THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE.
Queen Caroline is distinguished from the other Queens-Consort of
England as the one who took a genuine interest in literature; in this
respect she surpassed all our Queens-Regnant as well, though Elizabeth,
and in a far lesser sense Anne, showed an appreciation of letters. The
age of Elizabeth has been called the golden age of English literature:
the reign of Anne the Augustan period. There can be no doubt as to the
correctness of the first of these designations; the second is open to
cavil. But though the English writers who flourished during the early
part of the eighteenth century could not compare in loftiness or genius
to the writers of the reign of Elizabeth, yet they formed a galaxy of
talent--talent amounting in some instances to positive genius--which
England has never witnessed since. This galaxy shone throughout the
reigns of Anne and George the First, but soon after Caroline came to
the throne its brilliance began to wane. Some of the greatest writers
were dead, and others had already given their best work to the world.
It must be admitted that Queen Caroline’s judgment in literature was
not always as sound as her interest was genuine--in English literature
at least. Her imperfect knowledge of the English language had something
to do with this; one can hardly master the literature of a country if
one does not begin to speak its language until middle life. In French
and German literature she was far better equipped. She had read much
and widely of them both, and of her favourite studies of metaphysics,
philosophy and theology had perhaps taken in more than she could
assimilate. Her correspondence with learned and scientific men kept her
abreast of the best thought of the time, and no work of conspicuous
merit made its appearance in Europe without Caroline’s coming, directly
or indirectly, in touch with its author. When Voltaire, for instance,
visited England he received ready help and generous appreciation at
Caroline’s hands.
Voltaire came to England in 1726, after his quarrel with the Duke de
Sully. Some months’ detention in the Bastille, followed by an order to
quit Paris, had driven him into exile. In the warmth of his welcome
to England he found a balm for his wounded feelings, and he stayed in
this country more than two years. He found in England many congenial
spirits, and delighted in the freedom of discussion and latitude of
opinion everywhere prevalent, from the Court downwards, especially
in the brilliant literary circle where he foregathered. He warmly
admired the religious and civil liberty of England, and testified his
admiration in his _Lettres Philosophiques_, also called _Lettres
sur les Anglais_. He wrote in England his _Tragedy of Brutus_, and
here also he brought out, in 1728, the first edition of his poem _La
Henriade_. To Caroline, who often received him at Leicester House as
Princess of Wales, and who welcomed him with equal cordiality at court
when she became Queen, he dedicated this edition of _La Henriade_. The
dedication, in English, ran as follows:--
“TO THE QUEEN.
“MADAM--It was the fate of Henry the Fourth to be protected by an
English Queen. He was assisted by the great Elizabeth, who was in her
age the glory of her sex. By whom can his memory be so well protected
as by her who resembles so much Elizabeth in her personal virtues?
“Your Majesty will find in this book bold, impartial truths; morality
unstained with superstition; a spirit of liberty, equally abhorrent
of rebellion and of tyranny; the rights of kings always asserted, and
those of mankind never laid aside.
“The same spirit in which it is written gave me the confidence to
offer it to the virtuous Consort of a King who, among so many crowned
heads, enjoys almost alone the inestimable honour of ruling a free
nation; a King who makes his power consist in being beloved, and his
glory in being just.
“Our Descartes, who was the greatest philosopher in Europe before Sir
Isaac Newton appeared, dedicated the _Principles_ to the celebrated
Princess Palatine Elizabeth; not, said he, because she was a princess
(for true philosophers respect princes, and never flatter them); but
because of all his readers she understood him the best, and loved
truth the most.
“I beg leave, Madam (without comparing myself to Descartes), to
dedicate _La Henriade_ to your Majesty upon the like account, and not
only as the protectress of all arts and sciences, but as the best
judge of them.
“I am, with that profound respect which is due to the greatest
virtue as well as the highest rank, may it please your Majesty, your
Majesty’s most humble, most dutiful, and most obliged servant,
“VOLTAIRE.”
Even if we allow for flattery, and Voltaire was not given to flattering
princes, this dedication is a remarkable tribute to Caroline’s mental
powers and her interest in the arts. Voltaire must have known of
her friendship with Sir Isaac Newton; he had probably heard of her
admiration for Queen Elizabeth; and he skilfully wove allusions to both
in his dedication.
