Fashionable Diseases, Posthumous Diagnoses & Eliza Hayley

From 3-5 July  2014, I was at the Fashionable Diseases Conference at Northumbria and Newcastle Universities, inhaling information and ideas about illnesses – fashionable and unfashionable, psychological, physiological,  real and represented, imagined and imaginary – throughout the long eighteenth century and presenting a paper: "Marvellous mental infelicities": William Hayley, his first wife, Eliza, & William Cowper, "the most interesting of Sufferers".

I came away characteristically over-stimulated, thoughts and questions bubbling away in my brain, (and, naturally, tumbling out my mouth), having encountered a range of fascinating people presenting and discussing a deliciously wide range of perspectives.

And I left with one big question mark. It hangs over the concept, meaning and practice of "diagnosis" in general, and of posthumous diagnosis (especially of individuals who died a couple of hundred years ago) in particular.

There was a clear consensus that, for several reasons, attempting posthumous diagnosis is an unequivocally bad idea.

1. What's the point? They're dead so there's no chance of curing them
2. It distracts from talking about the more important aspects of an individual's work (in this context, the individuals concerned were, predominantly, writers)
3. It says more about the diagnoser and their context than it does about the person being diagnosed or whatever illnesses/conditions they may or may not have had
4. In almost all cases, this can only be pointless speculation: the diagnosis can never be confirmed, rendering the practice, in Roy Porter's words (I believe), a parlour game.

Yet, the impulse to do it is, it seems, almost irresistible: if it wasn't, I think it's unlikely that

      a. so many people would do it
and
      b. so many people would be so dead against it

I am guilty of a. So, the following may read as pure self-justification, but I hope there's a bit more to it than that. To be fair to me, I am a lifelong and enthusiastic hypochondriac (in the present, not long-eighteenth century, sense), and it was, at least in part, my generally anxious fascination with matters medical that drew me to William Hayley in the first place.

Also, as someone working biographically, I'm finding the process of exploring possible diagnoses particularly useful in framing my thoughts on Hayley's first wife, Eliza.

The best description I've yet encountered of Eliza is by the poet Anna Seward. She wrote it shortly after Eliza's death in 1897:

Fire in her affections, frost in her sensations, she shrunk from the caresses of even the husband she adored. Hence, while she had a morbid degree of tenaciousness respecting his esteem and attention, she was incapable of personal jealousy; and would amuse herself with the idea of those circumstances, with which she could so perfectly well dispense, being engrossed by another. …

… With sportive fancy; with no inconsiderable portion of belles-lettres knowledge; with polite address, and an harmonious voice in speaking, and with the grace of correct and eloquent language; with rectitude of principles, unsuspecting frankness of heart, and extreme good humour; she was, strange to say ! not agreeable, at least not permanently agreeable. The unremitting attention her manner of conversing seemed to claim, her singular laugh, frequent and excessive, past all proportion to its cause, overwhelmed, wearied, and oppressed even those who were most attached to her; who felt her worth, and pitied her banishment from the man on whom she doated.
(from Letters of Anna Seward: Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807, vol 5 pp22-25)

William Hayley – despite his medical knowledge and his particular interest in mental health issues – found himself unable name or, over the long term, meliorate to her condition. He recorded that "The fluctuation of her spirits was rapid to an alarming degree", "Though she is not, and perhaps never may, fall into absolute insanity,

the state of mind, to which she has long been subject, is to all who tenderly regard her, an evil much more distressing than madness itself; it is a state not easily described. At times suspicion and pride (the two frequent forerunners of absolute insanity,) appear its chief characteristics; at other times, depression and melancholy.

and that, as "one of her most attentive medical friends" said

“Her whole frame is full of pins and needles; at every turn they run into her, and she imputes the blame to the first cause that occurs to her agitated fancy.”
(Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley, Esq.  Vol 1, p210, p342, p484)

He also tells us that, "While he retained his health, and the native cheerfulness of his spirit, a lively imagination afforded him the best possible antidote for the marvellous mental infelicities of his pitiable Eliza. When he could no longer divert her volatile mind with lively sallies of fancy, she considered Eartham as a dungeon" (ibid p339). On one occasion "at a time when his health was cruelly shattered":

She said to him, with an air of innocent naïveté that proved she spoke only from painful ennui, “You were once the most agreeable man in the world, but you really have lost all your talents,” to which he mildly replied, “I believe, my dear, you speak something near the truth, according to your own ideas of it; yet it seems rather hard to hear it from you.”
(Memoirs of Thomas Alphonso Hayley p120)

I read Eliza's letters along with what Hayley and others say about her and I can't avoid speculating about her condition. Given that my medical qualifications don't even extend to an O level in biology, this is, at best, cheeky. But, for me, it's all part of trying to understand what made her tick, to get a feel for what she was like and why.

