Blazing Star

by Larman, Alexander;

  He had no illusions about the seriousness of his condition, whatever he said to Elizabeth. In an increasingly rare letter to Elizabeth Barry, who was about to give birth to his child, he claimed ‘this is the first service my hand has done me since my being a cripple’, and, writing painfully, he expressed his love for her: ‘I assure you that you are very dear to me, and as long as I live, I will be kind to you.’ He also wrote to a concerned Savile, who asked for clarification of ‘the scurvy report of your being very ill’ and who, poignantly, begged for Rochester’s return to town because without him it was ‘so dull’. In a letter that exhibits all the wit and mock-religiosity that characterize his exchanges with Savile, Rochester calls himself ‘almost blind, utterly lame and scarce within the reasonable hopes of ever seeing London again’, but he is still not ‘entirely mortified and dead’. He even, with knowing outrageousness, alludes to sodomy at the end of the letter, which he dispatched care of the handsome young French musician James Paisible, who had been entertaining him, and describes himself as ‘un bougre lasse’, or ‘a tired bugger’. He could scarcely have risen to any sexual activity in his weakened condition, but the allusion was a signal to Savile that, maimed though he was, the fight had not yet left him.

  Savile visited Rochester at Woodstock in late October, and found him somewhat recovered, if indeed he had not been exaggerating his account of his disposition for dramatic and comic effect; he wonders in a subsequent letter how ‘a man both lame and blind could be so merry’. A laundry list of court gossip and news follows, including that the jovial oaf Tom Killigrew is a recent widower and ‘laments his condition that fortune has made it possible for him to play the fool again’ and that the odorous court hanger-on and clown Will Fanshaw has had a daughter. He also alludes to how the court poets have been shocked by a libel allegedly composed by Rochester at Woodstock (which had materialized at the fashionable coffee-house, Will’s, no doubt placed there by one of Rochester’s enemies in town). He ends the letter by begging for Rochester’s return, ‘though upon crutches’.

  This ‘libel’ could have taken many guises. It might have been one of Rochester’s intemperate late satires upon Carr Scrope, finally coming into public consciousness. It could just as easily have been Scrope’s own ‘In Defence of Satire’, wrongly ascribed to Rochester, or any one of the dozens of poor imitations of his work. Or, indeed, it could have been a brilliant but now lost poem, fleetingly seeing general readership. In any case, Rochester, ignorant of its content, responded to Savile by asking for a copy and declared himself jubilant about any insult paid to ‘that most unwitty generation’ of court scribblers.

  Rochester allowed Buckingham and Savile to visit him on his sick bed, but he kept his wife at arm’s length. He was ashamed of his sickness and appearance, but also, in his hard-living way, he, like his father, found the presence of a wife to be an irritation, and took pains to avoid her while he led his simulacrum of a bachelor existence. That this caused her much misery can be seen by her letters, one of which only came to light in 2006. She writes how she does not expect to see him in the country, or even in London, ‘for I believe from my heart it is not the inconvenience of a winter journey that hinders you from giving me oftener the happiness of your company, but merely the disagreeableness of mine’. That Elizabeth was depressed at Rochester’s continued absence seems clear; in another letter, she begs him to come to Adderbury, ‘though I cannot flatter myself so much as to expect it’, and says that she will be ‘not a little rejoiced’ if he sends for her to come to Woodstock. She signs herself ‘your faithful humble wife’, displaying a humility and pathos that might have moved another man.

  Not Rochester, whose conviction that death was imminent led him, in his reply to Elizabeth on 20 November 1677, to describe himself as happier that he had ‘the torments of the stone upon me’ than ‘the unspeakable one of being an eyewitness to your uneasiness’. That she would be a ‘much respected widow’ when rid of him offered him a sense of release; he alludes to an ‘affliction’ that has beset him for the past three years, which could have been either his affair with Elizabeth Barry or the development of syphilis, or both. Love and disease were equal in Rochester’s mind; both transmitted by sex, both tearing through the mind and both resulting in nothing but unhappiness and loss.

