William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  The last specimen shall be one in the more sententious style, and one which proves that Cowper was capable of writing in a judicious manner on a difficult and delicate question — even a question so difficult and so delicate as that of the propriety of painting the face.

  TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

  “May 3rd, 1784.

  “MY DEAR FRIEND, — The subject of face painting may be considered, I think, in two points of view. First, there is room for dispute with respect to the consistency of the practice with good morals; and secondly, whether it be on the whole convenient or not, may be a matter worthy of agitation. I set out with all the formality of logical disquisition, but do not promise to observe the same regularity any further than it may comport with my purpose of writing as fast as I can.

  “As to the immorality of the custom, were I in France, I should see none. On the contrary, it seems in that country to be a symptom of modest consciousness, and a tacit confession of what all know to be true, that French faces have in fact neither red nor white of their own. This humble acknowledgment of a defect looks the more like a virtue, being found among a people not remarkable for humility. Again, before we can prove the practice to be immoral, we must prove immorality in the design of those who use it; either that they intend a deception, or to kindle unlawful desires in the beholders. But the French ladies, so far as their purpose comes in question, must be acquitted of both these charges. Nobody supposes their colour to be natural for a moment, any more than he would if it were blue or green: and this unambiguous judgment of the matter is owing to two causes; first, to the universal knowledge we have, that French women are naturally either brown or yellow, with very few exceptions; and secondly, to the inartificial manner in which they paint; for they do not, as I am most satisfactorily informed, even attempt an imitation of nature, but besmear themselves hastily, and at a venture, anxious only to lay on enough. Where therefore there is no wanton intention, nor a wish to deceive, I can discover no immorality. But in England, I am afraid, our painted ladies are not clearly entitled to the same apology. They even imitate nature with such exactness that the whole public is sometimes divided into parties, who litigate with great warmth the question whether painted or not? This was remarkably the case with a Miss E —— , whom I well remember. Her roses and lilies were never discovered to be spurious, till she attained an age that made the supposition of their being natural impossible. This anxiety to be not merely red and white, which is all they aim at in France, but to be thought very beautiful, and much more beautiful than Nature has made them, is a symptom not very favourable to the idea we would wish to entertain of the chastity, purity, and modesty of our countrywomen. That they are guilty of a design to deceive is certain. Otherwise why so much art? and if to deceive, wherefore and with what purpose? Certainly either to gratify vanity of the silliest kind, or, which is still more criminal, to decoy and inveigle, and carry on more successfully the business of temptation. Here, therefore, my opinion splits itself into two opposite sides upon the same question. I can suppose a French woman, though painted an inch deep, to be a virtuous, discreet, excellent character; and in no instance should I think the worse of one because she was painted. But an English belle must pardon me if I have not the same charity for her. She is at least an impostor, whether she cheats me or not, because she means to do so; and it is well if that be all the censure she deserves.

  “This brings me to my second class of ideas upon this topic, and here I feel that I should be fearfully puzzled, were I called upon to recommend the practice on the score of convenience. If a husband chose that his wife should paint, perhaps it might be her duty, as well as her interest, to comply. But I think he would not much consult his own, for reasons that will follow. In the first place, she would admire herself the more; and in the next, if she managed the matter well, she might he more admired by others; an acquisition that might bring her virtue under trials, to which otherwise it might never have been exposed. In no other case, however, can I imagine the practice in this country to be either expedient or convenient. As a general one it certainly is not expedient, because in general English women have no occasion for it. A swarthy complexion is a rarity here; and the sex, especially since inoculation has been so much in use, have very little cause to complain that nature has not been kind to them in the article of complexion. They may hide and spoil a good one, but they cannot, at least they hardly can, give themselves a better. But even if they could, there is yet a tragedy in the sequel, which, should make them tremble.

  “I understand that in France, though the use of rouge be general, the use of white paint is far from being so. In England, she that uses one, commonly uses both. Now all white paints, or lotions, or whatever they may be called, are mercurial, consequently poisonous, consequently ruinous in time to the constitution. The Miss B —— above mentioned was a miserable witness of this truth, it being certain that her flesh fell from her bones before she died. Lady Coventry was hardly a less melancholy proof of it; and a London physician perhaps, were he at liberty to blab, could publish a bill of female mortality, of a length that would astonish us.

  “For these reasons I utterly condemn the practice, as it obtains in England; and for a reason superior to all these I must disapprove it. I cannot, indeed, discover that Scripture forbids it in so many words. But that anxious solicitude about the person, which such an artifice evidently betrays, is, I am sure, contrary to the tenor and spirit of it throughout. Show me a woman with a painted face, and I will show you a woman whose heart is set on things of the earth, and not on things above.

  “But this observation of mine applies to it only when it is an imitative art. For in the use of French women, I think it is as innocent as in the use of a wild Indian, who draws a circle round her face, and makes two spots, perhaps blue, perhaps white, in the middle of it. Such are my thoughts upon the matter.

