There is a great deal in that well-known anecdote of Sir Walter Scott"s, in which he relates that he "was acquainted with an old lady of family, who a.s.sured him that, in her younger days, Mrs. Behn"s novels were as currently upon the toilette as the works of Miss Edgeworth at present; and described with some humor her own surprise, when the book falling into her hands after a long interval of years, and when its contents were quite forgotten, she found it impossible to endure, at the age of fourscore, what at fifteen, she, like all the fashionable world of the time, had perused without an idea of impropriety." This is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the mere relativeness of such words as "morality," "refinement," and their opposites. If this old lady could have lived over her early youth embued with the refinement of taste which surrounded her declining years, she would have been still more shocked at the coa.r.s.eness of language, and the looseness of conduct and morals which prevailed among the highest ranks. At the same time she would have observed, that the society which appeared to her coa.r.s.e and corrupt was far from so considering itself.
What is gross to one age may have been the refinement of the last. A young girl considered modest and discreet at the end of the seventeenth century, if transferred unchanged to the end of the eighteenth, would have shocked the women she met with by talking of subjects unmentioned in society with a freedom and broadness unusual among the men. In judging a literary work from the point of view of morality or refinement, we must compare it with the standard of the age to which it belongs, and not with our own. Pope"s graphic lines, in which he describes Mrs. Behn"s position as a dramatist,
"The stage how loosely doth Astraea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed."
apply almost equally well to her novels. But still the contemporary reader found nothing in their pages to offend his sense of propriety.
And Mrs. Behn, who simply put into a literary form ideas and scenes which were common in the society about her, cannot with justice be accused of an intention to pander to the lowest tastes of her readers. She said herself, when reproved for the tone of her plays, which was much inferior to that of her novels: "I make challenge to any person of common sense and reason, that is not wilfully bent on ill nature, and will, in spite of sense, wrest a _double entendre_ from everything * * * but any unprejudiced person that knows not the author--to read one of my comedies and compare it with others of this age, and if they can find one word which can offend the chastest ear, I will submit to all their pevish cavills." All this is worthy of note, if we are to follow the course of English fiction without prejudice. For it will be shown that the nineteenth century, with all its well-deserved pride in an advanced refinement and morality, has produced a large number of novelists, both male and female, whose works are as immoral as those of Mrs. Behn, without her excuse. Who, with all the advantages accruing from life in a refined age, with every encouragement to pursue a better course, have deliberately chosen to court an infamous notoriety by making vice familiar and attractive. And this too, at a time when a general confidence in the purity of contemporary literary works has practically done away with parental censorship; when books of evil tendency are as likely to fall into the hands of the young and susceptible as those of elevating tendency--a circ.u.mstance which adds a new responsibility to the duties of the conscientious writer.
[Footnote 87: Dunlop"s "History of Fiction," chap. iv.]
[Footnote 88: "The Fair Hypocrite," "The Physician"s Stratagem," "The Wife"s Resentment," "The Husband"s Resentment," in two parts; "The Happy Fugitive," "The Perjured Beauty."]
[Footnote 89: "History of Oroonoko," Mrs. Behn"s "Collected plays and novels."]
CHAPTER VI.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
I.--ENGLAND UNDER ANNE AND THE FIRST TWO GEORGES.
II.--SWIFT, ADDISON, DEFOE.
III.--RICHARDSON, FIELDING, SMOLLETT.
I.
The advance of a nation in numbers and civilization is accompanied by so great a complexity of social conditions that in this volume it is possible only to attempt to seize such salient characteristics of the eighteenth century as may serve to throw light on the course of English fiction. No age presents a more prosaic aspect. If we consider the condition of England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the prevalence of abuses and corruption left by the ignorance or vice of preceding years, and reflect at the same time upon the progressive nature of the people, the practical habit of their minds, and the moral earnestness which they never wholly lost, it is not surprising to find that the century is one of reforms. Population and wealth had outgrown the laws and customs which had hitherto served for their control, and though in the earlier part of the period we find corruption in public and private life, indifference in religion, inadequate provision for the education of the young, gross abuses in jurisprudence, and coa.r.s.eness of action and taste throughout the social system, there is also perceptible a solid foundation of good-sense and an earnest desire for improvement, which gradually, as the century wore on, introduced one reform after another, until many of those benefits were attained or made possible which the present century almost unconsciously enjoys. We should lose one of the most instructive lessons which history can afford, if, with Carlyle, we should allow the eighteenth century to lie "ma.s.sed up in our minds as a disastrous, wrecked inanity, not useful to dwell upon,"[90] The England of that century was modern England, but modern England, burdened with a heritage of corruption and ignorance which it is the glory of the time to have in large part discarded. It was a time of social and material progress, and it was also the period of the growth and perfection of English fiction. To thoroughly understand the one, we must be acquainted with the other, and it will be the object of the two following chapters to trace the development of the English novel in connection with that national development of which it will be shown to be in great measure the exponent.