I think there are five possibilities, as follows

1. Asperger's: on the basis that she "she shrunk from the caresses of even the husband she adored", and that her social and conversational behaviour didn't conform to norms/social mores.
2. Attachment Disorder: on the basis of her early life experience. Her mother had gone mad following the deaths of several of her children, and Eliza was the result of an attempt to cure her by getting her pregnant. And on the basis of her innocently naïve bluntness about her husband's loss of talents, her avoidance of touch and the nature and mode of her conversation.
3. She was a healthy, intelligent and educated woman who was massively stressed by a combination of the limitations society and culture imposed on women at that point in time AND her unusual personal circumstances.
4. A possibility that I haven't thought of/am unaware of.
5. A combination of some or all the above.

So a range of speculative diagnoses, a range of possibilities. And I'm left pondering

1. Why I feel the need – particularly given my total lack of medical credentials – to try to work this out.
2. The fact that I have focused on three potential diagnoses that, while not exactly "fashionable diseases", are, at present, floating around in public consciousness.
3. What it means for a lay person to try and diagnose someone. How far is it about about labelling or pigeonholing and/or trying to help/support and/or understanding and/or making allowances for, knowing how to react to, making judgements about – or being morally judgemental of – the individual we are trying to pin a diagnosis on? What does it mean about how we see ourselves in relation to others?
4. How different individuals react differently to the same diagnosis: how for me a diagnosis could feel like a relief, a liberation, the first step to managing or curing a condition, while for someone else, it could feel like stigmatising label, a failure , simply, confirm a belief that all is decaying.
5. If one is researching and writing a biography and its subject's physical or psychological condition has a significant impact on their life and experiences, can one, should one avoid thinking about a diagnosis? Or, is it not the speculation, the exploration, that's problematic, but the drive – where it exists – to prove or argue one possible diagnosis over the others?
6. And how has what it means to make a diagnosis – both during the lifetime of an individual, and posthumously – changed over the centuries?

I'd be very interested to hear people's views…

Eliza Hayley's letters

According to William Hayley, his first wife, Eliza, was a poor, "pitiable" thing. The "fluctuation" of her "spirits was rapid to an alarming degree" and she suffered from "marvellous mental infelicities".  Whilst her early letters give a hint of this – scarcely a paragraph goes by without a mention of her spirits, ailments minor or major (her own and other people's: one letter is almost exclusively devoted to the effects and treatment of thread worms) and the time she's been spending with local doctors – they're also lively, opinionated and, in places, deliciously acid.

While William is away, a friend "presses" Eliza "exceedingly" to come for dinner, but she decides to decline because Mrs Bull, who's staying with them "absolutely makes me sick". Although, on the upside, "she has been very ill & low with a sore throat so I hope she is less talkative…"

The next letter describes how she and Sally Steele (the daughter, I think, of William Hayley's godfather) have, after a major falling out, now returned their relationship to a civil footing. Eliza "heartily rejoiced at having ended a very unpleasant affair (that has given me infinite vexation) entirely to my satisfaction." One problem with this quarrel was that it looked like William's close friend John Thornton was about to propose to Sally.

Eliza addresses this issue head on. She doesn't think it's right for Thornton "to sacrifice his Happiness to a private Pique" of hers and seeks to assure him that, whilst she and Sally could never be bosom buddies, "I dare say we shall like each other as much as is necessary."

She's slightly more vehement - and no less acerbic - on the matter in a subsequent letter. "I absolutely wish," she writes, for  Thornton "to marry Sally (if he means to marry at all) that he may not add an other such to our acquaintance."

Eliza by George Romney

The end of the "intellectual machine"

The three fan letters Cowper received didn't cure his mental health problems. "The experiment for the restoration of his Mind," Hayley wrote, "did not certainly succeed to the extent of my Wishes, & my Expectations."

However, in Hayley's opinion, there was "great reason to believe, that the unexpected Letters, which He actually received, made a beneficial Impression on his Spirits; & gave a wonderful activity to his Mind, even while it seemed to be involved in impenetrable Gloom."

