Grub Street (Routledge Revivals)

Routledge Revivals

Grub Street

First published in 1972, this is the first detailed study of the milieu of the eighteenth-century literary hack and its significance in Augustan literature. Although the modern term ‘Grub Street’ has declined into vague metaphor, for the Augustan satirists it embodied not only an actual place but an emphatic lifestyle. Pat Rogers shows that the major satirists – Pope, Swift and Fielding – built a potent fiction surrounding the real circumstances in which the scribblers lived, and the impor- tance of this aspect of their writing.

The author ﬁrst locates the original Grub Street, in what is now the Barbican, and then presents a detailed topographical tour of the surrounding area. With studies of a number of key authors, as well as the modern and metaphorical development of the term ‘Grub Street’, this book offers comprehensive insight into the nature of Augustan literature and the social conditions and concerns that inspired it. This page intentionally left blank: Grub Street Studies in a Subculture

Pat Rogers

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group REVIVALS First published in 1972 by Methuen & Co. Ltd This edition ﬁrst published in 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1972 Pat Rogers

The right of Pat Rogers to be identiﬁed as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 72192666

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-02480-9 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-77549-4 (ebk)

Additional materials are available on the companion website at [http://www.routledge.com/books/series/Routledge_Revivals] This page intentionally left blank: St. Giles Drury Lane Fleet Street

Covent Bridew Garden

Tothill Fields Grub

Street Moorfields Ditch Bedlam Newgate

Ludgate

Billingsgate Rag Fair

clink

The Mint

A New and Correct PLAN of LONDON, WESTMINSTER and SOUTHWARK This page intentionally left blank: GRUB STREET Studiesin a Subculture This page intentionally left blank: This page intentionally left blank: DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE . NORTH EAST VIEW OF AN OLD HOUSE LATELY STANDING IN SWEEDONS PASSAGE GRUR STREET GRUB STREET Studies in a Subculture

PAT ROGERS

'Grubstreet,the name of a streetin London, once inhabitedby personswho wrote for hire, hence usedfor a paltry composition.' Nathaniel Bailey and others, A Universal EtymologicalDictionary

METHUEN & CO LTD London First publishedin I972 by Methuen (S Co Ltd I I New Fetter Lane, London EC4 © I972 Pat Rogers Printed in Great Britain by W (S J Mackay Limited, Chatham SBN 416 11690 6

Distributed in the USA by HARPER & ROW PUBLISHERS, INC. BARNES & NOBLE IMPORT DIVISION Contents

Illustrations vii Prefaceix Acknowledgementsxi Abbreviationsxiii

Introduction: The Topographyof Dulness I

I THE SUBURBAN MUSE 18 Meridian of Grub Street 21 The Cavesof Poverty and Poetry 37 Epic of Grub Street 56 Men and Places 70

II THE PLAGUES OF DULNESS 94 The Crowd in Action 99 The Rage and the Rabble 114 Fire and Fever 126 Artery of Dulness 145

III THE CRITERIA OF DUNCEHOOD 175 Portraitsin Dulness 176 The Dunce in Action 185 Crime and Punishment 196 Backgroundand Biography 207

IV SWIFT AND THE SCRIBBLER 218 GrubeanSpokesman 220 'Respublica Grubstreetaria' 235 The Road to Tyburn 248 Public Abuses 258 CONTENTS V LIFE STUDIES 276 Culture and Subculture 279 Private Lives 291 Defoe as a Dunce 311 The GenuineGrub-Street Opera 327

VI THE GRUB STREET MYTH 350 Legendand Legacy 352 Mournful Narratives 363 Books and Characters 382 A Lexical History 397

Appendix A: Evidencefrom the Rate-Books 412 Appendix B: The Tradesof Grub Street 416 Appendix C: A Grub StreetOde 418 Index 421 Illustra tions

'DomesticArchitecture. North eastview of an old house lately standing in Sweedon'sPassage, Grub Street'. Drawn and etchedby J. T. Smith, July 1791. frontispiece

'A New and CorrectPlan of London,Westminster and South- wark'. Made for J and R Dodsley between1756 and 1761 and includedin London and Its EnvironsDescribed, 1761. front endpaper

Map of 'CreplegateWard'. From p. 70 of John Strype'sedi- tion of Stow's Survey of London, 1720. back endpaper

Vll This page intentionally left blank: Preface

This book is an expandedversion of an essaywhich was awarded the Le Bas Prizeat CambridgeUniversity in 1969. To that composition, which was entitled 'Grub Street: an historical essay',I have addeda good deal of supplementaryevidence and documentation. However,its gravamensurvives intact. In both casesI havesought to showhow the Augustansatirists built uponthe facts of contemporary life. Their metaphors,their narrativeploys, their mise-en-scene,their castingprocedure, can all be relatedto particularsocial circumstance - for example,the choice of Moorfields as a venue for duncely ex- ploits brings with it quite explicit associationsof crime, poverty, martial ardour, sexual misbehaviour, low literary commerceand much else. This generalcase is, I hope, confirmed by the readingof The Dunciad in its revisedform as an epic of Grub Streeteo nomine, the contentionof my first chapter(although it is not dependenton the rightnessof that conjecture,for any cogencyit may have). The processof transformationhas proved long and laborious. It could not have been achievedwithout the patienceand support of Methuen& Co, and especiallyPatrick Taylor. Publishersare inured to waiting, and academicauthors prone to makethem wait. Nonethe less,my gratitudeis morethan token. In view of the contemporaryfashion for 'environmental'studies, it may be worth recordingthat the sectionon the ecologyof Dulness in the Introductionwas written at the end of 1967 and beginningof 1968. I hadconsidered omitting the section;but on secondthoughts, this seemedan unduedeference to modishness.I have thereforelet it stand.

Stock,Essex P.R.

