Our vain lady-wits, however, too often lacked refinement. “If I drink any more,” said Lady Coventry at Lord Hertford’s table, “if I drink any more, I shall be ‘muckibus.’” “Lord!” said Lady Mary Coke, “what is that?” “O,” was the reply, “it is Irish for sentimental!” In those days there were no wedding breakfasts: the nuptial banquet was a dinner, and bride and bridegroom saw it out. Walpole congratulates himself that, at the marriage of his niece Maria, “there was neither form nor indecency, both which generally meet on such occasions. They were married,” he adds, “at my brother’s in Pall Mall, just before dinner, by Mr. Keppel; the company, my brother, his son, Mrs. Keppel and Charlotte, Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady Betty Waldegrave, and I. We dined there; the Earl and new Countess got into their post-chaise at eight o’clock, and went to Navestock alone, where they stay till Saturday night.” Walpole gives instances enough—and more than enough—where matters did not go off so becomingly. Lords and Ladies were terribly coarse in sentiment and expression; and the women were often worse than the men. “Miss Pett,” says the writer whom I have so often quoted, “has dismissed Lord Buckingham: tant mieux pour lui! She damns her eyes that she will marry some Captain: tant mieux pour elle.” This is a sample of Table Traits in 1760; and it was long before manners and morals improved. The example was not of the best sort even in high places. The mistress of Alfieri dined at Court, as widow of the Pretender; and Madame du Barry was publicly feasted by our potential Lord Mayor.
Some of the women were not only coarse in speech, but furies in act, and often sharpers to boot. Thus, when “Jemmy Lumley,” in 1761, had a party of ladies at his house, with whom, after dinner, he played whist, from six at night till noon the next day, he lost two thousand pounds, which, suspecting knavery, he refused to pay. His antagonist, Mrs. Mackenzie, subsequently pounced upon him in the garden of an inn at Hampstead, where he was about to give a dinner to some other ladies. The sturdy “Scotchwoman,” as Gray calls her, demanded her money, and, on meeting with a refusal, she “horsewhipped, trampled, bruised,” and served him with worse indignities still, as may be seen by the curious, in Gray’s Letter to Warton. Lumley’s servants only with difficulty rescued their master from the fury, who carried a horse-whip beneath her hoop. The gentlemen do not appear to have been so generous, in their character of lovers, as their French brethren, who ruined themselves for “les beaux yeux” of some temporary idol. Miss Ford laughed consumedly at Lord Jersey, for sending her (“an odd first and only present to a beloved mistress”) a boar’s head, which, she says, “I had often the honour to meet at your Lordship’s table before ... and would have eat it, had it been eatable.”
The public are pretty familiar with the Household-Book of the Earl of Northumberland; and have learned much therefrom touching the Table Traits of the early period in which it was written. A later Earl did not inherit the spirit of organization which influenced his ancestor. “I was to dine at Northumberland House,” says Walpole, in 1765, “and went there a little after hour. There I found the Countess, Lady Betty Mackinsy, Lady Strafford, my Lady Finlater,—who was never out of Scotland before,—a tall lad of fifteen, her son, Lord Drogheda, and Mr. Worseley. At five” (which is conjectured to have been the hour of extreme fashion a century ago) “arrived Mr. Mitchell, who said the Lords had commenced to read the Poor Bill, which would take, at least, two hours, and, perhaps, would debate it afterwards. We concluded dinner would be called for; it not being very precedented for ladies to wait for gentlemen. No such thing! Six o’clock came,—seven o’clock came,—our coaches came! Well, we sent them away; and excuses were, we were engaged. Still, the Countess’s heart did not relent, nor uttered a syllable of apology. We wore out the wind and the weather, the opera and the play, Mrs. Cornely’s and Almack’s, and every topic that would do in a formal circle. We hinted, represented—in vain. The clock struck eight. My Lady, at last, said she would go and order dinner; but it was a good half-hour before it appeared. We then sat down to a table of fourteen covers; but, instead of substantials, there was nothing but a profusion of plates, striped red, green, and yellow,—gilt plate, blacks, and uniforms. My Lady Finlater, who never saw those embroidered dinners, nor dined after three, was famished. The first course stayed as long as possible, in hopes of the Lords; so did the second. The dessert at last arrived, and the middle dish was actually set on, when Lord Finlater and Mr. Mackay arrived! Would you believe it?