But there were notable society leaders, such as the ladies who founded Almack’s Club, some of whom, like Lady Molyneux, were beauties who set the fashions. Almack’s, which was opened in 1765, was a club for both sexes, on the model of the men’s club at White’s. Ladies nominated and elected the men, and the men chose the ladies. The founders were Mrs. Fitzroy, Lady Pembroke, Mrs. Meynel, Miss Pelham, Miss Lloyd, and Lady Molyneux.
Better known to after generations are the names of the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Mary Chudleigh, the sisters Gunning. Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, whose most intimate friend was the Duchess of Portland, collected the wits and brilliant talkers, and made Montagu House a rallying-point for all that was most attractive in society. The Countess of Suffolk was at one time the centre round which court gossip revolved. Lady Caroline Petersham kept up the pace with her frolics and jaunts. There was the more strictly political set, who were perpetually discussing the action of Ministers, and the probable effects on themselves and their friends. The ladies in this set, impelled largely by personal motives, were as keen about political moves as any party wire-puller.
“Our ladies are grown such vehement politicians that no other topic is admissible,” writes Walpole in 1783, the year of the memorable Westminster election. He complains that
“politics have engrossed all conversation and stifled other events, if any have happened. Indeed, our ladies who used to contribute to enliven correspondence are become politicians, and, as Lady Townley says, ‘squeeze a little too much lemon into conversation.’”
There was a good deal of acrimony imported into the atmosphere of political circles, partly because of the strong personal element pervading all politics. The weakness of eighteenth-century society was its narrowness. It cared nothing, comparatively speaking, for large general questions. The literary set discussed books and authors, but society in general did not care very much about literature. A new poem or a new romance were matters of interest because new; it was the correct thing to show acquaintance with the latest productions in verse or prose. Politics absorbed a great many in the fashionable world, but chiefly on the ground of personal interest. Society lived in a kind of mental stays.
The great ladies of the eighteenth century do not seem to have thought of work as a distraction when pleasures began to pall. They would have been bored to extinction at the idea. The worship of work is a characteristic of the nineteenth century. Those who do not work for profit work for the sake of the occupation, at some self-imposed task. The great philanthropic current, using the adjective to describe all forms of social amelioration, has drawn into its stream numbers of recruits from the so-called leisured classes. Indeed it is the members of this class who largely carry on works of general usefulness. England has become the country of volunteers in the public service.
The eighteenth century worshipped idleness. It looked upon labour as ignoble. This view of life had its effect on the bringing-up of girls in the higher ranks. They were bred to idleness as their proper vocation. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing to her daughter, Lady Bute, in 1753, about the education of the Countess’s daughter, says—
“I could give many examples of ladies whose ill-conduct has been very notorious, which has been owing to that ignorance which has exposed them to idleness, which is justly called the mother of mischief. There is nothing so like the education of a woman of quality as that of a prince: they are taught to dance, and the exterior part of what is called good breeding, which if they attain, they are extraordinary creatures in their kind, and have all the accomplishments required by their directors. The same characters are formed by the same lessons, which inclines me to think (if I dare say it), that nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity; though I am persuaded that if there was a commonwealth of rational horses (as Dr. Swift has supposed), it would be an established maxim among them that a mare could not be taught to pace.”
The life of a great lady in the eighteenth century is well reflected in the contemporary literature. The satires of poets, the strictures of moralists, the raillery of wits, bring before us the social side of the period in numberless ways. A lady who was not a politician or a blue-stocking killed time by rising late, spending several hours over an elaborate toilette, and preparing herself for the gaieties of the evening. The eighteenth century was in some respects a period of inanition. The formalism which pervaded its literature was seen in another aspect in the social life of the age. There was a general want of the sympathetic spirit. Each circle in society lived shut up within itself, not knowing, nor caring to know, how the rest of the world went on. The narrowness of this attitude told more strongly on the wealthy classes, who had not the stimulus of being obliged to make an effort for the satisfaction of any desire. Social progress, as a recent writer has observed, is not the product of the intellect, but is due to the altruistic spirit.[72] This spirit was asleep in the eighteenth century. In previous centuries there had been more progress with fewer opportunities. During periods of unrest women’s energies were called forth to cope with difficulties which a later civilization smoothed away. Family life, even for great ladies, offered scope, in times past, for the constant exercise of activity in the discharge of functions which lapsed in more refined ages. The leisure which had been painfully won in the progress of civilization the women of the eighteenth century knew not how to use. They dallied with trifles, yawned out of sheer vacuity, invented wants to pass the time, were by turns elated and vapourish, and affected sentiment for the sake of excitement. There were servile imitations of French manners as well as fashions, and neither were successful. Instead of progressing to a wider life, society turned off into a sidewalk of artificiality and moral inertia.
END OF VOL. I.