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HARVARD COLLEGE
LIBRARY
POCNCSICS.

VERI
TASR
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
MRS. ELLEN HAVEN ROSS
OF BOSTON
RECEIVED JUNE 28, 1938
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I





A WOMAN
OF WIT AND WISDOM






Omery Walker Ph se
Elizabeth Carter
from a drawing by.tir Thomas Lawrence PRA.


A WOMAN
OF VIT AND WISDOM
A ”..
Of ELIZ::. CARTIR
BY
\LICE C. C. GA' : :
THOR OF A LATER PS
'
WITH PORTR'..'
AND.
. E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
"I TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1906





A WOMAN
OF WIT AND WISDOM
A MEMOIR OF ELIZABETH CARTER
ONE OF THE
'BAS BLEU' SOCIETY
(1717–1806)
BY
ALICE C. C. GAUSSEN
AUTHOR OF 'A LATER PEPYS'
WITH PORTRAITS, ILLUSTRATIONS
AND FACSIMILE
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1906


Ir2103.8..
HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
FROM THE 6TY OF
MRS. ELLER!' AVEY R088
JUNE 28, 1938


PREFACE
Few but the most enthusiastic students of the
eighteenth century can find time to dig for the
hidden treasures that lie buried in the numerous
volumes containing the life and letters of Mrs.
Elizabeth Carter. To throw light upon the
brilliant picture of her personality, brimful of
animation, and of mental and physical activity,
and to focus the many side-lights that stream in
from various sources upon the stage on which
this remarkable woman moved, with men and
women of genius clustering in the foreground,
it is necessary to explore the mass of contem-
porary literature that recalls her times, and the
gifted circle to which she belonged.
The endeavour to bring back, however
faintly, even a breath of the atmosphere of
those days that are long since gone is a re-
freshing and invigorating task. No picture can
ever be complete. There must always be a side


vi
PREFACE
that is not shown. Every artist has a tendency
to catch the characteristics that appeal to him-
self, and give his sitter somewhat of his own
expression, as in the French fable each animal
asserted that the harlequin was entirely of his
own hue. But it is in the expression that the
likeness consists, and it is just this that is to
be found surviving in the quaint and original,
though perhaps slightly eccentric character of
Elizabeth Carter. Though the versatility of her
thoughts and sayings may make the narrative
appear to a certain extent disjointed, I have
tried, as far as possible, to tell the story of
her life in her own words, gathered from all
sources, for it is only by letting the real Mrs.
Carter speak for herself that we can see her as
she was.
Erratic and eccentric she could only appear
to those who mistrust the unconventional, and
hesitate to say and write what they really think.
Elizabeth Carter spoke her mind without dis-
guise, for the simple reason that of her inmost
thoughts she had no reason to be ashamed.
Reserve, while adding force and dignity to the
strongest characters, may if carried too far
stifle and kill originality, and reduce them to a
conventional dead level. Mrs. Carter, though


PREFACE
vii
she 'lets herself go,' is entirely free from the
opposite extreme of gush and sentimentality.
Epictetus taught men to restrain, but not sup-
press, the movements of the heart.
It was a strong sympathy between the
ancient philosopher Epictetus and his eigh-
teenth-century translator, Elizabeth Carter,
which led her after the lapse of many centuries
to reveal him to English readers. Both were
thinkers; both were sufferers; both bore their
sufferings cheerfully according to their different
lights, and both were philosophers.
Mrs. Carter saw no virtue in suffering. She
did not demand that the narrow path should
be full of thorns; but was content with those
already planted there, and did not insist on the
spiked girdle and other self-imposed aids to
mental and physical discomfort. For this,
some will condemn her as too self-satisfied and
optimistic.
On the other hand, her childlike faith and
implicit assurance of a joyful hereafter will not
be in accordance with the more fashionable
views of those who hold the doctrine 'Carpe
diem.' Between these two extremes she steered
a middle course, but in that happy medium,
where truth is generally to be found, she


viii
PREFACE
escaped mediocrity. Her rule, like that of
Epictetus, was 'bear and forbear;' she just
went her own way, and left other people to go
theirs. She never tried, like the man in the
fable, to carry the donkey, or to pose in un-
natural attitudes.
Elizabeth Carter possessed a genius for
friendship that prevented her life being a lonely
one, though in some respects it was solitary,
as the lives of all must be whose thoughts and
aspirations are not quite normal, or on a level
with that of their average fellow-creatures, for
the probability of being associated with those
of like mind, scattered here and there in the
world and up and down the ages, is always
remote. From her inability to make talk, she was
held of small account by those 'Deal misses'
whose chatter only reflected the local gossip of
their native town, and no one could suppose
that any of the 'Strephons' who in her youth
had done her the honour of wishing to marry
her would have proved congenial companions
through life. Neither the faithless versifier to
whom she was really attached, nor the im-
petuous youth whose 'wig was always in an
uproar,' nor yet the inquisitive Yorkshireman
would have added to her happiness or useful-


PREFACE ix
ness. As to those grave prelates, statesmen,
and men of letters who in her later years the
w0rld declared would marry Madam Carter,
she was far too sensible a woman to mistake
their friendship and respect for any other senti-
ment, or to suppose that they had 'any such in-
tention.' However, under other circumstances,
she would no doubt have accommodated herself
cheerfully to their idiosyncrasies as she did to
those of her own relations. She never com-
plained of being misunderstood by her family,
that constant lamentation of the egotistical
which a present-day preacher wisely meets with
the prompt assurance that the family of the
interesting sufferer understand her only too
well.
Mrs. Carter's life was spent to a great
extent in retirement, but her outlook on the
world from her little ' vinegar bottle' at Deal,
like that of Epictetus from his hut at Rome,
was one of an acute and judicious observer of
manners, and her instructions, like his, were
free from dogmatism, vanity, or rudeness. She
was a woman of the world in the best sense
of the word. By her little touches of humour
she shows how much she knew of human
nature and its ways. She never sneers, nor


X
PREFACE
frowns, nor grumbles; she is never cynical,
nor sarcastic, nor contemptuous; but she has
a wonderful way of hitting hard and hitting
straight. If at times she seems to soar in the
clouds, she always manages to come down on
her feet. Her flights of imagination are just
enough to give us for one instant an additional
peep of that smile which beams, and plays, and
twinkles, and hovers over her whole character,
as it is conjured up to us.
It has been said that in common with other
of the 'Bas Bleu' ladies, Elizabeth Carter
lacked a certain lightness of touch; but it must
be remembered that it is always easier to float
gracefully and quietly with the stream than
to pull vigorously against it, and those who
joined Dr. Johnson in his endeavour ' to make
mankind more reasonable creatures,' trod the
thorny path of the reformer.
Her eager activities in the early morning
hours may perhaps give the idea of restlessness.
There is an impetus in the woman which might
expose her to the charge of having been impul-
sive and headstrong, and unable to sit still. But
we look again, and see her at her work, and
her assiduity is such, she is so riveted, so con-
centrated, that we seem to find her all at once


PREFACE
xi
transformed to a silent, motionless statue, totally
absorbed, and wholly unconscious of every-
thing except her task. She also knows how
to rest, and can enjoy 'basking in the sun,
indolently happy, mighty tranquil, in an abso-
lute vacation of all thought.' Both in repose
and in action she possesses a charm and dignity
which her marvellous vitality and vivacity only
serve to enhance.
It speaks well for the bracing climate of
Deal that such a character should have been
nurtured there. Like the sea, which is ever
changing its tints only to reveal fresh beauties,
so this hardy child of nature seems to breathe
the fresh sea air of her native place all through
her life. Like the sea-gull that rests calmly on
the crest of the stormy wave, or skims along it
and dives for its prey, so this lady of many
sides and accomplishments seems to have been
here, there, and everywhere, roaming free and
unfettered in the very largeness of her own
expanse and outlook. The hard strain of work
brought her no weariness, no reaction, for she
was not in the habit of looking back; she was
far too interested ever to be bored. With her,
ennui was impossible. There is a bonhomie
about her that speaks for itself, and the object


xii
PREFACE
of this book will be fulfilled if it puts its readers
in touch with the clever, kindly cheerfulness
which belongs to Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, and is
peculiarly her own.
I desire to express my thanks to Mr. Robert
Brudenell Carter, whose grandfather, Henry
Carter, was half-brother to Elizabeth, and until
he entered the University was entirely edu-
cated by her. Besides writing the genealogical
appendix relating to the Carter family, Mr.
Brudenell Carter has allowed me to use letters
and papers in his possession, and two books of
hitherto unpublished correspondence that were
kindly placed at his disposal by the Mayor of
Deal and the 'Carter Institute' in that town.
Also I desire to thank Mr. Taylor-Whitehead
for his kindness in making researches and
furnishing me with many interesting facts.
The portrait of Bishop Hayter has been
reproduced, by kind permission of the Bishop
of London, from the picture at Fulham Palace,
and the view of Deal, by the courtesy of Mr.
Soutter, from an engraving in his possession.
For most of the other illustrations I am
indebted to Mr. Brudenell Carter. The
original medallion, reproduced on the cover of
the book, was modelled from the life in wax,


PREFACE
xiii
and cast in hard white enamel paste by James
Tassie (1735-90), the well-known Glasgow
artist, who settled in London in 1766. He exe-
cuted portraits of Adam Smith and many other
eminent Scotsmen. Specimens of his work are
now rare in this country, as they have been
largely acquired by American collectors. But
there is a collection of his medallions in the
Scottish National Portrait Gallery. His me-
dallion of Elizabeth Carter is enclosed in a
crystal pendant, and bears the monogram of
her sister, Mrs. Douglas, at the back. It passed
afterwards into the possession of Mrs. Carter's
niece, the Princesse de Vismes et de Penthievre,
and is now owned by Mr. Brudenell Carter.
In this, as in all my work, I acknowledge
the kind help and advice that I have found
literary friends ever ready to give.
Alice C. C. Gaussen.
88 Eaton Place: February 1906.





CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PREFACE
PAGE
PREFACE . . . . . . . . vii
I 'A LONG LIFE WITHOUT A STORY'. . . I
11. DEAL . . . . . . . . . 29
III. MRS. CARTER'S Views ON MARRIAGE ; . 60
IV. ARCHBISHOP SECKER AND CATHARINE TALBOT : 78
V. MRS. CARTER'S LITERARY WORKS AND PHILO-
SOPHICAL VIEWS . . . . . . . 92
VI. SOCIETY, · · ·
· 125
VII. DR. JOHNSON . . . . . . . 161
VIII. MRS. MONTAGU
. . . 174
IX. MRS. VESEY . . .
. . . . 189
X. LORD BATH . . . . . . . 202
XI. SPA AND FOREIGN TOUR . . . . . 215
XII. BODY AND MIND . . . . . . 227
APPENDIX: GENEALOGICAL NOTE. BY ROBERT
BRUDENELL CARTER, F.R.C.S. . . . 255
LORD BATH
202





ILLUSTRATIONS
ELIZABETH CARTER . . . . . Frontispiece
From a crayon drawing by Sir Thomas Lawrence,
P.R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.
DEAL . . . .
· · To face p. 30
From an engraving after a painting by J. W. M.
Turner, R.A.)
THOMAS HAYTER, BISHOP OF LONDON
From a painting in Fulham Palace.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON . . . .
From a painting by Joseph Highmore in the National
Portrait Gallery.
CATHARINE TALBOT
From the frontispiece to 'The Works of the late
Miss Catharine Talbot,' 1812.
THOMAS SECKER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTER-
BURY . . . . . . . .
From an engraving after a painting by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, P.R.A.
BOOK PLATE OF ELIZABETH CARTER . .
I 28
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
After the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.)
WILLIAM PULTENEY, EARL OF BATH . .
From a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., in
the National Portrait Gallery.)
ANCELL MONUMENT IN GREAT BARFORD
CHURCH . . . . . . .
From a photograph.
I0O
162
202
FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM ELIZABETH
CARTER TO HER BROTHER, DATED NO-
VEMBER 1, 1798 . . . .
.
186


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Elizabeth Carter was born in 1717
Wrote verses in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' signed
'Eliza' 1734
Published a small collection of poems . . . 1738
Translated from the French an attack on Pope's
'Essay on Man,'by M. Crousaz . . . . 1739
Translated from the Italian Algarotti's 'Newtonian-
ismo per le Dame' 1739
Commenced her translation of Epictetus at the re-
quest of Archbishop Secker 1749
Published her translation of Epictetus by guinea
subscription 1758
Printed a second collection of poems, dedicated to
Lord Bath 1762
Removed to a house of her own at Deal . . . 1762
Tiavelled on the Continent with Mr. and Mrs.
Montagu and Lord Bath 1763
Lost her friend, William Pulteney, Earl of Bath . 1764
Archbishop Seeker died . . . . . . 1768
Catharine Talbot died 1770
Dr. Nicholas Carter (her father) died . . . . 1774
Dr. Johnson died 1784
Mrs. Carter was presented to Queen Charlotte at
Lord Cremorne's house at Chelsea . . . . 1791
Died February 19 1806


A WOMAN
OF
WIT AND WISDOM
CHAPTER I
'A LONG LIFE WITHOUT A STORY'
As the personality of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter
claims our attention, more than either her life
or works, her uneventful career, marked by few
of the epochs which form the milestones of
the individual life, is best recorded in her own
quaint phraseology. No attempt has been
made to modernise her language, which is
characteristic both of herself and her period;
all that she wrote, said, or thought has, as far
as possible, been interwoven into the story,
which was the method by which Boswell said
'mankind were enabled to see his hero live.'
Modern English she could not endure. She
B


2
A WOMAN OF
lived to see the mushroom growth of a new
language, filled with phrases which nobody
could have understood when she was young,
and there seemed to be such a rage for writing;
and ' Oh, lack! What writing,' as somebody
used to say, 'what writation it all is!' It was
her woeful destiny on one occasion to entertain
a Beauty, who made most fearful counterfeit
coinage of the current language of this land.
Happily, she could not foresee the modern
young woman, who is not even as 'a jewel of
gold in a swine's snout,' for she often lacks
beauty as well as discretion, and will tell you
with a languid drawl, that she is 'so fearfully
devoted to electric light.' Only when the
phrase had meaning, when under the influence
of strong emotion she thought the whole cir-
culation of her blood would have stopped, did
Elizabeth Carter declare she had never seen
or felt anything so 'shockingly -well acted' as
the part of Shylock.
To Epictetus's uneventful life and circum-
scribed surroundings Dean Farrar applies the
saying, that 'Great men have often the
shortest biographies, their real life is in their
books ;' it might equally be said of his translator,
Elizabeth Carter, that her life was in her


WIT AND WISDOM
quaint personality, well-regulated mind, and her
shrewd and witty sayings.
She was born on December 16, 1717, at
Deal, and passed the greater part of her life in
those regions of obscurity and dulness where
nothing remarkable ever happened since the
landing of Julius Caesar, and all that took
place ten miles distant was absolutely unknown;
thence she could transmit no journal but a table
of the tides, or a register of the weather. For
the journal that consists of facts must contain
facts of great consequence. But in her quiet
and obscure life she read, wrote, thought, and
felt, and the whole wide creation was open to
her observation.
Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of the
Rev. Nicholas Carter, D.D., Perpetual Curate
of the chapel that was erected in Deal when
the church was found to be too small and dis-
tant. Dr. Carter was one of the six preachers
in Canterbury Cathedral. At the age of ten
she lost her mother, whose death was attributed
to vexation at the loss of a handsome fortune
she had brought her husband. The bursting
of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 swept away
the greater part of it, and the poor lady, who
B 2


A WOMAN OF
had not the spirit to conquer fate, fell into a
gradual decline.
A perfect knowledge of French, acquired at
an early age from a Huguenot refugee minister
at Canterbury, was the foundation of Elizabeth
Carter's education; her father taught her,
together with her brothers, Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, though the slowness of her apprehen-
sion tired out his patience. Italian, Spanish,
and German she taught herself without any
assistance, and later in life she set herself to
learn Portuguese, but for want of books she
made no great progress. Lastly, she taught
herself Arabic, and made an Arabic Dictionary,
containing various meanings of words which
elsewhere had been improperly translated.
• Louis XV., when his daughter's lectrice
confessed to being only familiarly acquainted
with two foreign languages, replied • En voilà
bien assez pour faire enrager un mari. Eliza-
beth Carter, however, inflicted her learning on
no man.
Youthful prodigies were not unknown or
unapproved in the eighteenth century. Lord
and Lady Grey's little girl, "just turned
five, had no joy but in books which she
picked out for herself,' and her favourite read-


A WOMAN OF
tracted a habit which she was never able to
shake off, of taking snuff to keep herself awake
during her midnight studies, and she used also
to put a wet towel round her head, and chew
green tea and coffee. But she soon found
herself obliged to avoid all'intemperance in
Hebrew and Greek,' for if she did not content
herself with a moderate degree of application
(eight to twelve hours a day), her perverse
temperament rendered her incapable of any
application at all. However, an aching head
proved an excellent antidote against a giddy
one, and there was no fear of its being turned
round like a whirligig by the perpetual motion
of London life; it also made her very philo-
sophical as to all vanities of a hat and feathers.
Had many of the speakers in both Houses been
similarly afflicted, she believed it would have
greatly tended to the good order and quiet of
the nation, but trembling nerves she found
were a much greater bar to knowledge than
the heaviest weight of dulness. When Dr.
Johnson complained of tooth-ache a voluble
Frenchman, regardless of probable cause and
effect, exclaimed “Ah, Monsieur, vous étudiez
trop!'
At one time she made considerable pro-


WIT AND WISDOM
gress in astronomy. A friend wrote to
her:
'You have been so taken up with the stars
that you forget us poor mortals here below.
Your mind and body have quarrelled lately,
and are separated—in plain English, your wits
are gone a wool-gathering. Build no castles
in the air, forsake your imaginary palace in
the Milky Way, and bless us, your quondam
friends, with your pleasant conversation.
'P.S.—A great many people here run
mad.'
Her severe studies were varied by equally
severe recreation, which she thus described:
'I have played the rake enormously these
last two days, and sat up till near three in the
morning. I walked three miles in a wind that
I thought would have blown me out of this
planet, danced nine hours, and then walked
back again. I am not so devoted to these
earthly entertainments but that I still retain a
great regard to the stars.'
'Dancing,' she said, 'was not an argument
of being either well or happy.' It seemed odd
that, having thought of little but books at
fifteen, she should at five-and-twenty run mad
after balls and assemblies; however, she


8
A WOMAN OF
declared she was too inconsistent in her follies
to be long under the power of any one, and per-
haps the next might be learning the Chinese
language or studying Duns Scotus and Thomas
Aquinas.
At the age of twenty-two Elizabeth Carter
consulted a doctor, who gave her little hopes
of ' a cure on this side of the grave,' alternate
succession of ease and pain was all he could
prophesy for her through life. She sub-
sequently enjoyed nearly seventy years of
vigorous health, that must have inclined her
to distrust physicians who assume the role of a
prophet.
She therefore was very careful of her health,
and upon that principle 'exceedingly afraid of
doctors;' of all considerations next to a good
conscience, health, she said, was the most im-
portant, as the sine qua non not only of every
comfort, but of all the active duties of life. For
those who set out on a mad pursuit after know-
ledge, and think it possible to improve their
understandings while they neglect their health,
soon run themselves out of breath, and are
stopped in the midst of their career, when a
sober, moderate pace might have carried them
securely to their point.


WIT AND WISDOM
Instead of wearying herself, however, to
acquire perfect health which was not in her
power, she was thankful for the amount she
enjoyed; for the knowledge of what positive
health meant, she was content to wait till some
future state of being. In spite of an untoward
constitution and youthful indiscretions, she was
granted what she called the ' tremendous bless-
ing' of long life, and died in her eighty-ninth
year.
She was always an early riser, and one
summer that she was compelled to pass in the
care of her health and the utter neglect of her
intellect, she rode or walked out by the advice
of her physician between four and five o'clock
every morning.
When engaged in this eager and somewhat
violent pursuit of health, she rambled at times
to the top of a hill by moonlight, enjoying a
superiority over the slumbering world with a
sense of dignity in finding herself awake. After
contemplating the still beauties of the land-
scape in the soft light of the moon, all the
spirit and glory of the opening day enlivened
her walk home, as the sun darted its full
splendour on the waves. Dr. Johnson, one
New Year's Day, made the heroic resolve to


10
A WOMAN OF
rise in future about eight. In this he per-
severed until the following March, when he
said that, though he had accomplished but little
when he was up, he had obtained for so many
more hours the 'consciousness of being. Some
may object that eight o'clock is not very early ;
to such he would answer, “Why, sir, a London
morning does not go with the sun.' Elizabeth
Carter found something inexpressibly delightful
in an autumn morning, when the elements
seemed to be reposing after they had finished
their work of distributing the blessings of
heaven to the inhabitants of the earth.
When debarred from the delight of rambling
alone by a set of 'rakish fellows' who infested
the place, she chose a companion of Amazonian
bravery who feared nothing but apparitions
and frogs, from which she promised to secure
her if she on her part would undertake to
defend her from May-bugs and men, which
she most dreaded ; so by the strength of that
alliance they both proceeded in great safety.
Without vanity, Elizabeth Carter claimed
to be one of the best walkers in England, and
her fellow-travellers followed her panting and
grumbling at a considerable distance, climbing
up the hill • Difficulty,' till at length they sank


WIT AND WISDOM n
into the 'Slough of Despond.' One of her
sisters declined to go with her until she had
learnt to fly, and another of her followers sent
word that she could not possibly venture any
more, as her last walk had absolutely dislocated
all her bones.
So she had no one to depend on but her
half-sister Mary, who was as strong as a little
Welsh horse, and trudged after her with great
alacrity, promising never to forsake her, if she
should walk to the North Pole. Those frightful
insects May-bugs, which so greatly molested
her walks in spring, were 'creatures with only
one head, no feathers, but two wings, a good deal
less than a crab, and not at all like it.' This
very accurate description of her formidable
enemies was at least as clear, she maintained,
as many she had met with in books, and would
enable the reader to form a very perfect idea
of these insects, that devastate the flowery fields
of Kent like the Northern army in Joel.
Elizabeth Carter describes the manner in
which she continued to pass her days at Deal
with little variety for nearly a century. 'As
you desire a full and true account of my whole
life and conversation, it is necessary in the first
place that you should be made acquainted with


12 A WOMAN OF
the singular contrivance by which I am called
in the morning. There is a bell placed at the
head of my bed, and to this is fastened a pack-
thread and a piece of lead, which, when I am
not lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken
pane, is conveyed through a crevasse of my
window into a garden below, pertaining to the
sexton, who gets up between four and five and
pulls the said packthread with as much heart
and good will as if he were ringing my knell.
Some evil-minded people have most wickedly
threatened to cut my bell-rope, which would be
the utter undoing of me, for I should infallibly
sleep out the whole summer. And now I am
up, you may inquire "To what purpose?"
I sit down to my several lessons, as regular as
a schoolboy, and lay in a stock of learning to
make a figure with at breakfast.' Boswell re-
lates that when the sexton failed she contrived
that her chamber light should at a certain hour
burn a string to which a heavy weight was
suspended, which then fell 'with a strong,
sudden noise' that roused her from her sleep.
'My general practice about six,' she con-
tinued, 'is to take up my stick and walk,
sometimes alone, and at others with a com-
panion whom I draw out half asleep and, con-


WIT AND WISDOM
sequently, incapable of reflecting on the danger
of such an undertaking; however, she has the
extreme consolation of grumbling as much as
she pleases without the least interruption,
which she does with such a variety of comical
phrases, that I generally laugh from the be-
ginning to the end of our journey.
'Many are the exercises of patience she
meets with: sometimes half-roasted upon an
open common, then dragged through a path in
the middle of a cornfield, bathed up to the ears
in dew, and perhaps forced to scratch her way
through bushes never before frequented by any
animal but birds.
'In short, towards the conclusion of our
walk, we make such deplorable ragged figures,
that I wonder some prudent country justice
does not take us up for vagrants, and cramp
our rambling genius in the stocks; an appre-
hension that does not half so much fright me,
as when some civil swains pull off their hats,
and I hear them signify to one another, with a
note of admiration, that I am Parson Carter's
daughter. I had rather be accosted with "Good
morrow, sweetheart! Are you walking for a
wager?"
'When I have made myself fit to appear


A WOMAN OF
among human creatures we go to breakfast,
and we are extremely chatty; this and tea in
the afternoon are the most sociable parts of the
day.
'We have a great variety of topics, but
whenever we get beyond Latin and French my
sister and the rest walk off, and leave my father
and me to finish the discourse and the tea-
kettle by ourselves, which we should infallibly
do if it held as much as Solomon's molten sea.'
Their discourse, like their correspondence,
was probably often carried on in Latin. Many
of their letters are dated 'Anno Mundi' instead
of 'Anno Domini,' on the basis of the Julian
chronology. A Xenophon of Elizabeth's, now
in the possession of Mr. Brudenell Carter, is
dated in her handwriting ' 6449.'
'After breakfast,' she continued, 'my first
care is to water the pinks and roses, and when
this task is finished I sit down to a spinnet,
which in its best state might have cost about
fifteen shillings, with as much importance as if I
knew how to play. After deafening myself for
about half an hour with all manner of noises,
I proceed to some other amusement, and thus
between reading, working, writing, twirling the
globes, and running up and down stairs to see


16
A WOMAN OF
I've considered your doubts of the ways and means how,
And will give you the very best council I know :
Even purchase a 'larum as loud as e'er squallid,
And set but your hour, and you're sure to be called.'
Elizabeth Carter thus describes her accom-
plishments :-'My present reigning scheme is
music. Having for some time past made a
composition of noises between the hissing of a
snake and the lowing of a cow upon a German
Aute, I am now set down to the spinnet, which
unfortunately stood in my way, and before I
can play three bars in any one tune, am trying
at a dozen. I content myself with thinking it
is a superficial world one lives in, and super-
ficial understandings suit it best, so vive la
bagatelle, I'll e'en trifle on and be content.'
Though these spasmodic efforts to make
music failed, throughout life she loved the art,
and enjoyed the works of Handel and Corelli
beyond all others. “Mr.' Handel's 'powerful
magic' recalled to her thoughts fine passages
from her favourite authors, striking conversa-
tions, and the memory of those she loved.
• Though he deserved to be maintained,' she
doubted how long his oratorios, once so
crowded, might be fashionable, for he played
to empty walls in the opera house. It pained


WIT AND WISDOM
her to notice amongst the most constant fre-
quenters of his oratorios 'profligate poor
wretches, who lived inharmonious and disor-
derly lives,' and she lamented to see 'a passion-
ate love of music and the fine arts often united
with a dissipated head and wicked heart.'
However, it was more fashionable to run
mad about Mr. Thomson's play 'Tancred and
Sigismunda,' to the success of which tragedy
the acting of David Garrick and Mrs. Cibber
no doubt contributed. It was written in 1748,
the year of his death, by James Thomson,
author of 'The Seasons,' the Roxburghshire
poet, who was born at Ednam in 1700.
Of painting she wrote: 'I have lately
taken great pains to acquire some little notion
of this delightful art; but with such wretched
success, that I begin to lose courage. I never
had any instruction but from books as unintel-
ligible to me as if they were written in the
Calmuck language; I have nothing to assist me
but industry; genius I have none, and I want
mightily to know whether one can make any
progress without it.'
She wrote to a friend: 'Pray can you
knit? I have just taken it into my head
to learn; I have taken incredible pains, and
c


18
A WOMAN OF
observed as profound a silence as if I had
entered myself a disciple in the school of
Pythagoras, to the great offence of Mrs.
Underdown, who insists that knitters are as bad
company as smokers, and observing that I
felt somewhat vain of my proficiency in finish-
ing a round in somewhat less than an hour, has
endeavoured to mortify my vanity by telling
me that, notwithstanding all my efforts, I am
blundering at an art in which I shall be excelled
by every goody in the parish.'
To Elizabeth Carter's active mind the
monotonous drudgery of learning to knit
appeared likely to qualify her for that earliest
of philosophical schools, which was one of
moral abstinence and purification.' Pythagoras,
the founder, attached great importance to
mathematical studies, and while counting her
stitches, she, too, probably found that numbers
are the principles of all things; she hoped, no
doubt, that her work would eventually become
like the universe according to the doctrines of
Pythagoras, a harmonious whole (Kosmos),
though the object attained after finishing a
round in somewhat less than an hour might
appear, like the ultimate aim of his philosophi-
cal school, to be wrapped in mystery.


