Cosmopugilism: Thomas Moore's Boxing Satires and the Post-Napoleonic Congresses
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Cosmopugilism: Thomas Moore’s Boxing Satires and the
Post-Napoleonic Congresses
Julia M. Wright
Studies in Romanticism, Volume 56, Number 4, Winter 2017, pp. 499-523
(Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/srm.2017.0003
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/740327/summary
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]JULIA M. WRIGHT
Cosmopugilism: Thomas
Moore’s Boxing Satires and the
Post-Napoleonic Congresses
homas moore’s satires were extremely popular in their day but
Tfell into obscurity along with their topical references. Tom Crib’s
Memorial to Congress (1819), for instance, sold nearly two thousand copies in
a matter of days but is now mentioned only briefly in scholarship and for its
most transparent historical allusions: for its jibes at the aristocrats it all but
names, and as evidence of the influence of Pierce Egan’s Boxiana (1812—
1813), especially through Regency-era boxing slang? That the poem does
I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for
its generous support of my research, Christina Morin and Marguerite Corporaal for the kind
invitation to speak at “Travelling Irishness in the Long Nineteenth Century” (August 2014),
a wonderfully interdisciplinary and collegial event that gave me an excuse to focus on this
project, and all who attended the conference for their responses to an early version of this
essay.
1.Jane Moore, ed., The Satires of Thomas Moore, vol. 5 of British Satire, 1785-1840, ed.John
Strachan (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003); Pierce Egan, Boxiana; Or, Sketches of Ancient
and Modern Pugilism; from the Days of the Renowned Broughton and Slack, to the Heroes of the Pres
ent Milling AEra (London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1812—13). All quotations from Moore
and Boxiana are taken from these editions and cited parenthetically.
J. C. Reid notes that the first volume of Boxiana was sent to subscribers in numbers begin
ning in 1812, and “The completed volume, issued bound in 1813 and 1815, retained the
1812 title-page.” See Bucks and Bruisers: Pierce Egan and Regency England (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1971), 232. Reid usefully traces the complexities of the series’ publishing his
tory and warns that, because the publisher held “copyright of the first three volumes and
continued to issue them” in altered form, “Egan’s authentic text will be found only in edi
tions before [1824]” (232). The influence of the series through to mid-century is evident in
its imitators, including Charles Williams’s Boxiana (1815), John Badcock’s Fancy-ana; Or, a
History of Pugilism (1824), and Francis Dowling’s Fistiana; Or, the Oracle of the Ring (1841), as
well as a series of “Boxiana” articles in Blackwood’s.
Moore notes in his journal that the Memorial was to appear on 9 March 1819 and by
14 March he “Had a letter from the Longmans to say that they had nearly sold the first edi
tion of‘Cribb’ (2000 copies), and had worked off 2000 more as a second and third edition.”
See vol. 2 of Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, ed. Lord John Russell
SiR, 56 (Winter 2017)
499500 JULIA M. WRIGHT
not fit Moore’s current reputation as an Irish-Catholic nationalist song
writer and orientalist poet has likely also contributed to its neglect. But
putting the poem into the context of the 1818 Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle
(the Congress of the poem’s title) and the broader tradition of boxing satire
can shed light not only on the satiric and political interests of the poem but
also on the significance of the sport as a trope in Romantic-era political
discourse. Despite its prominence in British material life throughout the
Romantic Century (1750—1850), boxing is generally neglected in literary
scholarship on the era. Important exceptions include Leo J. Henkin’s 1947
essay on “Pugilism and the Poets,” Jeffrey Robinson’s recent chapter on
1820s boxing literature, centrally William Hazlitt’s “The Fight” (1822),
John Strachan’s useful survey of sports and Regency writing, and Jane
Moore’s invaluable edition of Moore’s satires.2 There is also a significant
body of work on Romantic-era boxing by cultural historians of various
disciplines (including recent books by Jack Anderson, Kasia Boddy, James
Kelly, and David Snowdon) and more specifically scholarship on race and
boxing, from work by John Whale and Daniel O’ Quinn on British parallels
to the many important studies on the American context (where competi
tive boxing was inextricable from the practice of slavery).3
Boxing was not only a popular sport but also a preferred alternative to
dueling, offering a less lethal way of settling disputes consistent with the le
gal and cultural tradition of “trial by battle.” Long after his death the mid-
(London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1853), 274, 276—77. For the more sub
stantial discussions of the Memorial, see Leo J. Henkin, “Pugilism and the Poets,” Modem Lan
guage Quarterly (1947): 72-73; J. Moore’s introduction to the poem in Satires of Thomas
Moore, 183-87; and John Strachan, “Romanticism, Sport, and Late Georgian Poetry,” in
A Companion to Romantic Poetry, ed. Charles Mahoney (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011),
3«3—84-
2. Henkin, “Pugilism and the Poets,” 69—79; Jeffrey Robinson, Unfettering Poetry: Fancy in
British Romanticism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 195—222; Strachan, “Romanti
cism, Sport, and Late Georgian Poetry,” 374-92.
