ntomologists study Lepidoptera for their exquisite beauty and variety, and for all that they disclose about the natural world. Writers of poetry and fiction are drawn to the butterfly and moth for their seductive symbolic power. Because of their morphic or transformative character, these fascinating creatures offer themselves to the literary artist as the perfect image of change and reinvented identity. In the last century, Vladimir Nabokov, perhaps more so than other literary writers, masterfully deployed lepidoptero- logical images in constructing narrative and transmitting character. A recent collection of his butterfly writings took the lead review in the annual Natural History issue of the London Times Literary Supplement (4 August 2000).

But only recently have students of literature been introduced to a much earlier practitioner of butterfly artifice: the intriguing Mary ("Mall") Villiers, later Stuart, Duchess of Richmond & Lennox (London, 1622-1685), daughter of the legendary George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, and one of the great beauties of 17th-century English court history (Fig. 1). Known among her exclusive coterie as "The Butterfly," Mary Villiers vexed and baffled the scholarly community these three centuries as the pseudonymous poet-play-wright-songwriter, "Ephelia."

Fig. 1. "Lady Mary Villiers with her Dwarf, Anne Gibson," by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1638-1640 (Larsen, 1980). With the kind permission of Lord Pembroke, Wilton House, Wiltshire, England.

Long considered an impenetrable case in the annals of pseudonymous literature, the "Ephelia" poet of 17th-century Stuart London has proved to be the best research subject ever, in my experience; and my recent delvings into the entomological features of this complex case offer a model of interdisciplinary investigative methodology for literary sleuths and entomologists.

This guest essay for the Association for Tropical Lepidoptera fulfills a dual purpose. First, it sends out word of the naming of a new subspecies of Taiwan moth of elegant beauty in honor of the "Ephelia" poet. This new patronym for the "Ephelia" poet was first announced in my letter, "Ephelia, Butterfly Poet," in the September 1, 2000, issue of the London Times Literary Supplement. An "Ephelia" patronym among British butterflies is also being sought, namely for the orange tip subspecies of England, as "Ephelia's Orange Tip." Second, this piece offers an abridged summary of the researches I undertook from 1995 to 1999 at two of New York City's most bountiful archives: the library of the American Museum of Natural History, on Central Park West; and the New York Public Library Research Facility, on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. My goal, as I tested the patience of many a reference librarian and resident specialist, was to educate myself in the early scholarship on butterflies and moths which my 17th-century English poet might have known; and then to scour that early body of work for potential origins or variants of the name "Ephelia" and the many fictitious names she assigns her coterie in Female Poems On several Occasions. Written by Ephelia, one of the rarest and most elegant poetry books of 17th-century London (see Fig. 4, Chapter 2).

While I was not always successful in my digs -- indeed in some respects I was far afield -- this entomological leg of my research produced useful results which ultimately allowed me to build a persuasive case for "Ephelia"'s authorship in Mary Villiers.

THE ENIGMA OF THE "EPHELIA" POET

s many women writers of her age and certainly well before, Mary Villiers shielded herself from sneering ridicule and salacious lampoons by concealing her identity. When she bravely took her poems public in 1678, her credit line, which nonetheless disclosed both gender and high social class, read, "Written by a Gentlewoman"; in early 1679, her credit line read, "Written by a Lady of Quality." After testing the waters of public reception and finding them hospitable, she then released her principal work in the spring of 1679, under the original and euphonious pseudonym, "Ephelia." The inclusion of some of her verse, identified as "Ephelia"'s, in popular poetry miscellanies published prior to 1679, tells us that Mary Villiers had been employing this pseudonym prior to 1679 in privately circulated manuscript copies of her poems. A few of these evidently traveled beyond her primary (court) orbit into the quick hands of enterprising scribal copyists about the town. Surely, several of her coterie and a few privileged writers closely associated with the Stuart court, such as Aphra Behn and Lord Rochester, knew the identity of this bold and (sometimes) amusing writer. A small circle of friends evidently was in on the caprice, and we can imagine their delight in its witty evolution.

Fig. 2. "Lady Mary Villiers: vignette from the Earl of Pembroke's family portrait , by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, 1633-36. (See Appendix for full painting).

