110-) English Literature

110-) English Literature

Sir Richard Steele summary

Sir Richard Steele Summary

Sir Richard Steele, (born 1672, Dublin, Ire.—died Sept. 1, 1729, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire, Wales), English journalist, dramatist, essayist, and politician . He began his long friendship with Joseph Addison at school and attempted an army career before turning to writing. He launched and was the principal author (under the name Isaac Bickerstaff) of the essay periodical The Tatler (April 1709–January 1711), in which he created the mixture of entertainment and instruction in manners and morals that he and Addison would perfect in The Spectator. His attractive, often casual writing style was a perfect foil for Addison’s more measured, erudite prose. He made many later ventures into journalism, some politically partisan , and held several government posts. In 1714 he became governor of Drury Lane Theatre, where he produced The Conscious Lovers (1723), one of the century’s most popular plays and perhaps the best example of English sentimental comedy.

Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele (born 1672, Dublin, Ire.—died Sept. 1, 1729, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire, Wales) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, writer, playwright, journalist, and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator.magazine The Spectator.

Early life

Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1671 to Richard Steele, a wealthy attorney, and Elinor Symes (née Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year. He was the grandson of Sir William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and his first wife Elizabeth Godfrey. His father lived at Mountown House, Monkstown, County Dublin . His mother, of whose family background little is known, was described as a woman of "great beauty and noble spirit".

His father died when he was four, and his mother a year later. Steele was largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne (secretary to James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde), and Lady Katherine Mildmay. Steele’s father, an ailing and somewhat ineffectual attorney, died when the son was about five, and the boy was taken under the protection of his uncle Henry Gascoigne, confidential secretary to the Duke of Ormonde, to whose bounty, as Steele later wrote, he owed “a liberal education.” A member of the Protestant gentry, he was sent to study in England at Charterhouse in 1684 and to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1689,. At Charterhouse he met Joseph Addison, and thus began one of the most famous and fruitful of all literary friendships, which lasted until disagreements (mainly political) brought about a cooling and a final estrangement shortly before Addison’s death in 1719 . After starting at Christ Church, Oxford, he went on to Merton College, Oxford in 1691, then joined the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry in order to support King William's wars against France. Steele moved to Merton College but, caught up with the excitement of King William’s campaigns against the French, left in 1692 without taking a degree to join the army. He was commissioned in 1697 and promoted to captain in 1699, but, lacking the money and connections necessary for substantial advancement, he left the army in 1705.

He was commissioned in 1697, and rose to the rank of captain within two years. Steele left the army in 1705, perhaps due to the death of the 34th Foot's commanding officer, Lord Lucas, which limited his opportunities of promotion.

In 1706 Steele was appointed to a position in the household of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Anne, Queen of Great Britain. He also gained the favour of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.

Family

In 1705, Steele married a widow, Margaret Stretch, who died in the following year. After Margaret's death, a slave plantation she owned in Barbados came into the ownership of Steele.[10] At her funeral he met his second wife, Mary Scurlock, whom he nicknamed "Prue" and married in 1707. In the course of their courtship and marriage, he wrote over 400 letters to her. Mary died in 1718, at a time when she was considering separation. Their daughter, Elizabeth (Steele's only surviving legitimate child) , married John Trevor, 3rd Baron Trevor.

Steele had an illegitimate child, Elizabeth Ousley, whom he later adopted.

Early works .

Meanwhile, he had embarked on a second career, as a writer. Perhaps partly because he gravely wounded a fellow officer in a duel in 1700 (an incident that inspired a lifelong detestation of dueling), partly because of sincere feelings of disgust at the “irregularity” of army life and his own dissipated existence, he published in 1701 a moralistic tract, “The Christian Hero,” of which 10 editions were sold in his lifetime. This tract led to Steele’s being accused of hypocrisy and mocked for the contrast between his austere precepts and his genially convivial practice. For many of his contemporaries, however, its polite tone served as evidence of a significant cultural change from the Restoration (most notably, it advocated respectful behaviour toward women). The tract’s moralistic tenor would be echoed in Steele’s plays. In the same year (1701) Steele wrote his first comedy, The Funeral. Performed at Drury Lane “with more than expected success,” this play made his reputation and helped to bring him to the notice of King William and the Whig leaders. Late in 1703 he followed this with his only stage failure, The Lying Lover, which ran for only six nights, being, as Steele said, “damned for its piety.” Sententious and ill-constructed, with much moralizing, it is nevertheless of some historical importance as one of the first sentimental comedies.

