4. Anne St John, by the Dutchborn court artist Sir Peter Lely (1618–80). Rochester’s mother combined piety with a staunch sense of duty to her family. Woe betide anyone who aroused her enmity.
5. Elizabeth Malet, Rochester’s long-suffering wife, by Sir Peter Lely. Despite Rochester’s attempt to wed her by force (1665), their eventual marriage (1667) would be a lasting and productive union.
6. A Dutch raid on English ships in the River Medway, 1667, by Pieter Cornelisz van Soest (fl.1640–67). The large ship to the right of centre is HMS Royal Charles, which has just been captured by the Dutch.
7. The Crimson Bedchamber, by Sir John Baptist Medina (1659–1710), a portrait group of gentlemen with musical instruments, traditionally said to depict the so-called ‘CABAL’ ministry of Charles II’s closest advisors (1668–c.74). The group includes George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (centre), Rochester’s mentor at court.
10. Charles Wilmot, Rochester’s only son, as depicted by a follower of Lely. Named after his godfather the king, Charles was a sickly boy who suffered from illness — possibly congenital syphilis — throughout his short life, and died the year after his father.
11. Elizabeth and Malet Wilmot, by Sir Peter Lely. Rochester’s two youngest daughters were both advantageously married off to local aristocrats by their grandmother, who took care that no trace of their father’s notoriety would endure past his death.
8. Charles II, portrayed by John Michael Wright (1617–94). The man whom Rochester would mock as ‘the easiest King and best-bred man alive’ had an uneven relationship with his protégé, veering between amused tolerance and anger.
9. Nell Gwyn, by Sir Peter Lely. ‘Pretty, witty Nell’, an actress and sometime prostitute, was Charles’s favourite mistress. She was on good terms with Rochester, who interceded nobly on her behalf for her inheritance.
12. The title page of George Etherege’s comedy The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter (first performed in 1676). Rochester’s friend Etherege depicted him as the rake Dorimant, of whom it is said ‘I know he is the devil, but he has something of the angel yet undefaced in him.’
13. A banquet at the court of Charles II, in an engraving by Peter Philippe (c.1640–after 1700). Royal banquets were raucous and drunken affairs. When Rochester chose to enliven one such occasion by destroying Charles’s prized Sundial, he found himself banished from court.
14. Elizabeth Barry, in a portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723). Barry was the greatest actress of her day, originating many famous roles. She and Rochester, who was both besotted by and jealous of her, conducted a passionate five-year love affair that resulted in the birth of a daughter.
15. Gilbert Burnet, by John Riley (1646–91). The ambitious and worldly clergyman was responsible for propagating the (possibly fictitious) tale of Rochester’s final deathbed repentance, which made his name and career.
16. The Death of Rochester, by Alfred Thomas Derby (1821–73). The posthumous rehabilitation of Rochester as a repentant sinner saved reached its nadir with this treasurable piece of Victorian kitsch, complete with shafts of heavenly light.
17. Johnny Depp as Rochester and Rosamund Pike as his wife Elizabeth Wilmot in The Libertine (2004). Despite a committed performance from Depp, Laurence Dunmore’s film of Rochester’s life proved to be a muddled and disappointing experience. The enjoyment, alas, was all too imperfect.
Bibliography
There have been many editions of Rochester’s poetry published over the centuries. Some—ancient and modern—are of limited use, thanks to their credulous inclusion of far too many dubiously and occasionally outright absurdly attributed poems. However, it is very hard to go wrong with either of the two major modern editions, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester—The Poems and Lucina’s Rape—ed. Keith Walker and Nicholas Fisher (Wiley-Blackwell 2010) or The Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Harold Love (Oxford 1999), both of which offer as comprehensive a canon as can be imagined. The most famous twentieth-century edition, and the one of the most use to a casual reader, is The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. David M. Vieth (Yale 1968), which made several controversial decisions—ordering the poetry by perceived chrono-thematic order; modernizing the text; excluding many poems that were thought to be canonical—but is nonetheless well worth reading. All three collections were used extensively in the preparation of this book.
