by Leo Damrosch
Hoping to force an unconditional surrender, the allies decided to make a drive for Paris. The drive ended in horrifying bloodshed in the battle of Malplaquet in Belgium. The allied army lost twenty-one thousand killed and wounded, and the French army eleven thousand. “In many places,” a British general wrote, “they lie as thick as ever you saw a flock of sheep. . . . I hope in God it may be the last battle I may ever see.” A corporal recalled later, “All the hedges and ditches were lined with disabled men, the horrible cries and groans of the wounded terrified my soul.”11 Even if doctors had been available, the primitive state of medicine meant that there was little they could have done for these men, who were left to die slowly.
France claimed victory, but it was a Pyrrhic one; a French general said that a few more victories like that one would destroy his army. Perhaps the most lasting consequence of the battle was the derisive folk song “Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre”—“Marlborough Went Off To War.”12 The war dragged on, more dispiritingly than ever.
BLOOD AND TREASURE
Tories loathed the Whig war policy not just because it destroyed human lives, but because of the way it was financed. Wars had formerly been paid for with temporary, ad hoc taxation, but that meant that Parliament could effectively end them by cutting off the money supply. To secure a dependable way of supporting a protracted campaign, William III’s ministers created the first national debt in 1693, and once in existence it inevitably grew. People gladly bought government-backed securities and annuities, which were known as “the funds.” Before long everyone with money to invest had some of it in the funds, Swift included.
This was a financial revolution, creating a modern system of credit and public debt in order to sustain what John Brewer has called a “fiscal-military state.” Public expenditure rose during the war from ₤3 million a year to ₤13 million, and the national debt from ₤10 million to ₤50 million. At least 75 percent of government expenditure in eighteenth-century Britain went to war, and at times it would reach 85 percent.13 There were profound civilian consequences. In order to manage these new obligations, a centralized bureaucracy was created, as had already happened in France.
These changes were much to the taste of the Whigs and their supporters in the financial City. Winning the war would bring Britain a world empire, and empire would bring unprecedented wealth. Addison, who soon became a leading Whig spokesman, paid unctuous tribute to the Royal Exchange: “As I am a great lover of mankind, my heart naturally overflows with pleasure at the sight of a happy and prosperous multitude, insomuch that at many public solemnities I cannot forbear expressing my joy with tears that have stolen down my cheeks. For this reason I am delighted to see such a body of men thriving in their own private fortunes, and at the same time promoting the public stock.”14
The Tories hated the fiscal-military state, and Swift would soon join them. In the years to come he repeatedly used the expression “blood and treasure,” which he may have coined. There was a very practical reason why most country squires were passionately Tory. Individual incomes were largely secret, so it was impossible to tax income or even investments. The swelling national debt, along with subsidies to foreign allies and maintenance of the army, were largely funded by a tax on landowners. And this meant that the country squires, who deeply opposed the debt and the war, found themselves obliged to pay for them.15
Meanwhile, investors in the debt, who drew regular interest and got richer and richer, appeared to have a selfish stake in a war that must never end. Fashionable London carriages, Swift wrote, were filled with profiteers and army officers cashing in the spoils of battle, “a species of men quite different from any that were ever known before the Revolution, consisting either of generals and colonels, or of such whose fortunes lie in funds and stocks; so that power, which according to the old maxim was used to follow land, is now gone over to money.”16
Years later, when a speculative scheme known as the South Sea Bubble imploded, Swift felt vindicated. “I ever abominated that scheme of politics (now about thirty years old) of setting up a moneyed interest in opposition to the landed. For I conceived there could not be a truer maxim in our government than this: that the possessors of the soil are the best judges of what is for the advantage of the kingdom. If others had thought the same way, funds of credit and South Sea projects would neither have been felt nor heard of.” Swift also declared, “I have often wished that a law were enacted to hang up half a dozen bankers every year.”17
The War of the Spanish Succession did make Britain a world power. The modern Churchill said of his ancestor: “By his invincible genius in war, and his scarcely less admirable qualities of wisdom and management, he completed that glorious process that carried England from her dependency upon France under Charles II to ten years’ leadership of Europe.”18 But after the fiasco of Malplaquet, the war was increasingly unpopular, and Swift would play a leading role in the campaign to end it. Beyond that, he would always fiercely condemn the entire policy of British imperialism.