—the dessert was remanded, and the whole first course brought back again! Stay—I have not done! Just as this second first course had done its duty, Lord Northumberland, Lord Strafford, and Mackinsy came in; and the whole began a third time. Then the second course, and the dessert! I thought we should have dropped from our chairs with fatigue and fumes. When the clock struck eleven, we were asked to return to the drawing-room, and take tea and coffee; but I said I was engaged to supper, and came home to bed!” This dinner may be contrasted with another given, at a later period, by a member of the same house. The Nobleman in question was an Earl Percy, who was in Ireland with his regiment,—the Fifth Infantry; and who, after much consideration, consented to give a dinner to the officers in garrison at Limerick. The gallant, but cautious, Earl ordered the repast at a tavern, specifying that it should be for fifty persons, at eighteen-pence per head. The officers heard of the arrangement, and they ordered the landlord to provide a banquet at a guinea per head, promising to pay the difference, in the event of their entertainer declining to do so. When the banquet was served, there was but one astonished and uncomfortable individual at the board; and that was the Earl himself, who beheld a feast for the gods, and heard himself gratefully complimented upon the excellence both of viands and wines. The astonished Earl experienced an easily-understood difficulty in returning thanks when his health was drunk with an enthusiasm that bewildered him; and, on retiring early, he sought out the landlord, in order to have a solution of an enigma that sorely puzzled him. Boniface told the unadorned and unwelcome truth; and the inexperienced young Earl, acknowledging his mistake, discharged the bill with a sigh on himself, and a cheque on his banker.
A host, after all, may appear parsimonious without intending to be so. “This wine,” said one of this sort to the late Mr. Pocock of Bristol, who had been dining with him, “costs me six shillings a bottle!” “Does it?” asked the guest, with a quaint look of gay reproof, “then pass it round, and let me have another six-penn’orth!”
But, to return to our Table Traits of the Last Century. In 1753, on the 4th of June, there was an installation of Knights of the Garter, at Windsor Castle, followed by a grand dinner, and a ball. It would seem as if the public claimed the right of seeing the spectacle for which they had to pay; for we read that “the populace attempted several times to force their way into the hall where the Knights were at dinner, against the Guards, on which some were cut and wounded, and the Guards fired several times on them, with powder, to deter them, but without effect, till they had orders to load with ball, which made them desist.” This is an ill-worded paragraph from the papers of the day; but it is a graphic illustration of the manners of the period.
These few samples of what society was in the last century, would suffice alone to show that it was sadly out of joint. What caused it? Any one who will take the trouble to go carefully through the columns of the ill-printed newspapers of the early part of the last century, will find that drunkenness, dissoluteness, and the sword hanging on every fool’s thigh, ready to do his bidding, were the characteristics of the period. People got drunk at dinners, and then slew one another, or in some other way broke the law. Lord Mohun and Captain Hall dined together before they made their attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle; and when defeated in their Tarquin-like endeavour, they slaughtered poor Will Montford, the player, in the public streets, for no better reason than that Montford admired the lady, and Hall was jealous of the admirer. But neither copious dining, nor copious drinking, could make a brave man of Mohun. In proof of this, it is only necessary to state that before he fought his butchering duel with the Duke of Hamilton, he spent the previous night feasting and drinking at the Bagnio, which place he left in the morning, with his second, Major-General M’Carty, as the “Post-boy” remarks, “seized with fear and trembling.” “The dog Mohun,” as Swift styled him, was slain, and so was the Duke; but it is uncertain whether the latter fell by the hand of his adversary, or the sword of that adversary’s second. A few years later we read of Fulwood, the lawyer, going to the play after dinner, drawing upon Beau Fielding, running him through, rushing in triumph to another house, meeting another antagonist, and getting slain by him, without any one caring to interfere.
