THE "NORTH BRITON"
[Sidenote: 1763--John Wilkes]
One of the most beautiful places on one of the most beautiful rivers in
the world is Medmenham on the Thames, hard by Marlow. In the awakening
of spring, in the tranquillity of summer, or the rich decline of
August, the changing charm of the spot appeals with the special
insistence that association lends to nature. Medmenham is a haunted
place. Those green fields and smiling gardens have been the scenes of
the strangest idyls; those shining waters have mirrored the fairest of
frail faces; those woods have echoed to the names of the light nymphs
of town and the laughter of modish satyrs. It was once very lonely in
its loveliness, a ground remote, where men could do and did do as they
pleased unheeded and unobserved. Where now from April to October a
thousand pleasure-boats pass by, where a thousand pleasure-seekers land
and linger, a century and a half ago the spirit of solitude brooded,
and those who came there came to a calm as unvexed and as enchanting as
the calm of Avallon. They made strange uses of their exquisite
opportunity. They profaned the groves whose very winds breathed peace;
they polluted the stream that a poet would have found sacred. The
remains are there of a Cistercian abbey, the ruins of a ruin, twice
fallen into disuse and decay. It was a ruin in the eighteenth century
when a member of Parliament, who was also a baronet and a Chancellor of
the Exchequer, took it into his evil head to repair it. Under the care
of Sir Francis Dashwood it was restored for a new and altered life.
The abbey rose again, and once again was associated with a brotherhood
of monks. But where the quiet Cistercians had lived and prayed a new
{47} brotherhood of St. Francis, named after their founder, devoted
themselves to all manner of blasphemy, to all manner of offence. In a
spot whose beauty might well be expected to have only a softening
influence, whose memories might at least be found exalting, a handful
of disreputable men gathered together to degrade the place, and, as far
as that was possible, themselves, with the beastly pleasures and
beastly humors of the ingrained blackguard.
The Hell-Fire Club was dead and gone, but the spirit of the Hell-Fire
Club was alive and active. The monks of St. Francis were worthy pupils
of the principles of the Duke of Wharton. They sought to make their
profligacy, in which they strove to be unrivalled, piquant by a parody
of the religious ceremonies of the Christian faith. The energy and the
earnestness which other men devote to the advancement of some public
cause, to the furtherance of their country's welfare, or even to the
gratification of their own ambitions, these men devoted to a passion
for being pre-eminent in sin, conspicuous in infamy. If they succeeded
in nothing else, they succeeded in making their names notorious and
shameful, they succeeded in stirring the envy of men no better than
they, but less enabled by wealth or position to gratify their passions.
They succeeded in arousing the loathing not merely of honest men, but
even of the knaves and fools whose rascality was not so rotten and
whose folly was not so foul as that of the noblemen and statesmen who
rioted within the walls of Medmenham.
It is curious and melancholy to record that the leading spirits of this
abominable brotherhood were legislators in both Houses of Parliament,
men of old family, great position, large means, men holding high public
office, members of the Government. Their follies and their sins would
scarcely be worth remembering to-day were it not for the chance that
gave them for companion and ally one of the most remarkable men of his
age, a man whose abilities were in striking contrast to those of his
associates, a man who might almost be called a man of genius.
{48}
John Wilkes was the son of a rich distiller and of a Presbyterian
mother. He had received a good education in England and at Leyden,
where so many of the Englishmen of that day went as students. He had
travelled much in his youth upon the Continent. On his return he was
induced by his father, he being then only two-and-twenty, to marry a
lady who was exceedingly rich, but who had the misfortune to be at
least ten years older than her husband. It is scarcely surprising to
find that the marriage did not turn out happily. Wilkes was young,
fresh from the bright Continental life, delighting in pleasure and the
society of those who pursued pleasure. How far a happier marriage
might have influenced him for good it were idle to consider. His
marriage he regarded always and spoke of always as a sacrifice to
Plutus, not to Venus, and he certainly was at no pains to make it any
more of a sacrifice than he could help. His wild tastes, his wild
companions soon sickened and horrified Mrs. Wilkes. The ill-matched
pair separated, and remained separate for the rest of their lives.
Wilkes was delighted to be free. He was at liberty to squander his
money unquestioned and unchallenged in the society of as pretty a gang
of scoundrels as even the age could produce. No meaner, more
malignant, or more repulsive figure darkens the record of the last
century than that of Lord Sandwich. Sir Francis Dashwood ran him close
in infamy. Mr. Thomas Potter was the peer of either in beastliness.
