Darwin's Bulldog Bites Soapy Sam: The Oxford "Debate" over Evolution, 1860

In June 1860, seven months after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, scientists gathered at the Oxford University Museum. The occasion was the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Darwin himself was not in attendance, due to illness. (Image: Oxford Museum of Natural History, as it is today)

The meeting lasted a week but the main event took place on Saturday June 30. It was preceded by a long, tedious presentation by Professor John W. Draper of New York University. His subject was the intellectual development of Europe considered in relation to Darwin's theory. 

The discussion that followed is often called the Huxley-Wilberforce Debate after two the key participants, biologist and comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, the Anglican Bishop of Oxford. 

Their clash has gone down in history as a dramatic moment when evolutionary science, represented by Huxley, self-styled "Darwin's Bulldog" delivered a knockout blow against religion, championed by the Bishop, nicknamed "Soapy Sam." 

How Wilberforce got his nickname is a matter of debate, but he is supposed to have explained it good-humoredly, saying that although often in hot water, he always came out with clean hands. 

The caricatures below are of Wilberforce and Huxley, by "Ape" from Vanity Fair, 1869 and 1871. The artist, Carlo Pellegrini, often signed his work "Ape." It was not a reference to anthropoids, fitting as that might be. It was Italian for "Bee." Pellegrini could sting as well as amuse.

The reality of the Great Debate is more complicated than the legend. No official record exists of the discussion. Those who attended left conflicting recollections of what was said. The main lines are clear enough, however.

Wilberforce and Huxley were not the only participants in the discussion. Both of them were supported by prominent scientists and clergymen, which renders a strict "Science v. Religion" interpretation problematic. Both, however, came to the meeting with the intent of defending their respective positions on "Darwinism."

Huxley's most notable ally at Oxford was the renowned botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. Darwin's closest friend, Hooker was the Assistant Director of Kew Botanical Gardens. He later became its Director.

Several prominent scientists supported Wilberforce. Among them was Robert Fitzroy, who had commanded the expedition during which Darwin had conceived the outlines of natural selection. After The Origin appeared, Fitzroy is supposed to have declared that he wished he had never taken Darwin along on the Voyage of the Beagle. (Image: Robert Fitzroy)

Fitzroy was a first-rate meteorologist who devoted much of his life developing an effective system for warning ships of approaching stormy weather. He was also a devout Christian literalist. His main contribution to the Oxford Debate seems to have been raising a large Bible over his head and beseeching the audience to believe in God rather than man -- the man in this case being Darwin. 

(Image: HMS Beagle in Tierra del Fuego) 

Another of Bishop Wilberforce's supporters was Richard Owen, professor of biology. An accomplished comparative anatomist and paleontologist, Owen is perhaps best known for coining the word "dinosaur. " His greatest achievement was campaigning for and overseeing the establishment of the vast and wonderful Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London (below).

Owen had written a highly critical review of Darwin's Origin after its publication. He had also helped Wilberforce to write a longer review of his own. Owen encouraged Wilberforce to speak at the Oxford meeting and coached him on the main points of attack. 

Owen did not deny the idea of evolution itself, and some of his views have influenced modern evolutionary theory. But he claimed that Darwin had oversimplified the developmental process, that humans were a unique species, and that all life developed according to designed (divine) laws. (Image: Richard Owen)

Darwin ascribed Owen's hostility to the Origin to jealousy of the attention it brought to Darwin. Owen had also attacked Huxley and Hooker as Darwin's "short-sighted disciples." In particular, Owen had ridiculed Huxley for suggesting that humans were descended from an ape-like creature. 

At the 1860 debate, Bishop Wilberforce used scientific arguments, largely supplied by Owen, to counter Darwin's position. But what made the encounter famous (eventually) was Wilberforce's question, directed at Huxley, which went something like this: 

"Is it through your grandfather or your grandmother that you claim descent from a monkey?" 

Many years later Huxley wrote that hearing that, he turned to the man sitting next to him, Dr. Benjamin Brodie, and said, "The Lord hath delivered him (Wilberforce) into my hands" 

Huxley had not sought this encounter. He had intended to skip the session and head for home. Wilberforce was a famous and accomplished orator. Huxley, not yet the great public speaker he later became, did not relish butting heads with the Bishop. He was persuaded to stay and "defend the cause" by Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist. 

