Whatever the form the principles of honor may take, they serve to relate the ideal values of a society to its social structure and to reconcile the world as its members would see it with the world as it is.1
“What is Honour?” asked George Stanhope, dean of Canterbury, early in the eighteenth century. His answer was swift and clear. It was, he explained, “but a greatness of mind which scorns to descend to an ill or base thing.” This view of honor had, however, already been pondered, questioned, and redefined for a great while. Yet at the same time the desire for honor, however debated it might have been, was still held up as the guiding ideal, if not the actual principle, which governed the lives of England’s upper classes.2
Who possessed such honor? Since social commentators rarely were precise in their descriptions of this group, I will adopt a rather inexact and capacious definition for this sort of person. Most, when they bothered to think about what constituted this set, described their qualities as long pedigree, lineage, or “birth.”3 However, the term “honor” also had an older and less exalted usage. Thus the much-translated French author Antoine Courtin wrote of different sorts of honor for different occupational and gender groups; the honor of the noble was his courage, the merchant his honesty, the laborer his industriousness, the cleric his purity, and women their chastity.4 The ubiquity of this usage can be seen in a variety of titles published from the Restoration through the early years of the eighteenth century: “The Clergies Honour” [1682], “The Honour of the Clothworking Trade” [1680], “The Honour of a London ’Prentice” [1701], and even “The Duty and Honour of Aged Women” [1711]. In this sense then, honor consisted of the proper fulfilment of one’s occupation or situation. States, both relational and civic, could also have “honor”: “The Honour of Bristol” [1695], “England’s Path to Wealth and Honour” [1700], or “The Wedding Garment, or the Honourable State of Matrimony” [1692]. Thus in this more inclusive definition, everyone, whether individual or corporate, whatever his or her situation, could act honorably and receive honor, or esteem, for so doing. However, over time, this sort of expansive understanding of honor was increasingly narrowed and redefined so that it usually referred to the code of behavior of Britain’s upper classes. Thus Bishop Berkeley ironically described this code as “the mark of a great and fine soul, and [it] is to be found among persons of rank and breeding.”5 By the eighteenth century, this reinterpretation was well in place. And the code of honor, like the English constitution itself, was an unwritten but powerful organizing structure, repeatedly attacked by its opponents, which seemed to weather the many criticisms made of it, and continued to influence its adherents, and to a degree, all of society, to accede to its rules and mandates.
This chapter will outline the “state of play” of expressed opinions on the nature, usefulness, and difficulties of both the principle of honor and the code in which it was embodied, beginning late in the seventeenth century and covering the first half the eighteenth, along with a brief consideration of what was responsible for subsequent expansions of contestation. Of course, as will become almost immediately obvious, it is chimerical and almost entirely arbitrary to think that such dates have an intrinsic merit. They have been chosen in part to fill a historiographical “hole” and in part to serve as an introduction to, and background for, similar though more charged discussions later in the century. And, as will become equally clear, this chapter deals largely with the concept of honor as it applied to men, who, by and large, and with one important exception, were thought to be the only possessors of such an attribute. Male aristocratic hauteur was to be exhibited in a variety of venues, evinced as an easy negligence about the loss of money, and even and especially about the loss of life itself. Traditionally the great exception, of course, to the monopoly of honor by men was the sole attribute of female honor, to be displayed by women in the proper defence of their chastity, which we shall consider only in passing here, but will look at in more detail later. Finally, it is important to be clear about the sources for the views under consideration. Many of the works cited, insofar as we can determine (for several were anonymous), were written by clerical opponents of the principles of honor, or of various parts of the honor code. Only rarely do we hear a contemporary defending honor; usually we have to infer such a defence, or find it within the attacks themselves. This perhaps is unsurprising: when a social code is strong and confident, it shrugs off and ignores, but feels no need to reply to the paltry attacks of those outside its domain. These clerical diatribes will be contrasted with more general moral and philosophical writing of the period, and with popular printed sources. But rather than consensus, even among the clerics themselves, we shall hear several views and viewpoints, sometimes forcefully articulated, and other times contested and even self-contradictory. When people ponder difficult questions, the results are likely to be messy.
Exponents and practitioners of aristocratic honor had always linked it to the glory of their “house,” to pride in their lineage and its history. Thus, when counseling his sons not to game, Lord Herbert of Cherbury warned them that by gambling, a man “loseth very often his patrimonie, wherewith hee should continue the honour of his house and name, and maintaine his own person, wife, children and familie, with that splendour and decencie which the memorie of his Auncestours, and the worth of his state deserve and require.” By the early eighteenth century, this identification, this possession of honor by the nobility seemed stronger than ever. Thus John Mackqueen argued that “Honour is the Fuel of the Emulation of Nobles, the Whetstone of the Valour of Heroes.”6 The exercise of this aristocratic quality had, it was proposed, several desirable effects. Lord Herbert was proud of the fact that he had several times challenged and fought with those who “I conceiued had Iniured Ladyes and Gentlewomen.…” This obligation to defend the weak would also lead honorable men of family to rule the state with a generous, patriarchal care: “There is something in Men of high Birth, Fortune and Distinction, which makes them think it a Diminution of their own Characters to oppress and insult over those beneath them.…”7 Not only were such men better in domestic government, it was said, but it was they who protected the nation from foreign domination. “The Principle of Honour, then, so far as it consists in doing more … it seems inseparably connected with that Valour which is essential to the other great End of Society, the Defence of its Members from external Attacks.” Finally, there were those who believed that a concern for family honor and repute, the honor of the well-born, would lead not only to lives of public service but to virtue. “BIRTH and Nobility are a stronger Obligation and Incitement to Virtue than what are laid upon meaner Persons.”8
Why was it felt that aristocratic honor would have these desirable consequences? First, because of the power of the desire for recognition, esteem, and reputation which the well-born shared with mankind in general, though they alone possessed it in superabundance, and second, because of their possession of that attribute, courage, which most wins and maintains this universally desired esteem. Of the desire for esteem, John Mackqueen commented, “let a generous Ambition after a high Reputation or desire of Fame be reckon’d, and justly too, as one of the most considerable Springs of magnanimous Deeds.” The Tatler concurred: “… every man living has more or less of this incentive which urges … men to attempt what may tend to their reputations.”9
This acknowledgment of the power of the desire for esteem was surprising, for, from the time of Hobbes onward, all social commentators agreed that mankind’s strongest passion, the first law of nature, was the desire for self-preservation, and mankind’s greatest fear that of personal annihilation. Before we can consider the centrality of courage to aristocratic honor, therefore, we must briefly look into this position.
