DRAWING-ROOM.
No. 1.
LADY CAROLINE COWPER.
Red gown. Black and white cloak.
BORN 1733, DIED 1773.
By Sir Joshua Reynolds.
THE only daughter of William, second Earl Cowper, by Lady Henrietta Auverquerque, daughter of the Earl of Grantham. Married in 1753 to Henry Seymour, Esq. of Sherborne, Redland Court, and Northbrook, nephew to the Duke of Somerset. They had two daughters,—Caroline, wife to Mr. Danby of Swinton Park, county York (who bequeathed this picture to Lord Cowper), and Georgiana, married to the Comte de Durfort, Ambassador at Venice.
No. 2.
MRS. SAMUEL REYNOLDS.
Green gown, with short sleeves. Holding a basket.
A Study by Opie.
MISS JANE COWING married in 1793 Samuel Reynolds, who became identified with his great namesake, Sir Joshua, by his beautiful and delicate engraving of the works of that master, and of many other celebrated painters. His son and daughter were also artists in oil and miniature, and his grandchildren still keep up the character of the family for the love and practice of art. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds were intimate friends and constant guests of Lord and Lady John Townshend at Balls Park, Hertford, where the agreeable and versatile talents of the former, and the gentle and kindly disposition of the latter, ensured them a cordial welcome. They were also occasional visitors to Panshanger, and it is easy to imagine how fully the treasures of this noble gallery must have been appreciated by the practised eye and refined taste of Samuel Reynolds.
No. 3.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A.
Red coat. Fur collar. No spectacles.
BORN 1723, DIED 1792.
By Himself.
BORN at Plymouth, where his father, Samuel, was master of the Grammar-School. His mother was Theophila Potter, of Bishops Plympton, South Molton, who had many children. Samuel Reynolds was a good man, and sensible withal; yet we are told, on the authority of a maid who lived in the family, that he was given to astrology, and would go out on the house-top to consult the stars; moreover, that he once cast the horoscope of a little daughter, for whom he predicted a violent death,—a prophecy which was, unfortunately, fulfilled, as the child fell out of a window, and was killed. When only eight years old, Joshua had benefited so much by studying Richardson’s treatise on Perspective, that he was enabled to draw the schoolhouse according to rule, a feat which much delighted his father. The boy also busied himself in copying all the engravings he could lay hands on, more especially a volume of Catt’s Emblems, which his grandmother had brought with her from Holland. His sisters had all a turn for drawing, and the little band of artists used to decorate the whitewashed walls of the passages with designs in charcoal, whereof the least admired were the brother’s handiworks. Indeed, in those days Joshua was not considered a prophet by his sisters, who had nicknamed him ‘The clown,’—a sobriquet certainly not applicable to him in after life. Mrs. Parker, a friend and neighbour of the Reynolds family, sent the children a present of pencils,—a gift which the great painter lived to pay back with interest, for the walls of Saltram are rich in his paintings. When about twelve years of age, Joshua is said to have made his first essay in oils under considerable difficulties,—the portrait of Richard (afterwards Lord) Edgecumbe,—in the boat-house on Cremel Beach, below Mount Edgecumbe. This work was executed on the rough canvas of a boat-sail, with the common paints used by shipwrights!
After much consultation with friends and relations, and many pecuniary obstacles, Joshua proceeded to London as an apprentice to Hudson, the fashionable portrait-painter of the day, son-in-law to Richardson, whose writings on Art had been so useful to the young beginner. Shortly after his departure, his father writes to a friend that no one could be more delighted than the dear fellow with his new life, his master, his employment,—indeed, he was in the seventh heaven.
Joshua was an enthusiast in all things, and a characteristic anecdote is told of him when he first went to London. Hudson sent him to a picture sale, on a commission to make a purchase, when a whisper ran through the crowded room—‘Mr. Pope! Mr. Pope!’ A passage was instantly made for the great man, and Joshua, in a fever of excitement, stretched out his hand under the arm of the person who stood before him, desirous even to touch the hem of the poet’s garment. To his delight, his hand was warmly shaken by the man whose homely but expressive features, and poetical creations, he was destined to portray in later days.
Reynolds left Hudson’s studio before his apprenticeship had expired, for which step many reasons were assigned at the time by those who, perhaps, were not in possession of the truth. Some said his master was unkind to him, from a feeling of jealousy; but as both father and son (Reynolds) remained on friendly terms with the painter, this does not appear probable. Joshua went down to Plymouth, and painted all the remarkable people in the neighbourhood, including the greatest dignitary of all,—the Commissioner of the dockyard!
In 1746 his father died, and when the household broke up, he went to live with his two unmarried sisters at Plymouth. It was here he made the acquaintance of Commodore Keppel, whose portrait is so well known and so justly admired. This gallant sailor had been appointed to the command of the Mediterranean Fleet, and intrusted with a diplomatic mission, before he had completed his twenty-fourth year. He met Joshua at Mount Edgecumbe, and proposed to take him for a cruise, an offer that was gladly accepted. After visiting Portugal, the Balearic Isles, and different portions of the Italian coast, the young painter took leave of the Commodore, and proceeded on a prolonged tour through all the principal towns of Italy, carefully admiring, studying, copying, and writing essays on all the treasures of art in his progress. His long and patient worship of Raphael, in the chambers of the Vatican, cost him one of his senses, for the extreme cold of those vast apartments brought on a chill, which deprived him of hearing, even at that early age. Returning to London, he established himself in St. Martin’s Lane, in a house formerly occupied by Sir James Thornhill, immediately behind which stood the school for drawing and design. He now wrote to his sister Frances to come up from Devonshire, and keep house for him,—a proceeding which, judging from the character given of that lady by Madame D’Arblay (whose testimony we are always inclined to take cum grano), appeared to be of questionable advantage, for Miss Fanny, though a person of worth and understanding, lived in a perpetual state of irresolution of mind and perplexity of conduct,—what in these days we should call a chronic fuss; added to which, she insisted on being an artist, and her admiration for her brother’s works induced her to make what she called ‘copies,’ and Joshua ‘caricatures.’ ‘Indeed,’ said he wofully, ‘Fanny’s copies make me cry, and other people laugh.’ She had also a knack of taking offence on the slightest provocation, and one day, being displeased with her brother for some imaginary slight put upon her, she deputed Samuel Johnson to compose an expostulatory letter for her to write to Joshua. Dr. Johnson was a warm admirer of Miss Fanny and her talent for tea-making,—to which he did full justice,—and could deny her nothing; but when the copy of the letter was read and discussed, the style was so unmistakably masculine and Johnsonian, that it was deemed advisable not to send it.
Our painter’s hands were now full. Men and women of all classes, denominations, and reputations, thronged his studio; his pocket-book was a perfect record of all the illustrious and celebrated names of the period. He determined to change his quarters, first to Newport Street, and finally to far more commodious apartments in Leicester Square. He raised his prices, charging twelve guineas for a head, and forty-eight for a full-length. He set up a magnificent coach, which caused a great sensation. Northcote flippantly describes it as an advertisement; but it would appear more likely that Reynolds wished to do Catton a good turn. Catton had begun life as a decorator, and ended as an R.A. The vehicle was splendid in colour and gorgeous in gilding, and Catton soon received orders to paint royal and municipal carriages. Joshua was far too busy to take the air in his new equipage, and it was in vain he entreated Miss Fanny to do so. She was much too shy, she said, to attract the eyes of the whole town.
We do not require to be told that Sir Joshua was a friend and playfellow of children. None but a lover could have painted in all their winning varieties, not merely the comeliness, but the roguish grace, the dimpled smiles, the ‘beautifully shy’ glances, of childhood. It is easy to picture him paying court to these juvenile charmers, and entering into delightful small flirtations. But the history of one of these tender passages will suffice to give an idea of the course he usually pursued. The parents of the beautiful little Miss Bowles, with whose sweet face we are all familiar, had settled that their darling should sit to Romney. But Sir George Beaumont recommended Reynolds for the privilege. The little lady was shy and coy. ‘Invite him to dinner,’ said Sir George. The President came, and sat at table by the daughter of the house. He paid her the most assiduous court; no end of stories; no end of tricks; her plate was juggled away and brought back from unexpected quarters. Her senses were dazzled; the conquest was complete; she thought him the most captivating of men, and was only too ready to be taken to his house next day. There, seated on the floor in an ecstasy of expectation and delight, she gave herself up to Sir Joshua’s fascinations. He seized his opportunity, caught the radiant expression, fastened it on the canvas, and made his little friend immortal! No one gloried more in the success of the young painter than Samuel Johnson, for between these two great men, so essentially different in pursuits, in character, intellect, and appearance, a tender friendship had sprung up. Reynolds’s heart, home, and purse were always at the service of the Doctor, who was often in pecuniary difficulties, and who wrote Rasselas under the pressure of great sorrow, paying the expenses of his mother’s funeral out of the proceeds of the book. He puts these touching words into the mouth of Imlac: ‘I have neither mother to delight in the reputation of her son, or wife to share in the honours of her husband.’
Many a delightful summer excursion did Johnson and Reynolds make together, where the eccentricities and caustic humour of the former made him as welcome a guest at the country houses they visited as the refined qualities and polished manners of the latter.
If the peculiarities, the sayings, and doings of the great ‘leviathan of literature’ have been made familiar to us by the pen of Boswell, surely the pencil of Reynolds has stamped his image on our minds, as if the living Samuel had ever stood before us. Boswell recognised the Doctor when he saw him first through a glass door in Tom Davies’s coffee-house from his exact resemblance to the portrait which the painter afterwards gave the biographer, who had it engraved for one of the first editions of Johnson’s Life. What can be more charming than ‘The Infant Johnson,’ one of the chief glories of the Bowood collection? Was ever a joke so wonderfully delineated?
The question being raised one evening at a convivial meeting, Could the Doctor ever have been a baby? ‘No doubt about it,’ said Reynolds; ‘I know exactly what he looked like, and I will show you some day.’
The painter was a great admirer of Johnson’s powers of conversation, and it was chiefly at his instigation that the Literary Club was formed, with a view ‘of giving the Doctor the opportunity of talking, and us, his friends, of listening.’ The meetings were held in Gerrard Street, Soho, and were at first confined to twelve members, but ere long included all the wit and literature of the town.
Sir Joshua liked cards, masquerades, and theatres. Neither did he disdain the illegitimate drama, for we find him accompanying the sapient Samuel and the rollicking Oliver (Goldsmith) to a performance of the Italian Fantoccini; and, still more surprising, we have the account of the supper which crowned this convivial evening, when Goldsmith and the Doctor jumped over sticks, in imitation of the frolics of the wooden puppets, and the latter nearly broke his leg in these elephantine gambols!
