By the end of the eighteenth century, laughter was becoming an increasingly ambiguous affect. Hobbes’s cry of ‘sudden glory’, a scornful expression of superiority over ‘some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves’, had been challenged by philosophers (Hutcheson, Kant, and others) who read laughter as a non-judgemental response to a perceived incongruity. And yet, while both the superiority and incongruity theorists tended to consider laughter as a transitive force – as ridicule aimed at an object, or as amusement at something oddly compounded within it – poets were focusing on the phenomenology of laughter. This emphasis led them to see the laugh itself as an incongruity. My essay considers a range of Romantic and post-Romantic poems in order to explore what the lyrical and the laughable might have in common.

Meanwhile, the last course, and the dessert, past by. When the ladies had withdrawn, young Crotchet addressed the company.

MR. CROTCHET, JUN.

There is one point in which philosophers of all classes seem to be agreed; that they only want money to regenerate the world.

MR. MAC QUEDY.

No doubt of it.Nothing is so easy as to lay down the outlines of perfect society. There wants nothing but money to set it going. I will explain myself clearly and fully by reading a paper. (Producing a large scroll.) “In the infancy of society— ”

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Pray, Mr. Mac Quedy, how is it that all gentlemen of your nation begin every thing they write with the “infancy of society?”

MR. MAC QUEDY.

Eh, sir, it is the simplest way to begin at the beginning. “In the infancy of society, when government was invented to save a percentage; say two and a half per cent—.”

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

I will not say any such thing.

MR. MAC QUEDY.

Well, say any percentage you please.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

I will not say any percentage at all.

MR. MAC QUEDY.

“On the principle of the division of labor—”

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Government was invented to spend a percentage.

MR. MAC QUEDY.

To save a percentage.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

No, sir, to spend a percentage; and a good deal more than two and a half per cent. Two hundred and fifty per cent.: that is intelligible.

MR. MAC QUEDY.

“In the infancy of society”—

MR. TOOGOOD.

Nevermind the infancy of society. The question is of society in its maturity. Here is what it should be. (Producing a paper.) I have laid it down in a diagram.

MR. SKIONAR.

Before we proceed to the question of government, we must nicely discriminate the boundaries of sense, understanding, and reason. Sense is a receptivity—

MR. CROTCHET, JUN.

We are proceeding too fast. Money being all that is wanted to regenerate society, I will put into the hands of this company a large sum for the purpose. Now let us see how to dispose of it.

HOLOGRAPH manuscript of ‘Touchandgo’, with numerous corrections, on a double folio sheet of blue-grey Whatman paper (dated 1828 in watermark). The first page is numbered ‘199’ and the third ‘201’. The poem is reprinted in Halliford, 7.494–6.

Location: Pforzheimer Collection, New York Public Library (TLP 55).

LADY CLARINDA ( to the Captain.)

I DECLARE the creature has been listening to all this rigmarole, instead of attending to me. Do you ever expect forgiveness? But now that they are all talking together, and you cannot make out a word they say, nor they hear a word that we say, I will describe the company to you. First, there is the old gentleman on my left hand, at the head of the table, who is now leaning the other way to talk to my brother. He is a good tempered, half-informed person, very unreasonably fond of reasoning, and of reasoning people; people that talk nonsense logically: he is fond of disputation himself, when there are only one or two, but seldom does more than listen in a large company of illuminés. He made a great fortune in the city, and has the comfort of a good conscience. He is very hospitable, and is generous in dinners; though nothing would induce him to give sixpence to the poor, because he holds that allmisfortune is from imprudence, that none but the rich ought to marry, and that all ought to thrive by honest industry, as he did. He is ambitious of founding a family, and of allying himself with nobility; and is thus as willing as other grown children, to throw away thousands for a gew-gaw, though he would not part with a penny for charity. Next to him is my brother, whom you know as well as I do. He has finished his education with credit, and as he never ventures to oppose me in anything, I have no doubt he is very sensible. He has good manners, is a model of dress, and is reckoned ornamental in all societies. Next to him is Miss Crotchet, my sister-in-law that is to be. You see she is rather pretty, and very genteel. She is tolerably accomplished, has her table always covered with new novels, thinks Mr. MacQuedy an oracle, and is extremely desirous to be called “my lady.” Next to her is Mr. Firedamp, a very absurd person, who thinks that water is the evil principle.

