Records of Woman, with Other Poems

Felicia Hemans, Paula R. Feldman

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780813109640
• eBook ISBN: 9780813184302
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), one of the most influential and widely-read poets of the nineteenth century, wrote Records of Woman in 1828 at the height of her long career. In the series, which includes nineteen poems about exemplary lives, Hemans explores what it means to be a woman, challenging traditional beliefs while at the same time reinforcing persistent stereotypes. Her work celebrates the lives, events, and imagined thoughts of unremembered women from different cultures and time periods whose deeds show nobility of spirit and inner strength. In her introduction, Paula Feldman examines how Hemans's poetry shaped and was shaped by nineteenth-century literary tastes, and she reconsiders the aesthetic value of Hemans's work and the current understanding of the nature of Romanticism.

RECORDS OF WOMAN

ARABELLA STUART

“The Lady Arabella,” as she has been frequently entitled, was descended from Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII, and consequently allied by birth to Elizabeth, as well as James I. This affinity to the throne proved the misfortune of her life, as the jealousies which it constantly excited in her royal relatives, who were anxious to prevent her marrying, shut her out from the enjoyment of that domestic happiness which her heart appears to have so fervently desired. By a secret, but early discovered union with William Seymour, son of Lord Beauchamp, she alarmed the cabinet of James, and the wedded lovers were immediately placed in separate confinement. From this they found means to concert a romantic plan of escape; and having won over a female attendant, by whose assistance she was disguised in male attire, Arabella, though faint from recent sickness and suffering, stole out in the night, and at last reached an appointed spot, where a boat and servants were in waiting. She embarked; and, at break of day, a French vessel, engaged to receive her, was discovered and gained. As Seymour, however, had not yet arrived, she was desirous that the vessel should lie at anchor for him; but this wish was overruled by her companions, who, contrary to her entreaties, hoisted sail, “which,” says D’Israeli, “occasioned so fatal a termination to this romantic adventure. Seymour, indeed, had escaped from the Tower;—he reached the wharf, and found his confidential man waiting with a boat, and arrived at Lee. The time passed; the waves were rising; Arabella was not there; but in the distance he descried a vessel. Hiring a fisherman to take him on board, he discovered, to his grief, on hailing it, that it was not the French ship charged with his Arabella; in despair and confusion he found another ship from Newcastle, which for a large sum altered its course, and landed him in Flanders.”—Arabella, meantime, whilst imploring her attendants to linger, and earnestly looking out for the expected boat of her husband, was overtaken in Calais Roads by a vessel in the King’s service, and brought back to a captivity, under the suffering of which her mind and constitution gradually sank.—“What passed in that dreadful imprisonment, cannot perhaps be recovered for authentic history,—but enough is known; that her mind grew impaired, that she finally lost her reason, and, if the duration of her imprisonment was short, that it was only terminated by her death. Some effusions, often begun and never ended, written and erased, incoherent and rational, yet remain among her papers.”—D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature———The following poem, meant as some record of her fate, and the imagined fluctuations of her thoughts and feelings, is supposed to commence during the time of her first imprisonment, whilst her mind was yet buoyed up by the consciousness of Seymour’s affection, and the cherished hope of eventual deliverance.

And is not love in vain,

Torture enough without a living tomb?

Byron

Fermossi al fin il cor che balzò tanto.

Pindemonte

I

’Twas but a dream!—I saw the stag leap free,

Under the boughs where early birds were singing,

I stood, o’ershadow’d by the greenwood tree,

And heard, it seemed, a sudden bugle ringing

Far thro’ a royal forest: then the fawn

Shot, like a gleam of light, from grassy lawn

To secret covert; and the smooth turf shook,

And lilies quiver’d by the glade’s lone brook,

And young leaves trembled, as, in fleet career,

A princely band, with horn, and hound, and spear,

10

Like a rich masque swept forth. I saw the dance

Of their white plumes, that bore a silvery glance

Into the deep wood’s heart; and all pass’d by,

Save one—I met the smile of one clear eye,

Flashing out joy ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Further Reading
• Note on the Text
• Records of Woman
• Miscellaneous Pieces
• Notes to the Poems
• Index of First Lines