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.’