poetsquib.com

Queen of the Wits by Norma Clarke is a biography of Laetitia Pilkington (1709-1750), an Irish poet who somehow survived scandal (of the worse kind!), poverty, prison, a sort of poetry and theatre writing sweatshop, and a most terrible kind of husband. I was so absorbed by the end that I was in tears

This provides a wonderful insight into the process of poetry, satire, theatre, and political pamphleteering during this period. Laetitia was a close friend of satirist Jonathon Swift (so much for friends, he was later to call her ‘the most profligate whore in either kingdom’), novelist Samuel Richardson, and poet laureate Colley Cibber

Almost all the men in this book got on my nerves and I don’t know how poor Laetitia put up with them as she did, except that success was as much to do with who you acquainted with as it was to do with what you wrote, probably more so. The double standard for men and women, still alive and well today I fear, is so exasperating that again her stoicism is remarkable

Clarke gives us a blow by blow account of Laetitia’s finances, her constant letters begging for money, her subscriptions, the money she received, the money she needed but didn’t have, the cost of living, and so on. This not only foregrounds the unending cycle of poverty Laetitia lived in but also gives you a pretty fair idea of what life was like for writers in that period

‘We had four Play-bills for a Table-cloth, Knives, Forks, or Plates, we had none… The Butter, when we had any, was deposited in the cool and fragrant Recess of an old Shoe, a Coffee-pot of mine served for as many Uses as ever Scrub had, for sometimes it boil’d Coffee, sometimes Tea, it brought small Beer, and I am more than half afraid it has been applied to less noble Uses. (Laetitia Pilkington)

Scrub was the naïve servant in Farquhar’s ‘The Beaux Stratagem’, a play about a rake on the make. Pissing in the coffee pot was probably de rigueur for an ex-Satanist who had helped found the Dublin and Limerick Hell-Fire Clubs.’ (Norma Clarke)’

I don’t know that everyone would enjoy this book as much as I did but I loved it. Laetitia’s melodramatic epitaph is both funny and a little heart breaking, showing that even in death she wanted everyone to know the unjust deprivation she had suffered