| Title Page | “J. W.”: Dr. Wood suggests this is the fictitious John Walton of the
“Proposals” at the end of Dumpling. My own preference is for Dr.
John Woodward, the famous antiquarian and physician. As late as
Fielding’s “Dedication” to Shamela, Woodward was being mocked for
suggesting that the “Gluttony [which] is owing to the great
Multiplication of Pastry-Cooks in the City” has “Led to the Subversion
of Government....” (See Woodward’s The State of Physick and of
Diseases [London, 1718], pp. 194-196 and 200-201. Compare this
with Dumpling, pp. 22-23, on the Dumpling-Eaters
Downfall, also pp. 9 and 16, and Key, p. 17.) Swift
deals with “repletion” in Gulliver’s Travels (ed. Herbert Davis
[Oxford, 1941], pp. 253-254 and 262). |
| P.iii.1-22. | L[intot] was Pope’s publisher. B[ooth], W[ilks], and C[ibber] were
the managers of Drury Lane. The London Stage, Part 2: 1700-1729,
ed. Emmett L. Avery (Carbondale, Ill., 1960), shows that J. M.
Smythe’s Rival Modes was first played 27 January 1727 at Drury
Lane; John Thurmond’s pantomime The Miser: Or Wagner and
Abericock was first played 30 December 1726 at Drury Lane; and Lun’s
pantomimes Harlequin a Sorcerer: With The Loves of Pluto and
Proserpine and The Rape of Proserpine were first played at
the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre 21 January 1725 and 13 February 1727
respectively. |
| P.iv.16-25. | The preface ends on a similar note to Carey’s Of Stage
Tyrants (p. 108). |
| P.[v].3-4. | To “it never wants a Father,” compare Of Stage Tyrants
(p. 107). |
| P.vi.1-9. | Swift’s “old Bookseller” had been T[ooke] (though there may be
overtones here regarding Tonson). His new publisher was [Benjamin]
M[otte]. |
|
Pp.viii.24-ix.14. | The “Hackney Writer out of Temple Lane” could very well be
Carey. (See Carey’s Records of Love [London, 1710], pp. 175,
93, and 104.) |
| P.13.6-9. | Carey’s poem “The Plague of Dependence” cautions: “You may dance out
your shoes in attendance;/ [while you] .... wait for a court dependence”
(p. 90). |
| Pp.14.7-15.2. | Here Carey cleverly ties in Swift’s surgeon Gulliver, through the
“Pancake of Rabbets” (Dumpling, p. 17), with the topical and
notorious case of Mary Tofts, who in November 1726 was “delivered” of
fifteen rabbits. All the people mentioned were connected with this case.
Nathaniel St. André was the surgeon and anatomist to the King, and
Cyriacus Ahlers the King’s private surgeon; John Howard was the
apothecary. The imposture was finally brought to light before Sir
Richard Manningham (the famous man-midwife who probably influenced
Sterne) and Dr. James Douglas. Among the many contemporary pamphlets on
this subject is one by Thomas Braithwaite. |
| Pp.16.14-17.13. | The following is a very revealing quotation from records in the
Willesdon Public Library under F. A. Wood [not Dr. F. T.
Wood], Willesdon I, 99: “These nurse children must have been sent
from workhouses round Willesdon ... the parish must have become a baby
farm.... The large number of deaths between 1702 and 1727 ought to have
caused some official enquiry, which probably did take place, as after
1727 they soon ceased altogether.” |
| P.17.14-22. | See Jonathan Richardson, Works, Strawberry Hill Press
(London, 1792), pp. 198-199: “...had the honour of a letter ... the
term Connoisance was used.... I must not conceal the name it
was Mr. Prior.” Richardson, a frequent visitor to Hampstead,
painted both Prior and Pope. His essay on “The Connoisseur” was
frequently published. |
| P.18.6-22. | See also p. 24 and passim. Robert Walpole was born and died
at Houghton in Norfolk; he was helped up by Marlborough but lost power
with
him under the Tories. Walpole went to the Tower for five months in 1712
before going to his home county, where Defoe calls him “King Walpole in
Norfolk.” |
| P.24.19-20. | The “Fable of the Court Pudding” (see also Dumpling,
pp. 13-14) ties together both meanings of the scatological
Latin-English pun on the title page of Dumpling. |