The first edition of _La Henriade_ was sold to subscribers at one
guinea a copy, and had a great success. The Queen herself solicited
subscriptions for it among her friends, and the edition was soon
exhausted. Nor did her interest stop here. She persuaded the King to
give Voltaire a present of two thousand crowns, equal to £500, and she
added to this a further present of £200 from her privy purse, and sent
Voltaire her portrait.
English men of letters were not so fortunate as Voltaire in winning
the favour of the court. When she was Princess of Wales Caroline made
welcome any literary man of eminence to Leicester House whatever his
creed or party, Papist or Arian, Jacobite, Whig or Tory. George the
First’s contempt for literature made her graciousness the more marked,
and perhaps it was her affability and eagerness to please that gave
rise to expectations which were later unfulfilled. For it is certain
that many eminent writers of prose and verse expected great things
when Caroline became Queen; and it is equally certain that they were
grievously disappointed. Whether with all the goodwill in the world,
and all the power, the Queen could have satisfied every one of them
may be doubted, for the literary mind is not prone to underrate its
merits. As events turned out she could do little or nothing for any
man of letters, unless he were eligible for preferment in the Church.
She found herself as Queen in a position of less freedom and greater
responsibility. She was as anxious as ever to befriend literary men,
but in this respect she found herself thwarted by the King and opposed
by Walpole; her difficulties too were increased by the fact that nearly
every writer of talent was either openly or secretly hostile to the
Government.
For this hostility Walpole was to blame; he had inaugurated a new
policy. During the reign of William and Anne, and even in the reign
of George the First while Townshend and Stanhope were Prime Ministers,
literary men were courted and caressed by those in authority. In short
it has been well said that “though the Sovereign was never an Augustus
every minister was a Mæcenas”. Lucrative places were found for many
writers in departments of the civil service, and others were aided to
enter Parliament or diplomacy.
But when Walpole became Prime Minister in 1721 he changed all this, and
set his face like a flint against employing literary men in the public
service in any capacity whatsoever. In this he was supported by George
the First, and his successor George the Second, who both despised
literature and never opened a book. The number of readers was far more
limited then than now (though perhaps they were more discriminating),
and writing books was consequently less lucrative. When men of talent
and genius saw the avenues of patronage and of usefulness in the State
suddenly closed to them by the Prime Minister, it is no wonder that
they placed their pens at the service of the Opposition, led as it was
by two men so appreciative of the claims of literature as Bolingbroke
and Pulteney. But Walpole did not heed, and for twenty years followed
the same policy. “No writer need apply” was written over every door
that led to preferment in the State. But in the long run the writers
had their revenge, and his neglect of the pamphleteers was one of the
chief causes that led to Walpole’s fall.
Queen Caroline had promised so fair when Princess of Wales, and
her influence over her husband was known to be so great, that many
literary men looked forward to her coming to the throne as likely to
bring about a revival of the Augustan age of Queen Anne. They were
bitterly disappointed when they found her in close accord with the
Minister who had slammed the door of patronage in their faces, and
many considered that she had betrayed them. They forgot that in an
alliance like that between the Queen and Walpole each had to yield
something, and the Queen yielded some of her interest in letters for
the larger interests she had at stake. It was a pity that with so real
a desire to help literature Caroline was able to do so little. It was
a still greater pity that after she became Queen her relations with
some of the greatest English men of letters, like Swift, Gay and Pope,
were strained to breaking point. The fault was not all on her side,
and in some cases the breach was inevitable, but it was none the less
unfortunate.
[Illustration: MRS. CLAYTON (VISCOUNTESS SUNDON).]
Swift, who had fallen with Bolingbroke in 1714, visited England in
1726, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, probably with
the object of effecting a reconciliation with the reigning dynasty.
He made the acquaintance of Mrs. Howard through his friends Pope and
Gay, and was introduced by her to Caroline, then Princess of Wales.
Writing years later to the Duchess of Queensberry, who hated Caroline,
Swift declared that “a nameless person” (the Queen) “sent me eleven
messages before I would yield her a visit”. This was surely an
exaggeration, and it was written at a time when Swift, having lost all
hope of preferment from the Queen, was paying his court to the duchess.
Swift no doubt was quite as ready to have an audience as Caroline was
to grant him one. He began the conversation by saying that he knew the
Princess loved to see odd persons, and having seen a wild boy from
Germany, he supposed she now had a curiosity to see a wild dean from
Ireland. Caroline laughed, and found in his genius an excuse for the
lack of courtly manners. He came several times to Leicester House.
