The Merry-Thought: or the Gla.s.s-Window and Bog-House Miscellany.

by Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym).

INTRODUCTION

In an address to the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies at the 1983 annual meeting, Roger Lonsdale suggested that our knowledge of eighteenth-century poetry has depended heavily on what our anthologies have decided to print. For the most part modern anthologies have, in turn, drawn on collections put together at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the next, when the ideal for inclusion was essentially that of "polite taste." The obscene, the feminine, and the political were by general cultural agreement usually omitted. Lonsdale is not the only scholar questioning the basis of the canon; indeed, revisionism is fast becoming one of the more ingenious--and useful--parlor games among academics. Modern readers are no longer so squeamish about obscenity nor so uncomfortable with the purely personal lyric as were the editors at the end of the eighteenth century. And we are hardly likely to find poetry written by women objectionable on that score alone. In short, the anthologies we depend upon are out of date.

Among the works that would never have been a source of poems for the canon, and one mentioned by Lonsdale, was the collection of verse published in four parts by J. Roberts beginning in 1731, _The Merry-Thought: or, the Gla.s.s-Window and Bog-House Miscellany_, commonly known simply as _The Bog-House Miscellany_. Its contemporary reputation may be described as infamous. James Bramston, in his _The Man of Taste_ (1733), mentioned it as an example in poetry of the very opposite of "good Taste" (ARS 171 [1975], 7). Polite taste, of course, is meaningful only if it can define itself by what it excludes, and nothing could be in worse taste than a collection of pieces written on windows, carved in tables, or inscribed on the walls of Britain's loos.

Just as the compilers of a modern work, _The Good Loo Guide_, were parodying a well-known guide book to British restaurants, so the unknown authors of _The Merry-Thought_ had some notion, however discontinuous, of parodying the nation's polite literature. Were not Pope and Swift famous for their distinguished miscellanies? What could be more amusing than a collection of poems that represented a different poetic ideal--a collection of verse with none of the pretensions to artistic merit claimed by the superstars of the poetic world--the spontaneous productions of nonpoets in moments of idleness or desperation.

Apparently some of the inscribers in the bog-houses used excrement as a medium for--as well as a subject of--their inscriptions. _The Merry-Thought_, then, is not even the kind of art that Dryden attacked in _MacFlecknoe_ and Pope in his _Dunciad_--the work of bad poets masquerading as geniuses.[1] Rather, it is a primitive form of folk art produced as a more or less spontaneous act of play or pa.s.sion, and achieving some small degree of respectability only when practiced by a respected poet and collected with his more serious verse.[2] Like modern "serial" graffiti, it could function as a form of communication since the first inscriptions often provoked those who followed to make their own contributions.

[Footnote 1: On the other hand, the willingness of publishers to bring out such material would have suited well enough with Pope's picture of heir heroic games. See Alexander Pope, _The Dunciad_, ed.

James utherland, Twickenham Edition, 2d ed., rev. (London: Methuen, 1953), 97-306, bk 2, lines 17-220.]

[Footnote 2: See, for example, W. H. Auden's "Academic Graffiti," in Collected Poems_, ed. Edward Mendelsohn (London: Faber and Faber, 976), 510-18. Such a verse as the following is more clever than most raffiti, but like ordinary graffiti it remains essentially "unpoetic": Lord Byron / Once succ.u.mbed to a Siren. / His flesh was weak, / Hers reek."]

Indeed, one of the more interesting aspects of graffiti is that in an impermanent form it testifies to the continuance over the centuries of certain human concerns. Recent studies of graffiti have often focused on particular modern conflicts between races or nations, on drug problems, and on specific political commentary.[3] But such local matters aside, the content of modern graffiti is surprisingly like that of earlier periods: scatological observations, laments of lovers, accusations against women for their s.e.xual promiscuity, the repet.i.tion of "trite"

poems and sayings, and messages attributed to various men and women suggesting their s.e.xual availability and proficiency. And if the political targets have changed over the years, many of the political att.i.tudes have remained consistent. Graffiti is an irreverent form, with strong popular and anti-establishment elements. As actions common to all cla.s.ses, eating, drinking, defecation, and fornication find their lowly record in graffiti-like form.

[Footnote 3: See, for example, Elizabeth Wales and Barbara Brewer, "Graffiti in the 1970's," _Journal of Social Psychology_ 99 (1976): 115-23.]

On the most basic level, a writer will observe that the excrement of the rich differs in no way from that of the poor. Thus one poem, taken supposedly from a "Person of Quality's Boghouse," has the following sentiment:

Good Lord! who could think, That such fine Folks should stink?

(Pt. 2, p. 25)

There is nothing very polite about such observations, and no pretension to art. These verses belong strictly to folklore and the sociology of literature, but they suggest some continuing rumbles of discontent against the cla.s.s system, the existence among the lower orders of some of the egalitarian att.i.tudes that survived the pa.s.sing of the Lollards and the Levellers. Who were the writers of these pieces? Were they indeed laborers? Or were they from the lower part of what was called the "middle orders"? Is there some evidence to be found in the very fact that they could write?

