The Dog and the Water Lilies
William Cowper told Lady Hesketh about a walk beside the river at Olney, and the affecting behaviour of his spaniel Beau.
1788
William Cowper told Lady Hesketh about a walk beside the river at Olney, and the affecting behaviour of his spaniel Beau.
1788
This post is number 2 in the series William Cowper
In June 1788, William Cowper wrote to his friend Lady Hesketh about a remarkable act of devotion from his spaniel Beau. It all happened when Cowper, who now lived a rather retired life owing to his shattered nerves, was taking a break from his books with a walk by the River Great Ouse near Olney in Buckinghamshire. The following month he cast the tale into verse.
To Lady Hesketh
The Lodge, June 27, 1788.
I must tell you a feat of my dog Beau.* Walking by the riverside,* I observed some water-lilies floating at a little distance from the bank. They are a large white flower, with an orange-coloured eye, very beautiful. I had a desire to gather one, and, having your long cane in my hand, by the help of it endeavored to bring one of them within my reach. But the attempt proved vain, and I walked forward. Beau had all the while observed me very attentively.
Returning soon after toward the same place, I observed him plunge into the river, while I was about forty yards distant from him; and, when I had nearly reached the spot, he swam to land with a lily in his mouth, which he came and laid at my foot.
THE noon was shady, and soft airs*
Swept Ouse’s silent tide,
When, ’scap’d from literary cares,
I wander’d on his side.
My spaniel, prettiest of his race,
And high in pedigree,
(Two nymphs,* adorned with ev’ry grace,
That spaniel found for me)
Now wanton’d* lost in flags and reeds,
Now starting into sight
Pursued the swallow o’er the meads
With scarce a slower flight.
* Cowper’s spaniel Beau was his third pet dog, after Mungo and Marquis: Cowper told Lady Hesketh on September 20th, 1787, that “The Marquis is dead, and is succeeded by a Beau”. Cowper had been at pains to ensure that Beau liked water, and told Lady Hesketh just days before the events of June 27th, “Having taught him to take the water, and even to delight in it, I never give him a forced washing, lest he should contract hydrophobia, and refuse the river”.
* That is, by the River Great Ouse, close by Cowper’s cottage in Weston Underwood, where he lived from 1786 to 1795. The river rises at Syresham in Northamptonshire, and then runs 143 miles through Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk before emptying into the North Sea near Kings Lynn on The Wash. It is not to be confused with the River Ouse further north, on which the city of York stands, and which empties into the Humber Estuary.
* The poem was composed the following month, August 1788, and first published in The Gentleman’s Magazine for December 1791.
* Charlotte and Barbara Gunning, the daughters of Sir Robert Gunning (1731-1816) from nearby Horton; Sir Robert had served as the British minister in Denmark (1765–1771), Prussia (1771) and Russia (1772–1776). His daughters acquired the spaniel from a farmer, and gave it to Cowper. The epithet ‘nymphs’ was an appropriate choice: the water lily belongs to the family Nymphaeaceae.
* Cowper has fashioned a verb out of the adjective wanton, meaning ‘reckless and unrestrained’.