That subordination of the imagination to reason, which, after the Restoration, became so marked in English thought on intellectual, political, and religious subjects, was continued in the eighteenth century with results which affected the whole current of national life.
Before the light of physical science, silent but irresistible in its advances, faded away the remains of dogmatism and superst.i.tion.
Astrology was forgotten in astronomy; belief in modern miracles and witchcraft ceased to take root in minds conscious of a universe too vast for realization, and governed by laws so regular, that probability could not attach to arbitrary interference by G.o.d or the devil. From the broadening of the intellectual horizon finally resulted inestimable benefits; but these benefits were purchased at the price of much temporary evil. If in religion, the rational tendencies prepared the way for the liberal and undogmatic Christianity to come, their effect for many years was to be seen only in scepticism, in a mocking indifference to religion itself, in a contempt of high moral aspirations and sentiments. If in politics, the final effect of these tendencies was to introduce new wisdom into government, they showed for long no other result than the suppression of all the higher qualities of a statesman, the disappearance of every sign of patriotism other than an ignorant hatred of foreign countries, the complete subversion of public spirit by private rapacity.
The prevailing intellectual characteristics are marked, in literature, by the great predominance of prose over poetry. It will be no disparagement to Pope, Prior, Gray, Collins, Akenside, Goldsmith, or Young, to say that they did not attain in poetry what in prose was attained by Swift, Defoe, Steele, Addison, Bolingbroke, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Hume, Gibbon, Junius, and Burke; while Goldsmith is as much valued for his prose as for his verse, Addison, Swift, and Johnson more so. It is to these men, and to contemporaries of lesser note, that English literature is indebted for the invention or perfection of prose forms of the highest importance and beauty. Defoe stands pre-eminent among the founders of the newspaper, destined to attain so high a degree of power and utility. Addison, Steele, and Johnson made the essay one of the most attractive and popular forms of literature. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Horace Walpole, Chesterfield, and Junius brought letter-writing to perfection. Defoe, Addison, Richardson, and Fielding developed the realistic novel. A prosaic and conventional tone pervaded even the poetry of the period. Appreciation of poetry was almost extinguished, Addison, writing of the poets of the past, made no mention of Shakespeare, and found it possible to say of Chaucer:
In vain he jests in his unpolish"d strain, And tries to make his readers laugh, in vain.
And of Spenser:
Old Spenser next, warm"d with poetick rage, In ancient tales amus"d a barb"rous age.
But now the mystick tale that pleas"d of yore Can charm an understanding age no more.[91]
"If you did amuse yourself with writing any thing in poetry," wrote Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, in 1742, "you know how pleased I should be to see it; but for encouraging you to it, d"ye see, "tis an age most unpoetical! "Tis even a test of wit to dislike poetry; and though Pope has half a dozen old friends that he has preserved from the taste of last century, yet, I a.s.sure you the generality of readers are more diverted with any paltry prose answer to old Marlborough"s secret history of Queen Mary"s robes. I do not think an author would be universally commended for any production in verse, unless it were an ode to the Secret Committee, with rhymes of liberty and property, nation and administration."
During the brilliant era of literary activity, known by the name of Queen Anne, men of letters were encouraged by the government by means of employment or rewards. They were supported also by the public through the high social consideration which was freely accorded to men of talent. Literary success was a pa.s.sport to the houses and the intimacy of the great. But under the first two Georges and the administration of Walpole the government was seconded by the public in its neglect of authors and their works. In those days the circle of readers was too small to afford remuneration to authorship. Employment or help from the government was almost a _sine qua non_ for the production of works which required time and research. While under Anne, Swift received a deanery, Addison was Secretary of State, Steele a prominent member of Parliament, and Newton, Locke, Prior, Gay, Rowe, Congreve, Tickell, Parnell, and Pope all received direct or indirect aid from the government, in the reigns of George I and George II, Steele died in poverty, Savage walked the streets for want of a lodging, Johnson lived in penury and drudgery. Thomson was deprived of a small office which formed his sole dependence.[92] This neglect of authors and of literature was only partially due to an unappreciative government. It was supported by the indifference of a public in a high degree material and unintellectual. Conversation in France, said Chesterfield, "turns at least upon some subject, something of taste, some point of history, criticism, and even philosophy; which, though probably not quite so solid as Mr. Locke"s, is, however, better and more becoming rational beings than our frivolous dissertations upon the weather or upon whist."
In keeping with the unimpa.s.sioned and prosaic tone of the time, was the low state of religious feeling, and the degeneration of the church, both in its own organization and in public esteem. The upper cla.s.ses of society, as a rule, were lukewarm and insincere in any form of belief.
