Part 29 (1/2)

Nell Gwynne was an English woman, a Protestant, and the idol of the town.

She was known by the t.i.tle of the Protestant mistress, while Mrs. Carwell went by that of the king's Popish concubine. Nell was one day insulted in her carriage at Oxford, and came very near being mobbed by the populace in mistake for Mrs. Carwell. With her usual wit and presence of mind, she put her head out of the window, and quieted the rioters by telling them that she was ”the Protestant w--e.”

As the literature of the times reflected the general licentiousness of manners, it was not to be expected that the arts would escape their demoralizing influence. Most of the paintings then executed were characterized by the same freedom of expression which was used on the stage. There is an old print extant of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth, reclining on a bank of violets, wearing no other covering than a lace robe; and in another Nell Gwynne is represented in the same semi-nude condition. It is said that this dress had belonged to the d.u.c.h.ess, and had been much admired by the king, but that, with her usual love of mischief, Nell had purloined it, greatly to the amus.e.m.e.nt of her royal lover, and very much to the chagrin and mortification of the d.u.c.h.ess.

The king had his own peculiar way of celebrating the Sabbath. On that day he usually collected his mistresses around him, and amused himself by toying with them and humoring their caprices. We have a picture by a contemporaneous writer of one of his Sunday evenings at Whitehall, where the court resided. It was shortly before his death. Charles sat in the centre of a group of these women, indulging in the most frivolous amus.e.m.e.nts, and apparently in high humor. At a little distance stood a page singing love-songs for the delectation of the king's mistresses, while round a gambling-table were seated a number of his courtiers, playing for stakes which sometimes ran as high as ten thousand dollars of our money.[295] The orgies of the night were kept up until daylight broke in upon the revelers. At eight o'clock the same morning the king was seized with a fit of apoplexy, and died within a week.

James II., though of a grave and stern character, was scarcely less amorous in his temperament than Charles. They differed, however, in their tastes. Charles required beauty in his mistresses; and Nell Gwynne and some of his other concubines were not only beautiful in person but possessed of intellectual graces which gilded their gross sensuality.

James cared but little for personal attractions, and lavished his favors on coa.r.s.e-featured and coa.r.s.e-minded women. His wife was below him in rank, and he did not stoop to her for her beauty, for she was plain, if not downright ugly in her features. He soon transferred his affections to a still plainer mistress, Arabella Churchill. His strongest attachment was, however, that which he entertained for Catharine Sedley, who possessed a powerful influence over him. She was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, and seems to have inherited from him the strong pa.s.sions and reckless disregard of public opinion by which he was distinguished.

Sedley's writings were more licentious than those of any of his contemporaries. His literary talents were not of a high order, but he possessed fair conversational abilities, which made his society attractive. The extreme dissoluteness of his life and disregard of all decency provoked censure even in that age of loose morals. On one occasion, after a drunken revel with some of his profligate companions, he presented himself on the balcony of a tavern near Covent Garden in a state of complete nudity, and commenced a harangue so full of lewdness and obscenity that the crowd pelted him with stones and other missiles, and compelled him to withdraw into the house. A daughter inheriting these propensities, and brought up under the influence of this example, could not fail to become conspicuous for similar traits of character. Her person possessed none of the attributes which render women attractive. A lank, spare figure, a hollow cheek, sallow face, and an eye of glaring brightness comprised the sum total of her charms.

Charles, whose taste was more cultivated, remarked that his confessor must have recommended Catharine to his brother as a penance for his sins. She herself had the discrimination not to be insensible to the truth of this remark, and was even in the habit of boasting of her own plain looks. Her taste for finery was as great as if she possessed attractions worth setting off by its aid. James, when he formed this connection, had advanced to middle age, and it is difficult to account for the influence which she contrived to exercise over him. On his accession to the throne he promised the queen to abandon her, but his good resolutions soon gave way. Whenever the absence of his wife afforded the opportunity, Chiffinch might be seen conducting Catharine through the private pa.s.sage leading to his chamber. Notwithstanding all the affected austerity of his manners, James was, in reality, but little better than his volatile brother.

