William Hayley and Smallpox

William Hayley (1745-1820) is remembered today chiefly as the much-derided Felpham Billy, the Bard of Sussex, the friend or enemy of William Blake. But he was a generous and effective patron and friend to Cowper, Romney, Flaxman, and Blake, as well as many others; and it is perhaps unjust that his name should chiefly live in the spiky epigrams which Blake jotted down in his notebook

Thy Friendship oft has made my heart to ake
Do be my Enemy for Friendships sake.

In his lifetime, Hayley was an acclaimed poet, a scholar who achieved both commercial and critical success before, towards the end of his life, his work fell out of fashion. He was the first person to publish a substantial extract of Dante’s Divine Comedy in English translation, declined the offer of the poet laureateship (partly for political reasons), and, in his biographical writings, often explored issues of mental health. His literary efforts extended to drama, biographies of Milton and Cowper, an essay on sculpture, and endless epitaphs (many of them accompanying monuments in Chichester cathedral). He was also an amateur physician, treating himself, his household, and the villagers of Felpham with the then-fashionable electrical cure.

Despite having written a bestselling and highly influential book advising young women on how to attract and keep a husband (The Triumphs of Temper, 1781, and innumerable subsequent editions), Hayley’s own romantic life was a failure, with two disastrous marriages.

Hayley had married his first wife Eliza on the rebound from a broken engagement. He had been tutoring Eliza, the daughter of his family friend Thomas Ball, the Dean of Chichester, and Eliza had also been ferrying correspondence between him and Fanny Page, the girl with whom he had contracted a secret engagement. When Fanny broke off the engagement, Hayley turned to Eliza, and they married within months, in October 1769. Fanny Page conferred her blessing on the match.

But it transpired that Eliza couldn’t bear to be touched. After Eliza’s death, the poet Anna Seward, a friend of both the Hayleys, wrote of Eliza’s aversion to physical contact: 

Fire in her affections, frost in her sensations, she shrank from the caresses of even the husband she adored.

Despite the Hayleys’ mariage blanc—a phenomenon sufficiently common in England to warrant a French name—William and Eliza still wanted children and sought a surrogate mother to produce a “ready-made” child. (You may think of surrogacy as a late twentieth-century practice, but it was not uncommon in the eighteenth century if never spoken about. If only Mr and Mrs Bennett had considered surrogacy, Pride and Prejudice would have had a very different plot.) For his first child, Hayley approached a young Dutch woman, who gave birth to their daughter, Selina, in 1776 or 77. Tragically, Selina died of smallpox, following inoculation while still a baby. (I must thank Dr. Lisa Gee for information about Selina and her mother and much else.)

Thomas Dimsdale, in his treatise The Present Method of Inoculating for the Small-Pox (London, 1767), notes

In regard to age, where it is left to my choice, I decline inoculating children under two years old. I know the common practice is against me in this particular; but my reasons for rejecting such are founded on observation and experience (9).

Indeed, Prince Octavius (1779-83, George III’s 13th child and 8th son) and Prince Alfred (1780-2, the king’s 14th child and 9th son) both died after being inoculated against smallpox when small children. In his later madness George hallucinated conversations with his lost sons.

After Selina died, her mother apparently wanted to return to Holland and disappears from the record.

Hayley’s twentieth-century biographer, Morchard Bishop, makes reference to an unusual feature of the Hayley household, his “valet in petticoats”. This was Mary Cockerell, valet and general factotum to both the Hayleys, who also functioned as William’s secretary. She was to become the surrogate mother of his second child, Thomas Alphonso, born in 1780. Tom was brought up to regard Eliza as his mother, his letters to her addressed to his “Dear Mamma”, though Mary remained part of the Hayley household and involved in Tom’s care.

On Thursday 24th May 1782, Hayley wrote from Eartham to his great friend Anna Seward at Lichfield.

… you will pardon me, when I tell you in how anxious a scene I have been lately engaged—The prevalence of the small-Pox all around us obliged me at last to resolve on that measure which I thought of with so much sollicitude, [sic] while under your hospitable roof—I accordingly inoculated six of my dependents in my own House about a Fortnight ago, 2 Women, 3 little Girls, & Alphonso—I thank Heaven I can now give you the pleasure of knowing that they are all in a very prosperous Way, but many alarming circumstances arose to harrass me, & particularly some appearances of Contraction & Spasm in the bowels of the poor little Alphonso, which we could only relieve by Opiates—I think the Earth can afford no spectacle so affecting as the sufferings of children—Heaven preserve all we love from such Sights! I have fortunately saved Eliza both from the Pain, to which this scene would have exposed her, & from all sollicitude about it, for she is yet a Stranger to the business & I propose to myself infinite delight in surprizing her on Sunday next, (when I am to meet her in Surry [sic]) with the glad Tidings of my recovered Patients …

He does go on. By 1782. William and Eliza Hayley were already leading very separate lives.

