The life of Thomas Gray, the author of the Elegy in a Country
Churchyard, was passed in London, in Cambridge, and at Stoke-Pogis, in
Buckinghamshire, except what he spent in traveling, which was
considerable. Gray was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His parents
were reputable citizens of London; his grandfather was a considerable
merchant, but his father, Mr. Philip Gray, Mallet says, though he also
followed business, was of an indolent and reserved temper, and therefore
rather diminished than increased his paternal fortune. He had many
children, of whom Thomas was the fifth; all except him died in their
infancy. The business of Gray's father was, like that of Milton's, a
money-scrivener. But, unlike Milton's father, Philip Gray was, according
to Mallet, not only reserved and indolent, but of a morose, unsocial,
and obstinate temper. His indolence led him to neglect the business of
his profession; his obstinacy, to build a country house at Wanstead,
without acquainting his wife or son of the design, to which he knew they
would be very averse, till it was executed. This turned out a loss of
two thousand pounds to the family; and the character of the father,
which is supposed to have been stamped by bodily ailments, was the
occasion of Gray, though an only child, being left with a very narrow
patrimony. His mother, to provide for her family, entered into business,
independent of her husband, with her sister, Miss Antrobus. The two
ladies kept a kind of India warehouse in Cornhill. As clever ladies in
business generally do, they succeeded so well, that, on Mr. Gray's
death, which happened about the time of the young poet's return from his
first trip to the Continent, they retired, and went to join
housekeeping with their third sister, Mrs. Rogers, the widow of a
gentleman of that name, who had formerly been in the law, and had
retired to Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, where we find Gray, on one
occasion, describing, in a letter to Walpole, the uncle and the place
thus: "The description of a road that your coach-wheels have so often
honored, it is needless to give to you; suffice it that I arrived safe
at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in imagination. His dogs take up
every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand up at this present
writing; and though the gout forbids his galloping after them in the
field, yet he continues still to regale his ears and nose with their
comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty cheap, I perceive, for
walking when I should ride, and reading when I should hunt. My comfort
amid all this is, that I have, at the distance of half a mile, through a
green lane, a forest--the vulgar call it a common--all my own, at least
as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little
chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not
ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing
as Dover Cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as
well as I do may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much
pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered
with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that,
like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old
stories to the winds:
'And as they bow, their hoary tops relate,
In murmuring sounds, the dark decrees of Fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf and swarm on every bough.'
At the foot of one of these squats me I, _il penseroso_, and there grow
to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive
squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had Eve; but
I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there. In this
situation I often converse with my Horace--aloud, too; that is, talk to
you; but I do not remember that I ever heard you answer me. I beg pardon
for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is entirely your own
fault. We have old Mr. Southern at a gentleman's house a little way off,
who often comes to see us. He is now seventy-seven years old, and has
almost wholly lost his memory, but is as agreeable as an old man can
be--at least I persuade myself so when I look at him, and think of
Isabella and Oronoko."
By this agreeable extract, however, we have outstepped the progress of
Gray's life. He was educated at Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus,
his mother's brother, then assistant to Dr. George, and, when he left
school in 1734, entered a pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge. It was
intended that he should follow the profession of the law, for which his
uncle's practice and connections seemed to open a brilliant way. He
therefore lived on at college so long as his attendance on the lectures
was required, but took no degree. His uncle's death put an end to his
prospects of that kind, and he abandoned the idea of the legal
profession. When he had been at Cambridge about five years, he agreed to
make a tour on the Continent with Horace Walpole, and they proceeded
together through France to Italy, where they quarreled and parted,
taking different ways. On his return he again went to Cambridge, took
the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law, and continued there, without liking
the place or its inhabitants, as we are informed by both Johnson and
Mallet, or professing to like them. His pleasure lay in wading through
huge libraries, out of which, on a vast number of subjects, he extracted
a vast amount of information. Such were Gray's assiduous study and
research, that the following character of him by a cotemporary, the Rev.
