PARAGON REVIEW

Issue 7

PETER PINDAR AND HIS WORLD

Peter Pindar is not widely known these days, but he was an important man of his time. His world (he was born in 1738) saw great changes in English political life, which was dominated by figures such as King George III, Pitt the Younger, and Warren Hastings. It was a period which saw war with France, the independence of the American colonies, troubles in Ireland, the establishment of the British East India Company, and the French Revolution. It was against this backdrop that Peter Pindar's satiric verse was produced. Julie Maylon (Archivist) takes a look at the man and his work.

Peter Pindar was the pseudonym of John Wolcott, a physician by trade who had also taken holy orders, was a noted critic, and a great appreciator of art. He lived with his uncle in Devon from the age of nine, after the death of his father. He was sent to France in 1760 for about a year to learn the language, but whilst there also appears to have developed an adversity to everything French. On his return to England he trained as a physician, then in 1767 went to Jamaica and was offered the lucrative living of St. Anne's, where the current parson was thought to be seriously ill. On the distinct possibility that the parson might die, Wolcott came back to England and took holy orders, only to find on his return to Jamaica that the expected, and what would have been for him timely, death of the aforementioned parson did not in fact occur; annoyingly he had recovered and Wolcott was instead offered the less lucrative living of Vere. He stayed there until the death of the governor, Sir William Trelawny, prompted his return home accompanying Trelawny's widow, who sadly also died soon after. It was on this return journey in 1773 that Wolcott is said to have visited a supposedly deserted island, which provided the inspiration for his 'Isle of Innocence', one of the manuscripts in the Pindar archive, undated but watermarked 1794. On his arrival in England, Wolcott took up practice as a physician and travelled extensively round the Cornish countryside. On one of these jaunts he came across the artist John Opie, who was producing wonderful work despite having had no formal training. Wolcott, recognising an opportunity when one was presented to him, became Opie's patron and took him to London, where it is said they later fell out and parted company, possibly over money but the details are not clear.

This drawing of Peter Pindar appeared in volume 1 of The Works of Peter Pindar Esq. in 1816

Peter Pindar became a well known figure in London, and was greatly admired for his wit and social comment, though his verse is also a good indication of the changing face of satire and the growing politicisation of the nation. AL Rowse in his foreword to Peter Pindar's Poems (Bath, 1972) says that Pindar 'was, in fact, the chief satirist of the time in verse - an age that appreciated verse much as our own appreciates television'. He was also a best-seller, producing his verses for that very purpose, with PM Zall, in his editorial introduction to the same collection, saying that 'the bulk of his voluminous verse consisted rather of bawdy jests and scurrilous gossip, as timely as the morning papers and produced with no care for polish or accuracy'. This seems a harsh judgement even for a man who was today's equivalent of the tabloid press with as much influence as television, and especially for one who was considered a great source of daily news. However, W J Courthope in his A History of English Poetry (London, 1925) had earlier gone even further than this, seeing Pindar as the epitome of the decline of satire in poetry, representing a reduction in 'ethical quality, with its increasing tendency to become unreservedly personal and scandalous'. The contemporary Anti-Jacobean Review had taken Pindar to task, blaming anybody who so much as smiled at his work, and Courthope, in feeling the need to justify Pindar's inclusion in his book, states that 'Peter deserved . . . all the chastisement that he received, and if he is noticed in these pages, it is only because his work, however low, has a certain genuine humour and character which makes it representative, and which caused it to exercise an influence on the style of a later and greater satirist [Byron]'.

It might seem strange now that Pindar could have evoked such strong emotion. His work very much rested on the figures of the day, notably George III, and just as the satirical television programme Spitting Image flourished with Margaret Thatcher as a subject, and 'greyed' with only John Major for inspiration, much of Pindar's success lay in this choice of subject. However, tying himself so closely to a public figure like George III, whose popularity rose and fell depending mainly on the prevalent political mood, meant that Pindar's own career was directly affected, rising and falling in inverse relation to the King's popularity. Pindar was very clever not to write directly about the King's madness, and when such periods occurred, he turned his attention elsewhere. As PM Zall points out, 'By keeping a clear distinction between satire of the monarch and subversion of the monarchy, Peter escaped arrest for libel and treason over the course of twenty-five years'. Also, Pindar basically put in verse what appeared in the newspapers, and it was his ability to render it in such a way, painting vivid and detailed caricatures with words, that may explain his popularity.

A brief overview of the political climate in the years from when Pindar began writing to his death in 1819 may help illuminate his popularity and put his verses into context. George III as a young king was heavily influenced by his mother and by the 3rd Earl of Bute, who was briefly prime minister (1762-63). Views as to the King's character vary considerably. Some see him as one who had an inherent love of power which was strengthened and cultivated by those around him: a patriarch who gave orders to ministers and expected them to be followed. Others regard him as an emotional and ineffectual king, lacking in either the ambition or ability to effect any major changes. At the very least, his turbulent and unstable character is representative of the time in general, not only politically (where there were countless problems with taxes and finding money to reduce the national debt), but also in the areas of agriculture, industry, literature, art and education.

King George III

The sense of upheaval and rapid change, coupled with the drawing to a close of the century, is not altogether dissimilar to our own time, and if nothing else, the introduction of a National Lottery in 1784 raised many of the same concerns as it did here in 1994. As an example of the uncertainty of the period, William Pitt, who became Prime Minister amidst great excitement in 1784 was, in 1792, convinced that this was a time of durable peace with France, yet in 1793 he was faced with the prospect of war with the same country. Indeed, it is to the French Revolution of 1789 that much of the drive towards social change can be attributed. It led to a questioning of what was thought of as the 'natural order', and produced a feeling of uncertainty and conflict which was already beginning to show in the many different areas of social and political life. The period following the French Revolution saw a war with France which was to last over 20 years, bread riots, intermittent periods of madness for George III, and the death of Pitt. The result of all this was a sense of unease which manifested itself in the literature of the time.

Pindar was writing between times, as it were. He represented, according to Courthope, the end of satire; and he was also writing on the brink of the great Romantic period of literature, which produced writers such as Byron, Shelley and Keats. Pindar discarded the 'pretence of lofty principle' which had been present in satire for the preceding 100 years, and so, according to Courthope, 'Such popularity as [his satire] enjoyed . . . was due to the excitement of transient popular emotions or to the enmities of private individuals, and as these vanished, the point of the satire itself was lost.' However, along with satirising the King and members of the Royal Academy, focusing on the former's 'parsimonious habits, his ignorance of common things, and his oddities of speech', Pindar was also a great storyteller of ordinary occurrences, and his talents are no less than brilliant. Unfortunately, he did not know when to stop with his often cruel satires, and England's victories during the war with France, and the return of good harvests, eventually put an end to his literary popularity.

Peter's literary career began with a 'vanity press' publication - paying for his own work to be published. This method, often regarded as an egotistical exercise in self-love, proved to be a masterful stroke in his case. It was an anonymous verse satire announcing his own arrival in London. In the following year (1782) he again paid for the publication of the first series of Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians. Thereafter there was no need for him to pay. The range of his talents is well demonstrated in Zall's selection of Peter Pindar's Poems. This includes a wonderful verse commenting astutely on the nature of commercialism and bargain hunters. It tells the story of a fellow selling packs of razors in the market and a 'country Bumpkin' named Hodge. Hodge, eager for a bargain, decides to buy some of the razors, thinking secretly to himself that they are probably stolen but congratulating himself anyway on his good luck. However, the razors do nothing to tame his beard which is so bushy and black that it 'seem'd a Shoe-brush stuck beneath his nose . . .', and he succeeds only in cutting himself and lamenting his lost eighteen pence. On going back and confronting the seller we get the following exchange:

'Sirrah! I tell you, you're a knave,
To cry up Razors that can't shave.'

'Friend,' quoth the Razor-man, 'I am no knave:
As for the Razors you have bought,
Upon my soul, I never thought
That they would shave.'

'Not think they'd shave!' quoth Hodge with wondering eyes,
And voice not much unlike an Indian yell;
'What were they made for then, you dog?' he cries, -
'Made!' quoth the Fellow with a smile, - 'to sell.'

This is surely a common experience: we have all been duped at one time or another, and the pure truth of what the seller says, and the direct though gentle way he states it, as opposed to the fury of Hodge, still presents him as a sympathetic character.

