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London was famous or infamous rather for the variety of distractions held in store for everybody with a few shillings in his or her pockets. For the historian discussing the evolution of the modern metropolis in this period, the entertainment industry is an unmistakable sign of secular urbanity and the advent of big business. My question is how far the opinion leaders of the pulpit and in Grub Street were able to advance the cultural self-reflection towards a deeper analysis of their society. With the historian's hindsight, the key terms of this approach should focus on modernity, urbanity, the new secularized society, the pleasures of consumerism,1 and the leisure industry's total turnover increasing to heights unheard of in human history. We should understand how far the new rules of middle-class work ethos which had been described by Mandeville as dishonesty and economic competition influenced modern society. That London became ever more attractive to visitors from the rest of the country is an experience today called tourism and sightseeing which was widely advertised by grubstreeters like Tom Brown, Thomas D'Urfey and many other 'hacks' in the late 17th century. This paper will lean on Ned Ward, a popular writer of the turn of the century, who is being widely referred to in social history, but entirely disregarded by literary scholars.
Leisure is ubiquitous in life, but it is not a category typical of the period's social structure; the 'leisured classes' emerged in the 19th century only. Before, it was a problem of upper-class morals and manners. In Ward's works, whatever the wealth of detail, the context in which leisure, pleasure and entertainment was seen was still determined by traditional attitudes. The underlying Renaissance precepts for leisure were exhaustively described by Brian Vickers who drew the conclusion that "the fear of idleness in Europe up to the eighteenth century was so strong that otium could only be accepted if strongly qualified as honestum, a leisure which yielded 'fruits' in works of literature, poetry, philosophy or history."2 But further modes of experience have to be considered which were ultimately dependent on the market3 - even if it is just the market for humorous writing and London travelogues or town eclogues -, the growing spending power of the lower classes, and, from Ward's point of view in particular, the lower classes thronging into the spaces of leisure and entertainment which had formerly been frequented by the establishment (e.g. Islington Spa). Needless to say that Ned Ward viewed the rise of the urban lower classes with great suspicion.
Traditionally, the allurements of the City led straight to Hell, which was the view expressed in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; the capitalism of modern times had been denounced by Thomas Dekker in a counter-procession devoted to the new Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606), which parodied the powerful pageantry of the London companies, which he himself had designed as Elkanah Settle did one hundred years later.4 To the increasing fascination of the reading public, sin was being committed by one part of mankind and narrated and distributed to the other one according to the market demand. In The Amusements Serious and Comical the learned Tom Brown, friend and mentor of Ned Ward, walked through Westminster Abbey accompanied by his Indian visitor (anticipating Voltaire's Ingénu) and had a glance into Henry VII's chapel where their eyes fell upon a scandalous piece of medieval carving which he called "gampucades", obviously referring to sexual practice among the clergy.5 Thus under the guise of narration, touristic description and judgment go hand in hand. Another purpose of this paper is to focus on the question how far people like Ward were aware of new structures in society and how far the discrepancy between established norm and everyday experience fostered the sense of living in modern times.6
In the age of possessive individualism and dissenting self-fashioning,7 hypocrisy reigned and concealed greed behind the mask of righteousness. But the pervading power of pleasure was less easily dissimulated, as greed seems to need the outlet of pleasure-seeking, a hunger for life. Finally, it was Adam Smith who acknowledged the impact of market-forces on human society: utilitarian, demand-driven, consumerist, hedonistic.8 When people like Ned Ward, the author of the famous London Spy (1698-99) and numerous other descriptions of city life, wrote on night life and prostitutes, clubs and pub crawls, Bartholomew Fair, Horn Fair, Islington Wells and Sadler's Music-House, the masquerades of the 1720s and the Lord Mayor's processions around 1700, we need not expect a sociology of the metropolis in moral terms. Ward was a keen observer, an empiricist subsuming his findings within groups or classes of characters. Thus he took up a traditional device in rhetoric, which was very popular in the 17th century (the early 18th century even saw a rebirth of Theophrastus), and used it for sorting out the wealth of circumstantial detail the urban environment produced in abundance. Lastly, in political terms, under the new nationalism which became virulent in the 1720s, the time-honoured principle of "panem et circences", which was urban as well as rural leisure experience, was considered "congenial to the constitution of a free state."9 The sense of a unified nationhood is part and parcel of the new middle-class ideology.10
Ward's extraordinary success marked the rise of a new genre of pleasant reading making its appearance on the book market. Writing about sightseeing threw new light into the most unsavoury night spots of the city, for the respectable reader wanted to be shocked. Printers like Jacob Tonson made a fortune, which cannot be said of an indefatigable fanatic like John Dunton; due to the complaints by Pope, Edmund Curll, the main provider of pornography of the age, achieved notoriety in English literary history.11 Literature was to a considerable amount a part of entertainment and not of information, education and edification. Needless to say that Ned Ward paved the way for the realism of Daniel Defoe's novels. Needless to say that Ward was one of the few best-selling grubstreeters able to make a living from writing and to invest the capital he had made in Grub Street in the premises of a tavern. What he loathed was the protection by the aristocracy people like Pope, Swift and Gay strove for. As a self-made man, Ward was a 'projector' experienced in many fields of the entertainment industry writing under the motto "A fart for Virgil and his elegance" heading The London Spy. So far for the cultural outlook of a middle-of-the-road Tory and Anglican who never accepted the increasing power of the Dissent.
"The eighteenth century thus brought the formulation of new models of man and philosophical rationales for the right to individual happiness in the consumer society."12 Porter’s summary is true with regard to the ideology of the rising middle classes in need to legitimize their status in society not by property, the accumulation of which was to be kept veiled, but by right and might, which was to be founded on a sense of cultural superiority such as creed, politeness and style and to the appropriate display of leisure, of which the famous conversation pieces of the mid-century gave ample evidence.13 However, early eighteenth-century writers reacted to the rise of the urban middle class, to the growth of the proletariat, to migration, poverty and squalor and the ensuing moral decay. Christian lore held no consolation to human sufferance under capitalism, and the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, the only outstanding initiative in morals policy of the age, proved nothing else than tilting at windmills.
