Impressions of England 58

Impressions of England 58

frequently passed, on the railway, a village in Hertfordshire, which is

invested with memories of a more elevated and affecting character. It

was not only the birth-place of the poet, (as well as of Bishop Ken,)

but its church-tower is that from which he heard the bell tolled on the

burial-day of his mother. Its parsonage was the scene of all those

maternal tendernesses, which he has so touchingly celebrated; and who

that has shared the love of a Christian mother, can fail to reverence

the bard, who has so inimitably enshrined, in poetry, the best and

holiest instincts of the human heart, as exhibited in the mutual loves

of the mother and her son? I could not leave England without first

paying a pilgrimage to those scenes of his maturer life, which have

become classic from their frequent mention in his poems.

 

As I was taking my ticket for a second-class passage to the nearest

point on the railway to Olney, I happened to meet a gentleman who had

just bought his, and with whom I had the pleasure of some acquaintance.

Knowing him to be connected, by marriage and position, with some of the

most aristocratic families in the kingdom, I very naturally said to

him—“I’m going the same way with you, but shall lose the pleasure of

your company, for I’ve only a second-class ticket.” I was amused with

his answer:—“Yes, for I’ve only a _third_-class ticket.” He briefly

explained that he was forced to economize, and that, although he did not

like it, the inconvenience of a seat among a low-class of people, for a

short time, was not so intolerable as a collapsed purse, “especially” he

added, “as I am thus enabled to travel in the first-class carriages when

I travel with my wife.” Such is the independence as to action, and the

freedom as to confession of economy, which characterize a well-bred man,

whose position in society is settled; and I could not but think how

snobbish, in the contrast, is the conduct of many of my own countrymen,

who, if they ever use prudence, in their expenses, are afraid to have it

known. An aristocracy of money is not only contemptible in itself, but

it curses a land with a universal shame of seeming prudent. It makes the

dollared upstart fancy himself a gentleman, while the true gentleman is

degraded in his own eyes, as well as in the estimation of the vulgar, by

the fact, that his house is small, his furniture plain, and his table

frugal. Hence so much _upholstery_ in America; so much hotel-life; and

such a contempt for quiet respectability.

 

This anecdote is not out of place in a chapter devoted to Cowper. The

poet was a man of gentle blood, and, in every sense of the word, a

gentleman. Many an English nobleman is vastly inferior to him in point

of extraction. He was descended from the blood-royal of Henry Third, and

in divers ways was allied to the old aristocracy of England. He used to

be visited at Olney, by persons of quality, in their chariots; and

titled ladies were glad to accept his hospitalities. But his home at

Olney, where he lived for years, was one of the humblest in the place,

and even his darling residence, at Weston, was such a dwelling as most

country-parsons would consider barely comfortable. Now, I do not mean to

say that John Bull prefers such an establishment for a gentlemen’s

habitation; but I do mean that nobody in England would be so insane as

to think less of a gentleman, for living thus humbly, especially if he

lived so from principle.

 

As I came to Newport-Pagnel, a respectable elderly person drove by, in

an open carriage, whom the whip pointed out to me as Mr. Bull; the son

of Cowper’s old friend, whom he delighted to call his dear _Taurus_.

Having a few minutes to spare in the place, and a proper introduction, I

called at his house, and was glad to be shown a portrait of the

venerable personage himself—the “smoke-inhaling Bull” of the Letters. A

lady of the family politely gave me all needed directions, but assured

me I should be greatly disappointed in Olney, where “there was nothing

to see but old houses, and a general aspect of decay.” I said—‘Yes, but

the house is there—and the summer-house—and the spire—and the

bridge?’ I was answered that these were yet remaining, though somewhat

the worse for wear and weather; and so, having succeeded in hiring a

horse, off I went, alone. As I approached the neighbourhood of Olney,

the first truly _Cowperish_ sight that struck me—and I had never seen

such a sight before in my life—was a living illustration of his

lines:—

 

“Yon cottager that weaves at her own door,

Pillow and bobbins, all her little store!”

 

She little knew how much pleasure the sight of her gave to a passing

stranger, with whom her art had been rendered poetically beautiful, by

the charms of Cowper’s verse. This is, in fact, the secret of his spell

as a poet, the power of investing even homely things, in real life, with

a certain fascinating attractiveness. He avoids the romantic and the

poetical, in choosing his themes; but he elevates what is common to a

dignity and beauty unknown before. He is the most English of English

bards, and I love him for teaching me to see a something even in the

English poor, which makes them, to me, vastly more interesting than the

romantic peasantry of Italy. True, the latter tread the vintage, and the

other only stack the corn; but the English cottage has the Bible in it,

and its children learn the Ten Commandments, and also learn that

“cleanliness is next to godliness;” while in Italy, among fleas and

other vermin, the idle parents sit lazily in the sun, and the children

run after the traveller’s coach-wheel, lying while they beg, and showing

by their religious vocabulary, that Bacchus and Maria are confounded in

their imagination as saints of the same calendar.

