World Enough and Time (31 page)

O marvellous Fate, O Fate full of marvel;

That
Nol's Latin
Pay two
Clerks
should deserve ill!

Hiring a
Gelding,
and
Milton
the
Stallion;

His
Latin
was gelt, and turn'd pure
Italian.

The anonymous
S'Too Him Bayes or Some Observations upon the Humour of Writing Rehearsal's Transpros'd
was also published at Oxford and is of even less value, adopting the same dreary blow-by-blow approach of dissecting Marvell's pamphlet and abusing him in similar terms to those employed by Parker. In a revealing comment that lays bare what was the real argument for many, the anonymous author writes: ‘Thou art the imprudent'st Champion for Forein Jurisdiction or Toleration (chuse you which) that ever I knew.'
15
Edmund Hickeringill was another responder, who described himself as ‘merrily disposed' in
Gregory, Father-Greybeard, with his Vizard Off: or, News from the Cabal in Some Reflexions Upon a Late Pamphlet Entituled the Rehearsal Transpros'd.
Like the others he indicts the anonymous author for his impudence and ‘fashionable Drolling' but the new note is the attempt to link Marvell (who, of course, is not named but Hickeringill suggests his name through laboured puns) with a ‘Cabal of wits' and a ‘company in a coffee-house'. But his principal charge is that the author is a ‘Fanatick' who has lost his reason in obsessive railing: ‘Name but bayes, he cryes out (like that Hypocondriack that fancied he had Noah's flood in his belly, and if he piss'd should drown the world).'
16
And finally, the anonymous author of
A Common Place-Book Out of the Rehearsal Transpros'd Digested Under These Several Heads: viz His Logick, Chronology, Wit, Geography, Anatomy, History, Loyalty
attempts to pick apart Marvell's logical errors and inconsistencies, while conceding that ‘my Author has shewed a kind of Apothegmatical short Wit'.
17

He is particularly angered by Marvell's censure of Archbishop Laud for helping to bring about the Civil War: ‘Does it (think you) become the Son of a Vicar to prate thus of an Archbishop?' Marvell is dismissed, in terms that suggest the author was firmly in the orthodox church and court camp, as ‘a little Fellow, who had formerly been a whiffling Clerk to a
Usurper,
and afterwards turn'd
Broker
for all
Phanatick Ware
'. He concludes with an interesting alternative analysis of the causes of the English Civil War: ‘A wanton Pride of the People, bred out of Prosperity and long ease, infected with a touch of Levelling Principles, deriv'd over to their Politicks from the New Models of Church Government.'

The controversy was now nearly over. In the autumn Marvell would publish the Second Part of
The Rehearsal,
after which his critics would be silenced.

23

A Shoulder of Mutton

I intend by the end of the next week to betake my selfe some fiue miles of to injoy the spring & my privacy.
1

On 3 May 1673, Marvell wrote to Sir Edward Harley at Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire to bring him up to date with metropolitan gossip and share his thoughts about the Parker controversy. Sir Edward, father of the rather more famous Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, had been Governor of Dunkirk in 1660–61 and had opposed its sale to the French. Although he had not been a supporter of Cromwell, he belonged to the country party in the Cavalier Parliament and opposed anti-nonconformist legislation, and would naturally be in sympathy with Marvell. In the letter, Marvell revealed that he had been on ‘a sudden journy to Stanton-Harcourt',
2
the seat, near Oxford, of his friend Sir Philip Harcourt, the MP with whom Marvell was, in 1677, to be involved in an incident in the House of Commons which his enemies tried to exploit. Marvell recounted for Harley's benefit the appearance of
S'Too Him Bayes
which he thought was written ‘by one Hodges'. Marvell was clearly well informed about the progress of the controversy and what was being planned by his opponents for he wrote: ‘Gregory Gray-Beard is not yet out. Dr Parker will be out the next weeke.' In some way Marvell had managed to see the first 330 pages of Parker's work, enough to convince him that it was ‘the rudest book, one or other, that ever was publisht (I may say), since the first invention of printing'. Although it handled him roughly, he told Harley, ‘yet I am not at all amated [cast down] by it', but he did want to consult his friends about the best strategy for replying to Parker, and indeed whether it was advisable to do so at all. In the end, he concluded that it was right to reply but, with his customary circumspection and subtlety, he asked them to maintain the pretence for the time being that no answer was deserved by ‘so scurrilous a book'. To Harley he disclosed his real intentions:

