The salon and English letters

by Chauncey Brewster Tinker

There was no more certain way of achieving a reputation for wit than by the impromptu composition of these little verses. No lover of Goldsmith will fail to remember Garrick’s epigram on the poet who ‘wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.’ Less hackneyed is the couplet which Dr. Young produced at the ‘World,’ a club of gentlemen who were amusing themselves after dinner by scratching verses, with their diamonds, upon the wine-glasses. Having no jewel of his own, Young, when his turn came round, was obliged to borrow Chesterfield’s, and then wrote:

Accept a miracle: instead of wit,

See two dull lines with Stanhope’s pencil writ.[193]

It is difficult to find a volume of eighteenth century verse that does not bear witness to the popularity of the epigram. Every miscellany teems with them. No collected edition of poems was complete without a handful of them. They are recorded in every diary and commonplace-book, and were exchanged by friends in the course of familiar correspondence. High and low, the peer of wit and the pretender to it, vied with one another in the production of them. All alike seem to have reached a dead level of mediocrity. The charade which Johnson made in honour of his friend Dr. Barnard[194] is no better and no worse than scores of impromptu verses quoted in Walpole’s Letters or the Asylum for Fugitive Pieces.

Much of this, no doubt, seems trivial. But wherever the spirit of the salon appears, evidence of its presence is seen in the production and general esteem of such trifles: rebuses, anagrams, madrigals, enigmas, charades, and bouts rimés. The explanation of it all goes back, perhaps, to the Italian Renaissance, when, as Burckhardt has shown, an epigram could lay the foundation of a scholar’s celebrity:

It was held the greatest of all triumphs when an epigram was mistaken for a genuine copy from some old marble or when it was so good that all Italy learned it by heart, as happened in the case of some of Bembo’s.

The popularity of epigrams in fine English society is amusingly illustrated by the entertainments provided by a certain Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Miller at her villa near Bath. The character and the results of her attempt to stimulate the production of literature are typical, and, as they have left a considerable record in print, it may be profitable to consider them somewhat at length. She introduced what she was pleased to term the ‘little Gallic institution’ of bouts rimés. Lists of riming words were distributed among her guests, who composed verses suggested by them, employing them in their given order. The resulting effusions were then placed in a vase decorated with laurel branches and pink ribbons, erected upon a ‘modern altar.’ ‘It is at present,’ writes this ingenious lady, ‘the receptacle of all the contending poetical morsels which every other Thursday (formerly Friday) are drawn out of it indiscriminately, and read aloud by the gentlemen present, each in his turn. Their particular merits are afterwards discussed by them, and prizes assigned to three out of the whole that appear to be the most deserving. Their authors are then, and not before, called for, who seldom fail to be announced either by themselves, or, if absent, by their friends. Then the prize poems are read aloud a second time to the company, each by its author, if present, if not, by other Gentlemen, and wreaths of Myrtle presented publicly by the Institutress[195] to each successful writer.’

When these verses were published they roused, if not the general esteem which the Institutress plainly expected for them, the interest of Miss Burney, the curiosity of Boswell, and the mirth of Walpole. The latter wrote, in his most delightful mood, to the Countess of Ailesbury:

You must know, Madam, that near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new christened Helicon. Ten years ago there lived a Madam Riggs, an old rough humourist who passed for a wit; her daughter, who passed for nothing, married to a Captain Miller, full of good-natured officiousness. These good folks were friends of Miss Rich, who carried me to dine with them at Bath-Easton, now Pindus. They caught a little of what was then called taste, built and planted, and begot children, till the whole caravan were forced to go abroad to retrieve. Alas! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scudéri, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The Captain’s fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virtù, and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts rimés as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival; six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fat hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with—I don’t know what. You may think this is fiction or exaggeration. Be dumb, unbelievers! The collection is printed, published.—Yes, on my faith! There are bouts rimés on a buttered muffin, made by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland; receipts to make them by Corydon the venerable, alias George Pitt; others very pretty by Lord Palmerston; some by Lord Carlisle: many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre: and immortality promised to her without end or measure.[196]