A third play, The Tender Husband, with which Addison helped him (1705), had some success, but Steele continued to search for advancement and for money. In the next few years he secured various minor appointments, and in 1705, apparently actuated by mercenary motives, he married a widow, Margaret Stretch, who owned considerable property in Barbados. Almost immediately the estate was entangled in his debts (he lost two actions for debt, with damages, in 1706), but, when, late in 1706, Margaret conveniently died, she left her husband with a substantial income. Steele’s second marriage, contracted within a year of Margaret’s death, was to Mary Scurlock, who was completely adored by Steele, however much he might at times neglect her. His hundreds of letters and notes to her (she is often addressed as “Dear Prue”) provide a vivid revelation of his personality during the 11 years of their marriage. Having borne him four children (of whom only the eldest, Elizabeth, long survived Richard), she died, during pregnancy, in 1718.

In politics

Steele became a Whig Member of Parliament in 1713, for Stockbridge. He was soon expelled for issuing a pamphlet in favour of the Hanoverian succession. When George I of Great Britain came to the throne in the following year, Steele was knighted and given responsibility for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. He returned to parliament in 1715, for Boroughbridge.

While at Drury Lane, Steele wrote and directed the sentimental comedy The Conscious Lovers, which was an immediate hit. However, he fell out with Addison and with the administration over the Peerage Bill (1719), and in 1724 he retired to his second wife's homeland of Wales, where he spent the remainder of his life.

Steele was a member of the Kit-Kat Club. Both Steele and Addison became closely associated with Child's Coffee-house in St Paul's Churchyard.

Later life

Steele remained in Carmarthen after his wife Mary's death, and was buried there, at St Peter's Church. During the restoration of the church in 2000, his skull was discovered in a lead casket, having previously been accidentally disinterred during the 1870s.

Works

Steele's first published work, The Christian Hero (1701), attempted to point out the differences between perceived and actual masculinity. Written while Steele served in the army, it expressed his idea of a pamphlet of moral instruction. The Christian Hero was ultimately ridiculed for what some thought was hypocrisy because Steele did not necessarily follow his own preaching. He was criticized[by whom?] for publishing a booklet about morals when he himself enjoyed drinking, occasional duelling, and debauchery around town.

Steele wrote a comedy that same year titled The Funeral. This play met with wide success and was performed at Drury Lane, bringing him to the attention of the King and the Whig party. Next, Steele wrote The Lying Lover, one of the first sentimental comedies, but a failure on stage.

In 1705, Steele wrote The Tender Husband with contributions from Addison, and later that year wrote the prologue to The Mistake, by John Vanbrugh, also an important member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club with Addison and Steele. In 1709, he wrote Isaac Bickerstaff, Physician and Astrologer. He wrote a preface to Addison's 1716 comedy play The Drummer.

Mature life and works.

Steele’s most important appointment in the early part of Queen Anne’s reign was that of gazetteer—writer of The London Gazette, the official government journal. Although this reinforced his connection with the Whig leaders, it gave little scope for his artistic talents, and, on April 12, 1709, he secured his place in literary history by launching the thrice-weekly essay periodical The Tatler. Writing under the name (already made famous by the satirist Jonathan Swift) of Isaac Bickerstaff, Steele created the mixture of entertainment and instruction in manners and morals that was to be perfected in The Spectator. “The general purpose of the whole,” wrote Steele, “has been to recommend truth, innocence, honour, and virtue, as the chief ornaments of life”; and here, as in the later periodical, can be seen his strong ethical bent, his attachment to the simple virtues of friendship, frankness, and benevolence, his seriousness of approach tempered by the colloquial ease and lightness of his style. Addison contributed some 46 papers and collaborated in several others, but the great bulk of the 271 issues were by Steele himself, and, apart from bringing him fame, it brought a measure of prosperity. The exact cause of The Tatler’s demise is uncertain, but probably the reasons were mainly political: in 1710 power had shifted to the Tories and Steele, a Whig, had lost his gazetteership and had come near to losing his post of commissioner of stamps. The Tatler had contained a good deal of political innuendo, some of it aimed at Robert Harley, the Tory leader, himself, and Harley may well have put pressure on Steele to discontinue the paper.

