The Adventure of Living : a Subjective Autobiography. John St. Loe Strachey
that I have always been specially interested in the fact that in the letter to Lady Willoughby de Broke, Strachey notes a circumstance that was often observed in the war. He tells us that the young gallants, when every hand was required to work at the pumps, had to exert themselves to the very utmost, and to work as long and as hard as the professional seamen. To the astonishment of himself and everyone else, they were able to do as much work and to keep at it as strenuously as the old mariners.
Another reason for feeling pretty sure that William Strachey must have known Shakespeare is the fact, of which we have ample proof, that Strachey was well known to the men of letters of the day. To begin with, he was a friend of Ben Jonson and wrote a set of commendatory verses for the Laureate's "Sejanus." These appear in the folio edition of Jonson's works. Probably this sonnet—it has fourteen lines—is one of the most cryptic things in the whole of Elizabethan literature. No member of our family or any other family has ever been able to construe it. Yet it is a pleasure to me to gather from the concluding couplet that the author had sound Whig principles:
If men would shun swol'n Fortune's ruinous blasts,
Let them use temperance; nothing violent lasts.
[Illustration: John Strachey, the Friend of Locke.]
An even more interesting proof of William Strachey's literary connections is to be found in the fact that when he, Strachey, went to Venice he took with him a letter of introduction from the poet, Dr. Donne, to the then Ambassador with the Republic, Sir Henry Wotton, also a poet. The letter is witty and trenchant. After noting that Strachey was "sometime secretary to Sir Thomas Gates," he adds, "I do boldly say that the greatest folly he ever committed was to submit himself and parts to so mean a master." The rest of the letter is pleasantly complimentary and shows that Donne and Strachey were fast friends.
This William Strachey, as my father used to point out to us, had a very considerable amount of book-writing to his credit. There were two or three pamphlets written by him and published as what we should now call Virginia Company propaganda. One of these gives a very delightful example of the English and American habit of applying a "get- civilisation-quick" system for the native inhabitants of any country into which they penetrate. Strachey's book, which was reprinted by the Hakluyt Society, was entitled "Articles, Lawes and Orders, Divine, Politique, and Martiall, for the Colony of Virginia," and was printed in 1610.
One of these pamphlets was sold at auction in London just before the war, and went—very naturally and, in a sense, very properly—to America. The volume in question contained, besides the ordinary letter- press, several poems by William Strachey and an autograph inscription written in the most wonderfully neat and clear handwriting—a standard in handwriting to which no member of the family before or since has ever attained. But besides the handwriting the dedication has other claims on our attention. It is charmingly worded. It shows, amongst other things, how natural was the cryptic dedication to the Shakespeare Sonnets. It runs as follows:
To his right truly honoured, and best beloved friend, sometymes a Personall Confederat and Adventurer, and now a sincere and holy Beadsman for this Christian prose- cutiõ Thomas Lawson, Esq. William Strachey wisheth as full an accomplishment of his best Desires, as devoutly as becoms the Dutie of a Harty Freinde. January/21.
"This Christian prosecutiõ" was the Virginia Company and its system of colonisation. There is also in one of the show-cases in the Bodleian an interesting short dictionary of the language of the Chesapeake Indians compiled by Strachey. In a note attached thereto Strachey says that he thinks it will be useful to persons who wish to "trade or truck" with the Indians.
Another memorable fact in regard to William Strachey I may mention here, though it was not known to my father. I lately discovered that Campion, the poet-musician, who, like Strachey, was a Member of Gray's Inn, wrote a short Latin poem to Strachey. It is addressed "Ad Guillielmus Strachæum." In it Campion tells Strachey that although he has very few verses to give to his "old comrade," the man "who rejoiced in and made many competent verses," he will always be dear to him. He ends by calling him "summus pieridem unicusque cultor." The poem concludes almost as it began: "Strachaeo, veteri meo sodali"—To Strachey, my old comrade.
Evidently Strachey did not keep his verses entirely for dedication. As far as I know, the best of his verses dedicatory are those addressed to Lord Bacon in his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia." They run:—
Wild as they are, accept them, so we're wee;
To make them civill will our honour be;
And if good worcks be the effects of myndes,
Which like good angells be, let our designes,
As we are Angli, make us Angells too;
No better worck can state—or church-man do.
The Campion connection interests me personally because Campion was the protagonist of unrhymed lyrical verse—my special metrical hobby. I like to think that William Strachey may have supported Campion in his controversy with Gabriel Harvey, who, by the way, lived at Saffron Walden, from which town came also William Strachey. There is danger, however, in such speculation. Before long someone may prove that it was not Bacon who wrote Shakespeare but Strachey who wrote both Bacon and Shakespeare.
The following example of my father's family lore was still more interesting and exciting to us. John Strachey, son of William Strachey, married a Miss Hodges of Wedmore, an heiress in the heraldic sense, through whom we can proudly claim to represent the Somersetshire family of Hodges, whose arms we have always quartered. This lady's grandfather, or great-grandfather—I am not quite sure which—was of the very best type of Elizabethan soldiers-errant. He was killed at the Siege of Antwerp in 1583.
He had the good fortune to be commemorated in one of the most spirited epitaphs of his age. On the wall of Wedmore Church in Somersetshire is a brass tablet bearing a heart surrounded by a laurel-wreath. The inscription of the memorial runs thus:
* * * * *
Sacred to the memory of Captain Thomas Hodges, of the County of Somerset, esq., who, at the siege of Antwerp, about 1583, with unconquered courage won two ensigns from the enemy; where, receiving his last wound, he gave three legacies: his soule to the Lord Jesus, his body to be lodged in Flemish earth, his heart to be sent to his dear wife in England.
Here lies his wounded heart, for whome
One kingdom was too small a roome;
Two kingdoms therefore have thought good to part
So stout a body and so brave a heart.
* * * * *
I have often wondered how a poet could have been found in Somersetshire in those days to produce such spirited verse. The Elizabethan age, so splendid in great poetry, was apt to be tortured and affected in what Dr. Johnson called "lapidary inscriptions."
Little did I think when, as a boy, I first read those lines how closely linked England was to remain with the soil where Thomas Hodges fell, how many thousand stout bodies and brave hearts would again be laid in Flemish earth, and how many true soldiers would in my own day deserve my forbear's epitaph.
It seems most likely that Thomas Hodges's armour was preserved by the Hodges and brought to Sutton by Miss Hodges. In an old Hodges inventory which is still among the papers at Sutton there is mentioned "an armour of proof." My father also used to tell us how he had seen two or three sets of armour hanging on the brackets which supported the Minstrels' Gallery in the Hall at Sutton. My father's uncle, alas, was born in the eighteenth century and bred in India till about 1820. He was therefore little affected by Scott and the Gothic revival. When he came back to England, though full of interest in his house and family, he not only removed the Minstrels' Gallery from the Hall, but allowed the armour that had hung on it for some hundred and fifty years to be destroyed. The Estate mason was seen mixing mortar in the breastplate, and the coachman washed the carriage with his legs in the Cromwellian jack- boots. Oddly enough, when we were quite small children, my eldest brother, by pure accident, discovered half a steel helmet behind one of the greenhouses.
Two swords, however, were allowed to remain at Sutton,