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Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

R. E. Bennett
R. E. Bennett*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

John Donne, Jr., has been said to have “flung” his father's letters “to the world in complete disorder” when he prepared Letters to Severall Persons of Honour: Written by John Donne Sometime Deane of S' Pauls London (1651), and it is true that the letters in this volume are not arranged for biographical purposes. No effort was made to put any of them in chronological order, except that one, the last in the volume, seems to have been selected for its position partly because it was written during Donne's last illness. Most of the letters, moreover, are without dates, and many were deliberately given false addresses. The editor was chiefly concerned about preparing a volume of elegant letters to “severall persons of honour.” Both the adjective and the adjective phrase are significant; for the 1651 volume was not just thrown together. It was arranged so that it would appear to contain letters to a greater variety of people than it did, and to people who were better remembered in 1651. It is the purpose of this article to formulate working hypotheses about the editorial processes which determined the Letters to Severall Persons, first by discovering what the most probable sources of the letters were, and second by examining the motives and methods which governed their arrangement and the headings which were given to them.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1941 , pp. 120 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

Note 1 in page 120 Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne (London, 1899), i, 233; cf. i, xiii, and Geoffrey Keynes, A Bibliography of Dr. John Donne, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1932), p. 80.

Note 2 in page 120 In 1931 Mr. I. A. Shapiro published a short but valuable article, “The Text of Donne's Letters to Severall Persons” RES, vii, 291–301. He discussed only twelve letters. I accept his arguments about all of these but one, and I owe something to his hints about general principles. Dr. Keynes's table of the letters (pp. 84–89) and the notes in C. E. Merrill's reprint of Letters to Severall Persons (New York, 1910) do not make much improvement upon Gosse. I am somewhat more indebted to the marginalia of Charles Eliot Norton in various copies of Donne's Poems and Letters now in the Harvard College Library.

Note 3 in page 120 To avoid an unwieldy mass of page numbers, I refer to the letters by the serial numbers used in Merrill's reprint and in Dr. Keynes's table (pp. 84–89). The following letters have Goodere's name or initials (or “to the same”) in their headings: 12, 17–21, 24–25, 27–30, 33–34, 36, 38–39, 42, 46–49, 51–52, 54–58, 63–65, 68–69, 71, 75–78, 80–81, 83–84. The following have been assigned to Goodere by Mr. Shapiro: 26 (Shapiro, pp. 300–301), 41 (pp. 294–296), 44 (p. 293), 59–60 (pp. 296–297), 61 (pp. 299–300), 66 (pp. 297–299). In “Donne's Letters from the Continent in 1611–12,” PQ, xix (1940), 68, 75, I have argued that 6, 31, 32, 62, and 79 were written to him. References to Polesworth identify the addressee of No. 74 as Goodere. No. 98 has Goodere's name in the heading, but it was to the Earl of Somerset (cf. Gosse, ii, 51). Gosse (i, 183) argues that No. 25 was not to Goodere because the recipient's father was living and Sir William Goodere died in 1578. Gosse probably confused Sir Henry's father with William Goodere of Hadley, who died in 1577 according to F. C. Cass, Monken Hadley (Westminster, 1880), p. 151. William Goodere of Monks Kirby, Sir Henry's father, probably died ca. 1611, according to transcripts belonging to Mrs. L. V. Goodyear of Bromley.

Note 4 in page 121 Nos. 8, 90, 99–105, 111, 113, 115–120, 122–128.

Note 5 in page 121 Nos. 98 and 112. On No. 98 see n. 3 above.

Note 6 in page 121 Nos. 13–14, 85–86, 93–94, 96, 106–110 have his name or initials in the headings. No. 87 has his initials in the heading in Poems (1635). He is addressed by name in the text of No. 95; and I have maintained in “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” pp. 68, 70–75, that 89, 91, and 92 were to him.

Note 7 in page 121 No. 15 is so headed. For No. 97 see “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” p. 75. Cf. Merrill.

Note 8 in page 121 No. 88; see “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” pp. 68–69.

Note 9 in page 121 See “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” p. 68, n. 12.

Note 10 in page 121 i, 188.

Note 11 in page 121 If Goodere is addressed, he was not at Polesworth.

Note 12 in page 122 A True Historical Relation of the Conversion of Sir Tobie Matthew, ed. A. H. Matthew [and Edward Dowden] (London, 1904), pp. 85–86.

Note 13 in page 122 No. 65, pp. 195–196.