Chambers had published a book advocating evolution in 1844. The Vestiges of Creation was a bestseller that aroused a huge furor. Huxley, then an evolutionary skeptic, had written a hostile review of the Vestiges, but the two men were now on the same side. Chambers believed that Huxley's knowledge of comparative anatomy could carry the day.

Huxley countered Wilberforce by defending the main points of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Then he finished with the famous declaration that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor. What he would be ashamed of was to be descended from a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. 

According to later accounts, this put-down of Wilberforce left the audience in an uproar. One woman is reported to have fainted at seeing a bishop treated so disrespectfully. Or, maybe her corset was too tight.

History generally credits Huxley as the winner of the Great Debate. At the time, that was not so clear. Many contemporaries thought Wilberforce had the best of it. Never a shrinking violet, he was sure he had. 

Hooker claimed that Huxley did not adequately defend the arguments of the Origin and added the audience couldn't hear much of what he said anyway. Hooker, who spoke after Huxley, claimed that it was he and not Huxley who done the best job of countering Wilberforce's attacks. Scientists are human, after all.  (Image: Joseph Hooker)

The debate at Oxford did not receive a huge amount of attention at the time. It became legendary as a pivotal moment in the history of science only decades later. The monument memorializing the debate (below) was erected 150 years later outside the Oxford Museum.

Owen feuded with Huxley and Hooker for many years. Their disagreements became more than intellectual. Darwin, once friendly with Owen, wrote in 1871: "I used to be ashamed of hating him (Owen) so much, but now I will carefully cherish my hatred and contempt to the last days of my life."

Interestingly, Huxley and Darwin remained on good terms with Wilberforce after the debate. Darwin had gone to Cambridge with the aim of entering the church as an Anglican minister. Even after he returned from the voyage aboard the Beagle, he seems to have retained that aim for a time. 

In 1839, Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, himself an accomplished naturalist, was visiting England. He met Darwin and asked him what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Darwin replied, he intended to become a bishop. 

If Darwin was serious then he soon abandoned that intention. In his autobiography he explained that he no longer believed in God. His family removed those passages from later editions.  

The Oxford Debate may not have been the clear seismic event some later accounts claimed. But it remains an important and fascinating moment in the history of science. 

  

 

 

"The Tay Bridge Disaster": Magnum Opus of "History's Worst Poet"

On a stormy night in December 1879 one of the worst railway accidents in British history occurred. It resulted from the collapse of a bridge over the River Tay at Dundee, Scotland. A passenger train crossing the bridge at the time plunged into the river. 

The estimated death toll was 75, with 60 known dead. History calls it the Tay Bridge Disaster. A government inquiry determined the cause as faulty construction that left the structure vulnerable to high winds. (Image: photo of the Tay Bridge showing collapsed section.)

The Tay Bridge Disaster is remembered today more than most Victorian railway accidents because it is alleged to have led to another disaster: a poem of the same name by William McGonagall. This hard-rhyming Scots author has been labelled the worst poet in history. I don't know who called him that, but the claim is repeated in every reference to William, pictured below.

That judgment, I humbly maintain, is based on a narrow Anglo-centric analysis. The world in all its festering billions has surely produced worse poets than Willy McG. I would ask those who repeat that slur on the Poet, "Have you read his poetry?" But judge for yourself, Dear Reader. Here are the opening lines:

"Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay

Alas I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away"

OK, a bit of poetic license here, I admit. The Poet got the number of dead wrong. Dead wrong as it were. But one has to admit his lines do rhyme. How many modern poets accomplish that? 

Moreover, he analyzes, forthrightly, the weaknesses of the bridge. He summarizes hundreds of pages of public reports in concise, vigorous -- one might even venture -- pithy language. And he adds a note of caution to us all. He tells the world 

"fearlessly without the least dismay, 

That your central girders would not have given way,

At least many sensible men do say,

Had they been supported on each side with buttresses

At least many sensible men confesses,

For the stronger we our houses build,

The less chance we have of being killed."

What solid advice in those last two lines! 

