The Age of Voltaire Read online

  Throughout the eighteenth century acts of Parliament added to the number of crimes for which the statutory penalty was death. In 1689 there had been fifty such; by 1820 there were 160. Murder, treason, counterfeiting, arson, rape, sodomy, piracy, armed smuggling, forgery, destroying ships or setting them on fire, bankruptcy with concealment of assets, highway robbery, housebreaking, burglary of over forty shillings, shoplifting above five shillings, maiming or stealing cattle, shooting at a revenue officer, cutting down trees in an avenue or a park, setting fire to a cornfield, sending threatening letters, concealing the death of a husband or a child, taking part in a riot, shooting a rabbit, demolishing a turnpike gate, escaping from jail, committing sacrilege—all of these, and a hundred more, were, under the first three Georges, capital crimes. These laws reflected the resolve of Parliament to protect property. They may have been in some measure the result—and in part the cause—of popular lawlessness and brutality, and they may have helped to form the present law-abiding habits of the British people. The severity of the code was mitigated by the frequent refusal of judges or juries to convict, or by quashing the indictment on a technicality, or by arbitrarily fixing the value of a stolen article at less than the amount that would make the theft a capital crime. In time of war offenders might be pardoned on condition of joining the army or navy.

  Lesser crimes were punished by imprisonment, the pillory, whipping, hard labor in houses of correction, or transportation to the colonies. By a law of 1718 convicted prisoners were sold to a contractor who shipped them, at his own expense, generally to Maryland or Virginia, and sold them, usually at auction, to tobacco planters for the term of their sentences. The condition of the prisoners en route resulted in a high percentage of deaths, and such enfeeblement of the remainder as to make them for a time incapable of labor. One contractor reckoned that he lost a seventh of his human cargo on an average voyage.81 This traffic was ended only by the American War of Independence.

  Such deportation was often preferred to imprisonment, for prisons were notorious for inhumanity and filth. On his entry the new arrival was put in irons, heavy or light according to his payment to the warden. His bed was straw. His food consisted of a pound of bread per day, unless he could arrange to supplement it with gifts from outside. Except in Newgate Prison little attempt was made to keep the prisons clean. Dirt and germs accumulated, infecting almost every prisoner with “jail fever”—often typhus or smallpox. Johnson thought that twenty-five per cent of the permanent prisoners died through “putrid fevers.” The stench of foulness and disease was so strong that when a prisoner was brought to court the judges, jury, witnesses, and spectators took frequent sniffs of camphor, vinegar, or aromatic herbs to offset the smell. In May, 1750, a hundred prisoners from Newgate came to trial in the “Old Bailey,” the chief criminal court of London. The fever they spread was so virulent that of the six judges who tried the case four died; of the jury and the minor officials, forty died; after this lesson the court ordered that thereafter all prisoners coming to trial should be washed with vinegar, and that sweet-smelling herbs should be placed in the prisoner’s dock.82

  A man sued for debt, judged guilty, and unable or unwilling to pay was committed to such a jail until he paid, or until his creditor withdrew the suit. The creditor was bound by law to pay fourpence a day toward the support of his prisoner; but if he failed to do this the debtor had no recourse but to sue him—which cost money. If, however, the prisoner could get funds from outside, he could bribe the warden and others to let him enjoy better bed and board, wider liberties, the comfort of his wife, even, now and then, a holiday in the city. A penniless debtor, if unable to pay for food, might slowly starve on the bread allowed him. Samuel Johnson calculated that of twenty thousand bankrupts imprisoned in an average year, five thousand died of privation within twelve months.83 England had not found a milder way of protecting the rising business class from irresponsible borrowing or fraudulent bankruptcy.

