eating cucumbers without permission...

I heard an amusing story the other day, about how Jonathan Swift, writing as Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., literally (or at least legally) killed a man with his words. It all started when he published “Predictions for the Year 1708“, a satire on astrology in general and on John Partridge, a well-known almanac maker, in particular…

I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine, the stars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or inclinations: And whoever has not bent his studies that way, may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lyes, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, tho’ they descend from no greater a height than their own brains.

Swift attacks their vague, waffling predictions, then makes a few of his own, including one of Partridge’s own death.

My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: It relates to Partridge the almanack–maker; I have consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time.

Though Partridge did indeed fail to expire on the fated day, this didn’t stop “Isaac Bickerstaff” from publishing an elegy and confirmation of death. Swift added to this a day or two later with the anonymous pamphlet “The Accomplishment of the First of Mr Bickerstaff’s Predictions“, which admitted that the prediction was not entirely accurate:

I found it to be above five minutes after seven; by which it is clear that Mr. Bickerstaff was mistaken almost four hours in his calculation. In the other circumstances he was exact enough.

In his turn, Partridge published a reply expressing emphatically the notion that he was not, in fact, deceased. Full of righteous indignation — and unintentionally hilarious — he describes the manner in which Swift turned his life into a farce.

The maid, as she was warming my bed, with a curiosity natural to young wenches, runs to the window, and asks of one passing the street, who the bell toll’d for? Dr. Partridge, says he, that famous almanack–maker, who died suddenly this evening: The poor girl provoked, told him he ly’d like a rascal; the other very sedately reply’d, the sexton had so informed him, and if false, he was to blame for imposing upon a stranger.

Pray sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any business with me? […] Sir, says I, my name is Partridge: Oh! the Doctor’s brother, belike, cries he […] With that I assumed a great air of authority, and demanded who employ’d him, or how he came there? Why, I was sent, sir, by the Company of Undertakers, says he, and they were employed by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good Doctor departed; and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with the black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been tacking up by this time.

[J]ust as I was putting out my light in order to it, another bounces as hard as he can knock; I open the window, and ask who’s there, and what he wants? I am Ned the sexton, replies he, and come to know whether the Doctor left any orders for a funeral sermon, and where he is to be laid, and whether his grave is to be plain or bricked? Why, sirrah, says I, you know me well enough; you know I am not dead, and how dare you affront me in this manner? Alack-a-day, replies the fellow, why ’tis in print, and the whole town knows you are dead; why, there’s Mr. White the joiner is but fitting screws to your coffin, he’ll be here with it in an instant: he was afraid you would have wanted it before this time.

In short, what with undertakers, imbalmers, joiners, sextons, and your damn’d elegy hawkers, upon a late practitioner in physick and astrology, I got not one wink of sleep that night, nor scarce a moment’s rest ever since.

Partridge’s biggest mistake (other than attracting the ire of Jonathan Swift) was taking a three-month vacation to escape the furor. If you were to hear a man had died, then not see him for three months, what would you think?

I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after this, but presently one comes up to me in the street; Mr Partridge, that coffin you was last buried in I have not been yet paid for: Doctor, cries another dog, How d’ye think people can live by making of graves for nothing?

Lord, says one, I durst have swore that was honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend; but poor man, he is gone. I beg your pardon, says another, you look so like my old acquaintance that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he’s gone the way of all flesh — Look, look, look, cries a third, after a competent space of staring at me, would not one think our neighbour the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave to take t’other peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is improv’d in fortune–telling by having taken a journey to the other?

Not to be outdone, Swift published “A vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; against what is objected to him by Mr. Partridge in his almanack for the present year“. Partridge, he claims, is not only dead; he has proved himself a liar by disputing the obvious truth of this proposition.

As a thousand men have purchased his almanac and turned, at every line, to “cry out, betwixt rage and laughter, ‘They were sure no man alive ever writ such damn’d stuff as this,’” either Mr. Partridge must disown his authorship of the volume, or admit that he is “no man alive”.

Only the dead consort with spirits:

Secondly, Mr. Partridge pretends to tell fortunes, and recover stolen goods; which all the parish says he must do by conversing with the devil and other evil spirits: And no wise man will ever allow he could converse personally with either, till after he was dead.

Further, Partridge himself has admitted it. Though he says that he was alive on the 29th of March, and is alive now, he makes no claim regarding the intervening period. Clearly, the man has been caught in a lie of omission.

When the end of the year had verified all my predictions, out comes Mr. Partridge’s almanack, disputing the point of his death; so that I am employed, like the general who was forced to kill his enemies twice over, whom a necromancer had raised to life. If Mr. Partridge has practised the same experiment upon himself, and be again alive, long may he continue so; that does not in the least contradict my veracity.

And so forth. Believe it or not, it gets even worse: apparently Partridge had all sorts of trouble later in life, when a case he took to court was grievously damaged by the revelation that he had been legally dead for over a decade.