AT HUNTINGDON--THE UNWINS.
The storm was over; but it had swept away a great part of Cowper's
scanty fortune, and almost all his friends. At thirty-five he was
stranded and desolate. He was obliged to resign a Commissionership of
Bankruptcy which he held, and little seems to have remained to him but
the rent of his chambers in the Temple. A return to his profession
was, of course, out of the question. His relations, however, combined
to make up a little income for him, though from a hope of his family,
he had become a melancholy disappointment; even the Major contributing,
in spite of the rather trying incident of the nomination. His brother
was kind and did a brother's duty, but there does not seem to have been
much sympathy between them; John Cowper did not become a convert to
Evangelical doctrine till he was near his end, and he was incapable of
sharing William's spiritual emotions. Of his brilliant companions, the
Bonnell Thorntons and the Colmans, the quondam members of the Nonsense
Club, he heard no more, till he had himself become famous. But he
still had a staunch friend in a less brilliant member of the Club,
Joseph Hill, the lawyer, evidently a man who united strong sense and
depth of character with literary tastes and love of fun, and who was
throughout Cowper's life his Mentor in matters of business, with regard
to which he was himself a child. He had brought with him from the
asylum at St. Albans the servant who had attended him there, and who
had been drawn by the singular talisman of personal attraction which
partly made up to this frail and helpless being for his entire lack of
force. He had also brought from the same place an outcast boy whose
case bad excited his interest, and for whom he afterwards provided by
putting him to a trade. The maintenance of these two retainers was
expensive and led to grumbling among the subscribers to the family
subsidy, the Major especially threatening to withdraw his contribution.
While the matter was in agitation, Cowper received an anonymous letter
couched in the kindest terms, bidding him not distress himself, for
that whatever deduction from his income might be made, the loss would
be supplied by one who loved him tenderly and approved his conduct. In
a letter to Lady Hesketh, he says that he wishes he knew who dictated
this letter, and that he had seen not long before a style excessively
like it. He can scarcely have failed to guess that it came from
Theodora.
It is due to Cowper to say that he accepts the assistance of his
relatives and all acts of kindness done to him with sweet and becoming
thankfulness; and that whatever dark fancies he may have had about his
religious state, when the evil spirit was upon him, he always speaks
with contentment and cheerfulness of his earthly lot. Nothing
splenetic, no element of suspicions and irritable self-love, entered
into the composition of his character.
On his release from the asylum he was taken in hand by his brother
John, who first tried to find lodgings for him at or near Cambridge,
and failing in this, placed him at Huntingdon, within a long ride, so
that William becoming a horseman for the purpose, the brothers could
meet once a week. Huntingdon was a quiet little town with less than
two thousand inhabitants, in a dull country, the best part of which was
the Ouse, especially to Cowper, who was fond of bathing. Life there,
as in other English country towns in those days, and indeed till
railroads made people everywhere too restless and migratory for
companionship or even for acquaintance, was sociable in an unrefined
way. There were assemblies, dances, races, card-parties, and a
bowling-green, at which the little world met and enjoyed itself. From
these the new convert, in his spiritual ecstasy, of course turned away
as mere modes of murdering time. Three families received him with
civility, two of them with cordiality; but the chief acquaintances he
made were with "odd scrambling fellows like himself;" an eccentric
water-drinker and vegetarian who was to be met by early risers and
walkers every morning at six o'clock by his favourite spring; a
char-parson, of the class common in those days of sinecurism and
non-residence, who walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve two
churches, besides reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who regaled
his friend with ale brewed by his own hands. In his attached servant
the recluse boasted that he had a friend; a friend he might have, but
hardly a companion.
For the first days and even weeks, however, Huntingdon seemed a
paradise. The heart of its new inhabitant was full of the unspeakable
happiness that comes with calm after storm, with health after the most
terrible of maladies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain.
When first he went to church he was in a spiritual ecstasy; it was with
difficulty that he restrained his emotions, though his voice was
silent, being stopped by the intensity of his feelings, his heart
within him sang for joy; and when the Gospel for the day was read, the
sound of it was more than he could well bear. This brightness of his
mind communicated itself to all the objects round him, to the sluggish
waters of the Ouse, to dull, fenny Huntingdon, and to its commonplace
inhabitants.
For about three months his cheerfulness lasted, and with the help of
books, and his rides to meet his brother, he got on pretty well; but
then "the communion which he had so long been able to maintain with the
Lord was suddenly interrupted." This is his theological version of the
case; the rationalistic version immediately follows: "I began to
dislike my solitary situation, and to fear I should never be able to
weather out the winter in so lonely a dwelling." No man could be less
fitted to bear a lonely life; persistence in the attempt would soon
have brought back his madness. He was longing for a home; and a home
was at hand to receive him. It was not perhaps one of the happiest
kind; but the influence which detracted from its advantages was the one
which rendered it hospitable to the wanderer. If Christian piety was
carried to a morbid excess beneath its roof, Christian charity opened
its door.
The religious revival was now in full career, with Wesley for its chief
apostle, organizer, and dictator, Whitefield for its great preacher,
Fletcher of Madeley for its typical saint, Lady Huntingdon for its
patroness among the aristocracy and the chief of its "devout women."
From the pulpit, but still more from the stand of the field-preacher
and through a well-trained army of social propagandists, it was
assailing the scepticism, the coldness, the frivolity, the vices of the
age. English society was deeply stirred; multitudes were converted,
while among those who were not converted violent and sometimes cruel
antagonism was aroused. The party had two wings, the Evangelicals,
people of the wealthier class or clergymen of the Church of England,
who remained within the Establishment; and the Methodists, people of
the lower middle class or peasants, the personal converts and followers
of Wesley and Whitefield, who, like their leaders, without a positive
secession, soon found themselves organizing a separate spiritual life
in the freedom of Dissent. In the early stages of the movement the
Evangelicals were to be counted at most by hundreds, the Methodists by
hundreds of thousands. So far as the masses were concerned, it was in
fact a preaching of Christianity anew. There was a cross division of
the party into the Calvinists and those whom the Calvinists called
Arminians; Wesley belonging to the latter section, while the most
pronounced and vehement of the Calvinists was "the fierce Toplady." As
a rule, the darker and sterner element, that which delighted in
religious terrors and threatenings was Calvinist, the milder and
gentler, that which preached a gospel of love and hope, continued to
look up to Wesley, and to bear with him the reproach of being Arminian,
It is needless to enter into a minute description of Evangelicism and
Methodism; they are not things of the past. If Evangelicism has now
been reduced to a narrow domain by the advancing forces of Ritualism on
one side and of nationalism on the other, Methodism is still the great
Protestant Church, especially beyond the Atlantic. The spiritual fire
which they have kindled, the character which they have produced, the
moral reforms which they have wrought, the works of charity and
philanthropy to which they have given birth, are matters not only of
recent memory, but of present experience. Like the great Protestant
revivals which had preceded them in England, like the Moravian revival
on the Continent, to which they were closely related, they sought to
bring the soul into direct communion with its Maker, rejecting the
intervention of a priesthood or a sacramental system. Unlike the
previous revivals in England, they warred not against the rulers of the
Church or State, but only against vice or irreligion. Consequently in
the characters which they produced, as compared with those produced by
Wycliffism, by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, there was
less of force and the grandeur connected with it, more of gentleness,
mysticism, and religious love. Even Quietism, or something like it,
prevailed, especially among the Evangelicals, who were not like the
Methodists, engaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling with
the barbarous vices of the lower orders. No movement of the kind has
ever been exempt from drawbacks and follies, from extravagance,
exaggeration, breaches of good taste in religious matters,
unctuousness, and cant--from chimerical attempts to get rid of the
flesh and live an angelic life on earth--from delusions about special
providences and miracles--from a tendency to over-value doctrine and
undervalue duty--from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority by
leaders and preachers--from the self-righteousness which fancies itself
the object of a divine election, and looks out with a sort of religious
complacency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies itself
securely placed, upon the drowning of an unregenerate world. Still it
will hardly be doubted that in the effects produced by Evangelicism and
Methodism the good has outweighed the evil. Had Jansenism prospered as
well, France might have had more of reform and less of revolution. The
poet of the movement will not be condemned on account of his connexion
with it, any more than Milton is condemned on account of his connexion
with Puritanism, provided it be found that he also served art well.
Cowper, as we have seen, was already converted. In a letter written at
this time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of himself with great humility "as
a convert made in Bedlam, who is more likely to be a stumblingblock to
others, than to advance their faith," though he adds, with reason
enough, "that he who can ascribe an amendment of life and manners, and
a reformation of the heart itself, to madness is guilty of an
absurdity, that in any other case would fasten the imputation of
madness upon himself." It is hence to be presumed that he traced his
conversion to his spiritual intercourse with the Evangelical physician
of St. Albans, though the seed sown by Martin Madan may perhaps also
have sprung up in his heart when the more propitious season arrived.
However that may have been, the two great factors of Cowper's life were
the malady which consigned him to poetic seclusion and the conversion
to Evangelicism, which gave him his inspiration and his theme.
At Huntingdon dwelt the Rev. William Unwin, a clergyman, taking pupils,
his wife, much younger than himself, and their son and daughter. It
was a typical family of the Revival. Old Mr. Unwin is described by
Cowper as a Parson Adams. The son, William Unwin, was preparing for
holy orders. He was a man of some mark, and received tokens of
intellectual respect from Paley, though he is best known as the friend
to whom many of Cowper's letters are addressed. He it was who, struck
by the appearance of the stranger, sought an opportunity of making his
acquaintance. He found one, after morning church, when Cowper was
taking his solitary walk beneath the trees. Under the influence of
religious sympathy the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship;
Cowper at once became one of the Unwin circle, and soon afterwards, a
vacancy being made by the departure of one of the pupils, he became a
boarder in the house. This position he had passionately desired on
religious grounds; but in truth he might well have desired it on
economical grounds also, for he had begun to experience the difficulty
and expensiveness, as well as the loneliness, of bachelor housekeeping,
and financial deficit was evidently before him. To Mrs. Unwin he was
from the first strongly drawn. "I met Mrs. Unwin in the street," he
says, "and went home with her. She and I walked together near two
hours in the garden, and had a conversation which did me more good than
I should have received from an audience with the first prince in
Europe. That woman is a blessing to me, and I never see her without
being the better for her company." Mrs. Unwin's character is written in
her portrait with its prim but pleasant features; a Puritan and a
precisian she was, but she was not morose or sour, and she had a
boundless capacity for affection. Lady Hesketh, a woman of the world,
and a good judge in every respect, says of her at a later period, when
she had passed with Cowper through many sad and trying years: "She is
very far from grave; on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay, and
laughs _de bon coeur_ upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all the
little puritanical words which fall from her _de temps en temps_, she
seems to have by nature a quiet fund of gaiety; great indeed must it
have been, not to have been wholly overcome by the close confinement in
which she has lived, and the anxiety she must have undergone for one
whom she certainly loves as well as one human being can love another.
I will not say she idolizes him, because that she would think wrong;
but she certainly seems to possess the truest regard and affection for
this excellent creature, and, as I said before, has in the most literal
sense of those words, no will or shadow of inclination but what is his.
My account of Mrs. Unwin may seem perhaps to you, on comparing my
letters, contradictory; but when you consider that I began to write at
the first moment that I saw her, you will not wonder. Her character
develops itself by degrees; and though I might lead you to suppose her
grave and melancholy, she is not so by any means. When she speaks upon
grave subjects, she does express herself with a puritanical tone, and
in puritanical expressions, but on all subjects she seems to have a
great disposition to cheerfulness and mirth; and indeed had she not,
she could not have gone through all she has. I must say, too, that she
seems to be very well read in the English poets, as appears by several
little quotations, which she makes from time to time, and has a true
taste for what is excellent in that way."
When Cowper became an author he paid the highest respect to Mrs. Unwin
as an instinctive critic, and called her his Lord Chamberlain, whose
approbation was his sufficient licence for publication.
Life in the Unwin family is thus described by the new inmate;--"As to
amusements, I mean what the world calls such, we have none. The place
indeed swarms with them; and cards and dancing are the professed
business of almost all the gentle inhabitants of Huntingdon. We refuse
to take part in them, or to be accessories to this way of murdering our
time, and by so doing have acquired the name of Methodists. Having
told you how we do not spend our time, I will next say how we do. We
breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven, we read either
the scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of those holy
mysteries; at eleven we attend divine service, which is performed here
twice every day, and from twelve to three we separate, and amuse
ourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read in my own
apartment, or walk or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit an
hour after dinner, but, if the weather permits, adjourn to the garden,
where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally the pleasure of
religious conversation till tea-time. If it rains, or is too windy for
walking, we either converse within doors or sing some hymns of Martin's
collection, and by the help of Mrs. Unwin's harpsichord, make up a
tolerable concert, in which our hearts, I hope are the best performers.