Mr. Temple, rector of St. Gluvias, in Cornwall, written a few months
after his death, can scarcely be termed overdrawn. "Perhaps he was the
most learned man in Europe. He was equally acquainted with the elegant
and profound parts of science, and that not superficially, but
thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both natural and civil; had
read all the original histories of England, France, and Italy; and was a
great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a
principal part of his plan of study. Voyages and travels of all sorts
were his favorite amusement; and he had a fine taste in painting,
prints, architecture, and gardening."
He was, in fact, one of the first to open up the Northern antiquities
and legendary literature, and most probably was the cause of Mallet
turning to this subject; he was also one of the very first, if not the
very first person, who began to trace out and distinguish the different
orders of Anglo-Gothic architecture, by attention to the date of its
creation. These were the studies, enough to occupy a life, which kept
him close at Cambridge in his room for years, and once induced him to
take lodgings, for about three years, near the British Museum, where he
diligently copied from the Harleian and other manuscripts. The death of
his most intimate friend, Mr. West, the son of the Chancellor of
Ireland, soon after his return from the Continent, tended only the more
to fix this habit of retirement and study. He lived on at Peterhouse
till 1756, when a curious incident drove him forth. Two or three young
men of fortune, who lived in the same staircase, had for some time
intentionally disturbed him with their riots, and carried their ill
behavior so far as frequently to awaken him at midnight. After having
borne their insults longer than might reasonably have been expected,
even from a man of less warmth of temper, Mr. Gray complained to the
governing part of the society, and not thinking his remonstrance
sufficiently attended to, quitted the college. He took up his residence
at Pembroke Hall, where he continued to reside till the day of his
death, which occurred here in the fifty-fifth year of his age, July 30,
1771, being seized with gout in the stomach while at dinner in the
college hall.
He had for the last three years been appointed Professor of History in
this college, but such was his indolence, fastidiousness, or aversion to
so public a duty, that, to use the words of Johnson, "he was always
designing lectures, but never reading them; uneasy at his neglect of
duty, and appeasing his uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with
a resolution which he believed himself to have made, of resigning the
office if he found himself unable to discharge it." He continued thus to
vacillate, and held on till his death. A circumstance which attached him
more to Pembroke College was, that Mason was elected a fellow of it in
1747; they grew warm friends, and Mason afterward became his biographer.
Such was the general outline of Gray's life. In reading it, we find the
most interesting features those which he describes so well in his
letters, his travels, and his occasional retreats at Stoke-Pogis. He
made a tour into the north of England, to the lakes, and into Scotland;
at another time through Worcester, Hereford, Monmouth, and parts of the
neighboring counties; and all his details of such rambles, as they are
given with an evident zest, are full of life and interest. In his prose,
Gray gets out of the stiff and stilted formality of much of his poetry.