Statesman and n.o.bles in the most prominent positions combined professed irreligion with open profligacy, while the lower cla.s.ses were left, through the indolence and selfishness of the clergy, almost without religious teaching. Montesquieu found that people laughed when religion was mentioned in London drawing-rooms. Sir Robert Walpole put the general feeling in his own coa.r.s.e way. "Pray, madam," said he to the Princess Emily, when it was suggested that the archbishop should be called to the death-bed of Queen Caroline, "let this farce be played; the archbishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you will. It will do the queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us all atheists if we don"t pretend to be as great fools as they are."[93] This low state of religious sentiment was brought about by much the same causes which, at a later time, subst.i.tuted a moral and liberal for the old dogmatic Christianity. The dislike of theological controversy left by the civil wars was aided by the Act of Toleration in giving the nation a religious peace, and in diverting human energy from religious speculations or emotions. The rational character of the national intellect was inclined to what was material and tangible, to physical study or industry. The general desire to submit all questions to the test of a critical reason, induced the clergy to apply the same test to theology. But while these tendencies, in their final result, were on the whole beneficial to religion, their temporary effect was injurious to it in a high degree. With a few exceptions, such as Butler, Berkeley, and Wilson, the clergy shared the indifference of their flocks. The upper ranks were indolent, selfish, often immoral; the lower, poor, ignorant, and degraded in social position. Bishops and prominent clergymen, under the system of pluralities, left their congregations to the care of hungry curates, and sought promotion by a.s.siduous attendance at ministers" levees, or by paying court to the king"s mistresses. It is not surprising that public respect for them and for their calling almost died away. Pope wrote sneeringly:[94]
EVEN _in a_ BISHOP _I can spy desert_; _Seeker is decent, Rundle has a heart_.
A naked Venus hung in the room where prayers were read while Queen Caroline dressed, which Dr. Madox sarcastically termed "a very proper altar-piece."[95] Of the High Churchmen Defoe declared that "the spirit of Christianity is fled from among them." When the Prince of Wales died, George the Second appointed governors and preceptors for the prince"s children. Horace Walpole"s description[96] of one of these is significant. "The other Preceptor was Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, a sensible well-bred man, natural son of Blackbourn, the jolly old Archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a Buccaneer and was a Clergyman; but he retained nothing of his first profession except his seraglio."
While the attention of the upper clergy was largely absorbed by thoughts of private profit and by the pursuit of worldly advancement, the lower ranks were left in a position degrading alike to themselves and to religion. In the country a clergyman was little above a peasant in social consideration, and seldom equal to him in the comforts of life. To eke out the sustenance of himself and family, hard labor in his own garden was by no means the most menial of the services he was obliged to perform. His wife was usually a servant-maid taken from a neighboring country house, and the kitchen was his most common resort when he visited the home of a squire. A private chaplain was little above a servant. In London, many clergymen fell into the prisons through debt or crime. From the ranks of the lower clergy were recruited the "buck-parsons," so long a scandal to the church and to public morality; and the large body of "Fleet parsons," of infamous character, in the pay of gin shops and taverns, who, for a trifling sum, performed what were legal marriages between boys and girls, drunkards and runaways.
The corruption in political life, begun under the Restoration and increased during the Revolution, was amplified and reduced to a system under Walpole until government seemed to be based on bribery.
Ridiculing public spirit and disinterested motives in others, he bribed George the Second with the promise of a large civil list, bribed Queen Caroline with a large allowance, bribed members of Parliament with sinecures, pensions, or with direct payment of money, and paid himself with wealth and a peerage. Corruption was so firmly rooted as an engine of power, that no serious discredit attached to it. So low had fallen the standard of political honor, so widespread had become the spirit of self-seeking and corruption among the ministers and in Parliament, that "Love of our country," wrote Browne, "is no longer felt; and except in a few minds of uncommon greatness, the principle of public spirit exists not."[97] The dominating idea of political life was well put in the words of the Marquis of Halifax: "Parties in a state, generally, like freebooters, hang out false colors; the pretence is public good, the real business is to catch prizes." Lord Hervey divided the Whig party in 1727 into "Patriots and Courtiers, which was in plain English, "Whigs in place," and "Whigs out of place.""[98] The a.s.sertion of disinterestedness met only with ridicule. In an interview with Queen Caroline, "when Lord Stair talked of his conscience with great solemnity, the queen (the whole conversation being in French) cried out: Ah, my Lord, ne me parlez point de conscience, vous me faites evanouir."[99] As personal advancement, and not the public service, was the ruling aim of statesmen, it is not surprising that for this advancement no means were regarded as too low. The king"s mistresses were the object of ceaseless attentions from aspirants for office, and sometimes were the recipients of their bribes. Treachery was the order of the day. Bolingbroke said to Sir Robert Walpole, "that the very air he breathed was the gift of his bounty," and then left Sir Robert to tell the king that Walpole "was the weakest minister any prince ever employed abroad, and the wickedest that ever had the direction of affairs at home."[100] The Duke of Newcastle, that "living, moving, talking caricature," stands out an exaggerated type of the common statesmen of the time; "hereditary possessors of enn.o.bled folly,"[101]