IX This page intentionally left blank: Acknowledgements

Most of the work for this book has been undertakenin the Guild- hall Library, the Corporationof LondonRecords Office, the Greater London Council RecordsOffice, WestminsterLibrary, the Public Record Office, the British Museum Library and CambridgeUni- versity Library. I am grateful to archivistsand librarians who have allowed me accessto their collections. The best way to understandan age, of course,is to read its own books and journals,to look at its own paintingsand engravings.But to limit oneselfto contemporarysources, when modern scholarship can add so much by way of instruction and delight, is to eat acorn with the swine. Among publishedwritings, the work of theseauth- orities has left me hugely in their debt: Dorothy George, Dorothy Marshall,J. H. Plumb, Sir Leon Radzinowicz,George Rude, James Sutherlandand the late Sir William Holdsworth.Earlier generations of topographicalwriters, ranging from Strype, Maitland and Mal- colm to H. B. Wheatley and Sir Walter Besant,have provided in- dispensableaid. Nor have I disdainedthe vast library of popular bookson London: the works ofE. B. Chancellorfurnished a rangeof usually reliable (if not precisely scholarly) information. Like other commentatorson the Plagueand the Great Fire, I have found the studiesof W. G. Bell still unsupplantedas comprehensiveaccounts of their subject. Finally, I have relied heavily on the mapmakersof London, especiallythose of the late seventeenthand early eighteenth centuries.The modern Survey of London is alas uncompleted,but the extant volumes in this series,along with certain publicationsof the London TopographicalSociety, have always been at hand to consultas informantsof the last resort. For a generalpresentation of the city at the time, Ogilby, Morden and Lea, and Rocquesurvive without seriouschallenge from any modernreconstructions.

Xl ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I beganon this book, I was lucky to receivethe encourage- ment of Ian Jack, Denis Donoghueand GeorgeWatson, whose own distinguishedachievements were a stimulusin themselves.Ian Watt kindly read an early draft of the openingsections and madeshrewd but charitablecriticisms. None of thesegentlemen is to be held ac- countablefor the errors and imperfections of the book which has actuallyemerged. I have indicated my indebtednessby a specific referencein the footnotes whereverpossible. But my enthusiasmfor the world de- lineated in this book was a contagion early succumbedto; and I cannotbe sure that I have not on occasionsborrowed ideas or em- phasesunwittingly from previousstudents of the age.

xu Abbreviations

Shortforms and cue titles are employedfor the most frequently con- sultedprinted sources, as follows:

Arbuthnot. G. A. Aitken, The life and Works of John Arbuthnot(Oxford, 1892). Baddeley. J. J. Baddeley, An Account of the Church and Parish ofSt Giles, without Cripplegate (London, 1888). Bayne-Powell. Rosamond Bayne-Powell, Eighteenth-Century LondonLife (London, 1937). Besant. Sir Walter Besant, London in the Eighteenth Century(London, ed. 1925). Butt. The Poemsof Alexander Pope, ed. J. Butt (Lon- don, 1963). Calendar. The Newgate Calendar, ed. G. T. Wilkinson (London,ed. 1963). Clifford. J. L. Clifford, Young SamuelJohnson (London, 1962). Cross. W. L. Cross,The History ofHenry Fielding (New Haven,1918). Defoe, Letters. The Letters of Daniel Defoe, ed. G. H. Healey (Oxford, 1955). Defoe, Tour. Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. G. D. H. Cole (London,1927). Denton. W. Denton, Records of St Giles' Cripplegate (London, 1883). EtC. The Works of Alexander Pope, ed. W. Elwin, W. J. Courthope(London, 1872-89). Ehrenpreis. Irvin Ehrenpreis,Swift: The Man, the Works and the Age(London, 1962- ).

X111 ABBREVIATIONS Faber. The Poetical Works ofJohn Gay, ed. G. C. Faber (London, 1926). Fielding. The CompleteWorks ofHenry Fielding, ed. W. E. Henley(New York, ed. 1967). George. M. DorothyGeorge, London Life in the Eighteenth Century(Harmondsworth, 1966). Gomme. TopographicHistory ofLondon, ed. G. L. Gomme (London, 1904). Harben. HenryHarben, A Dictionary ofLondon (London, 1918). Holdsworth. Sir William Holdsworth, A History of English Law (London, 1922-38). Irving. W. H. Irving, John Gay's London (Cambridge, Mass.,1928). Journal. JonathanSwift, Journal to Stella,ed. H. Williams (Oxford, 1948). Lee. William Lee, Daniel Defoe,' His Life andRecently DiscoveredWritings (London, 1869). London Past H. B. Wheatley, P. Cunningham,London Past fS Present. and Present(London, 1891). Maitland. William Maitland, The HistorJI and Survey of London(London, 1756). Malcolm. J. P. Malcolm, Anecdotesof London, during the EighteenthCentury (London, 1810). Marshall. Dorothy Marshall, Dr Johnson'sLondon (New York, 1968). Moore, Checklist. J. R. Moore, A Checklistof the Writings ofDaniel Defoe(Bloomington, 1960). Moore, Citizen. J. R. Moore, Daniel Defoe Citizen ofthe Modern World (Chicago,1958). New Remarks. New Remarksof London . . . Collected by the Companyof Parish-Clerks (London, 1732). Oldmixon. John Oldmixon, The History of England (Lon- don, 1735). Paulson. Hogarth's Graphic Works, ed. R. Paulson(New Haven,1965).

