#Earl of Rochester

[majestativa]

Let me be bold and die for my desire: A phoenix likes to perish in the fire.

— John Wilmot/Earl of Rochester, Selected Works, (2004)

[derangedrhythms]

My life’s a thousand deaths.

John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, from ‘To His Mistress’

[defensivelee]

Three names for you :D

Monmouth, Nell, Rochester

WE ARE COMING IN WITH SOME HEAT I SEE....

okay we are beheading Monmouth already, once again, not bc I agree with James, but bc I think the hottest thing this man did was, indeed, getting beheaded. I just want to watch....

bedding my girl Nelly bc if you don't, what are you doing? also it would oddly feel like a bit of an honor to me, like I pulled THE baddest bitch in the land... she's great.

I am wedding Rochester bc I feel like him and I are quite similar in some ways... I would say I could fix him, but I can't, and he wouldn't fix me either.

[burningvelvet]

So anyway I've been reading about Restoration era writers & also learned that in Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester may have been partly inspired by the Restoration era poet John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, rambunctious sex legend & asshole extraordinaire. I totally support this theory & may include a reference to it in my Jane Eyre fic if I ever update it.

Interesting finds from John Wilmot and Mr. Rochester by Murray G. H. Pittock:

"Mr. Rochester is to an as yet unappreciated degree based upon the character and reputation of his namesake, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, whose career as it was popularly recorded is the model for the rakehell and penitent phases underlying the development of Mr. Rochester's character." (P 462)

"the Earl's mother 'was a daughter of Sir John St. John, an ancient family of Wiltshire.' The coincidence of the name with that of the alter hero of Jane Eyre is of course striking. This tract also contains an extended passage concerning Wilmot's propensity for disguise, a common feature of the religious Lives." (P 464)

"In both the real man and the fictional character, cynicism and misanthropy turn to faith. As early as Etherege, then, John Wilmot had become a literary archetype, the "devil-angel" of the wicked rake. But he was also, in the alternative tradition of the religious tracts, an archetype of the repentant sinner. Wilmot's pious end made him respectable, and he was in every sense an ideal figure on which to model his fictional namesake." (P 469)

"It is Mr. Rochester who characteristically uses Christian imagery to describe erotic feelings [..]" (P 462)

"Mr. Rochester associates himself with the devil. Quoting from Paradise Lost, he asks Jane 'not to attribute to me any such bad eminence' (p. 166)." (P 463)

i didn't know this but i mention paradise lost in my fic! even tho in her novel shirley, charlotte disses milton's depiction of eve (which i 100% agree with; my last semester i took an english renaissance class wherein i wrote about paradise lost & eve's oppression lol). heathcliff is also miltonian as i acknowledged in a prior post!!!

"Such talk of heaven and hell in the interests of passion are echoes in fact of Mr. Rochester's famous namesake." (P 463)

"The material that Bronte would use in creating the hero of Jane Eyre from his namesake was freely available at the time, and not only through the means of pious hearsay. Burnet's own account is based on interviews with the dying Earl, and because Wilmot's death was finally a pious one, the less risqué of his poems were often found in print. So thoroughly was Wilmot's profligate life associated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with his deathbed conversion, that it comes as no surprise to find his poems published in 1821 alongside those of Dr. Spratt, the Bishop of Rochester, in a one-volume collection enticingly titled The Cabinet of Love? Moreover, Burnet's Life was long popular, as its several editions testify, even in the "best" literary circles. Both Horace Walpole and Samuel Johnson wrote critiques which were incorporated into the edition issued in 1820. Such widely disseminated tales of reformed rakes and deathbed conversions were an important part of the literary culture of Brontes youth, reinforced by the Methodism introduced into the family circle by Aunt Branwell. It was not at all unusual, then, that Bronte should turn to John Wilmot in creating her own Mr. Rochester." (P 464)

"Passion untamed by religion until the moment of crisis is a mark of Charlotte Brontes fiction, and to make that mark, who better than a famous rake and a famous convert, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester?" (P 469)

From John Wilmot, Mr Rochester and William Harrison Ainsworth by Robert Dingley:

"it is also possible that she drew hints from the Earl's depiction in William Harrison Ainsworth's bestselling novel Old St. Paul's (1841), where the Restoration rake displays a chameleon-like facility in disguise and twice attempts to entrap the woman by whom he is obsessed (and who in turn loves him) in spurious wedding ceremonies."

