A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain

by Michael Paterson

  Sunday newspapers did exist, but were not respectable. How horrified my father was on discovering that the servants had been reading little bits to me out of Lloyd’s Weekly! My father’s Sunday efforts weakened towards evening, and after tea he liked to read aloud to us from books that sounded quite well, but afforded some chance of frivolity. Of course Shakespeare is Shakespeare. Ingoldsby Legends were always in demand, and above all the Misadventure at Margate, which we knew almost by heart. Pickwick Papers, by some blessed workings of Mother’s conscience, did not come under the head of novels. They were ‘papers’. She herself led the laughter. Often my father would read us things that he loved.24

  Charles Russell, who grew up in Ireland, similarly suggested in his memories of childhood that not everything about a Sunday need be dull:

  No cooking that might be done on Saturday was allowed. After dinner each of us had to read a chapter of the Bible aloud, while mamma and dada listened respectfully. The piano was never heard, except to accompany a hymn; no game of cards was allowed; but all sorts of childish games, such as riddles, conundrums, stories, etc. made our evening cheerful.25

  William Tayler, the footman, described what must have been for him a fairly typical Sunday in 1837, on which his elderly employer split the difference between respectability and enjoyment, social duty and relaxation:

  This Sunday a wet, boisterous day. Been to church of course. Our old lady is got quite well, thinks of little else but playing cards and paying visits all the time. When I went to take lunch up, she was making matches or candlelights. When I took lunch away, she was reading a novel with the Bible laying beside her, ready to take up if any body came in. She had a lady to dine with them. During dinner, the conversation turned on wordly [i.e. worldly] affairs – nothing relating to religion. At tea time, she was talking about china, how much was broke in our house and what it would cost to replace it again. I think these were excellent ideas for an old lady near eighty years of age on a Sunday, but for all this she is not a bad one in the end.26

  Not Like Other Days

  For those who were as concerned with social ritual as with religious duty – or indeed even more so – the Sunday walk was an established routine. During the Season, fashionable families in London walked to the only place it would occur to them to visit – Hyde Park. Even there, it was necessary to be very discriminating about where one went, as the biographer of one young woman recorded:

  On Sundays [the highest Society] stayed indoors or were out of town. But the rest, all those who, without being right at the top, were very near it, might be seen sitting on garden chairs or walking up and down a relatively small area of the lawns in the southern and south-eastern part of the Park. The exact spot was determined by fashion, too: ‘We went to the grass just beyond the Achilles statue, which is now the thing.’27

  Clearly, even if there was a broad consensus among society that Sundays should be treated as a day of rest, opinions varied about how strict its observance should be.

  It must be remembered that at this time many people worked six days a week. Sunday was not half of their weekend but the whole of it. There was not time to cram it with many of the things that for us fill the gap between Friday night and Monday morning. As a result, Sunday was a genuine day of rest whose differences – such as the eating of the week’s most elaborate meal and the chance to doze in an armchair afterwards – could be savoured. Where the church was the centre of a family’s social life, it provided – as it does to this day – the opportunity to see friends with whom one was not in touch during the week. Because it offered, through its services and social events and choir practices, the company of the opposite sex in surroundings of irreproachable respectability, it featured prominently in the courting of many Victorian couples. Even children, though often imprisoned in starched and uncomfortable Sunday dresses or sailor suits, could enjoy certain pleasures. There was available an extensive variety of magazines and journals, with titles like The Quiver and Sunday at Home, which were intended for family reading on Sunday afternoons and which filled the long afternoon hours with stories, puzzles and games. If the Sabbath must be devoted to worthy thoughts and pursuits, there was at least no shortage of advice available on how to make the most of what was allowed.

