CHAPTER XIII.
(1760-1801.)
The first forty-one years of the reign are marked by important social and economic changes, some of which began earlier, and some were not fully carried out till later. Though the cursory review of them attempted in this chapter will extend beyond the date which we have already reached, it seems time to say something of such matters, and a look ahead will make the later narrative more complete and intelligible. With the painful exception of a deterioration in the condition of the poor, these changes were for the better. Manners became more decent, pity was more easily evoked by human suffering, and culture more widely diffused. Moral improvement may be traced to a revival of practical religion and to a general reaction from the artificial cast of thought of earlier days, while as forces on the same side may be reckoned the influence of the king and, in a greater degree, that exercised by a number of distinguished men such as Johnson and Burke. Ideas elaborated and propounded by French philosophers shook the smug satisfaction of the world in what was hard, shallow, and insincere, and combined with the stress of a great war to complete the slow progress of a change in English taste. After long hesitation literature and art finally turned from unreality and convention, and drew inspiration direct from nature. As regards material progress, manufactures and commerce were enormously increased by the use of mechanical inventions, and the productive power of the soil by improvements in agriculture. The conditions of industry changed and, as must ever be the case, industrial revolution brought suffering on the poor.
The highest class still formed a small and close society; there was no doubt as to who belonged to it and no chance for an outsider to push his way into it. The members of it were so thoroughly acquainted with one another's doings that invitations to dinner were often given only two days beforehand, and with even shorter notice. They had enormous authority, both political and social. Entirely independent of public opinion, those of them who loved vice or frivolity indulged their tastes without shame or measure. Gambling, the fashionable folly, was carried to an extraordinary height, especially between 1772 and 1776. At Brooks's the stakes at quinze were not less than £50, and there was often £10,000 on the table. Gamesters exchanged their rich clothes for frieze coats, covered their lace ruffles with leather cuffs, and shielded their eyes by high-crowned hats with broad brims. Fox squandered £140,000, chiefly at play, by the time he was twenty-five, and his brother Stephen lost £20,000 at a sitting. Among the older gamesters were Lord Masham, too poor for such folly, the wicked Lowther, witty George Selwyn, and his associate, Lord March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry, Fox's instructor in vice, the "old Q." who in the next century as he sat in his favourite place above the porch of his house in Piccadilly presented to the passers-by the embodiment of the iniquities of an older generation. Ladies were not less given to play than men. Duchesses at Bath, the "paradise of doctors and gamesters," set an example which the vice-regal court at Dublin professed to imitate by spending whole nights at unlimited half-guinea loo.
There was no redeeming side to this gambling; it was a sordid struggle for money. At Brooks's in 1781 Fox, in partnership with some allies, kept the bank at faro as a regular business, one partner relieving another, and play going on continuously night and day. As the dealer and the partners could be seen at work through the open windows of the club, one can scarcely wonder that Fox's faro-bank was a sore point with the opposition. He won largely, then lost, and finally was £30,000 "worse than nothing". Idlers in St. James's street were amused by watching the Jews as they packed his clothes and books and carted them off from his lodgings. The next year the king was forced to make him a secretary of state. Though gambling continued common, it became less extravagant and was more widely condemned. In 1796, when the war with France was sobering people, some ladies of rank created a scandal by keeping a faro-bank at their houses. Chief-justice Kenyon threatened the pillory, and Gillray expressed and stimulated public opinion by a caricature representing two of "Faro's daughters" in that position. One of them, Lady Buckinghamshire, and two of her associates, were fined the next year for unlawful gaming. Fox and other gamesters of the wild time supplemented the faro-bank by betting at Newmarket. It was a notable period in the history of the turf, for many great men, specially of the whig party, were eager and judicious breeders. Such were the king's uncle, Cumberland, the breeder of Eclipse, Grafton, Rockingham, Egremont, Richmond, and Sir Charles Bunbury, whose horse Diomed won the first Derby race in 1780. The professional bookmaker was not yet, and racing, though used for betting purposes, was free from some evils which grew up later. The sport was popular, and in 1784 as many as 500 plates were raced for annually.