Swift returned to Ireland well pleased with his reception, though no
definite promise of what he desired, English preferment, had been given
him. He came again to England early the following year, 1727, as it
proved for the last time. His coming was heralded by the publication
of his famous satire, _Gulliver’s Travels_. Caroline read the book
with delight, and when the author presented himself at Leicester House
welcomed him most graciously. She accepted from him a present of Irish
poplins, and promised him a medallion of herself in return. Swift was
also a constant and welcome guest in the apartments of Mrs. Howard,
and met there, besides many men of letters, politicians of the stamp
of Townshend and Compton. He was in England at the time of George the
First’s death, and kissed the hands of the new King and Queen. For a
time he was full of hope, but his expectations received a shock when
he found Walpole, “Bob the poet’s foe,” confirmed in power. He went
back to Ireland, cast down but not dismayed, and waited there for the
summons that never came.
For some time the dean placed faith in Mrs. Howard, and more especially
in the Queen’s graciousness. He knew also the Queen’s views on Church
matters, and his unorthodoxy, which had hindered Anne from making him
a bishop, would, he thought, be a point in his favour with Caroline.
His commanding literary abilities ought certainly to have given him
a strong claim upon her consideration. But Swift, the friend of
Bolingbroke, was disliked by Walpole, and Caroline distrusted every
one who was intimate with Bolingbroke. Moreover Swift thought, like so
many others, that the way to the King’s favour lay through his mistress
rather than his wife, and on both his visits to England he paid great
court to Mrs. Howard, visiting her frequently, flattering her, telling
her some of his best stories, and writing her some of his wittiest
letters. Caroline, who knew of this friendship, resented it, and
though she gave the great dean audience, and was affable to him as she
was to every one, she made a mental note against his name, and never
helped him to realise his wish of obtaining English preferment. She
had never promised to give it to him, but she had promised to send him
her medallion. Swift, who for some time after his return to Ireland,
kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Howard, wrote to her recalling the
Queen’s promise.
“First, therefore,” he writes, “I call you to witness that I did
not attend on the Queen until I had received her repeated messages,
which, of course, occasioned my being introduced to you. I never asked
anything till, upon leaving England for the first time, I desired
from you a present worth a guinea, and from her Majesty one worth ten
pounds, by way of a memorial. Yours I received, and the Queen, upon
taking my leave of her, made an excuse that she had intended a medal
for me, which not being ready, she would send it me the Christmas
following: yet this was never done, nor at all remembered when I went
back to England the next year, and attended her as I had done before.
I must now tell you, madam, that I will receive no medal from her
Majesty, nor anything less than her picture at half-length, drawn by
Jervas; and if he takes it from another original, the Queen shall at
least sit twice for him to touch it up. I desire you will let her
Majesty know this in plain words, although I have heard I am under her
displeasure....
“Against _you_ I have but one reproach, that when I was last in
England, and just after the present King’s accession, I resolved
to pass that summer in France, for which I had then a most lucky
opportunity, from which those who seemed to love me well, dissuaded me
by your advice. And when I sent you a note, conjuring you to lay aside
the character of a courtier and a favourite upon that occasion, your
answer positively directed me not to go at that juncture; and you
said the same thing to my friends who seemed to have power of giving
me hints, that I might reasonably have expected a settlement[78] in
England, which, God knows, is no great ambition considering the station
I should leave here, of greater dignity, which might easily have been
managed to be disposed of as the Crown pleased....
“I wish her Majesty would a little remember what I largely said to her
about Ireland, when before a witness she gave me leave, and commanded
me to tell here what she spoke to me upon that subject, and ordered
me, if I lived to see her in her present station, to send her our
grievances, promising to read my letter, and do all good offices in her
power for this most miserable and most loyal kingdom, now at the brink
of ruin, and never so near as now.
“As to myself, I repeat again that I have asked nothing more than a
trifle as a memorial of some distinction, which her Majesty graciously
seemed to make between me and every common clergyman; that trifle was
forgot according to the usual method of princes, although I was taught
to think myself upon a footing of obtaining some little exception.”[79]
Whether Mrs. Howard laid this letter before the Queen, as the dean
evidently intended her to do, or spoke to the Queen on the subject,
is not known; in any case Swift would have done better to have written
directly to the Queen herself, or if that were impossible, to have
chosen some more congenial channel of communication than Mrs. Howard.