The Tatler’s greater successor, first appearing on March 1, 1711, was avowedly nonpolitical and was enormously successful. The Spectator was a joint venture; Steele’s was probably the more original journalistic flair, and he evolved many of the most celebrated ideas and characters (such as Sir Roger de Coverley), although later Addison tended to develop them in his own way. Steele’s attractive, often casual style formed a perfect foil for Addison’s more measured, polished, and erudite writing. Of the 555 daily numbers, Steele contributed 251 (though about two-thirds made up from correspondents’ letters).

Of Steele’s many later ventures into periodical journalism, some, such as The Englishman, were mainly politically partisan. The Guardian (to which Addison contributed substantially) contains some of his most distinguished work, and The Lover comprises 40 of his most attractive essays. Other, short-lived, periodicals, such as The Reader, Town-Talk, and The Plebeian, contain matter of considerable political importance. Steele became, indeed, the chief journalist of the Whigs in opposition (1710–14), his writings being marked by an unusual degree of principle and integrity. His last extended literary work was The Theatre, a biweekly periodical.

Steele’s political writings had stirred up enough storms to make his career far from smooth. He resigned as commissioner of stamps in 1713 and was elected to Parliament, but, as a consequence of his anti-Tory pamphlets “The Importance of Dunkirk Consider’d” and “The Crisis” (advocating the Hanoverian succession), he was expelled from the House of Commons for “seditious writings.” Calmer weather, however, and rewards followed on George I’s accession: Steele was appointed to the congenial and fairly lucrative post of governor of Drury Lane Theatre in 1714, knighted in 1715, and reelected to Parliament in the same year.

Steele’s health was gradually undermined by his cheerful intemperance, and he was long plagued by gout. Nevertheless, he busied himself conscientiously with parliamentary duties and, more erratically, with his part in the management of Drury Lane. One of his main contributions to that theatre’s prosperity was his last and most successful comedy, The Conscious Lovers (1722)—one of the most popular plays of the century and perhaps the best example of English sentimental comedy.

In 1724 Steele retired to his late wife’s estate in Wales and began to settle his debts. His closing years were quiet, but his health continued to deteriorate.

Publications

The Tatler, Steele's first journal, first came out on 12 April 1709, and appeared three times a week: on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Steele wrote this periodical under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff and gave Bickerstaff an entire, fully developed personality.

Steele described his motive in writing The Tatler as "to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour". Steele founded the magazine, and although he and Addison collaborated, Steele wrote the majority of the essays; Steele wrote roughly 188 of the 271 total and Addison 42, with 36 representing the pair's collaborative works. While Addison contributed to The Tatler, it is widely regarded as Steele's work.

The Tatler was closed down in early 1711 to avoid the complications of running a Whig publication that had come under Tory attack. Addison and Steele then founded The Spectator in 1711 and also The Guardian in 1713.

In literature

Steele plays a minor role in the novel The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray. It is during his time with the Life Guards, where he is mostly referred to as Dick the Scholar and makes mention of his friend "Joe Addison". Thackeray depicts Steele in glowing terms as a warm, generous, talented mentor who befriends the title character in his youth and remains loyal to him for years despite their political differences.

Legacy

Both as man and writer Steele is one of the most attractive figures of his time, much of his writing—easy, rapid, slipshod, but deeply sincere—reflecting his personality. “There appears in his natural temper,” wrote his contemporary, the philosopher George Berkeley, “something very generous and a great benevolence to mankind.” An emotional, impetuous, good-natured, and idealistic man, he always found it easier to get money than to keep it, and his career can be seen as in part shaped by the constant need to keep his head above the waters of debt.

Selected Works

The Procession .

The Tender Husband; or, The Accomplished Fools.

Prologue to Vanbrugh's The Mistake (1706)

Prologue to Philips' The Distrest Mother (1712)

Prologue to Addison's The Drummer (1716)

The Conscious Lovers: A Comedy (1723)

The Englishman's thanks to the Duke of Marlborough (1712)

A Letter to Sir M .