Though the notion of self-preservation was not absent in pre-modern and early modern thought, it is really only after the mid-seventeenth century that the concept became widespread, not only amongst moralists and philosophers, but also in poetry and popular writing. It was humorously employed by Robert Heath in a poem arguing against excessive tooth-pulling:
… I’m sure
That self-preservation Nature
Commands: what should we more preserve
Than teeth.…
In a post-Restoration sermon, the clergyman explained that upon “self-preserving Principles, Submission may sometimes be yielded to the lawful Commands of an unlawful … Power.”10 All living things, asserted John Prince, obeyed this law. “There is no animate Creature, how contemptible soever, down to the meanest Worm, but is careful of Self-preservation.”11
Since this prime directive was thought to be innate and equal in all ranks of men, the ability to face death with equanimity was even more exalted than it had been earlier, when courage was presented as part of the nature of the aristocratic military male. Thus an “Officer,” celebrating this ability, noted:
A Brave Contempt of what is so dreadful, and cannot therefore be natural; but must be produced in us by some Motive stronger than the Fear of what we so abhor: And this is a Vast Desire of Honour, and Love of doing Good, which only some noble and diffusive Minds are inspired with.12
Mandeville concurred: “The Passion [that Courage] has to struggle with, is the most violent and stubborn, and consequently the hardest to be conquer’d, the Fear of Death: The least Conflict with it is harsh Work, and a difficult Task.” Thus many late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century commentators would have agreed with Defoe that “Contempt of Death is in itself justly esteem’d the most exalted of all Virtues.”13
By the early eighteenth century, then, the aristocratic male quality par excellence was courage. “Courage and Intrepidity,” Mandeville remarked, “always were, and ever will be the grand Characteristick of a Man of Honour.” And this quality was considered essential to a martial nation and to military leaders. “A Soldier is of no Esteem, if he does not sacrifice all Considerations to his Honour.”14 This view was a restatement of Courtin’s earlier notion that courage was the particular excellence of noblemen: “… all Noblemen and Gentlemen … are naturally, as it were, a Body of Reserve for the Defence of the Prince and State, [and the nobleman] ought principally to be a Man of Courage, this being his Point of Honour.”15 Though not a “natural” attribute, this sort of ability was essential for national power, though only resident in the nation’s elite.
Since there had never been any Thing … invented before, that was half so effectual to create artificial Courage among Military Men [as the principle of Honour] … it was the Interest of all Politicians … to cultivate these Notions of Honour with the utmost Care, and … to make Every body believe the Existence and Reality of such a Principle, not among Mechanicks, or any of the Vulgar, but in Persons of high Rank, Knights and others of Heroick Spirit and exalted Nature.16
But courage was not only a quality reserved for the battlefield, and honor was not only a principle active among military men. A man without courage would not stand up for what he knew to be true or just because of his fear of rebuke or chastisement:
… to be Knavish and Cowardly are Properties that never part; Knaves are generally Cowards, but Cowards are always Knaves, for a Coward cannot be an Honest Man—How should he be Honest? He has not Courage, and he that dares not look Danger in the Face, dares not to be Honest.17
By the early eighteenth century, however, those applauding the values embodied in the aristocratic code of honor were facing attack, for a tide of criticism, aimed not only against its inevitable abuses, but at some of the central tenets of the code, was becoming common, and its proponents scarcer. Of course, the force of these objections may be more seeming than actual. For as we have seen, when a system of social practices is widely accepted, there is little need to applaud or defend it. Criticism therefore may be an inverse measure of the entrenchedness of a system. But on the discursive level, at least, between the second and the sixth decades of the eighteenth century, a vigorous debate raged about the nature and value of aristocratic mores, about the relation of honor and honesty, and about the role of honor in a well-ordered civil polity.
The single quality that most defined aristocratic practice and behavior was pride: pride of birth, of breeding, of position. At its best, pride, it was said, could lead noblemen to lives of “noblesse oblige,” of service without recompense, except of recognition and esteem. At its worst, pride was condemned as the source of sin, of pollution and lawlessness. Pride was that aristocratic quality earliest attacked by opponents. Not surprisingly, pride had many critics; more surprisingly perhaps, pride also had its champions. Thus Archibald Campbell saw pride as a laudable emotion, and asked whether it was “a piece of Weakness, or any Thing blameable in a finite Creature, to pursue after Happiness, or to desire the good Opinion and Applauses of God, and of all the rational Creation, through all the several Stages of our Eternal Existence?” Similarly, in the notes to his poem “The Universe,” Henry Baker argued that
As Self-Love is the inborn Principle of Mankind, so is Pride, its first-begotten, their general Passion … Nor is this Passion useless, or to be blamed …: for the Mind is hereby excited to emulate and rise above its Fellows, to gain and to deserve Esteem. The Love and the Respect of Others are the just as well as the wished Reward of every good Action: but, without this Passion, they both would be disregarded, and we should want the strongest Motive to encourage Us onward in the Pursuit of Vertue.18
Insofar as it was a spur to right action, then, pride could be tolerated and even encouraged. However, most commentators presented pride as the primal sin, in which Adam’s fall was only a repetition of Lucifer’s.
The Original and Primitive Source and Rise of the Luciferian Faction, against their Supream Monarch, and Omnipotent Creator, was Pride: the Punishment of which Rebellion, was everlasting Banishment from the Regions of Bliss, and unexhausted Felicity, and Confinement to the black and dreadful Kingdoms of Endless Darkness and Obscurity.
Led to violence, unruliness, and rebellion by pride, mankind, like Lucifer, would be embroiled in endless acts of injustice and anarchy unless they overcame its allure. The effects of such pride “would if possible, remove the very Foundations of the Universe, confound the Order of Nature, and convert all to the Subjection of Ambition.”19 Even that urbane teacher of civility, Courtin, criticized pride, which, he remarked, “exercises a kind of tyranny in the world.” And who more than aristocrats were likely to be so tyrannous or so liable to that sort of vain-glory that Hobbes described as a result of the misguided opinion that “difference of worth were an effect of their wit, or riches, or blood, or some other natural quality.…”20 This line of reasoning was made obvious in a tale reprinted in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1736. As a result of his attack on a lowly-born neighbor, a gentleman “of Rank and Distinction” is marooned, along with the man whom he has mistreated, on a barbarous island. Like “the admirable Crichton,” the injured laborer saves the life of his tormentor, and the gentleman finally learns that “the Superiority of his Blood was imaginary.” The tale concludes with the proper moral: “It continues a Custom in that Island, to DEGRADE ALL GENTLEMEN, who can not give a better Reason for their Pride, than they were born, to do no thing.…”21
Pride was seen not only as the usual vice of the well-born and thoughtless, but also as the central attribute of that code or system which governed their lives. “The Honour, with which these Persons greatly bluster, with whom my Argument is concerned,” remarked the Anglican divine Anthony Holbrook, “seems to me, to be Pride and Vanity, Fury and Revenge; mad Passion for their own Humour, regardless of social Decency and Reason.” Attempting to save the principle of honor, Holbrook distinguished what others would call true or ancient honor, from the false or modern sort. For, by the early eighteenth century, the phrase “a man of honour” or “a modern man of honour” often denoted a libertine miscreant. Thus the protagonist of Ned Ward’s tale “The Dignified Adulterer or the Libertine of Title,” married by his parents to a woman he dislikes, takes up with other women, “till at last, he becomes famous, for a Man of Honour, among all the intriguing fair Ladies of Quality.…” Ward could not resist ending the tale with its moral; his hero “notwithstanding he is so sinful a Drudge to his own Vices … yet Honour and Estate to a Libertine of Quality … are so effectual a Skreen from the Reproaches of the Publick, and the Punishments of the law, that [he] may whore on, without Danger or Reflection.…”22
For some, what distinguished true and false honor was that the latter implied that the honor-code was just a screen to hide what was really at stake—the desire for power and domination. Francis Hutcheson called the benign desire for honor, ambition, but noted that “custom [had] joined some evil ideas to that word, making it denote a violent desire of Honour, and of Power also, as will make us stop at no base means to obtain them.” While Hobbes had simply stated that “the acknowledgement of power is called HONOUR,”23 others saw in the swaggering courage of the man of honor only the desire to domineer and intimidate his fellows.24