At no period in the history of England, as we have just shown, had the licentiousness of the court been greater than it was during the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; only to be exceeded, perhaps, by the fearful abyss of debauchery and atheism which a few years later was beheld in the courts of Louis XV. and the Regent of France. The vigor and intellect of the early part of the reign of Louis XIV., the magnificence of his tastes, and the glory of his enterprises, stand out in powerful contrast to the doings of the imbecile, corrupt, and utterly profligate and debased court of England. The influence of this most pernicious example it is somewhat difficult to arrive at. The great body of the people, especially in the country, in those times of difficult communication, were probably but little affected by the extravagance of the restored Cavaliers, added to which there was a powerful leaven of religious feeling working through the country, which did not for some time settle down into the apathy that called for a new manifestation of Puritan feeling in the establishment of Wesleyan Methodism. In the upper cla.s.ses of society, however, the core-rottenness of the courts of Charles and James was yet felt, throughout the reigns of the succeeding sovereigns, even down to the time of George III. The writings of contemporary authors, especially of the comic dramatists, ”the abstract and brief chronicles of the times,” are a fair type of the public morals and intelligence in all ages. At this epoch we have from these sources overwhelming evidence of the reaction which had taken place.

After the removal of the compulsory restraint of Puritan control, the nation seemed at once to have lost its reason: modesty and decency were badges of Puritan Republicanism, and therefore unsuited to loyal men, who showed their attachment to the monarchy by their abandonment of decorum and violation of every moral virtue. The productions of the favorite authors teem with coa.r.s.e images, unequivocal allusions, and gross facts.

Wit degenerated into blasphemy, liveliness into obscenity, metaphors into lasciviousness. The scenes that took place in the court, and which const.i.tuted its daily amus.e.m.e.nts, were disgusting to the last degree. The mere commerce of the s.e.xes, and the libertinism of the period in that respect, were the smallest vices, and might almost be considered merely follies, but the venality and corruption were open and shameless. The courtiers cast aside the last rag of patriotic propriety, and avarice, cruelty, l.u.s.t, and perjury filled the measure of wickedness. On one occasion, it is said, an infant was prematurely born in one of the rooms of the palace, and Charles, with many jocular remarks, had the body conveyed to his own closet for dissection by his own hand! An incident of such brutality, which might be frequently paralleled by others equally bad in degree, though different in fact, shows the hideous dest.i.tution of all decency with which the court must have been cursed. The pages of Rochester, Etherege, Buckingham, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Fletcher, in the close of the seventeenth, and Prior, Gay, Swift, and scores of inferior writers in the commencement of the eighteenth century, all exhibit this state of affairs, while the n.o.ble Muse even of a Dryden could stoop to earn base applause by lending her powers to the decoration of vice, and voluntarily quitting her native regions to wallow in the mire.

The vices of this period must have left an ineradicable taint behind them, when, after the full tide of iniquity had swept on, and purer waters were succeeding, we find Lord Chesterfield, a British statesman of distinguished ability and high position, thus advising his own son: ”Let the great book of the world be your princ.i.p.al study. _Nocturna versate manu versate diurna_, which may be rendered thus: Turn over men by day and women by night: I mean only the best editions.”

While, as we have already observed, there was probably a wholesome religious element in a portion of the population, which operated as an antiseptic against the rottenness of the court, it is impossible but that the capital must have been imbued with the reckless iniquity, outrageous dissoluteness, and general immorality of the higher cla.s.ses. The poets, playwrights, essayists, and biographers of the age all bear traces of the effects of bad example in high places on public manners. A critic of those days says, ”The accomplished gentleman of the English stage is a person that is familiar with other men's wives and indifferent to his own, and the fine lady is generally a composition of sprightliness and falsehood.”

A thorough disrespect for female virtue, or rather the admiration of libertinism, tainted the life's blood of the capital. And when, pa.s.sing over the coa.r.s.e wit of Prior, or the perverted genius of Dryden, we come to the sober and moderate writings of essayists and satirists, we find material which gives us some little insight into the lower London life of the period, and that which has more immediate interest for us in this inquiry.

In the delightful and ever youthful pages of the Spectator, there are some incidents of great pathos touching the state of those unfortunates whose condition was then, as now, one of the disgraces of civilization. One paper contains a singularly apposite remark. ”I was told,” says the writer (a woman of the town), ”by a Roman Catholic gentleman last week, who I hope is absolved for what then pa.s.sed between us, that in countries where Popery prevails, besides the advantages of licensed stews, there are larger endowments given for the _Incurabili_, I think he called them. This manner of treating poor sinners has, we think, great humanity in it; and as you, Mr. Spectator, are a person who pretends to carry your reflections upon all subjects which occur to you, I beg therefore of you to lay before the world the condition of us poor vagrants, who are really in a way of labor instead of idleness.”

