Chapter V: Part II: Spenser's Wife

The second passion of our poet, having had birth

"In savage soyle, far from Parnasso Mount,"

is more barren of literary gossip and adventure, and may, therefore, we trust, be compressed into narrow limits.

The chief evidence on which we shall have to rely in this case must be of a similar nature with the former;--not that we shall have to interpret allegories, but the true reading of an anagram; for we may set out on our pursuit, assured, that, according to the poetical alchemy of his age, Spenser did not fail to screen his second _innamorata_ under the same "quintessential cloud of wit" as his first; and that we shall find in his homage some _sobriquet_, "the right ordering of which" (as in the former case) "will bewray the verie name of his love and mistresse."

On this point, however, his biographies and biographers have hitherto preserved absolute silence. They tell us he was married, and had several children by his wife; but, of the name, the rank, or the country of the lady they confess their ignorance. Todd informs us, that he "married a person of very inferior rank to himself,"-- "a country lass";--and he quotes the "Faëry Queen" to prove his assertion:--

"For, certes, she was but a country lass."

It is true, those words occur in the passage cited by the commentator from the "Faëry Queen"; most probably they refer to the person in dispute. But she was no more "a country lass," in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase, than was Spenser himself (Clerk of the Council of Munster) "a shepherd's boy." Had Mr. Todd consulted that portion of our poet's works especially devoted to record this passion, its progress and issue, he would have found she was a "lady," whose rank was rather "disparaged" than otherwise by "sorting" with Edmund Spenser, albeit his blood was noble:--

"To all those happy blessings which you have
With plenteous hand by Heaven upon you thrown,
This one disparagement they to you gave,
That you your love lent to so mean a one."
_Amoretti_. Sonnet lxvi.

Spenser devoted two entire poems expressly to this passion,--to wit, the "Amoretti," describing its vicissitudes, and the "Epithalamion, or Marriage Song," in which he celebrates its consummation. There are many allusions to it also in the "Faëry Queen" and "Colin Clout's come home again"; and from these sources we propose to supply the name, the lineage, and residence of the happy fair.

She was, undoubtedly, a person of rank and blood, residing in the poet's vicinage, and is so described in many of the Sonnets. She is constantly addressed as "a lady," enjoying the respect and the elegancies, if not the luxuries, of her condition,--well-educated, accomplished in the arts of design and embroidery,--at whose father's house the poet was no infrequent visitor. Her residence, or that of her family, could not have been far from Kilcolman Castle; and was seated, most probably, on the banks of the Mulla, (Spenser's favorite stream,) a tributary of the Blackwater, which empties into the sea at Youghal. For she is seen for the first time in the "Faëry Queen" as the love of Colin Clout, (Spenser,) dancing among the Nymphs and Graces,--herself a fourth Grace,--on a mountain-top, the description of which exactly corresponds with all his other descriptions of his beloved Mole,--a mountain which nearly overhangs his castle; [12] and, undoubtedly, the bridesmaids and companions who attended her at the hymeneal altar were the "Nymphs of Mulla," and,

"of the rivers, of the forest green,
And of the sea that neighbours to her near,"--

a localization which would fix her family mansion somewhere between Kilcolman Castle and the prosperous seaport town of Youghal,--but somewhat nearer to the former. This limits our inquiries within the narrow range of the lands bordering the Mulla waters.

But our poet, we believe, did not stop with these ambiguous indications of her birthplace and family; he had promised her to immortalize the triumph of his passion, and to leave to all posterity a monument of the "rare wonderment" of the lady's beauty. [13] He had gone farther; and, in three several sonnets,[14] vowed to eternize her name--"your glorious name in golden monument"--after his own fashion, and to the best of his abilities. We have no right, then, to doubt that he fulfilled his promise; and if we can fix upon any distinctive appellation or epithet addressed to her, common to the several poems which professedly reveal his passion, and solvable into the name of a person whose residence and circumstances correspond with those ascribed to the lady by her worshipper, may we not most reasonably conclude that we have at length discovered the long-lost secret?

