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Title: Joseph Addison and his time
Little blue book no. 328
Author: Charles Joseph Finger
Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius
Release date: April 19, 2026 [eBook #78492]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1922
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78492
Credits: Carla Foust, Tim Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOSEPH ADDISON AND HIS TIME ***
TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 328
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Joseph Addison
and His Time
Charles J. Finger
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1922,
Haldeman-Julius Company
JOSEPH ADDISON AND HIS TIME.
I.
THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND.
The main facts in Addison’s life could be compressed within the compass
of an ordinary telegram, thus:
Joseph Addison was born in Wiltshire, England, in 1672, had a grammar
school education, and went to Oxford University. Between the ages of
twenty-seven and thirty-one he traveled in Europe. Later, he held
public offices, but, in 1710 devoted himself seriously to literature,
and, in five years, gained lasting fame. He died in 1719.
If, in the style of the modern journalist, you chose to add a spice
of mild scandal, you might say that he was married to the Countess of
Warwick, but the union was not a happy one. Should a little extra tang
be required, it would be quite in order to say that on occasion he
drank too much.
Or, supposing that you were very narrow and chose to run a dark smear
across his name, you might make much of the fact that he sometimes
loaned money to his best friend, Richard Steele, and on one such
occasion, sent the sheriff’s officer with an order for the debtor’s
arrest, two days after the loan had been made. This story, be it said,
you may not find in any existing biography, at least I have not been
able to find it, but, nevertheless, it is true, for Dick Steele told it
to his friend Richard Savage the poet, who, in turn, told it to Doctor
Johnson. Then, of course, James Boswell got hold of it and gave it to
the world.
Still, as you know and as I know, and as Nietzsche said, men’s
wickedness is much less than the fame of it, so, rightly understood and
fairly told, even this, which might be denounced by the thoughtless
as an act of base treachery, turns out to be a very ordinary affair,
the like of which might easily have befallen me. For the fact is that
Richard Steele was Richard Steele, a mighty good fellow, as also was
Addison. You see the character of the man as soon as you look at his
picture. Ruddy and strong, full of boisterous health is he, one in
whom the sap of life rises swiftly. At a glance you see that he can
laugh heartily, like Rabelais, like Scarron. If you are supersensitive,
if you are timid, you would not go abroad with him, for he is, it is
plain to be seen, one who would take you into taverns, into baignoires
on occasion, into places where are jovial companions who love a good
song, or a jolly story over a bottle. With his kind, you may wind up
the night with either a broken head or a belly full, but which ever it
was, you would have had a good time. And Addison, a quieter sort, a
fine, sensitive type, liked his Irish friend. They had been school boys
together, and, later, college chums. They were the same age, too. It
was a friendship like that of William of Orange for Bentick, or Queen
Anne for Lady Churchill. But Dick Steele was not born with a silver
spoon in his mouth, and being a genius, was bold, reckless of life, of
health, of which the unco’ guid call honor. So his wealthy relative
cast him off before he had graduated from college, and he became a kind
of vagrant. He joined the army, soon tired of the discipline, bought
himself out, and lived by his wits. He loved women and he loved wine,
but he loved wine more than women. He was an easy going, good natured
adventurer with a strong literary gift and a tremendous imagination.
Like _Tom Jones_, he lived his life in a manner far from perfect, knew
it and regretted it. He had spurts of virtue, he made good resolutions,
then straightway forgot all about them and went on in the same old way.
Give him a guinea and immediately he went about to find a friend to
share it. A good meal and an evening spent in jolly company seemed to
him a far more attractive way to dispose of gold than the uninteresting
payment of tradesmen’s bills. Besides, do what he would, at one time in
his career, to pay off all that he owed seemed an utter impossibility.
So, as a palliative measure, he would borrow from Peter to pay Paul.
But Richard Steele was also a letter writer. His winning personality,
his charm of manner shone on the written page. He was as irresistible
as _Micawber_, as charming as _Esmond_. Judge for yourself. I take,
almost at random, four letters of twenty. They are written to his wife,
and, as most men know, to write to a wife is not easy, and less so when
one is long overdue, or too late for dinner, and, to boot, a little far
gone in one’s cups. Then it requires both dexterity and diplomacy. The
letters are, of course, of subsequent date to the Addison loan affair,
but serve to show the peculiar, persuasive qualities of the writer.
_To Mrs. Steele._
Monday, seven at night,
Sept. 27, 1708.
Dear Prue:
You see you are obeyed in everything, and that I write overnight
for the following day. I shall now in earnest, by Mr. Clay’s good
conduct, manage my business with that method as shall make me easy.
The news, I am told, you had last night, of the taking of Lille,
does not prove true; but I hope we shall have it soon. I shall send
by tomorrow’s coach. I am, dear Prue, a little in drink, but at all
times your faithful husband,
RICH STEELE.
Or this:
_To Mrs. Steele_ (lately Mrs. Scurlock).
Dec. 22, 1707.
My dear, dear wife:
I write to let you know that I do not come home to dinner, being
obliged to attend to some business abroad, of which I shall give you
an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful
and obedient husband.
RICH STEELE.
It is a little significant that nine out of ten letters written to his
wife, are graceful notes of apology because of his absence from home.
Here is another.
_To Mrs. Steele._
Eleven at night, Jan. 5, 1708.
Dear Prue:
I was going home two hours ago, but was met by Mr. Griffith, who has
kept me ever since meeting me, as he came from Mr. Lambert’s. I will
come within a pint of wine.
RICH STEELE.
(We drank your health, and Mr. Griffith is your servant.)
One more will be sufficient, especially as it seems to show that Mrs.
Steele was by no means pleased to have messengers knocking at her door
at all hours of the night with letters from the errant Richard.
June 7, 1708.
Dear Prue:
I enclose you a guinea for your pocket. I dine with Lord Halifax.
I wish I knew how to court you into good humor, for two or three
quarrels will dispatch me quite. If you have any love for me,
believe I am always pursuing our mutual good. Pray consider that all
my little fortune is to (be) settled this month, and that I have
inadvertently made myself liable to impatient people, who take all
advantages. If you have (not) patience, I shall transact my business
rashly, and lose a very great sum to quicken the time of your being
rid of all people you do not like. Yours ever,
RICH STEELE.
On that I rest my case, as the lawyers say, as having amply proved the
persuasive powers of Richard Steele. Such letters would turn a heart of
stone.
One day, when Addison was in funds, there came to him a touching letter
from his old school fellow. Dick was in trouble again. The letter told
all. His flint-hearted creditors pressed. His grate was fireless and
there was not as much as a candle in the house. Butcher and baker cast
a cold eye upon him. The wolf was at the door, and, eke, the bailiff
with a writ. “Impatient people who take all advantage” beset him. For
twenty-four hours he had fasted, and starvation stared him in the face.
A hundred pounds would save his life.
Picture Addison his friend, a man of wealth and position; Under
Secretary of State; a little king surrounded by his circle of admirers;
a coffee-house wit; a conversationalist able to keep a “few friends
listening and laughing around a table from the time when a play ended
till the clock of St. Paul’s struck four o’ the morning”; the guest of
the brilliant Lady Mary Montague; collector of Elzevirs and ancient
medals. He read the letter once, twice, thrice. There is a rabble of
reasons why he should help Dick and a rabble why he should not. He
ponders awhile in doubt.... But it is his old Irish school friend in
trouble again. It is Dick the luckless. But here is sincere repentance,
and, anyway, Dick is under a cloud. Moreover, he is through with “the
well-fed wits” who batten on him. So the messenger is called in,
presently leaves with the money and Addison sleeps well.
But not with monetary aid alone is Addison satisfied. He has some
knowledge of life in Grub Street--a knowledge also possessed by
Goldsmith who told how the luckless author in dark days
views with keen desire
The rusty grate unconscious of a fire;
With beer and milk arrears the freeze is scored
And five cracked tea cups dress the chimney board;
A night cap dress his brows instead of bay,
A cap by night--a stocking all the day!
So, the next day, Addison climbs Steele’s stairway. He is astonished
to find porters running up and down bearing trays loaded with soups,
fish, entrees and sweetmeats. He, himself, is elbowed out of the way
by servants. There are lights everywhere and, from within, the sound
of fiddles. It is long past sunset and no black-hearted bailiff may do
his full work. Through the open door is seen the long, crowded table,
piled high with wines and meats, champagnes and burgundies, and at the
head, brimming with happiness and good humor, without a present care in
the world, sits Dick Steele. Small wonder then that the good nature of
Addison received a shock and that he determined to give Steele and his
“well-fed wits” a lesson.
But big men find it easy to forgive. Vindictiveness is for small
minds alone. Indeed, Addison the gentleman never told the story. He,
doubtless, soon considered it a closed incident and so forgot all about
it. It was Steele the gentleman who gave the tale to the world, and, as
a gentleman should, to illustrate his friend’s generosity.
One day a notion struck Steele. He decided to publish a journal on a
new plan. It is true there were news sheets in plenty, but, the times
were, in some respects, very like our own, and the self-imposed task of
the journalist seemed then, as now, to be to provide the weak-minded
section of the public with a new variety of mental dissipation each
day. Then, as now, too, the spirit of sensationalism was abroad. Then,
as now, there was a very active championship of bad causes and the
only care of the journal’s owner was to increase his circulation and
keep out of the clutches of the law. Every blind popular prejudice and
every brutal fanaticism was seized upon avidly and every consideration
of decency disregarded. To cater to the baser appetites, the lowest
curiosities, the shallowest mind, was the rule. Today, picturing the
people of England as of then, from the current news sheets, you see
a nation of Yahoos that hate each other, tear each other with their
talons with hideous contortions and yells. You see, very much as you
see today with us, foul sheets doing lip service, darkening counsel by
words without knowledge, fawning on the wealthy, flattering the men in
power. To use Swift’s picture as applicable, (Gulliver’s Travels, Part
4, chap. 7):
In most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo who was always more
deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the
rest; that this ruler had usually a favorite as like himself as he
could get, whose employment was to lick his master’s feet ... and
drive the female yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then
rewarded with a piece of ass’s flesh....
I can well imagine Dick Steele, his mind busy with the idea of some
new play perhaps, turning into some coffee-house to rest, or, if
possible, to find some companion with whom he could have a pleasant
talk. It is the Cocoa Tree that he chooses, and it has a back room,
long, and low, and brown paneled, and through the window is to be seen
the red-walled rose garden. There he finds gathered company. Steele
notes the general picture, the browns and grays, here and there a coat
of brighter color, this face strongly illuminated and that in shadow,
and he also notes that there is a great deal of “goose gabble” by way
of conversation. Nothing there to interest him. He picks up the news
sheet. It is _Dawk’s Protestant Mercury_, a popular paper. It has been
well read as the coffee stains and finger marks show. He turns it over,
passing impatiently the two columns of flamboyant boastings which tell
how at any time, “one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen,” scanning
swiftly, and rejecting impatiently, its pretended statements of facts
as entirely unworthy; then his eye falls on the stirring item of the
day, the item to which men first turn as children of a low order of
intellect turn today to the funny sheet of a Sunday supplement, and he
reads this:
A MAN EATS A LIVE COCK ETC.
On Tuesday last a fellow at Sadler’s Wells, near Islington, after
he had dined heartily on a buttock of beef, for the lucre of five
guineas, eat a live cock, feathers, guts and all, with only a plate
of oil and vinegar to wash it down, and afterwards preferred to lay
five guineas more, that he could do the same again in two hours time.
The banality, the stupidity of it all startled him. It held him all
that day, and soon the idea filled Steele’s mind that a decent and
dignified journalism was possible. He was idealist enough to believe,
and optimist enough to hope that a decent paper might become a potent
agency of enlightenment and that intelligent citizens everywhere would
be only too glad to look to it for light and leading. It might contain
foreign news, dramatic reports and the literary gossip of Will’s and
the Grecian, the two coffee houses where the wits foregathered. So,
full of the idea, he wrote to Addison of his plan. No sooner did
Addison, then in Ireland, learn of it than he was all eagerness to
join in. His unexpected decision almost swept Steele off his feet. “I
fared,” he said, “like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful
neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once
called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” And in
another place he wrote: “This paper was advanced indeed. It was raised
to a greater thing than I intended it.”
Shortly after the paper was started, the circulation was a little short
of three thousand, but in a short time, nine or ten thousand copies
of each issue were sold, and, as Addison said each issue was read by
twenty people. Of the essays, in all, two hundred and seventy-four were
written by Addison and two hundred and thirty-six by Richard Steele.
The plan involved the creation of a fictitious character, one known
as the _Spectator_, a gentleman who had been a studious youth, and,
after some travel on classic ground, took up the study of men and
manners. He was a kind of sublime _Pickwick_. And, like that later
glorious creation of Dickens, he was a good listener. Fixing his
residence in London, he goes hither and yon, to coffee houses, to
theaters, to churches and to notable gatherings, and, in the pages of
the _Spectator_, records his impressions and his thoughts. As Dickens
gave _Samuel Pickwick_ his lesser lights, his _Tupper_, and _Winkle_
and _Snodgrass_, so the _Spectator_ has a few friends: a templar, a
clergyman, a soldier and a merchant, but the high lights are thrown
upon Sir Roger de Coverly, the old country baronet, and Will Honeycomb,
an old town rake, and through the eyes of these, as through a focussing
glass, was shown the life of the day. Soon, readers everywhere became
eager to know the doings of the famous club which Sir Roger visited,
the sessions of which were recorded by the _Spectator_.
The first outline of Sir Roger was made by Steele in No. 2, of the
_Spectator_, March 2, 1711, and thereafter Addison used the character,
indeed almost seems to have identified himself with it. “We were born
for one another,” he wrote.
“The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire of an
ancient descent, a baron, his name, Sir Roger de Coverly. His
grandfather was inventor of the famous dance which is called after
him. All who know that satire, are very well acquainted with the
parts and merits of Sir Roger. He was a gentleman that is very
singular in his behavior, but his singularities proceed from a good
sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as
he thinks the world is in the wrong. However, this humor creates him
no enemies, for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy, and his
being unconfined to modes and forms makes him but the readier and the
more capable to please and oblige all who know him. When he is in
town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself a bachelor
by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the
next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger was what you
call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and
Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel on his first coming to town, and
kicked Bully Dawson in the coffee house for calling him youngster;
but being ill-used by the said widow, he was very serious for a year
and a half; and, though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at
last got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never dressed
afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and a doublet of the same cut
that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry
humors he tells us twelve times since he first wore it. He is now
in his 56th year, cheerful, gay and hearty; keeps a good house both
in town and country; a great lover of mankind; but there is such a
skilful cast in his behavior, that he is rather beloved than esteemed.