Pindar often used his poetry as allegory, as a way of presenting human truths in the form of a narrative. This is of course a more than usual method employed by writers, but Pindar is very adept at it. And so in 'Sir Joseph Banks and the Thief-takers', the story of a bunch of men who go around jumping on people they think to be rogues, and who on this occasion mistook a knight for such a person, the poem ends 'Hoping to mind th'admire of godly books, / Viz. not to judge of people by their looks.' And in 'Frogs and Jupiter' the truth of 'The grass is always greener' is amusingly demonstrated when frogs, living in a happy state 'midst their peaceful pond', suddenly decide they would like an emperor, and Jove, giving them a wooden one and wisely telling them to be happy with their lot, reluctantly agrees to their demands by giving them an 'Emperor Stork'who then proceeds to eat them! These are funny little stories providing settings for Pindar's messages, and in using them, he got his meaning across to a wide range of people: by employing words in such a way, he expanded his audience and added to his popularity. Rather than deliberately writing teaching poems, it is likely that Pindar was writing about what he knew, and doing it very well in a way that appealed to readers of the time.

But Pindar could also use humour and the art of story-telling to mask more serious, and even factious, messages. In 'Birth-day Ode' the king goes to visit the brewer Sam Whitbread, and the story builds up a wonderful caricature of the unstable king who, childlike in his astonishment, flicks from one subject to another, always asking questions and not waiting for them to be answered. At one point, Pindar compares George III to a magpie, an excellent comparison and an accomplished example of bathos which is enriched by the layout used in this particular part of the poem:

Now Majesty into a Pump so deep
Did with an opera-glass of Dollond peep,
Examining with care each wondrous matter
That brought up water.

Thus have I seen a Magpie in the street,
A chattering Bird we often meet,

A Bird for curiosity well known,

With head awry,
And cunning eye,

Peep knowingly into a Marrow-bone.

The poem, though far from factious in any real sense, is nevertheless quite clear in its opinions of the King, opinions which Pindar expresses time and again throughout his poetry.

The Peter Pindar manuscripts in the BJL [at DX/41/2] cannot, unfortunately, be definitely authenticated, as we have no definite example of his signature or handwriting, but in comparing what we know is by him, and indeed what we know of him, with the hand-written originals we have here, it is highly likely that they are in fact his. Also, photocopies of Pindar manuscripts held in Durham University Library do bear a striking similarity to our own. The BJL's collection consists of 120 sheets, comprising 20 odes or poems, a bundle of miscellaneous papers, and a letter by a Rev. Cornelius Cardew, dated November 1819. The handwriting is difficult, much of it indecipherable, and only some of the material is dated (between 1797 and 1812). The letter from Rev. Cardew professes that the material is genuine, and goes some way in trying to prove this by transcribing songs and a poem reputedly by Pindar as part of his letter. This letter is just one piece in the puzzle of whether what we have can in fact be accredited to Pindar.

Part of the first page of Peter Pindar's manuscript of 'The Island of Innocence'

One of the most interesting pieces in the collection is 'Ode to Death' (hand-written, undated), a very clever poem. The subject matter of death was and is a common one for poets, but Pindar is very sure of what he wants to say here. He will hold no court with death; he will not strike a deal like Faust and he will not beg for time (though in another poem, 'Ode to Time', he does indeed beg time not to ravish a beautiful lady, if not for his own sake then for the sake of the world). 'Ode to Death' is a dark poem, becoming darker as the slow realisation of his meaning dawns on us. It begins in general, saying death is everywhere, waiting for the 'human species'like a spider waiting for flies, and then brings the focus in to say how a pretty face does not make one exempt from death. The tension builds as his words reveal his own alliance with Death, to our horror implying that he has in fact been in cahoots with Death in his role as a doctor, a role in which he is supposed to protect people and try to keep Death from their door:

I own for thee I've labour'd hard
and never met a fair reward
Physician filled the churchyard [?]
By folly many a victim made.
But Death I now abjure the trade
I'll do thy dirty journeywork no more

He then challenges Death, saying he wants no more to do with him: 'Don't call on me until I call on Thee'. There is no imploring tone to this: he is telling Death in no uncertain terms to leave him alone. As in most manuscript collections, the material used to write on can be just as revealing as what is being written, and in looking for clues as to whether this poem was written by Pindar, the paper the poem is written on may help. The content of the poem, as doctor in partnership with death, certainly helps, as Pindar was indeed a doctor, but in later life Pindar's eyesight failed and he became blind. In order to continue writing, he would often dictate his verses to a servant, but he would also tear pages into four and, holding a piece in one hand, would write a limited number of lines on it with the other hand, depending on how many lines made up each verse. There are a number of poems in the archive which are in fact written on pages which have been torn up, and this poem, written in a scrawl which is less than neat, is one of them. Can this, with its method of composition and its subject of mortality, be one of those later poems?

'Tristia: an Elegy' (hand-written, undated) is again written on torn pieces of paper, with four lines on each piece. It has many crossings out, scribbles and revisions, contradicting PM Zall's assertion that Pindar's 'verse [was] composed in haste and never revised' (my italics). 'Tristia' was the name of a long poem written by Ovid on his way to exile in the year AD 8, another example of Peter Pindar's deliberate evocation of literary echoes and allusion (his pseudonym Pindar was taken from the ancient Greek poet [circa 522-438 BC]). Ovid was exiled by Augustus, reputedly over the poem 'Ars Amatoris' (published circa 1 BC), an erotic poem but no more so than other erotic poems by Ovid. It seems his real crime was that it was 'explicitly didactic' (Ovid), a handbook for erotic teaching at a time when Augustus was trying to regenerate Roman morals. His influence grew with the poem's popularity, but Ovid also claimed there was another, later, reason for his exile, the details of which he only ever vaguely hinted at. It was reputed that Pindar was at one time offered a pension by the state to shut him up, indicating the kind of influence he held, and the similarities between his own situation and Ovid's more serious one would not have been lost on Pindar. The situation is conjured up ingeniously in the first verse of 'Tristia: an Elegy':

Why do the members rage about my rhimes;
Still bid me drink of sorrow's bitter cup.
I mean the Ministers that rule the Times
Since Majesty & I have made it up.

This is a brilliant play on words creating double meanings with 'the Times' (as in the era as well as the newspaper) and 'made it up' (meaning both reconciliation and falsehood), a phrase underlined in the manuscript.

The writing on the manuscript is very difficult to decipher, but from what can be made out, this is a very clever piece, satirising public figures who were prominent in the news at the time, whilst protesting not too, a trick which would have been greatly enjoyed by Pindar's audience. One example is verse four of the elegy:

The fam'd impeachment of the gallant York,
For Satire's mouth had furnished pretty pickings;
Yet has the Muse been mute on Mistress Clarke.
Nor plucked a plume from Mother [?] chicken

where 'Mistress'on line 3 replaced the original 'Mrs'.

This verse is a direct reference to a scandal of corruption centring around the Duke of York and his mistress, Mrs. Clarke, a scandal which came to light in January 1809. Even if we are disadvantaged as readers in not knowing immediately who Pindar's targets are, the references can be easily uncovered with a little investigation. However, Pindar's poems also work on a level where one need not know who the figures are, but can just read for the pleasure of his poetic skills, and 'Tristia' is a clear example of this. His argument for satire is also a humorously rendered bid to de-localise it, where prominent figures who would make excellent and rare 'food for satire'are supposedly left alone with the lament 'I bid my satire hold its tongue . . . How rich a subject for immortal song!', and where 'immortal'replaced 'the poets', shifting the focus from an individual (mortal) poet to immortality. In addition, the poems work on a purely literary level, and the theme of the five senses, and in particular taste (and food), runs through this one.

Pindar's poetic and satiric ability may not always be obvious, but I hope to have shown that his reputation as a lampooner should not mask the fact that he is a writer of some note. As has been stated, the manuscripts we hold are only reputedly by him, but they most certainly could be by him, written in the same style and with the same concerns as the poems we know to be by him.

However, from a file of correspondence from the BJL's own archives, dated February-April 1955, between the Hull University Librarian (first Agnes Cuming, and later Philip Larkin), and Professor WS Vines, formerly of the Department of English, who presented the manuscripts on his retirement in 1952, we learn that our collection almost did not stay in Hull. Agnes Cuming appears to have re-discovered them when sorting out her affairs prior to her own retirement in 1955. The final letter in the file, dated 14 April 1955, is from Philip Larkin to Professor Vines. It was not until 1979 that Larkin wrote his article 'A Neglected Responsibility', arguing in support of keeping manuscript collections in this country. This later enthusiasm is not overtly evident in Larkin's words of 1955 about the Pindar manuscripts: 'I think if I pass them into stock that is all I can usefully do at the moment', but it was enough to keep them in our possession, and for this we should be grateful.

Julie Maylon