IV. HERMENEUTICS...

Ephelia's Lamentation and the Case against Etherege

This section closes with the most pleasureful formulation in my Villiers research: the reconstructed meaning (or, at the very least, the more acceptable meaning) of the single couplet upon which "Ephelia"'s deauthentication has been grounded since the formation of the English literary canon by anthologists in the late eighteenth century.

In the controversial poem, A Familiar Epistle to Mr Julian, Secretary to the Muses (circa 1677; 108 lines), attributed by Restoration scholars to George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, the younger brother of the present 'Ephelia' candidate, Lady Mary Villiers, and published in Poems On Several Occasions. By George late Duke of Buckingham (1714), (see Harris 294ff; Vieth 329, 486ff), Buckingham asks, "From lofty Middlesex to lowly Scroop: / What Times are these?" George Villiers then proceeds to sketch something of the literary scene. He does not overlook himself: "Poor George grows old, his Muse is worne out of Fashion, / Hoarsly she sung Ephelias Lamentation (II: 222-3, lines 16-17).

In light of recorded facts on the life and times of George Villiers and his intriguing sister, 'Mall' Villiers, I believe that we now can say that this couplet, long identified by "Ephelia" contrarians as proof positive of Sir George Etherege's authorship of Ephelia's famous lyric to "Bajazet" (Lord Mulgrave), known as Ephelia's Lamentation ("How far are they deceiv'd, that hope in vain / A lasting Lease of Joys from Love t' obtain?" Female Poems, 104-6), has nothing to do with George Etherege. Its subject, rather, is the author of the couplet itself, George Villiers, and "his Muse," namely his clever older sister, 'Mall' Villiers. Let us consider the following recorded facts:

(1) George Etherege's age. Etherege's birth and death dates are usually recorded as c. 1635-1691/2; but not always. I had honored, in earlier work, the birthdate of 1653, as listed in the current edition of The New CBEL (1971); 1653 is, alas, an embedded error (see TLS, 5 December 2003; and two replies, "Letters," 2 January 2004). The George in the important Julian couplet is a pathetic, ageing, out-of-fashion writer. This was not Etherege's situation in the late 1670s. Also, the George in this couplet is called "Poor George", but Etherege was never "poor George"; he was familiarly "gentle George" or "easy Etherege". Furthermore, Etherege was not "worne out of Fashion" in the late 1670s; he was still vigorous and in demand in the opening years of his fourth decade (New CBEL II [1971]: 741). Indeed, Etherege was spry enough in the late 1670s to have been involved in the famous bloody brawl at Epsom (1676), as broadly documented ('Old' DNB, "Etherege," p 908, etc.). Clearly, Etherege was not "old" nor out-of-fashion in the late 1670s, when the "Julian" poem was penned.

(2) The other George on the literary scene. But another George, George Villiers, entering his fifth decade in the late 1670s, was, indeed, a pitiful spectacle of a deteriorating and disgraced aristocrat, said to be worn to a thread from whoring. And though his interests at this time were more political than literary, George Villiers's work, as Etherege's, was not "out-of-fashion": e.g., Villiers's collaborative play, The Rehearsal (1671), one of the most successful plays of the Restoration theatre, held the boards throughout the 1670s (Female Poems...by Ephelia (New CBEL II [1971]: 758). Thus, the reference in the Julian verse-epistle to the out-of-fashion "Muse" could not refer to George Villiers's creative vigor, nor indeed to Etherege's, but rather to a living-speaking-writing and older figure, whom this couplet all but names as one of George Villiers's quiet literary collaborators: his older sister, 'Mall' Villiers, the author of the poem mentioned in this contested couplet, known as Ephelia's Lamentation. George Villiers, as many of his contemporaries, was a shrewdly collaborative writer. The extent to which the two Villiers siblings worked together as a literary team has yet to be investigated; but there is a link, as I have mentioned in earlier publications, between Ephelia's "damn'd" play, The Pair-Royal of Coxcombs, most probably a burlesque and romping exposé of Charles II and his brother James Duke of York, and its possible source in an unpublished character-sketch of the royal Stuarts by George Villiers, which Villiers showed to Bishop Burnet.

(3) George's 'old-fashioned Muse'. George Villiers's usage of "Muse" is especially remarkable in this couplet as he may be invoking family precedent. His father, the powerful first Duke of Buckingham, was guided throughout his life and career by an older kinswoman: his intriguing mother, Mary (Beaumont), Countess of Buckingham ("great Mall," as her famous son called her). This conniving Countess essentially served as her son's manager and career strategist; broadly speaking, she was his 'muse' (Lockyer 8-11ff; Burghclere 4-5). Thus, the couplet suggests an entirely probable mentorial relationship between the second Duke of Buckingham and his older sister. (Katherine 'Kate' Manners, the widowed Duchess of Buckingham, in 1628, was not too accessible to her son, owing to her remarriage in 1635/6 to an Irish Catholic chieftain and member of the Queen Mother's inner circle [her 'society'], Randal McDonnell, Earl of Antrim. It was this brave and bold act which caused Charles I to take the important Villiers children away from their own mother and raise them at the Stuart court as de facto members of the royal household.)

(4) George's singing Muse. When George Villiers adds in his "Julian" poem that his "Muse" "sang" the Lamentation, he probably meant just that; for "Ephelia"'s (Mary Villiers's) collected writings include many amorous and pastoral songs, set by not a few prominent composers at the Stuart court and documented in the closing section of this archive ("Ephelia in English Song"). 'Mall' Villiers's interest in music and song is apparent from her activities in this medium when as the young Mary Lady Herbert, a principal masquer in Queen Henrietta Maria's Temple of Love (text by Davenant, 1635). In view of this early exposure, she may have composed and performed a modest vocal arrangement of the Lamentation for a small coterie audience at the Restoration court. This would explain Ephelia's boast in her scalding lines to her least favorite cousin, Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, in "To A Proud Beauty," of having received "loud Applauses" (Female Poems 55). Considering her 'advanced' age (mid-50s) when the "Julian" poem was composed (c. 1677), Lady Mary's vocal delivery may well have been less than mellifluous; thus, "Hoarsly she sang Ephelia's Lamentation."

As textual and biographical evidence would seem to suggest, George Villiers's reference in Julian to a hoarse, old-fashioned muse is wholly literal. Supporting this view is the opinion of James Thorpe, an editor of Etherege and also of Rochester, who admits that it has been the absence of incontrovertible evidence of "Ephelia"'s authorship of the Lamentation, rather than proof positive of Etherege's, that has permitted this poem (certainly, the most 'female' of Ephelia's "female poems") to remain in Etherege's canon these many centuries. My argument against Etherege's authorship of Ephelia's Lamentation draws upon established facts surrounding this pivotal couplet in 'Ephelia' scholarship; and it does offer a new, sensible reading of this long misunderstood reference to 'poor George and his hoarse, old-fashioned "Muse.'

Related matters beyond the important Julian couplet might also be mentioned here. Etherege and 'Ephelia' were very different kinds of writers: Etherege was an accomplished comic writer; Ephelia, very much a bracing feminist and political writer, with a penchant for psychological portraiture, surely the singular achievement of Ephelia's Lamentation, one of the most popular lyrics of the century. Etherege would not have been the pen behind Ephelia's confrontational poem to Monmouth, for example, nor her poems addressed to Charles II on the Popish Plot (1678, 1679), nor her pathetic lines on the Mall Kirke-Lord Mulgrave scandal (Ephelia's Lamentation). While Etherege did produce a small corpus of "unremarkable," "undistinguished" lyrical verse, being songs, pastorals, and love-poems (see Frederick M. Link, "Etherege," DLB 80: 94, 101), Etherege's poetic voice -- not to mention his subject-matter, versification, poetic habits, grammar, and syntax -- are wholly different from that of the 'Ephelia' poet. The only link in Ephelia's corpus to Etherege is an acrostic (perhaps apprentice or juvenile work) in Female Poems...by Ephelia to a Rachell Powney, Powney being Etherege's maternal line. The association, may I suggest, ends there.

Finally, the extant script of Etherege does not resemble the hand of the 'Ephelia' autograph at Nottingham. (If that autograph had been merely a scribal copy, I hasten to add, it would have looked far neater, it also would have been formatted differently, and it would not have been written on such special paper, one bearing a distinguished armorial watermark, which I take up in some detail in other publications.) Now while it is true that writers at this time were schooled in different styles of (formal and informal) script, there are often strong characteristics of penmanship which carry over from style to style. Compare, e.g., a specimen of Etherege's script (Letterbook of...Etherege, ed. Sybil Rosenfeld [Oxford UP, 1928]; see photograph, facing p. 408) with the 'Ephelia' autograph at Nottingham (Mulvihill, Poems by Ephelia [1992, 1993]; Mulvihill, Ephelia [2003]; and Image 5 in this archive). These surely appear to my eye to be two different hands.

I certainly considered George Villiers as a candidate for "Ephelia," some years ago, but I observed too many inconsistencies between biographical allusions to Mary Villiers in 'Ephelia''s poems and the recorded life and times of the second Buckingham. Consider, e.g., the rather broadly recorded role of Mary Villiers in Charles II's intrigue to seduce Frances ('La Belle') Stuart, the court Duchess of Richmond (thus, Frances is "Marina", the younger version of Mary Villiers, the dowager Duchess of Richmond). This famous scheme is the subject of "To Clovis, desiring me to bring Him into Marina's Company" in Female Poems...by Ephelia, pp 100-103, a poem remarkable for the moral and amorous turmoil the situation stirs in Lady Mary Villiers. Most commentators on this intrigue emphasize Mary's strong role (see, e.g., Hartmann's biography of Frances Stuart, p 48ff), not George Villiers's, who was disliked and repulsed by Frances Stuart, thus not a good candidate as chief intriguer in this plot. (For futher details, see my proposed Key to Ephelia's poetry-book of 1679, at the close of this archive.) There is also the recorded confrontation in open Court between Mary Villiers and Barbara Villiers, the obvious background of "To a Proud Beauty," a rare poem of righteous feminist ire. Such intersections between the "Ephelia" writer and Lady Mary Villiers (namely, recorded facts touching 'Mall''s life, circle, activities, political allegiances, character, and temperament) are both plentiful and persuasive throughout the "Ephelia" corpus; they became increasingly apparent to me once the correct candidate (Lady Mary Villiers) was in place.