Tom D’Urfey was born in Exeter in the year 1653. The date usually given, 1649, is incorrect. He came of a very ancient and well-connected family. Under Charles VII of France, Pierre d’UlphÉ was Grand Master of the crossbow-men of France. His son, Peter II, changed the spelling of his name from UlphÉ to UrfÉ. He died in 1508, after having served with distinction under Charles VIII and Louis XII. Francis, the nephew of Peter II, Baron d’Oroze, fought along with Bayard in a combat of thirteen Frenchmen against thirteen Spaniards. The son of Peter II, Claude, was ambassador of France at the Council of Trent, and governor of the royal children. He loved letters, had a fine library at his ChÂteau de la BÂtie, near Montbrison. Jacques, his son, was chamberlain to Henry II; he died in 1574, leaving several sons, of whom two were Anne and HonorÉ, both staunch Leaguers, and in their day considered to be poets. HonorÉ, however, made his fame by his interminable and tedious romance of AstrÉe. The Dictionary of National Biography says that Tom’s uncle was this same HonorÉ; but this is impossible. HonorÉ, the fifth son of Jacques I, was born 1572. He had four elder brothers—Anne, who died without issue; Claude, who died young; Jacques II, who had one son; Claude Emmanuel, who died in 1685. Christopher died without issue, and Antoine became a bishop. Consequently it is not possible to fit Tom D’Urfey into the pedigree. It is possible enough that the grandfather who quitted La Rochelle before the end of the siege in 1628 and brought his son with him to England, and who settled at Exeter, may have been a connexion by blood, possibly enough illegitimate, as no trace of him can be found in the D’UrfÉ pedigree. The grandfather broke away from the traditions of the family entirely by becoming a Huguenot, for not only were Anne and HonorÉ Leaguers, but Anne entered Orders and Antoine became Bishop of Saint Flores.

Charles Emmanuel called himself De Lascaris, and was created Marquis D’UrfÉ and De BaugÉ, Count of Sommerive and St. Just, Marshal, and died in 1685 at the age of eighty-one. His son Louis became Bishop of Limoges; another, Francis, became AbbÉ of St. Just, and devoted himself to missionary work in Canada; he died in 1701. The third son, Claude Yves, became a priest of the Oratoire; the fourth, Emmanuel, Dean of Le Puy, died in 1689; the fifth, Charles Maurice, was the only one who did not enter the ministry, and he died unmarried; thus the family came to an end, and it is characteristic of it that it was intensely Catholic. Thus if the grandfather of Tom D’Urfey did belong to the stock, he was a sport of a different colour. The father of Tom D’Urfey married Frances of the family of the Marmions, of Huntingdonshire. Tom certainly claimed kinship with the D’UrfÉs, of Forez, and was proud of the fame that attached to his relative HonorÉ.

The elder of the sons of Jacques I, viz. Anne, had married a splendid beauty, Diana de ChÂteau Morand, who was also an heiress. But the union was not happy, and it was annulled by the Ecclesiastical Court at Lyons (1598) at the joint petition of husband and wife. Then Anne, after trifling with the Muses, took Holy Orders. Thereupon HonorÉ, having money to pay for it, bought a dispensation at Rome, and married his brother’s late wife, not out of love, but for the purpose of retaining in the family her great estates. He was then aged thirty-two, and she was in her fortieth year. She was haughty, vain of her beauty, which had made her famous at one time, and spent her time in trying to disguise the ravages of time on her face. She lived mainly in her room surrounded by dogs, “qui rÉpandaient partout, jusque dans son lit, une saletÉ insupportable.”

Very different was the life of Tom D’Urfey’s father, and one of the touching incidents in his character was his devotion and tenderness towards his wife to her dying day.

Tom had been intended for the law, but, as he said, “My good or ill stars ordained me to be a knight errant in the fairy fields of poetry.”

He wrote plays that were well received for the most part, but all were tainted with intolerable grossness. But at this period of revulsion from Puritanism, licentiousness of intrigue, indelicacy of wit, most strongly appealed to the popular taste, at least in London, and among the hangers-on of a profligate court. In 1676, he produced The Siege of Memphis and The Fond Husband; or, The Plotting Sisters. In 1677, Madame Pickle. In all, down to his death, thirty-two dramatic pieces. But that which obtained for D’Urfey his greatest reputation was a peculiarly happy knack that he possessed in writing satires and songs. In the latter style of composition he knew how to start with a telling line. There was in his composition a vein of genuine poetry, but the trail of the serpent was over it all: he could not leave his best pieces without something foul to spoil it. Many of his songs were set to music by his friends Henry Purcell, Thomas Farmer, and Dr. John Blow; but a good many were adapted to folk airs. In 1683, he brought out his New Collection of Songs and Poems, in which was “The Night her Blackest Sables Wore,” which was afterwards claimed for Francis Semple, of Beltrees. D’Urfey wrote a good many songs in fancy Scottish dialect, as a taste for North-country songs came in after James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, was sent to govern Scotland in 1679 and 1680. Although there can be no doubt whatever as to the authorship of “The Night her Blackest Sables Wore,” about fifty years after its first publication the song and tune in a corrupt form appear in Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonicus (1733), with some change in the words so as to make it appear to be Scottish, as “She rose and let me in,” altered to “She raise and loot me in.” Mr. Chappell says: “It is a common error to suppose that England was inundated with Scotch tunes at the union of the two Crowns. The first effect was directly the reverse.” In fact, a stream of English popular melodies flowed into Scotland, and this in a flood in the reign of Charles II, carrying with them the English words, which Scottish compilers adapted and appropriated, and these have come back to us as “made in Scotland,” whereas they are genuine English songs, words and music and all.

Tom Brown, venomous and scurrilous as Tom D’Urfey was not, lampooned the latter, and called him “Thou cur, half French, half English breed,” and mocked him regarding a duel at Epsom, in 1689, with one Bell, a musician.

Tom took it in good part. It was only by Jeremy Collier that he could be prevailed to reply, and even then it was chiefly in a song.

Jeremy Collier had published in 1697 his famous Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, which dealt a terrible blow at what little prosperity the theatres enjoyed, and aroused a wholesome spirit of resentment against the outrages committed on the stage against Christian virtue and common decency. The castigation was well deserved, for the licentiousness of the stage both before and behind the curtain had become a monstrous evil.

The sensation created by the book was enormous, scores of pamphlets refuting or defending its views were written, and the falling off in the audiences plainly showed that its remonstrances had struck home. D’Urfey was one of those hardest hit; he winced, cried out, but did not mend. D’Urfey was a good, witty, and genial companion, and this obtained him favour with a great many persons of all ranks and conditions. The Duke of Albemarle, son of General Monk, had him frequently at his table to divert the company; of which he was not a little vain, as we may gather from part of a song made upon him at that time:—

Crowned heads condescended to admit him to their presence, and were not a little diverted by him. It is not surprising to hear this of so merry a monarch as Charles II; but even King William, so glum and reserved in temper, and so little appreciative of music, or of any amusements of that kind, must needs have D’Urfey one night to him; and D’Urfey extorted a hearty laugh even from him, and departed with a present. D’Urfey had inherited his grandfather’s Huguenot prejudices; he was a staunch Protestant in his feelings if not a Christian in his morals, and he wrote satirical songs against the Roman Catholics, so that William III felt it well to show him favour.

One of his anti-papal songs, and one that was very popular among the Whigs, was “Dear Catholic Brother,” and this he set to a very fine ancient tune, to which to this day “The Hunting of Arscott of Tetcott” is sung in Devon. But D’Urfey did not take the complete tune, as he did not need it for his piece of verse, and his incomplete version of the tune travelled into Wales and Scotland as well as throughout England. It is an early, genuine English melody in the Dorian mode.

Charles II had leaned familiarly on D’Urfey’s shoulder, holding a corner of the same sheet of music from which the poet was singing his burlesque song, “Remember, ye Whigs, what was formerly done.”

James II continued the friendship previously shown him when he was Duke of York. He had no wish to offend one who could turn a song against him and his religion. Queen Anne delighted in his wit and gave him fifty guineas when she admitted him to her at supper, because he lampooned the Princess Sophia, then next in succession to herself, by his ditty, “The Crown’s too weighty for shoulders of eighty.” She herself entertained great dislike towards the Electress Dowager of Hanover. D’Urfey was attached to the Tory interest; and in the latter part of the Queen’s reign frequently had the honour of diverting her with witty catches and humorous songs, suited to the spirit of the times, written by himself and sung in a droll and entertaining manner.

The Earl of Dorset welcomed him at Knole Park, and had his portrait painted there. At Wincherdon, Buckingham’s house, Philip, Duke of Wharton, enjoyed in company D’Urfey singing his songs, which he did with vivacity, although in speech he stammered. D’Urfey said: “The town may da-da-da-mn me as a poet, but they sing my songs for all that.”

He collected his songs into six volumes, published under the title of Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, which went through several editions. In that for 1719 all the songs in the first two volumes are his own; other songs, many of them folk ballads, he tampered with, and added coarsenesses of his own not in the original. The book was published by Playford, and the melodies are not always correctly printed. Most of his airs were folk melodies; many of them, doubtless, heard by him when he was young in Devonshire, for there they are still employed to ballads he recast.

Writing to Henry Cromwell, 10th April, 1710, Alexander Pope says: “I have not quoted one Latin author since I came down, but have learned without book a song of Mr. Thomas Durfey’s, who is your only poet of tolerable reputation in this country. He makes all the merriment in our entertainments, and but for him, there would be so miserable a dearth of catches, that, I fear, they would put either the Parson or me upon making some of ’em. Any man, of any quality, is heartily welcome to the best topeing-table of our gentry, who can roar out some rhapsodies of his works; so that in the same manner as it was said of Homer to his detractors, What! dares any man speak against him who has given so many men to eat? (meaning the rhapsodists who lived by repeating his verses). Thus may it be said of Mr. Durfey to his detractors, Dares any one despise him, who has made so many men drink? Alas, Sir! this is a glory which neither you nor I must ever pretend to. Neither you with your Ovid, nor I with my Statius, can amuse a board of Justices and extraordinary Squires, or gain one hum of approbation, or laugh of admiration. These things (they would say) are too studious, they may do well enough with such as love reading, but give us your ancient Poet, Mr. Durfey! ’Tis mortifying enough, it must be confess’d.”

There is a slight allusion to D’Urfey in the Dunciad, iii. 146.

Gay mentions that Tom ran his Muse with what was long a favourite racing song, “To horse, brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse!”

Tom was very irregular in his metres. He had the art of jumbling long and short quantities so dexterously together that order resulted from confusion. Of this happy talent he gave various specimens, in adapting songs to tunes, composing his songs in such measures as scarcely any instrument but a drum could accompany; as to the tune, it had to take care of itself. To be even with the musicians who complained of the irregularity of his metres, and their unusual character, he went further, composing songs in metres so broken and intricate, that few could be found who could adapt tunes to them that were of any value. It is said that he once challenged Purcell to set to music such a song as he would write, and gave him the ballad that speedily became popular, “One Long Whitsun Holiday,” which cost the latter more pains to fit with a tune than the composition of his Te Deum.

Tom, at least in the early part of his life, was a Tory by principle, and never let slip an opportunity of representing his adversaries, the Whigs, in a ridiculous light. Addison says that the song of “Joy to Great CÆsar” gave them such a blow that they were not able to recover during the reign of Charles II.

This song was set to a tune called “Farinelli’s Ground.” Divisions were made on it by some English master, and it soon became a favourite air. D’Urfey set words to it in which his old Huguenot execration of the Papists breaks forth. Farinelli was a Papist, a circumstance that gave occasion to Addison to remark that his friend Tom had made use of Italian tunes for promoting the Protestant interest; and turned a considerable part of the Pope’s music as a battery against the chair of St. Peter.

D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy is a book nowadays to be kept under lock and key, or else to be bound and lettered “Practical Sermons,” to avoid its being taken down from its shelf and being looked into by young people. And yet—“Tempora mutantur et nos mutantur in illis.” Addison speaks of his songs in No. 67 of The Guardian thus: “I must heartily recommend to all young ladies, my disciples, the case of my old friend, who has often made their grandmothers merry, and whose sonnets have perhaps lulled to sleep many a pleasant toast, when she lay in her cradle.” In No. 29, 1713, Addison wrote: “A judicious author, some years since, published a collection of sonnets, which he very successfully called ‘Laugh and be Fat; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy.’ I cannot sufficiently admire the facetious title of these volumes, and must censure the world of ingratitude, while they are so negligent in rewarding the jocose labours of my friend, Mr. D’Urfey, who was so large a contributor to this treatise, and to whose numerous productions so many rural squires in the remotest parts of the island are obliged for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them.”

D’Urfey was the last English poet that appeared in the streets attended by a page. Many an honest gentleman, it is said, got a reputation in his county by pretending to have been a boon companion of D’Urfey; yet, so universal a favourite as he was, towards the latter part of his life he stood in need of assistance to prevent his passing the remainder of it in a cage like a singing-bird; for, to use his own words, “after having written more odes than Horace, and about four times as many comedies as Terence, he found himself reduced to great difficulties by the importunities of a set of men who of late years had furnished him with the accommodations of life, and would not, as we say, be paid with a song.”

Addison, to relieve the old man, whose sight was then failing, but whose spirits had not been extinguished, applied to the directors of the play-house, and they agreed to act The Plotting Sisters, one of his earliest productions, for the benefit of the author. What the result of this benefit was does not appear, but it was probably sufficient to make him easy, as we find him living and continuing to write with the same humour and liveliness to the time of his death, which happened on 26 February, 1723. He was buried in the churchyard of St. James’s, Westminster, against the wall on the south-west angle of which church, on the outside, was erected a stone to his memory, with this inscription: “Tom Durfey died Feb. 26, 1723.”