“His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young
women profess to love him, and the young men are glad of his company.
When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and
talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I must not omit that Sir Roger
is Justice to the Quorum, that he fills the chair at quarter sessions
with great ability, and three months ago gained universal applause by
explaining a passage in the Gane Act.”
* * * * *
Thus, and with that fictitious character as a nucleus, began the
greatest literary partnership in the history of literature. Thus,
also, Addison found himself. Until he wrote in the _Spectator_, he
had, or seems to have had, no knowledge of his powers. He did not know
himself. Perhaps Steele knew Addison though; knew of the vast hidden
mine of wealth and thus deliberately tapped the inexhaustible vein.
True, Addison had written before the advent of the _Spectator_, for
at college he had been distinguished in a small way, and, later, he
had written his poem, the _Campaign_ (1704). That in itself was an
excellent model of a becoming and classical style, easily and correctly
written, but, alone, it had not the excellence to ensure its author
immortality. As it turns out, as we see it from this distance, it was
the _Spectator_ that made him, as it gave him an audience to hearten
him. And through the character of Sir Roger, he set out to make
morality fashionable, and, later, by means of the essay made it his
task to reconcile virtue with elegance and to make pleasure subservient
to reason. As a by-product there came a mighty literary influence that
passed down the ages. For it was upon Addison that Benjamin Franklin
founded his style. That prince of living essayists, Michael Monahan,
has been strongly affected by the same hand. His influence has touched
such widely diverse characters as Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Lamb,
Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, W. H. Hudson, Ford Maddox
Hueffer, Cunningham Grahame, Hilaire Belloc, H. M. Tomlinson, William
Marion Reedy. More still. The very existence of these Haldeman-Julius
booklets is, in a measure, due to the ideals promulgated by Addison,
or, at any rate, at bottom the same notion that moved Steele’s friend
moved the editor of this series. In proof, I quote from _Spectator_ No.
10, March 12, 1710:
“It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven
to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of
me, that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries,
schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables
and coffee houses. I would, therefore, in a very particular manner,
recommend these, my speculations, to well regulated families, and
set apart an hour in every morning for tea, and bread and butter;
and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper
to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the
tea-equipage.”
If I were asked to choose from all that Addison had written in the
pages of the _Spectator_, to take a single essay which might be
adduced as evidence that posterity would assign to him the reputation
he coveted, I would at once name his Vision of Mirza. To my notion it
is the most intensely beautiful thing he wrote. I transcribe it, well
remembering the thrill with which I first read it when a mere boy. It
seemed to me then the most fantastically beautiful thing ever written.
No. 159
Spectator) (Addison
Saturday, September 1, 1711.
When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several Oriental manuscripts,
which I have still by me. Among others I met with one entitled the
Visions of Mirza, which I have read over with pleasure. I intend to
give it to the public when I have no other entertainment for them; and
shall begin with the first vision, which I have translated word by word
as follows:
“On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the custom of my
forefathers I always keep holy, after having washed myself and offered
up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of the Bagdad, in
order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was
here airing myself on the top of the mountains, I fell into a profound
contemplation upon the vanity of human life; and passing from one
thought to another, ‘Surely,’ said I, ‘man is but a shadow, and life a
dream.’ While I was thus musing, I cast my eyes toward the summit of a
rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of
a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his hand. As I looked
upon him he applied it to his lips, and began to play upon it. The
sound of it was so exceedingly sweet, and wrought into a variety of
tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different from
anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs
that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their arrival in
Paradise, to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify
them for the pleasure of that happy place. My heart melted away in
secret raptures.
“I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of genius;
and that several had been entertained by music who had passed it, but
never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. When
he had raised my thought by those transporting airs which he played,
to taste the pleasure of his conversation, as I looked upon him like
one astonished, he beckoned me and by waving his hand directed me to
approach the place where he sat. I drew near with that reverence which
is due a superior nature; and as my heart was entirely subdued by the
captivating strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The
genius smiled upon me with a look of compassion and affability that
familiarized him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all fears
and apprehensions with which I approached him. He lifted me from the
ground, and taking me by the hand, ‘Mirza,’ said he, ‘I have heard
thee in thy soliloquies; follow me.’
“He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on
the top of it--‘Cast thy eyes eastward,’ said he, ‘and tell me what
thou seest.’ ‘I see,’ said I, ‘a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of
water rolling through it.’ ‘The valley that thou seest,’ said he, ‘is
the Vale of Misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of
the great tide of eternity.’ ‘What is the reason,’ said I, ‘that the
tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself
in a thick mist at the other.’ ‘What thou seest,’ said he, ‘is that
portion of eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun, and
reaching from the beginning of the world to its consummation.’ ‘Examine
now,’ said he, ‘this sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends,
and tell me what thou discoverest in it.’ ‘I see a bridge,’ said I,
‘standing in the midst of the tide.’ ‘The bridge thou seest,’ said he,
‘is human life; consider it attentively.’ Upon a more leisurely survey
of it, I saw that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches,
with several broken arches, which added to those that were entire, made
up the number about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius
told me that this bridge consisted first of about a thousand arches,
but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the
ruinous condition I now beheld it. ‘But tell me further,’ said he,
‘what thou discoverest on it.’ ‘I see multitudes of people passing over
it,’ said I, ‘and a black cloud hanging on each end of it.’ As I looked
more attentively I saw several of the passengers dropping through the
bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath it; and upon further
examination, perceived that there were innumerable trap doors that lay
concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but
that they fell through them into the tide and immediately disappeared.
These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance to the
bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud,
but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner toward the middle,
but multiplied and came closer together toward the end of the arches
that were entire.
“There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that
continued a kind of hobbling march upon the broken arches, but fell
through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a
walk.
“I passed some time in contemplation of this wonderful structure, and
the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled
with deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst
of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to
save themselves. Some were looking up toward heaven in a thoughtful
posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out
of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that
glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they
thought themselves within reach of them, their footing failed, and down
they sank. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars
in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the
bridge, thrusting several persons on trap doors which did not seem to
lie in their way, and which they might have escaped had they not thus
been forced upon them.
“The genius seeing me indulge myself in this melancholy prospect, told
me that I had dwelt long enough on it. ‘Take thine eyes off of the
bridge,’ said he, ‘and tell me if thou seest anything thou dost not
comprehend.’ Upon looking up, ‘What mean,’ said I, ‘those great flights
of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling
on it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants,
and among many other feathered creatures several little winged boys,
that perch in great numbers on the middle arches.’ ‘These,’ said the
genius, ‘are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the like
cares and passions that infest human life.’
“Here I fetched a deep sigh. ‘Alas,’ said I, ‘man was made in vain!
how is he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and
swallowed up in death!’ The genius, being moved with compassion towards
me, bid me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. ‘Look no more,’ said
he, ‘on man in the first stages of his existence, his setting out
for eternity; but cast thine eye onto that thick mist into which the
tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it.’ I
directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good genius
strengthened it with supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist
that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley
opening at the farther end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean,
that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of it, and
dividing it into equal parts. The clouds still rested on one-half of
it, in so much that I could discover nothing in it: but the other
appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were
covered with fruits and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas
that ran among them. I could see people dressed in glorious habits
with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down
by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could
hear a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices,
and musical instruments. Gladness grew within me upon the discovery
of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle, that I
might fly away to those happy seats: but the genius told me that there
was no passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw
opening every moment upon the bridge. ‘The islands,’ said he, ‘that
lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole face of
the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number
than the sands on the seashore; there are myriads of islands behind
those which thou discoverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even
thine imagination can extend itself. These are the mansions of good
men after death, who according to the degree and kinds of virtue in
which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands; which
abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the
relish and perfection of those who are settled in them; every island is
a paradise accommodated to its respected inhabitants. Are not these,
O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable
that gives the opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be
feared that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man
was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him.’ I gazed
with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. ‘At length,’ said
I, ‘show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those
dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of
adamant.’ The genius making me no answer I turned about to address
myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me: I then
turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating, but
instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands,
I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep,
and camels, grazing upon the sides of it.”
Remembering the peculiar habits of thought of that day, some indication
of which you will find in the chapter that follows, it will be
seen that Addison’s aim was a high one. Yet he has the modesty of
earnestness. There is no blatant claim to originality, nor verbal
pyrotechnics. You sense the quiet of the scholar with a real literary
background. “I have,” he wrote, “raised to myself so great an audience,
I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their
diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavor to enliven morality
with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if
possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day.
And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short,
transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh
their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out of that
desperate state of vice and folly into which the age has fallen.”
(Spec. No. 10.)
II.
THE DAYS HE LIVED IN.
The London of Addison and Steele can be very easily reconstructed, from
a reading of the _Spectator_. It did not differ from the London of
Hogarth, except in very minor details, nor from the London of Johnson
of which, in 1768, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Memoirs, (111, 315).
Even this capital is now a daily scene of lawless riot. Mobs
patrolling the streets at noonday, some knocking down all who will
not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice afraid to give
judgment against him; coal heavers and porters pulling down the
houses of coal merchants that refuse to give them more wages; sawyers
destroying saw mills; sailors unrigging all the outward bound ships
and suffering none to sail till merchants agreed to raise their pay;
watermen destroying private boats and threatening bridges, soldiers
firing among the mobs and killing men, women and children.... While
I am writing a great mob of coal porters fill the street, carrying a
wretch of their business upon poles to be ducked for working at the
old wages.
That paragraph, of course, paints a special picture and goes to show
that in some respects there were incidents afoot very similar to those
we know in our day. Always there have been labor troubles and those who
would grind the faces of the poor, and interfering efficiency experts
in the camps of both parties.
While the streets were narrow with a single kennel in the middle,
the narrow ways being impeded by coaches, sedan-chairs, carts and
barrows, it is well to bear in mind that it was but a short walk in
any direction to the suburban or genuine open country. A breath of
fresh air was thus within easy reach of workers and tradesmen. In one
direction indeed, it was a little over a mile from the most crowded
part of the city to the famous Bagnigge Wells, established on an old
residence of Nell Gwynn, where was a pump room, a formal garden, pond
and fountains and three rustic bridges crossed the Fleet River. Here
was a place open to all
Where the frail nymphs in amorous dalliance rove,
Where prentice youths enjoy the Sunday feast,
And city madams boast their Sunday best,
Where unfledged Templars first as fops parade,
And new made ensigns sport their first cockade.
--Gay.
The wealthy and fortunate, with a view to getting polish, were sent to
Paris. What they saw there was not vastly different from conditions
in their native country. There would be a furtive visit to the Rue du
Haut Pave looking toward the Pantheon--a crooked, evil street, an old
and murderous street, a vile and dishonored street where murderers and
brigands puffed cigarettes in the Cafe Vachette. Or the old Pont Neuf,
heavy and forbidding, which one crossed to the gambling house to see,
perhaps on one occasion, the famous Vicomte Nucingens on suicide bent,
after having staked his all on a last card. Or the Rue de Fossoyeurs at
night, with lights swaying and flickering, as citizens abroad carried
their lanterns to awe robbers. The swift _D’Artagnan_ lived there,
you may remember, and highwaymen carried off young girls over their
shoulders, and assassins cared little whose throats they cut.
But what of the _haut ton_ in those days? For Addison, and those in his
circle, climbed high, socially. I quote from the Journal of Madam de
Maintenon, January 22, 1713.
As a matter of politeness, the Duc de Bourgogne and his two brothers
had been taught to eat with a fork. But when they were admitted to
sup with the king, he would not hear of it, and forbade them to do
it. He never forbade me to do anything of the kind, for all my life I
have never used anything to eat my food save my knife and my fingers.
A Father Tixier tells of being present as spectator at a royal meal
and, “every time Marie-Terese spoke to the English King, he lifted
his hat to her, and by the end of the meal his hat was most terribly
greasy.”
I quote Jacques Boulanger in conclusion. “... access to the royal
residences was not difficult to obtain. At Versailles there were
beggars and hucksters selling trifles on the landings and stairways.
Thieves plied their trade, and one rogue went so far, one day, as to
steal the diamonds on the hat the King had just laid on the table.”
The gambling mania told of by Pepys in an earlier day had by no
means decreased. It culminated in the sublime madness of the South
Sea Bubble and the equally glorious Mississippi Scheme. On a famous
day in February, 1771, Charles James Fox set the pace. In Parliament
he delivered a speech on a religious question after having prepared
himself, as Gibbon put it, “by passing twenty-two hours in the pious
exercise of hazard.” During the game, he lost steadily at the rate
of five hundred pounds sterling per hour. On the next day he won six
thousand pounds, but, later in the week, he dropped twenty-one thousand
pounds in two sittings. The young Lord Stavordale, then eighteen, won
eleven thousand pounds in a single day and commented upon what would
have been the result had he “played deep.” One day, during the progress
of an extended game at Brooks’ gambling club, a new invention was born
in this wise. The Earl of Sandwich, one of the players, had sat for
several hours without interruption. Unwilling to leave the game, but
being hungry, he ordered the servant to bring him some meat without a
plate, suggesting that a slice of beef be placed between two slices of
bread. By such easy means it is given to some to achieve fame, to pass
a name to posterity!
The most remarkable social product of the age was the coffee-house.
Coffee was known in England a century before tobacco. A passage in
Evelyn’s diary of May 10, 1637, reads: “I saw one, Nathaniel Coniopos,
a Greek, the first I ever saw drink coffee, (which custom came not into
England until thirty years after).”
The earliest two coffee houses in England were established in 1652
and 1656, the second, being one James Farr’s. Admission to the coffee
house cost a penny, and a cup of tea or coffee, two pence. Favored and
regular customers had their own tables and as soon as one of these
appeared, the waiting man carried to him the latest gazette or news
sheet. Hence, the statement that Addison made that his _Spectator_
reached twenty more people than bought it, would not appear to be
extravagant.
