NEW LETTERS OF POPE AND SWIFT

‘One of the most considerable lawyers of his time and a particular friend of a poet’: William Fortescue is thus described in a letter from Alexander Pope of 18 February 1732/3, one of many which he received from him and which, for the most part, have been gathered together and impeccably edited in George Sherburn’s Correspondence of Alexander Pope (5 vols; Oxford, 1956). In Vol. I11 (p.403) Sherburn prints part of an excerpt from a letter of Pope to Fortescue of 27 March 1734. The excerpt had appeared originally in Maggs Bros Catalogue 140, November 1896. No details of the sale have been found, but the letter itself is now part of the rich and varied collection of holographs of the Muste Royal de Mariemont, 6510 Morlanwelz, Belgium. I am indebted to the Director of the Museum for his kind permission to transcribe and print this letter and several others, including the Swift holograph which follows it here.

The conflicting claims of private and public life provide much of the matter of the letter, as they do of so many others in the Pope-Fortescue correspondence. Fortescue’s professional services constituted one bond be- tween him and his client, as the second paragraph of theletter amply demonstra- tes, whilst adding some new material to the saga of the mysterious and elusive Major Roberts of Plas Newydd and the ill-fated annuity bought from him by Martha Blount. His professional aspirations are perhaps of more interest to students of Pope, however, since they provided for the poet a point of comparison between his friend and himself. They offered an obvious source of reflections upon the nature and pursuit of happiness (involvement or withdrawal? fame or obscurity?) which find expression in Pope’s work: the echo of lines 77-80 of the Fourth Epistle of the Essay on Man in the final paragraph of the letter is duly noted by Sherburn.

The question of Pope’s relations with his male friends has been treated sensibly and sensitively by George S. Rousseau in a paper which he gave at the BSECS colloquium at Norwich in 1981 (see also his ‘Threshold and explanation: the social anthropologist and the critic of eighteenth-century literature’, The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1981). The need for companionship expressed in the final sentence of the initial paragraph of the letter may well be taken as yet another example of the sublimation of Pope’s ‘keen libidinous drives’ (Rousseau: art. cit., p.141), though the more mundane thought of Fortescue grumbling about the hard slog of the circuit and the seemingly endless path towards the glittering prize (ultimately won) of a judgeship as he munches his host’s ‘broccoli and mutton’ detracts somewhat from the more intriguing idea of repressed passion. The reference to ‘Sleep’ takes on its properly innocuous significance when set in the context of other letters (26 March 1736; 16 August 1736) which show that Fortescue’s tender conscience, greatly exercised by the punitive aspect of administering justice, was still causing him to lose sleep after being appointed Baron of the Ex-

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chequer and acting as presiding judge at the Lent and Summer Assizes. Pope's advice - 'Get to be a Judge, the sooner the better, and go to Rest' ( 5 [November 17341) - was not working out as planned.

Pope to William Fortescue 27 March 1734 Dear Sir

I a.m at all Seasons and in all places so much yours, that I wish myself with you in the worst weather & in ye worst places. I shd prefer it to my present state, which is either too much in Company, or too much alone. Whenever I am in town, I am in a worse Circuit than you. So what I've said is but a bad compliment; but a serious truth it is, that I think too little of my Life is past with you, and there is little hopes it will be better, till you grow a Judge. We may then at least Sleep together, and you know how well I am qualify'd for that.

The affair of M' Roberts and M' Bethel I suppose M' Cruwys may have mentioned to you. It had like to have turnd out very unfortunately, for Fox, ye other witness is also dead. But I hope a sort of agreement (wCh M' Cruwys has answered for to be a safe one) will prove so. He has taken a Promissary note for ye arrear of Interest, payable next Midsummer home, from a Gentleman of the Law, M' Roberts's agent; and a Judgement to enter on ye Rents in case of defect afterwards. They pretend y' ye sale of ye Estate comes on - I fear there's some doubt whether the Judgement can operate on ye Tenants to receive ye Rent from them, or not? You'l advise M' Cruwys in any point you judge necessary.--

I hope no Accident of any sort, or any want of Health or Vigor, may ever approach you; especially on your Circuit, but that it may be both pleasant and profitable. Yet reflect that Riches can give neither Health, nor Pleasure, in any high degree; and that all we can have or enjoy in this world, is Competence, Ease, and a good Conscience: The first and last of these I think you sure of; it is for the second only I am sometimes in pain ab' you. For no man whatever prays, with more sincerity or affection, for y' Health & true happiness, than / Dear Sir / Your ever faith / ful friend / A. Pope. March 27'h. / 1734. Address: For / W" Fortescue Esq. / at his house in Bell-yard / n' Lincolns Inne / London Endorsement (Fortescue's): Mr Pope / Mar. 27. 1734

