British Sociability in the European Enlightenment: Cultural Practices and Personal Encounters 303052566X, 9783030525668

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Bibliography
Part I: Conceptualizing Sociability: Travel and Tourism
Chapter 2: The Cham on the Seine: Dr Johnson in Paris (and Mrs Thrale)
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Enlightened Fratriotism: Boswell in Corsica, Paoli in London
Extending the Salon: Boswell’s Journey to Corsica
Concentrating the Salon: Paoli in London
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Communing with the Fictional Dead: Grave Tourism and the Sentimental Novel
The Tomb of the Lovers
The Death of Maria, and Her Graves
The Cult of Charlotte
Bibliography
Chapter 5: Medicinal Sociability: British Bluestockings and the Continental Spa
Between Correspondence and Conversation
Sociable Tourism: Company and Companionship
Sociable and Unsociable Activities
Culture Contact and Conflict
Bibliography
Part II: Practicing Sociability: Conflict, Commerce, and Cultural Transfer
Chapter 6: Philip Thicknesse’s Sociable Encounters in France: The Politics of Eccentricity
A Brief Presentation of a Querulous Man: Sociability, Conflict and Eccentricity
Thicknesse’s Controversial Perception of French Sociability: The War with Britain Continued
From ‘Practical’ Sociability to Nationalism: A Process of Reconciliation and Integration of Eccentricity
Bibliography
Chapter 7: Elizabeth Craven, Private Theatricals and Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers
Private Theatres and Theatricals
Authorship: “[…] but I confess I have added”
The Theatre: “The Muse Thalia Holds Imperial Sway”
The Margravine’s Robbers: Free from “Jacobinical Speeches”
Bibliography
Chapter 8: “The English can’t waltz, never can, never will”: The Politics of Waltzing in Romantic Britain
William Hogarth’s “line of grace”: Shaping the English Body, Normalizing the Social Body
The Aesthetic and Popular Reception of the Dis-graceful Waltz
Pathologizing the Waltz
“Waltzing was made for souls of noble daring”: Charlotte Dacre’s heroic waltz
Bibliography
Chapter 9: Sociable Encounters in Model Commercial Letters
Available Sources
European Networks and Possible Contacts
Business and Sociability
Bibliography
Part III: Fictionalizing Sociability: Conversation, Friendship and Philosophy
Chapter 10: ‘Musick in their Company’: (Per)Forming Friendship and Early Enlightenment Sociability in Frances Brooke’s The History of Lady Julia Mandeville
Friendship Virtues and Enlightened Sociability
‘Virtues of the Same Kind’: Equality and Kindness in the Friendships of Lady Anne Wilmot
Staging Sociability: A Narrative Performance of Friendship Values
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 11: Robinson Crusoe: Speech, Conversation, Sociability
Bibliography
Chapter 12: Reshaping the Leviathan: A Commonwealth Built around Sociable Encounters in Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks
Unsociable Encounters: Humanist Classicism, Sensus Communis, and the Leviathan of Dogmatism
Practical Sociability: The Private Regimen as the Art of Life
How to Avoid Unsociability: Satire and the Real Thrust of Shaftesbury’s Sociable Encounters
Bibliography
Chapter 13: Hume and de Maistre: Sociable Fundamentalism
Hume’s Dialogues
De Maistre’s Les Soirées
A Solvent of Fanaticism
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

British Sociability in the European Enlightenment Cultural Practices and Personal Encounters

Edited by  Sebastian Domsch · Mascha Hansen

British Sociability in the European Enlightenment

Sebastian Domsch  •  Mascha Hansen Editors

British Sociability in the European Enlightenment Cultural Practices and Personal Encounters

Editors Sebastian Domsch Greifswald, Germany

Mascha Hansen Greifswald, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-52566-8    ISBN 978-3-030-52567-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Florilegius / Alamy Stock Photo, Image ID: EG759B This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

