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.