Peter's Remains
Jan. 18th, 2023 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI searched online for a picture of Peter Anthony Motteux and drew a blank. The nearest hit was a pen and ink sketch for a picture of the Motteux family by the Venetian painter Pellegrini- which is useless as portraiture- though it tells us something about Motteux's aspirations. Peter is wearing an ample robe or dressing gown and a towering Louis XIV wig. His face is just blobs of ink- and could be any age and either sex because the painter is just roughing out the composition and likenesses will come later. The family- parents and four children, two boys two girls- plus a fluffy little lap dog- are surrounded by impressive displays of porcelain- Peter's stock in trade. It's not only a portrait but also an advertisement for the family business. Was the portrait ever painted? Pelligrini was a fashionable artist, patronised by the aristocracy and admired by Christopher Wren. Could Motteux- a mere jobbing author- have afforded him? He obviously thought he could.
Motteux's plays were acted and admired in their day, but I haven't found a modern critic who thinks anything of them. I'm not going to read them to find out for myself. Sorry, Peter, but life's too short.
His most famous poem is his Poem Upon Tea. This I have read (this morning in fact). Peter imagines tea being introduced to the Olympian gods by Hebe. Bacchus throws a strop and Apollo sings its praises. It's a work of Fancy not Imagination, the civilised production of a civilised poet, conventional in sentiment and diction, witty, somewhat tongue in cheek and sufficiently lively for its length- ten pages worth of heroic couplets- not to seem over-extended.
I find myself liking Peter. He reinvented himself twice- and that takes some doing- first as a writer in a language that wasn't his birth tongue and then as a London merchant, importing luxury goods from the far East. We don't have his face so I'm going to imagine one for him. It's sharp, Gallic, with dark eyes, expressive eyebrows, a big voluble mouth- the kind of face you get from living on your wits and on your nerves...
It was a silly way to die. But up to that point it was quite a life, wasn't it? Picture him swishing through the narrow streets of 18th century London, constantly on the make, looking for opportunities- full of ideas, full of words- a clever little man in a scarlet cloak...
Motteux's plays were acted and admired in their day, but I haven't found a modern critic who thinks anything of them. I'm not going to read them to find out for myself. Sorry, Peter, but life's too short.
His most famous poem is his Poem Upon Tea. This I have read (this morning in fact). Peter imagines tea being introduced to the Olympian gods by Hebe. Bacchus throws a strop and Apollo sings its praises. It's a work of Fancy not Imagination, the civilised production of a civilised poet, conventional in sentiment and diction, witty, somewhat tongue in cheek and sufficiently lively for its length- ten pages worth of heroic couplets- not to seem over-extended.
I find myself liking Peter. He reinvented himself twice- and that takes some doing- first as a writer in a language that wasn't his birth tongue and then as a London merchant, importing luxury goods from the far East. We don't have his face so I'm going to imagine one for him. It's sharp, Gallic, with dark eyes, expressive eyebrows, a big voluble mouth- the kind of face you get from living on your wits and on your nerves...
It was a silly way to die. But up to that point it was quite a life, wasn't it? Picture him swishing through the narrow streets of 18th century London, constantly on the make, looking for opportunities- full of ideas, full of words- a clever little man in a scarlet cloak...