XIV ABBREVIATIONS Pope, The Correspondenceof Alexander Pope, ed. G. Correspondence. Sherburn(Oxford, 1956). Pope,Prose Works. The Prose Works ofAlexander Pope, ed. N. Ault (Oxford, 1936),Vol. I (all published). Radzinowicz. Leon Radzinowicz,A History ofEnglish Criminal Law (London, 1948- ). Romancesand Romancesand Narratives by Daniel Defoe, ed. Narratives. G. A. Aitken (London, 1895). Sherburn.Sherburn. GeorgeSherburn, The Early Career ofAlexander Pope(Oxford, 1934). Society. Memoirs ofthe Society ofGrub-Street (London, 1737)· Steeves. Pope, The Art of Sinking in Poetry, ed. E. L. Steeves(New York, 1952). StateTrials. StateTrials, ed. T. B. Howell (London, 1812). Stow. John Stow, The Surveyof London (London, ed. 1633). Straus.Straus. Ralph Straus, The UnspeakableCurll (London, 1927). Strype. John Strype'sedn of Stow's Survey of London (London, 1720). Sutherland. JamesSutherland, Defoe (London, ed. 1950). Swift, The Prose Works ojJonathanSwift, ed. H. Davis Prose Works. et. al. (Oxford, 1939-68). Swift, The Correspondenceof Jonathan Swift, ed. H. Correspondence.Williams (Oxford, 1963-5). Swift, Poems. Swift, Poetical Works, ed. H. Davis (London, 1967). Tale. Swift, A Tale ofa Tub [etc.], ed. A. C. Guthkelch, D. Nichol Smith (Oxford, ed. 1958). Thornbury. Walter Thornbury, Old and New London (Lon- don,nd.). TE. The Twickenham edition of The Poems of AlexanderPope, ed. J. Butt (London, 1939-69). The Dunciad, ed. J. Sutherland,is quoted from xv ABBREVIATIONS the third edition (1963). For the one-volume text, seeButt. Trevelyan. G. M. Trevelyan, England under Queen Anne (London,ed. 1965). Turberville. Johnson'sEngland, ed. A. S. Turberville (Oxford, 1933)· Watt. Ian Watt, TheRise of the Novel(Harmondsworth, 1963). Webb. Sidneyand BeatriceWebb, English LoealGovern- ment(London, ed. 1963). Wheatley. H. B. Wheatley, Hogarth's London (London, 1909). Williams. Aubrey Williams, Pope's Duneiad (London, 1955)·

XVI In Memory ofmy Mother This page intentionally left blank: Introduction The Topographyof Dulness

Thus, Wit has its Walks and Purlieus, out of which it may not stray the breadthof an Hair, upon peril of being lost. The Modernshave art- fully fixed this Mercury, and reducedit to the Circumstancesof Time, Placeand Person.Such a Jestthere is, that will not passout of Covent- Garden; and such a one, that is nowhereintelligible but at Hide-Park Corner. Swift, A Tale ofa Tub ...... 'Grub Street'entered the languagein the seventeenthcentury, be- camealmost a householdphrase in HanoverianEngland, and survives in modern parlance with a rather diminished identity. Its metaphorical senselives on, althoughthe road itself was renamedMilton Streetin 1830 and has now beenswallowed virtually whole in the immenseBarbican building scheme.This loss of physical presence is a shame.For we can hardly grasp the full force of the metaphor unlesswe know somethingof the literal existenceof the place. The geographical environs of Grub Street were noisy, squalid and crowded;the moral overtoneswhich the phrasecarried in its transferred sensecame initially from this fact, and were heightenedfor contemporariesby the social characterwhich the district continued to bear.Hack writers actually did live in CripplegateWard Without, in and around Grub Street. This fact, I believe, gives an added dimension to the many opprobiousreferences to denizensof the placewhich we find in Augustanliterature - satireespecially. Yet very little is known about the sociology of the region. The milieu of Duncehoodwas, first and foremost,the parishof St Giles', Cripplegate,in the liberties of the City of London.Now it is not hard to find out much solid fact concerningthe ecologyof this parishand its environsin the early eighteenthcentury. Surprisingly,no one has

I INTRODUCTION evertroubled to do this. The card catalogueof the Guildhall Library, which is perhapsthe most compendiousreference tool we have to London topography,contains only two entries under the heading 'Grub Street'.In one case,the connectionwith thestreet is fortuitous. In the other, we are led to a privately printed monographof mid- Victorian origin - an amiableand rather desultorywork by an anti- quarian,very much characteristicof its period, and not very full or rigorousin its scholarship.And thatis aboutall. 1 More recentstudents have rarely botheredto note, even in passing,the existenceof a real placecalled Grub Street,even though they usethe nameas a chapter headingand liberally besprinkletheir pageswith the phrasein its figurative application.2 One aim of this book is to show that the social conditionsin which the hacks lived and worked are not beyond re- search. Another is to establish the fact that this material, once assembled,can fill out our understandingof eighteenth-century literature at a level deeperthan that of mere 'topographic'reference. If tragedyconcerns itself with the insupportable,then satiretakes as its provincewhat may just be borne. Augustansatire is peculiarly occupiedby that harsh, fetid, oppressivelyphysical world of pain and pestilencewhich dominatesthe landscapeof Pope, Swift and Hogarth. All satiristsneed to have enemies.But not all have found it necessaryto namenames so insistently,to enrol their victims in a society of folly, to stick so closely to topical reality. For thesemen, the characteristicbutt is not a generalisedMaevius but an individual- ised ThomasWharton. The typical setting is not a vague infernal region but a particular locality such as Covent Garden market or Temple Bar.3 London, indeed, becomesa central symbol of their work. The city servesas a type of Pandemonium.Its streets,courts and alleys constitutea new map of hell. Its markets,theatres, prisons, hospitalsand ditchesmake up a gazetteerof folly and iniquity. Many critics have supposedthat the densityof topographicreference in all theseartists is a mere trick in the fingers. I think it is less superficial than that. The Augustansuse the physical detail of contemporary London to supporttheir fictions, much as Danteused the theological schemeof St Thomasas a poetic framework, or as Blake and Yeats employedan inventedmythology. The differenceis that Popedid not

