The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 by George A. Aitken (easy books to read in english .txt) 📖

to half this good company, who every hour of their life are knowingly and wittingly both fools and madmen, and yet have capacities both of forming principles, and drawing conclusions, with the full use of reason?"


From my own Apartment, July 11.

This evening some ladies came to visit my sister Jenny; and the discourse, after very many frivolous and public matters, turned upon the main point among the women, the passion of love.[395] Sappho, who always leads on this occasion, began to show her reading, and told us, that Sir John Suckling and Milton had, upon a parallel occasion, said the tenderest things she had ever read. "The circumstance," said she, "is such as gives us a notion of that protecting part which is the duty of men in their honourable designs upon, or possession of, women. In Suckling's tragedy of 'Brennoralt' he makes the lover steal into his mistress's bedchamber, and draw the curtains; then, when his heart is full of her charms, as she lies sleeping, instead of being carried away by the violence of his desires into thoughts of a warmer nature, sleep, which is the image of death, gives this generous lover reflections of a different kind, which regard rather her safety than his own passion. For, beholding her as she lies sleeping, he utters these words:

"So misers look upon their gold,
Which, while they joy to see, they fear to lose:
The pleasure of the sight scarce equalling
The jealousy of being dispossessed by others.
Her face is like the Milky Way i' th' sky,
A meeting of gentle lights without name!

"Heavens I shall this fresh ornament of the world,
These precious love-lines, pass with other common things
Amongst the wastes of time? what pity 'twere! [396]

"When Milton makes Adam leaning on his arm, beholding Eve, and lying in the contemplation of her beauty, he describes the utmost tenderness and guardian affection in one word:

" Adam with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamoured. [397]

"This is that sort of passion which truly deserves the name of 'love,' and has something more generous than friendship itself; for it has a constant care of the object beloved, abstracted from its own interests in the possession of it." Sappho was proceeding on the subject, when my sister produced a letter sent to her in the time of my absence, in celebration of the marriage state, which is the condition wherein only this sort of passion reigns in full authority. The epistle is as follows:

"DEAR MADAM,

"Your brother being absent, I dare take the liberty of writing to you my thoughts of that state, which our whole sex either is or desires to be in: you'll easily guess I mean matrimony, which I hear so much decried, that it was with no small labour I maintained my ground against two opponents; but, as your brother observed of Socrates, I drew them into my conclusion from their own concessions; thus:

"In marriage are two happy things allowed,
A wife in wedding-sheets, and in a shroud.
How can a marriage state then be accursed,
Since the last day's as happy as the first?

"If you think they were too easily confuted, you may conclude them not of the first sense, by their talking against marriage.

"Yours,

"MARIANA."

I observed Sappho began to redden at this epistle; and turning to a lady, who was playing with a dog she was so fond of as to carry him abroad with her; "Nay," says she, "I cannot blame the men if they have mean ideas of our souls and affections, and wonder so many are brought to take us for companions for life, when they see our endearments so triflingly placed: for, to my knowledge, Mr. Truman would give half his estate for half the affection you have shown to that Shock: nor do I believe you would be ashamed to confess, that I saw you cry, when he had the colic last week with lapping sour milk. What more could you do for your lover himself?" "What more!" replied the lady, "there is not a man in England for whom I could lament half so much." Then she stifled the animal with kisses, and called him, Beau, Life, Dear, Monsieur, Pretty Fellow, and what not, in the hurry of her impertinence. Sappho rose up; as she always does at anything she observes done, which discovers in her own sex a levity of mind, which renders them inconsiderable in the opinion of others.


St. James's Coffee-house, July 11.

