Part 2

During this year the Tory government had been as hard pressed at home as the King’s forces had been abroad. The news of Saratoga, received early in December 1777, struck a staggering blow to the ministers, who at once adjourned Parliament for six weeks and endeavored to open indirect and secret negotiations with the American commissioners in Paris. When Parliament reconvened, Fox’s motion in the Commons “that no more of the Old Corps be sent out of the kingdom” produced a suddenly swollen minority. There was a cry throughout the country for Chatham. North had lost his zest for the war and would willingly have retired in favor of Chatham, but the King refused to consider such a move. In a desperate effort to counteract American negotiations with France, North then introduced, 17 February 1778, his conciliatory bills, which offered the repeal of the acts that had offended the colonists and conceded all but the name of independence. While the House was recovering from its amazement Charles Fox rose and said that he was glad Ministers had at last concurred with the long-standing views of Opposition. But had not their repentance come too late? Did not Ministers know that a commercial treaty between France and America had already been signed?[19] “Acts of Parliament have made a war,” Walpole wrote Sir Horace Mann three days later, “but cannot repeal one.”[20] On the 13th of March the French ambassador in London announced the treaty of friendship between France and the United States. Thereafter no one in either party expected much of North’s commission to treat with America. Detained in England until mid-April, the commissioners arrived in the Delaware a whole month after Congress had ratified the treaty with France and, to their great chagrin, just in time to take part in the retreat from Philadelphia. One member of the commission, George Johnstone, after futile private overtures to members of Congress, quarreled with his colleagues and returned in a huff to vindicate himself and criticize ministers and commanders before Parliament. On the whole, the commission did little more than aggravate the ill-feeling on both sides.

On the 7th of April, after a long absence, Lord Chatham, wrapped in flannels and supported by his sons, took his seat in the House of Lords. Rising for the second time in the debate to speak on the American war, he was struck down by an apoplexy from which he never recovered. His death, on the 11th of May, was believed and said by many to be a portent of doom to the Empire.

Meanwhile the specter of a French invasion caused the King late in March to communicate to Parliament his intention of ordering the militia “to be drawn out and embodied, and to march as occasion shall require.” Five encampments were established; peers and M.P.’s, Whig and Tory alike, hastened to raise regiments; and by June Gibbon could tell Holroyd that “The chief conversation at Almack’s is about tents, drill-Serjeants, subdivisions, firings, &c.”[21] All summer and autumn the country was full of marching and countermarching for the edification of anxious royalty. In the newspapers appeared advertisements for “martial balsam,” recommended for those afflicted by toothache from exposure to damp canvas and mattresses. Even theater business was depressed by the rage for visiting the encampments. Sheridan, ever resourceful, dashed off as a counter-attraction his entertainment of _The Camp_, with a musical arrangement by Thomas Linley, a prologue by Tickell, and (according to the newspaper notices) “a perspective Representation of the GRAND CAMP at COXHEATH, from a view taken by Mr. de Loutherbourg and erected under his direction.”

All this was diverting, but in midsummer occurred an incident that betrayed to the nation the smoldering antagonism between ministers and commanders. In the previous March Admiral Keppel, a staunch Whig who had refused to serve against America, had been promoted commander of the Channel fleet. He found, contrary to the Admiralty’s repeated assurances in Parliament, that ships and equipment were woefully inadequate for his crucial task of defending the coasts. At length reinforced, Keppel on the 27th of July engaged the Brest fleet off Ushant. In command of the British rearward squadron was Sir Hugh Palliser, a Tory M.P. and a Lord of the Admiralty. Following a short and indecisive action, Keppel gave orders for a new line of battle, but Palliser did not obey until after dark. By morning the French had escaped. Keppel did not report Palliser’s insubordination, but accounts of the action appeared in the papers, and before the opening of Parliament the incident had become a heated party issue, with Keppel exalted as a popular hero and Palliser condemned as the agent of a negligent and scheming ministry.

