Addison had maintained his ‘ambitious’ courtship, as Dr Johnson called it,2 for a full decade. While governing in Ireland, Addison quizzed the Countess' son, the Earl of Warwick, on his studies, what he thought of ‘a paper called The Tatler‘ that had just appeared, and asked the boy to pass Addison's respects to ‘My Lady’.3 By 1713, Addison was writing references for Warwick to enter Oxford. Addison had postponed proposing marriage to the Countess because he felt, according to Tonson, that he needed to ‘qualify himself to be owned for her husband’.4 His seat on the Board of Trade finally provided the necessary financial security.
The couple married in September 1716 in St Edmund's, Lombard Street, one of Wren's new City churches. The newly-weds then travelled together to France, in rather grander style than Addison's journey of 1699, accompanying Lord Warwick on the first leg of his Grand Tour. The family may have crossed paths with Garth, in Paris that same September, following his own tour of France and Italy.
After they returned to London in late October 1716, Addison began living at Lady Warwick's Kensington home, Holland House. Addison had grown familiar with the fine Jacobean mansion and its extensive grounds over the years, but living there meant his lifestyle changed dramatically. His days were now full of formal visits from ladies in rustling silk, arranging themselves on stiff-backed Dutch drawing-room chairs. He could no longer, as Mr Spectator had boasted, go to bed and get up when he pleased, eat in his bedroom, or sit in his study without anyone ‘bidding me be merry’.5
‘A happy Marriage has in it all the Pleasures of Friendship,’ Addison once stated,6 a view worlds away from the cynical Restoration attitudes of Dorset or Carbery, and a view with dangerous implications for the male friendships of the Kit-Cat Club. Pope and Tonson, who claimed Addison's marriage was unhappy, said the Countess forced him to drop his club and coffee house friends. This recalls a Spectator essay in which Addison described a fictitious club of wives, whose rules for managing husbands included: ‘To turn away all his old Friends and Servants, that she may have the Dear Man to herself.’7 Wives were imagined as working to destroy the Kit-Cat's all-male camaraderie. Certainly there is little evidence of Addison socializing after he married: he commemorated the Whig anniversary of King William's birthday with Steele at the Trumpet tavern soon after his return from France, when Steele said he had the ‘double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the immortal memory of King William…as to drink his friend Addison up to the conversation pitch’,8 but this is one of few such meetings on record. A proverbial pram blocked Holland House's hallway in January 1720, with the birth of a baby daughter to the 40-year-old Countess.
A few months before Addison's marriage, the Steeles lost their eldest, 6-year-old son, Richard, to an unknown illness. Whether this caused Steele's stroke around the same date, it certainly led to heavier drinking. There is an anecdote of Steele being carried, by his arms and legs, blind drunk from a Whig club to his coach. For Lady Steele (as she was now styled), her husband's drinking, combined with grief over her son's death and the permanent strain of their debts in the midst of St James's luxury, drove her to retreat, alone, to her native south Wales. Though Steele told friends that Prue was in Wales because she needed to administer her late mother's estates there, and though he may have believed this himself when she left, it was in fact a non-legal separation. She seldom replied to his letters, more usually sending him messages via a cousin, and she discouraged him from visiting her in Wales, referring to her ‘indisposition’.9 Steele's replies to her messages are revealing: ‘You advise Me to take care of my soul, [but] I do not [know] what you can think of Yours when you have, and do, withhold from me your Body.’10
Following Prue's departure, Steele realized he had the additional chores of a single father to add to his list of employments. In mid-December 1716, Steele described himself joggling 3-year-old Molly and 4-year-old Eugene on his knees as he wrote his letters. On Christmas Day, a letter to Prue included a postscript by their eldest daughter Betty calculated to play on his wife's maternal guilt in the hope that it would bring her home. Far from being a bad wife and mother, Prue replied that remaining in Wales was ‘for my children's good’, to collect the rents that would keep the family afloat, even though being there gave her ‘vapours to a vast degree’.11
Steele impatiently assured Prue he was putting himself forward: ‘I do, as you advise, court and Converse with men able and willing to serve Me.’12 She had grounds, however, for scepticism about her husband's newly turned leaves. Though some letters promised to right their finances and protect their ‘Poor Babes’ manfully,13 others were written in weaker moments. One, in an obviously drunken scrawl, says simply: ‘Dear Prue, Sober or not, I am Ever Yours, Richard Steele.’14
