As someone pursuing a degree in history, I have to read a lot of books. Sometimes those books have fascinating stories. Sometimes they don’t. This piece is about the interesting stories. A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the 18th Century by John Brewer provides most of the grist for this newsletter. I suggest you check it out. It’s a fascinating tale of how murder gets represented in the news.
John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich has a place in history. Sandwiches, the meal we all know and love, take their name in honor of his title. This naming, according to legend, happened somewhere before 1770. Myth surrounds the actual events of the naming. The traditional story goes that the Earl needed to eat during a long gambling binge. Since he didn’t want to leave his cards the inveterate gambler requested that a servant bring him his normal meal of salt beef and serve it between two pieces of bread. The servant did so, the combination caught on, and some wit named it after Montagu. The story usually ends there, as a good bar trivia fact. The general consensus argues that the Earl only earned his place in history because he got hungry in a very particular way.
Montagu’s life involved much more than gambling and feeling a bit peckish however.
John Montagu had more than one vice. Besides gambling, he also involved himself in several scandals involving porn and a mistress. The Earl held the positions of Postmaster General and First Lord of the Admiralty at various points in his career. Despite holding these high-level positions he did not back away from controversy. A social inveterate, the term “Libertine” aptly describes the man. Perhaps coincidentally the term first became associated with debauchery in the 18th Century, the time the Earl participated in his indiscretions. One contemporary critic described Hinchingbrooke, the Earl’s country home, as “the scene of our youthful debaucheries, the retreat of your hoary licentiousness.”[1] In A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century John Brewer describes the Earl as “the very personification of aristocratic libertinage”.[2] In short, John Montagu had money and spent that cash on having a good time.
Lest you think that I simply want to destroy Montagu’s good name, I can assure you that he earned this opprobrium. To needlessly quote Shakespeare, he did not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. A man of incredible wealth and privilege he had almost no parental supervision. Living in London as a young man he entered into the life of a London “rake” at an early age. He remained a “rake” for a long period of time. Of course, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, did not behave any more depraved then some of his contemporaries. However, none of his contemporaries had a book written about his most famous affair, nor did they get a food item named after themselves.
For those living in the 18th Century, his affair provided much more entertainment than did the sandwich.
The 18th Century knew Montagu’s name not for food delivery system, but because he had a years-long public affair with Martha Ray. Montagu and Ray had five, possibly nine children. After the story told here James Hackman, a young clergyman shot and killed Marth Ray kicking off a national scandal. Montagu lived for sensation and just one high-profile affair did not do it for him. So, when his wife suffered a mental breakdown, which could have been code for any number of things, he also carried on an affair with his sister-in-law.[3] His affair with Martha Ray turned him into one of the first tabloid celebrities.
This next part should carry an “Adults Only” warning. The reason the world knows about all of Montagu’s affairs steams from the fact that he decided to read some porn out loud in the House of Lords. The House of Lords, at this time, held a tremendous amount of power in Parliament. Imagine if Mitch McConnel decided to read erotica on the floor of the Senate. Montagu did pretty much that.
Montagu did not just decide one day to titillate his fellow Lords. The 4th Earl of Sandwich had recently come to the attention of John Wilkes. At this point in time Wilkes could claim the title of England’s preeminent satirist. Wilkes had written a work poking fun at Montagu’s politics, as well as his social life. Montagu did not like what Wilkes had written about him. In a misguided attempt at revenge, The Earl, along with some friends, concocted a plan to steal Wilkes’ newest work, and read it in front of the House of Lords. Wilkes didn’t just write satires, he also wrote “vulgar” works. Also known as pornography. Wilkes had not printed this book for the general public, but for a small private group of elites that both Wilkes and Montagu belonged too. The Earl described Wilkes’ The Essay on Women as follows, “it was so full of filthy langue as well as the most horrid blasphemies”.[4] The Earl, in this case, did not overstate his case. To quote a small passage of the work that Sandwich read in The House of Lords, “Awake, my Fanny, leave all meaner things, / this morn shall prove what rapture swiving brings. / Let us (since life can little more supply / Than just a few good Fucks, and then we die) / Expatiate free o’er that lov’ scene of Man; / A mighty Maze! For mighty Pricks to scan”.
For his demonstration of the dirty rhyming ability of Wilkes the Earl won a few political points. He, led by his horrid political acumen, failed to capitalize on them, and the tide turned against John Montagu rather fast. First, The House of Lords deemed his display a breach of political procedure, a damning sentence. Second, Wilkes responded with such a vengeance that after this event that, “Tales of Sandwich’s debauchery, miserliness and lack of good faith were endlessly repeated, inexorably corroding his reputation. … a biography published in the late 1760s depicted Sandwich as an arsonist and thief.”[5][6] While the Earl did not face any huge financial loss, his reputation fell into the gutter. The growing number of newspapers, wishing to sell copies, picked up on this story and made the Earl a household name, not for the food named after him, but for all the times he had cheated on his wife and read pornography in Parliament.
So, next time you’re eating a sandwich, just remember that it was named after a dude who got in trouble for saying “Prick” out loud.
[1] John Brewer, A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 91.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The history of “hysteria,” and treatment of mental issues in women, on which several works have been written is disturbing and incredibly revealing.
[4] John Brewer, A Sentimental Murder, 104.
[5] Ibid., 109.
[6] Wilkes also said he had an “eternal dangler” and a “short little rapier”.
hot dogs are sandwiches. Tacos are not.