Letters from the Hague of the 16th instant, N.S., say, that the siege of Tournay went on with all imaginable success; and that there has been no manner of stop given to the attempts of the Confederates since they undertook it, except that by an accident of firing a piece of ordnance, it burst, and killed fifteen or sixteen men. The French army is still in the camp of Lens, and goes on in improving their entrenchments. When the last advices came away, it was believed the town of Tournay would be in the hands of the Confederates by the end of this month. Advices from Brussels inform us, that they have an account of a great action between the malcontents in the Vivarez, and the French king's forces under the command of the Duke of Roquelaure, in which engagement there were eighteen hundred men killed on the spot. They add, that all sorts of people who are under any oppression or discontent do daily join the Vivarois; and that their present body of men in arms consisted of six thousand. This sudden insurrection has put the Court of France under great difficulties; and the king has given orders, that the main body of his troops in Spain shall withdraw into his own dominions, where they are to be quartered in such countries as have of late discovered an inclination to take up arms: the calamities of that kingdom being such, that the people are not by any means to be kept in obedience, except by the terror of military execution. What makes the distresses still greater, is, that the Court begins to be doubtful of their troops, some regiments in the action in the Cevennes having faced about against their officers; and after the battle was over, joined the malcontents. Upon receiving advice of this battle, the Duke of Berwick detached twelve battalions into those parts, and began to add new works to his entrenchments near Briançon, in order to defend his camp, after being weakened by sending so great a reinforcement into the Cevennes. Letters from Spain say, that the Duchess of Anjou was lately delivered of a second son. They write from Madrid of the 25th of June, that the blockade of Olivenza was continued; but acknowledge, that the late provisions which were thrown into the place, make them doubt whether they shall be masters of it this campaign; though it is at present so closely blocked up, that it appears impracticable to send in any more stores or succours. They are preparing with all expedition to repair the fortifications of Alicante, for the security of the kingdom of Valencia.


[Footnote 392: It appears from Luttrell's "Brief Relation," that in Feb. 1707, Commissioners sat in the Exchequer Room at Westminster to try whether Viscount Wenman, "aged 19, of £5000 per annum estate in Oxfordshire," were an idiot or not. On the 14th February the Commission was superseded. In June 1709, a new Commission passed the Great Seal for inquiring into the Viscount's idiocy, and on July 29 they found that he was no idiot. On July 12, Peter Wentworth wrote thus to Lord Raby: "The prosecution of Lord Wainman is now order'd again, upon wch the Tatler is to day; the accation I am told is this, that last year when there was a stopt put to't 'twas upon the intercession lady Wainman the mother made to the Queen, and that she designed to marry her son, the fool, to Sir John Packington's daughter, 'twas then said that my Lady her self had married her Butler, wch the Queen desired her to tell the truth, and she did assure the Queen upon her word and honour,'twas false, and she never intended any such thing, but of late she has own her marriage to that same Butler, and put off the match with Sir John P----daughter, and married him to her husband's sister, wch they say the Queen is angry at and therefore this fresh prosecution is order'd" ("Wentworth Papers," p. 93). Lord Wenman, the fifth Viscount, was born in 1687, married Susannah, daughter of Seymour Wroughton, Esq., in 1709, and died in 1729. Lord Wenman's brother-in-law, Francis Wroughton, was also his father-in-law, for he had married, in 1699, as her third husband, the Viscount's mother, the Countess of Abingdon.]

[Footnote 393: The Scowrers and Roarers were the forerunners of the Mohocks of 1712. Shadwell wrote a play called "The Scowrers," and often alludes to the window-breakers of his time. See Gay's "Trivia," iii. 325:

"Who has not heard the Scowrer's midnight fame?
Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name?" ]

[Footnote 394: "Essay concerning Human Understanding," chap. xii. sect. 14.]

[Footnote 395: See Nos. 6, 35.]

[Footnote 396: "Brennoralt," act iii.]

[Footnote 397: "Paradise Lost," iv. 12, 13.]


No. 41. [STEELE.

From Tuesday, July 12 , to Thursday, July 14 , 1709.

Celebrare domestica facta.

* * * * *


White's Chocolate-house, July 12.

There is no one thing more to be lamented in our nation, than their general affectation of everything that is foreign; nay, we carry it so far, that we are more anxious for our own countrymen when they have crossed the seas, than when we see them in the same dangerous condition before our eyes at home: else how is it possible, that on the 29th of the last month, there should have been a battle fought in our very streets of London, and nobody at this end of the town have heard of it? I protest, I, who make it my business to inquire after adventures, should never have known this, had not the following account been sent me enclosed in a letter. This, it seems, is the way of giving out of orders in the Artillery Company;[398] and they prepare for a day of action with so little concern, as only to call it, "An Exercise of Arms."

"An Exercise at Arms of the Artillery Company, to be performed on Wednesday, June 29, 1709, under the command of Sir Joseph Woolfe, Knight and Alderman, General; Charles Hopson, Esquire, present Sheriff, Lieutenant-General; Captain Richard Synge, Major; Major John Shorey, Captain of Grenadiers; Captain William Grayhurst, Captain John Buttler, Captain Robert Carellis, Captains.

"The body march from the Artillery Ground through Moorgate, Coleman Street, Lothbury, Broad