Researching for my last literature paper at Oxford on 17th-century poet, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, I stumbled onto the late 17th-century court of Queen Mary of Modena, consort to James II. I was intrigued because she had so many female writers in her court—rare for the 17th century! Before heading back to the states, I met with my professor to discuss a book idea stemming from that research. Peter had stunned me with his compliment of my paper—“One of the most beautiful Bread Loaf papers I’ve read . . . The work of an artist by an artist.” He was encouraging about my book idea: True to his MO, Peter dashed to his computer and gathered up a beginning bibliography for me to pursue.
Maria Beatrice Anna Margherita Isabella of Modena was an educated, artistic princess growing up in a matriarchy of strong, prominent women. The duchy of Modena was a small but powerful Italian state that existed for four hundred years, from the mid-15th to the mid-19th centuries, in northwest Italy, near Bologna. Princess Maria’s widowed mother, Laura Martinozzi, ruled her estates and her family with wisdom and intelligence. Maria was exposed to powerful women all of her young life, but in 1673, she was powerless, a 14-year-old, unwilling political pawn, instructed to marry James, then still the Duke of York, by proxy. She refused more than once, insisting that she needed to live a life of study in religious seclusion. It was not unusual for girls to marry this young—even younger—in the 17th century. Eventually, family pressure intervened. In a handwritten note, heavily leaning on Maria’s devotion to Church, Pope Clement himself convinced the young princess of her duty to spread Catholicism across the channel. Maria left home on her 15th birthday, after two days and nights of tears and anguish. Imagine saying goodbye to family, possibly forever, then departing to a foreign country, trading a dazzling sun-draped palace for “one of the largest and dirtiest houses in the world,” in an assuredly bleak, damp climate. It was a treacherous journey over the Alps, up the Loire, and on to the dreary French port of Calais. There, they began a stormy, perilous English Channel crossing to Dover. The journey took two months.
At home in Tennessee, time permitting, I was reading books related to the topic, but I suffered disruptions while waiting for books to arrive through interlibrary loan, compounded by a heavy, demanding teaching schedule. I also realized that without the ability to visit settings, my writing would lack a sense of place. Just in time, after its first year of existence, I applied for a fellowship offered by my employer, University School of Nashville. I received the fellowship! That summer, six years after my meeting with Peter, I returned to Oxford, continuing my study of the complexity of Mary’s court culture and uncovering as much as I could about these women and their unique literary and artistic accomplishments, so unusual for the seventeenth century. Keep in mind that in 17th-century Christian tradition, “Woman (were) seen as a distractor, a temptress who beckoned from the realm of nature, personifying Original Sin and luring man to evil . . . Woman was not fully a human being, not endowed with a soul and not created in the image of God, who after all, was male.” But Mary of Modena provided a model of female patronage of women artists. She offered a world where women exchanged various genres of writing. In English Women’s Poetry, 1649-1714: Politics, Community, and Linguistic Authority, Carole Barash writes that as Duchess of York, Mary created a place where women’s education and women’s imagination were taken seriously.
I had questions I felt compelled to answer regarding this captivating story. What exactly was court culture? How might these women have interacted, inspired each other? What was Mary’s role in this? Part of the joy of research—and for me it is joyful—is the ability to explore freely. I wanted to sense their spaces, to breathe the same air, to imagine their lives. Rain Dodging follows my quest for a sense of Mary’s spaces, visiting palaces and manor houses in England and Scotland and exploring their sublime back roads.
in the Cotswolds 
photo bombed at Windsor Castle
It’s a fun ride, and I hope you will come along!