In order to flesh out my defense of this unfairly maligned Bard, it is incumbent upon me to note that McGullagal wrote two other poems about Tay Bridges. He wrote the first after the bridge that later collapsed was opened in 1878. He gave it the apt title "The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay." 

Here he anticipates a great song of the future -- "By the Light of the Silvery Moon". It is also worth noting how he charms us by altering "silvery" with "silv'ry."

The Poet praises the first bridge as the "Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay" as the best of all bridges, a bridge "unequalled to be seen." Yet, ominously, he seems to have had an ominous feeling about it.

"I hope that God will protect all passengers

By night and by day,

And that no accident will befall them while crossing

The Bridge of the Silvery Tay"

WE can imagine the Poet had already found here the theme of his second poem about the Tay Bridge, the one about the bridge's collapse. Perhaps he had already begun to write it, to be ready just in case. We wonder how his poetical career might have been altered had the first bridge stood erect and firm.

McGagitall wrote the third of his bridge trilogy about the second Tay railway bridge, built to replace the collapsed one. It is entitled, with Willy's typical genius, "An Address to the New Tay Bridge." This poem is brimming with self-confidence. We find The Poet at his cheeriest, predicting a long-lasting and satisfactory erection. 

"With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array, 

And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye 

Strong enough all stormy winds to defy 

The Poet excels himself here with his uncanny prescience. The second bridge remains firmly erected in the Year of Our Lord 2021. It carries trains across the Tay right up to this very day. 

WE would be remiss if we did not call attention here to the sheer economy of McGoonagall's poetry. Compare the opening lines of his three Tay Bridge poems:

Poem 1: "Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!"

Poem 2: "Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay"

Poem 3: "BEAUTIFUL railway bridge of the Silvery Tay"

Note the subtle changes he makes in each opening line to convey the mood of the poem's situation. 

The first is triumphant, befitting the rise of an erection that will inject new life into the town of Dundee.

The second is more subdued. This is a sensitive opening, attuned to the tragic subject matter. He omits the enthusiastic exclamation mark and removes the caps from "railway" and "bridge". The Poet effectively dismisses the fallen erection as simply not up to the job. Which is of course true, since large bits of it are in rather than on the Tay.  A subtle distinction perhaps, but crucial in practical terms.

The third opening line marks a revival of the enthusiastic optimism of the first. but in a more muted, cautious way. The bridge is no longer "beautiful." It is "BEAUTIFUL." The word "new" is cleverly added, alerting the reader to the undisputed fact that this poem is not about an old bridge that couldn't. 

The way the Poet transmutes these opening lines is awe-inspiring, even jaw-dropping. I could say much more about this unfairly maligned Bard. But here I will put down my pen in envy of his poetic art. They don't make poets like McGonadgall anymore. We shall never see his like again.

C. 2021 by Sacha Dufuss, PhD, Linguinistics, Oxtonguebridge

PS. It remains incumbent upon me to add that although McGullabal was born in Scotland, he was of Irish ancestry. This may explain his unique lyrical skills.

Pandemics may be Inevitable: Ignorance is Not

"Migration of man and his maladies is the chief cause of epidemics." Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, 2003

(Image: Romanticized depiction of the arrival of Columbus in the New World)

Alfred Crosby's words were written in connection with the European discovery of the New World. In the wake of the discovery, Europeans began to migrate to the Americas, first a trickle, then a flood, then a tsunami. The same is true for Africans, although they did not come by choice. 

Both Europeans and Africans unknowingly brought their microbes along, unleashing an explosion of diseases in the New World. All suffered, but the indigenous inhabitants suffered most -- indeed catastrophically. It was like being attacked by several deadly pandemics at once. War and enslavement worsened things.

Native Americans were extremely vulnerable to Old World diseases. Having been isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years, they had no experience with or immunity to a host of Old World infections. 

Smallpox, measles, influenza, pneumonia, and many other diseases killed Native Americans in huge numbers. The microbial invasion wiped out, or nearly wiped out, many Native American cultures. It was perhaps the worst demographic disaster in world history. 