Graffiti may, indeed, tell us something about degrees of literacy. One wit remarked that whatever the ability to read or write may have been at the time, almost everyone seemed to have been literate when presented with a bog-house wall: "Since all who come to Bog-house write" (pt. 2, p. 26). The traditional connection between defecation and writing was another comparison apparent to the commentators. One wrote:

There's Nothing foul that we commit, But what we write, and what we sh - - t.

(Pt. 2, p. 13)

And the lack of some paper or material to clean the rear end provoked the following sentiment in the form of a litany:

From costive Stools, and hide-bound Wit, From Bawdy Rhymes, and Hole besh - - t.

From Walls besmear'd with stinking Ordure, By Swine who nee'r provide b.u.mfodder _Libera Nos_---- (Pt. 4, p. 7)

Other types of graffiti, however, vary from the very earnest expression of affection to the nonexcrementally satiric. One of the more unusual is a poem in praise of a faithful and loving wife:

I kiss'd her standing, Kiss'd her lying, Kiss'd her in Health, And kiss'd her dying; And when she mounts _the Skies_, I'll kiss her flying.

(Pt. 3, p. 5)

Underneath this poem, _The Merry-Thought_ records a favorable comment on the sentiment. Even more earnest is the complaint of a woman about her fate in love:

Since cruel Fate has robb'd me of the Youth, For whom my Heart had h.o.a.rded all its Truth, I'll ne'er love more, dispairing e'er to find, Such Constancy and Truth amongst Mankind.

_Feb._ 18, 1725.

(Pt. 2, p. 12)

We will never know why she was unable to marry the man she truly loved; but her bitterness may have been short-lived. Just after this inscription comes a cynical comment identifying the lady as a member of the Walker family. And the writer insists that like all women she was inconstant, since he kissed her the next night.

This cynical approach to love and women dominates _The Merry-Thought_.

Part three, for instance, contains a poem that reads like a parody of Belinda awaking in the first canto of Pope's _Rape of the Lock_. The author, identified as W. Overb - - ry, presents a realistic morning scene without either the charms and beauties that surround Pope's Belinda or the viciousness and focus of Swift's similar pictures (see pt. 3, p. 26).

Prevailingly, women are depicted as s.e.xually insatiable, as in a piece written by a man who takes a month's vacation from s.e.x to recoup his strength (pt. 2, p. 12). And the related image of the female with a s.e.xual organ capable of absorbing a man plays a variation on the v.a.g.i.n.a dentata theme (e.g., pt. 2, pp. 19, 24). A drawing of a man hanging himself for love raises a considerable debate on whether such a thing can indeed occur (pt. 2, pp. 17-18). In a more realistic vein, though equally cynical, is the poem on the woman who complained of her husband making her pregnant so often:

A poor Woman was ill in a dangerous Case, She lay in, and was just as some other Folks was: By the Lord, cries _She_ then, if my Husband e'er come, Once again with his Will for to tickle my b.u.m, I'll storm, and I'll swear, and I'll run staring wild; And yet the next Night, the Man got her with Child.

S. M. 1708.

(Pt. 2, pp. 10-11)

S. M. is clearly unsympathetic to the plight of married women in an age with only the most primitive forms of birth control.[4] The picture of her as a long-suffering person is undercut by the casual male a.s.sumption that giving birth was not really dangerous and that women make too much of the pain and difficulty. That women were often forced to go through thirteen or fourteen deliveries when little thought had yet been given to creating an antiseptic environment for childbirth is apparently of little concern to S. M., who finds in the apparent willingness of the woman to have s.e.xual intercourse one more time sufficient reason for contempt.

[Footnote 4: For an account of the horrors a.s.sociated with childbirth, see Lawrence Stone, _The Family, s.e.x, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 79-80.]

In addition to giving glimpses into social att.i.tudes, _The Merry-Thought_ has a variety of inscriptions that show the way these writings functioned. Professor George Guffey, in his introduction to the first part of this work (ARS 216 [1982], iii-iv), remarks upon the proposal scene carried on in _Moll Flanders_ between Moll and the admirer who will prove her third husband and her brother. Such scenes involving witty proposals and responses cut into the windows of taverns were real enough at the time. The exchange in part two of _The Merry-Thought_ is not, however, half so satisfactory. The woman takes umbrage at her admirer's suggestions that the gla.s.s on which he writes is "the Emblem" of her mind in being "brittle, slipp'ry, [and]

pois'nous," and writes in retort:

I must confess, kind Sir, that though this Gla.s.s, Can't prove me brittle, it proves you an a.s.s.

(Pt. 2, p. 27)

Though an easy cynicism about women's availability and about the body's insistently animal functions predominates, there is enough variety in _The Merry-Thought_ to provide something of a picture of eighteenth-century society were any future anthropologist to come upon this volume as the sole remnant of that period. He would see a society engaged rather more in animal functions than in intellectual pursuits--a society rather more concerned with drinking, love, and defecation than the picture presented by the polite and intellectual literature of the time allowed. But he would also find in the satirical squibs on Corny, the Cambridge bookseller and printer, evidence of learning and university life (pt. 2, pp. 4-6) as well as a criticism of opera (pt. 2, pp. 14-16). He would see numerous young men longing for their mistresses to soften their hearts toward them, and cynical older men who had lost their illusions about love. But he could also come upon a straight piece of philosophy taken from the still fashionable Flask tavern in Hampstead (pt. 2, p. 24) or lowly bits of pious folk wisdom (pt. 2, p. 10). More often, however, he would uncover a society in which there was little of the generalized style that characterizes even the most personal formal poetry of the period. Many of the writers identify themselves and the names of the women they love or detest. In short, if these volumes do little else, they do provide a vivid glimpse into the personal life of the time, and to that extent an injection of some of these inscriptions into the anthologies of the period might help in providing a lively and piquant context for the serious artistic production of writers like Gay and Swift.

The announced "publisher" of this olio was one Hurlothrumbo, a character drawn from the theatrical piece of that name by Samuel Johnson of Cheshire (1691-1773). Professor Guffey has proposed that James Roberts, for whom the four parts were printed, "was almost certainly the collector of the graffiti" and that the name of Hurlothrumbo was invoked in order to attract some of the attention that Samuel Johnson of Cheshire and his play were still receiving two years after the play's first performance and publication.[5] But Roberts would appear an unlikely candidate for the role of editor;[6] I would suggest, rather, the possibility of a more direct and active connection with Samuel Johnson of Cheshire: that he was himself likely the compiler of the four parts of _The Merry-Thought_ and that, whatever the individual versifiers may have intended, this infamous collection of graffiti--_as collection_--shares very closely with Johnson's other work a spirit of wild variety, eccentric juxtaposition, and essential anarchism that is meant to lead, not to clever parody of polite literature, but to a new, almost apocalyptic vision of the sublime.

[Footnote 5: See ARS 216, x, n. 12. Professor Guffey offers parallels between _The Merry-Thought_ and _Hurlothrumbo_ in "Graffiti, Hurlo Thrumbo, and the Other Samuel Johnson," _Forum: A Journal of the Humanities and Fine Arts_ 17 (1979): 35-47.]

[Footnote 6: Michael Treadwell has demonstrated that the "trade publishers" of the eighteenth century, such as James Roberts, acted almost exclusively as binders and distributors of books and were therefore different in kind from the printers and booksellers, who were directly involved in the selection and production process.

Roberts and the other "trade publishers" dealt almost exclusively in "works belonging to others," and Treadwell singles out Roberts as the purest example. Despite putting his name to "literally thousands of works," he never purchased any of the copyrights on works during his long career. See "London Trade Publishers, 1675-1750,"

_Library_, 6th ser., 4 (1982): 99-134.]

At the first level, _Hurlothrumbo: Or, The Super-Natural_ (1729) itself appears to be quite simply a parody, in this case of opera in the form of a work mixing dialogue and song in a manner similar to but much wilder than Gay's _Beggar's Opera_. Johnson's apparent takeoff on the heroics of opera managed to include in its attack a commentary upon the absurdity of contemporary tragedy as well as some specific references to those works that aimed at the sublime. Lines like "This World is all a Dream, an Outside, a Dunghill pav'd with Diamonds" (48) seem to call the very nature of metaphor into question, especially when juxtaposed with other delirious lines such as "Rapture is the Egg of Love, hatched by a radiant Eye" (14) or by songs such as that sung by the king on contemplating the effects of swallowing gunpowder and brandy together:

Then Lightning from the Nostrils flies.

Swift Thunder-bolts from a.n.u.s, and the Mouth will break, With Sounds to pierce the Skies, and make the Earth to quake.

(P. 42)

_Hurlothrumbo_ may be mostly nonsense, but from the standpoint of literary history, it is highly significant nonsense. It represented a revolt against all dramatic conventions and shared a number of qualities with graffiti, including the sense of spontaneity.

Had Johnson's intention been something as relatively uncomplicated as literary parody he would have achieved some minor fame in a century which could boast any number of geniuses who had specialized in deriding the pretentiousness of the more established literary forms, particularly tragedy, the epic, and the pastoral. But Johnson of Cheshire lacked the aesthetic distance required of sustained irony and had a grander purpose in mind. His tradition was not that of the parodist but rather that of the visionary--the mystic whose tendency is to merge the high and the low, the sublime and the absurd, within a single work.[7] He was not attacking the extravagant rants of the heroic play as Fielding was to do in his _Tragedy of Tragedies_ (1731) or reflecting on opera and pastoral as Gay had done in _The Beggar's Opera_ (1728); rather he was trying, however unsuccessfully, to maintain his own work at the highest reaches of sublimity. He was like one of Pope's "_Flying Fishes_," who "now and then rise upon their fins and fly out of the Profound; but their wings are soon dry, and they drop down to the bottom."[8]

[Footnote 7: See Martin Pops, "The Metamorphosis of s.h.i.t,"

_Salmagundi_ 56 (1982): 27-61.]

[Footnote 8: Alexander Pope, _Peri Bathous_, in _Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope_, ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 54.]