HOLOGRAPH fragment of a draft of Chapter 4 of Crotchet Castle (c. 1830).

A single leaf torn from notebook. The text is almost illegible in places where the pencil is fading and rubbing off.

Location: Pforzheimer Collection, New York Public Library (TLP 151).

Philosophie d’amateur. (Sain[t] Paul & learned friend: Quackery)

HOLOGRAPH manuscript of ‘Touchandgo’, on three pages of a double quarto sheet of blue-greyWhatman paper, dated 1827 in watermark, tipped in at the back of a bound manuscript copy of Paper Money Lyrics. The poem is reprinted in Halliford , 7.242–4 (see also 7.496–7).

Location: Pforzheimer Collection, New York Public Library (TLP 18).

THE party which was assembled on Christmas-day in Chainmail Hall, comprised all the guests of Crotchet Castle, some of Mr. Chainmail's other neighbours, all his tenants and domestics, and Captain Fitzchrome. The hall was spacious and lofty; and with its tall fluted pillars and pointed arches, its windows of stained glass, its display of arms and banners intermingled with holly and misletoe, its blazing cressets and torches, and a stupendous fire in the centre, on which blocks of pine were flaming and crackling, had a striking effect on eyes unaccustomed to such a dining-room. The fire was open on all sides, and the smoke was caught and carried back, under a funnelformed canopy, into a hollow central pillar. This fire was the line of demarcation between gentle and simple, on days of high festival. Tables extended from it on two sides, to nearly the end of the hall.

Mrs. Chainmail was introduced to the company. Young Crotchet felt some revulsion of feeling at the unexpected sight of one whom he had forsaken, but not forgotten, in a condition apparently so much happier than his own. The lady held out her hand to him with a cordial look of more than forgiveness; it seemed to say that she had much to thank him for. She was the picture of a happy bride, rayonnante de joie et d’amour.

Mr. Crotchet told the Reverend Doctor Folliott the news of the morning. “As you predicted,” he said, “your friend, the learned friend, is in office; he has also a title; he is now Sir Guy de Vaux.”

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Thank heaven for that! he is disarmed from further mischief. It is something, at any rate, to have that hollow and wind-shaken reed rooted up for ever from the field of public delusion.

THE Reverend Doctor Folliott took his departure about ten o’clock, to walk home to his vicarage. There was no moon, but the nightwas bright and clear, and afforded himas much light as he needed. He paused a moment by the Roman camp, to listen to the nightingale; repeated to himself a passage of Sophocles; proceeded through the park gate, and entered the narrow lane that led to the village. He walked on in a very pleasant mood of the state called reverie; in which fish and wine, Greek and political economy, the Sleeping Venus he had left behind, and poor dear Mrs. Folliott, to whose fond arms he was returning, passed as in a camera obscura, over the tablets of his imagination. Presently the image of Mr. Eavesdrop, with a printed sketch of the Reverend Doctor F., presented itself before him, and he began mechanically to flourish his bamboo. The movement was prompted by his good genius, for the uplifted bamboo received the blow of a ponderous cudgel, which was intended for his head. The reverend gentleman recoiled two or three paces, and saw before him a couple of ruffians, who were preparing to renew the attack, but whom, with two swings of his bamboo, he laid with cracked sconces on the earth, where he proceeded to deal with them like corn beneath the flail of the thresher. One of them drew a pistol, which went off in the very act of being struck aside by the bamboo, and lodged a bullet in the brain of the other. There was then only one enemy, who vainly struggled to rise, every effort being attended with a new and more signal prostration. The fellow roared for mercy. “Mercy, rascal!” cried the divine; “what mercy were you going to shew me, villain? What! I warrant me, you thought it would be an easy matter, and no sin, to rob and murder a parson on his way home from dinner. You said to yourself, doubtless, “We’ll waylay the fat parson, (you irreverent knave,) as he waddles home, (you disparaging ruffian,) half-seas-over, (you calumnious vagabond.)” And with every dyslogistic term, which he supposed had been applied to himself, he inflicted a new bruise on his rolling and roaring antagonist.

