Anna Seward, a daughter of the Rev. Thomas Seward, destined to
become, by universal assent, the first poetess of her day in
England, was born 12th December, 1747. Her mother was
Elizabeth, one of the three daughters of the Rev. John Hunter
(who was in 1704 appointed Head Master of Lichfield Grammar
School), by his first wife, Miss Norton, a daughter of Edward
Norton, of Warwick, and sister of the Rev. Thomas Norton, of
Warwick. Anna Seward’s parents were married at Newton
Regis Church, Warwickshire, in October, 1741. The poetess
was born at Eyam in Derbyshire, where her father was then the
Rector. She was baptized Anne, but she generally wrote her
name Anna. Her pet name in her own family was
“Nancy,” and also often “Julia.”
Mr. Seward attained some literary fame, and was co-adjutor to
an edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. When Anna
Seward was seven years old, the family removed to
Lichfield, and when she was thirteen they moved into the
Bishop’s Palace, “our pleasant home” as she
called it, where she continued to live after her father’s
death, and for the remainder of her days.
The derivation of the word “Lichfield” has excited
a good deal of controversy. In Anna Seward’s time, it
was generally thought to mean “the field of dead
bodies,” cadaverum campus—from a number of
Christian bodies which lay massacred and unburied there, in the
persecution raised by Diocletian. A reference to
“Notes and Queries,” in the Sixth and Eighth Series,
will show an inquirer that later search throws some doubt on such
derivation. St. Chad, or Ceadda (669–672) founded the
diocese of Lichfield, and was its patron saint.
The Cathedral, the Venus of Gothic creation, as now existing,
was built piecemeal during the 13th and early part of 14th
centuries. The present Bishop’s Palace is of stone,
and was erected in 1687, by Thomas Wood, who was Bishop from 1671
to 1692, on the site of the old palace, built by Bishop Walter de
Langton (1296–1321). The Bishops of
Lichfield had a palace at Eccleshall, and this was the one used
by these dignitaries down to the time of Bishop George Augustus
Selwyn, who, it may be mentioned, was born 5th April, 1809.
The latter sold it, and with part of the net proceeds added two
ugly wings and an ugly chapel to the palace when he came to dwell
there, in order to make it a centre of religious activity in the
diocese. The body of the palace is, however, to this day
little changed from its state when inhabited by the Sewards.
Anna Seward had several sisters, and one brother, all of whom
died in infancy, except her second sister, Sarah. She,
almost on the eve of marriage in her nineteenth year, to Mr.
Porter, brother to Mrs. Lucy Porter of Lichfield, and son-in-law
to Dr. Samuel Johnson, died in June, 1764. She is described
as having been “lovely.”
A stanza in “The Visions,” an elegy, the first of
the poems in Anna Seward’s “Poetical Works,”
having reference to the sad event, runs thus:—
The bridal vestments waited to array,
In emblematic white, their duteous maid;
But ne’er for them arrived that festal day;
Their sweet, crush’d lily low in earth is
laid.
John Hunter was Samuel Johnson’s schoolmaster, and
Johnson declared that he was very “severe, and
wrong-headedly severe.” He once said, “My
master whipt me very well. Without that, sir, I should have
done nothing.” Mrs. Hunter died in July, 1780, aged
66. She had been very beautiful, from all accounts,
insomuch that Dr. Green, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and Dr.
Newton, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield (“the learned and
lucky pair”) were once, Anna Seward tells us, rivals in
their attachment to her.
Miss Honora Sneyd was the youngest daughter of Edward Sneyd,
who was the youngest son of Ralph Sneyd of Bishton, in
Staffordshire. She was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Seward and
brought up by them as one of their own children.
Edward Sneyd was a Major of the Royal Horse Guards (blue), and
became a widower early in life. The death of his wife was a
great affliction, but his relations and friends, who were
numerous, proved eager to take charge of his daughters.
Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and care with
which Mrs. Seward executed the trust that she had
undertaken. Indeed, none could have singled out Honora from
Mrs. Seward’s own daughters by the light of anything in
Mrs. Seward’s treatment or conduct. Honora was very
beautiful and accomplished, and had attracted many admirers, as
well as lovers. Anna Seward relates a whimsical story of an
“oddity,” an “awkward pedantic youth, once
resident for a little time at Lichfield, who, when asked how he
liked Honora, replied, ‘I could not have conceived that she
had half the face she has,’ adding that Honora was finely
rallied about this imputed plenitude of face. The oval
elegance of its delicate and beauteous contour made the
exclamation trebly absurd.” But her first real lover
was the “ill-fated” Major André. He
first met Honora at Buxton, or Matlock, and, falling deeply in
love with her, became a frequent visitor at the Palace. He
writes, “How am I honoured in Mr. and Mrs. Seward’s
attachment to me!” An engagement followed, but the
marriage was prohibited. The reason, it would seem, was
that André had not sufficient means to support a
wife. André wrote to Honora, “But oh! my dear
Honora! it is for thy sake only I wish for wealth,” which
wealth, indeed, he called “vile trash” in another of
his letters.
The story of the young soldier is truly a sad one. In
1780, while serving in America, André was entrusted with
secret negotiations for the betrayal of West Point to the British
forces, but was captured by the Americans. In spite of his
petition that General Washington would “adapt the mode of
death to his feelings as a man of honour,” he was hanged as
a spy at Tappan. General Washington was unable to listen to
strong appeals for clemency, for, though commander of the
American armies, his voice counted but one on the court
martial. André was of French descent, and has been
described as high-spirited, accomplished, affectionate and
merry-hearted. Anna Seward tells us that he appeared to her
to be “dazzled” by Honora, who estimated highly his
talents; but the poetess adds that he did not possess “the
reasoning mind” Honora required. In 1821 his body
was, on the petition of the Duke of York, brought
to England. “The courtesy and good feeling,”
remarks Dean Stanley of the Americans, were remarkable. The
bier was decorated with garlands and flowers, as it was
transported to the ship. On arrival in England the remains
were first deposited in the Islip Chapel, and subsequently buried
in the nave of Westminster Abbey, where the funeral service was
celebrated, and where a monument was erected to his memory.
Washington, Anna Seward records, did her the honour to charge
his aide-de-camp to assure her that no circumstances of his life
had given him so much pain as the necessary sacrifice of
André’s life.
Thomas Day, the author of “Sandford and Merton,”
who spent a good deal of his life in hunting for a wife, made
love to Honora. She, however, refused to marry him; and
small wonder, for the conditions he wished to impose on her were
ridiculously stringent and restrictive, and she, not unnaturally,
refused to entertain the prospect of the unqualified control of a
husband over all her actions, implied by his requirements.
Later on Day wished to marry Honora’s sister, but she
also refused his offer. It may be added that he eventually
succeeded in marrying a Yorkshire lady, who became devoted to
him, and was inconsolable on his death, in 1789, from a kick by a
horse.
The Earl of Warwick, when Lord George Greville, met Honora at
some race-meeting, and was, we read, much fascinated with
her. A Colonel Barry also was her lover, and once stated,
“she was the only woman he had ever seriously
loved.”
Honora supplied the place of Sarah Seward, after the
latter’s death, in Anna Seward’s affections, and
numbers of her poems and letters testify how ardently the poetess
admired and loved her.
In 1765 Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the well-known author,
visited Lichfield. He had been a wild and gay young man,
and had eloped with his first wife, who died in March,
1773. His personal address was “gracefully spirited,
and his conversation eloquent.” He danced and fenced
well, was an ingenious mechanic, and invented a plan for
telegraphing, consequent on a desire to know the result of a race
at Newmarket. Becoming very intimate with the
Sewards, and the addresses he had made to and for Honora,
“after some time being permitted and approved,”
Edgeworth married her on 17th July, 1773, as his second wife, in
the beautiful ladies’ choir in Lichfield Cathedral.
Mr. Seward, who had become a Canon Residentiary of Lichfield
Cathedral, performed the ceremony, and shed “tears of joy
while he pronounced the nuptial benediction,” and Anna
Seward is recorded to have been really glad to see Honora united
to a man whom she had often thought peculiarly suited to her
friend in taste and disposition.
Honora died of consumption in 1780, and, in accordance with
her dying wish, Edgeworth married her sister Elizabeth on
Christmas Day in the same year. Honora, who was buried at
King’s Weston, had issue two children.
In Anna Seward’s elegy, entitled
“Lichfield,” written in 1781, we read:—
“When first this month, stealing from
half-blown bowers,
Bathed the young cowslip in her sunny showers,
Pensive I travell’d, and approach’d the plains,
That met the bounds of Severn’s wide domains.
As up the hill I rose, from whose green brow
The village church o’erlooks the vale below,
O! when its rustic form first met my eyes,
What wild emotions swell’d the rising sighs!
Stretch’d the pain’d heart-strings with the utmost
force
Grief knows to feel, that knows not dire remorse;
For there—yes there,—its narrow porch contains
My dear Honora’s cold and pale remains,
Whose lavish’d health, in youth, and beauty’s
bloom,
Sunk to the silence of an early tomb.”
Edgeworth is to be remembered as having been a good Irish
landlord; he had a property at Edgeworthstown.
In 1802 Anna Seward wrote, “The stars glimmered in the
lake of Weston as we travelled by its side, but their light did
not enable me to distinguish the Church, beneath the floor of
whose porch rests the mouldered form of my heart—dear
Honora,—yet of our approach to that unrecording, but thrice
consecrated spot, my heart felt all the mournful
consciousness.”
It is not easy to agree with Mr. E. V. Lucas, the author of a
very entertaining book, entitled “A Swan and her
Friends” (Methuen & Co.), when he says, “of
Honora’s married life little is known, but she may
have been very happy,” for she left a letter, written a few
days before her death, which cannot easily be construed as
applying merely to her death-bed state.
Here is a paragraph from it:—
“I have every blessing, and I am
happy. The conversation of my beloved husband, when my
breath will let me have it, is my greatest delight, he procures
me every comfort, and as he always said he thought he should,
contrives for me everything that can ease and quiet my
weakness.”
“Like a kind angel whispers peace,
And smooths the bed of death.”
Her husband records that she was the most beloved as a wife, a
sister, and a friend, of any person he had ever known. Each
member of her own family, unanimously, almost intuitively,
preferred her.
Anne Hunter, the eldest sister of Mrs. Seward, married a few
days before her, viz., in October, 1741, at Newton Regis Church,
the Rev. Samuel Martin, the Rector, who was formerly a Fellow of
Oriel College, Oxford. He afterwards became the Rector of
Gotham, Notts., where he remained for 27 years, until his death,
in 1775. In a letter dated 23rd June, 1764, written from
Gotham, while visiting “her excellent Uncle and Aunt
Martin,” as she styled them, soon after the death of Sarah
Seward, Anna Seward says, “pious tranquility broods over
the kind and hospitable mansion, and the balms of sympathy and
the cordials of devotion are here poured into our torn
hearts,” and “my cousin, Miss Martin, is of my
sister’s age, and was deservedly beloved by her above all
her other companions next to myself and Honora.”
It was Dr. Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Robert
Darwin, the naturalist, who died in 1882, author of the
“Origin of the Species”) who first discovered Anna
Seward as a poetess. Happening to peruse some verses
apparently written by her, he took an opportunity of calling at
the Palace when Anna Seward was alone, and satisfied himself that
she could write good poetry unaided, and that her literary
abilities were of no common kind.
Dr. Darwin (who was a native of Nottinghamshire) in either the
year 1756 or 1757, arrived in Lichfield to practise as a
Physician there, where he resided until 1781. Darwin was a
“votary to poetry,” a philosopher, and a
clever though an eccentric man. He wrote “The Botanic
Garden,” which Anna Seward pronounced to be “a string
of poetic brilliants,” and in which book Horace Walpole
noted a passage “the most sublime in any author or in any
of the few languages with which I am acquainted.” He
inserted in it, as his own work, some lines of Anna
Seward’s,—which was ungallant, to say the
least. Anna Seward’s mother repressed her early
attempts at poetry, so for a time she contented herself with
reading “our finest poets,” and with
“voluminous correspondence.” On her
mother’s death, being free to exercise her poetical powers,
she forthwith produced odes, sonnets, songs, epitaphs, epilogues,
and elegies, in profusion.
Anna Seward visited Bath, and her introduction into the
literary “world” was made by Anna, Lady Miller, a
verse writer of some fame, who instituted a literary salon at
Bath-Easton, during the Bath season. An antique vase, which
had been dug up in Italy in 1759, was placed on a modern altar
decorated with laurel, each guest being invited to place in the urn an original composition in verse. When
it was determined which were the best three productions, their
authors were crowned by Lady Miller with wreaths of myrtle.
Lady Miller died in 1781, and a handsome monument in the Abbey at
Bath marks the spot where she was buried. It is stated in
the D.N.B. that the urn, after her death, was set up in the
public park in Bath.
Fanny Burney met Lady Miller, whom she describes with her
usual candour: “Lady Miller is a round, plump,
coarse-looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to
appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an
ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on.
Her habits are bustling, her air is mock-important, and her
manners very inelegant.”
Once a year the most ingenious of the vase effusions was
published, the net profits being applied to some Bath
charity. Four volumes of the compositions appeared.
The prize poem was written several times by Anna Seward, and on
one occasion was awarded for her monody on the death of David
Garrick.
Macaulay says, in his essay on Madame D’Arblay,
that Lady Miller kept a vase “wherein fools were wont to
put bad verses.” Dr. Johnson also said, when Boswell
named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase,
“He was a blockhead for his pains”; on the other
hand, when told that the Duchess of Northumberland wrote, Johnson
said, “Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she
pleases: nobody will say anything to a lady of her high
rank.” Remembering who were ranked among the
contributors to the “Saloon of the Minervas,” these
criticisms seem rather absurd, for
“Bright glows the list with many an
honour’d name.”
Christopher Anstey, a fellow of King’s College,
Cambridge, remembered as having written the “New Bath
Guide,” and as having been deemed worthy a cenotaph in
Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, and William Hayley,
appear to have been among the best-known to fame at “the
fanciful and romantic institution at Bath-Easton.”
The latter was a friend of Cowper, Romney and Southey, and
published the lives of the two former. In
“English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” occur these
lines:—
“Triumphant first see Temper’s Triumph
shine,
At least I’m sure they triumphed over mine.
Of ‘Music’s Triumphs’ all who read may swear
That luckless music never triumphed there.”
The poems “Triumphs of Temper” (1781) and
“Triumphs of Music” (1804) were Hayley’s chief
productions. He was the most ardent of all of those who
paid their homage to Anna Seward. Mr. Lucas informs us that
David Garrick appears also in the list. To the foregoing
names may be added Edward Jerningham, the friend of Chesterfield
and Horace Walpole, a dramatist as well as a poet; George Butt,
the divine, and chaplain to George III.; William Crowe,
“the new star,” as Anna Seward calls him, a divine
and public orator at Oxford; and Richard Graves, a poet and
novelist, the Rector of Claverton, who wrote “Recollections
of Shenstone” in 1788. These, and Thomas Sedgwick
Whalley, were perhaps the most learned of the vase group.
The latter, Fanny Burney says, was one of its best
supporters. He was a Prebendary of Wells Cathedral, and
corresponded a good deal with Anna Seward.
Wilberforce’s description of him is worth recalling, viz.,
“the true picture of a sensible, well-informed and
educated, polished, old, well-beneficed, nobleman’s and
gentleman’s house-frequenting, literary and chess-playing
divine.”
Anna Seward’s “Elegy on Captain Cook,” and
her “Monody on Major André,” were contributed
to the Vase, and immediately brought her into great repute.
Anna Seward made friends with, and had a great admiration for,
the celebrated recluses, “the ladies of Llangollen
Vale,”—Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah
Ponsonby. They were so called because when they arrived
their names were unknown. It is said that they never left
their home for 50 years, and were so absolutely devoted as to be
inseparable from each other. They adopted a semi-masculine
attire. These curious ladies,—“extraordinary
women,”—are described as ladies of genius, taste and
knowledge—who were “sought by the first characters of
the age, both as to rank and talents.”
She kept up a considerable correspondence with both of
them. Their house at Plas Newydd is described minutely and
at great length in one of her letters. It is still
standing, and continues to be visited by scores of
tourists. Lady Eleanor Butler died in 1829, and Miss Sarah
Ponsonby in 1831. One of Anna Seward’s poems is
entitled “Llangollen Vale,” and was inscribed to
these ladies, as likewise were some more of her verses.
In 1782 Anna Seward produced “Louisa,” a poetical
novel in four epistles. It ran through five editions.
She says that she received the highest encomiums upon the poem
“by the first literary characters of the age.”
It is now rarely read. However, the writer of an article in
“The Lady’s Monthly Museum” for March, 1799,
vol. 2, wrote that, “the story, though interesting enough,
is but a secondary object. It is told in strains, which,
for energy, voluptuousness, and dignity of description, are
rarely found in our language.” The writer further
states that “our readers will be amply gratified by a
perusal of the whole poem, which is everywhere equally replete
with genius and taste, happy invention, and a luxury of
glowing description.”
She found another writer of the time ready to defend her
against a reviewer who had brought a charge of
“accumulating in her dramatic characters glaring
metaphors,” and of aiming “to dazzle by superfluity
of ornaments.”
In 1790 Canon Seward died. He was deeply beloved by his
daughter, who most dutifully nursed him for some ten years before
his death.
Twelve years later Dr. Darwin died suddenly, in the very act
of writing a letter to Richard Lovell Edgeworth; and in 1804 Anna
Seward published a biographical Memoir of Darwin, in reference to
which Sir Walter Scott wrote, “he could not have wished his
fame and character entrusted to a pen more capable of doing them
ample and, above all, discriminating justice.” She
called Darwin her “bright luminary.” On his
death she wrote thus:—“His extinction is universally
lamented, from the most operative cause of regret; and while
disease may no longer turn the eyes of hope upon his
rescuing and restoring skill, the poetic fanes lose a splendid
source of ornament; philosophic science, an ingenious and daring
dictator; and medicinal art, a pillar of transcendent
strength.” The Memoir she called, “The
woman’s mite in biography.” This book,
notwithstanding Sir Walter Scott’s praise, is, nowadays,
considered but a poor piece of writing.
The Lichfield literary circle in Anna Seward’s time
included many learned people, for, besides Dr. Darwin, Richard
Lovell Edgeworth, and Thomas Day, may be mentioned the two Canons
of the Cathedral—Archdeacon Vyse and Canon Sneyd Davies, a
poet; the Rev. William Robinson (nicknamed “The
Rector” amongst his friends), a great wit, one who could
“set the table in a roar”; Sir Brooke Boothby, a poet
and politician; her cousin, the Rev. Henry White
[20], Sacrist of Lichfield Cathedral (who
married Lucy, the daughter of the Rev. John Hunter by his second
wife); and sometimes Dr. Johnson, but his presence was not much
appreciated. “There was,” wrote Sir Walter
Scott, “some aristocratic prejudice in their
dislike, for the despotic manners of Dr. Johnson were least
likely to be tolerated when the lowness of his origin was in
fresh recollection.”
How came Anna Seward to dominate and reign as the Queen over
the literary society in Lichfield? The great
“magnetic” power she must have possessed accounts to
a large extent for the popular adulation bestowed upon her.
Still, the circumstances of her residence in the Episcopal
Palace, and her being by birth a lady and endowed with a certain
amount of wealth, added to an attractive presence, must have
greatly helped her to attain the position.
Anna Seward certainly hated, and hated venomously, Dr.
Johnson, who was afraid of her, and he, she says, “hated
me.” She could not endure his mannerisms, but
mimicked his gestures and curious demeanours; calling him
“a despot,” “the old literary Colossus,”
an “envious calumniator,” “surly Samuel
Johnson,” “the massive Being,” “the old
elephant,” and “a growler.”
In 1787, Anna Seward tells us, she became acquainted with Mr.
and Mrs. Piozzi (formerly Mrs. Thrale), and on the
latter’s publication of Johnson’s letters, she
writes:—“Greatly as I admired Johnson’s talents
and revered his knowledge, and formidable as I felt the powers to
be of his witty sophistry, yet did a certain quickness of spirit,
and zeal for the reputation of my favourite authors, irresistibly
urge me to defend them against his spleenful injustice—a
temerity, which I was well aware made him dislike me,
notwithstanding the coaxing regard he always expressed for me on
his first salutations on returning to Lichfield.”
Again, in other letters, she says:—. . . “I have had
frequent opportunities of conversing with that wonderful man (Dr.
Johnson). Seldom did I listen to him without admiring the
great powers of his mind, and feeling concern and pain at the
malignance of his disposition. He would sometimes be just
to the virtues and literary fame of others, if they had not been
praised in the conversation before his opinion was asked—if
they had been previously praised, never.” . . .
“What right had a man who wrote a play for the
stage, to avow contempt for the theatric profession”? she
wrote, when referring to Johnson’s envy of David
Garrick. Boswell admitted, when he visited Anna Seward, in
1785, at Lichfield, that Johnson was “galled by
Garrick’s prosperity.” . . . “Who can think
Johnson’s heart a good one? In the course of many
years’ personal acquaintance with him, I never knew a
single instance in which the praise (from another’s lip) of
any human being, excepting that of Mrs. Thrale, was not a caustic
on his spirit; and this, whether their virtues or abilities were
the subject of encomium.” His opinions of poetry
were, she thought, “so absurd and inconsistent with each
other, that, though almost any of his dogmas may be clearly and
easily confronted, yet the attempt is but combating an
hydra-headed monster . . . Johnson’s ‘Lives of
the Poets,’ and all the records of his own life and
conversation, prove that envy did deeply stain his spirit.
To your question, ‘Whom could Johnson envy’? I
answer, all his superiors in genius, all his equals; in short, at
times, every celebrated author, living or dead . . . I
cannot help feeling that he has superiors, and that in a very
large degree, though they will not be found amongst our
essayists, where I acknowledge his pre-eminence. Johnson
was a very bright star, yet to Shakespeare and Milton, he was but
as a star to the sun . . . Gray was indolent, and wrote but
little; yet that little proves him the first genius of the period
in which he lived. I have been assured that he had more
learning than Johnson, and he certainly was a very superior
poet. Johnson felt the superiority, and for that he hated
him. . . . Johnson’s first ambition was to be distinguished
as a poet, and as a poet he was first celebrated. His fine
satire, ‘London,’ had considerable reputation; yet it
neither eclipsed, nor had power to eclipse, the satires of
Pope.”
The account she has given of Johnson’s last days and
hours differs very widely from Macaulay’s version, who
states that, “when at length the moment, dreaded through so
many years, came close, the dark cloud passed away from
Johnson’s mind. His temper became unusually patient
and gentle; he ceased to think with terror of
death, and that which lies beyond death; he spake much of the
mercy of God and of the propitiation of Christ.” In a
letter written by Anna Seward to T. S. Whalley, dated November
7th, 1784, she said, “The extinction, in our sphere, of
that mighty spirit, approaches fast. A confirmed dropsy
deluges the vital source. It is melancholy to observe with
what terror he contemplates his approaching fate.” In
a letter to Mrs. Knowles (the wife of Dr. Knowles, an eminent
physician in London, and in her younger days a well-known
Staffordshire beauty), dated March 27th, 1785, Anna Seward says,
“O, yes, as you observe, dreadful were the horrors which
attended poor Johnson’s dying state. His religion was
certainly not of that nature which sheds comfort on a death-bed
pillow. I believe his faith was sincere, and therefore
could not fail to reproach his heart, which had swelled with
pride, envy, and hatred, through the whole course of his
existence. But religious feeling, on which you lay so great
stress, was not the desideratum in Johnson’s virtue.” The reader must
decide for himself which of these two contradictory accounts he
will believe. It may be remarked that she was in “the
almost daily habit of contemplating his dying,” which she
describes as “a very melancholy spectacle.” She
informs us that it was at Johnson’s repeatedly expressed
desire that she often visited him.
* * * * *
In a letter written in 1785, to James Boswell, Anna Seward
said that she regretted it was not in her power to collect more
anecdotes of Dr. Johnson’s infancy. “My mother
passed her days of girlhood with an uncle at Warwick,
consequently, was absent from home in the school-boy days of the
great man; neither did I ever hear her mention any of the
promissory sparkles which, doubtless, burst forth, though no
records of them are within my knowledge. I cannot meet with
any contemporary of those, his very youthful days. . . .
Adieu, sir, go on and prosper in your arduous task of presenting
to the world the portrait of Johnson’s mind and
manners. If faithful, brilliant
will be its lights, but deep its shades.”
Anna Seward seems to have known everybody worth knowing, and
she met many celebrities of her day,—not only at Lichfield,
but when she visited Buxton and Harrogate, as she sometimes did,
for the Baths. Writing from Buxton in 1796 to Mr. Saville,
she said, “my acquaintance here seem to set a far higher
value on my talents and conversation, such as they are, than the
Lichfieldiens; but it is more than probable that novelty is the
cause of this so much more appreciating attention”; and,
further on, she adds that she had conversed with William
Wilberforce, the philanthropist, “who disappoints no
expectation his imputed eloquence has excited”; and also
with the luminous and resistless Lord Chancellor, Thomas Erskine,
“whose every sentence is oratory, whose form is graceful,
whose voice is music, and whose eye lightens as he
speaks.” She corresponded with Dr. William Lort
Mansel, when he was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in
1798, who was well known as a wit, and writer of epigrams, and to whom she was introduced by her cousin,
H. White, at Lichfield. In a letter written in 1806, she
said that “the animated attention with which he honoured
me, the praise he lavished on my poems, and the passages he
quoted from them, constituted one of the most poignant literary
gratifications I ever received. The hope that they may
live, is attached to the demonstrated impression they had made on
a mind of such distinguished classical endowment.”
Further on, she said that he often exclaimed, “Lichfield
is, indeed, classic ground of peculiar distinction.”
In a letter dated March 5th, 1789, written from Lichfield by
Anna Seward, she said, “I was honoured and blest by a two
hours personal conversation with the most distinguished
excellence that ever walked the earth, since saints and angels
left off paying us morning visits. To say that his name is
Howard would be superfluous. This is the third time he has
favoured me with his conversation on his way through this
town. I am truly glad of our King’s recovery, but yet
I should not walk half so tall upon a visit from
him. Mr. Howard presented me with his new publication, and
had previously given me the former.”
The Poet Laureate in 1785 was Thomas Warton, and she
corresponded with him, “our great Laureate,” as she
called him.
Miss Mitford has described Anna Seward as “all tinkling
and tinsel—a sort of Dr. Darwin in petticoats.”
Edgeworth described her as “a handsome woman of agreeable
manners, she was generous, possessed of good sense, and capable
of strong affection”; and Sir Walter Scott thought that she
must have been, “when young, exquisitely beautiful; for, in
advanced age, the regularity of her features, the fire and
expression of her countenance, gave her the appearance of beauty,
and almost of youth. Her eyes were auburn, of the precise
shade and hue of her hair, and possessed great expression.
In reciting, or in speaking with animation, they appeared to
become darker, and, as it were, to flash fire. . . . Her voice
was melodious, guided by excellent taste, and well suited to
reading and recitation, in which she willingly exercised
it.”
An accident to her knee in her youth prevented her from
riding, which, had she been able to do, she thought she would
have enjoyed.
She did not care for “eternal card-parties,” and
considered the card-table “an annihilator of
ideas.” She had a passionate love for scenery,
especially for mountain scenery, and in general for the pleasures
of landscape.
Her estimates of many of the poets born in her lifetime appear
in her letters, but most of their poetry was only read during
their respective lives, and for a few years after, and theirs,
like her own productions, are little known to readers of this
age, though it appears that she hoped her works would be read for
a long time after her death. She wrote, “If my poems
are of that common order which have, as Falstaff says, a natural
alacrity in sinking, the praise of hireling and nameless critics
would not keep them above the gulf of oblivion. If, on the
contrary, they possess the buoyant property of true poetry, their
fame will be established in after years, when no one will ask,
‘What said the reviewers?’” Her remarks as to plagiarism—petty
pilferings—and borrowing from others, to be found in her
letters, are most interesting. She thought that
“imitative traces, of one kind or other, may be found in
all works of imagination, up to Homer; and that he is not
detected in the same practice, is certainly owing to the little
that remains of the writings of his predecessors.”
Her religious views were broad. She felt “no great
reverence for Kings.” In politics she was a
Whig. “I was born and bred in Whiggism,” which
word, she tells us, was synonymous to “fool and
rascal,” from Johnson’s lips. It may be added
that Johnson also said, “the Devil was the first
Whig.” She confessed she had no great appetite for
politics, though she expressed her views pretty freely on the
subject. In 1790 the titles of nobility were suppressed in
France, and Anna Seward disapproved of Burke’s vindication
of hereditary honours. She thought that “they are
more likely to make a man repose, with slumbering virtue upon
them, for the distinction he is to receive in society, than to
inspire the effort of rendering himself worthy of
them. They are to men what beauty is to women, a dangerous
gift, which has a natural tendency to make them indolent, silly,
and worthless. Let property be hereditary, but let titular
honours be the reward of noble or useful exertions. France,
in her folly, has destroyed them totally, instead of making them
conditional.” Howbeit, titled people appear to have
been highly honoured by her, notwithstanding these
observations. By 1797 she had lost her long-existing
confidence in Pitt’s wisdom and integrity, and in 1798 she
thought he was “disqualified for retaining the reasonable
confidence of the people of England.” In 1801 she
wrote of “Pitt’s low and perfidious
manœuvres,” and she never changed her opinion of
him. She seemed unable to write what is called plain
English. Archdeacon Vyse is described by her as “a
man of prioric talents in a metrical impromptu.”