  Some mild protests were raised against the severity of the penal code. Johnson, no sentimentalist, pointed out in 1751 the danger in making so many crimes capital: “To equal robbery with murder is to … incite the commission of a greater crime to prevent the detection of a less.”84 The most powerful criticisms of prison administration appeared in the novels of Fielding and Smollett, and in the drawings of Hogarth. A modest amelioration was effected by James Oglethorpe, whose varied and energetic career shows the nobler side of John Bull. In 1714, aged eighteen, he left college to join the army of Prince Eugene of Savoy, and served in several actions against the Turks. Returning to England, he was elected to Parliament. A friend having been imprisoned for debt, and having died in jail of smallpox contracted there, Oglethorpe persuaded the Commons to appoint a committee—of which he was made head—to inquire into the conditions of the London prisons. The filth, disease, corruption, and oppression revealed by this investigation shocked for a moment the conscience of England. Some especially culpable wardens were dismissed, some new regulations mitigated old abuses; but most of the evils remained, and the actual reform of the prisons had to wait for John Howard and the final quarter of the eighteenth century. Oglethorpe turned to emigration as a means of reducing the pressure of poverty in England. In 1733 he founded the colony of Georgia; for a time he served as its governor; he forbade the importation of slaves, and welcomed the Moravians, and John Wesley, and Protestant refugees from Austria. Again in England and Parliament, he secured an act exempting the English Moravians from taking oaths or bearing arms. He became an intimate friend of Johnson, Goldsmith, and Burke, and lived to the age of eighty-nine. Pope crowned him with a couplet:

  One driven by strong benevolence of soul

  Shall fly like Oglethorpe from pole to pole.85

  VI. MANNERS

  The men who promenaded in the parks or on the Mall were still—as in Elizabethan or Restoration days—the more grandly dressed sex. Except at work or at home, they wore tilted three-cornered hats, often cocky with tassels, ribbons, or cockades. They bound their tresses with a pretty bow behind the neck, or covered their heads with a powdered wig. Their handsome coats, rustling about their knees, sported buttons designed to dazzle rather than to tie; and sleeves of rich brocade proclaimed income or class. Their fancy waistcoats sought the eye with their gaudy tints—yellow, orange, scarlet, pink, or blue—and dangled a watch fob of gold on a golden chain. Their shirts of fine linen were faced with frills, hiding flannel underwear. “Stocks” (cravats) of “lawn” (a fabric imported from Laon in France) were fitted snugly about their throats. Their breeches were fastened with buckles at the knees, three buttons at the waist, and three hidden in the fly. Their stockings were usually red, but would be of white silk at formal gatherings. Their shoes, in 1730, had to be red in toe and heel. Even with all this equipment the man of fashion felt naked without a sword. As the middle classes mounted, swords were replaced with canes, usually topped with some costly metal and finely carved; but since the streets were still dangerous, the cane often contained a sword. Umbrellas had entered the picture late in the seventeenth century, but did not become general till the end of the eighteenth. Specific costumes, of course, were required for riding in the park or with the hounds; and dandies (“Macaronis”) clamored for attention with extremes of adornment or coloration. Another group (“Slovens”) made a religion of careless manners and untidy clothes; they disheveled their hair with rebellious care, left their breeches unbuckled, and flaunted the mud on their shoes as declarations of independence and emblems of original thought.

  Women, when on display, dressed as in our wondering youth, when the female structure was a breathless mystery costly to behold. Their fluffy skirts were generally inflated with hoops that lifted them lightly from step to step, and made a giddy revelation of sparkling ankles and prancing feet. Hoops, sometimes nine yards around, were ramparts, and stays were shields, so that the conquests of love required all the ardor of a knight piercing armor and scaling parapets; so much the better for p
oetry. The gloss and splendor of a woman’s hair were partly lost in reinforced elevations so lofty that they had to be guarded against being ignited by chandeliers. Feminine faces were concealed by lotions, pastes, patches, powders, and adjustable eyebrows; and all the gems of the Orient were commandeered to adorn their hair and ears and neck and arms and dress and shoes. From her towering hat and scented curls to her silken and jeweled footwear the woman of fashion was dressed to kill any hesitation on the part of circumjacent males. By 1770 the arts of the toilette had reached such wizardry that Parliament, in a jovial mood, passed an act designed to protect the precipitous sex:

  That all women, of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree, whether virgins, maids, or widows, that shall, from and after such Act, impose upon, seduce, or betray into matrimony any of his Majesty’s male subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, etc., shall incur the penalty of the law now enforced against witchcraft and like misdemeanours, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.86

  Sumptuary laws struggled to check conspicuous expenditure in dress, but custom required all loyal Britons to don a new outfit on the birthday of Queen Caroline, who at her coronation wore a costume costing £2,400,000—mostly in borrowed gems.