To begin with the beginning,--the "Amoretti." Here she is an _Angel_, in all moods and tenses, the "leaves," "lines," and "rhymes" are taught, that, "when they behold that _Angel's_ blessed look," they shall "seek her to please alone." [15] In a subsequent sonnet, she is an:

"_Angel_ come to lead frail minds to rest
In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound." [16]

Again, the poet denies that

"The glorious portrait of that _Angel's_ face"

can be expressed by any art, by pen or pencil. [17]

Again, she is

"Of the brood of _Angels_ heavenly born." [18]

And yet again, she is

"Divine and born of heavenly seed." [19]

Once more we are bid

"Go visit her in her chaste bower of rest,
Accompanied with _Angel-like_ delights." [20]

Turn we next to the "Epithalamion." And here the same cuckoo-note is repeated _usque ad nauseam_. We are told, that, to look upon her,

"we should ween
Some _Angel_ she had been." [21]

Even her bridesmaids (her sisters, probably) are thought to be _Angels_, and, addressing them, the bridegroom says,

"Sing, ye sweet _Angels_, Alleluya sing!" [22]

Finally, in "Colin Clout's come home again," the poet very dexterously evades the royal anger of Elizabeth, sure to be aroused by the preference of any beauty to her own. To deceive the Queen,--to whom, in gratitude for past favors, and, mayhap, with a lively appreciation of others yet to come, he is offering up homage,--he describes her Majesty by the very same imagery he had elsewhere employed to depict his lady-love; and ostensibly applies to the royal Elizabeth the amatory terms which are covertly meant for an Elizabeth of his own,--between whom and her royal type he either saw or affected to see a personal resemblance. Here we find her placed by the poet:

"Amongst the seats of _Angels_ heavenly wrought,
Much like an _Angel_ in all form and fashion."

The metaphoric 'Angel' of enamored swains is at once so trite and obvious, that both the invention and vocabulary of the lover who abides by it so perpetually must have been poor and narrow beyond anything we can conceive of Spenser's fecundity of language and imagery, if we sit down content to imagine that no more is meant by its recurrence than meets the eye. We are satisfied that this title or simile--call it what you will--is the key-word of the mystery; and we must now look around the neighborhood of the Mulla for a family-surname out of which this "Angel" can be extracted by the "alchemy of wit."

On consulting the "Great Records of Munster," Vol. VI., we find a family residing in the neighborhood of Kilcolman Castle whose name and circumstances correspond exactly with all the requirements of our Angel-ic theory. The Nagles were a very ancient and respectable family, whose principal seats were in the northern parts of the County of Cork and the adjoining borders of the County of Waterford. There seem to have been two races of them, distinguished by the color of their hair into the Red Nagles and the Black Nagles; and of the former, the lord or chieftain of the tribe resided at Moneanymmy, an ancient preceptory of the Knights of St. John, beautifully seated on the banks of the Mulla, where it disembogues its tribute into the Blackwater, on its passage to Cappoquin and Youghal, and at a convenient distance from Spenser's Kilcolman. Elizabeth Nagle belonging to the _Red_ branch of the family, we shall find no difficulty in accounting for her alleged resemblance to Queen Elizabeth.

The proprietor of Moneanymmy, strictly contemporaneous with Spenser, was John Nagle, whose son, David, died in the city of Dublin in 1637. It is therefore but fair to suppose that in 1593 (the year of Spenser's marriage) this David might have had a sister of marriageable age; for he himself, by his marriage with Ellen Roche of Ballyhowly, had a daughter, Ellen, who in due time was married to Sylvanus, the eldest son of Edmund Spenser. If our supposition be correct, therefore, Ellen and Sylvanus were linked by the double bond of cousinhood and matrimony.

Unfortunately for our Spenserian inquiry, however, the full and regular pedigree of these Nagles commences only with David, whose marriage and the issue thereof are recorded at large in Irish books of heraldry; whereas the preceding generations, to a remote antiquity, are merely notified by the bare names of the son and heir as they succeeded to the inheritance.

John Nagle may have had a daughter marriageable at the time of Spenser's marriage; and she may have married the poet,--and did, we are convinced,--even though her family belonged to the Romish persuasion, and the bridegroom to the Protestant Church.

To this untoward circumstance--the difference in religion--there is curious reference made in a remarkable passage of the "Amoretti," which seems not only to indicate the name of her family, but to screen the poet himself from the penalties denounced against Protestants who intermarried with Roman Catholics. In the Sixty-first Sonnet, the lady is said to be:

"divinely wrought,
And of the _brood of Angels_ heavenly born;
And with the _crew of blessed Saints_ upbrought,
Each of which did her with their gifts adorn."

Here we have distinctly her _birth_ and _education_, each assigned to a different source. She is of the "brood" or family of anagrammatic "Angels,"--otherwise, Nagles; but has been "upbrought," or instructed, by persons whom Spenser denominates "Saints," or Orthodox Protestants; for Spenser was by party and profession a Puritan; and the Puritans were "Saints,"--to such as chose to accept their own account of the matter.