3. Anderson, The Legality of Boxing: A Punch Drunk Lore? (London: Birkbeck Law Press,
2007); Boddy, Boxing: A Cultural History' (London: Reaktion Books, 2008); Kelly, Sport in Ire
land, 1600-1840 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014); Snowdon, Writing the Prizefight: Pierce
Egan’s Boxiana World (New York: Peter Lang, 2013); Whale, “‘Imperfect Sympathies’: The
Early Nineteenth-Century Formation of Responses to Black Fighters in Britain,” Mooing
Worlds 12 (2012): 5-18, and “Daniel Mendoza’s Contests of Identity: Masculinity, Ethnicity
and Nation in Georgian Prize-fighting,” Romanticism 14 (2008): 159-71; and O’Quinn, “In
the Face of Difference: Molineaux, Crib, and the Violence of the Fancy,” in Race, Romanti
cism, and the Atlantic (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2013), 213—35. For the American context, see,
e.g., Andrew M. Kaye, The Pussycat of Prizefighting: Tiger Flowers and the Politics of Black Celeb
rity (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004). (This list is far from exhaustive—racism and
boxing are deeply and complexly intertwined over centuries, and constitute a significant field
of scholarly interest.)THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 501
1700s boxer Jack Broughton was being cited for his claim that the sport
“would undoubtedly supersede, and entirely abolish the only use that was
made of the sword; and men of honour, instead of tilting at each other,
might have the satisfaction of drubbing one another in a tight set-to.”4 One
1796 account of an altercation in London, triggered by the artist James
Gwinn looking for his missing pet viper in a woman’s petticoats, notes,
“This odd adventure was terminated by a boxing match between a gentle
man [the woman’s husband] and himself in his own chamber.”5 Boxing
was also a significant public spectacle, whether in the form of exhibitions in
theaters or large outdoor gatherings for prizefights, with a committed fol
lowing known as “the Fancy”—a more likely origin of the twentieth-
century term “fan” than “fanatic.”6 Commodity culture followed the
sport’s popularity: prints, ceramics, and books all fed the Fancy, and
were in turn adapted to satiric purposes. An impromptu boxing match to
settle an argument between the Earl of Barrymore and the (commoner) son
of Charles Fox was the subject of an Isaac Cruikshank graphic satire in
1790, capitalizing on the shock-value of a cross-class fight in a sport
strongly associated with the brutality of working-class life.7 Egan also at
tended to the class complications of boxing: in his Life in London (1821), the
wealthy hero Corinthian Tom uses his boxing skills “in rescuing himself
from the rude grasp of the ‘guardians of the night.’”8 Oliver Goldsmith
similarly uses boxing to deflate elite claims to civility: in The Citizen of the
World (1762), he inserts “an Indian tale” of shipwrecked royalty in which
the mother is “called the black-eyed Princess,” for “two black eyes she had
received in her youth, being a little addicted to boxing in her liquor.”9
In Romantic-era graphic satire, artists regularly used boxing to undercut
4. Henry Lemoine, Modern Manhood; Or, the Art and Practice of English Boxing (London,
1788), 54. Edward Barry argues the charge of murder “equally applies to the boxer as it does
to the duelist,” in a “Letter to the Legislative Body, on the Brutal Practice of Boxing” ap
pended to his Theological, Philosophical, and Moral Essays, new ed. (London: H. D. Symonds,
1799), 284.
5. Anthony Pasquin (pseud. John Williams), An Authentic History of the Professors of Paint
ing, Sculpture, & Architecture, who have Practised in Ireland (London, 1796), 19.
6. For instance, an 1800 playbill advertised two nights in which “Mr. Mendoza, the Cele
brated Pugilist, will Exhibit with a Pupil His Whole System of Defence” (admission two
shillings); figures of 20,000 and 30,000 regularly appear in Regency accounts and recent his
tories as estimates of crowd size for prizefights (see, e.g., Anderson, Legality of Boxing, 21).
7. Cruikshank, “Scrub and Bonniface; Or, Three Brave Lads” (1790; British Museum
J,4.68); for an account of this altercation, see John Robert Robinson, The Last Earls of
Barrymore, 1769-1824 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, & Co., 1894), 101.
8. Egan, Life in London: Or, the Day and Night Scenes ofJerry Hawthorn, Esq. and his Elegant
Friend, Corinthian Tom (London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1821), 45.
9. Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, vol. 2 of Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith,
ed. Arthur Friedman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 356, 359.502 JULIA M. WRIGHT
the powerful: “The Prussian prize-fighter and his allies attempting to tame
imperial Kate, or, the state of the European bruisers” (1791) spoofed Euro
pean political tensions by representing rulers as boxers; “The set-too be
tween Old Price and Spangle Jack the Shewman” (1809) mocked debate
over a change in theater prices; Charles Williams’s “A Boxing Match, Or
Another Bloody Nose for John Bull” (1813) refers to US naval victories
over Britain, and depicts George III with a black eye as well as a spewing
nose.1" Authors of broadsheet ballads also followed the trend: “The Boxing
Match between John Bull and Bonaparte” (c. 1800) ends, “Our Tars will at
sea, box the Corsican elf, / They’re a match for his Second, the Devil him
self, / From Bonaparte and his Host no invasion we fear, / John Bull will
him box and keep the coast clear.”10 11 More upscale poets participated in the
tradition as well: the Preface to The Odiad (1788) asks Kings to “consider”
“whether they could not be infinitely more serviceable to their Country,
if they decided their private quarrels by their own personal valour, than if
they hired their inoffensive subjects to cut one another’s throats,” and then
imagines some secondary benefits, including the national savings on
gunpowder and the conversion of the Tower of London to a “Boxing
University.”12
In Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress, Moore clearly draws on this much
longer tradition of popular satire (one that reaches back at least to Paul
Whitehead’s The Gymnasiad of 1744) and not just the post-1818 fashion for
boxing satire noted by Strachan in his discussion of the Memorial.'3 Moore’s
first boxing poem, “Epistle from Tom Crib to Big Ben,” appeared in 1815
and was illustrated by Charles Williams, the same who depicted the Anglo-
American war as a “Boxing Match” in 1813. The Memorial shares graphic
and verse boxing satires’ double-interest in allegorizing conflict and satiriz
ing the elite, from its title poem (hereafter distinguished as “Memorial”) to
its appendices. The volume began as “a political squib,—a series of flash
letters from the pugilists that have been exhibiting at Aix-la-Chapelle,”14
and a diversion from the extensive research Moore was conducting for his
biography of R. B. Sheridan. “Memorial” centers on the description of the
crowd and then the fight itself at a boxing match between two rulers,
10. Williams, “A Boxing Match, or Another Bloody Nose for John Bull” (1813); available
at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002708982/; the Library of Congress page details the
historical context briefly noted here.
11. “The Boxing Match between John Bull and Bonaparte” (c. 1800) is in a collection of
broadsheets at the British Library; a less legible copy is available online at http://ballads
.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/10000/09060. gif.
