So wrote the Tory tailor who abused the Whigs, who were at that time most flourishing at court, and most arrogant in drawing-rooms. The day came when the Tories took root at court, and swaggered in saloons: and then, sooth to say, court life and lounging in boudoirs seemed no longer reprehensible in the eyes of the satirist. When he abused the throne, he never expected to be allowed to make a congé at the foot of it. Benedick, in a similar style, when he abused matrimony, never expected to be a married man. And, besides, we may allow in well-abused Paul,—once pillowed on his sire’s sleeve-board,—the tergiversation of principle which was so coolly practised by such mighty fine gentlemen as Dryden, and that insufferably impudent and dishonest fop, Waller.
One at least of Paul’s works led to a public demonstration of some importance; and I may as well notice it here as where it would otherwise as naturally come—under the head of “Masks.” Walpole, writing to Sir Horace Mann, in November, 1741, says:—“I believe I told you that Vernon’s birthday passed quietly; but it was not designed to be pacific, for at twelve at night, eight gentlemen, dressed like sailors, and masked, went round Covent Garden with a drum, beating for a volunteer mob; but it did not take, and they retired to a great supper, that was prepared for them at the Bedford Head, and ordered by Whitehead, the author of ‘Manners.’”
In this last piece the author had committed onslaught on some members of the House of Lords; the latter assembly summoned and imprisoned Dodsley the publisher, Whitehead himself having absconded. The publisher confessed that he had not read the tailor’s strains, but that, as the work was a satire, he had compelled the author to affix his name to the title-page, and take the responsibility. One of the libelled Lords, Essex, moved the discharge of Dodsley; and not only Whitehead, but Pope, was kept quiet by fear of prosecution.
Whitehead had already known what imprisonment was. He had, like many a foolish youth, been ambitious of maintaining an acquaintance with the actors, and he was particularly intimate with Fleetwood the manager. He had not read the admonitory remark of the Wise King, that he who goeth security for his neighbour shall smart for it; and the consequence of putting his name to a bond ultimately placed his person in bonds also, and he expiated in the Fleet his act of generous folly.
But he soon recovered from the effects of this. He was something of a beau, and he did what beaux were wont to do,—married an heiress. The lady was Anne Dyer, daughter of an Essex baronet, Sir Swinnerton Dyer. She was homely and somewhat imbecile, but she had ten thousand pounds,—“dix milles vertus en louis bien comptés,”—and Paul always regarded her as a woman who had rendered him some little service. As duty was then accounted of, this was acting with most singular uprightness.
He now took to what Mrs. Partington calls his “opium cum digitalis,” and ceased to publish, though not to write. His republican friends attacked him as a renegade; his royalist foes assailed him as an atheist; and Paul laughed at both. To show however that he had strength if he chose to exert it, he wrote his ‘Gymnasiad,’ a punching philippic against boxing; and he dedicated it to Boughton the “bruiser,”—and all this in the face of fashion, which then took prize-fighters by the arm, and walked with them in the Mall, proud of the acquaintance.
The atheistical gentleman who turned his satire from the Cabinet to the “ropes,” was well rewarded by Ministers; and Lord le Despenser gave Paul the post of Deputy-Treasurer of the Chamber, with £800 a year to reconcile the patriot to becoming a placeman. He now took his annual tours like a nobleman, and in the course of one of them he found himself at Deal. There, in a little literary circle, Mrs. Carter met him, to that pious and learned lady’s profound horror. She had scarcely patience to hear him read one of his productions; and she who had translated ‘Epictetus,’ in order to gain consolation from his philosophy for being the native of a place so dull, dreary, dirty, dear, and dismal as Deal, could hardly recall a maxim or two to her mind to fortify her against the annoyance of playing second fiddle to the atheistical son of an old London tailor!
Yet Paul was one of the finest of gentlemen in his way, and associated with the very finest of the same class. He not only had his country-house at Twickenham, but a coruscant circle about him of wits whose brilliancy was not considered as tarnished by the most mouldy blasphemy. He was, as I have said, the choice spirit of that club which met at Medenham Abbey. We are struck with a species of horror when we contemplate Augustus and his friends reclining at a banquet dressed out as, and named after, the gods whom they professed to adore. It was a thousand times worse with the atheistical wits who met at Medenham to drown themselves in drink, to wallow in every inconceivable extravagance of vice, and amid it all to laugh at Heaven’s lightning. To crown the horror, these exemplary individuals took the guise and names of the Apostles; and nude Marthas and Marys held the bowl to the lips of Simon Peter and of Jude. But enough of this awful habit of the day. Suffice it to say, that Paul Whitehead and Wilkes, the immaculate patriot, were the most licentious of these pseudo-apostles, and gloried in their shame.
The hour in which the former was called to answer for the crime, struck in 1774. Paul was then residing in Henrietta-street, Covent-garden; and, when he felt the hand of the Inevitable upon him, he burned all his erotic and infidel poetry, as if that could hide his sins from the eye of his Judge. He added to this the heathenish folly of bequeathing his heart to Lord le Despenser. That exemplary nobleman accepted the legacy; and the precious bequest, solemnly inurned, was pompously borne to West Wycombe Church, attended by a procession of minstrels, singers, and admiring friends. As to the quality of the clergy present, it may be judged of by the fact that they stood unprotestingly by while the vocalists, engaged by the Medenham apostles, sang, with rapt expression, the following strophe:—
“From earth to heaven Whitehead’s soul is fled;