At another time the Spectator himself meets ”a slim young girl of about seventeen, who, with a pert air, asked me if I was for a pint of wine. I could observe as exact features as ever I had seen; the whole person, in a word, of a woman exquisitely beautiful. She affected to allure me with a forced wantonness in her look and air, but I saw it checked with hunger and cold. Her eyes were wan and eager; her dress thin and tawdry; her mien genteel and childish. This strange figure gave me much anguish of heart, and, to avoid being seen with her, I went away, but could not avoid giving her a crown. The poor thing sighed, courtesied, and with a blessing, expressed with the utmost vehemence, turned from me. This creature is what they call _newly come upon the town_.”

The arts of the procuresses; their experiments on inexperienced country girls; their attendance at coach-offices and public places to hunt for and entrap the unwary; the regular customers they have for new wares; the mode, first of offering them to private sale, and, when the first gloss is worn off, casting them on the public market, are all as true of 1858 as of the day for which it was written. In one case, the Spectator, being at a coach-office, overhears a lady inquiring of a young girl her parentage and character, and especially if she has been properly brought up, and has been taught her Catechism. Desirous of seeing a lady who had so proper an idea of her duties to servants, he peeps through and sees the face of a well-known bawd, thus decoying a young girl just arrived in London. One amusing cheat in the business of these go-betweens is complained of by a lady correspondent: for a consideration, they profess to introduce some ambitious foreigner or country gentleman to the favors of ladies of high degree, ruling toasts, leading belles, etc. Some lady, Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, is foisted upon the deluded customer, who must, of course, be ignorant of the person of his inamorata, and he walks off boasting, in great self-gratulation, of his good fortune, to the great injury of an irreproachable woman's fame.[296]

It was reserved for the reign of George III. to give a favorable turn to court morals and to make virtue respectable. The Georges I. and II. had exercised but a negative influence on their subjects. They were merely viewed as political necessities, and held in little or no personal esteem.

Their uncouth manners, foreign mistresses, and decidedly heavy _liaisons_ had no charm for either eye or fancy. With George III. and his queen, virtue in courts became in some degree fas.h.i.+onable; the slough of libertinism in which Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans had plunged themselves seemed in France to have created some reaction. Louis XVI. in Paris, and George III. in London, presented the rare spectacle to their respective subjects of two well-conducted men, whose domestic life and character were unimpeachable. But as the sons of George III., especially the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, attained their majority, they were surrounded by bands of flatterers and parasites, who stimulated and encouraged the natural p.r.o.neness of youth to pleasure and dissipation. The libertinism and excesses of the Stuarts again became _bon-ton_, devoid, it is true, of political debas.e.m.e.nt and national dishonor; checked also by parental disapprobation, and by the influence of public opinion. This, though very weak, was not quite powerless; and, though lenient to the errors of youth, it drew an unfavorable comparison between the reckless extravagance and dissolute tastes of the princes, and the moderate and personally estimable conduct of the king and queen.[297]

The ma.s.ses of the English people were distinguished for plain good sense, and attachment to the cause of religion and morality; and although drinking, gambling, boxing, and racing were, in honor of the royal princes, fas.h.i.+onable amus.e.m.e.nts, and their attainment coveted and emulated by many of the rising generation, still the general sentiment of the nation at this period was condemnatory of these vices. Those inclined to charitable views of human nature found excuses in the temptations of youth, a fine person, a commanding position, and, lastly, in the infamous counsels of those who found political capital in the encouragement of these excesses, thereby promoting a division between the heir to the throne and his sovereign parent. Others there were who beheld in George IV., whether as prince or monarch, a modern Tiberius, a man of ungovernable l.u.s.ts; a ruthless libertine and a debased sensualist, without any redeeming qualities. As a fact, apart from causes and political prejudices, George IV. was undoubtedly a debauchee and a man of dissolute habits;[298] but he was a man of liberal education, of cultivated taste, of distinguished appearance, and elegant manners. He and the Count D'Artois, brother of Louis XVI., were considered the most finished gentlemen in Europe, so far as mannerism went. These externals glossed over, and even lent a charm to, the vices of his youth; and the mysterious orgies of Carlton House were a.s.sociated in the public mind with the brilliant wit of Sheridan, the manly grace of Wyndham (that _beau ideal_ of an English gentleman), the vast talent of Fox, and the enchanting grace of Georgiana, d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re, the bright particular star amid a galaxy of minor luminaries. The respectability belonged to the court party; the genius and fascination were ranged on the side of the Prince of Wales.