In 1769 the Royal Academy was founded. Joshua did not join the deputation that waited on the King; in fact, he kept aloof from the whole undertaking, interested as he was at heart in the cause; but the slights put upon him at Court formed a sufficient reason for his non-appearance. From the moment that he found himself elected President by the unanimous voice of his brother artists, his zeal never slackened, and knew no bounds. He drew up Regulations, wrote and revised the Catalogue, and began a regular course of lectures, which gained him as much literary, as his paintings had secured for him pictorial, fame. As long as Reynolds could hold a brush he contributed his most splendid portraits to the Exhibitions. As in duty bound, he went to the levee, where the King knighted him. ‘His very name,’ says his friend Edmund Burke, an undoubted master of euphony, ‘seemed made for knightly honours.’
George III. sat to him for the presentation picture to the Royal Academy. Sir Joshua had not as much time now as formerly for his summer excursions, whether in England or abroad. He spent most of the day in his painting-room, or in attending to his numerous duties as P.R.A. In the evening he gave himself up more or less to social enjoyment, dining out constantly at clubs or private houses, or presiding at his own table at those convivial banquets, where oftentimes half a dozen guests were expected and a dozen appeared, and where verily the feast of reason and the flow of soul made up for the scarcity of the servants, knives, forks, plates, and such minor details.
In that dining-room were gathered all the intellect and wit of the town; and its noble master presided calmly, taking an interest in all that came within the range of his ear-trumpet. Leicester Square was in the centre of the disturbed district at the time of the Gordon Riots, and the noise and hubbub were painfully audible to the painter’s impaired hearing, and for a time interfered with the visits of his fair sitters. On St. George’s Day 1770, Sir Joshua presided at the first Royal Academy banquet, a festivity which was spoiled for many of the guests by the announcement that the boy-poet Chatterton had committed suicide.
In the ensuing year Reynolds was summoned to Windsor Castle to witness the installation of nine Knights of the Garter, all of whom (with the exception of two foreign Princes) had been immortalised by his pencil. Northcote tells us that on this occasion Sir Joshua lost his laced hat and gold watch in the crowd close to the Royal precincts,—a circumstance which excited little astonishment in days when a boat containing ladies and gentlemen from Vauxhall was boarded by masked highwaymen!
A delightful addition was made in 1771 to the Leicester Square household, in the person of his pretty niece, Theophila Palmer; and two years later she was joined by her sister, Mary, adding that element of youth, beauty, and good spirits which were most acceptable to Sir Joshua himself and to all his guests. A sad blow was in store for him in the death of his valued friend David Garrick, who was taken ill when on a visit to Lord Spencer at Althorp, and only returned to London to die. The whole Faculty put forth their skill to save this darling of the public, this cherished member of private society; but in vain. Garrick’s humour never forsook him; when almost at the point of death, he drew a friend near him, and, pointing to the crowd of doctors in the room, whispered these words from the ‘Fair Penitent’—
‘Another and another still succeeds,
And the last fool is welcome as the former.’
David Garrick’s funeral was a pageant. The procession included every name remarkable for talent, rank, celebrity of all kinds and classes. But amidst that crowd of mourners few could have grieved more deeply than the actor’s fast friend, Joshua Reynolds.
He was indeed a good friend, and was much interested in the unhappy Angelica Kauffmann, whom he assisted in the dissolution of her marriage with her first husband, a swindler and an impostor. We find by his pocket-book that she sat twice to him, and in exchange she afterwards painted the P.R.A. for Mr. Parker of Saltram. There was a rumour that the painter’s heart was touched by the charms of the paintress. But Joshua was evidently not very susceptible; he was an inveterate club man, and was immensely popular, from the geniality and cordiality of his manners, as also (it was whispered) from the badness of his whist-playing. He was elected for the Dilettanti Club in 1766, and his picture of the assembled members was greatly admired, and added considerably to his fame.
In 1782 the great painter had a paralytic seizure, though of a mild nature, and he soon recovered sufficient energy to continue his labours, with, if possible, increased diligence, finishing and exhibiting some of his noblest works after this premonitory warning. In 1784 Samuel Johnson was stricken down by the same terrible disease, but in a much more aggravated form, leaving little hope of his recovery. He had lost the power of speech for a time, and his first efforts at returning articulation were to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and an earnest supplication that his intellect might be spared to the last, together with a summons to his dear Joshua,—the loved companion of so many pleasant excursions, of so many jovial and intellectual gatherings,—of whom he took a tender farewell. The dying man made three requests in that solemn moment: that Reynolds would paint no more on Sundays; that he would invariably read his Bible on that day, and other days besides; and that he would cancel the debt of £30 which he (Johnson) owed him.
The relations between Gainsborough and Reynolds had never been very friendly; but when the first-mentioned painter was on his deathbed, he also sent for Sir Joshua, who says: ‘In those solemn moments all little jealousies were forgotten, and he recognised in me one whose tastes and pursuits were in common with his own, and of whose works he approved.’ It should be remembered that when Gainsborough heard some one disparaging Sir Joshua’s talent, he spoke up gallantly, and said, ‘For myself, I consider his worst pictures superior to the best of any other painter;’ and words nearly to the same effect, on the same subject, are recorded of Romney. Reynolds himself, being attacked on the score of his portraits fading, laughed, and said good-humouredly, ‘Well, you must confess at all events that I have come off with flying colours.’ On the death of Ramsay, the Court painter, the post was offered to Sir Joshua, but it required the united persuasions of his friends to induce him to accept the office.
Reynolds had a great deal to contend with in these latter days. He had entirely lost the sight of one eye, and was under grave apprehensions for the safety of the other; while the conduct of many of the Royal Academicians towards their noble President was such as to determine him to resign his post. The King (who had just recovered from an attack of insanity) exerted himself to persuade Reynolds to take back his resignation. But it was not until he had received a deputation from the Council, accompanied by apologies from some of the offenders, that Sir Joshua consented to resume the Chair. In December 1790 he delivered his last discourse at the Royal Academy, which he commenced by alluding slightly and delicately to the causes which had nearly prevented his ever occupying that place again, and assuring his hearers that he should always remember with pride, affection, and gratitude the support with which he had almost uniformly been honoured since the commencement of their intercourse. He enjoined, for the last time, the enforcement of those rules which he considered conducive to the wellbeing of the institution.
Every eye was fixed on the speaker, every ear open to his charming, when suddenly a loud crash plunged the whole assembly (with the exception of the President) into alarm and confusion. There was a general rush to the door, but when order was restored, and assurance of safety believed, it was ascertained that a beam, which helped to support the flooring, had given way.
Alas for the omen! The greatest prop to the grandeur of the Royal Academy was soon to fall away in truth.
Sir Joshua remained calm and unmoved during the perturbation, and concluded by these words: ‘I reflect, not without vanity, that these discourses bear testimony to my admiration of a truly divine man, and I desire that the last words I pronounce in this Academy should be the name of Michael Angelo.’
As Reynolds descended from the Chair, Edmund Burke stepped forward, and, taking his hand, addressed him in the words of Milton:—
‘The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear
So charming left his voice, that he a while
Thought him still speaking, and stood fixed to hear.’
‘Such a tribute, from such a man,’ says Leslie, ‘was a fitting close to the life-work of Joshua Reynolds.’
Neither his impaired sight, his deficient hearing, or his increasing weakness, could entirely damp the warmth of his social affections. The last time he wielded his brush was at the request of some schoolboys, who entreated him to paint them a flag for ‘breaking up.’
Reynolds had that love for children and domestic pets which seems inseparable from great and good natures. He would pay the most assiduous court, and make the most gallant advances, to some of the exquisite little models who sat to him, till they became spellbound. And one day, his canary having escaped from its cage, nothing would content the P.R.A. but he must go out into the glaring sunshine, with his weak eyes, and the green shade over them, to spend hours in seeking and whistling for his lost favourite.
The end was approaching. His spirits became depressed, his appetite failed, and on the evening of February 23, 1792, he concluded a blameless life by a calm and peaceful end. The manuscript of Burke’s obituary notice still exists, blotted with the writer’s tears. It was written in the very house where the friends had spent so many happy hours together. Beautiful in its touching eloquence, we regret we have only space for a short extract:—
‘From the beginning Sir Joshua contemplated his dissolution with a composure which nothing but the innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and his entire submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In the full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art, by the learned in science, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him. He had too much merit ever to excite jealousy, too much innocence ever to provoke enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with so much sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow.’ And these words were confirmed by the crowds of every calling, position, and class which followed him to the grave.
The body lay in state at Somerset House. There were ninety-one carriages followed, so that, before the first in the line had reached St. Paul’s, the last was still at the entrance of Somerset House. The Annual Register for that year gives a detailed account of the funeral. The pall-bearers were ten Peers, Reynolds’s personal friends, the greater part of whom had been his sitters. And the procession included three Knights of the Garter, two of St. Patrick, and one of the Thistle; three Dukes and four Lords-Lieutenant of Ireland; the whole body of Academicians, painters, authors, actors,—every name distinguished for literature, art, and science. Sir Joshua left numerous legacies; many of his finest pictures were bequeathed to private friends.
He left the bulk of his fortune, for her life, to his sister, Frances Reynolds, with reversion to his niece, Mary Palmer, afterwards Lady Thomond, together with a large collection of his paintings, which were sold and dispersed at her death.
The number of his paintings seems miraculous when the list is read. He was a large contributor to the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy. At the first of these he sent four; at the last (as far as he was concerned, in 1790) he sent but six, only two years before his death. But in the interim his pictures often numbered fourteen, sixteen, and, on one occasion, seventeen, for his talent was only equalled by his industry, and he was a workman as well as an artist, to which fact all his contemporaries bear witness.
No. 4.
THE NIECE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, MARY, OR THEOPHILA PALMER.
Sitting. White gown. Blue sash. Hair falling on her shoulders.
By Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
WE give a sketch of both sisters, not being quite certain as to the identity of the portrait. They were the daughters of Mrs. Palmer, who was sister of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and wife of John Palmer of Torrington, county Devon. Theophila, their youngest daughter, had been residing some time with her uncle in Leicester Square, but came home for change of air; and when she returned to London in 1779, her elder sister, Mary, accompanied her. Miss Burney tells us that the two sisters ‘added to the charm of the President’s table and his evening parties by their pleasing manners and the beauty of their persons.’
They both served as occasional models. Mary appears to have been the more staid and demure of the two. She had the keenest admiration and appreciation of her uncle’s talent, and never tired of describing his works to her frequent correspondent and cousin, William Johnson, at Calcutta. In 1786 she says: ‘Uncle seems more than ever bewitched by his palette and pencil. He paints from morning till night, and, truth to say, each picture appears better than the last. The Empress of Russia has ordered an historical painting; his choice is still undecided.’
