'An Extempore Invitation to the Earl of Oxford, Lord High Treasurer. 1712.' - Matthew Prior

‘If weary’d with the great Affairs,

Which Britain trusts to Harley’s Cares,

Thou, humble Statesman, may’st descend,

Thy Mind one Moment to unbend.’

 

‘An Extempore Invitation to the Earl of Oxford, Lord High Treasurer. 1712.’

Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

 




Robert Harley, First Earl of Oxford
and Mortimer. Detail from portrait
after John Richardson,1804
(Parliament of the United Kingdom).

In 1712, British politics was in the grip of competing factions, all bitterly struggling to direct the future of the country: not altogether unlike today. Back then, the question was all to do with who should succeed the ailing Queen Anne (whom some of you might have recently made acquaintance with through Olivia Colman’s Oscar winning-portrayal in the film The Favourite). Questions of religion intermingled with those of politics, with some seeking to continue the bloodline of the Stuart family by inviting Anne’s Catholic half-brother James Edward Stuart to be king after her, whilst others wanted to secure the monarchy for the Queen’s Protestant Hanoverian cousins. The competing interests of the two main political parties, Whigs and Tories, led to the formation of social clubs including the Kit-Cat Club (most probably named after the owner of the establishment where they met and nothing to do with chocolate bars), and the Tory Brothers’ Club (so-called because the members called each other ‘Brothers’: women were not admitted as members). Back then, the post of ‘Prime Minister’ didn’t really exist yet, but the broadly equivalent role of Lord Treasurer was held by Robert Harley, First Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. Having started out as a Whig, Harley later shifted to the Tory side but appears to have remained committed to acting in the best interests of his country and monarch. He is very far from being an unproblematic figure though: he masterminded and was Governor of the South Sea Company, which was set up with the aim of reducing British national debt via the transportation and trade of people as slaves across the Atlantic (for more info on this, see John A. Richardson, Slavery and Augustan Literature: Swift, Pope, Gay, 2004).

 

This was not the reason why he wasn’t ever admitted to join the Tory Brothers’ Club though: they actually seem to have just though he was powerful enough already. But that didn’t stop them inviting him to join a meeting in 1712, and rather than sending a tired little RSVP the invitation was written in verse by one of the leading British poet of the day, Matthew Prior. This was not altogether an unusual choice – poems would often be written and circulated between friends in manuscript form, and the later Scriblerus Club sent multiple verse invitations to Harley. Prior’s invitation begins with the practicalities, stating when and where the meeting is to take place, followed by the object of the evening:

 

‘Our Weekly Friends To-morrow meet

At Matthew’s Palace, in Duke-street;

To try for once, if They can ine

On Bacon-Ham, and Mutton-chine:’

 

Then, having tempted Harley with talk of food, the poem suggests that if he is ‘weary’d with the great Affairs’ of statesmanship, he ‘may’st descend, / Thy Mind one Moment to unbend’. It’s an eighteenth-century way of asking him to leave work at the office to come and chill for a bit. The poem then becomes even more deferential, as Harley is invited so that he might ‘see Thy Servant from his Soul / Crown with Thy Health the sprightly Bowl’ – in other words, Prior is proposing to toast him in his presence. This, Prior goes on to claim, would be the most ‘Honor’ that ‘e’er [his] House / Receiv’d’.

 

You can find this poem:

https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/pmp18-w0940.shtml

(a fantastic website with heaps of eighteenth-century poems all superbly curated and free to all!)

 

You can find more about eighteenth-century British club culture, Robert Harley, and the Succession Crisis in these excellent books:

 

Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (London: Harper Collins, 2012)

 

Ophelia Field, The Kit-Cat Club (London: Harper Collins, 2008, repr. 2009)

 

Sources used in writing this blogpost:

 

John A. Richardson, Slavery and Augustan Literature: Swift, Pope, Gay (London: Taylor & Francis, 2004)

'The Banished Man' - Charlotte Smith

‘In losing every thing but my honour and my integrity, I have learned, that he who retains those qualities can never be degraded, however humble may be his fortune.’

