Warm Steele
J. H. PLUMB
Sir Richard Steele Calhoun Winton (John Hopkins Press 86s) Professor Winton's first volume of his life of Steele, Captain Steele, was rightly and widely acclaimed, and this second volume has the qualities that were expected—accurate and thorough scholarship, sound judgment, an easy and pellucid style. This book deserves more than a scholarly, public, for Steele possessed a rich personality, a compound of high creative ability, overwarm imagination, and little control—hence he was frequently involved in almost preposterous adventures and labyrinthine personal relationships— ripe material for a biographer.
Steele was a quaint compound of sense and rashness, a man, who wanted fame and money. He could make an excellent speech in the House of Commons; he could turn out a political pamphlet—cogent and readable—overnight. A moral essay in the style of his Spectator days still came easily to him. In a burst of frantic energy he could edit, if need be write, a weekly periodical. And The Conscious Lovers demonstrated that his capacity to turn out a lively and suc- cessful play was still undamaged. In his political dealings Steele was not without judgment. He veered, and veered wisely, towards Robert Walpole in the 1717-19 crisis of the Whig party. He avoided involvement in the South Sea Bubble. His whiggery was not assumed: and he remained very loyal to his principles. He was no Defoe who would write for anyone with a guinea to spare. So Steele ought to have been a great success. But he was not.
He was, as many writers are, hot-headed and extravagant. Money poured from him in a riot of fine living and expense. He entered rashly into commitments that he could not afford and speculated crassly in ventures such as the Fish Pool which absorbed money like a sponge, although, as Professor Winton shows, more by luck than judgment, Steele may even have made some money from this scheme for tankers to bring in live fish.
Steele was often prey to sharks, always a sucker for a glib tongue, and often ex- asperating because of his self-absorption; at times he was deceitful and sly, yet my heart warms to the man. His relationship %kith his wife displays a true love combined %%ith generosity of the heart. Lively, ebullient, compassionate and witty, Steele lives as a man, although his works now are scarcely read. What fame he has, he deserves: and he deserves, too. a biographer as admirable as Professor Winton.
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