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Lost Malcolm X Speech

By DAVID KLEPPER | Associated Press

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The recording was forgotten, and so, too, was the odd twist of history that brought together Malcolm X and a bespectacled Ivy Leaguer fated to become one of America’s top diplomats.

The audiotape of Malcolm X’s 1961 address in Providence might never have surfaced at all if 22-year-old Brown University student Malcolm Burnley hadn’t stumbled across a reference to it in an old student newspaper. He found the recording of the little-remembered visit gathering dust in the university archives.

“No one had listened to this in 50 years,” Burnley told The Associated Press. “There aren’t many recordings of him before 1962. And this is a unique speech — it’s not like others he had given before.”

In the May 11, 1961, speech delivered to a mostly white audience of students and some residents, Malcolm X combines blistering humor and reason to argue that blacks should not look to integrate into white society but instead must forge their own identities and culture.

At the time, Malcolm X, 35, was a loyal supporter of the black separatist movement Nation of Islam, now based in Chicago. He would be assassinated four years later after leaving the group and crafting his own more global, spiritual ideology.

The legacy of slavery and racism, he told the crowd of 800, “has made the 20 million black people in this country a dead people. Dead economically, dead mentally, dead spiritually. Dead morally and otherwise. Integration will not bring a man back from the grave.”

The rediscovery of the speech could be the whole story. But Burnley found the young students in the crowd that night proved to be just as fascinating.

Malcolm X was prompted to come to Brown by an article about the growing Black Muslim movement published in the Brown Daily Herald. The article by Katharine Pierce, a young student at Pembroke College, then the women’s college at Brown, was first written for a religious studies class. It caught the eye of the student paper’s editor, Richard Holbrooke.

Holbrooke would become a leading American diplomat, serving as U.S. Ambassador to Germany soon after that nation’s reunification, ambassador to the United Nations and President Barack Obama’s special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan before his death in 2010 at age 69.

But in 1961, Holbrooke, 20, was eager to use the student newspaper to examine race relations — an unusual interest on an Ivy League campus with only a handful of black students.

Pierce’s article ran in the newspaper’s magazine and made her the first woman whose name was featured on the newspaper’s masthead.

Somehow, the article made its way to Malcolm X. His staff and Holbrooke worked out details of the visit weeks in advance. Campus officials were wary: Malcolm X had been banned from the University of California-Berkeley and Queens College in New York.

Tickets — going for 50 cents apiece — for the Brown speech sold quickly. About 800 people filled the venue, the 19th-century, Romanesque Sayles Hall, meant to hold about 500.

Pierce introduced Malcolm X and recalls him vividly.

“He came surrounded by a security detail,” she said. “You got the sense — this is an important person. He was handsome, absolutely charismatic. I was just bewildered that my class paper could have led to something like this.”

In his speech, Malcolm X outlined Black Muslims’ beliefs and argued that black Americans cannot wait for white Americans to offer them equality.

“No, we are not anti-white,” he said. “But we don’t have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already … He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.”

Richard Nurse, one of three black students in his Brown University class in 1961, came to the speech with his mind made up against Malcolm X.

“I very strongly believed in integration,” Nurse said in a telephone interview from his New Jersey home. “These were ideas I had accepted, adopted. Here I was at this Ivy League university. But he confounded me a little bit. I had never heard a black man in public speak as forcefully as Malcolm X did that night. It was cataclysmic.”

Nurse, now 72 and retired from teaching at Rutgers University, said the speech didn’t cause him to change his views. But he said he understood Malcolm X’s message better years later when, in the U.S. Army, he was barred from all-white USO clubs and movie theaters in the South.

“Now things have changed to the point where that kind of notion (separatism) is no longer even considered,” he said.

Pierce said the speech exposed her and other students in the audience to a different side of America. She gives Holbrooke credit for bringing Malcolm X to campus.

Holbrooke joined the foreign service after graduation and was posted to Vietnam in 1962. He visited Pierce in Hong Kong, where she worked as a teacher. She went on to work on international refugee projects and at Yale University and now creates computer training programs.