[didanagy]

The Libertine (2004)

dir. laurence dunmore

[unanchored-ship]

Its becoming a mini series or whatever of me drawing dead people ridiculously headcannoned and then drawing them realistically and seeing the difference

[poemoftheday]

Poem of the Day 20 January 2023

Love and Life by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. ALL my past life is mine no more; The flying hours are gone, Like transitory dreams given o'er, Whose images are kept in store By memory alone. 5 The time that is to come is not; How can it then be mine? The present moment 's all my lot; And that, as fast as it is got, Phillis, is only thine. 10 Then talk not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows; If I by miracle can be This live-long minute true to thee, 'Tis all that Heaven allows. 15

[savagewildnerness]

Last one.

Oh no, I don’t like an improvisation that literally references music in a positive way, as now I feel this has to be beautiful & it will surely sound like a cat on a hook, ALAS! Oh well, here goes. 💀

Also, do I want this music to be innocent or to convey the horrors?! I decided a few seconds on innocent, but let’s entwine The Horrors! (Much like life, eh! Never innocent for long! Here come The Horrors! 😂😩💀) Because despite the description of the music… this improvisation is about the horror of meaninglessness…

(I thought innocence-the horrors-innocence… THE HORRORS!)

"”Play again," I said. "The music is innocent."

Nicolas smiled and nodded. Pamper the madman.

And I knew it wasn't going to pass, and nothing for the moment could make me forget, but what I felt was inexpressible gratitude for the music, that in this horror there could be something as beautiful as that.

You couldn't understand anything; and you couldn't change anything. But you could make music like that. And I felt the same gratitude when I saw the village children dancing, when I saw their arms raised and their knees bent, and their bodies turning to the rhythm of the songs they sang. I started to cry watching them.

I wandered into the church and on my knees I leaned against the wall and I looked at the ancient statues and I felt the same gratitude looking at the finely carved fingers and the noses and the ears and the expressions on their faces and the deep folds in their garments, and I couldn't stop myself from crying.

At least we had these beautiful things, I said. Such goodness.

But nothing natural seemed beautiful to me now! The very sight of a great tree standing alone in a field could make me tremble and cry out. Fill the orchard with music.

And let me tell you a little secret. It never did pass, really.

What caused it? Was it the late night drinking and talking, or did it have to do with my mother and her saying she was going to die? Did the wolves have something to do with it? Was it a spell cast upon the imagination by the witches' place?

I don't know. It had come like something visited upon me from outside. One minute it was an idea, and the next it was real. I think you can invite that sort of thing, but you can't make it come.

Of course it was to slacken. But the sky was never quite the same shade of blue again. I mean the world looked different forever after, and even in moments of exquisite happiness there was the darkness lurking, the sense of our frailty and our hopelessness.

Maybe it was a presentiment. But I don't think so. It was more important than that, and frankly I don't believe in presentiments.”

Interesting though.. a presentiment regarding how Lestat will be pulled from all that is natural: The Earth & the seas & the grass & the sky & humanity… and into monstrousness. But perhaps, Mon Cher, you can still find beauty & goodness & meaning in art? Or even, dare I suggest, within your immortal soul? Your body is no longer human, no. But your soul is the same as it ever was & ever shall be. And maybe there’s some metaphor in here about how we mostly struggle to imagine anything other than that some essence of our selves is eternal?

Truth, though? Dead, we become the lumber of the world, eh?

“After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,

The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.

Let the ambitious zealot lay aside

His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;

Let slavish souls lay by their fear

Nor be concerned which way nor where

After this life they shall be hurled.

