WELL OF INSPIRATION
Jonathan Rowe
Hot springs, lukewarm reception: Poets inspired by city failed to impress peers
William Whitehead went on to become Poet Laureate, despite writing some awful verses about Clifton, while William Combe hacked out some even worse verse, blew a fortune and spent the rest of his life in a debtor’s prison. introduces us to a pair of colourful 18th century literary figures and their Bristol connections.
Nymph of the Fount! From whose auspicious Urn
Flows health, flows strength, and Beauty’s roseate bloom,
Which warms the virgin’s cheek, the gifts I sing!
THESE are the opening lines of ‘An Hymn to the Nymph of the Bristol Spring,’ written 270 years ago in 1751 by the soon-to-be Poet Laureate, William Whitehead (1715-1785).
The poem praises the properties of the “Bristol Spring”, the waters of the Hotwell spa which flourished from the late 17th century (Catherine of Braganza, Charles II’s Queen, was a visitor in 1677) for around a hundred years.
The Bristol Hotwell was much smaller than the neighbouring spa of Bath. It was in no sense a rival, but rather a complimentary cure, as many people combined visits to both resorts.
At the time of Whitehead’s rather overblown (and over-long) ode, the Hot Wells of Bristol were at the height their popularity and attracted the aristocracy and many famous literary names including Joseph Addison, John Gay, Alexander Pope and Tobias Smollett who set the opening chapters of his 1771 novel, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker there. Today the only reminder is part of the colonnade which still stands in Hotwells Road.
Whitehead’s 470-line Bristol ode attempts the style of Edmund Spenser and John Milton, two of the greatest poets of the 16th and 17th centuries, and incorporates allegorical imagery with local references:
Of Clifton, tow’ring Mont, th’ enraptured Eye
Beholds the cultivated Prospect rise
Hill above Hill, with many a verdant bound of Hedge-row chequer’d
Clifton gets two more mentions, “Clifton stands, Courted by every breeze” and
“Clifton’s love sick sons”, and there are references to the Severn River and Bristol where the sun “o’er Bristol’s red’ning towers his orient beam”. There is also a reference to the famous Bristol Diamonds:
Nor yet for Waters only art thou fam’d,
Avonia; deep within thy cavern’d rocks
Do Diamonds lurk, which mimic those of Ind*
(* i.e. India)
Bristol Diamonds are the quartz crystals found in the Avon Gorge which became popular novelties for visitors to Hotwells in the Georgian period.
Whitehead’s Bristol poem received a rather muted reception. Fellow poet William Shenstone (1714-1763) wrote: “I have seen Whitehead’s ode to the Bristol Spring, which I don’t much like”.
The son of a Cambridge baker, Whitehead became tutor to tenyear-old Viscount George Villiers in 1745, and together with the boy’s parents, William Villiers, 3rd Earl of Jersey and his wife, the former Dowager Duchess of Bedford, Whitehead made several summer excursions to Bristol in the 1740s and 50s, for the Earl and Countess to take the benefit of the waters of Hotwells.
Whitehead enjoyed the patronage of the family for the rest of his life as his former pupil (an ancestor of Emmerdale actor, Christopher Villiers) became the 4th Earl of Jersey in 1769 aged 33. The following year the Earl married 17-year-old Frances Twysden.
They had ten children and at the age of 40 – and a grandmother – Frances became mistress to the 31-year-old Prince of Wales (later George IV).
In 1749 Whitehead and the family enjoyed several visits to the Jacob’s Wells Theatre (Bristol’s first purpose-built playhouse, opened in 1729, and which stood on the site of Brandon House in Jacob’s Wells Road) and was “highly pleased” with the performances of Hannah Pritchard, a leading actress of her day, and Thomas King who later became actor manager of the Theatre Royal in King Street. He was also the original Sir Peter Teazle in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal in 1777.
Said to be good-humoured and amiable but rather dull, Whitehead became Poet Laureate in 1757 and held the post until his death. For 28 years he contented himself in writing obligatory verse, avoiding flattery, domestic politics, and bolstering Britain’s place in world affairs.
He is considered one of a long run of insignificant Poets Laureate
of the 18th century but he could also see past court and political divisions and speak of the “spirit of England”.
His poetry was often ridiculed, but he also wrote several successful and well-received plays. His first, The Roman Father (1750) in which the greatest actor of the age, David Garrick, appeared alongside Thomas King and Hannah Pritchard, was met with “extravagant applause.’
In 1775 literary hack journalist and writer, William Combe (17421823) penned another Bristolthemed ode, ‘Clifton: A Poem in Imitation of Spenser,’ which was even more excruciating than Whitehead’s:
Thy beauties, Clifton, I will strive to sing!
For thee, thou lovely scene, I tune
my lay!
For thee, my poor forsaken lyre I string,
And at the Muse’s shrine my vows I pay
In his preface, Combe wrote “I love and admire the place, which I mean to celebrate , with a real enthusiasm”. The poem, he suggested, was “offered to the candour and indulgence of those who reside in, or may occasionally visit the favourite Village, which is the object of my sincere but imperfect praise.”
