John Wilkes and the Enlightenment - Part 3
Part 3 looks at Wilkes' reputation as a libertine in the context of then contemporary values.
Portrait of Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781), founder of the Monks of Medmenham, which Wilkes frequented under the pseudonym John of Aylesbury. William Hogarth (late 1750s). Wikipedia.
Wilkes’s libertinism has significantly contributed to his rakish reputation and such a view was undoubtedly shared by a number of contemporaries such as Burgh and Price who were otherwise sympathetic to his political causes.[1] However, Salisbury has also argued that Wilkes’s used his libertinism to further his political goals: ‘Wilkes identified in mid-eighteenth-century polity, a zone of discomfort which he sought to aggravate with the ideological instruments of the libertine Whig tradition to which he saw himself the heir.’[2] The discussion here will not engage with the debate on the history of the concept of libertinism,[3] nor Wilkes’s position within the libertine tradition, but will be limited to advancing the view that the role Wilkes’s libertinism played in the development of his political ideas and public identity should not be given undue weight since it was not an issue he choose to defend in public but was forced upon him by his political opponents. Furthermore, libertinism was not peculiar to Wilkes but shared or at least tolerated by many contemporaries, including some of the philosophes with whom he associated, and it would be misleading in this cosmopolitan context at least to characterise Wilkes by reference to his libertinism rather than his libertarian principles.
Wilkes did not set out to portray himself as a libertine in public. The obtaining of a copy of the Essay on Woman by his political opponents in 1763 was part of their campaign against him over publication of the North Briton no. 45 and was probably the result of duplicity by his printer Michael Curry.[4] It was never the intention of Wilkes that the parody of Pope’s Essay on Man should have anything but a limited private circulation.[5] The fact that he was able to exploit its disclosure to expose the hypocrisy of his political opponents[6] and nevertheless retain the support of his urban freeholder electors[7] is a testament to his political skill but should not obscure the fact his sexual libertinism was not an issue he chose to exploit. In a reply dated 15 May 1771 to a letter of John Horne,[8] Wilkes made this clear:
‘I do not mean, Sir, to be impertinent enough to a public, whom I respect, to descend to those particulars of private life, in which they are not interested, either to accuse you or to defend myself. The frailties, of which I have repented, I will not justify. I will not even plead with Horace, ‘Nec lusisse pudet, sed non incidere ludum;’ but I hope to redeem and bury in oblivion every past folly by great and virtuous actions, by real services to my country.[9]
He was, however, prepared to defend his civil rights as he made clear in his Letter to the Worthy Electors of the Borough of Aylesbury of 22 October1764:
... I will always maintain the right of private opinion in it’s fullest extent, when it is not followed by giving any open, public offence to any establishment, or indeed to any individual. The crime commences from thence, and the magistrate has a right to interpose, and even to punish outrageous and indecent attacks on what any community has decreed to be sacred. In my own closet I had a right to examine, and even to try by the keen edge of ridicule, any opinion I pleased.[10]
In Letter to the Duke of Grafton of 12 December 1766, Wilkes developed this libertarian defence by arguing for a person’s right of privacy against the search of private papers under a general warrant which threatened:
... not only his own safety and property, but what will come still more home to a man of honour, the security, the happiness of those with whom he is most intimately connected, their fortunes, their future views, perhaps secrets, the discovery of which would drive the coldest stoic to despair, their very existence possibly, all that is important in the public walk of life, all that is dear and sacred in friendship and love.[11]
The second point is that Wilkes from his student days frequented circles where libertine views and behaviour were prevalent. G.S. Rousseau has shown that at the University of Leiden in 1744 Wilkes was part of a libertine group centred around Andrew Baxter[12] which ‘linked up with an affiliated homosocial club in Leiden that included LaMettrie, Akenside, and d’Holbach’.[13] On his return to England, Wilkes’s friendship with the reprobate Thomas Potter led to membership of the Knights of Saint Francis of Wycombe and licentious visits with Charles Churchill to Sir Francis Dashwood’s Medmenham Abbey.[14] After the furore over An Essay on Woman, this private libertinism became public and gave Wilkes a reputation which his subsequent escapades with Corradini and various courtesans cemented.[15]
However, the negative perception of Wilkes this reputation created among dissenting Ministers and polite society in England was not reflected among his philosopher friends in Paris. D’Holbach had in his youth been part of a ‘homosocial club’[16] and Chastellux wrote of his fellow philosophes: ‘Raynal, Helvétius, Galiani et d’autres gens qu‘on célèbre sont les plus immodérés des libertins, et leur métaphores préférées, au cours des conversations, sont empruntées au langage des pires bordels[i].’[17] Suard, who made arrangements for the education in Paris of Wilkes’s illegitimate son John Smith, also showed in his correspondence his relaxed sexual attitudes, relating the following salacious gossip to Wilkes in a letter of 9 December 1772: ‘Que dites de Voltaire qui vient d’avoir une bonne fortune à ferney. Il a couché avec une femme, et le lendemain il a eu trois évanouissements qu’il avoit mal mérités[ii].’[18] Diderot, who experienced similar amorous disappointments, wrote to Wilkes at the beginning of June 1776:
Au milieu du tumulte public, portez-vous bien; soyez gai; buvez de bons vins; et lorsqu’il vous prendra fantaisie d'être tendre, adressez-vous à des femmes qui ne fassent pas soupirer longtemps. Elles amusent autant que les autres; elles occupent moins; on les possèdent sans inquiétude, et on les quitte sans regret[iii].[19]
In such company, Wilkes’s libertinism was unlikely to have shocked.