After tea we sally forth to walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good
walker, and we have generally travelled about four miles before we see
home again. When the days are short we make this excursion in the
former part of the day, between church-time and dinner. At night we
read and converse as before till supper, and commonly finish the
evening either with hymns or a sermon, and last of all the family are
called to prayers. I need not tell you that such a life as this is
consistent with the utmost cheerfulness, accordingly we are all happy,
and dwell together in unity as brethren."
Mrs. Cowper, the wife of Major (now Colonel) Cowper, to whom this was
written, was herself strongly Evangelical; Cowper had, in fact,
unfortunately for him, turned from his other relations and friends to
her on that account. She, therefore, would have no difficulty in
thinking that such a life was consistent with cheerfulness, but
ordinary readers will ask how it could fail to bring on another fit of
hypochondria. The answer is probably to be found in the last words of
the passage. Overstrained and ascetic piety found an antidote in
affection. The Unwins were Puritans and enthusiasts, but their
household was a picture of domestic love.
With the name of Mrs. Cowper is connected an incident which, occurred
at this time, and which illustrates the propensity to self-inspection
and self-revelation which Cowper had in common with Rousseau.
Huntingdon, like other little towns, was all eyes and gossip; the new
comer was a mysterious stranger who kept himself aloof from the general
society, and he naturally became the mark for a little stone-throwing.
Young Unwin happening to be passing near "the Park" on his way from
London to Huntingdon, Cowper gave him an introduction to its lady, in a
letter to whom he afterwards disclosed his secret motive. "My dear
Cousin,--You sent my friend Unwin home to us charmed, with your kind
reception of him, and with everything he saw at the Park. Shall I once
more give you a peep into my vile and deceitful heart? What motive do
you think lay at the bottom of my conduct when I desired him to call
upon you? I did not suspect, at first, that pride and vainglory had
any share in it, but quickly after I had recommended the visit to him,
I discovered, in that fruitful soil, the very root of the matter. You
know I am a stranger here; all such are suspected characters, unless
they bring their credentials with them. To this moment, I believe, it
is a matter of speculation in the place, whence I came, and to whom I
belong. Though my friend, you may suppose, before I was admitted an
inmate here, was satisfied that I was not a mere vagabond, and has,
since that time, received more convincing proofs of my _sponsibility_;
yet I could not resist the opportunity of furnishing him with ocular
demonstration of it, by introducing him to one of my most splendid
connexions; that when he hears me called 'that fellow Cowper,' which
has happened heretofore, he may be able, upon unquestionable evidence,
to assert my gentlemanhood, and relieve me from the weight of that
opprobrious appellation. Oh pride! pride! it deceives with the
subtlety of a serpent, and seems to walk erect, though it crawls upon
the earth. How will it twist and twine itself about to get from under
the Cross, which it is the glory of our Christian calling to be able to
bear with patience and goodwill. They who can guess at the heart of a
stranger,--and you especially, who are of a compassionate temper,--will
be more ready, perhaps, to excuse me, in this instance, than I can be
to excuse myself. But, in good truth, it was abominable pride of
heart, indignation, and vanity, and deserves no better name."
Once more, however obsolete Cowper's belief, and the language in which
he expresses it may have become for many of us, we must take it as his
philosophy of life. At this time, at all events, it was a source of
happiness. "The storm being passed, a quiet and peaceful serenity of
soul succeeded," and the serenity in this case was unquestionably
produced in part by the faith.
I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since; with many an arrow deep infixed
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades,
There was I found by one who had himself
Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore
And in his hands and feet the cruel scars,
With gentle force soliciting the darts,
He drew them forth and healed and bade me live.
Cowper thought for a moment of taking orders, but his dread of
appearing in public conspired with the good sense which lay beneath his
excessive sensibility to put a veto on the design. He, however,
exercised the zeal of a neophyte in proselytism to a greater extent
than his own judgment and good taste approved when his enthusiasm had
calmed down.