2 INTRODUCTION contrive his own moral universe.His satiric cosmologyis basedon the geographyof the London of his day. He makestopography serve as moral symbolism. A numberof influential recentcommentators have argued that we need not concern ourselvesunduly with the victims of Augustan satire. No: more than that, they have assertedthat it is positively distracting to do so. This book has been actuatedby a radically different belief. I shall contendthat it is profitable to adopt, at least for a moment,the Dunce'seye view.4 By studyingthe victim in his naturalhabitat, we do gain considerableinsight into the procedures and motivation of the satirist. By taking seriously the replies which the hack made to Swift, for instance,we may often find out more about the Dean'sintentions than if we restricted ourselvesto the presuppositionsof Renaissancehumanism, or the donneesof Anglican rationalism.It is, apartfrom anythingelse, a favourite device of the Scriblerian party to beat down an opponentwith his own weapon. Footling writers the Duncesmay have been- many certainly were - but their existencewas no footling thing for the courseof English satire. Bad writing has often beenthe occasion,or proximatecause, of good - witnessNorthanger Abbey.The great stroke of the Augustan satiristswas to make the world of low literatureserve as subjectand setting of their works. Both Swift's Tale and The Dunciad reflect in their narrativethe buffeting, combativeexistence of the hacks; their imagery is filled with diseaseand disaster,as were the seamierparts of London familiar to the hack. This means that the scribbler's environmentis as much the satiric target as the writers themselves. Grub Street is the Dunces'milieu; but it is also the expressionof their corporateidentity. Like so many Scriblerianinventions, it has onefoot in the real world, the otherin an imaginativerealm. As everybody knows, the subject-matterof Pope, Swift and Hogarthis repletewith obnoxiousdetail. Their recurrentmotifs are squalor,pestilence, ordure, poverty: their modeis one of physicality, their tone is often that of outrageor disgust.(Sometimes a hyberbolic outragefor comic ends, but that makes little difference.) I do not think it has been sufficiently realised that this reflects not only a 3 INTRODUCTION general inheritance,from Juvenal or Bosch, but also a particular responseto the conditions of the time. Climatic events of recent history, suchas the Plagueand the GreatFire, suffusetheir imagery and hang over their drama. Once again, we can only come to grips with their richest artistic statementsif we desertthe overcrowded consultingroom of the private pathologist,and follow the satiriststo the seethingcrowd outsideNewgate or to the public spectaclewhich was Bedlam. Theirs was a clamorous,savage, often brutal world. In ProfessorPlumb's words, it was filled 'with violenceand aggression, with coarselanguage and gross manners, with dirt, diseaseand lust.'s London, especially, was in many parts overcrowded,malodorous, tumultuous: an insecure,neurotic city where King Mob might at any time resumehis reign afterthe briefestinterregnum. (Sacheverell, Ormonde,the gin act, the excise crisis - almost anything might be the occasion.)Small wonder that the art of satirist fixes, with hal- lucinatory clarity, on the here and now. As for the 'now', we may recall how many of the figures portrayedby Hogarthare identifiable individuals, comparedwith those of Rowlandson.And as for the 'here',there is a further considerationwe shouldkeep in mind. London was then a much smaller place than it is today. The population of the combined metropolis, including Westminster, Southwarkand the out-parishes,fell short of 700,000at the start of the eighteenthcentury; moreover, these people were herdedtogether appallingly closely in many districts. Most inhabitantsof the capital lived neartheir work. Merchantswere beginningto acquirecountry- boxesat Claphamor Hampstead,but the City was never the ghost- town at theweekends which it is today.Again travelwas slow, virtually always on the surfaceof the earth (rarely subterraneanand never superterrene),and often dangerous- it demandedone's full atten- tiveness.One was, besides, longer about a given journey:'This Town is grown to such an enormoussize,' wrote Mrs Pendarvesto Swift in 1736, 'that abovehalf the day must be spentin the streetsin going from one placeto another.'6Places only a few miles distantfrom the city were regardedas remote:Ward of Hackneycould be so identi- fied - as opposedto Ned Ward of Moorfields, say - almostas though he were an ancestrallaird. Defoe in Stoke Newington was an early

4 INTRODUCTION exurbanite.Moreover, it was not yet customaryto give numbersto houses,so that a particular coffee-houseor bookseller'sshop would be located by a physical description,even on the cover of a letter - 'over against CatharineStreet' or 'two doors from the Exchange'. Finally, really large buildings were comparativelyrare. There were no vast offices, no blocks of flats, no railway termini. Thus, apart from the occasionalprivate mansion such as Montagu House or Marlborough House (and they were mostly on the outskirts), the main public edifices stood out stark and unmistakable.Churches, prisons,hospitals, mercantile centres - this was the kind oflandmark which any Londoner would know from childhood. It takes an imaginative effort to put oneself into this visual setting, with its primary horizontal emphasis:but that is the world into which the hackswere born. It is interestingto note that, at a climatic momentin Clarissa, a novel now somewhatoverburdened with moral-cum-metaphysical readings, the same particularity reassertsitself. When Clarissa is arrestedas sheleaves St Paul's,Covent Garden ('at the door fronting Bedford Street'), she is told by the sheriff's officer that she must accompanyhim to High Holborn. 'I know not where High Holborn is,' is her bewilderedresponse - geographicalinnocence of the city's thoroughfaresportending, of course, much more. Then, 'looking about her, and seeing the three passages,to wit, that leading to Henrietta Street, that to King Street, and the fore-right one, to Bedford Street, crowded, she started.Anywhere - anywhere,said she, but to the woman's!'(Letter CV.) This passagehas something of the flavour of a tableauin classicalhistory painting - Herculesat the fork in the road. Somethingbut not all: for the mythological suggestionsare severelyqualified by the explicitnesswith which the streetsare named. Even at such a fateful moment for the heroine, Richardsonkeeps his eye on the imaginativegeography of the scene. Clarissa'sreluctance to go back to Mrs Sinclair's is conveyedby a sort of vertiginousbefuddlement, in which the streetsappear before her distractedgaze as alarmingmoral alternatives.7 It follows from all thesefacts, that to contemporaries,the social mode of the satiristswas all the more comprehensiblebecause of its 5 INTRODUCTION readydependence on topography.In 1730 one navigatednot by tube stationsor bus routes,but by given featuresof the landscape,most of which playedan obviouspart in the religious, legal or commercial life of the city, and dominateda little hinterlandof their own. Smith- field, St Paul's and the Fleet River are straightforwardexamples. Similarly, one navigatesthe satire of Pope, Gay or Swift with the help of theseconspicuous directional aids: now becomemoral land- marks, they carry special associations- broadly sociological or historical - which help to underpin the satire. In this book I try to provide a sort of gazetteer,to assist the modem readerto pick up these associationswith somethingof the fluency and delight with which men and women of the eighteenthcentury seized on them. This is a route-mapto explore the comedyof Grub Street.For the zestwith which Popeand Swift, especially,responded to the facts of life aroundthem is not always fully appreciated.In an age when the life of the streetswas a standardtheme, Swift standsout for the vivid and graphicimmediacy of his handlingof this topic. The sense of fascinatedoutrage which penetratesthe satireof both menappears with notable force in this area of their response.I shall try in this book to conveysomething of this energy:an energyoften of rejection andcontumely, yet an indispensablefactor in the concentratedpower of their satire. In the imaginativelycharted streets of London, Blake - the Londonerborn and bred - hearsthe youthful harlot'scurse as a kind of universal malediction.With the Scriblerians,fixing on an external reality somehow alien yet deeply compelling, the harlot becomesa characterin a localiseddrama: her utteranceis specified, as it is registeredon the mind of the author and reader with the sharpnessof outline that belongs to idyll and to nightmare. It is exactly the distinction of Popeand Swift that they are not transcen- dentalin Blake'sway.

It has, of course,long beenrecognised that satire in this age is rich in topographicallusion. But this hasnearly alwaysbeen dismissed as a sort oflocal colour, and not muchhas been made of this recognition in the serviceof worthwhile critical ends.In most cases,a little inert social history is dredgedout of Trivia and poemsof that kind, for a 6 INTRODUCTION sectionentitled 'The Life of the Streets'.8 That is, the movementis from literature towards documentation.The author combs satiric literaturein orderto tell us somethingabout early eighteenth-century life in the capital. This book proceedsin an oppositedirection. I hope to show how a knowledge of London topographycan inform and enrich a readingof the greatestsatire of the period. That is another distinction in passing. Usually critics have found it necessaryto engagein London espionagewith Ned Ward, and to bring in Pope or Gay only as incidentalwitnesses from outside,literary daytrippers rather than residents.Here the great writers will be allotted a more centralplace. The only serious study of the topographyof The Dunciad, for example,is that of Aubrey Williams. Excellent as this is, it concen- trates entirely on the itinerary of the Dunces' 'progress',and the relation of that to the course followed by the official party on the real-life Lord Mayor's Day.9 In the contextof Williams' immediate purposes,this was an unimpeachableprocedure on his part. But there remainsa great deal else. For the effective geographyof the poemis not confinedto the carnival processionof folly to St Mary Ie Strandand back again. It includesa much denserreview of the city, its inhabitantsand its institutions; and likewise relies on a far more inward acquaintancewith London topographythan most of us can hopeto possesstoday. This, of course,is not in ordermerely to make out the externalaction of the poem, or the siting of any particular episode. Rather, it is so if we are to understandthe imaginative workings of Pope'sfiction, and to respondto its underlying human and social implications. On one level, the poem is about the onset/ spread/contagiouspower/epidemic character/low associations of evil. This pestilencemay be describedas folly, Dulness,modernism, the uncreatingword - what you will. About the contentof Pope'sviews, if we may distinguish such a thing, I am in almost total agreement with the splendid and authoritative reading provided by Professor Williams. But the methodof the poemis perhapseven more complex, more fully orchestratedand more effective than he allows. My view of The Dunciad, briefly, is that it is a work where humangeography becomes symbolism.

7 INTRODUCTION The imageof the City, in Augustansatire, is a sombreone. Pope, impelled by his 'ragefor order',fixes againand again on thethorough- fares of London in order to image disorder. Swift reverts to the dirt and rubble of the streets;his is a world of garrets,night-cellars, prostitutes.John Gay devotesan entire poem to the effective refu- tation of anironic thesis: Happy Augusta! law-defendedtown!10 ElsewhereGay composestown ecloguesand Newgate pastoral. In eachcase the point is the same.The unpleasantphysical facts of the contemporary townserve as a negativeimage: an actuality of poverty, confusion and immorality to set againstthe dream of learning, the vision of heroism, or the pastoral idyll. London, failing to be an Augustanmetropolis of epic stature,exposes - as it literally contains - the sordidreality which is the empireof Dulness. Thereis a good reasonwhy the satiristsshould have used geogra- phy to make their point. At this time spatial arrangementwas still regardedas in some manner symbolic. The self-evident mode of revelation found in a Gothic cathedralwas no longer imitated. But the lay-out of a Georgiancountry-house does, more subtly, affirm a whole hierarchicalsystem of values.To movethrough such a houseis to enact a declarationof assentto the Augustan notions of social living. As one traversesthe ground floor, from the imposingcentral salon, through formal reception-roomsinto the library and private apartments,one experiencesa senseof public dignity melting into personalamenity. (Sometimesthe separationof the parts is more clearcut: but the basic point still holds. At Blenheim, the great hall and the saloonare flanked, in the centralblock, by stateapartments: the private quartersare set at right-angles,in eachwing, thoughthis is disguisedon the main North front by the curving arcade.But then Blenheim was a monumentto official virtue. A houselike Stowe is more typical; as well as patriotic zeal, the mansion testifies to the moral valueof 'retirement'.) On occasions,this senseof material symbolismwas taken to ex- cess. It was certainly very strong in Horace Walpole, who actually slept with a copy of Magna Carta on one side of his bed and the 8 INTRODUCTION warrantfor the executionof CharlesI on the other.H Walpole care- fully compiled A Description of . .. Strawberry Hill (1774), and laid out its separateparts with deliberateartifice: much as he would have adjustedthe disponsiblesof a literary composition.Not all the arrangementswere, perhaps, ideal: the pantrywas next to theoratory, andthe kitchen seemsto havebeen in the oppositecorner of the villa from the refectory- which cannothave pleasedthe servants.12But, all in all, it is plain that Walpole did wish to makedefinite statements about himself and his own mode of living by the way spacewas allocated.Pope's rhetorical point derivesfrom a similar insight. The way Londonis laid out testifiesto the life which is led there. The density of topographicallusion, then, in Pope'swork is no accident.Places and poemsare capableof every kind of mutual rela- tionship. In this case,the social backgroundof a living London goes to inform the whole imaginativeconstruct which Popehas fabricated. A numberof factors which contributeto that processare worth brief examination. Initially, we should rememberthat on one level The Dunciad is a poemabout civil dudgeon.From the Restorationonwards an import- ant strand of polite literature takes its origin from what we might call, following the title of a play by JohnCrowne (1683), city politics. The fervour with which issueswere fought out in London a little later has beendescribed by two recenthistorians: 'A political ther- mometerwould have recordeda constanthigh temperaturein the capital during the reigns of William and Anne . . . Party politics mixed with both the businessand pleasureof Londoners. . . . The spirit of party . . . penetratedinto the leisurehaunts of the capital.' Now, it is true of coursethat Pope does not directly take up these squabblesin his work: his commentson the attempts toannex Cato by the two parties,on its openingnight, are detachedand amused. But he was after all the son of a London merchant,even though one who had retired to the seclusionof Windsor Forest. He grew up during the time of fermentdescribed in thelast quotation.As a result, his work is stuffed with referencesto aldermenand City magnates- his Horatian poems, perhaps most conspicuously.Just as Swift broughtin the famous episodeinvolving Sir HumphreyEdwin into