  ”Vive valeque,

  Yours ever,

  W. C.”

  These letters have been chosen as illustrations of Cowper’s epistolary style, and for that purpose they have been given entire. But they are also the best pictures of his character; and his character is everything. The events of his life worthy of record might all be comprised in a dozen pages.

  CHAPTER VIII. CLOSE OF LIFE.

  Cowper says there could not have been a happier trio on earth than Lady Hesketh, Mrs. Unwin, and himself. Nevertheless, after his removal to Weston, he again went mad, and once more attempted self-destruction. His malady was constitutional, and it settled down upon him as his years increased, and his strength failed. He was now sixty. The Olney physicians, instead of husbanding his vital power, had wasted it away secundum artem by purging, bleeding, and emetics. He had overworked himself on his fatal translation of Homer, under the burden of which he moved, as he says himself, like an ass over-laden with sand-bags. He had been getting up to work at six, and not breakfasting till eleven. And now the life from which his had for so many years been fed, itself began to fail. Mrs. Unwin was stricken with paralysis; the stroke was slight, but of its nature there was no doubt. Her days of bodily life were numbered; of mental life there remained to her a still shorter span. Her excellent son, William Unwin, had died of a fever soon after the removal of the pair to Weston. He had been engaged in the work of his profession as a clergyman, and we do not hear of his being often at Olney. But he was in constant correspondence with Cowper, in whose heart as well as in that of Mrs. Unwin his death must have left a great void, and his support was withdrawn just at the moment when it was about to become most necessary.

  Happily just at this juncture a new and a good friend appeared. Hayley was a mediocre poet, who had for a time obtained distinction above his merits. Afterwards his star had declined, but having an excellent heart, he had not been in the least soured by the downfall of his reputation. He was addicted to a pompous rotundity of style, perhaps he was rather absurd; but he was thoroughly good-natured, very anxious to make himself useful, and devoted to Cowper
, to whom, as a poet, he looked up with an admiration unalloyed by any other feeling. Both of them, as it happened, were engaged on Milton, and an attempt had been made to set them by the ears; but Hayley took advantage of it to introduce himself to Cowper with an effusion of the warmest esteem. He was at Weston when Mrs. Unwin was attacked with paralysis, and displayed his resource by trying to cure her with an electric-machine. At Eartham, on the coast of Sussex, he had, by an expenditure beyond his means, made for himself a little paradise, where it was his delight to gather a distinguished circle. To this place he gave the pair a pressing invitation, which was accepted in the vain hope that a change might do Mrs. Unwin good.

  From Weston to Eartham was a three days’ journey, an enterprise not undertaken without much trepidation and earnest prayer. It was safely accomplished, however, the enthusiastic Mr. Rose walking to meet his poet and philosopher on the way. Hayley had tried to get Thurlow to meet Cowper. A sojourn in a country house with the tremendous Thurlow, the only talker for whom Johnson condescended to prepare himself, would have been rather an overpowering pleasure; and perhaps, after all, it was as well that Hayley could only get Cowper’s disciple, Hurdis, afterwards professor of poetry at Oxford, and Charlotte Smith.

  At Eartham, Cowper’s portrait was painted by Romney.

  Romney, expert infallibly to trace

  On chart or canvas not the form alone

  And semblance, but, however faintly shown

  The mind’s impression too on every face,

  With strokes that time ought never to erase,

  Thou hast so pencilled mine that though I own

  The subject worthless, I have never known

  The artist shining with superior grace;

  But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe

  In thy incomparable work appear:

  Well: I am satisfied it should be so

  Since on maturer thought the cause is clear;

  For in my looks what sorrow could’st thou see

  When I was Hayley’s guest and sat to thee.

  Southey observes that it was likely enough there would be no melancholy in the portrait, but that Hayley and Romney fell into a singular error in mistaking for “the light of genius” what Leigh Hunt calls “a fire fiercer than that either of intellect or fancy, gleaming from the raised and protruded eye.”

  Hayley evidently did his utmost to make his guest happy. They spent the hours in literary chat, and compared notes about Milton. The first days were days of enjoyment. But soon the recluse began to long for his nook at Weston. Even the extensiveness of the view at Eartham made his mind ache, and increased his melancholy. To Weston the pair returned; the paralytic, of course, none the better for her journey. Her mind as well as her body was now rapidly giving way. We quote as biography that which is too well known to be quoted as poetry.

  TO MARY.

  The twentieth year is well nigh past.

  Since first our sky was overcast: —

  Ah, would that this might be the last!

  My Mary!

  Thy spirits have a fainter flow,

  I see thee daily weaker grow: —

  ’Twas my distress that brought thee low,

  My Mary!

  Thy needles, once a shining store,

  For my sake restless heretofore,

  Now rust disused, and shine no more,

  My Mary!