WIT AND WISDOM
The traditional gypsy woman has always
been represented with a pipe in her mouth, but
of smoking amongst educated English women
of the eighteenth century there does not appear
to be any record, although they were not averse
to a pinch of snuff. Had Dr. Johnson fore-
seen the present necessity of a cigarette to
soothe the overwrought feminine nerves, he
would not have so hastily condemned knitting
as the nearest approach to idleness. John
Bright used to testify from his own experience
to the calming power of this mechanical work,
to which he had recourse when harassed with
the affairs of the State, and which to the
habitual knitter requires no effort of the brain.
Elizabeth Carter had also been greatly en-
gaged in the 'important affair of working a
pair of ruffles' and handkerchief, and though
her friends highly applauded such laudable
imitation of the quiet domestic virtues of our
great-grandmothers as working in muslin and
lawn, they thought it would be an unpardon-
able sacrifice in those capable of employing
their eyes so much better.
Recognising his daughter's unusual abilities,
the worthy and learned Dr. Carter desired her
to qualify herself by the study of German for
c 2


20
A WOMAN OF
a place about the Court. Though the narrow
circle which bounds the views of a mere cour-
tier would have been very uncongenial, her pen
would probably have produced pictures of the
household of the Princess of Wales (mother of
George III.) as vivid as those in Fanny Burney's
Diary, which have made good King George and
his worthy Queen real and living persons for us.
She might also have influenced that un-
happy Princess Caroline Matilda, afterwards
Queen of Denmark, who wanted nothing but a
blameless life to have been accounted one of
the noble army of martyrs. The King of Den-
mark thus excused his cruel conduct to his wife.
He wrote to George III. that his sister had
behaved in a manner that had obliged him to
imprison her, but that from regard for his
Majesty her life should be safe.
Elizabeth Carter had heard with sympathetic
interest how this poor child, as she then was,
had gone out alone into the wide world, not a
creature that she knew attending her farther
than Altona. It was worse than dying, for it
was dying out of one bad world into another,
where she would have cares, and fears, and
dangers, and sorrows that were yet all new
to her.


WIT AND WISDOM
Contented as Elizabeth Carter was with her
manner of life, other people did not seem to
think it a life to be contented with. A good old
gentleman had proposed a variety of schemes,
which, though they might be very advantageous,
presented no attractions to her. To give up
one's ease and liberty, and to be under perpetual
restraint for the sake of wearing a finer gown,
eating a greater variety of dishes, and seeing
more company and fewer friends, appeared to
her a very strange scheme; and moreover,
unless it were to instruct the young Princesses
in Latin and Greek, which since the days of
Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey had
never been thought of, she could not imagine
for what important function she was designed.
The night before receiving a letter suggest-
ing her appointment to a post in the Princess
of Wales's household, she dreamed that for the
greater convenience of curling her hair she had
cut off her head: which she considered marvel-
lously applicable—for what was going to Court
but setting one's cap handsomely at the ex-
pense of losing one's head?
Few people were more attentive to the
subject of Court Intelligence than Elizabeth
Carter; for those engaged in the bustle and


A WOMAN OF
shifting scenes of Court life have very little
leisure to attend to the spectacle from which
quiet observers, who content themselves with
seeing the drama without any wish for the
pleasures and tinsel, and the long trains of
the actors, derive so much amusement. She
willingly adopted the following advice from her
father: 'Preserve the character of an inoffen-
sive and prudent woman, take extreme caution
concerning the company you keep, be civil
to all, not too intimate with any, and very
reserved with some, and your extraordinary
qualifications will in time produce something
desirable.'
Like Maria Edgeworth, who cheerfully wel-
comed a perpetual succession of stepmothers,
Elizabeth Carter lived on very happy terms
with her father's second wife, a woman of good
heart and useful life, whose devotion to her
husband was not of that narrow and selfish
kind that seeks to alienate a man from his own
children. She was one with him in the loyal
discharge of his duty to those who had a prior
claim. She was not a woman of strong nerve.
An unexpected offer of marriage for her step-
daughter Elizabeth 'quite scared her,' and
when it was rumoured that the French fleet


WIT AND WISDOM
23
was about to land 12,000 troops at Deal, she
'gaped,' whilst her husband merely looked pro-
found. Fear equally revealed the characters of
the servants. Polly secured her money, and
Betty wrung her hands, lifted up her eyes and
roared most wonderfully. At the time of this
good woman's death, Elizabeth Carter wrote:
'A few hours after my arrival at Lambeth I
received the sad news of the death of my
mother; she was no otherwise related to me
than by marrying my father, but her uncommon
care of his family rendered her a most valuable
blessing to us all. After her laborious cares,
I hoped she would have enjoyed relaxation and
ease, and that by my attentions I should con-
tribute to her happiness. How shall I miss
her kind indulgence, her tender concern for my
health, her constant watchful care of me, and
the particular assistance she was always ready
to give !
Dr. Johnson marvelled when he heard
that Hannah More and her four sisters lived
happily together ; but they kept a school—five
unemployed women living harmoniously in one
house might have aroused his incredulity.
Be it remembered to the credit of blue-
stockings,' often exposed to ridicule by the


24
A WOMAN OF
uncouth appearance of those who cultivate their
minds, that two such distinguished literary
women as Elizabeth Carter and Maria Edge-
worth shone conspicuously in their home duties
and the complication of step-relationships.
Elizabeth Carter entirely undertook the
education of her half-brother Henry (who was
twenty-one years her junior), from whom she
was inseparable. A friend wrote to her : ‘Do
not get into such idle Mama-panics about “your
son Henry,” because panics are endless, and
make reasonable people silly, and happy people
miserable.'
Much contrivance was necessary to find
employment for this lively boy; "he skipped,
danced, and played all manner of monkey
tricks, which she never checked, but racked
her brain to amuse him, allowing him the use
of every picture book in her cupboard, and
permission to stun her head by playing with
his tops and whips in her chamber ; but of all
this he soon tired. At length, anticipating the
• kindergarten 'scheme of after generations,
she hit upon a lucky expedient by setting him
to draw perpendiculars and triangles. A scale
and compasses kept him as quiet and as well
pleased as heart could wish.


WIT AND WISDOM
She considered it her duty to contribute to
the cheerfulness of her family society, and said
if people would recollect what they do not suffer
it would alleviate the sense of what they do.
'My nerves,' she wrote, 'are in a wretched
state and my spirits fluttering and low. Very
well, but I am not blind, nor in prison, nor among
heathen, nor betrayed by friends. As it is a
duty to feel for the sorrows of all, so it is
equally one to enjoy with cheerful thankfulness
one's own blessings.' She had learned from
Epictetus that ' If man is unhappy, hisunhappi-
ness is his own fault, for God has made all men
to be happy and free from perturbations. We
sit trembling for fear that something will
happen, and weeping, lamenting, and groaning
for what does happen, and yet God, like a true
Father, has given us faculties to bear with
greatness of soul and manliness everything that
happens without being depressed or broken
by it.'
She had nevertheless her seasons of de-
pression. In 1745 she wrote to a friend:
'Such is the present state of things I must
visit you in sackcloth and ashes, as the habit
best suited to the now disposition of my mind.
Indeed one would not imagine it from the


WIT AND WISDOM 27
happiness and perfection, which vanish with
the fickle cause that gave them being, and
one is left in the midst of a wild, perplexed
solitude, astonished and utterly at a loss what
road to take or where to meet with any object
to divert it. What a figure I must appear to you!
I am ashamed but not sorry, as it begins to do
me a great deal of good; the picture I have
been drawing of myself is so deformed that it
quite shocks me. Surely conversing with you
has a wonderful power of harmonising my
thoughts, for I find myself getting into good
temper apace—Me void donc passablement gai,
le monde se repeuple et tout va asses bien. I'll
e'en put on my Venetian cap, stick a great
sunflower in my bosom, look very fine, laugh,
and be as well pleased with people and things
as I used to be.'
Elizabeth Carter's advice to whoever will
apply it to herself:
'Madam,—Are you young? Then be wise
and be a wonder. Are you old? Be cheer-
fully prudent and decently agreeable; as for
your opinions, be consistent in all and obstinate
in none, and rejoice that you are got so far in
safety through a dangerous world, Are you
naturally gay? Why, then, never go out of


WIT AND WISDOM
29
CHAPTER II
DEAL
The spot on earth where one dwells may be
nothing or may be a great deal. Elizabeth
Carter thought her abode the most charming
she had ever seen. The stormy ocean, hang-
ing cliffs, and rocky shore formed a fine
contrast to the 'cultivated, sociable, and good-
humoured country' that lay between Deal and
Canterbury. From the gentle beauties of the
landscape the mind turned to the vast, wild,
awful works created by the Almighty hand, and
untouched by human littleness. “Man,' said
Epictetus, 'is a witness summoned by God not
only to be a spectator, but an interpreter of
His works, and he bids us to take care not to
die without having seen them.'
•What have I done to you, and what has
poor Kent done to you,' wrote Elizabeth Carter,
‘that in your direction you stick us in the


A WOMAN OF
mire of Sussex, when we are in reality so
happy as to be placed on the coast of
Kent?'
There summer might be seen in all its
charms, the sun shining bright and warm by
day, and the moon shedding a soft light and
cool freshness over the evening, so that the
fields did 'laugh and sing.' Yet very fine
weather was so transitory a good in that un-
certain sky that Mrs. Carter found there was
no great hope that it would wait till she had
more leisure to attend to it.
On the ist of June poor mortals on the
Kentish coast might be petrified with cold
winds, or on Midsummer Day alternately
scorched and frozen by a hot sun and cold
north-east wind; but in all weathers she had
the resolution to ramble in the fields, although
she had rather be loitering over a book, from
a conviction that any kind of weather is more
wholesome than too much Greek. Whenever
she tired of reading, her garden amused and
occupied her, even when the effects of a long
succession of north-east winds were shown in
the shabby, drooping appearance of her flowers.
Watering and planting were her great resource.
Elizabeth Carter loved her birthplace, as the



Rode
DEAL
From In ongrating after a painting by J. W. M. Turner, R.A.


WIT AND WISDOM
31
' frozen Russian prefers his interminable wastes
of snow to the citron groves and spicy fragrance
of Arabia. During nearly a century Deal was
her home, though the winter storms made fear-
ful havoc of her aching head. She could not
put her nose out of doors without securing her
cap and bonnet in a very powerful manner'
with the largest pins she could find to avoid
the awkward distress of having them blown to
the Goodwin Sands.
From her window, which looked towards
the North Foreland, she enjoyed a view of the
sea of which she never wearied. Èvery hour
it wore some new appearance. Sometimes a
dark cloud, illuminated by a rainbow, over-
shadowed part of the ocean, while over the
other the setting sun was shining on the sails
of the ships, forming a variety of the most
sublime and inconceivable beauty. At one
moment it displayed all the grandeur of a
storm, the waves of the Goodwin Sands dash-
ing against the clouds, or when the storm had
spent its fury from all points of the compass it
would settle into a calm. The Greeks had an
epithet for the sea, which interpreters translate
unfruitful, because, say they, the sea does not
produce any vineyards. Now the same word,


A WOMAN OF
Elizabeth Carter declared, by another deriva-
tion signifies 'unwearied,' and 'indefatigable,
and forms an epithet of the highest propriety
and beauty.
Sometimes she would take solitary moon-
light walks on the beach, indulging her melan-
choly thoughts by a view of the ocean that
had separated her from a favourite brother, a
lieutenant in the Navy, who died on foreign
service; at others, she would sit on the shore
surveying the dashing waves, or in her airy
little room, listening to the howling wind,
beating rain, and roaring billows. Fond as she
was of the sea, her house was too much like
the Eddystone, and her rooms (which were
smaller than she could wish) were in every-
thing but motion absolute cabins. But, then, it
was in such a situation that even her intem-
perate love of air had enough to content it.
She always called it the 'Vinegar Bottle,' pro-
bably alluding to its shape. She considered a
high hill, where one is solidly fixed and sur-
rounded by the free air of heaven, a good
station; but to be suspended between earth
and sky, and enclosed in walls of brick and
stone, as in the 'flatts' in Edinburgh, was a
most fearful stjour; it reminded her of the 'old


WIT AND WISDOM
woman who was drawn up in a basket three or
four leagues as high as the moon.'
Mrs. Montagu gladly left the magnificence
of her palace in Portman Square and the
Gothic beauties of Sandleford, and Mrs. Vesey
deserted her blue room in Bolton Street or
her Irish home full of mortal comforts and con-
veniences, to visit their friend in her 'Vinegar
Bottle.' Mrs. Carter's only attendants were
two damsels, who on one occasion during her
absence had behaved so wickedly that she
endeavoured to replace them by two others,
who knew no earthly thing save how to speak
the truth and do as they were bid. One such
prize she quickly found, and when another
equally ignorant was secured, she was con-
stantly employed, first in teaching herself, and
next in teaching them the art and mystery of
their business ; for they, poor souls, would have
run their noses against every door in that in-
tricate little tenement without knowing whither
it would lead, if she had not served them as
guide. Whether they would get acquainted
with the odd ways of their mistress she could
not tell, but she was not discouraged by any
former want of success; for trial is always a
duty, and with success she had nothing to do.
D


A WOMAN OF
Locks and bolts she always looked upon as the
most severe satire upon mankind. Elizabeth
Carter was not amongst those who
'Prepare a home from which to run away.'
To the indolence of her temper a journey
of sixteen miles seemed as formidable as a
voyage to 'Grand Cairo,' and that distance
placed her friends as completely out of her
reach as if they were perched on the farthest
point of the Orkneys. With the coaches and
chariots of this world she had nothing to do,
and her knowledge of riding was so slight
that she would as soon think of flying through
the air on the back of a hippogriff (the
winged horse of Ariosto). She told a cala-
mitous story of how she had ridden out one
evening to take the air with a friend, when her
friend's horse started and threw her. 'But as
the creature happened to have no legs it was
pretty near the ground, and she received little
damage except the breaking of a little glass
bottle in her pocket, which she feared might
put out her eyes.' In 1744 she described her-
self as having become so extremely plodding
and stupid, that she feared all her gay, whim-
sical ideas would dwindle into a sober relish for


WIT AND WISDOM
a comfortable life, and Instead of soaring in the
air as volatile as a skylark, she expected to be
soon reduced to waddling upon earth like a fat
goose. In the spring the usual flight of Kentish
people to London depopulated the county, and
when her own wings were clipped, she found
it melancholy to sit listening to the roaring
of the waves and the horrible howling of the
north-east wind. But she was well adapted
for solitude, for she possessed a genius for
'castle building' that would have afforded her
many happy hours if she had been banished
to the Orcades.
Her situation at this period resembled that
of poor Hero; and, warned by her fate, a
friend wrote: 'Do not expect a Leander from
the opposite coast, but rather return to London,
and when he is found may he be equally
faithful and more happy.'
Her friends at Deal knew nothing of the
larger world in which Elizabeth Carter shone
as a prominent member of the most exclusive
literary society; they were indifferent to every-
thing outside their own narrow circle, and could
only imagine her as taking part in their local
society, and joining their parties of whist and
quadrille. As no one there thought either better


· 36
A WOMAN OF
or worse of her for her attainments, she contrived
to live happily without spirit, taste, or senti-
ment,'or a hundred other fine things which her
blue-stocking friends in town reckoned among
the necessaries of life.
When engaged for the afternoon with a
party of vociferous fat gentlewomen’at fancy
quadrille, she could with great tranquillity
make tea for them, and quietly withdraw her
thoughts to a more amusing entertainment
than their comments on the black aces, voles,
sanprendres, &c., &c. She had enough com-
mon sense to keep in good humour through the
daily round, and to prevent her from running
the needle into her fingers when she was at
work. She found the good men and women
with whom she was associated as unentertain-
ing as dormice, yet as they bore the figure of
human creatures, and might be, for aught she
knew, of more use in society than herself, she
did not feel at liberty to shock their ideas of
good manners by drawing a book out of her
pocket. She comforted herself with the thought
that they would soon betake themselves to
their black aces, and though she might be
stifled with the heat, she would not be obliged
to talk. Of all the teasing exercises of the
OOD


WIT AND WISDOM 37
spirits, she found few so wearying as that of
mere mechanical, uninteresting talking, unless
looked upon as a wholesome mortification.
She had a 'laudable affection for conversation,
but mortally hated talking. A long walk was
required to give her spirit to pay a visit to two
or three of the Deal 'misses.' 'Oh, dear! oh,
dear !' she would cry, how can I contrive to
make talk ?' The gossip in a country town
like Deal made novel-reading unnecessary, for
the scandal gleaned from a few of these visits
supplied all the plots of the ordinary novel,
with the advantage of freshness and origi-
nality. She consoled herself with the reflec-
tion that perpetual intellectual pleasures might
in our present imperfect state withdraw
us from our duties, and weaken our human
sympathies. Neither her intellectual powers
nor futile efforts to make small talk were
always required to enliven these ceremonies,
for with a very aching head she paid a visit
where her hostess talked very loud, the parrot
screamed, the lap-dog barked, the child cried,
and the maid, to quiet all this tintamarre
blew a horn.
The less pretentious of her townsfolk were
quicker to recognise her talents, and were


38 A WOMAN OF
proud of the distinction they reflected on their
locality.
'Why, Punch,' said the showman of a pup-
pet-show at Deal,' what makes you so stupid?'
'I can't talk my own talk,' answered Punch;
'the famous Miss Carter is here.'
The inhabitants of Deal were amply satis-
fied with all that pertained to themselves; they
had an excellent set of actors, that wanted very
few qualifications but washing their faces and
learning to read; and as to the choir of St.
Paul's Cathedral, Mrs. Carter exclaimed: 'We
have such a very fine psalm singing here at
present, that we would hardly condescend to
listen to any music but our own.'
Occasionally foreign talent was exhibited.
Monsieur Blanchard fixed on a spot on the
South Foreland, whence he proposed to begin
a flight to Calais in his balloon. This attempt
Mrs. Carter viewed with great distrust, for she
supposed that the principles upon which a post-
chaise moves upon earth are equally secure,
and yet some chance might overturn it, and
'non deplaise a Monsieur Blanchard, a tumble
from the clouds is rather more formidable than
the breaking of a wheel or an axle on a turn-
pike road.'


WIT AND WISDOM
The ' Gentleman's Magazine 'gives a ' parti-
cular account of a voyage in a grand balloon, in
the atmosphere, from Dover Castle to France,
by those skilful and enterprising philosophers
Messrs. Blanchard and Jeffries,' and from this
we learn that, after waiting at Dover from
December 25, 1784, for a favourable gale to
reach the Continent, they determined on Friday
morning, January 7, 1785, to prepare for their
voyage, the sky being clear, the weather
moderate, and the wind N.N.W. At eight
o'clock the signal gun was fired, the flag hoisted
at the Castle, and soon after twelve the ascent,
which was successful in every way, took place.
Although the aeronauts had to throw out all
their ballast and gear, and finally cut away
the car itself in order to escape falling into
the Channel, at three o'clock they 'entered
France,' and descended at a point just twelve
miles from the coast. Some years later, when
the French proposed transporting an army of
invasion across the Channel in 1797 by means
of balloons, Mrs. Carter sarcastically remarked:
'Surely they must have great confidence in the
friendship of the "Prince of the power of the
air."'
The good people of Deal contented them-


A WOMAN OF
selves with plain practical sins, such as smug-
gling, and never troubled their heads about
speculative refinements upon wickedness. Mrs.
Carter heartily wished that all books that
taught people to be wicked under colour of
argument and principle were publicly burnt at
Tyburn.
'Our great people,' she wrote, 'break
through all the sacred authority of law, and
lose all sense of what is decent in pursuit of
French diversions, and are surrounded by
French tailors, French valets, French dancing
masters, and French cooks. Our fine ladies
disgrace the "human shape divine," and become
helpless to themselves and troublesome to all
the world besides, with French hoops, and run
into indecent extravagance of dress, inconsis-
tent with all rules of sober appearance and good
economy. Little people always follow the ex-
ample of their superiors, and we misses in the
country have our heads equally turned with
French fashions and French fooleries, which
makes us break the law, and smuggle for the
sake of getting French finery.'
In this description she hardly does herself
justice, for she had never squandered her
money on blonds and gauzes.


WIT AND WISDOM
Mrs. Carter was no free trader. Smuggling
was a subject on which she felt strongly, and
she was always willing to assist her suffering,
misled neighbours by any means in her power.
It hurt her to see the carriages of people of the
first rank in the kingdom leave Deal laden with
every article of contraband goods, and she was
indignant that the rich and great should avail
themselves with impunity of the frauds which
caused these poor, miserable people to be
brought to ruin, and entailed a fearful sacrifice of
life, for this infamous trade indirectly contributed
to many murders. The insolence of the smug-
glers was no doubt very great, as their trade
was encouraged by those who both made the
laws and broke them; but there were sad de-
vastations amongst them, and the seizures, like
their gains, were immense. They reckoned that
if they saved one boat out of three they were
quits, which showed the amount of their profits.
Colonel Thomas Best, of Chilston Park
and Cowling Castle, Kent, M.P. for Canter-
bury, and Governor of Dover Castle, was
amongst Elizabeth Carter's friends and neigh-
bours. His nephew, Thomas Best, lived at
Boxley, near Maidstone, on the direct road
between Deal and London. At dead of night


A WOMAN OF
his slumbers were occasionally disturbed by
sounds, the cause of which he suspected, and
perhaps did not wholly condemn. On opening
the window to make a faint protest, he received
the invariable reply, 'Good night, Squire; it's
all right, we'll shut the gates !' with which ex-
planation he had perforce to content himself,
though he knew full well that twenty stalls in
his stables would that night be vacant, and that
all the servants, grooms, gardeners, stablemen,
and labourers were out on the same errand.
Even the outrider who preceded the family
coach and four with a large lamp strapped to
his waist in front, when they dined out, and
was called 'the Moon,' would at that moment
be lighting the smugglers through the green
lanes that then did duty for roads. In Boxley
Woods contraband articles were temporarily
hidden, and removed when convenient to a
neighbouring well, where they could be safely
stowed away in a chamber twenty feet below
the surface of the ground, of sufficient size in
which to turn a coach and four. There they
awaited removal by other willing helpers from
a neighbouring parish, and in this manner
eventually reached their destination. Though
murders and hangings must occasionally result


WIT AND WISDOM
when thieves fall out, in the main the whole
country side worked harmoniously together,
with a right good will and common purpose,
and were all ready to join the gay throng not
only for the greed of gain, but the love of sport.
These tales of bygone days are recounted
by Thomas Best's grandson, Major Mawdistly
Gaussen Best, who also declares that his wife's
ancestor, Sir William Brockman, of Beech-
borough, was placed in rather an equivocal
position by the untimely leakage of a keg of
brandy just as his carriage was crossing
Rochester Bridge. It had been stowed away
ostensibly by the servants, in the sword case
at the back of the carriage, and covered with a
hanging cushion against which the passengers
rested. If they should be attacked by high-
waymen the cushion would be removed, and
the swords pulled out at a moment's notice.
From the same source a tradition is handed
down directly of the origin of the word 'grog.'
Admiral Vernon, of Nacton, Suffolk, and M.P.
for Ipswich, who took Portobello with six ships
of the line on November 22, 1739, married
Sarah Best, of Boxley. He is described by his
relative as an obstinate old fellow, who bullied
the naval authorities. When his men were out


A WOMAN OF
of beer he substituted rum and water, to which
the men promptly gave the name of ' grog' in
compliment to the old suit of grogram that the
Admiral invariably wore. His monument in
Westminster Abbey was erected by his uncle,
Lord Orwell.
Deal had become an important place about
the beginning of the eighteenth century. It
possessed three streets running parallel to the
sea, but until 1790 it was neither paved, lighted,
nor cleaned. The inhabitants were seafaring
men, and many of them smugglers. The sea
immediately opposite the town affords a pro-
tected anchorage, about eight miles long and
six broad, called the Downs, and was the ren-
dezvous for the East India Fleet and other
shipping; sometimes nearly 400 sail were safely
riding there. The Goodwin Sands form the
southern boundary of the Downs, and extend
about ten miles, almost from Ramsgate to
Kingsdown. In stormy weather, when the waves
break over them with violence, they are a source
of great danger to ships coming from the East.
At low water, people frequently land on them,
but when the tide begins to flow the sand be-
comes soft and quick, and the largest vessel
driven upon them is quickly swallowed up.


