Speaker 1: The first published volume of work from Margaret Cavendish, Poems
Speaker 1: and Fancies in sixteen fifty three, introduced readers to an
Speaker 1: author who didn't settle for one subject or style. The
Speaker 1: volume features poems about atoms, arguments for the existence of fairies,
Speaker 1: and conversations between man and nature. Amongst these varied pieces,
Speaker 1: one can also find a short essay titled to All
Speaker 1: Writing Ladies. In that essay, Cavendish argues that history is
Speaker 1: composed of ages defined by men's changing desires. There are
Speaker 1: ages of peace, ages of war, ages of many gods,
Speaker 1: ages of atheism, ages of learning, ages of ignorance. Throughout
Speaker 1: these ages, Margaret explains, there are times when women rise
Speaker 1: to prominence, whether they be heroines, prophets, rulers, or scholars.
Speaker 1: For brief periods of time. Then women, she argues, can
Speaker 1: define an era, and if it be an age when
Speaker 1: the effeminate spirits rule, Cavendish rites, let us take the
Speaker 1: advantage and make the best of our time, for fear
Speaker 1: their reign should not last long. To that same effect,
Speaker 1: Cavendish rites, let us strive to build us tombs while
Speaker 1: we live, followed by a couplet that, though our bodies
Speaker 1: die our names may live to after memory. Sixteen fifty
Speaker 1: three's Poems and Fancies would be the first of many
Speaker 1: tombs Margaret built herself while she was living. If you
Speaker 1: recall the ending of our last episode, readers of Poems
Speaker 1: were met with a title page loudly declaring that the
Speaker 1: book was written by the right Honorable the Lady Margaret,
Speaker 1: Countess of Newcastle. Some editions even featured a bold etching
Speaker 1: of Margaret as a classical statue, standing in between Apollo
Speaker 1: and Athena. Margaret's writing would never be so groundbreaking as
Speaker 1: to define an era or earn a spot among the classics,
Speaker 1: but simply by putting her own name on a work
Speaker 1: of fiction, Margaret Cavendish solidified her place in history as
Speaker 1: a trailblazer. A quote from a friend is included in
Speaker 1: the introduction to poems, quote, you are not only the
Speaker 1: first English poet of your sex, but the first that
Speaker 1: ever wrote this way. When the then Countess released Poems
Speaker 1: and Fancies, only an estimated one point three percent of
Speaker 1: total English publications were openly written by women, and naturally
Speaker 1: we don't even have the statistics for women who may
Speaker 1: have been writing anonymously. Although some certainly did one point
Speaker 1: three percent, then is small and mostly made up of
Speaker 1: works offering religious and maternal advice. From sixteen fifty to
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty, religious texts made up around sixty one percent
Speaker 1: of all published writing by women. Literature, including poetry and plays,
Speaker 1: made up only zero point zero one six percent. Trailblazers are,
Speaker 1: as we know, not always well regarded in their time.
Speaker 1: There's a quote from one of Margaret's contemporaries, Dorothy Osborne,
Speaker 1: known posthumously for her collection of letters. In one such correspondence,
Speaker 1: Osborne wrote, they say poems and fancies 'tis ten times
Speaker 1: more extravagant than her dress. And once Osborne got her
Speaker 1: hands on a copy, she declared that I have seen
Speaker 1: it and am satisfied that there are many soberer people
Speaker 1: in Bedlam. Osborne was not alone in her perception of Cavendish.
Speaker 1: After all, her nickname of the crazy Duchess persists to
Speaker 1: this day, immortalized by Virginia Woolf in a Room of
Speaker 1: One Zone. Was Cavendish truly as crazy as they say?
Speaker 1: In her own view? At least it's a bit more complex.
Speaker 1: I am not covetous, but as ambitious as ever any
Speaker 1: of my sex was, is or can be. Which is
Speaker 1: the cause though that I cannot be Henry the fifth
Speaker 1: or Charles the second. Yet I will endeavor to be
Speaker 1: Margaret the first. I'm Danish Schwartz, and this is noble blood.