She said she wasn’t surprised when Holbrooke became the diplomat presidents dispatched to hot spots like Bosnia and Afghanistan.

“He was a very good friend,” she said. “I was saddened to hear of his death, sad for myself and sad for the world.”

The recording of the address is in pristine condition. Pierce obtained the tape after the event — she isn’t sure who made the recording — and it sat in a box of mementos for years before she mailed it to the university archives.

Burnley has had the tape digitized and plans to air excerpts next week at an event hosted by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Association.

Lehigh University professor Saladin Ambar, who is working on a book about Malcolm X’s 1964 visit to Oxford University, said any new recording of him is reason to celebrate.

“Malcolm’s best speeches, they’re just gone,” he said. “He’s not nearly as well-documented as he should be, when you consider his power as an orator.”

The Link

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Letter from Freed Slave to Former Master

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I’ll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end.

UPDATE: Head over to Kottke for a brief but lovely little update about the later years of Jourdon and family.

(Source: The Freedmen’s Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

The Link

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Royal Degeneration

Royal Degeneration

This story caught my attention. The irrelevancy of the monarchy in the twenty-first century apparently is not just limited to government but extends to human relations. Well, that may have been true at least in the case of the current queen.

Please CLICK on her Majesty and watch this ABC News clip where Queen Elizabeth II is mentioned towards the end:

NO INTERVIEWS!

Then read this poem by Queen Elizabeth I. No need to click on her picture.

ON MONSIEUR’S DEPARTURE

I grieve and dare not show my discontent;
I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate;
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant;
I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate.
I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun—
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands, and lies by me, doth what I have done;
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft, and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, Love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low;
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die, and so forget what love e’er meant.

                             *****

Then draw your own conclusions.

I think here we have quite a strong argument against evolution, wouldn’t you say? OR at least proof that it may skip some generations!

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Jean Richardson (Fagans), born July 14, 1939, died January 14, 2012

My Mother, Jean Richardson Fagans

“Do you not remember Jeanie,

How she met them in the moonlight,

Took their gifts both choice and many,

Ate their fruits and wore their flowers

Pluck’d from bowers

Where summer ripens at all hours?

But ever in the noonlight

She pined and pined away;

Sought them by night and day,

Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;

Then fell with the first snow….”

Goblin Market

Christina Rosetti

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The Arch of Allegiance

The Arch of Allegiance: An Examination of Loyalty Systems in Beowulf and The Romance of Tristan

By Rebecca Forste

  Beowulf is a good poem, as its unknown author might say. It is also a more or less complete poem. Although it appears that there are a few holes in the manuscript, the lost pieces of Beowulf do not seem to be essential to the integrity of the whole because what remains stands alone without support from other texts (provided one has a knowledge of Old English or a translation.)

On the other hand, Beroul’s The Romance of Tristan survives in a far more fragmentary state. In order to make it comprehensible, it is necessary to borrow and insert extensive passages from other sources. So, unlike Beowulf, The Romance of Tristan is not a complete poem. Therefore, a comparison of these two texts is problematic, but not impossible. It is somewhat like comparing a crumbling stone arch to a remnant of moth-eaten embroidery: it can certainly be done, it might even be fun, but the main basis for a comparison of these two objects is that they are both old.

Interestingly, these metaphors also provide a convenient way of contrasting the allegiance systems revealed in these two texts. The stone arch serves to explicate the concept of service to the lord as the ideal of Beowulf, while the scrap of embroidery is just as appropriate a symbol of service to the lady as exemplified in The Romance of Tristan. How is Beowulf like a stone arch? Both are heavy and solid, perhaps “masculine.” Moreover, the structure of a stone arch provides a good analogy for the hierarchical structure of the communities in which the people of Beowulf live.  At the top of the arch is the keystone, which can be compared to a lord like Hrothgar. He is at the top, but only because he is held up by his thanes , which can be represented by the other stones in the arch.

