Yet, such staggering evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I find myself unable to get away from the record; and that record, so far as it has cursorily reached me in the course of my investigations, leads me to conclude that the real moral improvement of the year 1891, as compared with the conditions in that respect existing in the year 1691 or even 1791, is not less marked and encouraging than is the change of language and expression permissible in the days of Shakspeare and of Defoe and of Fielding to that to which we are accustomed in the pages of Scott, Thackeray and Hawthorne.
For instance, again recurring to my own investigations, I have from time to time come across things which, as indicating a state of affairs prevailing in the olden time, have fairly taken away my breath. Here is a portion of a note from the edition of Thomas Morton’s “New English Canaan,” prepared by me some years ago as one of the publications of the Prince Society, which bears on this statement:—
“Josselyn says of the ‘Indesses,’ as he calls them [Indian women] ‘All of them are of a modest demeanor, considering their savage breeding; and indeed do shame our English rusticks whose ludeness in many things exceedeth theirs.’ (Two Voyages, 12, 45.) When the Massachusetts Indian women, in September, 1621, sold the furs from their backs to the first party of explorers from Plymouth, Winslow, who wrote the account of that expedition, says that they ‘tied boughs about them, but with great shamefacedness, for indeed they are more modest than some of our English women are.’ (Mourt, p. 59.) See, also, to the same effect Wood’s Prospect, (p. 82). It suggests, indeed, a curious inquiry as to what were the customs among the ruder classes of the British females during the Elizabethan period, when all the writers agree in speaking of the Indian women [among whom chastity was unknown] in this way. Roger Williams, for instance [who tells us that ‘single fornications they count no sin’] also says, referring to their clothing,—‘Both men and women within doores, leave off their beasts skin, or English cloth, and so (excepting their little apron) are wholly naked; yet but few of the women but will keepe their skin or cloth (though loose) neare to them, ready to gather it up about them. Custome hath used their minds and bodies to it, and in such a freedom from any wantonnesse that I have never seen that wantonnesse amongst them as (with griefe) I have heard of in Europe’ (Key, 110-11).”[24]
Again, I recently came across the following, which illustrates somewhat curiously what may be called the social street amenities which a sojourner might expect to encounter in a large English town of a century ago. If ever there was a charming, innocent little woman, who, as a wife and mother, bore herself purely and courageously under circumstances of great trial and anxiety,—a woman whose own simple record of the strange experience through which she passed appeals to you so that you long to step forward and give her your arm and protect her,—if there ever was, I say, a woman who impresses one in this way more than Mrs. General Riedesel, I have not met her. Mrs. Riedesel, as the members of this Society probably all know, followed her husband, who was in command of the German auxiliary troops in Burgoyne’s army, to America in 1777, and in so doing passed through England, accompanied by her young children. Here is her own account of a slight experience she had in Bristol, where, the poor little woman says, “I discovered soon how unpleasant it is to be in a city where one does not understand the language, ... and wept for hours in my chamber”:—
“During my sojourn in Bristol I had an unpleasant adventure. I wore a calico dress trimmed with green taffeta. This seemed particularly offensive to the Bristol people; for as I was one day out walking with Madame Foy more than a hundred sailors gathered round us and pointed at me with their fingers, at the same time crying out, ‘French whore!’ I took refuge as quickly as possible into the house of a merchant under pretense of buying something, and shortly after the crowd dispersed. But my dress became henceforth so disgusting to me, that as soon as I returned home I presented it to my cook, although it was yet entirely new.”[25]
It was at Bristol also that the little German woman, hardly more than a girl, describes how, the very day after her arrival there, her landlady called her attention to what the landlady in question termed “a most charming sight.” Stepping hastily to the window, Mrs. Riedesel says, “I beheld two naked men boxing with the greatest fury. I saw their blood flowing and the rage that was painted in their eyes. Little accustomed to such a hateful spectacle, I quickly retreated into the innermost corner of the house to avoid hearing the shouts set up by the spectators whenever a blow was given or received.”
Street customs, manners and language are, to a very considerable extent, outward exponents of the moral condition within. It would not be possible to find any place in Europe now where women could be seen going about the streets in the condition as respects raiment which Josselyn, Winslow and Roger Williams seem to intimate was not unusual with the British females of their time; nor would a strumpet even, much less any decent woman, from a foreign land, be treated in the streets of any civilized city as Madame Riedesel describes herself as having been treated in the streets of Bristol in 1777. One cannot conceive of an adulterer or adulteress now doing public penance in a white sheet before a whole congregation assembled for the public worship of God, nor of a really respectable young married couple standing up under the same circumstances and confessing to the sin of fornication. Even if such a thing were done, it would be looked upon as rather suggestive than edifying. All the evidence accordingly indicates that, morally, the improvement made in the nineteenth century as compared with those that preceded it has been more than superficial and in externals only,—that it has been real, in essentials as well as in language and manners. So, while it would not be safe to adopt Burke’s splendid generality, that vice has in our time lost half its evil in losing all its grossness, yet it is not unfair to adopt the trope in a modified form, and assert that, in the matter of sexual morality, vice in the nineteenth century as compared with the seventeenth or the eighteenth has lost some part of its evil in losing much of its grossness.
Footnotes:
[1] History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, p. 231.