48a (above) and b (facing page) Cuerdon Masquerade, 1822, two watercolours by Emily Brookes. This select fancy-dress ball was part of the 1822 Preston Guild celebrations, a famous civic festival which took place every twenty years, drawing visitors from across the north.
Whether enshrined in the rule book or not, the assembly was associated with collective female influence. It was not for nothing that the electioneering Walter Spencer Stanhope was warned before the by-election of 1784, ‘The Hull Assembly … is composed of a set of partial proud people … you must … be all things to all the women.’45
The assembly spawned a host of variations, including the masquerade, the ridotto (a combined concert and assembly) and the ridotto al fresco staged in public rooms and gardens, and the musical party, the rout and the drum hosted in private households. Contemporary definitions of these myriad forms of social congregation routinely assumed female participation, indeed most saw heterosexual sociability as the very essence of the event, as here where Smollett defines the drum in 1746, ‘A riotous assembly of fashionable people, of both sexes, at a private house, consisting of some hundreds; not unaptly stiled a drum, from the noise and emptiness of the Entertainment.’46 As with the assembly, the fashionable private party was associated with female performance and pleasure. As the fourteen-year-old Ellen Barcroft engagingly concluded after the sandwiches, jellies, tarts, procession and dancing of a London rout in 1808, ‘Mem[o]. Spent a most delightful evening indeed’.47
The aforementioned ridottos and masquerades were a marked feature of London social life, drawing men and women in colossal numbers, but these gatherings enjoyed a scandalous reputation in some quarters and their voguishness was often cited as evidence that young men and women were on the road to debauchery. Concern lay with the sheer size and anonymity of these promiscuous gatherings. A ridotto at Vauxhall Gardens in May 1769, for instance, was attended by roughly ten thousand people. Similarly, The Times estimated that because of the mistakenly low price of admission a mixed bag of sixteen hundred people attended a masquerade at the Opera House in February 1798 and, unfortunately, ‘the freedom of conversation which is allowed in these motley meetings, became, on this occasion, indecent ribaldry and licentiousness.’ By the rules of the masquerade, absolute anonymity had to be respected and introductions were dispensed with. Addison in 1701 reported that ‘the women either come by themselves or are introduced by friends who are obliged to quit them upon their first entrance to the conversation of anybody that addresses them.’ Mist's Weekly Journal may have claimed soothingly in 1718 that ‘there is absolute freedom of speech, without the least offence given thereby’, but in the eyes of many the abandoning of decorum combined with strict anonymity was a recipe for social and sexual chaos. The Bishop of London preached a sermon against masquerades in 1724 and George II made an ineffectual attempt to have masked balls suppressed.48 Yet the dismay of the desiccated did little to dent the popularity of these fashionable social congregations. The Swiss businessman Johann Jacob Heidegger established the commercial success of the masquerade at the King's Theatre, Haymarket, in the 1730s and 1740s (between operas), admitting all-comers with twenty-seven shillings for the ticket and the appropriate costume. Subsequently, Vauxhall, Ranelagh and the Dog and Duck gardens in St George's Fields, Southwark, became famous for their masked Venetian balls, as did the Pantheon in Oxford Street, opened in 1772 (‘all the world goes to see this new outlandish Place, Kings, Queens, Duchesses, Countesses & commoners …’49), and Carlisle House in Soho Square in the 1760s, under the auspices of Mrs Teresa Cornelys. Even this notorious diversion could be reconciled with polite exclusivity: Jane Pellet noted in 1748, that ‘all people of taste have Plays & Masquerades at Home. There was last Thursday the Grandest Subscription Masquerade that was ever know. It is said there was not a Jewel in Town but what was there …’50
While the masquerade was a diversion associated with the metropolis, indeed it was one of the key emblems of cosmopolitan excess, fashion took it out to the provinces. Two masquerades were offered at the Preston Guild celebrations of 1742. (a civic festival held every twenty years), although a rather proper Miss Richardson, a Yorkshire gentlewoman, used them to advertize northern superiority to such a disreputable diversion: ‘I believe there was the least Company at them, indeed I had not the Curiosity to go …’ In fact, as early as 1722 a comedian at the Preston Guild had urged the bachelors in the audience to seek a virtuous local bride ‘averse to wanton serenades, To midnight Balls and London Masquerades’.51 Nevertheless, a grand masquerade held in January 1779 by Edwin Lascelles at Harewood House near Leeds was enjoyed by ‘some of the nobility and a great number of the neighbouring gentry’ without any negative comment from the Leeds papers, but private masquerades, with their hand-picked guests and ritual unmaskings, never produced the same erotic frisson as the anonymous public gatherings. In Pontefract in 1755, when there was masquerading all over town, Jane Scrimshire could detail the costumes of a whole raft of guests in advance.52 In a melée of sailors, harlequins, ballad singers, fools and columbines she would have no trouble identifying her friends; thus were the mysteries of the masquerade cleared away to meet the demands of provincial gentility. So much for social and sexual chaos.
