Wit at War: The Poetry of John Wilmot and the Trauma of War

Abstract

On 3 August 1665, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, barely eighteen years old, penned a long, dutiful, and what he ultimately char acterizes as a "tedious" letter to his mother. 1 He wrote from off the coast of Norway, while on board the ship Revenge during his first tour of duty in the Second Anglo-Dutch war. The letter begins in a measured, strangely untroubled voice. Rochester describes a crowded "Harbour where twenty shipps were to anchor not bigg enough for seven ... [the ships] all together one upon another ready to dash in peeces ... [the men] having nothing but bare Rocks to save [them]selves, " only to assure his mother in the same sentence that all is well-"that it was not fit for mee to see any occasion of service to the King without offering my self " and that he is "full of hopes and expectation," an earlier naval encounter having proven remunerative, resulting in "shirts and gold, which I had most need of " (Letters, 47). At first, then, Rochester's surviving the ensuing battle that will result in his reporting the loss of "over 500 men and six captains" in the space of only three hours can seem unremarkable. 2 The letter reflects the wry Rochester we have come to expect, in control of his imagery even as he documents a world without order. The details of impending destruction may accumulate, but Rochester's certain tone temporarily reassures, with immediate military action reframed as figurative service to the king and the threat of physical loss reimagined as the occasion for financial gain.By the end of the letter, however, the hint of trauma underlying Rochester's preferred appearance of ease cannot be missed. He con cludes the letter abruptly and crudely with a stark reminder of the brutal economies of war rather than the promised riches allud ed to earlier. The physical loss, as reported to his mother, is both real and immediate: "Mountegue & Thom. Windhams 1 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, The Letters of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. and intro. Jeremy Treglown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 49. References are to this edition. 2 Rochester's numbers are somewhat off here. Six captains were killed, but only 189 English and 100 Danish soldiers were killed. There were, however, 239 wounded, making the total number of those either wounded or killed 528. For descriptions of the battle and number of casualties, see Jeremy Treglown, Rochester's Letters (Chicago: University of

Belatedness in the 18th century and what to do about it

“…Yet his poetry is largely read as transcending the traumas of his age, including the English Civil War, and the brutal, mercenary Second Anglo‐Dutch War in which he served, rather than speaking to that trauma. My article, “Wit at War: The Poetry of John Wilmot and the Trauma of War” (2014) remains the only one to explore his war trauma and its relationship to his legendary wit. These isolated treatments point to our discipline's recognition of the value of trauma theory as a lens for reading complex, unusual 18th‐century texts.…”