This was the ‘Infant Hercules,’ which made such a noise at the time, and the merits of which were the subject of so much controversy. Romney’s verdict was ‘that, whatever fault might be found with it, no other painter in Europe could have produced that picture.’ Sir Joshua was one of those who did not disdain criticism, even from young lips. He had painted a captivating portrait of Mary’s little niece, Polly Gwatkin, and when Miss Palmer saw it she told the President boldly that the little fingers, which were clasped on the child’s lap, with their very red tips, suggested the idea of a dish of prawns! Sir Joshua, no ways offended, laughed, and set to work immediately, turning the prawns into roseate buds, which he placed in the little chubby hand. Mary was at Torrington when she heard of her uncle’s sudden failure of sight and loss of one eye. She hastened back to his side, to read, to write, to minister to him in every possible way, for he was not allowed to read, or write, or paint for some time. ‘You may believe,’ Mary writes, ‘what the loss of an eye is to him. But his serenity never forsook him. One of his early axioms was not to fuss about trifles,—if the loss of an eye could be considered as such. ‘The ruling passion continues. He amuses himself by mending or cleaning a picture. In the meantime he enjoys company as much as ever, and loves a game at cards.’
Mary Palmer lived with her uncle till his death. He left her a considerable fortune and a large collection of his pictures, which were sold by auction at her death, in 1821. The same year that Sir Joshua died she married Murrough, first Marquis of Thomond, as his second wife. She made a present of one of his historical paintings to George IV. Theophila, or Offy, as her uncle usually called her, was his favourite, although much attached to both sisters. She was only thirteen when she first went to live in Leicester Square. She was very pretty, and full of fun and playful spirits. She frequently sat to the President, especially for his arch and sprightly models,—his ‘Strawberry Girl,’ his ‘Mouse Girl,’ and ‘Reflections on reading Clarissa Harlowe.’ But Miss Offy’s dignity was much hurt on the exhibition of the last-named picture, because it was entered into the Catalogue as ‘A Girl reading:’ ‘You might have put “a young lady,” uncle’! Another time the President was scolded because he made the portrait look too young, when the original was nearly fourteen! But for all these differences, the great man and the little lady were the dearest friends, and we find in one of his long letters that he will not tell her how much he loves her lest she should grow saucy over it; and again he says he has two presents for her and Mary,—a ring, and a bracelet of his hair. She is to have her choice, but she is not to let her sister know of this mark of preference.
Offy was married in her twentieth year, from her mother’s house at Torrington, to Richard Lovell Gwatkin, a man of fortune, and of a good Cornish family. Her uncle writes her a most affectionate letter of congratulation, with a postscript by Edmund Burke, who came in at the moment, wishing her every possible happiness. The wish was fulfilled. There never was a happier wife or mother than little Offy. She came to London and sat for a conjugal picture to Sir Joshua, who also painted her little daughter, as we have said before. Mrs. Gwatkin lived to be ninety years of age, surrounded by her children’s children.
No. 5.
A YOUNG WOMAN.
Dark green gown, open at the throat. Shady hat. Landscape in background.
By Sir Joshua Reynolds.
No. 6.
KATRINE, COUNTESS COWPER.
Red gown. Diamond necklace.
By Poynter.
KATRINE CECILIA COMPTON, eldest daughter of the fourth Marquis of Northampton, by Eliza, second daughter of Admiral the Honourable Sir George Elliot, K.C.B.
She married in 1870 the present and seventh Earl Cowper.
No. 7.
WILLIAM COWPER, THE POET.
Loose gown, trimmed with fur. White cap. Table with books and papers.
BORN 1731, DIED 1800.
By Jackson, after a Chalk Drawing from Life.
THE grandson of Spencer Cowper, Attorney-General, and great-nephew of Lord Chancellor Cowper, the first peer of the name. His father was Dr. John Cowper, chaplain to King George II., who married the daughter of Roger Donne, of Lidham Hall, county Norfolk. William, the eldest of two sons, was born at his father’s rectory of Great Berkhamstead.
Mrs. Cowper died in giving birth to a second son. She was an amiable and pretty woman, and much more deserving of the flattering epitaph (by her niece, Lady Walsingham) than most objects of elegiac praise, in the days when it might well be asked ‘where all the naughty people were buried.’
Even in these times when ‘The Task’ and the Homer lie unopened on the table, few readers of poetry are surely unacquainted with the ‘Address to my Mother’s Picture,’ written half a century after her death. The portrait was a present to William Cowper, from his cousin, Mrs. Bodham, and he writes her an enthusiastic letter of thanks ‘for the most acceptable gift the world could offer;’ sending her at the same time the lines to which we have alluded. ‘I have placed the painting so as to meet my eye the first thing in the morning, and the last at night, and I often get up from my bed to kiss it.’
But we must not anticipate by so many years. When only six, William went to a large school at Markgate Street, where he had to undergo a fierce ordeal. Many a stout-hearted boy, possessing the germs of future heroism, might have quailed before the bully who marked the little sensitive, tender-hearted Willie (ready to burst into tears at the first harsh word) as his victim. He tells us himself that he scarcely ever dared to lift his eyes above the level of his tyrant’s shoe-buckle; and, alluding to those days in later life, he said he could not dwell on the cruelty practised on him, but he hoped God would forgive his tormentor, and that they might meet in heaven.
‘Wretch even then, life’s journey just begun.’
It is easy to see how the memory of those days suggested his ‘Tyrocinium.’ Mr. Cowper, finding that the boy was suffering from inflammation of the eyes, sent him to board with an oculist in London, and afterwards to Westminster School, where William improved in health, and took bodily exercise, cricket and football, which proved beneficial to him in more ways than one, making him popular in the school.
He was diligent in his study of the Classics, and wrote good Latin verses. Warren Hastings was his contemporary and friend, and Cowper would never listen in after days to a word against his old school-fellow.
On leaving Westminster, he became articled clerk to an attorney, in obedience to his father’s wishes, he himself disliking the profession of the law. He confesses that at this period he spent most of his time ‘in giggling and making giggle’ his two favourite cousins, Theodora and Harriet, daughters of Ashley Cowper. He ‘feared some day that worthy gentleman would be picked up for a mushroom, being a diminutive man, nearly hidden under the shadow of a white broad-brimmed hat, lined with yellow.’ His fellow-clerk and ally in these giggling matches was the afterwards famous Lord Thurlow, of whom it was said, ‘No man could possibly be as wise as Lord Thurlow looked.’ At all events he was wise enough at this period to combine legal study with flirtation. Cowper prophesied he would one day sit on the Woolsack, and Thurlow promised to do something handsome for his friend whenever that time should come. He redeemed his pledge by the gift of a few strictures and criticisms on the poet’s translation of Homer.
Cowper removed from the attorney’s office to chambers in the Temple, where he studied literature rather than law, and became a member of the Nonsense Club, which was the resort of authors, journalists, editors, and the like. Here he formed many friendships which lasted through life, became a contributor to several periodicals, kept up his classical reading, translated many amatory and sentimental poems, and wrote odes to Delia of a very tender character,—Delia otherwise Theodora Cowper.
The cousins had fallen in love, but the lady’s father would not hear of the marriage, which was a bitter disappointment. The lady remained faithful to her first love, and Cowper, as we know, never married.
A cousin of William’s, Major Cowper, had the patronage of the Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords; and the future poet, whose finances were very low at the time, one day expressed a hope that the holder of the office might die, in order to make way for him. This uttered wish was afterwards the subject of due remorse to this sensitive spirit: ‘God gave me my heart’s desire, and sent leanness withal into my soul.’ The man died, the office was offered to, and accepted by, Cowper. ‘I was so dazzled,’ he said, ‘by the idea, that I did not reflect on my incapacity for the appointment;’ but as he answered in the affirmative, he felt ‘a dagger strike at his heart.’ He fell a prey to nervous fears and terrors of all kinds, and, even while preparing himself for the duties of his office, began to contemplate with horror the prospect of being examined as to his proficiency at the bar of the House of Lords.
By degrees he became quite mad, and in that state meditated self-destruction. He bought laudanum, he drove to the river-side to drown himself, he pointed a knife at his throat; but his courage always failed him, or, as he thought, some particular interposition saved his life. Twice he suspended himself by the neck long enough to occasion insensibility, but so insecurely as to fall each time, the shock bringing back consciousness. After this last incident he sent for a relative, to whom he confessed everything, and who, comprehending the state of the case, returned the nomination to Major Cowper.
Several of his friends, unacquainted with these sad circumstances, called upon him on the day appointed for his appearance at the House of Lords, but one and all acquiesced in the sad decision that he must be placed under restraint. The asylum chosen was that of Dr. Cotton, a religious and well-educated man, who was of much service to the sufferer by his judicious treatment. William laboured under terrible despondency, fear of eternal punishment, and the deepest feelings of remorse. By the gentle, friendly care of Dr. Cotton, the patient gradually regained his health, both mental and bodily, and took much comfort in reading the Bible,—the very book which, in his fits of madness, he would dash to the ground. One morning, studying the third chapter of Romans, he experienced ‘comfort and strength to believe, feeling the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shining on me, and relying on the full justification by faith in the blood of Jesus. In a moment I believed, and received the Gospel.’
The seeds of religion, which bore fruit in Cowper’s after life, had been in some measure sown by the hand of the good physician Dr. Cotton, and, after eleven months’ sojourn at St. Albans, William Cowper went forth in his right mind.