The most public of the public places where women and men congregated was surely the pleasure garden, the most famous of which were in London: Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Marylebone and Kensington. Vauxhall Gardens on the south bank of the Thames in Lambeth was reopened to the public in 1732 by Mr Jonathan Tyers for ridottos al fresco on summer nights. A wooded twelve-acre grove, Vauxhall offered picturesque alleys and covered colonnades to stroll in and clearances dotted with classical columns, alcoves and temples in which to tarry. With glittering lights strung among the trees, it had an orchestra and an area for dancing. The evening's entertainment usually opened with a courtly promenade down the main walks, the ladies in full evening dress and the gentlemen carrying their hats. Then followed a concert and a chicken supper in one of the supper boxes decorated with the paintings of Francis Hayman and others. Vauxhall's chief rival was Ranelagh, in Chelsea, which opened in 1742 and rapidly became the more fashionable resort. As Jane Pellet reported in 1743, ‘Among the people of Tast le Delicatesse I think Ranelagh is now the darling pleasure for the sake of Mr Sullivan, who sings the Rising Sun & Stella & Flavia’.53 By reputation Ranelagh was more exclusive, but less exciting than Vauxhall. After paying half-a-crown for admission, a visitor was at liberty to wander about the garden admiring the Chinese buildings, the canal, the bridge and to take a circuit round the Rotunda, an enormous circular hall designed for a high-profile parade. By the 1770s it was considered fashionable to arrive at the Rotunda as late as eleven or twelve.54
49 ‘A General Prospect of Vauxhall Gardens’, 1751.
50 ‘View of the Grand South Walk in Vauxhall Gardens’, 1751.
51 ‘A View of the Company in Vauxhall Gardens’, 1779, from Carnan & Newbury's Pocket Book.
52 ‘A View of the Company at the Pantheon, Oxford St’, 1779, from Carnan & Newbury's Pocket Book.
These metropolitan gardens had a tremendous capacity and admitted virtually anyone who could afford the price of the ticket, so the size of the throng and the dangers latent in the mob were close to the surface in the written reactions of polite visitors. To celebrate the proclamation of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749, ‘a new way of entertaining the publick with a jubilee masquerade’ was devised at Ranelagh, expected to draw ‘Millions of people’ and an ‘a bundence of people come from France, Italy and Holland’.55 One visitor, the lawyer John Spencer, reported with amazement that ‘the crowd of people in the park was greater than you can possibly imagine & what is very surprising there was not in the least riot or disturbance of any kind all the evening’; despite the fact that the fireworks display caused one of the grand pavilions to ignite.56 Being a popular resort for both the likes of Frederick Prince of Wales and the well-dressed prostitute, the pleasure garden, particularly Vauxhal
l Gardens, conveyed the spice of danger amidst the glory, but demonstrably the gardens were also visited by respectable married couples and family parties. Polite, agreeable entertainment was to be had if one kept to the lighted path, in the company of known acquaintances. Dr Johnson reportedly believed Ranelagh to be altogether ‘a place of innocent recreation’.57 Outside London, town pleasure gardens, such the Spring Gardens in Leeds (in existence from at least 1715) or the Spring Gardens in Bath (from 1742), had less racy reputations, drawing a more socially homogenous custom.58
A high-profile promenade was also to be had along one of the numerous custom-built walks laid out in London and the provinces in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The most prestigious perambulation was to be enjoyed on the London Mall, constructed by Charles II in 1660, where the quality were to be observed on summer evenings and winter afternoons in their charming ‘undress’. Although one of the avenues on the Mall was reserved for the royal family and their friends, virtually anyone could join the cavalcade in the other carriageways, so the walk became synonymous with the moving of multitudes. De Saussure reported in 1725, ‘the park is so crowded at times that you cannot help touching your neighbour. Some people come to see, some to be seen, and others to seek their fortunes; for many priestesses of Venus are abroad, some of them magnificently attired, and all on the look-out for adventures.’59 The appeal for some was akin to that of a colossal beauty parade, as here, where a maudlin Sir Richard Philips sighs in 1817 for the bewitching beauties of yesteryear:
53 ‘A View in Kensington Gardens During the Performance of the Military Band’, from Poole's Cabinet of Fashion and Repository of Literature (1827).
