A

CHAPTER XXII.

THE TEEDON ORACLE.

(September, 1792-December, 1793.)

182. Constantly Teedon.

S might well be expected, it took Cowper no little time to get straight again after this "frisk into Sussex." "Chaos himself," he tells Hayley, "even the chaos of Milton, is not surrounded with more confusion, nor has a mind more completely in a hubbub, than I experience at the present moment. At our first arrival, after long absence, we find a hundred orders to servants necessary, a thousand things to be restored to their proper places, and an endless variety of minutiæ to be adjusted; which, though individually of little importance, are most momentous in the aggregate." A slight return of his disorder, too, added to his difficulties, as he informed Newton :

"I have neither been well myself, nor is Mrs. Unwin, though better, so much improved in her health, as not still to require my continual assistance. My disorder has been the old one, to which I have

been subject so many years, and especially about this season-a nervous fever; not, indeed, so oppressive as it has sometimes proved, but sufficiently alarming both to Mrs. Unwin and myself, and such as made it neither easy nor proper for me to make much use of my pen while it continued. At present I am tolerably free from it; a blessing for which I believe myself partly indebted to the use of James's powder, in small quantities; and partly to a small quantity of laudanum, taken every night; but chiefly to a manifestation of God's presence vouchsafed to me a few days since; transient, indeed, and dimly seen through a mist of many fears and troubles, but sufficient to convince me, at least while the enemy's power is a little restrained, that He has not cast me off for ever."

master.

Cowper now began again to hear voices, and, as aforetime, he communicated them to the Olney schoolThe influence of Teedon, indeed, over Cowper was extraordinary. From the 27th of August, 1791, to the 2nd of February, 1794, a period of 891 days, no fewer than 277 recorded letters passed between Olney and Weston, namely:

It is rather sad to say there are good grounds for the

supposition that this list is by no means a complete one.

These facts have been ascertained chiefly from Teedon's diary, which after the lapse of many years was discovered in 1890 by Mr. W. J. Harvey, of Champion Hill, S.W. It is a small MS. volume, size

6 inches by 3 inches, contains 122 pages closely written in a neat and minute hand, and dates from the 17th of October, 1791, to the 2nd of February, 1794. By none of Cowper's previous biographers has this diary been consulted. Southey refers to it, but that he did not see it is certain, for the single quotation from it (vol. iii. p. 148) he had second-hand, namely, from the "Memoir of the Rev. Henry Gauntlett." To a person acquainted with Cowper's history and surroundings, this closely-written volume of the impecunious and garrulous schoolmaster the Olney Pepys-conveys a great deal. To him it is not a mere collection of facts written by and relating only to an insignificant person, who, had his name not been linked with that of Cowper, would never have been heard of; it is not a mere chronicle of the small events of an out-of-the-way town in the Midlands; the names of Teedon's scholars are not merely the names of boys and girls, as like to other boys and girls as pins are to pins nobodies; it conveys

much more than this. As we turn over its soiled yellow pages the little world in which Cowper lived and moved seems to be rehabilitated. "The squire"

and "madam," as Cowper and Mrs. Unwin are constantly styled, are of course the central figures, but their abode being Weston they are only rarely seen in Olney, though now and then they take tea with their new friend, the Rev. Mr. Bean, at the Vicarage. We see Teedon in his best coat and breeches trudging up Overs Hill towards the Lodge to receive his quarterage; for the poet, thanks to the beneficence of an unknown friend, is able to allow him as much as £7 10s.

per quarter-a sum which, considering the modest total his pupils' pence amounted to, was a small fortune. Lady Hesketh imagined that Cowper was impoverishing himself by distributing his bounty so lavishly. But says Cowper: "I know who is alluded to in your letter, under the description of a person who lives luxuriously at my cost. But you are misinformed. Unless a pint of ale at meal-times be a luxury, there are no luxuries in that man's house, I assure you; and I can assure you beside, that whatever he has, he has it not by gift of mine; Mrs. Unwin and I are merely the medium through which the bounty passes, not the authors of it. But we administer it conscientiously, and as in the sight of God, and are the more scrupulous about it because it is not ours." We see Teedon another day approaching Weston on a very different errand. "The squire" has heard fresh voices, and he wishes to consult the man who is the peculiar favourite of Heaven. Teedon's face is serious this time, and before setting out it is evident that he has wrestled long in prayer. Teedon was certainly often absurd and injudicious, but he was no hypocrite.

In the period covered by the diary some two and a half years, no fewer than ninety-two visits of Teedon to Cowper are recorded, being an average of about one every nine days-hence there was a letter or a visit every three or four days.

We are also permitted to become acquainted with Teedon's household, which consisted, besides the schoolmaster, of his cousin, Elizabeth Killingworth, familiarly called "Mammy"; of Mammy's son Worthy, already alluded to in this book as Eusebius Killingworth, who

did a little at bookbinding; and likewise of Mary Taylor, "Polly," also styled "cousin." Mr. William Soul, of Olney, however, calls her "daughter," and it is evident that the people of Olney regarded her as Teedon's illegitimate daughter (she was now a middleaged woman), born before Teedon's arrival in Olney, and, as one piously hopes, before his conversion. In the ledger of Mr. Grindon she is styled sometimes. daugr." and sometimes "kinsw." On January II, 1794, Teedon writes: "I went over to Weston, saw the Esq and MadTM, and went to Miss Higgins, who told me she heard there were (sic) to be a wedding at my house, viz., Polly and Worthy." Worthy was at this time forty-three.

We are able also, by means of the diary, to take a peep inside Mr. Teedon's school, which was none other than the upper part of the old Shiel Hall (described in § 43), which building, to Teedon's terror, the authorities threatened to pull down. Poor place as it was, it was his school. On November 23, 1792, he writes:

"I could not bare (=bear) the School on Acc of the Smoak (=smoke). I went to the (Rev.) Mr. Bean, and he advised me to go to Mr. Wright (Lord Dartmouth's steward) at after 2, who ordered Mr. Raban to repair the chimney, &c."

On October 22 (1791), “M. (Maurice) Smith called me to tell me my school would be pulled down, &c. I replied I was glad of it if they would build me another."

On July 6th of the next year he writes that he was assaulted with reproach by Ashburner, who had inter