I. THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND.

The main facts in Addison’s life could be compressed within the compass of an ordinary telegram, thus:

Joseph Addison was born in Wiltshire, England, in 1672, had a grammar school education, and went to Oxford University. Between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-one he traveled in Europe. Later, he held public offices, but, in 1710 devoted himself seriously to literature, and, in five years, gained lasting fame. He died in 1719.

If, in the style of the modern journalist, you chose to add a spice of mild scandal, you might say that he was married to the Countess of Warwick, but the union was not a happy one. Should a little extra tang be required, it would be quite in order to say that on occasion he drank too much.

Or, supposing that you were very narrow and chose to run a dark smear across his name, you might make much of the fact that he sometimes loaned money to his best friend, Richard Steele, and on one such occasion, sent the sheriff’s officer with an order for the debtor’s arrest, two days after the loan had been made. This story, be it said, you may not find in any existing biography, at least I have not been able to find it, but, nevertheless, it is true, for Dick Steele told it to his friend Richard Savage the poet, who, in turn, told it to Doctor Johnson. Then, of course, James Boswell got hold of it and gave it to the world.

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Still, as you know and as I know, and as Nietzsche said, men’s wickedness is much less than the fame of it, so, rightly understood and fairly told, even this, which might be denounced by the thoughtless as an act of base treachery, turns out to be a very ordinary affair, the like of which might easily have befallen me. For the fact is that Richard Steele was Richard Steele, a mighty good fellow, as also was Addison. You see the character of the man as soon as you look at his picture. Ruddy and strong, full of boisterous health is he, one in whom the sap of life rises swiftly. At a glance you see that he can laugh heartily, like Rabelais, like Scarron. If you are supersensitive, if you are timid, you would not go abroad with him, for he is, it is plain to be seen, one who would take you into taverns, into baignoires on occasion, into places where are jovial companions who love a good song, or a jolly story over a bottle. With his kind, you may wind up the night with either a broken head or a belly full, but which ever it was, you would have had a good time. And Addison, a quieter

sort, a fine, sensitive type, liked his Irish friend. They had been school boys together, and, later, college chums. They were the same age, too. It was a friendship like that of William of Orange for Bentick, or Queen Anne for Lady Churchill. But Dick Steele was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and being a genius, was bold, reckless of life, of health, of which the unco’ guid call honor. So his wealthy relative cast him off before he had graduated from college, and he became a kind of vagrant. He joined the army, soon tired of the discipline, bought himself out, and lived by his wits. He loved women and he loved wine, but he loved wine more than women. He was an easy going, good natured adventurer [Pg 5]with a strong literary gift and a tremendous imagination. Like Tom Jones, he lived his life in a manner far from perfect, knew it and regretted it. He had spurts of virtue, he made good resolutions, then straightway forgot all about them and went on in the same old way. Give him a guinea and immediately he went about to find a friend to share it. A good meal

and an evening spent in jolly company seemed to him a far more attractive way to dispose of gold than the uninteresting payment of tradesmen’s bills. Besides, do what he would, at one time in his career, to pay off all that he owed seemed an utter impossibility. So, as a palliative measure, he would borrow from Peter to pay Paul.

But Richard Steele was also a letter writer. His winning personality, his charm of manner shone on the written page. He was as irresistible as Micawber, as charming as Esmond. Judge for yourself. I take, almost at random, four letters of twenty. They are written to his wife, and, as most men know, to write to a wife is not easy, and less so when one is long overdue, or too late for dinner, and, to boot, a little far gone in one’s cups. Then it requires both dexterity and diplomacy. The letters are, of course, of subsequent date to the Addison loan affair, but serve to show the peculiar, persuasive qualities of the writer.

To Mrs. Steele.

Monday, seven at night, Sept. 27, 1708. Dear Prue: You see you are obeyed in everything, and that I write overnight for the following day. I shall now in earnest, by Mr. Clay’s good conduct, manage my business with that method as shall make me easy. The news, I am told, you had last night, of the taking of Lille, does not prove true; but I hope we shall have it soon. [Pg 6]I shall send by tomorrow’s coach. I am, dear Prue, a little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband, RICH STEELE.

Or this:

To Mrs. Steele (lately Mrs. Scurlock).

Dec. 22, 1707. My dear, dear wife: I write to let you know that I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend to some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband. RICH STEELE.

It is a little significant that nine out of ten letters written to his wife, are graceful notes of apology because of his absence from home. Here is another.

To Mrs. Steele.

Eleven at night, Jan. 5, 1708. Dear Prue: I was going home two hours ago, but was met by Mr. Griffith, who has kept me ever since meeting me, as he came from Mr. Lambert’s. I will come within a pint of wine. RICH STEELE. (We drank your health, and Mr. Griffith is your servant.)

One more will be sufficient, especially as it seems to show that Mrs. Steele was by no means pleased to have messengers knocking at her door at all hours of the night with letters from the errant Richard.

