There is, however, one small and delicious piece of serendipity. Arguably Byron’s most famous lyric is ‘She walks in beauty’, composed in 1814 and inspired by his cousin by marriage, encountered one night at a ball. The name of this cousin was none other than Anne Wilmot, the wife of Sir Robert Wilmot, a politician and colonial administrator. Whether or not he was a descendant of Rochester, in this tiny but pleasing way the fortunes of the Byrons and Wilmots are forever tied together.
As the Victorian era hove into view, Rochester’s reputation began to be viewed differently once more. In an age of muscular Christianity and institutionalized sentimentality, his purported conversion became the most noteworthy thing about him. A typical example of this was a religious tract, published anonymously in 1840, from the British Tract Society, The Conversion of the Earl of Rochester, which took Burnet’s account as its basis and then shamelessly embroidered it, as it criticized Rochester’s ‘wicked practice, the lies he invented and the revengeful spirit in which he indulged’. It builds to the final insult that Rochester was nothing less than the English Voltaire, a statement that it is hard to imagine Rochester not being flattered by, especially given Voltaire’s rare and prescient appreciation of his work.
Even art followed this trend for lionizing Rochester the penitent. The minor painter Alfred Thomas Derby produced a memorably ghastly painting around 1850. Entitled either The Death of Rochester or A Last Request of the Earl of Rochester, it depicts a pallid Rochester on his deathbed in the arms of Elizabeth Wilmot, being ministered to by a clergyman, presumably Burnet but equally possibly Parsons. What lifts the picture from mere mundanity into the gleeful realms of kitsch is the heavenly light shining from the window onto Rochester, presumably to take his penitent soul up to heaven. The only things lacking are a stirring rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus and the text of Luke 15: 11–32—the Parable of the Prodigal Son—plastered underneath.
Thankfully, there were still those who remembered Rochester as a poet rather than a subject for tracts. Tennyson was especially fond of ‘A Satire against Reason and Mankind’ and could quote lines 12 to 28 by heart, with ‘almost terrible force’, according to one biographer. These lines were also much loved by the famous Master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett. There is also some acknowledgement that the poet and the man might be separated. Edmund Gosse, the scholar and critic, wrote in an introduction to a selection of his poems in an anthology that ‘by a strange and melancholy paradox the finest lyrical poet of the Restoration was also its worst-natured man’. Gosse describes him (unfairly) as ‘shifting and treacherous as a friend’, but also capable of ‘tenderness and quiet domestic humour’ in his letters to Elizabeth and of ‘sweetness and purity of feeling’ in his lyrics.
Gosse, like many early editors of Rochester, was hamstrung by both the uncertain attribution of many of the poems, and also what he termed the ‘Parnasse Satyrique’, into which Stygian pit of immorality ‘a modern reader can scarcely venture to dip’. It also says something of how low Rochester’s reputation had fallen that Gosse, a man who had some good to say of him, described him as ‘a petulant and ferocious rake’. With friends like this… Nonetheless, he makes the case for comparing Rochester to both Dryden and Donne, and makes a rather beguiling comparison between Rochester’s poetic muse and ‘a beautiful child which has wantonly rolled itself in the mud’. Unfortunately, this was about as flattering as many Victorian judgements on Rochester got; many openly wondered why his poetry was not burned as mere obscenity.
It was not until the 1920s that any serious critical interest in Rochester’s poetry, rather than his life, would emerge. This was for two reasons. The first is that Rochester’s anti-establishment sensibilities were a better fit in a world where the Modernist writings of such figures as T. S. Eliot (who described him as ‘courtly and polished’ and, like Gosse, compared him favourably to Donne), Ezra Pound and James Joyce frequently flirted with carnality, as well as implicitly and explicitly celebrating seventeenth-century literature. The second is that, after the cataclysmic slaughter of the First World War, a cynical and disillusioned air came over those who had survived, and they looked for writers as totems who could offer something other than the bluff imperial certainties of the Victorian age. Rochester as a deathbed penitent was of no interest to them, any more than his sexual escapades were. Instead, they responded to him as someone who had been lied to by those around him, and had rejected these lies in favour of striving for a more complex, more difficult but infinitely more rewarding truth.