 

At length I saw the spire of Olney, and soon I crossed the bridge, over

whose “wearisome, but needful length,” used to come the news from

London, to solace Cowper’s winter evenings. I was not long in finding

the poet’s most unpoetical home, now occupied by a petty shop-keeper,

who has turned his parlour into a stall. Here he lived, however, and

here he sang: here, motherly Mrs. Unwin made tea for him, and Lady

Austen gave him “the sofa” for his “Task.” Under these stairs once

lodged Puss, Tiney, and Bess; those happy hares which, alone of their

kind, have had a _local habitation_, and will always have _a name_. In

the garden, I saw where the cucumber-vine used to grow, and where Puss

used to ruminate beneath its leaves, like Jonah under his gourd. An

apple-tree was pointed out to me as “set by Mr. Cowper’s own hands.” The

garden has been pieced off, and to see the “summer-house,” I was forced

to enter, by a neighbour’s leave, another enclosure. Here is the little

nestling-place of Cowper’s poesy—the retreat where his Egeria came to

him. In the fence, is still the wicket he made, to let him into the

parsonage-grounds, when Newton was his confessor. ‘Here, then,’ I said,

‘one may fancy the lily and the rose, growing in rivalry; and another

rose _just washed in a shower_; and the _sound of the church-going

bell_, and a thousand other minute matters in themselves, all taking

their place in the poetic magazine of Cowper, and so coming into verse,

through his brain, as the mulberry leaf becomes silk, by another process

of spinning.’ It was a small field for such a harvest, and yet “the

Task” grew here.

 

And now, another mile brought me to the more agreeable Weston-Underwood,

the resort of all his walking days at Olney, and the dear retreat of his

later life; the dearer, because bestowed by the lovely Lady Hesketh.

This is, indeed, a residence worthy of a poet, and though all who once

rendered it so charming to Cowper have passed away, I was agreeably

surprised to find no important feature changed. A painful identity

belongs to it: you recognize, at every step, the fidelity of the poet’s

descriptive powers, and it seems impossible that he who has made the

scene part of himself, has been for half a century in his grave, while

all this survives. You enter the desolate park of the Throckmortons, and

there is “the alcove,” with its commanding view, so dear to the poet’s

eye, and Olney spire in the distance. You pass into “the Wilderness,”

now a wilderness indeed, for it is neglected and overgrown. Here are a

couple of urns, now green with moss, and lovingly clasped by ivy, but

each marked with familiar names, and graced by Cowper’s playful verse.

The one adorns the grave of “Neptune,” Sir John Throckmorton’s pointer;

the other is the monument of “Fop,” his lady’s favourite spaniel. I

hailed this memorial of “Lady Frog’s” pet; but was far more moved to

descry, before long, at the end of a flowery alley, the antique bust of

Homer, which Cowper so greatly valued, and to which he gave a Greek

inscription, which Hayley was proud to do into English:—

 

“The sculptor? Nameless though once dear to fame;

But this man bears an everlasting name.”

 

Here, then, that “stricken deer that left the herd,” was led to a sweet

covert at last, and went in and out, and found pasture, under the

guidance of one “who had himself been hurt by the archers.” With what

enchantment these haunts of hallowed genius inspired me! And yet never

felt I so melancholy before. The utter loneliness of the scene; the fact

that they who had bestowed its charm, were all, long ago, dead; and then

that painful reality—everything else there, as it should be; the Task,

no poem, but a verity, and before my eyes; but Cowper, Hayley, Austen,

Hesketh, all gone forever; these thoughts were oppressive. I sat down,

and almost wept, as I repeated the names of those who were so “lovely

and pleasant in their lives,” and who now are undivided in death! It was

an hour of deeper feeling than I had realized before, at any shrine of

departed genius, in England.

 

I went to the house, and rejoiced in the comfort it must have afforded

Cowper, in his latter days. It is neat and comfortable, and the village

is a pretty one, trim and thrifty in its look, and sufficiently

poetical. It has “an air of snug concealment,” which must have been most

congenial to its gifted inhabitant, and it was not unsuited to his

fondness for receiving his friends as guests. I went into the poet’s

chamber, and also into that which Lady Hesketh used to occupy. In the

former, there is a sad autograph of the poet, in lead-pencil, behind a

window-shutter. The window had been walled up, and only lately

re-opened, when the pencilling was found. It is one of the poet’s last

performances—an adieu to Weston, written there, as he left it

forever:—

 

“Farewell dear scenes forever closed to me,

O for what sorrows must I now exchange ye!”