HOLOGRAPH fragment of an advanced draft of Chapter 16 of Crotchet Castle (c. 1830).

One small quarto leaf, folded twice, numbered 263 (altered from 253), possibly from a notebook. The text is written on both sides in a single column down the right-hand half of the page, the speakers’ names extending into the left-hand column.

Location: British Library (RP 6769).

‘That Peacock is a classic’, declared the scholar and editor R. W. Chapman in 1924, ‘now needs no proof; he has passed his century, and his reputation grows.’ Such a judgement might have appeared sanguine even in the year in which The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, edited by H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones (1924–34), also known as the Halliford Edition, began to be published. During the early 1920s, Oxford University Press steadfastly resisted proposals for works by and about Peacock. But Chapman – learned, urbane Secretary to Delegates of the Press from 1920 to 1942 – was eager to see the novels back in print. He remarked in his Introduction to the World's Classics edition of The Misfortunes of Elphin and Crotchet Castle that the ‘experiment’ of publishing them, shortly after the initial five volumes of his ground-breaking edition of Jane Austen (1923) had appeared, might transform Peacock into a ‘popular classic’.

The present editors hope, in part, to realize that frustrated ambition. It seems fitting that the Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock should appear not long after the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (2005–8). That the decades since the 1920s have been kinder to Austen than to Peacock is no surprise; unlike Austen, Peacock is habitually, wilfully arcane. Nora Crook and Derek Guiton observe that ‘His writings contain references as inaccessible to the common reader as medieval graffiti in cathedral towers’; the historical and architectural contexts are appropriate, as is the flavour of irreverence suggested by ‘graffiti’. Even if his comic fictions abound, like Austen’s, with clever, good-looking women and with sparkling dialogue that culminates inmarriage, Peacock's repartee can be hard to follow. Ona first, unmediated encounter with him, many readers will feel, with Captain Fitzchrome (in Chapter 6 of Crotchet Castle), that ‘the pleasantry and the obscurity go together’. Peacock does not aspire to the portrayal of interiority – perhaps the most cherished aspect of Austen’s novels. Rather, his characters, both male and female, exist primarily in order to share, voice and test the limits of their ideas.

“THERE is a beautiful structure,” said Mr. Chainmail, as they glided by Lechlade church; “a subject for the pencil, Captain. It is a question worth asking, Mr. Mac Quedy, whether the religious spirit which reared these edifices, and connected with them everywhere an asylum formisfortune, and a provision for poverty, was not better than the commercial spirit, which has turned all the business of modern life into schemes of profit, and processes of fraud and extortion. I do not see, in all your boasted improvements, any compensation for the religious charity of the twelfth century. I do not see any compensation for that kindly feeling which, within their own little communities, bound the several classes of society together, while full scope was left for the development of natural character, wherein individuals differed as conspicuously as in costume. Now, we all wear one conventional dress, one conventional face; we have no bond of union, but pecuniary interest; we talk any thing that comes uppermost, for talking's sake, and without expecting to be believed; we have no nature, no simplicity, no picturesqueness: everything about us is as artificial and as complicated as our steam-machinery: our poetry is a caleidoscope of false imagery, expressing no real feeling, portraying no real existence. I do not see any compensation for the poetry of the twelfth century.”

MR. MAC QUEDY.

I wonder to hear you, Mr. Chainmail, talking of the religious charity of a set of lazy monks, and beggarly friars, who were much more occupied with taking than giving; of whom, those who were in earnest did nothing but make themselves, and every body about them, miserable, with fastings, and penances, and other such trash; and those who were not, did nothing but guzzle and royster, and, having no wives of their own, took very unbecoming liberties with those of honester men. And as to your poetry of the twelfth century, it is not good for much.

MR. CHAINMAIL.

It has, at any rate, what ours wants, truth to nature, and simplicity of diction. The poetry, which was addressed to the people of the dark ages, pleased in proportion to the truth with which it depicted familiar images, and to their natural connexion with the time and place to which they were assigned.