The 1920s saw such editors as Eliot’s friend John Hayward and Johannes Prinz attempt to produce editions of Rochester’s poetry with biographical introductions, but they were stymied both by the absence of any consensus on what the Rochesterian canon consisted of, and by the stringent obscenity laws of the time. When Graham Greene wrote his biography, Lord Rochester’s Monkey, in the early 1930s, he was forced to use the bowdlerized versions of the poetry in existence, in which the last line of ‘Upon his drinking in a bowl’, for instance, becomes the mealy-mouthed ‘And then to love again’, rather than the pungent ‘And then to cunt again’. If this was intended as a sop to frightened editors, it did not work. Greene, then regarded as a minor novelist, was unable to convince his publisher that they needed a life of Rochester, and so the book gathered dust before being published in 1974, unaltered since its first conception.
As a reader would expect, given Greene’s lifelong fascination with unconventional anti-heroes and others who had wandered from the proper path, he had an enormous interest in Rochester’s singular career. Although the book is next to useless as a serious biography, as a consequence of the unreliability of the sources Greene was using, it frequently offers fascinating parallels with Greene’s own novels: compare, for instance, Rochester as an adulterous husband to Henry Scobie in The Heart of the Matter, or his propensity for social disorder to that of Pinkie in Brighton Rock. Greene also has a typically trenchant view of the deathbed conversion, writing that if Rochester was touched by the hand of God, ‘it did not touch him through the rational arguments of a cleric. If God appeared at the end, it was the sudden secret appearance of a thief.’
There were other major Rochester scholars throughout the twentieth century, whose exploration of his writing helped to lift his reputation from the mire into which it had sunk in the years before. Even as late as the 1930s, however, he was still regarded with contempt by F. R. Leavis, who described him with a treasurable—even Rochesterian—double entendre: ‘Rochester is not a great poet of any kind; yet he certainly had uncommon natural endowments.’ Special mention must go to David M. Vieth, whose unexpurgated edition of Rochester’s poetry in 1968 was the first such; and to Vivian de Sola Pinto, who knew whereof he wrote, having been an expert witness for the defence in the Lady Chatterley trial in 1960. Pinto’s 1962 biography of Rochester, Enthusiast in Wit, talks despairingly in its introduction of how Rochester ‘has been even more unfortunate than the metaphysical poets’ when it comes to his infamy, and bemoans how ‘his reputation was at the mercy of three sections of the English public, the Puritans, the Bacchanalians and the Gossips’. Pinto writes at the end of his introduction ‘the time is now ripe for a revaluation of Rochester’. Half a century on, it still is.
After Rochester’s death, many expected a rash of books and plays featuring him as a character. It is something of a surprise that, over the past three-and-a-quarter centuries, there has been comparatively little in the way of dramatic representation of a man whose every public action spoke of theatricality and performance. After the works that depicted him in his lifetime and shortly afterwards, most famously Etherege’s The Man of Mode, there was a conspicuous dramatic silence throughout most of the eighteenth century; proof, perhaps, that Rochester was too large and complex a figure for playwrights to deal with.
In the nineteenth century, the first time that his avatar took to the stage was in 1829, when a French drama, Rochester, written by Benjamin Antier and Théodore
Nézel, appeared in Paris. The French always were receptive to Rochester as a man, if not as a poet, as can be seen by his presentation by the Comte de Gramont as one of England’s most notable figures, and Voltaire’s praise of him. The work itself was of negligible merit, drawing heavily on the Don Juan myth and representing Rochester as an archetypal rake and libertine. However, Verdi saw the play and was impressed enough by the characterization of its anti-hero to plan his first opera, entitled Rocester, in 1835. Unfortunately he decided to change the setting from Restoration England to medieval Italy, and the work became the now forgotten Oberto, which received its premiere in 1839.