But there may be a yet deeper meaning, an anagrammatic appropriateness, in this phrase, "crew of blessed Saints." The Nagles of Moneanymmy had intermarried frequently with the St. Legers of Doneraile; and thus such a close intimacy was established between the families as to warrant the supposition that a child of the one house might have been reared amongst the members of the other. Elizabeth Spenser (born Nagle) may not unlikely have been educated by the Puritan St. Legers. The name St. Leger, as Camden remarks, is a compound name, derived from the German _Leodigar_ or _Leger_, signifying "the Gatherer of the People." Verstigan also gives it the same translation, as originating from _Leod_, _Lud_, or _Luyd_, which, he says, means "folk or people." [23] Therefore St. Leger seems to signify a folk, a gathering, a legion or "crew" of saints, a holy crowd or crew,--which may have been the quibble extorted by Spenser's "alchemy of wit" from the "upbringing" of Elizabeth Nagle, his wife. He calls her with marked emphasis his "sweet _Saint_," his "sovereign _Saint_"; and in the "Epithalamion" the temple-gates are called on to:

"Receive this _Saint_ with honors due."

In praying to the gods for a large posterity, he places his request on the ground,

"That from the earth (which may they long possess
With lasting happiness!)
Up to your haughty palaces may mount
Of blessed _Saints_ for to increase the count."

There is yet another solution, beside the anagrammatic one, for the name of "Angel" so sedulously applied by the poet to his beloved. The Nagle family, according to heraldry, were divided into three branches, distinguished by peculiarities of surname. The Southern branch signed themselves "Nagle,"--the Meath or Midland branch, "Nangle,"--while the Connaught or Western shoot rejoiced in the more euphonious cognomen of _Costello_! Let the heralds account for these variations; we take them as we find them. The letter N, as we are informed, according to the genius of the Irish tongue, is nothing more than a prefix, set, _euphoniæ gratiâ_, before the radical name itself, when commencing with a vowel. Thus, the N'Angles of Ireland were the Angles whose heroic deeds are duly recorded in the lists of the battle of Hastings. They went over to Ireland with Strongbow; one branch assumed (can the heralds tell us why?) the name of Costello;--another became N'Angles, and the Southern shoot dwarfed down their heavenly origin into prosaic Nagle. The well-known punning exclamation of Pope Gregory, on observing the fairness and beauty of some English children,--"Non Angli, sed Angeli forent, si essent Christiani,"--may have set the fervid brain of Spenser on fire, and suggested the divine origin of her he loved. Between Elizabeth de Angelis--the pun of Gregory--and Elizabeth de Angulo--the latter being the derivation of heralds and lawyers--what poet could hesitate a moment?

Our task is done. We think we have established our case. By anagram, Elizabeth Nagle makes a perfect _Angel_; by heraldry and a pontifical pun, the N'Angles of the County of Meath are _Angels_ in indefeasible succession; Elizabeth belonged to the Red branch of her family, and therefore must have resembled the royal Elizabeth; she was brought up among the "crew of Saints" in the St. Leger family; and, finally, her place of residence corresponds with that depicted by the "passionate shepherd" as the home of his second mistress. We think we have satisfied all the requirements of reasonable conviction, and confidently await the verdict of that select few who may feel interest in this purely literary investigation.

Guided by the rules of anagram here laid down and illustrated, some future commentator, more deeply versed in the history and scandal of the Elizabethan era, may be able to identify real personages with all the fantastic characters introduced in the "Faëry Queen."

[Footnote 1: See _Colin Clout's come home again_.] [Footnote 2: _Vide_ Scott's _Life_.] [Footnote 3: Upton's _Faëry Queen_, Vol. I. xiv.] [Footnote 4: See Wood's _Athenæ Oxonienses_.] [Footnote 5: See Hunter's _New illustrations of Shakspeare_, Vol. II. p. 280.] [Footnote 6: Book II. Canto vi. etc.--See Black's _Life of Tasso_, Vol. II. p. 150.] [Footnote 7: Upton, Vol. I. p. 14.--_Faëry Queen_, Book VI. Canto vi. st. 10, 17.] [Footnote 8: _Vide_ that to Queen Anne.] [Footnote 9: Cornwallis's _Essays_, p. 99.] [Footnote 10: Camden's Remains, folio, 1614, p.164.] [Footnote 11: _Iliad_, Z. 265.] [Footnote 12: _Faëry Queen_, Book VI. Canto x.] [Footnote 13: Sonnet lxix.] [Footnote 14: Sonnets lxxiii, lxxv, and lxxxii.] [Footnote 15: Sonnet i.] [Footnote 16: Sonnet viii.] [Footnote 17: Sonnet xvii.] [Footnote 18: Sonnet lxi.] [Footnote 19: Sonnet lxxix.] [Footnote 20: Sonnet lxxxiii.] [Footnote 21: Stanza 9.] [Footnote 22: Stanza 13.] [Footnote 23: Verstigan's _Restitution of Decayed Intelligence_, p. 226.]

MISS WIMPLE'S HOOP.
[Concluded.]