Around this time, after months of inactivity, Cowper resumed work on his long-neglected translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. This could, of course,  have been coincidence, but Hayley attributed it firmly to his own intervention:

the Revival & Improvement of [Cowper's] Homer, while his Spirits appeared for unfit for such a Task, may be regarded as one of the most marvellous Facts, that can be discovered in the History of the human Mind.

Cowper continued to work and when, on 31 January 1800, Hayley received a letter from Johnny Johnson, enclosing a short, newly translated passage from the Iliad, in Cowper's handwriting, he was ecstatic.

[I]t appeared to me as a blessed omen of his being entirely Himself again - The Emotions of my Heart upon that Idea immediately gave rise to the following …
Sonnet

Blest be the Characters so Kindly trac’d
In that dear Hand which I have longed to view
Pledge of Affection old and Kindness new
From the reviving Bard supremely graced
With all the Gifts of Fancy and of Taste
That can Endear the Mind! and given to Few
The rarer richer Gift, a Heart as true
As e’er the Arms of Amity embraced.

Ecstatic Tears I on the Paper shed
That speaks, my Cowper! of thy mental Health
And of thy Friendship, soothing as the Dove!
So weeps the Nymph, who, when long Storms are past
Welcomes from the Sea her Bosom’s rescued Wealth
To Life to Joy to Glory and to Love

It's hardly great poetry. But the last three lines are interesting. They seem, like a magic mirro,r to reflect a happy ending onto the final stanza of Cowper's last, original poem, "The Cast-away" (written March 1799 and first published in Hayley's biography of his friend):

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
   No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
   We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm'd in deeper gulphs than he.

This is somewhat uncanny, as it's almost certain that Hayley didn't see the poem until January 1801.
A couple of weeks after Hayley received the letter that so fed his optimism, Cowper fell ill. A couple of months later, he was dead.

The "Intellectual Machine" cranks into action

After a lot of nagging by Hayley and the judicious application of Lady Hesketh's schmoozing skills, William Cowper started receiving letters of the type promised in "the Vision".

The first, written 9 August 1797, came from William Wilberforce.

When he caught sight of the letter, Cowper said "The outside tells me, I shall be taken away by Force, & the inside will tell me the Time when”. He did, however, read the letter with what the Reverend Johnny Johnson - Cowper's cousin and carer – described as "unusual Attention".

The second - hustled by Lady Hesketh - came from the Bishop of London late in September. It was an enthusiastic fan letter, detailing the religious enjoyment with which the Bishop read and re-read Cowper's poems.

Cowper's response?

“Never was such a Letter written, never was such a Letter read to a Man so overwhelmed with Despair, as I am — It was written in Derision – I know, & I am sure of it.”

Johnson challenged this: Cowper shouldn't say such a thing of a man as good as the Bishop of London!

“I should say so", Cowper replied, "of an archangel, were it possible for an archangel to send me such a Letter, in such Circumstances.”

"a large & Complicated intellectual Machine, which I have invented"

"My keen sensations in perusing these heartpiercing Lines have been a painful Prelude to the following Ecstatic Vision", wrote William Hayley, in a letter to William Cowper, sent four days after he received Cowper's devastating note.

— I beheld the Throne of God, whose Splendor, tho in Excess, did not strike me blind, but left me power to discern,  on the steps of it, two kneeling angelic Forms.

A kind Seraph seemed to whisper to me, that these heavenly Petitioners were your lovely Mother, & my own; both enjoyed fervent Supplications for your Restoration to mental Serenity, & Comfort.— I sprang eagerly forward to enquire your Destiny of your Mother.—Turning towards me, with a look of Seraphic Benignity, she smiled upon me, & said: “Warmest of earthly Friends! Moderate the anxiety of thy Zeal, lest it distract they declining Faculties! & know, as a Reward for thy Kindness, that my Son shall be restored to Himself, & to Friendship.