The Europeans and Africans, in contrast, grew in numbers. Unlike Native Americans, they had experience and some levels of immunity to the diseases they carried from their own regions, many of which had been around for centuries or even millennia. They suffered, too, just not as much. The only major disease that the New World gave to the Old is, possibly, syphilis. The disease exchange was heavily one-sided.

Africans were vulnerable to some European diseases, especially respiratory disorders such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. Europeans were vulnerable to some African diseases, especially tropical fevers such as falciparum malaria and yellow fever. Bad as these could be, they did not prevent population growth among the new arrivals.

As Western peoples moved around the globe during the orgy of imperialism in the 19th century, the same epidemiological patterns were repeated. Remote island peoples, for example in the South Pacific, faced an onslaught of western diseases. Westerners in some regions faced disease tsunamis of their own when they moved into Sub-Sharan Africa and parts of South Asia. 

There are many other examples of disease that spread through human migration. In the 14th century, the Second Plague Pandemic  (Black Death) migrated along trade routes such as the Silk Road and pilgrimages routes. Swift Mongol horsemen also played a role in spreading plague as they conquered much of Eurasia.  

The Cholera Pandemics of the 19th century followed a similar pattern. Originating in British India, cholera crept along trade routes and reached Western Europe and the Americas by the early 1830s, sparking panic. 

The Third Plague Pandemic, which began in China in the late 19th century, spread around the world aided by steamships and railroads. It reached San Francisco and Sydney, Australia by 1900. It was especially deadly in India, killing about ten million. (Image: Plague in Sydney, Australia, 1900: rat killing)

The mass movement of millions of soldiers in World War I famously spread the Great Influenza of 1918-20. American troops aboard crowded ships brought the influenza to Europe, where it mutated. Then they brought the more virulent mutation back to the Americas. (Image: Pandemic Incubator: US troopship returning from Europe, 1918)

That is history, ancient history for many of us. Today the world is battling against another virulent disease that has spread in part through the temporary migration we call tourism. Commercial airliners can spread microbes around the globe faster rate than even steamships and railways. 

Unprecedented numbers of people are constantly on the move, fleeing from violence, oppression, and poverty. Human migration into hitherto sparsely populated regions like rain forests and increased contact with wild animals have helped to create new deadly viruses like Ebola, SARS and now Covid-19. Unlike the first two, coronavirus is highly contagious and becoming ever more so as new strains like Delta and Omicron evolve. 

One of the main means of controlling Covid, or at least slowing its spread, is to restrict human migration, a difficult and sometimes inhumane thing to do. Countries can close their borders to prevent both in migration and out migration. Many have, but often too late. 

The perceived economic cost led most countries to avoid such restrictions for too long. Governments have mastered the art of closing the barn door after the horses have left. Economies are crashing anyway. 

"No one could have predicted this" is a common but largely false claim. Epidemiologists and public health experts have been predicting something like this for decades. WHO has been warning for decades that "disease X" will come from nowhere and we must be prepared for it. Even the film industry warned us, if often in an overly sensationalized form. Contagion (2011) was the best of these.

Those who made the predictions had science on their side, and history as well. But who pays attention to science and history nowadays?

The present combination of overpopulation, mass migration, tourism, and destruction of natural habitats makes the coming of more more "disease X's" and pandemics almost inevitable. The changes necessary to reduce their likelihood may be beyond the capabilities of the global systems we  have created, with their emphasis on maximizing GDP at all cost to the planet. 

Pandemics may be inevitable. Humans have the ability to minimize their damage if we learn the lessons that history and science can teach us. Ignorance is not inevitable, but overcoming it is a huge task. It will be especially difficult as long as sections of the media, especially social media, give free reign to the spread of false information and bizarre conspiracy theories.

 

Mission Impossible: Reverend Francis LeJau in South Carolina

"There is one thing wherein I find the people here generally like those in the West Indies, they are so well persuaded that what they do is well, as to be very angry when their mistakes are shown to them and they will find cunning arguments to oppose truth itself." Francis Le Jau, 1709

Francis Le Jau was a French Huguenot who fled to England c. 1685 to escape religious persecution under Louis XIV. After his arrival, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, earning a doctorate. He then became an Anglican minister. 