Men who exercised this power-hunger, who used honor as their excuse to browbeat others, were not truly possessed of honor, but were a sort of ravening animal, seeking prey. Abraham Clerke noted how, “under the influence of that false principle of honour … it becomes unequal and unsteady, not like the courage of a man, but the fierceness of a beast.” Practitioners of this false honor and courage were not fit for the society of civilized men and women, but only for the “Conversation of barbarous Indians, or the Company of Out-laws and Banditti.”25 In contrast, true courage was hailed as “Parent of Virtue! Daughter of Benevolence! Prop of Nations! Guardian of the Publick Good!” This distinction between true and false courage and honor was an attempt to save the good points of the system from some of the abuses that critics felt it had fallen into.26
The use of the term “a man of honour” as an ironic device to indicate true honor’s absence, was given an interesting turn in a 1741 essay on honor. Its author argued that there were two sorts of honorable types: the man of honor, who displays his superiority by a “Firmness of Mind, improved by a Train of wise and religious Reflections, and generous Actions, in which personal virtue and real Merit truly consist” and the person of honor, who “may be a prophane, irreligious Libertine, a penurious, proud, revengeful Coward, may insult his Inferiors, oppress his Tenants and Servants, debauch his Neighbours Wives or Daughters, defraud his Creditors, and prostitute his publick Faith for a Protection, may associate with Sots and Drunkards, Sharpers and Gamesters, in order to increase his Fortune.…” Unfortunately, most people mistook the second for the first, since for them, “noise and Shew, Title and Equipage, Glitter and Grandeur constitute the whole Idea of Honour.…” Many argued that true honor, honesty, and justice were synonymous; that only virtuous conduct could really be considered worthy of honor. Libertines, it was said, “scorn to take up with the old-fashioned Notions of Virtue and its Beauty, and in their Room have substituted Honour.”27 In the beau monde, the characters of the men of honor were “so very singular” and deformed because “the Laws of Fashion and Custom prevail over those of Justice and Morality.” But most would have agreed with Mackqueen that the truly virtuous “count nothing Great, but what is Just; nothing Glorious, but what is Virtuous; nothing Honourable, but what springs from a good Principle; is carried on by fair Means, and terminates in noble Ends.…”28
“Outward Honour,” argued Antoine Courtin, is just the reflection of inner virtue; it “attracts the Heart of Men; for ‘tis the Property of Virtue to make it self esteemed, applauded and believ’d.” But honor could be used as a guise for evil practices, and this misuse would “prove a universal evil, a general deluge, a common combustion over the world.”29 Some compared this virtue-less honor to a fiction; the person of honor is a “fictitious character,” remarked Timothy Hooker. Others, like Anthony Holbrook, thought it an illusion, describing it as “that Bubble which is called Honour.”30 For contemporaries, calling honor a bubble would have immediately called to mind the scandal and corruption of that other bubble which had occurred less than a decade before, the South Sea Bubble, and which brought the nation to its knees. Perhaps the strongest and most damning description, however, of the mere seemingness of such honor came from the pen of an aristocrat himself. In distinction to honesty, the Duke of Wharton was cited as characterizing honor as “a rotten Carcass in Brocade and gilded Chariot.” According to him, while honesty is scrupulous in its companions and constant in its virtues, honor “is as easy in Consort with Vice as with Virtue … wholly external and loves to be taken notice of, [and] is a perpetual Courtier.” For this reason, the French writer on civility François Troussaint noted that “All the Men of Honour together are less worth than one virtuous Man.”31
How had false honor replaced virtue in the behavior of the upper classes? In what ways was the code of honor systematic, and how was it seen as relating to other, competing moral systems? Mandeville, often called “Man-devil” by his opponents, of course had answers to these questions, but they were not ones that most contemporaries wished to hear, or could accept. According to him, the code of honor was devised after the fall of Rome by politicians and clerics who wished both to control and to channel aristocratic violence. And so they invented a code of honor.32
But despite the unpalatably radical cynicism and irony of Mandeville’s depiction of its origins, many contemporaries agreed with his assessment of how such modern honor functioned; “Honour signifies likewise a Principle of Courage, Virtue and Fidelity, which some Men are said to act from, and to be aw’d by, as others are by Religion” [emphasis mine]. Bishop Berkeley, in most respects Mandeville’s opponent, agreed with him in his assessment of the religion of honor among people of fashion. Matching Mandeville’s ironic tone, he remarked that for them, “Honour is a noble unpolluted source of virtue, without the least mixture of fear, interest or superstition. It hath all the advantages without the evils, which attend religion.”33 Some even went so far as to compare the vices of fashionable persons of honor to rites carried on in worship of a deity.34 So, for example, an opponent of the practice of duelling argued that the upper classes “make Honour a Cannibal, or Horseleach, hungry for want of Mans flesh, and thirsting after blood; and intimate to the World that there is a God of Honour so incensed that nothing will apease him but Human Sacrifice.” The system of aristocratic honor appeared to many critics as an alternate to the teaching of Christ, as the private religion of society’s elite.35
Perhaps of equal concern were the deleterious effects that a privileged code of behavior would have on all of civil society. For when the law of honor and the law of the land clashed, it was imperative for the formal judicial system to come out the victor. This was often not the case. “A virtuous Man thinks himself obliged to obey the Laws of his Country,” commented Mandeville, “but a Man of Honour acts from a Principle which he is bound to believe Superiour to all Laws.” Yet from Courtin onwards, while many commentators remarked on the corrosive effects that the laws of honor would have on the nation and the law, they seemed unable to recommend simple and effective alternatives. By disobeying the laws of the polity, men of honor flaunted the commands of their sovereign, and thus were guilty of treason of sorts.36 Obeying no law but that of his own making, a man of honor thought himself “infinitely above the Restraints which the Laws of God or Man lay upon vulgar Minds, and knows no other Ties but those of Honour.” But few thought it proper that any group decide that the laws of the polity were only for lesser men, and that they were guiltless if they obeyed their own private code. Most believed that for “the profligate Party, who … look upon … all the Laws of Religion, and Morality as Shackles to their Liberty, ‘tis fit that they should be brought under some Rules, as well for their particular Reformation, as for the general Interest of the Kingdom.” The only question was how this could be done.37
Some suggested that men of great mind and magnanimity should fly in the face of opinion, shun the dictates of an immoral honor, and act as good Christians and true gentlemen. In his dialogue-essay against duelling, Jeremy Collier had his man of the world question whether refusing a challenge would not result in loss of reputation and of good company. Collier’s alter-ego, Philalethes, assured the questioner that this would not be the case, that “there are not a few of good Extraction, of another Opinion.” Thomas Comber, dean of Durham, also assured the wary reader that such virtuous conduct would not be condemned but publicly lauded. No man, he argued, should worry about his reputation if he refused to duel; this “expresses a great Reverence for the Laws of the Land, and a mighty Aversion to do anything that is Evil.” This will ever be “Honourable among considering Men, and the Opinion of all others … is to be despis’d.”38 However this line of resolute virtue in the face of public opinion seems to have disappeared by the beginning of the eighteenth century.39
That aristocratic misbehavior would have grave national consequences was never challenged. For it seemed almost the universal consensus that mores and manners depended on example. Children learned virtue (or vice), it was said, from their parents and instructors; society learned these lessons from the behavior of its leaders, its patriarchal figures, the upper classes. When vicious, they were the font of corruption. This sentiment explains, said one pre–civil war commentator, why gambling had spread through the nation. “And were it not for the common example of great ones, whose continuall practice, may seeme to enact a law for it, & proclaim it apparently both just and fitting … who would not abhorre it as a most dangerous and sinful employment.…” Forty years later, an opponent of the practice of duelling explained its prevalence upon this same evil example. “Noblemen cannot but discern how Gentlemen of less quality throng and croud to come as neer them as is possible, imitating them according to (nay beyond) their Abilities, in their Habit, Carriage, and all pieces of Gallantry: Nay, even in their Vices; esteeming all things Lawful, or at least Creditable which are worthy of their pursuit. And were it not an easie matter for them to bring this foolish and rash way of Duelling into contempt, by being neither examples nor countenancers of it.”40