54 These ladies admiring potted plants appear in the untitled frontispiece to Marshall's Ladies Fashionable Repository (1827).
My spirits sunk and a tear started into my eyes as I brought to mind those crowds of beauty, rank and fashion which used to be displayed in the centre Mall of this park on Sunday evenings. How often in my youth had I been a delighted spectator of this enchanted and enchanting assemblage! Here used to promenade for one or two hours after dinner, the whole British world of gaiety, beauty and splendour. Here could be seen, in one moving mass, extending the whole length of the Mall, 5,000 of the most lovely women in this country of female beauty, all splendidly attired and accompanied by as many well-dressed men.60
Town walks in the provinces fulfilled the same exhibitionary function. The Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells (laid out in 1638), Avenham Walk in Preston (1690), the ‘New Walk’ in York (1730s) and the Grand Parade in Bath (1740s) are all famous examples of formal walks laid out as places of polite resort.
That genteel women walked the town and city streets of Georgian England cannot be in doubt. Indeed, foreigners attributed the unattractive size of English women's feet to their prodigious taste for exercise.61 When ladies were not sauntering along an elegant tree-lined parade, they were taking more purposeful walks in fashionable shopping districts. London's superior shopping was renowned across Europe. The most stylish shops were to be found on the Strand, Pall Mall, St Paul's Churchyard and, latterly, on Bond Street. In 1725 De Saussure was entranced by the attractive shops on the Strand, Fleet Street, Cheapside and Cornhill, ‘where the choicest merchandise from the four quarters of the globe is exposed to the sight of the passers-by. A stranger might spend whole days, without ever feeling bored, examining these wonderful goods.’62 London shops were often open until ten at night, but the afternoon was the most popular time for conspicuous consuming. Christian Goede, a German visitor in London between 1802 and 1804, noted that the West End was busiest between one and three, when the ladies purchased luxury goods in Bond Street and ‘the gentlemen pass on horseback up and down the street to see and be seen. [The] foot-pavement is so perfectly covered with elegantly dressed people as to make it difficult to move.’63 But in May 1808 Ellen Barcroft contrived to miss the carriage trade despite having spent half a day at large in the city: ‘We were out at least 5 hours walking in different parts of the town. We were in Bond st but the fashionable had not made their appearance.’64 A stroll around the better London shops was a standard feature of most tourist itineraries, male or female, just as a shopping spree was a crucial element of a trip to town in the provinces. Shops offered pleasures for the eye, but also opportunities for refreshment and relaxation, one of the most famous venues of the 1790s being Harding, Howell and Co. on Pall Mall, which had four departments on the ground floor and a room above where customers partook of wine, tea and sweetmeats. Even in Colne, local ladies and gentlemen collected at Betty Hartley's general store for tea, ‘to be tempted with her fashionable and elegant assortments from London’.65 Shopping was well entrenched as a public cultural pursuit for respectable women and men long before the advent of Selfridges and Whiteleys. Shops and showrooms were acceptable sites of mixed sex congregation from their very establishment. When, in 1711, Lady Mary Pierrepont and Edward Wortley surveyed the available spaces for a romantic rendezvous, both Cortelli's Italian Warehouse and Colman's toyshop were mooted spots. The urban voyager and female pleasure-seeker was no invention of the 1880s.66
55 ‘Prospect of a Noble Terras Walk’, York, c.1756. Another of York's facilities for polite recreation, this walk was laid out in the 1730s by the City Corporation.
