44-) English Literature

44-) English Literature 

John Donne  

Life and career

Donne was born of Roman Catholic parents. His mother, a direct descendant of Sir Thomas More’s sister, was the youngest daughter of John Heywood, epigrammatist and playwright. His father, who, according to Donne’s first biographer, Izaak Walton, was “descended from a very ancient family in Wales,” was a prosperous London merchant. Donne was four when his father died, and shortly thereafter his mother married Dr. John Syminges, who raised the Donne children. At age 12 Donne matriculated at the University of Oxford, where he studied for three years, and he then most likely continued his education at the University of Cambridge, though he took no degree from either university because as a Roman Catholic he could not swear the required oath of allegiance to the Protestant queen, Elizabeth. Following his studies Donne probably traveled in Spain and Italy and then returned to London to read law, first at Thavies Inn (1591) and then at Lincoln’s Inn (1592–94). There he turned to a comparative examination of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology and perhaps even toyed with religious skepticism. In 1596 he enlisted as a gentleman with the earl of Essex’s successful privateering expedition against Cádiz, and the following year he sailed with Sir Walter Raleigh and Essex in the near-disastrous Islands expedition, hunting for Spanish treasure ships in the Azores.

After his return to London in 1597, Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, lord keeper of the great seal, in whose employ Donne remained for almost five years. The appointment itself makes it probable that Donne had become an Anglican by this time. During his tenure with the lord keeper, Donne lived, according to Walton, more as a friend than as a servant in the Egerton household, where Sir Thomas appointed him “a place at his own table, to which he esteemed [Donne’s] company and discourse to be a great ornament.” Donne’s contemporary, Richard Baker, wrote of him at this time as “not dissolute [i.e., careless], but very neat; a great visitor of Ladies, a great frequenter of Plays, a great writer of conceited Verses.”

While in Egerton’s service, Donne met and fell in love with Anne More, niece of Egerton’s second wife and the daughter of Sir George More, who was chancellor of the garter. Knowing there was no chance of obtaining Sir George’s blessing on their union, the two married secretly, probably in December 1601. For this offense Sir George had Donne briefly imprisoned and dismissed from his post with Egerton as well. He also denied Anne’s dowry to Donne. Because of the marriage, moreover, all possibilities of a career in public service were dashed, and Donne found himself at age 30 with neither prospects for employment nor adequate funds with which to support his household.

During the next 10 years Donne lived in poverty and humiliating dependence, first on the charity of Anne’s cousin at Pyrford, Surrey, then at a house in Mitcham, about 7 miles (11 km) from London, and sometimes in a London apartment, where he relied on the support of noble patrons. All the while he repeatedly tried (and failed) to secure employment, and in the meantime his family was growing; Anne ultimately bore 12 children, 5 of whom died before they reached maturity. Donne’s letters show his love and concern for his wife during these years: “Because I have transplanted [her] into a wretched fortune, I must labour to disguise that from her by all such honest devices, as giving her my company, and discourse.” About himself, however, Donne recorded only despair: “To be part of no body is as nothing; and so I am. … I am rather a sickness or a disease of the world than any part of it and therefore neither love it nor life.”

In spite of his misery during these years, Donne wrote and studied assiduously, producing prose works on theology, canon law, and anti-Catholic polemics and composing love lyrics, religious poetry, and complimentary and funerary verse for his patrons. As early as 1607 friends had begun urging him to take holy orders in the Church of England, but he felt unworthy and continued to seek secular employment. In 1611–12 he traveled through France and the Low Countries with his newfound patron, Sir Robert Drury, leaving his wife at Mitcham. Upon their return from the European continent, the Drurys provided the Donnes with a house on the Drury estate in London, where they lived until 1621.