The letters have been edited carefully and perceptively by Jeremy Treglown, and his sadly out-of-print edition (Rochester’s Letters, Blackwell 1980) is the near-definitive one, only omitting those letters that have been discovered since its publication, and which have been resurrected and discussed here. I live in hope that some of Rochester’s correspondence will one day rematerialize; it goes without saying that I would be grateful to hear from any readers with further information on this.
In terms of previous biographies, Rochester has suffered from the attentions of those who have sought to bend his life and work to their own purposes, leading to some dissatisfying and patchy books, especially in the past couple of decades. The best-known is Graham Greene’s Lord Rochester’s Monkey (Bodley Head 1974), but the most useful and perceptive that I encountered in my research is James William Johnson’s A Profane Wit (University of Rochester Press 2004), which, while aiming at a more specialized academic market than I have done, offers a variety of insights into both Rochester’s life and his family milieu, as well as a fresh and thought-provoking look at the poetry. Other earlier biographical studies that proved of help included Vivian de Sola Pinto’s Enthusiast in Wit (Routledge 1962) and the very first of all, Gilbert Burnet’s 1680 Some Remarkable Passages in the Life and Death of the Right Honourable John, Earl of Rochester, which, for all Burnet’s inevitable bias, is at least written by someone with first-hand knowledge of Rochester, and is invaluable as a result.
Although this is not primarily a critical work, it would be wrong to omit many of the volumes that have offered helpful perspectives on the poetry and, often, the life. Some of the best include That Second Bottle, ed. Nicholas Fisher (Manchester University Press 2001), a compilation of thought-provoking and provocative essays; The Spirit of Wit, ed. Jeremy Treglown (Blackwell 1982); Rochester: The Poems In Context, ed. Marianne Thormählen (Cambridge 1993); and Rochester and Court Poetry, David M. Vieth & Dustin Griffin (UCLA 1988), invaluable as a means of placing Rochester in his time and age. Vieth’s book Attribution in Restoration Poetry (Yale 1963) which, despite the title, mainly focuses on Rochester, is a fascinating companion to his edition of the poetry and helps clarify many of his attributive decisions. An excellent source of much contemporary—and subsequent—comment on Rochester is Rochester: The Debt To Pleasure, ed. John Adlard (Fyfield 1974), which draws on sources both familiar and unexpected to give a kaleidoscopic view of how the Earl was regarded by all sectors of society.
In terms of more specific chapter-by-chapter further reading, the following all proved invaluable, many throughout the book. Titles are organized here according to their first appearance.
CHAPTER 1
FRASER, Antonia, King Charles II (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1979)
HIBBERT, Christopher, Charles I (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1968)
LOCKYER, Roger (ed.), Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion (Oxford University Press 1967)
OLLARD, Richard, The Escape of Charles II (Hodder & Stoughton 1966)
PLOWDEN, Alison, In A Free Republic: Life In Cromwell’s England (Sutton 2006)
SMITH, Geoffrey, The Cavaliers In Exile (Palgrave 2003)
CHAPTER 2
BARKER, Nancy Nichols, Brother To The Sun King (Johns Hopkins 1989)
EVANS, G. R., The University of Oxford, A New History (IB Taurus 2010)
GARDINER, Robert (ed.), The Registers of Wadham College Oxford, 1613–1719 (1889)
MALLET, Charles Edward, A History of the University of Oxford (Methuen 1924)
WELLS, J., Wadham College
(F. E. Robinson 1898)
; WRIGHT, Thomas, Circulation (Chatto & Windus 2012)
CHAPTER 3
BÉDOYÈRE, Guy de la (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (Headstart 1994)
DOLMAN, Brett, Beauty, Sex And Power (Scala/HRP 2012)
KEAY, Anna, The Magnificent Monarch (Continuum 2008)
KEEBLE, N. H., The Restoration (Blackwell 2002)
LATHAM, Robert (ed.) The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Penguin 2003)