When the Spectator was being launched, Addison had analyzed the market and focussed on the realm of pure ideology. Enlightenment benevolence and sentiment began to spread their wings and created a new vision of society.14 Writing about amusements responded to the ever growing demand of middle-class self-reflection toning Puritan righteousness down to more urban rules of polite behaviour. Without speculating about the size of the respective market segments for cultural goods, amusement and the representation of amusement as a legitimate form of amusement with the convenience of excluding less respectable practice were of equal importance.
In the following, the problem of economic activity, leisure and knowledge will be discussed under the headings of the carnivalesque, which refers to the risks of existence under raw capitalism, of sexuality and of reflection and retirement. In Ward’s comprehensive works on London life, two obsessions maintained by the culture of the period loom large: the dangers of marital and extra-marital sexuality, the instability of the pre-bourgeois household, and the ubiquity of the London mob encroaching upon the spaces of leisure and pleasure.
1. Laughter, leisure and the body: Bartholomew Fair
In any theory of leisure, laughter should be central, whatever its spontaneity. Laughter leads to deep relaxation. Laughter is triggered off by the sudden awareness of the discrepancies of everyday life one has to come to terms with. Laughter may be inane, cruel, to say the least, a moment of undeserved superiority or just a short spell of relief. People crowded to fairs in order to see, to be stunned with wonder and awe, or to laugh and to get inebriated. In literature, it has become an eminently British tradition to submit hilarious experience to the eyes of the reading public. So the first point here to be made on leisure in the early eighteenth century is just laughter transcribed for an ever growing market.
Medieval humour used to be pretty rough. Foolish people were misled to kissing a naked bottom which, at the same moment, gave vent to medieval wind. Less foolish people took their (Freudian) revenge by applying a red-hot iron on his malefactor's behind. But in the early 18th century the humour paradigm was definitely shifted towards more humane attitudes raising the shame barrier for the taste of a polite society. So the rendering of similar incidents followed rules obviously different from the age of Chaucer or even that of Hobbes. The transition is visible everywhere: The Bartholomew-Fair crowd breathlessly watching the caperings of an Irish rope-dancer is not the notorious London mob, but a representative sample of the city's residents enjoying themselves. The following episode is taken from Ned Ward's London Spy:
When, with much art and agility, she had exercised her well-proportioned limbs to the great satisfaction of the spectators, the Irish woman arose from her hempen seat to show the multitude her shapes. Her shoulders were of an Atlas-build, and her buttocks, as big as two bushel loaves, shaked as she danced like two quaking puddings handed to a table in one dish. Her thighs, as fleshly as a baron of beef, were so much too big for her body that they looked as gouty as the pillars in St Paul's. Her legs were as strong as a chairman's, her calves being as round and hard as a football, the swelling of the muscles stretching the skin as taut as the head of a new-braced drum. She waddled along the rope like a goose over a barn threshold, till at last, poor creature, willing to show the assembly the utmost of her excellencies, and putting nature upon a stress to cut a caper as high as a hog-trough, she happened to strain her twatling-strings, and let fly an unsavoury sound, as loud as a note of the double-curtal. 'Wounds, my lady,' says my neighbour the countryman, 'have a care you do no fall, for, by the mass, you made the rope give a woundy crack.' The men laughed, and the women blushed. Madam Lump quitted the rope with a shameful expedition and, as it was thought, did her dancing trunks much damage by the unfortunate eruption.15
Leisure is viewing. The spectator's gaze is riveted on the female body displaying those parts otherwise concealed to the public. Ward's Irish performer reminds one of the Rabelaisian body and Bakhtin's principle of the carnivalesque.16 In popular culture, the urges of the human mind, food and sex, closely linked in the human brain through sensual pleasure, are thus mirrored to the point of absurdity. As part of a complete menu produced by the English haute cuisine, the "baron of beef" refers to a joint of meat consisting of two sirloins (or loins and legs) left intact at the backbone. Needless to say that St. Paul's was not finished yet. According to Ward, English feeding culture could be defined as "beef, beef, beef".17 People thronged to view exhibits of the grotesque and abnormal: the deformation of the female body by gluttony and defecation. But viewing slides from metaphorical cannibalism into sheer voyeurism, and as soon as the Irish dancer is replaced by a nimble and beautiful "German Maid", desire surges from the body, which confirms the tenets of traditional theory suspecting leisure to turn into sin and degeneracy. Anyway, in the rope-dancers' booth, money was being made which makes it impossible to break the vicious circle from leisure to sin and from sin to cash, so that, in an acquisitive society under capitalism and the laws of the market, leisure cannot be entirely bad, whatever the xenophobic and misogynist connotations underlining this humorous incident.
2. Leisure for a romantic affair: a trip to Horn Fair
According to Defoe's entry in A Tour thro' the Whole Island (1724-27), the incidents at Charlton pleasure grounds, called Horn Fair, demanded the immediate interference from the authorities. However, it still took quite a time until public opinion supported the suppression of fairs on the grounds given by Defoe, and moralists and reformers had to wait until the second half of the century when numerous pleasure grounds and fairs were suppressed:18
On the other side of the Heath, North, is Charleton, a village famous, or rather infamous for that yearly collected Rabble of mad People, at Horn-fair; the Rudeness of which I cannot but think, or such as ought to be suppress'd, and indeed in a civiliz'd and well govern'd Nation, it may well be said to be unsufferable.19
Ward's readers knew what to expect from such a place and from a tale presenting contemporary fair events. In his narrative under the title A Frolick to Horn-Fair (1699) the descriptions of the place itself are to be found in the second part only, while in the first one Ward creates the rare story of an extramarital affair taking place on St. Luke's day (Oct. 18th): "When the near approach of Horn-Fair had Conjur'd up the Spirit of Cuckoldom in the Dissatisfied Minds of abundance of City Wives, who had just Reason to Complain of the unkind Usage, and slender Performances of either their Drowsie, Lazy, Morose, Insufficient, or Superannuated Husbands [...]",20 is an opening which reminds one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Extramarital affairs or just horning or cuckolding still seem to be glamourized by late 17th culture. We do not know whether the narrator, who meticulously dresses up as a Restoration beau, is married, but the lady definitely is, for she is able to foil her husband's plan to do the same trip to the fair with the apothecary's wife. Satire turns what is claimed to be common cultural practice into an increasingly nightmarish experience, whatever the degree of "Loves Enjoyment":
Having now, by a few Love-Toys, and light Expressions, together with the Assistance of the Wine, introduc'd a little Familiarity, we agreed upon a Dish of Fish, that we might fortifie our Stomachs against the cold Breezes we must expect from the Water. During the time the Cook was Labouring to delight our Pallates, we reciprocally oblig'd each other with lushious Kisses and endearing Words, that melted both our Hearts into an equal Concupiscence towards Loves Enjoyment.