Cultural tourism was a mainstay of the genteel life out of doors. Both the tour and the day-trip were popular diversions throughout this period, incorporating the viewing of a catholic range of sites. ‘How-to’ manuals for patriotic travellers were published throughout the eighteenth century, encouraging the observation and investigation of everything from field systems to local birth rates.67 Tourist attractions fell into five main categories: the commercial exhibition, scenes of natural beauty, architectural wonders, industrial sites or feats of engineering, and impressive institutions. Thus, in addition to predictable visits to county seats and pretty views, genteel tourists examined bridges and factories, hospitals and almshouses. Elizabeth Shackleton fancied herself a connoisseur of domestic architecture and the rural picturesque, but she also found time to ride out to view the new turnpike road, the Leeds cloth hall, the new locks on the Leeds to Liverpool canal at Bingley, and went to watch poor children winding silk. She also regretted having missed Mrs Walton's outing to view the Peels' cotton printing factory at Church.68 In the 1770s Mary Chorley was taken to admire Preston and Liverpool docks, a paper factory, a coal pit, a picture gallery, a china auction, an army exercise and the opening of the Lancaster assize. On a visit to London in 1786 Margaret Pedder relished all the traditional metropolitan attractions, but also attended the Foundling Hospital, Greenwich Pensioners' Hospital, the Magdalene and a meeting of sons of clergy and charity at St Paul's, making charitable donations at three of these institutions. In the 1790s Mary Chorley's own daughter Sarah Ford of Lancaster catalogued her visits to a furnace, a sugar house, a rural powder mill, the new Lancaster canal and the aqueducts at both Preston and Lancaster. Ellen Barcroft's sojourn in London a decade later, also incorporated edifying visits to Christ's Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, the Fishmonger's Almshouses, St Paul's meeting of the sons of the clergy, and the Magdalene chapel where she heard a sermon on charity. Judging by a rapt description of the steam-powering of Derby Infirmary penned in 1813, the female fascination with both engineering and worthy institutions still ran deep in the early years of the nineteenth century.69
56 An untitled illustration of two ladies in a phaeton, from Heideloff's Gallery of Fashion (1794).
A traditional, but enduring forum for genteel women's public lives was the established church. Women bulked large and opinionated in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century congregations, although for many apparently observant Christians a Sunday service offered a taste of the pleasures of this world as much as a prospect of the next, something which can quickly be deduced from advice to young women on their attendance: ‘Regard neither the Actions or Dress of others,’ urged lady Sarah Pennington, ‘let not
your eyes rove in search of Acquaintance, but in the Time of Divine Service avoid as much as possible, all complimental civilities, of which there are too great an intercourse in most of our Churches; remember that your only business there is to pay a solemn Act of Devotion to Almighty God…’70 But compliments and felicitations would not be extinguished. Susannah Gossip met her friends ‘with all imaginable civility’ at church every day in York in the 1730s. Elizabeth Shackleton had exemplary religious credentials, having been confirmed into the Anglican church by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Tower of London, but she still passed far more comment in her diary on who she met at church and how they looked, and on church-seating disputes, than on the content of the sermon. Mary Warde sacrilegiously invoked the country pulpit as a byword for ‘Dull Discourse’, and, of course, many a romantic fire was lit by looks sizzling across the pews. A Mr Town in the Connoisseur revealed the voiceless but eloquent byplay of the congregation, when he sought to curtail the loud socializing of the theatre: ‘The silent courtship of the eyes, ogles, nods, glances and curtsies from one box to another may be allowed them the same as at Church, but nothing more.’71 We would be naive to ignore the social appeal of the local church, especially in those small towns and villages which lacked alternative public venues.
Even in the decades when Evangelical reaction was at its height, social considerations could weigh as heavily as the spiritual with genteel Anglicans. In 1805 in Nottingham Abigail Gawthern took strong exception to the new curate ‘a most disagreeable vulgar voice and a drunken man’, while Eliza Whitaker's circle offered running commentaries on pulpit performances in the manner of a theatre critic: ‘Isaac Austen preached at the old church this morning … he beat the cushions most unmercifully and had not a good voice.’72 In fact, the Horrocks sisters seemed to have toured the Preston churches on the look-out for the liveliest young man at the lectern. In clear contrast, serious study of sermons was made by Mrs Anna Larpent, who always assessed those she heard in terms of form, content and delivery and, if thought-provoking, reflected at length on their significance for her. But whatever motivation was uppermost, the letters written by Anglican women about their churches are suffused with the assurance of social ownership, although none of the women studied here condoned the indecorous spectacle of female preaching. Let Beatrix Lister's horrified response to what she termed a Shaker meeting in the 1770s speak for all the women of her stripe: ‘[the meeting] had preaching enough to satisfy any reasonable people. A woman that had folly sufficient to make herself ridiculous held forth about an hour. She was quite frantic & in my opinion so far from making me laugh that upon me it had a very different effect, after this we soon made our escape with a resolution never to visit the meeting again.’73 Genteel religiosity stopped far short of enthusiastic public exhortation.
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