DISCOVEUY 



243 



At length, at the close of the year 1762, W'olcot was 

 sent to London to gain some experience of hospital 

 practice. His stay there coincides with the rapid issue 

 of the satires of Churchill. The resemblance between 

 the two satirists is superficial, but both were vigorous 

 and unscrupulous. Gilford, not Wolcot, was Churchill's 

 descendant. Churchill wrote serious satire ; Wolcot 

 was always the jester. 



Shortly after he arrived in town he stayed with a 

 Mr. Giddy, who thus refers to him in a letter to a friend 

 in Cornwall : 



" Mr. John Wolcot, who now lodges with me, has 

 very quick mental parts ; but the component parts of 

 his body are remarkably lazy and slow, except his 

 fingers, which, applied to the fiddle or flute, move very 

 nimbly. Entre-nous I am afraid he is too much 

 acquainted with Shaftsbury and Voltair's notions." 



He spent two years in London, and seems to ha\'e 

 paid a visit to France again. So much is known of 

 Wolcot's life that the gaps in our knowledge are very 

 tantalising. For one gets an uneasy suspicion that 

 there is much that has never been told. It is difficult 

 to say whether he was a rascal or merely a bohemian. 

 Many years later, when Miss Elizabeth Fry came to 

 London, Wolcot was asked to " take her about," as 

 the saying is. Yet he is represented as being an utter 

 scoundrel, so disreputable that no decent lady would 

 care to be in his society. Giffard's Epistle to Peter 

 Pindar is the most ferocious attack ever made by one 

 writer on another in the history of English verse. It 

 goes so far that one's sympathy cleaves to Peter. 

 Controversy at that time was waged in a style that 

 makes milk and water of our modern feuds. Byron 

 could not quarrel like Giffard : he used to forget 

 himself into writing poetry. A comparison of The 

 Vision of Judgment with An Epistle of Peter Pindar — 

 both productions engendered by personal dislike — will 

 reveal, as criticism never ran, the untraversable space 

 between mediocrity and genius. 



In 1764 Wolcot returned toFowey, and apparently 

 began to practise as a doctor. The first thing he did 

 was to write a passionate love letter to Miss Sukey 

 Nankivell — who refused him. Here he is describing 

 the opening of her reply : 



" Dear Miss Nankivell, 



I have just received yours which remains yet 

 unopened — now guess my sensations, all the blood up 

 in my face, my ears tingling, my heart drumming 

 against my ribs, and my spirits in an uproar ! What 

 a thin partition between me and despair, or supreme 

 felicity. Fortune has hitherto turned her back on me, 

 but let her now be kind and I will fairly forgive her all 

 her former injurious treatment — A confounded jilt ! 

 She has murdered me ! — To be plain I have opened 



your letter, am acquainted with its contents, and find 

 my hopes blasted. . . ." 



At this moment there came to Wolcot what ap- 

 peared to be the opportunity of his life. Sir William 

 Trelawney, with whom he had lately somehow become 

 acquainted, suddenly received the governorship of 

 Jamaica — a rich appointment. Wolcot, already sick 

 of doctoring people at Fowey, immediately approached 

 him, and asked to be taken out as physician to his 

 household. Trelawney, seeing in Wolcot a lively and 

 accomplished fellow of many parts, agreed to take him, 

 provided he was properly qualified as a physician. 

 Wolcot, who liad no scruples and much push, managed 

 to obtain immediately the degree of Doctor of Medicine 

 from Aberdeen University, after a formal examination 

 at Plj'mouth by a Dr. Huxam. On September 2 he 

 writes to his friend Mr. Giddy : 



" My friend Thomas has perhaps by this time been 

 informed of my intended peregrination to a place 

 characterised for being as hot as hell and as wicked as 

 the devil. . . . The intent of my western expedition 

 is undoubtedly to get money, for which beautiful acqui- 

 sition I left friends, sweethearts and old England ! . . ." 



At the end of the year he writes from London, where 

 he is going to be presented at Court. It is a very long 

 letter full of interest : 



" Dear Benjy, 



I am at length arrived in the great city, to 

 prepare for the new farce in which I am shortly to make 

 my appearance ; my wigs, my hats, my swords, my 

 canes, my laced cloathes, and last of all, — my chariot 

 are all bespoke ! " 



He goes on to say that he expects to place himself 

 " by the labour of a few years beyond the caprice of 

 a mob." Afterwards he describes himself drest in 

 white and gold, going in a sedan-chair to St. James's. 



There are several letters of his about this time, 

 written so vividly that they bring to us every detail 

 of how he spent many hours of that gay year, waiting 

 for his patron to set forth. At length he departs, 

 and the next letter is from Teneriffe — a letter full of 

 the beauties of Spanish ladies and the exceeding 

 nastiness and number of the fleas there, which he never 

 forgot, and to whom afterwards he wrote an ode. 

 That his verses did not exaggerate the pest, present 

 inhabitants of the town can testify. 



Trelawney and his suite and his physician arrived 

 at Jamaica in October 1768. At first all went well 

 with Wolcot. " My time," he wrote, " passes away 

 with the utmost cheerfulness." In fact he had nothing 

 to do. Trelawney, on the other hand, found himself 

 beset with difficulties. No one about him thought of 

 anything but the getting of good " jobs," and a weak 



