Part 6

No satirist could ask for better subjects for his wit than George III. and Queen Charlotte. The slow-witted monarch and his parsimonious consort offered every conceivable temptation to Wolcot’s nimble humour, and he was not slow to take advantage of this rare chance. Of course, he was not the first in the field, but he was head and shoulders over his rivals in talent and wit, and, if he did not silence, at least he succeeded in eclipsing them. He was especially fortunate in having accurate information concerning the internal economy of the royal palaces, and, though he took a poet’s licence to embroider the facts, there was always some foundation for his lampoons. Thus, when the King found a noxious insect in his plate at dinner and gave orders that everyone in the kitchens, from _chef_ to scullion, should be shaved, “Peter Pindar” wrote a “heroi-comic poem,” “The Lousiad,” in which he gave a version of the story. “I had this (incident),” he wrote to a friend, “from the cooks themselves, with whom I dined several times at Buckingham House and Windsor, immediately after the ‘shave’ took place.”

“‘Some spirit whispers that to Cooks I owe The precious Visitor that crawls below; Yes, yes, the whispering Spirit tells me true, And soon that vengeance all the locks pursue. Cooks, Scourers, Scullions, too, with Tails of Pig, Shall lose their coxcomb Curls and wear a Wig.’ Thus roared the King, not Hercules so big; And all the Palace echoed, ‘Wear a Wig!’”

So successful was the first canto of “The Lousiad,” which appeared in 1785, that during the next ten years four additional cantos were written, in which members of the Household and Ministers were introduced, scarified and dismissed; but the gem of the collection is the lengthy “Petition of the Cooks,” which, after references to France, the Schwellenberg and Wilkes, concludes:

“‘O King, our Wives are in the Kitchen roaring, All ready in rebellion now to rise; They mock our humble methods of imploring, And bid us guard against a wig surprise: “_Yours_ is the hair,” they cry, “th’ Almighty gave ye, And not a King in Christendom should shave you.’”

‘Lo! on th’ event the World impatient looks, And thinks the joke is carried much too far; Then pray, Sir, listen to your faithful Cooks, Nor in the Palace breed a Civil War: Loud roar our Band; and, obstinate as Pigs, Cry, “Locks and Liberty and damn the Wigs!”’”

Eventually the attention of the Privy Council was drawn to this poem, and that body, according to Wolcot, decided to prosecute the author, and refrained from doing so only when it discovered that the poem had its foundation in fact. “Are you sure of a verdict?” it is stated that Chancellor Thurlow inquired; “for, if not so, we shall look like a parcel of fools.” Huish states emphatically that the idea of prosecuting the poet did not originate with the King; and Galt says that the effusions of the satirist produced on George “no other effect than a smile of wonder at the perverse ingenuity of the man: and the most serious thing he was ever known to say of them was on the occasion of Peter’s lampooning General Carpenter, when his Majesty observed, that ‘for himself he cared nothing; but he was hurt to see a worthy man calumniated, because he happened to be one of his servants.’ As far as they were capable of exciting a good-natured laugh, the King enjoyed that laugh as much as any man; and when they were otherwise, as was but too often the case, he observed a dignified forbearance, leaving the author to enjoy all the triumph there might be in making a base attack on a party whom he knew to be precluded, by his dignity, from descending into the arena in his own defence.”

It may, however, he doubted whether Hazlitt was accurate in stating that “the King as well as the nation delighted in the bard,” for George had not a spark of humour in his composition, and was the last man in the nation to take a joke at his own expense in good part.

If, however, the King suffered in silence, the Queen was determined not to submit to similar attacks, and her solicitor warned Wolcot that if he exercised his wit against her Majesty, proceedings would at once be taken--representations that had the desired effect, although they furnished the subject for one of Peter’s verses:

“Great was the Bard’s desire to sing the Queen, Vast in her soul, majestic in her mien; But fierce George Hardinge swore, if pens or pen Of woman, women, man or men, In any wise or shape, in Ode or Tale, Dared mention that _superior_ Lady, lo! The law should deal them _such_ a blow! Hang, pillory, or confine for life in jail.”