The Queen was jealous of her influence, and Mrs. Clayton, who disliked
Swift, had been taught to think that ecclesiastical recommendations
were especially within her province. For Mrs. Howard to have asked
the Queen for the meanest curacy for one of her favourites would have
been resented. So it came about that after Swift had waited a few
years longer, heart-sick with deferred hope, he turned on Mrs. Howard
as well as her mistress, though in the former case he was not only
ungrateful but unjust, for the poor lady had not the power, though she
had the will, to help him. But Swift in his Irish exile could not be
expected to know the true inwardness of affairs at Court. “As for Mrs.
Howard and her mistress,” he wrote, “I have nothing to say but that
they have neither memory nor manners, else I should have had some mark
of the former from the latter, which I was promised about two years
ago; but since I made them a present it would be mean to remind them.”
He was extremely sensitive to slights, and he resented the Queen’s
forgetfulness about the medal almost as much as the fact that she
omitted him from her list of preferments. Years after, in a poem which
he wrote on his own death, the old grievance of the medals crops up
again:--
From Dublin soon to London spread,
’Tis told at Court “the Dean is dead,”
And Lady Suffolk in the spleen
Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
The Queen, so gracious, mild and good,
Cries: “Is he gone? ’tis time he should.
He’s dead, you say--then let him rot;
I am glad the medals were forgot.
I promised him, I own; but when?
I only was the princess then;
And now the consort of a King,
You know, ’tis quite another thing.”
Swift never forgave the Queen’s neglect, and for years, until her
death, Caroline was the subject of his sharpest satirical attacks.
But his satire failed to move her, any more than his presents and
compliments had done. The great dean was left to drag out the remainder
of his days in Ireland, embittered by disappointment and darkened by
despair. Probably Walpole interposed his veto also. It was felt that
such a firebrand was safer in Ireland, and his presence in England
might seriously embarrass the Government. No doubt there was something
to be said from that point of view. But the way in which those in
authority neglected this great genius, until baffled ambition drove him
to drink and madness, will ever remain one of the most tragic pages in
the history of literature.
Gay, like Swift, also had a grievance against the Queen, though if
Swift had any reason on his side, Gay certainly had none. Caroline had
frequently showed him kindness when Princess of Wales, and had promised
to help him when it was in her power. This promise she redeemed within
a few weeks of the King’s accession. She laughingly told Mrs. Howard
that she would now take up the “Hare with many friends”--an allusion to
one of Gay’s fables--and she offered him the post of gentleman usher
to the little Princess Louisa, a sinecure with a salary of £200 a
year, which would be equivalent to £400 in the present day. There was
little else that the Queen could offer him: the public service was now
closed to writers, and as Gay was not in holy orders, he could not be
provided for in the Church. This appointment, she thought, would secure
him from want, and give him leisure for his pen. But Gay, whose head
was quite turned by the adulation of foolish women, not only refused
the Queen’s offer, but resented it as an insult. Soon after he was
taken up by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who were among his
kindest friends.
