A somewhat solitary man he would appear to have been, though fond of occasional jollity. He lived alone in lodgings, and was much immersed in business, about a good deal of which we know nothing except that it took him abroad. His death was sudden, and when three years afterwards the first edition of his poems made its appearance, it was prefaced by a certificate signed "Mary Marvell," to the effect that everything in the book was printed "according to the copies of my late dear husband." Until after Marvell's death we never hear of Mrs. Marvell, and with this signed certificate she disappears. In a series of Lives of Poets' Wives it would be hard to make much of Mrs. Andrew Marvell. For different but still cogent reasons it is hard to write a life of her famous husband.
Andrew Marvell was born at Winestead in Holdernesse, on Easter Eve, the 31st of March 1621, in the Rectory House, the elder Marvell, also Andrew, being then the parson of the parish. No fitter birthplace for a garden-poet can be imagined. Roses still riot in Winestead; the fruit-tree roots are as mossy as in the seventeenth century.

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