  Many published memoirs of childhood, like Ernest Shepard’s, relate to the last twenty years of Victoria’s reign. The older – and often elderly – relatives who dictated their behaviour were therefore products of an earlier mindset rather than typical of current attitudes. By the time the Queen died, the rigidity with which Sunday had been observed in the mid-century seemed more and more of an anachronism. Society, led by the example of the Prince of Wales, had created the ‘weekend’, for the railways had long since made it possible to travel to country houses far outside London. These gatherings began later – on Saturday afternoon – than would be the case in future generations, and were known as ‘Saturday to Mondays’. They gradually popularized the notion that this part of the week could be spent entirely on pleasure. Another factor was that there was simply more to do. New sports and new facilities provided a host of temptations that had not existed, or been so obvious, in the early and middle decades. For those who lived in the burgeoning suburbs there were golf clubs, and for those in town who wished to visit the country there were bicycles. The Sabbath closing of museums was no longer as strictly carried out as in the days of Dickens’ Arthur Clennam. The British Museum, if that may be taken as a national litmus test, began opening on Sunday afternoons in 1895.

  The Best Tunes

  For those who were fond of music – even if they did not, like Molly Hughes, have the resources of a mighty cathedral to entertain them – there was much about a church service to enjoy. Prior to the nineteenth century there had been hymns of beauty that could inspire, but to a large extent the custom had been, in a world of widespread illiteracy in which hymnbooks would have been superfluous, that throughout the service the Bible Clerk would read aloud each line of a hymn or psalm and the congregation would repeat it. This could, of course, be extremely long-winded and uninspiring. The Wesleys and their movement had provided more rousing and memorable hymns, but it was not until religious revival hit its stride in the nineteenth century that there was a flowering of this type of church music, for the Victorians, as it were, mass-produced them. The printing of music became cheaper and easier and this, added to the popularity of sacred subjects, brought a flood of new hymns. One man – H. J. Gauntlett, who wrote the music for Once in Royal David’s City – allegedly produced 10,000 hymn tunes.

  A glance through the Church of England’s indispensable Hymns Ancient and Modern, itself a Victorian publication (its first edition appeared in 1861 ), will reveal how many of them – and how many of the great and stirring hymns that are popular even with non-believers – were written at this time. The list includes Fight the Good Fight, Crown Him with Many Crowns, Alleluia, Sing to Jesus and Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow, as well as such Christmas favourites as In the Bleak Midwinter, As with Gladness Men of Old, Shepherds in the Fields Abiding and O Little Town of Bethlehem. Among the mission halls and revival meetings, at which the singing was a good deal less genteel and more hearty, there was similarly a wealth of rousing, inspiring music in the form of ‘choruses’, many of which are still doing duty in churches today. As William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, once put it: ‘Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?’ The act of worship was rendered much more enjoyable by this outpouring of spiritual creativity.

  Why It Mattered

  Religious observance was not simply for Sundays. The reading of Scripture or the saying of prayers was a fixture of the daily life of many households, serving several purposes. It was an important part of the Victorian ethos that the servant-keeping class reinforce their authority by setting a good example. For the master of the house to do this by leading worship was seen to add to his dignity and enhance his status. The short service also enabled the household to assembl
e and begin the day together – no doubt as soon as the devotions were over, the master would use the opportunity to give instructions to the servants, or to speak to any particular one if it were necessary. The mistress could well be inspecting the housemaids’ appearance and demanding adjustments if necessary. The cook might be in the habit of staying behind to go over the day’s menu. It was, in other words, a small-scale version of a school’s morning assembly, and served the same purpose – to provide a formal start to the day by bringing together everyone in the community, and to combine this with an opportunity to sort out the day’s administration. In the British Army a daily gathering of a regiment’s officers and NCOs to hear the colonel’s instructions is still often referred to as ‘morning prayers’.