The Duchess of Queensberry was one of the most beautiful and graceful
women of her day; she was a daughter of Lord Clarendon, and therefore
cousin of the late Queen Anne. She was of a haughty disposition,
and considered herself quite equal, if not superior, to the princes
of the House of Hanover. The fact that Gay had been slighted (as he
considered) by Queen Caroline was enough to make her champion his cause
more warmly. Gay soon declared war against the court and the Government
in his famous _Beggars’ Opera_, which teemed with topical allusions and
covert political satire. The character of “Bob Booty,” for instance,
was understood to be Sir Robert Walpole, and was especially a butt
for ridicule. _The Beggars’ Opera_ took the town by storm; it enjoyed
not only an unprecedented run in London, but was played in all the
great towns of England, Ireland and Scotland. It became a fashionable
craze; ladies sang the favourite songs and carried about fans depicting
incidents and characters in the piece; pictures of the actress, Miss
Fenton, who played the leading part, were sold by the thousand, and
songs and verses were composed in her honour; she became a popular
toast and a reigning beauty, and finally married the Duke of Bolton,
who ran away with her. But the Queen and Walpole resented the covert
sarcasm in the play, and when Gay, encouraged by the success of _The
Beggars’ Opera_, wrote a sequel called _Polly_, and had it ready for
rehearsal, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain, acting under the
orders of the King, who was instigated by the Queen, refused to license
the performance. It was said that Walpole was satirized in _Polly_
under a thin disguise as a highwayman, but whatever the reason, the
prohibition of the play only made it more popular. If it could not
be played it could be read, and every one who had a grudge against
Walpole, or the court, bought it when it came out in book form. The
Duchess of Marlborough gave £100 for a single copy, and the Duchess
of Queensberry solicited subscriptions for it within the very precincts
of St. James’s, and at a drawing-room went round the room and asked
even the officers of the King’s household to buy copies of the play
which the King had forbidden to be played. The King caught her in
the act, and asked what she was doing? She replied: “What must be
agreeable, I am sure, to one so humane as your Majesty, for I am busy
with an act of charity, and a charity to which I do not despair of
bringing your Majesty to contribute”. The King guessed what the charity
was, and talked the incident over with the Queen, who so resented the
duchess’s action, which she rightly guessed was aimed more particularly
at herself, that the King’s vice-chamberlain was sent to request her
not to appear at court again. The vice-chamberlain’s message was
verbal; but the duchess immediately wrote a spirited reply:--
“The Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the King
hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where she
never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King
and Queen; she hopes that by such an unprecedented order as this is,
that the King will see as few as he wishes at his Court, particularly
such as dare to think or speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, and
ought not, nor could have imagined that it would not have been the very
highest compliment that I could possibly pay the King to endeavour to
support truth and innocence in his house, particularly when the King
and Queen both told me that they had not read Mr. Gay’s play. I have
certainly done right, then, to stand by my own words rather than his
Grace of Grafton’s, who hath neither made use of truth, judgment, nor
honour, through this whole affair, either for himself or his friends.”
The duchess told the vice-chamberlain to take the letter to the King
at once; the vice-chamberlain read it, and thought it so disrespectful
that he begged her to reconsider the matter. Thereupon she sat down
and wrote a second letter which was even worse, so he took the first
after all. The King was beside himself with passion when he received
it, and uttered the most appalling threats. But the duchess went
about unharmed, and laughed him to scorn. She was glad to have this
opportunity of showing her contempt for the “German Court,” as she
called it, and her husband supported her action by resigning his office
of Vice-Admiral of Scotland. Poor Mrs. Howard was the only sufferer,
for Gay and the duchess were both her friends, and she therefore got
the full brunt of the King’s ill temper. Most people took the duchess’s
part, thinking that the court had been impolitic in noticing her action
on behalf of Gay, who became for the moment a popular martyr. “He has
got several turned out of their places,” wrote Arbuthnot to Swift,
“the greatest ornament of the Court banished from it for his sake, and
another great lady (Mrs. Howard) in danger of being _chassée_ likewise,
about seven or eight duchesses pushing forward like the ancient
circumcelliones in the church to see who shall suffer martyrdom on his
account first; he is the darling of the city.”[80]
Gay certainly did not suffer from the Lord Chamberlain’s action,
for the subscriptions to _Polly_ brought him in £1,200, whereas by
_The Beggars’ Opera_, with all its success, he had only gained £400.
Therefore, as Dr. Johnson says, “What he called oppression ended in
profit”.
The Queen’s difference with Pope arose out of the political exigencies
of the hour. Unlike Swift and Gay he expected nothing from her, and
had therefore no disappointment. As a Roman Catholic he was debarred
from all places of honour and emolument, though in the reign of George
the First Secretary Craggs offered him a pension of £300 a year, to be
paid from the secret service money. Pope had been a familiar figure
at Leicester House and Richmond Lodge. He was a great friend of Mrs.
Howard, and a favourite with the maids of honour. Caroline, as Princess
of Wales, had shown him many courtesies, and recognised his genius and
admired his work. But Pope’s friendship with Bolingbroke and hatred of
Walpole necessarily led to a breach between him and the Queen. As Mrs.
Howard’s influence waned and Walpole’s became greater, Pope came no
more to court, and had nothing for the Queen but sneers and ridicule.
His famous quarrel with Lord Hervey also did much to widen the breach,
for the Queen naturally took her favourite’s side. A friend of Lord
Hervey’s in the House of Commons spoke of Pope as “a lampooner who
scattered his ink without fear or decency”. This was true of both
combatants, who showed in a most unamiable light in this sordid
quarrel. The origin of the feud is involved in obscurity, but Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu was undoubtedly in part responsible for it.
Lady Mary, since her return from Constantinople in 1718, had occupied
a unique position in society. She was a chartered libertine, her
conversation grew broader with advancing years, and her wit had more
licence. Between her and Lord Hervey there existed one of those curious
friendships which may sometimes be witnessed between an effeminate man
and a masculine woman, and there seems no doubt that it was of the kind
which is known as “Platonic,” for, after Lord Hervey’s death, when his
eldest son sealed up and sent Lady Mary the letters she had written to
his father, assuring her that he had not looked at them, she wrote to
say that she almost regretted he had not, as it would have proved to
him what most young men disbelieved, “the possibility of a long and
steady friendship subsisting between two persons of different sexes
without the least mixture of love”.
Lady Mary took a house at Twickenham not far from Pope’s beautiful
villa, and, though she was warned not to have anything to do with “the
wicked wasp of Twickenham,” she renewed her friendship with the poet,
and became as intimate with him as before. “Leave him as soon as you
can” wrote Addison to her, “he will certainly play you some devilish
trick else.” But Lady Mary took no heed, perhaps the danger of the
experiment tempted her, and she fooled the little poet to the top of
his bent. Pope, with all his genius, had an undue reverence for rank;
he was flattered by the notice which this clever woman extended to him,
and he genuinely admired her wit and vivacity. Lady Mary’s house was
the rendezvous of many of the courtiers and wits of the day, and here
Pope often met Lord Hervey. Lady Mary delighted in the homage the poet
gave to her ungrudgingly; it flattered her vanity that such a genius
should be at her feet. She wrote to him effusive letters, and in one of
them declared that he had discovered the philosopher’s stone, “since
by making the _Iliad_ pass through your poetical grasp into an English
form, without losing aught of its original beauty, you have drawn the
golden current from Patoclus to Twickenham”. Pope also wrote her the
most extravagant epistles. In one, referring to her portrait, which
had been painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, he says: “This picture dwells
really at my heart, and I made a perfect passion of preferring your
present face to your past”. Again he tells her, “I write as if I were
drunk; the pleasure I take in thinking of your return transports me
beyond the bounds of common decency”.
After a time Lady Mary began to grow rather weary of her poet, but
he, on the contrary, became even more arduous, and was at last led
into making her a passionate declaration of love. She received it
by laughing in his face. Pope was keenly sensitive to ridicule, his
deformity made him more so than most men; he was of a highly strung
disposition, and Lady Mary’s outburst of hilarity was a thing he
could neither forget nor forgive. He withdrew deeply mortified and
offended. His vanity could not understand how the beautiful Lady Mary
could reject him with such disdain if another had not stolen her from
him. He formed the idea that Lord Hervey was his rival, and against
him therefore directed all his malice, spleen and hatred. A scurrilous
paper war began. Lord Hervey dabbled in poetry, not of great merit, and
Pope savagely attacked it. Speaking of one of his own satires, against
which he pretended a charge of weakness had been brought, he says:--
The lines are weak, another’s pleased to say,
Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.
And again:--
Like gentle Fanny’s was my flow’ry theme
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.
Hervey, who thought his namby-pamby verses really poetry, was stung
to the quick by this contemptuous allusion, and, smarting under the
satire, was foolish enough to retaliate upon Pope in a poor effusion
addressed “To the Imitator of the Satires of the Second Book of
Horace”. It runs:--
Thus, whilst with coward hand you stab a name,
And try at least t’ assassinate our fame;
Like the first bold assassin’s be thy lot;
And ne’er be thy guilt forgiven, or forgot;
But as thou hat’st, be hated by mankind,
And with the emblem of thy crooked mind
Marked on thy back, like Cain, by God’s own hand,
Wander, like him accursed, through the land.
In the same poem Pope was told:--
None thy crabbed numbers can endure
Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure.