9 INTRODUCTION his Tale, so Popenever transferred his imaginativegaze from London for very long. Macaulayonce observed that in this age 'the influence of the City of London was felt to the remotestcorner of the realm.' This is true artistically, as well as politically.13 The reasonsfor that lie partly in the sociologicalcharacter of the placearound 1700. London was thenby far the biggesttown in the land. The metro- politan area containedabout one eighth of the entire populationof England and Wales.14 For this reason alone, civil broils took on microcosmic significance, at the same time as they constitutedin soberreality macrocosmicfacts. The city as a whole covereda rela- tively small spaceby modern standards.Yet within a few square miles there were markeddisparities in living standards,whether we interpretthat phraseto connoteeconomic levels or mores.Restoration London was not much more than a congeriesof villages. Hencethe readinesswith which men and women of the time distinguished betweenthe separatezones of the town, physically adjacentas they were. Steele- to take one exampleamong many - hasa characterin The Tender Husbandremark: 'You are so public an envoy, or rather plenipotentiary,from the very different nationsof Cheapside, Covent Garden,and St James's:you have, too, the mien and languageof each place so naturally . . .' Addison was to use exactly the same significantimage ('an aggregate of severalnations, distinguished from eachother by their respectivecustoms, manners and interests . . .')15 It was in this way theregrew up the situationdescribed by Ian Watt as a typical featureof the new urbanisedlandscape: 'this combination of physical proximity and vast social distance.'16Grub Street was within comfortablewalking distanceof, say,the new Bank of England. But it was not a very well worn path,for a greatdividing line (symbol- ised neatly by the old walls of the City) stood betweenthe two. Similarly, the slums of St Giles' ran almost up againstthe opulent new developmentsto the north of what was beginningto be called Oxford Street:yet their interactionwas minimal. In a less sophisti- catedsociety, it would seemthat visible barrierssuch as a ditch or a bastioncount for more in psychologicalterms; remarkably often, the parish and ward divisions follow some such obvious feature. The socialcontours are mapped out by the geographicalterrain.

10 INTRODUCTION Thereis an importantreason why place namescrop up with such remarkablefrequency. To the moderncity-dweller, the title bestowed on a road or a district is a historical accident-a dead metaphor.To the Augustans,the metaphorwas still living, at least in part. If one looks at a contemporarymap of London, this becomesclear. Take as a convenientinstance the map publishedby Dodsley in 1761, used for the endpapersof Boswell's LondonJournal,17 In the boroughof Southwark,the following is a completelist of the streetsnamed: The Broad Wall, Angel Street, Melancholy Walk, Gravel Lane, Love Lane,Bankside, Bear Garden,Maid Lane, Clink Street,Dead Man's Place,Red CrossStreet, Dirty Lane (twice), Foul Lane. I have set down thesenames as they came: it would be possibleto rearrange them in a more striking, quasi-narrativeorder. It must be apparent that such titles fulfil more than a narrow attributive role. They are descriptivelabels. Peopleof the age still saw symbolic meaningsin a name, which in any casewas held to be of divine origin and hence magical in quality. A clear caseof what happenedis provided by the widespreadview that the Great Fire was a visitation from the Almighty: a view sanctionedby the erroneousbelief that the fire had startedin PuddingLane and endedat Pie Corner - and must con- sequentlyhave been designedas a warning against gluttony. The sameliteral-minded concern with nomenclatureemerges from one of the many poems written just after the fire, 'London's Remains' (1667): PHYSICIANSCOLLEDG next, its Seatdid Pit, Whether by Chancethere plac'd or Wit. It stood at Amen,Paternoster's close; For he needspray that takesa Dose. The punningonly works becausepeople still took place namesseri- ously, as an indicationof what you might expectto find there.IS Pope capitaliseson this situation, which provided him with a readymadesymbolic framework, in a variety of ways. One of his concernsis to suggestthat a certainkind of soil breedsand nurtures a certainkind of plant. That is, he takesover from the secondGeorgie the ideathat thereis a properhabitat for eachcreated thing: Nunc locus arvorum ingeniis . . .

II INTRODUCTION It is a long way, perhaps,from willows and vines to starveling writers (that is part of the joke.)19 But 'the genius of soils' can be appliedto humanecology, as well as that of plants.This is one reason why Pope takes such pains to describe'The cave of Poverty and Poetry' at the outset.'Th' imperial seatof Fools', whetherRag Fair or Grub Street,is the nerve-centrefor Dulness;but in addition it is a type of the social degradationthat waits on Dulness('Emblem of music caus'dby Emptiness... The cave of Povertyand Poetry.') Moreover, Pope deliberately selects an image which relates the spiritual squalorof his victims to the actualsqualor which he had set out in his 'FurtherAccount of . . . Curll': Here in one bed two shiv'ring sisterslye. In this, they arebut avatarsof the scapegracelife led by professional hacks: the two translatorsin bed togetherin Moorfields, the other pair in the flock-bed at Cursitor'sAlley. Both unions,needless to say, aresterile. Another rhetorical stratagemis to insinuate that literary vice, becauseit is practisedin the samedingy quartersas social wrong- doing, is directly equivalent. Everyone knows the famous couplet aboutLady Mary, in the Horatiansatire addressed to Fortescue: From furious Sapphoscarce a milder Fate, P-x'd by her Love, or libell'd by her Hate ...20 What The Dunciad showsis that you got yourselflibelled in just the same districts as you got yourself poxed. A topographic identity becomesa moral equivalence.Again, a third device is to deflate grandiosepretensions by reminding the Dunce that his epic ambi- tions are acted out in downtown slums and suburbanalleys. Black- more'sclaims as a heroic poethave to withstanda successionof blows in the poem, but few more cutting than the reminderthat his effective audiencedoes not extendbeyond Tottenham and Hungerford. Pope has dramatisedin spatial terms an evaluative critical judge- ment. We cannotmove far in The Dunciad without finding this kind of technique.It is an almost topological poem: spaceand distance arepart of its essentialmechanics. The propositionsoutlined so far may perhapsbe corroboratedby the insights of the modernstudy of humanecology. A standardtext