When the Doctor was once reproved by an acquaintance for the liberties he took with his sovereign, “I confess there exists this difference between the King and me,” he replied; “the King has been a good subject to me, but I have been a bad subject to him.” This he admitted, but that he was guilty in any sense of serious offence he pooh-poohed:

“Such is the Song: and do not thou, severe, With ‘Treason! Treason!’ fill a royal ear; For gentle jokes, at times, on Queens and Kings, Are pleasant, taking, nay, _instructive_ things. Yet _some_ there are who relish not the sport, That flutter in the sunshine of a Court; Who, fearful Song might mar their high ambition, Loose the gaunt Dogs of State, and bawl ‘Sedition.’”

Wolcot was clever enough usually to take for his verse topics in which the public were interested, and it was to this acuteness his success with his contemporaries must be largely attributed. He attacked Lord Lonsdale when that nobleman showed a great disregard of his neighbour’s rights, and “expostulated” with Hannah More, when in her “Strictures on Female Education,” she wrote, “The Poets again, to do them justice, are always ready to lend a helping hand when any mischief is to be done.” He inveighed against the strict enforcement of Sunday Observance, which to some extent resulted from Lady Huntingdon’s petition to the King, and the Puritanism of the Methodists:

“‘No,’ roars the Huntingdonian Priest; ‘no, no: Lovers are liars; love’s a damned trade. Kissing is damnable; to Hell they go: The _Devil claws_ away the rogue and jade.’”

And he gave a fanciful description of the result of the unpopular Hair-Tax, which, according to him, evoked so much disgust that, “the male sex have already sacrificed their favourite curls, to disappoint the rapacity of a minister.”

“See groups of Hairdressers all idle stand, A melancholy, mute, and mournful band; And Barbers _eke_, who lift the crape-clod Pole, And round and round their eyes of horror roll; Desponding, pale, like Hosier’s Ghost so white, Who told their sorrows ’mid the morning light. But see! each hopeless wight with fury foams; His curling-irons breaks, and snaps his combs: Ah! doom’d to shut their _mouths_ as well as _shops_; For dead is Custom, ’mid the world of _crops_.”

Wolcot, as a defender of Mrs Fitzherbert, thought no words too strong in which to express his opinion of those who attacked her, and when John Rolle introduced the question of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons, he fell foul of him, and of Pitt, who supported him:

“Sick at the name of Rolle (to thee tho’ dear), The name abhorr’d by Honour’s shrinking ear, I draw reluctant from thy venal throng, And give it mention, though it blacks my song.

How could’st thou bid that Rolle, despised by all, On helpless beauty, like a mastiff fall; Then meanly to correct the brute pretend, And claim the merit of the Fair One’s friend?”

He had the courage to say a good word for Paine and “The Rights of Man”:

“O Paine! thy vast endeavour I admire. How brave the hope, to set a realm on fire! Ambition smiling praised thy giant wish. Compared to _thee_, the man, to gain a name, Who to Diana’s temple put the flame, A simple Minnow to the Prince of Fish.”

He was fearless in his denunciation of the Duke of York, when it transpired that during the latter’s occupation of the position of Commander-in-Chief, his mistress had been selling commissions and offices, and he voiced the public clamour:

“Heavens, what a dire confusion beauty makes! The Horse Guards tremble, and old Windsor shakes. Like bees, the mob around St Stephen’s swarms; And every street and alley feels alarms: Men, women, coaches, gigs, each other jostle; And thou the cause of all this horrid bustle! Hotels and tap-rooms sound with mingled din, And every coffee-house is on the grin. From morn to eve, from eve to midnight dark, Naught strikes the ear but ‘Duke and Mistress Clarke.’ Nay, too, the parrot and the simple starling Cry from their cages naught but ‘Duke and Darling’!”

When, as a consequence of the inquiry, the Duke resigned, Wolcot drew a malicious picture of his loneliness:

“No longer now the Duke excites our wonder, ’Midst gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss and thunder; Amidst his hosts, no more with rapture dwells On Congreve’s rockets, and on Shrapnell’s shells; But quits with scornful mien the field of Mars, And to Sir David’s genius leaves the wars. Now in dull Windsor rides the youth is seen; Now, in dull walks to Frogmore with the Queen; At Oaklands, where pigs and poultry charm, Like Cincinnatus on his Sabine farm; Now, o’er a lonely dish in Stable Yard, Without a friend, and (strange!) without a card!”

