Poetic communities are fascinating, partly because their very existence questions popular assumptions about the rebellious, romantic singularity of the poet. The Romantics themselves formed richly productive communities, and Augustan literature flourished with the Scriblerians. How many well-known poets today would have emerged without the rivalry and mentoring of a "poetry workshop"? The Cavalier poets were an earlier informal grouping, linked to the court of Charles I. This week's poem gives us the spicy flavour of a friendship between two of the group's members.
"Upon My Lady Carlisle's Walking in Hampton Court Gardens" by John Suckling (1609-1642) takes the form of a dialogue between himself and his older friend, Thomas Carew (1594/5-1640). Carew was the more ambitious and sombre-voiced poet, whose resonant elegy on the death of John Donne testifies to his own ambitions as a Metaphysical writer. Suckling had a lighter, more Jonsonian touch, and was fond of challenging poetic convention with cool common sense. "Why so pale and wan fond lover / Prithee why so pale? / Will, when looking well can't move her, / Looking ill prevail?" he asks in the ever-popular "Song".
So, in the current poem, it is J.S. who plays the role of sceptic. Thom has the first shot. He's in Petrarchan raptures after sighting the beautiful lady out walking: flowers have sprung up around her, she wafted wonderful scents, etc. He is so excited in seeking verification for these delicious if cliched fancies that words seem to fail him: he cannot even finish the first line of what might have been the last couplet (beginning with that potent image of "chafed spices"). Of course, it might be that J.S. interrupts his friend, too impatient to hear any more. His rebuttal is courteously phrased but emphatic: "I must confess those perfumes, Tom / I did not smell, nor found that from / Her passing by ought sprung up new." The flat, sensible language, with that cleverly thrown-away rhyme, "Tom/from". is clearly meant to ridicule Thom's elevated imaginings.
Thom's angry, or mock-angry, response is brief: three lines in contrast to his earlier nine. These odd-numbered, incomplete stanzas highlight the self-assured, symmetrical eight lines of J.S.'s first speech. Hyperbole reaches new heights in the reference to the lady as "a thing so near a deity". But the excited incredulity seems undercut with sexual innuendo, thanks to the suspiciously blunt phrase "move up and down".
J.S. goes on ironically to proclaim his lack of poetic accomplishment and/or privilege: "All are not born, Sir, to the bay". This is followed by a slightly shocking confession of his private reaction to Lady Carlisle. In the coy, modern phrase, he has been undressing her with his eyes. He would have succeeded in imagining her completely naked, had she "walked but one turn more". Again, the incompletion of a couplet seems to speak volumes.
Thom forgoes his earlier fancies and, in the last octet, he too adopts a more down-to-earth language to trace his friend's thoughts to their logical conclusion. "There is great danger in that face" is another poetic cliche, but Suckling takes it far enough to have brought a blush to any respectable courtly lover lamenting the power of his mistress's eyes to deliver Cupid's dart. Thom, almost embarrassingly, pursues the undressing to "leg", "thigh" and "parts that are more dear". The parenthetical line is ambiguous. "As fancy seldom stops so near" could imply that the truly sexual realm belongs to life, and is not attainable to poetry, but more likely that, once the imagination is set on such a track, it can't stop. As for the Elizabethans and for us, "dear" has a double meaning, and connects with the danger referred to earlier. Shakespeare's "the expense of spirit in a waste of shame" comes to mind.
Sexual danger averted is deliriously evoked in the last couplet. J.S. would have been "a lost thing" if he had gone any further. He would have been lost in sensuous pleasure, and perhaps also "lost" in the sense of having attracted the wrath of the Lady Carlisle, bringing court banishment, or worse. The verse hovers, it seems to me, between recalling a love-making fantasy, and imagining the literal act. And such is the power of imagination on the body, that the poet might any way have been found out, if he had proceeded with his fantasy in the Lady's presence.
It's interesting to speculate on her response to the poem. Lady Carlisle (Lucy Hay) was famed for her beauty, wit and political intrigues: she presided over a literary salon, and was patron of many poets. She must have read the poem, and was very likely intended to read it. As flattery goes, it's risqué, but the worldly Lucy is unlikely to have been offended. As for Thomas Carew, he was surely in on the joke and the sexual excitement.
The poem is all about the latter, of course, but it indicates a divided sensibility in Suckling. There were two sides to his poetic personality. He was not merely the playful cynic. Like Carew, he admired John Donne. His dialogue, while mocking the elaborate tropes of the courtly love-poem, suggests he's well aware that poetry's truth is more than the truth of common sense.
Upon My Lady Carlisle's Walking in Hampton Court Garden
Dialogue
T.C. J.S.
Thom.
Didst thou not find the place inspired,
And flowers, as if they had desired
No other sun, start from their beds,
And for a sight steal out their heads?
Heardst thou not music when she talked?
And didst not find that as she walked
She threw rare perfumes all about,
Such as bean-blossoms newly out,
Or chafèd spices give?—
J.S.
I must confess those perfumes, Tom,
I did not smell; nor found that from
Her passing by ought sprung up new.
The flowers had all their birth from you;
For I passed o'er the self-same walk
And did not find one single stalk
Of anything that was to bring
This unknown after-after-spring.
Thom.
Dull and insensible, couldst see
A thing so near a deity
Move up and down, and feel no change?
J.S.
None, and so great, were alike strange;
I had my thoughts, but not your way.
All are not born, sir, to the bay.
Alas! Tom, I am flesh and blood,
And was consulting how I could
In spite of masks and hoods descry
The parts denied unto the eye.
I was undoing all she wore,
And had she walked but one turn more,
Eve in her first state had not been
More naked or more plainly seen.
Thom.
'Twas well for thee she left the place;
There is great danger in that face.
But hadst thou viewed her leg and thigh,
And upon that discovery
Searched after parts that are more dear
(As fancy seldom stops so near),
No time or age had ever seen
So lost a thing as thou hadst been.