By the late 1730s it was said that this corruption of the leaders of society would have two grave consequences. The first was the inevitable spread of viciousness through the entire polity. The elite man of honor “not only immediately corrupts his own circle of acquaintance, but the contagion spreads itself to infinity. To such practice, and such examples in higher life, may justly be imputed the general corruption and immortality which prevail thro’ this kingdom.” Most agreed that the upper classes were not what they should be, and, even worse, that despite this, they seemed to be immune from all punishment. Thus, at mid-century, John Brown wondered: “It may seem strange that such Excesses should be allow’d in a free State: But it is yet more strange, that such Excesses should be allow’d and practised among the Great, at a Time when there are Laws in force against them.”41 Several writers pointed out the incongruous behavior of men who served as Members of Parliament and as magistrates, behaving in ways that broke the laws of the land. If those among the Great who “act the Part of Magistrates, of Legislators, or Patriots wantonly set at Defiance the very Laws which themselves have made or recommended” what could be expected but a tidal wave, an overwhelming deluge of vice, from the actions of their inferiors?42 Thus, Erasmus Mumford warned the aristocratic habitués of Whites’ gambling club:
The forms of Government should be carefully preser’ved … [therefore] to practice it [gaming] in Defiance of all Order, in the very Sight, as it were of the Government, and against the Spirit and the letter of the Laws which you made yourselves, is entirely inconsistent with the Character of Patriots, Nobles, Senators, Great Men, or whatever name of public Honour you would chuse to call yourselves by.43
The lower orders, it was said, would inevitably follow their superiors in either virtue or vice, through the lures of fashion or from a natural subordination. Thus Alexander Jephson commented that he was “sensible, indeed, that nothing hath contributed so much to the quick and extensive Propagation of these accursed Vices, as that so many Persons of the greatest Fashion and Distinction … have given so much Countenance to them by their own Example.”44 If this were not a worrying enough prognostication, the critics of aristocratic behavior also pointed out that an invariable consequence of the degeneracy of the upper classes was the decline of the nation. “… the united Voices of all Ages and Nations do proclaim this Truth, That a general and open Contempt of establish’d Laws among the higher Ranks of Men, hath always been a preceding Symptom, a certain Indication, of the approaching Dissolution of a State—.”45
However, it was in the fact of emulation, that all of society imitated the manners and ways of the Great, that hope for the rehabilitation of the moral fabric of the nation resided. If the noble and fashionable could be convinced of their responsibility to the nation, could understand that their vice would inevitably lead to widespread social decay, they would also see that their virtue would as naturally rehabilitate and revivify the manners of the whole. “Since then People of Distinction are the perpetual Objects of Imitation … they cannot be good or bad themselves without being the Cause of Piety or Wickedness in others.…” Even that old cynic Mandeville agreed that the power of fashion could lead to virtue as well as vice. “When a Reformation of Manners is once set on Foot, and strict Morality is well spoken of, and countenanc’d by the better Sort of People, the very Fashion will make Proselytes to Virtue.”46 And, from the mid-century, some critics started to call for a strict enforcement of existing laws, especially where the offenders were people of station and condition. “The greater the Offender the greater the Criminal, and the more notorious the Punishment the more Benefit will the Publick receive from the Prosecution,” said the author of Reflexions on Gaming. Without such exemplary punishment, “without punishment meted out to the great and little alike, the bonds of civil society would be weakened.”47 However, as we shall see, it was easier to analyze the problem and make recommendations for its mitigation than to convince aristocrats to live more uprightly or to more equitably enforce the law when the offenders were high-born.
Thus, by the mid-century, we see the honor code still in existence, despite more than a half-century of attack. We also have noted the growing weight of criticism against the code, though at the same time, of an appreciation for some of its side effects. Yet while most recognized the value of hierarchy, and esteemed the institution of the peerage and their role as martial leaders, the value of courage, and that of hereditary titles themselves were coming under attack. It is perhaps in these last criticisms, as well as in the faint praise one occasionally hears for the conduct of those in the middle station, that one can most clearly see the depths of opposition to the code of honor.
We have already noted the wavering admiration of courage among most writers on manners. Thus, when the author of a piece titled “On Bravery and Cowardice” rhetorically asked “Is not Courage an Infallible Mark of greatness of Soul?” his immediate answer was “Granted.” However, he went on to note that “we are apt to mistake the Effects of Cowardice for Instances of Valour. Duels are of this sort; for ’tis the most consummate Cowardice for a Man to be afraid of following the Rules of Reason and Humanity.” A decade later, Timothy Hooker denied even this ambiguous claim, noting that “when I consider the Bulk of Military Heroes, the Conquerors of Nations who stand foremost in the Lists of Fame, I esteem them no better than so many glorious Robbers, and illustrious Plunderers, born to be the Scourges and Plagues of Mankind.…”48
From the 1730s onwards we see a rather remarkable attack not only on the value of courage but also on the nature and value of noble titles. In a piece entitled “The Vanity of Titles” its author argued that “In Athens and Rome, there were no Titles of Honour. Some Author has observed, that when true Merit began to cease, Titles of Honour were invented in its Room.…” Only three years later, another article, “Titles of Honour Prostituted,” went through a long historical account of European villains who “have advanced themselves to the first Honours of their Country” and been ennobled through their villainy.49 In the 1740s Hooker pointed out that a foolish man’s title would only make his lack of accomplishments more public and visible, and by the 1750s several went even further. Thus William Webster chastised the proud, noble miscreant:
Many of those whom we call great Men have very bad, and very little Souls; and the Greatness of Mind, which usually begets Anger, is no better than one of the very worst of Vices, and that is Pride: And when this Tumor of the Mind, arising from Self-love, is swell’d beyond its natural Size, by Riches, Titles and Places, by the habitual Adulation of Creatures, and Syncophants, it grows enormous, and intolerable.50
With a haughty and slightly supercilious tone, The Man announced that “A pride founded upon birth, title, estate, or other things no way essential to our nature, is but a childish vanity. Whoever would think nobly of himself, must drop this silly pretension to regard; whose just reproof is the pitying smile of men.” And yet, only a year later, an essay appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine which seemed a direct denial of the former argument, entitled “The Advantages of Ancestry demonstrated.” The author of this piece made no bones of the fact that he thought the value of pedigree was now under severe and unprecedented attack: “In this refined and innovating age, when ’tis the mode to profess a licentiousness of sentiment, even in the most sacred and important concerns; ’tis not so much to be wondered at, that there are a set of men, who from a levelling disposition, speak evil of dignities and distinctions, and have in particular aimed at extirpating the deference heretofore paid to birth.” Even, and perhaps especially, at this late date, its author argued that the virtues of birth and breeding needed to be honored. A salutary national spirit of emulation and a desire to bequeath an unsullied reputation to one’s posterity depended on the preservation and support of what he called “family honour.”51
It is clear, however, that the author realized that his position was not the popular one, that it was under attack by “innovating” and “levelling” opinion. We get small hints of the nature and perhaps the direction of such attacks. I do not wish to overemphasize the importance of these, but merely to point out that a few critics of aristocratic manners, as early as the 1730s, were comparing them unfavorably with those of the middle station or rank. Thus in explaining the spread of free-thinking and irreligion amongst people of fashion, Bishop Berkeley had a character, Lysicles, a flashy unreflective young libertine, admit that “while the principles of free-thinking do [find easy admission] among ingenious men and people of fashion, … you will sometimes meet with strong prejudices against them in the middle sort, an effect of ordinary talents and mean breeding.” Even stronger was the comment in The Man of 1755: “We see, by daily experience, that men of a higher rank are more frequently guilty of cruelty and injustice, than those of a middling station; because their power is greater, and their fear of punishment less.”52 Here we see some quiet, tentative assertions of the virtue of the “middling sort.”