MILLER, John, Charles II (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1991)
PICARD, Liza, Restoration London (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1997)
UGLOW, Jenny, A Gambling Man (Faber 2009)
WILSON, Derek, All The King’s Women (Hutchinson 2003)
CHAPTER 4
CHARLTON, John (ed.), The Tower of London (HMSO 1978)
RAWSON, Claude, Satire and Sentiment 1660–1830 (Cambridge University Press 1994)
CHAPTER 5
HOPKINS, Graham, Constant Delights (Robson 2002)
HUME, Robert D. and Love, Harold (eds), Plays, Poems and Miscellaneous Writings Associated with George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (Oxford University Press 2007)
HUTTON, Ronald, Charles the Second (Clarendon Press 1989)
LINNANE, Fergus, The Lives Of The English Rakes (Portrait 2006)
WILSON, John Harold, A Rake And His Times: George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (Frederick Muller 1954)
CHAPTER 6
FEATHER, John, A History of British Publishing (Croom Helm 1988)
WYCHERLEY, William, The Country Wife And Other Plays, ed. Dixon, Peter (Oxford University Press 2008)
CHAPTER 7
PINTO, Vivian de Sola, Restoration Carnival (Folio Society, 1954)
CHAPTER 9
MARGOLIOUTH, H. M. (ed.), The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell (Oxford University Press 1971)
CHAPTER 10
ALCOCK, Thomas, The Famous Pathologist, or, The Noble Mountebank, ed. Pinto, Vivian de Sola (University of Nottingham 1961)
KATRITZKY, M. A., Women, Medicine and Theatre, 1500–1750: Literary mountebanks and performing quacks (Ashgate 2007)
TODD, Janet, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (André Deutsch 1996)
CHAPTER 11
CLARKE, T. E. S. & Foxcroft, H. C., A Life of Gilbert Burnet (Cambridge University Press 1907)
CHAPTER 12
KENYON, John, The Popish Plot (Heinemann, 1972)
LANE, Jane Titus Oates (Andrew Dakers 1949)
MARSHALL, Alan, The Strange Death of Edmund Godfrey (Sutton 1999)
WINN, James Anderson, John Dryden And His World (Yale University Press 1987)
CHAPTER 16
ELIOT, T. S., The varieties of metaphysical poetry, ed. Schuchard, Ronald
(Faber 1993)
FARLEY-HILLS, David (ed.), Rochester: The Critical Heritage (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1972)
HAMILTON, Anthony, Memoirs of the Comte de Gramont (Routledge 1930)
NORMAN, Charles, Rake Rochester (Crown Publishers 1954)
Acknowledgements
If writing a book of this nature is like running a marathon, then thanking those who have been invaluable in its construction and editing is more akin to the post-run pint. First amongst equals in the tavern of gratitude is my inspirational agent, Georgina Capel, whose enthusiasm for the project has been a constant buoy in its genesis, and the champagne will be on me next time. Drinks shall also be bought in abundance for all at Head of Zeus, especially Tom Webber, whose sympathetic and perceptive editing helped raise the text several substantive notches, my excellent copy-editor Ben Dupré, and Richard Milbank, whose intelligent and compassionate shepherding of the project is matched only by his indulgence towards those who, like me, occasionally take a glass of wine at lunchtime. It is, I like to think, what Rochester would have wanted.
A sober nod must be given to the many institutions and libraries and research institutes used in this project, a few of the most helpful of which have been the Bodleian, the British Library, Nottingham University, Wadham College, the Heinz Archive at the National Portrait Gallery, and, for a late-in-the-game discovery of some invaluable and previously unpublished letters, the Scottish National Records office. The London Library has been my base for the book’s creation, and a more comfortable and accommodating place to work is hard to imagine. I would also like to thank the Society of Authors for awarding me their Elizabeth Longford grant for historical biography, and I hope that the finished book repays their faith in the subject. My thanks also to Faber and Faber and Tom Stoppard for the use of the quotation from Arcadia, and to Pan Macmillan and Colin Dexter for their permission to cite the ‘fake Rochester’ poem from Death is Now My Neighbour.