As we finish this book, the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 keeps us home-­ bound and in search of new sociable practices. Future historians will have a lot to say about how this crisis changed twenty-first century sociability— for good, or temporarily? Virtual varieties of sociability have emerged over the last decades, social media are an established feature of many friendships, and video conferencing is not entirely new, either. However, friends sharing a pint in front of the webcam while each in fact stays in their own kitchen is still unusual. Once this is over, will we scramble to get back to the pub-shared pint, or will the webcam be the new normal? Time will tell. However, right now one feels grateful to a number of people not usually given credit in academic volumes: all those who make it possible for us to stay safely at home and still enjoy running water and food supplies—and books: thank you. This particular book enjoyed the support of many colleagues in the fields of social history and literature: the GIS Sociabilités under Annick Cossic and Valérie Capdeville, who initiated the Digital Encyclopedia of British Enlightenment Sociability (DIGITENS), and more recently, the EU-funded project led by Kimberley Page-Jones, the Digital Encyclopaedia of European Sociability, going by the same acronym (see https://www. univ-brest.fr/digitens/). The DIGITENS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no 823862. A first conference on “Sociable Encounters” in Greifswald in the summer of 2018, funded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Stiftung and the GIS Sociabilités, allowed us to debate some of the issues v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

now assembled in this volume. Particular thanks go to Dr Christian Suhm of the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald, our conference’s kind and competent host. In February 2020, Felix Schmid joined the editors of this volume as a student assistant, and a most valuable one he has proved to be! March 2020

Greifswald and Munich

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Mascha Hansen Part I Conceptualizing Sociability: Travel and Tourism  13 2 The Cham on the Seine: Dr Johnson in Paris (and Mrs Thrale) 15 Allan Ingram 3 Enlightened Fratriotism: Boswell in Corsica, Paoli in London 29 Sebastian Domsch 4 Communing with the Fictional Dead: Grave Tourism and the Sentimental Novel 41 Helen Williams 5 Medicinal Sociability: British Bluestockings and the Continental Spa 63 Mascha Hansen

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Contents

Part II Practicing Sociability: Conflict, Commerce, and Cultural Transfer  85 6 Philip Thicknesse’s Sociable Encounters in France: The Politics of Eccentricity 87 Annick Cossic-Péricarpin 7 Elizabeth Craven, Private Theatricals and Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers107 Susanne Schmid 8 “The English can’t waltz, never can, never will”: The Politics of Waltzing in Romantic Britain127 Kimberley Page-Jones 9 Sociable Encounters in Model Commercial Letters147 Alain Kerhervé Part III Fictionalizing Sociability: Conversation, Friendship and Philosophy 163 10 ‘Musick in their Company’: (Per)Forming Friendship and Early Enlightenment Sociability in Frances Brooke’s The History of Lady Julia Mandeville165 Katrin Berndt 11 Robinson Crusoe: Speech, Conversation, Sociability187 Jakub Lipski 12 Reshaping the Leviathan: A Commonwealth Built around Sociable Encounters in Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks203 Patrick Müller 13 Hume and de Maistre: Sociable Fundamentalism223 Michael Szczekalla Index237

Notes on Contributors

Katrin Berndt  is Professor of English Literature and Culture at Martin-­ Luther-­University Halle-Wittenberg. She works on contemporary British fiction, postcolonial writing, and the cultural poetics of Britain’s long eighteenth century. Her publications include the monographs Female Identity in Contemporary Zimbabwean Fiction (2005) and Narrating Friendship in the British Novel, 1760–1830 (Routledge 2017). Annick Cossic-Péricarpin  holds an agrégation in English, has a doctorate from the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, and is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Western Brittany, France. She has written on Christopher Anstey, Georgian Bath and eighteenth-century spas. Her research interests have recently focused on models of sociability in Britain and in France and she is Series Editor for Transversales (Paris: Le Manuscrit), a bilingual collection dedicated to the subject, and General Editor for DIGITENS, a digital encyclopaedia of British Enlightenment sociability. Sebastian Domsch  Chair of Anglophone Literatures at the University of Greifswald, is the author of The Emergence of Literary Criticism in 18th-­ Century Britain (2014) and co-editor of British and European Romanticisms (2007) and Romantic Ambiguities: Abodes of the Modern (2017). Mascha Hansen  Her research focuses on women in the long eighteenth century; especially Frances Burney, the Bluestockings, Hester Thrale and Queen Charlotte. She has published a monograph on Frances Burney in ix