In a few years coffee houses spread over the whole of London and it was
currently thought that they were established on granite foundation,
but thirty years ago they had declined so that only two or three
survived fairly unchanged. I recall going to one one night and meeting
there that strange saturnine figure of the 1880’s, Lothrop Withington,
reputed to have a very extensive knowledge of Elizabethan England. It
was in Tottenham Court Road and Gissing used to frequent the place.
We sat in a long room with neatly sanded floor. The tables were bare
topped, each with a straight bench on either side, with high partitions
between each table and its neighbor. At the end of the room was the
open fire-place with a couple of shining steaming kettles at which
presided a neat woman in a print frock. There was no bill of fare and
no variety in the course served. You had a mutton chop with coffee and
bread, or nothing. Entering, a lad brought you a new, long clay pipe
called a church-warden. The surroundings were conducive to conversation
and the prices charged were extremely modest.
At such coffee houses the affairs of the nation and universe were
settled and unsettled; clubs and social groups were formed, and, on
occasions, political plots hatched. An amusing account of the various
London resorts of this nature in the days of Addison was given in _A
Brief and Merry History of Great Britain_, and, for the information
of intellectual strangers, the subjects usually discussed at each was
listed and classified thus:
At those Coffee Houses, near the Court, called White’s, St.
James’, William’s, the conversation turns chiefly upon Equipages,
Horse Matches, Mode of Mortgages: The Cocoa Tree upon Bribery and
Corruption, Evil Ministers, Errors and Mistakes in Government: the
Scotch Coffee-Houses towards Charing Cross, on Places and Pensions;
the Tilt Yard and Young Man’s on Affronts, Honor, Satisfaction,
Duels and Recounters.... In these Coffee-Houses about the Temple
the subjects are generally on Causes, Costs, Demurrers, Rejoiners
and Exceptions; David’s the Welch Coffee-House on Fleet Street,
on Births, Pedigrees, and Descents; Child’s and the Chapter, upon
Globes, Tithes, Rectories, and Lectureships; ... Hamlin’s, Infant
Baptism, Lay Ordination, Free Will, Election, Reprobation; ... and
all those about the Exchange, where the merchants meet to transact
their affairs, are in a perpetual hurry about Stock Jobbing, Lying,
Cheating, Tricking Widows and Orphans, and committing Spoil and
Rapine on the Publick.
Says the _Spectator_, having in mind the atmosphere intellectual of
this coffee house and that:
I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently
seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen
of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a
more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein
I do not make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head
into a round of politicians at Will’s, and listening with great
attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular
audiences; sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child’s, and, while I seem
attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of
every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James’
Coffee House and sometimes join the little committee in the inner
room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise
very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the theaters
both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. (_Spectator_ No. 1.)
That the coffee house was not at all times a cave of harmony is
evidenced in many places. We recall that _Sir Roger de Coverley_ had
“kicked Bully Dawson in a coffee house for calling him a youngster.”
Then, too, a letter written by Colley Cibber to Mr. Pope would seem to
show that the irascible and waspish temper of the Twickenham poet had
got him into trouble.
“When you used to pass your hours at Button’s,” writes Cibber in
1742, p. 65, “you were even then remarkable for your satirical itch
of provocation; scarce was there a gentleman of any pretention to
wit, whom your unguarded temper had fallen upon in some biting
epigram, among which you once caught a pastoral tartar, whose
resentment, that your punishment might be proportionate to the smart
of your poetry, had stuck up a birchen rod in the room to be ready
whenever you might come within reach of it; and at this rate, you
writ and rallied and writ on, till you rhymed yourself quite out of
the coffee-house.”
Pope, obviously was made for a coffee house career. Dryden, Addison,
Steele and Savage on the other hand were in their glories at such
gatherings. Once, at St. James’ Coffee House, Addison and his friends
had noticed for several days a singular parson, who put his hat on the
table, walked up and down the sanded floor for half an hour without
speaking to any one, paid his money and left. They dubbed him the “mad
parson.” One day Addison saw this “mad parson” step up to a new arrival
who appeared to have come from the country, and heard him say, without
any introduction:
“Pray sir, do you know any good weather in the world?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the other, “thank God I remember a great deal of
good weather in my time.”
“That is more than I can say,” grumbled the “mad” one. “I never
remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too dry or too
wet; but however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year ’tis
all very well.”
That was the first time Addison and Swift met.
We gather that occasional dead beats walked the world even as with us.
In the _Spectator_ of March 28, 1711, appears the following:
ADVERTISEMENT.
To prevent all mistakes that may happen among gentlemen of the other
end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James’ Coffee House,
either by miscalling the servants, or requiring things from them
as are not properly within their provinces; this is to give notice
that Kidney, keeper of the book debts of the outlying customers, and
observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that
employment, is succeeded by John Sowton; to whose place of enterer
of messages and first coffee grinder, William Bird is promoted; and
Samuel Burdock comes as shoe cleaner in the room of said Bird.
Again, to all men who believe that human nature changes and that only
in these latter and effete days are we burdened with bores, dogmatists,
pedants and prigs, read what follows. It is Richard Steele writing in
No. 145, and under date of August 16, 1711:
You cannot employ yourself more usefully than in adjusting the laws
of disputation in coffee-houses and accidental companies, as well
as in more formal debates. Among many other things which your own
experience must suggest to you, it will be very obliging if you
will take notice of wagerers. I will not here repeat what Hudibras
says of such disputants, which is so true, that it is almost
proverbial but shall only acquaint you with a set of fellows on the
inns-of-court whose fathers have provided them so plentifully, that
they need not be anxious to get law into their heads for the service
of their country at the bar; but are of those who are sent (as the
phrase of parents is) to the temple to know how to keep their own.
One of these gentlemen is very loud and captious at a coffee house
which I frequent, and being in his nature troubled with a humor of
contradiction, though withal excessively ignorant, he has found a
way to indulge this temper, go on in idleness and ignorance, and
yet still give himself the air of a very learned and knowing man
by the strength of his pocket. The misfortune of the thing is, I
have, as it happens sometimes, a greater stock of learning than
of money. The gentleman I am speaking of takes advantage of the
narrowness of my circumstances in such a manner that he has read all
that I can pretend to, and runs me down with a positive air, and
with such powerful arguments that from a very learned person I am
thought a mere pretender. Not long ago, I was relating that I had
read a passage in Tacitus; up starts my gentleman in company, and
pulling out his purse offered to lay me ten guineas, to be staked
immediately to that gentleman’s hands, (pointing to one smoking at
another table), that I was utterly mistaken. I was dumb for want
of ten guineas.... There are several of this sort of fellows in
town, who wager themselves into statesmen, historians, geographers,
mathematicians and every other art....
Like any other man of cultivated taste and cosmopolitan training,
Addison had the contempt of enlightened persons for the fanaticisms
of his time. For then, as now, there was political mistrust and
suspicion and fanatics were abroad. The changes were rung upon all the
familiar phrases of political oratory, gold and pinchbeck alike, and
the political rhetorician recklessly indulged in sentiments to which
the whole tenor of his career gave the lie. The coffee houses swarmed
with those who smelt treason where none existed, who scented plots
where were none, who saw in innocent remarks dangerous tendencies, and
beheld, in the sweet fiction of the _Spectator’s_ club a diabolical
contrivance for intrigue. Very magnificently Addison handles the
situation in _Spectator_ No. 46, of April 23, 1711, and we get
incidentally a pretty side light on coffee house society.
ON SUSPICION.
NO. 46, SPECTATOR--ADDISON.
When I want material for this paper, it is my custom to go abroad in
quest of game; and when I meet any proper subject, I take the first
opportunity of setting down a hint of it upon paper. At the same time,
I look into the letters of my correspondents, and if I find anything
suggested in them that may afford matter of speculation, I likewise
enter a minute of it in my collection of materials. By this means I
frequently carry about with me a whole sheetful of hints, that would
look like a rhapsody of nonsense to anyone but myself. There is nothing
in them but obscurity and confusion, raving and inconsistency. In
short, they are my speculations in the first principles, that (like the
world in its chaos) are void of all light, distinction and order.
About a week since, there happened to me a very odd accident, by reason
of one of these my papers of minutes which I had accidentally dropped
at Lloyd’s coffee house, where the auctions are usually kept. Before
I missed it, there was a cluster of people who had found it, and were
diverting themselves with it at one end of the coffee house. It had
raised so much laughter among them before I had observed what they were
about, that I had not the courage to own it. The boy of the coffee
house, when they had done with it, carried it about in his hand, asking
everybody if they had dropped a written paper; but nobody challenging
it, he was ordered by those merry gentlemen who had before perused it,
to get up into the auction pulpit, and read it to the whole room, that
if anyone would own it, they might. The boy accordingly mounted the
pulpit, and with a very audible voice read as follows:
MINUTES.
Sir Roger de Coverly’s country seat--yes, for I hate
long speeches--Query, if a good Christian may be a
conjurer--Childermas day, salt cellar, house-dog, screech-owl,
cricket--Mr. Thomas Inkle of London, in the good ship called
the Achilles--Yarico--=Aehrescitque medendo=--Ghosts--The
Lady’s Library--Lion by trade a tailor--Dromedary called
Bucephalus--Equipage the Lady’s =summum bonum=--Charles Lillie to
be taken notice of--Short face a relief to envy--Redundancies in
three professions--King Latinus a recruit--Jew devouring a ham
of bacon--Westminster Abbey--Grand Cairo--Procrastination--April
fools--Blue boars, red lions, hogs in armor--Enter a king and
two fiddlers =soius=--Admission into the Ugly Club--Beauty how
improvable--Families of true and false humor--The parrot’s
school-mistress--Face half Pict half British--No man can be a hero of
a tragedy under six foot--Club of Sighers--Letters from flower-pots,
elbow chairs, tapestry-figures, lion, thunder--The bell rings to
the puppet-show--Old woman with a beard married to a smock-faced
boy--My next coat to be turned up with blue--Fable of tongs and
gridiron--Flower dyers--The soldier’s prayer--Thank ye for nothing,
says the gallipot--Pactolus in the stockings with golden clocks to
them--Bamboos, cudgels, drum-sticks--Slip of my landlady’s eldest
daughter--The black mare with a star in her forehead--The barber’s
pole--Will Honeycomb’s coat-pocket--Caesar’s behavior and my own
in parallel circumstances--Poems in patchwork--=Nulli gravi est
percussus Achilles=--The female conventicler--The ogle-master.
The reading of this paper made the whole coffee house very merry;
some of them concluded it was written by a mad man, and others by
somebody that had been taking notes out of the _Spectator_. One, who
had the appearance of a very substantial citizen, told us, with several
political winks and nods, that he wished there was no more in the
paper than what was expressed in it: that for his part, he looked upon
the dromedary, the gridiron, and the barber’s pole, to signify more
than was usually meant by those words: and that he thought that the
coffee man could not do better than to carry the paper to one of the
secretaries of state. He farther added, that he did not like the name
of the outlandish man with the golden clock in his stockings. A young
Oxford scholar who chanced to be with his uncle at the coffee house,
discovered to us who this Pactolus was: and by that means turned the
whole scheme of this worthy citizen into ridicule. While they were
making their several conjectures upon this innocent paper, I reached
out my arm to the boy as he was coming out of the pulpit, to give it to
me; which he did accordingly. This drew the eyes of the whole company
upon me; but after having cast a cursory glance over it, and shook my
head twice or thrice at the reading of it, I twisted it into a kind
of match, and lighted my pipe with it. My profound silence, together
with the steadiness of my countenance, and the gravity of my behavior
during this whole transaction, raised a very loud laugh on all sides of
me; but as I had escaped all suspicion of being the author, I was very
well satisfied, and applying myself to my pipe and the Postman, took no
further notice of anything that passed about me.
* * * * *
In No. 9, March 19, 1710, we find an account of a Social Club formed by
a few in a certain ale house. It is of a lower social strata.
_Rules to be observed in the Two-Penny Club erected in this place
for the preservation of friendship and good neighborhoods._
1. Every member at his first coming shall lay down his two-pence.
2. Every member shall fill his pipe out of his own box.
3. If any member absent himself, he shall forfeit a penny for the use
of the club, unless in case of sickness or imprisonment.
4. If any member curses or swears, his neighbor may give him a kick
upon the shins.
5. If any member tells stories in the club that are not true, he
shall forfeit for every third lie a half penny.
6. If any member strikes another wrongfully, he shall pay his club
for him.
7. If any member brings his wife into the club, he shall pay for
whatever she drinks or smokes.
8. If any member’s wife comes to fetch him home from the club, she
shall speak to him without the door.
9. If any member calls another a cuckold, he shall be turned out of
the club.
10. None shall be permitted into the club that is of the same trade
with any member of it.
11. None of the club shall have his clothes or shoes made or mended
but by a brother member.
12. No non-juror shall be capable of being a member.
* * * * *
In those days there were lively happenings. Dick Turpin on his bonny
Black Bess frightened travelers on Hounslow Heath, made his famous
ride from London to York, in twenty-four hours, and, one gray day in
November of 1714, died at Tyburn, dressed in his gayest attire with a
rose at his button hole. Nor would the crowd allow his body to be given
to the surgeons, for, seeing it taken from the gallows, they rescued
it, carried it through the town in triumph, then buried it in a deep
grave that night.
Claude Duval, too, was a popular hero, the pink of politeness, the
gentleman thief it was an honor to be robbed by. He would stop a coach
to dance a Sarabandi with the lady, and then rob her escort. He
Taught the wild Arabs of the road
To rob in a more gentle mode;
Take prizes more obligingly than those
Who never had been bred =filous=;
And how to hang in a more graceful fashion
Than e’er was known before to the dull English nation.
* * * * *
There was a period of insane speculation commencing with the South Sea
Company originated by Harley, Earl of Oxford, with a view to restore
public credit. Visions of ingots danced before everyone’s eyes, and
stock in any scheme rose rapidly. One bright genius, forerunner of
a Ponzi, announced the formation of a company “for carrying on an
undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” The
prospectus announced that it required a capital of a half million
pounds, of 5,000 shares of a hundred pounds each with a deposit of two
pounds on application. Each subscriber paying his initial deposit would
be entitled to a hundred pounds per annum per share. The following
morning after the prospectus had gone forth, he opened his office in
Cornhill, and when he closed that day at three, he was the winner of
two thousand pounds clear, so did not re-open his office, nor stay in
the country.
