Volume 1 — [STEELE.
Reading edition
From Tuesday, June 7, to Thursday, June 9, 1709.
From my own Apartment, June 8.
I have read the following letter with delight and approbation, and I hereby order Mr. Kidney at St. James's, and Sir Thomas at White's274 (who are my clerks for enrolling all men in their distant classes, before they presume to drink tea or chocolate in those places), to take care, that the persons within the descriptions in the letter be admitted, and excluded according to my friend's remonstrance.275
"To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.; at Mr. Morphew's near Stationers' Hall.
"June 6, 1709.
"SIR,
"Your paper of Saturday276 has raised up in me a noble emulation, to be recorded in the foremost rank of worthies therein mentioned; and if any regard be had to merit or industry, I may hope to succeed in the promotion, for I have omitted no toil or expense to be a proficient; and if my friends do not flatter, they assure me, I have not lost my time since I came to town. To enumerate but a few particulars; there's hardly a coachman I meet with, but desires to be excused taking me, because he has had me before. I have compounded two or three rapes; and let out to hire as many bastards to beggars. I never saw above the first act of a play: and as to my courage, it is well known, I have more than once had sufficient witnesses of my drawing my sword both in tavern and playhouse. Dr. Wall277 is my particular friend; and if it were any service to the public to compose the difference between Marten and Sintilaer278 the pearl-driller, I don't know a judge of more experience than myself: for in that I may say with the poet,
"'Quæ regio in villa nostri non plena laboris?'279
"I omit other less particulars, the necessary consequences of greater actions. But my reason for troubling you at this present is, to put a stop, if it may be, to an insinuating, increasing set of people, who sticking to the letter of your treatise, and not to the spirit of it, do assume the name of 'pretty fellows'; nay, and even get new names, as you very well hint. Some of them I have heard calling to one another, as I have sat at White's and St. James's, by the names of Betty, Nelly, and so forth. You see them accost each other with effeminate airs: they have their signs and tokens like freemasons: they rail at women-kind; receive visits on their beds in gowns, and do a thousand other unintelligible prettinesses that I cannot tell what to make of. I therefore heartily desire you would exclude all this sort of animals.
"There is another matter I am foreseeing an ill consequence from, but may be timely prevented by prudence; which is, that for the last fortnight, prodigious shoals of volunteers have gone over to bully the French, upon hearing the peace was just signing; and this is so true, that I can assure you, all engrossing work about the Temple is risen above 3s. in the pound for want of hands. Now as it is possible some little alteration of affairs may have broken their measures, and that they will post back again, I am under the last apprehension, that these will, at their return, all set up for 'pretty fellows,' and thereby confound all merit and service, and impose on us some new alteration in our nightcap-wigs280 and pockets, unless you can provide a particular class for them. I cannot apply myself better than to you, and I am sure I speak the mind of a very great number as deserving as myself."
The pretensions of this correspondent are worthy a particular distinction: he cannot indeed be admitted as a "pretty," but is, what we more justly call, a "smart fellow." Never to pay at the playhouse, is an act of frugality, that lets you into his character. And his expedient in sending his children a-begging before they can go, are characteristical instances that he belongs to this class. I never saw the gentleman; but I know by his letter, he hangs his cane on his button;281 and by some lines of it, he should wear red-heeled shoes;282 which are essential parts of the habit belonging to the order of "smart fellows."
My familiar is returned with the following letter from the French king:
"Versailles, June 13, 1709.
"Louis XIV. to Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.283
"SIR,
"I have your epistle, and must take the liberty to say, that there has been a time, when there were generous spirits in Great Britain, who would not have suffered my name to be treated with the familiarity you think fit to use. I thought liberal men would not be such time-servers, as to fall upon a man because his friends are not in power. But having some concern for what you may transmit to posterity concerning me, I am willing to keep terms with you, and make a request to you, which is, that you would give my service to the nineteenth century (if ever you or yours reach to them), and tell them, that I have settled all matters between them and me by Monsieur Boileau. I should be glad to see you here."
