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Addison's Aristocratic Wife

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Arthur L. Cooke
Arthur L. Cooke*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky Lexington 29
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Extract

During the eighteenth century it was generally assumed that Addison's marriage to the Countess of Warwick had been an unhappy one. Pope's caustic words in An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnol (1. 393) about “marrying discord in a noble wife” were supposed to refer to Addison and his countess. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, on hearing of Addison's appointment as Secretary of State, had sarcastically remarked: “Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatick, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.” The tradition came to full flower in Johnson's Lives of the English Poets: “... at last the lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, ‘Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.‘ The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness: it neither found them nor made them equal. She always remembered her own rank, and thought herself entitled to treat with very little ceremony the tutor of her son.” Johnson gave no authority for his “uncontradicted report,” and it seems likely that the Great Cham was supplementing the available evidence with a liberal use of imagination—a faculty which he elsewhere so strongly deprecated. Still the tradition continued, and at the beginning of the next century, Richard Phillips, in Addisoniana, related as a current anecdote, “that though Holland-house was so large a mansion, yet it could not contain Mr. Addison, the Countess of Warwick, and one guest, Peace.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , June 1957 , pp. 373 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

Note 1 in page 373 Letters and Works, ed. Lord Wharncliffe (London, 1837), II, 111.

Note 2 in page 373 Ed. George B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), ii, 110–111.

Note 3 in page 373 (London, 1803), i, 119.

Note 4 in page 373 Life of Joseph Addison (London, 1843), ii, 182–186, 218–219.

Note 5 in page 373 Addison, EML Ser. (New York and London, 1902), pp. 147–148.

Note 6 in page 374 The Life of Joseph Addison (Oxford, 1954), pp. 356–359, 441.

Note 7 in page 374 Chirk Castle Accounts 1666–1753, comp. by W. M. Myddelton (Horncastle, 1931), p. 143, n. 807.

Note 8 in page 374 BM Add. MSS. 40,174, “Court Book of Manors in the Lordship of Chirk Co. Denbigh.”

Note 9 in page 374 Wm. Duncombe Pink, Notes on the Middleton Family of Denbighshire and London (Chester, 1891), pp. 13–28; also Margaret Mahler, A History of Chirk Castle and Chirkland (London, 1912), pp. 41 ff.

Note 10 in page 375 Chirk Castle Accounts, p. 145, n. 818.

Note 11 in page 375 Ibid., p. 167, n. 935; p. 219, n. 1223.

Note 12 in page 375 Ibid., p. 219, n. 1223; for her guardians see Add. MSS. 36,175, fol. 237–244.

Note 13 in page 376 A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (Oxford, 1857), iv, 160; cf. iv, 185.

Note 14 in page 376 Add. MSS. 36,175, fol. 237–244. The members of the 3rd part were to be the trustees for investing the 10,000.

Note 15 in page 377 As quoted by Frances Evelyn Greville, Countess of Warwick, Warwick Castle and its Earls from Saxon Times to the Present Day (London, 1903), ii, 584. Cf. Luttrell, iv, 296.

Note 16 in page 377 Add. MSS. 36,175, fol. 244.

Note 17 in page 377 Correspondence of the Family of Rattan, ed. Edward M. Thompson, Camden Soc. Pub., N.S. 23 (Westminster, 1878), p. 235. Cf. Luttrell, iv, 445.

Note 18 in page 377 Add. MSS. 33,051, fol. 223; Luttrell, iv, 493, 499.

Note 19 in page 378 A Complete Collection of State Trials, comp. by T. B. Howell (continuation of Cobbett), xiii (London, 1812), 939–1032. Cf. H.M.C., Bouse of Lords MSS., N.S., iii, 358–361.

Note 20 in page 378 No. 697, 23–26 Sept. 1699.

Note 21 in page 379 Verney Letters, ed. Margaret Maria, Lady Verney (London, 1930), i, 40. The index erroneously states that this Lord Warwick was Fulke, 5th Baron Warwick; actually it was Edward, 6th Earl of Warwick; see i, 36, for a reference to his trial with Mohun.

Note 22 in page 379 Sir Richard Steele (London, 1934), p. 300.