Speaker 1: When we last left Margaret, she had discovered her passion
Speaker 1: for writing under the tutelage of her husband William and
Speaker 1: her brother in law Charles. Before she could publish poems, however,
Speaker 1: she would have to make an unexpected trip back to
Speaker 1: her home country following years abroad. In November sixteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: she locked her writings up in a trunk as though
Speaker 1: they had been buried in a grave, and left them
Speaker 1: behind in Antwerp with her husband William. That fall, the
Speaker 1: Cavendishes had learned that Charles's estates were sequestered by Parliament,
Speaker 1: while William's previously seized estates were being sold to fund
Speaker 1: war in Ireland. In order to regain possession or entitlement,
Speaker 1: the deemed delinquent had to appear in front of the
Speaker 1: newly established rump Parliament, more specif, there a literally named
Speaker 1: committee for compounding. The Cavendishes at this point were so
Speaker 1: broke that William recognized the necessity of the journey, but
Speaker 1: he himself could not join his brother, as setting foot
Speaker 1: on English soil would have been a death sentence for him.
Speaker 1: Thus it was up to Charles and Margaret to travel
Speaker 1: home in frugal style to try to reclaim what they could. Margaret,
Speaker 1: with her debilitating separation and social anxiety, certainly would not
Speaker 1: have left her husband's side if she didn't think the
Speaker 1: situation was so dire. After all, she had an important
Speaker 1: role to play. As William's wife. She was entitled to
Speaker 1: one fifth of the proceeds from his sold estates, which
Speaker 1: would have aided considerably in relieving the family's debt. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: for the couple, they would never see the promised payout.
Speaker 1: Margaret was so anxious to appear in court that her
Speaker 1: only living brother, John Lucas, had to speak to the
Speaker 1: committee on her behalf. Margaret listened quietly while they ruled
Speaker 1: that because she had married William, since he became a delinquent,
Speaker 1: she was owed nothing. For Charles's part, he managed to
Speaker 1: regain some of his estates, but he paid such hefty
Speaker 1: fines in the process that he had to sell some
Speaker 1: of the land that he had just won back. While
Speaker 1: Margaret's mission was ultimately unsuccessful, there were still bright spots
Speaker 1: to be found in London. For one thing, she was
Speaker 1: reunited with her family for the first time in many years.
Speaker 1: They were smaller in number by this point. Margaret's brothers,
Speaker 1: Charles and Thomas, her mother, and one of her sisters
Speaker 1: had all died while Margaret was abroad, but her brother
Speaker 1: John and her beloved sister Catherine were alive and well
Speaker 1: in London. If you recall, it was Catherine whom Margaret
Speaker 1: intensely feared losing, so to see her again must have
Speaker 1: felt like a miracle. Margaret was also able to meet
Speaker 1: some of Williams's sons and daughters for the first time,
Speaker 1: who all remained in London after their father's self imposed exile.
Speaker 1: This was also the period in which Margaret was introduced
Speaker 1: to London's royalist intellectual circles. She frequented the salons of
Speaker 1: composer Henry Laws, who welcomed the contributions of women, including
Speaker 1: Margaret's contemporary, the poet Katherine Phillips. In these groups, work
Speaker 1: was typically circulated as unpublished manuscripts, which would later sometimes
Speaker 1: be published posthumously. Margaret was one of the select few
Speaker 1: who chose to officially publish her work in her lifetime.
Speaker 1: Her publication was also notably not an independent venture. She
Speaker 1: worked with Martin and Alstree, a small but not unimportant
Speaker 1: press who would go on to become the official booksellers
Speaker 1: to the Royal Society. What drove her to take this
Speaker 1: step that few others, let alone women often took, we
Speaker 1: don't quite know. In the introduction to Poems and Fancies,
Speaker 1: Margaret explained the driving force behind her writing and defends
Speaker 1: her right to publish said writing, but she doesn't detail
Speaker 1: her thought process about the in between. As we discussed
Speaker 1: last time, Margaret found the practice of writing eased her
Speaker 1: anxiety and her sadness like nothing else, and indeed she
Speaker 1: was living in a specifically un settling time. Though she
Speaker 1: reunited with some of her family in London, she was
Speaker 1: without her husband in a country that did not look
Speaker 1: the same after eight years abroad. I was from my Lord,
Speaker 1: she writes in the preface to Poems, meaning she was
Speaker 1: away from her husband and knowing him to be in
Speaker 1: great wants, and myself in the same condition to divert them.
Speaker 1: I wrote to turn the stream. When she says once
Speaker 1: she could be referring to their longing for each other,
Speaker 1: but also their financial struggles. In that way, that line
Speaker 1: could be suggesting that publishing her work was an economic venture.
Speaker 1: Margaret certainly couldn't have hoped to make a living off
Speaker 1: her writing, after all, men of the era capable of
Speaker 1: such were few and far between. But even a small
Speaker 1: prophet could have helped to turn the stream, if not
Speaker 1: the tides, when it came to defending herself. Margaret dedicated
Speaker 1: poems in part quote to all noble and worthy ladies.
Speaker 1: In this short letter, she shares her fears. I imagine
Speaker 1: I shall be censored by my own sex, and men
Speaker 1: will cast a smile of scorn upon my book because
Speaker 1: they think thereby women encroach too. She implores her fellow
Speaker 1: women to stand up for her, and knows them to
Speaker 1: be capable of it, for I know women's tongues are
Speaker 1: as sharp as two edged swords, and wound as much
Speaker 1: when they are angered. After all, in Margaret's mind, she
Speaker 1: was doing no harm. Quote, the world may wonder at
Speaker 1: my confidence, how dare I put out a book, especially
Speaker 1: in these censorious times? Why should I be ashamed or afraid?
Speaker 1: Where no evil is her publication was not only audacious
Speaker 1: in its very existence, but also in its content. Most
Speaker 1: not the first poem, A World Made by Atoms, describes
Speaker 1: exactly what its title implies, the creation of our world
Speaker 1: as a scientific process with no mention of God. It
Speaker 1: may seem counterintuitive coming from a woman who was a
Speaker 1: royalist and believed in the divine right of kings, but
Speaker 1: much of Margaret's early philosophy is considered epicurean atomism, which
Speaker 1: was bold enough to garner accusations of atheism. In Margaret's
Speaker 1: work The World's Olio, she goes so far as to say, quote,
Speaker 1: it is better to be an atheist than a superstitious man,
Speaker 1: For in atheism there is humanity and civility towards man
Speaker 1: to man, but superstition regards no humanity. Margaret would later
Speaker 1: reassure readers, pray, account me not an atheist, but believe
Speaker 1: as I do in God Almighty. In typical Margaret fashion,
Speaker 1: her thoughts on her own work flip between shyly modest
Speaker 1: and brazenly ambitious. Spare your severe censures, she calls on
Speaker 1: the reader, I having not so many years of experience
Speaker 1: as will make me a garland to crown my head.
Speaker 1: Only I have had so much time as to gather
Speaker 1: a little posey to stick upon my breast. In the
Speaker 1: same introduction, she claims, my ambition is such as I
Speaker 1: would either be a world or nothing. Margaret's journey to
Speaker 1: being a world would take some time, but her next
Speaker 1: step would be to travel across our world once again.
Speaker 1: In February sixteen fifty three, just weeks after poem's publication,
Speaker 1: she prepared to cross the Channel and return to her
Speaker 1: husband Williams's side. While she had found prosperous Royalist circles,
Speaker 1: her home country was still a hostile place for those
Speaker 1: loyal to the dead King Charles. Her brother in law
Speaker 1: was meant to make the journey with her, but he
Speaker 1: fell ill and was advised against traveling for the time being.
Speaker 1: In order to leave England, Parliament was requiring travelers to
Speaker 1: swear an oath of allegiance known as the Engagement. I
Speaker 1: do declare and promise It read that I will be
Speaker 1: true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England as it
Speaker 1: is now established, without a king or house of lords.
Speaker 1: You can imagine this would have been a real indignity
Speaker 1: for Margaret if she had to swear it. The catch
Speaker 1: was that only men had to take this oath. Women were,
Speaker 1: of course, assumed to be so politically ignorant that there
Speaker 1: was no need for such declarations. On March second, the
Speaker 1: Council issued permission for Lady Newcastle and servants to go
Speaker 1: out of England without having taken of the engagement pressed
Speaker 1: upon her, As William had done in the early days
Speaker 1: of their courtship. William wrote Margaret many poems of longing
Speaker 1: during those fifteen months spent apart, and many poems of passion.