Similarly, if Hrothgar, or the keystone, crumbles or is removed, the entire structure, stones, thanes and all, comes tumbling down. The communities of Beowulf’s world are interdependent structures. Visualizing one as a stone arch helps to vividly illustrate the importance of loyalty to the lord to this structure. The disastrous results of thanes failing to support their lord are obvious when conceptualized in this way, as are the equally disastrous results of a weak lord.

Likewise, those all-important gifts, the hoards of gold, weapons and armor, the mead halls and perhaps the “peace-weaver” women can be viewed as the mortar which helped the structure stick together. On the first page we are told that it is “by splendid bestowals” that a leader can expect to win the loyalty of his “chosen men” and prosper (49). From then on, the importance of treasure in this world is continually and emphatically underscored. The poet sings of “bright gold and silver, gems from far lands … weapons of battle, swords and mail-shirts,” (51) “golden war-standard … with plated ornament … a jewel-encrusted long sword,” (107) and on and on and on.

However, these gifts do not ever seem to represent actual gain to the recipients. From the treasure which accompanies Scyld Scefing on his arrival, to the gifts bestowed upon Beowulf by Hrothgar which are in turn bestowed upon Hygelac, to the dragon’s hoard with which Beowulf is buried – “gold in the ground, .. as useless to men as it was before” – all gifts either return to their source or are given to someone else. (243) These “splendid bestowals” do not enrich people, they maintain equilibrium between them. The gifts had a greater ceremonial than intrinsic value.

Gift giving is more a ritual than an economic activity in Beowulf’s world. Yet, no matter how lavish the gifts, no matter how loyal the thanes, no matter how strong the lord, all structures in this world are temporary. They are built with the moment of their collapse forever in mind, just as the arrival of Scyld Scefing cannot be mentioned without including an allusion to his departure and the construction of Heorot cannot be described without also referring to its destruction. There is some logic to this attitude. If, as we have supposed, the gifts of treasure and arms, the mead-hall gatherings and the strategic marriages were the mortar gluing these stones to one another, then potentially destructive forces were built right in to these structures.

If Beowulf is a reasonably accurate portrayal of the thanes’ and lord’s way of life, then we can conclude that far more time was devoted to war than to mining gold, metalworking or courting ladies (although perhaps almost as much time was spent drinking mead as fighting.) Where and how, then, were they to obtain the tremendous quantities of gold and armor their lifestyle seems to have demanded?

The most likely way seems to have been to attack another group and take their hoard. There is some indication of this in the first few lines of the poem: “Often Scyld Scefing seized mead benches from enemy troops” (49). Similarly, since the warriors of Heorot display no aptitude for winning the favor of ladies through their polished manners, it is likely that they supplied their needs here through war also. Clearly, if a culture operates by building structures out of materials obtained from the destruction of other structures, no structure will stand for very long. The mere act of building invites demolition. Hence, the obsession of this culture with the ephemeral quality of everything.

On the other hand, The Romance of Tristan may be seen as being as light, fluttery and “feminine” as a delicate and colorful embroidered handkerchief, a gift which a lady might give to a knight in her service. Moreover, the loyalties and intentions of Mark, and to a lesser extent, his nephew Tristan, are blown about as easily as a handkerchief, or “a long fair hair” floating from the beak of a swallow.

While death and destruction are always kept in mind by the author of Beowulf, Beroul has little interest in such dismal topics. He is far more interested in sex and deception. The arch of Beowulf’s world still stands, but it is a moss-covered ruin. In some ways, Tristan is still part of this structure, but it is as if the mortar which should be bonding him to his lord is missing.

If we continue to maintain that gifts are this mortar, then perhaps it may be concluded that the mortar is missing, for Tristan’s lord, Mark, is never seen bestowing either gold or women on his most able servant. It is true that Mark gives his sister Blanchefleur to Tristan’s father, but we read nothing of Mark rewarding Blanchfleur’s son. This is strange when one considers the fact that Mark gives Yseut away twice to people (the harper and the leper) who have rendered him little or no service and from whom he cannot reasonably expect loyalty.

