"Mad Madge" - Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

By Lauren Gilbert



 

Portrait of Margaret Cavendish, 
Lady Newcastle, from the frontispiece 
to her 'Poems and Fancies', 1653

I'm currently taking an on-line class and was recently introduced to a fascinating author whose work I had never read. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle was a prolific writer, and she was also known as "Mad Madge." I had to know more...

Margaret Lucas was born about 1623 at St. John’s Abbey, the youngest of 8 children of Thomas and Elizabeth Lucas, a wealthy family but not titled, according to her autobiography.  The family was of Royalist sympathies.  Her father died when she was 2 years old.  Margaret was educated at home: taught reading and writing, singing and dancing, needlework and music (lute and virginals).  As a child, she showed an interest in writing, composing what she called her “baby books”, 16 in all.   The family seems to have been somewhat aloof from their neighbours, an attitude attributed to their Royalist views. 

In 1640, the Civil War broke out.  At some point, Margaret’s family home was attacked by Parliamentarians and, by some accounts, the family tomb destroyed.  She and her mother fled to Oxford in 1642 when Charles I and his court were living to live with her married sisters.  Margaret became a maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria and accompanied her to Paris in 1644.  This was her first real separation from her family.

In Paris, Margaret met William Cavendish, Marquess (later Duke) of Newcastle in the spring of 1645. A recent widower and fellow exiled Royalist who was about 30 years her senior, William apparently found her attractive and cast out lures.  Margaret, however, wanted marriage, even though some felt her status was too low to be worthy of the honour. Besides being an English peer (even though in exile), William was a patron of the arts, while his brother Charles was a scholar. He seems to have appreciated her mind and her talent, sharing her interest in literature.  She became his second wife in December of 1645. During their exile, they lived in Paris, Rotterdam and Antwerp, throughout which time Margaret wrote.  She also acquired a reputation for eccentricity: in addition to her writing, she designed her own clothes, cursed and flirted.  She became known as “Mad Madge” because of her unusual fashions and outrageous behaviour.

During her marriage, Margaret was a prolific author and, most unusually for a woman, published under her own name.  William encouraged her and paid for her publishing.  Her interests were wide-ranging: philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, science fiction, plays.   She also wrote a biography of her husband, and her own autobiography.   In November of 1651, Margaret returned to England and attempted to claim a portion of William’s estate.  While there, she published her first book POEMS AND FANCIES in 1653.  The book caused something of a sensation; praised by some for its originality, it was criticized by others for its shaky grammar and spelling.  Her second book, PHILOSOPHICALL FANCIES, was also published in 1653.  Margaret stayed in England 18 months and returned to Antwerp.

In 1660, William and Margaret returned to England with the Restoration and retired to their estate at Welbeck.  She resumed her writing and also studied philosophy and other subjects.  She published plays in 1662, and her book CCXI SOCIABLE LETTERS was published in 1664.  (This is the book I am currently exploring.)  In the guise of personal letters supposedly written between two women living in the country, she delivered candid, shrewd comments on daily life and personal relationships in a conversational tone.  I have only read a bit of this so far but am really enjoying it.  In her own time, although Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn made fun of her, others admired her and enjoyed her work then as well.

Margaret died suddenly at the age of fifty on December 15, 1673.  She was buried in Westminster Abbey.  William was too ill to attend her funeral.  Proud of her to the end, he died two years later and was buried with her at Westminster Abbey on January 22, 1676.

Sources include:

Cavendish, Margaret.  Sociable Letters.  James Fitzmaurice, editor.  2004: Broadview Editions, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

Image: Wikimedia Commons,   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/MargaretCavendish.JPG/452px-MargaretCavendish.JPG   

The University of Notthingham on line.  Manuscripts and Special Collections.   "Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne, c. 1623-1673."  https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/collectionsindepth/family/newcastle/biographies/biographyofmargaretcavendish,duchessofnewcastleupontyne%28c1623-1673%29.aspx   

Poetry Foundation.  "Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673).  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/margaret-cavendish   

Luminarium.org.  "Margaret (Lucas) Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673)." by Ron Cooley et al.  1998.  http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/cavendish/cavendishbio.htm  

International Margaret Cavendish Society.  http://internationalmargaretcavendishsociety.org/resources.html   

Project Vox.   "CAVENDISH (1623-1673)  Margaret Cavendish [nee' Lucas], Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne."  http://projectvox.library.duke.edu/pg/?q=node/4  

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Lauren lives in Florida with her husband.  Her first published work is Heyerwood: A Novel, and a second book is due out later this year.  Visit her website at http://www.lauren-gilbert.com to find out more. 