WIT AND WISDOM 45
A set of brave and experienced seamen,
called "hovellers,' assisted ships in distress, and
were the means of rescuing thousands of lives.
William Falconer, in the first canto of his
poem, "The Shipwreck,' dedicated in 1762 to
Edward, Duke of York, describes the skill and
intrepidity of these brave men ; whose exploits
were often varied by acts of extortion and
plunder.
In 1799 Deal was in a great bustle with
the embarkation of troops for Holland. The
hovellers’ volunteered their services for carry-
ing not only the men, but their baggage, on
board, and though their impedimenta appeared
to Elizabeth Carter sufficient for an army like
that of Xerxes, they transported it in safety
with surprising despatch. They patriotically
refused any reward from Government, in spite
of the ‘amazing fatigue’ they had endured.
As the troops and baggage-waggons passed
Mrs. Carter's door, she saw with satisfaction
that the bulk was increased by beds slung like
hammocks, so that the soldiers would not be
obliged to lie on the damp ground. The Duke
of York gave the men, in whose boat he went
off, ten guineas.
Elizabeth Carter's parcels were conveyed


46
A WOMAN OF
from London in a Sandwich hoy,' which was
a barge with one deck and one mast, something
between a boat and a ship. In the Fairy
Queen'we read of the arrival of three hoys
of Saxons. Though goods had never been
known to miscarry, it 'was proper' to require
the master's name. From Sandwich to Deal
they were forwarded once a week by a carrier.
With regard to the origin of the Goodwin
Sands, tradition asserts that during the reign
of William Rufus an island belonging to the
great Earl Godwin was suddenly submerged
as a mark of Divine displeasure.
Lesser upheavals caused by internal dis-
sensions disturbed the peace of this quiet little
town at a later period.
Dr. Carter incurred the severe displeasure
of his congregation by refusing to read the
Athanasian Creed, so, in order to appease their
wrath, his brother gave him 1,000l. wherewith
to keep a curate to read it for him.
A friend wrote a satirical letter to the
• Mayor and Corporation of Deal,' congratulat-
ing them on the step they had taken in 'pre-
senting their Minister in the Spiritual Court
for omitting to read that antient and venerable
part of our Liturgy. The laudable zeal they


WIT AND WISDOM 47
had shown for the purity of the Catholic Faith
would transmit their memories with a sweet-
smelling savour to the latest posterity. It would
be said that when orthodoxy was retiring from
the innermost parts of the land, the men of
Deale arrested her flight, and detained her for
a while on the borders of the sea.' After a
learned theological disquisition, the writer con-
cludes : ''Tis possible you may suspect I have
been talking to you hitherto in a bantering and
sarcastic strain. I am really very much in
earnest when I ask whether you can approve
the severe treatment that Dr. Carter has
received? Allowing that you have fallen into
a squabble with him about the weighty matter
of a parish clerk, could you settle the dispute
no otherwise than by driving him to keep a
curate? You bear testimony to the honesty
of his character at the same time that you hurt
his fortune. You must know him to be a man
above prevarication, who would not outwardly
assent to what he could not approve. I hope
that now the Doctor is a declared heretic, you
are so consistent as to avoid all manner of con-
versation with him; nay, I can hardly think it
quite safe for you to hold any correspondence
with his most ingenious and amiable daughter,


48 A WOMAN OF
the young lady being, I fear, a little infected
with her father's pestilential principles. Pray
keep your own wives and daughters, yea, and
your sons too, out of her way, or very fatal may
be the consequences. Whether in the course of
your trading with the opposite Continent, you
have never smuggled one cargo of French
principles, you yourselves best know. If such
is the case, it will surely be the wisest way to
confine your dealings for the future to brandy,
wine, tea, gold and silver lace, and not to
meddle with goods so little suited to a Protes-
tant Constitution.'
Mrs. Carter wrote from these regions of
discord, where the sun rose and set in a
quarrel, expressing a wish to enter into
acquaintance with the fishes, for fishes, good
creatures, are mute. This mighty commotion
made her even perpetrate an Irish bull, for she
exclaimed: 'Do not dissuade me, for I am
quite determined, if ever I keep a lapdog, or a
monkey, it shall be a fish.' She trusted less to
'time and chance which happens to all,' than
to the disposal of Providence, which often by
unexpected methods calms the tumult of human
passions. She sometimes walked to Kings-
down, a small fishing village, where the good


A WOMAN OF
to Canterbury, and from thence gave graphic
descriptions of life in a country town during
the eighteenth century. With regard to every-
thing external she found it a most agreeable
situation. Every morning she was serenaded
by a concert of rooks lodged in the elms at a
little distance from the window, and 'Oh,
enchanting sound! she heard the owl.' All
looked so like the country that she was apt to
think herself in a village. The venerable
ruins of the old Castle, and their desolate
buildings overgrown with moss and ivy, added
greatly to the beauty of the poetical surround-
ings. A little antique tower that had sustained
the silent batteries of time through a long
course of centuries, would be a fitting place to
converse with the dead, for there would be
little fear of interruption from the living. The
fine warm weather enjoyed at Canterbury
would be great news to anybody at Deal, where
in April the thermometer must be many degrees
below extreme cold. The town was by no
means always in repose, as from the foregoing
description might be supposed—there were
assemblies, charades, and lampoons.
The game of 'Push Pin,' in which Mrs.
Carter delighted, was introduced into the


WIT AND WISDOM
assemblies as a variety from dancing, to the
great annoyance of all the smart squires in
the county,' who, doubtless, thought it beneath
the dignity of territorial magnates. When
there was no 'Push Pin' going forward, Mrs.
Carter was heartily fatigued, sitting in dismal
solitude till three in the morning. When asked
if it was true that her London friends had
expressed surprise at · Push Pin' being played
at the Canterbury assemblies, she answered
'No, but I am informed that it is publicly
talked of in the drawing-room at Madrid, and
that the Queen of Spain thinks it very odd.'
Though the dignity of the assembly' was a
source of great amusement to her, she did not
wish to affront the company, against whom she
bore no malice, and wondered if any of her
friends had heard rumours of her 'trundling a
hoop in the cloisters. This might escape
censure, as it was no affront to the assembly,
but she was told it was 'very near as bad,' as it
would be an affront to the Church.
Canterbury society suddenly became pos-
sessed of 'the spirit of tragic fury,' and gave a
representation of The Royal Convert,' in which
Elizabeth Carter played the part of Hengist.
All the actors came off with flying colours,
OUTS
E 2


A WOMAN OF
although they had never rehearsed it but once,
for whenever they met for that purpose, they
had so much to say to themselves in plain
English that they could not confine themselves
to talking in buskins. They feared they might
be lampooned, for there was a lampoon going
about in Canterbury, that some attributed to
an officer in the Army, and others to a gentle-
man in the Navy; while a third party compli-
mented Elizabeth Carter. However, a fourth
denied her the honour, or in any case were
positive that she had been assisted to a very
considerable extent . The true author must
have laughed at these profound conjectures.
As Canterbury had conferred the dignities of
author and satirist upon her, Elizabeth Carter
warned her friends that it would be dangerous
to offend her, as she might make good the
accusation by beginning to lampoon them. It
was the best time in the world to turn author,
for the spirit of scribbling was extremely
powerful, and verses swarmed during the warm
weather in great abundance, and with as
striking effect as gnats. As she had become
so great a critic, her friends would find her
lying in wait to catch their harmless syllables
as spiders do flies.


WIT AND WISDOM
Elizabeth Carter lived to see great changes
in the neighbourhood of Deal. She remem-
bered a house that contained noble rooms, a
cedar gallery with striking air of sombre great-
ness, magnificent chimney-pieces, a chapel which
she had seen gilded by the rays of the setting
sun, and a pavilion fronted by a marble colon-
nade, which looked upon a garden that reminded
her of the groves of Babylon. This estate
was divided, the building sold for the material,
and for the most part levelled to the ground.
A noble old seat en decadence impressed her
most painfully, even if its downfall were uncon-
nected with guilt. It showed how little the
objects which formed the pride and pleasure
of one generation influence the fickle taste
of the next. But she rejoiced to think the
destructive folly of man has no power over the
works of God. 'People who have so little
taste or feeling,' she said, 'as to show no
respect for the abode of their ancestors seem
to be singularly careless of everything prior
to their own individual selves. When a fair
inheritance is transmitted to a family, they
ought to feel a certain degree of tenderness
for the abode of the ancestors from whom it
is derived.'


54 A WOMAN OF
0
nal
An absolute ruin, though a melancholy
object, may, however, soothe the imagination
by the idea of repose ; and, while it proves
the weakness and littleness of all that is great
below, and the overthrow of human art and
magnificence, it causes us to look through the
desolations of time to our own eternity. Were
it not for the certainty of immortality the sight
of a ruin would only inspire a feeling of gloom
and horror.
The mansion of Northbourne Court had
been granted to Sir Edwin Sandys, son of the
Archbishop of York, by James I. Colonel
Edwin Sandys was, however, fighting with
Cromwell's army at the battle of Worcester
when he received the wounds of which he died
at Northbourne. His grandson, Sir Richard
Sandys, left the property to his four daughters,
who sold it. The house was pulled down, and
only the walls, that formed a very considerable
ruin, remained of the once large and stately
building.
Sir Egerton Bridges, a Kentish baronet
and man of letters, claimant of the barony of
Chandos of Sudeley, and editor of the Censura
Literaria’ and Collins' Peerage of England,'
describes in his autobiography the prevailing


WIT AND WISDOM
55
characteristics of the county society during the
eighteenth century, which, like that of every
neighbourhood, varied according to the tone
given to it by a few conspicuous personalities.
In earlier days, Kent produced Sir Thomas
Wyatt, the poet and statesman in the reign of
Henry VIII., whose son was beheaded as a
leader of the rebellion against Queen Mary;
Lord Buckhurst ; Sir Philip Sidney, the gallant
and accomplished soldier and poet, and his
father-in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham ; during
the reign of Charles I., Sir Dudley Digges,
whom ye most knowing of Princes King
James sent as Embassador to ye Emperour
of Russia,' Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Roger Twis-
den, the scholar and historian, and Sir Edward
Dering, who founded the library at Surrendar
Dering. But, at the time of which Sir Egerton
Bridges wrote, unintelligent squires ruled the
day. Their talk he could not bear, but he
admits he acted upon them as a wet sheet, for
they suspected that he had ridiculed them in his
novel · Arthur Fitzalbini.' One of the Knatch-
bulls, it is true, was an author, but no one had
ever heard of a Honywood having written a
book. Unlike Job, who longed that his enemy
might commit himself by rashly attempting to


56 A WOMAN OF
write a book, Sir Egerton Bridges apparently
thought it detracted from the esteem in which
the Honywoods had been held in Kent since
the reign of Henry III. that no member of the
family had tried his hand at the making of
books. The Furnesses of Waldershare raised
themselves by smuggling, and enriched Lord
Guildford, Sir Edward Dering, and Lord
Bolingbroke. Catherine, the last representa-
tive of the Furness family, married first, Lewis,
Earl of Rockingham, and secondly, Francis,
Earl of Guildford. She died without issue and
bequeathed her estate to her second husband.
Lord Cowper, with his pack of hounds, was
popular at the Moat, until the Corporation of
Canterbury, within whose bounds the manor
was situated, insisted that he should employ no
workmen in the rebuilding of his house but
such as were freemen of the city. He con-
sequently made his home in Hertfordshire, and
the Moat was pulled down. Nothing remains
but a farmhouse and part of the old dog-kennel.
Lord Rockingham, the second Marquis, who
was Prime Minister in 1765, was well esteemed
at Lee's Court. But those who possessed
talents were rarely seen. Mr. Robinson, after-
wards Lord Rokeby, brother of Mrs. Montagu,


WIT AND WISDOM
57
'Queen of the Blues,' on retiring from Parlia-
ment, secluded himself at Horton, near Hythe.
Old John Lewis pursued his antiquarianism at
the little fishing village of Margate, of which he
was vicar, while Dr. Brook Taylor, LL.D. and
F.R.S., indulged his philosophical genius at
Bifrons, so called from its two fronts. Sir John
Hales shut himself up, like the miser Elwes, on
his immense estate, living on a crust, and allow-
ing his only son to die in prison. The bold
refractory and clever boy, Thurlow, afterwards
Lord Chancellor, was leading his schoolmaster,
Talbot, a life of torment at the Canterbury
Grammar School, and by his temper, and the
daring directness of his talents, laying the foun-
dation of his future greatness. From a small
house opposite the west door of Canterbury
Cathedral had once issued a Countess of Salis-
bury, and the same humble tenement was
destined to be the birthplace of a Chief Justice
of England. Dover had supplied a Lord Chan-
cellor who occupied the woolsack for nearly
twenty years in the person of Philip Yorke.
Mrs. Macaulay, the republican historian, was
at Ollantigh, a fine old house that had been
erected by Sir Thomas Kemp in the reign of
Henry VII., while her brother, John Saw-


58 A WOMAN OF
bridge, the patriotic alderman and member for
the City of London, was dreaming of civic
honours and John Wilkes. Old Dr. Nicholas
Carter, the father of Elizabeth, was writing
theological tracts against his neighbour, the
orthodox Randolph, and bandying Latin epi-
grams with Sir George Oxenden of Deane;
and the poetess herself was writing odes to
wisdom, corresponding with Archbishop Secker,
and translating Epictetus. Near Sandgate there
were the Brockmans of Beechborough, whose
ancestor, Sir William Brockman, gallantly de-
fended Maidstone in 1648 against the Parlia-
mentary forces under General Fairfax; and
Mr. Deedes, of Sandling and Saltwood Castle,
which was partially destroyed by the earth-
quake of 1587. Sir John Shaw had a small
marine villa on the beach.
Such was East Kent from about 1720 to
1765. Sir Egerton Bridges regretted that he
was only slightly acquainted with Elizabeth
Carter, from whom he might have learned
much. For a clearer, more extensive, or better
regulated mind, he declared, was unrecorded in
the annals of genius and learning. He found
her manners cold, stiff, and formal, the result
of constitutional shyness, of which her intimate


WIT AND WISDOM 59
SUTI
friends, however, had no cause to complain. In
Kent she lived principally within the narrow
limits of her native town, but, like Sir Egerton,
she found it pleasant to escape from provincial
surroundings to the world at large.
There might be found at this period Pope,
Bolingbroke, Gray, Johnson, Hume, Chester-
field, Robertson, Warburton, Lowth, Burke,
Lord Chatham, Fielding, Richardson, the
Whartons, Akenside, Young, Lyttelton, Horace
Walpole, Pulteney, Colman, Mason, Soame
Jenyns and Garrick. With most of these men
she was acquainted, and many of them were
her intimate friends.


60
A WOMAN OF
CHAPTER III
MRS. CARTER'S VIEWS ON MARRIAGE
In accordance with the dignified custom of the
day, which conceded to ladies the privilege of
being the first to acknowledge the flight of
time, Elizabeth Carter at a certain age as-
sumed the brevet rank of a matron, for which
she had not qualified by matrimony: a fashion
which has become obsolete in these latter days,
when of course all the world is young.
Matrimony she considered a very right
scheme for everybody but herself,' and she
returned from her brother's marriage exceed-
ingly consoled by the reflection that, though
she was very much tired of a wedding, it was
not her own.' Her gloomy forebodings on her
sister-in-law's chances of happiness, founded on
an intimate knowledge of her brother's temper
and uncomfortable health, were happily not
realised ; it proved to be a union of uninter-


WIT AND WISDOM 61
rupted affection, confidence, and happiness.
In spite of her clear sight and common sense
she overlooked the fact that in this matter, as
in many another hazardous enterprise, fortune
often favours the brave.
Her 'square cornered heart' and views on
this subject filled her family and friends with
dismay. Her father told her that, though it
always gave him a 'sharp uneasiness' to differ
from her, like every good parent he secretly
prayed to see her married to a good man, who
could maintain her decently, and whose temper
was suitable to her own. No one ought to
marry against his or her will, he allowed, but will
should be guided by reason. Though she did
not value the judgment of the world, it was not
to be slighted, and marriage 'procured more
consideration than single life, which is often
errant, and seldom meets with much respect.'
He laid no commands upon her, as he wished
neither to part with her nor to keep her against
her desire. He did not condemn her, but
commended her to the direction of Heaven.
These urgent appeals and warnings were
dispatched to 'Dear Bet' at intervals during
many years. The respective merits of Mr. B.,
Mr. D., and Mr. G. were severally set forth,


62
A WOMAN OF
according to the proposal under immediate dis-
cussion. (Even at this distance of time, as-
suredly Mrs. Carter's sense of honour would
have forbidden their real names being given.)
At length, weary of platitudes, feigned resigna-
tion, and the conventional methods of parental
persuasion, the worthy Doctor pours out his
whole soul, like a woman, into a postscript, the
only place where the feminine mind is said to
be clearly set forth.
It contains a terrible threat :
· P.S.- I cannot forbear saying that when I
die, and you are single, you will certainly find a
vast difference with regard to the respect of the
world.'
Fortunately, however, his daughter Eliza-
beth possessed a personality that insured her
the respect of all whose opinion she valued,
and greater than any that she could have
secured by a commonplace and loveless mar-
riage. Elizabeth Carter was nevertheless a
woman, though a very extraordinary one.
Once, indeed, she hesitated, and came very
near to accepting a gentleman ‘in every way
unexceptionable,' to whom she was very much
attached, but he was so ill advised as to publish
UN
S


WIT AND WISDOM 63
at that moment some verses of which she could
not approve, and in spite of the regrets and
remonstrances of her father and friends 'at her
missing so good a prospect,' she remained
obdurate. Her Strephon quickly found another
Delia, and ever after expressed a strong sense
of her obliging and handsome conduct! Her
friends were less accommodating, and reminded
her that, after all, as 'Strephons were not so
plenty,' she need have no fear of their again
finding occasion to weary her with their per-
suasions. Such an irresolute Strephon would
have proved a very incapable lord and master,
but her good sense would have prevented her
ever exhibiting to the world that sorry spectacle,
a husband that is not the head of the wife, or
even the better man of the two.
That stormy February passed, and only
from time to time do we read of fresh breezes
arising to ruffle the still waters. Perhaps the
ease with which Strephon consoled himself
shook her faith in the constancy of mankind,
for she wrote to a friend, 'I agree with you
on the effect fine scenery might have on such
lovers as are really in love, but as this is a
circumstance which happens much less fre-
quently than the misses are apt to suppose, a


64
A WOMAN OF
ball-room does better for small talk than an
Arcadian solitude. After all, one Delia ap-
peared to do practically as well as another, and
a poor black man who was an object of charity
afforded her a comfortable proof that, however
destitute of all other possessions, every mortal
man may, at all events (if he desire it), be
sure to find a wife. Dr. Johnson wished there
might be a special form of service for ‘marriages
of convenience.'
Dr. Carter, the worthy clergyman at Deal,
with two families to provide for, was exaspe-
rated by these views, and wrote severely :
'If you intend never to marry, you certainly
ought to live retired, and not appear in the
world with an expense which is reasonable
upon the prospect of getting a husband, but
not otherwise.'
Mrs. Carter's family were startled one
evening at ten o'clock by a most outrageous
ringing at the door, which proved to be a
letter containing a proposal from an impetuous
young man, whose wig was always in an
uproar, and who ran over everybody he met,
hanging his clothes upon every lock and bolt
in the extreme trepidation of his pace. The
servant of the aforesaid Orlando, who was the
2.


WIT AND WISDOM 65
bearer of the letter, demanded an immediate
answer, but Mrs. Carter thought it might be
as well to read it first; and, though she had
an emphatic 'No' extremely at his service,
would not detain his emissary. This hasty
youth had resolved 'prendre le Roman par
la queue, et debuter par le mariage'; but, as
he had never signified his intention before, to
be sure, the demand was somewhat abrupt and
peremptory. The next morning, before any
soul was up, the messenger returned, with the
same violence of ringing, to carry back her
answer to his master, whom she expected any
day to come and fly away with her in a chaise
and one, unless he should happen to meet with
somebody else and be married on the road.
It was alleged that both the Archbishop of
Canterbury (Dr. Secker) and the Bishop of
London (Dr. Hayter) wanted to marry Mrs.
Carter. She always positively denied the
rumour about Archbishop Secker, but her
contemporaries were not clear that in the case
of Bishop Hayter the report was equally un-
founded, though she never allowed that it was
true. One day in her presence, the Arch-
bishop, feeling his freedom in jeopardy, and
losing that presence of mind so essential to
F


66 A WOMAN OF
good breeding, exclaimed: 'Brother Hayter,
the world says that one of us two is to marry
Madam Carter; now I have no such intention,
and resign her to you.' Bishop Hayter, how-
ever, knew her well, and was assured that
whatever might be the views of her family and
friends, for her own part she would probably
be inwardly murmuring 'God forbid!' in Greek
at the idea of either of them, as she had been
heard fervently to ejaculate when it was sug-
gested that the learned but uncouth Dr. Burton
was very much her admirer. So, with more
courage and gallantry, the Bishop bowed to
her and replied, 'I will not pay your Grace
the same compliment; the world does me great
honour by the report.'
Though the Archbishop's manners were
not prepossessing, he remained her staunch
friend through life. She was frequently his
guest at Lambeth, and was indebted to him
for his advice in her translation of Epictetus.
As the owner of her house at Deal, he proved
a most generous landlord, though he indulged,
it is true, in a few malicious insinuations when
the world said that Madam Carter would marry
Lord Bath (Pulteney).
When the Archbishop died she sincerely



THOMAS HAYTER, BISHOP OF LONDON
From a Painting in Fnlham Palacc





WIT AND WISDOM 67
mourned the great and good man, with whose
friendship she had been honoured for more than
twenty years, and to whom she was under such
innumerable obligations. He left a sealed
packet for her, the contents of which were never
known. It was not found amongst her papers,
nor was there any memorandum of it.
When Mrs. Carter was upwards of forty
years of age, her father received a ' marvellous
odd letter' from a Yorkshireman, desiring to
be informed with all possible speed whether his
daughter had made any resolution against
marrying, and if not if she was engaged. But
Mrs. Carter said, 'Surely the poor man must
have lived in a wood, or he would have known
that no one has a right to ask the first ques-
tion, and could not suppose that the curiosity
of a stranger would be gratified as to the last.'
It is hardly necessary to note the fact that
no more was heard of the Yorkshireman. If
Dr. Carter's answer was half as concise and
definite as his daughter's, it would not require
the astuteness of a North Countryman to see
that nothing farther remained to be said on the
subject.
On one occasion, when Mrs. Carter had
been much tormented by her kind friends as to
F 2


WIT AND WISDOM 69
however, the strange enchantment that renders
him so universally agreeable must be the most
settled look of good-nature and happiness that
ever appeared in any human countenance.
And now I suppose you begin to be in great
pain for my heart, but it is really in no danger,
and I can safely answer for its giving me no
kind of trouble.'
At last her friends learnt to approach the
subject more cautiously, and when one of them
wrote of a worthy man that had the highest
regard for Mrs. Carter, she hastened to add,
'Do not be frightened, I mean nothing more
dangerous than Mr. Richardson ' (the novelist).
Mrs. Carter replied: 'The paragraph in your
letter did really put me in a fright. I had for
a moment forgot that some folks are married,
that other folks are galloped away, ready to
break their necks and look for a wife in some
distant country, and that there are no folks in
the world that trouble their heads about me.
It was not till I saw the quiet, harmless name
of Richardson that all these comfortable con-
siderations occurred to my thoughts.'
She was informed that Richardson possessed
an 'exceedingly like portrait' of her, drawn by
Mrs. Chapone without her knowledge, but that,


70 A WOMAN OF
as he could not possibly wear it in his snuff-
box, she need not be scandalised.
Though Mrs. Carter believed that mankind
were upon the whole a much better set of
beings than some moralists think proper to
represent them, she either failed to find per-
fection, or, having found it, the fates were
adverse.
Before creating the personality of Sir Charles
Grandison, Richardson asked Mrs. Carter to
define her ideal of the perfect man, uniting the
fine gentleman and the Christian, that every-
one wanted him to draw. She replied: 'One
distinguishing part of his character must be an
absolute superiority to false glory and false
shame, a steady opposition to the false maxims
of the world in essential points, and a perfectly
good-natured compliance in trifles.'
Richardson had, Mrs. Carter declared, no
doubt a very good hand at painting excellence,
but there was a strange awkwardness and ex-
travagance in his vicious characters. To be
sure, poor man, he had read in a book, or heard
someone say that there was such a thing in the
world as wickedness, but being perfectly igno-
rant in what manner it operates on the human
heart, he drew such a monster as probably



SAMUEL RICHARDSON
From a Painting by Joseph High more in the National Portrait Gallery





WIT AND WISDOM 71
never existed in mortal shape. Mrs. Chapone
apprehended that his creation of Sir Charles
Grandison would occasion the kingdom being
overrun with old maids. The difference be-
tween this ideal character and the generality of
men would be so striking, and would make
women so hard to please, the consequence
would be single life to ninety-nine out of a
hundred.
Fielding, on the contrary, seemed to think
no character natural but such as are a disgrace
to the human species.
Richard Savage wrote to Elizabeth Carter
in 1739:
'Dear Madam,—Be pleased to accept my
thanks for your pious intention of making me
a saint. I am truly desirous of becoming so,
because as saints they say are allowed the
happiness of conversing with angels, I may be
so blest as to become worthy of the conversa-
tion of Miss Carter. . . .
'Your most affectionate and devoted ser-
vant,
'R. Savage.'
The following reflections flowed from Mrs.
Carter's pen as she was thinking of the


72 A WOMAN OF
marriage of one of her friends, whose chance
of happiness appeared to her problematic:
'After all, excepting the sine qua non of
a good conscience, and exemption from real
calamity, that odd thing which we call happiness
entirely depends upon the temper and imagina-
tion of every individual; and as "the heart
knows its own bitterness," so " a stranger does
not intermeddle with its joys." Upon this
principle I comfort myself that the way of life
which would harass and perplex my aching
head with perpetual agitation and cares, serves
only to keep some of my friends in good
humour and good spirits.'
A very imprudent match caused Mrs. Carter
to be drawn into a sorrowful scrape by ex-
pressing her opinions too strongly. 'Bless me,'
she exclaimed, 'what business had I to talk
about things I know nothing about? As my
ill stars would have it, I happened to express
great pity for people under these dolorous cir-
cumstances. Out of mere indolence I shall
give up the point, and leave all lovers to hang
or drown themselves as they think fit.'
Assurance of the 'mutual society, help and
comfort, both in prosperity and adversity, that
the one ought to have of the other' carried


WIT AND WISDOM
little conviction to Mrs. Carter's mind, for
when harassed almost to death with various
disputes and turmoils, she wrote, 'Although I
know you will be angry, I cannot for my life
help telling you, that ever since I was made
unhappy by these commotions, it has been a
great consolation to me that I never was
tempted by any voluntary connection to en-
gage myself in the tumults of the world. If
I have suffered from the troubles of others,
what might I not have suffered from a hus-
band?' Socrates, by taking to wife the most
impossible person of his acquaintance, sought
to show the world that there was no one with
whom he could not live peaceably. He desired
to have under his roof one who would hourly
exercise his powers of endurance. When the
ill-tempered Xanthippe trampled on his cake,
poured water on his head, and transmitted her
failings to a very foolish son, he found the
taming of the shrew a more impossible task
than Shakespeare has since represented it to
be. He was, after all, outdone in patience by
the philosophic navvy who, when his wife beat
him, said, ' It don't hurt me, and it do her a deal
o' good.' The navvy kept silence, whereas the
unhappy married life of Socrates was prover-


