Whereas a young lady was at Covent Garden playhouse last Tuesday night, and received a blow with a square piece of wood on her breast; if the lady be single, and meet me on Sunday, at two o’clock, on the Mall in St. James’s Park, or send a line directed for A. B., to Mr. Jones’s, at the Sun Tavern in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where and when I shall wait on her, to inform her of something very much to her advantage on honourable terms, her compliance will be a lasting pleasure to her most obedient servant.—General Advertiser, Feb. 8, 1748.
It would seem as though the beau had been forced to resort to a missile to make an impression, and then felt the necessity of stating that his intentions were “honourable,” in order to secure an interview with his innamorata. Imagine, too, the open unblushing manner in which the assignation is attempted! We are far from saying that such matters are not managed now through the medium of advertisements, for we shall presently show they are, but in how much more carefully concealed a manner! The perfect contempt of public opinion, or rather the public acquiescence in such infringements of the moral law, which it exhibits, proves the general state of morality more than the infringements themselves, which obtain more or less at all times. Two of the causes which led to this low tone of manners with respect to women were doubtless the detestable profligacy of the courts of the two first Georges, and the very defective condition of the existing marriage law. William and Mary, and Anne, had, by their decorous, not to say frigid lives, redeemed the crown, and, in some measure, the aristocracy, from the vices of the Restoration. Crown, court, and quality, however, fell into a still worse slough on the accession of the Hanoverian king, who soiled afresh the rising tone of public life by his scandalous connection with the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington; whilst his son and successor was absolutely abetted in his vicious courses by his own queen, who promoted his commerce with his two mistresses, the Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth. The degrading influence of the royal manners was well seconded by the condition of the law. Keith’s chapel in May Fair, and that at the Fleet, were the Gretna Greens of the age, where children could get married at any time of the day or night for a couple of crowns. It was said at the time, that at the former chapel six thousand persons were annually married in this off-hand way; the youngest of the beautiful Miss Gunnings was wedded to the Duke of Hamilton, at twelve o’clock at night, with a ring off the bed-curtain, at this very “marriage-shop.” The fruits of such unions may be imagined. The easy way in which the marriage bond was worn and broken through is clearly indicated by the advertisements which absolutely crowd the public journals from the accession of the House of Brunswick up to the time of the third George, of husbands warning the public not to trust their runaway wives.
We have referred, in an early part of this paper, to the taste for blackamoors, which set in the reign of Charles II., and went on increasing until the middle of the next century, at which time there must have been a very considerable population of negro servants in the metropolis. At first the picturesque natives of the East were pressed into the service of the nobility and gentry, and colour does not appear to have been a sine quâ non. Thus we have in the London Gazette of 1688 the following hue-and-cry advertisement:—
Run away from his master, Captain St. Lo, the 21st instant, Obdelah Ealias Abraham, a Moor, swarthy complexion, short frizzled hair, a gold ring in his ear, in a black coat and blew breeches. He took with him a blew Turkish watch-gown, a Turkish suit of clothing that he used to wear about town, and several other things. Whoever brings him to Mr. Lozel’s house in Green Street shall have one guinea for his charges.
The next advertisement we find also relates to what we must consider an East Indian. The notion of property in these boys seems to have been complete; their masters put their names upon their collars, as they did upon their setters or spaniels:—
A black boy, an Indian, about thirteen years old, run away the 8th instant from Putney, with a collar about his neck with this inscription: ‘the Lady Bromfield’s black in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’ Whoever brings him to Sir Edward Bromfield’s at Putney shall have a guinea reward.—The London Gazette, 1694.
The traffic in African blacks, which commenced towards the end of the seventeenth century, seems to have displaced these eastern servitors towards the end of the century, for henceforth the word negro, blackamoor, or black boy, is invariably used. No doubt the fashion for these negroes and other coloured attendants was derived from the Venetian Republic, the intercourse of whose merchants with Africa and India naturally led to their introduction. Titian and other great painters of his school continually introduced them in their pictures, and our own great bard has for ever associated the Moor with the City in the Sea. In England the negro boys appear to have been considered as much articles of sale as they would have been in the slave-market at Constantinople. In the Tatler of 1709 we find one offered to the public in the following terms:—
A black boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis’s Coffee-house in Finch Lane, near the Royal Exchange.
Again, in the Daily Journal of September 28th, 1728, we light upon another:—
To be sold, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Enquire of the Virginia Coffee-house in Threadneedle Street, behind the Royal Exchange.