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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In 1779 James Dodsley published a slight piece of fiction entitled Columella; Or, The Distressed Anchoret. The author of that work was the Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, who kept his name from the title page, preferring to figure there as “the author of The Spiritual Quixote,” a clever satire on the Methodists by which he had won attention six years before. This latter work went through four editions before 1800 and was deservedly revived in a handsome reprint for the modern reader in 1926, but the only edition of Columella was the first. Special interest attaches to Columella today, however, because of its connection with the poet, William Shenstone. Graves and Shenstone had been intimate friends. Their friendship began in 1732 when both were undergraduates of Pembroke College, Oxford, and endured with great warmth of affection until Shenstone's death in 1763, when Graves found himself an executor of his friend's will. During Graves's lifetime (he lived on until 1804, one of the few nonagenarians in the history of English literature) it was apparently known that the character of Columella had been created in the image of Shenstone, for the fact was mentioned in the obituary notice of Graves in the Gentleman's Magazine? That interesting point has been duly remarked by recent writers, but as yet nobody has demonstrated how startlingly close the portrait is. In a like manner identifications of minor characters in Columella have been mentioned, but the suggestions, unsupported by proof, have remained only good intuitions. I propose in the following paragraphs to discuss the origins of certain characters in Columella, devoting special attention to showing that Columella himself is a highly intimate portrait of Shenstone.
1 Columella; Or, The Distressed Anchoret. A Colloquial Tale, 2 vols., London, 1779.
2 The Spiritual Quixote had an interesting bibliographical history. The first London edition came out in March of 1773. A second edition appeared in December, 1773, though bearing the date 1774. An edition was printed in Dublin in 1774, I conjecture from the second London edition. A third London edition was published, with corrections and additions by the author, in 1783. In 1792 appeared what I believe to have been a remainder issue of the edition of 1783 given a new title page. A German translation of the first edition was published in Leipzig in 1773, the translator being Johann Gottfried Gellius (Deutsches Anonymen-Lexicon). In 1798 a translation of the book into Dutch was made by Elizabeth Bekker Wolff, who on the title page of her translation attributed the original to Smollett. In 1810 Mrs. Barbauld introduced The Spiritual Quixote as volumes 32 and 33 of The British Novelists. In 1816 the book was similarly made a member of Walker's Classics, and as such made its debut in America, printed in Providence, Rhode Island. And then, after a lapse of over a century, it was reprinted in London in 1926 by Peter Davies.
3 lxxiv, Pt. ii (Dec., 1804), 1166:“He soon after published ‘Columella, or the distressed Anchoret,‘ in 2 vols. to show the consequence of a person of education and talents retiring to solitude and indolence in the vigour of youth: in this it is thought he alluded to his friend Shenstone.”
4 Havelock Ellis, in The Nineteenth Century, lxxviii (April, 1915), 858; Times Literary Supplement, xxi (May 11, 1922), 298; E. Monro Purkis, William Shenstone, Poet and Landscape Gardener (Wolverhampton, England, 1931), pp. 105–107.
5 Columella, i, 4–5.
6 Columella, i, 12.
7 Richard Graves, Recollection of Some Particulars in the Life of the Late William Shenstone (London, 1788), p. 20.
8 Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. Shenstone.
9 Columella, i, 74–75.
10 Ibid., p. 78.—Mr. Milward is Columella's real name, “ Columella” being a nickname given him by his friends.
11 William Shenstone, Works in Verse and Prose, 4th ed., 3 vols. (London, 1773), (Vol. iii is of the 3rd edition), iii, 101.
