Unlikely Bedfellows
Three Eighteenth Century Figures. By Bonamy Dobree. (O.U.P., 30s.)
BONAMY DOBREE'S Three Eighteenth Century Figures is a collection of three long essays which were first written in the late Twenties and early Thirties : on Sarah Churchill, first Duchess of Marlborough; on John Wesley, the evangelist; and on Giacomo Casanova, Knight of the Golden Spur. Each essay takes the form of a continuous (and very vigorous) biography inter- spersed with Professor bobree's good-humoured speculations as to motive and moral character. If these are seldom profound, they are seldom shallow and never dull; for the most part they are nicely compounded of mockery and charity, of a salutary scepticism and grateful regard.
On the face of it, Professor Dobree has chosen three unlikely bedfellows; but what emerges is less their differences than their fundamental simil- arity. Courage; passion; and—yes—absurdity : they all had these in common and in much the same proportion. Take Sarah Churchill. Her passion for her lord was magnificent; her courage consisted in blunt speaking on all occasions and an unconditional readiness to play her hunches; and with all this she was beautiful, progressively minded, and exceedingly shrewd (she was one of the few people to profit from the South Sea Bubble, having sold out, despite the protests of friends and agents, at the top of the market). Surely, you may say, there can be no absurdity here : the woman was a veritable Elizabeth. Well, yes; but Elizabeth herself was often absurd and so, for much the same reasons and much more often, was the Duchess of Marlborough : her passion for the Captain-General was near matched by her passion for money, her vanity and jealousy were inordinate, and, worst of all per- haps, she would not be wrong. Result: she was roundly bested by red-nosed Masham the bedder.
It was rather the same story with Wesley. His courage and endurance in the face of man's malignity or nature's; his passionate sense of vocation; his tender conscience, his concern with
social welfare, his great personal charm—all these do him honour. But like the Duchess, he would not be wrong; which being so, it was, to say the least, ironic that he should have had the over- sight to marry a shrew.
So that in a sense Casanova was the least absurd of the three. Matching both Sarah and Wesley in courage and resource (how Wesley would have relished the famous escape from the Leads), and having a voracious passion for every kind of human experience. Casanova was
also absurd, certainly, but not, like the other two, self-satisfied at the same time. For Casanova knew when he was being absurd and was only too ready to admit it afterwards, as he does so often and so engagingly in his memoirs. In the end, he retains our sympathy and his own dig- nity because he could laugh at himself; a happy knack for which no adequate substitute is to be found among all the talents of Sarah Churchill or all the virtues of John Wesley.
SIMON RAVEN
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