[...]
By this time we had an Island of Fish, floating in an Ocean of Butter, brought up to the Table; of which, like the Lady of a Feast, she ceremoniously help'd me to a very plentiful Plate, I gratefully repaid her Favour with a Cringe, which she return'd with a Bow, that we nodded at one another like two Rams in a Challenge, just going to butt: Every Bit that was better than ordinary, she would force upon my Plate, that no Country Turkey-Cock, fatted against Christmas, to be sent to my Landlord at London, was ever so cram'd: I Believe I swallow'd down as much Fresh-Cod as my Lord Mayor's Weapon Porter does Custard at a Feast; my Lady's chief Diversion, all Dinner-time, being to fish in Sauce for delicious Morsels to feast the Palate of her new humble Servant; using so many kind Expressions to court me to eat, that I was quite surfeited with her sweet Words, before I had half satisfied my Stomach with our enticing Dainties; being forc'd sometimes to be unmannerly, and, Bumpkin like, court my Mistress to eat, with my own Mouth full, for fear she should think, by my long silence, I did not regard her. When I, by the manly Industry of my Hands and Jaws, and my Mistress, by her effeminate Piddling and Picking, had both satisfied our Appetites with our Nice and well Dress'd Dinner, according to Custom, we thought it necessary to make our Fish to Swim a third time, in a more Noble Element than either Butter or Water; calling accordingly for half a Flask of Red, that the Noble Tincture of the Vine might enrich our Food of a purple Colour, and making Juice the fitter for our Veins Reception.
All the superfluous Implements of Eating being now taken away, we made each Glass a further Key to unlock the Secrets of our Souls, and begun to spin out the Threads of Love to a lasting length, wetting each kind Word with Wine, that the Knot of Friendship might be ty'd the faster. How far our mutual Desires might carry us beyond the Rules of Modesty, is neither my Business to tell, nor the Readers to enquire into; for there are many things that are Justifiable in Action, that are not Decent to Repeat; so that we will make that Modest by the Concealment, that might be thought Rude in the Discovery.21
The above passage is striking, because it evokes a rare spell of perfect enjoyment. "Spin out the threads of love to a lasting length" is a perfect definition of romance, which rarely matures into a long-term relationship. But right after the meal, when they have embarked for Charlton at Billingsgate Stairs, society is to gain due revenge over the couple. Current cultural norms against leisure are never made explicit, but turned into a sequence of burlesque incidents. The avenging angels have taken the shape of Thames watermen, and the reference to the ducking-stool as a punishment for unruly wives can hardly be missed; as many works by Swift and Pope give ample evidence, the period's everyday life was widely disturbed by excrements:
Having thus pretty well secur'd our Bodies from the Coldness of the Water, we took Boat at Billingsgate Stairs, and away for Cuckolds-Point; but were no sooner put off from the Shore, but we were got into such an innumerable Fleet of Oars, Skullers, Bargers, Cock-boats, Pinnaces, and Yawls, some Going, some Coming, and all Attacking each other with such Vollies of hard Words, that I thought Billingsgate-Market was kept upon the Thames, and all the Fish-Whores in the Town had been Scolding for a Plate, given 'em by some rich Oyster Woman, to encourage the Industry of the Tongue; calling my poor Lady and I so often by the opprobrious Names of Whore and Rogue, that for my part, I thought they were Witches, and had known what we had been doing; tossing Ladles full of Water into one anothers Boats, till the Passengers were many of 'em as wet as a turbulent Woman just taken out of the Ducking-Stool. At last an unlucky Rogue, with Bridewell Looks, and a Ladle in his Hand, fishes up a floating Sir-reverence in his Wooden Vehicle, and gives it an unfortunate toss upon my Lady's Bubbies. She crying out to me, her Protector, to do the Office of a Scavenger, and take away the Beastliness, she being herself so very squeamish, that she could no more endure to touch it with her Fingers, than a Monkey does a Mouse; It being lodg'd in the Cavity, between her Breasts and her Stays, she could not shake it off, but I was forced to lend a Hand, to remove the pois'nous Pellat from her snowy Temptations, giving on't a toss into another Boat, with like Success, Wounding an old Cuckoldy Waterman just in the Forehead, and so bedung'd his Brow Antlers, that I make no Question but they spread and flourish'd, being thus manured, like the Horns of an Ox after well Greasing.22
After wandering through Charlton, which gives rise to numerous descriptions of the place and further burlesque incidents, the love plot ends inconclusively, which may appear as a serious deficiency to modern readers accustomed to a coherent aesthetic structure in a piece of literature, but Ward the journalist produced burlesque realism for a public keen to read how the world really was.
3. Pleasure grounds and permissive society: the Islington bacchanalia
If leisure automatically led to sexual intercourse, did Ward really write about a permissive society? It is easy to misunderstand Roy Porter's assessment of the 1720s as a period when Restoration libertinage still was valid: "The omnipresence of prostitutes, bawdy prints and titillating words all indicate that sexual indulgence and tolerance were not just confined to a tiny libertine rakish fringe."23 Obviously, the verbalisation of sex in print was far more important for the culture of the period, if we take the commercial success of Edmund Curll. In A Walk to Islington (1699), which, in its opening lines, evokes Chaucer's lines on April showers, at Islington or New Tunbridge Wells the entertainment industry was rapidly spreading around the spa. The wells had been rediscovered in 1683, and within a few years the once fashionable resort was turned into a leisure park where even the London mob thronged to seek distraction.24
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In Holiday-Time, when the Ladies of London
Walk out with their Spouses, or think themselves Undone;
When Whores have a more than an ord'nary Itching
To visit the Fields, and so Ramble a Bitching;
When Vigorous Youth the young Damsel engages
In Meadowes, on Haycocks, or under the Hedges;
When Flesh and the Devil do greatly prevail,
And the Dame must have Prudence that governs her Tail;
When Honour in Wedlock by Lust is betray'd,
And the Maids are a gog to be otherways made:
Then I, like my Neighbours, to sweeten my Life,
Took a walk in the Fields; but for want of a Wife,
Was forc'd to take up with a Lady of Pleasure,
Who I turn'd off at Will, and enjoy'd at my Leisure:
We saunter'd about near the New-River-Head,
Where we pratled and tatled, tho' what 'twas we said,
If you'd have me Discover, indeed I must fail-you,
Because 'twas on Business improper to tell-you.