June 7, 1708. Dear Prue: I enclose you a guinea for your pocket. I dine with Lord Halifax. I wish I knew how to court you into good humor, for two or three quarrels will dispatch me quite. If you have any love for me, believe I am always pursuing our mutual good. Pray consider that all my little fortune is to (be) settled this month, and [Pg 7]that I have inadvertently made myself liable to impatient people, who take all advantages. If you have (not) patience, I shall transact my business rashly, and lose a very great sum to quicken the time of your being rid of all people you do not like. Yours ever, RICH STEELE.

On that I rest my case, as the lawyers say, as having amply proved the persuasive powers of Richard Steele. Such letters would turn a heart of stone.

One day, when Addison was in funds, there came to him a touching letter from his old school fellow. Dick was in trouble again. The letter told all. His flint-hearted creditors pressed. His grate was fireless and there was not as much as a candle in the house. Butcher and baker cast a cold eye upon him. The wolf was at the door, and, eke, the bailiff with a writ. “Impatient people who take all advantage” beset him. For twenty-four hours he had fasted, and starvation stared him in the face. A hundred pounds would save his life.

Picture Addison his friend, a man of wealth and position; Under Secretary of State; a little king surrounded by his circle of admirers; a coffee-house wit; a conversationalist able to keep a “few friends listening and laughing around a table from the time when a play ended till the clock of St. Paul’s struck four o’ the morning”; the guest of the brilliant Lady Mary Montague; collector of Elzevirs and ancient medals. He read the letter once, twice, thrice. There is a rabble of reasons why he should help Dick and a rabble why he should not. He ponders awhile in doubt.... But it is his old Irish school friend in trouble again. It is Dick the luckless. But here is sincere repentance, and, anyway, Dick is under a cloud. Moreover, he is through with “the well-fed [Pg 8]wits” who batten on him. So the messenger is called in, presently leaves with the money and Addison sleeps well.

But not with monetary aid alone is Addison satisfied. He has some knowledge of life in Grub Street—a knowledge also possessed by Goldsmith who told how the luckless author in dark days

So, the next day, Addison climbs Steele’s stairway. He is astonished to find porters running up and down bearing trays loaded with soups, fish, entrees and sweetmeats. He, himself, is elbowed out of the way by servants. There are lights everywhere and, from within, the sound of fiddles. It is long past sunset and no black-hearted bailiff may do his full work. Through the open door is seen the long, crowded table, piled high with wines and meats, champagnes and burgundies, and at the head, brimming with happiness and good humor, without a present care in the world, sits Dick Steele. Small wonder then that the good nature of Addison received a shock and that he determined to give Steele and his “well-fed wits” a lesson.

But big men find it easy to forgive. Vindictiveness is for small minds alone. Indeed, Addison the gentleman never told the story. He, doubtless, soon considered it a closed incident and so forgot all about it. It was Steele the gentleman who gave the tale to the world, and, as a gentleman should, to illustrate his friend’s generosity.

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One day a notion struck Steele. He decided to publish a journal on a new plan. It is true there were news sheets in plenty, but, the times were, in some respects, very like our own, and the self-imposed task of the journalist seemed then, as now, to be to provide the weak-minded section of the public with a new variety of mental dissipation each day. Then, as now, too, the spirit of sensationalism was abroad. Then, as now, there was a very active championship of bad causes and the only care of the journal’s owner was to increase his circulation and keep out of the clutches of the law. Every blind popular prejudice and every brutal fanaticism was seized upon avidly and every consideration of decency disregarded. To cater to the baser appetites, the lowest curiosities, the shallowest mind, was the rule. Today, picturing the people of England as of then, from the current news sheets, you see a nation of Yahoos that hate each other, tear each other with their talons with hideous contortions and yells. You see, very much as you see today with us, foul sheets doing lip service,

darkening counsel by words without knowledge, fawning on the wealthy, flattering the men in power. To use Swift’s picture as applicable, (Gulliver’s Travels, Part 4, chap. 7):

In most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo who was always more deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest; that this ruler had usually a favorite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master’s feet ... and drive the female yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass’s flesh....

I can well imagine Dick Steele, his mind busy with the idea of some new play perhaps, turning into some coffee-house to rest, or, if possible, to find some companion with whom [Pg 10]he could have a pleasant talk. It is the Cocoa Tree that he chooses, and it has a back room, long, and low, and brown paneled, and through the window is to be seen the red-walled rose garden. There he finds gathered company. Steele notes the general picture, the browns and grays, here and there a coat of brighter color, this face strongly illuminated and that in shadow, and he also notes that there is a great deal of “goose gabble” by way of conversation. Nothing there to interest him. He picks up the news sheet. It is Dawk’s Protestant Mercury, a popular paper. It has been well read as the coffee stains and finger marks show. He turns it over, passing impatiently the two columns of flamboyant boastings which tell how at any time, “one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen,” scanning swiftly, and rejecting impatiently, its pretended statements of facts as entirely unworthy; then his eye

falls on the stirring item of the day, the item to which men first turn as children of a low order of intellect turn today to the funny sheet of a Sunday supplement, and he reads this:

A MAN EATS A LIVE COCK ETC. On Tuesday last a fellow at Sadler’s Wells, near Islington, after he had dined heartily on a buttock of beef, for the lucre of five guineas, eat a live cock, feathers, guts and all, with only a plate of oil and vinegar to wash it down, and afterwards preferred to lay five guineas more, that he could do the same again in two hours time.

