Laetitia Pilkington (c. 1709–1750) is sometimes held up as a feminist heroine, oppressed by her misogynistic times. Oppressed at least she surely was, by a philandering husband who wanted to offer his teenaged bride to his society acquaintances, though it’s unclear whether that was for the money it brought him or to have an excuse for his own adulteries. And when she was finally divorced in 1738 — caught in flagrante delicto with the lover she had taken after her separation from her husband — she was left destitute.

Among the things she lost in the divorce were her relationship with her lover (Robert Adair, future surgeon general of Great Britain) and her friendship with Jonathan Swift (who called her a “profligate whore”). An Anglo-Irish near-aristocrat, she had always kept her place in Dublin society, but once that too was gone, she fled to London in 1739 and tried to support herself as a writer. Pilkington was . . . but how does one express this? She was a woman well versed in the ways of men. That’s not to say she was a harlot or a tart. Pilkington just had the air of a woman who understood the drives of men and the uses of a woman’s body. On her journey to London alone, she was asked to be installed as a mistress twice. She rejected both offers.

Instead she settled near White’s, the famous London club for fashionable men, and eventually served as an unofficial writer of witty lines for its members. Friendships with the writers Colly Cibber and Samuel Richardson soon followed, who helped her through her financial trials and imprisonment for debt. Today’s Poem of the Day, “A Song: Lying Is an Occupation,” is a typical sample of her work: not great poetry, but a bit of witty and ironic social commentary. Written in competent tetrameter, rhymed abab with feminine (two-syllable) rhymes in the first and third lines, Pilkington points out the work that dishonesty achieves.

A Song: Lying Is an Occupation
by Laetitia Pilkington

Lying is an occupation,
Used by all who mean to rise;
Politicians owe their station,
But to well concerted lies.

These to lovers give assistance,
To ensnare the fair-one’s heart;
And the virgin’s best resistance
Yields to this commanding art.

Study this superior science,
Would you rise in Church or State;
Bid to Truth a bold defiance,
’Tis the practice of the great.

___________________________________________
With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.