_4_

Affairs stood in this critical posture when Parliament was summoned in the last week of November. Fearing defection in the Tory ranks, North called a private meeting of his friends beforehand to consult on strategy. He was himself there taxed with negligence, and extraordinary steps were taken to secure attendance in the government seats. Now a favorite parliamentary weapon of North’s had always been humor—or, as his opponents styled it, “buffoonery.” His motto, said Walpole, ought to have been “_Aut dormitabo, aut ridebo_.”[22] And when _Anticipation_ appeared, it was widely believed that North himself had had a hand in its composition.[23] The very favorable reception of the pamphlet must have surpassed the hopes of both author and patron. For some days the papers printed eulogistic notices and long extracts. Representative is the comment in _The Morning Chronicle_ on the day the session opened:

The literary piece of mimickry published on Monday last, under the title of _Anticipation_, is beyond compare one of the ablest sketches ever hit off by a man of fancy and talents. Mimicks in general distort the features of those they affect to imitate; the author of _Anticipation_, on the contrary, has preserved the _vrais-semblance_ of each of the objects of imitation with wonderful correctness, and it is a question whether he deserves most applause for the humorous conceits with which he has dished out the oratory of his heroes, or the striking likenesses (in point of order, argument, imagery, and diction) which he has drawn of each speaker. Lord G[ranb]y’s harangue is, to those who have not been in the House of Commons on the first day of a session, a perfect example of Opposition oratory on such an occasion.—Mr. T. L[uttre]ll’s speech need not have had his name prefixed to it; no member, T. L[uttre]ll excepted, could possibly shew so much learning to so little purpose.... In a word, _Anticipation_ is one of the best pamphlets the publick have been favoured with for years, and though it has in some measure a political tendency, ... it serves, contrary to the effect of most political pamphlets, to put all parties in good humour.

The good nature of the parody was remarked by all who spoke of it. Certainly the pleasantest circumstance of the whole episode is the fact that some of the victims of Tickell’s mimicry enjoyed the humor of it; though we learn from Walpole that Welbore Ellis, “another justly and humourously drawn, proved how justly. He said, ‘It is well written, but I perceive the author takes me for a dull man.’”[24]

According to a tradition that is not implausible, North and his friends took copies of _Anticipation_ into the House on the opening day and dispensed them gratis.[25] An apparent consequence of this was Tickell’s luckiest satirical stroke, by virtue of which _Anticipation_ lived on in the memory of anecdotists. Walpole, who was on the spot, reported that Col. Isaac Barré, an Opposition stalwart, “not having seen this pamphlet, the first day of the Session cited a foreign Governor with whom he was acquainted, exactly in the manner here ridiculed, and he also translated a French expression.”[26] This episode grew appreciably in the telling. In 1823 Joseph Jekyll told Tom Moore (who wrote down everything he heard) of the

laughable effect on the House of Col. Barré’s speech; he being the only one (having just arrived from the country) ignorant of the pamphlet, and falling exactly into the same peculiarities which the pamphlet quizzed, particularly that of quoting French words and then translating them. At every new instance of this kind in his speech there was a roar of laughter from the House, which Barré, of course, could not understand.[27]

But this was not the last refinement. The progress of the story, from contemporary witnesses to Jekyll and Moore and finally to “Senex” writing his recollections in _Blackwood’s_ in 1826, is an illustration and a warning of the ways of anecdotists. The humorous success of _Anticipation_, wrote “Senex,”

I well remember.... The style of the speeches was so well imitated, and the matter in many cases so happily forestalled, that, like Vulcan among Homer’s gods, it caused inextinguishable laughter. What gave much zest to the joke was the ignorance of most of the usual speaking members that any such pamphlet existed. Their great surprise at the loud mirth excited by speeches intended to make a very different impression, and the frequent cries of “Spoke, Spoke!” the meaning of which they could not possibly comprehend, may be easily conceived. One of its effects was to shorten the debate, for, as the joke soon spread, many were afraid to address the House for fear of involving themselves in the predicament of those who had been so humorously anticipated.[28]

