Katherine Philips is often remembered for the emotionally charged poetry she addressed to women friends, lightly disguising them with mythological or pastoral pseudonyms – Lucasia, Rosania, etc. Good as many of these poems are, this week I've chosen one of Philips' elegies, "In memory of FP who dyed at Acton 24 May 1660 – 13th of her age". The subject is Frances Philips, and the poem represents surely a very small category indeed: elegies written by a stepmother to her stepdaughter.
Katherine Philips' own short life is well-documented. She was born Fowler, in 1631, to a merchant-class London family She went to school in Hackney, then moved with her widowed mother to Pembrokeshire. Her mother re-married and Katherine herself was married at 16 to James Philips, a man 38 years her senior. They lived contentedly enough, it seems, and spent a further 12 years in Wales.
James, an MP in Oliver Cromwell's parliament, encouraged Katherine's literary interests, seemingly unperturbed by her openly Royalist sympathies. She enjoyed an independent career in London, and became the best-known woman poet of her generation. Her coterie-name was Orinda, and this was soon elevated to "the matchless Orinda".
Her manuscript poems circulated widely, and, in 1664, an unauthorised collection of her work was published, one which she moved rapidly to suppress. Three years after her sadly premature death from smallpox, an authorised volume appeared, edited, though somewhat chaotically, by her friend, Sir Charles Cotterell.
The elegy is a beautiful piece of writing, impassioned and restrained. Philips' elegance of style perhaps owes something to her translations of Corneille. It opens conventionally enough. The third line introduces the first striking phrase, "Sorrow is no muse …" The disclaimer attests to a first-hand acquaintance with that dull emotion, sorrow, while the declared obligation to try and "weepe in numbers" demonstrates the poet's consciousness of her professional, public role.
The young Frances is aligned with the spring, whose blossom is "untimely dead" but this conventional trope is quickly passed over, to be followed by the reference to "charmes that allwayes did arise/ From the prevailing language of thine eyes …" This is an interesting thought, implying that the eyes unfailingly speak the truth: the "charmes" are genuine expressions of the self, and not attractive fakes.
Later it becomes clear how deeply Philips identifies with her parental role. Perhaps the grief of the child's natural father plays a part in intensifying her own feelings. Those "dearest tyes" that "continued from thy cradle to thy dust" bind the father and child and are inherited gladly by the stepmother who entered into the contract only belatedly. Frances, young as she was, may have been the first of Katherine's close female friends: Katherine, after all, was not much older. The girl is shown to have been a source of happiness, a "content" which seemed secure, but which death has snatched and transformed into a disturbing "mirrour". This glass shows human frailty (both in the sense of mortality and venality) and therefore embodies the Christian injunction to be "innocent," the adjective used in its original denotation of "harmless", "blameless".
Echoes of Henry King's fine "Exequy" can be heard at times, particularly in the opening and closing lines. "Deare Sainte" is unexceptional ("sainte" does not, of course, imply exaggerated good behaviour on the part of the living girl, but the Christian belief that sainthood is attained after death: see Milton's Sonnet 23, besides the Exequy). So, given that Philips adheres to the poetic conventions of the period, what is it that makes the modern reader feel that the poem expresses personal grief?
The regularity of iambic pentameter and couplet rhyme-scheme allows the tone to remain in one low key. Where there is a metrical disruption ("Never, ah never, let glad parents guess") the singularity emphasises the emotion. Another instance of regularity is that all the line-endings are masculine. Although the poet is clever enough to vary the parts of speech, so the end-of-line nouns are well-leavened with adjectives and verbs, the end-stopping creates a "falling" effect, a rhythm that suggests a voice that drops into sadness and curtness. Something is unsaid, something withheld. And this withholding seems to be the guarantee that, while the poet's public duty is to "weepe in numbers", it's the "thoughts that lie too deep for tears" which make those numbers add up to a poem. That final "bright soule" is much more evocative than the "deare Sainte" which is its earlier parallel, and signifies the heightened awareness to which the mourner's inner journey has brought her.
In memory of FP who dyed at Acton 24 May 1660 – 13th of her age
If I could ever write a lasting verse,
It should be laid, deare Sainte, upon thy herse.
But Sorrow is no muse, and doth confesse
That it least can what most it would expresse.
Yet, that I may some bounds to griefe allow,
I'le try if I can weepe in numbers now.
Ah beauteous blossom! too untimely dead!
Whither, ah whither is thy sweetness fled?
Where are the charmes that allwayes did arise
From the prevailing language of thine eyes?
Where is thy modest aire and lovely meen,
And all the wonders that in these were seen?
Alas! in vaine! In vaine on thee I rave;
There is no pitty in the stupid grave …
Never, ah never let glad parents guesse
At one remove of future happinesse,
But reckon children 'mong those passing joys,
Which one hour gives, and the next hour destroyes.
Alas! we were secure of our content,
But find too late that it was onely lent,
To be a mirrour wherein we might see
How fraile we are, how innocent should be.
But if to thy blest soule my griefe appeares,
Forgive and pitty these injurious teares;
Impute them to affection's sad excesse,
Which will not yeild to nature's tendernesse,
Since 'twas through dearest tyes and highest trust
Continu'd from thy cradle to thy dust;
And so rewarded and confirm'd by thine,
(wo is me!) I thought thee too much mine.
But I'le resigne, and follow thee as fast
As my unhappy minutes will make hast.
Till when, the fresh remembrances of thee
Shall be my emblem of mortalitie.
For such a loss as thine, bright soule, is not
Ever to be repaired, or forgot.