Various Issues of the Tatler
Number 1: April 12, 1709: The paper and Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., it’s fictional narrator, are introduced. Bickerstaff states that his paper will be particularly useful to public and political men, and that its subject shall be whatever goes through his head. Bickerstaff also introduces an organizational scheme for the subjects of the essays in which essays on certain matters will be noted as having originated from particular coffee-houses (for instance, foreign and domestic news will be from St. James Coffeehouse, a noted hangout for Whig politicians).
Number 163: April 25, 1710 (Addison): Bickerstaff, arriving before the rest of his company at Will’s Coffee-House, is approached by one Ned Softly, who wishes to have Bickerstaff’s opinion on some verses that he has written. Softly is proudly ignorant of politics and current affairs, but he has read a translation of Horace three times over (which, he believes, gives him quite a substantial body of knowledge of the classics) and has a knack for writing easy, melodic lines (a la Waller). Bickerstaff does his best to compliment Softly’s absurd poem, which finds Phoebus, the god of poetry, wearing petticoats and obliquely (and likely unintentionally) compares Cupid to both a porcupine and a goose.
Number 169: May 9, 1710: This issue records Bickerstaff’s thoughts on rural life. He begins by voicing his astonishment that drinking is the new vice in the country; this amazes him because there is so much to appreciate in nature that he can’t imagine willingly destroying your faculties as one does through drinking. The latter half of the essay is devoted to a comparison of the booby squire with the country gentleman. The former is referred to as an incumbent of the land because he relates to it purely for his own amusement; the true gentleman, however, is a steward of the land and community around him, and is consequently much happier than his grosser counterpart.
Number 217: August 29, 1710: On quarrels between the sexes. Bickerstaff draws two character sketches, the female scold and the male bully. In regard to the scold, since women are (according to Bickerstaff) naturally locquacious (which is pleasant when they are voicing passions) when something angers them they harp on men about it incessantly, and as long as they are chaste or faithful to their husband (the one female virtue that society has priveleged above all others) they feel they have a right to nag their husbands all they wish. As for the bully, as long as he does not find himself guitly of cowardice he does not have to live by any other rule. Bickerstaff then paraphrases (in vernacular) the scene from Paradise Lost in which Adam and Eve have their first argument; Bickerstaff argues that this is merely the first in a long, long line of cases of men and women being disappointed with one another. Bickerstaff says that the only solution that he can propose to this dilemma is the one that Milton proposed: men and women should acknowledge that they are both weak, but that women are weaker and hence men should have authority.
Number 263: December 14, 1710: On keeping regular hours. Bickerstaff notes that formerly the time for going to bed was 8PM when it got dark and 6AM when the sun rose, but that the people around him tend to keep later and later hours, staying up well into the night and sleeping well into the day. Bickerstaff inquires among his friends whether or not humans are the only animals who change the hours that they keep (he finds that they are) and then regrets that people do not wake up earlier, as it is much easier to see the pleasures of nature if you wake up before the world is bustling. The issue ends with a long quotation from Paradise Lost in which Adam wakes up Eve and they enjoy Paradise together.
Number 271: January 2, 1710: The final issue of The Tatler. Steele writes this issue in his own voice, arguing that he chose to write in the character of Isaac Bickerstaff not because he wanted to conceal himself from charges of slander, but because Richard Steele (unlike his fictional creation) is falliable and, hence, is not on such sure footing when criticizing others. Steele also acknowledges at length Addison’s contributions to the Tatler and gives another reason he no longer enjoys writing the paper: since everyone knows he writes the paper, people take particular care to act properly around him so that they will not be criticized in the paper.
Admittedly this is a very small sample of Steele’s body of work on the Tatler (and I’ll certainly be reading and writing about more issues later), but I did notice a couple of themes that ran across a number of these selections. First of all, Bickerstaff’s appreciation of nature is not really something that I expected from the creation of as staunch a Whig as Steele. Perhaps I’m missing something, but Bickerstaff’s praise of the life of the country gentleman in No. 169 seems earnest and (dare I say it) almost Tory-ish. This contrast between the ideal pastoral life and the town also carries through Steele’s numerous quotations from Paradise Lost, a work that dramatizes that issue quite effectively.
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