Furthermore, there is also evidence that Mark is stingy toward those to whom he owes loyalty. It is because he has failed to pay his tribute to the King of Ireland that he is attacked by Morholt, leading to Tristan’s nearly fatal wound and his meeting with Yseut. Mark is more a keyjellyfish than a keystone. Hrothgar, and later Beowulf, are weak and pathetic only because they have grown old and cannot fight as well, but they seem to retain their judgment and ability to fulfill all the other functions of a lord. Mark, on the other hand, never seems to posses any judgment nor willingness nor ability to fulfill any of the functions of a lord.

It is the absence of gift giving in The Romance of Tristan that helps to make its role as mortar binding thane to lord even clearer. Gifts fixed loyalty not merely by evoking gratitude, but by fostering dependence. This is evident in the passage in which Mark banishes Tristan at his barons’ insistence, but tries in his typical way to serve all sides by offering Tristan “whatever he wanted… he offered him gold and silver and rich clothing.” (112) It is revealing that Mark makes this offer not to reward Tristan for Tristan’s good behavior but to compensate Tristan for Mark’s bad behavior. Yet, it is Mark’s past failure to give Tristan his due that enables Tristan to haughtily spurn this probably insincere offer: “King of Cornwall, I will never take a farthing from you.” (112) It is difficult to imagine any of the warriors of Beowulf uttering this sentence. His time in the wilderness has taught Tristan just how easily he can live without Mark’s feeble patronage.

However, as stated before, the ceremonial role of gift giving seems to have been far more important than its economic role. Gifts represented loyalty more than wealth. Mark’s failure to make “splendid bestowals” upon Tristan is more an indication of his unfaithfulness to Tristan than his miserliness. This is seen in the fact that his barons, Frocin or nearly anybody who happens to be speaking to him are able to influence him against Tristan.

Treasure also seems to be equated with words, as we see when Beowulf is described as having “unlocked his word hoard” (63). Moreover, the act of speaking in Beowulf seems to be regarded as something very momentous and serious. Over and over, the poet announces “Hrothgar spoke” or “Beowulf spoke” as if this really means something. Deceit is not unheard of in Beowulf’s world, since, as the coast-guard points out, there is a “distinction between words and deeds” (65) yet it is clearly not considered a virtue. There may be conflicting versions of the story of Beowulf’s swimming contest with Breca, but the reader is not likely to doubt that Beowulf’s version is, as he says, “the true story” (81). People may lie, but heroes do not.

While the words of Beowulf are as weighty and unyielding from the truth as stone, words in Tristan are used cleverly, like an embroidered hanky draped artfully over the damaging truth, diverting Mark’s flighty attention with its bright colors and butterfly-like movements. There seems to be no question that Beroul regards Tristan as a hero, yet he sees no need to apologize for or even explain the blatant deceptions in which Tristan and Yseut engage. On the contrary, he seems to imply that their behavior is virtuous, even divinely sanctioned. “God let me speak first,” Yseut tells Brangain in recounting her successful attempt to mislead Mark about her relationship with Tristan and Brangain does not hesitate to agree that “God has really worked a miracle for you” in giving Yseut such a great opportunity to lie, adding that God is “a true father, and he will not harm those who are loyal and good.” (54-55).

It would seem that Beroul and Beowulf define the terms “loyal and good” very differently. Beowulf is judged as being “loyal and good” in relation to his lord and his men, while Tristan and Yseut are judged as being “loyal and good” in relation to one another. Even so, I feel that there is some question about whether Tristan was as “loyal and good” to Yseut as he might have been. Tristan ultimately seems to be less a story of service to a lady than a story of the conflict between service to a lady and a lord. I am tempted to think that Tristan’s doom was more the result of genetic tendencies from his mother than the magic potion from Yseut’s mother. Like Mark, his mother’s brother, he wobbles back and forth, unable to fully break off his loyalty to Mark.