After much consultation between the brothers, an abode was fixed upon for William Cowper at what one of his biographers designates as ‘dull, fenny Huntingdon,’ which appeared an Elysium to one who had just recovered his senses and his liberty. He had not been there long before an incident occurred which changed the whole tenor of his after life. Leaving church one morning, he began pacing up and down under the shade of the trees, before returning to his solitary lodging, when he was accosted by a young man of prepossessing appearance, who craved pardon for addressing ‘a perfect stranger,’ and asked leave to accompany him in his walk. Such an unconventional proceeding was doubtless calculated to please a man of so imaginative a turn of mind, and Cowper warmly responded. The young man announced himself as William Unwin, a student of Cambridge, the son of the Rev. Mr. Unwin, who lived in the town, and boarded pupils for the Huntingdon school. Young Unwin went on to confess that, for some time past, he had been attracted by Cowper’s appearance, and longed to speak to him, but to-day he could no longer resist doing so. He ended by requesting his new friend to accompany him home, that he might make acquaintance with his parents. No time was lost, the visit was paid; the liking proved reciprocal, and it was not long before William Cowper left his lonely apartments to occupy a room, lately vacated, under the roof of the Rev. Mr. Unwin. Thus began that lifelong friendship, the annals of which are indissolubly connected with the poet’s history. ‘Verily there is One who setteth the solitary in families.’ Writing to his dear cousin and constant correspondent, Lady Hesketh (the sister of Theodora), he described ‘the most comfortable and sociable folk he had ever met,—the son, destined for the Church, most frank and unreserved; the girl pretty, bashful, taciturn; the father a kind of Parson Adams, and the mother.’ Mrs. Unwin was some years younger than her husband, comely in appearance, strongly imbued with evangelical views in religion, well read, particularly in the English poets, with a vein of cheerfulness and humour tempering the strictness of her religious tenets, and an invaluable critic. Cowper describes a two hours’ walk and conversation with her, which did him ‘more good than an audience with a prince could have done. Her society is a real blessing to me.’ The manner of life in the Unwin establishment proved most congenial to Cowper’s tastes, for he both contemned and condemned ‘the frivolous gaieties, the balls, routs, and card-parties of the Huntingdon beau monde.’ ‘After early breakfast,’ he says, ‘we occupy ourselves in reading passages from Scripture, or the works of some favourite preacher; at eleven, Divine service, which is performed twice a day; a solitary ride, walk, or reading; and after dinner a sociable walk in the garden with mother or son, the conversation usually of a religious character.’ Mrs. Unwin was a good walker, and the friends often rambled beyond the home precincts, and did not return till tea-time; at night, reading or singing hymns till supper; family prayers concluded the order of the day. This was the description by William Cowper of a day of perfect cheerfulness. With all our admiration for the man who was thus spiritually minded, it is almost a relief to find him confessing to some slight shade of human weakness in a letter to his cousin, Mrs. Cowper. He had given young Unwin an introduction to ‘the Park,’ and—after a lengthened rhapsody of self-accusation, not without a spice of humour, as of one who is laughing at himself,—he allows that ‘it was not alone friendship for the youth which prompted the introduction, but a desire that Unwin should receive some convincing proof of “my sponsibility,” by visiting one of my most splendid connections, so that, when next he hears me called “that fellow Cowper” (which has happened before now), he may be able to bear witness to my gentlemanhood.’
About this time he seems to have revolved in his mind the idea of taking orders, which he wisely abandoned. He had spent but two peaceful years under his friends’ roof, when the home was broken up by the death of Mr. Unwin, who fell from his horse and fractured his skull, riding home after church. ‘This event necessitates a change of residence,’ Cowper remarks. But the possibility of a separation from Mrs. Unwin never appears to have struck either of them; they merely commenced making inquiries and taking advice as to whither they should flit. The poet’s biographers are at variance respecting this epoch in his life, some asserting, others denying, that the friends ever contemplated marriage. There must have been some rumour to this effect, as, in a postscript to one of his letters he says laconically, ‘I am not married.’ He frequently remarked that the affection Mrs. Unwin bore him was that of a mother for a son; nevertheless, the lady was only his senior by seven years.
To the eye of watchful affection, it was evident that Cowper’s mental recovery would not prove permanent, and such a consideration doubtless weighed in the devoted woman’s resolution to remain at her friend’s side. Her son, a religious and high-principled man, offered no objection; her daughter was married; and so William Cowper and Mary Unwin took up their abode together in the melancholy little town of Olney, in Buckinghamshire. They were attracted to this unpromising locality by one of those hasty friendships to which they were both prone. The Rev. Mr. Newton, at that time esteemed a shining light in Methodist circles—well known by his Cardiphonia and many evangelical works, and still better, perhaps, by his collection of ‘Olney Hymns’—had visited the Unwins at Huntingdon, and had held discussions with them on religious matters, in a strain much appreciated by the whole household. He was now curate at Olney, and invited his new friends to settle near him. This remarkable man had passed a stormy and eventful youth. He had been a sailor in all parts of the world; had endured shipwreck, slavery, imprisonment, and perils of all kinds, by land and by sea. He had become a minister of the Gospel, and was one of those enthusiasts who, after a sudden conversion (generally brought about by a lightning flash of conviction), take delight in reviling their former selves, painting their own portraits in colours so black as to bring out in stronger relief the subsequent brightness. He was a zealot, and had the reputation of ‘preaching people mad.’ Alas! such a man, however conscientious and well-intentioned, was one of the worst influences that could have crossed Cowper’s path. But so it was. Mr. Newton hired a house for the new-comers next door to the Vicarage where he lived,—damp, dark, and dreary; even the easily-contented and far from luxurious poet described it as a ‘well’ and an ‘abyss.’ Then the life prescribed by this spiritual pastor and master,—prayer-meetings at all hours of the day and evening; rigid self-examinations and upbraidings; scarcely any leisure allowed for wholesome exercise or cheerful correspondence.
Mrs. Unwin, usually watchful and judicious, was herself so completely under Newton’s influence, that she did not interfere to arrest the progress of a system which was helping to hurry her poor friend back into his former miserable state. Before the malady returned in its most aggravated form, Cowper used to take violent fancies, and one day suddenly insisted on leaving his own house and removing to the Vicarage,—a most inconvenient resolution, as far as the curate was concerned. John Cowper’s death, about this time, helped to agitate his brother’s mind, and ere long he was again insane.
When the dark hour came, the devoted woman and the benevolent though mistaken friend were unremitting in their care; and it was in allusion to the tenderness with which his gentle-hearted nurse ministered to him on this and subsequent occasions that Cowper wrote:—
‘There is a book
By seraphs writ in beams of heavenly light,
On which the eyes of God not rarely look;
A chronicle of actions just and bright.
Here all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine,
And since thou own’st that praise, I spare thee mine.’
Mr. Newton was soon to leave Olney, which he did under circumstances that appear, at this time of writing, rather comic. He had a great dread of fire, and strictly prohibited every species of bonfire, illumination, or firework in the locality on Gunpowder Plot Day. Such an inroad on a time-honoured institution could not be tolerated. The parish rose en masse, and his reverence narrowly escaped with his life. Disgusted by the ingratitude and rebellion of his flock, the curate removed to London.
Cowper had before this returned to his own house, and gradually his bodily health improved and his mind regained its equilibrium; he now began to resume out-of-doors pursuits, walking and gardening, and the like. He was much addicted to reading out of doors, and said that external objects fixed the subject of his lecture on his memory. He wrote to William Unwin about this time, requesting him to procure a diamond for cutting glass, and expatiating at length on the joys of a glazier’s trade. He hardly knows a business in which a gentleman might more successfully employ himself. ‘Possibly the happy time may come,’ he goes on to say, ‘when I may be seen trudging off to the neighbouring towns, with a shelf of glass hanging at my back. A Chinese of ten times my fortune would avail himself of such an opportunity,—and why not I, who want money as much as any mandarin in China?’ He recommends the notion to his clerical friend, who, by mending the church windows, might increase his income, and his popularity in the parish into the bargain. How acceptable must these jocose passages in his letters have been to those who loved him, after the terrible period of gloomy hallucinations; but a bright vein of humour was generally interwoven with the darkest threads of Cowper’s life. He had always evinced a passion for animals, and had a fancy for pets; and besides the hares (whose lives and deaths, if we may be permitted a Hibernianism, he has rendered immortal), Cowper was the proprietor of a flock of pigeons, which perched every morning on the garden wall, awaiting the moment when their gentle master should appear to give them breakfast. Still writing to Unwin, he says: ‘If your wish should ever be fulfilled, and you obtain the wings of a dove, I shall assuredly find you some fine morning among my flock; but, in that case, pray announce yourself, as I am convinced your crop will require something better than tares to feed upon.’
There is something very refreshing in his outburst of indignation at the manner in which Dr. Johnson handles Milton, ‘plucking the brightest feathers’ (or at least so Cowper thought) ‘from the Muse’s wing, and trampling them under his great foot. I should like to thrash his old jacket till his pension jingled in his pockets.’ He gives a most amusing description of an unwelcome visitor at Olney, in which he carefully draws the line between a ‘travelled man’ and a ‘travelled gentleman.’ He speaks of the intruder’s long and voluble talk, which set their favourite robins twittering through rivalry, neither the birds nor the talker inclining to give in; but, ‘I am thankful to say the robins survived it, and so did we.’
A delightful ray of human sunshine crossed the monotonous path of Cowper’s life about this time, and for a period cheered and relieved its grey and sombre colouring. Looking out of the window one afternoon, he saw Mrs. Jones (the wife of a neighbouring clergyman) entering the opposite shop, in company with a being (no other word could be applicable), whose appearance riveted him to the spot. He summoned Mrs. Unwin to his side, and requested she would ask both ladies to tea. The stranger proved to be Mrs. Jones’s sister, a widow, Lady Austen by name, lately returned from a lengthened sojourn in France, where she appeared, by all accounts, to have become imbued with a large portion of French vivacity, without losing any of those sterling qualities or earnestness of purpose, for which we (at least) give our fair countrywomen credit. The sisters accepted the invitation, and, as they entered the room, Cowper, with his characteristic timidity, made his escape at the other door. But the attraction was too great; he soon stole back to the tea-table, plunged headlong into conversation, and, when the ladies rose to take leave, craved permission to accompany them part of the way home. In fact, he had fallen in (Platonic) love at first sight. Lady Austen was soon in the receipt of poems and letters, addressed to ‘Sister Anna.’ Mrs. Jones having gone to join her husband in London, Lady Austen, finding herself lonely, and surrounded, she said, by burglars, was easily persuaded to settle at Olney, and at first under the same roof as Cowper and Mrs. Unwin. It was a large rambling house. ‘She has taken that part of the building formerly occupied by Dick Coleman, his wife, child, and a thousand rats.’
We confess to sharing the opinion of the author of a charming sketch of Cowper’s life, lately published, when he says, ‘That a woman of fashion, accustomed to French salons, should choose such an abode, with a couple of Puritans for her only society, surely proves that one of the Puritans, at least, possessed some great attraction for her.’
The Vicarage was too large for the requirements of Mr. Scott (Newton’s successor), whose sermons Lady Austen admired, though it was said he scolded rather than preached the Gospel; and so it was settled she should take rooms in his house, and the door of communication between the Scott and Cowper gardens was opened. Cowper writes to Unwin on the subject of the charming widow, and expatiates on the delightful change wrought in their daily life by her advent. ‘Our society,’ he says, ‘is not much increased, but the presence of one individual has made the whole difference. Lady Austen and we pass the day alternately at each other’s château. In the morning I walk with one or other of the ladies; in the evening I wind thread;—so did Hercules, and so, I opine, did Samson! Were either of these heroes living, I should not fear challenging them to a trial of skill.’
