Posts Tagged ‘Thomas Ellwood’

The “First Court” at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Milton would have walked it every day that he was here as a student.

Today I made my sad farewell to John Milton at his cottage in Chalfont St. Giles, but I expect it is an au revoir and not an adieu. Tonight, I am staying a few blocks away on the night before I head for Heathrow – with John Dugdale Bradley and his gracious wife Jan, who will comfort me in my sorrow. 

In my previous post, I mentioned how Milton’s Quaker friend, Thomas Ellwood, meant to greet the poet on his arrival here, as he fled the London plague and royal disfavor, but the government blocked Ellwood’s plans. Here’s the story in Ellwood’s words:

The “Great Gate” at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

Some little time before I went to Aylesbury Prison, I was desired by my quondam Master Milton to take a House for him, in the Neighbourhood where I dwelt, that he might go out of the City, for the Safety of himself and his Family, the Pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty Box for him in Giles-Chalfont, a Mile from me; of which I gave him notice: and intended to have waited on him and seen him well settled in it; but was prevented by that Imprisonment.

But now being released and returned Home I soon made a Visit to him, to welcome him into the Country.

After some common Discourses had passed between us, he called for a Manuscript of his which being brought he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me, and read it at my Leisure, and when I had so done, return to him, with my Judgment thereupon.

When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that Excellent POEM which he entitled PARADISE LOST. After I had, with the best Attention, read it through, I made him another Visit, and returned him his Book, with due Acknowledgement of the Favour he had done me, in Communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it; which I modestly but freely told him: and after some further Discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found? He made me no Answer, but sate some time in a Muse: then brake off that Discourse, and fell upon another Subject.

After the Sickness was over, and the City well cleansed and become safely habitable again, he returned thither. And when afterwards I went to wait on him there (which I seldom fail|•d of doing, whenever my Occasions drew me to London) he shewed me his Second POEM, called PARADISE REGAINED; and in a pleasant Tone said to me, This is owing to you: for you put it into my Head, by the Question you put to me at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.

If you want to see the “pretty box,” I refer you to an earlier blogpost here. The photos here revisit Milton’s student days at Christ’s College, Cambridge. John and I visited yesterday with Cambridge graduate student and Stanford alum Michael Gioia (our first visit to Cambridge as a guest of Girton College here) – all the images make a splendid finale to this U.K. visit. All photos by John Dugdale Bradley, a Cambridge (and Stanford) alum himself.

From the First Court towards the Great Gate…

Milton meets MacBook. In this room he slept and wrote.

I slept in John Milton‘s room last night. I’m told I was likely the first person to do so in hundreds of years. The sense of incongruity gave an unreality to the event, as I sat in the 17th century chair and worked at the desk next to the fireplace, first plugging in my Apple MacBook Pro with its adapter, and hooking up my cellphone to recharge. The sense of immodesty, too, as I pulled off my earrings, sweater, trousers, for the night, in the room where the Puritan poet spent his days, in royal disfavor after the fall of the Cromwell regime – though the poet was blind when he lived here, so my discomfort was meaningless on more than one scale. A hot water bottle generously provided by my real-life hosts kept me warm in bed, as well as mittens and heavy socks.

The view from the back, where the Milton Garden features the flowers that he loved.

To clarify, Milton’s bedroom doubled as his study, or rather vice versa. In 1665, he fled the plague in London to this refuge in Chalfont St. Giles, in Buckinghamshire, about 25 miles from the city.  His friend Thomas Ellwood had rented a residence for the poet now known as Milton’s Cottage, but he was arrested and jailed when he when he attended a Quaker funeral, and so wasn’t on hand to welcome him. Milton took on the place for a little over a year, a period that was bookended by the plague at the beginning, and the Great Fire that burned half London at the ending in 1666.

He completed Paradise Lost here, in Chalfont St. Giles. But it’s unclear how much work was done in this cottage, with its inexplicable layout of 8 or so rooms, cupboards, and many nooks and crannies. He had already given a draft to Ellwood, but Milton was an endless tinkerer and reviser. Certainly the final draft was finished here, and he began the inevitable sequel, Paradise Regained. He couldn’t leave his tale at this, at the end of Paradise Lost:

Blind, crippled with gout, he pretty much remained in this one room, with the parlor where he may have received guests. He slept in his study, next to the kitchen, where the challenging stairs wouldn’t torture him. He wouldn’t have seen the huge fireplace, about five feet high (parliament could meet in it), or the window that looks out onto the street, but I hope he could at least sense the sunlight, as I did, as it streamed through the small latticed eastern-facing window at the back of the room in the morning.

But perhaps there’s another reason why he slept here – one that captures the imagination more. Maybe he wanted to be close to ink and paper. He claimed he woke up with lines of poetry rolling through his head, and was anxious to take up his quill and write them all down – or rather, to have one of his daughters take up the pen and paper, as he dictated to her.

My Milton cup

Perhaps he fine-tuned lines like these:

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit’st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn
Purples the East. Still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.