Speaker 1: Upon their reunion. Our tongues thought much when lips did touch,
Speaker 1: they should not meet softly, reads one written after his
Speaker 1: wife's return to Antwerp. The couple's childlessness then cannot be
Speaker 1: attributed to a lack of trying. As for Margaret, she
Speaker 1: continued working on her second prose collection, Philosophical Fancies, a
Speaker 1: series of essays originally intended to be included in poems.
Speaker 1: With soon to be two publications under her belt, now,
Speaker 1: Margaret showed no signs of slowing down. Her next step
Speaker 1: was to establish herself as a literary figure in Europe.
Speaker 1: With William's help, Margaret sent out copies of poems and
Speaker 1: Fancies and philosophical fancies to prominent courtiers and intellectuals. Many
Speaker 1: of these celebrated figures sent messages of praise, but much
Speaker 1: of that praise comes across as too flattering, veering into
Speaker 1: the insincere. She was, after all, still a noble woman,
Speaker 1: As Margaret often referred to her writings as her children.
Speaker 1: One royalist scholar played on her own idea, advising her
Speaker 1: to go on, then, most honorable madam, bless the world
Speaker 1: with these noble infants of your brain. Margaret's most honest
Speaker 1: compliment may have come from a criticism. The English courtier
Speaker 1: and author Sir Edward Hyde argued that since Margaret was
Speaker 1: quote unskilled in any but our mother tongue, and lack
Speaker 1: of one normal education, she could not have written a
Speaker 1: book with so many terms of art and such expressions
Speaker 1: proper to all science. In his denouncement, Hyde evidently put
Speaker 1: forth the idea that Margaret's work was not only good,
Speaker 1: but too good. In response, the epilogue to Philosophical Fancies
Speaker 1: includes a rebuttal, I hear that my first book was
Speaker 1: thought to be none of mine own. Margaret argues, she
Speaker 1: is too honest as not to steal another's work, nor
Speaker 1: so vainglorious as to strain to build up a fame
Speaker 1: upon the ground of another man's wit. This would be
Speaker 1: a recurring battle throughout Margaret's career. Anatomists, philosophers, and writers
Speaker 1: of all kinds would accuse Margaret of lying about her
Speaker 1: education level or passing off someone else's work as her own.
Speaker 1: Margaret or William would write a defense in response, rinse,
Speaker 1: and repeat. As Margaret began to work on her next publication,
Speaker 1: the Words Olio, the Cavendish family faced a major loss.
Speaker 1: The illness that had kept Charles in London turned out
Speaker 1: to be deadly. He died in early sixteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: never having made it back to Antwerp. Both Margaret and
Speaker 1: William were devastated. In her memoir, Margaret later wrote that
Speaker 1: she would quote lament the loss so long as I live,
Speaker 1: going on to describe her brother in law and tutor
Speaker 1: as quote nobly generous, wisely valiant, naturally civil, honestly kind,
Speaker 1: truly loving, virtuously temperate. Maybe now is a good time
Speaker 1: to mention the rumor that Charles and Margaret had an affair.
Speaker 1: There's no concrete proof here, but a series of angry
Speaker 1: poet written by William after the couple's reunion, with titles
Speaker 1: like Love's Changeable Heart and Love's Perjury suggest a potential
Speaker 1: discovery of infidelity. And then there are Margaret's own published
Speaker 1: words in poems. A letter dedicated to Charles reads, and
Speaker 1: though I am your slave, being manicled with chains of obligation,
Speaker 1: yet my chains feels softer than silk, and my bondage
Speaker 1: is pleasanter than freedom, because I am bound to yourself,
Speaker 1: who are a person so full of generosity kinki. Margaret
Speaker 1: often writes of marriage as a form of slavery for women,
Speaker 1: so it's possible she was speaking of their legal bondage
Speaker 1: as brother and sister in law, or they were having
Speaker 1: an affair. Will likely never know for certain. Somewhat ironically,
Speaker 1: the portion of Charles's states that he was able to
Speaker 1: reclaim before his death had boosted the Cavendish fortune significantly.
Speaker 1: They were not clear of their debts, but they no
Speaker 1: longer had to pinch pennies on day to day expenses,
Speaker 1: and could even afford, albeit slightly irresponsibly, to spend on luxuries.