Lady Austen became as watchful as his older associate in marking the different phases of Cowper’s moods, and as assiduous in her endeavours to cheer and amuse him. She would sit by his side for hours, and tax her memory for anecdotes of foreign life, and the chequered scenes through which she had passed; and while Mrs. Unwin set him to work on moral satires, on ‘The Progress of Error,’ ‘Table-Talk,’ and, if we may so express it, sermons in verse, his younger companion suggested more lively themes for his Muse. One eventful evening, bent on cheering the drooping spirits of the invalid, Lady Austen related to him the wonderful adventures of John Gilpin. The poet laughed, laughed immoderately, went to bed, woke in the night and laughed again and again; and the next morning at breakfast he produced the immortal poem. How many generations, how many children of all ages have laughed since! how many artists have striven to portray their conception of that famous ride, till it was reserved for the pencil of Caldecott to embody (who can doubt it?) the very ideal of the poet’s fancy! Gilpin became widely known, even while the author continued unknown. Henderson, the popular actor, recited the ballad on the stage, and far and near it was read and re-read with delight. Cowper now frequently turned to Lady Austen for subjects, and followed her injunctions to the letter when she playfully bade him ‘sing the sofa,’ on which she sat. This poem swelled into ‘The Task’ and ‘The Task’ it was that made Cowper famous. There is no doubt that the first stone of his future fame was laid by the fair hand of that friend from whom he was so soon to be separated. ‘The Task,’ while inculcating piety and morality (the absence of which ingredients would have been impossible in any of Cowper’s lengthened writings), abounded in exquisite descriptions of life at home and abroad, paintings of Nature, of the quiet, homely, lovely, loveable nature of his own native land, some passages of which can scarcely be surpassed for calm beauty and musical rhythm. Let those readers unacquainted with ‘The Task’ turn to the lines where the poet stands, with the friend ‘whose arm has been close locked in his for twenty years,’ on the eminence, when their ‘pace had slackened to a pause,’ and judge for themselves of Cowper’s talents as a landscape painter. His interiors are as perfect in their way. How irresistible is the invitation to
‘Stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, draw the sofa round’!
We feel, as we read, a glow of comfort and snugness, and would gladly make a fourth beside the table, on which stand the cups that cheer without inebriating.
The success of ‘The Task’ was immediate and complete; the author suddenly found himself famous and popular. The postmaster at the little office at Olney had double work: acquaintances who had neglected him for years now boasted of their intimacy with the lion of the day; visitors arrived at Olney to stare at him; anonymous letters and presents poured in on all sides. An amusing incident occurred one day, when the clerk of All Saints’ Church, Northampton, was ushered into Cowper’s presence. He had come, he said, with a petition to the new poet: Would he consent to contribute the mortuary verses, annually appended to the bills of mortality, in the capital of England’s most midland county?
Cowper advised the messenger to apply to Mr. Cox, a statuary in the town, who wrote verses. ‘Alas!’ replied the clerk, ‘I have already got help from him; but he is a gentleman of so much reading that our townspeople cannot understand him.’ The very doubtful compliment thus implied amused our poet into compliance, and he became a contributor to the lugubrious periodical.
It was characteristic of William Cowper that, a few years later, he forbade Lady Hesketh to apply in his behalf for the office of Poet-Laureate to the Court, yet he willingly accepted the office thus proposed to him by the clerk of Northampton!
We are now approaching one of the many sad episodes in Cowper’s sad life; we allude to his estrangement from Lady Austen,—she who had been for some time a vision of delight to his eye, and heart. Not long before he had written some most unprophetic lines to his ‘dear Anna.’ We do not quote them from any admiration for the verses, but because they bear painfully on the subject:—
‘Mysterious are His ways, whose power
Brings forth that unexpected hour,
When minds that never met before
Shall meet, unite, and part no more.’
Further on, after describing the suddenness of their friendship, he says:—
‘And placed it in our power to prove,
By long fidelity and love,
That Solomon has wisely spoken,
A threefold cord cannot be broken!’
It appears that even the wisdom of Solomon is sometimes at fault, for it was but a few weeks after that the threefold cord was rudely snapped asunder. ‘I enclose,’ writes Cowper to Mr. Unwin, ‘a letter from Lady Austen, which pray return. We are reconciled. She seized the first opportunity to embrace your mother, with tears of the tenderest affection, and I, of course, am satisfied.’
Lady Austen went away for a time; and later on, Cowper again writes to Unwin, under the seal of profound secrecy: ‘When persons for whom I have felt a friendship disappoint and mortify me, by their conduct, or act unjustly by me, although I no longer esteem them, I feel that tenderness for their character that I would conceal the blemish if I could.’ Then, naming the lady to whom he alluded, he goes on: ‘Nothing could be more promising, however sudden in its commencement, than our friendship. She treated us with as much unreserve as if we had been brought up together. At her departure she proposed a correspondence with me, as writing does not agree with your mother.’
He then proceeds to tell how, after a short time, he perceived, by the tenor of Lady Austen’s letters that he had unintentionally offended her, and, having apologised, the wound seemed healed; but finding, on repeated occasions, that she expressed ‘a romantic idea of our merits, and built such expectations of felicity on our friendship, as we were sure that nothing human could possibly answer, I wrote to remind her that we were mortal, and to recommend her not to think too highly of us, intimating that, when we embellish a creature with colours taken from our own fancy, and extol it above its merits, we make it an idol,’ etc.
The reader, even if he be no poet, can supply the rest of this homily; and if he be of our way of thinking, he will smile at the frequent use of the plural pronoun. Neither will he be surprised to hear that the letter in question ‘gave mortal offence,’ even though the writer had read it aloud, before posting it, ‘to Mrs. Unwin, who had honoured it with her warmest approbation.’ We still quote the correspondence with William Unwin. ‘If you go to Bristol, you may possibly fall in with a lady who was here very lately. If you should meet, remember that we found the connection on some accounts an inconvenient one, and we do not wish to renew it; so pray conduct yourself accordingly. A character with which we spend all our time should be made on purpose for us, and in this case the dissimilitude was felt continually, and consequently made our intercourse unpleasant.’ Now the strain of this letter helps us to understand that the one written not long before to Lady Austen was no sooner read than she flung it indignantly into the fire.
But so it was, and, for our part, we are loath to see the bright vision, which had cast a halo over dull little Olney, vanish from the horizon. Cowper’s biographers are all at issue as to the cause of this estrangement, ‘it is so difficult to solve the mystery.’ To us the only difficulty appears in the choice of solutions. Hayley, who handles the matter with delicacy and discretion, says, ‘Those acquainted with the poet’s innocence and sportive piety would agree that the verses inscribed to Anna might assuredly have been inspired by a real sister.’ To him they appeared ‘the effusions of a gay and tender gallantry, quite distinct from any amorous attachment.’ At the same time, he sees the possibility of a lady, only called by that endearing name, mistaking all the attentions lavished upon her, as ‘a mere prelude to a closer alliance.’
The good-hearted, high-flown Hayley concludes by expressing his sympathy with Cowper, as being ‘perplexed by an abundance of affection in a female associate‘—surely he should have said a couple!
The Rev. Mr. Scott, for some time Lady Austen’s landlord at Olney, is reported to have said: ‘Who can wonder that two women, who were continually in the society of one man, should quarrel, sooner or later?’
Southey (an evident partisan of Mrs. Unwin’s), while acquitting Lady Austen of any ‘matrimonial designs,’ urges that it would be impossible for a woman of threescore to feel any jealousy in the matter of Cowper’s affections. Now it strikes us that the woman of threescore could herself have had no ‘matrimonial intentions,’ or she would have carried them out long before. But is it likely that Cowper’s ‘Mary’ would have tolerated a wife under the same roof, or tamely given the pas to an ‘Anna’? Cowper indeed called Mrs. Unwin his mother, and Lady Austen his sister; but the former lady may have distrusted the ambiguity of the latter elective relationship, knowing how frequently the appellation of brother and sister has been used as a refuge from the impending danger, of a nearer tie.
Southey goes on to observe, in contradistinction, we suppose, to Mr. Scott’s remark, that two women were shortly afterwards living constantly in the society of the identical man, without one shade of jealousy. Now Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh differed in all respects—in age, in character, in discipline of mind. The former had been Cowper’s early friend, and the confidante of his love for her sister Theodora; they had corresponded with each other for years; and in one of his letters he says: ‘It seems wonderful, that, loving you as much as I do, I should never have fallen in love with you. I am so glad I never did, for it would have been most inconvenient,’ etc.
Lady Hesketh now returned from a lengthened residence on the Continent, her husband was dead, and the intercourse of old days was renewed, in all its happy freedom, between the cousins. A few more words respecting poor Lady Austen, and then her name shall be heard no more. Cowper writes to Lady Hesketh a long letter on the subject, in which he describes the rise, decline, and fall of the friendship, and goes on in this strain: ‘At first I used to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at eleven. Custom soon became law. When I began “The Task,” I felt the inconvenience of this daily attendance; long usage had made that which was at first optional, a point of good manners. I was compelled to neglect “The Task,” for the Muse that had inspired it.’
Hayley speaks in most flattering terms of Lady Austen, in his Life of Cowper, and wrote one of the long-winded epitaphs of the day on her death, which took place before he had completed the poet’s biography, in the compilation of which she had given him much assistance. After her estrangement from the Olney household, Lady Austen married a Frenchman, one Monsieur de Tardif, who wrote verses to her in his own language; she accompanied her husband to Paris in 1802, where she died.
As regards Cowper, one thing is certain: he did not subscribe to the common error, that ‘two is company, and three none,’ but rather to the German proverb, ‘Alle gute ding, sind drey;’ for he now summons Lady Hesketh to his side. He entreats her to come and reside under his roof, painting, in the most glowing colours, the happiness that her society will afford them. He addresses her in the most tender, the most affectionate terms—‘Dearly beloved cousin,’ ‘Dearest, dearest,’—and often in the middle of his epistles he breaks forth again into similar endearing epithets. Southey assures us that Mrs. Unwin never felt a shade of jealousy for Lady Hesketh; but no one tells us if such letters as these were read aloud to Mary, or ‘honoured by her warmest approbation. Among the anonymous presents which Cowper was now in the habit of receiving, was one more acceptable than all others, and that not only because it enclosed a cheque for fifty pounds, with a promise that the donation should be annual, as he writes to Lady Hesketh (whom he appoints his ‘Thanks Receiver-General,’ ‘seeing it is so painful to have no one to thank’), but because the letter was accompanied by ‘the most elegant gift, and the most elegant compliment, that ever poet was honoured with,’—a beautiful tortoise-shell snuff-box, with a miniature on the lid, representing a landscape, with the three hares frolicking in the foreground; above and below two inscriptions, ‘Bess, Puss, Tiny,’ and ‘The Peasant’s Nest.’ Southey had no doubt (neither would it appear had Cowper himself, though he thinks it dishonourable to pry into the incognito) that ‘Anonymous’ and Theodora were synonymous. He was now hard at work translating Homer, and he longed to read what he had done to Lady Hesketh, as well as to Mrs. Unwin. ‘The latter,’ he says, ‘has hitherto been my touchstone, and I have never printed a line without reference to her. With one of you at each elbow, I shall be the happiest of poets.’