Officially the son of Robert Combes, a rich Bristol ironmonger, William was sent to Eton College. His Quaker mother, Susanna Hill, died when he was six and his father eight years later when William was fourteen, leaving him in the care of London alderman and tradesman,
William Alexander who became his guardian.
Alexander may have been William’s biological father, or possibly the lover that his mother should have married.
Alexander died in 1762 leaving 20-year-old William with a fortune of around £20,000, inherited from both Alexander and his (so-called) father.
Well known for his wit, good nature, lavish lifestyle and expensive tastes, he squandered his entire inheritance within four years.
Tall, handsome, an elegant scholar and highly accomplished in his manners and behaviour, Combe lived an ostentatious lifestyle. He lived in Hotwells for some time in the 1760s and kept two carriages, several horses and a large
retinue of servants. In his aspirations to become a gentleman he changed his name to “Combe” (losing the ‘s’) and gained the nickname “Count Combe”.
Because of his debts, he then spent 40 years, from 1785 until his death, living “within the rules” of the King’s Bench Prison. This meant that although he was imprisoned for debt, he could live within a three-mile radius of the prison in Southwark, London. He worked as a waiter, cook, and soldier at various times, and from 1788-1806 was employed by the government of William Pitt the Younger as a propagandist.
He wrote over 100 books and 2000 newspaper articles. A book, The Philosopher of Bristol was published in 1775 and a play The Flattering Milliner was performed at the Theatre Royal in King Street in the same year. He acquired a modicum of fame for his 1812 verses
accompanying The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. Jane Austen is known to have owned a copy.
In 1776 Combe married Maria Foster, a mistress of Francis, Lord Beauchamp, and a cousin of the writer Horace Walpole, who indicated Maria had given Beauchamp venereal disease, and that Beauchamp gave her £500, plus a promised annuity of £300 when she married Combe.
The annuity was never paid. Maria was confined to an insane asylum in Essex in 1791.
In 1795 Combe “eloped” with Charlotte Hadfield, and an illegal marriage was conducted by a cler
gyman in a private house. Divorce on grounds of insanity was not legal and Maria did not die until 1814. Combe died aged 82 in London in 1823, childless and without heirs.
Combe’s story has another Bristol in the connection with the woman to whom he dedicated his ‘Clifton: A Poem in Imitation of Spenser.’ Printed by George Routh at the Maiden Tavern in Baldwin Street, Combe dedicated his ode to “Lady Draper”.
This was in fact, Elizabeth Draper (1744-1778), born Elizabeth Sciater in Anjengo (now Anchuthengu), India, daughter of an East India Company official.
In 1758 at the age of 14 she married the morose and reserved, Daniel Draper, also a senior official of the East India Company, and 20 years her senior. In 1765 the couple travelled to England with their son and daughter who were to be educated here.
Daniel returned to India the following year but Eliza, as she was known, stayed in Soho, London. Here she met several leading literary figures of the day including, friend and biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, the MP and radical journalist. John Wilkes, and the Anglo-Irish novelist and clergyman, Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), best known for his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759).
Sterne was captivated by Eliza’s charm, vivacity and intelligence. She was flattered by his attention and did little to discourage him, but sadly their burgeoning friendship was cut short as after three months, Eliza returned to India leaving her children in the care of her grandfather in Shropshire.
The relationship between Eliza and Sterne (a married man) is believed to have been platonic, but it certainly aroused gossip.
In 1768 Sterne published A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, which contains some extravagant references to Eliza, and the previous year he had written Journal to Eliza, part of which he sent to her, but this was not actually published until 1904.
Sterne died of consumption only a year after he had met Eliza and they never saw each other again. Eliza became increasingly estranged from her husband who was keeping Indian women as mistresses, and who also seduced Eliza’s English maid.
Finally in 1773 she left her husband and never saw him again. The marriage was never dissolved but Eliza kept custody of her daughter, Betsy, (her son had tragically died aged nine) and returned to England for her health the following year with Betsy, then aged 16.
They lived in London for a while but in 1777, Eliza became seriously
ill and in June 1778 she moved to Bristol and is believed to have stayed with her husband’s cousin, Lieutenant-General Sir William Draper at his house, Manilla Hall, on Clifton Down. Sir William, who was born in Bristol, built the house in 1763 but it was demolished about 1912 for Manilla Road.
Eliza died on August 3rd 1778 aged 34. In 1780 an elaborate memorial was created for her in Bristol Cathedral, designed by celebrated London sculptor, John Bacon (1740-99).
The inscription reads “Sacred to the memory of Eliza Draper in whom genius and benevolence were united”.
Daniel Draper remained with the East India Company until 1782 when he returned to England where he bought an estate in Middlesex.
William Combe had known Laurence Sterne as they had met during in Italy in 1763 during a tour of Europe. Combe boasted that Eliza had loved him, rather than Sterne, and told the tale that he once had to flee from her bedchamber leaving one of his shoes behind!
It is believed the truth was Eliza snubbed him as a “vulgar chap”, and was less than impressed by his unwelcome advances.
No doubt, if she had lived, she would have not been amused by his dedication of his Clifton poem to her!