  Perhaps the thought of imminent death, and its attendant release from pain, perversely cheered him. There were those in town openly hoping for his end, although more charitable souls were keen to hear of his recovery. In another November letter to Savile, he had recovered something of his old joie de vivre, calling himself ‘the grievance of all prudent persons’ and ‘the scorn of ugly ladies (which are very near all)’. Away from the ugly and beautiful alike, he had time to think about Elizabeth Barry, then nearing the end of her pregnancy. He sent her maids to attend her in her confinement, but received no news from her about the birth of their child. Eventually, he learnt from Savile, rather than Elizabeth Barry, that she had given birth to a daughter, who was also christened Elizabeth. Despite her successes on the stage, Barry still wanted for money; Savile alluded to ‘a friend and protectress’ of hers, implying that Rochester had been ungenerous both in funds and in presence towards one who had, after all, loved him and borne his daughter. Rochester’s response was to write to her, expressing his delight that both she and her child were delivered safely, and sending her ‘trifles’, presumably some sweetmeats or jewellery. Money, despite Savile’s hints, was not forthcoming, indicating either callous disregard or, at best, a thoughtless lack of real interest in his illegitimate daughter and her mother. His ever-present penury does not excuse his refusal even to visit them, although perhaps his ill health made it impossible. Nonetheless, if he had been well enough to caper around Woodstock naked two months before, it seems strange that he was unable to pay at least a brief visit to his once beloved mistress.

  Others were similarly frustrated by the lack of Rochester’s company. He wrote to his young nephew Edward Lee on 23 December, now heir apparent to Woodstock Park, to cancel a planned Christmas visit, claiming that ‘the change of the weather makes it a dangerous journey for a man in no better health than I am’. In an effort to provide for his own family, Rochester tactfully describes himself as a kind uncle and a faithful servant, attempting to head off the criticism that Lee had heard about him by saying ‘the character you have of me from others may give you some reason to consider this no farther than good nature obliges you’; he then ridicules the idea by saying: ‘if I am ever so happy to live where my inclinations to you may show themselves, be assured you shall not want very good proofs.’ His good nature was not shown by a Christmas visit to his family; instead, he sent his wife (still lingering in Adderbury) a lamb, and purchased his mother a ham and a doe. Feeling better, he planned a trip to London, to reacquaint himself with the ‘rakehells’ and to see his new child for the first time. As ever, it was an eventful visit.

  The year 1678 saw Rochester reach the end of his long affair with Elizabeth Barry. Their daughter’s birth, far from bringing about a rapprochement, led to what Rochester described as a ‘torment of repentance’ on her part, and in an unusually anguished and troubled letter that he wrote to her soon after returning to town, he expresses his hurt at how he found ‘you repent the kindness you showed me, and undervalue the humble service I had for you’. Lacking Elizabeth Barry’s voice in these exchanges, any interpretation of her side has to be imagined. She had just given birth, probably after a long and painful labour, to a child by a man who was widely rumoured to be evil beyond belief and who had been largely absent from her life for the previous six months. This man, who was said to have other mistresses as well as a wife, was riddled with syphilis, with which he had almost certainly infected both her and her child, and offered no financial support, preferring to palm her off with a box of petty gifts. It is easy to imagine her frustration and misery.

  Rochester’s own feelings are more complex. That he made use of Elizabeth Barry for his own e
njoyment is true, but it is equally likely that he was in love with her, helping her burgeoning theatrical career out of pure altruism and relishing his involvement with one who matched him for wit and irreverence—​as, of course, his wife had in the early days of their courtship and marriage. When he writes that their love ‘is equally unjust and cruel to us both, and ought therefore to die’, it is not mere posturing, but imbued with a genuine sense of imminent loss. His subsequent letters to her alternate wildly and intemperately between self-loathing, self-pity, fury and a desire to correct falsehoods—​or, as he describes it at the beginning of one such epistle, written immoderately at 3 a.m., ‘anger, spleen, revenge and shame’. One moment, he is writing ‘give me leave to pity myself, which is more than ever you will do for me’; the next he is claiming that he values her too much to be capable of neglect.