The Banished Man (1794)

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)

If you’ve heard of Charlotte Smith at all – and a lot of folks sadly still haven’t – then it will probably be because of her poetry. Her rather more famous contemporary William Wordsworth (the chap who most people will have heard of thanks to a certain poem about clouds and daffodils) described her as ‘a lady to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered’. I could write a lot about how amazing her poetry is; but during her writing career Smith also wrote ten novels and it’s upon one of these that I want to focus today. Published in 1794, The Banished Man is a startlingly modern narrative following the adventures of the French aristocrat D’Alonville during the time of the French Revolution. Fleeing persecution in his own country, he journeys through Europe where he faces continual and humiliating suspicion and rejection. Even when the people he meet don’t actually suspect him of being a dangerous revolutionary travelling in the disguise of a refugee, they are often unwilling to involve themselves in assisting a penniless exile: it’s a concept that is as bitingly relevant today as it was two hundred years ago.

The tale’s first audiences believed that the novel’s sympathetic portrayal of an aristocratic main character indicated a shift in Smith’s political allegiance. Smith had initially been a vocal supporter of the French Revolution’s aims of liberty and equality for all. In fact, the truth is rather more nuanced. Rather than expressing overt political support or disdain for either faction, Smith instead focuses her anger upon the selfish and violent individuals who have exploited the Revolution for their own personal gain. A Polish Revolutionary is able to establish a close friendship with the French aristocrat D’Alonville because, even if the two have different opinions, each is willing to listen to and to respect the other’s point of view. Smith’s hero even acknowledges the fact that, had their situations been switched, ‘I might have thought and have acted as you have done’.

Intertwined with the stark realities of D’Alonville’s experiences as a persecuted refugee, is the life of the British woman Arabella Denzil. She is the daughter of an impoverished gentlewoman who supports her family through her writing, and who is widely believed to be an autobiographical portrait of Smith herself. Like Smith’s own husband, Arabella’s father has long since left the scene, and without any significant male relatives the family is left vulnerable to the machinations of sexual predators interested in Arabella’s beauty. Her inevitable romance with D’Alonville is likewise hampered by the unpopularity that attends such a cross-national relationship in the then deeply nationalistic British society.

At the time, one of the most popular genres of novel was the Gothic mode, in which heroes and heroines frequently faced both real and supernatural dangers in exotically portrayed European locations. Smith had written Gothic novels before and would do so again, but in The Banished Man she draws upon the conventions of the Gothic only to twist them around into a realistic portrayal of the genuine hardships suffered by those caught up in the all-too-real horrors of the French Revolution. She even underscores the originality of the novel by including a short section entitled ‘Avis Au Lecteur’ or ‘Advice to the Reader’, in which she points out her avoidance of a boy-meets-girl romance narrative. She writes that she believed ‘the situation of [her] hero was of itself interesting enough to enable [her] to carry him on for sometime, without making him violently in love’.¹ Even though D’Alonville’s and Arabella Denzil do inevitably become involved with each other, this romance remains very much a subplot to the novel’s main aim of presenting and exploring ideas of cultural dislocation, and exile inflicted by civil conflict. The depth, subtlety, and acute perception that Smith demonstrates here make this novel one of her best and most riveting.

You can find Smith’s The Banished Man:

 

Charlotte Smith, The Banished Man (Dodo Press, 2009)
(An affordable, printed copy of this almost-out-of-print novel: despite the occasional typo, this is a very useful edition for a general reader and is available from many popular online stores)

Charlotte Smith, The Banished Man, in Works of Charlotte Smith, ed. M. O. Grenby, gen. ed. Stuart Curran, vol. 7 (London: Pickering, 2006)

(An excellently edited copy of the text, though rather pricey for a general reader)

You can find more information about Charlotte Smith here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Turner_Smith

(Wikipedia: always a useful starting point) 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-Smith

(Encyclopaedia Britannica – a valuable free resource)

¹ Wordsworth's note to "Stanzas Suggested in a Steamboat off Saint bees' Heads," from ‘Poems Composed or Suggested during a Tour, in the Summer of 1833’, in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. by E. DeSelincourt and Helen Darbishire, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1949), IV, p. 403.

'The True-Born Englishman. A Satire' - Daniel Defoe

‘A horrid Medly of Thieves and Drones,

Who ransack’d Kingdoms, and dispeopl’d Towns.

The Pict and Painted Britain, Treach’rous Scot,

By Hunger, Theft, and Rapine, hither brought.

Norwegian Pirates, Buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-hair’d Offspring ev’ry where remains.
Who join’d with Norman-French, compound the Breed
From whence your True-Born Englishmen proceed.’

‘The True-Born Englishman.  A Satire’

Daniel Defoe

1701

At first glance, it is difficult to know what to make of this poem.  In its earliest stages the poem positively fumes acid from the earnest bigotry with which Defoe constructs stereotypes for just about every kind of nationality that existed at the time.  Readers be reassured, however: this text was in fact intended as a critique of the racist elements of English society who thought the ‘True-Born Englishman’ was a being altogether superior to the rest of humanity.  He does this by first listing all the faults that such racist detractors might identify with these supposedly inferior nationalities, and then by pointing out that the ‘True-Born Englishman’ of the title is in fact descended from all these various nations through Britain’s mottled history of invasions, raids, violence, and intermarriage (or similar).  Thus he asserts the fundamental absurdity of claiming that any Englishman is ‘True-Born’, as they are all basically descended from what the racists would term ‘foreigners’.  To avoid the risk of misinterpretation, Defoe provides the helpful pointer in his Preface that he is ‘one that would be glad to see Englishmen behave themselves better to Strangers’ (with 'strangers' in this context meaning foreigners). 



Daniel Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht,
after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the
18th century.  This copy was, er, 'borrowed' from
the Encyclopædia Britannica.  The earliest image
of Defoe was recently discovered by Joseph Hone,
and is an illustration on a pack of playing cards
(in which Defoe is depicted being pilloried as
punishment for penning some political pamphlets).

Indeed, the importance of this Preface as a means of interpreting the poem would seem to be very great. At the Defoe Society’s biennial conference this week, Andreas Mueller gave a very interesting talk on later reprints of the text, in particular American reprints; somewhat amusingly, an abridged version was published in Philadelphia around the time of the British occupation of that same city during the American Revolutionary War.  The removal of the Preface was one of various alterations which, Muller showed, had reconstructed the text as a depiction of the ‘True-Born Englishman’ as a somewhat vain and inglorious individual.  Defoe would probably have been horrified.



For the aim of his original poem would seem to have been to promote racial integration rather than to just annoy everyone.  Defoe claims in his poem’s Preface that ‘The End of Satire is Reformation’, referring here to the reform of absurd or offensive ideologies; in particular, he is keen to whip up support for the Dutch King William of Orange (the Protestant William III who, together with his wife Mary, had just usurped the English throne from Mary’s father James II).  Yet the sense that this is primarily a piece of political propaganda is perhaps dispelled by considering the broader attitude towards foreigners that is featured across Defoe’s writings.  As Angela Gehling demonstrated in her conference talk, Defoe was somewhat unique in his depiction (across various works) of Spaniards as paragons of honesty and courteousness.  At the time, Spaniards were often regarded as being the complete opposite of this (a stereotype which Gehling demonstrated still features in popular culture today). 

These are complex issues and this is a complicated poem, but don’t let this put you off: it is also an enormously engaging and thought provoking text, and the issues it deals with surrounding racism and politics remain vividly relevant in today’s political arena.  Frankly, this is a poem that everyone should read, whether or not they regard themselves as ‘True-Born’ English. 

Happy reading!  As always, feel free to ask questions and leave comments!

