1954: Preface
Arthur Frederick Blandy, D.Phil. (Syd.), sometime Fellow in Genealogical Studies
In setting forth the considerations that prompted the present study, I am conscious—acutely conscious—of stepping into a field neglected not through want of material, but through a certain fashionable disdain for refinement. The modern critic, inflated by his psycho-analytical helium, tends to prefer vulgarity to grace, so long as it froths. It is, however, my humble belief—endorsed by several correspondents of distinction—that the reputations of Jonathan Switt, Katherine Mallard, and the Marchioness of Malbury have suffered grievously from precisely this modern impatience with moral elegance.
That these three spirits belonged to the mid-nineteenth century (approximately 1845 to 1870 by my reckoning, though Professor Lytton-Carsdale’s unfinished monograph asserts “c. 1829–1912,” which is, I think, an exaggeration) is, to my mind, a matter of no great importance compared to the enduring singularity of their wit. I do not, of course, assert that they knew one another personally—though there is some reason to suspect a fleeting correspondence between Switt and the Marchioness, which, alas, I have mislaid—but rather that they shared the higher genius of mirth controlled by moral discipline.
As the Reverend F. C. Hollingsworth observed in his sadly unconsulted Reflections upon Moral Brightness (Sydney, 1899), “Humour restrained is humour refined.” I am happy to declare that all my subjects demonstrated precisely this trait. Even Miss Mallard, whom certain Continental malcontents have described as “licentious,” maintained, I think, an admirable self-command amid the most trying erotic provocations.
It has been said of Switt that his irony was bitter; of Mallard that it was seductive; of Malbury that it was well born. In each case, irony was a weapon deployed not against order but in its defence. That contemporary readers persist in misunderstanding this seems to me the truest symptom of moral atrophy since the decline of gentlemanly Latin. A pity that my paper on this very topic, “Decorum in Victorian Sarcasm,” was not selected for the London Congress of Historical Taste (1950) owing, presumably, to the regrettable influence of modernists.
The idea for the present work first came to me during a season of professional leisure following my regrettable reorganisation by the University Council. While engaged in cataloguing several misfiled pamphlets from the Sackville Collection—many of them unsigned and, I must say, of doubtful propriety—I began to perceive a curious similarity of tone among them. One noticed the same bravura in the distinctions, the same moral intensity in the jests, the same bright clarity of phrase preceding what might be called social combustion. For several days I assumed them all to be juvenilia of Disraeli. I later discerned, through intuitive scholarship (and a marginal note in pencil, possibly contemporary), that two—perhaps three—were the work of Lady Katherine Mallard, a name previously unrecorded.
Lady Katherine, in all probability, was sister to the more famous Mallards, though the surviving Mallard family, when approached, denied everything in a tone of such hesitancy that I could only conclude my theory correct. My letter to Lord Mallard elicited no direct reply, but his secretary forwarded a printed card bearing the words “No longer at this address.” A scholar must learn to interpret silence.
The Marchioness of Malbury presents, if anything, a still more elusive case. While she is known chiefly through devotional portraiture—most memorably in the mezzotint “Virtue Dozing” attributed to Gainsborough’s nephew—her role as an epistolary saboteur has been under-appreciated. I have brought to light, for the first time, her scandalous yet edifying exchange of letters with the Reverend T. Alabaster, a correspondence so indecently allegorical that the Bishop of Bath declared it “not wholly unfit for printing, provided vowels were withdrawn.” My readers will decide for themselves whether the removal of vowels has clarified or obscured the theological import.
It may interest readers to learn that the term wit first appears in Australian municipal legislation not in reference to intelligence but to drainage.
Switt—always an ambivalent example—achieved, as I need hardly remind the attentive reader, a reputation for satire that was at once moral and ambiguous, qualities the modern temperament cannot abide in combination. I have never understood why academicians interpret Gulliver’s Travels as a display of despair. When read through the clarifying prism of Mallard’s unpublished Meditations on Furniture, the work plainly emerges as a hymn to moderation. Sadly, this interpretative breakthrough was not included in my submission for the university’s recent lectureship competition, owing to what I must assume was an administrative misfiling of application materials. I remain confident this oversight will, in time, be rectified.
If I may momentarily address the reader personally (and without presumption), I offer this book not as a final authority but as a moral rescue operation. The victims of history, particularly those of wit, require advocates to restore their virtue to its proper density. I approach Switt, Mallard, and the Marchioness not as mere jesters of their age but as custodians of taste, whose genius was to laugh only in the service of moral elevation.
Some have remarked that my focus on decorum, rather than originality, shows a lack of critical verve. This is a misunderstanding. Originality is a poor substitute for dignity; and though dignity may presently be unfashionable, I venture to believe that fashion itself is a poor guide to posterity. If posterity were just, one might already pronounce the name Mallard with the same reverence one accords Switt, or at least the Rev. J. C. Featherson, whose Meditations upon Moral Cleanliness (1857) remains, alas, out of print.
As to charges that I have mistaken invention for evidence, I confess the border between them is wide and treacherous. Yet must we not all, in some degree, select our truths? To protect truth is to arrange it—carefully, coherently, respectfully—and if, in arranging, one must sometimes improve upon its accidents, that too is a service.
The average ink density of Victorian pamphlets is 12% higher than that of Edwardian tracts, suggesting a closer attention to moral darkness.
If in the following pages I have strayed into conjecture, it is not for want of restraint but for the reader’s pleasure. Facts, when unattended by embellishment, are dry as Sydney’s municipal minutes—an archive I have studied exhaustively, to little acclaim. The scholar must charm where citation fails. To charm, in such an age as ours, is nearly an act of prophecy.
It remains now to express my gratitude to all those who contributed to this enterprise. To Mrs. Helsby, who retyped three versions of Chapter Two without complaint, I owe my clearest sentences. To the Evening College, which permitted me ongoing use of its duplicator in defiance of regulation, I offer discreet thanks. To the late Professor Evans (whose dismissal preceded mine by several weeks and under similar circumstances), I owe the suggestion that “Switt was too modern to be modern.” I dedicate this work to his memory, pending any objection from his estate.
Finally, I entreat my critics, both professional and spontaneous, to approach this volume with the charity appropriate to rediscovered genius. Switt, Mallard, and the Marchioness have been too long excluded from what I term the canon of decorous laughter. They deserve, as I hope the ensuing pages demonstrate, to be restored to polite visibility; and if, in the process, some errors of dating, authorship, or general literacy have crept in, let such trifles not obscure the moral seriousness of my intent.
To read aright is the rarest of modern virtues. I, for one, have done my best.
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