Note 14 in page 122 Goodere was involved in the affairs of at least one other recusant family, that of John Somerville. See 5. P. Domestic, James i, xiv, No. 19, xiii, No. 87, clviii, No. 22. For other references to Matthew in Donne's letters to Goodere, see Nos. 42, 58, and Gosse, i, 310.

Note 15 in page 123 No. 34. No. 17, which should precede 34, is of the same nature. Cf. Nos. 18, 25, and 27.

Note 16 in page 123 “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” p. 75, n. 40.

Note 17 in page 123 Cf. Gosse, i, 225, and Merrill.

17a Mr. Stanley Johnson has called my attention to the fact that part of No. 11 was used by Goodere in a dedicatory letter to the Marquis of Hamilton, and part of No. 45 in a similar letter to Prince Charles (State Papers Domestic, James I, clxxx, No. 15, and cxlv, No. 12).

Note 18 in page 123 Cf. Nos. 29, 61, and 83.

Note 19 in page 123 Cf. Gosse, ii, 169, and Merrill.

Note 20 in page 123 J. E. Butt, “Walton's Copy of Donne's Letters,” RES, viii (1932), p. 72.

Note 21 in page 124 i, 122. In 1929 Mr. John Hayward followed Gosse, but in the later impression of Donne's Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (London, 1932), p. 787, he corrected the heading to “Sir [Henry Goodyer?],” although he did not correct his note.

Note 22 in page 124 The title is my guess.

Note 23 in page 124 See Nos. 30 and 33.

Note 24 in page 124 I owe this idea to Norton's marginalia. See Letters 18, 20, 30, 39, 77–79, and cf. Merrill's note on No. 22.

Note 25 in page 124 Mr. Shapiro has linked 54, 59, and 60. To these I have just added No. 50, and a letter printed by Gosse, ii, 33–34, but not in this volume, belongs with them.

Note 26 in page 125 Pp. 292–294.

Note 27 in page 125 This was the opinion of David Laing, who edited the Ker correspondence and searched in vain for letters from Donne. See Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, First Earl of Ancram, 2 vols., Roxburghe Club Publication 100 (Edinburgh, 1875), i, 47, n. 1.

Note 28 in page 126 I have collated carefully the letters in the 1633, 1635, 1639, and 1650 editions of the Poems (the 1649 edition should, according to Keynes, be identical in this part with 1650). Almost all of the differences are minor and insignificant variations in spelling or punctuation, often introduced to “justify” the lines. All of the editions subsequent to the first, and including 1651, show some tendency to simplify the spelling by omitting final e's, but there is no reason to suppose that two printers might not have printed speak for speake or read for reade independently. It is only in Nos. 21 and 27 that we find anything resembling evidence. In No. 21, “but the Spheare in which your resolutions are” should perhaps read revolutions. If so, there was no independent recourse to the manuscript, for all subsequent editions, including 1651, read resolutions. In the same letter 1633 reads: “and I which live in the Country without stupifying, am not in darknesse, but in shadow, which is not no light, but a pallid, watrish, and diluted one.” All subsequent editions of the Poems omit not, but 1651 retains it. So in the same letter 1651 and 1633 agree against the others in retaining subject in “and alike subject to the barbarousnesse and insipid dulnes of the countrie,” and in reading “tincture, and beauty” instead of “tincture or beautie.” In No. 27 it is at least noteworthy that each of two relative clauses is inclosed in parentheses in all editions except 1633 and 1651. In short, what evidence is worth mentioning indicates that 1633 was the source for the 1651 text of at least two of these letters.

Note 29 in page 126 The Poems of John Donne (Oxford, 1912), ii, xc–xci.

Note 30 in page 127 See Keynes; H. R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers . . . 1641 to 1667 (London: the Bibliographical Society, 1907), p. 122; A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers from 1640–1708 A.D., 3 vols. (London, 1913–14), i, 367. The packets of letters are not listed as Donne's, but they probably included his.

Note 31 in page 127 It is not necessary to take the 1639 and 1649–50 editions into account, for they agree in a misprint in No. 86 (considering for considered) against 1635 and 1651.

Note 32 in page 128 Nos. 107, 110.

Note 33 in page 128 “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” pp. 70–74.

Note 34 in page 128 “Walton's Use of Donne's Letters,” PQ, xvi (1937), 30–34.

Note 35 in page 129 The only real error is presented for preserud.

Note 36 in page 129 Gosse, ii, 122.—Several years ago Mrs. Evelyn Simpson communicated to me her conjecture that the Dobell MS may have been prepared for the Countess of Montgomery; but all that I can find about the history of the MS, before it was purchased by Dobell at Sotheby's in 1914, is that at the close of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries it was owned and used as a commonplace book by a resident of the Isle of Ely, probably Wisbech. He was related to the Stewards of Thorney and Stuntney, and he was probably a Balam, or possibly an Edwards. This is not very helpful.

