Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe | Page 2

all the advantages the time afforded." She learnt
French, singing to the lute, the virginals, and the art of needlework, and
confesses that though she was quick at learning she was very wild and
loved "riding, running and all active pastimes."

One can picture the light-hearted "hoyting girl" breaking loose when
she found herself at Balls in Hertfordshire, where the family spent the
summer, and skipping and jumping for sheer joy at being alive. And
then we see her at fifteen suddenly sobered by the death of her mother,
a lady of "excellent beauty and good understanding," and taking upon
her young shoulders the entire management of her father's household.
With naive satisfaction she tells of how well she succeeded and how
she won the esteem of her mother's relations and friends, being ever
"ambitious to keep the best company," which she thanks God she did
all the days of her life.
Her father, like other loyal gentlemen, cheerfully suffered beggary in
the King's cause. His estates and property were confiscated and he
himself arrested. He managed to escape to Oxford, whither his
daughters followed him, to lodge over a baker's shop in a poor garret
with scarcely any clothes or money, they who had till then lived in
"great plenty and great order."
The seat of learning was strangely transformed by the presence there of
the moribund Court indulging in its last fling of gaieties and gallantries
on the eve of the debacle of Marston Moor. Soldiers swarmed in the
streets and were billeted over the college gates, and gardens and groves
were the trysting-place of courtiers and beautiful ladies in that fair
spring-time. Oxford melted down its plate for the King and gave up its
ancient halls to masques and plays for the amusement of the Queen.
Sir John Harrison and his young daughters played their part in this
brilliant society. Mistress Anne's tender heart was moved to pity by the
"sad spectacle of war," when starving, half-naked prisoners were
marched past the windows of their lodging, but nothing could damp for
long her high spirits and girlish gaiety. We are told (not by herself, but
by the arch-gossip, old Aubrey) that in the company of Lady Isabella
Thynne, brightest star of the Stuart Court, "fine Mistress Anne" played
a practical joke on Dr. Kettle, the woman-hating President of Trinity,
who resented the intrusion of petticoats into his garden, "dubbed
Daphne by the wits." The lady in question aired herself there in a
fantastic garment cut after the pattern of the angels, with her page and
singing boy wafting perfumes and soft music before her, an apparition
not likely to soothe the gigantic, choleric doctor. Lady Isabella and her
friend Anne Harrison figure in one of the most graphic and remarkable

chapters of "John Inglesant," in which the author has also drawn largely
from these memoirs for a foundation to one of his imaginary episodes.
The girl of eighteen, full of life and enthusiasm, was doubtless flattered
at being taken up by the fashionable Court beauty, and may have
allowed herself to be led into rather dangerous frolics, till Richard
Fanshawe, a connection of her mother's family whom she had not met
before, came to wait on the King at Christ Church. The two were
thrown much together, and we may be sure Anne's time was now
claimed by one she admired even more fervently than the eccentric
Lady Isabella. Sir Richard wooed and won his fair young kinswoman
amidst the alarums of war, and they were married at Wolvercot Church
in May 1644, when the fritillaries were in bloom along the banks of Isis
and Cavaliers still made merry in the last stronghold of a waning cause.
It must have been a picturesque group which assembled at the altar of
the little quiet country church; the joyous bride with her fair young
sister and handsome father of whom she was so proud, and the genial
bridegroom who was of "more than the common height of men," and so
popular that every one, even the King, called him Dick. Those
troublous times had reduced the fortunes of both Harrisons and
Fanshawes to the lowest ebb, and the young couple started their
married life on 20 pounds and the forlorn hope of their Sovereign's
promise of eventual compensation. When her husband went to Bristol
with the Prince of Wales, we see the young wife left at Oxford, in
delicate health, with scarcely a penny and a dying first-born. She relates
how she was sitting in the garden of St. John's College breathing the air
for the first time after her illness, when a letter came from Bristol, to
her "unspeakable joy" containing fifty gold pieces and a summons to
join Mr. Fanshawe, and how there was a sound of drums beating