I found by her Words I her heart could command,
So quickly we setled the matter in hand.25 |
Whatever the narrator's misogyny, hardly anybody can resist the attraction of the bacchanalia or "revels". In Chaucer-like lines, sexuality appears to be 'natural':26
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The Faint-Hearted Youth, who was fearful to ask
His Lady the Question, had call’d for a Flask;
That by the kind Juice, with more Courage inspir'd,
He boldy might Beg what she fondly Desir'd.
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In many respects nature and leisure operate in favour of an egalitarian society; leisure activeties unify instead of emphasizing class distinction.27 Perceiving the crowd, Ward's narrator draws distinctions, which are instable, because under the pressure from capitalism and competition, English society has achieved a high degree of mobility. The crowd in the fun fair represents London society as such moving on common grounds. Ward probably is talking about his own past when he tried to regain his family's estate, as one might have guessed guess from his poem "A Poet's Rambles after Riches". It is a pity for the younger sons of the land-owning class:
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The next were a Crew of Extravagant Blades;
Tho' Born to Estates, yet are bred up to Trades:
As Merchants Apprentices, Sons of the City,
Who think to be Lewd, is the way to be Witty:
Or finely to Dance, and to Sing a New Song,
Are th' only Two Graces to Man do belong.
Thus led by the fury of Youth, without thinking,
To Bawdy-house, Play-house, to Gaming and Drinking,
Disdaining good Counsel, Reproof or Command,
Till spent what was painfully got to their hand;
Then full of Repentance, Despair, and Vexation,
Are Sold, like bad Goods, to some Foreign Plantation. |
In Sadler's "Musick-House", the narrator and his "lady of pleasure" take refreshments such as cheese-cake, wine and other delicacies and look down from the gallery to "examine the Pit":
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Where Butchers and Bayliffs, and such sort of Fellows,
Were mix'd with a Vermin train'd up to the Gallows. |
It is a sign of the egalitarian spirit of the London mob when the narrator meets with "Saucy Behaviour" and "Impudent Air" – obviously the populace is devoid of humbleness when facing the quality. But the lower classes have the spending power to enjoy even operatic elements28 performed in Sadler's music hall such as the air of a fat lady one can interpret as the moon goddess directing the bacchanalia. She acts as a representative of the archetypal Great Mother, and equally as impresario for vulgar taste. Needless to say that the wall paintings in the hall referred to scenes in Ovid's Metamorphoses which the narrator could only understand in the most explicitly sexual way. What is striking in this poem is how circumstantial detail in the world of entertainment is uniformly assessed by the narrator's mind.
Ward parodies the enigmatic character of airs sung in Italian by replacing the lyrics by allusions to sexual intercourse:
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Which made Lady Squab, with her Moonifi'd Face,
By the side of the Organ, resume her old place;
With hands on her Belly, she open'd her Throat,
And silenc'd the Noise, with her Musical Note:
The Guests were all Hush, and Attention was given,
The listening Mob thought themselves in a Heaven;
If the Ravishing Song which she sung, you wou'd know,
It was Rub, rub, rub; rub, rub, rub; in and out ho.
As soon as her sweet, modest, Ditty was done,
She withdrew from her Wicker, as Chaste as a Nun.
The Butchers so pleas'd with her warbling strains,
Both Knock'd her, and Clap'd her all round for her Pains. |
4. Masquerades - leisure without restraint?
"Our Protestant Carnaval", as Ned Ward once called it,29 seems to have been the apogee of leisure throughout the eighteenth-century England.30 To those who had the money, and there were many people with "more Time upon their Hands than they care to spend in Devotion, and more superfluous Money than they design for charitable Uses" (2), masquerades offered relief from all kinds of restraints society imposed upon the individual, an electrifying ambience created by the most prominent impresario of the period and master of the opera-house in the Haymarket, Heydegger, and a dream world promising wish fulfilment for sexual longings.31 In the 1720s, when the popularity of the masquerades soared, voices grew more numerous that called for stricter curbs on immorality, and the agents operating for the Societies for the Reformation of Manners had their finest day with a unique peak of convictions. But leisure out of control soon proves subversive, as Freud had predicted when he wrote about the pleasure principle. The Weekly Journal published a report of a 'masquerade' bust with the police trying to catch people for illegal practice, which meant that not only homosexuals were targeted but members of the lower classer as well, who had slipped into the role of the quality.32
Leisure is inescapably enclosed in the world of reality, behaviour determined by everyday's drudgery, which is the message Ward hammered home in The Amorous Bugbears (1725). Sexually transmitted disease for the gentlemen and pregnancy for the ladies loom large: "after things were drawn, to bring away much more than they'd carry'd along with them; to which good Fortune, I must own, the ladies are more especially entitl'd" (4). As a rhetorical device combining two normally contradictory terms, "The Protestant Carnaval" underlines the tensions in Ward's period between the rise of radical Protestantism (Dissent), its ruthless commercialism, its work ethos and a catholic culture brimful of life at least for a brief spell. Leisure means hedonism enclosed in a commercial society as Ward's narrator and his four friends are going to experience, "pritty Fellows as ever could be admitted into so frolicksome a society" (4). On their spree beyond "the honest part of the Town" (4), dressed up as "a compleat Mahometan", (8), "a Nobleman of Venice", "truss'd up in the Scotch habit of a Highlander" (9), and, the fourth being undertaker by profession, as "Running-footman" or "compleat Mercury" (10), they want to live up to what is written in the Holy Bible, "that of Genesis, i.e. Encrease and multiply" (13). However, the narrator opts for the role of the odd man out picking the "Habit of a Gray-Fryar, Call'd a Dominic" (10) in order to impersonate catholic asceticism or monastic hyper-sexuality, which will left to be decided in a few moments, as anti-catholic burlesque would fit nicely into the period.