He forgets his learning and his classical notions, and is at once easy,
amiable, witty, and jocose. There was a degree of effeminacy about him,
which you see in the portraits of him, which you do not the less detect
in his poetry; but his prose gives you a far more attractive idea of
him, as he must be in the familiar circle of his friends. On turning to
Gray's account of those places which I have visited in various parts of
the kingdom, I have always found him seizing on their real features, and
impressed with their true spirit. Of this genuine feeling of nature, his
account of his visit to the Grande Chartreuse may be taken as a
sufficient specimen:
"We took the longest road, which lies through Savoy, on purpose to see a
famous monastery called the Grande Chartreuse, and had no reason to
think our time lost. After traveling seven days, very slow--for we did
not change horses, it being impossible for a chaise to go fast in these
roads--we arrived at a little village among the mountains of Savoy,
called Echelles, from whence we proceeded on horses, who are used to the
way, to the mountain of the Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top; the
road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad; on the one hand is
the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging over head; on the other a
monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls
a torrent that, sometimes tumbling among the fragments of stone that
have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast
descents with a noise like thunder, which is made still greater by the
echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most
solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever
beheld. Add to this the strange views made by the crags and cliffs on
the other hand; the cascades that in many places throw themselves from
the very summit down into the vale and the river below, and many other
places impossible to describe--you will conclude we had no occasion to
repent of our pains. This place St. Bruno chose to retire to, and upon
its very top founded the aforesaid convent, which is the superior of the
whole order. When we came there, the two fathers who are commissioned to
entertain strangers--for the rest must neither speak to one another nor
to any one else--received us very kindly, and set before us a repast of
dried fish, eggs, butter, and fruits, all excellent of their kind, and
extremely neat. They pressed us to spend the night there, and to stay
some days with them, but this we could not do; so they led us about
their house, which is, you must think, like a little city; for there are
a hundred fathers, besides three hundred servants, that make their
clothes, grind their corn, press their wine, and do every thing among
themselves. The whole is quite orderly and simple: nothing of finery;
but the wonderful decency, and the strange situation, more than supply
the place of it. In the evening we descended by the same way, passing
through many clouds that were then forming themselves on the mountain's
side, and pursued our journey toward Chamberry."
It is, however, at Stoke-Pogis that we seek the most attractive vestiges
of Gray. Here he used to spend his vacations, not only when a youth at
Eton, but during the whole of his future life, while his mother and his
aunts lived. Here it was that his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton
College, his celebrated Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, and his
Long Story, were not only written, but were mingled with the
circumstances, and all the tenderest feelings of his own life.
His mother and aunts lived at an old-fashioned house in a very retired
spot at Stoke, called West End. This house stood in a hollow, much
screened by trees. A small stream ran through the garden, and it is said
that Gray used to employ himself when here much in this garden, and that
many of the trees still remaining are of his planting. On one side of
the house extended an upland field, which was planted round so as to
give a charming, retired walk; and at the summit of the field was raised
an artificial mound, and upon it was built a sort of arcade or
summer-house, which gave full prospect of Windsor and Eton. Here Gray
used to delight to sit; here he was accustomed to read and write much;
and it is just the place to inspire the Ode on Eton College, which lay
in the midst of its fine landscape, beautifully in view. The old house
inhabited by Gray and his mother has just been pulled down, and replaced
by an Elizabethan mansion by the present proprietor, Mr. Penn, of Stoke
Park, just by. The garden, of course, has shared in the change, and now
stands gay with its fountain and its modern green-house, and, excepting
for some fine trees, no longer reminds you of Gray. The woodland walk
still remains round the adjoining field, and the summer-house on its
summit, though now much cracked by time, and only held together by iron
cramps. The trees are now so lofty that they completely obstruct the
view, and shut out both Eton and Windsor.
It was at this house, now destroyed, that the two ladies from the Park
made their memorable visit, which gave occasion to the Long Story. The
facts were these: Gray had finished his Elegy, and had sent it in
manuscript to Horace Walpole, by whom it was shown about with great
applause. Among the rest of the fashionable world to whom it was thus
communicated, Lady Cobham, who now lived at the mansion-house at
Stoke-Pogis, had read and admired it. Wishing to make the acquaintance
of the author, and hearing that he was so near her, her relatives, Miss
Speed and Lady Schaub, then at her house, undertook to bring this about
by making him the first visit. He happened to be from home when the
ladies arrived at his aunt's solitary mansion; and when he returned, was
surprised to find, written on one of his papers in the parlor where he
usually read, the following note: "Lady Schaub's compliments to Mr.
Gray. She is sorry not to have found him at home, to tell him that Lady
Brown is very well." This necessarily obliged him to return the visit,
and soon after induced him to compose a ludicrous account of this little
adventure for the amusement of the ladies in question. This was a mere
_jeu d'esprit_, and, extravagant as some parts of it are, is certainly
very clever; Gray regarded it but as a thing for the occasion, and never
included it in his published poems. But Mallet tells us that when it
appeared, though only in manuscript, it was handed about, and the most
various opinions pronounced on it. By some it was thought a master-piece
of original humor; by others, a wild and fantastic farrago. It, in
truth, much more resembles his prose, and proves that, if he had not
always had the fear of the critics before his eyes, he would have
written with far more freedom and life than he often did. We may take a
few stanzas, as connected with our further subject:
"In Britain's isle, no matter where,
An ancient pile of building stands:
The Huntingdons and Hattons there
Employed the power of fairy hands
To raise the ceiling's fretted height,
Each panel in achievements clothing,
Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.
Full oft within the spacious walls,
When he had fifty winters o'er him,
My grave lord-keeper led the brawls;
The seal and maces danced before him.
His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green,
His high-crowned hat, and satin doublet,
Moved the stout heart of England's queen,
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.
*...*...*...*
A house there is, and that's enough,
From whence one fatal morning issues
A brace of warriors, not in buff,
But rustling in their silks and tissues.
The first came _cap-à-pie_ from France,
Her conquering destiny fulfilling,
Whom meaner beauties eye askance,
And vainly ape her art of killing.
The other Amazon kind Heaven
Had armed with spirit, wit, and satire;
But Cobham had the polish given,
And tipped her arrows with good-nature.
To celebrate her eyes, her air--
Coarse panegyrics would but tease her;
Melissa is her _nom de guerre_;
Alas! who would not wish to please her!
With bonnet blue, and _capuchine_,
And aprons long, they hid their armor,
And veiled their weapons, bright and keen,
In pity to the country farmer.
Fame, in the shape of Mr. P--t--
By this time all the parish knew it--
Had told that thereabouts there lurked
A wicked imp they call a poet;
Who prowled the country far and near,
Bewitched the children of the peasants,
Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer,
And sucked the eggs, and killed the pheasants.
My lady heard their joint petition,
Swore by her coronet and ermine,
She'd issue out her high commission,
To rid the manor of such vermine.
The heroines undertook the task,
Through lanes unknown, o'er stiles they ventured,
Rapped at the door, nor stayed to ask,
But bounce into the parlor entered.
The trembling family they daunt,
They flirt, they sing, they laugh, they tattle,
Rummage his mother, pinch his aunt,
And up stairs in a whirlwind rattle," &c.
The ancient pile here mentioned was the Manor-house, Stoke Park, which
was then in the possession of Viscountess Cobham. This place and the
manor had been in some remarkable hands. The manor was so called from
the Pogies, the ancient lords of that name. The heiress of this family,
in the reign of Edward the Third, married Lord Molines, who shortly
afterward procured a license from the king to convert the manor-house
into a castle. From him it descended to the Lords Hungerford, and from
them to the Hastings, earls of Huntingdon, and was afterward the
residence of Lord-chancellor Hatton. Sir Christopher Hatton had won his
promotion with Queen Elizabeth through his graceful person and fine
dancing, and is very picturesquely described by Gray, with "his
shoe-strings green, high-crowned hat, and satin doublet," leading off
the brawls, a sort of figure-dance then in vogue, before the queen. Sir
Edward Coke, having married an heiress of the Huntingdon family, became
the next possessor; and here, in the year 1601, he was honored with a
visit from Elizabeth, whom he entertained in a very sumptuous style.
After the death of the Viscountess Cobham, the estate was purchased by
Mr. William Penn, chief proprietor of Pennsylvania, a descendant of the
celebrated William Penn, the founder of that state.
This old manor-house has since been swept away, as Gray's residence is
also, and a large modern mansion now occupies its place. This was built
from a design by Wyatt, in 1789, and has since been altered and
enlarged. It is built chiefly of brick, and covered with stucco, and
consists of a large square center, with two wings. The north, or
entrance front, is ornamented with a colonnade, consisting of ten Doric
columns, and approached by a flight of steps leading to the Marble Hall.