12 Op. cit., iii, 36.
13 Columella, i, 128–129.
14 Op. cit., 81–82.
15 Columella, ii, 47.
16 Additional Manuscripts in the British Museum, 28, 958, f. 38 v.
17 Shenstone, op. cit., iii, 187.
18 Columella, ii, 188.
19 Op. cit., iii, 232.
20 Columella, ii, 80.
21 Ibid., p. 142.
22 Op. cit., iii, 102.—The latter is undated; it was called by Dodsley “about 1745.'?
23 Op. cit., iii, 105.
24 Op. cit., iii, 83–84.
25 In his will, which is preserved among the Chancery Proceedings of the British Public Record Office, Shenstone delegated Mary Cutler (also in his domestic service) as guardian to Mary Arnold, and bequeathed six pounds annually, payable from his estate, for her maintenance. One may observe, in connection with the question considered above, that at the time of Shenstone's death in 1763, Mary Arnold was old enough to be looked after. But Shenstone's “amour” was of the year 1745. I do not know at what time Mary Cutler entered Shenstone's service, but he died greatly in her debt, and she contested his will in Chancery, seeking unpaid salary and reimbursement of monies she had lent him to meet demands on his estate.
26 Columella, ii, 169.
27 Op. cit., vii, 204. The letter is addressed to Richard Iago.
28 Italian Landscape in Eighteenth Century England (Oxf. Univ. Press, 1925), pp. 138 and 208–210.—Shenstone and the Leasowes figure in Graves's novel, The Spiritual Quixote: Book ix, Chaps. 7–9. Though Graves could satirize landscape gardening, there is evidence that he tried some “improvements” on his own grounds at Claverton, a few miles east of Bath: See Shenstone, op. cit., iii, 184, 233–234, 291, and 329.
29 These observations are based upon an examination of Robert Dodsley's description of the Leasowes in Shenstone, op. cit., ii [285]–320.
30 It has been suggested (Times Literary Supplement, xxi, 298) that the Atticus and Hortensius of Columella stand respectively for Dr. Adams of Pembroke (the friend of Dr. Johnson) and the great barrister, William Blackstone. These identifications are by no means so convincing as that of Shenstone with Columella. Atticus is said to have become “a celebrated preacher in the University; an ingenious and diligent tutor in his own college,” and “by the time he was thirty, the Head of a very respectable and learned society” (Columella, i, 15). The name of William Adams is conspicuous in the archives of Graves's own college. For data concerning him see Douglas Macleane, History of Pembroke College (Oxf. Hist. Soc., xxxiii, 393–396). The facts ascertainable about Adams do not correspond as closely as one could desire with those quoted concerning Atticus, though in 1731–32 Adams was tutor at Pembroke and was for years thereafter a noted preacher, his duties lying, however, outside the University. In 1775, at the advanced age of sixty-nine, he was called back to be Master of Pembroke. If Dr. Adams is Graves's Atticus, perhaps Pembroke College is the “respectable and learned society of which he was Head.”
Hortensius is said to have gone from the University to the Temple, where he distinguished himself. After Columella's marriage, he sent him a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries (Columella, ii, 203). The famous barrister, William Blackstone, was another Pembroke man. Concerning Blackstone see again, Macleane, op. cit., pp. 380–381, and D. N. B. s. v. Blackstone. Blackstone matriculated at Pembroke in 1738. In 1741 he entered the Middle Temple, and in 1746 he was called to the Bar. In 1744 he had been elected Fellow of All Souls, and for many years afterwards he divided his attention between professional and academic interests. He certainly distinguished himself in the law. More than that, Graves had known Blackstone well at Oxford, having been himself for a time Fellow of All Souls. For Graves's own reminiscence of his friendship with Blackstone, see his last work, The Triflers (published posthumously, London, 180S), pp. 53–59. I do not doubt that Graves would have enjoyed making a character in his fiction suggest William Blackstone. Granting that such was his intention, his causing Hortensius to select the Commentaries as a gift for Columella was a nice bit of humor. It is possible to see Blackstone reflected in Hortensius, though it seems less likely that Dr. Adams is remembered in Atticus. Neither identification could be too vigorously insisted upon. I have not discovered that Adams and Blackstone were personal friends, but there is no reason to the contrary.
31 Havelock Ellis (op. cit., p. 858) made the surmise, but did not supportait with evidence.
32 Columella, i, 66–67.
33 From 1749 to 1804 Graves was Rector of the little parish of Claverton, three miles east of Bath.
34 Columella, i, 86.
35 Columella, i, 87–88.
36 Richard Graves, Sermons …, London, 1799, pp. 146–147.
37 Columella, i, 90.
38 Columella, ii, 183. The name of Graves's wife was Lucy.