In memory of Mrs.
Martha, wife to
Mr. Michael Pepper
who died march
12th 1793, in ye
54th Year of
her age.
The door is shut -
The Judge has pastd
my everlasting doom
Which all created pow
er can near reverse.
We can forgive the erratic eighteenth-century spelling of “passed” and “ne’er” or ‘never’, and admire the stern, stirring tone of this short verse: the door shut forever, the Judge’s verdict read, beyond the power of all creation to reverse.
The author of this remarkable passage is Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674–1737). Overlooked today, in her time Mrs. Rowe was highly regarded for both her literary style and her personal piety. She wrote novels as well as many religious and occasional poems, starting at the precocious age of twelve. She became a prominent defender the rights of women as poets, and an eminent literary figure. In my opinion Rowe merits renewed attention beyond academic specialists. Her poems reward the reader with their wit, style, and elegance. Her works are not always profound, but they are well-crafted and, on occasion, impassioned. Dr. Johnson admired “the copiousness and luxuriance of Mrs. Rowe.”
Martha Pepper’s epitaph is taken from Rowe’s most popular work, an epistolary meditation on death entitled Friendship in Death, in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living (1728). It went through scores of editions throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and I can understand why. The lessons they teach are unimpeachably pious, but they are conveyed via stimulating episodes of adultery, opportunistic rakes, dissipated guardians, cross-dressing seductresses, kidnapping corsairs and ominous Turks, allusions to incest – small wonder they were popular for ladies’ private reading.
This particular passage is from Letter II, in which a young man named Cassander writes to a friend in gory, lengthy, and florid detail about how he murdered his companion Antonio in a jealous rage, the latter having been seduced by the artful Marcella. Hot stuff. Cassander says that while he has been acquitted by the law, his own conscience gives him no rest. Then he interrupts his letter with a brief poem:
The door is shut:
The judge has passed my everlasting doom,
Which all created power can ne’er reverse:
My day’s forever gone, my sun is set
In final darkness, ne’er to rise again…
On me no ray of mercy e’er will shine,
No smiling beam of hope will ever rise…
I can hardly believe the choice of this epitaph was meant to be in any way biographical of Martha Pepper — surely she never slew anyone in a jealous rage! But Friendship in Death may very well been part of her private devotional reading, and she may well have dog-eared this passage, or copied it into her commonplace book, as telling reminder to live virtuously — exactly as Elizabeth Singer Rowe meant it to be read.