As I was to discover, thanks to the expert guidance of several friends of The Ephelia Project, Mary Villiers was called "The Butterfly" by her kin and close circle of royals and nobles resulting from a playful prank of hers circa 1636 on the future Charles II in the royal fruit gardens. This amusing joke from Lady Mary's girlhood is reconstructed in the Baroness D'Aulnoy's Memoires (Paris, 1695) and in most modern studies of the Villiers family, such as the Baroness Burghclere's Villiers (1903) and Charles Cammell's Buckingham (1939; 1984, 4th ed.). But as I also discovered, owing entirely from my own formulations, my poet's pretty nom de plume was itself a kind of butterfly language and but one component of an integrated butterfly persona constructed by this sly Stuart duchess.

According to my published researches, Mary Villiers produced a body of writings -- poems, songs, and a pre-empted satiric play on Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York -- under the pseudonym "Ephelia." She ingeniously created the legend of "Ephelia" by devising an (heretofore) intractable case in the history of concealed authorship, one dense enough to elude the most skilled literary detective. Unable to draw back "Ephelia"'s veil, most scholars unfairly judged the poet to be either a man or a thoroughly invented poet -- a sporting hoax -- created by a cabal of 17th-century writers. Now this sort of blithe deauthentication of early women writers is an old tradition in academic scholarship. As Katharina M. Wilson at the University of Georgia has shown, the writings of the 10th-century Saxon writer, Hrotsvit of the Abbey of Gandersheim, were long considered clever forgeries, contrived by a small group of male German humanists. Only in the last century were Hrotsvit's texts authenticated and her canon fully restored. The tiresome tradition of "Ephelia"'s deauthentication was revived as late as 1995 by Warren Chernaik at the University of London, who concludes an otherwise excellent essay on "Ephelia"'s poetic voice with a (comic) flourish of deconstructionist abandon: "It is possible that several authors, male and female, contributed to a collaborative enterprise [in 'Ephelia''s book of 1679]; it is possible that the volume is the work of a single female author or a single male author. 'Ephelia' does not exist, except as embodied in the poems" Philological Quarterly, Spring, 1995, p. 167). Elaine Hobby at Loughborough University in England hears a decidedly female voice in "Ephelia"'s work; but unable to find' "Ephelia" herself in the 1980s, Hobby bows to historical indeterminacy, judging the poet's identity both unknowable and unprovable A Virtue of Necessity, 1988). I and not a few adventurous others think differently.

As I know her story, "Mall" Villiers lived a full and turbulent life. This child of fortune and toy of fate was the most highly placed woman writer at the Stuart court. But in spite of vast entitlement, her long life (63 years) was marked by relentless personal crises. Thrice a bride and thrice widowed, her full name after 1664 was Mary Villiers Herbert Stuart Howard, this last deriving from a clandestine marriage in her forty-second year to Colonel Thomas Howard, a dashing young libertine and courtier of lesser rank. Hers is a lengthy catalogue of titles and names. We find her mentioned in contemporary writings as "the Lady Mary," "young Mall," "Mary, Lady Herbert," "Mary, Lady Stuart," "Richmond," and, as she is listed in the forthcoming New Dictionary of National Biography, "Mary, Lady Howard." Clearly, identity was the burden of her long life; self-reinvention, the signature of her art. Whereas Chernaik and others understandably complain of the "many confusing voices" in "Ephelia"'s verse, my case sets out a reasonable explanation of those voices in Lady Mary's multivocal persona and divisible personality. Morphing from one identity to another in her clever poetry book of 1679, she skillfully ventrilloquizes or, better, mimics (as butterflies are wont to do) the voices of various courtiers and courtesans of her circle. Adopting the voice of her good friend, "Celadon" (possibly George Porter), she versifies some of his amorous advice in the otherwise problematic verse-epistle, "The Reply. Written by a Friend," which is even signed "Celadon." And in her most famous and best lyric, "Ephelia's Lamentation," which begins, "How far are they deceiv'd, that hope in vain / A lasting Lease of Joys from Love t' obtain?", she voices Lady Mary Kirke, a discarded mistress of that unamiable libertine, John (Sheffield), Earl of Mulgrave ("Bajazet"). In a masterstroke of double masquerade, the tricksy "Mall" Villiers audaciously pens a self-dedication in her book of 1679 in the voice of a literary ingenue ("Ephelia"), who seeks patronal protection from her high and mighty ducal other: Mary Villiers. Ingeniously adopting many butterfly behaviors and characteristics, this splendid woman appears to have assembled an entire aesthetic around the pet-name given her in girlhood by the future Charles II, beginning with her self-reinvention as the "Ephelia" poet, the name itself but a kind of butterfly language, as I discovered.