Korn calls Ashe ‘the worst rogue, spiv, spendthrift, turncoat, seducer, deserter, literary journalist and all round scoundrel of a scoundrelly age’ [p.13], and recites in detail the tale of the career in ‘literary prostitution’ and blackmail which Ashe himself considered the most glorious of that or any age. Korn’s considers the ODNB article on Ashe to be no more than a summary of the uncreditworthy Life and Confessions, itself an uproarious work that remains unpublished though the very stuff of a BBC2 classic serial.

Korn provides an alternative tale: Impoverished Irish gentry; an overbearing father; eleven siblings; Ashe absconds ‘on the smallest provocation to the poor and the peasantry for weeks together’; joins regiment which revolts and is disbanded; sent to Bordeaux of business; seduces [Melanie]; gets post in Dublin and inadvertently becomes Lord Lieutenant’s mistress’s lover [“I prepared to depart for the Continent with all that caution and precipitancy with characterise the conduct of corruption and guilt”]

In Zurich he meets Lavater and Gibbon; joins Duke of York’s forces; is heroically wounded; goes recruiting and gathers debts; Portugal, Sardinia, London - where an untimely satire on Pitt dashes preferment [promotion] - fights in the French and Austrian armies; deserts back; goes to Isle of Man and publishes the Manks Monastery or Memoirs of Belvil and Julia (no copy in English Short Title Cat.); establishes schools in Coventry, Hammersmith, and Falkirk; tries navy; fights duel; made army commission agent and embezzles £8,000;

removes to America; lives at headwaters of Patuxent, mostly on squirrels; becomes “acquainted with several Indian dialects and made much progress in the interpretation of their hieroglyphics; socialises with Jefferson in Washington; joins Canadian Fencibles, but returns to London; gives expensive trinket to Anne Clark, the mistress of Duke of York [“a sedulous imitation of Fanny Hill and pampering some low rascal in a corner with the wages of her iniquity”]; sent recruiting to Canada, where he raises no recruits; pay stopped;

takes to natural history [“I found a few skeletons which proved to demonstrate that men were formerly at least a foot taller ... that the diminution of size followed the precession of the equinoxes and most probably had some secret connection with these”]; returns to England with relics, starts a theme park where [“the fragrance of exotic flowers was to be smelt and the wobbling music of Indians was to be heard”]; Customs demands 35% duty and he goes mad [“the springs and principles of my mind broke down”];

sells an option to Bullock of Bullock’s Museum, in a deal which involved Ashe writing the guide book, for which there is a copy in the British Library of an MS note: “Mr Ashe is extremely sorry to have mislaid a pamphlet for Mr B. he will search for it with assiduity”; jailed for debt; takes to literature [“during my residence in the Kings Bench which did not exceed 6 months, I composed three distinct works namely Political Arguments in Favour of Parliamentary Reform, which I sold to William Honeywood Yate Esq. for £300” - others being a History of the Azores, and a pamphlet on the State of Ireland for Lord Jervis”]; Sir Richard Murray paid £50 for an MS [worth 1,500 guineas];

travels to Madeira and Brazil and collects a double handful of diamonds, and is imprisoned; wrote Spirit of the Book, an imaginative - or imaginary - version of the “black book” of charges against Queen Caroline that her enemies in the Spencer Percival faction had printed and suppressed [“He exhibits the fruit of his labours - it is despised by the booksellers - instead of a publisher he meets with a creditor and is again imprisoned - visited by his creditors - treats them with contempt - libels them in a poem - they tremble” - Korner];

commences on a blackmailing career [“I completed a large work in 4 weeks called The Claustral Palace or the Memoirs of the Family. As I came to the close of the fourth volume I issued a circular letter; such was the interest the circular exerted that before I had revised my manuscript I received several proposals respecting it and was visit by several violent characters from London”]; sold half-share to a Mr C., to sell the suppression rights; Mr C. panics and flees the country leaving Ashe to pay the bills; approaches the lady in question, Lady Berkeley (Mary Tudor), and offers to write her memoirs; she declines; he proceeds; touched and “smiling most bewitchingly” she told him her story and gave him “some correspondence”;

the collaboration is unsuccessful [“I frequently yielded to her opinion and altered or mutilated those very passages which I esteemed the brightest ornaments of the work”]; upon completion, she burst into tears [“notwithstanding all the merit of your work and the great and valuable services its is universally calculated to render me I would not now for millions that it was printed or published.”]; he insists that he must publish or accept £1,000 from her; she become “no longer Lady - mild, lovely and benevolent, but Mary C. the butcher’s daughter, rude, vulgar and termagant with gore upon her mouth, blood upon her hands; famine in her aspect, and fury in her face”;

intimid[at]ed, he sells the MS for £100 changing title from “The Persecuted Peeress” to “The Perjured Peeress”, and re-offers it [“On the following day a creature of the family came and treated with me for the manuscript and paid me for it 500 guineas on the express obligation however of my dropping the subject.”]; then sells the MS to a private Gentleman in Bath for £200, this being Yate, who was cowed by threats of criminal proceedings; Yate handed the MS over for destruction;

engenders an Abridgement, The Spirit of the Spirit of the Book [“I had now moved to Park Place, Baker Street North, and Pursued such a life of literary prostitution as is perhaps unparalleled in the history of letters”]; becomes involved in the Princess Caroline scandal on several sides; publishes the Liberal Critic [“where the reader will find a characteristic review of all the books I had perused”]; also A Soldier of Fortune, a historical novel [“the grand principle of which is to invigorate the spiritual health, rouse the loyalty and fortify the mind of the public against the invasion of the levelling and deleterious doctrines which pervade the writings and orations of the opposition.”]

Note: The above account incorporates reading of the Memoirs and Confessions of Captain Ashe [...] 3 vols. (London: Henry Colburn 1815) - a copy of which i held in the Belfast Central Library (York St., Belfast.) BS.