Dead, we become the lumber of the world,

And to that mass of matter shall be swept

Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.

Devouring time swallows us whole.

Impartial death confounds body and soul.

For Hell and the foul fiend that rules

God's everlasting fiery jails

(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),

With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,

Are senseless stories, idle tales,

Dreams, whimsey's, and no more.”

Lestat’s existential crisis though… while I agree (as if it were about that) & feel the content of it, I feel almost opposite about it to him. I’ve heard people say that to look at the stars terrifies them as it makes them feel small & insignificant & meaningless… and for Lestat, he is horrified by the concept of life being utterly meaningless. Not just his own, but every life. But for me? I find that truth (which I agree with) comforting. We’re all but specks of dust & so our greatest joy; our greatest sorrow; our wonder; our horror; our suffering; our significance or lack thereof in any way matters not. Everything will tend through Lestat’s chaos & will eventually end in total nothingness. Even the music of Mozart, the history of all humanity will one day be lost to the vast chasm of nothingness as if it never existed.

Have a lovely day folks, contemplating non-existence!

But y’know… now I know my own feelings on such matters I ache because I want Nicolas & Lestat to discuss how there can exist a comfort in non-existence… because when life is all there is, all there is to do is to live it to the fullest you can. And Lestat knows all about that. And Nicolas - if only you could believe that, maybe you could have found some reason to exist too? I see why Nicolas doesn’t have it in him to comfort Lestat this way though as in this, Nicolas is even farther from myself - the chaos destroys him.

Rereading TVL I notice how often Lestat himself speaks of The Chaos.

xxxxx

[havithreatendub4]

#Hollywood Vampires #june 12 2023 #june 2023 #Sofia #Bulgaria #cane #The Libertine #Earl of Rochester #John Wilmot #character #scenes

[majestativa]

Her eyes that feed my love.

— John Wilmot/Earl of Rochester, Selected Works, (2004)

[derangedrhythms]

Absent from thee, I languish still;

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, from ‘The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’

[defensivelee]

i memorized regime de vivre so i could yell it at @kamijaij and call it our poem love u bae

[poem-today]

A poem by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Seneca's Troas, Act 2. Chorus

After Death, Nothing is, and Nothing, Death, The utmost Limit of a gasp of Breath: Let the Ambitious Zealot lay aside His Hopes of Heav'n (whose Faith is but his Pride) Let Slavish Souls lay by their Fear, Nor be concern'd which way, nor where, After this Life they shall be hurl'd, Dead, we become the Lumber of the World, And to that Mass of Matter shall be swept, Where things destroy'd with things unborne are kept. Devouring Time swallows us whole, Impartial Death confounds Body and Soul: For Hell, and the foul Fiend that rules God's everlasting fiery Gaols, Devis'd by Rogues, dreaded by Fools, (With his grim griesly Dog, that keeps the Door,) Are sensless Stories, idle Tales, Dreams, whimsies, and no more.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)

***

Seneca, Troades, lines 397-408

Post mortem nihil est ipsaque mors nihil, uelocis spatii meta nouissima; spem ponant auidi, sollicit metum: tempus nos auidum denorat et chaos. mors indiuidua est, noxia corpori nec parcens animae: Taenara et aspero regnum sub domino limen et obsidens custos non facili Cerberus ostio rumores uacui uerbaque inania et par sollicito fabula somnio. quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco? quo non nata iacent.

[circuitousways]

My first introduction to John Wilmot was The Libertine. I look forward to giving this a listen!

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a wonderful poet and a very poor role model. He died of syphilis and alcohol at 33. His life was like a mad romance, and he wrote some astonishing poetry on the way. I loved being the guest reader, and reading some of Rochester's poems on this glorious Betwixt the Sheets podcast about his life and work. WARNING they are very rude.

Kate Lister and Rebecca Rideal do all the work. I get to be the guest reader.

[unanchored-ship]

i drew tha pretty bois

jemmy is also a part of them imo but the drawing i made of him sucked ass so no

[blackhyena]

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ‘A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind’.