Note 37 in page 130 In a note on p. 293 of his article, Mr. Shapiro says that he will have “occasion to show later” that Donne kept copies of some of his letters, but unfortunately, this has not been shown in print, and we cannot know whether it was to these letters that he referred.

Note 38 in page 130 It is noteworthy that Donne sent a manuscript of his poems to Ker. As it has likewise disappeared, it may have been in the hands of the publisher of one of the early editions of Donne's poems.

Note 39 in page 130 See J. W. Hebel's bibliographical note to Biathanatos, Reproduced from the First Edition. (The Facsimile Text Society, New York, 1930), pp. v—vi; Keynes, pp. 68–69. The Harvard College Library has recently acquired a copy containing a presentation letter from John Donne, Jr. to the Earl of Denbigh, dated Nov. 16, 1647.

Note 40 in page 130 Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, i, 24.

Note 41 in page 130 That John Donne, Jr. had the letter to Ker before him when he edited Biathanatos, together with the facts that the Ker manuscript of the book is not extant and that we know of no other copies having been made, suggests the conjecture that he used Ker's copy for the edition. For evidence that the Herbert MS. was not used, see Evelyn M. Simpson, A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne (Oxford, 1924), pp. 147–149, and Hebel, p. vii. Donne's assertion to Ker that “no hand hath passed upon it to copy it” may mean that Ker had the autograph.

Note 42 in page 131 Professor Grierson (ii, lxiii, n. 1, and p. xci) assumes that No. 23 is the enclosure referred to. The question hinges on whether also in the following sentence refers to a second letter: “I also writ to her Lap for the verses she shewed in the garden.”

Note 43 in page 131 Cf. “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” pp. 68–69.

Note 44 in page 132 See Letters 116, 117, and 121.

Note 45 in page 133 See Bodleian MS. Berks, b. 2, fol. 17v; MS. Ashmole, 852, foll. 50, 332v; MS. Ashmole 851, fol. 47r; Mark Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1787), ii, 156–163.

Note 46 in page 133 See Noble, i, 162.

Note 47 in page 133 It is natural to look for some connection between the dedication and the first group of letters in the volume, and Sir Edmund Gosse even tried to believe that Bridget White, later Lady Kingsmill, and Bridget Dunch were the same person. He rejected the hypothesis, however, after devoting a truly remarkable page to it (i, 233–234). They were probably related, though distantly, through Edmund Dunch's great uncle, Walter, who married Deborah Pilkington. Her mother was a Kingsmill. See Noble, and B. B. Woodward, A General History of Hampshire, 3 vols. (London, n.d.), ii, 101, n. 4. They were also related through the Lucys (see below), and Professor Virgil Heltzel has called my attention to the fact that Kingesmill Long in 1625 dedicated Barclay his Argenis to William Dunche. I have not been able, however, to identify Kingesmill Long.

Note 48 in page 133 The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, ed. H. A. Doubleday, G. H. Gotley, and W. J. Hardy, 5 vols. and an index (Westminister 1900–1914), iv, 263. Donne's letter of condolence is dated October 26, 1624. The date may be an error, or Lady Kingsmill's memory may not have been precise after forty-five years. MS. Rawlinson B, 76, fol. 151v agrees with the monument, but calls him Sir “Wiłł.” The name, however, is blotted, and there may have been an attempt to correct “Will” to Henry. (The same MS says that Lady Kingsmill's father was of Southwicke, Hants.) The Victoria County History, iv, 254, mentions a Henry Kingsmill who died five years after 1619. Confusion about his Christian name may have arisen because a Sir William Kingsmill married Bridget, the daughter of George Raleigh of Thornborough. See Pedigrees from the Visitation of Hampshire, ed. W. H. Rylands, Harleian Society, lxiv (London, 1913), p. 3. This Sir William was probably Sir Henry's grandfather.

Note 49 in page 134 See The Victoria County History, iii, 146, 159, 163, 324.—I cannot explain the postscript to Letter 4: “Though this letter be yours, it will not misbecome or disproportion it that I mention your Noble brother, who is gone to Cleave.” She appears to have had no brothers; therefore the reference is probably to a brother-in-law, unless the postscript, as I suspect, belongs to a letter to someone else. Bridget White's sister Honoria married Sir Daniel Norton. See Pedigrees from the Visitation of Hampshire, p. 138.