It is very odd this prince should offer to invite me into his dominions, or believe I should accept the invitation. No, no, I remember too well how he served an ingenious gentleman, a friend of mine,284 whom he locked up in the Bastille for no reason in the world, but because he was a wit, and feared he might mention him with justice in some of his writings. His way is, that all men of sense are preferred, banished, or imprisoned. He has indeed a sort of justice in him, like that of the gamesters; if a stander-by sees one at play cheat, he has a right to come in for snares, for knowing the mysteries of the game. This is a very wise and just maxim; and if I have not left at Mr. Morphew's, directed to me, bank bills for £200 on or before this day sevennight, I shall tell how Tom Cash got his estate. I expect three hundred pounds of Mr. Soilett, for concealing all the money he has lent to himself, and his landed friend bound with him, at thirty per cent. at his scrivener's. Absolute princes make people pay what they please in deference to their power: I do not know why I should not do the same, out of fear or respect to my knowledge. I always preserve decorums and civilities to the fair sex: therefore if a certain lady, who left her coach at the New Exchange285 door in the Strand, and whipped down Durham Yard into a boat with a young gentleman for Fox Hall;286 I say, if she will send me word, that I may give the fan which she dropped, and I found, to my sister Jenny, there shall be no more said of it. I expect hush-money to be regularly sent for every folly or vice any one commits in this whole town; and hope I may pretend to deserve it better than a chamber-maid, or valet-de-chambre: they only whisper it to the little set of their companions; but I can tell it to all men living, or who are to live. Therefore I desire all my readers to pay their fines, or mend their lives.
White's Chocolate-house, June 8.
My familiar being come from France, with an answer to my letter to Lewis of that kingdom, instead of going on in a discourse of what he had seen in that Court, he put on the immediate concern of a guardian, and fell to inquiring into my thoughts and adventures since his journey. As short as his stay had been, I confessed I had had many occasions for his assistance in my conduct; but communicated to him my thoughts of putting all my force against the horrid and senseless custom of duels. "If it were possible," said he, "to laugh at things in themselves so deeply tragical as the impertinent profusion of human life, I think I could divert you with a figure I saw just after my death, when the philosopher threw me, as I told you some days ago, into the pail of water.287 You are to know, that when men leave the body, there are receptacles for them as soon as they depart, according to the manner in which they lived and died. At the very instant that I was killed, there came away with me a spirit which had lost its body in a duel. We were both examined. Me, the whole assembly looked at with kindness and pity, but at the same time with an air of welcome, and consolation: they pronounced me very happy, who had died in innocence; and told me, a quite different place was allotted to me, than that which was appointed for my companion; there being a great distance from the mansions of fools and innocents: 'though at the same time,' said one of the ghosts, there is a great affinity between an idiot who has been so for long life, and a child who departs before maturity. But this gentleman who has arrived with you is a fool of his own making, is ignorant out of choice, and will fare accordingly.' The assembly began to flock about him, and one said to him, 'Sir, I observed you came into the gate of persons murdered, and I desire to know what brought you to your untimely end?' He said, he had been a second. Socrates (who may be said to have been murdered by the commonwealth of Athens) stood by, and began to draw near him, in order, after his manner, to lead him into a sense of his error by concessions in his own discourse. 'Sir,' said that divine and amicable spirit, 'what was the quarrel?' He answered, 'We shall know very suddenly, when the principal in the business comes, for he was desperately wounded before I fell.' 'Sir,' said the sage, 'had you an estate?' 'Yes, sir,' the new guest answered, 'I have left it in a very good condition; I made my will the night before this occasion.' 'Did you read it before you signed it?' 'Yes sure, sir,' said the newcomer. Socrates replies, could a man that would not give his estate without reading the instrument, dispose of his life without asking a question? That illustrious shade turned from him, and a crowd of impertinent goblins, who had been drolls and parasites in their lifetime, and were knocked on the head for their sauciness, came about my fellow-traveller, and made themselves very merry with questions about the words 'carte' and 'terce' and other terms of fencers. But his thoughts began to settle into reflection upon the adventure which had robbed him of his late being; and with a wretched sigh, said he, 'How terrible are conviction and guilt when they come too late for penitence!'" Pacolet was going on in this strain, but he recovered from it, and told me, it was too soon to give my discourse on this subject so serious a turn; you have chiefly to do with that part of mankind which must be led into reflection by degrees, and you must treat this custom with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to pronounce sentence upon it. There is foundation enough for raising such entertainments from the practice on this occasion. Don't you know, that often a man is called out of bed to follow implicitly a coxcomb (with whom he would not keep company on any other occasion) to ruin and death? Then a good list of such as are qualified by the laws of these uncourteous men of chivalry to enter into combat (who are often persons of honour without common honesty): these, I say, ranged and drawn up in their proper order, would give an aversion to doing anything in common with such as men laugh at and contemn. But to go through this work, you must not let your thoughts vary, or make excursions from your theme: consider at the same time, that the matter has been often treated by the ablest and greatest writers; yet that must not discourage you; for the properest person to handle it, is one who has roved into mixed conversations, and must have opportunities (which I shall give you) of seeing these sort of men in their pleasures and gratifications; among which, they pretend to reckon fighting. It was pleasantly enough said of a bully in France, when duels first began to be punished: "The king has taken away gaming, and stage-playing, and now fighting too; how does he expect gentlemen shall divert themselves?"288