Speaker 1: Margaret published three more works while they were in Antwerp,
Speaker 1: the world's o Leo and the Philosophical and Physical Opinions
Speaker 1: in sixteen fifty five and Nature's Pictures in sixteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: Four years later, after spending nearly her entire adulthood as
Speaker 1: an expat, Margaret moved back to her home country. She
Speaker 1: would reside in England for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: Sixteen sixty was, of course, also the year Charles the
Speaker 1: Second made his grand return home, re establishing the monarchy. William,
Speaker 1: so thrilled at the prospect of returning to his homeland
Speaker 1: and serving the king he had actually tutored when he
Speaker 1: was a boy, sailed for England even before the royal
Speaker 1: entourage did. In Margaret's autobiography, she quotes his reaction upon
Speaker 1: finally seeing the smoke of London on the horizon. I
Speaker 1: have been sixteen years asleep and am not thoroughly awake yet. Margaret, however,
Speaker 1: did not hear those words first hand. William's departure for
Speaker 1: England was so rushed, in fact, that Margaret had to
Speaker 1: stay behind as a security for his debts. As margaret
Speaker 1: biographer Francesca Peacock phrases it, this situation was another classic
Speaker 1: Cavendish contradiction. It was a role that required independence. She
Speaker 1: had to organize the transport of all their possessions to England,
Speaker 1: deal with the magistrates of Antwerp, and secure another loan
Speaker 1: to pay off those remaining bills. But at the same
Speaker 1: time Margaret was quite literally being used as collateral upon
Speaker 1: for his debts. In her own words, Margaret expresses no
Speaker 1: displeasure at this turn of events. Despite her repeated opinion
Speaker 1: of marriage as a financial deal for men and bondage
Speaker 1: for women. For all of her historically overlooked positive qualities,
Speaker 1: Margaret was also inherently contradictory and often myopic in her
Speaker 1: otherwise progressive positions. We cannot forget, after all, the influence
Speaker 1: of her Royalist politics on her thinking. For example, in
Speaker 1: Sociable Letters, she writes that the disturbance in this country,
Speaker 1: referring pretty casually to the Civil War, hath made no
Speaker 1: breach of friendship betwixt women. For though there hath been
Speaker 1: a civil war in the Kingdom and a general war
Speaker 1: amongst the men, yet there have been no amongst the women.
Speaker 1: Margaret naturally did not know any parliamentary women who might disagree.
Speaker 1: It's a line of thinking that still echoes today when
Speaker 1: feminist talking points failed to consider other social metrics. Margaret
Speaker 1: was alone for about three months following William's departure for London.
Speaker 1: With the couple's affairs sorted, the proud royalist boarded a
Speaker 1: Dutch warship and set sail herself for England. Sea journeys
Speaker 1: and their unpredictable, potentially destructive outcomes are a major recurring
Speaker 1: motif in Margaret's work. In comparison to her near death
Speaker 1: experience departing England by boat when she was a teenager,
Speaker 1: her return trip was nothing but smooth sailing. Life in
Speaker 1: London was not as easy. William, once again officially the
Speaker 1: Marquise of Newcastle upon Tyne, expected a prestigious court appointment
Speaker 1: for his service to the late Charles the First and
Speaker 1: the young Charles the Second. By the time of Margaret's arrival, however,
Speaker 1: no such appointment had come. William was eventually appointed to
Speaker 1: some conciliatory but ultimately powerless positions. Fed Up, he respectfully
Speaker 1: took his leave from court to retire to his country estate.
Speaker 1: For the first time, Margaret was to see Wellbeck, where
Speaker 1: once upon a time William and Charles curated their intellectual circle.
