The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge. Adam Sisman
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* This is a low estimate. They travelled about two thousand miles in all, but some of the journey was by boat.
* The term came into usage around 1800.
† Coach travel cost 2d or 3d per mile, a prohibitive expense for all but the wealthy.
* It seems likely to have been on this trip that Wordsworth visited the celebrated travel writer Thomas Pennant, whose Tour in Scotland had stimulated Johnson and Boswell to make their journey to the Western Isles.
* Generally known as such after the place where members of the club met in the rue St Jacques. Their official name was the Society of the Friends of the Revolution.
* Until the Revolution, commissions in the army had been reserved for scions of families whose aristocratic lineage went back at least four generations.
* Confusion is caused by the term ‘aristocrat’. The French noblesse was not the same as the English aristocracy: even allowing for the difference in population size, they were far more numerous – perhaps a quarter of a million people, compared to the 10,000 or so in Britain. By no means all ‘aristocrats’ were wealthy, despite occupying a privileged position under the ancien régime. It was not unknown for a French ‘aristocrat’ to push his own plough. In Britain, the term ‘aristocrat’ had a political as well as a social meaning; it was used as shorthand to denote anyone opposed to reform; while a ‘democrat’ was defined as one who demanded radical changes to the constitution, together with an immediate peace with France and recognition of the French Republic.
† His MPs were known as ‘Lonsdale’s ninepins’
* Lonsdale was Sir James Lowther until ennobled in 1784.
* Commissioned by the Jacobin Club but never completed (in part because of the need for constant changes; some of those who had been present became personae non gratae, and thus had to be excluded, while others, who had not, now wished to be included): existing only in the form of David’s preliminary (but detailed) sketches, some of which portray the assembled oath-swearers as classically severe nudes.
* It may be significant that Louvet had been elected to the Convention to represent the Loiret, the département in which Wordsworth had been living; perhaps this fact contributed to Wordsworths interest in him
* Joseph Priestley was made a citizen of France in September. He too was elected to the Convention, but declined the election.
Wordsworth arrived in England in December 1792 overflowing with love for humanity, only to find the majority of his fellow countrymen suspicious or even belligerent. Recent events in France had thoroughly alarmed conservative opinion in Britain. It was one thing to limit the powers of the monarchy: quite another to abolish the monarchy altogether. With each passing week came news of further excesses; émigrés arrived by the boatload on British shores, every one bringing stories of fresh outrages. In its anxiety to avoid war, Pitt’s government had striven to remain neutral towards Revolutionary France, while stifling radical agitation at home. On 21 May 1792 a Royal Proclamation had been issued, encouraging magistrates to be more vigorous in controlling riotous meetings and seditious writings. Not much had ensued at the time, beyond a decision (perhaps taken beforehand) to prosecute Paine.
Meanwhile the victorious French armies had continued their advance, carrying all before them. The Prussians were driven back across the Rhine, and in November the French occupied Belgium, while in the south Savoy was annexed. On 19 November the Convention promised ‘fraternity and assistance’ to ‘all those wishing to recover their liberty’. The war changed its character: it was no longer a defence of the Republic, but a war of liberation. In the Convention Brissot declared, ‘We cannot relax until all Europe is in flames.’
The Convention’s threat to export the Revolution prompted Pitt to act, beginning a succession of prosecutions of radical authors, printers and publishers. At the same time the government released a flood of crude anti-French, pro-monarchist propaganda. Stories spread of plots, of insurrection, of traitors in our midst. Spies, informers and agents provocateurs proliferated. Support for the Revolution was portrayed as unpatriotic. It was not difficult to stir up popular sentiment against France, nor against those who appeared to side with the Old Enemy. Dissenters were especially vulnerable. By this time religious dissent and political radicalism had become synonymous; it was easy to portray prominent dissenters as pro-French Revolutionary conspirators. There had already been an ominous indication of what could happen if the crude prejudices of the people were inflamed. Back in 1791, a dinner in Birmingham to celebrate the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille had provoked three days of rioting. Though the mob chanted ‘No Popery’ (as well as the inevitable ‘Church and King’), its victims were mainly prosperous dissenters with progressive views, most prominently Joseph Priestley, whose house (including his precious library) and laboratory were burned to the ground.
Britons were encouraged to draw up loyal addresses to George III. Those who declined to add their signatures were deemed to be suspect. Loyalists powdered their hair in the traditional style, while radicals let it hang loose in the ‘French’ fashion. Inns displayed gilt signs: ‘No JACOBINS ADMITTED HERE’. In November the MP John Reeves founded an anti-Jacobin association, and branches sprang up around the country, a counter-revolutionary equivalent to the Jacobin clubs. A month later Reeves founded an Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, which met fortnightly at the Crown and Anchor tavern in The Strand. Burke proposed the toast: ‘Old England against new France’.
A further Royal Proclamation on 1 December 1792 summoned the militia to suppress ‘seditious activities’. Parliament was recalled to combat the threat of insurrection. In the House of Commons, Fox attempted to calm exaggerated fears:
An insurrection! Where is it? Where has it reared its head! Good God! An insurrection in Great Britain! No wonder the militia were called out, and parliament assembled in the extraordinary way in which they have been. But where is it?1
But his ironic words were scarcely heard in the storm of panic sweeping across the country. Fox’s allies began to desert him, going over to the ministry one by one, until eventually he would be left with only a rump of loyal supporters, too small to be able to make any serious challenge in Parliament.
The case against Paine had come to court in June, only to be adjourned. It was widely rumoured that the Attorney-General was reluctant to proceed to trial because he did not approve of the prosecution (a charge he denied). But the government’s own propaganda created pressure to make an example of Paine. He was dogged by government hirelings who hissed and hooted at him on every public occasion. Pillars of the community demonstrated their loyalty by burning his book in public.
Paine was among well-wishers at Joseph Johnson’s house in St Paul’s Churchyard one evening when another radical, the poet William Blake, warned him not to go home; a warrant