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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
For a man contemporary with Addison, Swift, and Pope, men quite near to us through personal letters and biographies, Congreve remains peculiarly apart and obscure. To get at his personality, more attention should be given to his letters. These, unfortunately, have not been preserved in large numbers; and the disorder in which the extant letters have remained has misled every biographer and brought about misinterpretations. Arranged in proper order, the letters clear up obscure references and give insight into the character of the writer. They deserve more careful study than they have hitherto received from biographers who have attempted to gain, and have despaired of gaining, an intimate knowledge of our wittiest dramatist.
1 Cf. Edmund Gosse, Life of William Congreve (London, 1888), p. 9: “There can be no question that, unless fresh material should most unexpectedly turn up, the opportunity for preparing a full and picturesque life of this poet has wholly passed away.” This statement was repeated in Gosse's revised Life in 1924; and Congreve's latest biographer—D. Crane Taylor, William Congreve (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1931), p. ix—speaks of the “almost impenetrable veil about the individuality of the man.”
2 The Complete Works of William Congreve (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1923), i, 69–105.
3 The Mourning Bride, Poems, & Miscellanies by William Congreve, The World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928), pp. 485–536.
4 Printed from the original in the Public Record Office, London, by John C. Hodges, “William Congreve in the Government Service,” MP, xxvii (1929), 190.
5 Printed from the original in the British Museum by Taylor, op. cit., p. 209.
6 Letter lxvii is preserved at Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, among the manuscripts of H. Clinton-Baker, Esq., who has very kindly premitted me to make a copy. In this letter Congreve addresses Jacob Tonson, requesting him to allow Colonel William Congreve (a first cousin living in Highgate) to have a copy made of the dramatist's picture in Tonson's collection. The picture was, no doubt, the well-known painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller which had been presented to Tonson, along with the pictures of the other members of the Kit-Cat Club, and hung in the special room provided for the Club in Tonson's house at Barn Elms. The same house, evidently just ready for occupancy at the time, is mentioned in Letter lxviii: “I believe bam-elms wants you & I long to see it but dont care to satisfie my curiosity before you come.” Hitherto only a short quotation from this letter has been known. The original is now preserved in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
7 Another letter from Congreve to Pope is referred to by Spence (Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 13), who gives the following quotation: “As the French philosopher used to prove his existence by cogito ergo sum, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is edi ergo est.”
8 In the letter, dated July 7, 1719, Congreve consents to give the person to whom he is writing information about his “poor Trifles and Self,” evidently for The Poetical Register, edited by Giles Jacob and published by Edmund Curii in 1719. There is some question whether the letter was addressed to the editor or to the publisher, for the book in which the letter is preserved (Wilson, op. cit., pp. xv, xvi) represents it as having been written to Curii. But the fact that Jacob thanks Congreve, in his Preface to The Poetical Register, for the information mentioned in the letter points to Jacob as the person to whom Congreve had written. And besides, the friendly tone of the letter is more readily understood if we assume that it was written to Jacob rather than to Curll, for whom Congreve could have had little respect. See Congreve's comment on Curii in a letter to Pope, Dobrèe, op. cit., p. 536.
9 This study is limited to the ordinary familiar or business letters. It excludes Congreve's seven dedicatory letters, one of which was addressed to Charles Montague; the five poetic epistles, one addressed to Richard Temple; and the essay Concerning Humour in Comedy, which is put in the form of a letter to John Dennis.
10 Apparently all of Congreve's dated letters follow the Old Style, according to which July 1, 1690, was equivalent to July 11 (July 12 after 1700) on the continent, where the Gregorian calendar (New Style) was used. None of the editors of Congreve's letters tries to restore the New Style, nor do I in this article.
11 Allardyce Nicoli, A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1925), pp. 301, 351.
12 Further proof is furnished by a description in the letter of an incident which occurred on March 8, 1711: “The Marquis de Guiscard was examined on Thursday last by a committee of the cabinet-council about some treasonable correspondence with France. Mr St John, after several questions, to which the prisoner answered very readily, at last produced a letter, the contents of which made him change colour; and on a sudden, with a penknife, he offered at Mr St John; but he being too far from him, he stabbed Mr Harley, who sat nearer him. The penknife broke against his breast-bone or a rib, so that he is in no danger. Guiscard, not knowing it was broke, stabbed twice or thrice on. Several of them drew their swords and wounded him, but not mortally. The matter of the information against him is kept very secret. He is in Newgate.”
13 Op. cit., p. 191.
14 See Hodges, loc. cit., p. 187.
15 According to the British Museum MS 32, 248, ff. 36, 37, the first season at the Haymarket Theatre extended from April 9, 1705, through June 29, 1705. When the theatre was opened again on October 30, 1705, it was “under the direction of Sir John Vanbrugh, Mr. Congreve having given up to him his share of the License.”
18 The Works of Joseph Addison, ed. Richard Hurd (London, 1856), v, 382.
17 See Letter xviii (June 26, 1706).
18 See Taylor, op. cit., p. 98.
19 Taylor, op. cit., p. 167.
20 See Letter lxv (Ashley, October 5, 1717).
21 See the discussion of Letter lxii, above.
22 See Swift, Journal to Stella, October 26 and December 14, 1710; February 13, 1710/11; July 2, 1711; and January 5, 1711/12. Taylor (op. cit., p. 168) says that Letter xlix “contains the first intimation of” Congreve's “trouble with cataracts” and that the “letter may belong to the summer of 1708, when Congreve spent six weeks in Derbyshire.”
23 The order of the original letters is 1 (xlviii), 2 (xlix), 3 (l), 4 (li), 5 (lii), 6 (liv). 7 (liii); in the later manuscript the order of the letters is 5, 4, 7, 3, 2, 1, 6.
24 Since the type was set for this article, an additional Congreve letter has come to light in the recently acquired Bancroft Collection of the Baker Library, Harvard School of Business Administration. This letter (inserted in the chronological table above as Number lxix), dated August 14, 1716, is addressed to Mr. Grigsby in regard to stock in the South Sea Company.