  Edith Buxton, the daughter of the missionary C. T. Studd, recalled the formality of this ritual, at which the family was joined – in strict hierarchical order – by the housekeeper, butler, footman and maids:

  The morning began with family prayers. If it was winter a bright fire would be burning in the grate, which reflected in the brass eagles on either side. They held the tongs and poker, and the steel and brass shone to distraction. My Father sat at the table, already spread for breakfast, with the Bible open. There would be the sound of the fire crackling, and the rustle of Mrs Miles’ starched dress and apron as she led the way in, followed by Ryall and Charles, then Jenkins and Roland, the housemaids. There followed the droning of Father’s voice, and far away the intermittent sounds of Bayswater Road.28

  And George Sala, writing of an imaginary household in the fifties, describes the attitudes of those taking part. No one, including the man conducting the service, wants to be there. The servants and the children fidget, their minds on other things. They see this interlude as an unwelcome interruption to the day, something to be got over with:

  The servants come in, not to morning breakfast, but to morning prayers. The housemaid has just concluded her morning flirtation with the baker; the cook has been crying over ‘Fatherless Fanny’. The master of the house reads prayers in a harsh, grating voice, and Miss Charlotte, aged thirteen, is sent to her bed-room, with prospects of additional punishment, for eating her curl-papers during matins.29

  The emergent middle classes, unsure of their status in society and wishing to be punctilious in their observance of convention, aped the perceived behaviour of the aristocracy and gentry. If these occasions were traditional in country houses, then they must be observed in suburban villas too, for a paternalistic interest in the spiritual welfare of one’s domestics was clearly a badge of belonging to the ‘right sort’. Since servants gossiped a great deal, it might be that the family who employed them did not want news to get out among others of their class that they failed to conduct matters properly.

  Missions

  Although it is undeniable that many Victorians saw religious observance as a tiresome ritual, we must not underestimate the extent to which a live, sincere and passionate belief influenced people of all classes. The country not only sent missionaries abroad during these years but received them, and with results that were often spectacular. The missions conducted by two Americans – Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey – had an effect on Victorians that is hard to underestimate now. Moody was a preacher, his partner wrote and played hymns. They had already had a considerable impact on the faith of their own countrymen when they first came to the United Kingdom in 1875, and they returned in 1884. They brought something of the atmosphere of an American tent mission, and perhaps their approach to conversion was more direct than the British were accustomed to. At any rate, they were highly successful. Moody’s preaching was brilliant and inspiring, and the accompanying music in itself was enough to draw many in. They made thousands of converts, and their visits are still remembered as a landmark in British church history. The forceful impact of such an evangelical crusade could result in some unlikely conversions, for it was not only the poor or the dissatisfied who found faith but others who appeared to be content with their lives. One of these was a Mr Vincent, a wealthy retired planter whose passion was for horseracing. Returning from Punchestown races in Ireland one evening, he missed the boat back to England and found himself obliged to stay the night in Dublin. The American evangelists happened to be holding a series of meetings in the city at that time, and by chance he came across them. An author describes how:

  He was at a loose end, and not knowing how to spend the evening, took a stroll. He noticed over a theatre the names ‘D.L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey’, wondered what Vaudeville Company this was, and went in. He was amazed to find the place crowded out, and on the platform a number of people in ordinary dress and a man singing. He had a wonderful voice, and was singing words such as he had never heard before. He stood absolutely riveted.

  The hymn over, he sat down and heard Moody preach, and strange to relate, instead of going home next day, he stayed on day after day. Finally, one evening he followed a great throng of people who rose to go into the Enquiry Room. Moody knelt beside him and simply said, ‘Mr Vincent, do you believe Jesus Christ died for you?’ ‘I do,’ he replied. ‘Then,’ said Moody, ‘thank Him.’ He did, and he left that room a transformed man.30

  A short time later, in London, he met an old friend, Edward Studd, who was also a planter and racing enthusiast. He persuaded Studd to accompany him to Drury Lane, to which the Americans had now brought their mission. Studd was in his turn deeply touched by Moody’s preaching, and he too returned on subsequent evenings to hear more sermons. Within days he had undergone conversion and his hedonistic, raffish lifestyle had altered beyond recognition:

  He withdrew from the Turf, giving a racehorse to each of his elder sons as a hunter, and then sold the remainder. He cleared out the hall of his house at Tedworth and put in chairs and benches; then he rode round the countryside to urge his neighbours to come in on Sunday evenings, and used to get splendid fellows down from London, merchants and business men, to preach the Gospel to the people. They came in their hundreds, filling up the staircase to the first floor, leaning over the balconies to hear. Moody himself came.31

  Studd’s new-found faith was no mere passing fad. He preached relentlessly – and effectively – to all with whom he came in contact. When attending Moody and Sankey’s later meetings in London, he took his carriage, and his granddaughter recalled that ‘he would come out at half time and send in the coachman and footman, and hold the horses himself.’32 He also gave financial assistance to the building of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, which rapidly became a power-house for the training of evangelists. He died only two years after his conversion, but his family carried on his work, principally in the overseas mission field.

  All three of his sons became Christians. They were known throughout the country during the eighties because – as outstanding cricketers – they had all, in succession, been captains of the Cambridge University XI. That one of them, Charles (‘C. T.’), became a missionary tells us something significant about the extent to which active Christianity had penetrated the social and intellectual elite. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, missionaries had been, almost without exception, poor men from humble walks of life. William Carey, for instance, the Baptist evangelist who made an immense impact in India at that time, was a shoemaker. Missionaries were therefore people who – seen from a worldly point of view – had not given up much in the way of material comfort or future greatness to ‘follow the call’. Such was the power of Christian revival that at Cambridge University in 1885 – amid a spate of conversions – Studd and six others volunteered to devote their lives to working for the China Inland Mission. ‘The Cambridge Seven’, willingly turning their backs on comfortable backgrounds and bright prospects for the work of the Gospel, became national celebrities. Studd’s daughter described them. They included:

  The stroke of the Cambridge boat, and the stroke of one of the trial eights, a dragoon Guardsman, an officer of the Royal Artillery, and the son and heir of a titled family in
Norfolk. In the history of missions no band of volunteers has caught the imagination of the public as much as these seven. Queen Victoria was pleased to receive a booklet giving their testimonies [each one’s account of his conversion]. Such was the stir among the universities that their sailing had to be put off so that they could go to Edinburgh and speak at the urgent request of the leading professors. In a hall packed with 2,000 students they were cheered again and again as they rose to speak.33

  While Studd’s father had undergone conversion to the Christianity of the Gospel mission, it is worth remembering that equally sincere tendencies could lead in the opposite direction. John Patrick Crichton-Stuart inherited a vast fortune, together with the title Marquess of Bute, six months after his birth in 1847. His father had belonged to the Church of Scotland and he had been brought up in the Church of England. At Oxford he changed his Anglicanism for an equally devout Catholicism (and was therefore asked to leave); his conversion caused a considerable stir in London society, and was described by Disraeli in his novel Lothair. Until his death in 1899, Bute remained a highly influential champion of Catholic interests.

  By the end of the century the Church had lost a good deal of its monopoly on charitable work. Secular organizations and political bodies had taken on much the same functions and this meant that religion and charity were no longer seen as synonymous. Science also battered at the gates of Christian orthodoxy. Until Victoria’s reign there had been no alternative to belief in divine creation of the world, and it had been established by theologians that this took place in 4004 BC. The science of geology was able to prove that the earth – and even animal life – was very much older than this. The publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 – and the work that followed in 1871, The Descent of Man – offered an alternative to the concept that man was created, suggesting that the whole of human life was the result of circumstance. In addition to this, theologians discovered that the translations of the Bible on which Anglican worship had been based for centuries were inaccurate, and therefore that parts of the Scriptures were open to doubt. The unreliability of some of the Bible laid the rest of it open to doubt in many minds. The Christian Church had never in history faced challenges like these to its basic tenets. The apparently flourishing condition of religion at the end of the century, when millions still regularly attended services and religious organizations continued to receive widespread support, is testimony to the strength of faith within all branches of Christianity.