Sir John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester was the embodiment of the new era, and he is as well known for his rakish lifestyle as his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. In 1669 he committed treason by boxing the ears of Thomas Killigrew in sight of the monarch, and in 1673 he accidentally delivered an insulting diatribe to the King. He died at the age of 33 from venereal disease.

Rochester's contemporary Andrew Marvell described him as "the best English satirist", and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits. His poetry, much of it censored during the Victorian era, enjoyed a revival from the 1920s onwards, with notable champions including Graham Greene and Ezra Pound. The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism. During his lifetime, he was best known for A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind, and it remains among his best known works today.

Life

John Wilmot was born in Ditchley, Oxfordshire. His father, Henry, Viscount Wilmot, was a hard-drinking Royalist from Anglo-Irish stock, and had been created Earl of Rochester in 1652 for military services to Charles II during his exile under the Commonwealth; His mother, Anne St. John, was a Royalist by descent and a staunch Anglican.

At the age of twelve, Rochester attended Wadham College, Oxford, and there, it is said, he "grew debauched". At fourteen he was awarded the degree of M.A. by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who was both the Chancellor of the University, and Rochester's uncle. After carrying out a Grand Tour of France and Italy, Rochester returned to London, where he graced the Restoration court. Later, his courage at the Battle of Vågen made him a war hero.

In 1667 he married Elizabeth Malet, a witty heiress whom he had attempted to abduct two years earlier. Samuel Pepys describes the attempted abduction in his diary for 28 May 1665:

Thence to my Lady Sandwich's, where, to my shame, I had not been a great while before. Here, upon my telling her a story of my Lord Rochester's running away on Friday night last with Mrs. Mallett, the great beauty and fortune of the North, who had supped at White Hall with Mrs. Stewart, and was going home to her lodgings with her grandfather, my Lord Haly, by coach; and was at Charing Cross seized on by both horse and foot men, and forcibly taken from him, and put into a coach with six horses, and two women provided to receive her, and carried away. Upon immediate pursuit, my Lord of Rochester (for whom the King had spoke to the lady often, but with no success) was taken at Uxbridge; but the lady is not yet heard of, and the King mighty angry, and the Lord sent to the Tower.

Rochester's life was divided between domesticity in the country and a riotous existence at court, where he was renowned for drunkenness, vivacious conversation, and "extravagant frolics" as part of the Merry Gang (as Andrew Marvell called them). The Merry Gang flourished for about 15 years after 1665 and included Henry Jermyn; Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset; John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave; Henry Killigrew; Sir Charles Sedley; the playwrights William Wycherley and George Etherege; and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

Rochester was fascinated by the theater and was the model for the witty, poetry-reciting rake Dorimant in George Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676). According to an often repeated anecdote, Rochester's coaching of his mistress Elizabeth Barry began her career as the greatest actress of the Restoration stage.

In 1674, Rochester wrote a satire on Charles II, which is commonly known by the title of "Satyr" and by its first line, "In the Isle of Britain" – which criticized the King for being obsessed with sex at the expense of his kingdom. Charles' reaction to this satirical portrayal resulted in Rochester's brief exiling from the court. During his brief exile, Rochester appears to have spent time at his estate in Adderbury, and may have also posed as a merchant in London's old city. He then returned to his seat in the House of Lords after an absence of about seven weeks.

Rochester fell into disfavor again in 1676. During a late-night scuffle with the night watch — a scuffle probably provoked by Rochester himself — one of Rochester's companions was killed by a pike-thrust. Rochester was reported to have fled the scene of the incident.

Following this incident, Rochester briefly went underground, impersonating a quack physician, "Doctor Bendo." Under this persona, he claimed skill in treating "barrenness" (infertility), and other gynecological disorders. Gilbert Burnet wryly noted that Rochester's practice was "not without success," implying his intercession of himself as surreptitious sperm donor. On occasion, Rochester also assumed the role of the grave and matronly Mrs. Bendo, presumably so that he could inspect young women privately without arousing their husbands' suspicions.

By the age of 33, Rochester was dying, presumably from syphilis, gonorrhea or other venereal diseases, as well as from the effects of alcoholism. His mother had him attended in his final weeks by her religious associates, particularly Gilbert Burnet, later Bishop of Salisbury. A deathbed renunciation of libertinism was published and promulgated as the conversion of a prodigal son. This reported renunciation became legendary, reappearing in numerous pious tracts over the next two centuries. Because the first published account of this story appears in Burnet's own writings, some have disputed its accuracy, suggesting that he shaped the account of Rochester's denunciation of libertinism to enhance his own reputation. Notwithstanding this, other sources, including documents signed by Rochester, confirm that in his final months his thoughts turned towards religion and the afterlife. Rochester died in the early morning of 26 July 1680, "without a shudder or a sound." Rochester was later buried at Spelsbury Church in Spelsbury, Oxfordshire. After hearing of Burnet's departure from his side he muttered his very last words; "Has my friend left me? then I shall die shortly"

Works

The three great critical editions of Rochester in the twentieth century have taken very different approaches to authenticating and organizing his canon. David Vieth’s 1968 edition adopts a heavily biographical organization, modernizing spellings and heading the sections of his book “Prentice Work,” “Early Maturity,” “Tragic Maturity,” and “Disillusionment and Death.” Keith Walker’s 1984 edition takes a genre-based approach, returning to the older spellings and accidentals in an effort to present documents closer to those a seventeenth century audience would have received. Harold Love’s Oxford University Press edition of 1999, now the scholarly standard, notes the variorum history conscientiously, but arranges works in genre sections ordered from the private to the public.

Rochester's poetic work varies widely in form, genre, and content. He was part of a "mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease", who continued to produce their poetry in manuscripts, rather than in publication. As a consequence, some of Rochester's work deals with topical concerns, such as satires of courtly affairs in libels, to parodies of the styles of his contemporaries, such as Sir Charles Scroope. He is also notable for his impromptus, one of which is a teasing epitaph of King Charles II:

Here lies our sovereign lord the King, Whose word no man relies on. He never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one.

To which Charles is reputed to have replied:

"That is true; for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers."

His poetry displays a wide range of learning, and a wide range of influences. These included imitations of Malherbe, Ronsard, and Boileau. Rochester also translated or adapted from classical authors such as Petronius, Lucretius, Ovid, Anacreon, Horace, and Seneca.

Rochester's writings were at once admired and infamous. A Satyr Against Mankind (1675), one of the few poems he published (in a broadside in 1679) is a scathing denunciation of rationalism and optimism that contrasts human perfidy with animal wisdom.

The majority of his poetry was not published under his name until after his death. Because most of his poems circulated only in manuscript form during his lifetime, it is likely that much of his writing does not survive. Burnet claimed that Rochester's conversion experience led him to ask that "all his profane and lewd writings" be burned; it is unclear how much, if any, of Rochester's writing was destroyed.

Rochester was also interested in the theater. In addition to an interest in the actresses, he wrote an adaptation of Fletcher's Valentinian (1685), a scene for Sir Robert Howard's The Conquest of China, a prologue to Elkanah Settle's The Empress of Morocco (1673), and epilogues to Sir Francis Fane's Love in the Dark (1675), Charles Davenant's Circe, a Tragedy (1677).

The best-known dramatic work attributed to Rochester, Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, has never been successfully proven to be written by him. Posthumous printings of Sodom, however, gave rise to prosecutions for obscenity, and were destroyed. On 16 December 2004 one of the few surviving copies of Sodom was sold by Sotheby's for £45,600.