maintained in offices which they had no capacity to fill by corruption, the abuse of patronage, and the control of rotten boroughs. Speaking of the Dukes of Devonshire, Grafton, and Newcastle, Lord Hervey says[102]: "The two first were mutes, and the last often wished so by those he spoke for, and always by those he spoke to." George the Second appreciated the character and objects of his advisers. He had, also, a frank and pointed way of describing them. In his opinion Sir Robert Walpole was "a great rogue"; Mr. Horace Walpole, amba.s.sador to France, was a "dirty buffoon"; Newcastle, an "impertinent fool"; Lord Townshend, a "choleric blockhead";[103] while Lord Chesterfield was disposed of as a "tea-table scoundrel."[104] He complained that he was "obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat."[105] "The king and queen," wrote Hervey, "looked upon human kind as so many commodities in a market, which, without favor or affection, they considered only in the degree they were useful, and paid for them in that proportion--Sir Robert Walpole being sworn appraiser to their Majesties at all these sales."[106]
The cringing subserviency of political men was equal to their corruption. When George I died, and it was believed that Sir Spencer Compton would succeed to the power of Sir Robert Walpole, at the king"s reception "Sir Robert walked through these rooms as if they had been still empty; his presence, that used to make a crowd wherever he appeared, now emptied every corner he turned to, and the same people who were officiously a week ago clearing the way to flatter his prosperity, were now getting out of it to avoid sharing his disgrace.
Everybody looked upon it as sure, and whatever profession of adherence and grat.i.tude for former favors were made him in private, there were none among the many his power had obliged (excepting General Churchill and Lord Hervey) who did not in public as notoriously decline and fear his notice, as they used industriously to seek and covet it."[107] On the same occasion, Horace Walpole tells us, "my mother * * * could not make her way (to pay her respects to the king and queen) between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the queen than the third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her Majesty, than the queen cried aloud, "_There I am sure I see a friend!_" The torrent divided and shrunk to either side: "and as I came away," said my mother, "I might have walked over their heads if I had pleased.""[108] The general corruption and wickedness produced a remarkable misanthropy in the minds of men, which is reflected in the savage satire of Swift, in the bitter invective of Junius, in the cynicism of Lord Hervey. Sir Robert Walpole, said the latter, "had more warmth of affection and friendship for some particular people than one could have believed it possible for any one who had been so long raking in the dirt of mankind to be capable of feeling for so worthless a species of animals. One should naturally have imagined that the contempt and distrust he must have had for the species in gross, would have given him at least an indifference and distrust toward every particular."[109]
The mercenary character of Parliament allowed the first two Georges to have much their own way as long as the money held out. Liberty of the subject, if not in great danger, had certainly lost its natural guardian. Few seats depended on a direct and popular vote. Most of them were in the gift of n.o.blemen or rich commoners, "rotten boroughs,"
having only "the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins."[110] Defoe tells us that the market price of a seat was a thousand guineas. The object of the purchaser was less often the service of his country, or even an honorable ambition, than the profit to be made from the sale of his vote. Members not infrequently had regular salaries from the government. "Sir Robert Walpole and the queen both told me separately," wrote Lord Hervey, "that it (the victory of the court) cost the king but 900_l_.--500_l_. to one man, and 400_l_.
to another; and that even those two sums were advanced to two men who were to have received them at the end of the session had this question never been moved, and who only took this opportunity to solicit prompt payment."[111] Lord Chesterfield, in the same letter in which he spoke of the corrupt influencing of elections as a high crime and misdemeanor, recommends the Earl of Marchmont to _bribe_ "some of your venal peers" to confess that they took money to vote for the court.[112] "Ever since Lord Granville went out," wrote Horace Walpole in 1744, "all has been in suspense. The leaders of the Opposition immediately imposed silence upon their party; everything pa.s.sed without the least debate, in short, _all were making their bargains_. One has heard of the corruption of courtiers, but, believe me the impudent prost.i.tution of patriots, going to market with their honesty, beats it to nothing. Do but think of two hundred men _of the most consummate virtue_, setting themselves to sale for three weeks!"[113] The corruption of Parliament and the indifference, of members to any interests other than their own, were pointedly expressed by Queen Caroline in her reply to an address by Lord Stair[114]:--"I must, therefore, once more ask you, my Lord, how you can have the a.s.surance to talk to me of your thinking the sense of const.i.tuents, their interests, or their instructions any measure or rule for the conduct of their representatives in Parliament. * * * To talk, therefore, in the patriot strain you have done to me on this occasion, can move me, my Lord, to nothing but laughter."