Note 23 in page 380 Bodleian MS. of Hearne's Diary, vi, fol. 132; published in Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. C. E. Doble (Oxford, 1885), i, 124. The published edition takes no notice that the 2 words were inserted with a caret.

Note 24 in page 380 John Oldmixon, in his History of England (London, 1735), p. 682, had stated: “After Addison returned from his travels, (1704), he took upon himself the care of the education of the young Earl of Warwick; and that gave him opportunity to render himself acceptable, by his services, to the Countess, that Lord's mother” (as quoted in Works of Addison, Bohn ed., v, 366). But Addison's later biographers considered Oldmixon unreliable. Hearne's entry confirms Oldmixon's accuracy as to the date when Addison first met the countess, but it is highly unlikely that he became the tutor of the young earl, then only 6 years old. The countess' household accounts, discussed later in this article, go back as far as 1703, but contain no mention of Addison as the earl's tutor, though they dp show that in 1710–11 John Pountney was his tutor.

Note 25 in page 383 BM Egerton MSS. 1973, fol. 25, 45, 55.

Note 26 in page 383 Ibid., fol. 12; cf. fol. 17.

Note 27 in page 383 Egerton MSS. 45515, fol. 6.

Note 28 in page 383 Egerton MSS. 1973, fol. 74.

Note 29 in page 383 Aitken MSS., Univ. of Texas Library. Since these MSS. are not bound or catalogued, it is not possible to give volume and folio numbers.

Note 30 in page 383 Stephen Gwynn, The Life and Friendships of Dean Swift (New York, 1933), p. 230.

Note 31 in page 383 Egerton MSS. 1973, fol. 21, 25. 91–92

Note 32 in page 384 Ibid., fol. 47.

Note 33 in page 384 Aitken MSS. The Examiner was being edited by Swift during this period; the Medley was largely the work of Addison's friend, Arthur Maynwaring.

Note 34 in page 384 Egerton MSS. 1973, fol. 34, 37.

Note 35 in page 384 Add. MSS. 45515, fol. 3, 7; Egerton MSS. 1973, fol. 93-94; also Aitken MSS.

Note 36 in page 384 Egerton MSS. 1973, fol. 51.

Note 37 in page 384 Ibid., fol. 65.

Note 38 in page 385 Add. MSS. 4551S, fol. 8.

Note 39 in page 385 Letter Books oj John Hervey, 1st. Earl of Bristol 1651–1750 (Wells, 1894), ii, 24.

Note 40 in page 386 Add. MSS. 21508, fol. 23–24. The Catalog Index says the letter was probably written in 1707, but in 1707, 25 July did not fall on a Wednesday; it did come on a Wednesday in 1705 and 1711 ; the latter date seems more probable since at that time Rowe was a widower and would be more likely to write a love poem to a lady than in 1705 when he was a married man.

Note 41 in page 386 Works of the English Poets, ed. Alexander Chalmers (London, 1810), ix, 476.

Note 42 in page 386 Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Walter Graham (Oxford, 1941), p. 263. The facsimile of this letter printed by Richard Phillips in his Addisoniana (London, 1803) differs somewhat from Graham's version, the end of the sentence reading : “... and what is more yn all ye rest my Mistress.” It has been claimed that Rowe's “Colin's Complaint” is a veiled account of Addison's lament for the loss of his mistress, but there seems little basis for this claim.

Note 43 in page 387 BM Harleian MSS. 7523, fol. 189. This may have been in compensation for the loss of her jointure. At the time of her marriage the countess owed a balance of 1,222 to her son's estate (Egerton MSS. 1973, fol. 93–94).

Note 44 in page 387 The Letters of Thomas Burnet to George Duckett 1712–1722, ed. David Nichol Smith (Oxford, 1914), p. 109.

Note 45 in page 387 Spence's Anecdotes, ed. S. W. Singer (London, 1820), p. 47.

Note 46 in page 388 Egerton MSS. 1971, fol. 41.

Note 47 in page 388 Add. MSS. 36175, fol. 237–244.

Note 48 in page 388 See my article, “Addison vs. Steele, 1708,” PMLA, LXVIII (March 1953), 313-320.

Note 49 in page 388 Egerton MSS. 1971, fol. 2.

Note 50 in page 389 A copy of the will is in the Aitken MSS. It was dated 29 May 1728, and was proven 14 July 1731.