If Mark is to be found at fault for lightly handing over Yseut to the harper and the leper, then how can we excuse Tristan for repeatedly handing her back over to Mark? Tristan may love Yseut, but something still binds him to Mark, and since the mortar used by Beowulf has been ruled out, I suspect it may be the fact that he and Mark are cut from the same cloth.

Works Cited:

Beroul. The Romance of Tristan. Trans. Alan S. Fedrick. London: Penguin, 1970.

Chickering, Howell D., Jr., trans. Beowulf : a Dual-language Edition. New York: Anchor, 1977.

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The Verse Insult

By Rebecca Forste

Dr. Johnson: [to the Prince Regent]  I see you underlined a few (words). [reads] ‘Bloomers, bottom, burp, fart, fiddle, fornicate!’ Sir, I hope you are not using the first English Dictionary to look up Rude Words!

Mr Blackadder: I wouldn’t be too hopeful. That’s what all the other ones will be used for.

from the “Ink and Incapability” episode of the television series Black Adder the Third.
In this essay, I will argue that Jonathan Swift’s “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed; Written for the Honour of the Fair Sex,” (British Literature 1640-1789, 652-4) and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s “The Reasons That Induced Dr. S[wift] to Write a Poem called ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’”(779-81) are both examples of verse insults.I will further contend that the verse insult is a characteristic feature of Eighteenth Century British literature. In addition, I will discuss some of the attributes of the verse insult.I use the term “verse insult” to contrast this form with the earlier verse compliment, the same convention that William Shakespeare plays on in the sonnet which begins“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun….” (Sonnet 130, The Complete Oxford Shakespeare, p. 392.) However, where Shakespeare gives the verse compliment a gentle tweak, writers of the Eighteenth Century, like Swift and Montagu, give it a violent wrench and turn it completely around.
The verse insult usually involves a personal attack. It may be directed at one or (usually) several specific individuals, as in the case of Montagu’s verse, which attacks both Swift and Alexander Pope. It may also be directed at a general group, as in the case of Swift’s verse, which attacks the entire “Fair Sex” in the person of “Corinna.”However, it is more usual that these two functions, both the general and the specific attack, are combined, maximizing the offense.This is, in fact, true of both the verses cited above. While Montagu refers specifically to the flaws and failings of both Swift and Pope, she also has several hard words to throw infor “wretched Humankind.” Similarly, while Swift’s Corinna is unreal, his verse is phrased as though she was real, and, thus, his attack is launched on a specific, if imaginary, person.
Where the verse compliment usually focuses on the beauty of a particular woman’s physical features, Swift’s verse insult reverses this and describes, not the beauty, but the hideousness of the physical features of his “lovely Goddess.”Montagu, realizing that men are valued more for their “wit” than their physical appearance, directs her criticism of Swift and Pope at their “Heads” rather than at their bodies. Montagu also accuses Swift of impotency. That this strikes me as yet another attack on his “head” is probably an indication that I have immersed myself too deeply in the literature of the Eighteenth century.
Another quality perceptible in the verse insult is the use of comparatively informal, even vulgar, diction. A particularly noteworthy example of this can be seen when we contrast a line from Shakespeare’s sonnet referred to above with a line from each of the two verses with which this essay deals:
Shakespeare: “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;” (COS, p 392.)
Swift: “Her flabby Dugs, and down they drop.” (l. 22, BL, p 653)
Montagu: “Peeps in her Bubbies, and her Eyes,” (l. 64, p 781)
Where Shakespeare uses the standard word “breasts” to refer to the human mammary glands, Montagu and Swift choose words of a very different connotation.Swift, as is his wont, obliterates the distinction between human and animal with the choice of one his all-time favorite words, “dugs,” a word which appears repeatedly in the work known as Gulliver’s Travels. This appellation is more closely akin to the words “udder” and “teat” than to either “breast” or, as Montagu writes, “bubbies.” It, and the context in which it is placed, inspire nothing so much as disgust and revulsion. The “dun breast” of Shakespeare’s mistress seems absolutely alluring in comparison.
