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[Transcriber's Note:
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no relationship to the number of letters omitted. For this e-text,
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D - - - n _Molley H----ns_ for her Pride.
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The Augustan Reprint Society
THE
MERRY-THOUGHT:
or, the
Glass-Window and Bog-House
MISCELLANY.
Part I
(_1731_)
_Introduction by_
GEORGE R. GUFFEY
Publication Number _216_
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
_1982_
GENERAL EDITOR
David Stuart Rodes, _University of California, Los Angeles_
EDITORS
Charles L. Batten, _University of California, Los Angeles_
George Robert Guffey, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Thomas Wright, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
ADVISORY EDITORS
Ralph Cohen, _University of Virginia_
William E. Conway, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_
Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_
Earl Miner, _Princeton University_
Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_
James Sutherland, _University College, London_
Robert Vosper, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Beverly J. Onley, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Frances M. Reed, _University of California, Los Angeles_
INTRODUCTION
For modern readers, one of the most intriguing scenes in Daniel Defoe's
_Moll Flanders_ (1722) occurs during the courtship of Moll by the man
who is to become her third husband. Aware that the eligible men of her
day have little interest in prospective wives with small or nonexistent
fortunes, Moll slyly devises a plan to keep her relative poverty a
secret from the charming and (as she has every reason to believe)
wealthy plantation owner who has fallen in love with her. To divert
attention from her own financial condition, she repeatedly suggests that
he has been courting her only for her money. Again and again he protests
his love. Over and over she pretends to doubt his sincerity.
After a series of exhausting confrontations, Moll's lover begins what is
to us a novel kind of dialogue:
One morning he pulls off his diamond ring and writes upon the glass
of the sash in my chamber this line:
You I love and you alone.
I read it and asked him to lend me the ring, with which I wrote under
it thus:
And so in love says every one.
He takes his ring again and writes another line thus:
Virtue alone is an estate.
I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it:
But money's virtue, gold is fate.[1]
After a number of additional thrusts and counterthrusts of this sort,
Moll and her lover come to terms and are married.
[Footnote 1: Daniel Defoe, _Moll Flanders_ (New York: New American
Library, 1964), pp. 71-72.]
The latter half of the twentieth century has seen a steady growth of
serious scholarly interest in graffiti. Sociologists, psychologists, and
historians have increasingly turned to the impromptu "scratchings" of
both the educated and the uneducated as indicators of the general mental
health and political stability of specific populations.[2] Although most
of us are familiar with at least a few of these studies and all of us
have observed numerous examples of this species of writing on the walls
of our cities and the rocks of our national parks, we are not likely,
before encountering this scene in _Moll Flanders_, to have ever before
come into contact with graffiti produced with such an elegant writing
implement.
[Footnote 2: For example, E. A. Humphrey Fenn, "The Writing on the
Wall," _History Today_, 19 (1969), 419-423, and "Graffiti,"
_Contemporary Review_, 215 (1969), 156-160; Terrance L. Stocker,
Linda W. Dutcher, Stephen M. Hargrove, and Edwin A. Cook, "Social
Analysis of Graffiti," _Journal of American Folklore_, 85 (1972),
356-366; Sylvia Spann, "The Handwriting on the Wall," _English
Journal_, 62 (1973), 1163-1165; Robert Reisner and Lorraine
Wechsler, _Encyclopedia of Graffiti_ (New York: Macmillan, 1974);
"Graffiti Helps Mental Patients," _Science Digest_, April, 1974,
pp. 47-48; Henry Solomon and Howard Yager, "Authoritarianism and
Graffiti," _Journal of Social Psychology_, 97 (1975), 149-150;
Carl A. Bonuso, "Graffiti," _Today's Education_, 65 (1976), 90-91;
Elizabeth Wales and Barbara Brewer, "Graffiti in the 1970's,"
_Journal of Social Psychology_, 99 (1976), 115-123; Ernest L. Abel
and Barbara E. Buckley, _The Handwriting on the Wall: Toward a
Sociology and Psychology of Graffiti_ (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1977); and Marina N. Haan and Richard B. Hammerstrom,
_Graffiti in the Ivy League_ (New York: Warner Books, 1981).]
Glass being fragile and diamonds being relatively rare, it is not
surprising that few examples of graffiti produced by the method employed
by Moll and her lover are known to us today. Interestingly enough, we
do, however, have available to us a variety of Renaissance and
eighteenth-century written materials suggesting that the practice of
using a diamond to write ephemeral statements on window glass was far
less rare in those periods than we might expect. Holinshed, for example,
tells us that in 1558 when Elizabeth was released from imprisonment at
Woodstock, she taunted her enemies by writing
these verses with hir diamond in a glasse window verie legiblie as
here followeth:
Much suspected by me,
Nothing prooued can be:
Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.[3]
[Footnote 3: _Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and
Ireland_ (London, 1808), IV, 133.]
And in John Donne's "A Valediction: of my Name in the Window," we find
two lovers in a situation reminiscent of that of the scene I previously
quoted from _Moll Flanders_. Using a diamond, the poet, before beginning
an extended journey, scratches his name on a window pane in the house of
his mistress. Here is the first stanza of the poem:
My name engrav'd herein,
Doth contribute my firmnesse to this glasse,
Which, ever since that charme, hath beene
As hard, as that which grav'd it, was;
Thine eyes will give it price enough, to mock
The diamonds of either rock.[4]
While he is absent, the characters he has cut in the glass will, the
poet hopes, magically defend his mistress against the seductive
entreaties of his rivals.
[Footnote 4: John Donne, _The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets_,
ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 64.]
In 1711 in a satiric letter to _The Spectator_, John Hughes poked fun at
a number of aspiring poets who had recently attempted to create works of
art by utilizing what Hughes called "Contractions or Expedients for
Wit." One Virtuoso (a mathematician) had, for example, "thrown the Art
of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one
without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may to his great Comfort, be
able to compose or rather erect _Latin_ Verses." Equally ridiculous to
Hughes, and more relevant to the concerns of this introduction, was the
practice of another poet of his acquaintance: "I have known a Gentleman
of another Turn of Humour, who, despising the Name of an Author, never
printed his Works, but contracted his Talent, and by the help of a very
fine Diamond which he wore on his little Finger, was a considerable Poet
upon Glass. He had a very good Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a
Parlour or Tavern Window where he visited or dined ... which did not
receive some Sketches or Memorials of it. It was his Misfortune at last
to lose his Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not
attempted to make a Verse since."[5]
[Footnote 5: _The Spectator_, No. 220, November 12, 1711.]
But "Epigrammatick Wits" of this sort were not universally despised in
the eighteenth century. In 1727 in a "critical dissertation prefix'd" to
_A Collection of Epigrams_, the anonymous editor of the work argued that
the epigram itself "is a species of Poetry, perhaps, as old as any other
whatsoever: it has receiv'd the approbation of almost all ages and
nations...." In the book proper, he found room for a number of epigrams
which he evidently copied from London window panes. Here is an example:
CLX.
_To a Lady, on seeing some Verses in Praise of her, on a Pane of
Glass._
Let others, brittle beauties of a year,
See their frail names, and lovers vows writ here;
Who sings thy solid worth and spotless fame,
On purest adamant should cut thy name:
Then would thy fame be from oblivion sav'd;
On thy own heart my vows must be engrav'd.
One of the epigrams in this collection suggests that, unlike Moll's
lover and Hughes's poet, some affluent authors had even acquired
instruments specifically designed to facilitate the practice of writing
poetry on glass:
_Written on a Glass by a Gentleman, who borrow'd the Earl of
_CHESTERFIELD_'s Diamond Pencil._
Accept a miracle, instead of _wit_;
See two dull lines by _Stanhope's_ pencil writ.[6]
[Footnote 6: No. CCCLXXXII, in _A Collection of Epigrams. To Which
Is Prefix'd, a Critical Dissertation on This Species of Poetry_
(London, 1727).]
As the title of this epigram also suggests, window panes were not the
only surfaces considered appropriate for such writing. A favorite
alternate surface was that of the toasting glass. The practice of
toasting the beauty of young ladies had originated at the town of Bath
during the reign of Charles II. By the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the members of some social clubs had developed complex toasting
rituals which involved the inscription of the name of the lady to be
honored on a drinking glass suitable for that purpose. In 1709 an issue
of _The Tatler_ described the process in some detail:
that happy virgin, who is received and drunk to at their meetings,
has no more to do in this life but to judge and accept of the first
good offer. The manner of her inauguration is much like that of the
choice of a doge in Venice: it is performed by balloting; and when
she is so chosen, she reigns indisputably for that ensuing year; but
must be elected a-new to prolong her empire a moment beyond it. When
she is regularly chosen, her name is written with a diamond on a
drinking-glass.[7]
[Footnote 7: _The Tatler_, No. 24, June 4, 1709.]
Perhaps the most famous institution practicing this kind of ceremony in
the eighteenth century was the Kit-Kat Club. In 1716 Jacob Tonson,
a member of that club, published "Verses Written for the
Toasting-Glasses of the Kit-Kat Club" in the fifth part of his
_Miscellany_. Space limitations will not permit extensive quotations
from this collection, but the toast for Lady Carlisle is alone
sufficient to prove that complete epigrams were at times engraved upon
the drinking glasses belonging to this club:
She o'er all Hearts and Toasts must reign,
Whose Eyes outsparkle bright Champaign;
Or (when she will vouchsafe to smile,)
The Brilliant that now writes _Carlisle_.[8]