12. The Odiad; Or, Battle of Humphries and Mendoza, an Heroic Poem (London, 1788), ix—x.
13. Strachan, “Romanticism, Sport, and Late Georgian Poetry,” 381.
14. Moore, Memoirs, 212.THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 503
Georgy the Porpus (the Prince Regent) and Long Sandy the Bear (Alexan
der I of Russia), ending with Tom Crib’s offer to train royalty to box for
their political interests. Appendix I offers an “Account of a Grand Pugilistic
Meeting” in which the boxers, including Crib, discuss participating in the
Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. Appendix II returns to the subject that con
cerns the extensive Preface, namely the classical roots of the sport. Appen
dix III, on the role of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, as Britain’s
representative to Congress (and as an Irish Tory who supported colonial
rule in Ireland and suppressed reform in Britain and Europe), is the only
one that does not overtly address boxing. Appendix IV consists of various
poems that purport to be written by the boxing champion Bob Gregson,
the sport’s “Poet Laureate.” In the volume as a whole, Moore builds on
Egan’s strategic representation of boxing culture as guided by rules, princi
ples of fair play, and a righteous resistance to prejudice—a civil society.
I shall first situate the poem in the context of representations of boxing in
connection with international conflict and English radicalism, before turn
ing to the more specific implications of Moore’s Memorial for contempo
rary European politics.
i. Boxing, Class, and Self-Governance
Generally speaking, for English authors, boxing was either manly and
English, or unChristian and dangerous for drawing large crowds and mix
ing the classes together: Broughton, who developed the first rules for
boxing in 1743, proposed an amphitheater constructed to separate the
classes and so remedy “The present Indiscrimination” at boxing events.15
Reverend Edward Barry’s 1799 “Letter to the Legislative Body, on the
Brutal Practice of Boxing” lamented, “Deliberate Boxing matches have
been publicly exhibited, in direct violation of every law, of humanity, and
common decency,” and Thomas Hall twenty years later echoed Barry in
terming the sport an “inhuman practice” that violates the commandment,
“Thou shalt do no murder.”16 On the other side of the debate, boxing was
“manly,” and articles such as William Cobbett’s “Boxing” (1805) praised
the sport’s contribution to men’s “hardihood” and “resolute and amiable
character, for which the people of England have ever been distinguished”
(a point repeatedly echoed by Egan)—even John Milton was invoked as an
authority in favor of boxing.17 But all this attention to men’s muscular bod-
15. John Broughton, Proposals for Erecting an Amphitheatre for the Manly Exercise of Boxing
(n.p., 1 January 1742—43), 3, 2. On the broader national debate about sport in general, see
Strachan, “Romanticism, Sport, and Late Georgian Poetry,” esp. 376.
16. Barry, “Letter,” 273; Thomas Hall, National Brutality: Containing Reflections and Admo
nitions Relative to Cock-Fighting, Pugilism, &c. (Manchester: Joseph Pratt, 1819), 8, 8n.
17. Broughton, Proposals; William Cobbett, “Boxing,” Political Register 8.12 (21 Sept.504 JULIA M. WRIGHT
ies also raised concern about decency (along with a whiff of homophobia),
particularly given the many prints depicting boxers stripped to their
breeches.18 As Boddy notes, boxing was both “hardy” and “intimate,” and
could “allow men of all classes to fight on equal terms,” or viewed as
“cruel” and “a ‘detestable traffic in human flesh.’”19 By the 1820s, crit
ics tended to group boxing with animal fights as barbaric working-class
amusements.2" Moore expected a fight to be “horrid” and notes the injuries
to the boxers, a group with which he socialized along with Byron (known
for his interest in the sport); a match Moore attended in December 1818
lasted nearly two-and-a-half hours and, he writes, “de-humanised” one
boxer’s face.21
Bare-knuckle prizefighting was nominally illegal but economically and
socially sustained by the social elite.22 In Boxiana, Egan describes royalty
and aristocrats eagerly following the sport, patronizing boxers, and even
entering the ring: “men of the first distinction felt not ashamed of being
seen in the ring, or in acting as umpires at a boxing match” (104). The
sport’s culture of celebrity was not limited to white working-class boxers,
but also included African-American boxers such as Bill Richmond, Tom
Molineux, George Head, and Harry Sutton. Even the conservative Black
wood’s contributed to their celebrity, in its own way: “We never felt so
grateful to Mr. Clarkson and Mr. Wilberforce, for their humane exertions
to procure the abolition of the slave trade, as when we first saw Molineux
knock down Crib.”23 Boxing also had its own jargon, opaque to outsiders,
and yet remarkably influential on modern slang, with terms such as “kid,”
“quid,” “gob,” “coves,” “a lark,” and “buttering-up” peppered through
Moore’s satire and defined for readers in helpful footnotes. Boxing offered
something similar to Dick Hebdige’s subculture, “alternately dismissed, de-
1805) : 418; Lemoine adapts Milton’s support of exercise in “Tractate on Education” to box
ing {Modern Manhood, iv).
18. Barry laments, “print-shops disgust the eye, by holding out in full view the naked por
traits of the bruisers,” “Letter,” 274, and another essayist obliquely invokes “semi-nudity” as
a factor in whether authors support the sport, Arguments upon Boxing or Pugilism (London,
1806) , 9.
19. Boddy, Boxing, 47, 48, 41, 42.
20. See, for instance, The Deoil among the Fancy; Or, the Pugilistic Courts in an Uproar by a
Member of the Pugilistic Club (London: John Fairburn, 1822); William Vasey, Remarks on
the Influence of Pugilism on Morals (Newcastle, 1824).
21. Moore, Memoirs, 233 (Journal, 4 December 1818). On Byron and boxing, see, e.g.,
Henkin, “Pugilism and the Poets,” 71—72.
22. See Anderson, Legality of Boxing, 2.
23. “Boxiana no. vm, The Sable School of Pugilism,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 8
(October 1820): 64. For more on this Blackwood’s series, see Whale, “Daniel Mendoza’s
Contests,” 262-63.THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 505
nounced, and canonized” and exhibiting—through jargon, the elision of
class and “racial” differences, and the celebrity of lower-class boxers (sus
tained through prints, ceramics, and texts)—“the idea of style as a form of
Refusal. ”24
Moore’s “Memorial” makes much of the sport’s cross-class mixing and
general air of the illicit. “Corinthians and Commoners mixed on the ground”
(96), Moore’s narrator notes, and one aristocrat, Nicholas Vansittart, then
Chancellor of the Exchequer, “Got among the white-bag-men, and felt quite
at home” (100)—the “white-bag-men” are identified in a note as “Pick
pockets” (i99n). Such direct references to the ruling elite, part of the most
obvious satire in the “Memorial,” identify aristocrats with base crimes:
Lord Siddons is linked with the notorious “quack” Dr. Eady (102),25 Cam
den, Pitt’s Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and opponent to Catholic Emancipa
tion, is “eyed” by a “dealer in donkies” (107) in a suggestion (among others)
that the Lord can be bought as easily, and so on. As Snowdon suggests
of this passage, “The cumulative impact” of such references to the ruling
elite is to suggest that they are “little more than glorified swindlers.”26 This,
however, is the aristocratic Fancy.