Note 50 in page 134 Madagascar: With Other Poems, 2nd ed. (London, 1648), pp. 36–38. I am indebted to Professor Arthur H. Nethercot for this information. One other member of the Kingsmill family appears as a dedicatee. In 1618 Dekker dedicated Canaan's Calamity to Richard Kingsmill, probably Richard of High Clere, Sir Henry's great uncle.

Note 51 in page 134 See Keynes, p. 69.

Note 52 in page 134 The Victoria County History, iv, 278, 286; Woodward, ii, 369, n. 3; F.L. Colvile, The Worthies of Warwickshire (Warwick, 1869), p. 523.

Note 53 in page 135 See The Earl of Strafforde's Letters and Dispatches, ed. William Knowler, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1740), i, 177, 205–206, 225, 243.

Note 54 in page 135 See Donne's letters to Roe inaccurately printed by Gosse from the Domestic State Papers (ii, 173–175, 222–225) and more satisfactorily by Hayward, Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, pp. 475–478, 486–489. Gosse suggested that the second of these was to the Earl of Dorset, but see my letter to the [London] Times Literary Supplement, January 31, 1935, and Mr. Shapiro's, February 7, 1935. Since then I have discovered two of Roe's letters to Donne, which I hope to describe in another place.

Note 55 in page 136 For Nos. 41, 44, 59, 60, 61, 66, 74, and 79 see n. 3 above. See p. 121 for Nos. 40 and 73, p. 123 for Nos. 45 and 43, and p. 124 for No. 50. The internal evidence furnished by Nos. 40 and 73 is perhaps a little weaker than that in the others. No. 77 is headed “To Sir G. H.” in Merrill's reprint, but “H. G.” in all copies of the original which I have seen.

Note 56 in page 136 “Donne's Letters from the Continent,” p. 75.

56a Mr. Stanley Johnson comments: “The mask [referred to in No. 70] is obviously Jonson's Masque of Beauty, in which Lady Bedford took part (Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, iii, 380). The enclosure may have been Donne's New Year's letter to Lady Bedford (Grierson, i, 198–201).”

56b It may be significant that most of these miscellaneous pairs of initials (L.H., T.H., G.K., G.B., G.P., G.H., F.H.) include one of Goodere's initials. “R.D.” and “T.R.” are the only exceptions.

Note 57 in page 138 His successor was appointed December 9, 1650 (the Letters were entered November 29, 1650). See J. P. Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum, 4 vols. (London, 1802–1807), i, 419. He died at Petworth, the seat to which the Earl of Northumberland had retired, in 1660, after making his will (P.C.C., Nabbs, 280, 304) there in 1658.

Note 58 in page 138 See The Dictionary of National Biography, “Ker,” and the Correspondence, i, xxiii ff.

Note 59 in page 140 A summary of the content of the volume may be useful:—Nos. 1–5 Kingsmill; 6 Goodere; 7 Donne's copy of a letter to Sir Edward Herbert; 8 Ker, perhaps Donne's copy; 9 to Lady Bedford, probably Goodere's copy; 10 Donne's copy of a letter to the Countess of Montgomery; 11–12 Goodere; 13–15 George and Martha Garrard; 16–20 Goodere; 21–38 Goodere, alternately derived from the Poems and from MSS, and including one from Goodere's copy of a letter to Lady Bedford; 39–84 Goodere; 85–89 Garrard, and his copy of a letter to a lady; 90 Ker; 91–97 George and Martha Garrard; 98–105 Ker, including his copy of one to Viscount Rochester; 106–110 Garrard; 111–128 Ker, including his copy of one to Viscount Rochester; 129 Mrs. Cokain.

Thirty-seven headings should be corrected, or supplied:—The five Lucy, three Wotton, two G.H., and two G.B. headings should be changed to Goodere. So should H.R., G.F., I.H., G.M., R.D., T.H., G.K., G.P., T.R., and F.H. One Goodere heading (No. 98) is a mistake for the Earl of Somerset. Of the eight letters To Yourself Nos. 31, 37, and 73 are to Goodere, Nos. 89, 91, and 95 to Garrard, and Nos. 114 and 121 to Ker. A. V. Merced heads a letter to Goodere. Your fair sister is Martha Garrard. The heading of No. 87 should be taken from the Poems. Of the two other letters without headings No. 22 is to Goodere, No. 92 to Garrard. That No. 16 is to Sir Thomas Roe is questionable. Lady G. was not Lady Grymes, but Martha Garrard or some great lady of Garrard's circle.