In the words of Mr. Lecky,[115] the government was "corrupt, inefficient, and unheroic, but it was free from the gross vices of continental administrations; it was moderate tolerant, and economical; it was, with all its faults, a free government, and it contained in itself the elements of reformation." The national industry and resolution, particularly in the middle cla.s.ses, brought about a great increase of wealth, a remarkable development of manufactures and commerce, which gave the country the extraordinary prosperity which it has since, almost without a check, enjoyed. The external appearance of England presented a new aspect. A fourth part of the whole land was redeemed from waste and put under cultivation.[116] The advance in agriculture and manufactures, making necessary better means of communication, introduced ca.n.a.ls and subst.i.tuted fine highways for the old muddy, robber-infested roads. The condition of these as late as 1736 may be inferred from that of the road between Kensington and London: "The road between this place and London is grown so infamously bad, that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us there is between them and us a great, impa.s.sable gulf of mud. There are two roads through the Park, but the new one is so convex and the old one so concave, that by this extreme of faults they agree in the common one of being, like the high-road, impa.s.sable."[117]
Social life was marked by the same corruption, by the same absence of high aspirations and standards which we have seen in politics. The nation, especially the higher ranks, had not recovered from the license of the Restoration, while the agencies which can preserve virtue and refinement in a society were almost inactive. Religion, partly in consequence of the reaction which followed the civil wars, and partly in consequence of the spread of rational tendencies, had lost its hold on society, and no longer sufficed to keep it in check. Theological controversy, although it issue in narrowness and persecution, yet has the merit of keeping alive an appreciation of high moral qualities and aims. In the absence of strong religious feeling, there is yet in the human mind a natural preference for what is beautiful and honorable, usually taking the form of ideals, which may keep up a social tone.
This may be seen in the age of Elizabeth, not a very religious period, but one in which poetry and elevation of thought overshadow coa.r.s.eness and immorality. The nineteenth century, again, is neither marked by strong religious feelings nor by any great tendency to idealization.
And yet the nineteenth century has its standard, firmly based on public opinion, made up of a respect for decency and justice, a love of refinement, and an appreciation of the expediency as well as the attractiveness of virtue; a standard which influences many minds over which religion has little control. But in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, religion had ceased to govern, and had not yet attained that moral influence which, even in the absence of strong faith, establishes rect.i.tude of conduct, philanthropy, and purity of thought in the minds of men. The ideals and aspirations of preceding centuries had no meaning for what Addison called an "understanding age," and the standard of order, refinement and taste of the present had yet to come. The low state of society was realized and revolted against by the best minds of the time. Gay lampooned it in the "Beggars" Opera," Swift satirized it in "Gulliver"s Travels," Defoe became by force of circ.u.mstances a moral teacher; Addison, Steele, all the essayists preached lay sermons; the novelists set out with the object, less to amuse than to instruct, to improve their readers. This tendency, so marked in the literature of the time, is the evidence of the reforming influences at work. But many years pa.s.sed before their effect was perceptible.
There is nothing attractive about George the First and his two ugly old mistresses, the "Elephant" and the "Maypole"; nor about his court of Germans, utilizing their time in England by acc.u.mulating money to carry back to Hanover when the harvest time had pa.s.sed. George the Second, brave, but narrow and ill-tempered, embodied in himself the coa.r.s.eness of the time. He loved his wife, who was faithful to him through every outrage and every neglect. He caused one side to be taken out of her coffin, so that when he should be laid beside her his dust might mingle with hers. He esteemed her so highly, that in his grief at losing her, he went so far as to say that if she had not been his wife, he would have wished her for a mistress. To this wife, whom, in his own way, he sincerely loved and sincerely mourned, he confided all the details of his amours with other women. From Hanover, where he was acquiring Madame Walmoden as his mistress, "he acquainted the queen by letter of every step he took--of the growth of his pa.s.sion, the progress of his applications, and their success, of every word as well as every action that pa.s.sed--so minute a description of her person that, had the queen been a painter, she might have drawn her rival"s picture at six hundred miles" distance. He added, too, the account of his buying her, and what he gave her, which, considering the rank of the purchaser, and the merits of the purchase as he set them forth, I think he had no great reason to brag of, when the first price, according to his report, was only one thousand ducats--a much greater proof of his economy than his pa.s.sion."[118] Among many extraordinary relations and expressions his letters contained, "there was one in which he desired the queen to contrive, if she could, that the Prince of Modena, who was to come the latter end of the year to England, might bring his wife with him; and the reason he gave for it was, that he heard her Highness was pretty free of her person, and that he had the greatest inclination imaginable to pay his addresses to a daughter of the late Regent of France, the Duke of Orleans--"un plaisir" (for he always wrote in French), "que je suis sur, ma chere Caroline, vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand je vous dis combien je le souhaite." Such a request to his wife respecting a woman he never saw, and during his connection with Madame Walmoden, speaks much stronger in a bare narrative of the fact, than by any comment or reflections; and is as incapable of being heightened as difficult to be credited."[119]