GENESIS AND COMPOSITION

On 24 January 1829, ‘Touchandgo’, Peacock's boisterous satirical poem on rogue bankers, appeared in the Globe and Traveller. At around the same time, he was asked ‘to look into the whole question’ of steam navigation; that request yielded a ‘Memorandum respecting the Application of Steam Navigation to the internal and external Communications of India’, dated September 1829. By the end of 1830, these divergent strains of topical commentary had united to produce Crotchet Castle. Navigation, steam, bureaucracy, paper money and ‘all the recognised modes of accumulation on the windy side of the law’ (Chapter 1) shaped Peacock's sixth novel. They began, perhaps, to combine after dinner, as various ideas are said to mingle in the Reverend Doctor Folliott's mind at the beginning of Chapter 8: ‘fish and wine, Greek and political economy, the Sleeping Venus he had left behind, and poor dear Mrs. Folliott … passed, as in a camera obscura, over the tablets of his imagination’.

‘Touchandgo’ was sparked by the flight on 27 December 1828 of Rowland Stephenson (1782–1856) – politician, art collector and defaulting Lombard Street banker – and his assistant, John Henry Lloyd. Thanks to a number of unsecured advances, authorized by Lloyd, the bank of Remington, Stephenson and Coleman, and Stephenson himself, were ruined. A reward was offered, in vain, for his capture. With Lloyd, he fled to Savannah, Georgia, reportedly cashing the securities he had stolen and acquiring a brace of loaded pistols from a pawnbroker. The episode was so scandalous (the escape of ‘the nefarious banker’ and his clerk, via the Devonshire fishing village of Clovelly, was included in a book of illustrations published four years later) that one contemporary reviewer, glossing Crotchet Castle, felt it wholly unnecessary to elaborate: ‘We need not tell the reader what period or event of the last seven years is pointed to in the following extract.’ James Fenimore Cooper recalled people asking him in Italy and Switzerland why Stephenson had been permitted to remain in America, after landing in Georgia and being removed by bounty hunters to New York: ‘I understood pretty distinctly’, wrote Cooper, ‘that there were reports current that the Americans were so desirous of obtaining rich emigrants, that they had rescued a criminal in order to reap the benefit of his gold!’

THIS veridicous history began in May, and the occurrences already narrated have carried it on to the middle of autumn. Stepping over the interval to Christmas, we find ourselves in our first locality, among the chalk hills of the Thames; and we discover our old friend,Mr. Crotchet, in the act of accepting an invitation, for himself, and any friends who might be with him, to pass their Christmas-day at Chainmail Hall, after the fashion of the twelfth century. Mr. Crotchet had assembled about him, for his own Christmas festivities, nearly the same party which was introduced to the reader in the spring. Three of that party were wanting. Dr. Morbific, by inoculating himself once too often with non-contagious matter, had explained himself out of the world. Mr. Henbane had also departed, on the wings of an infallible antidote. Mr. Eavesdrop, having printed in a magazine some of the after-dinner conversations of the castle, had had sentence of exclusion passed upon him, on the motion of the Reverend Doctor Folliott, as a flagitious violator of the confidences of private life.

Miss Crotchet had become Lady Bossnowl, but Lady Clarinda had not yet changed her name to Crotchet. She had, on one pretence and another, procrastinated the happy event, and the gentleman had not been very pressing; she had, however, accompanied her brother and sister-in-law, to pass Christmas at Crotchet Castle. With these, Mr. Mac Quedy, Mr. Philpot, Mr. Trillo, Mr. Skionar, Mr. Toogood, and Mr. Firedamp, were sitting at breakfast, when the Reverend Doctor Folliott entered and took his seat at the table.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Well, Mr.Mac Quedy, it is now some weeks since we have met: how goes on the march of mind?

MR. MAC QUEDY.

Nay, sir; I think you may see that with your own eyes.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Sir, I have seen it, much to my discomfiture. It has marched into my rick-yard, and set my stacks on fire, with chemical materials, most scientifically compounded. It has marched up to the door of my vicarage, a hundred and fifty strong; ordered me to surrender half my tithes; consumed all the provisions I had provided for my audit feast, and drunk up my old October.

HOLOGRAPH fragment of an early draft of Chapter 5 of Crotchet Castle (c. 1830).

One page, folded down the middle.

Location: Pierpont Morgan Library, Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 4361).