A more notable appearance, of sorts, came in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre, where the brooding and tormented Byronic hero bears the name Mr Rochester. Although this could be mere coincidence, Brontë had read and refers to the work of Samuel Johnson, including The Lives of the English Poets, and it is conceivable that she was also familiar with William Henry Ainsworth’s 1841 Restoration potboiler Old St Paul’s, in which Rochester, as usual characterized as a cunning lecher, appears in disguise—as, of course, Brontë’s Rochester does. However, attempting to draw parallels between her characterization of a passionate but ultimately noble and penitent figure and Johnson’s depiction of a man consumed by ‘lavish voluptuousness’ seems a doomed endeavour.
The twentieth century saw surprisingly few fictional appearances of Rochester, and when he was depicted, it tended to be in ‘popular literature’ as a stock rogue-seducer who was reformed by the love of a good woman at the end, as in Barbara Cartland’s 1979 bodice-ripper A Serpent of Satan. Anyone who has ever trudged their way through a book in Cartland’s oeuvre will know what to expect: a virginal heroine, a wicked lord, coyness in the final bedroom scene, and much breathily delivered dialogue along the lines of ‘I must be dreaming… I did not even dare to pray that you would love me’. Even as critics of the stature of Germaine Greer, Harold Love and Keith Walker produced valuable work about him, it seemed as if novelists, playwrights and film-makers were cowed by Rochester or—worse—unaware of him.
This changed in 1994, when Stephen Jeffreys’ play The Libertine was staged at the Royal Court Theatre, in a production directed by the then artistic director Max Stafford-Clark. The play begins with Rochester addressing the audience, making the bold claim ‘You will not like me’ and announcing ‘What I require of you is not your affection but your attention’. A more familiar note is soon struck, when he declares: ‘Ladies. An announcement. I am up for it. All the time.’ Generously, he soon extends this offer to the gentlemen in the audience as well.
The play has its moments of high comedy and pathos, but, in its original form, it often feels like Carry On Up The Restoration, with Jeffreys taking the relationship between Rochester and Elizabeth Barry, and his training her in the ways of naturalistic acting, as the central focus of the play, before ending with Rochester’s death. Arguably a more interesting dynamic, between Rochester and Charles, was later explored in a 2004 play by Craig Baxter, The Ministry of Pleasure, which was produced at a London fringe theatre to mild critical interest.
However, The Libertine enjoyed an American production in 1996 by the acclaimed Steppenwolf theatre company, with John Malkovich playing Rochester. Anyone who has seen his superbly reptilian Valmont in the film Dangerous Liaisons will know that Malkovich has an unparalleled ability to combine charm and menace, so he was perfectly cast, and the text was substantially revised. Malkovich was sufficiently fond of the play to buy the rights and to produce a film version, which eventually appeared in cinemas in 2005, after a lengthy and convoluted production process.
Despite the casting of Hollywood A-list star Johnny Depp as Rochester (Malkovich, gracefully accepting he was too old at fifty to play a man who died at thirty-three, took the role of Charles II instead), Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry and an excellent range of British character actors including Rosamund Pike (as Elizabeth), Tom Hollander (Etherege), Francesca Annis (Anne Wilmot) and Jack Davenport, the film is unsatisfying. Part of this is because a low budget and a decision to film exteriors in murk-o-vision combine to make the Restoration world a dingy, repellent place. Which may of course have been the point, but it makes it an unpleasant environment to spend time in.