Conclusion
Only one country was absent from this array of ‘Enlightened’ thinkers in the sixties and seventies, and that was England.... no ‘parti des philosophes’ was formed in London, and so could not claim to guide society. The struggles which did take place (one only has to recall ‘Wilkes and liberty’) are not those of a nascent intelligentsia. Even the English giant of the Enlightenment, Gibbon, was not only closely linked with continental culture but remained an isolated figure in his own country, a solitary figure... English radicalism, too, was born around 1764, but it exhibited very different characteristics from the philosophy of the continent.[20]
This view of English political culture as essentially parochial, as opposed to the cosmopolitanism of the Scottish Enlightenment during the same period,[21] is challenged by the evidence for the intellectual and social cosmopolitanism of Wilkes who personified English radicalism for much of this period and whose ideas on political and civil liberties converged with those of the leading philosophes.
The diversity and cosmopolitanism of Wilkes’s intellectual background and associations also challenges the traditional interpretation of Wilkes as a rakish figure motivated principally by self-interest. When Wilkes’s political ideas are examined in the context of his collaboration with Churchill, his Introduction to The History of England and other political writings, and his association with the philosophes, a more principled and consistent view emerges. Wilkes shared the intellectual commitment of the philosophes in favour of civil and political liberties and his campaigns for freedom of the press, freedom of election, and publication of parliamentary debates[22] reflected that commitment.
Finally, the view which sees a clear connection between Wilkes’s libertinism and politics,[23] while it gives a fuller account of Wilkes’s rich intellectual background,[24] overemphasises the role of libertinism in the development of Wilkes’s political identity. His libertinism, while it was a trait which he shared with Churchill and many of the philosophes with whom he associated, was incidental to that identity. Libertinism was an issue raised by his political opponents and, while he defended the right to privacy and liberty of private opinion by reference to libertarian principles, he did not seek to defend libertinism. Wilkes was by political conviction a libertarian not a libertine.
End Notes
All pre-1800 works were published in London unless otherwise stated. Translations in the footnotes are by the author.
[i]Trans.: Raynal, Helvétius, Galiani and others who are celebrated are the most unrestrained libertines, and their favourite metaphors, during conversations, are taken from the language of the worst brothels.
[ii]Trans.: What do you say about Voltaire who has just had a piece of luck at Ferney. He slept with a woman, and the following day he had three fainting fits which he hardly deserved.
[iii]Trans.: In the middle of the public tumult, bear up well; be in good spirits; drink good wines; and when it takes your fancy to be tender, address yourself to women who do make one sigh for a long time. They amuse as much as the others; they take up less time; one possesses them without worry, and one leaves them without regret.
[1] John Sainsbury, ‘Wilkes and Libertinism’, in Syndy M. Conger and Julie C. Hayes, eds., Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 26 (1998), pp. 151-174, at pp. 167-168.
[2] Ibid., p. 153.
[3] See James G. Turner, ‘The Properties of Libertinism’, in Robert Purks Maccubbin (ed.), ’Tis Nature’s Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality during the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 75-87.
[4] Thomas, John Wilkes, pp. 38-39.
[5] See A. Hamilton, The Infamous Essay on Woman, or John Wilkes Seated Between Vice and Virtue (London, 1972).
[6] Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, p. 36.
[7] Namier and Brooke, The House of Commons, i, pp. 331-335.
[8] In a letter of May 1771, Horne had written to Wilkes: ‘It is not my intention here to open any account with you on the score of private character: in that respect the public have kindly passed an act of insolvency in your favour.’ The Controversial Letters of John Wilkes, p. 27.
[9] Ibid., pp. 29-30.
[10] Letters to and from Mr. Wilkes, p. 209.
[11] Ibid., pp. 259-260.
[12] Baxter dedicated his philosophical work Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul to Wilkes and on his deathbed addressed Wilkes on 29 January 1750 a final philosophical reflection: ‘The end of God’s punishing us ... is our final happiness’: ibid., p. 274.
[13] G. S. Rousseau, ‘The Pursuit of Homosexuality in the Eighteenth Century: “Utterly Confused Category” and/or Rich Repository?’, in Maccubbin, ed., Unauthorized Sexuality, pp. 132-168, at p. 157.
[14] Charles Chenevix Trench, Portrait of a Patriot: A Biography of John Wilkes (London, 1962), pp. 24-26.
[15] Sainsbury, ‘Wilkes and Libertinism’, pp. 158, 168.
[16] Rousseau, ‘The Pursuit of Homosexuality’, p. 157.
[17] A. Dainard, J. Orsoni, D. Smith and P. Allan, eds., Correspondance Générale d’Helvétius, iii, n. 3, p. 35 (trans.).
[18] Bonno, ed., ‘Lettres Inédites de Suard’, no. 43.
[19] Lewinter, ed., Oeuvres Complètes de D. Diderot, xi, pp. 1143-1144.
[20] Venturi, Utopia and Reform, p. 132.
[21] Ibid., p. 133.
[22] Brewer, Party Ideology, pp. 164-165.
[23] G. S. Rousseau refers to: ‘… the freethinking antinomian Wilkes, who equated liberty with licence, and freedom with libertine ethics’: ‘The Sorrows of Priapus: anticlericalism, homosocial desire and Richard Payne Knight.’, in G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (eds.), Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment (Manchester, 1987), pp. 101-153, at p. 122.
[24] Sainsbury examines this background, and in particular Wilkes’s connection with English deism, in: ‘Wilkes and Libertinism’, pp. 154-155.