Warwick’s Reviews > The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle > Status Update
Warwick
is on page 335 of 992
End of vol 2. Our hero takes a grand tour of Italy, France and the Low Countries, featuring a great deal of sophisticated 18th century humour, like men farting at windmills. Returns for the social season at Bath. He has manwhored his way around Europe, but apparently we are still supposed to be rooting for his relationship with the virtuous Emilia, who's been waiting patiently at home for him.
— Sep 16, 2020 07:53AM
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Warwick’s Previous Updates
Warwick
is on page 487 of 992
End of vol. 3. This volume dominated by the inserted 80-page Memoirs of a Woman of Quality, a disguised life of Frances, Lady Vane, who was a figure of some scandal at the time. She may even have written this herself; certainly everyone thought she had at the time. It's a fascinating example of a serial adulterer telling her own side of the story in a society stacked against women. Good counterpoint for PP…
— Sep 27, 2020 01:45AM
Warwick
is on page 170 of 992
End of volume one. Narratively bitty (like most picaresques) but linguistically very rich. Includes the unbelievable exclamation “odd's niggers!” which is etymologically unrelated to the racial slur but still gave me a hell of a fright. Surprisingly meta (the main character has read Roderick Random). Main character is also a ‘high-spirited prankster’, i.e. a bit of a dick, which doesn't help.
— Sep 01, 2020 11:19PM
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Ooh! I am definitely into that kind of research, thanks!
This has to be one of my favourite academic papers of the year now. It is quite statty at the beginning but later on there are paragraphs of accumulated facts that end up emphasising how utterly rife STIs were (very much like I imagined it even thought I'd forgotten a few of these points) and how many activities they (syphilis especially) affected. And I feel entirely justified in thinking "Poor Emilia" - not much in an emotional sense as the idea that he'd be shagging his way round the Grand Tour would be a tacit assumption - but because she'd be destined to catch something from him.
Also makes me want to be really scathing about idealised historical romance. It seems more absurd than it ever has straight after reading that paper. I was looking at reviews of one the other day, thinking I'd love to read about a realist interaction between the two characters, a decadent and a suffragette (she would almost certainly reject him in the end, because she didn't want to catch a disease).
This is exactly why the liaison between Boswell and ‘Louisa’, as detailed in his London Journal, 1762-1763, is so utterly amazing. He goes into it talking as though he's some romantic hero, while she artfully puts him off; in the end they hook up, but he gets a dose of syphilis – probably not from her at all, but it leads to a completely unromantic overreaction, outrage, and several months of recuperation at home. It's just an invaluable glimpse into the reality behind these high-flown notions of ‘gallantry’ and ‘coquetry’. If only we had her side of the story too.
I was being lazy going to Wikipedia, yet it actually led to the info I wanted within a minute or so, info which I wasn't sure existed at all or in up to date research.