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), founded in 1701, sent him to St. Christopher in the West Indies and then to South Carolina as a missionary. (Image: portrait of Le Jau, by Henrietta Johnston)

Le Jau arrived in Charleston (then Charles Town) in 1706. He was 41 years old and in good health. The colony, slightly younger, was not. The colonists had just driven off a combined French and Spanish attack, and were expecting another soon. Anglicans and Protestant Dissenters were feuding with one another over an act making the Church of England the established religion in the Carolina colony, which then included what is now North Carolina. [Image: A View of Charleston in 1773]. 

In addition, Charleston was suffering from a deadly epidemic of yellow fever. Samuel Thomas, the first and thus far only SPG missionary to have come to the colony, was among the hundreds of dead. Local officials whisked Le Jau away to his rural parish, St. James, Goose Creek, to escape the pestilence. 

Despite this grim beginning, Le Jau was optimistic. People had told them new arrivals commonly experienced a bout of sickness during the warm season of their first year of residence. They called it the "seasoning," as if one was being preserved like a piece of meat. 

"When I am seasoned to the country, I hope I'll do well," he wrote his SPG superiors in London. In the winter months, he proclaimed, the climate was the finest he had ever experienced, pleasant and productive. The people were prosperous and generous.

With the advance of summer, the tone of his reports to London began to alter. He suffered his first bout of fever, probably malaria. His family arrived that summer and all became sick. 

At first, he blamed the seasoning, and anticipated a speedy recovery of health. Instead, he remained seriously ill for more than a year with fevers and fluxes (dysentery or severe diarrhea). For months he was unable to perform his clerical duties.

Notes of disillusionment crept into his letters. His disappointment extended to his neighbors. They were not the good Christian folk he had at first thought, but consumed by greed. They would "do any thing for money." They treated their  enslaved Africans and "Indians" (many of whom they had also enslaved) barbarously. The colonists fomented conflicts among the various tribes and then bought war captives as slaves. 

The mistreatment of the Native Americans led to the Yamasee War in 1715, during which an alliance of several tribes nearly destroyed the young colony. They attacked Le Jau's Goose Creek parish, and he and many of his neighbors fled to safety in Charleston.

Le Jau's animosity towards his neighbors deepened when his white neighbors failed to help him in his time of need. Few had honored pledges to supplement his meager income, or to finish building him a house and a church. After six years it was still unfinished. [Image: St. James, Goose Creek]

"They deceived me more than I can dare say," he wrote to the SPG, and he urged them to inform other missionaries coming to Carolina to be warned that they "must be prepared to suffer great hardships and crosses."

For ten years, Le Jau was plagued by fevers, fluxes, and other diseases. In August 1716, he was attacked with a fever and digestive disorder that confined him to bed for months. In March 1717, he reported that he expected to die soon. His body was "worn out with labour in this sickly and desolate country." He died a few months later in the Carolina Lowcountry's cruelest month, September. 

Le Jau did not understand all of the connections between South Carolina's economic system and its deadly disease environment, particularly that between disease, enslavement of Africans, and rice production. 

Yet he sensed the root of the problem: "This would be a pleasant place if men were but willing to make themselves easy and improve the fruitful soil where anything grows without much trouble ... but they all aim at riches which are hard to be got and they neglect the peace of their conscience and life."

Sources: 

Frank J. Klingberg, ed., The Carolina Chronicle of Francis Le Jau (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956)

Papers of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London (Microfilm copies available in many academic libraries; a treasure for historians of colonial America)

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pbk, 2014)

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks! 

Tourists Visit Washington, 1814 and 2021

In 1814, thousands of jolly British tourists descended upon the new American capitol in Washington, DC. Having just dispatched Napoleon Bonaparte to Elba after two decades of war, the British decided to celebrate and reward their soldiers and sailors by sending them on holiday to see the White House and the Capitol building. They were well armed but well intentioned, eager to do the new nation a well-deserved service. 

They ransacked, looted, and burned the White House, and other buildings. "It was a great tour," one said. "I haven't had so much fun in years!" The sentiment was echoed by numerous others on the trip. Needless to say, they took away many souvenirs of their visit. [Image: British tourists enjoying their trip.]