The boxers themselves are heralded in Boxiana, and in Moore’s boxing
oeuvre, for their devotion to honor and fairness. Egan provides various an
ecdotes in support of this characterization. Henry Pearce, for instance, res
cued a servant girl from a burning building: “This was the act of a Pugilist'.”
(152), exclaims Egan, and he adds that Pearce had risked his life “to obtain
a purse of gold as a prize-fighter” “but here was no gold” (152, 153). Dutch
Sam also put ethics before cash, and refused “the offer of a thousand
pounds to lose a battle, on which great sums had been betted” (322).
Boxing had been self-governed, as a matter of pride, since 1743 by
Broughton’s rules (the predecessor of Marquess of Queensberry rules in the
Victorian era). These rules were associated with the principle of fair play, a
principle that, as we shall see, extended to critiques of racism in the sport.
But, more suggestively for an Irish-Catholic nationalist such as Moore,
these rules and compliance with them demonstrated self-governance by a
group that had no political voice in the era. Broughton rose from being
a waterman who got into fights to a champion boxer, and earned so high a
patron as Prince William, the Duke of Cumberland who suppressed the
Jacobite rising in 1746. He reputedly drafted his rules after the death of an
amateur boxer, George Stevenson, from injuries he sustained in the ring
with Broughton.27
24. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979), 2.
25. See J. Moore, Satires of Thomas Moore, 48 m.
26. Snowdon, Writing the Prizefight, 184.
27. See Anderson, Legality of Boxing, 13—14.506 JULIA M. WRIGHT
One of the most frequently invoked Broughton rules was the last: “That
no person is to hit his adversary when he is down,” where “a man on his
knees [is] to be reckoned down” (Boxiana 52). This rule is key in Moore’s
first known boxing satire, “Epistle from Tom Crib to Big Ben.” The poem
was widely reprinted in 1815 (including in the Morning Chronicle and Gen
tleman’s Magazine) and Jane Moore notes that it “also appeared in The
Scourge, illustrated with a Cruikshank print entitled Boxiana—or the Fancy,
which depicts an over-sized Regent kicking Napoleon’s prostrate form.”28
While the Boxiana cartoon by Williams might seem to make Napoleon the
abject figure and the Prince Regent the powerful one, under Broughton’s
rules the Regent (as Big Ben) is behaving very badly. Moore’s Tom Crib
laments,
What! Ben, my old hero, is this thy renown?
Is this the new go?—kick a man when he’s down!
When the foe has knock’d under, to tread on him then—
By the fist of my father, I blush for thee, Ben!
(i-4)
Moore’s poem first appeared in the “Morning Chronicle 31 August 1815,”
the month that Napoleon went into exile on St. Helena; as Jane Moore in
dicates, this context was highlighted in Moore’s collected Poetical Works,
which “adds the note: ‘Written soon after Bonaparte’s transportation to
St Helena.’”29 Britain, in short, is treating Napoleon unfairly, putting him
into prison rather than handling the defeat of a head of state on more tradi
tional terms.
The “Memorial” is clearly, as Strachan puts it, “Moore’s indictment of
the post-Napoleonic settlement.”311 In the “Memorial,” Napoleon is “that
Kid, Master Nap” (54), with the term “kid” attached to a footnote explain
ing the term “kidnapper” (i97n), stressing the epithet’s reference to Napo
leon’s forced exile. In both the 1815 and the 1819 Moore satires, the cham
pion Tom Crib, a former coal porter, is the voice of moral authority, in
sharp distinction to the elite who showed, in their treatment of Napoleon,
that they do not respect the rules of fair play. This sets Moore’s poems apart
from British print culture’s depiction of Crib. As O’Quinn notes, in this
body of work Crib represents British liberty “understood as the political
rights associated with being a property-holding subject of a King and Par
liament,” helping to “form[] a bulwark against not only the governmental
innovation of the French and American revolutions, but also the absolut-
28. J. Moore, Satires of Thomas Moore, 115.
29. J. Moore, Satires of Thomas Moore, 115, 45711.
30. Strachan, “Romanticism, Sport, and Late Georgian Poetry,” 384.THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 507 ism of the Napoleonic era.”31 Moore’s Crib is far more radical, and both satires are sympathetic to Napoleon and critical of the monarchy. This radicalism is relevant to the Memorial’s connection to the Congress. The 1818 Congress, the second event of its kind that decade, was primarily organized to address the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat, especially the con tinuing occupation of France. Addresses to the Congress in print include “An Address to the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle on the Subject of the Slave-Trade” and the self-serving Address to Congress by the Marquis d’Orvault.32 More closely echoed in Moore’s volume, though apparently unnoted as yet by scholars, is Robert Owen’s “Memorial on Behalf of the Working Classes, Addressed to the Allied Powers, Assembled in Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle,” published anonymously in 1818 by Moore’s usual publisher. Owen argues for the possibility of general prosperity because of higher volumes of production and the power of education to transform the populace, proposing that it was time for all ranks to work on taking advan tage of these two opportunities.33 Satires in the appendices to Moore’s vol ume include references to the boxers’ education and desire to get a share of the wealth the monarchs are dividing up, as well as suggestions that the working-class boxers have much to teach the elite. Moreover, Moore’s Crib repeatedly echoes Owen’s offer to give Europe’s leaders instruction based on the radical’s “experience”—and, most obviously, both works use the relatively peculiar term “Memorial.”34 The identification of boxing, and Crib in particular, with popular self- governance is stressed in the first appendix in Moore’s Memorial, a poetic “Account of a Grand Pugilistic Meeting, held at Belcher’s . . . Tom Crib in the Chair, to take into consideration the propriety of sending Representa tives of the Fancy to Congress” (207). Early in the “Account,” Moore identifies the boxers as “high-bred Heroes of the Ring” (3), supporting the claim to “peerage” with a quotation from Horace, “ilium superare pugnis / Nobilem” (2o8n), literally “best at boxing” but “nobilem” allows an English pun. In Moore’s satiric inversion, the boxers are the true nobility. Crib is thus “Almost Corinthian” (8), boxing’s term for “aristocratic,” and an effec tive leader: he “kept the Cones in quiet tune . . . And whosoe’er grew 31. O’Quinn, “In the Face of Difference,” 222. 32. “An Address to the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle on the Subject of the Slave-trade,” The Philanthropist 7 (1819): 328—38; Translation of an Address to Congress: to All the Powers of Europe, by Marie-Armand Gtterry de Maubreuiil, Marquis D’Orvault (London: Schulze and Dean, 1818). 33. Robert Owen, Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818). 34. Owen, Two Memorials, 10.
