Isaac Teale (1717-1764)
ISAAC TEALE (1717-1764)
Isaac Teale was a clergyman in the Church of England, tutor of the historian Bryan Edwards (1743-1800), and author of the contentious work, The Sable Venus. An Ode.
He was the son of Isaac and Mary Louise Amelia Teale, born in London on 12 Oct 1717 and baptized in St Martin in the Fields, Westminster.[1] He was educated at Westminster School from 1732 to 1735, then apprenticed to an attorney, Samuel Maurice Gale of New Inn, London, and admitted to the Inner Temple.[2] Attorneys were held in low esteem in the first half of the 18th century:[3] perhaps for that reason he did not finish his apprenticeship, but entered on a course in arts at Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1740, and graduated M.A. in 1744.[4] He had already entered the Church of England by then: he was ordained deacon, then priest, at Prebendal Church, Buckden, Hunts, in May 1743.[5] He served as a curate for many years, but was still remembered by friends in the legal profession: in 1745-46 he earned a fee of £2 for preaching in the Inner Temple.[6] In 1747 he was appointed Rector of Ringwould in Kent but resigned a year later: his appointment may have been a stop-gap measure, necessitated by the sudden resignation in 1747 of the former Rector on account of illness.[7] He resumed his curacy and supplemented his meagre earnings by becoming “master of a free grammar school”.[8]
Presumably hoping to improve his fortunes, he travelled out to Jamaica with a license, granted by the Bishop of London on 13 May 1755, to serve as a minister in the colony.[9] He must already have had connections in the island for in August 1756 he was appointed chaplain to the House of the Assembly.[10] The chaplain’s duties consisted only of “reading prayers, every morning during session, previous to entering upon business” in the two to three months each year when the House was sitting, but the office carried a useful stipend of £100.[11] It was probably during Teale’s attendance in the House that, according to Edwards, “his virtues, learning and talents attracted the notice of my distinguished relation and bountiful benefactor, Zachary Bayly”.[12] Teale was appointed rector of St Ann in 1757, but later in the same year he moved to St George, probably on the recommendation of Bayly who was Custos of the parish.[13] Since there was no church in St George, the rectorship was a “mere sinecure” but it provided Teale with another stipend of £100 per annum.[14] In 1760 Bayly engaged him as resident tutor to teach Latin and Greek to his sixteen-year-old nephew, Bryan Edwards. Thus, thanks to the kindness of his patron, Teale “was enabled to spend the remainder of his days in leisure and independency”.[15] He acknowledged his gratitude to Bayly with an elegant tribute in verse (see below).
Teale’s poems would have remained in obscurity if they had not been vigorously promoted after his death by Edwards: The Sable Venus was first printed privately in Kingston, Jamaica in 1765, reprinted in all editions of Edwards’s history of the British West Indies (1793-1819), and in his own collection of poems.[16] Whether the poem is pure fantasy or is rooted in Teale’s own life is unknown, but the clergy in Jamaica had a reputation for licentiousness in the eighteenth century.[17]
He died in Jamaica on January 10th, 1764, at the age of forty-seven, and was buried at his own request on the banks the river Agua Alta.[18] His tribute to Bayly was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1771, with a prefatory letter undubitably written by Edwards (he noted details of the poem’s publication in his History).[19]
Mr. Urban,
The friends of the Muses cannot but be pleased with the following little elegant Poem, which I wish to see preserved in your collection. It was intended as a compliment to a friend on his birth-day, and proves that in poetry, as in painting, there is no subject, however trite, but is capable of receiving new graces from the hand of a master. Both the Author and his friend are now far removed from the reach of censure or applause; I hope I may therefore gain credit when I add, that this was the tribute of no venal muse, but the grateful offering of the sincerest affection towards a Gentleman whose virtues and abilities were too conspicuous to borrow lustre from fiction.
I am, &c.
The COMPLIMENT OF THE DAY.
To ZACHARY BAYLY, Esq; of Jamaica,
By the Rev. ISAAC TEALE, A.M.
Written May 30, 1761.
The table, tea, and cards are set,
And all the company now met.