12 INTRODUCTION on Urban Society,for instance,described how residentialzones follow 'differencesof social class, religion, ethnic origin, and race.' And, arguingthat 'the division of labour and social differences often re- inforce oneanother', the authorsstate: Socialisolationism is reinforcedby spatialisolationism; the more people are spatially segregated,the less likely are they to come into intimate contactwith eachother. At least the possibilitiesof close relationships on the basis of social equality are greatly reduced. Instead,contacts tend to be formalized, confined principally to the market place or the work situation. Peoplewho . . . have contactsof a strictly economic character,may live in entirely different social and ecologicalworlds. This is surely appositeto the relationsof Popeand his book-sellers. Tonson,alone, had purchasedenough respectability at Barn Elms to acquire something approachingfriendship, though not equality. Lintot may be usedas a subscriptionagent, but will still be a Dunce. It is much the same with Swift and men like Motte, Barber and Faulkner,whom he genuinelyliked (though here London'sremote- ness fromDublin is a factor). The easewith which the major writers kept themselvesat a distancefrom the trade except in the purely mercantile role, is symbolisedby the fact that Pope scarcely ever went into the City, if his correspondenceis any guide, althoughthe trade was increasinglycentred there. Nor, of course, did he make many excursionsinto St Giles' or Cripplegate.His contactswith Drury Lane seemremarkably few, for one who was connectedquite closely with the theatrefor a numberof years.Pope's rejection of the way of life of the city is fitly representedby his withdrawal to Twickenham,whatever the legal basisof that move. Yet he did spend a greatdeal of time in London,and as we have seendisplayed abun- dantknowledge of the town. It remainstrue that his first-handdealings with the enclavesof Dulnessmust have beenfleeting and lacking in intimacy. Thesame textbook contains this passage: Human ecology goes farther than merely determiningwhere designa- ted groupsare localized or where particular functions of thesegroups are performed. It is also concernedwith interactive relationshipsbe- tweenindividuals and groupsand the way theserelationships influence, or are influencedby, particularspatial patterns and processes.21 13 INTRODUCTION Now, Pope'streatment of social reality as he saw it makesclear how 'particular spatial patterns and processes'(such as the westward march of the trading class) influences relationships. Augustan society superimposeda spatial segregationon a vertical social hier- archy, and amongstother things The Dunciadgives us an imaginative vision of the moral entity which was the city, imaged by its topo- graphicand ecologicalindentity. The 'map' is finally only a palimp- sest.For the Grub Streetwhich showsup thereas an outlying enclave is no more than a shadowon the wall of the cave. The real Grub Streetis elsewhere:an outlying enclavein the metropolisof letters.

The argumentof this book is laid out on a simple plan. ChapterI describesthe main centres of Dulness, notably the history and characterof Grub Streetproper, and locatesthe Duncesthemselves in their particular haunt. The secondchapter examines some of the ways in which the 'real life' of London affect Augustanwriting. By this I meannot simply the literal occurrenceof fire, diseaseand riot- ing within eighteenth-centuryworks, but also the imaginativereson- anceof thesemotifs in the idiom of satire. After this comesa section of the 'criteria' for admissionto Duncehood:that is, the social and literary characteristicsof a hack. Thefourth chapterconsiders Swift's dealingswith Grub Street.The fifth is concernedwith what might be called the existentialstate of Dulness:the psychology,rather than the social condition, of professionalwriters. Defoe's career is re- viewed, as it is both typical and wildly aberrantfor authorsin this period. In addition, thereis a brief surveyof Fielding'suse of Grub Streetthemes and terminology. This leads on to the final chapter, describingthe gradualblurring of the Grub Streetidea, as it loses contactwith its original topographicbase. Throughoutthe book, I have attemptedto presenta world and not merely to juggle with ideas.First andforemost, this is a history - of words, of places, of feelings. The overriding intent is that of describinghow thingswere, or seemedto people,at a specificmoment of time. I do not assertthat thereis a necessaryconnection between Grub Streetand squalid social conditions: rather, that therewas an 14 INTRODUCTION observablelink at this period. It may be that in other agesthe hack would standin a different relationshipto the major artist. I have not consideredthe question, for I am not engaging in the theory of literature. How permanentthe conditions that I describewere, is a questionwhich must be left to scholarsof other periods, or of all periods,if such there be. In other words, this book startsfrom and returns to the concreteeighteenth-century setting. It attemptsto showwhat one literary form, satire,took from contemporarylife: and how that 'real' world is transfiguredby art. It is a study of one aspect of the eighteenth-centurymind: its curiousloyalty to the actual.

Epigraph. Tale, p. 43. I. SeeCh. VI. After thefirst draft ofthis book hadbeen substantially completed, a work by Philip Pinkuswas publishedunder the title Grub StreetLaid Bare (London, 1968). This containsa pleasingfund of anecdote.But it must be statedthat the book addsfurther impetusto what I have called the Grub StreetMyth. Its subtitle, 'The scandalouslives and pornographicworks of the Original Grub St. writers, togetherwith the bottle songswhich led to their drunkenness,the shamelesspamphleteering which led them to New- gate Prison, and the continual panderingto public taste which put them amongthe first almostto earna fitful living from their writing alone', does no disserviceto the contents.More to the presentpoint, Mr Pinkus writes blandly, 'Grub Streetitself is a metaphor',(p. xi) without enquiring any further into the basisof this imaginativetransference. And his first chapter begins: 'There was an actual Grub Street once. According to the New English Dictionary, it is now calledMilton Street,near Moorfields in London - which mayor may not be relevant. But the Grub Streetwe know is an eternalspirit that dwells in the heartof every authorwhose belly is at odds with his principles. . . . Today . . . we call it Fleet Street or Madison Avenue .. .' (p. 13). As this book will show, it is highly relevantthat Grub Street,for instance,lay nearMoorfields - the presenttense is hardly appro- priate, sinceMoorfields as suchno longer existsand Milton Street,too, was effectively goneby 1968. Furthermore,we canhardly understand the derived meaningof Grub Street,in the metaphoricaland almostmetaphysical sense to which Mr Pinkusalludes, if like him we dismissthe vehicle of the metaphor at the very outset. Mr Pinkus'sbook, one might say, is really about hacksat large; whereasthis studyis concernedwith the genesisof the metaphor, the interaction of tenor and vehicle, the name and nature of Grub Streetin generaland - crucially - in particular. 15 INTRODUCTION