All three were members of Parliament; all three were partially
responsible for the legislation of the country; two were especially so
responsible. All three were bound at least to a decorous
acknowledgment of the observances of the Church; one was in especial so
bound. Sir Francis Dashwood and Lord Sandwich were, then or
thereafter, members of the Government. Sir Francis Dashwood was
remarkable as having been the worst and stupidest Chancellor of the
Exchequer known to history. Lord Sandwich was made First Lord of the
Admiralty. As for the third in this triumvirate of blackguards, Mr.
Thomas Potter was a son of the Archbishop {49} of Canterbury, and he
was soon afterwards made Vice-Treasurer for Ireland. Into such
honorable hands were the duties of government delivered less than a
century and a half ago.
[Sidenote: 1763--Wilkes's profligacy]
In this society Wilkes was made very welcome. He brought to their
filthy fooleries something resembling wit; he brought an intelligence
as far above that of his companions as that of the monkey is above that
of the rabbit. While he had money he spent it as royally as the rest.
If he rivalled them in their profligacy, he outstripped them by his
intellect. They were conspicuous only by their vices; he would have
been a remarkable man even if it had pleased Providence to make him
virtuous. It had not pleased Providence to make him attractive to look
upon. There were few uglier men of his day; few who lost less by their
ugliness. But though we are well assured that his appearance was
repulsive, he redeemed his hideousness by his ready tongue and witty
mind. He said of himself, truly enough, that he only wanted half an
hour's start to make him even with the handsomest man in England.
Wilkes flung his money and his wife's money about recklessly, while he
played his part as a country gentleman upon the estate at Aylesbury
which his unhappy wife had resigned to him when they separated. Of
this money some eight thousand pounds went in an unsuccessful attempt
to bribe his way into the representation of Berwick, and seven thousand
more went in the successful attempt to buy himself the representation
of Aylesbury. It is probable that he hoped to advance his failing
fortunes in Parliament. His fortunes were failing, failing fast. He
made an ignoble attempt to bully his wife out of the miserable income
of two hundred a year which was all that she had saved out of her
wealth, but the attempt was happily defeated by that Court of King's
Bench against which Wilkes was to be pitted later in more honorable
hostility.
It was perhaps impossible that Wilkes could long remain content with
the companionship of men like Dashwood and Sandwich; it was certainly
impossible that men {50} like Dashwood and like Sandwich could for long
feel comfortable in the companionship of a man so infinitely their
superior in wit, intelligence, and taste. The panegyrists of
Sandwich--for even Sandwich had his panegyrists in an age when wealth
and rank commanded compliment--found the courage to applaud Sandwich as
a scholar and an antiquarian, on the strength of an account of some
travels in the Mediterranean, which the world has long since willingly
let die. But the few weeks or months of foreign travel that permitted
Sandwich to pose as a connoisseur when he was not practising as a
profligate could not inspire him with the humor or the appreciation of
Wilkes, and a friendship only cemented by a common taste for common
vices soon fell asunder. There is a story to the effect that the
quarrel began with a practical joke which Wilkes played off on Sandwich
at Medmenham. Sandwich, in some drunken orgy, was induced to invoke
the devil, whereupon Wilkes let loose a monkey, that had been kept
concealed in a box, and drove Sandwich into a paroxysm of fear in the
belief that his impious supplication had been answered. For whatever
reason, Wilkes and Sandwich ceased to be friends, to Wilkes's cost at
first, and to Sandwich's after. Sandwich owes his unenviable place in
history to his association with Wilkes in the first place, and in the
next to his alliance with the beautiful, unhappy Miss Ray, who was
murdered by her melancholy lover, the Rev. Mr. Hickman, at the door of
Covent Garden Theatre. The fate of his mistress and his treason to his
friend have preserved the name of Sandwich from the forgetfulness it
deserved.
[Sidenote: 1763--Wilkes as a Member of Parliament]
In those days Wilkes made no very remarkable figure in Parliament. It
was outside the walls of Westminster that he first made a reputation as
a public man. In the unpopularity of Bute, Wilkes found opportunity
for his own popularity. The royal peace policy was very unwelcome, and
agitated the feeling of the country profoundly. Political controversy
ran as high in the humblest cross-channels as in the main stream of
courtly and political life. At that time, we are told by a
contemporary {51} letter-writer, the mason would pause in his task to
discuss the progress of the peace, and the carpenter would neglect his
work to talk of the Princess Dowager, of Lord Treasurers and
Secretaries of State. To win support and sympathy from such keen
observers, the Ministry turned again for aid to the public press that
had been so long neglected by the Whigs. Smollett, the remembered
novelist, Murphy, the forgotten dramatist, were commissioned to
champion the cause of the Government in the two papers, the _Briton_
and the _Auditor_.
