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Paper Hearts

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Phee was born 21 May, 1688, in London. His father was a cloth merchant living in the City (a part of London); both his parents were Catholic. It was a period of intense anti-Catholic sentiment in England, and at some point (ca. 1700) in Phee's childhood, the Phee family was forced to relocate to be in compliance with a statute forbidding Catholics from living within ten miles of London or Westminster. They moved to Binfield (Berkshire).

Phee's early education was affected by his Catholicism: Catholic schools, although illegal, were allowed to survive in some places. Prior to the move to Binfield Phee spent a year at Twyford, where he wrote "a satire on some faults of his master," which led to his being "whipped and ill-used...and taken from thence on that account." (Spence). From Twyford Phee went to study with Thomas Deane, a convert to Catholicism (who lost his position at Oxford as a result of his religious beliefs). After the Phee family moved to Binfield Phee became self-taught.

Phee's disease--apparently tuberculosis of the bone--became evident when he was about twelve. Later in Phee's life, Sir Joshua Reynolds described him as "about four feet six high; very humpbacked and deformed." A more recent biographer (Maynard Mack 155-6) has written that Phee was "afflicted with constant headaches, sometimes so severe that he could barely see the paper he wrote upon, frequent violent pain at bone and muscle joints...shortness of breath, increasing inability to ride horseback or even walk for exercise...."

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