COURTING THE GREAT WHIGS
During 1707–8, Swift kept pushing his First Fruits agenda and working to ingratiate himself with the ministry. He sent regular reports to Archbishop King, and although it’s sometimes said that there was bad feeling between them at this stage, the evidence doesn’t support it. King did find Swift headstrong at times, and Swift did think that King could have tried harder to advance his career. But they always treated each other with respect, and appreciated a mutual disinterestedness that was rare in the Church hierarchy. “I never was a favourite of any government,” King wrote to Swift, “nor have I a prospect of being so, though I believe I have seen forty changes, nor would I advise any friend to sell himself to any so as to be their slave.” Swift in turn told King that his letters were “full of everything that can inspire the meanest pen with generous and public thoughts.” And although Swift didn’t always disclose everything he knew—there was much that was confidential—he sent full accounts of the political ebb and flow. King, in return, offered sensible advice, for example, that to argue that a given measure would benefit Ireland was a sure way to get it blocked.19
When we read accounts of the Whig grandees, they may seem interchangeable as well as remote—Whigs in wigs. The two words do overlap; Swift once teased Stella: “Who are those Wiggs that think I am turned Tory? Do you mean Whigs? Which Wiggs and wat do you mean?” He also made the connection in his City Shower:
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed;
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.20
Among these powerful men, Swift found the witty, brilliant Somers the most attractive, and the formidable Godolphin the most off-putting. Immensely privileged patricians, all of them moved in a far different world from the vicar of Laracor. Of Godolphin, for example, Trevelyan said approvingly, “Newmarket [racetrack] was his spiritual home, and not the least of his services to England was done in the capacity of breeder of race horses.”21
In after years Swift liked to claim that he never flattered the great, but that was far from true. He did flatter them, until it became obvious that they were never going to help him. For a while his hopes were placed in the Earl of Halifax, whose portrait captures his ironic worldliness.
Sometimes Swift would even suggest that he was the perfect candidate for a specific vacancy. After declaring that Halifax had “fifty times more wit than all of us together,” he suggested, “Pray, my Lord, desire Dr. South to die about the fall of the leaf, for he has a prebend of Westminster which will make me your neighbor, and a sinecure in the country, both in the Queen’s gift; which my friends have often told me would fit me extremely.” The sinecure was the parish of Islip, just four miles from Oxford. Halifax replied politely that Dr. South was not immortal, “and upon all occasions that shall offer, I will be your constant solicitor, your sincere admirer, and your unalterable fri
end.” He never did anything, however, and Swift noted later, “I kept this letter as a true original of courtiers and court promises.” And when he came upon a writer’s claim that Halifax was “a great encourager of learning and learned men” and “patron of the Muses,” Swift wrote in the margin, “His encouragements were only good words and dinners—I never heard him say one good thing, or seem to taste what was said by another.”22
36. Lord Godolphin. On his shoulder is the emblem of the Order of the Garter, with the cross of St. George and the legend Honi soit qui mal y pense; at the left is the white staff that denoted the office of lord treasurer.
37. Lord Halifax.
In the long run, the politician who would matter most to Swift was Robert Harley, though they were not close at this time. Harley was the leader of a group known as the Country Whigs, because they promoted the “country interest” of landed gentlemen as opposed to the “city interest” of merchants and financiers. From 1704 to 1708 Harley held office as secretary of state, but he was distrusted by his colleagues, who saw him as a closet Tory, and in due course he would indeed become the Tory leader.