They are ushered in probably by Heydegger himself, "Master of the Ceremonies", "into a lofty Hall, as high as a modern Conventicle, parted in the middle with a green Curtain, as if intended to separate the Righteous from the Ungodly." Ward would not miss out on any opportunity to attack the Dissent. In the history of mentality, the problem the Wardian character feels the impact of the growing economic power of the Dissent displayed with perfect righteousness so close to hypocrisy. Ward's chains of associations unravel an ambivalent attitude to leisure and pleasure. The tradition-minded Tory senses that what may be called psychological Puritanism encroaches upon all areas of leisure and, obviously, upon his own views of society. The ambivalence Ward suffers from explains the difficulties of a period when the current set of values came under the pressure from sheer materialism. Over time, Ward must have internalized puritan attitudes.
Spontaneous associations are revealing for the culture in which they are produced. Facing the moral decay of society, Ward's latent Puritanism seems to reinforce archaic misogyny:
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For Woman, if she once espies
An Object that delights her Eyes,
Each other Sense must be befriended,
By what her Sight has recommended,
Or else she bears the hellish Pain
Of Tantalus, and longs in vain,
Our fist Good Mother Eve, we see,
In her high State of Purity,
Tho' above all her Daughters bless'd,
Was never so divinely chast,
As to behold not not to tast. (14-15) |
Having thus amus'd myself a while with the glittering Pomp and astonishing Variety that surrounded me, I could not forbear thinking, that all the Vices and Follies in the Universe were promiscuously huddl'd together in this sinful Repository;33 for some, especially the Ladies, stood craning their Carcasses at the long Side-boards, with provoking Marmalades and perfum'd Comfits, in so extravagant a manner, as if they intended to turn their Bellies into Bags of Sweetmeats, that their Husbands and Gallants, after a timely Digestion, might find the powerful Effects of their lushious Entertainment. (17-18)
If the basic rule of leisure is to fill it brimful of life, once again, carnal desires find an outlet in the consumption of expensive delicacy. Substitution seems to be another basic rule defined by the economy of human drives. Sexual intercourse, if not achieved, will be substituted by gluttony, luxuria by gula, just to name two of the seven deadly sins.
Under the scrutiny of Ward's narrator, the fashionable place reveals its true character as a haunted house peopled by those who have failed in life. Dressed up as a monk, the narrator targets a Protestant lady in black. She should be willing gratify his lust, for Catholic girls are exempt from sexual duty during Lent. But the anti-catholic joke does not work. The lady is tracking down her cheating husband. The lady's appearance, however, produces an effect even more sinister, which, in modern psychology, would refer to a disturbing state of mind in the observer himself. Leisure has turned into obsession at its worst hinting at schizophrenia:
The next fair lady, that came in my way, seem'd to be a fine tid-bit, tho her Beauty (if she had any) was obscur'd by a pale Vizard, resembling the flux'd Countenance of a poor Harlot just turn'd out of the Lock-Hospital. Her Body soberly disguis'd in a black Antike Dress, not very different from the Mourning Weeds, worn by young Widows in old Times, to dissemble their Grief for their lost Husbands; but so Extravagantly deck'd with costly Gems, or glittering Counterfeits, I know not which, that she appear'd as bright by Candle Light as a Looking-Glass Shop in the Sunshine, insomuch, that I no sooner came near her, but I could see my self in a hundred Places by the reflexion of her Jewels. Upon her Head she had a black Riding Hat, lac'd round with Silver, that hung flapping over her Ears, and made her look like a Jew's Harlot just return'd from a Hackney Marsh Horse-Race, and dismounted at Finsbury. (28)
That many ladies attending the masquerades were just prostitutes was a well-known fact, as prostitution in general had been a prominent feature of the metropolis after the reign of Cromwell. The next lady targeted by the narrator is "a pretty sort of a Pissle-wasted Madam, most neatly disguised in all the Sanctify'd Formalities of a She-Quaker" (32); "I must confess I lik'd her Figure much, and could not forbear fancying I should find something extraordinary under the formal Cover of these puritannick Weeds" (33). So he switches into cant, the jargon of radical Protestantism to pick up the lady:
"Friend Rebekka, how cometh it about, that thou art stray'd from the Tabernacles of the Godly, into the tents of the Wicked, where there is nothing to be found but profane Dancing, Drinking, Gaming, and Intriguing, which are all Abominations to the sober Saints of thy holy Profession." (33)
As Terry Castle emphasizes, masquerades facilitated the free conversion among the classes.34 The lady introduces herself as "Diana Riggle", a Drury Lane resident promising to explain her name when they meet again, which needs no explanation.
The party gains momentum, some people practice cross-dressing to get rid for a moment of their gender roles as determined by society. The narrator rivets his eyes on "the numberless Throng of uncouth Spectacles that were buzzing about me." Libido, repressed desire and furtive liaisons are being free reins. Society needs spaces of leisure, and even excess stabilizes what it seems to undermine, even if the guardians of public morals saw things differently. Ward's satire, however, confirms traditional views upon sexual deviation by linking it with excremental comedy. Leisure and laughter enhance the purging effect of what can be obnoxious by repression:
[...] one young Gentleman, to shew his extraordinary Modesty to the Company, and great regard to the Ladies, had dress'd up his Head in a Woman's Night-Pinners, and cover'd his Body with a fine lac'd Holland Smock, in which he walk'd about the Room like an airy Bride in hot Weather, dish'd up for Man's Meat upon her Wedding Night. Another, to make the Indecency the more ridiculous, and the unmannerly Jest the more loathsome, comes behind Miss Molly and throwing a Box full of Spanish Snuff upon the Seat of her Smicket, made her backside look as offensively besmear'd, as the hind Lappet of a Drayman's Shirt when it is first handled to a Washerwoman; insomuch that the squeamish Part of both Sexes were greatly disorder'd at the unseemly Sight, and had no small difficulty to retain the Wine they had drank and Sweetmeats they had eaten: Every Body believing him some Sodomite or other, that could be guilty of so much Immodesty, in derision of the Fair Sex. (36)
Even as its inverse, leisure cannot but correspond to normality. Carnival serves not only as a regular outlet for restraint and repression, but, even more importantly, as a therapy against the risk of existence, which have increased under modern capitalism. In the haunted house of the masquerade carnival becomes the descent into hell which is reality. The gates of hell open to force reality upon the spectator. Satire and reality wrapped into one, the risks of existence under capitalism are revealed: the manifold economic, social, political and religious aspects failure manifest in venereal disease, drug addiction, gambling and ruin. In Ward's pieces, there are no allegorical figures walking around, but real human beings of his period.
