Foremother Poet: Anne Wharton (1659-85)

Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768), London, Whitehall and the Privy Gardens from Richmond House (1747)

Dear friends and readers,

A fifth foremother poet. In Slipshod Sibyls: Recognition and Rejection and the Woman Poet, Germaine Greer’s moving “Rochester’s Niece” on the life and poetry of Anne Wharton reveals a brilliant young woman poet whose life was brief and deeply unhappy (in all senses of the word). What she was was a great tragic satirist. She’s not the only one to write in this vein in her period: her uncle, John Wilmot does; so too Dryden in certain moods, Oldham. This was to write great poetry in her era: peers as women include Sarah Fyge Egerton, Anne Killigrew, in some moods Anne Finch, Elizabeth Thomas, Aphra Behn (who tends to the hard comic in her satire). While the oeuvre is small, it’s strong.

To begin with, I have four poems this time — a fifth follows a short life, and selections from a sixth longer one, an Heroide, will be found in the comments: a free translation/imitation where Wharton personates Penelope to Ulysses in Ovid’s way will be found in the comments. Penelope as an important icon for women is still with us (Margaret Atwood’s book).

I hope the poems will mostly speak for themselves to readers who can lend themselves to the older British prosody and plain spokenness of verse from the later 17th century

A powerful personal lyric, psychologically-conceived pictorial allegory rooted in real natural event:

On the Storm between Gravesend and Diepe; Made at that Time

When the Tempestuous Sea did foam and roar,
Tossing the Bark from the long-wish’d for Shore;
With false affected fondness it betray’d,
Striving to keep what Perish’d, if it stay’d.
Such is the Love of Impious Men, where e’re
Their cruel Kindness lights, ’tis to ensnare:
I, toss’d in tedious Storms of troubled Thought,
Was careless of the Waves the Ocean brought.
My Anchor Hope was lost, and too too near
On either hand were Rocks of sad Despair.
Mistaken Seamen prais’d my fearless Mind,
Which, sunk in Seas of Grief, could dare the Wind.
In Life, tempestuous Life is dread and harm,
Approaching Death had no unpleasing Form;
Approaching Death appeases ev’ry Storm.

A strong critique of social life(my favorite of her poems that I’ve been able to read):

Wit’s Abuse

I see not why Astrea fled away,
But wonder more, why any virtuous stay
In such a world, where they are made a scorn,
Oppress’d by numerous vice, mangled and torn
Wounded by laughter, and by wit forlorn.
I mean not here by wit, what’s truly so,
But that false coin which does for current go.
‘ Tis certain but a few can judgment make
Of such a gift, which but a few partake.
Ignorant judges may decide a cause,
Sooner against, than for concealed laws.
This is wit’s pledge, but few those precepts know,
Which many false pretenders overthrow.
And yet amongst those very few, there are
Some who betray that glorious character;
Whilst low-born falsehood goes for heavenly wit;
How many aim at what so few can hit?
The trade of hell was never had to get.
Thus these intruders double ends pursue,
Rooting out wit, they root out virtue too.
Soft pity passes now for servile fear,
A generous scorn of life for mean despair.
Truth and sincerity the fools proclaim,
Which witty falsehood always load with shame.
An active soul affected notions prove,
Out-flying common thoughts, or private love.
Thus tho’ each virtue in itself they hate,
They love to make it add to a deceit.
Undress’d ’tis scorn’d, but favour’d and allow’d.
When to the neighbouring vice it lends a cloud.
Thus the inconstant empress of the night,
Tho’ foul, and spotted, clothes herself with light,
And can with borrow’d beams be always bright.

An elegy for poetry (also above) and Rochester:

Elegy on the Earl of Rochester

Deep waters silent roll, so grief like mine
Tears never can relieve, nor words define.
Stop, then, stop your vain source, weak springs of grief,
Let tears flow from their eyes whom tears relieve.
They from their heads show the light trouble there;
Could my heart weep, its sorrows ‘twould declare:
Weep drops of blood, my heart, thou’st lost thy pride,
The cause of all thy hopes and fears, thy guide.
He would have led thee right in wisdom’s way,
And ’twas thy fault whene’er thou wentst astray;
And since thou strayedst when guided and led on,
Thou wilt be surely lost now left alone.
It is thy elegy I write, not his:
He lives immortal and in highest bliss.
But thou art dead, alas! my heart, thou’rt dead:
He lives, that lovely soul for ever fled,
But thou mongst crowds on Earth art buried.
Great was thy loss, which thou canst ne’er express,
Nor was th’ insensible dull nation’s less:
He civilized the rude and taught the young,
Made fools grow wise, such artful magic hung
Upon his useful, kind, instructing tongue.
His lively wit was of himself a part,
Not, as in other men, the work of art;
For, though his learning like his wit was great,
Yet sure all learning came below his wit;
As God’s immediate gifts are better far
Than those we borrow from our likeness here,
He was but I want words, and ne’er can tell;
Yet this I know, he did mankind excel.
He was what no man ever was before;
Nor can indulgent nature give us more,
For to make him she exhausted all her store.

A disillusioned song:

How hardly I conceal’d my Tears?
How oft did I complain?
When many tedious Days my Fears
Told me I Lov’d in vain.

But now my Joys as wild are grown,
And hard to be conceal’d:
Sorrow may make a silent Moan,
But Joy will be reveal’d

I tell it to the Bleating Flocks,
To every Stream and Tree,
And Bless the Hollow Murmuring Rocks,
For Echoing back to me.

Thus you may see with how much Joy
We Want, we Wish, Believe;
‘Tis hard such Passion to Destroy,
But easie to Deceive.

The one image of Anne that has come down to us is heavily stylized.

An unlived life: Anne’s father, Sir John Danvers, died of plague four months before she was born; Anne Danvers, her mother died after she gave birth to Anne. She and her sister were made the responsibility of Anne, Countess of Rochester, John Wilmot’s mother. Rochester’s mother is not presented as having affectionate or tender feelings ever for anyone. After her niece was “deflowered” by Henry Mordaunt, 2nd Earl of Peterborough (the two events may not have been linked), she married Anne off in 1673 at age 14 to Thomas Wharton, referred to as a sportsman and politician. Wharton was one of the debauched wit set to which her uncle, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester belonged. Apparently Peterborough paid a servant to give him access to Anne and raped her. The marriage to Wharton produced no discernible relationship between the two except that he bullied her. The one genuine companionate relationship, congenial and supportive she had was with her uncle. Some scurrilous writing at the time said they were lovers, but from their poetry it doesn’t seem so. They seem to have been uncle and niece. She manifested a very bad illness (very painful) by the time she was 11 and is said to died in wretched suffering at age 26.

I hope her life will make the final poem of this blog understandable.

Complaints are not listened to:

To Melpomene against complaint

In soft Complaints no longer ease I find,
That latest refuge of a Tortur’d Mind;
Romantick Heros may their Fancy please
In telling of their Griefs to senceless Trees.
‘Tis now to me no pleasure to rehearse
A doleful Tale in Melancholy Verse!
Men are more Deaf than Trees, more Wild than Seas:
Complaints and Tears will sooner Storms appease,
Than draw soft pity from an Humane Breast.
All Sooth the Happy, and Despise the Opprest.
Each Man who lives, of sorrow hath his share,
Or else of Pride, and cannot pity spare,
For those whose weight is more than one can bear.
All who are happy, do their Merit boast,
Think Heaven ows ’em more, and Heav’n is Just.
Still they observe the Opprest with Partial Eyes,
And think their Crimes draw Vengeance from the Skies.
But were they gentle, pitiful, and mild,
Not (as they are) rough, unconcern’d and wild.
What Joy can pity bring on other’s Grief?
For what I feel, affords me no relief;
To see another’s Eyes with pity melt,
For wretched me, would add to what I felt.
Since in Complaints there can no ease be found,
For such an Heart as mine in sorrow drown’d.

Anne Wharton does not belong to the set of women who experienced the civil war, but was a member of the next generation which reacted to and against the religiosities and (to them) hypocritical idealisms of the mid-century. Her prosody is that of this group whose most famous woman poet was Aphra Behn. The poem to Rochester shows that like Behn (who also wrote a beautiful elegy to Rochester), Anne Wharton was one of those who saw and appreciated all his finest qualities. I really love “Wit’s Abuse.” She is said to have left 24 poems and 1 play.

In her Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry, Paula Backscheider has credited her with a poem I think written by Anne Finch: All Flie th’unhappy, and all I would flie

The tone, prosody, simple language and rhythms of the sentences are wholly unlike Wharton’s; they are close in spirit and resemble many of Finch’s. Finch’s attraction to a line like: “”Survey those glittering Particles of Light” is quintessentially typical of her. The plangent tone is her. A typical melancholy withdrawing couplet, down to the use of one syllable words:

Yes, here I’m lost, for none of all the dead
Return to tell what a Soul is when fled.

The attribution was originally contemporary and is repeated in Chadwyck-Healey too.

Backscheider also says that Wharton’s elegy to Rochester was noticed by other writers and she was “an eminent” poet in the era. I would like to think so too, but the probability is she was mostly ignored and then forgotten (see Greer); at any rate there’s no evidence for wide respect. Yes she was praised by Edmund Waller and John Dryden and exchanged verses with Behn.

I took the poems I present from Germaine Greer, Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff, Melinda Sansone, edd. Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women’s Verse; Joy Fullard, ed. British Women Poets 1660-1800: An Anthology; Paula Backscheider and Catherine E. Ingrassia, British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century.

Ellen