Gay Fortune pleas’d, the ev’ning spends
With a few chearful chosen friends.
She smil’d to see the chief were there,
And spoke,—while conscious was her air;
‘A favourite of mine you know,
Was born just forty years ago;
Whom spiteful Envy’s sneering tone
Hath often hinted all my own.
But if his firm and fair endeavour
Hath fought, and gain’d, and kept my favour,
You Ladies, and the world, may find
Dame Fortune is not always blind.’
At this grave Prudence rais’d her head,—
Mildly she spoke, and calmly said;
‘We own your happy choice demands
‘Most just applause at all our hands;
‘Yet, with the world, you must agree
‘No trifling debt is due to me.
‘With Temper, ever by his side,
‘Still have I been his cautious guide!’
With eager air and earnest eye,
Warm Industry thus made reply.
‘What Ladies, is there nothing due
‘To me? Suppose I grant it true,
‘Prudence his happy steps you led,
‘Yet mine his hand, if yours his head:
‘And though I would not seem severe,
‘Fortune can claim but little share.’
She said:—A mild but princely dame,
—’Twas Generosity by name,—
Attentive heard the kind dispute,
And pleas’d their sentiments to suit,
Observ’d that each had done her part,—
‘He thinks so,—for I hold his heart.
‘And since I hope we all delight
‘True merit ever to requite,
‘Suppose our compliments we pay,—
‘You hear it is his natal day.
‘But, then what messenger to send?’
—Says Prudence,—‘Gratitude your friend.’
She heard and rose, with eager start,
Fix’d was her eye,—for full her heart.
‘Dear maid, (says Generosity)
‘Thy wish in that warm look I see;
‘Haste then my friend in early hour,
‘Virtue shall guide thee to his bow’r;
‘There to its gentle owner say
‘What chanc’d among his friend [sic] to-day,
‘How Fortune, Prudence, Industry,
‘Gladly consenting, join’d with me
‘To promise him our full protection,
‘Firm friendship, and sincere affection.
‘Our aid shall sooth life’s future cares,
‘And bless him down the vale of years.
‘But least thy beauties should surprize,
‘And blaze too bright for mortal eyes,
‘Those charms in humble form conceal,
‘And look to-night like Parson Teale.’
[1] His mother’s name is spelt Mary Lewise Emelia in the baptismal register but appears in standard form in the International Genealogical Record.
[2] From Record of Old Westminsters (1928), 2.907, with grateful acknowledgments to Elizabeth Wells, archivist of Westminster School.
[3] Robert Robson, The Attorney in Eighteenth-Century England (1959), 134-8.
[4] His name is recorded as “Is. Teil, Anglus [English]” in Fasti Academiae Mariscallanae Aberdonensis, ed. P.J. Anderson, (1898), 2.315.
[5] Clergy of the Church of England Database, CCEd Record ID 23807.
[6] Calendar of the Inner Temple Records (1933), 4.508.
[7] Grateful acknowledgments to Jean Win, Local Historian, Ringwould, Kent.
[8] Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 3rd edn. (1801), 1.xii.
[9] CCEd Record ID 75660.
[10] Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, 17 Aug 1756 (4.572). He was nominated for the chaplaincy again in 1761 but another candidate was chosen: JAJ, 31 Mar 1761 (5.250).
[11] Edward Long, History of Jamaica (1774), 2.238.
[12] History (1801), 1.308.
[13] R A Minter, Episcopacy without Episcopate: The Church of England in Jamaica before 1824 (1990), 301-302.
[14] Long, History of Jamaica (1774), 2.181.
[15] Edwards, History (1801), 1.308.
[16] Poems, written chiefly in the West Indies (1792).
[17] Charles Leslie, New History of Jamaica (1740), 303; see also William Jones, Diary of the Revd. William Jones 1777-1821 (1929), 52, entry for 21 April 1779.
[18] Edwards, Poems (1792), 33n. He was buried on 11 Jan 1764: Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, 1664-1880; St Andrew Burials, vol. 1. https://familysearch.org
[19] GM 41 (Aug 1771), 371; History (1801), 1. xii.