Influence

Rochester has not lacked distinguished admirers. His contemporary Aphra Behn lauded him in verse and also based several rake (character) characters in her plays on Rochester. Anne Wharton wrote an elegy marking Rochester's death, which itself came to be praised by contemporary poets. Horace Walpole described him as "a man whom the muses were fond to inspire but ashamed to avow". Daniel Defoe quoted him in Moll Flanders, and discussed Rochester in other works. Voltaire, who spoke of Rochester as "the man of genius, the great poet", admired Rochester's satire for "energy and fire" and translated some lines into French to "display the shining imagination his lordship only could boast." Goethe quoted A Satyr against Reason and Mankind in English in his Autobiography. William Hazlitt commented that Rochester's "verses cut and sparkle like diamonds" while his "epigrams were the bitterest, the least laboured, and the truest, that ever were written". Referring to Rochester's perspective, Hazlitt wrote that "his contempt for everything that others respect almost amounts to sublimity." Ezra Pound, in his ABC of Reading, compared Rochester's poetry favorably to more famous poets including Pope and Milton.

In popular culture

Rochester served as the model for the witty, amoral nobleman; Dorimant in George Etherege's Restoration Comedy The Man of Mode, and the libertine character in Aphra Behn's Restoration comedy The Rover, Willmore, were assumed by contemporaries to have been modeled on Rochester.

Two plays have been directly written about Rochester's life; Stephen Jeffreys wrote The Libertine in 1994, and was staged by the Royal Court Theatre. The 2004 film The Libertine, based on Jeffreys's play, starred Johnny Depp as Rochester, Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry, John Malkovich as King Charles II, Rosamund Pike as Elizabeth Malet, and Rupert Friend as Billy Downs, the companion and apparent lover who was killed by the pike. Michael Nyman set to music an excerpt of Rochester's poem, "Signor Dildo" for the film. The other play about Rochester was Craig Baxter's The Ministry of Pleasure, which was produced at the Latchmere Theatre in London, in 2004, with Martin Delaney as Wilmot.

Rochester's work and background figures centrally in "Last Bus to Woodstock", an episode of the British TV crime drama Inspector Morse.

In 1665 John Wilmot attempted an abduction of the wealthy heiress Elizabeth Malet, after which he spent three weeks in the Tower of London. Elizabeth Malet married John Wilmot two years later.

According to Wikipedia: Samuel Pepys described the attempted abduction in his diary on 28 May 1665:

Thence to my Lady Sandwich's, where, to my shame, I had not been a great while before. Here, upon my telling her a story of my Lord Rochester's running away on Friday night last with Mrs. Mallett, the great beauty and fortune of the North, who had supped at White Hall with Mrs. Stewart, and was going home to her lodgings with her grandfather, my Lord Haly, by coach; and was at Charing Cross seized on by both horse and foot men, and forcibly taken from him, and put into a coach with six horses, and two women provided to receive her, and carried away. Upon immediate pursuit, my Lord of Rochester (for whom the King had spoke to the lady often, but with no success) was taken at Uxbridge; but the lady is not yet heard of, and the King mighty angry, and the Lord sent to the Tower.

18-year-old Rochester spent three weeks in the Tower, and was only released after he wrote a penitent apology to the King.

Rochester attempted to redeem himself by volunteering for the navy in the Second Dutch War in the winter of 1665, serving under the Earl of Sandwich. His courage at the Battle of Vågen, serving onboard the ship of Thomas Teddeman, made him a war hero. Pleased with his conduct, Charles appointed Rochester a Gentleman of the Bedchamber in March 1666, which granted him prime lodgings in Whitehall and a pension of £1,000 a year. The role encompassed, one week in every four, Rochester helping the King to dress and undress, serve his meals when dining in private, and sleeping at the foot of the King's bed. In the summer of 1666, Rochester returned to sea, serving under Edward Spragge. He again showed extraordinary courage in battle.

Upon returning from sea, Rochester resumed his courtship of Elizabeth Malet. Defying her family's wishes, Malet eloped with Rochester again in January 1667, and they were married at the Knightsbridge chapel.

In October 1667, the monarch granted Rochester special license to enter the House of Lords early, despite being seven months underage. The act was an attempt by the King to bolster his number of supporters among the Lords.