Another person “evinced an elevated mind,” while a
third exhibited an “attic spirit” in her
writings. An evening is described as being
“attic”; but even Pope, we may remark, calls a
nightingale an “attic warbler.” It
is true, however, he was writing poetry, not prose. Though
a Bluestocking, her praise was usually generously bestowed; she
knew well how to flatter. She, though unacquainted with
Latin, paraphrased Horace; and she admitted her ignorance of
French. She loved all animals, notably cats and dogs, and,
believing in a future existence for the dumb creation, wrote a
poem, entitled “On the Future Existence of
Brutes.”
The following are three of more beautiful stanzas:—
“Has God decreed
this helpless, suffering train
Shall, groaning yield the vital breath he gave,
Unrecompens’d for years of want, and pain,
And close on them the portals of the grave?
Ah, no! the great Retributory Mind
Will recompense, and may, perhaps, ordain
Some future mode of being, more refin’d
Than ours, less sullied with inherent stain;
Less torn by passion, and less prone to sin,
Their duty easier, trial less severe,
Till their firm faith, and virtue prov’d, may win
The wreaths of life in yon Eternal Sphere.
She appears to have liked all things bright and
beautiful. “It is too seldom,” she wrote,
“that people express a conscious enjoyment of
the present. While regret is busy with the past, and
expectation with the future, ennui usurps the place of
cheerful feelings, and thinks coldly of the social, and yawns
through the studious hour.” But as to Balls, she
tells us, “I am one of the creatures that love not Balls in
general.”
Had she lived now, she probably would have approved of women
having votes, for, concerning a book published in her life-time,
entitled, “Rights of Woman,” she
wrote:—“It has, by turns, pleased and displeased,
startled, and half-convinced me that its author is oftener right
than wrong. Though the ideas of absolute equality in the
sexes are carried too far, and though they certainly militate
against St. Paul’s maxims concerning that important
compact, yet they do expose a train of mischievous mistakes in
the education of females.” We may note that Tom
Paine, “the greatest of pamphleteers,” died in 1809,
whose pamphlets, “The Rights of Man,” and “The
Age of Reason,” achieved great success. Anna Seward
sympathised with the views expressed in his books on the French
Revolution, though she considered many of his views on
politics far too fanciful to be put into practice; moreover, she
thought they would, if adopted, “ruin the earth.”
Her affection for a Mr. Saville (“a man of sense, and a
scholar”) who was for 48 years Vicar-choral of Lichfield
Cathedral, appears to have been merely platonic, though deep and
sincere. In a letter dated August 31st, 1803, she tells us
that, “the dearest friend I had on earth, passed in one
quarter of an hour, from apparent health and even gay vivacity,
to the silence and ghastliness of death.” He died
August 2nd, 1803, aged 67 years. She erected a monument to
his memory in the Cathedral, and composed the verses inscribed on
it. His vault is on the south side of the green surrounding
the Cathedral.
In a letter to Sir Walter Scott, written in 1807, the poetess
remarks that her “astonishment and disgust” rose to
their utmost height while she read Wordsworth’s poem,
“The Daffodils”—“dancing daffodils, ten
thousand, as he says, in high dance in the breeze beside the
river, whose waves dance with them, and the
poet’s heart, we are told, danced too.” She
deemed this unnatural writing, and mentions some of his verses
she liked, notably the “Leech-Gatherer.” If he
had written nothing else, that composition might stamp him, she
thought, a poet of no common powers. Lovers of poetry
generally, however, think “The Daffodils” one of the
most beautiful poems ever written.
Mr. Alfred Austin, the Laureate of our own day, has recently
written in an article, entitled, “The Essentials of Great
Poetry,” that the English masters of song are, Chaucer,
Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, and he tells us that
only the merest fraction of Wordsworth’s work is real
poetry. Anna Seward would seem to have agreed with the
selection of these names, if we substitute Pope for Byron.
However, the latter was, we must recollect, only born in
1788. She would surely have welcomed Mr. Austin’s
estimate of Wordsworth! Anna Seward considered
Southey’s genius, beyond comparison, superior to that of
Wordsworth. She wrote in 1796, “This is the age of
wonders. A great one has lately arisen in the
poetical world—the most extraordinary that ever appeared,
as to juvenile powers, except that of the ill-starred
Chatterton—Southey’s Joan of Arc, an epic poem of
strength and beauty, by a youth of twenty.” Cowper
was, to her mind, a vapourish egotist and a fanatic. She
hated his Calvinism, and thought that the spirit of scornful
denunciation everywhere prevails when Cowper reprehends the
errors of mankind. Still, in answer to a request for her
opinion of Cowper, she wrote, “He appears to me at once a
fascinating, and a great poet; as a descriptive one, hardly
excelled;” but she would not allow that his constitutional
melancholy was any excuse for his misantrophy. She writes,
“Dante is the only poetic author of high reputation, whom I
cannot understand. Were you not struck with the inherent
cruelty of that mind which could delight in suggesting pains and
penalties at once so odious and so horrid?” We may
remember that Dante has stated that “I found the original
of my hell in the world which we inhabit.”
She did not like “gloomy religionists,” as she called the Calvinists. One acquaintance she
evidently did not care for, because he talked
“methodistically.” Hannah More, she lamented,
“exposed herself to the reproach of that absurd and
intolerant Methodism with which I have long believed her
tainted.” She wrote to the Rev. R. Fellowes;
“the eminent champion in our day of true and perfect
Christianity,”—“How happily have you removed
that dire impediment to rational faith, the doctrine of original
sin, which the revived Calvinistic school, of which Mr.
Wilberforce is the head, so injudiciously presses upon the
attention of the public. . . . The licentious, or giddy votaries
of fashion, wish to have an excuse for persisting in their
career, and think they have found it in the dark and cruel
difficulties in which resumed Calvinism involves
Christianity.”