_5_

_Anticipation_ had a great run. Such was the popular demand that a “Fourth Edition” was advertised by Becket within a week of first publication. Five more London editions and a Dublin reprint appeared before the end of the year. As soon as copies reached America, _Anticipation_ was reprinted at both the British headquarters in New York and the American headquarters in Philadelphia. In announcing his New York reprint, James Rivington stated, with what degree of exaggeration the reader is free to guess, that “such was the reception given to this novel and immensely admired piece, that more than _Forty Thousand_ copies were disposed of in a few days.”[29] In London a rash of imitations broke out at once. _Altercation_, _Deliberation_, _Anticipation Continued_, _Anticipation for the Year MDCCLXXIX_, _The Exhibition, or a Second Anticipation_—all these appeared within a year. As late as 1812 appeared _Anticipation: or, The Prize Address; which will be delivered at the Opening of the New Drury Lane Theatre_, a squib inspired by the same circumstances that gave rise to the celebrated _Rejected Addresses_ of James and Horace Smith. And there were others. But, as Dr. Johnson remarked of _The Splendid Shilling_, “the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author.”[30]

There was another result of the publication of the satire that, to Tickell, was perhaps the most gratifying of all. The author was right, observed _The London Magazine_ in its review, in predicting a majority for Administration in his mimic debate; “and we verily believe he might have added by way of note at the end—‘This will get me a place or a pension.’”[31] This impertinence was justified by the event. On the 6th of December Richard Rigby, Paymaster and general factotum in North’s cabinet, wrote David Garrick a short but meaningful note: “I have had a meeting with _Anticipation_, and like him very much; I wish to have some further discourse with you upon that subject. Could you call here to-morrow morning about eleven?”[32] The subject was unquestionably a ministerial reward for services rendered. About this time Tickell was granted a pension of 200_l._ _per annum_.[33] Soon afterward an anonymous poet of the Batheaston circle returned good for evil in praising Tickell while attempting to recall him to virtue:

Some writers be of an amphibious race, And prose and verse their elemental place. Such he, whose wit made wond’ring senates roar, And those to blush that never blush’d before. _Anticipation_ gave him sterling fame, _The Wreath of Fashion_ a poetic name. And Nature gave, and at the gift repines, At pension’d wit and prostituted lines. Be your’s, O _Tickell_, to correct this vice, That deals out praise or censure at a price, And in one grand example prove to men, How weak is Wit, when Party holds the pen; And while you glow with more than virtue’s flame, And all admire from whence such virtue came, Each literary Swiss shall dread thy rage, Dismiss their weapons, and no more engage.[34]

But man cannot live by wit alone. In the next two years Tickell wrote two more satirical tracts for the ministry, which, though not dull, were scarcely inspired; and in August 1781 he was appointed a commissioner of the Stamp Office. Here, with other beneficiaries of ministerial generosity and a salary of 500_l._, he stayed. A year earlier (25 July 1780) he had married Miss Mary Linley, a charming and witty young lady if less renowned than her sister Elizabeth (Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan). In September 1782, doubtless through the good offices of Lord North, they settled in an apartment in the Gold Staff Gallery at the top of Hampton Court Palace.[35] Tickell’s talents were useful in the Linley-Sheridan family enterprise of Drury Lane Theatre. He served in the capacity of Mr. Puff as “a Practitioner of Panegyric” in the newspapers, refurbished old plays, and tried his hand, with mild success, at composing librettos. When Fox and North formed their coalition government (of unhappy memory), Tickell’s political allegiance was transferred to the Whigs. That he had long had a preference for Whig society appears from the satirical-affectionate picture of Brooks’s Club in his _Epistle from the Honourable Charles Fox, Partridge-Shooting, to the Honourable John Townshend, Cruising_, 1779. The devoted but sharp-tongued Mrs. Tickell informed her sister in a letter of 1785: “So I find the election has taken a happy turn at last and I am to congratulate myself with being the wife of a member of Brooks’s.... T. is delighted; the great point of his ambition is gained.”[36] To which she added, at the thought of her husband’s increased opportunities for conviviality: “Farewell, a long farewell to all my comforts.”[37] From the many fragments of Mary Tickell’s spritely letters that have been printed here and there, it is impossible not to give at least one representative passage showing both husband and wife in character. In an undated letter from Hampton Court she wrote:

The men stayed last night or rather this morning till four or five tho’ I entreated T⸺. to think of to-night’s fatigue for me and let them go, but ’twas all in vain, for the moment my back was turn’d off they march’d into the other room with their Bottles and Glasses and order’d Stephen to bring the fire after them—so at least they had the grace to think of not disturbing me, for you are to know since the cold wether we dine and sup in the Drawing Room. However unfortunately my ears were quick enough to reach to Stephen’s Pantry where I heard every cruel Pop of that odious five shilling claret which entirely hindered my closing my eyes, so here I am at half past one just after breakfast and thinking of my evening’s dissipation. Don’t you think that I should cut a figure in the great world?[38]

As a member of the glittering Whig fraternity that moved about Fox, Sheridan, and the Prince of Wales, Tickell became a large contributor to the great collective (and perennial) satire known as _The Rolliad_, a shilling edition of which, George Saintsbury once remarked, if properly annotated, would keep one amused from London to York. He also produced a number of more or less serious pamphlets attacking Pitt’s government; and during the regency crisis of 1788-89 he worked feverishly with the other Foxites in the expectation of a Whig triumph. But the King recovered, the Whigs’ hopes were dashed, and Tickell never obtained his expected seat in Parliament.[39]

Mary Tickell died in July 1787. Two years later Tickell eloped with the daughter of a captain in the East India Company’s service, Miss Sarah Ley, a reigning beauty who was for a time the rival of Emma Hamilton as Romney’s model.[40] She was very young, very extravagant, and without any fortune. In a year or two her husband, who was chronically improvident and was now deprived of Mary Tickell’s common sense, found himself overwhelmed with debts. In May 1793 he appealed to Warren Hastings for a loan of 500_l._ and obtained it.[41] Hastings was a friend of the Ley family, but that an intimate of the Fox-Sheridan circle and a contributor to _The Rolliad_ should have turned to him for help is an indication of Tickell’s desperate straits. The loan was evidently not sufficient for his needs. On the 4th of November his lifeless body was found below the parapet outside his Hampton Court apartment. Two days later Joseph Farington recorded in his _Diary_: “Distressed circumstances and an apprehension of being arrested, it is said, is the cause of this momentary phrenzy.”[42]

_6_

As a successful parody of parliamentary proceedings and eloquence at the time of the American Revolution, _Anticipation_ retains historical interest. One reviewer went so far as to say that a comparison of the actual debate with Tickell’s anticipated version would show that between the two “the difference as to the material grounds of disputation is trifling.”[43] This is scarcely an exaggeration, though, as it turned out, the House was less full and the debate less animated than had been expected from the presence in town of so many generals and admirals known to be at odds with one another and the ministers. As a parodist, however, Tickell was less concerned to present the substance of a particular debate than the idiosyncracies of those who spoke frequently in the House, whether from Opposition or Administration benches. The verisimilitude of his subjects’ accents, attitudes, and hobby-horses of theme was unanimously acknowledged and praised by contemporaries. _Anticipation_ is in short a speaking picture of that House of Commons in which, as well as in America, a bitter conflict was in progress. Here are Burke’s rumbling periods on the decline of the British Empire, and Fox’s skilful arguments to show that neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be successfully continued in America. David Hartley the younger quotes the recent sentiments of his friend Benjamin Franklin in Paris, and a radical Member from the City praises Washington and threatens ministers with the Tower and the block. Other Whigs attack profiteering army contractors, false news in the _Gazettes_, and the employment of Indians to butcher the colonists; others demand parliamentary inquiries that government officials suggest deferring until “about six months after Christmas.” Late in the evening Lord North rises and, after invoking the mighty shade of Chatham, takes up his secretary’s notes on speeches by the Opposition and urges upon an unruly House the need of unanimity.

It is a vivid and authentic picture, and it is also an entertaining one. Though parody is a minor genre, it has its masterpieces. But they should be read rather than talked about. Let the last opinion on _Anticipation_ be that of George IV, who was a person of discernment in these matters. J. W. Croker recorded in his diary that at a royal dinner-party in January 1822 the talk had turned to Tickell. The King spoke of _Anticipation_ “_con amore_ and quoted some of the speeches.” He promised to have a copy looked out for Lady Conyngham, who had never read it. “The events and the pieces were gone by,” said the King; “but the wit and pleasantry of it never could fade.”[44]

_NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION_

[1] A certain A. Buzaglo, who had a shop in the Strand, opposite Somerset House, frequently advertised in the newspapers in 1778. His warming-pans, for curing the gout, were highly recommended to the nobility.

[2] Letter to Mason, 18 April 1778 (_The Letters of Horace Walpole_, ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, Oxford, 1903-05, X, 222).

[3] _Boswell’s Life of Johnson_, ed. G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell, Oxford, 1934—, III, 318.

[4] XLV, 1778, 310.

[5] See Ruth A. Hesselgrave, _Lady Miller and the Batheaston Literary Circle_, New Haven, 1927.

[6] LIX, 1778, 145. Garrick acknowledged his authorship of this review in a letter to Hannah More, misdated 1777, in William Roberts, _Memoirs of ... Mrs. Hannah More_, 3rd ed., 1835, I, 116.

[7] _The Farington Diary_, ed. James Greig, New York, 1923-28, I, 186; _Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers_ [ed. Alexander Dyce], New York, 1856, pp. 71-72.

[8] _Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica_, new ser., II, 1877, 473; Sir [John] Bernard Burke, _Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland_, 9th ed., 1898, II, “Ireland,” p. 441; Richard Eustace Tickell, _Thomas Tickell and the Eighteenth Century Poets_, 1931, p. 173 and “Tickell Pedigree.”

[9] A long letter from John Tickell to the Duke of Newcastle, 26 August 1767, alludes to these circumstances and appeals to Newcastle’s generosity (Newcastle Papers, British Museum Add. MSS. 32,984, f. 350).

[10] G. F. R. Barker and A. H. Stenning (compilers), _The Record of Old Westminsters_, 1928, II, 919; R. A. Austen-Leigh (ed.), _The Eton College Register, 1753-1790_, Eton, 1921, p. 517; John Hutchinson, _A Catalogue of Notable Middle Templars_, 1902, p. 242.

[11] David Erskine Baker, Isaac Reed, and Stephen Jones (compilers), _Biographia Dramatica_, 1812, I, 713.

[12] Tickell to Garrick, 11 May 1778 (_Private Correspondence of David Garrick_ [ed. James Boaden], 1831-32, II, 304).

[13] Unpublished letter in the Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library.

[14] I, 713-714.

[15] Garrick, _Private Correspondence_, II, 317.

[16] _Private Letters of Edward Gibbon_, ed. R. E. Prothero, 1896, I, 348.

[17] _Last Journals during the Reign of George III_, ed. A. Francis Steuart, 1910, II, 206n.

[18] _The American Journal of Ambrose Serle ... 1776-1778_, ed. Edward H. Tatum, Jr., San Marino, California, 1940, p. 296.

[19] Walpole, _Last Journals_, II, 117; Fox, _Speeches_, 1815, I, 116-118.

[20] _Letters_, ed. Toynbee, X, 195.

[21] _Private Letters_, I, 338.

[22] _Last Journals_, II, 115n. In a debate on the navy estimates, 2 December 1778, Temple Luttrell said of North:

Whenever the noble lord found himself closely pressed in argument, or fact, it was his known practice to get rid of the question by a joke. His manner was no less curious than his matter; when he was half asleep, or seemingly quite asleep, he collected a store of wit and humour, from Æsop, Phædrus, or Joe Miller, or some other book equally distinguished for such species of drollery; and, instead of reasoning, was sure to treat the House with a laugh (_The Parliamentary History of England ... to the Year 1803_ [compiled by William Cobbett], 1806-20, XIX, 1388).

[23] John Taylor, _Records of My Life_, 1832, I, 144.

[24] _Last Journals_, II, 206.

[25] _Altercation; Being the Substance of a Debate ... on a Motion to Censure the Pamphlet of Anticipation_ [1778], p. 10; _The Pamphleteer_, XIX, 1822, 310.

[26] MS. note in Horace Walpole’s copy of _Anticipation_.

[27] Thomas Moore, _Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence_, ed. Lord John Russell, 1853-56, IV, 34.

[28] “Reminiscences.—No. IV. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, &c.,” _Blackwood’s Magazine_, XX, 209.

[29] _The Royal Gazette_, 17 March 1779.