ON THE SPECTATOR'S ACQUAINTANCE
Various suggestions have been made concerning the identity of the characters drawn in these papers. Tradition reported that Sir Roger was drawn from Sir John Pakington or Packington, Knight of Worcester. This theory was maintained by Tyers in 1783, but has been conclusively disproved by Wills. Mr. R. E. H. Duke has made an exhaustive study to show that his original was Richard Duke, of Bulford, near Milston, where Addison's early years were spent.
For the prototype of Sir Andrew Freeport Mr. Henry Martin has been suggested. He was one of the authors of The British Merchant; he contributed No. 180, and probably other papers, to the Spectator.
Rumour has also identified Will Honeycomb with Pope's friend, Colonel Cleland; Captain Sentry with Colonel Kempenfeldt, father of Admiral Kempenfeldt of the Royal George; and Will Wimble with Thomas Morecraft, a Yorkshire gentleman introduced to Addison by Steele. Will Wimble seems, however, to be more nearly akin to the Hon. Thomas Gules of the Tatler (256), who 'produced several witnesses that he had never employed himself beyond the twisting of a whip, or the making of a pair of nut-crackers, in which he only worked for his diversion, in order to make a present now and then to his friends'; [Footnote: Cf. p. 20, I, 13 and p. 21, II, 2-11.] and the imaginary nature of Will Honeycomb's existence is sufficiently indicated by the style in which Addison's eighth and supplementary volume of the Spectator is dedicated to him.
The same questionable authority has given to the perverse widow the name of Mrs. Catharine Bovey, or Boevey, of Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire, to whom Steele dedicated the second volume of the Ladies' Library.
It is, however, very doubtful that the characters of the Spectator were drawn from individual persons. Budgell certainly says of Theophrastus that he 'was the Spectator of the age he lived in; he drew the pictures of particular men', but Tickell, who was Addison's friend and literary executor, speaks expressly of 'the feigned person of the Author, and of the several characters that compose his club', and the Spectator himself in two papers exhorts every reader 'never to think of himself or any one of his friends or enemies aimed at in what is said', [Footnote: Spectator 34] for 'when I draw a faulty character I … take care to dash it with such particular circumstances as may prevent all such ill-natured applications.' [Footnote: Spectator 262] The characters are almost certainly created by the Spectator's genius out of the material gathered from his observation of many men.
APPENDIX III
ON THE DEATH OF SIR ROGER
After Sir Roger's visit to town we hear no more of him until the club is startled by the receipt of his butler's letter announcing his death. Some of his admirers have devised a sentimental reason for his decease. In Budgell's Bee we read that "Mr. Addison was so fond of this character that a little before he laid down the Spectator (foreseeing that some nimble gentleman would catch up his pen the moment he quitted it) he said to our intimate friend with a certain warmth in his expression, which he was not often guilty of, 'I'll kill Sir Roger that nobody else may murder him'" Dr. Johnson follows Budgell, and assigns to Addison Cervantes' reason, who finds himself obliged to kill Don Quixote, 'being of opinion that they were born for one another, and that any other hand would do him wrong.'
But there was a more inevitable reason for the death of the knight. Six more weeks saw the end of the original Spectator, the joint production of Addison and Steele, and their creators were now engaged in disposing of their characters in various ways. Chalmers remarks that 'The killing of Sir Roger was sufficiently accounted for without supposing that Addison despatched him in a fit of anger; for the work was about to close, and it appeared necessary to close the club.'