In March 1717, holding down the three jobs received thanks to his Kit-Cat patrons, Steele nonetheless complained to Prue about his ungrateful treatment by the Hanoverian Court and its ministers: ‘I have served the Royal Family with an unreservedness due only to Heaven, and I am now (I thank my Brother Whigs) not possessed of twenty shillings from the favour of the Court.’15
Steele's irrepressible optimism meant he continued to hope he could ‘turn a Kind inclination towards Me at present, into what is solid’. He expected to be granted a particular forfeited estate as additional payment for his work on the Commission. In the meantime, to justify not sending Prue some £800 she demanded, Steele wrote to Wales that it remained ‘a Terrible Circumstance to have one's money due to others before it comes into one's own hands’.16
Seeking patronage in Georgian Britain was growing more complicated than it had been under William or Anne. A major rift had opened within the Whig party, and hence the Kit-Cat Club, a year earlier, in the spring of 1716, forcing every member to gamble and place his allegiance with one faction or another. Steele told Prue, ‘It is not possible to describe to you the perplexities into which the business of this nation is plunged.’17 The rift had originated in disagreement over George's emerging foreign policy, which some Kit-Cats thought served Hanover rather than Britain. Stanhope negotiated, with the King's full support, a new entente with France (now ruled by the Regent Duc d'Orléans), and in the summer of 1716 accompanied George back to Hanover, where good relations were further cemented with the French ambassadors. During his father's absence from London, the Prince of Wales hosted grand parties at Hampton Court and began to position himself as the figurehead for an opposition faction—a move motivated as much by personal filial hostility as any political principles. Addison's Freeholder, sensing the mood, warned the Whigs to treasure their unity: ‘[A] large diamond is of a thousand times greater value whilst it remains entire than when it is cut into a multitude of smaller stones, notwithstanding they may each of them be very curiously set.’18
Sunderland found an excuse to make his own way to Hanover, and there made a play for power, telling exaggerated tales of how Walpole and Townshend were plotting with the Prince against the King back in London, which both Stanhope and the King believed. The King responded by sending home instructions that Townshend should resign as Secretary of State for the North, at which news Walpole realized that his old friend Stanhope had listened to Sunderland's whispering campaign. A long, carefully worded letter to Stanhope expressed Walpole's shock and sadness: ‘Such sudden changes to old sworn friends are seldom looked upon in the world with a favourable eye…I have heard old friends were to be valued like old gold. I never wished anything more sincerely than to bear that title, and to preserve it with you.’19
By 13 December 1716, Stanhope's betrayal of Townshend and Walpole, siding instead with Sunderland, was the talk of London. One observer reported: ‘There never was such a jumble amongst the Whigs…Whether they'll carry their pet so far as to let in the Tories, God knows. Things look very dark.’20 Another, seeing the repercussions shaking the patronage ladder to its lowest rung, laughed at ‘the hurry and fright of the little placemen who did not know upon what ground they stood, nor what cue they were to follow’.
21
After the King's return to Britain in January 1717, there was the brief appearance of party unity, but at the first Privy Council meeting in February it was obvious that Sunderland and Stanhope were in power, while Walpole and Townshend were out. Caught in the middle of this schism was the young Duke of Newcastle, and the situation brought out all Newcastle's neurosis and neediness. One memoirist found Newcastle's behaviour indecorous in a nobleman: ‘[H]e accosted, hugged, embraced, and promised everybody, with a seeming cordiality, but at the same time with an illiberal and degrading familiarity.’22
For such a man, division among his friends was personally unbearable. Newcastle therefore attempted to reconcile Walpole and Stanhope, and heal the Whig schism, by hosting a special meeting of the Kit-Cat Club on 30 March 1717.23 Newcastle may have used the excuse of his impending marriage to Marlborough's granddaughter, Lady Harriet Godolphin, whose dowry had finally been negotiated, to beg the attendance of any Club members reluctant to bury the hatchet. The venue was Newcastle House, newly remodelled by Vanbrugh—the first time we know that the Club convened in a private house other than Barn Elms. A letter from a member tells us, however, that Newcastle was not merely the host but also ‘in the Chair’ of the Club. Previously this has been considered a one-off supplanting of Tonson's chairmanship, but in the context of Newcastle's role as the Club's fount of cultural patronage after 1714—Tonson dedicated the complete set of his six Miscellany Poems to Newcastle in 1716, the fifth volume of which published Kit-Cat toasting verses for the first time—it may instead confirm that the Duke was generally assuming Tonson's Kit-Cat duties by this date.
