Poeticizing the Pillory

Daniel Defoe pilloriedDaniel Defoe pilloried 

Poetry comes to our aid in all kinds of situations. Including when we’ve been condemned to the pillory.

That, at any rate, is one of the ways poetry was used by Daniel Defoe, subject of yesterday’s post.

Here’s what happened. Defoe was a Dissenter (or Puritan), which is to say, a fundamentalist Protestant at odds with the Church of England. Upset over a government crackdown during the reign of Queen Anne, he wrote a pamphlet called “The Shortest Way with Dissenters.” The shortest way, he said, was to kill them. Needless to say, it was a satire.

Only it wasn’t read that way by everyone. In fact, it was praised by certain Anglicans until they realized that Defoe was messing with them. Then they threw him in prison and also condemned him to three days of public humiliation in the stocks.

The stocks could be a severe penalty depending on what people chose to throw at you—which could be anything from rotten eggs to stones. Defoe, however, was able to use a poem to frame the experience differently.

Prior to serving his sentence, he wrote a poem called “Hymn to the Pillory.” In it, Defoe groups himself with other men of conscience who have spent time in the stocks. How, he asks this “great engine,” can you have held both honorable men such as Bastwick, Prynne, and Hunt and scoundrels such as Oates and Fuller? The implication, of course, is that he himself fits in with the first group:

Tell us, great engine, how to understand
Or reconcile the justice of the land;
How Bastwick, Prynne, Hunt, Hollingsby, and Pye,
Men of unspotted honesty,
Men that had learning, wit, and sense,
And more than most men have had since,
Could equal title to thee claim
With Oates and Fuller, men of later fame . . .

Defoe says that the pillory is no shame to “truth and honesty.” The reproaches rebound on those “who plac’d ‘em there.” Scandal cannot prevail:

But if Contempt is on thy Face entail`d,
Disgrace itself shall be asham`d;
Scandal shall blush that it has not prevail`d
To blast the man it has defam`d.

He then goes on to list the kinds of people who should be there instead: incompetent statesmen, corrupt judges, and (here is something we can really relate to), speculators and inside traders:

Then clap thy wooden wings for joy,
And greet the men of great employ;
The authors of the nation’s discontent,
And scandal of a Christian government.
Jobbers and brokers of the City stocks,
With forty thousand tallies at their backs,
Who make our banks and companies obey,
Or sink them all the shortest way.
The intrinsic value of our stocks
Is stated in our calculating books.
The imaginary prizes rise and fall
As they command who toss the ball;
Let them upon thy lofty turrets stand,
With bear-skins on the back, debentures in the hand,
And write in capital upon the post,
That here they should remain
Till this enigma they explain,
How stocks should fall when sails surmount the coast,
And rise again when ships are lost.

Do you find it a pleasing fantasy to imagine Bernie Maddoff  or Kenneth Lay (of Enron) standing in a pillory?  Or (since Defoe is referring to those who get away with such shenanigans), how about those politicians or economists who deregulated us into last fall’s meltdown–say, Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve?

For years it was believed that the poem turned the occasion into a celebration, that garlands were hung around Defoe’s neck and supporters gathered to protect him. Historians now are not so sure. But one could well imagine the poem being read aloud while Defoe was standing there, or being circulated amongst the bystanders. The defiance that the poem represented would have given supporters extra courage to turn out.

The poem also appears to have helped salvage Defoe’s reputation. Although for years afterwards detractors (including Tory writers Swift and Pope) threw the punishment in Defoe’s face, he was able to move beyond it.

Last but not least, “Hymn to the Pillory” may have helped him bear up under the ordeal. Perhaps writing the poem helped him sort through his fears and jumbled emotions. By fitting the experience into rhyme and meter, he brought order to it, and through mock praise (“Hail, hieroglyphic state machine”) he diminished its terrors. Then, when he stood on the scaffold, he could be buoyed up by his images. Poetry put him in touch with a higher self.

The incident would prove to be pivotal. His self-confidence seems to have gone up, although some of that was because the ministry, realizing that he would be of better use working for them, released him from prison and hired him. One can’t say that a single poem did the trick but at the very least it let people know that Defoe was resilient and wouldn’t go away quietly.

The rest is history. Defoe would go on to found and run a spy service, first for the Tories and then, when power shifted, for the Whigs. He would also become the father of modern journalism and, through Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, the father of the British novel.

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