Anna Seward did not sing, but enjoyed music. She learnt,
late in life, to handle the harpsichord sufficiently well to play
it in little private concerts. Musical festivals she
frequented, and admired Elizabeth Billington’s singing.
This vocalist is remembered in our day as one of
England’s greatest singers, especially at Handel
commemorations. “Handel,” Anna Seward said,
“is as absolute a monarch of the human passions as
Shakespeare.” . . . “Were Handel living, I should
approach and address him with much more awe than any merely good
sort of body upon the throne of England.” . . .
“Poetry itself, though so much the elder science, for
music has been a science only since the harmonic combinations
were discovered, possesses not a more inherent empire over the
passions than music, of which Handel is the mighty master; than
whom
‘Nothing went before so great,
And nothing greater can succeed.’” . . .
“Milton knew music scientifically, and felt all its
powers. To Samuel Johnson, the sweetest airs and most
superb harmonies were but unmeaning noises. [39] I often regret that Milton and
Handel were not contemporaries; that the former knew not the
delight of hearing his own poetry heightened
as Handel has heightened it.”
The poetess thought that “The contemptible rage for
novel-reading is a pernicious and deplorably prevalent taste,
which vitiates and palls the appetite for literary food of a more
nutritive and wholesome kind. . . . I am well assured, that
novels and political tracts are the only things generally
read.” . . . Though disavowing a propensity to read and to
love novels, yet she always considered the “Clarissa”
and “Grandison” of Richardson—“glorious
Richardson” she calls him—as the highest efforts of
genius in our language, next to Shakespeare’s plays.
She abjured the coarse, unfeeling taste of those who preferred
Fielding’s romances to the glories of the Richardsonian
pen. In 1792 she wrote that “the London papers had no
authority for saying that I was writing a novel. The design
of framing such a composition never occurred to me; though I am
well aware that novels and political tracts are the only things
generally read. If I could write like Richardson, I would
turn novelist; but then my work would be too good to be
popular;—for how is Richardson neglected!”
Mr. Andrew Lang, at the festival this year of the Royal
Literary Fund, stated that the only literary people who prospered
were “the novelist and the gentleman who remembered many
people in his reminiscences. The essayist was no longer in
favour. He had been killed by fiction and
photographs. It was the purpose of the Royal Literary Fund
to aid authors who needed assistance, and all who were not
novelists did need it.” It seems that the public, a
hundred years ago, had the same taste as the public of
to-day! It is novels, novels, novels, which alone satisfy
their appetites, when they feed on books!
“Wit was never my talent,” Anna Seward says, but
she has recorded that when the “rulers of our
Cathedral” decreed a four years’ silence for
“the pealing organ and the full-voic’d choir,”
because of alterations to be made there, she considered them
“a little bedemoned, or much be-deaned—which is
nearly the same thing.”
Anna Seward was a faithful and generous friend; her
fault would appear to have been her conceit. As Mr. Lucas
finely remarks, everything conspired to increase her self-esteem
and importance, for the three things that might have corrected it
were all lacking: poverty, London life, and marriage.
The poetess had several lovers, and was jilted by one, who was
a native of Lichfield, and who afterwards became a General.
“But overtures, not preceded by assiduous tenderness and,
which expected to reap the harvest of love without having nursed
its germs, suited not my native enthusiasm, nor were calculated
to inspire it.” She wrote in 1767, from Gotham
Rectory, “to a female mind, that that can employ itself
ingeniously, that is capable of friendship, that is blessed with
affluence, where are the evils of celibacy? For my part, I
could never imagine that there were any, at least, compared to
the ennui, the chagrin, the preclusion, which hearts, cast
in the warm mould of passion, must feel in a marriage of mere
esteem.”
As to sermons, she considered, “immoderate length in a
sermon is a fault which excellence itself cannot
expiate.” . . . “The present mode of dress in our
young women of fashion, and their imitators, is, for its
gross immodesty, a proper subject of grave rebuke for the
preacher.” . . . “Nothing is more disgusting to me,
and, indeed, to the generality of people, than dictatorial
egotism from the pulpit. Even in the learned and aged
clergyman it is priestly arrogance. When we see that man in
the pulpit whom we are in the habit of meeting at the festal
board, at the card-table, perhaps seen join in the dance, and
over whose frailties, in common with our own, no holy curtain has
been drawn, we expect modest exhortation, sober reasoning,
chastened denunciation.” . . .
Anna Seward informs us that she was “no great reader of
sermons,” but she wrote a sermon for “an ingenious
young clergyman of our neighbourhood, who has just taken orders,
and who wishes to make his first essay in the pulpit with
something of my writing. If I know anything of my talents,
sermonising is their forte.” She wrote another
sermon for a friend, a funeral sermon, delivered on a festival day—Whit-Sunday, and chose the text from
the 7th chapter of Job; a verse than which she thought there was
nothing in Scripture more sublime:—“The eyes of them
that have seen me, shall see me no more—thine eyes are upon
me—and I am not.” “The young
preacher,” she says, “spoke this oration with solemn
earnestness and unaffected sensibility.”
Her love and admiration for Lichfield began early in life, and
remained keen to its close. When twenty-four years old she
wrote from Gotham Rectory, in 1767, “We bend our course
towards Lichfield, lovely, interesting Lichfield, where the
sweetest days of my youth have passed—the days of
prime.” No City could compare with Lichfield in her
eyes, and no Cathedral with that of Lichfield when the music to
be heard there was also taken into account. After visiting
York Cathedral, that “vast and beautiful House of
God”: she herself styled it “noble and
transcendent,” she wrote, “I passed through York, and
heard choral service in the noblest Cathedral in the world; . . .
but if the sight perceived the undying
superiority of York Minster, my ear acknowledged the yet more
transcendent, harmonic advantages of the Gothic boast of
Lichfield.”
