Ned Ward wrote to offend and offend he did, but how much better his attack on the establishment and those who supported it than today’s unisex, panty-waist writers. While Hudibras Redivivus and Vulgus Britannicus are difficult to find, his series of articles which made up The London Spy is available in some libraries and copies are for sale on the Internet. (Abebooks, Bibliofind, etc.)
Following his path through the best and worst that London offered, gives a glimpse of life in a community that had suffered the plaque, great and small fires, the crush of peasants from the country side, and the rush of ne’er-do-wells to board the ships to America. Along the way Ward exposes those with or without money, education, style or religion. No diary of Pepys, or Evelyn captures the smell, taste or passion of our forefathers equal to Ned Ward’s chapters, published beginning in November 1698.
The London Spy
“The Character of an Irishman -
He is commonly a huge fellow, with a little soul, as strong as a horse, and as silly as an ass; very poor and proud. Lusty and yet lazy; foolish yet knavish; impudent but yet cowardly; superstitiously devout yet infamously wicked; very loose in his morals; a loyal subject to his prince, and as humble servant to his master, for he thinks ‘tis his duty to make a rogue of himself at any time to serve the one, and a fool of himself at any time to serve the other; that is, to back a plot, or make a bull, he is the fittest calf in Christendom. He has a natural propensity to be a bully, and at his first coming into England most certainly lists himself in a harlot’s service and has so much a day out of her earnings to be her Guard du Corps, to protect her in her vices....
He has as little kindness for his native country, as a Scotchman, when once he’s out of it, and seldom cares for returning. He’s much of the nature of pumpkins, thrives best within filthy places; he loves most base means to live, and honesty’s a soil that won’t agree with him. To conclude, he’s a coward in his own country, a graceful footman in France, a good soldier in Flanders, and a valuable slave in our western plantations, where they are distinguished by the ignominious epithet of White Negroes.” pp 278-279.
The Character of a Beau --
“He is a Narcissus that is fallen in love with himself and his own shadow. Within doors he’s a great friend to a great glass; without doors he adores the sun like a Persian, and walks always in his rays. His body’s but a poor stuffing of a rich case, like bran to a lady’s pin-cushion, that when the outside is stripped off, there remains nothing that’s valuable. His head is a fool’s egg which lies hid in a nest of hair. His brains are the yolk, which conceit has addled.
He’s a strolling assistant to drapers and tailors, shewing every other day a new pattern and a new fashion. He’s a very troublesome guest in a tavern, and must have good wine changed three or four times, till they bring him the worst ˆ the cellar, before he’ll like it. He’s a bubble to all ?e deals wit?, from his wench to his periwig-maker, and hates the sordid rascal that won’t flatter him. He scorns to condescend so low as to speak to any person beneath the dignity of a nobleman; the Duke of such a place, and my Lord such? a one, are his common cronies, from whom he knows all the secrets of the Court, but dares not impart ‘em to his best friends, because the Duke enjoined him to secrecy.
He is always furnished with new jest from the last new play, which he most commonly spoils in repeating. Though his parents have given him an expensive education, he’s as dumb to rhetoric as a fool to reason; as blind to philosophy as an owl to the sunshine; and as deaf to understanding as a priest to charity. He’s a coward among rave men, and a brave fellow among cowards; a fool amongst wise men, and a wit in fool’s company.
pp 280-281
Dryden’s Passing -
The pomp and circumstance that was dictated for so great (pun intended regarding the man’s obesity) a passing was not unlike the Hollywood bash for Senator Wellstone. The procession was made up of the best that London and the surrounding cities could offer, having been assembled over almost two weeks following the poet’s death. Being there, and in the best of presentation with horse drawn carriages instead of the contrivances of today, the streets were crowded and became blocked in the narrow lane in front of Ned Ward’s tavern. Ward closes his last writing of The London Spy with observation of the antics of one such coachman, the coach and its passenger.
“One imprudent driver had run his pole against the back leather of the coach in front to the great damage of the beau’s reins, who peeping out of the coach door, with at least a fifty-ounce wig on, swore, “Damn him! If he came out, he would make as great a slaughter amongst hackney rogues with his sword, as ever Samson did amongst the Philistines with the jaw bone of an ass.”
Whilst he was thus cursing and swearing like an old sinner in a fit of gout, his own coachman flinging back the thong of his whip in striking of the horses, gave him such a cut over the nose that he jerked in his head as if he had been shot, not knowing from whence the blow came, and sat raving within his leathern territories, like a madman chained down to his seat, not daring to look out, for fear he should a second time pay for his peeping....”
They lay Dryden to rest between Chaucer and Cowley, and Ward seems to have been put to rest as well, we know not where. Such is the spirit of Ned Ward’s London. How much preferred it is to the droll dead city that seems to have survived in spite of itself, inhabited by cockroaches that look to be h. sapiens, a royal family that could use a bit of Henry VIII’s trimming, and a commoner politic that is, well, too common.
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