The Government already had a severe journalistic critic in the
_Monitor_, a newspaper edited by John Entinck, which had been started
in 1755. The _Monitor_ was not at all like a modern newspaper. It was
really little more than a weekly pamphlet, a folio of six pages
published every Saturday, and containing an essay upon the political
situation of the hour. Its hostility to Bute goaded the minister into
the production of the _Briton_, which was afterwards supplemented by
the creation of the _Auditor_ when it was found that Smollett had
called up against the Ministry a more terrible antagonist than the
_Monitor_. For the _Briton_ only lives in the memories of men because
it called into existence the _North Briton_.
Wilkes had entered Parliament as the impassioned follower of Pitt. He
made many confessions of his desire to serve his country, professions
which may be taken as sincere enough. But he was also anxious to serve
himself and to mend his fortunes, and he did not find in Parliamentary
life the advancement for which he hoped. Twice he sought for high
position under the Crown, and twice he was unsuccessful. He wished to
be made ambassador to Constantinople, where he would have found much
that was congenial to him, and his wish was not granted. He wished to
be made Governor-General of the newly conquered Quebec, and again his
desires were unheeded. Wilkes believed that Bute was the cause of his
double disappointment. He became convinced that while the favors of
the State lay in Bute's hands they would only be given to Tories, and
more especially to Tories who were also {52} Scotchmen. If Bute could
have known, it would have been a happy hour for him which had seen
Wilkes starting for the Golden Horn or sailing for the St. Lawrence.
But Bute was a foolish man, and he did his most foolish deed when he
made Wilkes his enemy.
The appearance of the _North Briton_ was an event in the history of
journalism as well as in the political history of the country. It met
the heavy-handed violence of the _Briton_ with a frank ferocity which
was overpowering. It professed to fight on the same side as the
_Monitor_, but it surpassed Entinck's paper as much in virulence as in
ability. Under the whimsical pretence of being a North Briton, Wilkes
assailed the Scotch party in the State with unflagging satire and
unswerving severity. In the satire and the severity he had an able
henchman in Charles Churchill.
[Sidenote: 1731-1764--The poet Churchill]
Those who are inclined to condemn Wilkes because for a season he found
entertainment in the society of a Sandwich, a Dashwood, and a Potter,
must temper their judgment by remembering the affection that Wilkes was
able to inspire in the heart of Churchill. While the scoundrels of
Medmenham were ready to betray their old associate, and, with no touch
of the honor proverbially attributed to thieves, to drive him into
disgrace, to exile, and if possible to death, the loyal friendship of
the poet was given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a man
of irreproachable character, of unimpeachable morality, or of
unswerving austerity. But he was as different from the Sandwiches and
the Dashwoods as dawn is different from dusk, and in enumerating all of
the many arguments that are to be accumulated in defence of Wilkes, not
the least weighty arguments are that while on the one hand he earned
the hatred of Sandwich and of Dashwood, on the other hand he earned the
love of Charles Churchill.
Churchill's name and fame have suffered of late years. Since Byron
stood by the neglected grave and mused on him who blazed, the comet of
a season, the genius of Churchill has been more and more disregarded.
But the Georgian epoch, so rich in its many and contrasting types {53}
of men of letters, produced few men more remarkable in themselves, if
not in their works, than Charles Churchill. The cleric who first
became famous for most unclerical assaults upon the stage, the satirist
who could be the most devoted friend, the seducer who could be so loyal
to his victim, the spendthrift who could be generous, the cynic who
could feel and obey the principles of the purest patriotism, was one of
those strangely compounded natures in which each vice was as it were
effaced or neutralized by some compensating virtue. It may be fairly
urged that while Churchill's virtues were his own, his vices were in
large part the fault of his unhappy destiny. The Westminster boy who
learned Latin under Vincent Bourne, and who was a schoolfellow of
Warren Hastings, of Cowper, and of Colman, might possibly have made a
good scholar, but was certainly not of the stuff of which good
clergymen are made. An early marriage, an unhappy marriage contracted
in the Rules of the Fleet, had weighed down his life with encumbrances
almost before he had begun to live. Compelled to support an unsuitable
wife and an increasing family, Churchill followed his father's example
and his father's injudicious counsel and took Holy Orders. Men took
Orders in those days with a light heart. It afforded the needy a
livelihood, precarious indeed for the most part, but still preferable
to famine. Men took Orders with no thought of the sanctity of their
calling, of the solemn service it exacted, of its awful duties and its
inexorable demands. They wished merely to keep famine from the door,
to have food and fire and shelter, and they took Orders as under other
conditions they would have taken the King's shilling, with no more
feeling of reverence for the black cassock than for the scarlet coat.