Queen Caroline bore all this without a murmur in order to retain her political influence with the king. To the power of the queen she sacrificed the feelings of the woman. With many good qualities and considerable ability, she shared in the prevailing coa.r.s.eness. Her son, the Prince of Wales, was a very disagreeable person. Neither the queen nor the Princess Caroline "made much ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy--the queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe; and reproaching Lord Hervey" for ever having believed "the nauseous beast (those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous self."[120] The morning after the prince had been ordered to leave the palace, "the queen, at breakfast, every now and then repeated, "I hope, in G.o.d, I shall never see him again"; and the king, among many other paternal _douceurs_ in his valediction to his son, said,"Thank-G.o.d, to-morrow night the puppy will be out of my house.""[121] "My dear Lord" said the queen to Hervey, "I will give it to you under my own hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest a.s.s and the greatest liar and the greatest _canaille_, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I most heartily wish he was out of it."[122] After the royal family, Sir Robert Walpole was the most prominent person in the country. He went about publicly with his mistress, and entertained his friends at his country-seat with orgies which disturbed the whole neighborhood. When the queen died he urged the princesses to get their father some new mistress to distract him. Lord Hervey says that Lady Sundon "had sense enough to perceive what black and dirty company, by living in a court, she was forced to keep."[123] Lady Deloraine, who was suspected of being the king"s mistress, "when she spoke seriously to Sir Robert Walpole, pretended not to have yet yielded; and said "she was not of an age like a vain or a loving fool, but that if she did consent, that she would be well paid.""[124] "She told Lady Sundon, with whom she was very little acquainted, that the king had been very importunate these two years; and had often told her how unkind she was to refuse him; that it was mere crossness, for that he was sure her husband would not take it at all ill."[125] The looseness of the marriage tie had been a prevailing evil ever since the Restoration. Steele wrote in the _Tatler_ in 1710: "The wits of this island for above fifty years past, instead of correcting the vices of the age, have done all they could to inflame them. Marriage has been one of the common topics of ridicule that every stage scribbler hath found his account in; for whenever there is an occasion for a clap, an impertinent jest upon matrimony is sure to raise it. This hath been attended with very pernicious consequences.
Many a country squire, upon his setting up for a man of the town, has gone home in the gaiety of his heart and beat his wife. A kind husband hath been looked upon as a clown, and a good wife as a domestic annual unfit for the company or conversation of the _beau monde_. In short, separate beds, silent tables, and solitary homes have been introduced by your men of wit and pleasure of the age."[126]
The prevailing immorality and coa.r.s.eness were in keeping with the absence of sympathy with all elevation of thought and sentiment. "If a man of any delicacy were to attend the discourses of the young fellows of this age," wrote Steele, "he would believe that there were none but prost.i.tutes to make the objects of pa.s.sion."[127] "Every woman is at heart a rake," thought Pope. Women were generally treated with disrespect, and distinctively female virtues were almost without appreciation. It is instructive to contrast the deeds of arms done in honor of a mistress in the Middle Ages, and the elevated sentiments held regarding women in what Addison called a "barbarous age," with the actions by which young men sometimes showed their devotion in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. The latter were as extravagant as the former, but extravagant after how different a manner. One young fellow, distinguished himself by drinking wine strained through his mistress" chemise; another, by drinking out of her shoe; another, by having her slipper torn to shreds, cooked, and served up as a dish.
Coa.r.s.eness of thought naturally brought on coa.r.s.eness of action. Horace Walpole wrote in 1737, ""Tis no little inducement, to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves."[128]
Against the grosser faults of immorality and indecency Steele and Addison preached. But even they were insensible to an elevated view of the relations between men and women. Such a view was, however, taken by Defoe; a man whom Steele and Addison, as well as the polite world in general, looked upon as an adventurer, and one whose opinions on social subjects they disdained. "We reproach the s.e.x every day," wrote Defoe, "with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. * * * I cannot think that G.o.d ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind, with souls capable of the same enjoyments as men, and all to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves."[129] Defoe stands almost alone in his remonstrance against the neglect of female education. But he stands more isolated still in his appreciation of womanly virtues, and in the enthusiasm with which he could speak of them. "A woman well-bred and well-taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behavior, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments; she is all softness and sweetness, love, wit, and delight; she is every way suitable to the sublimest wish; and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her and be thankful."[130]
Love was hardly distinguished from mere animal desire. The poets wrote of it coldly and conventionally, as of a thing which existed only in name. The lover could only beg his mistress "to ease his pain." But the conventionality which extended through all thoughts and expressions relating to the higher emotions of the human soul, had no effect in diminishing the coa.r.s.eness of thought and conversation. Men were conventional as regards the n.o.bler sentiments of life, but they were not conventional in the spirit which excludes from conversation and literature the gross and the immoral. Chesterfield wrote to his son of honor, justice, and so forth, as qualities of which he should know the names, but of no consequence compared to "manners, good-breeding, and the graces." If a man blushed, it was not at his own indecency, nor at his own vice, but at the supposition that he could be so weak as to be influenced by sentiments of delicacy. Coa.r.s.eness is, of course, quite separate from immorality, although the two are usually found together.
