Memoirs of Laetitia Pikiington, edited by A.C. Elias, University of Georgia Press, 2 vols, 845pp, $95
Not many people know that a Bishop of Cork and a future Dean of Down disputed whether mankind before the Flood ate meat. These things mattered in the 18th century at least as much as the politics of BSE today. But whether there was ever meat for satire in such topics is more doubtful. On the evidence of these two beautiful and lovingly edited volumes, Mrs Pilkington for the title of "then as now the greatest satirist in the language".
Pilkington, nee Van Lewen, married a clerical friend of Swift's. But the two fell out, each accusing the other of falling into bed with a third party. Divorce followed, with the usual bitterness. The memoirs were published as part of the injured lady's campaign of attrition, and they preserve much of interest from the gossipy life of Georgian Dublin and London. Everywoman was then obliged to be her own Kitty Kelly, for the men could not be trusted. Everywoman who dared, that is.
A.C. Elias, however, has done his author a better service as editor than her merits deserve. Few Irish books have been subjected so such learned and yet lively annotation, one whole volume being given over to scholarly apparatus. In his introduction, he stresses the value of the Memoirs as echoing spoken English. Here is the ebb and flow of conversation rather than the stately, lethal periodising of Swift" compositions. "One Day, at Dinner, the Pin in the Robing of my Gown, prik'd my breast; as there was no body but my Husband and Children present, I made no scuple of uncovering my Bosom, to examine what had hurt me; upon which Mr. Pilkington rose from Table, and said, I had turn'd his Stomach."
Unfortunately, Mrs P. also wrote verse which is prosier than her prose. A Dublin lawyer called Callaghan - for once Elias is indecisive about a Christian name - wrote three volumes of manuscript on philosophy which the poetess deemed useless to the head. So she referred them for use at the other end of the anatomy. But her poem involved twelve stanzas where Swift would have settled the matter in a couplet. Elias has learned things to say about evidence of the poem's being in circulation independent of these Memoirs (first published in 1748), but I doubt if Callaghan quaked in his boots.
Though Laetitia Van Lewen was a grand-niece of Elizabeth (the dowager) Lady Meade, and lived "in the genteel eastern end of Dublin", Mr and Mrs Pilkington were people to be classified by Swift among "a middle kind both for understanding and fortune". A good deal of information, or at least anecdote, about the Dean of Saint Patrick's is recorded, presenting him less as a mentor of government ministers than as a generous man in disguise. The psychology of vulnerable, ambitious individuals is nicely observed on occasion - "Mr Pilkington, who love'd me best at a Distance, wrote me a very kind letter... "
The city, then as now, was dominated by the vulgar rich, with politicians, lawyers, and churchmen holding their own among bankers and more honest thieves. Behind the sprightly self-serving narrative of the Memoirs one can faintly bear a tragic theme - that of passably talented men and women dashing under the wheels of confident wealth dubiously acquired. Fellow-citizens of Charles Haughey can learn something from these two volumes, even if only a handful can afford them.
Hugh Maxton's new collection of poems, Gubu Roi, is due from Lagan Press later this year.