However I will for mine own private satisfaction forthwith draw up an answer that shall haue as much of spirit and solidity in it as my ability will afford & the age we liue in will indure. I am (if I may say it with reverence) drawn in, I hope by a good Providence, to intermeddle in a noble and high argument wch therefore by how much it is above my capacity I shall use the more industry not to disparage it.
3

But for the time being, Marvell declared, he would sequester himself some five miles off – presumably a reference to his retreat at Highgate – ‘to injoy the spring & my privacy'. Should Harley wish to contact him, he was instructed to send his letter to Richard Thompson, the businessman with whom Marvell would later become involved in a complicated financial affair. The letter was to be left with Thompson ‘at the Signe of the Golden Cock in Wooll-Church Market'.

The following month, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, was appointed Lord Treasurer. Some time after this, possibly when Marvell had returned to London in the autumn to oversee publication of the second part of
The Rehearsal,
an incident is said to have occurred. In Marvell biography it has acquired the status of legend but it has no corroboration whatsoever except in tradition. ‘A Life of Andrew Marvell,' wrote Grosart drily in 1872, ‘would be as imperfect without it, as a history of King Alfred without the neatherd's cottage and the burnt cakes.'
4
It would be churlish to omit it here. Collating the various accounts,
5
the following playlet suggests itself:

The Incorruptible Member

The scene is the simple bachelor lodgings of Andrew Marvell, Member of Parliament for Hull, on the morning after the poet and politician has been honoured with an evening's entertainment by the King. Charmed by Marvell's easy manners, sound judgement, and keen wit, and delighted to have met the man who settled the hash of the egregious opponent of his policy of toleration, Samuel Parker, the King has despatched no less a figure than the Lord Treasurer, Danby, to visit Marvell. The encounter takes place in Marvell's second-floor rooms in a court near the Strand, probably in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.

MARVELL: (
Looking up in surprise as DANBY rather abruptly bursts into the room from the dark and narrow staircase up which he had fumbled, but nonetheless greeting his visitor with a smile.
) My Lord, have you not mistaken your way?

DANBY: (
Bowing gracefully.
) No, not since I have found Mr Marvell. For my purpose is to bring a message from His Majesty, who wishes, on account of the high opinion he has formed of your merits, to do you some signal service.

MARVELL: (
With an ironic pleasantry.
) I think that His Majesty has it not in his power to serve me. (
Noticing Danby's consternation at this last remark.
) Forgive me, my Lord, but I know the nature of courts too well not to be sensible that whoever is distinguished by a Prince's favour is expected to vote in his interest.

DANBY: But, sir, His Majesty only desires to know whether there be any place at court you would accept.

MARVELL: I could accept nothing with honour, for either I must prove ungrateful to the King in voting against him, or false to my country in giving in to the measures of the court. Therefore, the only favour I beg of His Majesty is that he would esteem me as dutiful a subject as any he has, and one who acts more in his proper interest by
refusing
his offers than if he had accepted them.
(
DANBY goes to the door, but, turning back at the last minute, addresses MARVELL confidentially.
)

DANBY: His Majesty requests that you accept this sum of 1,000 guineas. (
Exit, the Lord Treasurer, having slipped the Treasury order for the amount into MARVELL's hand at the last moment. Looking down at the piece of paper in his hand, MARVELL rushes out on to the stair to recall DANBY who is now on his way back down to his waiting carriage.
)

MARVELL: My Lord! I request another moment.

DANBY: (
Having now re-entered the room.
) Very well, what is it?

MARVELL: Surely, my good Lord, you do not mean to treat me ludicrously by these munificent offers, which seem to interpret a poverty on my part? Pray, my Lord Treasurer, do these apartments wear in the least the air and mark of need? And as for my living, that is plentiful and good, which you shall have from the mouth of the servant. (
Turns to his servant boy.
) Jack, child, what had I for dinner yesterday?

JACK: Don't you remember, sir? You had the shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring from a woman in the market.

MARVELL: Very right, child. What have I for dinner today?

JACK: Don't you know, sir, that you bid me lay by the sweet blade-bone to broil?

MARVELL: 'Tis so, very right, child, go away. (
Turning to DANBY.
) My Lord, do you hear that? Andrew Marvell's dinner is provided. And when your Lordship makes honourable mention of my cook and my diet, I am sure His Majesty will be too tender in future, to attempt to bribe a man with golden apples who lives so well on the viands of his native country. There's your piece of paper back. I want it not. I knew the sort of kindness you intended. I live here to serve my constituents; the Ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not one.
(
Exit DANBY for the last time, smiling at the wit and high principle of the poet he has left behind.
)

MARVELL: Jack, hasten along to my bookseller, Mr Nathaniel Ponder, at the sign of the Peacock in Chancery Lane near Fleet Street, and tell him that I must needs borrow a guinea of him.
(
Curtain.
)

The moral drawn by Marvell's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biographers was that the poet was of unimpeachable principle. Like Diogenes in his barrel, informing Alexander the Great that the only favour the most powerful man in the world could perform for him was to stand out of his light, Marvell was beyond the reach of worldly suasion. ‘No Roman virtue ever surpassed this temperance,' intoned Edward Thompson in 1776, ‘nor can gold bribe a mind that is not debauched with luxury.'
6
Like the anecdote of his brandishing in triumph the half-crown that sufficed for his dinner ‘at a great ordinary in the Strand', this story is part of a tradition of Puritan hagiography of Marvell. In his life of the poet in 1833, Hartley Coleridge sensibly described the latter story as: ‘A piece of dry English humour mistaken for a stoical exhibition of virtue.'
7

Life for Marvell at this time was perhaps not quite so easy and pleasant as these amusing tales imply. His polemic had made him enemies, including the ‘J.G.' already mentioned (possibly John Gelson, who was known to have been acting as a spy for Secretary of State Williamson in Holland the previous year and who was the brother of the secretary to the Bishop of Oxford), who left a letter for Marvell at the house of a friend on 3 November. It was a death threat informing Marvell: ‘If thou darest to Print or Publish any Lie or Libel against Doctor
Parker,
by the Eternal God I will cut thy Throat.'
8
Fearlessly, Marvell issued his final riposte to Parker, the second part of
The Rehearsal,
at the end of the year, stating boldly on the title page that it had been occasioned by two letters: the first being Parker's
Reproof
(said here to be ‘by a nameles Author') and the second the letter of J.G. For the first time, Marvell appended his own name to the pamphlet. Six months after Parker defied him to ‘do your worst. You know the Press is open'
9
Marvell answered the challenge.

The second part of
The Rehearsal
appeared with the sanction of the censors. It ran to a second edition, corrected by Marvell in a way that underlined and extended the attack on Parker, for example by augmenting the charge that Parker was suffering from venereal disease. The line of criticism does not differ in any significant way from the first part and once again is relentlessly personal in its abuse. Marvell mocks Parker's sense of injury and paranoia: ‘And even so
the Author of the Ecclesiastical Polity,
ever since he crept up to be but the Weather-cock of a Steeple, he trembles and creaks at every puff of Wind that blows him about, as if the
Church of
England
were falling and the State totter'd.
' He claims that Parker's attacks on the nonconformists may not have had the effect he intended for: ‘he hath done more service to their cause by writing against it, than all their own Authors that ever writ for them'. Marvell has left almost no record of his thoughts on the art of writing, which makes an early passage in this second part of special interest. ‘Those that take upon themselves to be Writers,' he points out, ‘are moved to it either by Ambition or Charity: imagining that they shall do therein something to make themselves famous, or that they can communicate something that may be delightful and profitable to mankind.' But writing is ‘an envious and dangerous imployment' given the fact that the writer appears to assume that he or she has some superior gift to bestow on the humble reader and, by doing so, appears to suggest that the reader is ignorant: