Sullivan Black
Sullivan Black [1720 - 1793] Poet, diarist and essayist. Born Gloucester, England, the son of landed gentry. A contemporary of the Rev'd Gilbert White at Oxford University, he followed him to be mainly resident at Plestor House in Selborne, Hampshire, throughout his life - although he also kept a house in London. This was done out of mischief rather than friendship, for Black's character was a reciprocal of that of the noted naturalist. His dissolute habits and robust literary style have been wholly overshadowed by the considerable success of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), White's masterpiece. Fortunately, a small archive of Black's manuscript work survives in that village: - ''It would seem that the old booby White has taken it to his head to compile a natural history of this our village. His man Andrew was more than usually in his cups at the public house this evening. He disclosed that our beloved not quite reverend yet revered Gilbert has an unchristian craving for the ephemeral gongs of posterity, and proposes to immortalise both Selborne and himself in the form of a natural philosophical diary. His intention is to lard it with his letters to other dull worthies such as Barrington and Pennant. Gods, but Barrington is a sanctimonious bore!
- ''As the late Newton famously decreed in his Laws of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So for every natural history there must be an unnatural history. Who better to provide this than I, White’s regretted alter ego? It would seem that our futures, both in this world and beyond, are to be entwined; just as the bindweed doth ensnare the climbing bean.
- I shall subvert poor simple Andrew with the promise of copious draughts of ale, and shall parallel dear Gilbert’s well-meaning observations with my own more earthy and pertinent asseverations upon the life of a Southamptonshire village. My own correspondences with statesmen, writers and artists would surely be of greater interest and historic import than White’s anodyne observances of the habits of the butterfly and wasp, or the aleatoric ramblings of his confounded tortoise.
Black was an adept early practitioner of the limerick verse-form, a structure which was not formalised in print until the 1820s. He was a pioneer of its use in bawdy repartee - in a way which would not become common until the twentieth century. Two of the cleaner examples of his work are: - The butler from Coneycroft House [1]
::Was asked, "Are you man or a mouse?"
::By parlourmaids, twins.
::Now each, for her sins,
::Is with child and as big as a house. - and
- Seducing young Annie Buccleuch
::In Hawkley, a storm raged and blew.
::The Hanger collapsed [2]
::But I did not lapse.
::I enquired, “Did the earth move for you?”.
Black was a polymath and is reputed to have corresponded with, inter alia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau [for whom he proved a temporary home in 1766], Voltaire, Fragonard, Charles James Fox and several of the leading characters of the American War of Independence such as Benjamin Franklin. He is known, for example, to have been a contemporary guest with George Washington at Claverton Manor, near Bath, Somerset. A man of extreme republican sympathies, he is believed to have travelled to the newly United States in the early days of their formation. The merchant-ship aboard which he had been returning home having previously been taken by the French, he was aboard the French frigate L'Imperieuse when she was captured by the Royal Navy on 11 October 1793 near Genoa. He suffered a fatal heart attack in the boarding action, and was buried at sea. His actions in support of the Royal Navy, remarkable for a man of his years, were mentioned in Admiral Gell's despatch on the action.
Notes [1] A substantial house, with parts dating to the late 16th century, on the north-western edge of Selborne. [2] This dates Black's seduction precisely to the night of 8th/9th March 1774, when the side of the Hanger [the local term for a steep clay ridge] collapsed in a fierce storm. A cottage built on the site is still known as "Slip Cottage". External Links [1] Extract from White's record of the collapse of Hawkley Hanger
|
|
