“That in pursuance of the said articles, the said Mary, with the assistance of the said Dorothy her sister, hath carried on the said trade for near thirty years, with tolerable success for the said Dorothy. That she hath been at no charge to the said Philip; and during all the said time hath not only found herself in all manner of apparel, but also for all her children to the number of twelve, and most of the furniture of his house; and paying £40 a-year for his shop, almost providing everything for her son, whilst at Eton school, and now he is at Peter House at Cambridge.
“Notwithstanding which, almost ever since he hath been married, he hath used her in the most inhuman manner, by beating, kicking, pinching, and with the most vile and abusive language; that she hath been in the utmost fear, and danger of her life, and hath been obliged this last year to quit her bed and lie with her sister. This she was resolved, if possible, to bear; not to leave her shop of trade for the sake of her son, to be able to assist in the maintenance of him at the University, since his father won’t.
“There is no cause for this usage unless it be an unhappy jealousy of all mankind in general (her own brother not excepted); but no woman deserves or hath maintained a more virtuous character: or it is presumed, if he can make her sister leave off trade, he thinks he can then come into his wife’s money, but the articles are too secure for his vile purposes.
“He daily threatens he will pursue her with all the vengeance possible, and will ruin himself to undo her and his only son; in order to which he hath given warning to her sister to quit his shop where they have carried on their trade so successfully, which will be almost their ruin: but he insists she shall go out at Midsummer next; and the said Dorothy, his wife, in necessity must be forced to go along with her to some other house and shop, to be assisting to her said sister in the said trade, for her own and her son’s support.
“But if she can be quiet, she neither expects nor desires any help from him: but he is really so very vile in his nature, she hath all the reason to expect most troublesome usage from him that can be thought of.”—Vol. i. Appendix B.
Then follow some questions, and the answer of Counsel, which it is not necessary to extract. What must have been the effect of such domestic scenes as are here disclosed to us, on the sensitive mind of Gray, may be partly guessed. Nor need we be surprised that the college youth at Peter House, and the associate of Horace Walpole, early contracted a habit of silence upon the events of his own life. Bonstettin, whom he took so cordially to his friendship, says, “Je racontais à Gray ma vie et mon pays, mais toute sa vie à lui était fermée pour moi. Jamais il ne me parlait de lui. Il y avait chez Gray entre le present et le passé un abîme infranchisable. Quand je voulais un approche, de sombre nuées venaient le couvrir.”—Vol. V., Notes, p. 181.
We understand now why Gray held his mother in so much esteem, and why the father was rarely spoken of, while her name was never mentioned to the latest day without a trembling of the voice; why there was found at his death, still unopened, in his room, the chest containing her wearing-apparel: he had never dared to open it, or had never reconciled himself to part with its contents. To his mother he owed his education and the position he occupied in life—a greater debt than even that life which she twice gave. He was the only one of twelve children who survived. The rest died in their infancy, as we are told, “from suffocation produced by a fulness of blood;” and this strange family destiny would have befallen Gray also, but that his mother “removed the paroxysm which attacked him, by opening a vein with her own hand.”
The chief incident of Gray’s life, so far as biographers have been able to record it, is his intimacy with Walpole;—his journey with him upon the Continent, and the rupture that took place between them. Of this quarrel we find an explanation in a note which is by no means honourable to Walpole. Entertaining a suspicion that Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England, he clandestinely opened and re-sealed one of Gray’s letters. After this, there was “little cordiality between them.” We should think not, for, short of a crime, could one man be guilty towards another of a more dishonourable action? But we are not satisfied with the authority on which this explanation is given. The account will be found in a note, vol. ii. p. 175. We have only that sort of hearsay evidence which lawyers have universally agreed in rejecting. A Mr Isaac Reed makes a private memorandum (some time after the conversation) of what a Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, had told him. This is not sufficient authority for what, we presume in the time of Walpole as well as our own, would be regarded as a grave charge, if brought against a gentleman. Of Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, and how he heard the story, we are told nothing. Mr Isaac Reed merely says of him “that he was likely to be well informed.”
The quarrel, its cause and its reconciliation, are, perhaps, now of very little moment, but the intimacy with Walpole must always remain as one of the most important facts in the life of Gray. For what is the character which Gray reveals to us? In few words, it is the incongruous combination of the sensitive poet and man of letters, with the affectation and levity of a man of the world. This latter phase of his character must have owed much of its development to his early intercourse with the son of a prime-minister, and one whose wit and pleasantry would fully justify and explain an influence over his graver companion. Gray was a man who had a heart, and had learnt to hide it under the affectation of indifference; neither could he have been without the stirrings of a noble ambition; but he had taught himself that it was a prettier thing to graft the man of letters on the refined gentleman, than to give himself, heart and soul, to some intellectual enterprise. He thinks, or he can write, that “Literature, to take it in its most comprehensive sense, and include everything that requires invention or judgment, or barely application and industry, seems indeed drawing apace to its dissolution;” but he makes no serious effort to arrest this dissolution. What is the literature of a country but the efforts of such men as he? There was a younger contemporary, one Gibbon, then turning over the same classic pages as himself, who was soon to add to the literature of England a History which would display more learning and more eloquence than had ever before been united together. Antiquarian as he was, what epoch has he illustrated for us? Zoologist, botanist; he corrects the latinity of Linnæus! He makes notes innumerable—notes on Strabo, notes on Plato; the text of what author has he amended or explained for us? When appointed Professor of History, he does not even write a single lecture.
“The political opinions of Gray, H. Walpole says, he never rightly understood;” and his biographer adds that his religious opinions lie in a certain obscurity. Some writers “not favourable to the cause of Christianity,” have ranked him, it seems, amongst freethinkers: orthodox and pious friends have no doubt whatever about his orthodoxy or his piety. The perusal of his Letters never led us, for a moment, to rank him amongst unbelievers; but if any one should suggest that he had not thought on the subject with sufficient earnestness even to be a doubter, we might be disposed to acquiesce in this explanation. He lived in a time when there was little earnestness of thought, and he was not of that energetic nature which rises above the influence of the age. He was scandalised at Rousseau and Voltaire because they were disturbers of the peace: one is not sure that there was a deeper feeling in his hostility towards them. The manner in which a person is written to is often as significant as the manner in which he himself writes. Throughout their correspondence, the Rev. William Mason never alludes to his clerical profession in any one respect but as a means of living well and comfortably in the world—as a career in which promotion and good living are to be encountered. The credit of this quite secular tone must be divided between the correspondents: perhaps in the greater measure to the elder and more influential of the two.