WRITING STORIES - The Lawless Early Days of Print

 

I doubt you could have missed the pair, seated in the Swan tavern on Fleet Street in London, that 28 March,  1716.  Last to arrive was the infamous publisher, pornographer and plagiarist Edmund Curll, a scarecrow of a man, tall and thin, splayfooted, and with gray goggle eyes that threatened to burst from his pale face like a cartoon character. He was so ugly no image of him survives.

Waiting for him like a spider on his web was one the greatest poets in history, the oft quoted and revered deformed genius Alexander Pope (above), with a Roman nose and a spine so twisted he stood barely four feet six inches tall from his stylish shoes to the top of the hump on his back. 

Curll (above, right) thought he had been invited to settle their disagreements. Pope (above, left) intended upon doing just that, by poisoning his guest's beer. 

Later Pope joyfully wrote a mocking obituary of his victim (above), under the name of an Eye Witness. It was titled   “A Full and True Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison on the Body of Mr. Edmund Curll, bookseller...To be published weekly”. Curll was not killed, but he did projectile vomit until he wished his was dead. It was like a scene from Animal House. Ah, good times among the 18^th century London literati. 

Publishing was in its youth, as young as the internet is today, and just as chaotic, dishonest, unregulated, and unencumbered with a functional business model. 

In 1688 there were only 68 printing presses in London, all controlled by members of the Stationer's  Guild.  But in 1695 Parliament refused to renew that company's monopoly, setting off a decade of pure anarchy. 

Daniel Defoe (above) of "Robinson Crusoe" and "Moll Flanders" fame, noted, “One man studies seven year(s), to bring a finished piece into the world, and a pirate printer....sells it for a quarter of the price ... these things call for an Act of Parliament".  

In 1702 Defoe himself was fined and sentenced to be pilloried (above), but his fans threw flowers instead of rotten fruit. Then, finally, in 1710 Parliament obliged with The Statue of Anne - she was queen at the time - which created a 14 year copyright for authors. 

Still, six years later one author felt required to poison a pirate printer – by making him vomit for 24 straight hours, and then attacking him again in print with his obituary set to rhyme .

“Next o'er his books his eyes begin to roll,

In pleasing memory of all he stole;
How here he sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug,
And suck'd all o'er like an industrious bug.”

Alexander Pope (above)  The Dunciad (1728)

Pope's public justification for the poisoning of  Edmund Curl was as revenge for embarrassing him in eyes of the smart and lovely Lady Mary Montagu (above). 

The morally pompous and socially inept poet Pope (above, right), so famous for his version of Shakespeare and translations of Homer that he was nicknamed “the Bard”, was smitten with the lady. They even maintained a correspondence.  And then Pope privately published one of her poems, under a pseudonym of course, since  nobility were not supposed to engage in actual writing or publication – it smacked of stooping to actually earning a living.  But copies of the ladies' poem were discretely passed about the English court. 

But soon, Curll was selling bootleg copies on the streets for 3pence, humilating the lady and by extension, Pope who had set her up for this dishonor. So Pope could claim he was defending the lady;s honor, and not his own when he poisoned Curll.

Pope then attacked Curll  again (among others) in an epic insulting poem, published under the title of “Dunciad”.  

Curll responded by pirating the poem about his own attempted murder, even publishing an annotated version, also called a “key”. Mocked Curll, “How easily two wits agree, one writes the poem, one writes the key”.

Of course, Edmund Curll was not quite the “shameless Curll” Pope portrayed – not quite. He was infamous for keeping a revolving stable of struggling quill drivers “three in a bed” in the “low-rent flophouses, brothels, and coffeehouses” jammed into Grub Street (above), just off the Fleet Street when his own offices were. 

Originally “grub” referred to the roots and insect larval uncovered when the street was originally scrapped out. Eventually the address was adopted as a badge of honor by the poverty stricken occupants (above), like the eventual great biographer Samuel Johnson, or Ned Ward, who considered his own profession as “scandalous...as whoring....”.

These grubs were hack writers, named after the ubiquitous horse drawn Hackney cabs that plied London's streets, going where ever their paying passengers demanded. 

Which usually meant, obscenity, which as today, always sold well, as did insults and visual attacks on the pompous and well to do - like Pope (above). The occasional advance, paid to a hungry writer was called a “grub stake”, and the pitiful meals they could afford were “grub”.  

The Irishman Jonathan Swift (above), eventual creator of “Gulliver's Travels”, grandiosely referred to this literary sub-culture as "the Republica Grubstreet-aria." But like Johnson, Swift was clever enough and lucky enough to eventually escape the life as a mere grub.

