The Real Story of John Carteret Pilkington
Introduction
John Carteret
Pilkington was the youngest son of Lætitia Pilkington
the poet, memoirist and friend of Jonathan Swift, whose memoirs
are also on
this site. After his father had cast her off, he declared that young
John was not his son, and so ill-treated him that he decided to
run away from home. This memoir is the story of some of his
subsequent adventures. He alternated between being taken up by wealthy
patrons,
and being dropped by them and left to shift for himself. They are well-written with a very ingenuous
honesty -- he professes himself at a loss to understand why his company seemed
to pall after a while with a patron, and his adventures with the inventor of
musical instruments, with the Jacobite agents, and on the stage are funnier to
us than they were to him.
Also appended to the
book are a number of letters between his mother and Lord Kingsborough, of which
the account of her meeting with John Wesley is the most
interesting. It seems he was in private a much less austere personality than he
showed in public to his followers.
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