In the papers of the period are to be found advertisements and notices,
all kinds of mad money-making propositions, as filed at the Council
Chamber Whitehall. To name a few:
Petition for a wheel for perpetual motion.
For the philosopher’s stone. (Steele was interested in this question.)
Petition for incorporation to carry on a whale fishery.
On paving London Streets. Capital two million pounds.
For trading in human hair.
For the transmutation of quicksilver into malleable fine metal.
For changing lead into gold.
* * * * *
Duelling was very prevalent. Addison and Steele in the _Spectator_
were untiring in the reprobation of it. Steele constantly exposed
the absurdity of the practice and endeavored to bring his readers to
his way of thinking. His comedy, _The Conscious Lover_, contains an
admirable exposure of the abuse of the word honor, which led men to so
fanatic an absurdity. Swift, in his own savage way, remarked that he
could “see no harm in rogues and fools shooting one another.” Addison
summed up nearly all that could be said on the subject in the following
powerful paragraph:
“A Christian and a gentleman are made inconsistent appellations of
the same person. You are not to expect eternal life if you are not to
forgive injuries, and your mortal life is rendered uncomfortable if you
are not ready to commit a murder in resentment of an affront; for good
sense, as well as religion, is so utterly banished in the world that
men glory in their very passions, and pursue trifles with the utmost
vengeance, so little do they know that to forgive is the most arduous
pitch human nature can arrive at. A coward has often fought--a coward
has often conquered, but a coward never forgave.”
Again in No. 99, June 23, 1711, Addison writes:
“The placing the point of honor in this false kind of courage, has
given occasion to the very refuse of mankind, who have neither virtue
nor common sense, to set up for men of honor. An English peer who has
not long been dead, (this was William Cavendish, the first duke of
Devonshire, who died August 18, 1707) used to tell a pleasant story of
a French gentleman that visited him early one morning at Paris, and
after great professions of respect, let him know that he had it in his
power to oblige him; which in short, amounted to this--that he believed
that he could tell his lordship the person’s name who jostled him as he
came out from the opera: but before he would proceed, he begged his
lordship that he would not deny him the honor of making him his second.
The English Lord to avoid being drawn into a very foolish affair, told
him that he was under engagements for his two next duels to a couple
of particular friends; upon which the gentleman immediately withdrew,
hoping his lordship would not take it ill if he meddled no further in
an affair from whence he was to receive no advantage.
“The beating down of this false notion of honor in so vain and lively
a people as those of France, is deservedly looked upon as one of the
most glorious parts of their present king’s reign. It is a pity but
the punishment of these mischievous notions should have in it some
particular circumstance of shame or infamy: that those who are slaves
to them may see, that instead of advancing their reputations, they lead
them to ignominy and dishonor.
“Death is not sufficient to deter men who make it their glory to
despise it; but if every one that fought a duel were to stand in the
pillory, it would quickly lessen the number of these imaginary men of
honor, and put an end to so absurd a practice.
“When honor is to support virtue’s principles, and runs parallel to
the laws of God and our country, it cannot be too much cherished and
encouraged: but when the dictates of honor are contrary to those of
religion and equity, they are the greatest depravations of human
nature, by giving wrong ambitions and ideas of what is good and
laudable; and should therefore be exploded by all governments, and
driven out of the bane and plague of human society.”
* * * * *
The article was penned in consequence of an affair on the 8th of May,
1711, when Sir Cholmely Deering, M.P., for the county of Kent, was
slain in a duel by Mr. Richard Thornhill, also member of the House
of Commons. Three days after, by the efforts of Addison, Sir Peter
King brought the subject under the notice of the Legislature, and
after dwelling at considerable length on the alarming increase of the
practice, obtained leave to bring in a bill for the prevention and
punishment of duelling.
As an Irishman, fighting against duelling, Steele was going contrary
to all the traditions of his countrymen. In Ireland, not only military
men, but men of every profession had to work a way to eminence with
pistol or sword. Each political party had its regular corps of fire
eaters who qualified themselves for the position by spending their
whole time at target practice. They boasted that they could hit upon an
opponent in any part of his body they pleased, and made up their minds
before the encounter began whether they should kill him, disable him,
or disfigure him for life.
We have it on the authority of Sir Jonah Barrington in his “Personal
Sketches of His Own Time” that “no young fellow could finish his
education till he had exchanged shots with some of his acquaintances.
The first questions always asked as to a young man’s respectability
and qualifications, particularly when he proposed for a lady-wife
were--‘What family is he of?’ ‘Did he ever blaze?’”
Everywhere, as you see, there are coarse things, great and gross
sensuality, wild animality, unrestrained joy and not a little bestial
pleasure. Virtue had the semblance of puritanism and the memory of
the days under the rule of the kill-joys was a nightmare. So, men who
wrote the news sheets of the day saw nothing for it but to foster
that brutal bloody impulse that seemed to sway the masses of their
readers. If it was necessary to feed them, then the fare given was raw
flesh, violence, blood. This must be borne in mind in order to fully
appreciate the wonderful change brought about in five short years by
two men of fine tastes and delicate sensibilities. Steele in No. cxxxiv
of the _Tatler_, condemning the cruelty of the age, says he has “often
wondered that we do not lay outside a custom which makes us appear
barbarous to nations much more rude and unpolished than ourselves. Some
French writers have represented this diversion of the common people
much to our disadvantage, and imputed it to natural fierceness and
cruelty of temper, as they do some other entertainments peculiar to
our nation. I mean these elegant diversions and bull baiting and prize
fighting, with the like ingenious recreation of the Bear-garden. I wish
I knew how to answer this reproach that is cast upon us, and excuse the
death of many innocent cocks, bulls, dogs, and bears, as have been set
together by the ears, or died untimely deaths, only to make us sport.”
Bearing that in mind, I call your attention to an advertisement of the
time which I copy from the Harlean MSS. 5931,46. Here it is, word for
word:
At the Bear Garden in Hockley in the Hole, 1710. This is to give
notice to all Gentlemen, Gamesters, and Others, that on this present
Monday is a match to be fought by two dogs, one from Newgate Market
against one from Honey Lane Market, at a Bull, for a Guinea to be
spent. Five Let goes out off Hand, which goes fairest and farthest
in, wins all; likewise a Green Bull to be baited, which was never
baited before, and a Bull to be turned loose with fireworks all over
him; also a Mad Ass to be baited; with variety of Bull Baiting, and
Bear Baiting, and a dog to be drawn up with Fireworks.
One named Mission, a writer of the day, describes a bull fight as
follows:
They tie a rope to the foot of the ox or bull, and fasten the other
end of the cord to an iron ring fix’d to a stake driven into the
ground, so that this cord being 15 feet long, the bull is confined
to a sphere of about 30 foot diameter. Several butchers or other
gentlemen, that are desirous to exercise their dogs, stand round
about, each holding his own by the ears; and, when the sport begins,
they let loose one of the dogs; the dog runs at the bull. The bull
immovable, looks down upon the dog with an eye of scorn, and only
turns a horn to him to hinder him from coming under; the dog is not
daunted at this, he turns round him, and tries to get beneath his
belly, in order to seize him by the muzzle, or the dew lap or the
pendant glands; the bull then puts himself in a Posture of Defense;
he beats the ground with his feet, which he joins together as close
as possible, and his chief aim is not to gore the dog with the
point of his horn, but to slide one of them into the dog’s belly
(who creeps close to the ground to hinder it) and to throw him so
high in the air that he may break his neck in the fall. This often
happens; when the dog thinks he is sure of fixing his teeth, a turn
of the horn which seems to be done with all the negligence in the
world, gives him a sprawl thirty foot high, and puts him in danger
of a damnable squelch when he comes down. This danger would be
unavoidable, if the dog’s friends were not ready beneath him, some
with their backs to give him a soft reception, and others with long
poles which may offer him slant ways, to the intent that, sliding
down them, he may break the force of his fall. Notwithstanding all
this care a toss generally makes him sing to a very scurvy tune and
draw his phiz into a pitiful grimace; but, unless he is totally
stunned with the fall, he is sure to crawl again towards the bull,
with his old antipathy, come on’t what will. Some times a second
frisk into the air disables him forever from playing his old tricks;
but, some times, too, he fastens on his enemy, and when he has seized
him with his eye teeth, he sticks to him like a leech, and would
sooner die than leave his hold. The bull bellows and bounds, and
kicks about to shake off the dog; by his leaping, the dog seems to
be no matter of weight to him though in all appearances he puts him
to great pain. In the end, either the dog tears out the piece he
has laid hold of, and falls, or else remains fixed to him, with an
obstinacy that would never end, if they did not put him off. To call
him away would be in vain; to give him a hundred blows would be as
much so; you might cut him to pieces joint by joint before he would
let him loose. What is to be done then? While some hold the bull,
others thrust staves into the dog’s mouth and open it by main force.
That is the only way to part them.
* * * * *
I copy the advertisement that follows from the Harl. MSS. 5931,50:
At the Bear Garden in the Hockley-in-the-Hole.
A Trial of Skill to be performed between two Profound Masters of the
Noble Science of Defense on Wednesday next, being the 13th inst.
July, 1709 at two of the clock precisely.
I, George Gray, born in the City of Norwich, who has fought in most
parts of the West Indies, viz., Jamaica, Baradoes, and several other
parts of the world, in all twenty-five times upon a stage and never
yet was worsted, and now come to London, do invite James Harris, to
meet and exercise at these following weapons, viz.:
Back Sword
Sword and Dagger
Sword and Buckler
Single Falchion and
Case of Falchions.
I, James Harris, Master of the Noble Science of Defense, who formerly
was in the Horse Guards, and hath fought a 110 prizes, and never left
a stage to any man, will not fail God willing, to meet this brave and
bold inviter, at the time and place appointed desiring sharp swords,
and from him no favor.
=Note.=--No persons to be upon the stage but the seconds. =Vivat
Regina.=
There is report of a similar entertainment by the hand of Steele in No.
436 of the _Spectator_, July 21, 1712. Steele does not plunge into the
blood and the filth; he passes through on tiptoe and so daintily that
the mire does not stick.
“Being a person of insatiable curiosity, I could not forbear going
on Wednesday last to a place of no small renown for the gallantry
of the lower order of Britons, namely, the Bear-garden, at
Hockley-in-the-Hole; where, (as a whitish-brown paper, put into my
hands in the street, informed me) there was to be a trial of skill
exhibited between two masters of the noble science of defense, at two
of the clock precisely. I was not a little charmed at the solemnity of
the challenge, which ran thus:
I, James Miller, sergeant (lately come from the frontiers of
Portugal), master of the noble science of defense, hearing in most
places where I have been of the fame of Timothy Buck, of London,
master of the said science, do invite him to meet me and exercise at
the several weapons following, viz.:
Back Sword
Sword and Dagger
Sword and Buckler
Single Falchion
Case of Falchions
Quarter Staff.
“If the generous ardor of James Miller to dispute the reputation of
Timothy Buck had something resembling the old heroes of romance,
Timothy Buck returned answer in the same paper with the light spirit,
adding a little indignation at being challenged, and seeming to
condescend to fight James Miller, not in regard of Miller himself, but
in that, as the fame went out, he had fought Parkes of Coventry. The
acceptance of the combat ran in these words:
I, Timothy Buck, of Clare-market, master of the noble science of
defense, hearing he did fight Mr. Parkes of Coventry, will not
fail, God willing, to meet this fair inviter at the time and place
appointed, desiring a clear stage and no favor. =Vivat Regina.=
“I shall not here look back on the spectacles of the Greeks and Romans
of this kind, but must believe that this custom took its rise from the
ages of knight-errantry; from those who loved one woman so well that
they hated all men and women else; from those who would fight you,
whether you were or were not of their mind; from those who demanded
the combat of their contemporaries both for admiring their mistress
or discommending her. I cannot therefore but lament that the terrible
part of the ancient fight is preserved, when the amorous side of it is
forgotten. We have retained the barbarity but not the gallantry of the
old combatants. I could wish, me thinks, these gentlemen had consulted
me in the promulgation of the conflict. I was obliged by a fair young
maid, whom I understood to be called Elizabeth Preston, daughter of the
keeper of the garden, with a glass of water; who I imagined might have
been, for form’s sake, the general representative for the lady fought
for, and from her beauty the proper Amaryllis on these occasions. It
would have run better in the challenge, ‘I, James Miller, sergeant,
who have traveled parts abroad, and came last from the frontiers of
Portugal, for the love of Elizabeth Preston, do assert that the said
Elizabeth is the fairest of women.’ Then the answer, ‘I, Timothy Buck,
who have stayed in Great Britain during all the war in foreign parts
for the sake of Susannah Page, do deny that Elizabeth Preston is so
fair as the said Susannah Page. Let Susannah Page look on, and I desire
no favor of James Miller.’
“This would give the battle quite another turn; and a proper station
for the ladies whose complexion was disputed by the sword, would
animate the disputants with a more gallant incentive than the
expectation of money from the spectators; though I would not have that
neglected, but thrown to that fair one whose lover was approved by the
donor.
“Yet considering the thing wants such amendments, it was carried with
great order. James Miller came on first, preceded by two disabled
drummers, to show, I suppose, that the prospect of maimed bodies did
not in the least deter him. There ascended with the daring Miller
a gentleman, whose name I could not learn, with a dogged air, as
unsatisfied that he was not principal. This son of anger lowered at the
whole assembly, and, weighing himself as he marched around from side
to side, with a stiff knee and shoulder, he gave intimations of the
purpose he smothered till he saw the issue of this encounter. Miller
had a blue ribbon tied around the sword arm; which ornament I conceive
to be the remain of that custom of wearing a mistress’s favor on such
occasions of old.
“Miller is a man of six foot eight inches in height, of a kind but
bold aspect, well fashioned, and ready of his limbs, and such a
readiness as spoke his ease in them was obtained from a habit of motion
in military exercise.