We have seen modern or false honor several times referred to as a glittering garb, a misleading external costume. In part this was an attack on the “inauthenticity,” the artificiality of modern honor, in part it was the observation that this honor consisted as much in manner, in outward show, as in anything else. What were the key elements of this manner of honor? Early in the eighteenth century, John Mackqueen argued that the man of honor and valor “must march, and go on among all the cruel Instruments and frightful Circumstances … undauntedly, with a stately pace, serene Countenance and a stout Heart; as if he were making a Pastime of Dangers, a May-game of Terrors; as if he counted hard Trials and fierce Skirmishes but his Playfellows.” A certain coolness, an elaborate je ne sais quoi, were reckoned one of its chief qualities. People of honor, it was said, knew this manner almost instinctively, and therefore it did not need to be explained or codified. “There is a Quintessence called Honour, for the use of the Nobility, Gentry,—but No Other.… As to defining it, I shall not set about it … it being a thing much easier to be felt than understood.”53 Others were more condemnatory; integral to the character of the man of honor, one article noted, was the necessity for there to “be a Haughtiness and Insolence in his Deportment, which is supposed to result from conscious Honour.” Haughtiness was probably the most frequently used English term to describe this sort of bearing. The French writer François-Vincent Toussaint was lighter in his characterization of the man of honor: “A confident and assuming Air, an easy Fortune, with the Vices in Fashion, are what constitutes the Man of Honour.” Both English and French writers agreed, however, that the finishing touches to the complete man of honor were certain fashionable failings, arguing that a certain seasoning of the “genteelest Vices” was required to fit a gentlemen for this exalted station.54
What were these genteel vices, these requisites for membership in the beau monde? A wide variety were cited at different times by different writers, though a fair amount of overlap also existed. Of course, then as now, vices were thought to be multitudinous, ranging from swearing to drinking to not paying tradesmen’s bills. However, it is the four vices most commonly lamented, most commonly thought to be interrelated and to form a vast cluster of aristocratic misconduct, that are the subject of this book and this chapter. These four were duelling, suicide, adultery, and gaming. And all were thought to be directly inspired by the Devil and, in some macabre way, acts of Devil-worship. It was a well-known and accepted fact that suicide, or self-murder as it was usually called through the first half of the eighteenth century, was a result of the Devil’s incitement: “For without the Instigation and Influence of that Evil, Envious and Malicious Spirit, it cannot be supposed, that Men of themselves, even left to themselves, could be transported to such detestable Things.…” And a decade later, in a pamphlet entitled Self-Murther and Duelling the Effects of Cowardice and Atheism, its author asserted that both vices were “a tame and dishonourable submitting and yielding to our grand Adversary the Devil … [for these sins are] owing to a direct Assault of the Devil.…”55 Much earlier, the author of Timely Advice presented adultery as one of the first lures of Satan: “Many are the temptations of the devill, whose beginning are Idolatry, Adulterie, Theft, Rapine.…” He added, as well, that anyone who gambled and played at dice “doth sacrifice to the devill, and rather deserveth the name of a Pagan than a Christian.” And, at mid-century, in a magazine named after his infernal Highness, the Devil reveled in the “practice of which I am the supreme head and director, namely that fashionable delight GAMING.”56 Thus, one strand tying together these four vices was that all were seen as inspired, though perhaps only rhetorically, by satanic influences.
Second, and more important perhaps, these vices constituted the “dark side” of fashionable life; they were the acts that the great and not-so-good could indulge in without feeling the full weight of the law. They were examples of the governing principles that controlled and policed the genteel world of honor. If the men and women of the ton obeyed its rules, they could flaunt those governing the polity. Men could duel, though duelling was against the law, and by extension could kill themselves when tired of life.57 Aristocratic men and women could commit adultery and annul unsuccessful marriages. And the only debts that the inhabitants of the beau monde needed to worry about quickly paying were “debts of honour,” i.e., gambling debts, due to other members of their world. By the mid-century, all these vices were coming, individually and collectively, under significant attack. Thus, The Man linked gaming and suicide as natural consequences of a misspent life:
Voluptuaries, who spend their days in company, gallantry, and gaming … A constant round of moral dreaming brings some of this class into such distresses, as rouse them, at length, to their confusion, and drive them, in a frighted, cowardly desperate state, to put a violent and unnatural period to their lives. They shamefully steal away from the sight of men, and rush audaciously into the more immediate and awful presence of God.
The author of The Whole Art and Mystery of Modern Gaming, in describing the vice, also pointed out the class of its chief participants/victims. It is, he noted, “the most fatal and epidemical Folly and Madness, especially among the Persons of superior Degree, and Quality.”58 Both adultery and suicide were also presented as acts pre-eminently committed by the beau monde or men and women “of honour.” The Connoisseur of 1755, describing the latest affectation of genteel rakes and men of mode, noted that “Suicide is the most gallant exploit by which our modern heroes chuse to signalize themselves.” And Alexander Jephson pointed out the unlikely connection of honor and adultery; “And yet these [adulterers] frequently affect to call themselves men of honour! … A horrid prostitution of terms! The guilt of the highwayman, and even the murderer, is, in many cases, much inferior.” How upsetting it must have been to such critics to confront the mitigating words of John Oldmixon, after his friend General McCartney’s involvement in an infamous duel. Oldmixon asserted, as a matter of widely recognized truth, that “No Man of Honour can avoid a Duel, or refuse being a Second.… Legislatures of Europe have not been able to find a Remedy for this Evil, nor no way of making injured Honour an ample Reparation, then a Man of Honour has no other recourse but to a Duel, or live under a Blemish’d Reputation.” Therefore, he concluded, a man had to do what a man had to do, and “the Law should wink at such Misfortunes it can’t with Justice prevent or repair.”59 But such comments were rare, such suggestions unusual. While, in practice, many were willing to “wink” or turn a blind eye to the evil practices of the self-indulgent Great, few were willing to defend or discuss the oversight. A frank admission of the law’s inadequacies, of the actual as opposed to the ideal administration of criminal justice, might have provided the fuel for massive social unrest and resistance. Most preferred to deride the particular vices, to attempt to convince the men and women of the ton that they must be good Christians and good citizens, and to leave it at that.