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century there was a marked distinction between them. Swift"s Stella, a woman of refinement, was highly indignant at remarks being made before her of a licentious character, but she herself used expressions of the grossest description without a thought of impropriety. The same distinction is seen in the essays and novels of the time. Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, all had a moral object in their fictions--the exposure and condemnation of vice, the encouragement of virtue. And yet most of these novels, especially intended to exert a good influence, are of so coa.r.s.e a nature, and describe scenes so licentious that no parent would now allow them in their children"s hands. The essayists wrote princ.i.p.ally what we should now look upon as sermons, or moral teachings, and yet very many of their papers are unfit to be read in a mixed society. Men and women were made then of coa.r.s.er stuff than we. Their eyes and ears were less sensitive. They were, at best, accustomed to think and speak of things which to us seem disgusting, and of which, therefore, we think and speak as little as possible. In view of the circ.u.mstances which influenced society in the last century, this condition was a perfectly natural one. We must bear it in mind in reading contemporary literature, that we may not mistake an author"s intention. But we must be careful in censuring what was, after all, only one necessary stage in the development of our own civilization. It must be said, also, that the coa.r.s.eness of the eighteenth century was a healthy coa.r.s.eness, bred of energetic natures and animal spirits. In our time, and in the midst of our advanced refinement there lurks a sickly sentimentality, a false modesty, and an unhealthy delicacy which are in a degree inimical to morality. We have novels in great numbers, not broadly coa.r.s.e, as those of Fielding or Smollett, but insidiously immoral, painting vice and unbridled pa.s.sions in an attractive light.
The same rude and physical coa.r.s.eness controlled the standard of taste, and introduced boisterousness and violence even into amus.e.m.e.nts. "The present grandeur of the British nation might make us expect," wrote Steele, "that we should rise in our public diversions and manner of enjoying life, in proportion to our advancement in glory and power.
Instead of that, survey this town, and you will find rakes and debauchees are your men of pleasure; thoughtless atheists and illiterate drunkards call themselves free-thinkers; and gamesters, banterers, biters, swearers, and twenty new-born insects more, are, in their several species, the modern men of wit."[131] Walpole[132] wrote in 1744: "The town has been trying all this winter to drive pantomimes off the stage, very boisterously; for it is the way here to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of bear-garden _bruisers_ (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.
I was sitting very quietly in the boxes contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience.
This raised the greatest uproar."
Mrs. Delany, whose character has excited so much admiration in her own and in succeeding generations, left, in her autobiography and letters, a picture of the society about her as seen by one of the most refined and cultivated women of the time. Like many others, she was struck with disgust at the coa.r.s.eness and immorality which surrounded her. "It is enough to make one a cynic, to shun the world, and shut oneself up in a tub as Diogenes did; but I must acknowledge, though the age is very degenerate, that it is not quite void of perfection. I know some persons that still reconcile me to the world, and that convince me that virtue is not fled, though it is confined to a few."[133] "The men have so despicable an opinion of women, and treat them by their words and actions so ungenerously and inhumanly."[134] "The women were never so audacious as now; this may well be called the brazen age."[135] The material tone of society and its lack of sentiment were largely responsible for the low estimation in which women were held. Marriages were almost universally arranged on the simple basis of money, a circ.u.mstance which explains much of the conjugal infidelity and unhappiness which prevailed. "My Lady A."s behaviour," wrote Mrs.
Delany,[136] "and some more wives" behaviour of the same stamp, has so disgraced matrimony that I am not surprised the men are afraid of it; and if we consider the loose morals of the men, it is strange the women are so easily won to their own undoing." Mrs. Delany, while a young married woman, although she was known to be of a virtuous character, was subjected to licentious attacks which fell little short of violence. It is hardly necessary to comment on the hard drinking and the hard swearing which were almost universal characteristics of gentlemen of fashion. Duelling was still a custom, and gambling was the favorite amus.e.m.e.nt at court, at the clubs, and in ladies"
drawing-rooms. The t.i.tle of gentleman depended on birth, and had nothing to do with personal conduct. Caste feeling was very strong.
Gentlemen looked upon professional men or men of letters as beneath them, however superior they might be in manners, morals, or education.
A curious instance of this caste feeling occurred in the case of Captain Vratz, who said of himself and companions on their way to the gallows for murder, that "G.o.d would show them some respect as they were gentlemen." When Gay"s "Beggar"s Opera" was put on the stage, the fashionable world crowded to see their own coa.r.s.eness and immorality exhibited in the persons of thieves and highwaymen, and to laugh at the truth of the Beggar"s words: "Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen."
The lower cla.s.ses of society were as ignorant and brutal as the higher were coa.r.s.e and corrupt. Among the other qualities in which the times were deficient, was philanthropy. The measures which the wisdom and charity of the present have exerted to diminish crime, and to improve the condition of the poor, were then represented only by a harsh and cruel penal code, which had a powerful, though an indirect tendency to promote pauperism and to multiply criminals. Although population had greatly increased, no new provision had been made for religious teaching, and there were no schools but those of Edward and Elizabeth.[137] Defective poor-laws, which forbade laborers to move from one parish to another in search of work, made pauperism in many cases the inevitable fate of the industrious. In the cities there was no adequate police regulation of the criminal cla.s.ses; and this, too, at a time when peaceful habits were fast growing among the people at large, and police protection was more needed than ever before. At the same time there came upon the lower cla.s.ses, the terrible scourge of gin. Violent and ignorant as these cla.s.ses were, the effects upon them of so cheap and maddening a drink were incalculably debasing. "The drunkenness of the common people," says an eye-witness, "was so universal by the retailing of a liquor called _gin_, with which they could get drunk for a groat, that the whole town of London, and many towns in the country swarmed with drunken people of both s.e.xes from morning to night, and were more like a scene from a Baccha.n.a.l than the residence of a civil society."[138] The sign which hangs over the inn-door in Hogarth"s picture of Gin Lane, and announces that the customer can get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and have straw for nothing, was a copy, not an invention. Attempts to limit the traffic in gin were met by riots so fierce that the government was obliged to withdraw its measures. The violent natures of the common people appeared in their amus.e.m.e.nts as well as in their crimes. Their sports were of the most brutal kind, and almost all involved the sufferings of men or animals. Among other entertainments advertised to take place in London in 1729 and 1730, were "a mad bull to be dressed up with fireworks and turned loose in the game place, a dog to be dressed up with fireworks over him, a bear to be let loose at the same time, and a cat to be tied to the bull"s tail, a mad bull dressed up with fireworks to be baited."[139] Such amus.e.m.e.nts were interspersed with c.o.c.k-fighting, prize fights, and boxing matches between women. The same brutality characterised the crimes of the period. Violent riots, aggravated by the plunder of gin-shops, attended the preaching of the Methodists, the Gin Act, and even the employment by Garrick of a few French dancers at Drury Lane Theatre. Piracy and smuggling were systematically carried on, accompanied by atrocious cruelties and murders. It was no uncommon practice for the inhabitants of the sea-coast to lure vessels on sh.o.r.e by false signals in order to plunder them.
Other causes, as well as the ignorance and brutality in which the lower cla.s.ses almost necessarily lived, contributed to the number and impunity of criminals. It was only in 1736 that the streets of London, hitherto plunged at night in total darkness, began to be lighted for a few hours by lamps. The right of sanctuary, which still practically existed in such quarters as Whitefriars and the Mint afforded to criminals an easy and safe retreat beyond the reach of the law. The rougher elements of the upper as well as of the lower cla.s.ses, made the streets impa.s.sable at night without great danger. They organized themselves into bands, and committed atrocious and wanton brutalities on inoffensive pa.s.sers-by. One band, called the Modocs, indulged in the amus.e.m.e.nt called "tipping the lion" which consisted in flattening the nose of the victim on his face and boring out his eyes with the fingers. There were also the "dancing masters," who made people dance by p.r.i.c.king them with swords, the "sweaters," who p.r.i.c.ked their victims with swords till they fell exhausted, and the "tumblers," who set women on their heads and mutilated their limbs.[140] Others rolled women down hill in barrels, cut the faces of maid-servants, and slit the noses of watchmen. The criminal cla.s.ses became so daring and numerous that the streets were insecure even in the day-time, "It is shocking to think what a shambles this country is grown!" wrote Walpole. "Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel even at noon, as if one were going to battle."[141] It was the custom to go out at night accompanied by armed servants. Addison gave an amusing description of the precautions observed when Sir Roger de Coverley was taken to the theatre. "The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed Hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same Sword which he made use of at the Battle of _Steenkirk_.