coins, and knew the points of old engravings. He wrote a history of the Christian Church down to our own ill-conducted Reformation, and composed a complete metrical version of the Psalms of David and of the Song of Solomon. These and many other productions, which he characterised as “The Employment of my Solitude,” still remain in his own handwriting. Amongst them, Yorkshire men will hear with pleasure, is a “Treatise on the breeding of the Horse.”
Of the quality of his wife we have already had a touch. She was one of the four daughters of Lord Vere of Tilbury, who came of a fine fighting family, and whose daughters had a roughish bringing-up, chiefly in the Netherlands. None of the daughters were reckoned beautiful, either in face or figure, and it may well be that Lady Fairfax had something about her of the old campaigner; but of her courage, sincerity, and goodness there can be no question. Her loyalty was no sickly fruit of “Church Principles,” for her strong intelligence rejected scornfully the slavish doctrines, alien to our political constitution, of divine right and passive obedience; but a loyalty, none the less, it was, of a very valuable kind. She was fond of argument, and with Lady Fairfax at Nunappleton there was never likely to be any dearth of sensible talk and lively reminiscence. The tragedy of the 30th of January could never be forgotten, and it is possible that Marvell’s most famous verses, so nobly descriptive of the demeanour of the king on that memorable occasion, derived their inspiration from discourse at Nunappleton.
Of the Lady Mary, aged twelve, we have no direct testimony. When she grew up and had her portrait painted she stands revealed as a stout young woman with a plain good-natured face. The poor soul needed all the good-nature heaven had bestowed upon her, for she had to bear the misery and disgrace which were the inevitable marriage-portion of the woman whose ill-luck it was to become the wife of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. Somebody seems to have taught her philosophy, for she bore her misfortunes as best became a great lady, living as one who had sorrow but no grievance. The duke died in 1688; she lived on till 1704. She was ever a good friend to another ill-used solitary wife, Catherine of Braganza. Marvell had every reason to be proud of his pupil.
Beside the actual inmates of the great house, the whole countryside swarmed with Fairfaxes. At the Rectory of Bolton Percy was the late Lord-General’s uncle, Henry Fairfax, and his two sons, Henry, who succeeded to the title, and the better-known Brian, the biographer of the Duke of Buckingham. At Stenton, four miles off, lived the widow of the gallant Sir William Fairfax, who died, covered with wounds, in 1644 before Montgomery Castle. There were two sons and two daughters at Stenton, whilst Charles Fairfax, another uncle, and the lawyer and genealogist of the family, lived at no great distance with no less than fourteen children. There were also sisters of Lord Fairfax, with families of their own, all settled in the same part of the county.
Such were the agreeable surroundings of our poet for two years, 1650–1652. I must leave it to the imaginations of my readers to fill up the picture, for excepting the poems, which we may safely assume were written at Nunappleton House, and—who can doubt it?—read aloud to its inmates, there is nothing more to be said.
Before considering the Nunappleton poetry, a word must be got in of bibliography. College exercises and complimentary verses excepted, Marvell printed none of his verse under his own name in his lifetime. So far as his themes were political there is no need to wonder at this. Indeed, the wonder is how, despite their anonymity, their author kept his ears; but why the Nunappleton verse should have remained in manuscript for more than thirty years is hard to explain.
Until Pope took his muse to market, poetry, apart from the drama, had no direct commercial value, or one too small to be ranked as a motive for publication. None the less, the age loved distinction and appreciated wit, and to be known as a poet whose verses “numbered good intellects” was to gain the entrée to the society of men both of intellect and fashion, and also, not infrequently, snug berths in the public service, and secretaryships to foreign missions and embassies. Thus there was always, in addition to natural vanity, a strong motive for a seventeenth-century poet to publish his poems. To-day one would hesitate to recommend a young man who wanted to get on in the world to publish a volume of verse; but the age of “wit” and “parts” is over.
It was not till 1681—three years after Marvell’s death—that the small folio appeared with a fine portrait, still dear to the collector, which contains for the first time what may be called the “garden-poetry” of our author, together with some specimens of his political and satirical versification.
Marvell’s most famous poem—The Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland—is not included in the 1681 volume, and remained in manuscript until 1776, as also did the poem upon Cromwell’s death.
The remainder of the political poems, which had made their first appearance as broadsheets, were reprinted after the Revolution in the well-known Collection of Poems on Affairs of State.1 These verses were never owned by Marvell, and it is probable that some of them, though attributed to him, are not his at all. We have only tradition to go by. In the case of political satires, squibs, epigrams, rough popular occasional rhymes flung off both in haste and heat to be sold with old ballads in the market-place, we need not seek for better evidence than tradition, which indeed is often the only external evidence we have for the authorship of much more important things.
Now to return to the Nunappleton poetry.
In a poem of 776 lines Marvell tells the story and describes the charms of the house which Lord Fairfax built for himself during the war, and to which, as just narrated, he retired in the summer of 1650. The story is only too familiar a one, being writ large over many a fine property. Appleton House was Church loot. In the time of Henry, “the majestic lord that burst the bonds of Rome,” the old house at Nunappleton was a Cistercian nunnery, a religious house. In 1542 the community was suppressed and its property appropriated by the great-grandfather of the Lord-General—one Sir Thomas Fairfax. The religious buildings were pulled down and a new secular house rose in their place. In these bare and sordid facts there is not much room for poetry, but there is a story thrown in. Shortly before 1518 a Yorkshire heiress, bearing the unromantic name of Isabella Thwaites, was living in the Cistercian abbey, under the guardianship of the abbess, the Lady Anna Langton. Property under the care of the Church is always supposed to be in danger, and the Lady Anna was freely credited with the desire to make a nun of her ward, and so keep her broad acres in Wharfedale and her messuages in York for the use of Mother Church. None the less, the young lady was allowed to go about and visit her neighbours, and whilst so doing she fell in love with Sir William Fairfax, or he fell in love with her or with her estates. Thereupon, so the story proceeds, the abbess kept her ward a close prisoner within the nunnery walls. Legal proceedings were taken, but in the end the privacy of the nunnery was invaded, and Miss Thwaites was abducted and married to Sir William Fairfax at the church of Bolton Percy. The lady abbess had to submit to vis major, but worse days were in front of her, for she lived on to see the nunnery itself despoiled, and the fair domains she had during a long life preserved and maintained for religious uses handed over to the son of her former ward, Isabella Thwaites.
Our poet begins by referring to the modest dimensions of the house, and the natural charms of its surroundings:—
“The house was built upon the place,
Only as for a mark of grace,
And for an inn to entertain
Its Lord awhile, but not remain.
Him Bishop’s-hill or Denton may,
Or Billborow, better hold than they:
But Nature here hath been so free,
As if she said, ‘Leave this to me.’
Art would more neatly have defac’d
What she had laid so sweetly waste
In fragrant gardens, shady woods,
Deep meadows, and transparent floods.”
And then starts the story:—
“While, with slow eyes, we these survey,
And on each pleasant footstep stay,