This brutal allusion to Pope’s physical infirmities and his birth
stung the most sensitive of poets to the quick. In this duel of wits,
Hervey had chosen verse as his weapon, forgetting that in this line his
adversary had no equal, and Pope seized the advantage. Hervey had set
him an unworthy example, which he did not hesitate to follow, and he
raked up everything which approached physical hideousness, weakness, or
deformity in the person and mind of his adversary. According to Lord
Hailes, “Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of epilepsy, entered
upon and persisted in a very strict regimen, and thus stopped the
progress and prevented the effects of that dreadful disease. His daily
food was a small quantity of ass’s milk and a flour biscuit. Once a
week he indulged himself with eating an apple; he used emetics daily.
Lord Hervey used paint to soften his ghastly appearance.” All these
weaknesses were seized upon by Pope, and put into a poem wherein Lord
Hervey was satirized as “Sporus”.
Let Sporus tremble! what! that thing of silk!
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk!
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way
Whether in florid impotence he speaks
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or, at the ear of Eve, familiar toad
Half froth half venom, spits himself abroad:
In puns or politics, in tales or lies
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;
His wit all see-saw between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart;
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the Board,
Now trips a lady and now struts a lord.
Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,
A cherub’s face and reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Coxe, alluding to the portrait of Sporus, writes: “I never could read
this passage without disgust and horror, disgust at the indelicacy
of the allusions, horror at the malignity of the poet in laying the
foundation of his abuse on the lowest species of satire, personal
invective, and what is still worse, sickness and debility”. This
condemnation is true of Pope’s verses on Hervey, but it is equally true
of Hervey’s verses on Pope--and it was Hervey who began the personal
abuse.
Lady Mary did not escape either. Pope depicted her as a wanton, scoffed
at her eccentricities, and hinted that she conferred her favours on “a
black man,” the Sultan Ahmed of Turkey.
[Illustration: JOHN, LORD HERVEY.]
Pope also addressed a prose letter to Lord Hervey, which was, if
possible, more bitter and vindictive than his character of “Sporus”. He
thought very highly of his letter, which Wharton styles “a masterpiece
of invective”. To one of his friends Pope wrote: “There is woman’s
war declared against me by a certain lord; his weapons are the same
which women and children use--a pin to scratch, and a squirt to
bespatter. I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists
with him, and after showing it some people, suppressed it; otherwise
it was such as was worthy of him and worthy of me.” The reason Pope
gives for suppressing this letter, which was not published until after
his death, though privately shown to many, was not the true one. Queen
Caroline got hold of a copy of the epistle, and it was at her express
desire that Pope withheld it. She feared lest it should render her
favourite contemptible in the eyes of the world, and though she was
greatly incensed against Pope, she dissembled her anger, and used her
influence to end this wordy war, in which there could be no doubt that
Pope was the victor.[81]
But though Caroline was unfortunate in her relations with Swift, Gay
and Pope, men whose writings shed a lustre on her era, she was the
means of helping other writers who were eminent in a different way.
Butler, the author of the _Analogy_, and Berkeley, who wrote _The
Minute Philosopher_, she preferred to high office in the Church. For
other writers who were not in holy orders she did what she could. She
befriended Steele at a time when, to use his own words, he was “bereft
both of limbs and speech”.[82] She had often befriended him before in
the course of his chequered career. She reprieved Savage, the natural
son of that unnatural mother the Countess of Macclesfield, when he lay
under sentence of death. And after his wonderful poem, _The Bastard_,
was written, she helped him again with a pension of £50 from her privy
purse. She patronised Somerville, author of _The Chase_, no mean poet
in the opinion of Dr. Johnson; and she sought to support that luckless
playwright William Duncombe. It was one of her sayings that “genius was
superior to the patronage of princes,” but she had a great sympathy
for literary endeavour, however humble. But her patronage of minor
writers was more often dictated by the kindness of her heart than by
the soundness of her judgment. An instance of this was afforded by her
patronage of Stephen Duck, whose fate has been not inaptly compared to
that of Burns--without the genius.