Apart from the craze for masquerading, clubs of all kinds sprang up, even a number of imaginary ones in Ned Ward's best-selling History of the London Clubs (1709), which was preceded by the notorious Secret History of the Calves-Head Club (1703 etc.), the entirely fictitious members of which, as true republicans, commemorated the execution of King Charles by chopping off a calf's head.35 In Ward's imagined London club life, perverts go on the rampage. In the No-Nose Club victims of syphilis meet; the Farting Club is reserved to the followers of medieval cuisine, and in the Mollies Club Ward once again satirizes the homosexual scene. Leisure builds identity, even in the distorting mirror of Ward's satire. "Feeding culture", however, has created its own myth. In a pub under the sign of the "Imperial Phiz" in vicinity of the Kit-Cat Club, which was frequented by the famous Whigs, the Beef-Steak Society opened its doors mainly to theatre people: "This noted boozing ken, above all others in the city, was chosen out by the Rump-steak admirers, as the fittest mansion to entertain the Society, and to gratify their appetites with that particular dainty they desired to be distinguished by."36 The noted boozing ken became the house that truly deserved "that public Fame for their inimitable Management of a Bovinary-Sliver, which the World had given them."37 Secular society was under reconstruction, and the new middle classes indulged in leisure in order to distinguish themselves from others.
5. Metropolitan tourism and the edifying experience of Bedlam and Westminster Abbey
London attracted many visitors, however low the level of convenience and mobility in the first half of the 18th century. The metropolis offered adventures by night and edification by day, and in contrast to the vast number of travel desriptions of London or pieces like John Gay's Trivia (1716), Ward's London Spy, which originally was a periodical, supplied, as the appropriate tourist guide, comprehensive information about the city and invited the reader to follow his itinerary of sights and taverns, shops and bawdy houses. While Bedlam, which exhibited their patients for a small fee and became a major attraction, appeared like a repository of the political madness of the past, it may be more rewarding to hve a look at Westminster Abbey. This episode took up Tom Browns chapter and, more importantly, anticipated, or in the jargon of intertextuality, preceded Addison's famous walk through the aisle in Spectator No. 26. Jonathan Culler defined tourism as semiotic practice, so that the reader has to analyse the building as a sign system which will making visible the markers pre-defining the viewer's experience.38 The visitor is expected to contemplate afterlife and eternity:
When we came in sight of this sacred edifice, I could not behold the outside of the awful pile without reverence and amazement. 'Twas raised to such stupendous height, and beautified with such ornamental statues, that the bold strokes of excelling artists, whilst the building stands, will always remain visible. The whole seemed to want nothing that could render it truly venerable. We passed by that emblem of mortality, the charnel-house, where poets, priests, pimps and porters lay their empty heads together, without envy or distinction, and on the north side entered the magnificent temple with equal wonder and satisfaction.39
Addison's narrator watches the grave-digger unearth the bones of former dignitaries and transforms the act into a unique rhetorical flourish beyond any meaningful amplification: "undistinguish'd in the same promiscuous heap of matter" - "Men and Women, Friends and Enemies, Priests and Soldiers, Monks and Prebendaries", "Beauty, Strength, and Youth, with Old-age, Weakness, and Deformity." Ward's "empty heads" are replaced by Addison's "kind of Satyr upon the departed Persons", the pomp of sentiment overrides ludicrous precision. When the Wardian flaneur leaves the cathedral, he notices the militia practising in the square in front of the portal, which again becomes the object of ridicule. However, the tourist has duly reacted to the markers put up for him, although he is able to keep his Tory fallacy. The grandeur of the site has done its work and called forth the appropriate edifying effect on him.
6. Retirement far from the madding female crowd
It was Ward's haunting experience that leisure and pleasure were continuously dimmed by the encroaching mob and the inflated role of sexuality. Among bachelors the number of eccentrics, egocentrics and philosophers may be significantly elevated for they shun close contact with a considerable part of the population. For many reasons this attitude appears to be entirely respectable. In "The Pleasures of a Single Life: or, the Miseries of Matrimony" (1701) the gentleman philosopher looks down upon nature and mankind in a pose of Virgilian self-fashioning. The translation of Virgil's Georgics by Dryden, who was the acknowledged authority on poetic diction, had been printed in 1697.40 Although Ward had rejected this model in the preface to The London Spy in 1698, in "Solitary Enjoyment: Or, the Pleasures of Contemplation" he resorted again to poetic diction and attacked deism and modern science.41 Maybe there was a period when Ward aspired to the models of antiquity, which is a point Troyer had left undiscussed.42 However, Ward was able to write artful couplets ("That every Mead her verdant Mantle wore" - "The feather'd Choristers whose warbling Throats").43 The following attempt at stoicism pursues the model of ancient philosophy for undisturbed leisure:
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When home return'd, my thanks to heaven
For all the past kind blessings of the day;
No haughty help-mate does my peace molest,
No treach'rous snake to harbour in my breast,
No fawning mistress of the female art,
With Judas kisses to betray my heart;
No light-tail'd hypocrite to raise my fears,
No vile Impert'nence to torment my ears;
No molten offspring to distress my thought,
In wedlock born, but God knows where begot.
