Читать книгу Roaring Girls - Holly Kyte - Страница 24

By 1644, the Parliamentarians were gaining strength and the Queen, now pregnant with her ninth child, was in particular danger. Parliament had put a price on her head for high treason, citing her Catholic influence on the King as the primary cause of the war, so in April that year it became imperative for her to leave not just Oxford, but the country. With Margaret and the rest of her entourage in tow, Henrietta Maria went on the run, enduring a difficult birth and grave illness along the way. The group fled to Falmouth and on 30 June boarded a boat to the Queen’s native France, where they were confident of a warm reception.

But first they had to survive the voyage. Buffeted by storm winds, they lurched over the waves, the Parliamentarian ships in hot pursuit, pelting them with shots. Henrietta Maria was as impressive as ever during the onslaught, commanding that if it should come to it, the captain should blow up the ship’s ammunition store rather than allow them to be captured. Thankfully it didn’t come to that; they reached Brittany alive, only to be faced with the dangerous coastal cliffs that stood between them and safety. A treacherous scramble to the top followed, before they eventually found asylum at a small fishing village, a ragged and far from regal-looking bunch.

This daring great escape had shown Margaret rather more of the world than she had bargained for. At 21, she was suddenly an exile and a refugee, and the harrowing experience left an indelible mark on her psyche. Time and again in the stories she would later write, beautiful, virtuous young ingénues would endure perilous voyages and find themselves shipwrecked in strange lands.

Traumatised but safe, Margaret was living an isolated, miserable life with the Queen at King Louis XIV’s court at the Louvre in Paris when, in April 1645, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle, arrived – a fellow Royalist exile who, having fled England in despair after a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Marston Moor, was also looking for comfort. On the surface, William was everything Margaret wasn’t: a courageous soldier and renowned horseman, confident, worldly, charming and, as the former tutor of Prince Charles, highly educated. He was also a ladies’ man, a rich widower and, at the age of 52, a full 30 years older than Margaret. And yet the pair had much in common: both were deeply romantic in nature and harboured high ideals, literary aspirations and a veneration of poetry, philosophy and plays. It wasn’t long before William was wooing Margaret with passionate verses on a daily basis.

Unused to male attention, Margaret was wary at first. Marriage was not on her mind – on the contrary, ‘I did dread marriage’, she would later admit.[15] To a free-spirited woman of the seventeenth century, it meant a caged life of household management, the dangers of childbirth and unquestioning submission to one’s husband, even if he turned out to be a drunkard, philanderer or tyrant. In later life, Margaret would even argue forcefully against marriage in principle, reckoning that ‘where one husband proves good … a thousand prove bad’.[16] Had circumstances been different, she might well have chosen the shame of spinsterhood over the shackles of marriage, but as it was, she fell in love and married William in a quiet ceremony at the end of 1645.

Young, timid Margaret Lucas was now Lady Cavendish, Marchioness of Newcastle. It sounded grand, but as a prominent Royalist, William’s primary Midlands estates of Welbeck Abbey and Bolsover Castle had been sequestered by Parliament, so in truth he had little to offer his new bride but his title. Margaret, in turn, was unable to access her substantial dowry of £2,000, as her brother, John, had been branded a ‘malignant’ by Parliament and also had his property confiscated, so when the couple set up home in William’s Parisian apartments, the only option was for William to flaunt his name, reputation and continued spending in the hope of reassuring creditors that he was a safe bet. The bluff allowed them to live well enough on borrowed money, but it was a precarious existence. More than once over the next few years the creditors’ patience would wear thin and William’s steward would bring the worrying news that ‘he was not able to provide a dinner’ for them that day.[17] On these occasions, pawning their belongings and borrowing money from William’s brother, or the Queen or anyone who would help them was the only recourse left.

Still, the Cavendishes put on a good show. William and his brother Sir Charles were enthusiastic, well-connected intellectuals who played host to some of the leading scholars, writers, scientists and philosophers of the day, including Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes. For Margaret, these soirées were accompanied by feelings of gnawing inadequacy, but by listening and observing (something she had always been good at), she found she could pick up second-hand all the latest philosophical theories and technological advancements to emerge from the Scientific Revolution that was sweeping through Europe. Margaret absorbed it all, quietly nursing a passion for big ideas and a longing to grapple with the invisible workings of the world. A woman with no education to speak of was suddenly an avid pupil at the cutting-edge of new thinking, and she found it utterly thrilling.

Less enthralling were Margaret’s new domestic challenges – not least her antipathy towards home-making and the fact that, as time went by, babies stubbornly refused to appear. Given that William had fathered numerous children by his first wife, the problem was assumed to be Margaret’s, so when there was still no sign of pregnancy two years into their marriage, her physician began to prescribe spa waters and a witches’ brew of herbs to be syringed into her womb every morning and night.[18]

It’s quite possible Margaret was secretly relieved when these remedies didn’t work, for her own attitude to motherhood was ambivalent – society said it was her wifely duty to provide children and she felt that pressure, but the burning desire for them herself simply wasn’t there. She could barely even understand it in other women. Dynastic motives made no sense for a woman, she would later argue, since ‘neither name nor estate goes to her family’ when she marries; and then, of course, she ‘hazards her life by bringing them into the world, and hath the greatest share of trouble in bringing them up’.[19] Maternal instinct or affection didn’t even enter the equation. Margaret would soon find other ways of perpetuating herself and her name that appealed far more …

The couple thrived regardless. Conscious of her good luck in finding a husband who didn’t suppress her ideas or curb her ambitions, Margaret was respectful and adoring of William – the model of a loyal, deferential, dutiful wife. In this, at least, she was happy to play the conventional woman. In no other part of her life would she be so conformist.