New letters of Pope and Swift 69

‘I am Lord Mayor of 120 houses, I am absolute Lord of the greatest Cathedral in the kingdom: am at peace with the neighboring Princes, the Lord Mayor of the City, and the A. Bp. of Dublin, only the latter, like the K. of France, sometimes attempts encroachments on my Dominions . . .’. Louis A. Landa in his Swift and the Church of Ireland quotes this statement from a letter of the Dean of St Patrick’s of 8 July 1733 to his friend Pope, and goes on to explain the potential source of strife constituted by the fact that the Liberty of St Patrick’s was situated within the geographical area covered by the Archbishop’s Liberty of St Sepulchre, yet remained largely outside his jurisdiction, with Dean and Chapter fortified by Acts of Parliament and Letters Patent in their resolve to defend their independence. The suggestion of a threat to this independence, in the shape of an over-zealous Seneschal to Archbishop Hoadly acting ‘arbitrarily and Magisteryally’ , provoked Swift, in a letter which he wrote to him on 15 April 1737 (see Harold Williams, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, Vol. V pp.32-33), into a counter-threat to ‘resist by force’ any incursions upon the cherished ‘Libertyes of the Dean and Chapter of St Patrick’s’. The Dean’s letter, as Landa suggests, shows his characteristic defiance in the face of such challenges, but this stance seems less impressive if it is borne in mind that the letter was never sent. We have Swift’s own words, in the endorsement on the verso of the second leaf, that it was ‘not sent, by M‘ King’s advice --’. It is in all probability this same trusted counsellor who is the subject of the letter to Archbishop Hoadly printed below.

The Rev. James King, M. A., incumbent of St Bride’s Church, Dublin, was a favourite friend of Swift’s. The mutual trust on which their relationship was based is reflected in the choice of King as Swift’s executor. The ‘Deafness and Giddyness’ which the Dean refers to in this letter was a life-long complaint aggravated towards the end by the onset of senile decay. It was, in fact, a protCgC of King’s, his curate at St Bride’s, John Lyon, who was made responsible for the care of Swift’s person during his last days. The devotion of such a friend as King does not need to be accounted for in terms of repayment for services rendered. There is, all the same, little doubt that Swift’s realistic attitude to helping those he liked up the ladder of clerical preferment must have cemented many a friendship.

A member of the Chapter of a secular cathedral like St Patrick’s had two sources of income, corresponding to the double capacity in which he acted. He was a Canon and enjoyed a share in the cornrnuna or common fund of the Chapter, but was also Rector of a parish, attached to his Canonry. From this he derived a portion, probably in most cases the larger portion, of his revenues and so it was called his prebend (pruebenda) and in relation to it he was styled Prebendary.

Swift’s attempt in this letter to further his friend’s career can be situated in the detailed record of preferment, and more especially of awards of prebendal stalls, provided by H. J. Lawlor (The Fusti of St Patrick’s Dublin, Dundalk, 1930) who sets out (p.30) the order of precedence or ‘seniority’ of the prebendaries. The death of Edward Drury made available the prebendary of Mulhuddart. Drury’s appointment to Mulhuddart two years before his death

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had allowed Nicholas Synge to take over the more modest prebend of Tassa- gard from which Drury had resigned. Synge, given precedence over King despite Swift’s recommendation, relinquished Tassagard and was installed 13 October 1737 in the Mulhuddart prebend which he had inherited from Drury. Subsequently he rose to become Archdeacon of Dublin in 1734 and was consecrated Bishop of Killaloe in 1746. As for James King, he was installed as Prebendary of Tipper, which he had already held from 1726 to 1730 and which was further down the seniority scale. At the time of the vacancy which Swift hoped would be filled by his friend, King was Prebendary of Tymothan - a prebend without a church but entitling its holder to its tithes. This explains Swift’s reference to King as a ‘nominall Prebend‘y’.

For all his attachment to the dignity of his office and to the rights and interests of Dean and Chapter (to whom he gives the last word in this letter), Swift could in matters of preferment only approach the Archbishop as the ‘humble servant’ he was. His fairly recent brush with Hoadly’s Seneschal would not have helped matters as far as King was concerned, and the letter printed here makes it seem not unlikely that King was very much alive to the personal risk to himself if he had sent Swift’s defiant letter of 15 April.

Swift to Archbishop Hoadly 1 June 1737

My Lord I have been a long time, and still continue so perpetually tormented with

Deafness and Giddyness, that I am not fit for any Company or Conversation, and this disorder hath made it impossible for me to wait upon your Grace: But a late Incident, I mean, the Death of D‘ Drury, hath forced me as Dean of the Cathedrall, where he had a Prebend, to recommend a Successor to whom you have shewn some Favour, I mean M‘ King of S‘ Bride’s, who is now only a nominall Prebend‘Y and is a very worthy useful1 Clergy-man without any Reproach, and as well Principled in point of Loyalty and good notions, as your Grace can desire. One thing I am sure of, that the Choice of M King will be very acceptable to the Chapter.

I am with great Respect I My Lord, I Your Grace’s most / obedient humble I servant I J: Swift Deanry-house Jun. lst 1737

I desire to present my humble Respects to the Ladyes.

For bibliographical assistance in establishing the background of the above letter, I wish to thank my colleague of the Department of Theology, Dr Sheridan Gilley.

Dennis Fletcher University of Durham