2. A numberof examplesare given in Ch. VI. An interestingcase in point is that of Sir Ivor Jennings'section on Grub Streetin his Party Politics, vol i The Appealto the People(Cambridge, 1960), pp. 134-53.The original Grub Streetwas more than a publicity machine:its associationswere quite dif- ferentfrom thoseof modernFleet Street. 3. It should never be forgotten that early editions of A Tale of a Tub were garnishedwith a cut of a wholly unmistakableBedlam, those of The Dunciad with a sceneat Bridewell Bridge depictedby no less a hand than Francis Hayman. There is really no possible ambiguity in these cases.Whatever generalor symbolic referencewe give to thesevignettes, it remainsa fact that the narrative prescribesa definite locality which the illustrator has no qualmsin setting down with the carelessfidelity that goeswith utter famili- arity. It has beenpointed out that T. S. Eliot usedas the basisof a scenein the Four Quartets a recollection of GloucesterRoad undergroundstation; and it is arguedthat in a novel he would probablyhave namedthe location quite openly. I am not entirelysure about this; but thatthe Augustan satirists would have done as much, I am quite certain. See Graham Hough, An Essayin Criticism (London, 1966), p. 117. The fact is that mostpresent-day critics areinsufficiently literal-mindedwhen it comesto Scribleriancomedy. 4. By this I do not meanthat we should take the hacks'word for everything. Pinkus'sintention to present'the story of the Grub Streethacks through their own writings' seemsa curious undertaking.'What evolvesfrom this,' he says, 'will not be pure, laboratory-testedhistorical truth, but the usual amalgamof fact and fiction that contemporarywriters createof their own world. Where it is not history it becomeslegend, and legend has its own validity. Surely the legendthat the hack writers createdof themselvesis as much a picture of Grub Streetas any so-calledobjective study.' Yes; but a different kind of picture. The validity of legendis one thing, the rejectionof historicalevidence quite another.Pinkus concludes, 'The final effect, atleast, is immediate,and what the readercannot see he should be able to smell' (pp. xi-xii). We may hope to achieve this immediacy without sacrificing objectivity quite so shamelessly. 5. For the views of J. H. Plumb on violence and aggressionin the eighteenth century, cf. the following: England in the EighteenthCentury (Harmonds- worth, 1950), pp. 2-4; The First Four Georges(London, 1956), pp. 14-20; Sir Robert Walpole: The Making ofa Statesman(London, 1956), pp. 30-4; Men and Places(Harmondsworth, 1966), pp. 19-21. 6. Swift, Correspondence,IV, 475. 7. Incidentally, we know a good deal about Clarissa'smovements around London - which churchesshe attendedon which occasion,the addressof Lovelace'swigmaker, and so on. One recalls that anothercockney, Defoe, built up his plague-ravagedLondon from contemporaryobservation and 16 INTRODUCTION

from childhoodmemories, notably ofSt Botolph's, Aldgate and St Stephen's, Coleman Street. See an excellent article by Manuel Schonhorn,'Defoe's Journal ofthe Plague Year: Topographyand Intention', RESXIX (1968), 387-402. 8. Irving, pp. 150-222. It should be addedthat Irving's book is well written and makesno bonesabout its real aims. Thereare other less distinguished examplesin this genre. 9. SeeWilliams, esp.pp. 29-41. 10. Faber,p. 81. II. W. S. Lewis, Horace Walpole(London, 1961), p. 73. 12. SeeAustin Dobson,Horace Walpole: A Memoir (London, 1910), map opp. p.212. 13. G. S. Holmes and W. A. Speck, The Divided Society(London, 1967), pp. 40-1, 132: cf. Macaulay,I, 274. 14. George,p. 319: cf. Watt, p. 184, andauthorities cited there. IS. The Tender Husband, ed. C. Winton (London, 1967), p. 14: Watt, p. 184, citing Spectator,no. 403. Seealso George,p. 91, for JackKetch's Warren as constituting'a separatetown.' 16. Watt, p. 185. 17. I refer to theYale edition, ed. F. A. Pottle(London, 1950). 18. Londonin Flames,London inG/ory, ed. R. A. Aubin (New York, 1943), p. 97. 19. Georgics, II. 177: translatedby Dryden, 'Thenature of the severalsoils now see .. .' 20. Imitations ofHorace, SatII. i. 83-4(Butt, p. 616). 21. N. P. Gist and Silvia F. Fara, Urban Society(New York, 5th edn, 1964), pp. 96, 118-46.See also sectionson 'City versusthe Country',pp. 528-30:'The City in Literature', pp. 530-1: and Ch. XXIII, 'The Image of the City'. Relevantto any considerationof eighteenth-centuryLondon, as regardsthe siting of various political, cultural, religious, recreationaland other socially importantl~ties, is Robert is RobertE. Dickenson,The West EuropeanCity (Lon- don, 1951),pp. 254-8. In emphasisingthe spatialdrama which underlinesthe moral dialectic of Pope'spoem, I do not wish to suggesta one-for-onecorrespondence between the two. It is of coursetrue that the broad social characterof a given area might be qualified by a numberof factors,which could affect its imaginative availability for Pope.None the less,one would be hard put to if one were to seeka Dunceresident in CavendishSquare (erected in the early 1720'S)or, a memberof the literary aristocracywho openly frequentedJack Ketch's Warren.