To the same: ‘I am impatient to tell you how impatient I am to see you. But you must not come till the fine weather, when the greenhouse, the only pleasant room in the house, will be ready to receive us, for when the plants go out, we go in. There you shall sit, my dear, with a bed of mignionette by your side, and a hedge of roses, honeysuckle, and jasmine, and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle every day. Come, come then, my beloved cousin, for I am resolved, whatever king may reign, you shall be vicar of Olney.’ He hopes their friendship will be perpetuated for ever; ‘For I should not love you half so well if I did not believe you would be my friend to all eternity. There is not room for friendship to unfold itself in full bloom, in such a nook of life as this; therefore I am, and must, and always will be yours for ever.—W. Cowper.’
In another letter he prepares her for the aspect of his peculiar abode: ‘The entrance hall: opposite you, stands a cupboard, once a dove-cot, and a paralytic table, both the work of the same author. Then you come to the parlour door, which we will open, and I will present you to Mrs. Unwin; and we shall be as happy as the day is long.’
Lady Hesketh preferred separate lodgings, and, following in the footsteps of Lady Austen, became a tenant of the Vicarage, and inhabited the rooms so lately vacated by her predecessor. ‘All is settled, dear cousin, and now I only wish for June; and June, believe me, was never so much wished for, since it was first made. To meet again, after so long a separation, will be like a resurrection; but there is no one in the other world whose reappearance would cause me so much pleasure.’ He prepares her for the possible recurrence of his fits of dejection, but is sure he will be cheerful when she comes. In a letter to Unwin, speaking of the long-looked-for arrival, he says: ‘I have always loved the sound of church bells; but none ever seemed to me so musical, as those which rang my sweet cousin into her new habitation.’ Lady Hesketh, writing a description of Mrs. Unwin, says she ‘is a very remarkable woman. She is far from being always grave; on the contrary, she laughs de bon cœur on the smallest provocation. When she speaks on grave subjects, it is in a Puritanical tone, and she makes use of Puritanical expressions; but otherwise she has a fund of gaiety; indeed, but for that, she could not have gone through all she has done. I do not like to say she idolises William, for she would disapprove of the word; but she certainly has no will but his. It is wonderful to think how she has supported the constant attendance and responsibility for so many years.’ She goes on to describe the calm, quiet, dignified old lady, sitting knitting stockings for her poet, beside his chair, with ‘the finest needles imaginable.’
Cowper used to work in a little summer-house (which is still standing, or was a few years since) of his own construction, where there were two chairs indeed, but Lady Hesketh did not often intrude. He says of himself about this time, that he was happier than he had been for years. But there are some excellent people in the world, who consider peace unwholesome, and like to throw stones into their neighbours’ lakes, as schoolboys do, for the pleasure of ruffling the surface. Cowper writes to William Unwin: ‘Your mother has received a letter from Mr. Newton, which she has not answered, and is not likely to answer. It gave us both much concern; but it vexed her more than me, because I am so much occupied with my work that I have less leisure to browse on the wormwood. It contains an implied accusation, that she and I have deviated into forbidden paths, and lead a life unbecoming the Gospel; that many of our friends in London are grieved; that many of our poor neighbours are shocked; in short, I converse with people of the world, and take pleasure therein. Mr. Newton reminds us that there is still intercourse between Olney and London, implying that he hears of our doings. We do not doubt it; there never was a lie hatched in Olney that waited long for a bearer. We do not wonder at the lies; we only wonder he believes them. That your mother should be suspected (and by Mr. Newton, of all people) of irregularities is indeed wonderful.’
The extent of their crimes, the head and front of their offending, were drives with Lady Hesketh in her carriage, and visits to the Throckmortons. We suspect that was an unpardonable offence (on account of their being Roman Catholics) in Mr. Newton’s eyes.
‘Sometimes, not often, we go as far as Gayhurst, or to the turnpike and back; we have been known to reach as far as the cabinetmaker’s at Newport!’ And, O crowning horror! Cowper confesses to having once or twice taken a Sunday walk in the fields with his cousin, for Mrs. Unwin had never been led so far into temptation. Speaking of Lady Hesketh, who came in for her share of censure, he says: ‘Her only crime in Olney has been to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and nurse the sick.’ The letters to Mr. Newton were in the same strain, but modified in their expressions; for it was evident Cowper feared his spiritual adviser, and, like some of our Roman Catholic friends, subscribed to the infallibility of his Pope, even while harbouring some secret misgivings on the subject. He ventures to observe: ‘As to the opinion of our poorer neighbours, uneducated people are seldom well employed when judging one another, but when they undertake to scan the motives, and estimate the behaviour, of those whom Providence has placed a little above them, they are utterly out of their depth.’
Gentle-hearted, generous-hearted Cowper; he not only forgave, but continued his friendship and intercourse with his severe censor. Mr. and Mrs. Newton were his guests after he had left Olney, and was settled in his new house; and though the correspondence between the two men slackened in some measure, and lost some of its unreserved character, it was not discontinued. Neither did the poet refer to the difference which had arisen, unless we accept such a passage as this, as an allusion to Mr. Newton’s censoriousness. Speaking of the narrow escape which Mrs. Unwin had run of being burned to death, he says: ‘Had I been bereft of her, I should have had nothing left to lean on, for all my other spiritual props have long since broken down under me.’ It did indeed seem strange and cruel, that the only hand found to throw a stone at the marble shrine of Cowper, and his Mary, should be that of his own familiar friend.
When Lady Hesketh came to investigate the resources of Olney, she decided in her own mind that it was a most unfit place for her cousin to inhabit,—cold, damp, and dreary; and she was not long in arranging that her two friends should change their abode for a pretty little house called Weston, belonging to Sir John Throckmorton, and standing in a picturesque neighbourhood on the skirts of his park. Lady Hesketh took all the trouble and expense of the removal on herself; furnished and embellished the little house; and on the day she left Olney for London, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin drove over to settle at Weston. But they had not been there above a fortnight, before a sad blow fell upon them both. News came that William Unwin was no more,—‘the only son of his mother, and she was a widow;’ the dearly loved friend and constant correspondent of Cowper. William Unwin was travelling with a friend, whom he nursed to recovery through a dangerous attack of typhus; but, catching the disease himself, he died in the hotel at Winchester. The mother bore her irreparable loss, ‘with her accustomed submission to the Divine will.’ Cowper dared not give way to emotion, but the shock was none the less severe. His letters began to show signs of returning illness and dejection; he marks down for his intimate friends all the variations of the mental barometer. Alas! the storm signal was already hoisted, and the tempest was at hand. He complained of sleeplessness: ‘It is impossible, dear cousin,’ he writes, after explaining how heavily the task of translation (he was busy on Homer) weighed on his mind, ‘for a man who cannot sleep, to fight Homer’s battles.’ Religious despondency once more took possession of his distracted mind. Speaking of a visit to his old home at Olney, he says: ‘Dreary, dark, cold, empty—it seemed a fit emblem of a God-forgotten, God-forsaken creature.’ Insanity returned in all its distressing symptoms; he again attempted self-destruction. Poor Mrs. Unwin came into the room one day, just in time to cut him down. He would scarcely let her out of his sight for a moment, and would allow no other person to enter his presence.
It is not our intention to dwell longer than necessary on these dark passages in the sufferer’s life; suffice it to say, that, as on a former occasion, the cure was instantaneous; and, after an interval of several months, he once more took up the thread of his work and correspondence. He tells Lady Hesketh he is mending in health and spirits, speaks enthusiastically of the Throckmortons’ kindness, and says that he has promised them she will soon be at Weston. ‘Come then; thou art always welcome; all that is here is thine, together with the hearts of those who dwell here.’ Alluding to her father’s declining health, he ‘is happy not to have grown old before his time. Trouble and anguish do that for some, which longevity alone does for others. A few months ago I was older than he is now; and though I have lately recovered, as Falstaff says, “some snatch of my youth,” I have but little confidence, and expect, when I least expect it, to wither again.’ In the midst of some melancholy reflections he breaks out with: ‘Oh how I wish you could see the gambols of my kitten! They are indescribable; but time, that spoils all, will, I fear, sooner or later, make a cat of her.’ Then he relates, for his cousin’s amusement, how a lady in Hampshire had invited him to her house, bribing him with the promise of erecting a temple in her grounds ‘to the best man in the world.’ Not only that, but, would she believe it, a Welsh attorney has sent him his verses to revise and criticise! a lady had stolen his poem of
‘A rose had been washed, just washed by a shower,
Which Mary (Mrs. Unwin) to Anna (Lady Austen) conveyed.’
‘You must excuse it, if you find me a little vain, for the poet whose works are stolen, and who can charm an attorney, and a Welsh one into the bargain, must be an Orpheus, if not something greater.’ He was at work again on Homer, and, when urged not to overtax his mind in so doing, says he considers employment essential to his wellbeing. But writing was irksome to him, and he found innumerable volunteers for the office of secretary,—Lady Hesketh, Mrs. Throckmorton, young Mr. Rose—a new but true friend,—and his favourite kinsman John, or Johnny, Johnson, of Norfolk.
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin had a succession of guests at The Hermitage, as he sometimes called Weston; among others, Mr. Rose, an agreeable young man, a great admirer of the poet’s, who writes his sister an account of their life, and speaks of Lady Hesketh, ‘A pleasant and agreeable woman, polite without ceremony;’ of Mrs. Unwin, ‘A kind angel;’ of their amusing breakfasts, ‘which take an hour or more, to satisfy the sentiment, not the appetite, for we talk, O heavens! how we talk!’
Cowper was much attached to Rose. Speaking of his departure: ‘When a friend leaves me, I always feel at my heart a possibility that perhaps we have met for the last time, and that before the return of summer, robins may be whistling over the grave of one of us.’
Our poet was very fond of mere rhyming, and did not despise doggerel, for we can call the Lines to his ‘dearest Coz,’ after the manner of Shenstone, by no other name,—being an inventory of all his goods and chattels, including the cap, so thoroughly identified with his image in our minds. It was the fashion of the day, more especially for literary men, to lay aside the heavy periwig, and don this most unbecoming but, we imagine, more comfortable head-gear.
