Queen's promise.
THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE 165
" 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 Eng-land 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,
althougrh I have heard I am under her dis-
pleasure. . . .
"Against yoti 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 oppor-
tunity, 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
i66 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
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 ^ in England, which, God knows, is no
ofreat 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 excep-
tion."-^
Whether Mrs. Howard laid this letter before the
Queen, as the dean evidently intended her to do, or
^ A living.
'-^ Dean Swift to Mrs. Howard, Dublin, 21st November, 1730.
Suffolk Correspundence.
THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE 167
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 un-
grateful 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 : —
i68 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
From Dublin soon to London spread.
'Tis told at Court " th« 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 foro-ave the Queen's nea"lect, and for
years, until her death, CaroHne was the subject of
his sharpest satirical attacks. But his satire failed
to move her, any more than his presents and com-
pliments had done. The great dean was left to drag
out the remainder of his days in Ireland, embittered
by disappointment and darkened by despair. Pro-
bably 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
THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE 169
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 equiva-
lent 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 Govern-
ment in his famous Beggars Opei^a, which teemed
with topical allusions and covert political satire. The
character of " Bob Booty," for instance, was under-
stood to be Sir Robert Walpole, and was especially
i;o CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
a butt for ridicule. The Beggars Opera took the
town by storm ; it enjoyed not only an unprece-
dented 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 Graf-
ton, 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 Wal-
pole, or the court, bought it when it came out in
book form. The Duchess of Marlborough gave
^loo for a single copy, and the Duchess of Queens-
berry 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 QUEEN AND LITERATURE 171
the King- had forbidden to be played. The King
caught her in the act, and asked what she was doing ?
She repHed : "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 Oueensberry is surprised and
well pleased that the King hath given her so agree-
able a command as to stay from Court, where she
never came for diversion, but to bestow a ofreat
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 hon-
1/2 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
our, 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-chamber-
lain 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 lauijhed 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 resign-
ing 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 popu-
lar 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 chassde 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." ^
Gay certainly did not suffer from the Lord
^ Dr. Arbuthnot to Swift, 19th March, 1729.
THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE 173
Chamberlain's action, for the subscriptions to
Polly brought him in ^1,200, whereas by The
Beggai^s 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 emol-
ument, 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 Lodgfe. He was a oreat 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
174 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
quarrel. The origin of the feud is involved in ob-
scurity, 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 knowm 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 pos-
sibility 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.
THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE 175
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 o-enius 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" aug-ht 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 plea-
sure 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
176 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
he could neither forgfet nor forg-ive. 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.
THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE 177
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 ad-
vantage. 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
VOL. II. 12
178 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
Half froth half v-enom, 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 de-
picted her as a wanton, scoffed at her eccentricities,
and hinted that she conferred her favours on " a
black man," the Sultan Ahmed of Turkey.
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
JOHN, LORD HERVEY.
THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE 179
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 sup-
pressing 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.^
But though Caroline was unfortunate in her rela-
tions 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 Ana/o£y,a.nd Berkeley,
who wrote T/ie 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
1 In his Memoirs Lord Hervey makes no mention of liis 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.
i8o CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS
speech".^ 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, how-
ever 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 Wilt-
shire, and worked as a day labourer and thresher