But the all-Merciful & almighty ordains, that his Restoration shall be gradual; & that his Peace with Heaven shall be preceded by the following extraordinary Circumstances of signal Honour on Earth.— He shall receive Letters from Members of Parliament, from Judges, & from Bishops, to thank Him for the service that He has rendered to the Christian World by his devotional Poetry. These shall be followed by a Letter from the Prime Minister to the same effect; & this by Thanks expressed to Him on the same account, in the Hand of the King Himself.— Tell Him, when these Events take place, he may confide in his celestial Emancipation from despair, granted to the Prayer of his Mother; & He may rest satisfied with this assurance from Her, that his Peace is perfectly made with Heaven.—Hasten to impart these blessed Tidings to your fav’rite Friend! said the Maternal Spirit; & let your Thanksgiving to God be an Increase of reciprocal Kindness to each other!—

In classic direct marketing style, Hayley added a call-to-action PS:

if any of these Incidents speedily take place, which your angelic Mother announced to me in this Vision, as certain signs of your Recovery, I conjure you in her Name, my dear Cowper, to communicate them to me, with all the kind dispatch, that is due to the tender anxiety of sympathetic affection!— Heaven grant that I may hear from you again very soon!— adieu!

He then tried to kickstart his "large & Complicated intellectual Machine" by persuading politicians and church men to write to Cowper. He was careful, however, to keep his overall plot a secret: one he shared only with Cowper's relations/carers, the Reverend John Johnson and Lady Harriot Hesketh.

Imagine receiving this from your best friend…

“It was on Tuesday, the 20th of June 1797,” wrote William Hayley in the second of his unpublished Two Memorials of Hayley’s Endeavours to serve His Friend Cowper, “that after long lamenting the calamitous suspension of our Correspondence, I received in Sussex a Letter with the Post Mark of Dereham, containing the following Words, in the Hand-writing of Cowper, but with no signature.”

To
William Hayley Esqr
Eartham
near Chichester

Ignorant of every thing but my own instant & impending Misery, I know neither what I do, when I write, nor can do otherwise than write, because I am bidden to do so. Perfect Despair, the most perfect, that ever possessed any Mind, has had Possession of mine, you know how long, and knowing that, will not need to be Told, who writes.

Hayley adored Cowper: his love for the older poet was "as strong as manly friendship can be" and so he was, unsurprisingly, deeply affected by this letter. “I believe," he wrote "it is hardly possible for Language to describe all the various Emotions, that this dark billet of my desponding Friend produced in my Heart.”

But he was also ever-hopeful and his “fervent affection for the dear Sufferer”, combined with “a Fancy naturally inclined to cherish the most sanguine Hopes of what it ardently wishes”, to inspire him to try something quite extraordinary to improve Cowper’s state of mind. It was, in his words, "a large & Complicated Intellectual Machine", and I’ll tell you all about it in my next post…

So, what's new about it?

Although reading a book about someone can be an excellent way of getting to know about them, it’s not like getting to know them. The ways we impart and receive information during interpersonal contact are radically different from the ways we absorb stories from books. The order of information sharing, what is given and withheld at any particular moment, how much the sharer reveals about any particular event, what happened, how they feel, their degree of honesty, and so on, vary, depending on all kinds of factors, including why and how people meet, how much time they spend together, how much they like each other – and in which kind of way. If people were books, they would be a different book for each individual they formed a relationship with.

And that's how I want to make HayleyWorld. As a different experience for every reader, based on their individual interests and interactions with the app. This means that I need to break down each story/event in William Hayley's life into a "nugget" of information, write each significant nugget in tow or three ways, with varying levels of detail and emotional content, so that Hayley "tells you" the story in a way that's appropriate to how well you've got to know each other.

So, yes, readers will be asked to enter some information about themselves. Their journey through William Hayley's life and storyworld will be determined partly by their choices and partly by other triggers including chronological date, the amount of time they've spent in his company and what William Hayley "wants" to tell them about…

Making that work isn't going to be easy. There are certain aspects of the process – particularly ensuring that the various nuggets link up every which way into different, but equally satisfying, narratives – that will be exceptionally challenging

HayleyWorld will be built as an app for tablets and smartphones, using Padify, and – thanks to Michael Kowalski – with help from Contentment's team of developers.

Hello & welcome

… to Making HayleyWorld, which will feature

• snippets from my research into William Hayley (1745-1820)
• info on my progress transforming my research into a new kind of biography, or zoeography
• related stuff
• unrelated stuff when I'm distracted by other things I have – or want – to do.

Expect 18th century gossip, comedy, tragedy, marital discord, madness, dubious medical interventions and some mediocre poetry alongside the occasional disquisition on creative and technological choices and processes.

Hope you enjoy it - and please talk to me through Twitter or via my website.

Incidentally, you may also like William Hayley's tweets (I help him with those).