Wolcot sometimes contrived to combine his attacks upon art and royalty, as in “Subjects for Painters,” in the introduction to which he explained that the rage for historical pictures, “so nobly rewarded by Messieurs Boydell and Macklin,” tempted him to offer subjects that would be useful when the painters had exhausted Shakespeare and Milton.

“Pitt trying to unclench Britannia’s fist, Imploring money for a King; Telling _most mournful_ tales of Civil List, The Lady’s _tender_ heart to wring:

Tales of expense in doctors’ bills, High price of blisters, boluses, and pills; Long journey to Saint Paul’s t’_oblige_ the Nation, And give thanks for Restoration:-- Britannia, with arch look the while, Partaking strongly of a smile, Pointing to that huge Dome,[15] the Nation’s wealth; Where _people_ sometimes place their Cash by _stealth_, And, all so modest with their secret store, Inform the World they’re _poor_, ah! _very poor_!”

[15] The Bank of England.

As a rule, however, Wolcot directed his lampoons against the King, whose foibles he most unmercifully laid bare. He was never weary of decrying a monarch who preferred farming to art, and whose economies were a source of scandal to the whole nation. It is said that the bitterness on this latter score arose from the King having purchased a picture from a friend of the satirist and having given him only half the market value. This, indeed, was only one instance out of many of George’s meanness. He would put an artist to the expense of bringing his pictures to Windsor, and not offer to pay the carriage, even when, in the case of one such command, the cost was twenty-five pounds. He would invite eminent singers and actors to perform at Court functions and give them never a sou, thinking the honour sufficient reward.

“At length the Actress ceased to read and spout, Where Generosity’s a crying Sin: Her curtsey dropp’d, was nodded to; came out. So rich! How rich? As rich as she went in.

Should Mara call it cruelty, and blame Such royal conduct, I’d cry, Fie upon her! To Mistress Siddons freely say the same: Sufficient for _such people_ is the _honour_.”

Wolcot was never weary of harping upon this unroyal quality that was common to both the sovereigns. He returned to it in the “Odes to Kien Long, Emperor of China.”

“Give nothing from the Privy Purse away, I say: Nay, should thy coffers and thy bags run o’er; Neglect, or pension Merit on the Poor. Give not to Hospitals; thy Name’s enough: To death-face Famine, not a pinch of snuff. On Wealth, thy Quarry, keep a Falcon-view, And from the very children steal their due!”

The King’s love of farming for profit--a king with a Civil List of eight hundred thousand pounds and occasional special grants amounting to millions--was a subject much discussed, and not likely to escape the attention of our satirist.

“... the note is, ‘How go sheep a score? What, what’s the price of Bullocks? How sells Lamb? I want a Boar, a Boar, I want a Boar; I want a Bull, a Bull; I want a Ram!’ Whereas it should be this: ‘I want a Bard, To cover him with honour and reward.’”

Indeed, nothing that the King did was allowed to pass without comment. Did he go to Weymouth, “Peter Pindar” accompanied him in spirit:

“See! Cæsar’s off: the dust around him hovers; And gathering, lo, the King of Glory covers! The Royal hubbub fills both eye and ear, And wide-mouth’d Wonder marks the wild career.”

Did George visit Samuel Whitebread’s brewery, the event was duly recorded:

“Now moved the King, Queen, and Princesses, so grand, To visit the first Brewer in the land; Who sometimes swills his beer and grinds his meat, In a snug corner christen’d Chiswell Street; But oftener, charmed with _fashionable_ air, Amidst the gaudy Great of Portman Square.”

Popular as such verses were, and wide as was their circulation, they were easily eclipsed in both respects by those in which the stupidity of the King was chronicled, and people, being so much amused by them, forgot that the foundation of truth was often so built upon as to obscure it. “Peter Pindar” was in his element poking fun at George’s ignorance, as shown when looking through Lord Pembroke’s treasures at Wilton House.