A WOMAN OF
bial amongst the ancients. It is, therefore, not
surprising that Epictetus did not consider 'the
affair of marriage in this state of the world a
thing which is especially suited to the cynic.'
When one of his hearers ventured to remind
him of the beautiful Hipparchia who adopted
the views and the austere life of her husband
Crates, and gave them as conspicuous an
example of what a good wife may be as
Xanthippe did the reverse, Epictetus sternly
rebuked him for quoting such an exceptional
case. 'You are speaking of a circumstance
which arose from love,' he said, 'and of a woman
who was another Crates, but we are inquiring
about ordinary marriages.' Crates placed his
wife's fortune in the hands of the bankers, with
directions that it should be given to his sons
if they should prove fools, and to the poor if
. they proved philosophers.
After all, neither Epictetus nor his translator
had any practical experience in the matter, and
circumstances are but externals ; the immovable
self should be the same in all. Therefore,
argued a friend, 'Miss Carter at Paris, Miss
Carter with a ducal coronet on her coach,
would be the same domestic, affectionate,
dutiful creature, as Miss Carter at Deal in her


WIT AND WISDOM
peaceful retirement. She would, like a reason-
able woman, secure to herself every day some
hours for recollection and improvement, and
would as highly enjoy every moment of leisure
as she does now. And Miss Carter in a family
of her own, ordering her family affairs, sur-
rounded by sons and daughters, dressed in her
plain work, fed with her own plum-puddings,
taught by her own care, would be still as happy
and as valuable a person as either.'
However much gratified Elizabeth Carter
may have felt by her friend's opinion of her
individuality that surroundings could not affect,
she rather resented the allusion to the possible
family that under other circumstances she would
have so ably clothed, fed and educated, and
answered with some asperity:
'One would think by the comfortable do-
mestic scenes into which you introduce me,
that you had Lovelace's tombstone in your eye.
One part of your description I can answer, for
children I have, and though I say it who
should not say it, four as fine children as need
be desired [her half-brother and sisters]. They
are not, indeed, fed with my own plum-pud-
ding, because I have not any to give them,
but as far as they have any appetite for the


76 A WOMAN OF
slender diet of learning, all I have in the world
is much at their service.'
'VVhate'er we think on't, Fortune's but a toy,
Which cheats the soul with empty shows of joy;
A mere ideal creature of the brain,
That reigns the idol of the mad and vain;
Deludes their senses with a fair disguise,
And sets an airy bliss before their eyes.
But when they hope to grasp the glitt'ring prey,
Th' unstable fantom vanishes away.
Could mortals learn to limit their desires,
Little supplies what Nature's want requires,
Content affords an inexhausted store,
And void of that a Monarch's wealth is poor.
Grant but ten thousand pounds, Philaurus cries,
That happy sum would all my wants suffice.
Assenting powers the golden blessing grant,
But with his wealth, his wishes too augment.
With anxious care he pines amidst his store,
And starves himself to get ten thousand more.
Ambition's charms Philotimus inspire,
A treas'rer's staff the pitch of his desire:
The staff he gains, yet murmurs at his fate,
And longs to shine first Minister of State.
A coach and four employ'd Cosmelia's cares,
For this she hourly worried Heav'n with pray'rs.
Did this when gained her restless temper fix?
No, she still prays—for what ?—a coach and six.
A soul which uncorrupted Reason sways
With calm indiff'rence Fortune's gifts surveys;
If Providence an affluent store denies,
Its own intrinsic worth that want supplies;


WIT AND WISDOM
77
Disdains by vicious actions to acquire
That glittring trifle vulgar minds admire ;
With ease to Heaven's superior will resigns,
Nor meanly at another's wealth repines ;
Firmly adheres to Virtue's steady rules,
And scorns the fickle deity of fools.'
When Mrs. Thrale had given great occasion
to the enemy to blaspheme and triumph over
the ‘Bas Bleu' ladies by her marriage with
Piozzi, her daughter's singing master, and Mrs.
Macaulay, the republican historian, had capti-
vated a youth, twenty-six years her juniora
marriage which might have been pardonable,
Mrs. Montagu sarcastically said, if he had been
great-great-grandson to one of the regicides-
Mrs. Carter, aged sixty-five, wrote to Mrs.
Montagu :
Marriage seems to be as general this year
as influenza. I hope, as you and I have escaped
the one, we shall not be carried off by the
other. Good lack a day! What a tapage
such an event would make in the world!'
Up to the time of her death, in her eighty-
ninth year, Mrs. Carter would say, "Nobody
knows what may happen; I never said I would
not marry.'


78
A WOMAN OF
CHAPTER IV
ARCHBISHOP SECKER AND CATHARINE TALBOT
was
ELIZABETH Carter's knowledge of the world
was considerably extended during her earlier
years by her friendship with Catharine Talbot,
the adopted daughter of Dr. Secker, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. Mrs. Carter was fre-
quently the guest of Dr. Secker, when, as
Bishop of Oxford, he resided at Cuddesdon,
and also at St. Paul's, when preferment to that
deanery provided the Bishop with a house in
London.
Later on, when Archbishop of Canterbury,
Dr. Secker, with Mrs. and Miss Talbot, was
always ready to bid her welcome to Lambeth,
where they did not insist on her company all
day long, but left her free to sit as unmolested
by her own fireside as in her own home. In
summer she might watch from the windows the
family syllabub' and dance under the trees in
the garden.



CATHARINE TALBOT
From the frontispiece to 'The Works of the late
Miss Catharine Talbot,' (1812)





WIT AND WISDOM 79
As a guest of Archbishop Secker, Mrs.
Carter was lodged in one of the towers, and
was the only occupant of that side of the palace
which is separated from the rest of the house
by the chapel. Through this and other vener-
able buildings she used to pass every night,
under Gothic arches dimly lighted by pale
lamps, with all the winds of heaven whistling
round her, followed by the echo of her own
steps, and the deep hollow sound of the closing
doors. In this situation she felt with great
force the grandeur of a storm. The prospect
from one of her windows was a long green
court, terminated by the gateway which forms
a 'fine perplexity of arches' in all directions.
The other side of the tower was shaded by tall
trees, and through their branches there was
a view of the Thames, which washed their
roots. She delighted in rambling through the
long, narrow Gothic passages which led she
knew not whither. From a little window in one
of them she could look down into the chapel,
which she often viewed by moonlight.
The more frequented parts of the house
were so modernised as to have lost all their
ancient style, and what in its original state
would have appeared solemn and venerable


80 A WOMAN OF
became merely dull, the only point ever gained
by modernising Gothic buildings. She always
'honoured Lord and Lady Northumberland for
preserving the Gothic grandeur of Alnwick
Castle, undiminished by the fopperies of modern
prettiness.'
During her visits to Lambeth Elizabeth
Carter joined the daily family readings of
English authors, conducted in an orderly and
sociable way, after breakfast and supper. Ten
o'clock was the closing hour both morning and
evening. After chapel they all retired to
their apartments, unless sunshine tempted them
abroad, and Lady Mary Grey, who was a prin-
cipal figure in their little domestic history, read
Tully's 'Offices' or Moliere to Miss Talbot,
while she embroidered or painted. When day-
light failed, the ladies exercised themselves by
walking in a large unfurnished room, sometimes
by moonlight, conversing in a manner that
made that hour the most agreeable of the four-
and-twenty. After seven, quadrille was called
in, to vary the object of their attention from
history and spinning wheels to aces black
and red.
Thomas Secker, who was born in 1693, was
the son of a Dissenter, and whilst studying


WIT AND WISDOM 81
divinity with a view to the ministry, finding
himself unable to determine with which sect he
wished to identify himself, he resolved to study
physic until his opinions were more thoroughly
settled. He took his degree of M.D. at Leyden
in 1721, and whilst studying anatomy in Paris
formed a life-long friendship with Martyn Ben-
son, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, of whom
Pope wrote:
'Manners with candour is to Benson giv'n.'
Through the persuasion of his school-fellow,
Joseph Butler, author of the 'Analogy' and
afterwards Bishop of Durham, who had also
been educated for the Dissenting ministry,
Secker returned to England and followed his
example of taking orders in the Established
Church.
The advancement of these three young
men, Secker, Butler, and Benson, was entirely
due to their friend Edward Talbot, who on his
death-bed recommended them to the notice of
his father, the Bishop of Durham, and was thus
the means of providing the Church with three
distinguished prelates.
Edward Talbot died of small-pox a few
months after his marriage, and his daughter,
Catharine Talbot, was born in 1720, five months
G


WIT AND WISDOM
nou
his eldest son, the Prince of Wales. His
Royal Highness having removed to Norfolk
House, which is in the parish of St. James's,
constantly attended Divine service at that
church. The first time he came the curate
inadvertently began prayers with the usual
sentence, I will arise and go to my Father,'
and it was asserted that the Rector preached
on the Fifth Commandment, 'Honour thy
father and thy mother.'
Bishop Sherlock could only defend Secker
by saying that he must certainly have been in
a course of sermons on the Commandments,
and was, unfortunately, obliged to preach on
this particular one in its turn. Secker him-
self declared that his whole discourse had been
on the subject of “The Lord is good to all.”
In any case his Royal Highness forgave
him, and he baptized most of the Royal
children, including the future King George III.
He could not, however, attend the Prince's
Court, which was forbidden to all those who
went to the King's. Dr. Secker had also the
misfortune to incur his Majesty's displeasure,
who supposed his influence much greater with
the Prince than it really was, and thought he
might have used it to more purpose. For this
G 2


84 A WOMAN OF
reason the King did not speak to him for a
great number of years.
Through life Secker, Butler, and Benson
lost no opportunity of advancing each other's
interests. Secker mentioned Butler to the
Queen (Caroline the illustrious), who thought
he had been dead. On making further in-
quiries she was assured he was not 'dead, but
buried.' The kind-hearted Queen, acting on
this suggestion, soon after appointed him her
Clerk of the Closet.
Archbishop Secker made a proposal for
appointing bishops in some of the American
colonies to save the loss and hazard incurred
by candidates for ordination, who were obliged
to cross the Atlantic at the cost of 100/.; of
those who undertook that voyage nearly a fifth
part actually lost their lives. He contended
that the members of the English Church in
America did not enjoy its benefits, having no
Protestant bishop within 3,000 miles of them,
a case which never had its parallel before in
the Christian world. His Grace further declared
it never had been intended to appoint a bishop
in New England, but that episcopal colonies
had always been proposed. He bequeathed
1,000/. to this scheme.


WIT AND WISDOM 85
A volume of Catharine Talbot's essays,
reflections, and poems was published after her
death by Elizabeth Carter ; her writings show
her to have been a woman of culture and
common sense, and, as in the every-day con-
duct of life sense is none too common, her
reflections and maxims bear reiteration. The
following is a specimen :
'On the employment of wealth,' she writes,
describing people who, by squandering their
fortunes, reduce themselves to all the shifts
and pinches that often make them rapacious
and dishonest. “By lavishing their money on
a hundred poor devils who have run them-
selves into misery from mere worthlessness
their fortune has become a prey to the good-
for-nothing, and is like a quantity of gold dust
dispersed uselessly in the air, that might have
been melted down and formed into regal crowns
and monuments of glory. Thus the man
of quality is reduced to all the meannesses
imaginable, and has the humbled air of in-
feriority when he meets the eye of his unpaid
tradesman.
Elizabeth Carter corresponded regularly
with Catharine Talbot, who could not for the
life of her write short letters. One of her


86
A WOMAN OF
immoderately long epistles to a friend who was
travelling in the East saved him the loss of a
valuable ring that had been given to him by
Lord Northumberland. He was attacked by
robbers, who examined his papers, but the
sight of so much writing discouraged them,
and they returned all the packets, including one
containing the ring.
As a specimen of laconic letters, Miss
Talbot quoted that of Quin the actor, whose
tongue, his monument in Bath Abbey tells us,
*Kept all the table on a roar.'
* Mr. Rich, I have received yours, and am
at Bath.
Quin.'
Mr. Quin,—I have received yours, and you
may stay at Bath and be hanged. Rich.'
Miss Talbot was afraid, however, that hanged
was not the original word.
When residing at St. Paul's Deanery,
Sunday was the evening allotted for Mrs. and
Miss Talbot to be at home, in order that fine
ladies might not be interrupted by drays and
waggons, or hindered from going to drums and
plays.
In this way the Talbots saw many more


WIT AND WISDOM 87
friends than they did when living in Piccadilly
during Dr. Secker's incumbency at St. James's,
for, owing to the distance, fixed days and ap-
pointed times were necessary. When the fine
folk set about going to St. Paul's in an after-
noon, they so much over-reckoned the distance,
that by means of dining by sunrise they arrived
an hour earlier than they would have thought
it possible at St. James's to ring for tea. Every-
one was so glad and so obliged by these labo-
rious visits, and innumerable court'sies were
made to a neighbour at St. James's that in
other days the Talbots would have put them-
selves in no hurry to visit.
The Spring Miss Talbot sometimes passed
in the beautiful, well - cultivated country at
Brompton, which was all laid out in gardens,
where she enjoyed the cuckoo and thrush, and
sometimes the nightingale. There was some-
thing so charmingly alive in the environs of
London, where the joy of town and country was
united, and it was possible to sit on a shady
seat in pure air and sunshine, surrounded by
roses and carnations, and to hear the guns from
the Park and Tower. She also delighted in a
sweet village called Kilburn, where the air and
grass were as fresh as a thousand miles from


WIT AND WISDOM 89
that till then she had feared existed only in the
imagination of poets. The shrubs were scattered
about with the most agreeable wildness. The
trees were grown with as much freedom as in
a forest, and not distorted into the unnatural
shapes of triumphal arches or elbow-chairs.
In one part of the garden was a winding ascent,
leading to the top of a mount, that was sur-
rounded by a hedge of yew and covered with
trees. Through their branches was discovered
a vista of the Thames. The whole place ap-
peared to be the sequestered habitation of a
society of wood-nymphs, and formed a retreat
for the Muses equal to their own Parnassus,
so ''twas no wonder they took so long a journey
to pay such frequent visits to Mr. Pope.'
Miss Talbot was thoroughly versed in the
theory of cheerfulness, and had no notion that
anybody could be seriously in the spleen, though
almost everybody is subject to waking dreams
of misery. But a little serious reflection sets
life in a very different light from that in which
fancy places it upon every little vexation. She
had a great notion that half one's business in
this world is to make the best of everything, as
common good-breeding teaches us to do at the
most ordinary entertainment that is made for us.


90
A WOMAN OF
She had no notion of the fine-lady airs of
hating her neighbours, and when she resided
at Cuddesdon during the years Dr. Secker was
Bishop of Oxford, she visited eighteen families
at distances varying from three to fourteen
miles, and twenty neighbours in Oxford. “As
for seeing people one likes,' she declared, ‘one
must learn to like people one sees. 'Tis a note
to this body, a message to that; an errand to
one end of the house, and a whim to send one
to another; a robin to be fed at this window,
and a tom-tit to be attended to at another ;
cats or chickens, spinsters or ague patients.
Methusalem was a happy man, if he had any
genius for filling up his time. When anybody
has read or writ a folio they have somewhat to
show ; but bills of fare, messages, letters of
business, are Sibyl's leaves dispersed by the
breeze.'
Miss Talbot had but three creatures in the
world over whom she had any right to exercise
control-a foolish dog, a restive horse, and a
perverse gardener. She did not wish to be
one of those reformers who desire to mend
everybody around them, while poor self, the
only person they could really influence, is
forgot. She rather agreed with the well-bred


WIT AND WISDOM
Pericles, who denied that either prudence,
justice, or fortitude can belong to women, and
therefore gave them a polite admonition to
keep quiet, and make themselves as little talked
of as possible.


A WOMAN OF
CHAPTER V
MRS. CARTER'S LITERARY WORKS AND
PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS
In 1738, at the age of twenty-one, Elizabeth
Carter published a small collection of poems,
printed by Cave, the original and enthusiastic
editor of the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' who, as
Johnson declared, scarcely ever looked out of
the window but with a view to its improve-
ment. In this periodical some of her poems
had previously appeared with the signature of
'Eliza.'
A cut of St. John's Gate figures on the
title-page. This edition is very scarce, and
only two of the poems contained in it were
included in the edition generally called the first,
which was not published till 1762, when she
was forty-five years of age.
In the year 1739 she translated from the
French of M. Crousaz a critique of Pope's


WIT AND WISDOM 93
· Essay on Man.' There is no preface ; no
translator's name is mentioned ; the notes are
few and not of any great importance.
Crousaz, a Swiss professor, and zealous
promoter of pure religion, believed Pope's
*Essay on Man,' notwithstanding Warburton's
elaborate explanation, to be hostile to revealed
religion, and written under the influence of
Bolingbroke. Mrs. Carter's notes tended to
moderate the severity of Crousaz's criticism.
She always defended Pope against accusations
of ill-nature, and declared that he had been
stung by provocation and ill-treatment.
Warburton, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester,
had joined in a cabal against Pope. He
accused Milton of borrowing from pride and
affectation, Dryden from want of leisure and
indolence, Addison from modesty, and Pope
of necessity, from want of genius. Though he
helped Theobald in the edition of Shakespeare
published in opposition to that of Pope, he
afterwards transferred his allegiance, and be-
came as ardent in his defence of Pope as he
had been zealous for the triumph of his oppo-
nent. He 'undertook to rescue Pope from the
talons of Crousaz.' Pope thus expressed his
gratitude:


WIT AND WISDOM 95
martyrdom, sums up that ill-fated monarch's
character in a manner that displays the
preacher's ingenuity in not sacrificing truth
even in the panegyric of princes :
'In a word, his princely qualities were
neither great enough nor bad enough to suc-
ceed in that most difficult of all attempts, the
enslaving of a free and jealous people.'
Elizabeth Carter translated in the same
year (1739), from the Italian, Algarotti's • New-
tonianismo per le Dame, Sir Isaac Newton's
Philosophy explained for the use of the ladies,
in six dialogues on light and colour. Dr. Birch
wrote of her: This lady is a very extra-
ordinary phenomenon in the republic of letters,
for her knowledge of the ancient and modern
languages; an equal skill in any one of them
would be a distinction to a person of the
other sex.' Mrs. Carter never spoke willingly
of either of these translations—they were un-
worthy of her powers.
With these exceptions, it does not appear
that she wrote anything for the press till her
celebrated translation of Epictetus, which she
began in 1749, though it was not published till
1758. From this hard work she declared her
head received no kind of injury. She would


96 A WOMAN OF
hardly ever read or work for more than half
an hour at a time, and then visit for a few
minutes any relations in the house, or go into
her garden.
After the success of this great work, which
not only brought her in 1,000/., but made her
acquainted with all the literary people of the
day, she wrote to one who feared her head
might be turned: ' I have no painful excellence,
alas! to give you any particular apprehension
about me; I wear my hat in the same way as
I used to wear it, I dress just as awkwardly,
and look just as silly as ever.' Some years
earlier she had written to a friend whose
exaggerated admiration of her talents pre-
vented an easy intercourse, and whose obse-
quious letters annoyed her:
'It is with the utmost diffidence that I
venture to do myself the high honour of
writing to you, when I consider my own
nothingness and utter incapacity of doing
any one thing upon earth. Unless I had
as many tongues in my head as there are
grains of dust between this and Canterbury,
it is impossible for me to express the millionth
part of the obligations I have to you, there-
fore I must content myself with assuring you


WIT AND WISDOM 97
that I am, with the sublimest veneration and
most profound humility,
Your most devoted, obsequious, respectful,
obedient, obliged, and dutiful humble servant,
'E. CARTER.
I shall die with envy if you outdo this.'
The extraordinary circumstance of a trans-
lation from the Greek of so difficult an author
by a woman made a great noise all over
Europe. In her own country, however, some
persons chose to assert that her father wrote
it, and others said it was Archbishop Secker.
George, first Lord Lyttelton, said that he ad-
mired Mrs. Carter's preface more and more,
and was much struck by the poem prefixed to
it by Mrs. Chapone. “The English ladies,' he
wrote, 'will appear as much superior to the
French in wit and learning as the men in
arms.'
The quarto volume, published by subscrip-
tion, consisted of all Epictetus's discourses
preserved by Arrian in four books, fragments
ranslated from the original Greek, and the
• Enchiridion, which is the only part that had
been previously translated into any modern
language, except French. In 1710, when


98 A WOMAN OF
scarcely twenty years old, Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu had translated the 'Enchiridion' of
Epictetus, but only from the Latin version.
Her great-grandson Lord Wharncliffe, in his
edition of her works, published in 1837, draws
attention to it as a great literary curiosity. He
adds that, when she presented it to Dr. Gilbert
Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, for his emenda-
tions, she wrote, 'Here is the work of one
week of my solitude.' Mr. Harris, the author
of 'Hermes,' and father of the first Earl of
Malmesbury, lent Mrs. Carter a copy of the
French translation, which was extremely scarce,
and had been published 150 years earlier. He
was a deep scholar, a philosopher and philo-
logist, and his critical knowledge of the Greek
language induced her to consult him on all
obscure passages.
This work was undertaken at the request
of Miss Talbot, who spent the hours before
breakfast reading Epictetus, and was provoked
that there was no translation of his precepts
preserved by Arrian, a work which she was
'vastly curious' to see. She lamented that
she was confined to dull, imperfect translations
of the noblest authors. The family readings
of Livy showed the greatest sentiments clothed


WIT AND WISDOM
in the meanest words, provoking the most
absurd mixture of admiration and ridicule. In
defence of their faith and homes, the Samnites
were described as fighting 'for church and
chimney,' and the style very much resembled
that of a celebrated orator in the county of
Kent, who in the petition for the King before
the sermon prayed for 'George and family.'
Though Mrs. Carter's first translation ap-
peared to her neither sense nor language, she
preferred to write obscure bad English rather
than disoblige her friend, and claimed to be,
perhaps, the first translator who was ani-
mated by a spirit of enthusiasm. Dr. Secker
considered it very good, and only objected to
its being 'writ too smooth,' and in too orna-
mented a style. Epictetus was a plain man,
and spoke plainly, to express which fact the
translation should preserve the spirit of the
original, and unless she could prove that Epic-
tetus wore a laced coat, the Archbishop would
not allow her to dress him in one.
Mrs. Carter acknowledged that the 'En-
chiridion ' was merely plain common sense; but
maintained that Arrian's commentary was much
less simple, and in some places abrupt and
unconnected, and if the sense was preserved,
H 2


i0o A WOMAN "OF
it was lawful to make him speak a language
that is easy and natural, rather than retain any
peculiar modes of his own country, which may
appear uncouth and awkward. Arrian, the
Archbishop argued, was not a commentator on
Epictetus as Simplicius was, but professed to
exhibit his very conversations and discourses,
as Xenophon did those of Socrates, and a
translator should preserve his genuine air and
character, as far as is consistent with making
him rightly understood.
The following extract from a letter shows
the extent to which her old friend the Arch-
bishop, assisted her with his advice:
Letter from Dr. Secker, A rchbishop of Canter-
bury (then Bishop of Oxford)
Cuddesdon : Sept. 13, 1749.
'G0od Miss Carter,—. . . Every ancient
writer should be laid before the modern reader
such as he is. Epictetus will make a better
figure in his homely garb than in any other.
Abruptness often adds much force and per-
suasion to what is said. It shows the speaker
to be in earnest, which hath the greatest
weight of anything; and the same sentiments



Ch
THOMAS SECKER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
From an engraving after a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.





WIT AND WISDOM
delivered in a smooth and polite professional
style are no longer the same. These last
were the methods in vogue when Epictetus
lived, and they had brought philosophy into
disregard and disgrace. He saw it with grief;
and reproved Messieurs les Philosophes with
an honest zeal. ... I confess myself to have
bent the stick as strongly as I could the oppo-
site way to yours, yet I think a rough and
almost literal translation, if it doth but relish
strongly of that warm and practical spirit which
to me is the characteristic of this book, infi-
nitely preferable to the most elegant para-
phrase, that lets it evaporate and leaves the
reader unmoved.'
After this Dr. Secker, who had shut him-
self up with Epictetus for near a month, never
leaving his study but for a morning ride or
walk, refused to give her any more assistance,
and wrote in his usual blunt manner: 'Are
you not ashamed to persecute a poor English
Archbishop with heathen Greeks, which it may
be hoped he hath the grace to forget entirely?
But you cannot be quiet in your bed, you say,
without doing it. Very probable truly; for
I read of some persons, "They sleep not


WIT AND WISDOM
is to live conformably to nature, though their
methods of attaining to this end varied. Some
of the Epicureans by means of pleasure de-
based man into a mere animal, while to others
pleasure meant only freedom from uneasiness,
for even Epicurus recognised the universal
obligation of a virtuous life, and his adversaries
admitted that his own was simple, pure, and
manly.
The Stoics, on the contrary, aimed at an
absolute perfection of the soul, but their noble
efforts resulted in the idolatry of human nature,
and a proud self-sufficiency that insulted it, by
enjoining a perfection of which this life is in-
capable. Neither sect understood man in his
mixed capacity; both considered him as inde-
pendent and self-reliant; thus self-satisfaction
checked progress and improvement.
Between these two doctrines Horace wa-
vered; at one time he aspired to become an
active man and plunged into public life; at
another he glided back insensibly into the pre-
cepts of Aristippus and the pleasure-seekers,
and strove to make circumstances subservient
to himself, instead of adapting himself to
circumstances.
Modern heathens are apt to be Epicureans


A WOMAN OF
in practice and Stoics in theory, and when
both fail have recourse to the pistol, that
open gate of which Epictetus probably spoke
ironically, as it was contrary to his principles
and to the practice of the best of his sect:
'Go hang yourself, like a grumbling, mean-
spirited wretch as you are; God has no need
of such querulous, discontented people as you.'
Unacquainted with the doctrine of a future
state, the Stoic saw no other means of vindi-
cating the justice and goodness of God, and
reconciling it with the unequal distributions of
things, than by renouncing the feelings of the
human heart and denying pain to be an evil.
The preparation of the mind by the anti-
cipation of calamities was a favourite Stoic
doctrine, but misfortunes are not better sup-
ported by being considered beforehand.
By the regulation of his desires the Stoic
endeavoured to escape disappointment, to anni-
hilate feelings of aversion, and to regard all
external objects with absolute indifference.
Good and evil meant virtue and vice, and
excluded life, health, ease, friends, reputation,
which were mere appearances, from any share
in human happiness. A universal apathy fol-
lowed.