Lichfield, although it may seem to the casual visitor rather a
sleepy place to-day, appears to have been pretty lively in Anna
Seward’s day. “Plays thrice in the week, balls
and suppers at our Inns, cards and feasting within our
houses.” And again, “Lichfield has been of late
wondrous gay. Six private balls were given, which I was
persuaded to attend.”
Sir Walter Scott corresponded for some time with the poetess
before his visit to Lichfield in May, 1807. He wrote in
1805, “believe me, I shall not be within many miles of
Lichfield without paying my personal respects to you, and yet I
should not do it in prudence, because I am afraid you have formed
a higher opinion of me than I deserve; you would expect to see a
person who had dedicated himself much to literary pursuits, and
you would find me a rattle-skulled half-lawyer, half-sportsman,
through whose head a regiment of horse has been exercising
since he was five years old; half-educated, half-crazy, as his
friends sometimes tell him, half-everything, but entirely Miss
Seward’s much obliged, affectionate and faithful servant,
Walter Scott.”
She wrote of him, “the stranger guest delighted us all
by the unaffected charms of his mind and manners,” and
Scott, Lockhart tells us, “had been, as was natural,
pleased and flattered by the attentions of the Lichfield poetess
in the days of his early aspirations after literary
distinction.”
No one can deny that Anna Seward was the most famous poetess
of her day, but there is, as Sir Walter Scott wrote, “a
fashion in poetry, which, without increasing or diminishing the
real value of the materials moulded upon it, does wonders in
facilitating its currency, while it has novelty, and is often
found to impede its reception when the mode has passed
away.” It must be admitted that her poetry is not
likely ever again to be much read; still, a study of her, and of
the Lichfield Savants of her time, must always be
instructive.
Writing as to the probability of the poems being much
read, Sir Walter Scott says: “The general reception they
may meet with is dubious, since collectors of occasional and
detached poems have rarely been honoured with a large share of
public favour.”
There is yet, it may be suggested, another reason, which is,
that her poetry was far too artificial, and abounds in words now
unfashionable, even when used in prose.
Anna Seward died 25th March, 1809, and is buried Lichfield
Cathedral, probably in the choir. She had always prayed for
a sudden death, but though this prayer was not literally
answered, she did not long suffer serious illness, for on the
23rd of March she was seized with “an universal
stupor,” which only continued until the 25th.
The poetess has always been known as “The Swan of
Lichfield,” though no one seems to know who gave her the
name.
There are two portraits of Anna Seward, painted by Romney; the
latest particulars with regard to their history and present
ownership is to be found in “Notes and Queries” 10,
s. IX., 218. Her portrait by Kettle is in the possession of
Colonel Sir Robert T. White-Thomson, K.C.B., of
Broomford Manor, Exbourne, N. Devon, and he also possesses a
miniature of her by Miers. It is not known who the painter
was of the portrait forming the frontispiece of this book, which
is the same as the frontispiece to “The Lady’s
Monthly Museum” for March, 1799.
Anna Seward commenced her Will thus:—“I, Anne, or
as I have generally written myself, Anna Seward, daughter
of the late Reverend Thomas Seward, Canon Residentiary of the
Cathedral Church of Lichfield, do make and publish my last Will
and Testament in manner following:—I desire to have a
frugal and private funeral, without any other needless expense
than that of a lead coffin to protect my breathless body.
If the Dean and Chapter shall not object to our family vault in
the choir being once more opened, I desire to be laid at the feet
of my late dear father; but, if they object to disturbing the
choir pavement, I then request to be laid by the side of him who
was my faithful excellent friend, through the course of
thirty-seven years, the late Mr. John Savile,
in the vault which I made for the protection of his remains in
the burial ground on the south side of the Lichfield Cathedral: I
will that my hereafter executors, or trustees, commission one of
the most approved sculptors to prepare a monument for my late
father and his family, of the value of £500; that with
consent of the Dean and Chapter, they take care the same be
placed in a proper part of Lichfield Cathedral.” The
Will is a very lengthy one, many relations, connections, servants
and friends being remembered in it. Lockhart relates that
“she bequeathed her poetry to Scott, with an injunction to
publish it speedily and prefix a sketch of her life, while she
made her letters (of which she had kept copies) the property of
Mr. Constable, in the assurance that due regard for his own
interests would forthwith place the whole collection before the
admiring world. Scott superintended accordingly the edition
of the lady’s verses, which was published in three volumes
in August, 1810, by John Ballantyne and Co., and Constable lost
no time in announcing her correspondence, which
appeared a year later, in six volumes.”
As regards the literary correspondence, Lockhart observed,
“no collection of this kind, after all, can be wholly
without value; I have already drawn from it some sufficiently
interesting fragments, as the biographies of other eminent
authors of this time will probably do hereafter under the like
circumstances.”
The Staffordshire Advertiser for July 8th, 1809,
contained the following notice:—“We hear Mr.
Constable intends to publish Miss Seward’s correspondence
before Christmas next; and if the public in general be as anxious
for its appearance as the inhabitants of Lichfield and its
vicinity, it must prove to him a very valuable legacy
indeed.”
A monument, the work of Bacon, was erected in the Cathedral,
commemorating the parents of Anna Seward, her sister Sarah, and
herself. It was originally placed in the north transept,
but is now in the north aisle of the nave. There is a
representation of the poetess mourning her relations, while her
harp hangs, neglected, on a tree.
Sir Walter Scott wrote the lines on the monument, which
run as follows:—
Amid these Aisles, where once his precepts
showed,
The heavenward pathway which in life he trode,
This simple tablet marks a Father’s bier;
And those he loved in life, in death are near.
For him, for them, a daughter bade it rise,
Memorial of domestic charities.
Still would you know why o’er the marble spread,
In female grace the willow droops her head;
Why on her branches, silent and unstrung,
The minstrel harp, is emblematic hung;
What Poet’s voice is smother’d here in dust,
Till waked to join the chorus of the just;
Lo! one brief line an answer sad supplies—
Honour’d, belov’d, and mourn’d, here Seward
lies:
Her worth, her warmth of heart, our sorrows say:
Go seek her genius in her living lay.