  By this stage, Rochester was too ill to behave with restraint and decorum; then again, he had seldom behaved with restraint and decorum before. In March 1678 he collapsed while in London, probably on account of the weakness of his syphilis-ridden body, and once again it was rumoured that his death was imminent. He was seriously ill for about a month, and it is telling that no letters of his survive from this period, or indeed until June. Too weak and fragile at first to return to the country, he lay on his potential deathbed in his Whitehall lodgings, occasionally attended by clergymen praying for his immortal soul—​something that he took no active part in.

  His friends gave what support they could. There is no record of Charles offering any assistance, moral or financial; either he was too busy arranging secret treaties with Louis XIV, or he had no interest in bothering himself over his sometime supporter. Instead, Rochester was visited by the likes of Will Fanshaw and Jack Verney, son of his mother’s friend Ralph Verney, who reported in a letter of 25 April to his father that Rochester ‘has been very ill and very penitent, but is now bettering’. Others, like Savile and Rochester’s young protégé, the poet and dramatist Francis Fane, were themselves indisposed with various illnesses, but managed to write either consoling letters, or, in Fane’s case, a Horatian ode, ‘To the Earl of Rochester, upon the report of his sickness in town’.

  Rochester, believing himself at death’s door, made certain gestures in the direction of moral improvement, hence the presence of clergymen and Verney’s comment that he was ‘very penitent’. This drew the attention of various ambitious ministers, not least the Chaplain of the Rolls, Gilbert Burnet, who was also a friend of Savile’s father George. Through him Burnet became aware of Rochester and heard the mutterings from the gutter, although he only became a pivotal figure in the earl’s life the following year. He later wrote that this illness ‘brought him so near death when I first knew him, when his spirits were so low and spent, that... he did not think to live an hour’. Yet, by May, Rochester had recovered sufficiently to endure the sixteen- or seventeen-hour journey from London to Adderbury, presumably in as much comfort as the cramped environment of a four-horse carriage would allow, where he convalesced at his family home.

  It is here that he wrote, or at least completed, one of his last major poems, ‘Upon Nothing’. Differing greatly in both form and tone to his earlier, long satirical works, it is particularly noteworthy because at least one draft, currently residing in the National Archives in Kew, has corrections and amendments in Rochester’s mother’s handwriting. This might either indicate a posthumous edit, or, more interestingly, suggest a literary collaboration between mother and son. However, Anne’s sensibilities were so different to Rochester’s that it is most likely that her role was as maternal amanuensis, rather than inspired poet.

  Whether she was aware that ‘nothing’ was contemporary slang for vagina is unclear, but the religious overtones within the work stem from a source other than Rochester’s jokey appropriations of scriptural language to amuse his friends and lovers. The poem addresses the philosophical and theological issue of the world being created out of a void, wherefore ‘nothing’ is the source of all things. The poem begins in quasi-Miltonic style:

  Nothing, thou elder brother even to shade,

  Who had’st a being, ere the world was made,

  And well fixed, art alone of ending not afraid.

  Ere Time and Place were, Time and Place were not

  When primitive Nothing Something had begot

  Then all proceeded from the great united – What?

  The word that springs to mind reading this is ‘portentous’. The first half of the poem feels atypical of Rochester’s work, eschewing humour or social commentary in favour of grandiose allusions to Genesis and musings on original sin. It might be the work of another writer (potentially Buckingham, who is credited with the first six verses in the copy-text) were it not for the later return of emphasis to traditional Rochesterian tropes:

  Yet this of thee the wise may truly say:

  Thou from the virtuous nothing dost delay,

  And to be part of thee the wicked wisely pray.

  Great Negative! How vainly would the wise

  Enquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise

  Didst thou not stand to paint their vain philosophies!

