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n Samuel Wesley moved from London to Lincolnshire,nwhen he became the rector at Epsworth, and in May 1697, Elizabeth Dunton died,nand this almost spelled the end of the Athenian project too. She left antouching letter, which Dunton published in his autobiography, The Life andnErrors of John Dunton (1705), he provided mourning for twenty of hernrelatives and buried her at Bunhill Fields, beneath an elegant tombstone whichnbore a long, self-penned, memorial verse. Mr Rogers, a respected divine, wasnengaged to preach a funeral sermon at her late-father’s meeting house, whichnDunton later published.
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| John Dunton |
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nAnd then, a mere six months later, he was married to MissnSarah Jane Nicholas of St Albans (he always calls her ‘Valeria’), butnthis marriage was not, shall we say, the happiest. He wrote of her,
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n“Shenseemed to be his first wife in a new edition, corrected and enlarged, or rathernin a new binding,”n
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nbut his early, high estimate was ill-founded. His firstnwife had effectively managed his business affairs on his behalf, but his secondnspouse lacked her predecessor’s commercial acumen. Shortly after the marriage,nDunton left her behind in London and made his way to Ireland, where he sold allnhis books at auction and managed to get into a variety of scrapes, which hendescribes in The Dublin Scuffle (1699).
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nHe fell out with his newnmother-in-law, Jane, and she and her daughter accused him of only marrying fornmoney, to clear his debts with the ‘maggoty’ printers. Dunton’s sanity,nnever the most stable of things, began a marked decline and his writings fromnthis time reflect this – he is, hensays, learning the Art of Living Incognito, scribbling for a living (‘…nconstant sickness and debt have made me an author… an everlasting drudge to thenquill’), and only alive thanks to the charity of his friend, the Rev SamuelnWesley.
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| John Dunton – The Phenix – 1707 |
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nWhat he did write became increasingly deranged, from ‘Dunton’snWhipping Post; or, a Satire upon Everybody’, through ‘The Living Elegy,nor Dunton’s Letter to his few Creditors’ and ‘Neck or Nothing’ to ‘Mordecai’snMemorial, or There is nothing done for him.’ He wrote political pamphletsnfor the Whigs – one, Dunton’s Ghost (1714), is signed ‘By the unknownnauthor of Neck or Nothing, since he was number’d among the dead’. Henseparated from Sarah and she died in 1721, and, by then quite mad, he died ‘innobscurity’ in 1733.
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| John Dunton – Dunton’s Ghost – 1714 |
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nIt was said of him that he contained a thousandnprojects, fancied that he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by thenfifty he executed; he was known to his contemporaries as a ‘lunatick’,nback in the days when you knew that if the other people thought of as anlunatick, then you really did have a cause to be concerned.
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| John Dunton – The Shortest Way with Whores and Rogues – 1703 |
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nPerhaps his maddestnidea was a project (all his schemes were called ‘projects’) entitled ThenNight Walker; or Evening Rambles in search of Lewd Women. The aim was thenextirpation of lewdness from London, something as unlikely to be achieved, asnit was impracticable to undertake. Dunton armed himself with a truncheon and,nwith a clerical companion in tow, he sallied forth on the streets of thenmetropolis in the evenings, and the pair of moral crusaders followed thenwretched street-walkers home, where every effort was made to win the erringnfair to the paths of virtue.
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| The Athenian Oracle – Second Edition – 1704 |
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nAnd what of the Athenian project, his firstnand the best? Dunton retained the copyright and in 1702, a three-volumencompilation of the most interesting questions and answers from The AtheniannMercury were republished as The Athenian Oracle; a second edition followednin 1704, after which the copyright was sold to Andrew Bell, bookseller of thenCross Keys and Bible, Cornhill, who published a further edition in 1706, andnadded a fourth volume in 1710.
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| The Life and Errors of John Dunton – 1705 |
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nIf The Athenian Mercury was a forerunnernof the modern question-and-answer magazine, the Athenian Oracle can benthought of as a more populist, everyman version of the more esoteric PhilosophicalnTransactions of the Royal Society, (which commenced in 1664). That is notnto say it was, in modern parlance, that it was ‘dumbed-down’; on the contrary,nit was self-consciously knowing, and referenced such authors as Montaigne ornRabelais. The following reply, for example, to the question, “What isnknight-errantry?” could have been taken almost verbatim from the latter’s Gargantuanand Pantagruel –
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n“Knight-Errantry is loving, sighing, whining, rambling,nstarving, tilting, fighting, dying, reviving, walking, staring, singing,ncrying, praying, wishing, composing, writing, serenading, rhyming, hoping,nfearing, despairing, raving.”n
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nIt also provided the mould for two othernpublications of interest, which I will consider next.
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