Speaker 1: Later deemed the Wellbeck Academy. The estate was not the
Speaker 1: jewel it had once been. In place of accommodations designed
Speaker 1: for royalty and fame. Scholars were now, in Margaret's words,
Speaker 1: but some few old feather beds, and all those spoiled
Speaker 1: fit for no use. Much like the estate, the Cavendish
Speaker 1: family situation was in disorder. Margaret was not quite given
Speaker 1: the evil stepmother treatment, but some of William's children and
Speaker 1: longtime employees considered her influence on him too powerful. While
Speaker 1: they may have been misplacing their frustrations, William was in
Speaker 1: fact giving them a number of reasons to worry. Now
Speaker 1: back in England, the Marquess finally settled the jointure, or
Speaker 1: the portion of his estate that would be left to
Speaker 1: Margaret in the event that he died before her, that
Speaker 1: normally would have been finalized upon their marriage. Margaret was
Speaker 1: set to have an annuity of one thousand, one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five pounds, as well as possession of the
Speaker 1: manors Chesterfield, Woodthorpe and William's favorite Bolsover Castle. In later
Speaker 1: years he would add another home and more land to
Speaker 1: that already generous arrangement. Henry William's youngest son and heir
Speaker 1: following the deaths of his uncle and older brother, feared
Speaker 1: that there would be no land left for his own
Speaker 1: children or for the continuation of the male line and
Speaker 1: family name. Considering that William was thirty years his wife's senior,
Speaker 1: Henry understandably saw the jointure as a pretty sure thing.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the only concern. Margaret's dearest friend had married
Speaker 1: a Dutch businessman named Francis Topp during their exile abroad.
Speaker 1: William was evidently so impressed by Topp that he replaced
Speaker 1: Welbeck's long term steward Andrew Clayton, with that new acquaintance.
Speaker 1: Clayton blamed his displacement on Margaret and teamed up with
Speaker 1: an unhappy tenant of Williams to turn the marquess against
Speaker 1: his wife. They wrote an unsigned letter in which they
Speaker 1: blamed William's diminished respect at court on Margaret and went
Speaker 1: even further as to accuse her of committing adultery with
Speaker 1: top All of that sitcom esque scheming was ultimately for not.
Speaker 1: William saw through their ruse quite clearly. Margaret was but
Speaker 1: of course still publishing through the drama. Her first collection
Speaker 1: of plays published with the mouthful of a title, Plays
Speaker 1: Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, was
Speaker 1: printed in sixteen sixty two. Notably, it was also Margaret's
Speaker 1: first book printed by a woman, the widow of the
Speaker 1: printer Thomas Warren. Alice took over her husband's business after
Speaker 1: he passed, and from sixteen sixty six onwards almost all
Speaker 1: of Margaret's works were published by Anne Maxwell, the widow
Speaker 1: of David Maxwell, who had inherited and managed to her
Speaker 1: late husband's rather large business on her own. At this point,
Speaker 1: Margaret was still a crazy Countess, but she was about
Speaker 1: to become the crazy duchess history would remember her as.
Speaker 1: In sixteen sixty four, William was finally rewarded by his
Speaker 1: old pupil and friend. On June seventh, he received a
Speaker 1: letter from Charles the Second reading, I'm resolved to grant
Speaker 1: your request. Send me there for word what title you
Speaker 1: desire to have, or whether you will choose to keep
Speaker 1: your old and leave the rest to me. I am
Speaker 1: glad you enjoy your health, for I love you very well.
Speaker 1: William was to be made a duke, the highest rank
Speaker 1: of English nobility below the monarch. It would take a
Speaker 1: year to make things official, but in sixteen fifty five
Speaker 1: Margaret and William traveled to London for a small ceremony
Speaker 1: where they were official recognized as the Duke and Duchess
Speaker 1: of Newcastle on Tyne. In sixteen sixty six, William sold
Speaker 1: one of his country estates to buy back Newcastle House,
Speaker 1: the family home in London. In sixteen sixty seven, the
Speaker 1: couple moved in and found themselves in the heart of
Speaker 1: the city's social scene. The King visited their home, and
Speaker 1: the couple visited court to meet his queen for the
Speaker 1: first time. They hosted fellow aristocrats and intellectuals, including many
Speaker 1: of Margaret's philosophical correspondents. The writer John Evelyn visited Margaret
Speaker 1: several times a week, delighted by her extraordinary, fanciful habit, garb,
Speaker 1: and discourse. John Avelyn's wife did not share his good opinion.