On the other hand, Montagu, who writes with a motive opposite to Swift, uses a term more likely to evoke a giggle than a retch.“Bubbies” suggests a humorous and affectionate, if irreverent, stance toward the mammary glands. My old American Heritage Dictionary labels this a slang word, but declares that it was “formerly in standard use” citing a quote from Dryden (“And rudely with your pretty bubbies play” ) apparently in support of this claim.I was unable to find the source of this quote, but did find that in the poem Pygmalion and the Statue (386-9) Dryden uses the term “breast” four times and “bosom” once, but never mentions bubbies.Therefore, it seems likely that “bubbies” was less standard than “breasts” even in the Eighteenth century.We can also deduce this from the context in which Montagu places it. Swift obviously appears more ridiculous in the act of  “peeping” at “bubbies” than he would if he were merely “gazing” at “breasts.”Moreover, Montagu makes it clear that the ridicule is intended to be at the expense of Swift, rather than the bubbies, by likening them in this line to another round body part that comes in pairs, the eyes.
Yet, “dugs” and “bubbies” are scarcely the coarsest terms to be discerned in these two verses. Both also employ incognito obscenities describing the excretion of human (or, characteristically, in the case of Swift,) animal waste: p—sed and shite.In Montagu’s verse insult, the incognito obscenity is reserved until the very last word, which accentuates its impact.Swift positions his incognito obscenity less strategically (in line 62), yet contrives to emphasize it through the use of alliteration, paving the way with a succession of three plosives and echoing it with three more in line 63:
“And Puss had on her plumpers p–sed;
“A Pigeon picked her Issue-peas;” (654)
There is no other notable instance of alliteration in this verse. The effect is like an arrow pointing to the incognito obscenity, as if Swift wanted to shout “Look! Look! I USED A NAUGHTY WORD!”
That the contrivance is conscious can be further seen in the unprecedented appearance of the pigeon, chosen more for the first letter of its name than for its known habits, which, as far as I have ever heard, do not include flying into the bedrooms of human beings and picking at the sores on their sleeping bodies. “Puss,” “Shock” and the “wicked Rat” are all believable inhabitants of Corinna’s “Bow’r,” and their presence surely would have deterred the intrusion of the pigeon, if Corinna herself had been insufficient to that purpose. That the pigeon is not a pet of Corinna’s can be inferred from the fact that it, unlike Shock and Puss, does not have a name. The implausibility of its presence in this verse serves as another pointer to the incognito obscenity which precedes it.
It is interesting that such raunchy language should come from two writers of exalted social position: Swift, a high-ranking clergyman, and Montagu, a female aristocrat. On the other hand, a writer of less secure social standing, such as John Gay, might be less free to offend. Gay’s verse on themes similar to those found in the two verse insults addressed here, “The Toilette; A Town Eclogue; Lydia,” is not a verse insult, as is evident from the fact that it attacks no one.Moreover, Gay’s diction is far more delicate than either Montagu’s or Swift’s. No words more offensive than “molest” or “coquette” are to be found in Gay’s verse.
The verse insult, then, along with its piquant vocabulary, appears to have been a luxury more often indulged in by the rich and well-connected, like Montagu, or social reformers, like Swift, than by struggling members of the middle class, like John Gay. Further evidence of this can be gleaned with a cursory glance at the work of aristocrat John Wilmot.
The verse insult is a reflection of the general contentiousness of the Eighteenth Century. It also reveals something of the nature of the aesthetic of the Eighteenth Century, which valued wit and cleverness over beauty and delicacy. Moreover, it is a reminder to us that writers of the Twentieth century do not possess the monopoly on naughty words.

The Rejected Poet, William Powell Frith

 
Works Cited:
DeMaria Jr, Robert, Ed.British Literature 1640-1789: An Anthology. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996.
Morris, William, Ed. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language; New College Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
Wells, Stanley, et al, Eds. The Complete Oxford Shakespeare; Volume I: Histories. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.