Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury

Author:John Drury [Drury, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Baynton, from Andrewes and Dury’s map of Wiltshire, 1773. Edington Church is in the middle of the village. Baynton, Jane Danvers’s home is to the east (right). Going further east, Sir John Danvers’s house andgarden was situated in West Lavington, where ‘Duke of Marlborough’ (a later owner) is inscribed on the map. The steep ascent to Salisbury Plain runs along the south.

It was not long before he had a more substantial reason to be happy. The Danverses were a large and ramifying family. Henry Danvers had cousins a day’s ride south of Dauntsey at Baynton Manor. It was situated on the northern edge of Salisbury Plain, very close to Lavington where Herbert’s remarried stepfather Sir John Danvers was busy on his new gardens. There in Baynton lived the family of Charles Danvers, who had died in 1626 leaving no fewer than fourteen children, including eight unmarried daughters and only one married. According to Walton, Charles Danvers had had a particular fondness for GeorgeHerbert.

This Mr. Danvers, having known him long and familiarly, did so much affect him that he often and publicly declared a desire that Mr. Herbert would marry any of his nine daughters (for he had so many), but rather his daughter Jane than any other, because Jane was his beloved daughter: and he had often said the same to Mr. Herbert himself; and that if he could like her for a wife, and she him for a husband, Jane should have a double blessing; and Mr. Danvers had so often said the like to Jane, and so much commended Mr. Herbert to her, that Jane became so much a Platonic as to fall in love with Mr. Herbert unseen.

This was a fair preparation for a marriage; but alas, her father died before Mr. Herbert’s retirement to Dauntsey; yet some friends of both parties procured their meeting; at which time a mutual affection entered into both their hearts, as a conqueror enters into a surprised city, and Love, having got such possession, governed, and made there such laws and resolutions as neither party was able to resist; insomuch that she changed her name to Herbert the third day after this interview.50

There follows a rapturous paragraph on the Herberts’ concord and mutual love. However, that three-day courtship was impossible: the marriage was legally set up by an ‘allegation’, or declaration of intent, and a bond ten days before the wedding; and the banns would have been publicly called over the three preceding Sundays. Walton’s calling Jane ‘so much a Platonic as to fall in love with Mr. Herbert unseen’ needs to be balanced against John Aubrey’s view of her. He had excellent Wiltshire connections and was related to Jane and the other Danverses of Baynton. With a characteristic nod and a wink he wrote: ‘His marriage, I suppose, hastened his death. My kinswoman was a handsome bona roba and ingenious.’51 Aubrey’s phrase ‘bona roba’ is a surprise to Herbert’s more pious devotees. Literally translated it is ‘good stuff’. When Aubrey

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