On January 6, 2021, American Trumpistas sought to repeat the British feat. The idea came from the fertile head of Donald J. (Jenius) Trump, who had recently been unelected as POTUS. He was thoroughly bummed to learn that the British had toured the capital with so much gusto, but not Americans. 

The Trumpistas took the cue. And how! They beat up police. They broke windows. They smashed down doors. They chased the legislators and staff who fled in terror. In other words, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. All in the name of patriotism.

Democrat sourpusses poured piss on the Trumpista celebration, as they do, by fussing about the damage to lives and property. When will the US capital learn to welcome tourists with proper charm and dignity? 

[Image: Trumpista Tourists finding new ways to enter the Capitol building.]

 

The Brexiteer's Guide to English Ancestry

Hey, Brexiteers! Mes amis! You don't have to have a DNA test to prove what a True Born Englishman you are! All you need to do is read a poem by Daniel Defoe, an Englishman of oops, Flemish descent.

"A Brexit victory's a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction." (Apologies and thanks to Daniel Defoe,1660-1731)

Brexit is real now, sort of. Devout Brexiteers proclaim, in near holy terms, that the UK has finally achieved "independence." By the "UK", however, they really mean England. 

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland must reconcile themselves to being dragged about by the whims of English nationalists. British companies are in the same boat. The immense costs of Brexit for those trading to Europe are becoming distressingly clear. 

Narrow English nationalists are the big winners for now. It remains to be seen what they have actually won. In fact, Brexit is a triumph of extreme nationalism, aided by ignorance and lies, over economic rationality. 

Much of the pro-Brexit vote in 2016 stemmed from xenophobia, a hatred of foreigners. In this case, "tyrannical" foreigners in Brussels. Of course, not all who voted for Brexit were motivated by by xenophobia. Yet the rhetoric of hard Brexiteers is often based on the assumption that people who are "Not English" are somehow "lesser breeds," not to be trusted and certainly not listened to.

England found itself in a similar situation more than 300 years ago. The thrones of Britain were occupied by a foreigner, the Dutch prince William of Orange. He and his wife Mary had become joint sovereigns in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution, in which he and the Dutch military had played the pivotal role. (Image: William III, of Orange)

 

Despite being hailed as the savior of English Protestantism, William III (II in Scotland) was never much liked in England or in Scotland. In Northern Ireland, of course, he is still idolized by people who remain imprisoned in a time warp, the eponymous "Orangemen." 

William became thoroughly unpopular in England after Mary died of smallpox in 1694. People not only disliked him but the Dutch soldiers, politicians, and merchants who followed him to London in particular. They were the target of numerous vitriolic pamphlets and poems. 

In 1701, Daniel Defoe took up his pen to defend the Dutch king and his countrymen. He did so in a long satirical poem that was highly successful in its time. "The True-Born Englishman" is not read much today. Perhaps it should be, at least some of it. 

Defoe was a prolific writer, mostly of political pamphlets at this time. Later he made his name as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and other novels. (Image: Defoe)

The target of Defoe's satire was not Englishness per se, but anti-Dutch xenophobia. To clear up any misunderstanding about that he added an explanatory preface two years later. In it he declared "that an Englishman, of all men, ought not to despise Foreigners as such ... since what they are today, we were yesterday, and tomorrow they will be like us." 

The English were themselves foreigners, invaders who eventually assimilated into one nation. The Dutch newcomers would assimilate as well, given the chance, Defoe implied. 

The English, far from being racially pure, were in reality a mongrel race. The "English" were a people forged from the union of Celtic Britons, Romans, Scots, Picts, "Anglo-Saxons," and Danes. Somewhat oddly, Defoe left out the Normans, here wearing the latest in 12th century fashion.

Defoe pulled no punches. The "union" he meant was sexual. Englishness originated "in eager rapes, and furious lust." The "rank daughters" of the land "Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust." The "nauseous brood" that resulted contained the "well extracted blood of Englishmen." 

In reality, the "True-Born Englishman" did not exist: "A true-born Englishman's a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction."

Defoe understood the biological and cultural reality of Englishness 300 years ago. Why do so many people today continue to champion a view so much at variance with history and biology? They should check the ancestry of their leader, True-Born Boris.