Stephen Duck was the son of a peasant in Wiltshire, and worked as a
day labourer and thresher on a farm at Charlton. He must have had some
ability and a good deal of application, for when his day’s work was
done, he taught himself the rudiments of grammar and a smattering of
history and science. These labours bore fruit in poetry; but the poems
remained unpublished until Duck reached the age of thirty, when he had
the good fortune to attract the notice of a country clergyman named
Spence, who not only lent him books, but found the means for him to
print some of his poems in pamphlet form, including _The Thresher’s
Labour_, a poem descriptive of his own life, and _The Shunamite_. These
poems found their way into the hands of Lord Tankerville and Dr. Alured
Clarke, Prebendary of Winchester, who thought so highly of their merits
that they got up a subscription to aid the author. Dr. Alured Clarke
did more; he wrote to his friend Mrs. Clayton telling her the story of
Duck’s life, and begging her to bring his poems before the notice of
the Queen. By this time Duck had quite a little coterie of admirers in
his own county, who, as Dr. Alured Clarke wrote, thought “the thresher,
with all his defects, a superior genius to Mr. Pope”.[83]
Caroline was much interested in the fact that these poems were written
by a poor thresher, and when the court was at Windsor she commanded
that Duck should be brought there. She was so pleased with his manner
and address that she settled a small annual pension on him, and in 1733
made him one of the yeomen of the guard. Dr. Alured Clarke, by this
time one of the royal chaplains, and Mrs. Clayton acted as the sponsors
of the poet, whose work now became well-known. The most extravagant
ideas were formed concerning it, some considering _The Thresher’s
Labour_ superior to Thomson’s _Seasons_, and others declaring that
the author of _The Shunamite_ was the greatest poet of the age. Thus
encouraged, Duck wrote more poems, and the Queen’s patronage secured
for them a large sale. Naturally many were in praise of his generous
benefactress. Duck in due time took holy orders, to which he had always
a leaning--he was ordained, as a literate, by the Bishop of Salisbury.
Shortly after his ordination, the Queen appointed him keeper of
Merlin’s Cave, a fanciful building she had erected at Richmond. Both
Merlin’s Cave and Duck came in for a great deal of satire from “the
epigrammatic Mæcenases,” as Dr. Alured Clarke calls them, who regarded
both the cave and the patronage of the poet as proofs of the Queen’s
folly rather than her wisdom. Pope wrote:--
Lord! how we strut through Merlin’s Cave, to see
No poets there, but Stephen, you and me.
Swift, writhing under neglect, penned a very caustic epigram:--
The thresher Duck could o’er the Queen prevail:
The proverb says, “No fence against a flail,”
From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains
For which her Majesty allows him grains,
Though ’tis confessed that those who ever saw
His poems, think them all not worth a straw.
Thrice happy Duck! employed in threshing stubble
Thy toils were lessen’d and thy profits doubled.
Close by Merlin’s Cave the Queen raised another quaint conceit known
as the “Hermitage,” in which she placed busts of Adam Clarke, Newton,
Locke and other dead philosophers. These busts excited the ire of
living worthies. Swift in his _Elegant Extracts_ wrote:--
Lewis, the living genius fed
And rais’d the scientific head:
Our Queen, more frugal of her meat,
Raises those heads that cannot eat.
This drew forth the following repartee, addressed to Swift:--
Since Anna, whom bounty thy merits had fed,
Ere her own was laid low, had exalted your head,
And since our good Queen to the wise is so just,
To raise heads from such as are humbled in dust,
I wonder, good man, that you are not envaulted;
Pr’y thee, go and be dead, and be doubly exalted.
Whereto the dean wittily replied:--
Her Majesty never shall be my exalter;
And yet she would raise me I know, by--a halter.
Stephen Duck’s poetry was popular in its day, but it owed its
popularity to the favour of the Queen rather than to its intrinsic
merit. His talent was not sufficient to overcome the defects of his
early education. Duck realised this far more than his friends, and he
was keenly sensitive to the satire which great writers like Swift and
Pope thought it worth their while to pour upon him. The Queen remained
his constant friend, and preferred him successively to a chaplaincy at
Kew and the rectory of Byfleet in Surrey. But Duck was not a happy man;
his education began too late in life, and he could never accommodate
himself to his altered circumstances. He ended his career by committing
suicide, a few years after the death of his royal patroness.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER VII:
[78] A living.
[79] Dean Swift to Mrs. Howard, Dublin, 21st November, 1730. _Suffolk
Correspondence._
[80] Dr. Arbuthnot to Swift, 19th March, 1729.
[81] In his _Memoirs_ Lord Hervey makes no mention of his quarrel with
Pope or his duel with Pulteney, and slips over the years 1730–1733
without a line of comment. This seems to show that he was not proud of
either of these achievements.
[82] Sir Richard Steele to Mrs. Clayton, May, 1724.
[83] Dr. Alured Clarke to Mrs. Clayton, Winchester, 18th August, 1730.