“The expectation of the spectators was now almost at its height; and
the crowd pressing in, several active persons thought they were placed
rather according to their fortune than their merit, and took it in
their heads to prefer themselves from the open area or pit to the
galleries. This dispute between desert and property brought many to
the ground, and raised others in proportion to seats by turns, for the
space of ten minutes till Timothy Buck came on, and the whole assembly
giving up their disputes, turned their eyes upon the champions. Then
it was that every man’s affections turned from one or the other
irresistibly. A judicious gentleman near me said, ‘I could methinks
be Miller’s second, but I had rather have Buck for mine.’ Miller had
an audacious look that took the eye; Buck had a perfect composure
that engaged the judgment. Buck came on in a plain coat, and kept all
his air till the instant of engaging, at which time he undressed to
his shirt, his arm adorned with a bandage of red ribbon. No one can
describe the sudden concern in the whole assembly; the most tumultuous
crowd in nature was as still and as much engaged as if all their lives
depended upon the first blow. The combatants met in the middle of the
stage, and shaking hands, as removing all malice, with much grace to
the extremities of it; from whence they immediately faced about, and
approached each other, Miller with a heart full of resolution, Buck
with a watchful, untroubled countenance: Buck regarding principally his
own defense, Miller chiefly thoughtful of annoying his opponent. It
is not easy to describe the many escapes and imperceptible defenses
between two men of quick eyes and ready limbs. But Miller’s heat
laid him open to the rebuke of the calm Buck, by a large cut on the
forehead. Much effusion of blood covered his eyes in a moment, and the
huzzas of the crowd undoubtedly quickened the anguish. The assembly was
divided into parties upon their different ways of fighting; while a
poor nymph in one of the galleries apparently suffered for Miller, and
burst into a flood of tears. As soon as his wound was wrapped up, he
came on again with a little rage, which disabled him further. But what
brave man can be wounded into more caution and patience? The next was a
warm, eager onset, which ended in a decisive stroke on the left leg of
Miller. The Lady in the gallery during this second strife, covered her
face, and for my part, I could not keep my thoughts from being mostly
employed on the consideration of her most unhappy circumstance that
moment, hearing the clash of swords, and apprehending life or victory
concerned her lover in every blow, but not daring to satisfy herself
on whom they fell. The wound was exposed to the view of all who could
delight in it, and sewed up on the stage. The surly second of Miller
declared at this time that he would that day fortnight fight Mr. Buck
at the same weapons, declaring himself the master of the renowned
Gorman; but Buck denied him the honor of that courageous disciple,
and, asserting that he himself had taught that champion, accepted the
challenge.
“There is something in human nature very unaccountable on such
occasions, when we see the people take a painful gratification in
beholding these encounters. Is it cruelty that administers this sort of
delight? Or is it a pleasure that is taken in the exercise of pity? It
was, methought, pretty remarkable that the business of the day being a
trial of skill, the popularity did not run so high as one would have
expected on the side of Buck. Is it that the people’s passions have
their rise in self love, and thought themselves (in spite of all the
courage they had) liable to the fate of Miller, but could not so easily
think themselves qualified like Buck?
“Tully speaks of this custom with less horror than one would expect,
though he confesses it was much abused in his time, and seems directly
to approve of it under its first regulations, when criminals only
fought before the people. _Crudele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum
nonnullis videri solet; et haud scio annon ita sit ut nunc fit; cum
vero sontes ferro depugnabant, auribus fortasse multa, oculis quidem
nulla, poterat esse fortior contra dolorem et mortem disciplina._ The
shows of gladiators may be thought barbarous and inhuman, and I know
not but it is so as it is now practiced; but in those times when only
criminals were combatants, the ear might perhaps receive many better
instructions, but it is impossible that anything which affects our eyes
should fortify us so well against pain and death.”
* * * * *
But brave, bellicose, blood-thirsty as was the Briton in the days of
Addison, he was very fearful of unseen things. He feared a witch as we
fear a microbe. He was full of morbid possibilities, his nerves were
strangely susceptible. As a man in our day will fight the daily fight
fearlessly, will declare his intellectual independence, will be bold
in the expression of his opinions, yet quail and cringe at the name of
the unseen Mrs. Grundy, so those who yelled at bull fights, glorified
in the bloodshed of the ring side or went forth in the street to do
battle for a political cause, feared with a most lively fear dark
demoniac powers who worked by occult means and subtle fascinations of
evil.
In the paper that next follows, there is an exquisite touch when Sir
Roger catches sight of a cat and the broomstick behind the old woman’s
door. That to him seems to be proof positive of dark and nefarious
doings--proof as positive as, not so long ago, it was considered
proof positive by an excited crowd in a small town, when an old woman
with a German name was found to have in her house a blue print of a
railroad bridge. That it might have a perfectly legitimate origin was,
to illogical minds, unthinkable. No. There was a blue print, and blue
prints were sometimes used by spies. Germany had spies, and the old
woman had a German name. So she went to jail. What further proof was
needed? And who dare object to summary proceedings, lest he also be
judged tainted?
ON WITCHCRAFT.
NO. 117, SPECTATOR--ADDISON.
“There are some opinions in which man should stand neuter, without
engaging his assent to one side or the other. Such a hovering faith as
this, which refuses to settle upon his determination, is absolutely
necessary in a mind that is careful to avoid errors and prepossessions.
When the arguments press equally on both sides in matters that are
indifferent to us, the safest method is to give up ourselves to neither.
“It is with this temper of mind that I consider the subject of
witchcraft. Whenever I hear the relations that are made from all parts
of the world, not only from Norway and Lapland, from the East and West
Indies, but from every particular nation in Europe, I cannot forbear
thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce with evil
spirits, as that which we express by the name of witchcraft. But when
I consider that the ignorant and credulous parts of the world abound
most in these relations, and the persons among us who are supposed to
engage in such an infernal commerce, are people of weak understanding
and crazed imagination--and at the same time reflect upon the many
impostures and delusions of this nature that I have detected in all
ages, I endeavor to suspend my belief till I hear more certain accounts
than any which have yet come to my knowledge. In short, when I consider
the question, whether there are such persons in the world as those we
call witches, my mind is divided between two opposite opinions, or
rather (to speak my thoughts freely) I believe there is, and has been,
such a thing as witchcraft; at the same time can give no credit to any
particular instance of it.
“I am engaged in this speculation, by some occurrences that I met with
yesterday, which I shall give my reader an account of at large. As I
was walking with my friend Sir Roger by the side of one of his woods,
an old woman applied herself to me for charity. Her dress and figure
put me in the mind of the following description in Otway:
In a close lane as I pursu’d my journey
I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself.
Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall’d and red;
Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seemed wither’d;
And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt
The tatter’d remnant of an old striped hanging,
Which served to keep her carcass from the cold:
So there was nothing of a piece about her.
Her lower weeds were all o’er coarsely patch’d
With different colored rags, black, red, white, yellow,
And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness.
“As I was musing on this description, and comparing it with the object
before me, the knight told me, that this very old woman had the
reputation of a witch all over the country; that her lips were observed
to be always in motion; and that there was not a switch about her house
which her neighbors did not believe had carried her several hundred
miles. If she chanced to stumble, they always found sticks or straws
that lay in the figure of a cross before her. If she made any mistake
at church, and cried amen in the wrong place, they never failed to
conclude that she was saying her prayers backward. There was not a maid
in the parish that would take a pin of her, though she should offer a
bag of money with it. She goes by the name of Moll White, and has made
the country ring with several imaginary exploits which are palmed upon
her. If the dairy-maid does not make her butter come so soon as she
would have it, Moll White is at the bottom of the churn. If a horse
sweats in the stable, Moll White has been upon his back. If a hare
makes an unexpected escape from the hounds, the huntsman curses Moll
White. ‘Nay,’ says Sir Roger, ‘I have known the master of the pack,
upon such an occasion, send one of his servants to see if Moll White
had been out that morning.’
“This account raised my curiosity so far, that I begged my friend Sir
Roger to go with me into her hovel, which stood in a solitary corner
under the side of the wood. Upon our first entering, Sir Roger winked
to me, and pointed to something that stood behind the door, which upon
looking that way, I found to be an old broom-staff. At the same time he
whispered to me in the ear to take notice of a tabby cat that sat in
the chimney corner, which, as the old knight told me, lay under as bad
a report as Moll herself; for beside that Moll is said to accompany her
in the same shape, the cat is reported to have spoken twice or thrice
in her life, and to have played several pranks above the capacity of an
ordinary cat.
“I was secretly concerned to see human nature in so much wretchedness
and disgrace, but at the same time could not forbear smiling to hear
Sir Roger, who is a little puzzled about the old woman, advising her as
a justice of peace to avoid all communication with the devil, and never
to hurt any of her neighbors’ cattle. We concluded our visit with a
bounty which was very acceptable.
“In our return Sir Roger told me that Moll had been often brought
before him for making children spit pins, and giving maids the
nightmare; and that the country people would be tossing her into a pond
and trying experiments with her every day, if it was not for him and
his chaplain.
“I have since found upon inquiry that Sir Roger was several times
staggered with the reports that had been brought him concerning this
old woman, and would frequently have bound her over to the county
sessions, had not his chaplain with much ado persuaded him to the
contrary.
“I have been the more particular in this account, because I hear there
is scarcely a village in England that has not a Moll White in it.
When an old woman begins to doat, and grow chargeable to a parish, she
is generally turned into a witch, and fills the whole country into
extravagant fancies, imaginary distempers, and terrifying dreams. In
the meantime, the poor wretch that is the innocent occasion of so many
evils, begins to be frightened at herself, and sometimes confesses
secret commerces and familiarities that her imagination forms in a
delirious old age. This frequently cuts off charity from the greatest
objects of compassion, and inspires people with a malevolence towards
those poor discrepit parts of our species, in whom human nature is
defaced by infirmity and dotage.”
* * * * *
A word of explanation here seems necessary. At the time of Sir Roger’s
supposed movements, memory of the great Matthew Hopkins was lively in
many places, and, now and then, imitators sprang up, just as today,
while the idea is generally discarded and thrown on the scrap heap of
exploded opinions, you will find in back country districts, “water
witches” who will undertake to locate water or minerals and tell the
depth at which they are to be found.
Matthew Hopkins lived in Essex and had made himself conspicuous in
discovering the devil’s mark on many witches. He had a peculiar
monopoly for a time, and, being a specialist, was much sought after,
aiding the judges with his knowledge of “such cattle” as he called
them, whenever a witch was suspected. Lesser lights in the way of
specialists soon appeared.
Later, he assumed the title of “Witch Finder General” and traveled
through the central counties witch hunting. In one year, he brought
more than sixty old women to the stake. His favorite method was that
advocated by King James in his “Demonologie.” The hands and feet of
the suspected one were cross tied, then, wrapped in a blanket, they
were laid on their backs in a pond. If they sank, they were adjudged
innocent, but if they floated for a short time, as was often the case,
especially when they were laid carefully on the water, they were judged
guilty and burned.
Another test was to make the suspected one repeat the Lord’s Prayer
and the Creed. If a word was missed or wrongly pronounced, she was
accounted guilty. It was said that witches could not weep more than
three tears, and those only from the left eye. Thus, the natural
excitement and its effect became a proof of guilt.
Hopkins traveled through his counties like a man of consideration,
attended by two assistants, put up at the chief inn of the place,
and always at the cost of the authorities. His charges were twenty
shillings a town, his expenses of living while there, and his
transportation. This he claimed whether he found witches or not. If he
found any, he charged twenty shillings a head in addition when they
were brought to execution. For three years he carried on this infamous
trade, success making him so insolent and rapacious, that high and
low became his enemies. The Rev. Mr. Gaul, a clergyman of Houghton,
in Huntingdonshire, wrote a pamphlet accusing him of being a common
nuisance. Hopkins replied in an angry letter to the mayor of Houghton,
stating his intention of visiting their town, but desiring to know
whether it held many such sticklers for witchcraft as Mr. Gaul, and
asking whether they were willing to receive and entertain him with
the customary hospitality. He added by way of threat, that in case
he did not receive a satisfactory reply, “He would waive their shire
altogether and betake himself to such places where he might do and
punish, not only without control, but with thanks and recompense.”
Mr. Gaul describes, in his pamphlet, one of the modes employed by
Hopkins. It was proof even more atrocious than the swimming test. He
says, that the “witch-finding general” used to take the suspected
witch and place her in the middle of a room, upon a stool or table,
cross-legged, or in some other uneasy posture. If she refused to sit
in this manner, she was bound with strong cords. Hopkins then placed
persons to watch her, for four and twenty hours, during which time she
was to be kept with meat and drink. It was supposed that one of her
imps would come during that interval, and suck her blood. As the imp
might come in the shape of a wasp, a moth, a fly or other insect, a
hole was made in the door or window to let it enter. The watchers were
ordered to keep a sharp lookout, and endeavor to kill any insect that
appeared in the room. If any fly escaped, or if they could not kill it,
the woman was guilty; the fly was her imp, and she was sentenced to be
burned, and twenty shillings went into the pockets of master Hopkins.
In this manner he made one old woman confess because four flies had
appeared in the room, that she was attended by four imps, named
“Ilemazar,” “Pyewackett,” “Peck-in-the-crown,” and “Grizel-Greedigut.”
Hopkins was eventually caught in his own trap. Suspected presently,
he was beset by a mob in the village of Suffolk, and accused of being
himself a wizard. An old reproach was brought against him, that he had,
by means of sorcery, cheated the devil out of a certain memorandum
book, in which Satan had entered the names of all the witches in
England. “Thus,” said someone, “you find out witches, not by God’s
aid, but by the devil’s.” In vain he denied his guilt. The crowd put
him to his own test. He was stripped and given the swimming test. Some
say that he floated, was taken out, tried and executed upon no other
proof of his guilt. Others assert that he was drowned. As no judicial
entry of his trial and execution is found in any register, it appears
most probable that he was killed.
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.
We come to Sir Roger himself, the character that Addison loved as
Dickens loved _Pickwick_, as Cervantes loved _Don Quixote_, as Rabelais
loved his _Pantagruel_. Sir Roger was no wooden puppet, no dummy
stuffed with straw. He lived. He had his faults, his opinions, his
character. His is a type that has passed away. The county squire,
in his position as magistrate, land owner, benefactor, respected
authority, no longer exists. Be it remembered, there was, as William
Morris used to point out, much of good, as well as much of evil, in
the feudal system. In that day the land owner’s domain, was a little
state, paternally governed. We have freed ourselves from that, to
become institution governed. A Sir Roger scolded his tenants, knew
their affairs, gave them advice, assistance, orders. There was indeed,
a “mixture of the father and the master of the family” in him. He lived
with his people and was respected, obeyed, loved; the simplicity of
his tastes put him on something very near a level with them. That was
something, as it is always something to see authority face to face.