Speaker 1: Never did I see she wrote, a woman so full
Speaker 1: of herself, so amazingly vain and ambitious. Margaret's reputation, both
Speaker 1: positive and negative, was growing by the day. Some of
Speaker 1: her rising notoriety was of her own doing. Eveland's wife
Speaker 1: goes on to say that Cavendish took occasion to cite
Speaker 1: her own pieces, line and page in such a book,
Speaker 1: and to tell the adventures of some of her nymphs.
Speaker 1: Margaret wanted to be a serious philosopher, and beyond that,
Speaker 1: she wanted to be a world. Accounts from the social
Speaker 1: season of sixteen sixty seven make it clear she had
Speaker 1: achieved something close to celebrity status and was recognizable enough
Speaker 1: to be regularly surrounded on the street. Sixteen sixty six
Speaker 1: saw the publication of her most famous work, The Blazing World,
Speaker 1: which we discussed in the introduction of last week's episode.
Speaker 1: Margaret's recognizability, however, did have a little bit more to
Speaker 1: do with her fashion than with her writing. To get
Speaker 1: an idea of what exactly was so daring about Margaret's clothing,
Speaker 1: a letter from a young man who saw Margaret Cavendish
Speaker 1: at the premiere of William's play The Humorous Lovers describes
Speaker 1: her as having her breasts all laid out to view
Speaker 1: and accessorized with scarlet trimmed nipples. Fashionable cleavage was not
Speaker 1: uncommon in the period, but Margaret was taking things further
Speaker 1: than socially accepted. But her style was not without purpose,
Speaker 1: Like her work, she was seeking to emulate the Greco
Speaker 1: Roman classics. Margaret also had a strong preference for black
Speaker 1: patches or mouchet, which were typically worn to cover blemishes
Speaker 1: and make the complexion look lighter by contrast, and she
Speaker 1: fancied accessories usually associated with the masculine, including certain styles
Speaker 1: of hats and vests. Her rise in status culminated in
Speaker 1: a visit to the prestigious exclusive Royal Society, established in
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty. Margaret had actually originally been highly critical of
Speaker 1: the society's approach to science, which she viewed as hubristic.
Speaker 1: Though her visit was arranged by a friend, there is
Speaker 1: no doubt a large portion of the society was unhappy
Speaker 1: with her presence there. Not only was she a woman,
Speaker 1: the Royal Society would not elect a female fellow for
Speaker 1: three more centuries, but she was the most gossiped about
Speaker 1: woman in London, after all, the crazy Duchess. She arrived
Speaker 1: at the Royal Society late in a gilded carriage and
Speaker 1: wearing a dress with a train which, as described by
Speaker 1: one spectator, took up half a road. At least, she
Speaker 1: had to be literally carried inside by her maids of honor.
Speaker 1: Like she was at the mecha. She was roughly a
Speaker 1: decade ahead of her time with address of that style.
Speaker 1: But even more unusual was her decision to pair the
Speaker 1: gown with a masculine, wide brimmed hat. In all her extravagance,
Speaker 1: Margaret walked the halls of the Royal Society, listening and
Speaker 1: learning about their ongoing experiments. Margaret's presence in the Royal
Speaker 1: Society was an experiment in its own way. As she
Speaker 1: observed their work, the men observed her. The woman who
Speaker 1: proudly called herself a philosopher wanted to be an empress
Speaker 1: in fiction, at least, dressed like a performer, and was
Speaker 1: also so shy that she hardly spoke through all her contradictions,
Speaker 1: her greatest desire was to be amongst the greats, to
Speaker 1: have her name on everyone's lips. She knew that she
Speaker 1: was not the most talented or educated writer, but she
Speaker 1: would reach for it nonetheless. As the character of the
Speaker 1: Empress says in The Blazing World, she would rather die
Speaker 1: in the adventure of noble achievements than live in obscurity
Speaker 1: and sluggish serenity. Margaret's time as a London socialite was grand,
Speaker 1: but I imagine given her social anxiety, she felt some
Speaker 1: relief when the couple returned to the country following that
Speaker 1: busy summer. Her focus at this point became editing and
Speaker 1: translating her older works for reissues. In sixteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: she published what would be her final volume of her
Speaker 1: new work, plays, never before printed. In the early sixteen seventies,
Speaker 1: Margaret returned to conducting her own scientific experiments, as she
Speaker 1: had once done with her brother in law, Charles, though
Speaker 1: she seemed a source of perpetual motion. Margaret Cavendish died
Speaker 1: suddenly on December fifteenth, sixteen seventy three, at fifty years old.