Gossip in Early Modern England

by Samuel Thomas

In today’s world, whether it is used as a noun or a verb, the term “gossip” has universally negative connotations. Gossips spread rumors of dubious veracity, and are often considered the very opposite of what a friend should be. But such was not always the case, for in early modern England “gossip” had additional and sometimes contradictory meanings. In this post I’ll briefly outline origins and changing definitions of “gossip” and in a later post I’ll try to rehabilitate gossip’s reputation and make the case for it’s importance to a well-ordered society.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest recorded use of the word “gossip” comes from 1014, but its meaning would have no resonance today, for “gossip” referred to a child’s godmother or godfather. The spiritual kinship between the child and the godparent extended to the child’s birth parents as well, making them “siblings in god.” And here is where things get really cool: “gossip” is short for “god-sib” which is itself an abbreviated form of “god sibling.” Thus your gossips were the women and men you chose as godparents for your child – gossips were your closest friends. (According to the English, the Irish chose wolves as their gossips. As one historian noted, this idea is as interesting if it is false as if it is true.) Intriguingly enough, this meaning of the word – including its inclusion of men as gossips – endured into the late 19th century.

In the seventeenth century, “gossip” began to refer to the women who attended a woman during labor and delivery of a child, or at her recovery (or lying-in) afterwards, and here we can begin to see the word taking on its negative connotations. Prior to the eighteenth century, childbirth was women’s business, and a central occasion for women’s sociability. A woman gave birth not in the presence of doctors and nurses (whom she knew not at all), but her friends and neighbors. Such gatherings of women made some men very nervous, and they spilt a great deal of ink voicing their anxiety. In ’Tis Merry When Gossips Meet (1602) and its sequel A Crew of Kind Gossips (1609), Samuel Rowlands describes the meeting between a widow, wife, and spinster in which the three women exchange complaints about their husbands, and the widow offers the other women advice on how to manipulate their spouses.



While there is no denying Rowlands’s misogyny, his description may not have been entirely off the mark. Writing later in the century Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, describes just such a gathering in terms Rowlands would recognize:

as is Usual at such Gossiping Meetings, their Discourse was most of Labours and Child-beds, Children and Nurses, and Household Servants...at last they fell into a Discourse of Husbands, Complaining of Ill Husbands, and so from Husbands in General, to their own Particular Husbands.

When Cavendish ( ever the defender of patriarchy ) reprimanded the women for their disrespectful carriage, they turned their guns on her.

the ladies being before Heated with Wine, and then at my Words, with Anger fell into such a Fury with me, as they fell upon me, not with Blows, but with Words, and their Tongues as their Swords, did endeavour to Wound me...it hath so Frighted me, as I shall not hastily go to a Gossiping-meeting again, like as those that become Cowards at the Roaring Noise of Cannons, so I, at the Scolding Voices of Women.

(This episode also makes clear we should not imagine these gatherings as occasions for sisterly resistance against patriarchal oppression. Rather they were the scene of as much infighting and competition as characterized society in general.)

In the early modern period, then, the term “gossip” could refer any number of things, ranging from a child’s godfather, to a woman’s closest female friends, to a woman who spread scurrilous rumors about her neighbors. While some might find such imprecision frustrating, to my mind it simply speaks to the richness of early modern English and the ability of the common folk to define words in terms that were useful to them.


Sam Thomas's debut novel The Midwife's Tale: A Mystery will be published in 2013 by Minotaur/St. Martin's press. He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and his very own website.