Depp channels his recent success as Captain Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film into his performance, conveying something of Rochester’s charm and charisma but little of his decency, capacity for intellectual brilliance or emotional turmoil—although, to be fair, these facets are undeveloped in the script, adapted by Jeffreys from his play. Instead, there is undue emphasis on Rochester’s alcoholism, as there is in Jeremy Lamb’s 1993 biography So Idle A Rogue. There are small pleasures, such as a typically forthright score by Michael Nyman and some farcical moments of knockabout comedy, but the far from dissimilar Restoration drama Stage Beauty about the cross-dressing actor Ned Kynaston, with Billy Crudup and Claire Danes, made many of the same points in a more enjoyable manner when it was released in 2004.
The film also offers, deliberately or not, one of the more egregious blunders in recent historical cinema. Towards the end, a syphilis-racked Rochester, anachronistic false nose tentatively in place, drags himself into the House of Lords to deliver a rousing speech in support of the succession of Charles’s brother, James, despite his being a Catholic. An addition to the original play, it works well as a symbol of Rochester’s redemption, showing a talent for public speaking and a compassionate attitude towards Catholicism, and makes for a stirring climax. Unfortunately this speech was delivered not by John Wilmot, but by the subsequent Earl of Rochester, Laurence Hyde, whose sister had originally been married to James. It is one thing for Rochester’s poetry to be misattributed, but for aspects of his life to be similarly mixed up seems even more unfortunate.
In addition to Nyman, who set ‘Signior Dildo’ to music in the film, other contemporary composers have been inspired by Rochester’s life and writing. The Dutch composer Hans Kox wrote a chamber opera in 2003, Rochester’s Second Bottle, which takes its title from a letter of Rochester’s to Savile praising the wit and wisdom that the second bottle gives drinkers. Meanwhile, the much-lauded James MacMillan was inspired by the so-called ‘monkey portrait’ in the National Portrait Gallery to write a work in 1990, …as others see us…, which takes Rochester and others, including Byron, T. S. Eliot and Henry VIII, and offers ‘sound paintings’ of each. As MacMillan puts it, speaking of the Rochester segment: ‘the two musics influence each other, and after passing through the rhythms of the French overture (popular in the court at this time), the Poet becomes Monkey and Monkey becomes Poet.’ Rochester and his monkey remain inextricably entwined.
And so, at the start of the twenty-first century, Rochester still occupies a stealthily underground position in popular understanding. Beloved by musicians, writers and artists—that most Rochesterian of rock stars, Nick Cave, namechecks him, ‘riddled with the pox’, in his 2004 record ‘There She Goes My Beautiful World’—his work seems to look sardonically on at society and reject it, even today. In an era which reflects many of the hypocrisies and dual standards that Rochester loathed, his poetry has never been more relevant, nor his willingness to subvert the dull orthodoxies of conformity in favour of an iconoclastic expression of self. Everyone has their own interpretation of who Rochester was, whether it is the angel undefaced, the devil incarnate or something in between, and that is how it should be. As Rochester himself wrote, musing on fate, fortune and love:
All my past life is mine no more;
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams given o’er
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone.
Whatever is to come is not:
How can it then be mine?
The present moment’s all my lot,
And that, as fast as it is got,
Phyllis, is wholly thine.
* Fielding refers to
‘the rude answer that Rochester once gave a man, who had seen many things’. This is an allusion to the poem ‘To all curious critics and admirers of metre’, which lists various worldly wonders and ends with the words: ‘If you have seen all this —then kiss mine arse.’ Ironically, the poem is almost certainly not by Rochester.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
For more information, click one of the links below:
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Picture credits
Index
To read the selected works of John Wilmot, Songs & Verses Mannerly Obscene, click the link or turn the page.
~
Alexander Larman
An invitation from the publisher
To download a free copy of the works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, visit: www.headofzeus.com/rochester
Table of Contents
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Introduction
The Discovery
‘’Twas a Dispute ’Twixt Heaven and Earth’
‘Fair Chloris in a Pigsty Lay’
The Imperfect Enjoyment
Against Constancy
A Ramble in St James’s Park
Love and Life
‘Leave this Gaudy, Gilded Stage’
Upon his Drinking a Bowl
Signior Dildo
Blazing Star Page 37