In one of the numbers of the “Daily Post” for 1726, I find it recorded that a bevy of gallants, having joyously dined or supped together, descended from a hackney-coach in Piccadilly, bilked the coachman, beat him to a mummy, and stabbed his horses. Flushed with victory, they rushed into a neighbouring public-house, drew upon the gallants, terrified the ladies, and laughed at the mistress of the establishment, who declared that they would bring down ruin upon a place noted for “its safety and secrecy.” The succeeding paragraph in the paper announces to the public that the Bishop of London will preach on the following Sunday in Bow-church, Cheapside, on the necessity for a reformation of manners!
The Clubs, and especially the “Sword Clubs,” with their feastings and fightings, were the chief causes that manners were as depraved as they were. After supper, these Clubs took possession of the town, and held their sword against every man, and found every man’s sword against them. The “Bold Bucks,” and the “Hell-Fires,” divided the Metropolis between them. The latter, a comparatively innocent association, found their simple amusement in mutilating watchmen and citizens. The “Bold Bucks” took for their devilish device, “Blind and Bold Love,” and, under it, committed atrocities, the very thought of which makes the heart of human nature palpitate with horror and disgust. No man could become a member who did not denounce the claims both of nature and God! They used to assemble every Sunday at a tavern, close to the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. During divine service, they kept a noisy band of horns and drums continually at work; and, after service, they sat down to dinner, the principal dish at which was a “Holy-Ghost pie!” Assuredly the sermon of the metropolitan Prelate was much needed; but, when preached, reformation did but very slowly follow, especially in high places. At the very end of the century we hear of the Prince of Wales dining at the Duke of Queensberry’s, at Richmond, with the last mistress of Louis XV.; and nobody appears to have been scandalized. And this was the characteristic of the time: vice was not only general, but it did not very seriously offend the few exceptional individuals. For the first three quarters of the century the epitaph of that time might have been taken from the eulogium passed by a May-Fair preacher in his Funeral Sermon upon Frederick, Prince of Wales: “He had no great parts, but he had great virtues; indeed, they degenerated into vices: he was very generous; but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many people; and then his condescension was such, that he kept very bad company.”
I have, elsewhere, spoken of some of the roystering Clubs of the last century; but I cannot refrain from adding two other instances here, as examples of the Table Traits of the same period. The Calves’-Head Club established itself in Suffolk-Street, Charing Cross, on the anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles, in the year 1735. The gentlemen members had an entertainment of calves’ heads, some of which they showed to the mob outside, whom they treated with strong beer. In the evening, they caused a bonfire to be made before the door, and threw into it, with loud huzzas, a calf’s head, dressed up in a napkin. They also dipped their napkins in red wine, and waved them from the windows, at the same time drinking toasts publicly. The mob huzzaed, as well as their fellow brutes of the Club; but, at length, to show their superior refinement, they broke the windows; and at length became so mischievous, that the Guards were called in to prevent further outrage.
The above was, no doubt, a demonstration on the part of gentlemen of republican principles. Some few years later, a different instance occurs. The “Monthly Review,” May, 1757, mentions, that “seven gentlemen dined at a house of public entertainment in London, and were supposed to have run as great lengths in luxury and expense, if not greater, than the same number of persons were ever known to do before at a private regale. They afterwards played a game of cards, to decide which of them should pay the bill. It amounted to £81. 11s. 6d.; besides a turtle, which was a present to the company.” This was certainly a heavy bill. A party of the same number at the Clarendon, and with turtle charged in the bill, would, in our days, find exceeding difficulty in spending more than £5 each. Their grandsires expended more than twice as much for a dinner not half as good.