No lustful Messalina to requite
Whole troops of men to feed her brutal fire;
No family cares my quiet to disturb,
No headstrong humours to dissuage or curb;
No jarring servants, no domestic strife,
No jilt, no termagant, no faithless wife,
With vinegar or gall, to sour or bitter Life. |
However, life takes its due course. This intellectual gentleman with enlightened attitudes falls in love with a beautiful woman who immediately turns his life into hell which he can only escape through a complicated divorce procedure. Before matrimony, he had achieved a fulfilled life with friends, polite conversation, limited quantities of wine, books holding all the knowledge of the world, and walks: "I range the fields and flow'ry meads,/ Where nature her exuberant beauty spreads." Obviously the gentleman wallows in self-pity anticipating the sentimentality of an age to come. The curse he hurls against her is misogyny at its Christian worst:
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Woman! the worst of all church plagues! farewel,
Bad at the best, but at the worst a hell;
Thou truss of wormwood, bitter tease of life,
Thou misery of human cares, a wife;
Thou apple-eating trait'ress, who first began,
The wrath of Heaven, and miseries of man;
And hast with never-failing diligence,
Improv'd the curse to human race e'er since. |
However, a middle-of-the-road solution is easily found for the gentleman. There is a suitable woman coming to terms with the patriarch's wishful thinking: a mother-like fairy, an extra-marital stand-by, quite a sensitive soul and a perfect and inexpensive lover:
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For there's that sweetness in a female mind,
Which in a man we cannot hope to find.
[...]
To this fair creature I'd sometimes retire,
Her conversation would new joys inspire.
Give life an edge so keen, no surly care,
Would venture to assault my soul, or dare
Near my retreat, to hide one secret snare.
But so divine, so noble a repast,
I'd seldom and with moderation taste,
For high cordials all their virtue lose,
By a too frequent and too bold an use. |
In the extensive debate of matrimony, the cultural opinion leadership had been claimed by the founders of the Tatler and Spectator, but their campaign for matrimony was continued far into the eighteenth century as, for instance, by Henry Stonecastle's Universal Spectator (1728-46), to whom the author of The Batchelor's Recantation appealed.44 Leisure was being transferred to the realm of privacy and the family.45 Even Daniel Defoe tried to benefit from this central issue when the discussion intensified again in the late 1720s and published his contribution under the somewhat lurid title "Conjugal Lewdness" (1727).46
Conlusion: Tory nostalgia
What has been discussed was the pursuit of distraction in the late 17th and early 18th century. At the same time, Ward's works provided cultural self-reflection within given bounds. More importantly, he created pleasant reading about people steeped in sin and mindless pleasure. Ward knew the demands and the taste of his reading public. The disillusioned conclusion of an indefatigable walker through London was that true leisure is bliss temporarily found among friends, in an honest vintner's tavern. The following lines from the London Spy are a blatant piece of self-advertising which anticipate Ward's later career in the catering business. In 1714 when he had to face the coming Whig supremacy, Ward forsook political journalism and invested his money in a pub:
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To speak but the truth of my honest friend Ned,
The best of all vintners that ever God made,
He's free of his beef, and as free of his bread,
And washes both down with a glass of rare red
That tops all the town, and commands a good trade,
Such wine as will cheer up the drooping King's Head,
And brisk up the soul, though the body's half dead!
He scorns to draw bad, as he hopes to be paid,
And now his name's up he may e'en lie abed,
For he'll get an estate, there's no more to be said. |
This again is unmistakably a myth of leisure and national identity, which was useful when Ward attempted to survive in the modern world. His longing for re-gentrification and past virtue is another reference to Tory ideology. Ward wrote a number of racy drinking songs which gave advice not to meddle with women while indulging in the best possible form of leisure. Ward's survey of the urban environment is comprehensive, but given his outlook, to be summarized succinctly on Swift's lines, a human being may be defined as capable not only of reason but of leisure and ready to transgress any bounds of decency. Julian Hoppit described English society in the process of moving towards urbanity which, first of all, meant the accomplishment of the leisure industry: "More and more ways of gratifying body and mind were explored, both for selfish and social reasons. Drinking, eating, dressing up, gambling and being seen were all part of this."47
Notes
1 See in particular J.H. Plumb's chapter on "The Commercialization of Leisure," in The Birth of a Consumer Society, ed. by Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb (London: Europa Publications, 1982).
2 "Leisure and Idleness in the Renaissance: the Ambivalence of otium," Renaissance Studies 4 (1990), 1-37 and 107-54; here: 153.
3 This is being emphasized by Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England, 1689-1727(Oxford: Clarendon, 2000). Hoppit focuses upon the market forces (438); as an important collective and social phenomenon, "the pursuit of pleasure had emerged as a particularly distinctive feature of English society after the restoration to become a powerful motor of change around 1700" (430).
4 Glory's Resurrection (1698).
5 A Walk round London and Westminster, The Third Volume of the Works of Mr. Tom Brown, Serious and Comical in Prose and Verse (London, 1720), 316.
6 "Modernity" is one of the principal issues discussed by Paul J. Hunter, Before Novels. The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York: Norton, 1990), 161-64.
7 Roy Porter, "Enlightenment and Pleasure," Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Roy Porter and Marie Mulvey Roberts (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 17.
8 Ibid., 16.
9 Quoted from Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London: Allen Lane, 1982), 273.
10 See Suzy Halimi, "Identité culturelle et loisirs en Angleterre au XVIIIe siècle," RANAM 18 (1985), 17-32.
11 Cf. Pat Rogers and Paul Baines, Edward Curll, Bookseller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
12 Porter, "Enlightenment and Pleasure", 17.
13 See Christine Lerche, Painted Politeness. Private und öffentliche Selbstdarstellung im Conversation Piece des Johann Zoffany (Weimar: VDG, 2006).
14 See No. 10 for the blatantly patriarchal gender definition: "But there are none to whom this Paper will be more useful than to the female World. I have often thought there has not been sufficient Pains taken in finding out proper Employments and Diversions for the Fair ones. Their Amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are Women, than as they are reasonable Creatures; and are more adapted to the Sex, than to the Species."
15 The London Spy. Ned Ward's classic account of underworld life in eighteenth century London, ed. by Paul Hyland (East Lansing: Colleagues Press, 1993), 184.
16 See Renate Lachmann's preface to Michail Bachtin, Rabelais und seine Welt: Volkskultur als Gegenkultur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 38 ff. [English version Rabelais and his World, 1968].
17 London Spy No. XII, 217-19.
18 Cf. Halimi, "Identité culturelle et loisirs," 28-29.
19 Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, vol I. ed. by John McVeagh (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), 138.
