A Georgian Pageant — Key Ideas to Explore

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Authors: Moore, Frank Frankfort, 1855-1931 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2016 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain -- Court and courtiers -- History -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 18th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 90,335

Reading time 393 min

Text sections 10

A Georgian Pageant — Key Ideas to Explore can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 90,335 words, 6 hr 33 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 26.0 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Great Britain -- Biography,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #51964

Frank Frankfort Moore challenges conventional portraits of Johnson, Goldsmith, and other Georgian figures through close reading of primary sources, arguing that received anecdotes often distort character and motive.

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quick walker at all times; but on this winter day the slowest would have had little temptation to dawdle. The usual river mist was thrusting up a quivering cold hand among the gaunt trees of the water boundary of the Gardens, and here and there it flitted like a lean spectre among the clipped evergreens of the shrubberies. There was a maze of yew hedges, in the intricacies of which one mist-spectre had clearly got lost; and the lady, who had some imagination, could see, as she hurried past, the poor thing's wispy head and shoulders flitting about among the baffling central walks. (A defective eyesight is sometimes a good friend to the imagination.) And all the while she was hurrying along the broad track she was looking with some measure of uneasiness through her half-closed eyes down every tributary walk that ran into the main one, and peering uneasily down every long artificial vista that Sir Thomas Chambers, the Swedish knight and landscape gardener, had planned, through the well-regulated boskage, with an imitation Greek temple or Roman villa at the end. Approaching the widening entrance to each of these, she went cautiously for a few moments until she had assured herself on some point. Once she started and took a step backward, but raising the lorgnette which she carried, and satisfying herself that the group of men a hundred yards down one of the vistas was composed wholly of gardeners, she resumed her stroll.

Whatever slight apprehension may have been on her mind had vanished by the time she had half completed the circuit made by the main walk. She had reached one of the mounds which at that time were covered with rhododendrons, and paused for a moment to see if there was sign of a bud. A blackbird flew out from among the dense leafage, and she followed it with her eyes as well as she could while she walked on, crossing the narrow path that led to the seats on the mound. But at the moment of crossing she was startled out of her senses by the sound of a shout from some distance down this path--a loud shout followed by several others rather less imperative. She gave a little exclamation of terror, raising her muff to her face. Glancing in the direction whence the commotion was coming, she gave another cry, seeing a tall man rush toward her with outstretched arms--waving arms, frantically beckoning to her while he shouted:

“Miss Burney! Miss Burney!”

She waited no longer. She turned and fled along the broad walk, making for one of the many labyrinths not so very far away, and after her ran the man, still shouting and gesticulating. She could hear the sound of his feet and his voice behind her, as well as the cries of the other men who were endeavouring to keep pace with him. On they came, and there flashed through her active brain, in spite of the horrible apprehension which thrilled through every nerve in her body, as she doubled back upon the path which she had just traversed, the lines written by Dr. Goldsmith and often quoted by her friend Dr. Johnson:

A hare whom hounds and horns pursue,

Pants to the place from whence at first he flew.

She realised, all too painfully, the feelings of the poor hare at that moment. She longed for a friendly earth to open up before her. They were behind her--those wild huntsmen, one hoarsely yelling to her she knew not what, the others, more shrill, shouting to her to stop.

She was too frightened to think of obeying any of them. On she ran, and it seemed that she was increasing the distance between her and her panting pursuers, until one of them, having better wind, managed to shoot ahead of the others, and to get close enough to say in a voice that was not all gasps:

“Madam, madam, the doctor begs you to stop!” She glanced over her shoulder, still flying.

“No, no, I cannot--I dare not!” she gasped.

“Madam, you must--you must: it hurts the King to run!” cried the man.

Then she stopped. The man, an ordinary attendant, stood in front of her. He was more breathless than Miss Burney.

“The doctor, madam,” he faltered, “'twas the doctor--he thought at first that His Majesty was--was--but that was at first--now he says you must please not lead His Majesty on--'tis all too much for him. Save us! How you did go, madam! Who would ha' thought it?”