WIT AND WISDOM
Active exertion or restraint of the inclina-
tions insured a proper observance of all social
relations, and comprehended the whole system
of moral duties. A Stoic never formed any
opinion, so could not be misled even during
sleep, intoxication, or delirium, though some
authors were so very reasonable as to admit
the possibility of his being mistaken in his
judgment after he had lost his senses. The
judgments of the mind the Stoics termed prin-
ciples, and determined the faculty of willing
on the actions or course of life. The precon-
ceptions were innate notions, the adaptation of
which is the office of reason, and is insisted
upon by Epictetus as a point of the highest
importance. By prosperity the Stoics under-
stood the actual state of mind, when the
affections and active powers are so regulated
that all events appear happy, and nothing can
fall out contrary to its wishes. Stoical insensi-
bility fell far short of Christian fortitude, for
to walk in the narrow way and do our best,
humbly acknowledging our failure, rejoicing in
hope, and aiming at perfection, appeared to the
Greeks, including Epictetus, foolishness.
Though the Stoics carried their logic to
such a degree of subtlety as rendered their


i06 A WOMAN OF
reasoning incoherent and perplexed, they held
that there is one God, incorruptible, unorigi-
nated, immortal, rational, perfect in intelligence
and happiness, unsusceptible of all evil, govern-
ing the world and everything in it, the Creator
of the universe and Father of all, though not
of human form; and those authors who repre-
sent them as little better than atheists do them
great injustice. They believed in the eternity
of matter, but that it was reduced into form
by God; and that the world was made, and is
continually governed, by Him. They were the
most zealous defenders of the doctrine of a
particular Providence, and utterly rejected the
notion of chance. By Fate they understood
the events appointed by the immutable counsels
of God. Cicero allows that Chrysippus, whose
eloquence, it was said, the speech of the gods
must resemble, endeavoured to reconcile Fate
with Free Will. God's own eternal Will is
His Law; that He cannot change, because
He always ordains what is best. As Fate is
no more than a connected series of causes,
God is the first Original Cause, on which all
the rest depend. On the subject of the im-
mortality of the soul the Stoics were confused
and uncertain. Plato held that it is as a


WIT AND WISDOM 107
punishment that the soul is united to the body,
and buried in it as in a tomb. After its libe-
ration it takes its essence in the ether, and
becomes immortal and Divine.
That a good man stretched on a rack or
reposing on a bed of roses should enjoy himself
equally, was a doctrine that gained few prose-
lytes, and drove many disciples from the thorny
asperities of the painted Portico, where Zeno
opened his school, to the flowery gardens of
Epicurus.
Few could attain to the spirit of the epi-
taph of the emancipated slave:
'I, Epictetus, was a slave, and ailing in body,
But poor as I was, yet dear to the Immortals.'
The doctrine of virtue being its own reward
could not safeguard them from sufferings en-
tailed by the follies and wrong-doings of others.
Though Mrs. Carter had learnt from Epic-
tetus to talk of the headache as if it were no
evil, her friend Mrs. Chapone would have felt
greater respect for that philosopher if she could
furnish a receipt to prevent one suffering any
pain from the faults and follies of those with
whom we are connected. Failing this, she
held Mrs. Carter's stoical airs and all such stuff


i08 A WOMAN OF
in mortal contempt, and was not at all com-
forted by her jargon.
It is remarkable that in no sect of philo-
sophers was suicide so frequently committed as
among the Stoics; whereby they contradicted
their noble precepts of submission to the Divine
Will. Zeno hanged himself when his finger
ached.
They allowed the duty of praise and thanks-
giving for Divine assistance in moral improve-
ments, but they knew no repentance of their
failings.
Socrates, who had of all mankind the fairest
claim to be an instructor and reformer of the
world, confessed that he knew nothing, and
acknowledged the want, of a superior Guide.
There is a remarkable passage in Epictetus in
which he represents it as the office of God, or
of one deputed by Him, to appear among man-
kind as a Teacher and Example.
Mrs. Carter thought Epictetus inferior to
Socrates, but saw no reason to reduce him to
the level of modern heathen like Lord Boling-
broke, who treated Plato and St. Paul with
equal virulence, being opposed to all that was
good in either Christians or heathen.
She had more pleasure in reading Plato,


110 A WOMAN OF
hanged (suspendatur, Grot. ' De Verit.' lib. iv.).
So likewise he says that Socrates told Alci-
biades that, in proper time, a Divine person
would come into the world, who out of his care
and tender regard to mankind, would remove
all doubts, disperse all darkness, and fully in-
struct them how to present their prayers,
praises, and religious offerings to the Supreme
Being in a pure and acceptable manner. ('Alci-
biad II,'as cited by Blackwall, “Sacred Classics,'
vol. ii. p. 111.)
The cruelty of the Athenians proved that
something more than the illumination of specu-
lation, reason, and the fine arts is necessary to
dispel the darkness of disordered principles and
tame the savage outbreak of passions.
The whole heathen system of augury, divi-
nation, oracles, &c., arose from the universal
want felt for some Divine assistance, and the
insufficiency of the soul to its own virtue and
happiness. How unlike the soi-disant philo-
sophers of Edinburgh and Paris was that
distinguished ornament of polished Greece,
Xenophon, one of the greatest generals and
most illustrious philosophers in all heathen
antiquity. He carefully sought his way through
clouds and darkness; they, on the contrary,


WIT AND WISDOM
113
months every winter in London. No. 20
Clarges Street, where she had rooms for many
years on the first floor, was next door to the
house, No. 21, where she eventually died.
Clarges Street had been built in 1717, the
year of Mrs. Carter's birth, on the site of
Clarges House, a property owned by the family
of Anne Clarges, wife of General Monk, Duke
of Albemarle. Mrs. Carter had as neighbours
the distinguished Admiral, Lord St. Vincent,
and Charles James Fox, and at No. 11, Emma,
Lady Hamilton, is believed to have resided.
Later on Edmund Kean occupied No. 12.
A turnpike that stood at the corner of Picca-
dilly was abolished in 1761. Boswell enter-
tained Dr. Johnson hard by, in Half Moon
Street.
In 1762 Mrs. Carter's establishment at
Deal was also put on a different footing. Her
brothers and sister were all married, and her
stepmother was dead. She therefore bought
a house for herself at the southern extremity
of the town, commanding a view both of the
country and the sea, where her father lived
with her. Her friends lamented that her
talents should be wasted on the daily round of
domestic economy, but she said with her usual


WIT AND WISDOM 115
many of her admiring acquaintance to be buried
at Deal, yet that was the place where she most
shone. The applause of the world was not the
end or motive of any of her attainments, and
she enjoyed her position as much as many of
her friends regretted it for her. Failure in
such homely abilities as the science of pud-
dings only proved an incentive that eventually
caused her to excel. She wrote to Miss Tal-
bot: 'One would think you had a mind to
insult me upon a misfortune that happened to
me some fifteen years ago, when I produced a
pudding of a new invention, so overcharged
with pepper and brandy that it put the whole
family in a flame. The children all set up their
little throats against Greek and Latin, and I
found this unlucky event was like to prove
my everlasting disgrace, for they made a
perfect era of it—every remarkable thing was
sure to happen on the day "my sister made
the brandy pudding." So, to stop their clamour,
I happily applied myself to the forming a
special good sweet cake, with such success
that the former mishap was forgot, and I was
employed to make every christening cake
that happened in the family ever after. And
though I say it, that should not say it, several
1 2


n6 A WOMAN OF
grave, notable gentlewomen of unquestionable
good housewifery have applied to me for the
receipt. I hope you will not infer that I am
fond of brandy, for I put it in out of pure good
management to save milk.'
Mrs. Carter and her father seldom met
except at meals: each had a separate library
and apartment; this continued till his death in
1774, at the age of eighty-seven. To the last
he composed a sermon with the same per-
spicuity and force as at forty. She suffered
much anxiety when he insisted on mounting a
ladder to prune his vines, for to those advanced
in years, and unaccustomed to gymnastics,
she considered it hazardous, and saving a few
shillings was not worth the risk of giving pain
to his family. Some years previously she
seems to have entertained hopes of welcoming
yet another stepmother, and of thus being
relieved of her home duties; she wrote : 'Well,
at length my father is arrived from London,
and mayhap . There are some misses
coming in all possible expedition to spend some
time at Deal. ... A journey to London, if I
live and prosper, in spite of the misses I shall
have. My father has been so good as to
propose my taking a lodging. ... He will


WIT AND WISDOM 117
soon be in London and fix on a place for me
in the environs of St. Paul's.'
The visit of the misses, if it ever took place,
proved to be void of significance, and Mrs.
Carter continued doing her duty to her father
as far as her aching head would allow her.
The premises which Mrs. Carter had pur-
chased at Deal consisted of several adjoining
tenements, held under the Archbishop of Can-
terbury, but by different leases; she wished,
therefore, to have them all inserted in one
lease. Archbishop Secker granted her request,
and wrote:
'Madam Carter,—I am glad to find that
you are so prudent. And now it is my turn to
show that I am prudent too. As you will save
money by the re-union of four houses, I can
the better whip you up in your fine, especially
as I hear you like your house. Letting me
know that, was not quite so discreet. But the
wisest in their generation did not become so at
once.
'Under so able a master [Lord Bath] as
you have had for some months past, I do not
doubt but you will come on apace. And who
knows how much a few instances of gude
economy may contribute to bring about a


n8 A WOMAN OF
certain great event that hath been long de-
pending.'
In this letter the Archbishop, alluding to
the report that Lord Bath would marry Mrs.
Carter, permits himself a few malicious insinua-
tions as to his reported love of money, against
which Mrs. Carter had always so ably defended
her friend.
The Archbishop, however, when it came
to business, acted very generously to his old
friend, and when her lease was renewed he
would take nothing for it, and sent her word
that, as her fine did not satisfy him, he would
not receive it, and meant to keep it in his
power to arrest her until she could tender him
legal payment; to which she replied that her
only comfort was that if he screwed her up till
she broke nobody would be so great a loser by
her bankruptcy as he.
One day, when staying at Lambeth, Mrs.
Carter complained to the Archbishop of the
unfair manner in which our translators, for the
evident purpose of supporting the superiority
of the husband, have translated the same Greek
verb differently. 'If any brother hath a wife
that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell
with him, let him not put hcr away. And a


WIT AND WISDOM
119
woman which hath a husband that believeth
not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let
her not leave him. The Archbishop denied
the fact, and asserted that the word in the
original was not the same, but finding his
antagonist obstinate, said, Come with me,
Madam Carter, to my study, and be confuted ;'
they went, and his Grace, instead of being
angry when he was proved to be wrong, said
good-humouredly, "No, Madam Carter, 'tis I
that must be confuted, and you are right.'
Granting, however, that the home belongs to
the husband, the translators were surely justi-
fied in accentuating the difference between
leaving and being turned out.
Archbishop Secker appointed Mrs. Carter's
brother-in-law one of his chaplains, and to the
end of her days his kindness followed her, even
after he was himself long since dead. In 1798
Bishop Porteous, of London, in presenting a
living to her nephew, wrote:
* Although you and I have long been very
good friends, I don't think I ever had the gal-
lantry to present you with a New Year's gift.
I now wish to mend my manners, and as we
are both of us a little past our prime, it would
not suit either of us to wait very long for any-


120
A WOMAN OF
thing. I will therefore enter upon a new course
(as all penitents ought to do) without delay,
and will in one respect at least begin the New
Year well by desiring you to accept, as a New
Year's Gift, the living of Thorley, in Hertford-
shire, for your nephew, Mr. Pennington. In
offering you this benefice, I have the great
pleasure of testifying my regard for a most
excellent lady, whose talents, learning, and
piety are an honour to her sex and the age in
which she lives; and who is the oldest and
most intimate friend of my revered patron,
Archbishop Secker, who, were he now living,
would not be displeased with this mark of my
attention to one whom he most highly esteemed
and loved.'
Mrs. Carter wrote a poem on the death of
Queen Caroline, wife of George II. (Caroline
the Illustrious), which was presented to the King
by Sir Robert Walpole, and in Coxe's Life
of Walpole' it has been erroneously ascribed
to Lord Melcombe. Richardson inserted her
• Ode to Wisdom' in his Clarissa' without
her permission. She complained; he apolo-
gised, and explained that, as the ode had been
shown to him as written by a lady, he had
inserted it to enliven a work that was written


WIT AND WISDOM 121
with the intention of doing honour to the sex
to the best of his poor abilities. 'Clarissa' was
translated into Dutch in 1752, and with it the
* Ode to Wisdom.'
She was a great admirer of Richardson's
works, and believed that he was determined to
be revenged on the people who thought him too
prolix, by a judicious conclusion that left them
longing to learn how Clementina was disposed
of, and made them wish the book still longer.
Elizabeth Carter's fame spread to the Con-
tinent. In 1739, at the age of twenty-two,
with her father's consent, she commenced
a literary correspondence with Jean Philippe
Baratier, that youthful prodigy of learning, who
was three years her junior. He wrote several
works of theology and ecclesiastical history,
and was admitted to the Academy of Science
at Berlin when he was fourteen, and died in
1740, aged nineteen. His father was a French
Huguenot who settled in Germany, and his
mother was a Prussian, so he possessed the great
advantage of two nationalities. His letters to
Elizabeth Carter expressed an effusive admira-
tion, that must have rather astonished his mat-
ter-of-fact correspondent. He was mortified,
he said, at not even seeing her portrait, and


WIT AND WISDOM 123
author are less read and valued than if the
reader has been at some pains to acquire them
himself. This promising young life was cut
short the following year.
The Empress Catherine expressed high ad-
miration of Mrs. Carter's translation of Epicte-
tus, and in Russia, where Mrs. Carter said the
people were just learning to walk on their hind
legs, there appeared in the 'Sotschinenie : ou
Mélanges de Littérature en Russe, pour le mois
de Mai, 1758 ':
'Anecdotes au Sujet d'une savante Fille en
Angleterre, Mademoiselle Elizabeth Carter,
qui vient de donner au public une belle traduc-
tion en Anglais de tous les ouvrages d'Epictète.
Elle est fille de Nicholas Carter, Docteur en
Théologie, établi à Deal, ville maritime, dans
le Comté de Kent. Cet ecclésiastique, homme
de beaucoup de piété et d'érudition, remarquant
dans sa fille de très heureuses dispositions, réso-
lut de ne rien négliger de ce qui pourrait con-
tribuer à son éducation. Mais, craignant avec
raison que ces avantages ne produisissent en
elle une sotte vanité, il s'appliqua à lui inspirer
des sentiments d'humanité et de modestie, et
surtout une piété éclairée et solide.
'Mademoiselle Carter possède le Latin, le


A WOMAN OF
Grec, l'Anglois, le François, l'Italien et l'Espa-
gnol; et elle lit l'Hebreu et l'Allemand. Elle
serait trop accomplie, si à toutes ces qualités
était joint un extérieur également parfait
(quoiqu'elle soit assez agréable) avec de plus
grands avantages du côté de la fortune. Mais
son tempérament, son goût pour la simplicité,
et enfin une philosophie soutenue et épurée par
la religion, lui font presque regarder toutes ces
choses d'un œil de Stoïque.
'30"" de Mai 1758.'
Elizabeth Carter was not ambitious to attain
fame by affecting new discoveries in religion
or morals, but her sound principles were the
result of research and conviction, and secured
her own happiness, while it added to that of her
fellow-creatures.


WIT AND WISDOM
CHAPTER VI
SOCIETY
Mrs. Carter equally condemned a life passed
in perpetual society or in perpetual solitude.
Social pleasures at proper intervals stimulated
her mind and spirits, but she wearied of con-
stant dissipation, and home alone presented the
joyful means of rest and recreation. Variety,
she considered, is best adapted to the human
mind during its life of probation. Only as a
rest from work can repose be enjoyed. Queen
Elizabeth acknowledged two methods of bring-
ing our years to an end, 'wearing out' and
'rusting out,' but those who neither know how
to work nor how to rest contrive to do both,
and that very rapidly. They loiter through the
day in a purposeless activity, and boast that they
never rest. Their weeks, like their days, are
unbroken by the alternate work and rest ap-
pointed to man, and if, after having transgressed


i26 A WOMAN OF
the law of work for six days, they attempt to rest
for conscience' sake on the seventh, they find it
very dull. It was not made for the unemployed.
If circumstances, said Epictetus, make it neces-
sary for us to live alone, we should enjoy tran-
quillity and freedom, and not complain of soli-
tude. If we find ourselves in a crowd we
should cheerfully endure the trouble and un-
easiness, and not treat our neighbours as knaves
and robbers. We cannot escape from men,
nor can we change them, so we should regard
an assembly of them as a festival. At times
God wills that we should be at leisure to medi-
tate, write, read, hear, and prepare ourselves.
When we have had sufficient time He says,
'Come to the contest; now is the opportunity
for you to prove whether you are worthy of
victory, or whether you are among those who
go about the world defeated.' No contest is
without confusion, and some will plead that
their only desire is to live quietly. To such
weak, discontented folk, who dishonour God's
summons, Epictetus answers contemptuously,
'Lament, then, and groan as you deserve to do,
be grieved, envious, disappointed, and unhappy.'
He despises the impotent wailings of those who
have not had the courage to take their part


WIT AND WISDOM
in life, and cry ' I am in a wretched condition,
master, and I am unfortunate; no man cares
for me, no man gives me anything, all blame
me, all speak ill of me.'
In her youth, Mrs. Carter would not have
chosen to live year after year upon the same
spot, in the same contracted circle, had it been
in her power to do otherwise. She thought it
important to mix now and then in the hurry of
society, in order to keep up with the 'universal
community of mankind,' to enlarge and vary
her ideas, and thus become more useful and
agreeable to those with whom she lived than it
is possible to be if leading an absolutely regular
clockwork life, always moved by the same
springs and perpetually striking the same note.
The wisest and best of the human race must
sometimes need to be diverted from their own
thoughts and feelings; and in town opportuni-
ties are every hour at hand. Those refined
and cultivated minds that depend little on
external entertainment are liable to despise the
amusements that are necessary to keep others
in good humour. There is a danger of their
becoming 'odd, out-of-the-way people to whom
the important affair of a masquerade is a
grievous task, nothing but good sense, and true


128 A WOMAN OF
purposes of living an amusement, and all the
gay bagatelles of folly, immense labour, and
vexation of spirit.' • Feeling no want them-
selves, such minds may be disappointed not to
find in the generality of mankind the reasonable
intelligence that belongs to very few. Conse-
quently those who might elevate society are
often inclined to run away from it. 'After all,'
she concludes, 'the men and women of this
world must have their rattles and their play-
things, and the only way people of superior
talents can hope to make them wiser and better
is by condescending to play with them. Re-
member that Socrates and Plato frequented all
the routs, visiting rooms and raree-shows in
Athens, or they would never have gained so
many proselytes to virtue.' Socrates even
learnt to dance at an advanced age.
The pleasures of a 'volatile head' are at
any rate much less liable to disappointment
than those of a 'sensible heart.' For such as
can be contented with rattles and raree-shows
there are rattles and raree-shows in abundance,
and when one is broken, it is mighty easily re-
placed by another.
Though Mrs. Carter had a strange, stubborn,
constitutional disposition to be pleased that



BOOK-PLATE OF ELIZABETH CARTER





WIT AND WISDOM
made her sociable and tolerant, she suffered all
her life from weak nerves and fluttering pulses,
constitutional evils, for which she foresaw no
cure but in the regions of immortality. Her
shyness aggravated by short sight made it im-
possible, she complained, to divest herself of
her idiot look, though self-control enabled her
to enter a room with ' a very graceful intrepidity.'
With an aching head and twitching limbs, she
went about the world active, useful, cheerful,
and thankful, and showed none of those sym-
ptoms of bad nerves, well described as a ' term
one is pleased to give to the indulgence of ill
humour that disgraces one's best principles,
grieves one's best friends, and makes one's
whole being ungrateful. A disposition that,
though troublesome and teasing to others, so
scratches and tears the poor owner, that it is
more worthy our compassion than we are will-
ing to allow.' The most nervous people fre-
quently appear the most composed, and sudden
fear only makes them calmer. They have
learnt to exercise that self-control, without
which they would be like the Roman, described
by Epictetus, who wrapped up his head when
his favourite horse was running, and when, con-
trary to his fears, it won, the revulsion of his
K


130
A WOMAN OF
feelings was so strong that sponges were
required to recover him from a fainting fit.
Housebreakers, Dr. Johnson allowed, may have
just cause for fear, as they may be 'shot get-
ting into a house, or hanged when they get
out of it,' but ordinary mortals should control
their nerves.
Though Mrs. Carter might appear tran-
quil, she said, “people who make it a point
never to squall, and do not often speak, have
nevertheless their feelings. If she had not
been a Christian she would have been a 'Stoic,
a metaphysician, a bear and a wit. When her
solitude was occasionally turned into hurry and
company, to which she had been long disused,
she felt like a wild thing just caught, and
doubted if in her fright she would not run into
holes and corners like a wild kitten. In the
midst of all these foolish Autters she wrote:
• I bless myself for being placed in a situation
which seldom exposes me to them, and born to
a position neither of hard labour nor the equally
fatiguing one of splendid slavery. None but
those who enjoy it can have any idea of the
comfort of insignificancy. She often secretly
exulted in the privilege of being suffered to
go in and out of a room with as much silence


WIT AND WISDOM 131
and as little ceremony as a cat, while people of
more consequence were kept at a distance by
the forms and fashions of this world, and could
only strain their eyes by looking at each other
through a telescope. Excess of good house-
wifery had prevented her ever making use of
the fan, and it was so long since she had
appeared without either a shuttle or needle in
her hands, that she would be utterly at a loss
what to do with them, and in her perplexity,
regardless how she disposed of her feet, she
would infallibly tumble over her nose. Miss
Talbot considered it her duty to get rid of
this awkwardness. 'Learn the exercise of the
fan,' she said; 'I will furnish you with fan-
mounts.'
Unfortunately Mrs. Carter's modesty and
straightforwardness lessened her influence in
raising the general tone of society. Like all
shy people she loved listening better than talk-
ing. The world has no leisure to attend to the
wisest if they are backward and diffident in
asserting their opinions. Dr. Johnson, when
assured that a man to whom he had just been
introduced would grow very entertaining pre-
sently, calmly answered, 'Sir, I can wait.'
Lady Louisa Stuart tells us that Mrs. Carter


i32 A WOMAN OF
not only lacked a quick perception of her
neighbours' absurdities, but was equally free
from any desire to expose them. She sat still,
honestly admiring what a livelier but shallower
person would have criticised and ridiculed.
It was not the glitter and finery of this
world that awed Elizabeth Carter, for even at
Deal, where folks were nearly all on a level,
she was as much flurried as in the most
splendid assembly; on the contrary, she was
no doubt more at her ease with well-bred
people, whatever position they chanced to oc-
cupy, as the best bred are invariably those
'who make the fewest persons uneasy.' Her
head, she declared, was fortunately a very un-
important one in the world of literature or busi-
ness, so that it might act 'sans consequence?
and with half a ray of twilight she was able to
pass her day, resting her aching head upon a
pillow, or indulge in the alleviations of an
elbow-chair.
An occasional visit to her uncle, a wealthy
silk merchant living in St. Paul's Churchyard,
was her only experience of city life during her
early years; there, panting for breath in the
smoke of London, she read, wrote, sung,
played, hopped and amused herself as well as


134
A WOMAN OF
'queen,' she had been acquainted from child-
hood, as many of her early years had been
passed at Horton, near Hythe.
My London life,' Elizabeth Carter wrote,
'has not that hurry and bustle it might have
if I was of more importance. My insignifi-
cance exempts me from forms and ceremonies
to which higher situations are subject; my
hours pass quietly in the society of my friends,
and, without mixing in what is called the world,
I partake of that vivacity which always enlivens
conversation in a great metropolis. Unfor-
tunately she heard too many 'smart things' to
remember any. If she were only now and then
to discover some bright thought shooting like
a star through the gloom of a dull conversation
its singularity would have struck her so forcibly
that she might be able to retain it, but being
constantly in the midst of one continued cloud-
less sunshine, her eyes were dazzled and at a
loss where to fix their gaze.
She declined to stay with any of her
friends, as she said she must have somewhere
to rest her aching head without giving trouble,
and have some hours of the day to call her
own. When merely paying a visit, she felt
quite 'out of the track' of her proper employ-


WIT AND WISDOM 137
in the week, unlike the lady who, when she
had reached the fifth, exclaimed, 'What! will
that man have never done complaining?'
Mrs. Carter did not care for the pompous
suite of apartments lighted up for the joyless
drum, but liked a number of large comfortable
rooms, well furnished, and warmed with good
fires, where an intelligent circle of friends met
every evening. Though she could perfectly
conceive the joy of talking to a thousand people
during half the day, she heartily pitied those
who did not spend the other half 'quietly and
decently in the sober conversation of books.'
She never dined at home, unless prevented by
illness from going out. The chairs and carriages
of her friends were always sent to fetch her to
dinner, and brought her back at ten at the
latest. Though she thought it wrong to debar
people from 'the comfortable privilege of play-
ing the fool,' she would have wished the revival
of the curfew, so that any assembly of folks
out of their own habitations after ten o'clock at
night might be deemed a riot. This would
save many an aching head, and perhaps, too, an
aching heart, and introduce much good order
and economy into the world. For her own
part, she fluttered up and down the world in


r38 A WOMAN OF
the height of good spirits, which she never
lavished away by keeping 'bad hours,' for
except on public occasions ten o'clock was her
invariable rule.
Though the season broke up towards the
end of May, Mrs. Carter declared that winter
in London lasted till July, but then, she added,
you have the comfort of spending it among
creatures of your own species and in your own
way, while the rest of the world are catching
cold in the country by fancying that June and
July must be summer. In the country no one
appreciated the blessing of a fine day more
than she did. A French philosopher, in the
short compass of ninety pages, had accurately
demonstrated that the weather which is par-
ticularly favourable to the growth of cabbages
is downright poison to the human genius, but
in town she considered fair weather 'no other-
wise ' than as a matter of convenience to keep
her out of the dirt. From any other view one
day in the city was just as good as another.
She sometimes visited the moon and stars
at Lambeth, where they were rather more
visible than in the smoke of London, but even
there the atmosphere was very different from
that of the country.


WIT AND WISDOM
Mrs. Carter did not agree with her friend,
Miss Talbot, who complained that there was an
enchantment in the air of London which made
people avoid each other the moment they found
themselves in that vile place, who previously
had been wishing above all things to meet, and
that those happy hours spent with agreeable
friends in all the ease and freedom of familiar
intercourse, not on trifles such as 'actors and
dramas,' but on subjects worthy of the attention
of reasonable creatures, was a sort of society
that seemed to be extinct. In the country,
Miss Talbot lamented, we cannot have it
because the people are not there, and in town
we cannot have it because everybody is daily
engaged in some public place.
Mrs. Carter, on the contrary, in the
brightest splendour of summer suns, looked
forward with joy to the dark days of January
and the smoke of London. * If I had no other
motive,' she exclaimed, 'to bring me to
London than to avoid the hollow blasts of the
wind, I could sit through the wintry months
listening to the tempests, and looking at the
dashing ocean with great tranquillity, but Dr.
Johnson says, " London is the land of ideas,"
and I say that it is the land of friendship.'