‘The cap which so stately appears,
With ribbon-bound tassel, on high,’
was the gift of his Harriet, and so were the bookshelves, the chairs, tables,—all enumerated in verse—‘endearing his abode,’ by recalling the memory of her, from whom he daily expects a visit, only she is in attendance on
‘The oldest and dearest of friends,
Whose dial-plate points to eleven,...
And who waits but a passage to heaven.’
And the hour struck very shortly after, for Lady Hesketh’s father, Ashley Cowper.
In the sylvan glades of Yardley Chase, rich in fine old timber, stood an ancient oak, the frequent goal of the poet’s rambles, to which he wrote an address. The tree still bears his name, and ‘Cowper’s Oak’ is the meeting-place of two packs of hounds. Many a bright morning since our poet’s time have the woods of old Yardley echoed to the sound of the huntsman’s horn and the baying of the deep-mouthed ‘beauties.’
One of his letters contains a most graphic description of how he and Mrs. Unwin, returning from a ramble, fell in with the hounds, and, climbing the broad stump of an elm in order to have a better view of the proceedings, were actually in ‘at the death.’ It is delightful to think of the poet and his Mary in such unexpected circumstances, for they seem both to have been much excited. ‘And thus, dear cousin,’ as Virgil says, ‘what none of the gods would have ventured to promise me, time, of its own accord, has presented me with.’
A letter to his friend Mr. Hill proves how much pleasure a visit from the Dowager Lady Spencer had afforded him. This remarkable woman, the daughter of Stephen Poyntz, a distinguished diplomate, was the widow of the first Earl Spencer, and mother of the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire. She had made a long détour to call on the poet, whose works she much admired. And he says: ‘She is one of the first women in the world; I mean in point of character and accomplishments. If my translation prove successful, I may perhaps receive some honours hereafter, but none I shall esteem more highly than her approbation. She is indeed worthy to whom I should dedicate, and may my Odyssey prove as worthy of her.’
At length the happy hour arrived: Homer was translated and ready for the press. The Iliad was dedicated to his young relative, Earl Cowper, and the Odyssey to the Dowager Countess Spencer.
He expressed himself well satisfied with his publisher, Johnson. ‘I verily believe that, though a bookseller, he has the soul of a gentleman! Such strange combinations sometimes happen.’ We give an extract from a letter which he wrote on the conclusion of his Homeric labours to his amanuensis, Johnny Johnson: ‘Dearest Johnny: now I can give you rest and joy,—joy of your resting from all your labours, in my service. But I can foretell that, if you go on serving your friends at this rate, your life will indeed be one of labour. Yet persevere; your rest will be all the sweeter hereafter; in the meantime I wish you (whenever you need him) just such a friend as you have been to me.’
He was very much attached to Johnny, and it was in allusion to his young kinsman that he said: ‘I agree with Lavater, “Looks are as legible as books, take less time to peruse, and are less likely to deceive.”’ Johnny did the poet a good turn, for it was he who suggested to his aunt, Mrs. Bodham, what a welcome present it would be if she sent Cowper his mother’s picture,—a subject to which we have already alluded.
When Homer was concluded, Mrs. Unwin was most anxious that he should undertake some new work, which would occupy his thoughts for some considerable time. She dreaded the effect of idleness, or of the mere desultory composition of occasional poems. And therefore she rejoices that he has been prevailed upon to edit a magnificent edition of Milton, to translate all his Latin and Italian poems, to select the best notes of former commentators, and to add annotations of his own. It was a wholesome task, though occasionally, under the pressure of nervous dejection, Cowper cavilled at what he called the ‘Miltonic trap.’ Mrs. Unwin, who had lately become enfeebled, had had a bad fall, but fortunately escaped with some bruises, when one day she was seized with giddiness, and would have again fallen to the ground, had not Cowper saved her. There could be little doubt the attack was of a paralytic nature, though her companion would not allow himself to utter the fearful word. In this hour of utmost need an invaluable friend was raised up in the person of William Hayley, whom Southey designates as one of the most generous of men. We will let him speak for himself, by giving an extract of his first letter to Cowper, enclosing some complimentary lines. ‘Although I resisted the idea of professing my friendship and admiration, from a fear of intrusion, I cannot resist that of disclaiming an idea which I have heard has been imputed to me, of considering myself your antagonist. Allow me to say, I was solicited to write a Life of Milton before I had the least idea that you and Mr. Fuseli were engaged on a similar project.’ He concludes a most amiable letter to the man ‘whose poems have so often delighted him,’ by saying, ‘If, in the course of your work, I have any opportunity of serving and obliging you, I shall seize it with that friendly spirit which has impelled me, both in prose and rhyme, to assure you that I am your most cordial admirer.’ And thus, out of what might have proved a misunderstanding, began that intercourse which lasted Cowper’s life, and soothed his latter days.
Speaking of Hayley’s visit to Weston, he says: ‘Everybody here has fallen in love with him—and everybody must. We have formed a friendship which will, I hope, last for life, and prove an edifying example to all future poets.’ Hayley, on his part, writing to his friend Romney, the painter, describes at length the welcome he had received at Weston, his delight in Cowper’s society; and then as to the grand article of females,—‘for what is a scene without a woman in it? Here is a Muse of seventy, whom I perfectly adore; the woman who, for so many years, has devoted her time and fortune to the service of this tender and sublime genius. Not many days after this letter was written, the two authors were returning from a morning ramble, when the news met them that Mrs. Unwin had had a second paralytic stroke. Cowper rushed forward into the house, and returned in such a state of agitation as made Hayley tremble for his reason; ‘but, by the blessing of God, I was able to quiet him in a great measure, and from that moment he rested on my friendship, and regards me as providentially sent to support him in a season of deepest affliction.’
Cowper will not accept his cousin’s proposal to come to Weston; for he wishes his dear Harriet’s visits thither to be made for pleasure. Mrs. Unwin’s health improved. ‘It is a blessing to us both, that, poor feeble thing as she is, she has an invincible courage. She always tells me she is better, and probably will die saying so; and then it will be true, for then she will be best of all.’ Hayley, before, and since leaving Weston, had urged Cowper to pay him a visit at what his friends called his ‘little paradise’ at Eartham, on the south coast, as soon as Mrs. Unwin’s state would allow her to travel. It must have seemed a tremendous undertaking for those who had not strayed further than a thirteen miles’ drive for upwards of thirteen years! But Cowper believed the change of air might benefit his invalid; and that determined him.
In the interim he writes to his friend, Mr. Bull: ‘How do you think I have been occupied the last few days? In sitting, not on cockatrice’s eggs, but for my picture. Cousin Johnny has an aunt who is seized with a desire to have my portrait, and so the said Johnny has brought down an artist.’
To Hayley he writes:—
‘Abbot is painting me so true,
That, trust me, you would stare,
And hardly know, at the first view,
If I were here, or there!’
It was much to be regretted that, with no lack of kind and judicious friends—and Hayley in particular, with his good sense and true affection,—Cowper should have fallen about this time under the baneful influence of a fanatic, one Teedon, a schoolmaster, who had long been a pensioner on his and Mrs. Unwin’s bounty, at Olney. Cowper constantly spoke of him in his letters to William Unwin and others as foolish Mr. Teedon’s ridiculous vanity and strange delusions, who prided himself on the immediate answers to any prayer he might consider it advisable to put up, as also on wonderful spiritual and audible communications. This empty-headed man became an object of reverence rather than contempt in the eyes of Cowper, and of poor Mrs. Unwin herself, in her debilitated state of health. Cowper began to believe in Teedon, and to bend beneath his influence. Had Mr. Newton not strained the spiritual curb too tightly, he would, in all probability, have retained his hold over the minds of his two friends, and not exposed them to the subjugation of one uneducated as Samuel Teedon. But enough of this contemptible man. The friends now began to prepare for the great enterprise, and we are not surprised to hear Cowper say, ‘A thousand lions, monsters, and giants, are in the way; but I suppose they will vanish if I have the courage to face them. Mrs. Unwin, whose weakness might justify such fears, has none.’ A coach, with four steeds, is ordered from London to convey them on their desperate way; the journey is to be a species of royal progress. ‘General Cowper, who lives at Ham—is Ham near Kingston?—is to meet me on the road, ditto my friend Carwardine and others. When other men leave home, they make no disturbance; when I travel, houses are turned upside down, people turned out of their beds at unearthly hours, and every imaginable trouble given. All the counties through which I pass appear to be in an uproar. What a change for a man who has seen no bustle, and made none for twenty years together!’ He is scrupulous respecting the numbers that will accompany him,—‘for Johnny of Norfolk, who is with us, would be broken-hearted if left behind.’ It would be the same with his dog Beau, who paid a wonderful tribute to Abbot’s portrait of his master, by going up to it, and wagging his tail furiously; while Sam, the gardener’s boy, made a low bow to the same effigy.
The travellers reached Eartham at last, Hayley’s home, about six miles from Chichester, and five from Arundel. ‘Here,’ writes Cowper on his arrival, ‘we are as happy as it is possible for terrestrial good to make us.’ He looked from the library window on a fine landscape, bounded by the sea, a deep-wooded valley, and hills which we should call mountains in Buckinghamshire. Hayley and Cowper were both very busy with their several works in the morning, and Johnny, as usual, was his cousin’s transcriber. The kind host, thinking to do honour to his guest, invited the ex-Chancellor Thurlow to meet his old acquaintance, but his Lordship would not come. There were, however, pleasant visitors at Eartham, with whom Cowper fraternised,—Charlotte Smith the novelist, and Romney the admirable painter. ‘Hayley has given me a picture of himself by this charming artist, who is making an excellent portrait of me in pastel.’
‘Mrs. Unwin,’ he says, ‘has benefited much by the change, and has many young friends, who all volunteer to drag her chair round the pretty grounds.’ In spite of all these pleasant surroundings, the two friends became home-sick, and returned to Weston, where they found (after the manner of less gifted mortals) that chaos had reigned in their absence. Cowper resumed his Miltonic labours, and began preparing Homer for a new edition. ‘I play at push-pin with Homer every morning before breakfast, furbishing and polishing, as Paris did his armour.’ Speaking of his assurance in having undertaken works of such importance, he quotes Ranger’s observation in the Suspicious Husband: ‘There is a degree of assurance in your modest men, which we impudent fellows never arrive at.’