  For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil

  The same kind office for me still,

  Thy sight now seconds not thy will,

  My Mary!

  But well thou play’dst the housewife’s part,

  And all thy threads with magic art,

  Have wound themselves about this heart,

  My Mary!

  Thy indistinct expressions seem

  Like language utter’d in a dream:

  Yet me they charm, whate’er the theme,

  My Mary!

  Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,

  Are still more lovely in my sight

  Than golden, beams of orient light,

  My Mary!

  For could I view nor them nor thee,

  What sight worth seeing could I see P

  The sun would rise in vain for me,

  My Mary!

  Partakers of thy sad decline,

  Thy hands their little force resign;

  Yet gently press’d, press gently mine,

  My Mary!

  Such feebleness of limbs thou provest,

  That now at every step thou movest,

  Upheld by two; yet still thou lovest,

  My Mary!

  And still to love, though press’d with ill,

  In wintry age to feel no chill,

  With me is to be lovely still,

  My Mary!

  But ah! by constant heed I know,

  How oft the sadness that I show

  Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe,

  My Mary!

  And should my future lot be cast

  With much resemblance of the past,

  Thy worn-out heart will break at last,

  My Mary!

  Even love, at least the power of manifesting love, began to betray its mortality. She who had been so devoted, became, as her mind failed, exacting, and instead of supporting her partner, drew him down. He sank again into the depth of hypochondria. As usual, his malady took the form of religious horrors, and he fancied that he was ordained to undergo severe penance for his sins. Six days he sat motionless and silent, almost refusing to take food. His physician suggested, as the only chance of arousing him, that Mrs. Unwin should be induced, if possible, to invite him to go out with her; with difficulty she was made to understand what they wanted her to do; at last she said that it was a fine morning, and she should like a walk. Her partner at once rose and placed her arm in his. Almost unconsciously, she had rescued him from the evil spirit for the last time. The pair were in doleful plight. When their minds failed they had fallen in a miserable manner under the influence of a man named Teedon, a schoolmaster crazed with self-conceit, at whom Cowper in his saner mood had laughed, but whom he now treated as a spiritual oracle, and a sort of medium of communication with the spirit-world, writing down the nonsense which the charlatan talked. Mrs. Unwin, being no longer in a condition to control the expenditure, the housekeeping, of course, went wrong; and at the same time her partner lost the protection of the love-inspired tact by which she had always contrived to shield his weakness and to secure for him, in spite of his eccentricities, respectful treatment from his neighbours. Lady Hesketh’s health had failed, and she had been obliged to go to Bath. Hayley now proved himself no mere lion-hunter, but a true friend. In conjunction with Cowper’s relatives, he managed the removal of the pair from Weston to Mundsley, on the coast of Norfolk, where Cowper seemed to be soothed by the sound of the sea, then to Dunham Lodge, near Swaffham, and finally (in 1796) to East Dereham, where, two months after their arrival, Mrs. Unwin died. Her partner was barely conscious of his loss. On the morning of her death he asked the servant “whether there was life above stairs?” On being taken to see the corpse, he gazed at it for a moment, uttered one passionate cry of grief, and never spoke of Mrs. Unwin more. He had the misfortune to survive her three years and a half, during which relatives and friends were kind, and Miss Perowne partly filled, the place of Mrs. Unwin. Now and then, there was a gleam of reason and faint revival of literary faculty, but composition was confined to Latin verse or translation, with one memorable and almost awful exception. The last original poem written by Cowper was The Castaway, founded on an incident in Anson’s Voyage.

  Obscurest night involved the sky,

  The Atlantic billows roared,

  When such a destined, wretch as I,

  Wash’d headlong from on board,

  Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,

  His floating home for ever left.

  No braver chief could Albion boast;

  Than he with whom he went,

&n
bsp; Nor ever ship left Albion’s coast

  With warmer wishes sent.

  He loved them both, but both in vain;

  Nor him beheld, nor her again.

  Not long beneath the whelming brine

  Expert to swim, he lay,

  Nor soon he felt his strength decline,

  Or courage die away;

  But waged with death a lasting strife,

  Supported by despair of life.

  He shouted; nor his friends had fail’d

  To check the vessel’s course,

  But so the furious blast prevail’d,

  That pitiless perforce

  They left their outcast mate behind,

  And scudded still before the wind.

  Some succour yet they could afford,

  And, such as storms allow,

  The cask, the coop, the floated cord,

  Delay’d not to bestow;

  But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore,

  Whate’er they gave, should visit more.

  Nor, cruel as it seem’d, could he

  Their haste himself condemn,

  Aware that flight, in such a sea,

  Alone could rescue them;

  Yet bitter felt it still to die

  Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

  He long survives, who lives an hour

  In ocean, self-upheld;

  And so long he, with unspent power,