And, after all, what more could they have done? For, while many denounced elite vice, while clerics thundered against it from pulpits and print, English society at large remained committed to notions of honor as essential to the sort of nation they wished to be. And the law refused to intervene. Few attacked the principle of honor itself, or the traditional understanding of what it meant to be a gentleman. “To be a fine gentleman,” Steele insisted, “is to be a generous and brave man.” While calling for an end to duelling, they reaffirmed the importance of the passion for honor and its centrality in the well-ordered state:
The innate Desire of Honour and the general Disposition to esteem those that are Worthy are from God.… For this is a Curb to Rashness, a Restraint to Licentiousness, and a Spur to Industry. It rouses up from Laziness and puts one upon the Search, Study and Practice of what is good and commendable.… The innate Desire of Honour and of what doth merit it is a better Security of one’s good Behavior than either private and personal Obligations.
Freed from its fashionable misinterpretations and restored to its original purity, the pursuit of honor would result in a society characterized by quality and magnanimity.60
In his Journal of 1738 John Wesley recounted a meeting with a felon whom he visited in prison, where the prisoner was awaiting execution:
He attempted twice or thrice to shoot himself; but it [the gun] would not go off. Upon his laying it down, one took it up and blew out the priming. He was very angry, went and got fresh primer, came in again, sat down, beat the flint with his key and …, pulling off his hat and wig, said he would die like a gentleman, and shot himself through the head.61
This short parable of the prisoner wishing to be thought a gentleman sheds some light on popular eighteenth-century notions of both masculinity and gentility. By taking his own life, the nameless felon declared not only that he faced extinction with equanimity and disdain, but also that he, and he alone, was to be the ultimate judge and executioner in his case and his life. By the cool resoluteness of his endeavor he clearly hoped to make good his claim to be a man of standing and fortitude.
In this chapter we have considered the evolution of, and support and opposition for, a code of honor, a set of social practices governing what was considered as the exclusive law of men and women of rank, and of the sorts of activities that that code forbade and allowed. Now we must look more closely at the gender specifications of that regimen. The code of honor was seen as both defining and separating genders in the upper classes, for a series of masculine and feminine practices were sanctioned by its principles.
For men and women of the beau monde, as we have seen, whose lives were governed by the code of honor, this gender difference was equally, though particularly, present. Addison neatly encapsulated these differences when he noted that “The great point of honour in men is courage, and in women chastity.” In comparing women with men, The Man argued that since “courage, intrepidity and valour, being virtues suited to the make of a man,” these qualities “are justly expected from him.”62 But for women, few mentioned any other female honor but chastity. While many may have agreed with this articulation of the essence of male and female honor, fewer would have followed Mandeville’s entirely logical conclusion that, in consequence, “Gallantry with Women, is no Discredit to the Men, any more than Want of Courage is a Reproach to the Ladies.” But many surely would have, in their hearts, and in their practices, agreed. For the “double standard,” though already (and perhaps always) venerable by the early eighteenth century, was one that was usually implicitly held without being spoken of.63 Though philandering, both before and after, without and within marriage, was clearly a Christian sin, it was one usually that was tolerated in upper-class men, though deemed heinous, or at least actionable, in women. But despite the fact of dissimilarity of virtues between the genders, one slip from gender-appropriate behavior was said to be fatal for both men and women:
he that has Religion and good Sense enough to refuse a Challenge, is in danger of being kick’d out of the fashionable World for a Scoundrel and a Coward; and every Woman who has once been so unhappy as to offend in point of Chastity, cannot by the most sincere Repentance, by all the merciful Abatements that ought to be made for human Frailty, and a thousand amiable Qualities besides, thrown into the Balance, be ever able to wipe off an indelible Mark of Infamy fixed upon her by all the ill-natur’d Prudes and Coquets about Town.
Of course, in practice, it was possible for a man to regain his honor, either by bravery in battle or by accepting the next challenge, and to a smaller degree, it was possible for some, if not all, women to avoid the public notoriety of their loss of honor, through their indulgence in amorous infidelity.64
Even accepting these limitations to the perceived innate virtues of men and women, if we consider courage and chastity as two component aspects of a larger understanding of the essential differences between men and women rather than the entirety of their honor, we may be able to see other ways in which the character of the two genders was different, though intertwined. For if courage, intrepidity, or valor were understood as elements of the basic male qualities of determination, self-control, and steely resoluteness, and in contrast, chastity was seen as part of the female virtues of compliance, sensitivity, and modesty, the honor of each gender rested on a wider, and perhaps more significant base than on either the willingness to duel or the refusal to have lovers. Women, in fact, by the preservation of their innate delicacy, could influence men and effect a modification in their natural aggressiveness and incivility. We will come back to this aspect of their gendered roles later.
As we have seen, male honor, or virtue, consisted for many primarily of courage. Mandeville made explicit the connection between such masculine virtue and valor. “This makes me think, that Virtus, in its first Acceptation, might, with great Justice and Propriety, be in English render’d Manliness; which fully expresses the Original Meaning of it.…” However, increasingly, most commentators thought that courage, while the beginning, was not the end of male honor, that men needed other qualities in conjunction with valor to be useful and reputable leaders of their nation. The man of noble stature was a man of power, of self-direction and self-control. He was recognizable by the “easiness” of his demeanor; his behavior was cool though courteous, and his word was his bond. Courage was neither the highest virtue, nor one that was most difficult to acquire.65 Even before the publication of the Spectator and the Tatler or Shaftesbury’s evocation of polished society had influenced social thought, critics of courage as the main virtue of the man of honor realized that mere brute valor might be wrong-headed and harmful, describing it as a “mistaken and unmanly Courage.” As Anthony Holbrook noted, “Good Men preserve the Masculine under Provocations; whereas habitual Passions are ruffled by every Storm they meet, and made the Sport of the Indiscretions and Infirmities of Men.”66 The ability to remain calm when challenged or insulted, the element of control, this mental and psychological steadfastness, came to be seen as at least as important as physical bravery. Which polished man of the world would wish his main virtue, it was asked, to be that in which a brute beast might well outstrip him? The anonymous author of the two-volume work The Gentleman instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and Happy Life [1755], warned his readers: “be not deceived in the Notion of Honour; some seat it on the Sword’s Point, and persuade themselves it consists in slaughter; as if there were no difference between Honour and Savageness, between a Gentleman and a Butcher.” Of such men of “honour” The Man noted that “Some are so savage as to thirst for blood; … Their actions shew no signs of humanity. Few brutes, even in a fever, are so mischevious and outragious as such desperados, resembling mad dogs more than men.”67
We can see this endeavor to “tame” courage, to make it act as the arm of civility, rather than the muscle of savagery, when we look at that sort of male vocation for which the man of breeding was pre-eminently intended, and consider attitudes toward the requisites of soldiers. Mandeville had argued that the code of honor was created because of the need for a cadre of men who were willing to fight and die at their country’s call. This “itch,” as Prince dubbed it, “to be thought brave and gallant,” though useful in motivating young bucks and gallants, would often cause them to waste their own lives and those of their acquaintance thoughtlessly and uselessly.68 Good soldiers needed to rely on intelligence, not anger, needed to win in conflict while shedding as little blood as possible. “Conduct as well as Courage is the Souldiers Character; and his Conduct may be really shewn in extricating himself dextrously from a Personal Rencounter, as well as from Superior Numbers, or an Ambush in the Field.” And, in an article entitled “Of Honour” in the urbane Gentleman’s Magazine, which reads more like a sermon than a tea-table essay, the writer proposed that only men of religion and probity, men who believed in salvation and redemption, could have the sort of cool and deliberate courage that made the best fighting military men. “He only is truely Valiant, because he knows his Protector, the Justice of his Cause, and considers what is he to expect hereafter; he encounters Dangers with Calmness of Thought and Presence of Mind; which is true Courage; while wicked Men are both Fools and Cowards.”69 And in his sermon of 1751, “True Religion the only Foundation of true Courage,” Joshua Kyte gives us the fully formed picture of the genteel soldier, the true Christian hero as one who is “early accustomed to endure difficulties and inconveniences … calling into action every generous and manly Virtue.”70
What qualities would make up this refined and modern soldier? In addition to that self-possession already discussed, he would need a certain panache, a careless generosity, an easy refinement, and a well-developed though modest eloquence. Like all true gentlemen, the polished soldier needed to be able to get on in civilian life as well as on the battlefield. Like all true gentlemen, the soldier needed to be “well-bred”; breeding in this sense had much more to do with nurture than lineage. Such well-bred, gentlemanly soldiers would have had their tempers softened so that “they may bend in compliance and accommodate themselves to those they have to do with.” And the English soldier really needed this sort of amendment because of the innate “Rudeness of our Northern Genius.”71
Thus all gentlemen, but especially military men, needed to become “polite” members of a new sort of refined social order. Of course, a great deal could be done by rearing. Yet even more central to the creation of a polished, gentle man of honor, was his interaction, the smoothing of his rough edges, by genteel yet delicate, well-educated though modest women. Thus, as male honor was interpreted to mean more than brute courage, but to imply qualities of resoluteness and self-command, female honor, resting on a natural compliance and softness, perhaps became as valued as, though in no sense replaced, the older and narrower virtue of female chastity.72
The importance of women’s mission civilatrice made it only more imperative that they retain their natural characteristics, that they guard their femininity, which consisted of both chastity and modesty. For, if they approached the masculine, whether in temper, dress, or vice, they lost their influence, their ability to improve. It was they and they alone, for example, who could “discountenance rakes” and banish male sexual predators from fashionable assemblies, making them pariahs rather than favored guests. As much for the sake of social refinement as for their polishing of men, women were urged to preserve their demure characters. Thus, the author of The Essay On Modern Gallantry, in an open letter to the young women of Great Britain, advised them
that you would not think it wholly unnecessary to take some Care of your Reputations, by retrenching some of those masculine Arts, and rampant Liberties, which have been so much in Fashion of late.…73
Of course, in committing adultery, a woman not only gave up all potential for influence but, by implicitly denying the absolute property her husband had in her person, threatened all property relationships. “Nothing,” said Addison, “besides chastity, with its collateral attendants, truth, fidelity, and constancy, gives the man a property in the person he loves, and consequently endears her to him in all things.” Still it was thought, as we have already seen, that many aristocratic women, under the cover of marriage, were able to get away with such adultery and even with illegitimacy, as ladies “of gallantry and fashion.”74 But by mid-century, there is some evidence that the toleration of adultery in both men and women was coming under attack.
In a sermon entitled The heinous sins of ADULTERY and FORNICATION, considered and represented, in a SERMON, Alexander Jephson spoke of the mutual need for men and women to be true to their marriage vows: “And therefore, whenever a married Man or Woman forsakes each other’s Company, thro’ their Love and Affection to a Stranger, they are not only false in their own Word and Promise, … but are guilty also of the very worst kind of Lying and Perjury.”75 Clearly illicit private acts, even when complicity or toleration between the couple involved was present, had effects beyond the marriage bed. Lying and especially perjury were general practices that were both worrisome and socially deleterious.
With the view that male virtue was not merely harsh bravery, but polished and genteel fortitude, and with the usefulness of female influence in this refining process, came concomitantly a strengthening of the notion that while men of honor must shine in the public world, they must also exhibit virtues of a private and domestic sort. The Christian hero must be exemplary not only on the field of battle but in the parlor.
That politeness was much talked of and usually recommended in early eighteenth-century English writings is now an accepted, understood, and important strand of the prescriptive literature of the period.76 Whether the practice of these forms of polite civility, which would have meant the restraint of pride and violence and the avoidance of illicit forms of sociability, was as widespread as its discourse, is another matter. Of course, the daily lives of men and women of wealth and standing often did not conform to even their own notions of propriety and good behavior. But in the continuance, and perhaps even in the growth, of aristocratic vice through the century, we can see the rift that existed between polite ideals and unmannerly practices.
While it is a matter of conjecture whether or not the members of the ton would, at any point in the latter eighteenth century, have reformed their ways, eschewing aristocratic honor for the more solid and prosaic virtues, it is clear that a great impetus to such a change was provided by the growth and nature of the press.
When, in 1785, George Crabbe in his poem “The Newspaper” lamented that it was to this printed form that “all readers turn, and they look/Pleased on a paper, who abhor a book,” he was going against the tide.78 Most contemporaries not only very much enjoyed the daily dose of news and gossip, opinion and vituperation, advertisement and advice that the papers offered, but also saw the (reasonably) free press as a great “palladium of liberty,” which, along with the jury system, differentiated England from the despotic regimes of the continent, and provided a forum for peaceful, general debate and discussion. For many, the press taken collectively was a sort of Parliament out-of-doors, a representative of varied opinions and beliefs, an anonymous and protected public space where men and women could exchange information and points of view. In addition to serious sites like the pulpit and the floor of Parliament, and frivolous ones like the theater, the press was a collective commercial endeavor whose role were to educate, to amuse, and to improve the public weal. “We live in an age” said a noted late-century attorney, “in which the most important questions were decided by the newspapers.”79
Though news sheets and various forms of news-letters had flourished in the seventeenth century, and a variety of magazines and newspapers had come into being after the Restoration, it was only in 1702 that England’s first daily paper, The Daily Courant, began. Like most dailies of the first half of the eighteenth century, the Daily Courant was very short (it consisted only of one single-sided page) and was almost entirely devoted to foreign news.80 However, the early eighteenth century saw the growth and development of an important and powerful type of periodical press, the essay-journal, the most famous examples of which were, of course, the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian. These (tri-weeklies) were largely composed of articles and letters, with occasional comments on newsworthy items, theatrical reviews, and advertisements. In addition to providing their readers with entertainment and improvement, these journals devoted themselves to identifying and satirizing what they saw to be the failings, or to use an eighteenth-century term, the vices, of their society. Eschewing partisan politics, they criticized fashionable faults, endeavoring simultaneously to re-create their readers, that is, to amuse them while ameliorating public and private morality. For morality could not be accused of belonging to a party or a faction; promoting virtue through the ridicule of vice could not be considered as anything but salutary. For most of the rest of the century, the essays published in these periodicals would be reread, recopied, and repeated as authoritative statements of virtuous maxims.81
By the 1730s, however, the world of London periodical publishing had been significantly diversified. Essay-journals, resembling both news-sheets and the older general tri-weeklies, proliferated, now in weekly format, though it was the appearance of new monthly magazines in the 1730s that was to have the most long-term impact. These storehouses of miscellaneous information, like the pioneering Gentleman’s Magazine, provided something for every taste, never hiding the fact that, initially, much of their contents was excerpted from other journals or papers. Including essays on history, on manners, or on travel, the Gentleman’s also included lists of bankruptcies, a monthly historical chronicle, and a list of births, deaths, marriages, and promotions. The new monthlies also continued and increased the practice of including letters from their readers, begun in the earlier periodicals. Between 1731 and 1769, seven such monthlies appeared, the majority of which continued to be published for a decade or more.82 Both in these publications, and in the proliferation of the newspapers in the second half of the century, an overlooked but important circulation of items occurred; books were often excerpted as items in the papers, and books were created of especially interesting items from the press. And, as we have seen with both the Gentleman’s and the London, the press circulated stories and essays internally. The enormous expansion of print enabled both a growth and a concentration of available information of wide public interest.