The south front, 196 feet long, is also adorned with a colonnade,
consisting of twelve fluted columns of the old Doric order. This is
surrounded by a projecting portico of four Ionic columns, sustaining an
ornamental pediment; and again, on the top of the house, by a dome.
Stoke Park, thus interesting both on account of these older
associations, and of Penn and Gray, is about a couple of miles from
Slough. The country is flat, but its monotony is broken up by the noble
character and disposition of its woods. Near the house is a fine expanse
of water, across which the eye falls on fine views, particularly to the
south, of Windsor Castle, Cooper's Hill, and the Forest Woods. About
three hundred yards from the north front of the house stands a column,
sixty-eight feet high, bearing on the top a colossal statue of Sir
Edward Coke, by Rosa. The woods of the park shut out the view of West
End House, Gray's occasional residence, but the space is open from the
mansion across the park, so as to take in the view both of the church
and of a monument erected by the late Mr. Penn to Gray. Alighting from
the carriage at a lodge, I entered the park just at the monument. This
is composed of fine freestone, and consists of a large sarcophagus,
supported on a square pedestal, with inscriptions on each side. Three of
them are selected from the Ode to Eton College and the Elegy. They are:
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful, wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
"One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he."
The second is from the Ode:
"Ye distant spires! ye antique towers!
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights the expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver winding way.
"Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow,
A momentary bliss bestow."
The third is again from the Elegy:
"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed."
The fourth bears this inscription:
"This Monument, in honor of
THOMAS GRAY,
Was erected A.D. 1799,
Among the scenery
Celebrated by that great Lyric and Elegiac Poet.
He died in 1771,
And lies unnoted in the adjoining Church-yard,
Under the Tomb-stone on which he piously
And pathetically recorded the interment
Of his Aunt and lamented Mother."
This monument is inclosed in a neatly-kept garden-like inclosure, with a
winding walk approaching from the shade of the neighboring trees. To the
right, across the park, at some little distance, backed by fine trees,
stands the rural little church and churchyard where Gray wrote his
Elegy, and where he lies. As you walk on to this, the mansion closes the
distant view between the woods with fine effect. The church has often
been engraved, and is therefore tolerably familiar to the general
reader. It consists of two barn-like structures, with tall roofs, set
side by side, and the tower and finely-tapered spire rising above them
at the northwest corner. The church is thickly hung with ivy, where
"The moping owl may to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign."
The structure is as simple and old-fashioned, both without and within,
as any village church can well be. No village, however, is to be seen.
Stoke consists chiefly of scattered houses, and this is now in the midst
of the park. In the churchyard,
"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
All this is quite literal; and the tomb of the poet himself, near the
southeast window, completes the impression of the scene. It is a plain
brick altar tomb, covered with a blue slate slab, and, besides his own
ashes, contains those of his mother and aunt. On the slab are inscribed
the following lines by Gray himself: "In the vault beneath are
deposited, in hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains of _Mary
Antrobus_. She died unmarried, Nov. 5, 1749, aged sixty-six. In the same
pious confidence, beside her friend and sister, here sleep the remains
of _Dorothy Gray_, widow; the tender, careful mother of many children,
ONE of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her. She died, March 11,
1753, aged sixty-seven."
No testimony of the interment of Gray in the same tomb was inscribed any
where till Mr. Penn, in 1799, erected the monument already mentioned,
and placed a small slab in the wall, under the window, opposite to the
tomb itself, recording the fact of Gray's burial there. The whole scene
is well worthy of a summer day's stroll, especially for such as, pent in
the metropolis, know how to enjoy the quiet freshness of the country,
and the associations of poetry and the past. The Great Western Rail-way
now will set such down in about one hour at Slough, a pleasant walk from
Stoke.
The late Mr. Penn, a gentleman of refined taste, and a great reverencer
of the memory of Gray, possessed his autographs, which have been sold at
great prices. It is to be regretted that his house, too, is now gone,
but the church and the tomb will remain to future ages.