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2004, and co-edited volumes on Great Expectations: Futurity in the Long Eighteenth Century (Peter Lang, 2012) and “The First Wit of the Age”: Essays on Swift and his Contemporaries in Honour of Hermann J.  Real (Peter Lang, 2013). Her particular interests range from women’s (life) writings to their involvement in sociability, science and education. She is part of the GIS Sociabilités and the DIGITENS project. Allan  Ingram is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. He has published books on James Boswell, on Swift and Pope, and on eighteenth-century insanity and its representation, as well as edited collections of primary material on the relations between insanity and medicine in the period. He edited Gulliver’s Travels for Broadview Press (2012). Between 2006 and 2009 he was Director of the Leverhulme Trust research project, ‘Before Depression, 1660–1800’, later Co-Director of a second Leverhulme Trust research project, ‘Fashionable Diseases: Medicine, Literature and Culture, 1660–1830’ and is now Co-Director of a third Leverhulme Trust project, Writing Doctors: Representation and Medical Personality ca. 1660–1832. His current work, which is connected with this project, is on relations between Swift, Pope and the medical profession. He is one of the editors of the English Association journal, English. Alain Kerhervé  is Professor of British Studies at the University of Western Brittany, France, and Director of the research unit HCTI (Héritages et Constructions dans le Texte et l’Image). His research focus is on the theory and practice of letter-writing, and he has published edited collections of The Correspondence of Mary Delany (1700–1788) and Francis North, Lord Guilford (1704–1790) (Cambridge Scholars, 2009), The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer (Cambridge Scholars, 2009), and The Memoirs of the Court of George III, vol. 2 (Routledge, 2015). His recent work is concerned with sociability: he co-founded the GIS Sociabilités together with Annick Cossic and edited a volume on British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth-Century (Boydell and Brewer, 2019) together with Valérie Capdeville. Jakub  Lipski is an associate professor and the head of Anglophone Literatures at Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz, Poland. He is the author of In Quest of the Self: Masquerade and Travel in the ­Eighteenth-­Century Novel (Brill/Rodopi, 2014) and Painting the Novel:

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

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Pictorial Discourse in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (Routledge, 2018). He is the editor of Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade across Languages, Cultures, and Media (Bucknell University Press, 2020) and is currently preparing a new edition of Robinson Crusoe for the Polish National Library series. Patrick  Müller took his Ph.D. at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster with a thesis on Latitudinarianism and Didacticism in Eighteenth-­ Century Literature in 2007 (Peter Lang, 2009), and was part of the Shaftesbury project at Friedrich Alexander-Universität, Erlangen-­ Nürnberg, for the next six years. In 2018, he edited a volume on Shaping Enlightenment Politics: The Social and Political Impact of the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury (Peter Lang). He now works as a teacher of English at the German Federal Office of Languages in Dresden. Kimberley  Page-Jones  is senior lecturer at the University of Western Brittany in France. Her research has focused on the practice of notebook writing during the Romantic era and she has published a monograph on the Notebooks of S.T.  Coleridge: Energie et mélancolie: les entrelacs de l’écriture dans les Notebooks de S.T. Coleridge (Grenoble: UGA, 2018). She is part of the GIS Sociabilités and currently coordinating the H2020 project called DIGITENS on European sociability in the long eighteenthcentury (2019–2021). Recently, she has co-edited La sociabilité en France et en Grande-Bretagne au Siècle des Lumières: l’insociable sociabilité: résistances et résilience (Paris: Editions Le Manuscrit, 2017) and Discours sur la mer. Résistance des pratiques et des représentations (Rennes: PUR, 2020). Her research work currently focuses on the political values attached to sociable practices and their aesthetic representations in literature. Susanne Schmid  has taught at a range of universities in Germany, Britain, and the US, among them Princeton, Salford, Freie Universität Berlin, Frankfurt, Mainz, and Greifswald. Book publications include her award-­ winning Shelley’s German Afterlives: 1814–2000 and British Literary Salons of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (both Palgrave Macmillan). She coedited several collections: The Reception of P.  B. Shelley in Europe (Bloomsbury), Drink in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Routledge), and Anglo-American Travelers and the Hotel Experience (Routledge). Her most recent book is an edition of Marguerite Blessington’s 1847 novel Marmaduke Herbert for the Chawton House series (Routledge).

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Michael Szczekalla  is a headmaster and also adjunct professor for English Literature at the University of Greifswald. He took his doctorate at the University of Münster in 1989. He has published monographs on Bacon and Hume, and his numerous articles and reviews cover seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English literature, historiography, and philosophy. He has also written on Oscar Wilde, Ford Madox Ford, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Burgess, Pat Barker, Malcolm Bradbury, Jennie Erdal, Glyn Maxwell, and on the methodology of teaching. Helen Williams  is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Northumbria University. She is the author of Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), co-editor of John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Broadview, 2018), and sits on the editorial board of the Shandean journal. She is Principle Investigator of the AHRC-funded ‘Sterne Digital Library’ project, whose primary output is the open-access database Laurence Sterne and Sterneana available through Cambridge Digital Library, a 2019 winner of the British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards, and co-investigator of the Leverhulme-funded research project ‘Writing Doctors’.