The banality, the stupidity of it all startled him. It held him all that day, and soon the idea filled Steele’s mind that a decent and dignified journalism was possible. He was idealist enough to believe, and optimist enough to hope that a decent paper might become a potent agency of enlightenment and that intelligent [Pg 11]citizens everywhere would be only too glad to look to it for light and leading. It might contain foreign news, dramatic reports and the literary gossip of Will’s and the Grecian, the two coffee houses where the wits foregathered. So, full of the idea, he wrote to Addison of his plan. No sooner did Addison, then in Ireland, learn of it than he was all eagerness to join in. His unexpected decision almost swept Steele off his feet. “I fared,” he said, “like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” And in another place he wrote: “This paper was advanced indeed. It was raised to a greater thing than I intended it.”

Shortly after the paper was started, the circulation was a little short of three thousand, but in a short time, nine or ten thousand copies of each issue were sold, and, as Addison said each issue was read by twenty people. Of the essays, in all, two hundred and seventy-four were written by Addison and two hundred and thirty-six by Richard Steele.

The plan involved the creation of a fictitious character, one known as the Spectator, a gentleman who had been a studious youth, and, after some travel on classic ground, took up the study of men and manners. He was a kind of sublime Pickwick. And, like that later glorious creation of Dickens, he was a good listener. Fixing his residence in London, he goes hither and yon, to coffee houses, to theaters, to churches and to notable gatherings, and, in the pages of the Spectator, records his impressions and his thoughts. As Dickens gave Samuel Pickwick his lesser lights, his Tupper, and Winkle and Snodgrass, so the Spectator has a [Pg 12]few friends: a templar, a clergyman, a soldier and a merchant, but the high lights are thrown upon Sir Roger de Coverly, the old country baronet, and Will Honeycomb, an old town rake, and through the eyes of these, as through a focussing glass, was shown the life of the day. Soon, readers everywhere became eager to know the doings of the famous club which Sir Roger visited, the sessions of which were recorded by the Spectator.

The first outline of Sir Roger was made by Steele in No. 2, of the Spectator, March 2, 1711, and thereafter Addison used the character, indeed almost seems to have identified himself with it. “We were born for one another,” he wrote.

“The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire of an ancient descent, a baron, his name, Sir Roger de Coverly. His grandfather was inventor of the famous dance which is called after him. All who know that satire, are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He was a gentleman that is very singular in his behavior, but his singularities proceed from a good sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as he thinks the world is in the wrong. However, this humor creates him no enemies, for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy, and his being unconfined to modes and forms makes him but the readier and the more capable to please and oblige all who know him. When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped [Pg 13]with my Lord Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel on his first coming to

town, and kicked Bully Dawson in the coffee house for calling him youngster; but being ill-used by the said widow, he was very serious for a year and a half; and, though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and a doublet of the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry humors he tells us twelve times since he first wore it. He is now in his 56th year, cheerful, gay and hearty; keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of mankind; but there is such a skilful cast in his behavior, that he is rather beloved than esteemed. “His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women profess to love him, and the young men are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I must not omit that Sir Roger is Justice to the Quorum, that he fills the chair at quarter sessions with great ability, and three months ago gained universal

applause by explaining a passage in the Gane Act.”

Thus, and with that fictitious character as a nucleus, began the greatest literary partnership in the history of literature. Thus, also, Addison found himself. Until he wrote in the Spectator, he had, or seems to have had, no knowledge of his powers. He did not know himself. Perhaps Steele knew Addison though; knew of the vast hidden mine of wealth and thus deliberately tapped the inexhaustible vein. [Pg 14]True, Addison had written before the advent of the Spectator, for at college he had been distinguished in a small way, and, later, he had written his poem, the Campaign (1704). That in itself was an excellent model of a becoming and classical style, easily and correctly written, but, alone, it had not the excellence to ensure its author immortality. As it turns out, as we see it from this distance, it was the Spectator that made him, as it gave him an audience to hearten him. And through the character of Sir Roger, he set out to make morality fashionable, and, later, by means of the essay made it his task to reconcile virtue with elegance and to make pleasure subservient

to reason. As a by-product there came a mighty literary influence that passed down the ages. For it was upon Addison that Benjamin Franklin founded his style. That prince of living essayists, Michael Monahan, has been strongly affected by the same hand. His influence has touched such widely diverse characters as Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, W. H. Hudson, Ford Maddox Hueffer, Cunningham Grahame, Hilaire Belloc, H. M. Tomlinson, William Marion Reedy. More still. The very existence of these Haldeman-Julius booklets is, in a measure, due to the ideals promulgated by Addison, or, at any rate, at bottom the same notion that moved Steele’s friend moved the editor of this series. In proof, I quote from Spectator No. 10, March 12, 1710: