Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (55 page)

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the exchange between reviewers and P. B. Shelley, Kim Wheatley has

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detailed the “virtuperative rhetoric of the poet’s hostile contempo-

rary reviewers as a historically specific version of the ‘paranoid style,’

a heightened language of defensiveness and persecution” (1, quoting

Richard Hofstader). As with the attacks on Caroline, persecution

and prosecution were woven into a combined rhetoric that review-

ers used across the political spectrum, and in which the Satirist

reveled.

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14. Russett outlines the “fantasy of descent” (30) in the cases of

Chatterton and Ireland, both of whom manipulated shadowy origins

and Christian names to enforce connections to their literary progeni-

tors (23–32).

15. Gillian Russell identifies this same trope in contemporary reactions,

over 30 years earlier, to Lady Kingston’s trial for bigamy in the

House of Lords, in which her names were strung together and punc-

tuated by “alias” in an effort to suggest an association with crimi-

nals brought before the Old Bailey, particularly prostitutes (
Women,

Sociability and Theatre in Georgian London
157–58).

16. This does not accord with Fraser’s account that it was Blagdon who

promised to publish the excerpts in the
Phoenix
. Aspinall reports that

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Blagdon published both the
Phoenix
and its political rival (according

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to Ashe), the
Political Register
(“Statistical Accounts” 231–33).

17. This was a copy of the “Confessions” of Edward John Newell, an Irish

double agent and informant during the rebellion of 1798. The sup-

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posed confessions record his sickbed change of heart and establish the

innocence of all those against whom he informed. There is no record

of Newell ever having recanted, nor is there any record of his death,

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although he is believed to have been killed by the United Irishmen.

The Satirist alleges that the “Confessions” is a known forgery.

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18. Erskine was Lord Chancellor from 1806 to 1807, the time of the

printing and suppression of the Book. He succeeded and was suc-

ceeded by Lord Eldon, who was Lord Chancellor when
The Spirit of

“the Book”
was published. If the letter is indeed addressed to Erskine

and not to Eldon, it may be that Ashe is hoping to inculpate him as

well as Perceval. Ashe does not mention a letter, although it is clear

from his own account that his aim was blackmail against Perceval.

19. The third document, which Ashe refers to in his letter only as “the

case of the Earl of Westmorland” (331), the Satirist identifies as

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“[T]he report made to the Earl of Westmorland on the subject of

benevolent funds in Ireland,” the contents of which Ashe “probably

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was equally ignorant” (327n). The Earl of Westmoreland was Lord

Lieutenant of Ireland from 1789 to 1794.

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20. Regarding Ashe’s assurance that the Book had been put into his hands

“by a distinguished personage who despises the reward” (328), the

Satirist queries, “What ‘distinguished personage’ would thus employ

a man so notoriously i – – s [infamous] as Thomas Ashe? ‘The varlet

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lies most nefariously’ ” (328n).

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21. It is difficult to know which, if either, version of the story is defini-

tive. Both Ashe and the Satirist quote extensively from the August 5

notice, but no copies of
The Phoenix
are extant. Both could be quot-

ing from memory, without worrying overmuch about accuracy. At the

same time, one or both could be embellishing or altering the origi-

nal to suit particular rhetorical aims. Ashe makes no mention of the

blackmail letter or the Newell or Westmoreland schemes. The Satirist

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leaves out all mention of Perceval’s involvement in the printing of

the Book, although he includes an account of Perceval’s “scheme” of

advancement (328), which is slightly but not significantly divergent

from Ashe’s version. Moreover, he supplies no source for the story of

the Irish soldier, on which so much of his ethical and rhetorical case

against Ashe depends. He assumes, probably correctly, that his read-

ers will accept the identity of this key witness and, using the same

logic, will dismiss Ashe’s “distinguished personage” as a fabrication.

22. Blackstone defines forgery, or
crimen falsi
as “the fraudulent making

or alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man’s right”

and points out that, although other penalties officially obtain, the

use of the death penalty has become “general” (
Commentaries
IV.

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245). Randall McGowen discusses the debate on forgery as a capital

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offense in “From Pillory to Gallows” (107–40).

23. Earlier he had listed both spellings (“Thomas Ashe,
alias
Anvil,
alias

Anville,
alias
Sidney”), dividing what he will later collapse to suggest

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a longer list of crimes. He accomplishes the same thing here with the

offhanded condensation, “
alias
&c. &c.”

24. During the diamond scheme section, after a rhapsodic description of

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the natural beauties of Brazil, he turns to his traveling companion,

an outlaw and former prison buddy, with the following: “ ‘But amidst

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all the pleasant pursuits of this journey,’ said I to my friend Smith,

‘let the same exalted design, which first led me from home, still actu-

ate us every hour with additional ardour. Let us even already experi-

ence a kind of foretaste of the great and splendid advantages, which

reward the labour of those who bend the whole force of their talents

towards some one magnificent point. The issue of our journey will

be the source of all future good; a steady perseverance in our design,

the fountain of eternal happiness’ ” (II. 259). The sentimental lan-

guage both elevates and obscures the self-interest, but the irony lies

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in Ashe’s cheerful disclosure elsewhere of the scheme’s and its perpe-

trators’ criminality.

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25. Blagdon founded his conservative weekly in October 1809. The title

is a deliberate echo of Cobbett’s
Political Register
and is meant to

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indicate opposition to his radicalism. Kevin Gilmartin discusses the

rash of anti-Cobbett weeklies in
Writing against Revolution: Literary

Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832
(101). The October 1811 issue of

The Satirist
that contains the review of
The Spirit of “the Book”
ends

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with a collection of critical notices on Blagdon’s 1808–9 Annual,
The

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Flowers of Literature
(340).

26. Ashe does not reveal, although he must have known, that Blagdon

was the publisher of both papers. He started
The Phoenix
around the

same time as
The Political Register
but sold it in 1811 to James Swan.

Both papers were by this time in trouble financially.
The Political

Register
folded first, in 1811;
The Phoenix
carried on for another year

(Aspinall 231–32).

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27. Both Whitbread and Folkestone were members of the progressive

branch of the Whigs, “distinguished from the rest of the Opposition

primarily by its independent, aggressively activist support for eco-

nomical and parliamentary reform and its willingness to associate on

these issues with the followers of Sir Francis Burdett and the metro-

politan radicals” (Rapp 35).

28. I am grateful to Clare Simmons for pointing out the reference in

Ashe’s pseudonyms.

29. Ashe is large-minded and philosophical on the subject of political

writers and their fragile allegiances:

There is not a newspaper editor who would not change his

principles to increase his means, nor any author who could not

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be employed in scourging and curbing the administration, or

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in exposing the opposition as the vilest characters that ever

took rank in the society of man . . . In point of fact, political

writers have the principles of men of the law; they advocate

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any party, any man, any measure for which they are paid; and

I now venture to predict, that when George Manners is dis-

gusted with Lord Sidmouth, he will gladly take the brief of

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Samuel Whitbread, and barter the Satirist for the Scourge.

(III. 77–78)

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30. The “conspirators” (21) manage to impose on the Prince without

ever questioning the legitimacy of Princess Charlotte, which is doing

Iago one better.

31. A year after the publication of
The Spirit of “the Book”
Ashe published

a 40-page pamphlet called “The Spirit of the Spirit,” the subtitle

of which describes it as “a Concise ABRIDGMENT of that popu-

lar and interesting Work, The Spirit of the Book, comprising the

PARTICULARS of the DELICATE ENQUIRY, and a Memoir of

the Life of that most virtuous and ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCESS,

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respecting whom it concerns” (London, 1812). Ashe was probably

trying to garner some of the profits from
The Spirit of “the Book”
after

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his sale of the copyright. But the relationship between condensing

and illuminating in his title is the same one Agg is making with both

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“The Book Discovered” and “The Book Itself.”

32. William St. Clair describes a similar practice with “new” editions

of novels whose sales have flagged: “as a means of maintaining or

renewing interest” (
Reading Nation
180) publishers would some-

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times bring out as new editions “unsold sheets of earlier print-

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ings . . . sometimes with nothing but the title page changed to a new

date” (181).

33. G. J. Barker-Benfield outlines the eighteenth-century preoccupa-

tion with the sexual danger posed by acute sensibility in women:

“The strength of women’s wish for lovers sensitive to them made

women easy marks for men who pretended sensibility in order to

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seduce them. . . . Women of ‘excessive sensibility’ were by definition

especially susceptible” (331).

34. The verdict “not proven,” exists in Scots law but not in English.

After 1728 it was increasingly taken to mean that a prisoner had been

acquitted only because there was not sufficient evidence to convict

(Fleming 540).

35. In his
Memoir
, Ashe claims to have altered the content of the Book

only in the interest of “seiz[ing] and enchain[ing] the attention

of the reader” (89), following the dictum that “a work, intended

for general publicity,” should offer a balance between “extreme

simplicity” and the tedium of too much detail (88)—hence con-

densing the events outlined in the Book to “one capital change of

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fortune” (89).

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36. She includes the legend of Charlotte’s grandfather’s clandestine mar-

riage, while still Prince of Wales, to the “lovely quaker girl, for whom