508 JULIA M. WRIGHT
impolite, / The well-bred Champion serv’d him out" (9, 15-16). Crib lays
out the business for the gathering:
I see no reason, when such things
Are going on among these Kings,
Why We, who’re of the Fancy lay,
As dead hands at a mill as they,
And quite as ready, after it,
To share the spoil and grab the bit,
Should not be there to join the chat,
To see, at least, what fun they’re at.
(41-48)
He then addresses the boxers and asks, “what say you?—yes, or no?” (54),
and the boxers then take turns addressing the group, mostly supporting
participation in the Congress though one expresses concern that “if too
many ‘Big ones’ went, / They might alarm the Continent!" (118-19). They
fight in the ring—not intimidate people outside of it. So, here are Moore’s
boxers: developing their own rules for fair behavior, running meetings in
which everyone can speak, voting on whether to send a delegation to an
international meeting of European rulers, and condemning the elite for
failing to behave properly, while also recalling Owen’s treatise in aspiring
to share in the wealth. This is not just a satire on the elite: this is also an ar
gument for popular democracy, and offers a broad echo of Owen’s “me
morial” “on behalf of the working classes.”
2. Cosmopugilism: Boxing and the Elision of National Distinctions
But there are nationalist overtones to boxing that neither Moore nor his
contemporaries could ignore. Whether Egan was born in England to Irish
parents or in Ireland is the subject of much speculation but, regardless, he
was writing for a British audience at a time when boxing was characterized
as quintessentially British.35 In the Dedication to Boxiana, Egan attributes to
boxing “the alacrity of the tar in serving his gun, and the daring intrepid
ity of the British Soldier in mounting the Breach—in producing those
brilliant victories which have reflected so much honor to the English
Nation” (iv). This is not only a matter of practice but also of origins. Egan
briefly traces the sport back to “the times of the immortal Alfred”; he con
cedes, “That athletic exercises have not been performed in foreign coun-
35. Reid notes that Egan was closely related to the prominent Tipperary Egans: his grand
father was a vicar, and his uncle was an Irish MP who argued against the abolition of the Irish
Parliament by the Act of Union (1800) (Bucks and Bruisers, 2-4).THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 509 tries at various times, by particular individuals, it is not our intention to deny; but in speaking generally, as a national trait, we feel no hesitation in declaring, that it is wholly—British” (14). He thus dismisses evidence of boxing in the classical world (Moore, a classicist by education, devotes much of his Preface to countering this view) and reinforces the Britishness of the sport at every opportunity, including a note on “Female Pugilism” in which he reproduces a notice of a 1722 fight between two women “To shew the nationality of boxing, and that it was not merely confined to heroes” (300).36 Two years before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, such remarks about “the nationality of boxing” cater to a nation at war. He writes for instance of a boxing “exhibition . . . under the guidance of a Frenchman, who undertook to prove that science, in competition with strength, was of no avail; but John Bull soon took the conceit out of him, as he had done many more of his countrymen, in more formidable contests than that of sparring, by exposing his gasconade. The Frenchman very soon got milled [beaten], and shortly afterwards muzzled [drunk]; so that the science received but little interruption from his lectures” (9). The insults against the “Frenchman” are consistent with the general position of the Boxiana: box ing is a science, valued through Enlightenment notions of reason, civility, and sociability, and so does everything from educating the morals of those who practice it to serving the public interest by reducing the number of fa tal duels. The French teacher who favors “strength” is thus perfunctorily dismissed by the “science” ofJohn Bull, implying the same will be true on the battlefield. In Egan’s text, boxing also helps to guarantee the moral authority of British empire, under suspicion in the wake of the Warren Hastings’s im peachment for exploitation in British India as well as various mutinies linked to abuses in the navy. Boxing and other so-called “vulgar Sports,” contends Egan, can give generosity to the mind, and humanity to the heart, by instilling these unalterable principles into the breast of every Briton, not to take an unfair advantage of his antagonist; and which cannot be more na tionally illustrated, than in the recollection of a British Sailor, at the taking of Fort Omoa, who being in possession of two swords, and suddenly meeting an enemy destitute of any weapon of defence, with unparalleled manliness and generosity divided the instruments of death with him, that he might have a fair chance for his life! (iv) 36. Women boxing was not unusual in the Romantic period: Egan praises Grace Maddox and women boxers from the Belcher family, for instance (206—7, 120), and a 1781 print depicts two women in an impromptu boxing match (An Engagement in Billingsgate Channel, between the Terrible and the Tiger, two First Rates, British Museum 1935,0522.1.73).
510 JULIA M. WRIGHT
The Battle of Fort Omoa, in which the British captured a key Spanish pos
session in Honduras in 1779, was the subject of nationalist drama, with
scenes to reflect it added to Henry Woodward’s Harlequin FortunatusP7 This
is more of Egan’s thinly veiled political allegory: Napoleon negotiated an
agreement with Spain in October 1807 under which, according to Simon
Bolivar, “French legions crossed the Pyrenees, and penetrated to the heart
of Spain, under the pretence of shutting her seaports against the com
merce of Great Britain. The conquest of Spain and Portugal appeared to
Napoleon an easy task,”38 leading to the launch of the Peninsular War in
which Britain, at Spain’s request, fought to push Napoleon back. Here,
in Egan’s “nationally illustrative]” anecdote, Britain deals fairly and openly
with defenseless Spain.