“‘Who’s this? Who’s this? Who’s this fine fellow here?’ ‘Sesostris,’ bowing low, replied the Peer. ‘_Sir Sostris_, hey? _Sir Sostris?_ ‘Pon my word! Knight or a Baronet, my Lord? One of _my making_? what, my Lord, _my making_?’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Pray, pray, my Lord, who’s that big fellow there?’ ‘’Tis Hercules,’ replied the _shrinking_ Peer. ‘Strong fellow, hey, my Lord? strong fellow, hey? Clean’d stables; crack’d a Lion like a flea; Kill’d Snakes, great Snakes, that in a cradle found him--The Queen, Queen’s coming: wrap an apron round him.’”

The best thing that Wolcot ever wrote, and one that provoked a laugh all over England, was “The King and the Apple-Dumplings,” in which he described George’s astonishment at first seeing a dumpling, one of which he took into his hand to examine:

“‘’Tis monstrous, monstrous hard, indeed,’ he cried: ‘What makes it, pray, so hard?’ The Dame replied, Low curtseying, ‘Please your Majesty, the Apple!’

‘Very astonishing indeed! Strange thing!’ (Turning the Dumpling round, rejoined the King). ‘’Tis most extraordinary then, all this is; It beats Pinetti’s conjuring all to pieces: Strange I should never of a Dumpling dream! But, Goody, tell me where, where, where’s the seam?’

‘Sir, there’s no Seam,’ quoth she, ‘I never knew That folks did Apple-Dumplings _sew_.’ ‘No!’ said the staring Monarch with a grin: ‘How, how the devil got the Apple in?’”

Since it was thought unwise to prosecute Wolcot, after a time an endeavour was made to silence him by gentler means, and, through the instrumentality of Yorke, the Government offered the satirist a pension of three hundred a year, at which he professed to be much astonished:

“Great is the shout indeed, Sir, all abroad, That you have order’d me this handsome thing; On which, with lifted eyes, I’ve said, ‘Good God! Though great my merits, yet how great the King!’

And yet, believe me, Sir, I lately heard That all your doors were doubly lock’d and barr’d Against the Poet for his tuneful art; And that the tall, stiff, stately, red Machines, Your Grenadiers, the guards of Kings and Queens, Were ordered all to stab me to the heart:

That if to the House of Buckingham I came, Commands were given to Mistress Brigg, A comely, stout, two-handed Dame, To box my ears and pull my wig; The Cooks to spit me; curry me, the Grooms; And Kitchen queans to baste me with their brooms.

You’re told that in my ways I’m very evil; So ugly, fit to travel for a show; And that I loot all grimly where I go, Just like a devil; With horns, and tail, and hoop, that make folks start, And in my breast a Mill-stone for a Heart.”

Nothing came of the proposal, for it fell through owing to a difference of opinion as to the conditions which it would carry with it.

“This pension was well meant, O glorious King, And for the Bard a very pretty thing: But let me, Sir, refuse it, I implore; I ought not to be rich while you are poor. No, Sir, I cannot be your humble Hack: I fear your Majesty would break my back.”

Wolcot then made a bid for the favour of the Prince of Wales in the “Expostulatory Odes.”

“Elate, to Carlton House my rhymes I sent, Before the Poem met the public eye: Which gain’d _applause_, the Poet’s great intent But naught _besides_, I say it with a sigh.”

Thereafter, but not necessarily because of this, he found the Prince nearly as useful a subject for his scathing verses as the King, and when the former was appointed Regent, “Peter Pindar” was ready with “The Royal First-Born, or, The Baby out of his Leading Strings.”

“The P[rince] he promised to _be good_, And do as every R[egen]t should, Nor give vile slander cause to say things: He owned with grief his conduct _wildish_, And swore no longer to be _childish_, But part with his _Imperial Playthings_.

This is the day when Britain’s pride Shall throw his leading-strings aside, And pass a solemn confirmation; And, being now arrived at age, From hence shall for himself engage To do his duty to the nation.