Churchill was not the man to wear the clergyman's gown with dignity, or
to find in the gravity of his office consolation for the penury that it
entailed. The Establishment offered meagre advantages to an
extravagant man with an extravagant wife. He drifted deeper and deeper
into debt. He became as a wandering star, reserved for the blackness
of bailiffs and the darkness of duns. But the {54} rare quality he had
in him of giving a true friendship to his friend won a like quality
from other men. Dr. Lloyd, under-master of his old school of
Westminster, came to his aid, helped him in his need, and secured the
patience of his creditors. He was no longer harassed, but he was still
poor, and the spur of poverty drove him to tempt his fortune in
letters. Like so many a literary adventurer of the eighteenth century,
he saw in the writing of verse the sure way to success. Like so many a
literary adventurer of the century, he carried his first efforts
unsuccessfully from bookseller to bookseller. The impulses of his wit
were satirical; he was not dismayed by failure; the stage had
entertained him and irritated him, and he made the stage the subject of
his first triumph. "The Rosciad" was in every sense a triumph. Its
stings galled the vanity of the players to frenzy. At all times a
susceptible brotherhood, their susceptibilities were sharply stirred by
Churchill's corrosive lines and acidulated epigrams. Their indignation
finding vent in hot recrimination and virulent lampoon only served to
make the poem and its author better known to the public. Churchill
replied to the worst of his assailants in "The Apology," which rivalled
the success of "The Rosciad," and gained for the satirist the
friendship of Garrick, who had affected to disdain the praises of "The
Rosciad," but who now recognized in time the power of the satirist and
the value of his approval. Churchill himself was delighted with his
good fortune. He was the talk of the town; he had plenty of money in
his pocket; he was separated from his wife, freed from his uncongenial
profession, and he could exchange the solemn black of the cleric for a
blue coat with brass buttons and a gold-laced hat.
[Sidenote: 1762--Newspaper polemics]
Lest the actors whom he had lashed should resort to violence for
revenge, he carried with ostentation a sturdy cudgel. It was a
formidable weapon in hands like Churchill's, and Churchill was not
molested. For Churchill was a man of great physical strength. He
tells the world in the portrait he painted of himself of the vastness
of his bones, of the strength of his muscles, of his arms like {55} two
twin oaks, of his legs fashioned as if to bear the weight of the
Mansion House, of his massive body surmounted by the massive face,
broader than it was long. The ugly face was chiefly remarkable,
according to the confession of its owner, for its expression of
contentment, though the observant might discern "sense lowering in the
penthouse of his eye." Like most giants, he overtaxed his strength,
both mentally and physically. Whatever he did he did with all his
mighty energy. He loved, hated, worked, played, at white heat as it
were, and withered up his forces with the flame they fed. In nothing
did his zeal consume itself more hotly than in his devotion to Wilkes.
Churchill met Wilkes in 1762, and seems to have fallen instantly under
the spell which Wilkes found it so easy to exercise upon all who came
into close contact with him. Undoubtedly Churchill's friendship was
very valuable to Wilkes. If Churchill loved best to express his satire
in verse, he could write strongly and fiercely in prose, and the _North
Briton_ owed to his pen some of its most brilliant and some of its
bitterest pages. In the _North Briton_ Wilkes and Churchill laid about
them lustily, striking at whatever heads they pleased, holding their
hands for no fame, no dignity, no influence. It was wholly without
fear and wholly without favor. If it assailed Bute again and again
with an unflagging zeal, it was no less ready to challenge to an issue
the greatest man who over accepted a service from Bute, and to remind
Dr. Johnson, who had received a pension from the King's favorite, of
his own definition of a pension and of a pensioner.
Before the fury and the popularity of the _North Briton_ both the
_Auditor_ and the _Briton_ had to strike their colors. The _Auditor_
came to its inglorious end on February 8, 1763. The _Briton_ died on
the 12th of the same month, leaving the _North Briton_ master of the
field. Week after week the _North Briton_ grew more severe in its
strictures upon the Government, strictures that scorned the veil of
hint and innuendo that had hitherto prevailed in these pamphleteering
wars. Even the _Monitor_ had always alluded to the statesmen whom it
assailed by initial letters. {56} The _North Briton_ called them by
their names in all the plainness of full print, the name of the
sovereign not being excepted from this courageous rule. But the fame
of the _North Briton_ only came to its full with the number forty-five.
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