On this day created by the Greeting Card Industrial Complex to honor what are now fashionably referred to as “birthing persons,” you may find yourself beset by what the Existentialists call–“mauvais foi”–a troubled conscience. You may harbor doubts as to whether you have been (or were, if she’s dead) good enough to your mother during your years on this world together.
Perhaps you got in an argument with her about whether you should wear a certain slovenly outfit to school, or came home high (or low) on a controlled substance or intoxicating beverage. Thus, while everyone you meet is saying their mothers were the best ever, you find yourself on the one hand questioning your intellectual honesty if you say the same thing (which is, of course, a mathematical impossibility), or filial piety on the other–you ungrateful jerk.
Not to worry. Whatever your mother’s faults, she finished out of the money in the Bad Mother Sweepstakes. Consider, in support of this claim, Anne Brett, Countess of Macclesfield, mother of Richard Savage, 18th century poet honored by Samuel Johnson in his “Lives of the Poets.” Johnson describes Savage as “a man whose writings entitle him to an eminent rank in the classes of learning,” but “whose misfortunes claim a degree of compassion . . . as they were often the consequences of the crimes of others”–chief among them, his mom.
Savage was conceived–physically and intellectually–as an escape from Anne’s unhappy marriage. “In the year 1697,” Johnson wrote, “having lived for some time upon very uneasy terms with her husband, [she] thought a public confession of adultery the most obvious and expeditious method of obtaining her liberty.” She accordingly cheated on him with the 4th Earl Rivers, became pregnant, and gave birth to Richard. Her desired divorce was granted, but she gave away her son to a poor nurse with instructions never to tell him the facts of his birth. As a result of the divorce, Anne again became entitled to an estate of 12,000 pounds that had been hers before the marriage; adjusted for inflation, she was worth around 1,833,200 pounds sterling, or $2,300,000.
Savage was thus raised in poverty apart from his wealthy parents, but on his deathbed his father asked Anne whatever happened to their son–he wanted to leave him some money. Anne told Rivers that their son was dead, so the father did not provide for Savage in his will. Johnson calls this “perhaps the first instance of a [lie] invented by a mother to deprive her son of a provision which was designed him by another, and which she could not expect herself, though he should lose it.” Hoping to avoid future claims by her son, Anne tried to ship him off to America but was unable to find any accomplices to assist her.
Savage was then apprenticed to a shoemaker, but when the poor nurse who cared for him died, he discovered among her personal effects letters from his grandmother, Lady Mason, describing his noble birth. He “without scruple applied to” his mother for her support, but “neither his letters, nor the interposition of those friends which his merit or his distress procured him, made any impression upon her mind,” according to Johnson. She continued to neglect him, but “could no longer disown him.”
Savage was “so touched with the discovery of his real mother, that it was his frequent practice to walk in the dark evenings for several hours before her door, in hopes of seeing her as she might come by accident to the window, or cross her apartment with a candle in her hand.” Pathetic scene!
Nothing could soften the woman’s heart, however, and Savage “was therefore obliged to seek some other means of support.” In what will seem an improbable strategy to those who try to make a living as a writer, he “became by necessity an author.”
But against the odds Savage became a popular poet and, with the power of his writer’s voice filling his sails, he managed to extort a pension of 200 pounds a year from his heartless mother by threatening to lampoon her.
I have shopped Savage’s tale of perseverance and triumph over a heartless mother around without success, even when I gave editors ample lead time for special Mother’s Day editions.
It is the ultimate irony, in this age of Artificial Intelligence content generators:
You finally come up with copy that could not possibly have been written by a bot, and no one believes you.
Good story!