No longer like a baby toss The bold M[aho]n as his ball, Make S[heri]d[a]n his rocking horse, Himself a laughing stock for all.

When he no more in many a frolic Shall give to Decency the Cholic, Hang Truth in his imperial garters, Butchers good-breeding at a jerk, And crucify (O Parricide and Turk!) Poor Virtue and Morality, like Martyrs.”

He often returned to administer castigation to the Prince, whose profligacies were notorious, and when the heir-apparent was said to be suffering from a sprained ankle, he voiced the general opinion that the confinement was the result of a thrashing from Lord Yarmouth, whose wife had been insulted by “The First Gentleman of Europe.”

“Ye Princes, as you love your lives, Ne’er meddle with _your neighbours’ wives_, But keep your brittle hearts from tripping; Lest some rude _Lord_, to scare beholders, Should compliment your princely shoulders, With such another _royal_ whipping. So let us sing, Long live the King, The Regent long live he; And when again he gets a _sprain_, May I be there to see.”

Wolcot’s sight began to fail, and in 1811 he was nearly blind, but he still contrived to continue his literary work almost until his death, which took place on 14th January 1819. By his express desire he was buried in St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, by the side of the coffin which contained the mortal remains of Samuel Butler, of whom, perhaps, and not without some reason, he considered himself a humble disciple.

He was a very sane man, sensible of his limitations, and not given to value his work unduly. Indeed, in his first work, “The Epistle to Reviewers,” he stated the position to which he aspired:

“I am no cormorant for Fame, d’ye see; I ask not _all_ the laurel, but a _sprig_: Then hear me, Guardian of the sacred Tree, And stick a Leaf or two about my wig.”

At the same time, he was by no means inclined to hide his light under a bushel, and his verses contain many deliberately humorous references to his talents. “Had I not stepped forward as the Champion of my own Merit (which is deemed so necessary now-a-days for the obtention of public notice, not only by Authors, but by tête-makers, perfumers, elastic truss and Parliament-speech makers, &c., who, in the daily newspapers, are the heralds of _their own_ splendid abilities),” he wrote in “Subjects for Painters,” “I might possibly be passed by without observation; and thus a great part of a poetical Immortality be sacrificed to a pitiful _mauvaise honte_.”

Of course he made many enemies, as every satirist must, but he bore attacks unflinchingly, as, indeed, every satirist should.

“Great are my Enemies in Trade, God knows: There’s not a Poet but would stop my note; With such a world of Spite their venom flows, With such _good-will_ the knaves would cut my throat.”

As a rule he treated his revilers with good-humoured banter, but once a critic raised his ire by an unmerciful attack on his “Nil Admirari, or, A Smile at a Bishop,” in _The Anti-Jacobin_, in which he was styled, “this disgraceful subject, the profligate reviler of his sovereign and impudent blasphemer of his God.” Gifford at once issued as a counterblast, “An Epistle to Peter Pindar,” the savagery of which made the subject so sore that he endeavoured to thrash the author, who, however, had the best of the struggle.

“False fugitive! back to thy vomit flee-- Troll the lascivious song, the fulsome glee; Truck praise for lust, hunt infant genius down, Strip modest merit of its last half-crown; Blow from thy mildew’d lips, on virtue blow, And blight the goodness thou canst never know. . . . . . . . . . . . . But what is he that with a Mohawk’s air, Cries havock, and lets slip the dogs of war? A blotted mass, a gross unkneaded clod, A foe to man, a renegade from God, From noxious childhood to pernicious age, Separate to infamy, through every stage.”

Yet the man of whom these words were spoken was described by his friends as of “a kind and hearty disposition,” with little or no malice in his composition, a lover of flowers, music and art. Not even his blindness or the infirmities of age soured his temper, and in his last years he said to Cyrus Redding, “You have seen something of life in your time. See and learn all you can more. You will fall back upon it when you grow old--an old fool is an inexcusable fool to himself and others--store up all; our acquirements are most useful when we become old.” Yet he did not suffer age gladly, and when on his death-bed John Taylor asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” the reply--Wolcot’s last words on earth--came. “Bring me back my youth.”