You can find this poem:

http://thetruebornenglishman.co.uk/

(a digital edition of the original, first edition of Defoe’s poem, compiled by Luke Dawson; a very concise, useful, and free way to enjoy this text)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/True-Born-Englishman-Satire-Daniel-Defoe/dp/B00UL585MY/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437847223&sr=1-4&keywords=true+born+englishman

(a new printed version of the book… a word to the wise, though, don’t bother reading the Amazon reviews.  One of them claims that this is ‘Austen from a man’s point of view’, and I have to admit it has been a very long time since I read a sentence that was such complete tosh!)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173337

(This is a short extract from the poem on Poetry Foundation, which omits the most vitriolic aspects of the poem.  It is nonetheless interesting if you just want a quick snapshot of the style of the piece)

About the Defoe Society Conference:

The Defoe Society ( http://www.defoesociety.org/ ) was established in 2006 to promote research upon, and interest in, the works of Daniel Defoe, and to basically just spread the word about what a masterful and engaging writer he is.  This week’s conference was an opportunity for Defoe scholars from all over the world to come together and exchange ideas; the people I’ve referenced in my discussion above are only a very small sample of what was a vibrant and absorbing array of academic knowledge.  To gain access to a broader range of the thoughts and ideas that were being mooted, search for the hashtag #Defoe15 on Twitter to look back over the excellent live-tweeting of Stephen Gregg ( @gregg_sh ) during the conference.  Because literary research is for everyone, not just academics!

You can find out more about Defoe:

http://www.defoesociety.org/defoe.html

(The Defoe Society website pages have lots of fascinating info)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe

(Wikipedia!!)

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Defoe

Encyclopædia Britannica (a more sophisticated, and perhaps more reliable, form of Wikipedia)

'The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat' - Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

‘The Queen of Birds, t'encrease the Regal Stock,
Had hatch'd her young Ones in a stately Oak,
Whose Middle-part was by a Cat possest,
And near the Root with Litter warmly drest,
A teeming Sow had made her peaceful Nest.
(Thus Palaces are cramm'd from Roof to Ground,
And Animals, as various, in them found.)’

(lines 1-7)

The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

(published 1713)

It sounds like the start of a joke, but the only humour here is of the darkest kind.  Three animals are

all living in the same tree, but one of them sees a chance of monopolising the situation and takes it.  By playing upon the fears of his neighbours, the cat finds a cunning way of coming out on top; there is no hero in this story, only a stark warning about being careful when taking advice that the advisor doesn't have their own best interests at heart.

Illustration from 1668 edition of Jean de La Fontaine's
Fables, Book III.  Woodcut by François Chauveau.
This image courtesy of:
http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/aiglaichat.htm

The basic storyline comes from a French poem by Jean de La Fontaine, entitled ‘L’Aigle, la Laie, et la Chatte’, published in 1668 with the accompanying illustration by François Chauveau.  Yet Anne Finch’s poem is far more than a simple translation.  In analysing Finch’s work, both Charles H. Himnant and Paula R. Backsheider have noted how in Finch’s hands this little fable becomes a subtle political comment.  In 1688 William and Mary of Orange deposed Mary’s father, James II of England; differences of religion were the focus of the coup.  Yet while this incident is frequently referred to as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ because of the comparative peacefulness with which it took place, there were those who opposed the change.  Anne Finch and her husband, Heneage Finch, were amongst those who refused to support the new monarchs.  Fleeing London for the safety of the country, they remained active in support of James (with Heneage even ending up imprisoned for a time for having attempted to join James's exiled court in France).  For Anne, this activity was in the form of writing; through the cat’s smooth assumption of power in ‘The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat’ it is easy to see, as Paula Backsheider points out, the character of ‘the wily courtier, a figure risen from the middle ranks, who rejoices in sowing dissent’ (p. 47).  Though this is not strictly allegorical, and the politics surrounding the ‘Glorious Revolution’ is much more complex and intricate than there is space to discuss here, this is certainly a poem that assumes a highly critical tone of those who use deceit and betrayal to usurp power.

