Smitten with an admirer
As
happens with popular authors’ works, Watts’ Horae
Lyricae began drawing fan mail. One such letter came from a young woman,
Elizabeth Singer, a poetess in her own right. Her father was a friend of Thomas
Ken, author of the Morning, Evening, and Midnight hymns, all three ending with
the well-known doxology “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Ken had
encouraged Elizabeth’s ’poetic interests and had urged her to begin a
versification of Job 38.[i]
Elizabeth wrote Watts a versified
fan letter in which she, perhaps a bit indiscreetly, said that his poetry on
love made her forget all her other suitors and gave her a deep desire to meet
him. When they met, Watts, who had thought himself above susceptibility to
romantic love, was smitten. Standing before him was a lovely woman with shining
auburn hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a fair complexion with, as Watts
described her, a “lovely blush” on her cheeks. Her carriage was gracious and
her voice was “harmoniously sweet.” She was just Watts’ age and, what is more,
she wasn’t too tall. What she saw was another matter: “Before her stood not
even a moderately presentable Englishman, but a minute, sallow-faced anatomy
with hook nose, prominent cheekbones, heavy countenance, pale complexion, and
small gray eyes.”[ii]
Watts, however, was not about to let
the opportunity pass him by. This man of eloquence, the celebrated poet of Horae Lyricae, had given hints of his
longings “for social
bliss,” that is, for marriage:
Give me a blessing fit to match my mind,
He was sure the lovely woman before
him must be the fulfillment of those longings. Therefore, he formulated his
words and made ready to propose marriage to her. But when he did so, Elizabeth
gently but candidly declined. “Mr. Watts,” she said, “I only wish I could say
that I admire the casket as much as I admire the jewel.”[iv]
She could not see herself married to a man whose jewel, whose inner poetic
beauty, was encased in such an unattractive shell.
Watts may have inadvertently
expressed some of his forgivable disappointment at being slighted by Miss Singer
in a hymn entitled “Love to the Creatures Dangerous,” as seen in these
representative stanzas:
How vain are all things here
below!
How false, and yet how fair!
Each pleasure hath its poison too,
And every sweet a snare.
How false, and yet how fair!
Each pleasure hath its poison too,
And every sweet a snare.
The
brightest things below the sky
Give but a flattering light;
We should suspect some danger nigh
Where we possess delight.
Give but a flattering light;
We should suspect some danger nigh
Where we possess delight.
The
fondness of a creature’s love,
How strong it strikes the sense!
Thither the warm affections move,
Nor can we call them thence.[v]
How strong it strikes the sense!
Thither the warm affections move,
Nor can we call them thence.[v]
We
feel in these lines how deeply Watts’ own senses had been stricken by Elizabeth
and how difficult it must have been for him to call his romantic affections
away from her beauty. Watts and Miss Singer, however, managed to remain friends
from afar and kept up an active correspondence throughout their lives. At
thirty-five, she married the nephew (who was twenty-two) of Watts’ instructor
Thomas Rowe[vi];
Watts never married. He concluded his jilted love poem in keeping with his
Christ-centered outlook on all of his life:
Dear
Savior, let thy beauties be
My soul’s eternal food.[vii]
My soul’s eternal food.[vii]
His next published collection of
poems would even more clearly keep the beauties of his dear Savior before his
and his readers’ minds and hearts.
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