It was, however, with the appearance of the new daily papers of the 1760s and 1770s that the nature of the relationship between what might be called “the news,” the press, and its readership became transformed in several ways. Throughout the eighteenth century, the press was centrally involved as a partisan player in the political struggles of the day, on both the international and the domestic stage. Some papers, like the Daily Gazetteer, owed their very inception to a particular political stance. This involvement continued to be true of many of the papers begun during the Seven Years’ War, which, for most part, were oppositional and Wilkite.83 However, what made the daily press of the 1770s different from that of the 1730s and 1740s, was its size and the variety of its concerns. Appearing 6 days a week meant that 96 paper columns needed to be filled. Of course, much of this space could be and was filled with advertisements, but, even so, much more space was now available for commentary, sometimes lengthy and sometimes brief, on a variety of issues formerly less featured. Thus, the Daily Courant of January 1, 1735, a paper of only two pages with three columns on each page, had only one advertisement on the bottom of page 2; the rest of that day’s coverage was taken up by the continuation of “A Dissertation on Parties.” In contrast, forty years later, the Gazetteer of January 1, 1775, a paper of four pages, each with four columns, or 16 columns in total, had advertisements covering more than half (51.5 percent) its pages, letters to the printer accounting for one fifth (20.3 percent) of its column lines, with news from home and abroad, notes from other papers, and miscellaneous items filling the remaining almost one third of the columns. And as its historian, Robert Haig, has noted, “The Gazetteer of the sixties, there can be no doubt, owed a great deal of its increased popularity to the letters it printed.” He cites the paper’s own figures on its receipt and publication of such letters: “From the first day of January [1764] to this day [four months later], we have received 861 letters: of which 560 have been inserted at length: 262 have been taken notice of … and 39 now remain in hand.…”84 Since most of these letters were signed by a pseudonym, it is impossible to know how many were written by journalist-hacks, by interested parties, or by the editor himself. Still, it is undoubtedly the case that whatever their actual parentage, “letters to the press gave the impression of the newspaper as a national forum, open to all.…” Such letters perhaps also enabled editors, and now allow us, to catch “a useful insight into the preoccupations of their readers.”85
In order to properly assess the impact of the press, however, we must briefly consider how and where it was read, and the nature of its content. In many ways, the growth of the press and that of the coffee-house were integrally connected. The latter afforded the venue and lured in customers by providing a selection of many of the most popular papers of the day. In turn, the papers’ readers ordered coffee or tea, making possible and sustaining the proliferation of this sort of public forum for reading and discussion. Reading the papers of the day was often not a solitary or domestic activity, but for many occurred as part of a neighborly consideration of what was happening in the locale, the nation, or even the world.86 And for much of the century, the nature of press layout, with many news items arranged quite helter-skelter, did not encourage or allow for introspection or sustained attention. Only late in the period do “stories” really appear, enclosed in boxes, and with headlines. Before then, a wide variety of “items” of various lengths and subject matter filled the many papers of the day. And much of the body of these pages was filled with advertisements for both goods and services, as well as communicative public (and private) notices. Catering to a multiplicity of tastes and views through the eighteenth century, a huge number of monthly, weekly, tri-weekly, and daily newspapers and magazines offered their readers, “the public,” a cornucopia of items both serious and trivial.
And, like the owners of the Gazetteer, who claimed that theirs was “the best family News-paper ever yet published,”87 the other competing journals wished to capture, however they could, a share of this new “niche” in the market for news. Fashion, especially the fashion of the court, sports, and amusements, as well as accounts of foreign travels, found an enlarged place in the press of the second half of the century. In addition, newsmen soon found that scandal, served hot and frequently, seemed an irresistible lure to many readers. The establishment of the Morning Post in 1772, under its first and most daring editor, the swashbuckling Rev. Henry Bate, set the pattern for, and forced its competitors to copy, the wholesale purveyance of this steamy commodity. But the Post was only serving daily what the innocently named Town and Country Magazine had begun to dish up monthly for a grander audience—frank discussions of the various goings-on of the denizens of the world of fashion. In their commercially successful and much-copied revelations about the doings and mis-doings of the great and not-so-good, these journals appealed to that combination of prurience and outrage which allowed a hungry public simultaneously to both desire and deplore the reports they consumed.
In addition to affording more room for letters, the expanded dailies also allowed for more playful experimentation with various forms of satirical content, as well as an increased commentary aimed at what were perceived to be current immoralities. Thus, after the publication and popularity of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, some papers not only used its characters in dialogues designed to gently mock specific vices, but even adopted Shandean punctuation to carry the joke, and the lesson, even further. Mock advertisements and dictionaries appeared which, while employing well-known forms, surprised by putting those forms in the service of ridiculing fashionable improprieties. And, of course, the tri-weeklies, the weeklies, and the monthlies all borrowed from, and expanded on these popular concerns. Thus the Connoisseur praised the efforts of the daily press, noting that he knew of nothing “which would give posterity so clear an idea of the taste and morals of the present age, as a bundle of our daily papers.”88
And, in ways which are central to the topics under investigation in this book, the press changed the nature of its coverage of such issues through the century. While, as we shall see, they had excoriated immorality and ridiculed improper behavior during the period’s first six decades, newspaper editors rarely descended to personalities, rarely “named names,” especially if those involved were members of the upper classes. Pushed by the cut-throat competition between the large number of papers, propelled by their growing political and moral fearlessness, the press, and especially the daily press, increasingly indulged in exposés of aristocratic wrong-doing and calls for general and specific reformation and legislation. And, as an eminent biographer has noted of a later period, “Society scandals which got into the newspapers were the tip of the iceberg … [however] if nothing was said or read, nothing had happened.”89 Such scandal was made “real” and easily available through this burgeoning press. Perhaps because the advocacy of moral reform could not be called partisan, perhaps because newspaper editors were both reflecting and helping to shape public opinion, we will see how such commentary increased in scope, became more specific in its coverage, and created repeated demands for positive action. For in publicizing, that is in publishing, the misdeeds and mal-conduct of the Great, the press informed its readership, made them armchair witnesses to much more upper-class immorality than most would have known about from personal experience, and more than many could otherwise have imagined. Like the crime reporting which heightened popular fears and concerns about lawlessness, the reporting by the press of upper-class faux pas created and gave public voice to waves of moral anxieties. In such reporting the press erased the insecure boundary between the “private” and the “public,” allowing readers a keyhole into the lives of the political and social leaders of society. For how else could most people know about the private vices of the better sort? And these keyhole views, these scandalous insights, fostered a growing sense of resentment and irritation among the public, a feeling that the lives of the great and powerful were not what they should be, and that reformation was necessary.