List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3

Thomas Wilson, An Analysis of Country Dancing, London: W. Calvert, 1822, p. 65 (fig. 7) 132 James Gillray, “Waltzer au Mouchoir” (1800), Hand-coloured etching published by Hannah Humphrey, National Portrait Gallery, London 138 Edward Francis Burney, “The Waltz” (late eighteenth, early nineteenth century), Watercolour drawing, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 139 Letter movements in Négociant universel (1799) 151 Letter movements in Epistolae Commerciales (1779) 152 Part of a war-time letter in Epistolae Commerciales (1779, 26) 154 George Cruickshank, Crusoe and Poll the Parrot in dialogue, 1831. (Photo: Phillip V. Allingham. Courtesy of The Victorian Web) 193 George Cruickshank, Crusoe and Friday encounter the captain of a British ship whose crew have mutinied, 1831. (Photo: Phillip V. Allingham. Courtesy of The Victorian Web) 199 Detail from the emblem for The Moralists (1714/15) 209 Detail from the Upper Border to the Frontispiece of the third volume of Characteristicks214 Detail from the Lower Border to the Frontispiece of the third volume of Characteristicks215

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Mascha Hansen

Throughout the long eighteenth century, in Britain and all over Europe, whether in the private, semi-public, or public sphere, through correspondences or commerce, what may be termed sociable encounters took place at an increasing rate: meetings, exchanges, negotiations, conversations or friendships framed by the sociable practices of the day. ‘Encounter’ is a term that has spawned its own literature, and within travel-related genres usually refers to Europeans exploring and/or exploiting the cultural and racial Other in remote parts of the world—remote, to be sure, only from a European perspective (for a recent discussion, see Craciun and Terrall 2019). This book, by contrast, seeks to highlight the importance of encounters between Britons and continental Europeans, moments when not only people but also their different cultures and their varying sociable practices got together. Individuals frequently felt torn between the conviction of being basically of a similar kind, as Europeans whose frequent meetings and exchanges had seemingly aligned social practices, and fundamentally different nevertheless, as nations who did things in quite distinct ways, be it waltzing or writing or wrestling. Whether consciously or not, continental sociabilities willy-nilly influenced British travellers—but in

M. Hansen (*) Greifswald, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_1

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turn, British tourists’ sociable interests also impacted on continental spaces, generating the infrastructures to accommodate them, since—as was frequently flagged up by critics of the practice in Britain—they brought a lot of money into the countries they visited (see, for instance, Black 1999, 86). Money, indeed, cannot be kept out of a discussion of sociability, as funds, high or low, facilitated or prevented private commerce and travel, be it the purchase of a book or that of a passage to France. Tourists, traders and even readers, with their varying social convictions and cultural practices, met, traded, clashed and compromised, in fact as well as in fiction, and their meetings more often than not eventually led to cultural transfers that had in turn to be comprehended, negotiated and finally encompassed by the individual within a larger social frame. Encounters between private persons and professional groups served to spread the sociable ideals of the Enlightenment, here taken in the sense advanced by Roy Porter as based on instructive conviviality as well as practical results: “In Britain, at least, the Enlightenment was thus not just a matter of pure epistemological breakthroughs; it was primarily the expression of new mental and moral values, new canons of taste, styles of sociability and views of human nature” (2001, 14). All of these, we argue, had an impact on the European Enlightenment, too, via the spreading of British notions of sociability on the Continent through personal, practical, and fictional encounters. Travellers as well as books, be they novels or advice manuals, disseminated these new values, conveying the sense of a modern taste for sociable encounters. Newly-found leisure contributed to the vogue for foreign travel, as did the realization of the necessity of professional exchanges despite, or perhaps because of, frequent political turmoil. Modern languages had become a matter of course in middle-class education, and a thriving book market as well as circulation libraries made European literature and travel advice manuals freely available to all. A surge in tourism and private travels in the later eighteenth century, lasting roughly until the French revolution and the subsequent wars made travelling difficult, may have contributed to a (temporary) decline in xenophobic reactions at home, possibly, as Jeremy Black has argued, because Britain felt “politically and culturally more secure”, a security to which economic factors certainly contributed but which also points to a new-­ found self-confidence (Black 1999, xiii). Travelling inevitably also led to a change not only in the perceptions of those travelling but also in how they were perceived by others, and Britons and their cultural practices were “ridiculed, revered and emulated” in the rest of Europe, frequently at the