Further Reading: Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman (London, 1701 and later editions)

  

"A Vile Country": Dr Johnson on Scotland and Scots

The writer Samuel Johnson, AKA Dr. Johnson (1709-1785), is best known today for his celebrated Dictionary of the English Language. First published in London in 1755, it is often called "Johnson's Dictionary." The dictionary was warmly received and proved highly influential in shaping the modern English language. (Image: Johnson in 1775, by Sir Joshua Reynolds)

Some of Johnson's definitions were witty. His definition of lexicographer poked fun at himself: "a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the significance of words."

Other definitions conveyed his prejudices. An example is monsieur: "a term of reproach for a Frenchman." Johnson, in common with many English folk at the time, had no love for the French, with whom they were often at war. 

The English were almost as contemptuous of the people of Scotland, with whom they had been united in 1707 into a new country, Great Britain. The Union was an uneasy one for many years. 

Several rebellions arose in Scotland seeking to restore the exiled Catholic Stuarts to the throne of both kingdoms, occupied since 1714 by the German Hanoverians, Georges I and II.

The last and most dangerous of these "Jacobite" Risings began in 1745. An army made up mainly of Highlanders led by Prince Charles Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") defeated a Hanoverian army at Prestonpans. 

The Jacobites quickly seized Edinburgh, and marched into England. They came within striking distance of London at Derby before turning back and facing final bloody defeat at Culloden Moor in April 1746. It was the last battle fought on British soil. (Image: Battle of Culloden, by David Morier, 1746)

The Highland army's incursion into central England had terrified and outraged many English people, including Johnson, himself a sentimental Jacobite. 

The English viewed the Highland Scots with their plaids and Gaelic language as uncouth, dirty, and savage. The romantic Highlander of the novels of Sir Walter Scott would not appear until decades later. The cartoon below, "Sawney in the Boghouse," gives an indication of how contemporary Englishmen viewed the barbaric Highlander. 

Johnson shared these views. Perhaps it is not surprising that he used his dictionary to convey them. His definition of oats is classic: "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland is used to support the people."

Here, Johnson was parroting the conventional English view of the Scots as an impoverished and oppressed people, who might, if given their way, reduce the English to the same level. That view had some merit: Scotland was poorer than England, and its political system was more authoritarian at that time. 

Yet the idea that Scots could impose an authoritarian system on England was far fetched. Incidentally, many American colonists shared that view, which contributed to the drive for independence. 

The American cartoon below, from 1775, shows Scots Lord Bute and Lord Mansfield tyrannizing Americans. backed up by the Catholic Church (the monk) and the British army. 

It was a conspiracy theory worthy of QAnon. Bute had been out of politics for ten years by this point. Chief Justice Mansfield had no say over colonial policy, but he had declared slavery in England illegal in 1773, which made him a tyrant for American slaveholders. 

Johnson eventually softened his views on Scotland and its people, though he always enjoyed a dig at them. His circle of friends came to include some Scots he admired, including poet James Beattie. His best friend in his later years was Scots lawyer James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck. (Image: James Boswell, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1785)

In 1763, Boswell went to London, hoping to get a commission in a Guards regiment and enjoy the capital's culture (and women). He was quickly exposed to anti-Scottish sentiment. 

In his journal he recorded how he went to Covent Garden Theater one evening to see a comic opera. Just before the overture began, two Highland officers entered, the crowd began to chant, "No Scots! No Scots! Out with them!" 

Boswell was outraged. The officers had just returned from the successful siege of Havana. At that moment, he wrote, "I hated the English. I wished from my soul that the Union was broke and that we might give them another Battle of Bannockburn.... The rudeness of the English vulgar is terrible."

After this encounter, it may come as some surprise that Boswell sought out the acquaintance of two Englishmen men famed for their anti-Scottish prejudices: John Wilkes and Johnson. 

Except for their antipathy to Scots, the two can hardly have been more different. Wilkes was a libertine radical and a demagogue. Johnson was straight-laced, pious, and socially conservative.  

Wilkes was "very civil" to Boswell when they met. He even invited Boswell to call on him. Boswell's first meeting with Johnson was less auspicious: 

Johnson: I understand, Sir, that you are from Scotland.