* * * * *
A VISIT TO SIR ROGER.
NO. 106, SPECTATOR, JULY 2, 1711--ADDISON.
“Having often received an invitation from my friend Sir Roger de
Coverley to pass away a month, with him in the country, I last week
accompanied him hither, and am settled with him for some time at his
country-house. Sir Roger, who is well acquainted with my humor, lets me
rise and go to bed when I please; dine at his own table or in my own
chamber as I see fit; sit still and say nothing without bidding me be
merry. When the gentlemen of the country come to see him, he only shows
me at a distance: as I have been walking in his field I have observed
them stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have heard the knight
desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hated to be stared at.
“I am the more at ease in Sir Roger’s family, because it consists of
sober and staid persons: for, as the knight is the best master in the
world, he seldom changes his servants; and, as he is beloved by all
about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his
domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would
take his valet-de-chambre for his brother; his butler is gray-headed,
his groom is one of the gravest men I have ever seen, and his coachman
has the looks of a privy-counsellor. You see the goodness of the master
even in the old house dog, and in a gray pad that is kept in the stable
with great care and tenderness out of regard to his past services,
though he has been useless for several years.
“I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure the joy that
appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics upon my
friend’s arrival at his country seat. Some of them could not refrain
from tears at the sight of their old master! every one of them pressed
forward to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were
not employed. At the same time the old knight, with a mixture of the
father and master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his
own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This
humanity and good nature engages everybody to him, so that, when he is
pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none
so much as the person whom he diverts himself with: on the contrary,
if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a
bystander to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants.
“My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his
butler, who is a very prudent man, and as well as the rest of his
fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they have
often heard their master talk of me as his particular friend.
“My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in the woods
or in the fields, is a very venerable man who is ever with Sir Roger,
and has lived in his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty
years. This gentleman is a person of good sense and some learning, of
a very regular life and obliging conversation: he heartily loves Sir
Roger, and knows that he is very much in the old knight’s esteem, so
that he lives in the family rather as a relation than a dependent.
“I have observed in several of my papers, that my friend Sir Roger,
amidst all his good qualities, is something of a humorist; and that
his virtues, as well as his imperfections, are, as it were, tinged
by a certain extravagance, which makes them particularly his, and
distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it
is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation
highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree of sense
and virtue would appear in their common colours. As I was walking
with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have
just mentioned; and without staying for my answer, told me that he
was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table;
for which he desired a particular friend of his at the university to
find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of
a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper; and, if possible,
a man that understood a little of the back-gammon. My friend, says
Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments
required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not
show it. I have given him the parsonage of the parish; and, because I
know his value, have settled upon him a good annuity for life. If he
outlives me, he shall find that he was higher in my esteem than perhaps
he thinks he is. He has now been with me thirty years; and, though he
does not know I have taken notice of it, has never in all that time
asked anything of me for himself, though he is every day soliciting
me for something in behalf of one or the other of my tenants, his
parishioners. There has not been a law-suit in the parish since he has
lived among them; if any dispute arises they apply themselves to him
for the decision; if they do not acquiesce in his judgment, which I
think never happened above once or twice at the most, they appeal to
me. At his first settling with me, I made him a present of all the good
sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that
every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly
he has digested them into such a series, that they follow one another
naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity.
“As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking
of came up to us; and, upon the knight’s asking him who preached
tomorrow, (for it was Saturday night,) told us, the Bishop of St.
Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then showed
us a list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great
deal of pleasure Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Sanderson, Dr. Barrow,
Dr. Calamy, with several living authors who have published discourses
of practical divinity. I no sooner saw this venerable man in the
pulpit, but I very much approved of my friend’s insisting upon the
qualifications of a good aspect and a clear voice; for I was so charmed
with the gracefulness of his figure and delivery, as well as with the
discourses he pronounced, that I think I never passed any time more
to my satisfaction. The sermon repeated after this manner is like the
composition of a poet in the mouth of a graceful actor.
“I could heartily wish that more of our country clergy would follow
this example; and, instead of wasting their spirits in laborious
compositions of their own, would endeavor after a handsome elocution,
and all those other talents that are proper to enforce what has
been penned by greater masters. This would not only be more easy to
themselves, but more edifying to the people.”
* * * * *
The peculiar relations between landowner and tenant as pictured by
Addison, seem to be confirmed quite independently by that crusted old
Tory, Sir Jonah Barrington. He writes:
“At the great house all disputes among the tenants were then settled,
quarrels reconciled, old debts arbitrated; a kind Irish landlord
reigned despotic in the ardent affections of the tenantry, their pride
and pleasure being to obey and support him.
“But there existed a happy reciprocity of interest. The landlord of
that period protected the tenant by his influence; any wanton injury to
a tenant being considered as an insult to a landlord; and if either of
the landlord’s sons were grown up, no time was lost by him in demanding
satisfaction from any gentleman, for maltreating even his father’s
blacksmith.
“No gentleman of this degree ever distrained a tenant for rent: indeed
the parties appeared to be quite united and knit together. The greatest
abhorrence, however, prevailed as to tithe protectors, coupled with
no great predilection for the clergy who employed them. These latter
certainly were, in principle and practice, the real country tyrants of
that day, and first caused the assembling of the White Boys.
“I have heard it often said that at the time I speak of, every estated
gentleman in the Queen’s county was _honored_ by the gout. I have since
considered that its extraordinary prevalence was not difficult to be
accounted for, by the disproportionate quantity of acid contained in
their seductive beverage, called rum-shrub, which was then universally
drunk in quantities incredible, generally from supper time till
morning, by all country gentlemen, as they said, to keep down their
claret.
“My grandfather could not refrain, and therefore he suffered well;
he piqued himself on procuring, through the interests of Batty Lodge
(a follower of the family who had married a Dublin grocer’s widow),
the very first importation of oranges and lemons to the Irish capital
every season. Horse loads of these packed boxes, were immediately sent
to the great house of Cullenaghmore; and no sooner did they arrive,
than the good news of _fresh fruit_ was communicated to the colonel’s
neighboring friends, accompanied by the usual invitation.
“Night after night the revel afforded uninterrupted pleasure to the
joyous gentry: the festivity being subsequently renewed at some other
mansion, till the gout thought proper to put the whole party _hors de
combat_; having the satisfaction of making cripples for a few months of
each as he did not kill.
“While the convivials bellowed with only toe or finger agonies, it was
a mere bagatelle; but when Mr. Gout marched up the country, and invaded
the head or the stomach, it was then called _no joke_; and Drogheda
usquebaugh, the hottest distilled drinkable liquor ever invented, was
applied to for aid, and generally drove the tormentor in a few minutes
to his former quarters. It was, indeed, counted specific; and I allude
to it more particularly, as my poor grandfather was finished thereby.
“It was his custom to sit under a very large branching bay-tree in his
armchair, placed in a fine, sunny aspect at the entrance to the garden.
I particularly remember his cloak, for I kept it twelve years after his
death; it was called a _cartouche_ cloak, from a famous French gang
who, it was said, invented it for his gang for the purpose of evasion.
It was made of very fine broadcloth, of a bright blue color on one
side, and a bright scarlet on the other; so that on being turned, it
might deceive even a vigilant pursuer.
“There my grandfather used to sit of a hot sunny day, receive any rents
he could collect, and settle any accounts which his indifference on
that head permitted him to think of.
“At one time he suspected a young rogue of having slipped some money
off his table when paying rent; and therefore, when afterwards the
tenants began to count out their money, he used to throw the focus
of his large reading glass upon their hands: the smart, without any
visible cause, astonished the ignorant creatures! they shook their
hands, and thought it must be the devil who was scorching them. The
priest was let into the secret: he seriously told them all it _was_
the devil, who had mistaken them for the fellow that had stolen the
money from the colonel; but that if he (the priest) was _properly
considered_, he would say as many masses as would bother fifty devils,
were it necessary. The priest got his fee; and another farthing never
was taken from my grandfather.”
* * * * *
Addison is too true an artist to give the impression that his
character, his Sir Roger, is a type of the squire in general. Lightly,
at the close of the essay on Sir Roger at church, he sketches another
sort of man, the country squire full of pride and prejudice, who
like Fielding’s _Squire Western_ in _Tom Jones_, is a good fellow in
the main, but hard, violent, dogmatic. Such a man is like a bull,
headstrong, sometimes offensive, quick to anger, always ready to give
battle. He is like a badly broken horse and ready to rear and kick
at the least sign of opposition to his own will. He will storm and
rage, then, of a sudden there is a change and he is swiftly at the
other extreme. Consider that glorious creation of Fielding’s, _Squire
Western_, a contemporary of Sir Roger.
He is told that _Tom Jones_ has dared to fall in love with his
daughter. Then the storm breaks:
It’s well for ’un I could not get at ’un; I’d a licked ’un; I’d a
spoiled his caterwaulin; I’d ha’ taught the son of a whore to meddle
with meat for his master. He shan’t ever have a morsel o’ meat o’
mine, or a farden to buy it. If she will have ’un, one smock shall be
her portion. I’d sooner give my estate to the sinking fund that it
may be sent to Hanover to corrupt our nation with.
Then, soon, there is the change. He is reconciled to _Tom_. He becomes
as full of love as he was formerly of hate. The marriage shall not be
delayed a day:
To her, boy, to her, go to her. Hath she appointed the day, boy?
What, shall it be tomorrow or the next day? I shan’t be put off a
minute longer than the next day, I am resolved.... I tell thee it’s
all flim flam. Zoodikers! she’d have the wedding tonight with all
her heart. Woulds’t not Sophy?... Where the devil is Allworthy?...
Harkee, Allworthy, I bet thee five pounds to a crown, we have a
boy tomorrow nine months. But prithee, tell me what wut ha? Wut ha
Burgandy, Champagne, or what? For please Jupiter, we’ll make a night
on’t.
Nor again must it be supposed that the picture which Addison gives
of the well kept church is actually representative of the condition
of all church buildings in that day. Sir Roger, interested in his
surroundings, was at no time unwilling to spend time and money on
improvements. Others did not. There was another side to the picture.
Cowper, writing an article for the _Connoiseur_, (No. 26, August 19,
1756) says:
“The ruinous condition of some of these edifices gave me great
offence; and I could not help wishing that the honest vicar, instead
of indulging his genius for improvements, by inclosing his gooseberry
bushes within a Chinese rail, and converting half an acre of his
globe land into a bowling green, would have applied part of his
income to the more laudable purpose of sheltering his parishioners
from the weather, during their attendance on the divine service. It
is no uncommon thing to see the parsonage house well thatched, and in
exceeding good repair, while the church, perhaps, has scarce any other
roof than the ivy that grows upon it. The noise of owls, bats and
magpies, makes the principal part of the church music in many of these
ancient edifices; and the walls, like a large map, seem to be portioned
out into capes, seas and promontories, by the various colors by which
the damps have stained them. Sometimes, the foundation being too weak
to support the steeple any longer, it has been expedient to pull down
that part of the building, and to hang the bells under a wooden shed on
the ground beside it. This is the case in a parish in Norfolk, through
which I lately passed, and where the clerk and the sexton, like the two
figures in St. Dunstan’s, serve the bells in capacity of clappers, by
striking them alternately with a hammer.
“In other churches I have observed that nothing unseemly or ruinous is
to be found, except in the clergyman, and the appendages of his person.
The squire of the parish or his ancestors, perhaps, to testify their
devotion, and leave a lasting memorial of their magnificence, have
adorned the altar piece with the richest crimson velvet, embroidered
with vine leaves and ears of wheat; and have dressed up the pulpit
with the same splendor and expense; while the gentleman who fills it,
is exalted in the midst of all this finery, with a surplice as dirty
as a farmer’s frock, and a periwig that seems to have transferred its
faculty of curling to the band which appears in full buckle beneath it.
“But if I was concerned to see several distressed pastors, as well
as many of our country churches in a tottering condition, I was more
offended with the indecency of worship in others. I could wish that the
clergy would inform their congregations, that there is no occasion to
scream themselves hoarse in making the responses; that the town crier
is not the only person qualified to pray with due devotion; and that he
who bawls the loudest may, nevertheless, be the wickedest fellow in the
parish. The old women, too, in the aisle might be told that their time
would be better employed in attending to the sermon than in fumbling
over their tattered testaments till they have found the text; by which
time the discourse is drawing to its conclusion....
“The good old practice of psalm singing is, indeed, wonderfully
improved in many country churches since the days of Sternhold and
Hopkins; and there is scarce a parish clerk who has so little taste
as not to pick his staves out of the New Version. This has occasioned
great complaints in some places, where the clerk has been forced to
bawl by himself, because the rest of the congregation cannot find the
psalm at the end of the prayer book; while others are highly disgusted
with the innovation, and stick as obstinately to the Old Version as
to the Old Style. The tunes themselves have also been set to jiggish
measures; and the sober drawl, which used to accompany the two first
staves of the 100th psalm with the _Gloria patri_, is now split into
as many quavers as an Italian air. For this purpose there is in every
county an itinerant band of vocal musicians, who make it their business
to go round to all the churches in their turns, and, after a prelude
with the pitch pipe, astonish the audience with hymns set to the new
Winchester measure and anthems of their own composing. As these new
fashioned psalmodists are necessarily made up of young men and maids,
we may naturally suppose that there is a perfect concord and symphony
between them; and, indeed, I have known it happen that these sweet
singers have more than once been brought into disgrace by too close
unison between the thorough bass and the treble.
“... The Squire, like the King, may be styled Head of the Church in
his own parish. If the benifice be in his own gift, the vicar is his
creature, and of consequence entirely at his devotion; or, if the care
of the church be left to a curate, the Sunday fees of roast beef and
plum pudding, and a liberty to shoot in the manor, will bring him as
much under the Squire’s command as his dogs and horses. For this reason
the bell is often kept tolling, and the people waiting in the church
yard an hour longer than the usual time; nor must the service begin
till the Squire has strutted up the aisle, and seated himself in the
great pew in the chancel. The length of the sermon is also measured
by the will of the Squire, as formerly by the hour glass; and I know
one parish where the preacher has always the complaisance to conclude
his discourse, however abruptly, the minute that the Squire gives the
signal, by rising up after his nap....
