The summer-house, * it has been stated, is still standing.
* Since this paper was first written, the summer-house, the
garden, and the 'Guinea Orchard'—a strip of field which
came between Cowper's garden and that of the Parsonage—have
been sold by auction, the purchaser being a local butcher.
The sale took place in February, 1896.
But of another favourite haunt of Cowper, which preceded and co-existed with it, there are now no traces. This was the greenhouse.
''T is a bower of Arcadian sweets,
Where Flora is still in her prime,
A fortress to which she retreats
From the cruel assaults of the clime'—
he writes in his favourite rocking-horse metre, and most conventional language, bidding his Mary remark the beauty of the pinks which it has preserved through the frosts; and in mid-July, when the floor was carpeted, and the sun was excluded by an awning of mats, it became 'the pleasantest retreat in Olney.' 'We eat, drink, and sleep, where we always did,' he says to Newton; 'but here we spend all the rest of our time, and find that the sound of the wind in the trees, and the singing of birds, are much more agreeable to our ears than the incessant barking of dogs and screaming of children,' from both of which, it may be observed, they suffered considerably in the front of the house. Two years later he tells Mr. Unwin that 'our severest winter, commonly called the spring, is now over, and I find myself seated in my favourite recess, the greenhouse. In such a situation, so silent, so shady, where no human foot is heard, and where only my myrtles presume to peep in at the window, you may suppose I have no interruption to complain of, and that my thoughts are perfectly at my command. But the beauties of the spot are themselves an interruption, my attention being called upon by those very myrtles, by a double row of grass pinks, just beginning to blossom, and by a bed of beans already in bloom; and you are to consider it, if you please, as no small proof of my regard, that, though you have so many powerful rivals, I disengage myself from them all, and devote this hour entirely to you.'
Later still—a year later—he writes to Newton: 'My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just upon the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it a much more agreeable retreat than we ever find it in the summer; when, the winds being generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the same time incommoded by it. But now I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower, in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive, I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette, opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that Nature utters are delightful, at least in this country.' But he goes on, nevertheless, to except the braying of an ass; and from another letter it seems that the serene quietude of his bower was at times invaded by the noise of a quadruped of this kind (inimical to poets!) which belonged to a neighbour.
It was in passing from the greenhouse to the barn that Cowper encountered the viper, whose prompt taking off gives motive and point to that admirable little lusus poeticus,—as Mr. Grimshawe condescendingly calls it,—the 'Colubriad,' and other memories cluster about this fragment paradise. Here 'lived happy prisoners' the two goldfinches celebrated in 'The Faithful Bird;' here he wrote 'The Task,' and, according to Mr. Thomas Wright, of Olney, it is to the stimulating environment of its myrtles and mignonette that we owe, if not the germ, at least the evolution, of 'John Gilpin.' Every one knows how, in the current story, Lady Austen's diverting narrative of the way in which a certain citizen 'of famous London town' rode out to celebrate the anniversary of his marriage, gradually seduced her listener from the moody melancholy which was fast overclouding him 'into a loud and hearty peal of laughter.' It 'made such an impression on his mind that at night he could not sleep; and his thoughts having taken the form of rhyme, he sprang from bed, and committed them to paper, and in the morning brought down to Mrs. Unwin the crude outline of "John Gilpin." All that day and for several days he secluded himself in the greenhouse, and went on with the task of polishing and improving what he had written. As he filled his slips of paper he sent them across the Market-place to Mr. Wilson, to the great delight and merriment of that jocular barber, who on several other occasions had been favoured with the first sight of some of Cowper's smaller poems. This version of the origin of "John Gilpin" differs, we are aware, from the one generally received, which represents the famous ballad as having been commenced and finished in a night; but that the facts here stated are accurate we have the authority of Mrs. Wilson; moreover, it has always been said in Olney that "John Gilpin" was written in the "greenhouse," and that the first person who saw the complete poem, and consequently the forerunner of that noble army who made merry over its drolleries, was William Wilson the barber.' *