Boswell: I am indeed, but I cannot help it.

Johnson: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help. 

This was how one of the most famous friendships in British history began. Johnson and Boswell became boon companions, eating, drinking, and conversing together. 

"Bozzy" would later write a biography of his friend, The Life of  Samuel Johnson (1791). Many critics consider it the greatest biography ever written in English.

The pair spent many an evening in animated conversation with other members of Johnson's circle. The "Club" as it is sometimes known, was the idea of Johnson's friend, painter Joshua Reynolds. (Image: A Meeting of the The Club. Johnson is second from left, Reynolds is third, with ear trumpet.)

 

Its members included some the greatest minds of the day including actor David Garrick, orator Edmund Burke, and writers Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Sheridan. Scientist Joseph Bank and historian Edward Gibbon also attended meetings from time to time. Another Scot, Adam Smith, was a later member. Johnson never liked him because he contributed little to the conversation. 

Boswell recorded many of the exchanges at these meetings. On occasion, Johnson's prejudices against Scotland rose to the surface. A famous such occasion was when the group was discussing "noble prospects" or beautiful views. Johnson quipped, "the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England."

Here, Johnson, joking or not, was reflecting a very real concern in England at the time. Many people complained that a plague of greedy, half-starved Scots was invading their country, snapping up plum jobs and rich heiresses. People often compared the Scots immigrants to a plague of locusts, as reflected in this cartoon of 1796, "A Flight of Scotchmen":

The poet Charles Churchill, a collaborator with Wilkes, wrote a pastoral in which he characterized Scotland as a land where half-starved spiders preyed on half-starved flies. 

The comparative poverty of Scotland was a subject Johnson often returned to in conversation. During a discussion on the danger of invasion in Scotland, he asked: "What enemy would invade Scotland, when there is nothing to be got?"

Warning an Irish friend against uniting in a union with England: "Do not make a union with us, Sir. We should unite with you only to rob you; we should have robbed the Scots if they had anything of which we could rob them."

Scotland, unlike England at the time, provided a basic primary education to most children in a system of parish schools. Johnson was not impressed: "Knowledge is divided up among Scots like bread in a besieged town, to every man a mouthful, to no man a bellyful." Learning in Scotland, he concluded, was widely diffused, "but thinly spread." 

Boswell, irked by Johnson's refusal to concede the existence of highly educated Scots, mentioned Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. Johnson denied that Scotland derived "any credit from Mansfield, for he was educated in England. Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young."

Asked by a Scot what he thought of Scotland, Johnson replied, "it is a very vile country, to be sure, Sir." Taken aback, the Scot retorted that God had made it. "Certainly, he did," Johnson agreed; "but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. S-------; and God made hell."

Arthur Lee of Virginia once remarked that he could not understand why some Scots had settled in a barren part of America. Johnson thought the answer obvious: "Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it be barren."

Having Boswell as a close friend gradually softened Johnson's views on Scots if not Scotland. In 1773, Bozzy convinced Johnson to make a trip to Scotland, including a tour of the Hebrides, or Western Isles. 

Johnson complained about some things, notably the weather, roads, and some of the inns and food. But he praised much as well, especially Scottish hospitality: 

"At the tables where a stranger is received, neither plenty nor delicacy is wanting.... he that shall complain of his fare in the Hebrides, has improved his delicacy more than his manhood.... If an epicure could remove by a wish, in quest of sensual gratifications, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland."

The Hebrides in particular impressed Johnson.. The pair visited Skye, Iona, Mull, and other islands. Johnson recorded feelings of awe on his visit to Iona, where Irish missionaries established the first Christian foothold in Scotland in the 6th century.

After returning to London, both men wrote accounts of their journey. Still in print and quite readable today, the books inspired many others to make similar trips. One could argue that they (and Walter Scott) helped lay the foundations of later Scottish tourism. 

Johnson later told Boswell that the trip "was the pleasantest part of his life..." High praise indeed for a man who wrote that "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." Perhaps Bozzy made a difference after all.

Further Reading:

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London, 1791)

____________, Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763 (New Haven, 1950)

____________, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson(1785)

Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755)

_____________, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (London, 1775)