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Frank Frankfort Moore opens A Georgian Pageant with a pointed apology: the papers that follow grew out of a conversation with the late Professor J. Churton Collins, in which Moore argued that prevailing views of Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Thrale, James Boswell, and Samuel Johnson were “grossly erroneous.” He charges earlier biographers with treading “in the footsteps of the man preceding him” like “Indians on the warpath,” a simile that signals his combative stance. The book is not a neutral survey but a deliberate corrective, aiming to restore nuance to figures flattened by repetition.

A Diction of Disagreement

Moore’s vocabulary repeatedly marks his revisionist intent. He describes received opinions as “conventional,” “grossly erroneous,” and the product of “conservators of the conventional.” His own method he calls “unbiassed,” a word that implies previous accounts were biased. In the chapter on Goldsmith, he strings together the epithets applied to the writer—“contemptible wretch,” “silly man,” “envious man,” “empty-headed man,” “stuttering fool,” “idiot (of the inspired variety),” “awkward lout,” “shallow pedant”—before demolishing each with counter-evidence. The accumulation itself is a rhetorical device: by listing the insults, Moore makes their absurdity palpable. He then juxtaposes these with facts: Goldsmith was chosen as traveling companion by “two of the most beautiful and charming young ladies,” exchanged nicknames with them, and was visited in his garret by Dr. Percy. The contrast is stark and deliberate.

The Voice of the Narrator

Moore’s own voice is conversational and occasionally sardonic. He uses direct address (“What is a simple reader to think?”) and rhetorical questions that implicate the audience in his skepticism. His tone shifts from scholarly to colloquial, as when he notes that if the poet Beattie “could only have been laid on to Mark Twain we should have the most comic biography ever written.” This blend of erudition and wit mirrors the eighteenth-century essayists he discusses. He also employs irony: after listing Goldsmith’s supposed failings, he remarks, “A singular position for an Irish lout to find himself in!” The italics and exclamation mark underscore the gap between stereotype and reality. Moore’s prose thus performs the very re-evaluation it argues for, refusing the dry neutrality of conventional history.

Structure as Argument

The book’s organization reinforces its polemical purpose. Each chapter is titled as a dramatic or narrative form—“A Comedy in St. Martin’s Street,” “A Tragedy in the Haymarket,” “The Best Comedy of the Century”—suggesting that history itself is a series of scenes to be reinterpreted. The opening “Writer’s Apology” functions as a manifesto, naming the specific errors Moore intends to correct. Subsequent chapters then provide the evidence. This structure mirrors the legal or forensic mode: a charge is laid out, then proven. Within chapters, Moore often presents the conventional view first, then systematically undermines it with primary sources. For instance, he notes that Boswell was excluded from Johnson’s Club for ten years, while Goldsmith was an original member—a fact that undercuts Boswell’s portrait of Goldsmith as a fool.

Recurring Details and Their Weight

Moore anchors his arguments in small, telling details. He observes that Johnson, “who certainly never was accused of harbouring unworthy aspirations to be accounted a beau,” would dress in his best clothes before visiting Goldsmith, “in order, as he explained, that the latter might have no excuse for his slovenliness.” This anecdote, drawn from contemporary accounts, does double duty: it shows Goldsmith’s reputation for slovenliness, but also Johnson’s peculiar solicitude. Moore also notes that Goldsmith was appointed Professor of History to the Royal Academy without protest, a fact that contradicts the charge of shallow learning. These details are not mere ornaments; they are the evidence on which Moore’s revision rests. By foregrounding such specifics, he invites readers to weigh them against the sweeping dismissals of earlier biographers.

Moore’s method—close attention to diction, structure, and contradictory detail—offers a model for reading eighteenth-century lives against the grain. Readers will find that the book rewards those who pause over its quotations and weigh its evidence. The pageant, as Moore presents it, is less a procession of settled reputations than a series of contested portraits, each requiring fresh scrutiny.

Frankfort Moore’s insistence on seeing past the anecdotes reminded me of my grandmother’s quiet correction of family myths. She’d read aloud from Mary Russell Mitford and her surroundings — Reading Companion, and I felt that same gentle unsettling of a well-loved portrait. Both books ask me to sit with the original letters, not the legends we’ve layered on top.