Harley had a stable of journalists who were also information gatherers, and might even be described as spies. Their access was literally through the back door, as he indicated in a note to one of them: “I will be ready, upon your giving three knocks at the back door, to let you in.”23 The most effective of these agents was Daniel Defoe, not yet a novelist. His relationship with Harley furnishes an interesting glimpse into a political underworld that Swift kept clear of.
Defoe fell into Harley’s lap because he got into trouble with the law. Brought up a Dissenter—he once mentioned that he had thoughts of becoming a Presbyterian minister—he was outraged by the Test Act and published a satiric attack called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Unfortunately, The Shortest Way mimicked bigoted Tories all too well, and many people thought at first that one of them had written it. Shrewder readers understood the ironic intention, and after a relentless search Defoe was identified. He was put on trial, convicted of “seditious libel” threatening the stability of the nation, forced to stand in a pillory, and consigned to Newgate Prison.
38. Daniel Defoe.
Desperate to be released, Defoe got in touch with Harley, who responded by persuading the queen that the prisoner was harmless and by paying his fine out of the “Queen’s bounty.” Thereafter Defoe toured England and Scotland under assumed names, gossiping in coffeehouses and taverns in order to pick up information and plant useful rumors. For this work he received £400 a year from the government. In addition he turned out a stream of political pamphlets, as well as a periodical called A Review of the State of the British Nation—the Review for short—that presented the Whig party line.24
It isn’t clear how often Swift and Defoe met, but they were definitely aware of each other. When Harley went over from the Whigs to the Tories, Defoe did not, and from then on he and Swift were opponents. But since they published anonymously, they were opponents in the dark, with readers only guessing at the authorship of pamphlets, and often guessing wrongly. It was altogether a strange moment in political history, with modern party alignments just beginning to take shape, and a new breed of propagandists getting out their message and defaming the other side’s.
In a pamphlet of his own on the Test Act, Swift dismissed Defoe contemptuously as a pretentious fraud: “The fellow that was pilloried (I have forgot his name) is indeed so grave, sententious, dogmatical a rogue that there is no enduring him.” The claim to have forgotten Defoe’s name is usually quoted as Swift’s personal opinion, but actually he put it in the mouth of an imaginary member of the Irish House of Commons. It was quite true, though, that Defoe was sententious and humorless. Dickens remarked that Robinson Crusoe was “the only instance of an universally popular book that could make no one laugh and could make no one cry.”25
Harley, as it would turn out, would soon offer Swift an avenue to the long-sought First Fruits prize, and to much else besides. At last, at the age of forty, Swift would be close to the center of power, and not relegated to the back stairs, either.
THE MANY BLANKS IN SWIFT’S STORY
It needs to be emphasized that during this time, as in the previous forty years of Swift’s life, the documentary record is extremely spotty, and highlights his public life much more than his private. Thanks to a clever piece of modern detective work, an episode can be recovered that illustrates how much is missing. In October 1708, Swift sent a short letter to the poet Ambrose Philips, dating it from “Havisham” (or possibly “Harisham”) and mentioning that he was staying with a Mr. Collier who had been at school with Philips.26 There is no such place as Harisham, and nothing to associate Swift with the tiny hamlet of Haversham in Bedfordshire. As for Collier, until recently nothing was known about him either. But there are sufficient clues to establish that his name was actually spelled Coleire, and that he was the vicar of a town in Kent called Harrietsham. Swift probably met him when they were both at Oxford for their M.A. degrees, and evidently they remained friends, since they spent nearly a month together on this occasion.
During this visit Coleire undoubtedly regaled Swift with his remarkable story. Having gotten into financial straits, he signed on as a chaplain in the Royal Navy, and the records of the Navy Board describe what had happened to him two years before Swift’s visit. Sent ashore in Portugal to bury a sailor who had been murdered, Coleire was left behind when his ship unexpectedly sailed off for the West Indies. Together with twenty-one companions who were stranded along with him, he chartered a Portuguese boat to get as far as Madeira, where they found another ship bound for England. This voyage too led to misadventure, since a storm forced a landing at the southern tip of Ireland. Still in charge of his band of tars, Coleire marched them to Kinsale, where he was able to turn them over to naval authorities. He then submitted a bill for ₤49 and 15 shillings as reimbursement for his expenses, which the navy duly paid.