More crucially, Egan’s boxing world extends its notion of fair play to
guard the diversity of the sport. While Egan keeps insisting that boxing is
quintessentially British, he still has to acknowledge that many leading box
ers in this era were Jewish, Irish, or African-American by birth or descent.
Egan marks these boxers as “other”: instead of using names throughout or
general terms, as he does for white British boxers, Egan consistently uses
racial epithets, such as “Paddy” for Irish-diaspora boxers and “man of col
our,” “the black” or even “the Moor” for African-diaspora fighters. But, at
the same time, he suggests that legitimate Britishness and effective boxing
are inextricable from good sportsmanship, which, as Strachan notes in his
discussion of Egan’s inclusiveness, effectively means “capable of behav
ing like an Englishman.”39 Racial and national prejudices are not simply
unethical—they are unBritish. All must, like the Spanish soldier at Fort
Omoa, be treated fairly in the spirit of Broughton’s rules, and Egan gently
laments fans’ racist support for white English boxers.
Egan offers, as a kind of parable, various versions of a story with the same
general plot: a virtuous man who is not English by birth is taunted by an
Englishman for his race or nationality; matters escalate to the point that
they agree to settle the dispute with a boxing match; and the taunter is
roundly trounced, demonstrating the error of his prejudiced ways on terms
consistent with trial by battle. Take the example of Harry Sellers:
Harry, after his victory over Corcoran, was continually insulting
the Paddies; and being one St. Patrick’s evening at the Black Dog, Hol
loway Mount, a Mr. Harvey, a Lamp-black maker, was among the
37. Christopher Baugh, “Scenography and Technology,” in Cambridge Companion to Brit
ish Theatre, 1730-1830, eds. Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 2007), 48.
38. Bolivar, Memoirs of Simon Bolivar, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1830), 1:90.
39. Strachan, “Romanticism, Sport, and Late Georgian Poetry,” 379.THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 511 company, who had a Shamrock in his hat in honour of that Saintl Sellers (who, it appears, was unknown) began sneering and laughing at Harvey, and observed, “that he ought to take that thing from his hat, as the conceit had been completely taken out of the Paddies since their Champion Peter had been defeated!” In consequence of this in sult, words arose. (88) Sellers suggests a boxing match the next day, but his prejudice is roundly beaten in the ring: “Harvey’s true courage rose superior to all the attacks of his adversary, and straight forward completely punished Sellers in a quarter of an hour. Sellers, thus deservedly disgraced and beaten, soon fell into disrepute and oblivion!” (89). But Egan does more than just “direct at tention to incidents where Irish fighters were maligned,” as Snowdon sug gests.40 Compare this account of the African-American boxer Bill Rich mond, who was brought to England as a teenager: Richmond, in passing through the streets of York, one evening, with a female under his protection, was accosted by one Frank Myers, with the epithets of “black devil,” &c. and who otherwise insulted the young woman for being in company with a man of colour. Bill, full of gallantry, and with a becoming spirit of indignation, requested him to desist for the present moment, but to meet him at the Groves on the next Monday morning, when they would settle this difference. (441) After some delays—Myers does not appear so they have to go get him— “Richmond soon taught him very properly to acknowledge, that it was wrong, and beneath the character of an Englishman, to abuse any individ ual for what he could not help—either on account of his country or his colour. Myers, very properly, received a complete milling” (442). Jewish box ers are also considered in the light ofEnglish “prejudices” (255).41 Consis tently for Egan, boxing provides the proper frame in which to treat na tional distinctions: it leads the British soldier to treat the Spanish soldier fairly, it recognizes merit of character and science in Jewish, Irish, and African-American boxers, and it can be used to punish and embarrass those who act “beneath the character of an Englishman” through racist abuse. The songs that conclude the first volume of Boxiana highlight this con cern with race in early nineteenth-century boxing discourse. Two deal with a famous fight between Tom Crib and Tom Molineaux, including the song “Crib and the Black”: 40. Snowdon, Writing the Prizefight, 114. 41. For more on Daniel Mendoza in this racially charged climate, see especially Whale’s “Daniel Mendoza’s Contests.”
512 JULIA M. WRIGHT
Tom Crib is a British man, he’s cast in British mould,
With a heart like a lion, of courage stout and bold,
A brave black man is Molineaux, from America he came . . .
With his skin as black as ebony—Crib’s as white as snow,
They shook hands like good fellows, then to it they did go.
(480)
This is 1812-1813. Slavery is still legal in British colonial possessions,
and the British had only recently taken the first step towards abolition
when they criminalized the slave trade in 1 807. Casually vicious racist dis
course is rife in essays, poetry, plays, novels, and so on, and abolitionist dis
course relies heavily on sentimental treatments of slaves as victims. But
here, in the immensely popular Boxiana, it is perfectly acceptable for a
black man to beat a white one into humiliating defeat, or escort a white
woman, as long as it is done according to the rules: Bill Richmond not
only fights fairly but also, “full of gallantry,” considers the woman “under
his protection.”
Again and again, Egan insists on what we might broadly call the rule of
law within an increasingly diverse and globalized working-class society, and
in that Moore follows suit. In his satiric account of the boxers’ meeting
about Congress, with Tom Crib chairing the meeting, the second-last
speaker is Bill Richmond. Moore’s Richmond declares,
‘He hop’d that Swell, Lord C—ST—R—gh,
Would show the Lily-Whites fair play;
And not—as once he did’—says Bill,
Among those Kings, so high and sqnirish,
Leave us, poor Blacks, to fare as ill,
As if we were but pigs, or—Irish!’