Newcastle also seems to have attempted to reunify the Kit-Cats through a literary commission, funding Tonson's production of a deluxe edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1717) that combined new translations with sections previously translated by Dryden, Maynwaring, Congreve, Addison and others. Garth was asked to recruit the new contributors, and Pope, who was not one of those invited, wrote a satire about Garth drumming up ‘Wits, Witlings, Prigs and Peers’ like a literary recruiting officer, old Tonson inspecting the troops.24 The book was dedicated to the Princess of Wales, while its sections were dedicated to other prominent Whig ladies, related to men on either side of the current schism. Richly illustrated, the book influenced neoclassical painting and design in the decades to come, providing motifs for the work of William Kent and later Georgians.
Newcastle's peace-making initiatives failed, the Whigs' one-party State remaining riven in two. Townshend's dismissal prompted Walpole's resignation and the pair's formation of an opposition known as the ‘Prince's Party’ as they did indeed now ally with the Prince of Wales. Stanhope, despite having little economic expertise, was promoted to fill Walpole's places as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Newcastle, who fell in with the new Sunderland–Stanhope ministry when sitting on the fence was no longer an option, was appointed Lord Chamberlain, with control over the dispensing of nearly 500 Court places.
Among the office-holders who resigned alongside Walpole and joined the Prince's Party were many prominent Kit-Cats. They included Speaker Spencer Compton, who had become a personal friend to the Prince of Wales as Treasurer in his Household, as well as Grafton, Devonshire, Pulteney and Jack Smith. Altogether, Walpole and Townshend carried some fifty Whig MPs into opposition.
Addison's previous employment under Sunderland, and personal liking for Stanhope over Walpole, allied him to the Court faction. It was a surprise to many, however, when Addison was given the post he had long coveted as Secretary of State for the South, in charge of Britain's foreign relations with the better half of the world and worth almost £10,000 annually (over £1.2 million today). Stanhope, though in the Treasury, intended to maintain firm control over southern European and colonial foreign policy, and Addison, allergic to independent decisions, was just the kind of man he knew he could work with—diligent in managing a huge workload without complaint and unlikely to question his superiors. Enjoying direct access to the King, Addison was responsible for administering the American and West Indian colonies, the suppression of piracy, the Indian wars in Carolina and the settling of Nova Scotia. He would oversee the implementation of certain Utrecht articles, including the expulsion of Jews from Gibraltar, handle delicate Spanish trade negotiations (under Stanhope's guidance), and play a critical part in freeing British captives held in Morocco. Addison's job was so demanding that it left little time for non-professional friendships—a more plausible explanation for his retreat from the Kit-Cat Club and Button's Coffee House than his wife's alleged tyranny.
The most onerous aspect of being Secretary of State for Addison was being a Court spokesman in the Commons. Tonson gossiped that Addison only accepted a job so ill-suited to his temperament to satisfy his wife's snobbery,25 and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu similarly remarked to Pope: ‘Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be in prudence eligible for a man that is asthmatic; and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.’26 Steele, torn between loyalty to his two former defenders, Walpole and Stanhope, sent news of Addison's appointment to his wife without comment.
Despite ‘gouty lameness’, Steele worked long hours at the Commons, telling his wife, ‘I pant for Leisure and tranquillity.’27 Since he now had ‘no money’,28 Steele was also forced to pant for favours from Stanhope and Sunderland's ministry. Not only did Steele hope Addison would help him towards something, but he also looked to his friend General William Cadogan, who was perhaps the third most powerful figure in the new ministry. Steele confided his hopes to Prue: ‘They tell me I shall be something in the new changes.’29 Three days later, however, Steele dined with ‘Mr Secretary Addison’ and was informed—how kindly we do not know—that his seat as a Commissioner for the Forfeited Estates prevented him receiving further offices or advancement.30 This disappointment, in sharp contrast to Addison's elevation, made Steele start to look towards the mutinous Walpole–Townshend camp for assistance instead.