Swift had a great appetite for picaresque travel stories, and it’s easy to imagine that this one remained in his memory. Coleire was a young clergyman who was forced by bad financial management to leave his family and go to sea, was deserted on the shores of a strange land, and then had to make his way back to England. Change the profession from clergyman to physician, and this could be the germ of Gulliver’s Travels. But if no one had taken the trouble to dig out the information that was misleadingly preserved in the letter to Ambrose Philips, we wouldn’t have the slightest glimpse of an interesting episode.27
CHAPTER 12
Swift the Londoner
LONDON LIFESTYLE
As before, Swift found London alarmingly expensive, and he had to manage his finances with care. Whenever possible he walked rather than hiring a coach or sedan chair. Lodgings were relatively cheap, about £1 a month, and he moved often, though it’s not clear why. His quarters were taken by the week or month, and it was easy to change them. At various times he lived in Pall Mall, Bury Street, St. Albans Street, Suffolk Street, St. Albans Street, St. Martin’s Street in Leicester Fields, Little Panton Street, and Rider Street; he also lived in Chelsea and in an unidentified street in Kensington.1
The main meal was at midday. At no time did Swift have a cook or kitchen, so he would have a roast or fowl brought in from a “cook shop,” or else go to a tavern. It would be a mistake to romanticize taverns. “We had a neck of mutton,” he reported one evening, “that the dog could not eat.” The next morning he added, “I was very uneasy last night with ugly, nasty, filthy wine that turned sour on my stomach.”2
Swift was always on the lookout for invitations to dine with friends, but that could be expensive too, since servants in great houses expected generous tips, known as “vails.” You could pay a footman a couple of shillings just for opening the door when you arrived, and be 10 shillings poorer by the time you went home. One footman whose annual salary was ₤4 collected ₤100 more per year in vails.3
A recent inno
vation that had caught on fast was the coffeehouse; by 1700 London had over two thousand of them. It was a place to have one’s mail sent (there were no post offices), sit by a fire, gossip, make business appointments, catch up on the news, and argue about politics. Coffee was the social lubricant, as in Pope’s description:
Coffee, which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.4
Some of these establishments developed impressively over the years. Maritime insurers did business at Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse, which became the ancestor of Lloyd’s of London. “The spoken word,” Trevelyan says, “did many things that print does today, and for merchants the word was spoken at Lloyd’s.” The stock exchange had its origin in a coffeehouse run by a man named John Castaing, who began to publish updated lists of stock prices in 1698.5
The coffeehouses are sometimes described as establishing a new kind of “public sphere” in which ideas could be freely exchanged. But whatever the buzz there was like, it didn’t embody public opinion in the modern sense, since only a narrow slice of the public was represented. “It is the folly of too many,” Swift commented, “to mistake the echo of a London coffee house for the voice of the kingdom.” At another time he summed up the coffeehouse atmosphere as “tobacco, censure, coffee, pride, and port.” And he once remarked, “The worst conversation I ever remember to have heard in my life was that at Will’s coffee house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble.” Will’s was where Dryden held forth.6
LONDON FRIENDS
During these years the cast of characters in Swift’s life grew much larger. It can be hard to keep them straight, as T. H. White indicated in a whimsical sequel to Gulliver’s Travels:
He searched the Colonnade, where the great Pope himself had walked with William Broome, on the night when he was persuading the latter to persuade Tonson to publish a letter from Lintot, signed however by Cleland, and purporting to have been written by Bolingbroke, in which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was accused of having suspected a Mr. Green of persuading Broome to refuse permission to Tonson to publish a letter by Cleland, purporting to have been signed by Lintot, without the knowledge of Bolingbroke, about the personal habits of Dr. Arbuthnot, under the pseudonym of Swift.7