(v) Immorality as Sport
ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
Evening Post published a typical "list of officers," attached to the more noxious gaming houses of the day: and among the considerable band were included an " operator," who deals the cards at a "cheating game called faro" ; ' Puffs" with " money given them to decoy others to play"; a " Clerk," who checks upon the puffs " to see that they sink none of the money given them to play with." ; a '"' Squib," who is a puff of lower rank, serving at half-salary while learning to deal ;
Flashers,' who subtly move among new plungers recalling 'how often the bank has been stripped"; a '"' Dunner," who strives to recover money lost at play; a "' Waiter," to serve wine, etc.; an " Attorney"; a '' Captain," to handle any who are peevish about losing money; an " Usher," who lights patrons up and down stairs and gives the word to the Porter,
"who is generally a soldier of the foot guards"'; an '"' Orderly Man," who walks up and down outside the door, to give notice to the porter, and alarm the house at the approach of constables ; a "Runner," who is to get intelligence of justices' meetings ; together with ' Link-boys,"
"Watchmen,"
" Chairmen,"
" Drawers,"
'' Affidavit men,"
'"' Ruffians,"
"' Bailees,"' cum multis alis.+ (v) Immorality as Sport Even immorality, under cloak of the "' nature worship "' and *' natural expression"? propounded by Deism, was, during most decades of the century, largely winked at as "sport."
George II, Walpole and the Prince of Wales were but representative of a large section of "' high society '? who lived in flagrant, shameless adultery.
Lady Montagu, in October, 1723, writing to the Countess of Mar, declared that, in society "' the appellation of rake is as genteel in a woman as in a man of quality."
The Drury Lane district of West London was an extensive seraglio, and such terms as " Drury Lane Vestal,"
"' Covent Garden Virgin" and '"' Newgate Saint "' were ironical designations of different classes of prostitutes.2_
The Court Masquerades moreover, which continued till the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755,2 when the moral and religious feelings of the country procured their suppression, were scandalously sensual ; while the popular "' subscription" Receptions and Masquerades were copiously tarred with the same brush.
'' Champagne, dice, 1 See Sydney, Vol. I., p. 220.
2 See Sir Richard Steele in Tatler (July 26th, 1709); G. R. Balleine, History of Evang. Party, p. 14 ; Sir Chas. Petrie, The Four Georges, pp. 74—-5.
3 See Lecky, I., pp. 503-4.
EXPIRING HOPES
music or your neighbour's spouse," were among the contending attractions of "the midnight orgy" and "' the mazy dance."
Horace Walpole, writing to Mann (May 3rd, 1749), concerning a " subscription masquerade " at which George II was present, says that Miss Chudleigh, a popular maid of honour, masquerading as "Iphigenia," was
'"'so naked that you would have taken her for Andromeda " ; and Besant, lumping together the masquerades of the time, describes them as "scenes of dissipation."+ Yet as late as February, 1770, the House of Commons "adjourned to attend a subscription masquerade held in Soho."
Among the illiterate and outcast multitude, to such a pitch of barbarity did sensuality rise, that frequently it was seen on parade.
Every new Parliament, for example, " the borough of Garret," a settlement of " straggling cottages near Wandsworth," held a mock election; and "the qualification of a voter was that he had enjoyed a woman in the open air in that district."
The occasion, with all its obscene humour and bawdry horse-play, drew swarming crowds of debauchees from London ; ''and so much custom resulted to the local publicans, that they found it to their interest to contribute largely to the expense of the ceremony."?
So utterly depraved, too, were some rural areas, that labourers actually "'sold their wives by auction in the cattle market ; and Baptism registers show how rampant was immorality in the villages.'
Nor can it seriously be contended that the primary cause of this depravity was economic or financial.
Defoe, in the early part of the century, and Arthur Young, more than fifty years later, make it abundantly clear that English wages, both rural and urban, were very substantially higher than those on the Continent ; and prices were cheap.* 'The root cause was none other than spiritual atrophy and moral decay: for one of the most remarkable facts of the century, was the way in which multitudes of converts of the Great Revival, despite their unprecedented voluntary charity, quickly raised themselves from a condition of drunkenness, poverty and squalor to a status of decent living, economic independence and self-respect.
Of such wholesome present-day sports as baseball and Association or Rugby football, the eighteenth century knew
1 London in the Eighteenth Century, p. 410.
2 Petrie, op. cit., p. 15.
3 Balleine, op. cit., p. 14. i 4 See Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through Great Britain (1724-26), and Arthur
Young, A Tour Through the Southern Counties (1768), A Tour Through the North of England (1771).
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
nothing : while anything approaching modern cricket made no popular appeal till well into the latter half of the century.*
To the general rabble, as indeed to many of '*' their betters," the baiting of bulls, bears and badgers ; the teasing and torture of cats, dogs, rams, cocks and ducks; the flogging of horses over an "endurance course"; the beastly bludgeonings of prize fighters and local bruisers ; together with drunkenness, gambling and sex immorality represented the basic elements of "Sport."
Even the school games of children were for the most part, bullying, cruel and crude—a stimulus perhaps to brawn and muscle, but an enemy both of team-work and wit.
Little wonder, therefore, that Wesley's attitude towards popular amusements was so inhibitive as to seem unreasonable to-day.
His problem was comparable to that of the Early Christian leaders concerning Roman gladiatorial shows.
A complete and peremptory break was imperative.
He had to free the masses from the cruelty and barbarism, the lust and the avarice, then associated with the name and substance of " sport.'
His high and holy purpose was to re-discover and purge the nation's soul; and when once that unparalleled service was wrought, a new and elevated conception of sport duly appeared.
Meanwhile, the vulgar, degrading pastimes of the early and middle eighteenth century, reflected all too clearly the vicious Zeitgeist then at work: they expressed with uncanny accuracy the soul tragedy of "a period of dim ideals and expiring hopes."
1E, D. Cuming, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 378-81.
CHAPTER Ix -
DAWN DEFERRED
"I do not remember that our English poets ever suffered a criminal amour to succeed upon the stage until the reign of Charles II.
Ever since that time the alderman is made a cuckold, the deluded virgin is debauched, and adultery and fornication are supposed to be committed behind the scenes as part of the action."
JONATHAN Swit, Project for the Advancement of Religion.
"Ir is certain the apprenticeship of some parish children is as great a scene of inhumanity as the suffering others to die in infancy."
Jonas Hanway, An Earnest Appeal for Mercy to the Children of the Poor (1766). p. 105.
Here malice, rapine, accident conspire, And now a rabble rages, now a fire ; Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here a fell attorney prowls for prey ; Here falling houses thunder on your head,
And here a female atheist talks you dead."
SAMUEL JouNson, London, (1738).
CHAPTER IX
DAWN DEFERRED
Licur literature, including comic drama, has, in every age, striven to hold a mirror to the fashions and foibles, the habits and humours, the appetites and aspersions, the manners and morals of contemporary life.
Co-ordinated imagination and artistic latitude here, of course, are freely allowed.
But unless the action and atmosphere are consonant with current experience, habit, fashion or fancy, such literature has scanty hope of wide appeal.
What then of the light literature of the early and middle eighteenth century?
Beyond doubt, it emits an odour of scented sickliness and putridity that never would have been tolerated in a healthy or decent age.
Sir Walter Besant, in his comprehensive quarto volume London in the Eighteenth Century, writes:
'' The coarseness prevalent in the eighteenth century, the gross indecency and ribaldry of its songs, of the daily and common talk, makes itself felt in the whole of its literature—in the plays, the poems, the essays, the novels .
. the grossness belonged not only to the poor wretch of a harlot, but to all classes alike."
Among the many characters, for example, in John Gay's sweeping success, "' The Beggar's Opera " (1728), one looks in vain for a single honest person.
True, Addison, Steele, Richardson, Johnson and Goldsmith worked hard to stop the pestilential rot; but to the vast proportion of their countrymen, they were asking water to run up hill.
The taste for the pornographic was avid, if not insatiable : the drift of the era was toward the pedantic, the sensual, the vulgar.
Even clergymen like Swift and Sterne could not resist the lure of the coarse and the prurient : neither could such would-be reformers as Defoe, Fielding and Smollett often succeed in keeping their pages quite clean ; while as for the "' wit " of most popular scribblers—many of them women— they won and held their following by gilding and mirroring dirt.
The moral standards of Richard Sheridan were far removed from anything Puritan or prudish ; yet in The Rivals,
1 Op. cit., p. 276%
CHAPTER Ix
DAWN DEFERRED
Licut literature, including comic drama, has, in every age, striven to hold a mirror to the fashions and foibles, the habits and humours, the appetites and aspersions, the manners and morals of contemporary life.
Co-ordinated imagination and artistic latitude here, of course, are freely allowed.
But unless the action and atmosphere are consonant with current experience, habit, fashion or fancy, such literature has scanty hope of wide appeal.
What then of the light literature of the early and middle eighteenth century?
Beyond doubt, it emits an odour of scented sickliness and putridity that never would have been tolerated in a healthy or decent age.
Sir Walter Besant, in' his comprehensive quarto volume London in the Eighteenth Century, writes:
'"' The coarseness prevalent in the eighteenth century, the gross indecency and ribaldry of its songs, of the daily and common talk, makes itself felt in the whole of its literature—in the plays, the poems, the essays, the novels .
. the grossness belonged not only to the poor wretch of a harlot, but to all classes alike."
Among the many characters, for example, in John Gay's sweeping success, '' The Beggar's Opera "' (1728), one looks in vain for a single honest person.
True, Addison, Steele, Richardson, Johnson and Goldsmith worked hard to stop the pestilential rot; but to the vast proportion of their countrymen, they were asking water to run up hill.
The taste for the pornographic was avid, if not insatiable : the drift of the era was toward the pedantic, the sensual, the vulgar.
Even clergymen like Swift and Sterne could not resist the lure of the coarse and the prurient : neither could such would-be reformers as Defoe, Fielding and Smollett often succeed in keeping their pages quite clean ; while as for the "' wit " of most popular scribblers—many of them women— they won and held their following by gilding and mirroring dirt.
The moral standards of Richard Sheridan were far removed from anything Puritan or prudish ; yet in The Rivals,
"Ops cits p. 276%