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same time (Farr and Guégan 2013, 1). Some derision notwithstanding, British travellers could generally count on the Anglophilia of at least the Northern and Central European countries, on an “admiration for political liberty and commercial and manufacturing progress” in Britain (Sweet et al. 2017, 4), a fascination with the British way of life, and thus—this volume argues—with British sociability. Conversely, while British liberty and literature were admired or rejected, advanced or contested throughout Europe, any actual sociable encounters would still have to cope with national prejudices, patriotism and largely irrational feelings of superiority on all sides. To some British travellers, however, the neighbouring European countries hardly counted as foreign countries any more: “The manners of nations who have so much intercourse with each other, have very little variety”, the Bluestocking Elizabeth Carter deplored already in 1763 (Pennington 1807, 193), a claim with which Samuel Johnson would have agreed. Nonetheless, on being abroad, both found much to puzzle over, delight in, or disapprove of. Their letters are filled with comparisons to England, and mostly, confidence and pride in their nation prevail. Indeed, as critics have argued, many travellers came home “better-­ informed xenophobes” (Black 1999, 235), and it is certainly true that British travellers by and large voiced a decided preference for their own country. Yet this can be said of the travellers of other nations as well, and many such statements were due to the relief of finally being back at home, or even to homesickness while abroad. Back in Britain, once the strains of travel had worn off, the fascination with other countries remained. This volume, thus, is meant as another challenge to the “enduring trope” of British travellers returning home “firmly embedded in the culture that they had brought with them” (Sweet et al. 2017, 4), even if they themselves may have thought so (see also Barczewski 2013, 38). This is not to say that British travellers, or even British readers, easily adopted foreign ways, as contemporary critics feared: “there was relatively little unthinking assumption of foreign customs, manners and mores”, instead, there was a growing openness towards foreign cultural influences, more willingness to accept other cultures on their own terms (Black 1999, 302). There were, in short, more frequent personal encounters between the different nations, and paradoxically, while each individual encounter may have served to foster prejudices, xenophobic reactions gradually began to decline, and even to be replaced by curiosity. Over time, even the favourite destinations on the Continent changed, and while going on a Grand Tour to Italy was still a dream for some, costs and other

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complications led many to prefer a less ardent route. This may have been due to a more general shift in the goals of travelling, away from educational purposes towards leisure and pleasure, self-serving goals which no longer needed defending. Journeys especially to Northern Europe, including Britain, were undertaken in search of modernity rather than antiquity, attracted by “contemporary power, society and culture” (Sweet et  al. 2017, 5–6). Health had long been another reason for travel, and with the amelioration of continental infrastructures, this goal seemed within reach, or at least accessible, to British travellers in search of alleviations for their sufferings. Last but not least, impecunious middle- and upper-class families began to move abroad for a few months or even years to save on the costs of living, or in some cases, avoid scandal, and these, too, would have brought their own notions of contemporary sociability to the Continent. Nonetheless, the concept of British sociability should not be stretched, or contracted, into a uniform or homogeneous practice; neither should it be taken for granted, as every British book or traveller of the time followed their own preferences rather than a predetermined code of conduct. As Michèle Cohen has pointed out, “sociability changed over time […] it was a living practice” in which “apparently contradictory practices could co-­ exist without being antithetical” (2019, xv). Clearly, the spreading of a new kind of sociability does not require everyone to follow suit, it just needs a critical mass, or general awareness, to reach a state of widespread acceptance and emulation to establish itself as the dominant mode of procedure in social situations. Politeness, for instance, served different purposes at different times, and for different classes. Jeremy Black, for one, has raised the interesting point of the connections between sociability and morality: he questions the usefulness of the concept of politeness in the context of the aristocratic Grand Tour’s frequent sexual encounters. Love affairs, or sexual exploits, could be a dominant trope, related in rather crude language, indeed in “a clear contrast to Addisonian restraint”, in letters to friends rather than family back at home. Black continues: Any stress on this politeness has to address the question as to how far it was deliberately inculcated in order to cope with a very different culture. A self-­ image of politeness must be understood as a cultural artefact, a socio-­ ­ ideological aspiration designed to foster particular ends of moral improvement. (Black 1999, 194)

