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.