(“Account,” 148-53)
Moore does a lot in these few lines. Castlereagh did argue at the 1818 Con
gress for the Europe-wide criminalization of the slave trade, as I shall dis
cuss below. Like Egan, but more explicitly, Moore uses Richmond to link
racial prejudice across targeted groups—and, it is worth noting, Moore
gives the political analysis in the voice of a black boxer instead of a white
author. “Pigs,” here, is legible as a common radical reference to Edmund
Burke’s disparaging remark in his reactionary Reflections on the Revolution in
France to the general population as the “swinish multitude.” (Moore oddly,
however, uses Richmond’s nickname, “Lily-White,” as a plural reference
to “Negroes,” usage apparently unprecedented in the period’s boxing liter
ature, even in the Blackwood’s piece on black boxers which derisively refersTHOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 513
to Richmond’s “Sable or Lily-White School of Pugilism.”)42 43 “Among
those Kings,” Moore’s Richmond suggests, the African diaspora, the Irish,
and the working classes are treated comparably—and Egan and Moore sug
gest that they are forming their own alliances through boxing.
In the “Memorial,” there is a cluster of muted references to Ireland. Im
mediately on the defeat of Georgy the Porpus by Long Sandy, “the
fiddlers” “Play’d ‘Green grow the rushes ff in honour of Sandy!” (275—76),
footnoted, “The well-known compliment paid to the Emperor of all the
Russias by some Irish musicians” (205n). The introduction of the Tsar’s
second as “Pottso” (76) brings an earlier footnoted gesture to Irish support
for Russia against Britain: “The Irish used to claim the dancer Didelot as
their countryman, insisting that the O had slipped out of its right place, and
that his real name was Mr. O’Diddle. On the same principle they will, per
haps, assert their right to Mr Pozzo” (i98n). The boxers at this royal match
are also described as “Buffers" (73), a rare use in the volume of an explicitly
“Irish” boxing term (i98n). After the fiddlers celebrate the British Regent’s
defeat, Crib offers to train the royal boxers in the best skills of various
prizefighters. His pitch ends with Irish boxers’ technical accomplish
ments and quite possibly the best pun in Irish satire after Swift: “Old
Corcoran’s click, that laid customers flat— / Paddy Ryan from Dublin's
renown’d ‘coup de Pat”’ (319—20), evoking the coup d’etat that Europe’s
monarchies feared after the French Revolution. Peter Corcoran and Mi
chael Ryan are both identified in Boxiana as Irish immigrants to England
(82, 224—25) known for their “knock-down blow[s]” (84, 225). Other sat
ires by Moore are “More directly concerned with Ireland,”44 or at least
more overtly so, but the Memorial is concerned instead with the Irish dias
pora, claiming M. Pozzo, itinerant musicians, and leading boxers for that
group as well as linking the treatment of the lower classes, the Irish, and
diasporic Africans. Threaded through it all, Moore stresses the higher mor
als of the lower classes and reinforces the representation, in Boxiana as else
where, of boxers as the real gentlemen: they are politically modern enough
42. “The Sable School of Pugilism” (Boxiana no. viu), Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 8
(1820): 65. Moore also repeats the association in his Preface (191, 19m).
43. The Irish musicians are likely playing Robert Burns’s popular song rather than the
English folk song with the line, “Two, two, the lily-white boys”; the latter is apparently un
documented before the 1860s but, if it was known in 1819, would compound the connec
tion made by Richmond in the appendix between “Lily whites” and the Irish, not least be
cause of the well-known Irish rural insurgent group, the Whiteboys (named for their white
farming clothes).
44. Jane Moore, “Thomas Moore as Irish Satirist,” Scotland, Ireland, and the Romantic Aes
thetic, eds. David Duff and Catherine Jones (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2007),
161.514 JULIA M. WRIGHT
to transcend racism and are fairly self-governed within a globalized com
munity, but, while they have something to teach royalty about settling dis
putes, they are not citizens because of a political regime that does not
recognize them as such. They are cosmopugilists (world boxers) not cos
mopolitans (world citizens). It is in this context that the Memorial is ad
dressed to the Congress.
3. Congressional Internationalism and Castlereagh
The first meeting of European heads of state in response to the Napoleonic
wars, the Congress of Vienna, concluded in 1815 and is a key context for
Moore’s short boxing satire that same year; the second, at Aix-la-Chapelle,
took place in 1818, and is the specific focus of Moore’s 1819 volume. The
participants were the sovereigns of Europe and their aristocratic representa
tives and advisors, such as Wellington and Castlereagh for Britain and
Metternich for Austria in 1815. The Congress of Vienna set the terms for
redrawing the map of Europe in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat at
Waterloo: restoring some territories, legitimizing new acquisitions, and in
some cases compensating for losses. It did much to increase Prussian and
Russian territories in particular, but no major power, apart from France,
was a loser. In 1818, they met again, ostensibly with the aim of dealing
with removing occupying troops from France, but also to settle other mat
ters. France needed a seat at the table, for instance, and Castlereagh brought
a British proposal to criminalize the slave trade on nearly global terms,
given the reach of European empires at the time. One of the recognized
agendas of both Congresses, however, was the suppression of the radicalism
that launched the French Revolution. Meetings of and for royalty and aris
tocracy, the Congresses aimed to maintain their hegemony.
One of the key issues at the 1818 Congress was thus, as legal historian
Alfred P. Rubin puts it, “ ‘Legitimacy’ as a rule of governmental succession
in the international legal order. . . . The Alliance sought to forbid by law
revolutions within municipal orders [i.e., civic law—the nation-state].
From that point of view, ‘legitimacy’ as argued by the supporters of the
Holy Alliance did not reflect any substantive rules or any particular law
making process within the international legal order.”45 In other words, they
could forbid revolution within any member state without changing the re
lationships between member states. Moore invokes the term “Legitimate”
in the first verse paragraph of the “Memorial”: Jane Moore notes that
'‘Legitimate” means “A King or ruler, and, in this context, members of the
Holy Alliance. For Moore, and those opposed to the Holy Alliance, ‘Legit-
45. Rubin, Ethics and Authority in International Lain (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 117.THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 515
imacy’ came to signify unjust interference by the ruling heads of Europe in
domestic and national affairs.”46 Rubin’s discussion makes clear that
Moore’s concerns are more fundamental than this: the Congress sought to
entrench the power of monarchs by making revolution illegal or, in effect,
placing all political power in the hands of sovereigns at the very moment
that popular nationalism was becoming common across Europe, an ideol
ogy in which the nation’s sovereignty is rooted in the people and the land,
not the sovereign per se. Under the “Legitimate” model, it makes a kind of
sense for the kings to have a boxing match—they fully embody national
sovereignty. But this is also the reason that Castlereagh’s aim of
criminalizing the slave trade failed, as Moore seems well aware.