Hayley writes to Anna Seward again on the 23rd June

… your kind letter found me returned to my fav’rite Retirement, where I had the Comfort of finding my Household quite well, & my little inoculated Flock free from all Traces of the distemper, thro’ which they had passed …

It is curious that in these letters, Hayley never mentions any third-party involvement in inoculating the household at Eartham, not even Dr. William Guy, his Chichester physician. Did he perhaps carry out the variolations himself, with Dimsdale’s treatise as guide? Though he ignored Dimsdale’s advice not to inoculate children under two years of age.

When, in spring 1789, Hayley and Eliza finally separated, Mary Cockerell accompanied Eliza to Derby, where Hayley had placed his estranged wife under the care of Martha, the widow of John Beridge, one of his university friends. A few months later, Eliza happily settled, Mary returned to Eartham. (Eliza died, unreconciled, in 1797.)

Early in 1798, Thomas Alphonso, who was apprenticed to the sculptor John Flaxman, was sent home to Sussex, seriously ill. Over the next two years his condition deteriorated slowly and painfully. (Twentieth-century observations on people recovering from smallpox recorded three notable sequelae, or symptoms that followed upon the disease. These were, in order of frequency, facial pockmarks, blindness, and limb deformities. Is it possible that Tom’s fatal illness, linked to his curvature of the spine, may have been a long-term effect of his childhood illness following inoculation?) Mary Cockerell cared for Tom until he died in May 1800, remaining at Eartham after Hayley moved to his new house in Felpham. She subsequently moved to a cottage Hayley had procured for her on the edge of the Eartham estate, where she stayed until she died in November 1810. (I presume William Blake would have met Mary Cockerell on his occasional trips to Eartham with Hayley. But was he aware of the role she had played in Hayley’s life?) It remains only to note that Hayley had married his second wife Mary Welford in March 1809; and separated from her early in 1812.

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By the late eighteenth century, a handful of physicians in England and Germany had noticed that people infected with the milder cowpox seemed to be immune to smallpox, and there were a couple of early vaccination tests in humans. For instance, in 1774, a farmer named Benjamin Jesty in Dorset, successfully vaccinated his wife and children with cowpox. But it was the English physician Edward Jenner who is credited with bringing the smallpox vaccine into mainstream medical practice after giving a cowpox inoculation against smallpox to the son of his gardener in May 1796.

Edward Jenner’s discovery of a smallpox vaccine in 1796 was a major milestone, not only for smallpox control but also for modern medicine more generally, as it inspired the development of vaccines for many other pathogens. Jenner’s vaccine provided a safer, cheaper, and more effective alternative to variolation. The existence of a smallpox vaccine was the key factor that made eradication of the disease an achievable goal. This was the first disease to be eradicated entirely by human efforts.

Jenner and his two colleagues seeing off three antivaxxers.

The idea of vaccination was initially met with scepticism by the scientific and medical communities. Jenner “was advised not to send a record of his observations to the Royal Society, which was prepared to refuse it, but to publish it as a pamphlet; and as a pamphlet it appeared in 1798”. Unlike variolation, vaccination came with relatively little risk to the vaccinee, no preparatory period, and much lower cost. Vaccination was adopted by the public more quickly and more widely than variolation ever was.

“The Cow-Pock___or___the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation.”

Thomas Dimsdale, expert inoculator, lived to see the publication in 1798 of Jenner’s work on vaccination. It led at first to an unseemly conflict between supporters of variolation and supporters of vaccination. The latter eventually triumphed and put an end to the earlier practice. Gillray here satirises the Anti-Vaccinationers, allegedly supposing that vaccination with cowpox will cause an eruption of cows.

And Hayley, who knew everybody, appears to have been personally acquainted with Jenner himself. He had probably met Edward Jenner at Petworth, where Lord Egremont was a friend and strong supporter of Jenner. Hayley maintained a sporadic association with Edward Jenner for many years.

Hayley was even involved in the publication of a memorial volume for John Dawes Worgan, Jenner’s protégé, tutor of Jenner’s children, and public eulogist of his patron, whose “Essays on Vaccination” appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1808-9 under the nom de plume “Cosmopolites”.

Jenner’s biographer, Baron, also notes

During the year in which he [Worgan] became an inmate in Dr. Jenner s house, the Spanish vaccine expedition, under Balmis, had returned to Europe: his [Jenner’s] correspondent, the late Mr. Hayley, had suggested this as a fit subject for the muse of Worgan, who almost from his infancy had shewed a decided taste for metrical composition.

Hayley himself picks up the theme in his Stanzas of an English Friend to the Patriots of Spain (London, 1808), perhaps his only poetical allusion to Jenner and vaccination against smallpox:

And not with Freedom’s arms alone,

Does liberal Spain with transport own

She emulates the warmth of Britain’s heart:

In mild Humanity’s exploit

Bravely, and tenderly, adroit,

She follows England’s life-preserving art,

And bids from rescu’d earth one loathsome pest depart.

Honour, with shouts of praise, will mark

The course of that Iberian bark,

That round the globe spread Vaccination’s name;

O’er every clime, to which she flew,

She shed the blessing, hail’d as new,

And with Philanthropy’s and Friendship’s aim,

On Jenner fix’d the crown of medicinal fame.3

Angelic friends to Nature’s weal!

Progressive science! truth! and zeal!

We hail your progress with a grateful mind:

Though Rapine’s dark, and rapid, storm

May many an injur’d land deform,

Yet Heaven, in mercy with its wrath combin’d,

Still bids your influence grow, to meliorate mankind.

(lines 169-189)

3An allusion to the voyage of Dr. Francis Xavier Balmis (Surgeon Extraordinary to the King of Spain), who sailed from Corunna on the 30th of November 1803, to circumnavigate the world in the cause of vaccination. He is said to have successfully vaccinated 230,000 persons in the course of his expedition. See a note to the elegant and animated poem entitled, An Address to the Royal Jennerian Society, by Mr. Dawes Worgan, printed for Longman, 1808. [Hayley’s note]

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Sources and Further Reading

John Baron.—THE LIFE OF EDWARD JENNER, M.D. LL.D., F.R.S. PHYSICIAN EXTRAORDINARY TO HIS MAJESTY GEO. IV. FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, &C. &C. &C. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF HIS DOCTRINES, AND SELECTIONS FROM HIS CORRESPONDENCE. BY JOHN BARON, M.D., F.R.S. LATE SENIOR PHYSICIAN TO THE GENERAL INFIRMARY, AND CONSULTING PHYSICIAN TO THE LUNATIC ASYLUM AT GLOUCESTER, FELLOW OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, &c. &c. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I[-II].—LONDON : HENRY COLBURN. PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1898

Evelyn Morchard Bishop.—Blake’s Hayley: The Life, Works, and Friendships of William Hayley.—London : Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1951.

Real name: Oliver Stoner. An amusing read but Bishop persists with the myth that Thomas Alphonso’s mother was a “Miss Betts”, daughter of Sarah Betts, Hayley’s former wetnurse.

Thomas Dimsdale.—The Present Method of Inoculating for the Small-Pox, to Which Are Added Some Experiments Instituted with a View to Discover the Effects of a Similar Treatment in the Natural Small-Pox.—London : W. Owen, 1767.

William Hayley.—The Stanzas of an English Friend to the Patriots of Spain.—London : 1808. 

Edward A. Jenner.—An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae, a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox.—Printed , for the author, by Sampson Low: and sold by Law; and Murray and Highley; 1798.

Deborah Oxley.—"The seat of death and terror’: urbanization, stunting, and smallpox”.—Economic History Review, Vol.56, no 4 (November 2003), 623-656.

Most Sacred Things: A Museum of Relationships.

https://amor.fitz.ms/

A pilot project for the organisation and display of William Hayley’s correspondence. My source for the quoted letters. The Fitzwilliam Museum holds the world’s largest collection of manuscript material relating to William Hayley. 

John Dawes Worgan.—SELECT POEMS, &c. BY THE LATE JOHN DAWES WORGAN, OF BRISTOL, Who died on the 25th of July 1809, Aged Nineteen Years. TO WHICH ARE ADDED SOME PARTICULARS OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER, BY AN EARLY FRIEND AND ASSOCIATE; With a preface, BY WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.—LONDON : PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HUR5T, REES, AND ORME, PATERNOSTER-ROW 1810.—S. GOSNELL, Printer, Little Queen Street, London

Contents: Dedication (“To Edward Jenner, M.D. F.R.S. &c. &c. &c.”).—Preface.—Particulars of the life of John Dawes Worgan.—Letters, &c., selected from his papers.—Poems.—Six essays on vaccination.—Lines to the memory of John Dawes Worgan.
Dedicated to Jenner by Hayley, with a long preface.

Worgan’s collected writings, comprising the letters, essays, poems, and sonnets of a short life, make up a substantial book of 310 pages published posthumously. 

I can only guess that it was Hayley’s name on the titlepage that encouraged an American edition: Philadelphia : Published by Kimber & Richardson; Merritt, printer, 1813.