A toast will then be offered to the many people who generously offered help, advice and encouragement along the way, including Lucy Worsley, Jeremy Treglown, Marianne Thormählen, Will Gompertz, Rowley Leigh, Donald Eastwood, Chris Lochery, Simon Renshaw, James Carter, Sarah Davidson, Sean Herdman-Low, Caru Sanders and, in particular, Nick Fisher, whose enthusiasm for all things relating to John Wilmot led to a couple of hugely enjoyable meetings and a much appreciated read of the first draft, to say nothing of many perceptive comments on points of detail. Large measures will be bought for James Douglass, Emrys Jones, Joseph Wilkins and James Dunn for many useful and enthralling conversations about their perspectives on seventeenth-century life and poetry, as well as my university tutors Anna Beer, Julian Thompson and Mark Atherton, all of whom in their various ways sent me down this particular path, for which they can be praised or blamed accordingly.
A glass will also be raised to absent friends, namely my father Andrew Larman, who bought me my first collection of Rochester’s verse and fatefully piqued my interest, and Sebastian Horsley, whose Rochesterian wit and flamboyance were only matched by a kindness and generosity that I believe his spiritual forebear would have appreciated. Then a further glass will be had with the far from absent Sophie Gregory, who has been an invaluable sounding board and source of debate for most of the questions and ideas raised in this book over the past decade. ‘Much wine had passed, with grave discourse…’
Finally, as the evening winds down, I must offer three particularly heartfelt expressions of thanks before last orders. My grandparents Barbara and Raymond Stephenson have been a source of invaluable support and assistance to me for more time than I can remember, and I am delighted that I can repay their faith in me with the appearance of this volume. No less gratitude is extended to Dan Jones who, in the unorthodox surroundings of a transatlantic plane journey, convinced me that my thoughts about Rochester and his milieu could be marshalled into a book of this nature, and his insightful and often trenchant subsequent conversations with me have been both inspirational and enjoyable, and have shaped the narrative in more ways than I can give him credit for. However, it is to my fiancée Nancy Alsop that the last word must go (as ever). She has been an invaluable and sympathetic companion throughout the writing and editing process, and it is little exaggeration to say that without her warm and insightful guidance, suggestions and enthusiasm, the book and I would both be much poorer.
Picture credits
1 · John Wilmot,
2nd Earl of Rochester.
The De Morgan Centre, London/The Bridgeman Art Library
2 · Charles Stuart with Henry Wilmot.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
3 · Wadham College, Oxford.
Mary Evans Picture Library
4 · Anne St John.
Cobbe Collection, Hatchlands Park/United Agents LLP
5 · Elizabeth Malet.
Topfoto
6 · A Dutch raid on English ships in the Medway.
Topfoto
7 · The Crimson Bedchamber.
Private Collection/De Agostini Picture Library/The Bridgeman Art Library
8 · Charles Wilmot.
Lydiard House & Park, Swindon
9 · Elizabeth and Malet Wilmot.
Topfoto
10 · King Charles II.
The Art Archive
/DeA Picture Library
11 · Nell Gwyn.
The Art Archive/Army and Navy Club/Eileen Tweedy
12 · Title page of The Man of Mode.
Wikimedia Commons
13 · A banquet at the court of Charles II.
The Art Archive
14 · Elizabeth Barry.
Topfoto
15 · Gilbert Burnet.
National Portrait Gallery
16 · The Death of Rochester.
Private Collection/Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library
17 · Still from The Libertine.
Isle of Man Film Ltd/ODYSSEY/KOBAL
ENDPAPERS
Panoramic view of London c.1670, looking from Southwark towards St Paul’s Cathedral, by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–77).
Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Index
A
Action party 19
Adderbury Manor 80, 101, 105, 117, 145, 158, 203; demolishment 347
Adultery and Fornication Act (1650) 15
Agreeable Companion, The 121
Ainsworth, William Henry: Old St Paul’s 360
Albemarle, Duke of (George Monck) 28, 52–4, 56, 59, 92, 109
Alcibiades 159, 160
Alcock, Thomas 229, 231, 233, 239, 341
All Souls College (Oxford) 31, 36
Anglo-Dutch Wars 193; First 61, 83–6; Second x, 83–6, 88, 92, 94, 107–8; Third 148
Annis, Francesca 362
anti-Catholicism 162, 270, 271–2, 275, 278
Antier, Benjamin 360
Apsley, Sir Allen 7
Arran, Earl of (James Douglas) 306–7, 318
Blazing Star Page 42