In “To the Ship in which C—st—r—gh Sailed for the Continent,” in
Appendix III of the Memorial, Castlereagh is chastised for his failure:
Oh, what a face of brass was his,
Who first at Congress show’d his phyz—
To sign away the Rights of Man
To Russian threats and Austrian juggle;
And leave the sinking African
To fall without one saving struggle.
(15-20)
Castlereagh proposed to the major powers that they abolish the slave trade
in 1817, failed, and tried again at the 1818 Congress.47 Rubin summarizes
the outcome: “At the close of the Congress, Castlereagh circulated a min
ute in the name of the British Government outlining the legal position he
proposed to take. Regretting the failure of the Congress to act, Castlereagh
took particularly to task the Russian Plenipotentiaries whose enlightened
sentiments stopped short of accepting the British proposal that slave traders
be agreed to be qualified as ‘pirates.’ ”48 Thus, one member state would not
agree and others contended that to proceed without that state’s agreement
would constitute interference in its sovereignty. So, the sovereignty of the
ruler trumps everything—including “the Rights of Man.”
In the “Memorial” account of the boxing match between Georgy the
Porpus and Long Sandy the Bear, Castlereagh is Georgy’s second. In
prizefights, boxers had official “seconds” who could take their place in the
ring; Egan reports that George Maddox often had his sister Grace as his
second, and she had “been frequently heard to exclaim, whenever her
brother had been defeated, ‘that she was certain sure, if she had had the han-
46. J. Moore, Satires of Thomas Moore, 48 m.
47. Rubin, Ethics and Authority, 115—16.
48. Rubin, Ethics and Authority, 116.516 JULIA M. WRIGHT
dling of him [her brother’s opponent], that it would not have happened so
unfortunate!’” (207). Castlereagh, however, is no Grace Maddox, praised
in Moore’s final appendix as “a young Lady of pugilistic celebrity” (222).
Throughout the volume, Moore represents Castlereagh as the comic inver
sion of a successful boxer. He is introduced as
he, who lives
At the sign of the King's Arms a-kimbo, and gives
His small beer about, with the air of a chap,
Who believed it himself a prodigious strong tap.
(77-8o)
As Jane Moore notes, the reference to the King’s Arms “alludes to Castle-
reagh’s Royal sycophancy,” but Castlereagh is specifically depicted in a ter
rible stance for a boxer and, perhaps worse, cannot handle his ale.49 Many
leading boxers became pub-owners, and being light drinkers is not part of
the mythology. Moreover, Tom Crib talks like he boxes: “Tom’s words,
you know, / Come, like his hitting, strong but slow” (“Account,” 25-26).511
Castlereagh, conversely, is an ineffectual speaker. In the “Memorial,” he
merely “Show[s] off his talk,” and in a footnote Moore quotes “a late wit,
who, upon being asked what was going on in the House of Commons, an
swered, ‘only Lord C., airing his vocabulary’” (iq6n). In the “Lines,” one of
the poems in the third appendix, he is the “Malaprop Cicero,” in “Leagu[e|
with Kings, who, for mere recreation, / Break promises, fast as your Lord-
ship breaks metaphors” (26, 31—32). He even mangles pronunciation, pro
nouncing “knowledge” as “nullidge,” “deriving it . . . from the Latin,
nullus” (28, 2i9n). Recalling the use of boxing to resolve disputes (akin to
the trial by battle), Castlereagh is England’s representative to Congress and
he is the laughable inverse of the boxing champion Tom Crib. This is a
nub of Moore’s satire: England has sent the wrong champion into the field.
These champions are not only different as pugilists but also in cosmopol
itan terms. In Moore’s “Memorial,” an early footnote reads, “The com
mon people, the mobility” (i98n); “mobility” alters a Latin term, “mobile
vulgus,” the origin for the pejorative “mob,” and plays on its similarity
to the word “nobility.”51 This footnote adds to the quiet radical referenc
ing in the text: E. P. Thompson notes, “ ‘Mobility’ was a term proudly
49. J. Moore, Satires of Thomas Moore, 48m. Elbows must be kept in, then as now, and
manuals recommended, for instance, “elbows pointed downwards,” The Art of Manual De
fence; Or, System of Boxing, 3rd ed. (London: Kearsley, 1799), 77.
50. Romantic-era boxing had few constraints on methods of attack, but Crib fights in the
way that was valued: “The beauty of boxing is in hitting clean'' (Lemoine, Modern Manhood,
87).
51. See the OED's etymology for “mobility, n. 2.”THOMAS MOORE’S BOXING SATIRES 517
adopted by nineteenth-century Radicals and Chartists for their peaceable
and well-conducted demonstrations.”52 In the “Memorial,” Moore ties the
mobility/nobility dyad to legitimate/illegitimate movement:
It now being settled that emp’rors and kings,
Like kites made offoolscap, are high-flying things,
To whose tails a few millions of subjects or so,
Have been tied in a string, to be whisk’d to and fro,
Just wherever it suits the said foolscap to go—
While snug and secure you may now run your rigs,
Without fear that old Boney will bother your gigs
Let us hope now that wars and rumbustions will cease.
(28-32, 35-36, 40)
This passage includes a phrase, “run your rigs,” used to condemn Castle-
reagh’s flitting about to Europe:
In vain we wish our Secs, at home,
To mind their papers, desks, and shelves,
If silly Secs, abroad will roam,
And make such noodles of themselves.
—But such hath always been the case,
For matchless impudence of face,
There’s nothing like your Tory race!
When each, in turn, had run their rigs,
Necessity brought in the Whigs,
And oh, I blush, I blush to say,
When these, in turn, were put to flight, too,
Illustrious T—mp—e flew away,
With lots of pens he had no right tol
(“To the Ship,” 25-31, 37-42)
The final lines allude to the Duke of Buckingham & Chandos walking
away with, as the footnote indicates, “1200 I. worth of stationary, which
his Lordship had ordered, when on the point of vacating his place” (22m) in
the government. But, more pointedly, here we have not the mobility but
the nobility, who move when they should stay in their “place,” conve
niently here a pun on location and government position. They are the
52. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1968), 78-79.You can also read