I don’t want to get too heavy though: I originally chose this poem for inclusion here because, at least on first reading, it does seem rather funny.  A bit like an Aesop fable, it conveys a serious moral message through the means of entertainment.  It’s the kind of poem designed to make you first laugh at the gullibility of the eagle and the sow - then stop and realise that, actually, the author has quite a serious point.  Not least, it's aim is to provoke reflection upon gullibility more generally, and on the importance of not letting the selfish concern for personal safety create destructive panic.  The eagle and the sow both abandon their young because of the cat’s machinations, yet this is as much a result of their own preoccupation with self-preservation as of the cat’s deceit.    

One or two points to note before you read this: the first two lines look like a clumsy attempt at rhyme, but it’s useful to remember that pronunciation of words has changed a lot over time.  Linguistic historians would probably be able to explain it better, but basically don’t write her off as a poet just because her first couplet doesn’t seem to work; when she was writing, it probably did rhyme.  Also, when the poem refers to ‘Sow’s paps’ as a great delicacy, it is referring to mammary glands (I know, sounds disgusting: but then the cat is the villain of the piece, remember). The 'sycophant' referred to in the moral describes a person who is ingratiating towards another simply for their own gain (in this poem, the cat). 

Happy reading! And apologies to all the internet cat lovers out there!

As always, feel free to leave comments and ask questions!

You can find this poem:

http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/finch/1713/mp-eagle.html

(editions of Anne Finch’s poetry are not always easy to come by, so I would recommend readers use this free version of the poem available online, and from which I have taken the reading that follows.)

Other poems by Anne Finch can be found here:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-finch#about
(Poetry Foundation online: great free resource!!)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Selected Poems, ed. by Denys Thompson (Carcanet Press Ltd,

2003)

https://www.waterstones.com/book/selected-poems/anne-finch/9781857547207

(this is pretty much what it says on the tin: selected poems by Anne Finch.  Available from numerous places; I just put the link to Waterstones for variety.  And because they have a points card system…)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-century women poets: an Oxford anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)

(available from numerous book shops online and on the high street: an excellent volume!  Last time this came up in a blog post I entered up ordering a copy, which arrived in the post the other day… Look out for future blogs referring to poems in this exciting little anthology! There are plenty of economical priced second-hand copies of this available online too!)

The information for this blogpost was taken from the following sources:

Paula R. Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre (JHU Press, 2005), p. 47

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kRVSnAqeKBoC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=anne+finch+the+eagle+the+sow+and+the+cat&source=bl&ots=DVEtLiRz9S&sig=bBeCNWf8nKOWaLvzI7PjP4jC3Sk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCwQ6AEwA2oVChMIs8KGjfPhxgIVoo_bCh2IgAco#v=onepage&q=anne%20finch%20the%20eagle%20the%20sow%20and%20the%20cat&f=false

(This looks to be a fascinating and clear book; like many works of literary criticism, this might be a little expensive for small budgets (like mine), so I’ve attached a link to the pages relating to this poem, available via a preview on googlebooks)  

Charles H. Himnant, The Poetry of Anne Finch: An Essay in Interpretation (University of Delaware, 1994) pp. 194-6

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NPJuMBADoYAC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=anne+finch+the+eagle+the+sow+and+the+cat&source=bl&ots=mK9qsHosPB&sig=S2QdnbXZfpMgRFrqWTPUBnx3P8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAWoVChMIo6ec793hxgIVQZ8UCh0zVgB5#v=onepage&q=anne%20finch%20the%20eagle%20the%20sow%20and%20the%20cat&f=false
(The link should lead to a googlebooks preview of the book that gives most of the relevant information about this poem)

Barbara McGovern, ‘Finch, Anne, countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9426 [accessed 16 July 2015]

(sadly, this resource is accessible by subscription only)

Leslie Clifford Sykes, “Jean de La Fontaine”, Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2015
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-de-La-Fontaine [accessed 17 July 2015]

(an excellent, and free, resource!)

http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/aiglaichat.htm

(a website all about Jean de La Fontaine, written in French but accessible to to English-only speakers via google translate)

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com
(a useful free dictionary online!  Always worth looking up unfamiliar words!)

You can also find out more about Anne Finch on her Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Finch,_Countess_of_Winchilsea