In fact, Curll employed no more Grub Street warriors than any other Fleet Street baron. But he was particularly adept at supplying what the public wanted - licentious sex, and manufactured controversy. Curll paid grubs to engage in a “pamphlet war” - much like the Fox News' war on Christmas and on American democracy.

...as in the 1712 trial of Jane Wehham (above) for witchcraft - she was convicted and executed several times over on grub street and with much profit on Fleet street.

Curll also printed cheap pirated books that sold for a mere shilling, thus undercutting the actual author's authorized editions. Acknowledged one critic, Edmund Curll, “...had no scruples either in business or private life, but he published and sold many good books.”  The dirty and stolen books he published illegally paid for the good books he published legally. 

With Pope's urging, Curll was convicted of obscenity in 1716, and twice more in 1725. In 1726, Curll struck back by befriending the mistress of a Pope confident. 

She passed to Curll several letters in which the arrogantly moral Pope admitting to lusting after the Blount Sisters, Terresa and Martha. In one purloined missive Pope wrote,  “How gladly would I give all that I am worth, for one of their maidenheads.” Embarrassed and angered, Pope helped engineer yet another Curll conviction in February of 1727. 

This time the outrage could not be hushed up and the frustrated and exasperated royal court fined Curll and ordered him pilloried for an hour. At the mercy of the mob, Curll was spared the usual bombardment of rotted food and manure when, before he made his appearance, a pamphlet was read to the well armed crowd, claiming Curll was being punished for defending the recently departed Queen Anne. Thus misinformed, the mob threw nothing and after his hour in the block, carried Curll home on their shoulders. Pope was infuriated and determined to even the score.  Which was probably the real reason he poisoned Curll. 

One of Edmund Curll's most profitable ventures was what came to be called “Curlicisms”. When a well known figure died, Curll would advertise a forthcoming biography, and ask the public for any anecdotes about or letters from the deceased. Then, without validating the submissions Curll would hire a Grub street hack to string them together into an instant and usually inaccurate biography, creating what one potential subject described as “one of the new terrors of death.”

Curll had done this when the Duke of Buckingham died in 1721. But Buckingham had been a peer, a member of the House of Lords, and that body summoned Curll for interrogation. 

Curll was unrepentant, since it was not a crime to publish writings of a peer without their permission. So the Lords made it illegal, and in this Pope saw a new opportunity to again injure Curll.

In 1731 Curll announced a upcoming “Curlicism” of Alexander Pope, himself; “Nothing shall be wanting,” Curll assured his potential readers, “but his (universally desired) death.” Again Curll called for submissions and a mysterious figured identified only as “P.T.” offered letters written by Pope to the Lord of Oxford.  

In 1734 Curll published his vicious biography of Pope which quoted from the Lord of Oxford letters. The next year Pope published his own “Literary Correspondence for Thirty Years”, including the same letters to Oxford.  But the details in Pope's version did not match those published by Curll, as Pope pointed out when he alleged Curll had violated the privilege of a member of the House of Lords and worse, slandered the Lord of Oxford while doing it. The trap was sprung.

The only problem was, Curll again refused to repent. Called again before the Lords, Curll quipped, "Pope has a knack of versifying, but in prose I think myself a match for him.” And in fact as well. 

The Duke of Oxford (above) still had the original letters in his files and Curll was able to call them to be examined by the Lords.  Surprise! The texts of the originals did not match those supplied by the mysterious P.T.  So, asked Curll, where had P.T.'s inaccurate versions come from? Curll produced P.T.'s letters so the Lords could judge for themselves who was implicated by the handwriting. 

For a few days, the city of London, or that section that cared about such things, held its breath. And then an ad appeared in a small newspaper offering 20 guineas if P.T. would come forward to admit he had “acted by the direction of any other person.”  

P.T., of course did not collect the reward. And the ploy fooled no one – Pope had written the originals and the fakes and even the ad, and everybody knew it. The House found a political solution; since the published letters were fakes, the law had not been broken. Case closed, except Pope now had even more egg on his face.

Wrote Curll, “Crying came our bard into the world, but lying, it is to be feared, he will go out of it.”.

And so he did.  Pope died on 30 May, 1744, and Edmund Curll followed him in December of 1747.

Thus, Curll earned the last word. He described his relationship with Pope this way, “A fitter couple was never hatched, Some married are, indeed, but we are matched”.

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