a melancholy woman as someone who makes jokes.

Several other women across Anne’s life meant a great deal to her personally so that she could feel free to write candid poetry:  Catherine Cavendish, who married Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet; both spouses were friends of Heneage and Anne, and married only a few months after they did; the Tuftons (or Earl and Lady Thanet) took in the Finches (Colonel and Mrs Finch) at their estate of Hothfield in Kent when the Finches fled London. Catherine Cavendish is Arminda, and they were life-long confiding friends; to Arminda, Anne wrote but one poem, but an important beautiful one, deeply grateful, openly vulnerable:

1) MS Folger, pp 220-27, “Give me, oh! indulgent Fate,” “The Petition for an Absolute Retreat, Inscribed To the Right Honorable Catharine Countess of THANET, mention’d in the Poem, under the name of ARMINDA.”

Of the next generation, another close friend to Anne Finch was Cleone, or Mrs Grace Strode Thynne, wife of Henry Thynne (Theanor, died 1708), son of Francis and Thomas Thynne, Lord and Lady Weymouth. Henry was then Heneage’s nephew so Cleone was daughter-in-law to Anne’s best friend, and, eventually, mother to Anne’s beloved Lady Hertford. Henry died fairly young, and Mrs Grace did not continue to live with her in-laws but returned to the Strode family home in Leweston; nevertheless, she and Anne remained close, to which relationship three poems by Anne testify.

1) “Sooner I’d praise a Cloud which Light beguiles,” To the Painter of an ill-drawn Picture of CLEONE,” no MS (!), the only source text the 1713 Miscellany, pp 176-78. Very lovely in parts, with strong praise in words which suggest these contemporaries were “sympathizing” friends, written possibly around the time of the couple’s marriage (1695),

2) “THINK not a partial fondness sway’d my mind,” An Epistle to the honourable Mrs. THYNNE, persuading her to have a Statue made of her youngest Daughter, now Lady BROOKE. No MS; found in a 1714 Steele Miscellany; and in 1717 Pope’s Own Miscellany, from which the copy on my website is taken. Finch defends herself for having appeared to favor Mary (“Maria”) over Francis Thynne (“Aspasia”) I suggest 1704-5.

3) One of Anne’s comic (happy) masterpieces, “How plain dear Madam was the Want of Sight,” After drawing a twelf cake at the Hon ble Mrs Thynne’s (dated in MS Additional 4457: “To the Hon ble Mrs Thynne after twelfth Day 1715 By Lady Winchilsea”, Ms Wellesley 91-92 (copy text althought one of the lines is softened in comparison with Ms Additional text)

For full details about the occasion, the cards, the people there, click on The Birthday at Winter Solstice

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Mary of Modena (Urania) was one of Anne’s real and dream figures: Mary of Modena seems to have functioned in Finch’s life as a luminous icon of beauty, divinity, poetry of language. Perhaps she was also in Anne’s mind a mentor-substitute for the mother whom Anne never had. Perhaps one of the sources of Anne’s passionate Jacobitism was this imagined relationship. Two poems. One very early, after James II fell from power, one of Anne’s brief masterpieces. The second includes the presence of Anne Tufton (Salisbury or Lamira; see below) who tries to mitigate Anne’s over-reaction and on whose advice the elegy to the queen is brought to an end:

1) MS’s: F-H 283, 7*; Folger 17, “She Sigh’d, but soon it mixt with common air“. Never printed.

2) Ms Wellesley, pp 68-71, “Dark was the shade where only cou’d be seen,” “On the Death of the Queen”

Mary of Modena, depicted with a James III

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Returning to Anne’s circles in later life, one is tempted to say these are less important women to Anne because they came later or were of a younger age. Not so apparently in the case of Anne Tufton (see above, Lamira and below “Salisbury”): Catherine Cavendish Tufton, Lady Thanet had two daughters. These relationships may have been substitutes for the biological daughters Anne never had: To Anne Tufton, Lamira, the first of which seems to me uncomfortably coy; the second perhaps Anne’s greatest poem. She is also mentioned in Anne’s poem on the death of Mary of Modena:

1) Ms Wellesley, 92-93, “With all respect and humble duty,”, The white mouses petition to Lamira the Right Hon: ble the Lady Ann Tufton now Countess of Salisbury. This relationship matured into

2) No MS, 1713 Miscellany, pp 292-94, “In such a Night, when every louder Wind”, “A Nocturnal Reverie”

A tawny owl — part of a beautiful tribute and analysis of Anne’s poem by Carol Rumens in the Guardian for this year!

Mrs Arabella Marrow was an unmarried daughter of Samuel and Lady Marrow, of Berkwell, Warwickshire; she was one of Mrs Grace Strode Thynne’s closest companions. Date: Lady Marrow died October 19, 1714. A “letter” shows how much Anne knew and was up-to-date on Jacobite and Hanoverian politics.

1) Ms Wellesley, p 55v.“For can our correspondence please,”, “A Letter to Mrs Arrabella Marow: [A prose opening: The favour of such an agreeable & most obliging letter as I recieved . . .] In MS Additional 4457 it is subscribed “London, October 18 1715.” A strongly Jacobite poem. Lady Marrow already dead.

2) MS Additional 4457, p 56v “Their piety th’Egyptians show’d by Art,” “To Mrs Arabella Marrow upon the Death of Lady Marrow”. A witty epigram whose modest idea is intended to console her friend for her loss of her mother.

A double stock flower (tagetes patula?)

Anne did not forget people. Lady Selena Finch Shirley (1681-1762), married to Robert Shirley, Lord Ferrers (1650-1717) in 1699.  Lady Selena lived at Wye College in the early 1700s (Cameron found this out): she was a daughter of George (and Jane?) Finch whom Cameron found living at Wye College in the early 1700’s; she had ten children by Robert Shirley before he died in 1717. She died 1762. In the second poem Finch says looking upon the flower in its ripe prime reminds her of the time when she “That beauteous maid wou’d view/The green house where I liv’d retired;” that is, between 1700 and 1703 when Anne lived at Wye Shirley Finch would come to visit her in a green house or garden near Wye; now destiny has led her young friend to the country and Anne placed in town where Anne can no longer feel rejuvenated by her friend’s presence as once she was. It is a compliment to Lady Selena’s daughter, also called Selena (See Complete Poems, Vol 2, pp 484-85).

The first may be explained this way: Statira was best known to 17th century women readers as presented in La Calprenede’s Cassandra. Finch had used this romance before in poetry found in MS Folger: see the homoerotic, “An Epistle from Alexander to Ephestion in his Sicknesse” Statira is a formidable heroine in LaCalprenede’s book, a sort of Amazon; it’s an ambiguous compliment (for she is not chaste), but perhaps Finch was thinking of her friend having had ten children.  During the time the women were close Lady Selena must’ve been almost continually pregnant.  And now she is or is near widowhood.

1) Ms Wellesley, “Such was Statira, when young Ammon woo’d,” Upon Lady Selena Shirly’s picture drawn by Mr Dagar.

2) 1717 Pope’s Own Miscellany “How is it in this chilling time,” “On a double Stock July-flower, full blown in January, presented to me by the Countess of FERRERS” By the right honourable the Lady WINCHELSEA, pp. 126ff

Lady Catherine Jones (Clorinda, d 1740), third daughter to Richard Jones, Viscount, first Earl of Ranelagh. Her name occurs very late in Anne’s poetry and only once but there is suggestive evidence they knew each other for a long time. Anne uses the name Clorinda in other poems but these are about secular beauty, and one may refer to Anne herself. What’s significant here is she served Mary Beatrice as Chamber-keeper, and was a patron of Mary Astell who dedicated two religious treatises to her. Lady Catherine corresponded with Swift twice but to her contemporaries it was probably more important that her family moved in high circles (she once dined with George I, 1717); she seems never to have married. The poem below is devotional, poetry as praying:  perhaps Lady Catherine was especially religious. The poem occurs in series of such poems, and I think it was meant to be set to music; it’s not meant to be read, but sung as a series of visions:

1) Ms Wellesley, 134-35 “Alleluja Sollemn Strain,” An Ode Written upon Christmas Eve in the year 1714 Upon these Words[:] And again they Said Alleluia Inscribed To the Rt: Hon ble the Lady Catherine Jones

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Last the daughters and granddaughters of friends and relatives:

To the younger Catherine Tufton, Serena, born 1692, Anne Tufton’s sister:

1) MS Folger, 298-9, “To write in verse has been my pleasing choice,” “To the Rt. Honble the Lady Tufton Upon Adressing to me the first Letter that Ever she Writt at the Age of–”

2) MS Folger, pp 242-44, “‘Tis fitt Serena shou’d be sung,”, “A Poem For the Birth Day of the Right Honorable the Lady Catherine Tufton. Occasion’d by the sight of some Verses upon that Subject For the preceding Year compos’d by no Eminent Hand” — also for a child.

The first poem in the MS Wellesley, to or on Lady Carteret, yet another daughter of the family, Francis Worseley, Lady Carteret, Utresia’s daughter, so granddaughter to Frances Finch Thynne, Lady Weymouth:

1) Ms Wellesley, p 49  “Quoth the Swains who got in at the late Masquerade”, “On Lady Cartret drest like a shepherdess at Count Volira’s ball”

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So I’ve identified as friends or people Anne Finch both cared about and wrote deeply felt poems for: Frances Finch Thynne, Lady Weymouth; Dorothy Ogle; Elisabeth Haslewood, Lady Hatton; Frances Thynne, Lady Worsley; Mrs Grace Strode Thynne; Mary of Modena; Anne Tufton, Lady Salisbury; Arabella Marrow; Lady Selena Finch Shirley, Countess of Ferrers; Lady Catherine Jones; Catherine Tufton; Francis Worseley, Lady Carteret.

Anne writes to and about male friends too, some poets, some not, but often with irony and never with the open earnestness and fullness of heart she does to her women friends. Several of these poems to women are more deeply felt than those by her to Heneage. Eventually I may try to write a blog about the poems to male friends and poets.

Ellen