Speaker 1: She had already published more than a dozen original works.
Speaker 1: We don't know how she died, but we do know
Speaker 1: William would constantly remind her to be mindful of her
Speaker 1: health and fought to pull her away from her writing
Speaker 1: to exercise. In an absolutely delightful retort, she once wrote,
Speaker 1: the motions of my mind hinders the active exercises of
Speaker 1: my body. For should I dance or run or walk apace?
Speaker 1: I should dance my thoughts out of measure, run my
Speaker 1: fancies out of breath, and tread out the feet of
Speaker 1: my numbers. William, who outlived his wife after all, assembled
Speaker 1: a posthumous collection in his wife's honor, Letters and Poems
Speaker 1: in Honor of the incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle,
Speaker 1: which was published just months before he died in sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. Margaret's greatest desire to be a world or
Speaker 1: nothing was born out of a fear of becoming obsolete.
Speaker 1: The desire for fame proceeds from a doubt of being
Speaker 1: an afterthought. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Margaret's work
Speaker 1: was not forgotten, but the subject of repeated criticism and mockery.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty four's Memoirs of Eminent English Women, Louisa
Speaker 1: Stuart Costello bitingly writes, in almost every age there has
Speaker 1: been some such self esteemed phoenix, whose harmless conceit does
Speaker 1: but little injury, but is nevertheless a general annoyance, except
Speaker 1: to the tradesman she employs to print and bind the
Speaker 1: countless volumes with which she delights to adorn her own library.
Speaker 1: Tell us how you really feel, Louisa cai had become
Speaker 1: as wolf. Put it in a room of one's own,
Speaker 1: a bogey to frighten clever young girls with a cautionary
Speaker 1: tale see girls, If you try to write, you might
Speaker 1: become like the crazy Duchess. In more recent years of scholarship, however,
Speaker 1: Margaret's contributions and natural philosophy and fiction have been canonically acknowledged.
Speaker 1: She might be the giant cucumber. Wolf described her as
Speaker 1: crushing her floral contemporaries in the Garden of Good Taste.
Speaker 1: But you can't deny that a cucumber takes up space.
Speaker 1: Margaret was buried in the joint tomb William had purchased
Speaker 1: at Westminster Abbey. He could never have imagined his wife,
Speaker 1: thirty years his junior, would be laid to rest inside
Speaker 1: before he The monument in which the couple now lay
Speaker 1: side by side can still be seen at the abbey today.
Speaker 1: Visitors will see the couple, elaborately sculpted in ceremonial dress,
Speaker 1: lying peacefully next to each other. If they look closely,
Speaker 1: they can see a book and an inkpot in Margaret's
Speaker 1: left hand. Look even closer, and they'll read the inscription
Speaker 1: below telling them that here lies a wise, witty and
Speaker 1: learned lady, which many of her books do well testify
Speaker 1: decide for yourself. That's the story of Margaret Cavendish. But
Speaker 1: keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a
Speaker 1: little reminder about one of her forebears. In our earlier
Speaker 1: episode on Lady Mary Roth, the first english woman to
Speaker 1: publish fiction under her own name, we mentioned that it
Speaker 1: would take forty years for another englishwoman to do the same.
Speaker 1: This woman was, of course, Margaret Cavendish. What Margaret had
Speaker 1: feared had happened to Mary. Mary was shunned by society
Speaker 1: after her prose fiction Urania's sixteen twenty one release shocked
Speaker 1: the English Court. One detractor, Edward Denny infamously called her
Speaker 1: a hermaphrodite in show, indeed a monster in a scathing poem.
Speaker 1: In the preface to sixteen sixty four's Sociable Letters, Margaret
Speaker 1: Cavendish quotes the final couplet from Denny's poem to Mary work, Oh,
Speaker 1: the works leave idle books alone, For wise and worthier
Speaker 1: women have written none. Noble Blood is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble
Speaker 1: Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing
Speaker 1: and research by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Courtney Sender, Amy
Speaker 1: Hit and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced
Speaker 1: by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il KLi and
Speaker 1: executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.