No record exists of Addison and Steele meeting for some time after this awkward dinner. Given Addison's immense salary, Steele may have found his friend's failure to loan a sum of money—say, the amount needed to cover his daughter Betty's Chelsea school fees—an unforgivable failure. In May 1717, Steele frostily told his wife: ‘I do not ask Mr Secretary Addison anything.’31
Tonson, similarly, seems to have quarrelled with Addison after the latter became Secretary of State and failed to have the Tonsons' firm appointed official stationers to the War Office. After all Tonson had done for Addison, this does seem ungrateful, though the post may not have been in Addison's gift alone. After 1717, Tonson started admitting to other Kit-Cats that he had never really liked Addison. Mocking the pious author's weakness for drink, Tonson ‘boasted of paying his court by inventing excuses for requesting a glass of Barbadoes water, in order to furnish the Secretary with an apology for indulging his own inclination’.32
Steele decided he had to rely upon his own efforts if he could not rely on his friends. He told Prue his Fishpool prototype was now finished ‘with great success, insomuch that Sir Isaac Newton is desirous the machine may stand at his House and be carried from thence to the Parliament’.33 So soon after the ministerial schism, this was not the best time to capture politicians' attention, but the Fishpool's unveiling must have gone fairly well since Steele promised Lady Steele that, if she returned from Wales, he would hire sufficient servants to allow her to be no more than his parlour companion. ‘Money is the main thing,’ Steele wrote to Prue. ‘Get I always could, but now I will get it and Keep it.’34
Steele later described himself as heartened when Prue called him ‘Good Dick’ in a note, in return for which he called her ‘My Dear little Peevish Beautiful Wise governess’35 and ‘Poor Dear Angry Pleased Pretty Witty Silly Everything Prue’.36 With unashamed sentimentality, Steele admitted: ‘I love you with the most ardent affection and very often run over little Heats that have
sometimes happened between Us with Tears in my Eyes.’37 He enclosed a blank sheet of paper so that she could not use lack of paper as an excuse for failing to reply.
Steele, however, soon had to ask Prue to stop ‘dunning’ him for money again, and his autumn 1717 letters returned to complaints about her denial of his conjugal rights:
Your Ladyship's coldness to Me as a Woman and a Wife has made me think it necessary to Suppress the expression of my Heart towards You, because it could not end in the pleasures and enjoyments I ought to expect from it, and which you obliged Me to Wean myself from till I had so much money etc.38
The Fishpool continued to need attention before it could turn a profit, yet Steele was compelled to leave his London enterprise to serve on the Scottish Commission. There was no time to detour via Wales for even one night with his wife. By 15 November, Steele reached Edinburgh, where he was treated well: ‘You cannot imagine the civilities and honours I had done me [in Edinburgh] and never lay better, ate or drank better, or conversed with men of better sense than there.’39 With suspicious timing, Lady Steele returned from Wales to London after his departure. They argued over who would pay for her carriage.
By October 1717, a leading Whig was declaring that ‘[t]he breach between the Whigs is irreparable’.40 Kit-Cat meetings were likely suspended, just as they had been during the temporary and comparatively minor breach between the Treasurer's Whigs and Junto Whigs back in 1708. Richard Blackmore's prophecy that the Kit-Cat Club would be destroyed not by external enemies but by internal rivalries was, more than a decade later, coming true.
An incident at a royal christening in November 1717, involving Newcastle, led to the King banishing the Prince and Princess of Wales from St James's Palace. After this, they established an alternative ‘Court’ at Leicester House, with Walpole and Townshend among the first to rally round. The popularity of the festivities at Leicester House forced the King to compete and make the Court proper more sociable too. He started hosting evening assemblies at St James's Palace several times a week, ‘courting’ public support through hospitality and cultural patronage. With two royal courts vying to be thought the more generous, stylish and enlightened, the need for a private club to promote British culture was diminished.
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