20 A Frolick to Horn-Fair. With a Walk from Cuckold's-Point thro' Deptford and Greenwich (London, 1699), repr. in A Collection of the Writings, Hitherto Extant (London, 1700); die folgenden Seitenangaben beziehen sich auf diese erste 'Gesamtausgabe' Wards, A Collection of the Writings, Vol. II (London, 1717 [1703, 1704, 1706, 1709]).
21 Ibid., 200; 208.
22 Ibid., 209-10.
23 "Mixed feelings: the Enlightenment and sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain," Sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain, ed. by Paul-Gabriel Boucé (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), 12. See the elucidating passages on Samuel Pepys' sexlife by Liza Picard, Restoration London (London: Phoenix, 2003), 159-66.
24 See the entry on Sadler's Wells in British History Online, "Sadler's Wells," Old and New London, Vol. 2 (1878), 289-296. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45099. Date accessed: 05 April 2008. The development of Islington spa is a counter-movement to what Lawrence E. Klein observed as politeness which "constituted an oligarchical culture for a post-courtly and post-godly society with a growing metropolis;" see "Politeness for plebes. Consumtion and social identity in early eighteenth-century England," The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800. Image, Object, Text, ed. by Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1997), 362.
25 A Walk to Islington: With a Description of New Tunbridge-Wells, and Sadler's Musick-House. By the Author of the Poet's Rambles after Riches (London, 1699 and 1701).
26 See H. Weber, The Restoration Rake-Hero (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 185, on the Restoration utopia of unrestricted sexual delight.
27 Cf. Suzy Halimi, "Identité culturelle et loisirs," 21-23.
28 See for a survey of opera satire my essay, "'Near opera's fribling fugues, what muse can stay? Where wordless warblings winnow thought, away!' – Englische Opernsatire im frühen 18. Jahrhundert," The Senses' Festival. Inszenierungen der Sinne und Sinnlichkeit in der Literatur und Kunst des Barock. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Rolf P. Lessenich, ed. by Norbert Lennartz (Trier: WVT, 2005), 329-49. For the burlesque versions of the opera see Thomas Duffet, which Ward might have known; cf. Edward J. Dent, The Foundations of English Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 128-29.
29 The Amorous Bugbears (London, 1725), 6; unless otherwise noted, I am quoting from this edition.
30 See the accounts given by Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: the Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (London: Methuen, 1986); idem, "Eros and Liberty at the English Masquerade, 1710-90," ECS 17 (1983/84), 156-76; idem, "The Carnivalization of Eighteen-Century English Narrative," PMLA 99 (1984), 903-16.
31 See William Hogarth's satirical drawing "The Masquerade Ticket" (1727) showing a crowd in Haymarket Theatre, all sorts of symbols referring to orgiastic practice and two "lecherometers".
32 Weekly Journal (2 Jan. 1725); "misbehaviour" became "endemic", as the homosexual scene acted out their feelings: "Last Monday Night a private masquerade was held at a House near Drury Lane, of which the Justices of the Peace having previous Information upon Oath, issu'd a Warrant to the Constables, for apprehending such Persons as they should find there misbehaving themselves: Accordingly near 40 of them were apprehended, and secured that Night in the Gatehouse and other Places. And next Day they were carried before several of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace, who committed some of them to Bridewell, and bound over others to the next Sessions. We hear that tho' several personated Emperors and Queens, few or none of 'em were above the Rank of Footmen or Scullions; that many of the Men were taken in Womens Cloaths, and generally go amongst themselves by Female Names or rather by the Names of the Racers at New-Market such as Cochineal Sue; Flying Horse Moll, Greenpea Moll, Plump Nelly, &c. and that one of them was convicted last Sessions for an Attempt to commit Sodomy, which Crime the Assembly in general lies under the Imputation of. This 'tis hop'd will be a Warning to Tradesmen and their Wives, Servants, Apprentices, &c. who frequently are decoy'd into such unlawful Assemblies, as was the Case of some at the aforesaid Meeting, who we are inform'd were discharged, on Promise not to resort to such Places any more."
33 Ward alludes to Addison's famous description of the monuments in Westminster Abbey in Spectator no. 26; se below.
34 Masquerade and Civilization, 34.
35 Surprisingly, an acknowledged eighteenth-century historian such as Julian Hoppit takes the existence of the club for granted, see A Land of Liberty?, 433, which is an unbelievable blunder.
36 John Timbs, Clubs and Club Life in London: With Anecdotes of its Famous Coffee Houses [...] from the 17th Century to the Present Time (London, 1872), 103 ff.
37 Ward, The Secret History of Clubs: particularly the Kit-Cat, Beef-Stake, Vertuosos, Quacks, Knights of the Golden Fleece, Florists, Beaus, &c. (London, 1709), 381.
38 Cf. Eveline Kilian, "Exploring London. Walking the City - (Re-)Writing the City," The Making of Modern Tourism. The Cultural History of the British Experience, 1600-2000, ed. by Hartmut Berghoff, Barbara Korte, Ralf Schneider and Christopher Harvie (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 266. Jonathan Culler, "The Semiotics of Tourism," Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 153-67.
39 London Spy, 141.
40 See on the influence of the dictio Virgiliana Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock in Müllenbrock and Eberhard Späth, Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (Düsseldorf: Bagel und München: Francke, 1977), 121; Dwight L. Durling, Georgic Tradition in English Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), 33-37.
41 Like many other pieces, this poem was originally published in Ward's Fourth Volume of the Writings of the Author of the London Spy. Prose and Verse (London, 1709).
42 See the hitherto only monograph by Howard W. Troyer Troyer, Ned Ward of Grub Street: A Study of Sub-literary London in the Eighteenth Century (London: Cass, 1968 [1946]).
43 "The Pleasures of a Single Life" may have been written by Sir John Dillon who left no trace in current bibliographies.
44 Obviously John Single was just Ward's pen name, see the preface of The Batchelor's Recantation. Or, His Estimate of the Expences of a Married Life Re-consider'd Paragraph by Paragraph, and Retracted (London, 1731).
45 See Christoph Heyl, A Passion for Privacy. Untersuchungen zur Genese der bürgerlichen Privatsphäre in London, 1660-1800 (München: Oldenbourg, 2004).
46 The debate on the marriage issue had been launched by Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500 – 1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977.
47 A Land of Liberty?, 440.
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