This was the death date of “Citizen” John Thelwall, at one time Britain’s best-known radical orator, a notorious democrat, and officially “the most dangerous man in England.” We’ll return to him in greater detail another time, but for now he is the starting point for the story of what became known as the Spy Nozy Affair.
In the summer of 1797 – at a time when the British authorities were on high alert for either a revolution, or an invasion by France, or both – reports reached London of a suspicious group which had taken up residence in a manor house near Bridgwater in Somerset. The evidence against these people was pretty damning: they might or might not be foreign; they definitely owned camp-stools and sketchpads (both essential tools for carrying out reconnaissance); they were fond of country walks; and the master of the house had no wife with him, “but only a Woman who passes for his Sister.”
The government despatched one of its top agents, a man named Walsh, to investigate. He quickly made contact with a former servant of the house in question. Walsh admitted that this witness was “by no means the most intelligent Man in the World,” but had confirmed that the new residents were indeed French – and that amongst other outrages they washed their clothes on a Sunday.
That last charge might have been true, but Walsh soon established that the alleged French revolutionaries living at Alfoxton House were in fact a pair of British poets. The man was William Wordsworth, and the “Woman who passes for his Sister” was his sister, Dorothy.
The secret policeman had not necessarily had a wasted journey, however. He learned from chat at the local pub that amongst those observed at this “Nest” of “Rascalls” was the notorious John Thelwall. This was exciting news, since Walsh had devoted much of his career to investigating the man universally known as Citizen Thelwall.
Further investigation convinced agent Walsh that he had uncovered a “Sett of violent Democrats.” As well as the Wordsworths, also resident were Mr and Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr Coleridge was yet another poet, and more damning still he was known to own a small printing press, on which he might be planning to produce any number of subversive pamphlets.
Apart from gossiping in pubs and bribing servants (from which he learned that after a dinner, Thelwall “talked so loud and was in such a Passion” that the frightened waiters refused to go near him, and that the Wordsworths’ maid strongly suspected that “Her Master was a Phylosopher”), Walsh relied mainly on eavesdropping. When Coleridge and Wordsworth went for their strolls, and found a place to sit and chat for a while, the spy would hide nearby, for hours if necessary, writing down every word.
This went on for days, but the nest of democrats stubbornly refused to utter a syllable, in private or public, which might suggest that they were revolutionaries, and eventually Walsh came to the conclusion that he was wasting his bosses’ time. His surveillance in Somerset ended. Two young poets, future giants in their field, had unknowingly faced the prospect of disappearing forever into the hungry belly of state paranoia – and had escaped that fate because of the testimony of the man sent to trap them.
Wordsworth and Coleridge eventually found out about Walsh, and the suspicions which had summoned him, from the landlord of the local pub. They both thought it was a laugh, nothing more – Coleridge in particular dined out on the story for years afterwards, and even published an account of it. It was then that Walsh became “Spy Nozy.” Coleridge’s very unlikely explanation for this retrospective nickname was that Walsh, a man apparently blessed with a big schnozz, overheard the poets talking of Spinoza and believed they had rumbled him, and were discussing a nosey spy.
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Sources:
Regency spies by Sue Wilkes (Pen & Sword 2015)
https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/35490797/IldikoCsengei_TheLiteratureOfFearInBritain.pdf
www.wottonheritage.com/john-thelwall-and-gloucestershire-e89
This is hilarious!