“... The ladies, immediately on their entrance, breathe a pious
ejaculation through their fan sticks, and the beaux very gravely
address themselves to the haberdasher’s bills glued upon the lining of
their hats....”
* * * * *
One incident of Addison’s boyhood is particularly interesting as
exemplifying the conflict of opinion on matters religious. All pleasure
had been barred under the Puritan rule, and the nation oppressed as
never before under a religious despotism. Then, under Charles II, the
pendulum swung too far in the other direction and sensual pleasure was
exalted into a worship, and impiety into a creed. The aftermath of all
that had its effect.
So we have a key to what follows, taken from an essay by Addison in
_Spectator_ No. 125:
The worthy knight, being but a stripling, had occasion to inquire
which was the way to St. Anne’s Lane, upon which, the person he spoke
to instead of answering his question called him a young Popish cur,
and asked him who made Anne a saint. The boy, in some confusion,
inquired of the next he met which was the way to Anne’s Lane, but was
called a prick ear’d cur, for his pains, and, instead of being shown
the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born and
would be one after he was hanged. “Upon this,” said Sir Roger, “I did
not see fit to repeat the former question, but going into every lane
of the neighborhood, asked what they called the name of that lane.”
Again in a _Spectator_ of an earlier date, we find a semi-humorous
letter setting forth the troubles of a man, a member of the Established
Church, whose wife has become a dissenter. Thus:
I am one of the most unhappy men that are plagued with a gospel
gossip so common among dissenters (especially friends). Lectures in
the morning, church-meetings at noon, and preparation sermons at
night, take up so much of her time, it is very rare she knows what we
have for dinner, unless when the preacher is to be at it. With him,
come a tribe, all brothers and sisters it seems; while others, really
such, are deemed no relations. If at any time I have her company
alone, she is a mere sermon pop-gun, repeating and discharging texts,
proofs, and applications so perpetually, that however weary I may to
bed, the noise in my head will not let me sleep till toward morning.
The misery of my case, and great numbers of such sufferers, plead
your pity and speedy relief; otherwise, I must expect in a little
time, to be lectured, preached, and prayed into want, unless the
happiness of being sooner talked to death prevent it. I am, etc.,
R. G.
* * * * *
SIR ROGER AT CHURCH.
NO. 112, SPECTATOR, JULY 9, 1711--ADDISON.
I am always very well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, if
keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would
be the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing
and civilizing of mankind. It is certain the country people would soon
degenerate into a kind of savage and barbarians, were there not such
frequent returns of a stated time in which the whole village meet
together with their best faces and in their cleanliest habits, to
converse with one another upon different subjects, hear their duties
explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being.
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes
in their minds the notion of religion, but as it puts both the sexes
upon appearing in their most agreeable forms, and exerting all such
qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the eye of the village. A
country fellow distinguishes himself as much in the church-yard, as a
citizen does upon the Change, the whole parish politics being generally
discussed in that place either after sermon or before the bell rings.
My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, has beautified the inside
of his church with several texts of his own choosing; he has likewise
given a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed-in the communion table at his
own expense. He has often told me that, at his coming to his estate, he
found his parishioners very irregular; and that, in order to make them
kneel and join in the responses, he gave every one of them a hassock
and a common prayer book; and, at the same time, employed an itinerant
singing-master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to
instruct them rightly in the tunes of the psalms; upon which they very
much value themselves, and indeed outdo most of the country churches
that I have ever heard.
As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in
very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself;
for if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon
recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and, if he sees
anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself or sends his servants
to them. Several other of the old knight’s peculiarities break out upon
these occasions; sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the
singing-psalms, half a minute after the rest of the congregation have
done with it; sometimes, when he is pleased with the matter of his
devotion, he pronounces _Amen_ three or four times in the same prayer;
and sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their knees, to
count the congregation, or see if any of his tenants are missing.
I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my friend, in the midst
of the service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was
about, and not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews, it seems,
is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and at that time was kicking
his heels for diversion. This authority of the knight, though exerted
in that odd manner which accompanies him in all circumstances in life,
has had very good effect upon the parish, who are not polite enough to
see anything ridiculous in his behaviour; besides that the general good
sense and worthiness of his character makes his friends observe these
little singularities as foils that rather set off than blemish his good
qualities.
As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody presumes to stir until Sir
Roger is gone out of the church. The knight walks down from his seat
in the chancel between a double row of his tenants, that stand bowing
to him on each side; and every now and then inquires how such-an-one’s
wife, or mother, or son, or father do, whom he does not see at church;
which is understood as a secret reprimand to the person that is absent.
The chaplain has often told me, that upon a catechising day, when Sir
Roger has been pleased with a boy that answers well, he has ordered a
bible to be given to him next day for his encouragement; and sometimes
accompanies it with a fitch of bacon to his mother. Sir Roger has
likewise to add five pounds a year to the clerk’s place; and, that
he may encourage the young fellows to make themselves perfect in the
church service, has promised, upon the death of the present incumbent,
who is very old, to bestow it according to merit.
This fair understanding between Sir Roger and his chaplain, and their
mutual concurrence in doing good, is the more remarkable, because the
very next village is famous for the differences and contentions that
arise between the parson and the squire, who live in a perpetual state
of war. The parson is always preaching at the squire, and the squire,
to be revenged on the parson, never comes to church. The squire has
made all his tenants atheists and tithe-stealers; while the parson
instructs them every Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates
to them in almost every sermon that he is a better man than his patron.
In short, matters have come to such an extremity, that the squire has
not said his prayers either in public or private this half-year; and
that the parson threatens him, if he does not mend his manners, to pray
for him in the face of the whole congregation.
Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the country, are very
fatal to the ordinary people; who are so used to be dazzled with
riches, that they pay as much difference to the understanding of a man
of an estate, as of a man of learning; and are very hardly brought to
regard any truth, how important soever it may be, that is preached to
them, when they know there are several men of five hundred a-year who
do not believe it.
* * * * *
Without any doubt whatsoever, the outstanding characteristic of our
present day life is the extreme lack of sociability. It is the more
apparent to me, because I have lived in countries at times, especially
in Patagonia, where, in some respects, the manners and the customs of
the people closely approached the manners and customs of the early
eighteenth century. There were scandalous roisterers and hard drinkers
there, and vice was in fashion, nor was it a delicate kind of vice.
Many of the ladies would lend an ear to obscene ballads, on occasions
swear and blaspheme very prettily, and consider as a good joke, the
coarse words and oaths that flowed through their lovers’ conversation
like filth through a sewer. We were never in a hurry and a horseback
journey was an occasion for sociability. It was much so in the Addison
days. People on the highway had a will to companionship. _Will Wimble_,
as you see in the paper that follows, “joined a couple of plain men who
rode before,” and “conversed with them.” It was always so. You pick up
your Fielding to see _Tom Jones_ traveling mile after mile in company
with a chance acquaintance. _Joseph Andrews_ is carried on his way
by a man with a spare horse. _Peregrine Pickle_ on the road to Dover
overtakes and journeys with all sorts and conditions of sociable men
and _Roderick Random_ never lacks a chance friend.
Indeed, in the days when men were not so eager to save time which, when
saved, they knew not what to do with, to encounter a fellow wayfarer
was counted a high and joyful privilege. It meant companionship and
a “God be wi’ ye” at parting. If fellowship is Heaven, as Morris put
it, and the lack of fellowship is hell, then indeed we of today are
much further advanced along the downward path that is paved with
good intentions. Your present-day autoist is far more prone to knock
the wayfarer down than to pick him up, or to insult his ears with a
derisive fanfare on his klaxon than he is to bid him “God speed.” And
so to Sir Roger.
SIR ROGER AT THE ASSIZES.
NO. 122, 1711, SPECTATOR--ADDISON.
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart;
his next, to escape the censures of the world; if the last interferes
with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there
cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind than to see those
approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the
public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he
passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the
opinion of all that know him.
My worthy friend Sir Roger is one of those who is not only at peace
within himself, but beloved and esteemed by all about him. He receives
a suitable tribute for his universal benevolence to mankind, in the
returns of affection and good will, which are paid him by every one
that lives within his neighborhood. I lately met with two or three
odd instances of that respect which is shown to the good old knight.
He would needs carry Will Wimble and myself with him to the country
assizes: as we were upon the road Will Wimble joined a couple of plain
men who rode before us, and conversed with them for some time; during
which my friend Sir Roger acquainted me with their characters.
“The first of them,” says he, “that has a spaniel by his side, is a
yeoman of about a hundred pounds a year, an honest man: he is just
within the Game-Act, and qualified to kill an hare or a pheasant: he
knocks down a dinner with his gun twice or thrice a week; and by that
means lives much cheaper than those that have not so good an estate
as himself. He would be a good neighbor if he did not destroy so many
partridges: in short, he is a very sensible man; shoots flying; and has
been several times foreman of the petty jury.
“The other that rides along with him is Tom Touchy, a fellow for taking
the law of everybody. There is not one in the town where he lives that
he has not sued at quarter-sessions. The rogue had once the impudence
to go to law with the Widow. His head is full of costs, damages, and
ejectments; he plagued a couple of gentlemen so long for a trespass in
breaking one of his hedges, till he was forced to sell the ground it
enclosed to defray the charges of the prosecution: his father left him
fourscore pounds a year; but he has cast and been cast so often, that
is not now worth thirty. I suppose he is going upon the old business of
the willow-tree.”
As Sir Roger was giving me this account of Tom Touchy, Will Wimble and
his two companions stopped short until we came up to them. Will it
seems had been giving his fellow traveler an account of his angling one
day in such a hole; when Tom Touchy, instead of hearing out his story,
told him, that Mr. Such-an-one, if he pleased, might take the law of
him for fishing in that part of the river. My friend Sir Roger heard
them both upon a round trot; and, after having paused some time, told
them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgment rashly,
that _much might be said on both sides_. They were neither of them
dissatisfied with the knight’s determination, because neither of them
found himself in the wrong by it; and upon which we made the best of
our way to the assizes.
The court was set before Sir Roger came, but notwithstanding all the
justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for
the old knight at the head of them; who, for his reputation in the
country, took occasion to whisper in the judge’s ear, _that he was
glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit_.
I was listening to the proceedings of the court with much attention,
and infinitely pleased with the great appearance of solemnity which so
properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws; when,
after about an hour’s sitting, I observed to my great surprise, in the
midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I
was in some pain for him till I found he had acquitted himself of two
or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity.
Upon his first rising the court was hushed, and a general whisper ran
among the country people that Sir Roger _was up_. The speech he made
was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with
an account of it; and I believe was not so much designed by the knight
himself to inform the court, as to give him a figure in my eye, and
keep up his credit in the country.
I was highly delighted, when the court rose, to see the gentlemen of
the country gathering about my old friend, and striving who should
compliment him the most; at the same time that the ordinary people
gazed upon him at a distance, not a little admiring his courage, that
was not afraid to speak to the judge.
In our return home we met with a very odd accident; which I cannot
forbear relating, because it shows how desirous all who know Sir Roger
are of giving him marks of their esteem. When we reappeared upon the
verge of his estate, we stopped at a little inn to rest ourselves and
our horses. The man of the house had, it seems, been formerly a servant
in the knight’s family; and, to do honor to his old master, had some
time since, unknown to Sir Roger, put him up in a sign-post before the
door; so that the _Knight’s Head_ had hung out upon the road a week
before he himself knew anything of the matter. As soon as Sir Roger was
acquainted with it, finding that the servant’s indiscretion proceeded
wholly from affection and good-will, he only told him that he had made
him too high a compliment; and, when the fellow seemed to think that
hardly could be, added with a more decisive look, that it was too great
an honor for any man under a duke; but told him at the same time, that
it might be altered with a very few touches, and that he himself would
be at the charge of it. Accordingly they got a painter by the knight’s
directions to add a pair of whiskers to the face, and by a little
aggravation of the features to change it into the _Saracen’s Head_.
I should not have known this story, had not the innkeeper, upon Sir
Roger’s alighting, told him in my hearing, that his Honor’s head was
brought back last night with the alterations that he had ordered to be
made in it. Upon this my friend with his usual cheerfulness related the
particulars above mentioned, and ordered the head to be brought into
the room. I could not forbear discovering greater expressions of mirth
than ordinary upon the appearance of this monstrous face, under which,
notwithstanding it was made to frown and stare in a most extraordinary
manner, I could still discover a distant resemblance of my old friend.
Sir Roger, upon seeing me laugh, desired me to tell him truly if I
thought it possible for the people to know him in that disguise. I
at first kept my usual silence; but, upon the knight conjuring me to
tell him whether it was not still more like himself than a Saracen, I
composed my countenance in the best manner I could, and replied, _that
much might be said on both sides_.
These several adventures, with the knight’s behavior in them, gave me
as pleasant a day as ever I met with in any of my travels.
* * * * *
If you went abroad at night in those days, it was better to carry a
stout cudgel than a walking cane. Says the poet Gay, in his “Trivia,
or the Art of Walking the Streets of London” Part III, ii, 326,
Who has not trembled at the Mohock’s name?
Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds,
Safe from their blows or new invented wounds?
I pass their desperate deeds and mischief done,
Where from Snow hill black steepy torrents run;
How matrons, hoop’d within the hogshead womb,
Were tumbled furious hence.
The young men of the age, like everyone else, mistook brutality for
pleasure just as do shallow minds today. The difference is, that
whereas we take it out at second hand, looking at blood letting in a
moving picture, or wasting time on a so-called funny sheet where the
humor turns on someone being hurt, they were more sincere and honest
about it. Gay, in his “hogshead womb” refers to the curious practice
of the Mohocks, (which seemed to have something in common with our Ku
Klux Klans in a love for cruelty and mob work), by which they caught a
woman, packed her in a barrel, and set her rolling down a steep hill.
You have seen, and perhaps enjoyed that kind of thing in a screen
“comedy.” As the screen men at times picture impossible cowboys making
innocent citizens dance by firing revolvers close to their feet, so
the Mohocks made them dance by pricking their legs with their swords.