WIT AND WISDOM 141
little groundless disquietudes with which people
are apt to tease those whom they most sin-
cerely love. Their very quarrels were vastly
amusing, for they used to quarrel sometimes,
but with so little resentment on either side that
it only served as a diversion.
'It is no doubt a very reasonable wish,'
she said, 'that the whole creation should con-
tribute to our amusement, and no impediment
ever stand in the way of our enjoying at one
season the conversation of our friends, and at
another the song of the nightingales and the
bloom of roses, one pleasure being thus im-
mediately replaced by another. A fine system
this, and one extremely well adapted to the
undeviating rectitude of the race of Adam!
After all, we must be content to take things as
they are, and it is from our own folly if they
are not mighty well.'
For the sake of health Mrs. Carter walked
sometimes in the Mall during the fine weather,
but, though there was plenty of gossip to be
had there, she seldom heard anything 'very
smart.' The following is a specimen of the
wit that satisfied the fine folk, but that she
feared to spoil by a blundering repetition:
Lady , whose unhappy married life was


i42 A WOMAN OF
notorious, was very ill, and, fearing that her
lord would show 'the triumph of hope over
experience,' by rushing headlong into another
union, told him that she would not mind dying
if she were not afraid of a successor who was
the devil's eldest daughter. 'Your ladyship
may be perfectly easy about that,' answered
my lord, 'for it is against the canon for any
man to marry two sisters.'
Grotius says that 'All are fools who do
appear to be such, and one half of those who
do not.'
If human nature, Mrs. Carter thought,
were estimated by the figure it makes in his-
tory, the result would be extremely mortifying,
but it would be as fair to judge the elements by
some earthquake, that once in a century lays
waste half a province, whilst successive years of
plenty pass unrecorded. History recounts the
violent passions and perverse principles that
effect revolutions, but takes no notice of the
regular tenor of common life.
Such a man as Sir James Macdonald, with
his great and noble schemes for the civilisation
and improvement of his property in the Isle
of Skye (to which end he acquired the Erse
language), and, at twenty, possessed the


A WOMAN OF
distinction between right and wrong which it is
of infinite importance to preserve. Into what
is called the world, she said, no true penitent
would have the effrontery to try to enter. A
female gamester seemed to her a blot in
nature. 'Pray,' she asked, 'could you ever
discover who gets the money that is lost?
I never remember hearing of above two or
three people who made a fortune by gaming.
Does Satan sweep the stakes and carry off the
winnings? At least one never heard they
were anywhere extant on earth. It would be
well if no honest tradespeople were hurt, but
their lawful debts are the last thing people of
this stamp ever think of paying.'
The round of diversion at Bath is described
by Dr. Carter in a letter written to his daughter,
when he accompanied his Kentish neighbours,
Sir George and Lady Oxenden, to that fashion-
able resort. Tuesday and Friday evenings
there were balls; Monday, Wednesday, Thurs-
day and Saturday assemblies; and every night
there was gaming of all sorts. On Sunday
evenings all profane diversions gave way to
tea-drinking! The company met in the Pump
Room to drink the waters in the morning, and
were entertained with music. 'For my own


WIT AND WISDOM 145
part,' wrote the Doctor, though I generally
attend these meetings, I stay not long at them,
but read, walk, and converse with Sir George,
which is the chief part of my pleasure. Last
Monday night a bloody fray happened betwixt
the footmen and the bath-chair-men, which put
the ladies into a great consternation. The
contest was sharp but not long, and the suc-
cess very doubtful. The footmen had the
advantage in numbers, and the chair-men in
the goodness of their weapons. The damage
of both sides is computed to be the breaking of
half a dozen heads, and the windows of forty
chairs, so that there has been more business
for the glazier than the surgeon. Sir George
met with a little brush upon his leg; Lady
Oxenden and I just escaped.'
During her early years Elizabeth Carter
joined the movement, originated by Dr. John-
son and Mrs. Chapone, to substitute conversa-
tion for cards. She was delighted when her
old friend Horace Walpole succeeded to the
earldom of Orford, and immediately begged
him “to get an Act of Parliament for putting
down faro. “As if I could make Acts of Par-
liament!' exclaimed Lord Orford, whose power
as an hereditary legislator was so greatly over-


146 A WOMAN OF
rated. The attempt would have ill become one
who 'for some years played more faro than
anybody.'
'1 played commerce last night,' wrote Mrs.
Carter in 1741, 'and made such wonderful
improvement as to know that clubs are red,
hearts black, and that the knave is the highest
card in the whole pack, with many other
particulars too tedious to mention, only I was
willing to give you a specimen of my extra-
ordinary genius. However, I lost every
counter, and retired into a corner with other
unfortunate gamesters, to bewail my lot and
tell quaint stories.'
'For the punishment of my iniquities,' she
wrote on another occasion, 'I was once
drawn into a—what shall I call it? a drum,
a rout, a racket, a hurricane, an uproar, a
something in short that was the utter con-
fusion of all sense and meaning, where every
charm of conversation was drove away by
that foe to human society—whist; in a word,
where I was kept up muzzing and half dead
with sleep and vexation till one in the morn-
ing, and from that time made a resolution
in whatever company I met a pack of cards
to fly fro7ti it as from the face of a serpent.


WIT AND WISDOM
I have often borne such a situation among
people I was indifferent to, but it is beyond
mortal sufferance to see those capable of
the most enlivening entertainment look as
stupid as dormice, and whenever they did
speak, it was in a language utterly unintel-
ligible.' Miss Talbot, to whom she addressed
this complaint, only objected to cards when
they became the business of life and the
bane of conversation; in mixed company she
reverenced them, and amongst a good-
humoured set of people that were not con-
versible, she really loved them. Mrs. Carter
subsequently modified her views, and in her
old age enjoyed a quiet rubber.
People who fancy themselves busy, running
from one crowded room to another, wearing
their spirits and ruining their health with late
hours and splendid entertainments, or wasting
life in wild ambition or dishonest gain, are, she
declared, the truly idle, and not those who, by
cheerful relaxation from useful industry, one
part of the day provide themselves with health
to perform with comfort and spirit the duties of
the other.
Mrs. Carter was full of insular prejudices,
and considered the new French ambassador,
L 2


150
A WOMAN OF
her into a hot crowd that was listening to my
Lord Monboddo, and had no sooner stuck her
at his elbow, than he went off to another part
of the room, whereupon she walked back re
infecta to her corner. He was pleasant and
unassuming, with an astonishing quantity of
erudition, an enthusiast in Greek literature and
a worshipper of Homer. Notwithstanding his
learning and talents, he declared he had re-
ceived more information during the time he
had conversed with society in London than he
ever found before. Though unable to acquire
the tail of his ancestors, Lord Monboddo en-
deavoured, as far as the laws of society would
permit, to enjoy their freedom, by taking a
daily air-bath in his room, where he walked
unattired with the windows open.
Mrs. Carter's own appearance at one of
Mrs. Vesey's assemblies is thus described in
the year 1785 by Elizabeth Sheridan :
Our circle was increased by the arrival of
Mrs. Carter; on her being announced you may
suppose my whole attention was turned to the
door. She seems about sixty (she was really
sixty-eight) and is rather fat; she is no way
striking in her appearance, and was dressed in a
scarlet gown and petticoat, with a plain undress


WIT AND WISDOM 151
cap and perfectly flat head. A small work-bag
was hanging at her arm, out of which she drew
some knitting as soon as she was seated; but
with no fuss or airs. She entered into the
conversation with that ease which persons have
when both their thoughts and words are at
command, and with no toss of the head, no
sneer, no emphatic look, in short no affected
consequence of any kind.'
That our heroine when verging on seventy
should have elected to clothe herself in scarlet
is rather a shock, but her ' perfectly flat head'
only implies that she did not adopt the 'tower-
ing Bade/onian' head-dress crowned with
feathers then in vogue. She was always more
sociable and easy when there were few people,
and avoided entertainments where, as Hannah
More said, '200 persons met together, dressed
in the extremity of fashion; painted as red as
bacchanals; poisoning the air with perfumes;
treading on each other's gowns; making the
crowd they blame; not one in ten able to get
a chair; protesting they are engaged in ten
other places, and lamenting the fatigue they
are not obliged to endure.'
When Epictetus was annoyed by the rude-
ness, the pushing, the abuse, and the thievish


i52 A WOMAN OF
propensities of his fellow-creatures at the public
baths, he did not lose his temper—or, at least,
he recommended his followers not to lose
theirs—for, he said, 'It is more important you
should keep your will in harmony with nature
than that you should bathe.'
Neither Epictetus nor his translator could
foresee the congested state of modern society,
or imagine that at the Court of Queen Victoria
a crowd, largely composed of well-bred women,
would have to be restrained by solid barriers,
guarded by Gentlemen-at-Arms, from storming
each line of defence as they approached the
Royal presence. During the early years of the
present reign the scene of conflict was happily
changed to the outer hall of the palace, which
enabled loyal subjects to pass their Majesties
unruffled by the fray. The sight of beauty in
distress during the struggle that ensued as the
crowd departed sometimes melted the large
heart of a stalwart Life-Guardsman. With
grim humour he would allow an importunate
fair one to'pass, knowing that her farther pro-
gress was barred by a solid barrier of high
seats that no persuasion could move, and that
impeded by train and veil it would be im-
possible to negotiate. Baffled and dejected,


A WOMAN OF
a man of honour, and yet how many went
about the world in unmolested possession of
these titles to which they had no better right
than her poor friend to his esquireship.
As an onlooker the petty vanities of society
amused her. Besides other impertinences
essential to the character of a fine lady she
noted a peculiar kind of vanity, which dis-
played itself in a perpetual alteration of the
will, for which purpose one of her acquaintance
contracted with a lawyer by the year. 'Tis
not,' she said, 'that the woman has any love
for the people she puts in, or resentment against
those she scratches out, but a determination to
show her power ; and those who would get any-
thing by her must catch her at her last gasp.'
Lord Chesterfield's cynicism, however,
rather disappointed a virtuoso of his acquaint-
ance, who bought an old picture of a man and
woman and two boys, and observing the Stan-
hope arms in one corner, presented it to my
lord, imagining he would be delighted to have
a proof of the antiquity of his family. To pre-
vent all disputes of precedency for the future,
my lord, who treated this sort of vanity very
whimsically, inscribed under the figures,' Adam
Stanhope, of Eden Garden, Egypt, and Eve


WIT AND WISDOM 155
Stanhope, his wife, with their two sons, Cain
Stanhope and Abel Stanhope.' His genealogy
would have been indisputable if he had put
Seth Stanhope instead of Cain.
That self-advertisement and pose without
which no one, though possessing the beauty of
Venus herself, would fill the rôle of a profes-
sional beauty she severely censured; the very
term, which is supposed to have been invented
towards the end of the nineteenth century, was
applied by Mrs. Carter to the Miss Gunnings,
of whom she wrote: 'Indeed a beauty by pro-
fession is a kind of being much too hurrying
and bruyant not to overset all the tranquil ideas
of sequestered life, and is supportable only in its
proper element-a crowded town assembly.'
She agreed that nothing makes people tired
of a fine face but a want of something in
the mind and character, and its being seen
everywhere in that idle, fluttering way, that
makes half the fine faces in England old and
neglected in a twelvemonth.
She considered mere constitutional good
humour and civility mighty pretty decorations
for an afternoon visit, but at home, or in the
important duties of life, they are of little avail,
if the behaviour is regulated only by a system


WIT AND WISDOM
157
the whole day turned on horses and dogs,
except now and then a word upon the weather,
dust, and heat, out of pure condescension to
her limited powers of conversation. Dr.
Carter's Kentish neighbour and literary friend,
Sir George Oxenden, warned Elizabeth in her
youth that there was hardly an instance of a
woman of letters entering into an intimacy
with men of wit and parts—particularly poets
—who were not afterwards abused and mal-
treated by them in print. Mr. Pope, he said,
had done so more than once. Her father
added, “As you never abuse others, you may
hope not to be abused. Hold your own, but
without any appearance of ill-nature or con-
tempt.' She always maintained that the unjust
manner in which Pope had been attacked ex-
cused any apparent malice on his own part.
She regretted the more powerful avocations
that caused Burke to quit the tranquil pleasures
of the select · Bas Bleu 'society for the turbu-
lent schemes of ambition and the tricks of
political life; he rarely found time to step in to
their assemblies, where, if he marked no one
with whom he wished to exchange ideas, he
would seize the first book or pamphlet he could
catch to sooth his harassed mind by reading a


WIT AND WISDOM 159
her interesting countenance. Thackeray in his
• Virginians' mentions Mrs. Carter amongst the
most attractive women of her day. When Sir
George Warrington succeeded to his uncle's
estates he soon wearied of his surroundings, and
the only possession he contemplated with un-
mixed satisfaction was his wife, who had shared
his poverty in his dear little cottage at Lam-
beth. Though reminding her somewhat pom-
pously how immeasurably inferior she was to the
women he might have married, with the spirit
of the Turk that is said to lurk in all English-
men, he allowed that she did very well. “I
have never cared,' he said, 'for another woman.
I have seen more beautiful, but none that suited
me as well as your ladyship. I have met Mrs.
Carter and Miss Mulso [Mrs. Chapone], Mrs.
Thrale, and Mme. Kaufmann, and the angelical
Gunnings, and her Grace of Devonshire, and a
host of beauties who were not angelic by any
means; and I was not dazzled by them.'
It was impossible not to be better as well
as happier for an intimate acquaintance with
Mrs. Carter ; the most insignificant people she
inspired with confidence in themselves, by
showing them how to regulate their minds, as
well as their actions, by the power of will.


i60 A WOMAN OF
Mrs. Carter's talk was all upon books ; of life
and manners, Fanny Burney declared she was
as ignorant as a nun. If certain phases of them
escaped her observation, the oversight happily
contributed to her optimism; her shrewdness
and common sense were undoubted. Dr. John-
son questioned if much consolation is to be
drawn from seeing life as it is, but, he added,
'that drawn from truth, if any there be, is solid
and durable.' Possessing few of the surround-
ings and ties that in the eyes of the world re-
present happiness, Mrs. Carter exemplified the
maxim that to be good is to be happy. 'Happy
she certainly was beyond the race of women.'
Mrs. Chapone observed a 'few dear comfortable
signs of weakness' in her which were attractive,
because the most endearing ties of society arise
from mutual indulgence of each other's failings.
She kept out of an easy-chair as long as possible,
and was content to take the blessings of friend-
ship and affection, with the inevitable tax of
anxiety, that is wisely imposed on them, till we
wake amidst a society from which we can dread
no future separation.


WIT AND WISDOM
161
CHAPTER VII
DR. JOHNSON
For Dr. Johnson Mrs. Carter had a very great
esteem. She had enjoyed his friendship for
nearly fifty years. He had been introduced to
her by Mr. Cave, editor of the 'Gentleman's
Magazine. On this event her father wrote to
her on June 25, 1738: You mention Johnson ;
but that is a name with which I am utterly
unacquainted. Neither his scholastic, critical,
or poetical character ever reached my ears. I
a little suspect his judgment if he is very fond
of Martial.' In one of her last conversations
with Dr. Johnson, when she was expressing
her approval of his unswerving adherence to
religion, and admiration for his sound princi-
ples, he took her by the hand, and said with
great eagerness, You know this to be true;
testify it to the world when I am gone.'
She blamed his biographers for recording
M


162 A WOMAN OF
arguments he had maintained only for the sake
of victory, which did not convey his genuine
sentiments, for he held that a man should be
able to argue equally well on either side. His
real opinions, she declared, were to be found in
his works.
His 'Lives of the Poets,' which had lost
him the friendship of many eminent people, did
not alter her steadfast regard for him; all that
it contained of envy or ill-nature she attributed
to a morbid irritability of the nerves, brought
on by bodily suffering.
Referring to their first acquaintance, he
wrote to her: 'To every joy is appended a
sorrow. The name of Miss Carter introduces
the memory of Cave. Poor dear Cave! I
owed him much; for to him I owe that I
have known you.' Dr. Johnson concluded
one of his letters to her with the expres-
sion of a respect 'which I neither owe nor
pay to any other.' Having dined at Mrs.
Garrick's in the society of Mrs. Carter, Hannah
More, and Fanny Burney, he declared, 'Three
such women are not to be found; I know not
where I could find a fourth, except Mrs. Len-
nox, who is superior to them all.' So much
excellence, however, seems to have been rather





WIT AND WISDOM 163
son V
oppressive, for when Boswell exclaimed, “What!
had you them all to yourself, sir?' he answered,
* I had them all, as much as they were to be
had; but it might have been better had there
been more company there.'
Dr. Johnson was Mrs. Carter's favourite
author. Of his notes on Shakespeare she
wrote, “I will not undertake his defence as a
commentator, but his work is valuable for many
strokes of his own great, refined and delicate
way of thinking. With all his encomiums on
our Bishop (Warburton], he sometimes, in the
most polite and elegant language, treats him
more severely than his open enemies ; these
have
""Kicked and cuffed, and split, and tore and rent,
And done they know not what, in their avengement,"
but the pen of Dr. Johnson, like the ethereal
stroke of lightning, without any external mark
of violence has penetrated to his vitals.'
Dr. Johnson, she said, had no vanity, and
there was never a human mind more regardless
of censure and applause. This excused the
want of tenderness he had shown for the
weaknesses of others, though a knowledge of
mankind should have taught him that people
M 2


164 A WOMAN OF
whose minds are not of the same impenetrable
firmness may suffer by having their blundering
and folly exposed with such unmitigated severity.
He once, however, had the satisfaction of
outdoing even Mrs. Carter in charity towards
his neighbour. When they were both dining
with Mrs. Garrick, in company with Hannah
More, Mrs. Boscawen, Sir Joshua Reynolds,
and Dr. Burney, the conversation turned on
Thomas Hollis, whose democratic books, deco-
rated with daggers and caps of liberty, were
being circulated throughout Europe. 'I doubt
he is an atheist,' said Mrs. Carter, in one of
those unguarded moments which are sure to
occur when the most charitable allow themselves
to discuss their neighbours. 'I don't know
that,' replied Johnson, smiling triumphantly;
'he might have become one if he had had time
to ripen, he might have exuberated into an
atheist.'
Dr. Johnson always took a friendly interest
in her literary work, and suggested that she
should undertake a translation of ' Boethius de
Consolatione' because there is prose and verse,
and put her name to it when published.
Of his epigram on Mrs. Carter,1 Dr. Johnson
1 See Gent. Mag. vol. viii. p. 210.


WIT AND WISDOM 165
wrote: 'I have composed a Greek epigram
on Eliza, and think she ought to be celebrated
in as many different languages as Louis le
Grand.' He always treated her with civility,
attention, and respect. Her winning gentle-
ness and the politeness of her conversation and
address were said to be such as to disarm even
brutality itself, and her religious cast of charac-
ter and gravity of deportment, as well as her
erudition, imposed some check on the asperity
and eccentricities of Dr. Johnson, who wrote to
her, 'Who is there that you cannot influence?'
It was the affectation of learning that he
disliked, not the learning itself; she was not
'herissde de grec,' nor blown up with self-
importance.
'And Carter taught the female train,
The deeply wise are never vain.'
He respected her domestic qualifications,
and though he considered that a man is in
general better pleased when he has a good
dinner on his table than when his wife talks
Greek, he said, 'My old friend, Mrs. Carter,
can make a pudding as well as translate
Epictetus, and work a handkerchief as well as
compose a poem.'
He quite allowed that a man of sense and


166 A WOMAN OF
education should find a suitable companion in
his wife, and that it is a miserable thing when
conversation is limited to a dispute as to
whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted.
When consulted by a friend as to the
advisability of proposing to a woman whom he
greatly admired, but whose talents he feared,
the Doctor assured him that after she had been
married to him for one year he would find her
reason much weaker, and her wit not so bright.
This man, 'who praised one whom he would
have been afraid to marry,' probably ended by
'marrying one whom he would have been
ashamed to praise.'
Of Dr. Johnson's opinion of the ' Bas Bleu'
ladies she wrote to Mrs. Montagu:
'Oh, dear! Oh, dear! how pretty we look,
and what brave things Mr. Johnson said of us!
I am just as sensible to present fame as you
can be. Your Virgils and Horaces may talk
what they will of posterity, but I think it is
much better to be celebrated by the men,
women and children among whom you are
actually living. One thing is particularly
agreeable to my vanity, that you and I always
figure in the literary world together, and that
from the classical poet of water-drinking


WIT AND WISDOM 167
rhymes to the highest dispenser of human
fame, Mr. Johnson's pocket-book, it is per-
fectly well understood that we are to make
our appearance in the same piece. I am
mortified, however, that we do not in this last
display of our persons and talents stand in the
same corner as I am told we do not, for, to
say truth, I cannot exactly tell which is you,
and which is I, and which is anybody else.
But this must arise from mere deficiency of my
sight, for some of the good people of Deal
affirm my picture to be excessively like.'
At a time that much dissatisfaction was
expressed at the mal-administration of the
Government, some of the Streatham coterie
professed themselves weary of male administra-
tion and proposed ay^male one. Dr. Johnson,
when called upon to arrange it, replied, 'Well,
then, we will have:
Carter: for Archbishop of Canterbury.
Montagu: First Lord of the Treasury.
Hon. Sophia Byron: Head of the
Admiralty.
Mrs. Crewe: Speaker of the House of
Commons.
Mrs. Wedderburne: Lord Chancellor.


WIT AND WISDOM 169
Mrs. Carter wrote a paper (No. 100 in ' The
Rambler') on modish pleasures, signed Cha-
riessa, 'recommending they should give their
readers a complete history of Forms, Fashions,
Frolics, Drums, Hurricanes, Balls, Assem-
blies, Ridottos, Masquerades, Auctions, Plays,
Operas, Puppet-shows, and Bear-gardens, and
the whole art and mystery of passing day after
day, week after week, and year after year,
without the assistance of any one thing that
formal animals are pleased to call useful or
necessary. . . .
'Such irresistible arguments,' she wrote,
'must convince numbers of the error of sup-
posing they were sent into the world for any
other purpose but to flatter, sport, and shine,
and that an everlasting round of diversion, the
more sprightly and hurrying the better, is the
most important end of human life.
'As for the antiquated notions of duty, they
are not to be met with in any French novel
but derived almost wholly from authors called
I think, Peter and Paul, who lived a vast many
years ago. ... It does not appear that even
their most zealous admirers (for some parti-
sans of his own sort every writer will have)
can pretend to say they were ever at one


WIT AND WISDOM 171
day and every day, discharging the ordinary
civilities of life without time to read, reflect,
recollect or think. Though she did not fre-
quent card-tables, bear-gardens, and auctions,
or lead the life of the 'Ranelagh-education
Misses,' her head was as giddy and empty as if
she had whirled through the whole round of
impertinence. Her acquaintance lay amongst
excellent people whom she loved and esteemed,
but she complained that there were so many of
them that her narrow mind had not room to
hold them all at once, with all the attentions
that belong particularly to every one.
Mrs. Carter wrote another paper in 'The
Rambler' (No. 44) on ' Religion and Supersti-
tion.' Religion, she asserted, is not confined
to cells or sullen retirement. 'These are the
gloomy doctrines of superstition. The greatest
honour we can pay the Author of our being is
shown by a cheerful behaviour and a mind satis-
fied with his dispensations. The restraints and
difficulties of social active life furnish the most
useful discipline of the human heart, and the
best means of improvement to ourselves and
others. Suffering is no duty unless in a good
cause, nor pleasure a crime unless it de-
moralises.'


WIT AND WISDOM 173
in having proposed to himself that reward to
his labours which he is sure not to be dis-
appointed of by the stupidity or ingratitude
of mankind.'
Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of the
literati, and the high esteem in which 'The
Rambler* was held, the sale was very incon-
siderable—seldom more than 500 copies were
disposed of. It was thought that the price of
2d., or the unfavourable season of its first pub-
lication, might have hindered its sale. The
first paper of ' The Rambler ' was published on
Tuesday, March 20, 1749-50; and it was con-
tinued without interruption every Tuesday and
Saturday, till Saturday, March 14, 1752, on
which day it closed. Dr. Johnson received no
assistance except four letters in No. 10, by
Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Catharine Talbot;
No. 97, by Samuel Richardson; and Nos. 44
and 100, by Elizabeth Carter.
Mrs. Carter did not regret that the patron-
age of men of letters by the great seemed
completely abolished, for 'authors are now,'
she said, 'happily obliged to trust solely to that
best of all patrons—that best of all judges of
literary merit, the public'


176 A WOMAN OF
were willing to pay their court to her. All
ambassadors or foreigners of note she enter-
tained, and occasionally provided some royal
or distinguished personage upon whom the
more rustic geniuses might gaze. But she
could never accomplish Mrs. Vesey's feat of
squaring the circle: even the very chairs and
tables seem to conspire against her, and form
themselves into a ring. She possessed no
power of harmonising the conflicting elements
of which her assemblies were composed. Her
guests arrived in a mass, and each individual
departed 'feeling himself single, isolated, and
embarrassed with his own person.' On one
occasion about twenty-five women formed a
barrier round the fireplace in the shape of 'a
vast half-moon,' through which the Chancellor,
a body of prelates, and other eminent men
found it impossible to penetrate. After look-
ing wistfully towards the fire, they had to
content themselves with drawing chairs from
the wall, and seating themselves solemnly and
silently in an outer crescent of their own, until
such time as the exit of one of the inferior sex
created a 'gap for the wise men to enter in
and take possession of the fireplace'—the
instinctive stronghold of the Englishman.


182 A WOMAN OF
moment she was in high rapture. She described
the progress from the gay town lady to the con-
tented country housewife. First the tragedy
princess in an august melancholy, and then the
pastoral nymph lolling on a green bank, among
roses and honeysuckle, singing sonnets to the
zephyrs, idle indeed, but perfectly rural. In
like manner did Marie Antoinette enjoy an ela-
borate simplicity, and imagine her artificially
rustic Arcadia to be truly pastoral.
Mrs. Montagu found it very agreeable to
see no human creature but her servants, nor to
hear an articulate sound except the cuckoo's
unvarying note; but Mrs. Carter warned her
'that in solitude we are tempted to think our-
selves wise and virtuous; these short and im-
perfect views of the grandeur and dignity of the
soul should incite our wishes for a less imperfect
state, and encourage a cheerful compliance with
the humiliating duties of our present condition.'
Though Mrs. Montagu extolled the simple
pleasures of the country, 'that general feast
nature spreads for all her children, to which she
came a happy guest,' and boasted that she
wanted not Stewart, Adams, nor Brown (Capa-
bility Brown) to build her a palace or lay a
county into garden for her, she constantly em-


WIT AND WISDOM 183
ployed these artists to embellish both Sandle-
ford, her home in Berkshire, and her residence
in Portman Square, where she added to her
already large house the room of the Cupidons
painted with roses and cupids, and the 'feather
room ' adorned with the plumage of every pos-
sible bird, her pillars of verd antique and the
'porte cochere. Of Mrs. Montagu's 'feather
room' Cowper wrote in 1788:
'The birds put off their every hue
To dress a room for Montagu.
The peacock sends his heavenly dyes,
His rainbows, and his starry eyes;
The pheasant, plumes which round infold
His mantling neck with downy gold.
The cock his arch'd tail's azure show,
And river-blanched the swan his snow.
All tribes beside of Indian name
That glossy shine or vivid flame
Where rises and where sets the day,
Whate'er they boast of rich and gay,
Contribute to the gorgeous plan,
Proud to advance it all they can.
This plumage neither dashing shower
Nor blasts that shake the dripping bower,
Shall drench again or discompose,
But, screen'd from every storm that blows,
It boasts a splendour ever new,
Safe with protecting Montagu.'
It was during some of these works, when Mrs.
Montagu had been complaining of bad seasons


184 A WOMAN OF
and agricultural depression, that Mrs. Carter
wrote :
It grieves me to hear of the mischief the
rain has done to your property. I am interested
in your “Menus plaisirs," and should be sorry
that the fly in the turnips or the smut in the
wheat should retard the completion of your
elegant room.'
In Mrs. Montagu's contribution to her
friend Lord Lyttelton's 'Dialogues of the Dead,'
there is a conversation between Mercury and a
modern fine lady, Mrs. Modish, who excuses
her unreadiness to cross the Styx, not on the
plea of conjugal attachment and maternal duties,
but a glance at her chimney-piece showed it
crowded with engagements : to the play on
Mondays, balls on Tuesdays, the opera on
Saturdays, and card assemblies for the rest of
the week, and though late hours and fatigue
gave her the vapours, she was ambitious to be
thought 'du bon ton.'
"“Bon ton!” exclaims the astonished
Mercury, 'what is that, madam ?'
Mrs. Modish, who had admired and aimed
at it all her life, answered it was one of the
privileges of 'bon ton' never to define or
be defined. Though it was the child and


WIT AND WISDOM 185
parent of jargon, she could only explain what
it was not. 'In conversation it is not wit;
in manners it is not politeness; in be-
haviour it is not address; but it is a little like
them all.'
This fine satire was a great favourite with
the town and showed much good sense; but
with all her talents Mrs. Montagu did not pos-
sess the charm of simplicity. Though she had
a sensible and penetrating countenance, and
the air and manner of a woman accustomed to
being distinguished, her acquaintance unfor-
tunately could remember her trying for this
same air and manner. There was always that
half-conscious effort to play the role of a fine
lady, on which Mrs. Carter often rallied her.
'As for fashion,' she exclaimed, 'whatever Mrs.
Montagu does must be right.' When she was
accompanying Mr. Montagu rather unwillingly
on a visit to his northern property, Mrs. Carter
wrote:
'It grieves me to think that instead of
soaring into regions of intellectual delight, your
spirits should be suffocated in the damps of a
coal-mine. But, after all, the true proof of
wisdom is doing the thing which ought to be
done. If you had stayed behind, you might


186
A WOMAN OF
have appeared a much finer lady, and a much
finer genius, and might have sat in your
Chinese and Athenian rooms and have written
more “Dialogues of the Dead,” but you cer-
tainly are a more reasonable being in accom-
panying Mr. Montagu, and assisting him in his
business, and the entertainment of his north-
country neighbours.'
Mrs. Carter applauded Mrs. Montagu's con-
descension in riding pillion for some hours in
every day, which, though it degraded her from
a fine lady to appearing like a mere reputable
gentlewoman, was necessitated by the wretched
state of her eyes, that betrayed her into such
blunders. She hoped Mrs. Montagu would
never attempt to ride a single horse, but get
behind some good, staid, sober, dull man, on a
dull horse, with a strong leathern belt round
his coat, on which she might take good, sure
hold, and ride much more safely than by
mounting a Pegasus of her own guiding. She
also begged she would not attempt to drive
herself, adding: 'I should be mighty sorry,
both for your sake and my own, to be a
cottage or a church in your way; however, if
you do run into anything, pray let it be John
of Gaunt's Castle, and converse with the
neven


и л*12 с





WIT AND WISDOM 187
melancholy spectres of the race of York and
Lancaster.'
Mrs. Montagu's charities were on the
munificent scale that rigid economy in the
administration of her great wealth and a
wholesome horror of debt made possible.
When she was in doubt as to whether the pur-
chase of a new ' whisky' (a fashionable carriage
of the day) might be deemed an extravagance,
Mrs. Carter wrote to her:
'In general the best relief to the poor is
from supplying their wants by means of their
own honest labour; therefore our expenditure
can only be ranked amongst the vices of
useless luxury when, by too great expense in
employing those who can' work, there is not
enough reserved for the relief of those who
cannot.'
Whiskys were then 'the most prevailing
fashion of two-wheel vehicles.' They were
one-horse chairs of the lightest construction,
and in spite of Mrs. Montagu's qualms of
conscience cheaper than any other. The ease
and expedition with which they moved enabled
them to whisk past other carriages. Hence
their name. The whisky curricle had a more
solid appearance than the whisky, and on that


188 A WOMAN OF
account was particularly affected by the
Quakers, and was commonly known as a
Quake-chaise.
Mrs. Montagu declared she would be per-
fectly happy if dowlas and linsey-woolsey
were so cheap that she could clothe half the
parish. Of this aspiration Mrs. Carter warmly
approved, and answered:
'I think your dowlas shifts and chequered
aprons a more enviable contrivance than the
finest birthday trimming that ingenious vanity
ever devised. The one will tarnish and fade,
and the other furnish materials for a " sky-spun
robe," which may figure in a more splendid
assembly than any Imperial drawing-room
below the stars.'
After all, Mrs. Carter reflected, large pos-
sessions often prove as great an obstacle to
carrying out our inclinations as poverty. For
the comfort of little people, be it remembered
that excess is as strong an impediment some-
times as defect; both rich and poor are fet-
tered by external things. She wrote to Mrs.
Vesey, to whom she longed to pay a visit:
'I cannot get to you because I have not a
post-chaise; and Mrs. Montagu cannot get to
you because she has a coal-mine.'


WIT AND WISDOM 189
CHAPTER IX
MRS. VESEY
Every individual that strongly engaged Mrs.
Carter's affection had some characteristic and
distinguishing mark. The spirit of some
enlivened her indolence, while her quiet
tempered their vivacity. Mrs. Vesey she
honoured for having the simplicity of a little
child. Throughout her life she remained as
lively and picturesque as at eighteen, because
'those sullen demons, turbulent agitations, sor-
did principles and interested schemes, had not
put to flight the fair forms of imagination, which
can never subsist but in gentleness of disposi-
tion and simplicity of heart, for the bustles,
perturbations, and competitions of the world
are much more destructive than the ravages of
age.'
To these characteristics Mrs. Vesey owed
her perpetual youth.


190
A WOMAN OF
She could always wave a fairy wand, and
conjure up pleasures and amusements all
around her in whatever climate or element she
happened to be thrown. Her imagination
could raise up palaces and coral groves beneath
the sea, and convert a pigeon-house into a
dressing-room, and a heap of brick and mortar
into a walk of roses upon earth. She would
be more amused raising fairy visions uninter-
rupted at Lucan (her husband's place in
Ireland) than in mixing with the gay society
of 'geniuses and rational parrots' in Dublin.
In fact, she shared Rousseau's power of trans-
porting himself whenever he was alone into an
ideal world, where he made for himself the
society he liked, and found all those blessings
which this world denied him. Though there
was little of the turbulent in the composition of
the Sylph (as Mrs. Vesey was called by her
friends), the uproar of a stormy sea was as
much adapted to her sublime imagination, as
the soft murmurs of a gliding stream to the
gentleness of her temper.
Mrs. Vesey shared with Mrs. Montagu the
honour of having originated the ‘Bas Bleu' as-
semblies, but according to Fanny Burney she was
'gentle and diffident, and dreamed not of any


WIT AND WISDOM 191
competition, only desiring to collect celebrities
under her roof, and without attempting to shine
herself, or be accounted one of their number,
she had the happy secret of bringing forward
talents of every kind, and diffusing over the
society the gentleness of her character. With
no advantage of appearance and manner, she
possessed, with a reserve of good sense, that
easy politeness that gained everyone in a
moment, and had the almost magic art of
putting all the company at their ease.'
By the dedication of her poem, the 'Bas
Bleu,' Hannah More gave Mrs. Vesey the
preference, not only of Mrs. Montagu but of
any philosopher who should square the circle,
a feat both these hostesses were constantly
attempting in the arrangement of their chairs.
Sometimes in Mrs. Vesey's anxiety to render
all her guests easy with one another, her fear
of ceremony, and eagerness to break a circle,
she insisted upon everybody sitting back to
back, the chairs being drawn into little parties
of three together in a confused manner, all
over the room, so that the occupants could not
catch sight of their neighbours except by
twisting their necks. But such was Mrs.
Vesey's magic power that she could arrange


i92 A WOMAN OF
forty people in her room, and yet contrive to
give it a less crowded appearance than it would
have with a dozen people filled by anyone else.
'One would think,' said Mrs. Carter, 'that you
stript the souls of your company of their bodies,
and left only a phantom to cover their naked-
ness; yet I never perceived that a human soul
is more clearly seen through at your assemblies
than at any other.'
Though Mrs. Vesey was famous for her
dexterity and skill in selecting her guests,
owing to her kindness of heart, her circle
threatened to become too wide for comfort; so
Hannah More, Mrs. Carter, and Horace Wal-
pole made their own parties for her assemblies,
and asked and excluded just whom they liked.
'Our last "Vesey" was a little too large,'
wrote Hannah More, 'and had too many great
ladies. We are agreed to keep the next a
secret, but poor dear Mrs. Vesey is so sweet-
tempered that, though she vows she will not
mention it to anybody, she cannot help asking
every agreeable creature that comes in her way.'
Even Mrs. Vesey's deafness did not detract
from her love of society. With numberless
ear-trumpets hanging at her waist, slung about
her neck, or tossed upon the chimney-piece,


A WOMAN OF
quarrelling with each other, was to her friends
a matter requiring deep investigation. Her
secret, they decided, was that she contrived to
put all her guests in perfect good humour with
themselves, and without any appearance of flat-
tery, effort, or design, making each individual
with whom her enchanting blue room was
crowded consider itself as the principal and
distinguished object. Wherever people imagine
themselves to possess the first place, they will
always be in wonderful good humour with
all the world, and external war is at an end.
This art would have been impossible to attain
if Mrs. Vesey had possessed a grain of vanity,
but as she had no merely personal feelings, she
had an infinite deal of attention to bestow in
adapting herself to the feelings of others: hence
her success.
The goodness of Mrs. Vesey's heart, and
the 'uncommon turn of her head,' showed ' a
genius of that eccentric kind which is mighty
apt to be accompanied by a plentiful lack of
common sense.' When a friend who was
staying with her in the country was ordered
not to use her crutches on the floor for fear of
slipping, but to be carried downstairs and use
them on the gravel walk, Mrs. Vesey started


WIT AND WISDOM 195
up, and said she would order the gardener
immediately to gravel the drawing-room. The
dear Sylph would also à la Vesey frequently
offer Mrs. Carter a lodging, totally forgetting
that she had long before engaged her only
spare room.
Simplicity and absent-mindedness were her
chief characteristics, she could hardly remem-
ber her own name. •What has become of
our Sylph ?' Mrs. Carter wrote ; 'I do not
know, I expect she hardly knows herself, but
I hope she is as well as nervous people must
ever expect to be. During a severe winter
she consoled herself with the reflection that the
Sylph would be in no danger of petrifaction,
for ether does not petrify. All Mrs. Vesey's
domestic arrangements were superintended by
her sister-in-law, Mrs. Handcock, a very
practical woman. From the contrast of their
endowments they were known as · Body and
* Mind.' When Mrs. Vesey invented a coffee-
pot with all the essential advantages of a
beautiful form, Mrs. Handcock most unreason-
ably objected because the lid would not open
to put in the coffee, nor the spout answer to
pour it out.
Mrs. Carter wrote sympathetically :
02


198
A WOMAN OF
adapted to the wants and purposes of the Right
Honourable Agmondisham Vesey than to those
of his more ethereal partner.' The dear old
castle, with the niches in its walls, she valued
beyond everything, and the display of Mr.
Vesey's correct Grecian taste was very grievous
to her poetic imagination. However, she con-
trived to pass the winter at Lucan very tolerably
--at least judging from the manner in which
she talked of it afterwards, though it was true,
Mrs. Carter added, that the winter of which
she made the ' éloge' was past.
'God mend her health and give her better
spirits,' wrote Mrs. Carter of the poor Sylph,
who, like all excitable people, was subject to
fits of depression. By all means, my dear
Mrs. Vesey,' she wrote, "leave Dr. James to
swallow his own powders, and Mr. Vesey to
squabble with his two old gentlemen, and get
as fast as you can to Tunbridge; if you do not
find health in the springs, you will at least
acquire good spirits from the society, but
do not seduce Mrs. Montagu into any of
your lively schemes for being diverted to
death.'
Mrs. Vesey had a much better art of
amusing herself in a crowd than Mrs. Carter,


WIT AND WISDOM
who to the end remained just as many degrees
removed from a rake as ever.
Mrs. Carter was exceedingly disappointed
at the Sylph's rejection of a scheme for visiting
Walmer Castle, within a mile of her house at
Deal. 'But I expect,'she wrote, 'it is Mrs.
Handcock's fault; she probably represented it
to you merely as a pleasant dwelling, where
you might eat your dinner and drink your tea
like any modern house. If she had told you
that some discontented spectre walked its
melancholy rounds every night along the grass-
grown platform, the attraction would have been
irresistible to your curiosity. She might have
told you how the spirits of the air talk in
whistling winds through its battlements, and
the angel of the waters dashes the roaring
billows at its foot. Instead of alluring you by
these sublime ideas, I suspect she dwelt chiefly
on the pleasure you would confer upon a couple
of mere two-legged human creatures; upon
which you turned about and said, "Why, Mrs.
Handcock, we can meet enough of these
upon the Pantiles!" and so the die turned for
Tunbridge.' Sometimes Mrs. Carter's friends
would take a cottage at Walmer, 'for the con-
venience of going into the sea' [bathing ?].


200
A WOMAN OF
''Tis a mighty pretty scheme,' she declared,
*for Walmer is one of the pleasantest villages
about here.
When Mr. Vesey died he left 'the Sylph,'
to the great indignation of her friends, wholly
dependent on the bounty of his nephew, who
fortunately proved himself worthy of the trust.
Though Mr. Vesey's case is not stated, he
secures our uninvited sympathy, as his ethereal
partner had always obtruded her superiority
to all earthly considerations of 'mere mortal
comforts and conveniences.' When he was
proposed in 1773 as a member of the Literary
Club, Burke began by saying he was a man
of gentle manners. 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'you
need say no more. When you have said a
man of gentle manners, you have said enough.'
Mrs. Vesey's friends were provoked at
'their dear Niobe' continuing to weep so
immoderately for what they considered little
deserved her tears—the loss of Mr. Vesey.
· Had the subject been ever so worthy,'
wrote Mrs. Carter, it would have been her
duty to check them, but, alas! she has no
resolution.
Though Mrs. Carter had no personal
experience, she might have imagined the pos-


WIT AND WISDOM 201
sibility of there being something in the tie,
that after years of estrangement would in the
end reassert itself, and that sorrow would be
only intensified by the fatal 'too late.'
Poor Mrs. Vesey's timorous and feeble
mind Aluctuated between the extremes of un-
belief and superstition; though tormented with
doubts as to a future existence, she would
start at the sudden opening of a door, expecting
a visit from her departed friends. Mrs. Carter
wrote to her on this matter :
'I am flattered to find I agree with Mr.
Burke. Yes, ask your own heart; and it will
tell you what is the rule of life that best directs
it to grow wise and good. Be thankful for
this gracious guidance, and never listen to the
half-learning, the perverted understanding, and
pert ridicule of French philosophers and beaux
esprits, who would persuade you it is best to
wander over a wide stormy ocean without a
pilot, and without a leading star!'



WILLIAM PULTENEY, EARL OF BATH
From a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery


WIT AND WISDOM
magnificent rudeness of Bristol, but the wild-
ness was all soft and agreeable '—surroundings
amidst which the geniuses of the age 'sported
sentiment from morn till noon, from noon to
dewy eye,' and wit flowed more copiously than
the springs. It was owing to their persuasions
that Mrs. Carter was prevailed on to publish
the collection of her poems which appeared in
1762. The proposal of printing these trifles
was made by my Lord Bath, who desired they
might be dedicated to himself; and that she
might be under no kind of difficulty added that
he himself would write the dedication, which he
did in a style exactly suited to her taste, for she
had such an objection to flattery that she would
not even allow herself to say what she really
thought. His politeness, his constant cheerful-
ness, and generous, friendly disposition made
her indeed heartily esteem and love him, but
she declared she would be as far from putting
her sentiments into a dedication, as he would
be from allowing her to do so. Of her verses
addressed to Lord Bath, Archbishop Secker
said: 'Why, Madam Carter, you have not
been tolerably civil to the man.'
Lord Lyttelton's verses were prefixed to the
collection of Mrs. Carter's poems.


WIT AND WISDOM
205
of a kind of an edgeway fashion, near my
Lady A. But pray consider the difference.
It is by mere dint of scratching and clawing
that Lady A. can draw Lord Bath—poor man!
-a few plain steps across the Pantiles; while
we, by the natural power of sober attraction,
draw him quite up “Tug Hill” to the top of
Mount Ephraim, and keep him there, till we
are quite afraid he will endanger his life in
returning.'
The disembarkation of Princess Charlotte
of Mecklenburg Strelitz at Harwich owing to
bad weather, and her consequent visit to Lord
Abercorn at Witham on her way to London,
before her marriage to George III., furnished
the Archbishop with fresh matter of condol-
ence, conveyed through Miss Talbot, who
wrote: 'Alas, poor Miss Carter, what joy can
anything give you if it be true that your per-
secutor, Lady Abercorn, lives with her son at
Witham ; for consider that after being the sole
object of all eyes, and engrosser of all admira-
tion at Tunbridge, she only went from thence
to prove to the world that not only could Lord
Bath make his parties with none but her lady-
ship—but even the Princess, whom so many
thousands had been expecting for a fortnight


206
A WOMAN OF
at Greenwich, could find no one fit to honour
with her first visit to England but Lady
Abercorn. You may talk of your Apollos and
Minervas as long as you please, but, after this,
never let me contend again with the friends of
honest Eolus and Boreas.'
Princess Charlotte had embarked at Cux-
haven on August 28, 1761, in the Royal
yacht Charlotte' that had been launched the
previous summer at Deptford, and named in
honour of the future Queen. The crew were
clothed at his Majesty's expense in a red
uniform, with gold lace hats, light grey stock-
ings, buckles and pumps. This gala costume
must have hampered the handy British seaman.
No news of the vessel was received until Sep-
tember 6, for after twice sighting the coast
of England, she had been repeatedly driven off
by contrary winds.
To persons of delicate constitutions sea
voyages are sometimes very pernicious,' but
her Highness, though one day in hopes of
landing on English ground, and the next in
danger of being driven on the coast of Norway,
continued in good health, and diverted herself
with playing English tunes on the harpsichord.
On her journey to St. James's she was refreshed


208 A WOMAN OF
lead, or assumed that superiority to which he
had a claim. He did not dictate, dogmatise
or talk essays like Lord Bolingbroke, or mono-
polise the conversation like Lord Granville,
but called forth the powers of others. He
did not lead up to pre-arranged bons mots
like Lord Chesterfield, all was natural and
easy, and his wit directed to whatever chanced
to be the subject of the moment. Whether in
a small or large circle, he was more agreeable,
entertaining and instructive than any other man
of his time. He outshone all the other members
of the Opposition, known as the 'Cobhamites'
or 'Grenville cousins' assembled at Stowe.
His temper always appeared equal, there was
a perpetual flow of vivacity and good humour
in his conversation, and most attentive polite-
ness in his behaviour, which was not the effect
merely of external and partial good-breeding.
Lord Bath was accused by his enemies of an
undue love of money, that instinct of accumula-
tion often the besetting sin of really great men.
But many stories told to his disadvantage reflect
on his accusers. Lord Chesterfield desired to
purchase from him the land that lay between
Chesterfield House and Hyde Park, in order that
his view might not be obstructed. To oblige


WIT AND WISDOM
209
him, Lord Bath agreed to sell it for 3,000l., al-
though with the general rage for building the
land was worth more. Lord Chesterfield made
'a heavy outcry' against Lord Bath's avarice
and extortion, but at length agreed to pay the
money, and then, regardless of his view, imme-
diately resold the land to a builder for 5,000l.
In 1746 Lord Bath had the satisfaction of
being Prime Minister for very little over forty-
eight hours, but he reaped none of the fruits of
office, being constantly in the Opposition, that
he not only supported by his abilities, but car-
ried on chiefly at his own expense.
Bishop Newton tells us that his love of
money was not near so great as was reported,
for in that age of prodigality everyone was
deemed covetous that paid his way honestly,
and did not squander his money. He was
strict and exact in all his accounts, and any
attempt to impose upon him he considered as
an insult to his understanding. Like Hotspur
he would 'give to any well-deserving friend,'
but he loved a bargain, and in that matter
would not readily yield a point.
He contributed largely to the education of
many promising young men, encouraged learn-
ing, and subscribed liberally to literary under-


WIT AND WISDOM
211
marriage he gave her 10,000l. to employ and
improve as she pleased. Having increased
this sum to 60,000l., she refused to make a
will, saying to her lord, that she owed him all
she had, and to him it should all return.
Though Lord Harvey denied that she
possessed any one good quality but beauty,
Lady Bath, like many another, was a wonder-
fully agreeable woman when she was in a good
humour, but, possibly owing to financial
anxieties, her spirits were oftener clouded and
overcast. She did not live to see the failure of
all the ambitious schemes of family aggrandise-
ment for which she and Lord Bath had toiled
in vain. Soon after her death their only son,
Lord Pulteney, died of fever at Madrid. The
agonies of grief endured by Lord Bath are
described by Bishop Newton, who sought to
comfort his friend with the reflection that
• Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth
himself in vain ; he heapeth up riches, and
cannot tell who shall gather them. Though the
truth of this assertion cannot be gainsaid, it was
rather an ill-timed reminder that no heir sur-
vived to inherit Lord Bath’s vast accumulations.
His chaplain, Dr. Douglas, declared Lord
Bath was of all men the best and easiest to live
P 2


212
A WOMAN OF
with. So familiar and engaging was his manner
that you could not be with him half an hour
without being entirely at ease; your awe of him
vanished, while your respect increased. As an
orator, Speaker Onslow described him as
having the most popular parts for public
speaking of any great man he ever knew,' and
Walpole feared his tongue more than another
man's sword.
But in spite of the favourable testimony of
his friends, it has been truly said that his career
was marred by a spirit of faction, that caused
him to stake his whole reputation on over-
throwing Walpole, and later, on attempting to
get rid of Pitt. He was not moved by any
personal enmity to Sir Robert Walpole, or
ambitious views of supplanting him. He liked
the man, but disliked his measures. In the
protracted course of this contest he narrowed
public life to the petty conditions of a duel, and
at last, for reasons which no on-looker could
understand, fired into the air. Thus he called
down upon him his proper Nemesis ; he
‘Left not faction, but of it was left.'
In 1739 Lord Bath suffered from a dan-
gerous illness, that cost him 750 guineas in


WIT AND WISDOM 213
physician's fees, and from which he was
eventually cured by a draught of small beer.
Mindful of the efficacy of simple remedies, in
1763, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Montagu
and Mrs. Carter, he had recourse to the Spa
waters. During their tour he appeared to be
the youngest, liveliest, and healthiest of the
whole party. He preserved that freshness of
mind which in his younger days was combined
with great bodily activity. It did Mrs. Carter's
heart good to see with what universal respect
he was treated by all people, of all ranks, and
all nations at Spa. There was so much dignity,
politeness, and good humour in his behaviour
to all, that he well deserved the attention that
was paid him. The following year he died.
Extract from Mrs. Carter's verses to Lord
Bath, written when
Subdued at length beneath laborious life,
In peaceful age the harass'd virtues sink to rest.
Yet not in flow'ry Indolence reclin'd,
They waste th’ important gift of sober hours :
To every state has Heav'n its task assign'd,
To ev'ry task assign'd its needful powers.
For better purposes to favour'd man
Is length of days—tremendous blessing !-given ;


214
A WOMAN OF
To regulate our life's disorder'd plan,
And purify the blemish'd soul for Heav'n.
Such, gracious Heav'n, be Pulteney's setting day,
And cheerful peace its various labours close;
May no dark cloud obscure its soften'd ray,
Nor ruffling tempest shake its calm repose.'


WIT AND WISDOM 215
CHAPTER XI
SPA AND FOREIGN TOUR
Soon after the treaty of peace was signed
in the beginning of the year 1763, Mr. and
Mrs. Montagu and Lord Bath persuaded Mrs.
Carter to make a tour on the Continent with
them, in the course of which they were to visit
Spa for the benefit of Lord Bath's health.
They were also accompanied by Dr. Douglas,
afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, the learned
detector of literary forgeries, who was Chaplain
to Lord Bath, and his intimate friend. Mrs.
Montagu said that when she had Mrs. Carter
she had nothing to wish for; and Mrs. Carter
declared she would even enjoy Mrs. Montagu's
company in a ramble by moonlight, amongst
the ruins of an old abbey. This wish expressed
more than a thousand speeches, for she said,
there are many very good sort of folks whom
one may tolerate, and even be mighty pleased


218 A WOMAN OF
marine' possibly combined the advantages of
both.
Mrs. Carter travelled with 'as little incum-
brance as is possible for any animal not clothed
with wool or feathers,' and made the best of any
difficulties on the road; once at the end of
a journey she declared that she felt 'pretty
faint, having taken nothing but serpents' food
[dust] on the way.' She found the 'politesse
et empressement pour vous servir' of the
lower orders in France very engaging, though
throughout her foreign travels she was struck
with the infinite inferiority of all advantages
when put in competition with the Bible and
Magna Charta.
There was a little perruquier with a most
magnificent queue, belonging to the inn at
Calais, who was her second page; she adds,
'My first is provided for me by my Lord Bath,
a little French boy with an English face.'
This 'little rogue of a page* was ex-
cessively entertained when, on Mrs. Montagu
and Mrs Carter inquiring if it were possible to
see the inside of a convent, a nun answered:
'Pas sans y rester au moins.' Such confine-
ment would hardly have suited the social tastes
of the ' Bas Bleu ' ladies.