In 1614 King James I refused Donne’s final attempt to secure a post at court and said that he would appoint him to nothing outside the church. By this time Donne himself had come to believe he had a religious vocation, and he finally agreed to take holy orders. He was ordained deacon and priest on Jan. 23, 1615, and preferment soon followed. He was made a royal chaplain and received, at the king’s command, the degree of doctor of divinity from Cambridge. On Nov. 22, 1621, Donne was installed as dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, at which he carried out his duties with efficiency and integrity. But this turnabout in Donne’s professional life was accompanied by searing personal grief. Two years after his ordination, in 1617, Anne Donne died at age 33 after giving birth to a stillborn child. Grief-stricken at having lost his emotional anchor, Donne vowed never to marry again, even though he was left with the task of raising his children in modest financial circumstances at the time. Instead, his bereavement turned him fully to his vocation as an Anglican divine. The power and eloquence of Donne’s sermons soon secured for him a reputation as the foremost preacher in the England of his day, and he became a favourite of both Kings James I and Charles I.

In 1623 Donne fell seriously ill with either typhus or relapsing fever, and during his sickness he reflected on the parallels between his physical and spiritual illnesses—reflections that culminated during his recovery in the prose Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624. On Feb. 25, 1631, Donne, who was fatally ill with stomach cancer, left his sickbed to preach a final sermon at court; this was published posthumously as “Death’s Duell” and is sometimes considered to be his own funeral sermon. He returned to his sickbed and, according to Walton, had a drawing made of himself in his shroud, perhaps as an aid to meditating on his own dissolution. From this drawing Nicholas Stone constructed a marble effigy of Donne that survived the Great Fire of 1666 and still stands today in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Career and later life

In 1602, Donne was elected as a member of parliament (MP) for the constituency of Brackley, but the post was not a paid position. Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, being succeeded by King James VI of Scotland as King James I of England. The fashion for coterie poetry of the period gave Donne a means to seek patronage. Many of his poems were written for wealthy friends or patrons, especially for MP Sir Robert Drury of Hawsted (1575–1615), whom he met in 1610 and who became his chief patron, furnishing him and his family an apartment in his large house in Drury Lane.

In 1610 and 1611, Donne wrote two anti-Catholic polemics: Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius His Conclave for Morton. He then wrote two Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul[16] (1612) for Drury.

Donne sat as an MP again, this time for Taunton, in the Addled Parliament of 1614. Though he attracted five appointments within its business he made no recorded speech. Although King James was pleased with Donne's work, he refused to reinstate him at court and instead urged him to take holy orders. At length, Donne acceded to the king's wishes, and in 1615 was an ordained priest in the Church of England.

In 1615, Donne was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity from Cambridge University. He became a Royal Chaplain in the same year. He became a reader of divinity at Lincoln's Inn in 1616, where he served in the chapel as minister until 1622. In 1618, he became chaplain to Viscount Doncaster, who was an ambassador to the princes of Germany. Donne did not return to England until 1620. In 1621, Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading and well-paid position in the Church of England, which he held until his death in 1631.

In 1616 he was granted the living as rector of two parishes, Keyston in Huntingdonshire and Sevenoaks in Kent, and in 1621 of Blunham, in Bedfordshire, all held until his death.[9] Blunham Parish Church has an imposing stained glass window commemorating Donne, designed by Derek Hunt. During Donne's period as dean his daughter Lucy died, aged eighteen. In late November and early December 1623 he suffered a nearly fatal illness, thought to be either typhus or a combination of a cold followed by a period of fever.

During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain and sickness that were published as a book in 1624 under the title of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. One of these meditations, Meditation XVII, contains the well-known phrases "No man is an Iland" (often modernised as "No man is an island") and "...for whom the bell tolls". In 1624, he became vicar of St Dunstan-in-the-West, and in 1625 a prolocutor to Charles I. He earned a reputation as an eloquent preacher. 160 of his sermons have survived, including Death's Duel, his famous sermon delivered at the Palace of Whitehall before King Charles I in February 1631.

Death

Donne died on 31 March 1631. He was buried in old St Paul's Cathedral, where a memorial statue of him by Nicholas Stone was erected with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself. The memorial was one of the few to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666 and is now in St Paul's Cathedral. The statue was said by Izaac Walton in his biography, to have been modelled from the life by Donne to suggest his appearance at the resurrection. It started a vogue of such monuments during the 17th century. In 2012, a bust of the poet by Nigel Boonham was unveiled outside in the cathedral churchyard.