  Home was a place where one might discard the laborious accouterments of display; there one could dress in anything or less. Windows were not inquisitive, for their number was held down by a law that limited them to five and taxed any surplus as luxury. Interiors were dark and stuffy, and not designed for breathing. Lighting was by candles, usually not more than one at a time per family; the rich, however, brightened their rooms with gleaming chandeliers and with torches burning oil. In the mansions of the well-to-do, walls were paneled in oak, staircases were of massive wood and unshakable balustrades, fireplaces were marbles of majesty, chairs were padded with hair and upholstered in leather. Furniture was designed in heavy “Georgian” style, complex with carving and glaring with gilt. Toward 1720 mahogany was introduced from the West Indies; it was too hard for existing tools; sharper tools were made; and soon the new wood made the most brilliant pieces in English homes.

  Houses were heated by burning coal in stoves or open grates, or wood in spacious hearths. London air was cloudy with smoke. Domestic cleanliness was made difficult but imperative by the ever-threatening dust and soot. The French rated their English enemies as next only to the Dutch in the grooming of their homes. Said Nicolas de Saussure in 1726:

  Not a week passes by but well kept houses are washed twice in the seven days, and that from top to bottom; and even every morning most kitchens, staircases, and entrances are scrubbed. All furniture, and especially all kitchen utensils, are kept with the greatest cleanliness. Even the large hammers and the locks on the doors are rubbed and shine brightly.87

  This despite the fact that soap was expensive and water limited. Bathrooms were a luxury of the few; most men and women bathed by standing and splashing in a tub.

  Commoners spent most of their indoor and waking hours in the kitchen, courting the big stove; they ate there, chatted there, sometimes slept there, for the kitchens were immense. Dining rooms were for special occasions. In all ranks the main meal came after midday: in the middle classes at two or three o’clock, among the rich at five or six; then, as now, the more money you had, the longer you had to wait for dinner. In fashionable homes the women retired when eating was over, for then began male drinking, smoking, toasts, and tales. Dinners were substantial, but they were the city Briton’s first food after breakfast and a light 11-A.M. “snack.” Frenchmen were astonished at the amount of food an Englishman consumed at a sitting. Most of the diet in the upper and middle classes was meat; vegetables were negligible garniture. Heavy puddings were a favorite dessert. Tea drinking was universal, though tea cost ten shillings a pound. Supper at 9 P.M. rounded out the exploits of the day.

  Most Englishmen hugged the safety of their homes at night, and amused themselves with conversation, drinking, quarreling, reading, music, dancing, chess, draughts (the American “checkers”), billiards, and cards. “Prithee,” said Marlborough’s Duchess, “don’t talk to me about books. The only books I know are men and cards.”88 Bishops and parsons, even the prim Dissenting preachers, played, and philosophers too; Hume rarely went to bed without having a turn at whist (now “bridge”). In 1742 Edmond Hoyle systematized the laws of whist in a Short Treatise, after which, till 1864, the game had to be played “according to Hoyle.”—Animal pets were a household necessity, not only dogs and cats, but, here and there, a monkey or two.89Almost every woman nursed flowers, and nearly every home had a garden.

  Blest and harassed with rain, the English made garden design a national passion. Under Charles II English gardens followed French models—chiefly Versailles—in shaping formal gardens on geometrical lines, straight, rectangular, radial, or circular, with “picturesque vistas” and “perspectives” (these three words had entered the language in the seventeenth century), with trees, shrubbery, and hedges clipped to line, and classical statuary symmetrically placed. The amusement gardens at Vauxhall and Ranelagh were so laid out; we can sample this formal style today at Hampton Court. Though it accorded well with the neoclassical literature of the “Augustan Age,” Addison and Pope, the best exemplars of that age in print, rebelled against the formal garden, and cried out politely for a “natural garden” that would leave at least a part of nature’s luxuriance unclipped and untamed, and would generate delighted surprises by preserving nature’s incalculable irregularity. Chinese influences entered into the rebellion; pagodas replaced statues in some gardens; in his Kew gardens the Duke of Kent built a house for Confucius. The natural garden reflected the sentimental Thomson and Collins rather than the chaste Addison and the meticulous, trim and tidy Pope; it joined with the “poets of feeling” in a “Romantic” treble to a classical bass. Pope and Thomson agreed in praising the gardens designed on the “Stowe” estate of Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham. Charles Bridge-man had begun it on a formal design; William Kent and Lancelot “Capability” Brown re-formed it in natural style; it became the talk of gardeners in England and France, and won the acclaim of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

  Beyond the gardens lay the streams where oarsmen rowed and lazy anglers dreamed of snaring fish; and the woods where men shot pheasants, grouse, partridge, or wild fowl, or where scarlet huntsmen followed their dogs to the cornered fox or the exhausted hare. Less moneyed Britons amused themselves with cricket, tennis, fives (“handball”), bowling, horse racing, cockfighting, bear baiting, bull baiting, and boxing matches—between women as well as between men. Prize fighters like Figg and Piper were the idols of every class, drawing immense crowds to the ringside. Till 1743 prize fighters fought with bare fists; boxing gloves were then introduced, but many years passed before these were accepted by the spectators as anything but an effeminate device unworthy of John Bull. Among the entertainments advertised in London in 1729–30 were “a mad bull to be dressed up with fireworks and turned loose” in a ring, “a dog to be dressed up with fireworks over him, a bear to be let loose at the same time, and a cat to be tied to the bull’s tail.”90 In the game called “cock throwing” a cock was tied to a stake, and sticks were thrown at it from a distance till it died. The most popular cockfights were those in which as many as sixteen cocks were matched against another sixteen till all on one side were killed; then the victors were divided into opposing camps, and fought till all on one side were killed; and so on till all but one were dead. Counties, towns, and villages pitted their cocks against one another with a noble patriotism, and an amiable writer hailed these sports as a moral equivalent for war.91 Nearly all sports were accompanied by betting.

  Those whose stomachs were not attuned to these spectacles could seek milder amusement at Vauxhall or Ranelagh, in whose shaded gardens they might, for a shilling, feel the comfort and security of crowds, if they kept their pockets guarde
d; there they could dance and masquerade, or sit under lanterned boughs, sip tea, and watch fashionable ladies and gallants, and the passing stars of the stage; they could gaze at fireworks or acrobats, hear popular music, dine in state, or seek adventure in lovers’ lanes gratefully obscure. At Ranelagh, under the great Rotunda, they could lift themselves up to loftier music amid people of genteeler class. “Every night,” wrote Horace Walpole in 1744, “I go to Ranelagh, which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else; everybody goes there.”92 Vauxhall and Ranelagh were closed in winter; but then the rivers might freeze, and winter sports had their day. Once, at Christmas of 1739, even the Thames froze, and the Londoners showed their spirit by staging a carnival of dancing and dining on the ice; some enjoyed the thrill of driving by coach on the river from Lambeth to London Bridge.93 Lastly there were the great fairs, where you met all the unpedigreed world, and enjoyed a variety of spectacles from peep shows to flying men.

  Aside from some bluestockings, manners were rough and blasphemous. Hogarth will show us the life of the commonalty, but not their speech. Harlots and rakes, draymen and bargemen, soldiers and sailors, were masters of damnation and ribaldry, and the fishmongers at Billingsgate made their market immortal with their incomparable profanity. In the inns and taverns speech was less vivid but still coarsely free. Even in their homes the men alarmed the women with their stories, expletives, and toasts, and the ladies themselves were not above a hearty curse and a gay obscenity.

  In the coffeehouses and clubs language took on more refinement. Steele, Swift, Fielding, Cowper, and Johnson wrote on conversation as a polite art. We picture the men in their jealously male gatherings, sampling their coffee or beer, gulping their liquor, smoking their pipes, arguing about arguments in Parliament, about Robert Walpole’s vote buying, and the unseemly politics of those “French dogs” across the Channel. Laughter was deep in the belly and loud in the throat, despite the pleas of moralists like Shaftesbury and amoralists like Chesterfield that laughter should be left to the lowly and should simmer down to a smile.94 Snuff-taking, first mentioned in 1589, had become a careful ritual in both sexes; like coffee, snuff (powdered tobacco) was supposed to have medicinal value: the sneezing it caused would clear the nasal passages, cure headache, colds, deafness, and sleepiness, soothe the nerves, and improve the brain. No man or woman of style was fully dressed without a snuffbox; and on that appendage the goldsmith, the jeweler, the enameler, and the miniaturist exercised their most delicate craft.