A WOMAN OF
side of their vehicle, who, to her great comfort,
could speak French, so she begged he would
let her come into his house. With 'great good
nature ' he offered to call an English gentleman
who lodged with him. Here she procured
some hartshorn for Mrs. Montagu, and by the
time she got better, my Lord Bath and Mr.
Montagu arrived perfectly unhurt.
From Liege to Spa all the carriages held
out very well, except the 'chaise-marine,'
which was overturned. The little page, with
whom my Lord Bath had provided Mrs.
Carter, gave a terrible account of the affair.
'A gun, which was deeply loaded, broke in
pieces by the overthrow, but did not go off'
At Spa the rains were perpetual, and they
went on 'drinking and clothing' themselves in
water. On the walks of the Geronsterre were
seen priests and Hussars, beaux and hermits,
nuns and fine ladies, stars and crosses, cowls
and ribbons, all blended together in the most
lively and picturesque manner imaginable. As
to beaux esprits, Mrs. Carter thanked her stars
she had neither seen nor heard of such trum-
pery in the place, and there seemed to be none
of those fashionable pests of society, the bucks
and choice spirits among them. The society of


222
A WOMAN OF
She was, however, scandalised to see some
of her compatriotes' whom she had formerly
known with pale, decent, unsophisticated faces
at Bath and Tunbridge, now appearing at Spa
in glaring Parisian complexion. It is pro-
digious,' she exclaimed ; 'how I long to beat
them.' The Comtesse de Choiseul had just
come from Paris with a face like a coach
wheel. French manners seemed to be grow-
ing as universal as their language, and even
German gravity appeared to have ‘culbuté' into
French philosophy. It was quite terrifying to
meet a chapter of German Chanoinesses all
with such fierceness of countenance. The
most complete beauty, however, was one of
their order, who, with nothing to put one in
mind of the Venuses and Helens of old, had
the expression and countenance of an angel.
Everyone at Spa was preparing to pay their
court to Princess Ferdinand of Prussia, but as
a hoop was absolutely necessary, Mrs. Carter
declined the honour of looking silly in the
Royal presence, for no hoop had she, and no
hoop did she design to have. After all, the
Princess gave a dispensation for going without
hoops, but one of Mrs. Carter's severe head-
aches got her out of the scrape.


WIT AND WISDOM 223
Poor Prince Ferdinand of Prussia suffered
much from the unkind treatment of his brother,
Frederick the Great; this hero, as Mrs. Carter
said, 'who defied Omnipotence, this philosopher
sans souci who was the slave of his own capri-
cious humours and the torment of all who had
any dependence on his favour. At Spa Prince
and Princess Ferdinand were very gay and
joyous, their manners were unaffected and
agreeable, and · Vive la bagatelle !' seemed to
be their motto.
The Princess was a most indefatigable
dancer; she wore a cap of such a size as had
never yet been seen upon the head of the
tallest plebeian gentlewoman. Her Royal
Highness and her suite were the most extra-
ordinary sight, their dresses were so ridiculously
stiff that they put Mrs. Carter in mind of King
Pharaoh's Court in a puppet show. They
were laced within an inch of their lives, their
stays excessively stiff, and their stomachs of
an amazing length, nearly approaching to their
chins. But what struck her most was that
their features were at a dead stand; never did
anything in the human countenance so much
realize the fable of the Gorgon. The Princess,
strange to say, had a fine complexion, and was


A WOMAN OF
as pretty as it was possible to be with such
a stony look. As for her French pronunciation,
all that could be said of it was ' Cela ecorche les
oreilles.'
Mrs. Carter declared that for her own part,
she had never since she came to Spa been in
love to signify, except with a Russian Ambas-
sador, a pretty little man, who had cast the
bear-skin, and did not at all resemble the plump
gentleman with the arrow in his throat on her
seal. But Mrs. Montagu, who was very fond
of the fine folk and fine things of this nether
world, carried on an infinite flirtation with the
Prince Bishop of Augsburg, 'en attendant le
Roi de Prusse'.
The talents of this Royal Prelate did not
appear to Mrs. Carter to be of the most shining
kind, like his diamonds. But arrayed in a
blossom-coloured coat, with embroidered star
and diamond cross, there was perfect decorum
and much good nature in his behaviour, and in
his religion she believed him to be perfectly
sincere. He desired her not to have the head-
ache the evenings she was engaged to dine
with him, but the headache, alas! was no
flatterer of foreign Princes. In the midst of
this society of grave bishops, serene princesses,


226
Á WOMÁN OF
who could breathe without air, but, having no
inclination to be buried alive, they insisted on
having the state room to themselves for the
night, and resigned the beds below to the
gentlemen, who were so charmed with them.
As to my Lord Bath, he was so impatient to get
into his delectable hole that he went off early in
the afternoon with great glee. As soon as they
landed they procured, as fast as they could,
a'miserable, ragged, dirty thing called a coach,'
and hurried away to Breda, and there immedi-
ately went to bed.
At Brussels they waited on Lady Prim-
rose, and met a lady who desired to be intro-
duced to them. Mrs. Carter added : 'I hap-
pened to be in a talking fit, and as I always talk
bad French much more boldly than I do good
English, there was no end to my larum ; so
the poor soul is gone home, blessing herself,
and crossing herself, and praying to every saint
in her calendar to deliver her from ever more
attempting to be introduced to a learned lady.'


228 A WOMAN OF
limited by the grave, what horror should we
feel at the thought of quitting a world full of
wonder, beauty, and magnificence! How terri-
ble to close our eyes on the flowery earth and
radiant sun, to 'leave the warm precincts of
the cheerful day,' and sink into a cold, dark,
eternal night! To lose all sense of intellectual
pleasure and human affection! From this
dreadful extinction Mrs. Carter exclaimed,
'God be thanked we are secured!' Much as
she was attached to this world, she heartily
rejoiced that it was not to last for ever.
Yet she had little curiosity concerning a
better. She was content and thankful to know
that those who endeavour to fulfil the conditions
on which future happiness is promised, and to
perform their present duties, will, when the
task is over, infallibly be happy, and convinced
that HeWho formed our capacities for happiness
alone knows what will make us so. 'We can
none of us,' she concluded, 'feel much concern
at the thoughts of being divested of spasms,
apoplexies, fluttering nerves, and aching heads.'
The humiliation of mortal frailty can never be
completely subdued but in that state where alone
the ' spirits of the just' will be 'made perfect.'
When advanced in life she wrote: 'It is


WIT AND WISDOM
my birthday; there are few people who have
so many reasons to be fond of life as myself,
and yet perhaps there are not many to whom
the thoughts of its being so far advanced would
give less concern. In a course of travelling,
though the road be ever so pleasant, and the
company ever so good, one cannot help some-
times feeling that one is not at home, and
looking forward to the journey's end. How
thankful ought we to be that there is at last a
home, where all who do not wilfully take a
wrong path will be sure to find repose and
security, which in the most prosperous journey
can never be found on the road. Yet, except
in cases of violent pain, life has always its
attractions, and the weary passenger, though in
sight of home, and travelling through a rough
path, yet sees on either hand some flowery
spot, or hears some tuneful note; and thus
charmed by colour and enlivened by song,
walks contentedly on, without too impatient
wishes for the end of the journey.'
She had always been struck with the truth
of Seneca's observation, that 'nothing is really
great which is not calm and gentle,' and she
scarcely recollected any passage in antiquity so
melancholy as the answer of a celebrated orator,


A WOMAN OF
on being asked how he did: 'As well as any-
one can who is turned of fourscore, and who
considers death as the greatest of all evils.'
Death, when considered without any regard to
futurity, must appear dreadful to the best and
wisest of men. 'Such brutes as Diogenes
and Crates, indeed, might treat the idea of
death very cavalierly ; might throw themselves
on the first dunghill and die without regret
.
For what motive had they to wish to live?
They cared for nobody; and the world, which
in this matter is always perfectly just and well-
bred, returned the compliment, and nobody
cared for them.' When asked the same ques-
tion, Mrs. Carter answered: 'As to your
inquiries of how I do? and what I think? I
do like anyone who every day feels increasing
symptoms of the depredations of time on a
shattered machine, and I endeavour to think
such thoughts as befit such a discovery.'
Mrs. Carter held it to be a very unreason-
able kind of impatience to quarrel with those
elements to which we belong, and which, with
all their inconveniences, we are generally very
unwilling to quit; yet the world can never
bestow any real and secure enjoyment, unless
it is connected with the hope of a better. For


WIT AND WISDOM 231
the dark cloud of death is ever impending over
the gayest scene, and the trap-door constantly
opening beneath our feet. Surely it must be
worth our attention to try and penetrate the
shade, and discover the prospect of immortality
and happiness beyond.
No one can dispute Bourdaloue's assertion,
that as the certainty of dying is more assured
than any other truth that can be demonstrated
or proved, the only way to annihilate the fear
of it is to dare to look it in the face. 'I
must die,' wrote Epictetus; 'but must I die
groaning? Why should I not depart smiling,
cheerful and serene?' 'Keep your eye steadily
fixed on the great reality of death,' he added,
'and all other things will shrink to their true
proportion.'
Mrs. Carter agreed with a friend who
wrote: ' Death is almost the only subject that
is never treated of in conversation, farther than
a mere uninteresting fact. Were any number
of persons destined to embark for a distant,
unknown country, of whom some might be
called upon to-morrow, and all must be called
thither soon, would they not be inquiring
amongst themselves how each was provided for
the journey, and excite each other to despatch


A WOMAN OF
what yet was possible to be done, and might
to-morrow be irretrievably too late? Yet the
flight of time is mighty apt to deceive our
observation. How seldom is it that the mind
can rise to that point of view whence it sur-
veys time hurrying on towards eternity, and
inviting all our hopes and fears to follow.'
A French preacher observed that 'though
we know we must die we are not persuaded of
it because we do not know when or how, or
under what circumstances.' We are still just as
we were in childhood, when the nurse, whose
authority was final on all grave subjects, under
severe cross-examination always placed the life
of man at a hundred years, regardless of the
Psalmist's opinion to the contrary. To the
small child who ' felt its life in every limb,'
and had no doubt of being able to reach its
utmost limit, was not that practically eternity?
An attempt to recall our earliest thoughts
on the subject shows us that our own crude
and childish notions of death were not, after all,
far removed from those of the greatest empire-
maker of our day, to whose powerful mind the
position and surroundings of a resting-place for
the 'sheer hulk ' he had once inhabited seemed
of supreme importance. As children in imagina-


WIT AND WISDOM 233
tion, we localised a probable spot, it may be
some tiny country church, occasionally visited,
where our forbears lay, the prevailing at-
mosphere of the family pew forming a basis
for speculation as to the aspect of the unseen
vault below. Monotony and confinement, in
which there would be the semi-consciousness of
a sleepless night, summed up the impression. In
London, of course, the neat and vacant gravel
enclosures surrounding the churches conveyed
the comforting assurance that, in town at least,
no one ever died, though in the darkness of a
winter's evening, that appeared to be the middle
of the night, when the wind was in a certain
direction, a bugle call rang clearly out, and
represented to the imagination the agitating
phenomenon of the last trumpet. These early
impressions were assisted by the study of
Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress,' at an age when
the beauty of its language could not be appre-
ciated, and the 'foul fiend Apollyon' with his
hideous monsters, and Giant Despair of grim
and surly voice, with his dark and nasty
dungeon, were more sensational and realistic
than the instruction about the Better Land,
which even the hymn admitted to be
'Far, far away.'


A WOMAN OF
Wandering one afternoon into a country
church, at a time of great sorrow, the writer
found these childish and heathenish ideas being
actually inculcated by the following hymn for
the young:
'Within the churchyard, side by side,
Are many long, low graves,
And some have stones set over them,
On some the green grass waves.
'Full many a little Christian child,
Woman, and man, lies there;
And we pass near them every time
When we go in to prayer.
'They cannot hear our footsteps come,
They do not see us pass;
They cannot feel the warm, bright sun
That shines upon the grass.
Cr. 'They do not hear when the great bell
Is ringing overhead;
They cannot rise and come to church
Dim. With us, for they are dead'
At which point the wheezing organ sank
into a tragic diminuendo, to convey to the
children's minds the helpless and hopeless
sensation of those who could not rise and come
to church, 'for they are dead' It is only fair
to add that the concluding verses mention
the resurrection, though the materialistic and


236 A WOMAN OF
of life, activity, and social joy beyond it, from
which the gentle spirits of those we mourn
look back with compassion on our imperfect
and insecure enjoyments, we are perpetually
endeavouring to keep up their connection with
our own, by inviting them back from the
unfading blooms of paradise to a participation
of our mortal roses with all their thorns, instead
of accompanying our departed friends into their
happy estate. But so it must be, for while on
a future world we only reason, in whatever
relates to the present we feel. We think with
pleasure of friends now vanished out of sight,
with whom a few months ago we conversed
familiarly on this subject, whose minds are now
open to these astonishing scenes. What clear
views they have of those great truths that the
foolish bustle of this world obscures!
Mrs. Carter anticipated through every
change of existence continued enjoyment in
the exercise of her intellect and affections, for
she said, 'Wherever God's will is made the
supreme object, all talents and all opportunities
become great, and extend their consequences
to eternity; while the most splendid effects
that are produced from merely human or selfish
motives vanish into nothing, and are lost in the


240 A WOMAN OF
use will be eternal. Dr. Johnson reminds us
that the grain which is sown is not the same
as the grain which grows, but that it is enough
if there be such a sameness as to distinguish
the identity of person. We may smile at the
idea of those sects who have thought any
mutilation of the body in this life would injure
it for the next, and therefore would not permit
even the necessary amputation of a limb, but
the root of the idea is a beautiful one. In
childhood, any attempt to criticise the appear-
ance of our fellow-creatures was promptly
checked by a severe reminder that people do
not make themselves, whereas by every thought,
word, and deed, by every trick, habit and
expression they are every day making them-
selves, not only their minds but their bodies,
both for time and for eternity, and should be
striving with both towards perfection. Their
characters have built up everything but the
mere shell. Beauty from within is neither skin-
deep nor fleeting as we were taught, and what-
ever the outer frame may be like, wherever the
beauty of the mind and spirit shine out, every
fresh line adds force arid character, and shows
the greatness of the soul within. Only those
deform that come from a narrow, envious, hard


A WOMAN OF
the opening door? Ah, my dear Mrs. Vesey,
the heart is wiser and honester than the head.
If at that hour of silence and solemn thought
Lady Anne [Dawson] had been permitted to
stand before you, could even that have been
more convincing than the voice of common
sense, which with intuitive perception assents
to the truth of eternal revelation, and pro-
nounces it impossible that such virtue could
ever die.'
Mrs. Carter's mind was 'perpetually thwarted
and held back by the weakness of her body,
and her intellectual pursuits interrupted by a
weak head and fluttering nerves, that no change
of air or water would affect, but the air of
paradise, and the waters which are bordered by
the tree of life.' She knew something of the
contention of which St. Paul speaks, the war-
fare of the flesh and the spirit.
Her mind, Mrs. Chapone said, should have
been joined to a Herculean body, which could
have supported its share of the fatigues of so
active a companion. In the quarrels of Mrs.
Carter's body and mind, she was inclined to
side with body, who as she suspected met with
hard usage from its towering mate, who seemed
to treat it with disdain, and hardly acknowledge


WIT AND WISDOM
it as a companion and partner. Mrs. Chapone
declared she would in fact as soon be Dr
Jortin's wife; and yet it had always been her
prayer that she might never be the wife of an
overgrown scholar.
In 1740, at the age of twenty-three, Mrs.
Carter wrote the following dialogue on the
subject:
'Says Body to Mind, " Tis amazing to see,
We're so nearly related, yet never agree,
But lead a most wrangling, strange sort of life,
As great plague.to each other as husband and wife.
The fault's all your own, who with flagrant oppression
Encroach ev'ry day on my lawful possession.
The best room 1 in my house you have seized for your own,
And turn'd the whole tenement quite upside down,
While you hourly call in a disorderly crew
Of vagabond rogues,8 that have nothing to do
But run in and out, hurry scurry, and keep
Such a horrible uproar, I can't get to sleep.
There's my kitchen 3 sometimes is as empty as sound,
I call for, my servants,4 not one's to be found:
They all are sent out on your Ladyship's errand,
To fetch some more riotous guests in, I warrant!
And since things are growing, I see, worse and worse,
I'm determin'd to force you to alter your course."
Poor Mind, who heard all with extreme moderation,
Thought it now time to speak, and make her allegation:
"'Tis I that, methinks, have most cause to complain,
Who am crampt and confin'd like a slave in a chain.
'The head. ■ The thoughts. » The stomach.
* The spirits.
R 3


A WOMAN OF
I did but step out, on some weighty affairs,
To visit, last night, my good friends in the stars,
When, before I was got half as high as the moon,
You dispatch'd Pain and Languor to hurry me down;
Vi et armis they seiz'd me, in midst of my flight,
And shut me in caverns as dark as the night."
"'Twas no more," reply'd Body, "than what you deserv'd;
While you rambled abroad, I at home was half starv'd,
And, unless I had closely confin'd you in hold,
You had left me to perish with hunger and cold."
"I've a friend," answers Mind, "who, tho' slow, is yet sure,
And will rid me, at last, of your insolent pow'r:
Will knock down your mud walls, the whole fabric demolish,
And at once your strongholds and my slav'ry abolish:
And while in the dust your dull ruins decay,
I shall snap off my chains and fly freely away."'
The above dialogue was no doubt intended
to show that as, to the Christian, divorce and
suicide are alike impossible, body and mind
during their temporary connection must, by a
system of give and take, find a modus vivendi,
and like an ill-assorted couple try not to let
their diverse interests and inclinations clash, till
at last something like real harmony will grow
up. The body if its weaknesses are neglected
will revenge itself, and always manage to have
the last word. The note of triumph in the last
two lines expresses the release of the mind,
which at death flies freely away from that 'dull
clog the body,' just as in our dreams, unfettered


WIT AND WISDOM
by distance and a thousand other disabilities,
we pass at once,
'So swift a pace hath thought,'
into the society of our friends and the enjoy-
ment of unrestrained intercourse. The sense
of detachment of body and mind is more
common amongst Eastern nations, and apart
from all differences of creed, accounts for much
of their indifference to death: that feeling that
St. Paul expresses as 'whether in the body or
out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth.'
The prospect of a solitary passage through
the heavy road and dim twilight of our con-
cluding journey Mrs. Carter admitted was a
melancholy idea, but happily there are few
cases in which it is verified. Divine good-
ness raises up successive comforts through the
whole of our progress, which alleviates our sor-
row for those we have lost. 'Every individual
that strongly engages our affection has some
characteristic and distinguishing mark. Thus,
while our present companions assist us to pur-
sue our journey with cheerfulness and spirit,
the regret for those whom we have lost gives
a delightful prospect of our arrival at that
home where human happiness will be rendered


246 A WOMAN OF
complete by the assembly of all those who
have assisted us through different stages of our
mortal passage.'
Mrs. Carter acted on Dr. Johnson's advice
and kept her friendship in constant repair.
For if a man does not make new friends as
he advances through life, he will very soon
find himself alone.
Pascal wrote: 'II est injuste qu'on s'attache,
car on n'est la fin de personne.'
The end of all living creatures Mrs. Carter
argued was happiness. The pleasure and
affection we feel in the fine qualities of our
associates is one of the noblest and most
reasonable sources of human happiness. To
justify this attachment it is not necessary that
we should be the 'end ' and sole object of our
friends, it suffices that we should be a means of
their happiness. Pascal continues: 'Mais il
est injuste que Ton s'attache, parce que nous
mourrons.' 'Cela se repond fort naturellement,'
exclaimed Mrs. Carter : 'nous revivrons.' 'May
we not delight in our friends because they may
be separated from us for a time? An attach-
ment that does not look beyond the grave is
unworthy of being immortal. When one con-
templates this present life, not as a separate


WIT AND WISDOM 247
state, but, as it is in truth, a part of eternity, the
objection that we must die does not affect the
question.'
Pascal's notions of duty appeared to Mrs.
Carter to be the outcome rather of a severe
and gloomy temper than to be founded on the
cheerful, social spirit of the Gospel. He was,
however, to be esteemed and compassionated
for having turned the edge of that severity
chiefly on his own ease. It was not in the New
Testament that poor Pascal found a direction
for wearing a spiked girdle. What a monstrous
fabric of absurdities enthusiasm and supersti-
tion have erected on that simple plan which
Divine wisdom has proposed in the Gospel!
'Very few,' she added, 'have sufficient
strength of mind not to be hurt by great
numbers of what are called good books. I am
not setting all serious reading at defiance.
Heaven forbid! But it is most devoutly to be
wished, people would make their Bible their
principal study.'
Mrs. Carter's opinion of Pascal is merely
quoted for what it is worth. Whether his book
'Les Pensdes' is studied from a religious or
from merely a literary point of view, it must be
admitted to be one of the most perfect works


248 A WOMAN OF
existing in the French language, and is incom-
parable in depth and beauty. Even Voltaire
allowed that Pascal was a model of eloquence
and humour. Mrs. Carter's horror of 'goody-
goody' books has been shared by many seri-
ous thinkers, who deplore the mischief done
by them. But had she lived in the twentieth
century what would she have thought of the
religious novel, that is often irreligious and
even sacrilegious? Sacred subjects are lightly
handled and even dragged through the mud,
and that by some of our most brilliant writers.
By harping on three strings they insure an
eager audience. They appeal to the weary and
heavy-laden hearts that, disappointed with the
distorted view of religion presented to them
through human agencies, are ready to hear any
new thing concerning those vital questions of
life and death with which they are at times
confronted. By sailing as near the wind as
they dare, along the thin imaginary border of
virtue and vice, they pander to the idle curiosity
of those who desire to penetrate the 'mystery
of iniquity.' Finally, they appeal to the masses
by a caricature of social circles into which many
of their readers have no other means of access.
For instance, when the fundamental truths of


WIT AND WISDOM 251
'God hath knit
The Soul and Body in one mystic bond,
As horse and rider, and then sent them forth
To run their course upon the race of life.
Along the way the strife is permanent—
And now the rider with decided voice
The steed controls, and now with sudden swerve
The horse has thrown his rider in the dust.
Yet joined together onwards still they pass
O'er gently swelling slope through forest dark,
Flying o'er dreary marsh and pleasant plain,
Until at last one day the charger falls
Worn out, his strength all spent—
The hollow tomb
Gives back the echo of his dying groan.
'Free to his feet the rider springs
And seeks the face of Him
Who counts alike each victory and each fall.'
As an octogenarian Mrs. Carter travelled
every winter by 'diligence' to London, where
she found most of her friends had already
assembled, and 'the birthday ' brought the rest.
She usually set out from Deal by moonlight
at 8 p.m. and reached Clarges Street at 11 A.M.
the following day. The first part of the road
was safe from robbers, and daylight protected
the travellers, before they reached Hanging
Wood, where the highwaymen deposited their
ill-gotten gains in a cavern, that could only be





APPENDIX
GENEALOGICAL NOTE
BY ROBERT BRUDENELL CARTER, F.R.C.S.
THE recent inquiries of Mr. Francis Galton and others
into the influence of heredity lend much support to
the belief that' the life of every man is to some extent
written before he is born,' and that a knowledge of
past family or racial influences is of definite value as
an aid to the correct appreciation of character.
Elizabeth Carter was descended from a landed
family of moderate estate, which was settled from an
early period in Bedfordshire, and sent branches into
the adjacent counties of Buckingham and Hertford.
A common ancestor was Thomas Carter, of Higham,
in the county of Bedford, who was seated there in the
reign of Edward IV., and is mentioned in the records
of the Heralds' College as bearing arms, * Azure, a
talbot statant between three round buckles, or.' On
the tomb of one of his descendants, William Carter,
erected in Kempston Church in 1702, it is said that
the body of the deceased was brought for burial to the
parish in which his family had 'possessed an estate



Phototirafih by Btske * Edgar, Bedford.
INSCRIPTION ON THE ANCELL MONUMENT ON THE NORTH WALL
OF THE CHANCEL WITHIN THE SANCTUARY, GREAT BARFORD
CHURCH, CO. BEDFORD (NR. ST. NEOTS).
'Here lyeth the body of Thomas Ancell, son and heir to Edward Ancell of West
Hounton in the county of Somerset gent; who had to wife Elizabeth Whetley
daughter and co-heir of Robert Whetley of Gt. Joneby in the county of Cumber-
land gent, by whom he had issue sonnes: Whetley. Oliver, Thomas, and Nicholas
and left Thomas livinge and daughters Agnes. Rose, Mary, Temperance. Elizabeth,
Elizabeth and Anne, whereof he bestowed six in marriage and left rive of them
living and being of the age of 71 years deceased in the fuythe of Christ the 27th day
of April Anno Dni 1591."





WIT AND WISDOM 257
commences. This William is therein recorded to have
married Elizabeth, sister and sole heir of William
Cranfield, of Great Barford, in the same county; and
the son and heir of this marriage, also William, is
recorded to have married 'Mary, third daughter of
Thomas Aunscell, of Great Barford,' to whom and to
whose family there is an elaborate monument in Great
Barford Church, a monument on which four sons are
sculptured kneeling behind their father, and seven
daughters behind their mother, and on which the
arms of both husband and wife (daughter and heir of
Robert Wheatley of Great Joneby in the county of
Cumberland), are displayed. The marriage of William
Carter and Mary Aunscell was a prolific one, for upon
his tomb in Kempston Church there are two brass
plates, one of which bears the following inscription:
'Here lieth the bodie of William Carter, Gent,
who tooke to wife Marie, the daughter of Thomas
Aunsell, Esq., by whom he had issue seaven sones
and ten daughters. He died the first day of Sep-
tember, 1605. She, surviving, in memorial of her
affection to him living, caused this monument to be
made over him.'
The second plate bears a rude engraving, which
appears intended to represent the 'seaven sones'
mentioned in the inscription. The baptisms of six
of the sons and nine of the daughters are duly
recorded in the Kempston register, as well as the
marriages of six of the daughters; but the Visitation
record mentions only the eldest son, Thomas, who
succeeded to the estate, and two of his brothers.
In course of time, the branch of the family which
S


WIT AND WISDOM 261
Bucks, viz. azure, two lions rampant, or, which are also
borne by the Carters of St. Cullumbe, in Cornwall.'
We have here a curious illustration of the ignorance
and indifference about matters of heraldry which
prevailed during much of the eighteenth century.
It was by no means uncommon even for gentlemen
of good lineage to be ignorant of their own armorial
bearings, and not only to seek for information about
them from engravers or stationers as ignorant as
themselves, but actually to use arms that were sup-
plied to them by such persons, among whom the
arms of the Carters of St. Columb were so popular
that they have been thus bestowed upon several
families of the name in different parts of England,
none of whom have had any title to them. Elizabeth
Carter's brothers seem to have been beguiled in this
manner, for variants of the St. Columb arms appear
upon their bookplates and tombstones, although they
were entitled to the talbot statant and the buckles
above mentioned, a bearing of older date than the St.
Columb coat. The family of Carter of St. Columb
terminated in three co-heiresses about 1670, and very
few, if any, of the persons of the name who now use
their coat of arms would be able to establish a claim
to it, or to obtain the sanction of the Heralds' College
to its continued employment.
Although Dr. Nicolas Carter (who strenuously
objected to the customary 'h' in his baptismal name)
was appointed, soon after his ordination, to be Per-
petual Curate of St. George's Church, then newly built
at Deal as a Chapel of Ease, and although his son, Mr.
John Carter, was County Chairman of East Kent for