It is difficult, even at this brief lapse of time, and when so many eye-witnesses are yet surviving, to speak with any degree of confidence of the state of general public morals in England as affected by the French Revolution, and the violent Tory and Whig contests of the period. The literature which preceded and accompanied the French Revolution went the whole length of undermining and unsettling every established inst.i.tution, both of politics and religion, without building up an effective subst.i.tute in place of the structure destroyed. The doctrines of moral obligation and the balance of general convenience, which, according to the Volney, Voltaire, and Rousseau school, were to supersede the effete and worn-out dogmas of the Gospel, were little known and less liked in England. At the outset of the French movements, the cause had the sympathy of the English Liberals; but afterward, when the social and political excesses of the time disgusted even its moderate British supporters, and when the deep-rooted and apparently innate antagonism of the two nations was revived by the war, the hatred and contempt of the English people for French manners, French literature, French men, French every thing, knew no bounds. Thus, while the leaven of Parisian philosophy was fermenting in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all Continental Europe, it is our opinion that its influence in England was purely of a reactionary character; and as under the last Stuarts patriotism and libertinism went hand in hand, so, in the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, an Englishman's love of his own country and his hatred of France were a.s.sociated with a detestation of the heresies of French philosophers and patriarchs.

Of the effect produced on the morals of the people by the loose manner in which, previous to 1753, the marriage ceremony was performed, we have the evidence brought forward in the debates on Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Bill.

Anterior to that time, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve years of age might marry against the will of their parents or guardians, without any possibility of dissolving such marriage. The law, indeed, required the publication of banns, but custom and the dispensing power had rendered them nugatory. A dispensation could be purchased for a couple of crowns, and the marriage could take place in a closet or a tavern, before two friends who acted as witnesses. But dispensations were not always necessary. There were privileged places, such as May Fair and the Fleet, where the marriage ceremony could be performed at a moment's notice, and without any inconvenient questions being asked.

Gretna Green, on the borders of Scotland, was long a famous place for runaway matches. It has been questioned how far the Scotch law of marriage was conducive to morality; but, judging from its effects upon the people themselves, it can scarcely be considered an ally of vice. This law, which has only been repealed within a few years, treated marriage as a civil contract, valid if contracted before witnesses, and required no ceremony or preparatory notice. That unions so formed were binding, admits of no possible dispute: the question has been tried in the British courts of law on every conceivable ground, and their legality has been always affirmed, but in the case of marriages at May Fair or the Fleet the same certainty did not exist. Gretna Green is the first village after pa.s.sing the dividing line between England and Scotland, and owes its fame to its locality. It has doubtless been the scene of many heartless adventures, for which the actual law of the land must be held accountable.

The marriage act which came into operation in 1754, had for its object the prevention of clandestine marriages in England, but did not interfere with the law of Scotland. It sought to effect this reform by making it necessary to the validity of a marriage without license, that it should take place after the proclamation of banns on three Sundays in the parish church, before a person in orders, between single persons consenting, of sound mind, and of the age of twenty-one years, or of the age of fourteen in males and twelve in females, with the consent of parents and guardians, or without their consent in cases of widowhood. The new marriage act of 1837 allows marriage, after notice to the superintendent registrars in every district, either in the public register offices in the presence of the superintendent registrar and the registrar of marriages, or in duly registered places of wors.h.i.+p.

We have no statement as to the number of marriages previous to the year 1753. All we know is, that from 1651 to 1751 the population only increased sixteen per cent., the increase being only one million and fourteen thousand in one hundred years. Since the act of 1753 came into operation, the registers of marriages have been preserved in England, and show an increase of marriages from 50,972 in the year 1756, to 63,310 in 1764.

”The rage of marrying is very prevalent,” writes Lord Chesterfield in the latter year; and again in 1767, ”In short, the matrimonial phrensy seems to rage at present, and is epidemical.” After many fluctuations, the marriages rose to seventy, eighty, ninety, and one hundred thousand annually, and in 1851 to one hundred and fifty-four thousand two hundred and six. Fourteen millions were added to the population, an increase of 187 per cent., or at the rate of one per cent. annually.[299]

CHAPTER XXV.

GREAT BRITAIN.--PROSt.i.tUTION AT THE PRESENT TIME.