  Thus Rochester returns to his favourite poetic idea: a righteous attack on both vanity and puffed-up pride. This manifests itself in social satire against both kingship—​‘That sacred monarchs should in council sit / With persons highly thought at best for nothing fit’; and court—​‘While weighty something modestly abstains / From princes’ coffers and from statesmen’s brains’. The concept of ‘nothing’, now less a religious one than its secular equivalent, ‘dwells with fools in grave disguise’ of an ecclesiastical nature, consisting of ‘lawn sleeves and furs and gowns, when they like thee look wise’. As in ‘A Satire against Reason and Mankind’, the appearance of godliness to these is far more important than its sincere expression. The final two verses, comprising a list of wittily xenophobic and social abuse, represent a complete volte-face from the language of the beginning, as Rochester details how ‘nothing’ has become commonplace for many:

  French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy,

  Hibernian learning, Scotch civility,

  Spaniards’ dispatch, Danes’ wit are mainly seen in thee;

  The great man’s gratitude to his best friend,

  Kings’ promises, whores’ vows—​towards thee they bend,

  Flow swiftly into thee, and in thee ever end.

  Only Rochester could end a poem of this nature with the witty jokes of a Restoration stage character.

  On 2 June 1678, this ‘great man’ had cause to be grateful to his own best friend. He received a reassuring missive from Savile, who alluded to the ‘scurvy alarums’ he had heard of Rochester’s health, but mentioned his relief at having heard that he was on ‘the improving hand’: ‘if there be a man living gladder than myself, I am much mistaken.’

  Savile was also suffering. He took a rueful enjoyment in letting Rochester know about his own illnesses—​‘the return of my venereal pains have thrown me back to dry mutton and diet drink’—​and about a disagreement that he had had with John Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, whom Savile had opposed in the Commons over the question of military action against France. A letter to Lauderdale sent in May 1678 gives a good account of how Charles behaved with those, such as Savile and Rochester, whom he believed stood against him:

  The King, upon the first sight of [Savile] fell into such a passion, that his face and lips became as pale (almost) as death, his cheeks and arms trembled, and then he said to Saville, ‘You villain, how dare you have the impudence to come into my presence, when you are guilty of such baseness as you have shown this day? I do now and from henceforth discharge you from my service, commanding you never to come any more into my presence, nor to any place where I shall happen to be.’

  Such outbreaks of royal petulance, even amongst his favourites, were considered sufficiently usual for Savile not even to bother mentioning it to Rochester, but instead to bemoan that t
he cancelled war against France would disappoint ‘the fine gentlemen’ and ‘this noble army’. It is likely that Rochester read his friend’s pro-military sentiments, smiled thinly and considered how false an idea dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was to him—​a man who had served with conspicuous honour a decade before and now seemed fated to die in a far more ignoble fashion.

  The one thing that Rochester was always keen to receive from court was gossip, the more scurrilous and sordid the better, and a lengthy update was soon provided by Savile. At times, the laundry list of baseness provided by ‘a friend in town’ verges on the comic. The unfortunate Fanshaw was suffering from syphilis-induced arthritis, with his mouth standing ‘quite awry’, and Savile mocks him as ‘the only creature upon earth poorer and pockier than myself’. The existence of another—​Rochester—​was tactfully omitted. He writes

  of nobles scheming to prove the illegitimacy of others and of great ladies indulging in machinations to seat their relatives in positions of high state, the whole thing watched over by the ageing and increasingly unimpressive Charles, sardonically called ‘Charlemagne’ by Savile.

  Savile asked for Rochester’s help, but the enfeebled earl was taking his leave from court occupations. He replied gracefully, noting his continued illness in a flattering fashion by saying: ‘Any kind of correspondence with such a friend as you is very agreeable, and therefore you will easily believe I am very ill when I lose the opportunity of writing to you.’ Comparing himself unfavourably to a contemporary Polonius-like figure, a Master of Requests called Thomas Povey, who ‘hinders further compliment’, Rochester, still far from well, strikes an elegiac note in his letter, perhaps unironically inviting comparisons with ‘The Disabled Debauchee’, when he writes at the end: ‘you may judge whether I was a good pimp or no... but some thought otherwise and so, truly, I have renounced business; let abler men try it.’