Poor Cowper! He was again gradually sinking back into despondency, though he combated the advances of the enemy as far as in him lay. ‘I am cheerful on paper sometimes when I am actually the most dejected of creatures. I keep melancholy out of my letters as much as I can, that I may, if possible, by assuming a less gloomy air, deceive myself, and improve fiction into reality.’ He is to sit for his portrait once more to Lawrence, and he only wishes his face were moveable, to take off and on at pleasure, so that he might pack it in a box, and send it to the artist. On Hayley’s second visit to Weston, he found Cowper tolerably well in appearance. Young Mr. Rose was there, the bearer of an invitation from Lord Spencer, who wished Cowper to meet Gibbon. ‘We did all we could to make him accept, urging the benefit he would derive from such genial society, and the delight he would experience from revelling in the treasures of the magnificent library. But our arguments were all in vain; Cowper was unequal to the exertion.’ So Rose and Hayley were his ambassadors to Althorp, laden with his excuses. It is our intention to dwell as briefly as is consistent with the narrative on the sad scenes now enacting at Weston. A fearful relapse had befallen Cowper; Mrs. Unwin’s state bordered on imbecility; and Lady Hesketh, who had lately taken up her abode with her two afflicted friends, seemed powerless to cheer them, and Hayley, whom she summoned to their aid, was shocked to find that Cowper scarcely recognised him, and manifested no pleasure in his society. It was with the greatest difficulty that he could now be induced to taste food, and this system of course increased his malady, by reducing his strength. One morning a letter arrived from Lord Spencer, announcing that the long-looked-for pension had at length been granted,—a circumstance which was a great relief to his friends, but, alas! brought no satisfaction to the sufferer’s bewildered mind. Change of air and scene were recommended. Lady Hesketh, whose own health was greatly impaired, went to London, and Cowper and Mrs. Unwin were conveyed into Norfolk under the kind charge of ‘Johnny’ Johnson. They went first to a village called Tuddenham, and afterwards to Mundsley, on the coast. Johnson accompanied Cowper in all his rambles, and one day, calling on Mrs. Bodham, their cousin, to whom we have already alluded, Cowper saw the portrait of himself painted by Abbot; he looked at it for some time, and then, wringing his hands, uttered a vehement wish that he were now as happy as when he sat for that picture.
He had always been very fond of coast scenery; and in one of his early letters to William Unwin he speaks of his astonishment at the number of people who can look on the sea without emotion, or, indeed, reflection of any kind. ‘In all its various forms, it is an object of all others most calculated to affect us with lasting impressions of that awful Power which created and controls it. Before I gave my mind to religion, the waves used to preach to me, and I always listened. One of Shakespeare’s characters, Lorenzo, says: “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” The sight and the sound of the ocean, produces the same effect on me that harmony did on Jessica.’ He began to write again to Lady Hesketh, but his letters were most gloomy, and must have been painful in the extreme for the recipient.
In the first he thus expresses himself: ‘The most forlorn of beings, I tread the shore, under the burthen of infinite despair, which I once trod all cheerfulness and joy.’ He fancies the vessels he sees in the offing were coming to seize him; he shrinks from the precipice of the cliff on which he walks, though, perhaps, it would be better for him to be dashed to pieces. A solitary pillar of rock seems an emblem of himself: ‘Torn from my natural connections, I stand alone, in expectation of the storm that shall displace me;’ and so on in the same terrible strain. He begins to suspect his faithful friend Johnson (whom he no longer calls ‘Johnny’) of wishing to control him, and writes to Lady Hesketh, as if compelled to do so by stealth: ‘Dear Weston! I shall never see Weston again, or you either. I have been tossed like a ball to a far country, from which there is no rebound for me.’ Johnson now moved his patients to a new residence, Dunham Lodge, in the neighbourhood of Swaffham, and never slackened in his attendance on his kinsman,—reading aloud to him for hours a series of works of fiction, on which Cowper never made any comment, though they appeared to rivet his attention. He tells Lady Hesketh, notwithstanding, that he loses every other sentence, from the inevitable wanderings of his mind. ‘My thoughts are like loose and dry sand, which slips the sooner away the closer it is grasped.’ Cowper could not bear now to be left alone, and if he were so for a short time, he would watch on the hall door steps for the barking of dogs at a distance, to announce his kinsman’s return. Mrs. Powley, Mrs. Unwin’s daughter, came with her husband to visit her mother, and was much touched by the affection which Cowper still manifested for his Mary, even in moments of the deepest dejection. By degrees he was induced to listen composedly, both to the reading of the Bible, and also to family prayers, which at first his companions feared might excite instead of soothing him. Johnson laid a kind trap in order to coax the invalid into a renewal of his literary occupations. One day he designedly mentioned in Cowper’s hearing, that, in the new edition of Pope’s Homer, by Wakefield, there were some passages in which the two translations were compared. The next morning he placed all the volumes of the work in a large unfrequented room, through which Cowper always passed on his way from his morning visit to Mrs. Unwin; and the next day Johnson found, to his great satisfaction, that his kinsman had examined the books, and made some corrections and revisions, an occupation which Cowper continued for some little time with apparent interest. But this improvement did not last long: the melancholy household moved again to Mundsley, and then to Johnson’s own home, at Dereham, which was considered less dreary than the house of Dunham Lodge. It was there that, on the 17th of December, Mrs. Unwin, Cowper’s faithful and devoted Mary, passed away from earth calmly and peacefully. In the morning of that day, when the maid opened the shutters, Cowper asked, ‘Is there still life upstairs?’ She died in the afternoon, and he went up with Mr. Johnson to take a farewell look; and, after silently gazing on the lifeless form for some time, he burst into a paroxysm of tears, left the room, ‘and never,’ says Hayley, ‘spoke of her more.’
Mrs. Unwin was buried by torchlight in the north aisle of Dereham Church, where a marble tablet was placed to her memory.
After this event there was little improvement, though some fluctuations, in Cowper’s state. His friends, Lady Spencer, Sir John Throckmorton, and others, came to visit him, but he showed no pleasure in seeing them. He occasionally wrote short verses, especially Latin, suggested to him by Johnson, made revisions and corrections, and a longer poem, embodying the most gloomy thoughts, ‘The Castaway,’ from an incident in one of Anson’s voyages, the last and saddest of his works.
‘For misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another’s case.’
The end was drawing near. Lady Hesketh was too unwell to go to him; Hayley was in attendance on his dying son; Mr. Rose went to bid him farewell, and Cowper, who had evinced no pleasure at his arrival, mourned his departure.
Johnson thought it now incumbent on him to prepare his friend’s mind for the impending danger, to which Cowper listened patiently. But when his kinsman thought to soothe him by speaking of the blessed change from earthly sorrow to the joys of heaven, the unhappy listener broke forth into wild entreaties that he would desist from such topics.
On the 25th of April 1800, William Cowper expired, so quietly that not one of the five persons who stood at his bedside was aware of the exact moment. ‘From that time till he was hidden from our sight,’ says his faithful and untiring watcher, Johnson, ‘his countenance was that of calmness and composure, mingled, as it were, with a holy surprise,’—words of deepest pathos, indissolubly connected with the poet’s memory. They inspired Charles Tennyson Turner, our Laureate’s worthy brother, with one of his most beautiful sonnets,—‘On Cowper’s Death-smile’—
‘That orphan smile, born since our mourner died,
A lovely prelude of immortal peace.’
Cowper lies buried in the church at Dereham, where his cousin Harriet placed a monument to his memory.
No. 8.
A GIRL.
In a tawny gown and white cap.
By Sir Joshua Reynolds.
No. 9.
EMILY, WIFE OF THE FIFTH EARL COWPER, AFTERWARDS VISCOUNTESS PALMERSTON.
Yellowish-green gown. Pearl necklace. Floating scarf. Arms crossed.
She is holding a white hat and feathers. Background, a stormy sky.
BORN 1787, DIED 1869.
By Hoppner and Jackson.
THE only daughter and youngest child of the first Viscount Melbourne, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke. When only eighteen she became the wife of Peter Leopold, fifth Lord Cowper, in the same year that her brother William married Lady Caroline Ponsonby. We are confident we cannot do better than quote some passages from an article, published on Lady Palmerston’s death, by an eminent writer, who was her personal friend: ‘On her marriage, Lady Cowper immediately took her place amid that brilliant galaxy of beautiful and accomplished women who continued to form the chief ornament of the British Court, through successive reigns, till they were gradually replaced (not outshone) by a younger race.’ He goes on to describe how Lady Cowper was admired and distinguished in the brilliant seasons of 1814 and 1815, on the occasion of the Royal and Imperial visits to England. While speaking of later years, after her second marriage, he says at that time coteries, cliques, and, above all, party exclusiveness in politics, prevailed. But at Cambridge House there were no such limitations. All classes—political, diplomatic, literary, scientific, artistic—found a welcome, even the proverbially dull ‘country cousin,’ who had any claim on Lady Palmerston’s notice; they were all received with a gracious smile and a kind word by the amiable hostess. Her country houses bore the same character for hospitality and variety of attraction as the London dwelling, and foreigners, in particular, were never tired of recording the delights of Panshanger, Brocket (to which she succeeded on her brother’s death), and Broadlands. The same biographer says of Lady Palmerston that she never forgot a friend, or remembered an injury; and, speaking of her devotion to her husband: ‘She was most jealous of his reputation, and proud of his distinction as a Minister. Every night she sat up for him until his return from the House of Commons, and her many anxieties on his account were often hurtful to her health.’ After his death, her circle was almost entirely restricted to her own family and connections.
Lady Palmerston was esteemed a most excellent ‘man of business,’ managing her vast property and large households with consummate skill. She died in her eighty-second year.
London in her time was especially rich in courtly beauties, the fame of whose charms still survives: the Duchess of Rutland, Ladies Jersey and Tankerville, Charlotte Campbell, and many other names, well known to those who read the memoirs of the period. Among such formidable competitors Lady Cowper held her own for grace and beauty, while she far surpassed most of her contemporaries in intellectual gifts. She was much attached to her brother, whose upward career was a source of pride and satisfaction to her. But in early life she evinced no personal interest in politics.
Lord Cowper died in 1837; his widow married, in 1839, Lord Palmerston, and from that moment she became immersed in political life, watching with the keenest interest the public events which were passing around her.
Her brother, Lord Melbourne, was at this period at the head of the Government, and ere long her husband was destined to occupy the same position. Lady Palmerston now formed a salon, which continued for the lapse of many years to constitute one of the greatest attractions of London society. We use the word salon advisedly, for these assemblies bore a nearer resemblance, in character and quality, to the salons of Paris, than most congregations of guests to be met with in a London drawing-room.
This picture was begun by Hoppner, and finished after his death by Jackson.
No. 10.
BOY.
In a dark grey coat. Buff waistcoat. White cravat.
By Sir Joshua Reynolds.
No. 11.
GIRL.
Brown gown. White muslin handkerchief. Large straw hat. Basket on her arm. She is seated.
By Hoppner.
BILLIARD ROOM.