Sometimes they went further, and, like latter day self-appointed
patriotic leagues, killed those they tortured. Of the Mohocks, Swift
writes, in his Journal to Stella, “Did I tell you of a race of rakes,
called the Mohocks, that play the devil about this town every night,
slit people’s noses and beat them? Faith, they shan’t cut mine; I like
it better as it is. The dogs will cost me at least a crown a week in
chairs.”
The good knight had sufficient reason for his fear, for the Mohocks
at one time were a very serious menace. Eustace Bludgell in No. 347
of the _Spectator_, of April 8, 1712, has a paper on the subject. The
fellows who banded themselves together to terrorize quiet citizens,
sometimes worked upon the superstitious fears of the ignorant, “like
those specters and apparitions which frighten several towns and
villages in her majesty’s dominions,” says Bludgell. The Mohocks tried
to form a sort of invisible empire, like the Ku Klux Klan of today.
They had their Emperor of the Mohocks, who sent anonymous letters of
a threatening nature, which were signed, ridiculously enough “Taw
Waw Eben Zan Kalader.” They pretended to constitute themselves into
guardians of law and order, issuing manifestoes setting forth that
“We have received information, from sundry quarters of this great and
populous city, of several outrages committed” and so on. They were,
of course, full of the sentimentality that finds absurd expression in
proclamations that they were defenders of the honor of women. Read
this, from Bludgell’s paper:
And whereas, we have nothing more at our imperial heart than the
reformation of the cities of London and Westminster, which to our
unspeakable satisfaction we have in some measure already affected.
We do hereby earnestly pray and exhort all husbands, fathers,
housekeepers and masters of families ... not only to repair
themselves to their habitations at early and seasonable hours, but
also to keep their daughters, wives, sons, servants and apprentices,
from appearing in the streets at those times and seasons which may
expose them to military discipline as it is practiced by our good
subjects the Mohocks; and we do further promise on our imperial word,
that as soon as the reformation aforesaid shall be brought about. We
will forthwith cause all hostilities to cease.
Given from our Court at the Devil Tavern, March 15th, 1712.
SIR ROGER AT THE THEATRE.
SPECTATOR, NO. 335, MARCH 1712--ADDISON.
My friend Sir Roger De Coverley, when we last met together at the
club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy with me,
assuring me, at the same time, that he had not been at a play these
twenty years. “The last I saw,” said Sir Roger, “was the Committee,
which I should not have gone to neither, had I not been told beforehand
that it was a good Church of England comedy.” He then proceeded to
inquire of me who this distressed mother was; and upon hearing that
she was Hector’s widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man,
and that when he was a school boy he had read his life at the end of
the dictionary. My friend asked me, in the next place, if there would
not be some danger in coming home late, lest the Mohocks should be
abroad. “I assure you,” says he, “I thought I had fallen into their
hands last night; for I observed two or three lusty black men that
followed me half way up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me,
in proportion as I put on to get away from them. You must know,” said
the Knight with a smile, “I fancied they had a mind to hunt me; for I
remember an honest gentleman in my neighborhood, who was served such a
trick in King Charles the Second’s time; for which reason he has not
ventured himself in town ever since. I might have shown them very good
sport, had this been their design; for as I am an old fox hunter, I
should have turned and dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks
they had never seen in their lives before.” Sir Roger added, that if
these gentlemen had any such intention, they did not succeed very well
in it; “for I threw them out,” says he, “at the end of Norfolk Street,
where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my lodgings before they
could imagine what had become of me, however,” says the knight, “if
Captain Sentry will make one with us tomorrow night, and you will both
call on me about four o’clock, that we may be at the house before it
is full, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for John
tells me he has got the fore wheels mended.”
The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour,
bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword
which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger’s servants,
and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided
themselves with good oaken plants, to attend their master on this
occasion. When he had placed him in the coach, with myself at his
left hand, the Captain before him, and his butler at the head of his
footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the play house,
where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the Captain
and I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the pit. As soon
as the house was full, and the candles were lighted, my old friend
stood up and looked about him with that pleasure, which a mind seasoned
with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude
of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same
common entertainment, I could not but fancy to myself as the old man
hearing a cluster of them praise Orestes, struck in with them, and told
them, that he thought his friend Pylades was a very sensible man; as
they were afterwards applauding Pyrrhus Sir Roger put in a second time:
“And let me tell you,” says he, “though he speaks but little, I like
the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them.” Captain Sentry
seeing two or three wags, who sat near us, lean with an attentive
ear toward Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoke the knight,
plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear, that
lasted till the opening of the fifth act. The knight was wonderfully
attentive to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus’s death; and
at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work
that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterwards
Orestes in his raving fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took
occasion to moralize (in his way) upon an evil conscience; adding that
Orestes in his madness, looked as if he saw something.
As we were the first that came into the house, so we were the last
that went out of it; being resolved to have a clear passage for our
old friend, whom we did not care to venture among the justling of the
crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment, and
we guarded him to his lodging in the same manner that we brought him to
the playhouse; being highly pleased, for my own part, not only with the
performance of the excellent piece which had been presented, but with
the satisfaction which it had given the old man.
* * * * *
_Note._ Much as the simple knight seemed to have been pleased with the
play, _The Distrest Mother_ was a dull version by Ambrose Philips of
Racine’s _Andromaque_. Fielding made a burlesque of it in his _Covent
Garden Tragedy_, 1712. The _Committee_, to which Sir Roger refers, had
a sub-title by which it was better known, _The Faithful Irishman_.
It was written by Robert Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law, and first
produced in 1665.
* * * * *
A country cousin could no more pass a week in London in those days
without going to Vauxhall, than could a countryman stay any length of
time in New York without finding his way to Coney Island. The earliest
mention of the place is in Evelyn’s diary, 2nd July, 1661, when he went
to see the “New Spring Garden at Lambeth; a pretty contrived plantation
where sometimes they would have music and sit upon barges on the
water.” Charles II, who missed nothing in the line of gaiety, had built
for him “a fine room, the inside all of looking glass, and fountains
very pleasant to behold,” which, the grave Morland, his Master Mechanic
reports, was for the reception of “the King and his ladies.”
Later, little improvements were made and there was an artificial
cascade, a water mill, a bridge with a mail coach passing over it, a
cottage scene with animated figures drinking and smoking by machinery.
Samuel Pepys, who missed nothing, says, “July 27, 1688--So over the
water with my wife and Deb and Mercer, to Spring Garden, and there
ate and walked, and observed how rude some of the young gallants of
the town are become, to go into people’s arbors, where there are not
men, and almost gore the women--which troubled me to see the vice
and confidence of the age.” Tom Brown, a little later, speaks of the
close walks and wildernesses, which “are so intricate, that the most
experienced mothers have often lost themselves looking for their
daughters.”
In the days of Sir Roger, the fashionable way of going to the gardens
was by water, and an evening there, with a glass of ale and a slice of
hung beef was the usual course. Walpole, in a letter of 1750, gives
an interesting account of a Vauxhall party: “I had a card from Lady
Petersham to go with her to Vauxhall. I went accordingly to her house
and found her and the little Asche, or the Pollard Ashe as they call
her; they had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as
handsome as crimson could make them.... We marched to our barge, with
a boat of French horns attending, and little Ashe singing. We paraded
some time up the river and at last debarked at Vauxhall.... Here we
picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny Whim’s (a tavern
between Chelsea and Pimlico). At last we assembled in our booth, Lady
Caroline in the front, with the visor of her hat erect, and looking
gloriously handsome. She had fetched my brother Orford from the next
box, where he was enjoying himself with his _petite partie_, to help
us to mince the chickens. We minced seven chickens in a china dish,
which Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three pats of butter and
a flagon of water, stirring and rattling and laughing, and we, every
minute, expecting the dish to fly about our ears. She had brought
Betty the fruit girl, with hampers of strawberries and cherries, from
Roger’s, and made her wait on table and then made her sit by herself at
a little table.... In short, the air of our party was sufficient, as
you will easily imagine, to take up the whole attention of the gardens;
so much so, that from eleven o’clock to half an hour after one, we had
the whole concourse round our booth. At last they came into the little
garden of each booth on the sides of ours, till Harry Vane took up a
bumper, and drank their healths, and was proceeding to treat them with
greater freedom. It was three o’clock before we got home.”
Oliver Goldsmith in his “Beau Tibbs at Vauxhall” makes his hero say,
significantly, “As for virgins, it is true they are a fruit that don’t
much abound in our gardens here: but if ladies, as plenty as apples in
autumn, and as complying as any _houri_ of them all, can content you, I
fancy we have no need to go to heaven for paradise.”
SIR ROGER AT VAUXHALL GARDENS.
SPECTATOR NO. 383, MAY, 1712--ADDISON.
As I was sitting in my chamber, and thinking on a subject for my next
_Spectator_, I heard two or three irregular bounces at my landlady’s
door, and, upon the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice inquiring
whether the philosopher was at home. The child who went to the door
answered very innocently, that he did not lodge there. I immediately
recollected that it was my good friend Sir Roger’s voice; and that I
had promised to go with him on the water to Spring-garden, in case it
proved a good evening. The knight put me in mind of my promise from
the bottom of the staircase, but told me, that if I was speculating,
he would stay below till I had done. Upon my coming down, I found all
the children of the family got about my old friend, and my landlady
herself, who is a notable prating gossip, engaged in a conference with
him; being mightily pleased with his stroking her little boy upon the
head, and bidding him be a good child, and mind his book.
We were no sooner come to the Temple-stairs, but we were surrounded
with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir
Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a
wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As
we were walking toward it, “You must know,” said Sir Roger, “I never
make use of anybody to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an
arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ
an honest man that has been wounded in the Queen’s service. If I was
a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would not put a fellow in my
livery that had not a wooden leg.”
My old friend, after having seated himself and trimmed the boat with
his coachman, who, being a very sober man, always serves for ballast
on these occasions, we made the best of our way for Vauxhall. Sir
Roger obliged the waterman to give us the history of his right leg;
and, hearing that he had left it at La Hogne, with many particulars
which passed in that glorious action, the knight, in the triumph of
his heart, made several reflections as to the greatness of the British
nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we
could never be in danger of popery so long as we took care of our
fleet; that the Thames was the noblest river in Europe; that London
bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the seven wonders of the
world; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the
heart of a true Englishman.
After some short pause, the old knight, turning about his head twice or
thrice, to take a survey of this great metropolis, bid me observe how
thick the city was with churches, and that there was scarce a single
steeple on this side Temple-bar. “A most heathenish sight!” says Sir
Roger: “there is no religion at this end of the town. The fifty new
churches will very much mend the prospect: but church-work is slow,
church-work is slow.”
I do not remember I have anywhere mentioned, in Sir Roger’s character,
his custom of saluting everybody that passes by him with a good-morrow
or good-night. This the old man does out of the overflowings of his
humanity, though at the same time it renders him so popular among all
his country neighbours, that it is thought to have gone a good way in
making him once or twice knight of the shire. He cannot forbear this
exercise of benevolence even in town, when he meets with any one in his
morning or evening walk. It broke from him to several boats that passed
by upon the water; but to the knight’s great surprise, as he gave the
good-night to two or three of the young fellows a little before our
landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us what
queer old put we had in the boat, and whether he was not ashamed to go
a-wenching at his years; with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry.
Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first; but, at length assuming a
face of magistracy, told us, “That if we were a Middlesex justice, he
would make such vagrants know that her Majesty’s subjects were no more
to be abused by water than by land.”
We were now arrived at Spring-garden, which is exquisitely pleasant
at this time of the year. When I consider the fragrancy of the walks
and bowers, with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees, and the
loose tribe of people that walked under the shades, I could not but
look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger told me
it put him in mind of a little coppice by his house in the country,
which his chaplain used to call an aviary of nightingales. “You must
understand,” says the knight, “there is nothing in the world that
pleases a man in love so much as your nightingales. Ah, Mr. Spectator!
the many moonlight nights that I have walked by myself, and thought
on the Widow by the music of the nightingale!” He here fetched a deep
sigh, and was falling into a fit of musing, when a mask, who came
behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if
he would drink a bo mead with her. But the knight, being startled by
so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his
thoughts of the Widow, told her, _She was a wanton baggage_, and bid
her go about her business.
We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale, and a slice of hung
beef. When we had done eating, ourselves, the knight called a waiter to
him, and bid him carry the remainder to the waterman that had but one
leg. I perceived that the fellow stared upon him at the oddness of the
message, and was going to be saucy; upon which I ratified the knight’s
commands with a peremptory look.
As we were going out of the garden, my old friend thinking himself
obliged, as a member of the _quorus_, to animadvert upon the morals of
the place, told the mistress of the house, who sat at the bar, that
he should be a better customer to her garden, “if there were more
nightingales and fewer improper persons.”
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation
and italicization were standardized.
Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
change:
Page 3: “smear acros his” “smear across his”
Page 4: “Rabelias, like Scarron” “Rabelais, like Scarron”
Page 4: “bagnois on occasion” “baignoires on occasion”
Page 5: “He was irresistible” “He was as irresistible”
Page 7: “under Secretary of State” “Under Secretary of State”
Page 7: “collector of Elizivirs and” “collector of Elzevirs and”
Page 14: “Hilare Belloc, H. M.” “Hilaire Belloc, H. M.”
Page 22: “sawyers dstroying saw” “sawyers destroying saw”
Page 24: “at Brook’s gambling” “at Brooks’ gambling”
Page 27: “atention to the narratives” “attention to the narratives”
Page 27: “a letter writer by” “a letter written by”
Page 31: “Thomas Incl of London” “Thomas Inkle of London”
Page 35: “formation af a company” “formation of a company”
Page 37: “would quickly lesson” “would quickly lessen”
Page 40: “tried to get beneath” “tries to get beneath”
Page 42: “Hockley-inthe-Hole; where” “Hockley-in-the-Hole; where”
Page 64: “figures in St. Dustan’s” “figures in St. Dunstan’s”
Page 66: “pleasuse had been” “pleasure had been”
Page 76: “Acordingly they got” “Accordingly they got”
Page 76: “himself than a Sarcacen” “himself than a Saracen”
Page 77: “so the Mohawks made” “so the Mohocks made”
Page 78: “only to repair thmselves” “only to repair themselves”
Page 81: “applauding Pyrrhu Sir” “applauding Pyrrhus Sir”
Page 81: “gives of Pyrrhu’s death” “gives of Pyrrhus’s death”
Page 86: “work that any” “work than any”
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