EXCESSIVE DRINKING.
Excessive drinking was common in society. Since the Methuen treaty of 1703 port was the wine most drunk. A genuine port cost about two shillings a bottle, but the wine was largely adulterated on importation, and one stingy lord is said to have recommended his guests to drink his port instead of a more expensive wine by assuring them that he knew that it was good as he made it himself.[178] Men would constantly drink two bottles of port apiece at a sitting, and sometimes three and even more, and would appear in parliament, in the theatre, or in a drawing-room in a state of drunkenness. A treaty with France in 1786 largely increased the consumption of French wines, but this change, which favoured sobriety, was ended by the war. Nevertheless, drunkenness was less general than earlier in the century, and, except in the Prince of Wales's set, seems to have decreased during the war with France. Duels were frequent, and, though towards the end of our period they were increasingly condemned by religious people, they were approved of by society at large. For some time men of fashion dressed in velvets and silks of various hues, but during the American war Fox, once the most extravagant of "macaronis," and his friends showed their political sympathies by carelessness in dress, and their example was largely followed. Men's dress, however, did not decline until about 1793 when the whigs imitated the severity affected by the French republicans. Wigs were discarded early in the reign, except by professional men, and hair-powder began to fall out of fashion by the end of the century. Then, too, ladies' dress became more simple, chiefly because improvements in the textile manufactures provided them with materials at once simple and pleasing.
Besides the ordinary amusements of society, fashionable people frequented public assemblies, of which those at Ranelagh were longest in vogue. The company at Vauxhall was more mixed. People of the shop-keeping and lower classes enjoyed themselves in the numerous pleasure resorts about London, such as Mary-le-bone gardens, Islington, and Sadler's Wells. Theatres were well attended and the increase of public decency is illustrated by the disappearance from the stage of the coarseness of earlier times. It was the golden age of the drama; for it saw the acting of Macklin and Garrick, of Mrs. Siddons, "the tragic muse," and her brother John Kemble, of Mrs. Abington, Miss Farren, "the comic muse," afterwards Countess of Derby, and Mrs. Jordan. As dramatists Home, Foote, Colman, and Cumberland deserve to be mentioned; and Goldsmith and Sheridan wrote comedies which, while belonging to acting drama, adorn English literature. Among less respectable amusements bull-baiting was confined to the lowest class. An attempt to render it illegal was defeated in parliament in 1800, chiefly through the opposition of Windham. Cock-fighting, though widely condemned, was practised even by gentlemen, chiefly as a means of betting. Exhibitions of combats with swords became extinct, and made way for the scarcely less dangerous prize-fights of bruisers which from about 1788 became extremely popular.
Foreign travel, which earlier was almost confined to the "grand tour" made by rich young men as part of their education, increased greatly before the revolutionary war, and travelling in England became more general as the means of communication were improved. In 1760 English roads were little better than they were a century before, mere trackways, which in parts were sloughs in winter and scored with deep ruts in summer. Travelling over them was slow and often dangerous. The "flying-machine," or coach, between London and Sheffield was fully three days on its journey. During the first fourteen years of the reign 452 acts were passed for repairing roads, but for some time little progress was made. Many and bitter are the complaints made by Arthur Young, the eminent agriculturist, of the roads on which he travelled in 1769-70. One turnpike road was a bog with a few flints scattered on top, another full of holes and deep ruts, while "of all the cursed roads which ever disgraced this kingdom" that between Tilbury and Billericay was, he says, the worst, and so narrow that when he met a waggon, the waggoner had to crawl between the wheels to come to help him lift his chaise over a hedge. During the last quarter of the century a vast change was effected; good roads became general, and coaches with springs and otherwise well appointed ran between London and most considerable towns, and between one large town and another. From 1784 many of these coaches carried the mails, and letters posted in Bath were delivered in London seventeen hours later.