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Politeness is certainly a means of coping with a very different culture: to facilitate encounters of whatever kind is the mandate of politeness, and social usefulness the indicator any practical concept of politeness has to be measured by. This is not to say that British sociability relied on politeness alone, or that “moral improvement” of the limited sense implied here was its main goal. On the contrary, morality and politeness were and often still are at cross-purposes, especially in the area of the polite lie. Black is looking at the kind of wealthy young men, those on the Grand Tour, for whose moral example Richardson invented Sir Charles Grandison. For other tourists, male or female, sexual exploitations would not have constituted the basic excitement of travelling; instead, they actively employed and adjusted their own standards of politeness in order to socialize successfully with their European neighbours. Nonetheless, even a sexual liaison of the kind described by Black counts as a cross-cultural encounter, outlining the conditions of polite sociability each party relied on. One of the letters detailing such a sexual encounter between a young aristocrat and a penniless Italian—possibly a servant as she is called “Ancilla” in the letters— highlights the theatricality that is also part of sociability: the young man, having left never to return but still keeping up the semblance of a correspondence with his ‘beloved’, knows that she needs to move on to another lover for financial reasons, and reflects on this to his friend: “I wrote her however most violent letters for doing what I had tacitly consented to” (quoted in Black 1999, 194), a stance no doubt taken in order to maintain the fiction of a loving encounter between them, rather than admitting to a heartless exchange of money for sexual favours. Indeed, Brian Cowan raises the spectre of a “paradoxical juxtaposition” of politeness and libertinage in the eighteenth century only to conclude that the progress of both “went hand in hand” (2019, 19). Love and sex in any case were matters of sociability, too, relying on the same means of polite negotiation, or cover-up, as other encounters: the young man is saving face here, his own most prominently, but arguably also that of the woman, by politely pretending that she has chosen to desert him rather than being compelled by necessity to move on. Judged by any moral standards, this is inacceptable behaviour, but from the point of view of social politeness, the young man at least would not have considered himself wanting, whatever ‘Ancilla’ may have thought about the matter (if she was in love, she might have preferred those insincere letters to a blunt cheque). Polite sociability relies on a certain amount of adroitness, or even theatrical know-how, rather than on sound moral principles. However, even the young nobleman’s

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traditional Grand Tour was changing: Sarah Goldsmith speaks of the “staggering effort devoted to socializing” (Goldsmith 2017, 67) by young aristocrats in the later eighteenth century. These young men not only represented the British elite on tour, they also served to promote British ideas of sociability abroad, and brought back their own accounts of social practices in other countries. This “social itinerary”, Goldsmith argues, should not be confined to an educational frame but be linked to larger socio-­ political concerns of the time, though it did teach “vital skills in social versatility” (70). Social customs and reactions to the political situation in Europe were closely interrelated, then as now. This volume, then, is meant to address a broad range of private and public, touristic, commercial and even fictional meetings that led to a meaningful exchange of opinions, and of practices of sociability, in Europe. Drawing on recent publications such as Capdeville and Kerhervé’s innovative British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century (2019), this book takes the existence of a specific British variety of sociability as its vantage point. Going beyond the English-French connections, we are interested in debating how those sociable encounters played out in a European rather than national frame. Even apart from clubs and coffee-houses, face-to-face encounters took place—quite literally taking up some space somewhere— in specific locations that also require further attention: whereas the polite society of salons and debating rooms has received quite some consideration by now (for recent work see e.g. Schmid 2013; Prendergast 2015; Lilti 2007/2015), other places and other forms of spreading sociability still need to be investigated. Most kinds of encounters require specific spaces at least in the sense of material or physical requirements that have to be met before an encounter can take place. Letters rely on ink and paper as well as postal services, and may be read by others than those they are addressed to, while European travel even then was largely based on a newly emerging reliable infrastructure of coaches and ships, roads and inns, all of which offered numerous opportunities for chance encounters. Martin Farr and Xavier Guégan point out that the long-standing tradition of British travelling abroad itself entailed the “export of British tourism practices to Europe and beyond” (2013, 1). The notion of travel, and especially that of tourism, in turn depends on its being defined as a “cultural and political experience, generating images, dreams and promises of alternatives to life at home” (2), and, we might add, of alternatives to local modes of sociability.

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The essays in these volumes try to capture a broad variety of situations: the everyday moment, the shifting attitude and explanation, the cultural practice in the process of changing. They show that defining Britishness against the social practices of other cultures is only one way of accepting that those have inevitably already impacted on, and probably significantly changed, individual British perceptions and practices, and that this process can rarely be pinned down to particular events (or encounters). Reciprocally, of course, the British left their own stamp on the places they visited and people they met abroad, no matter whether these were local servants they hired to interpret for them or urban spaces redesigned to suit their conversational habits and tourist requirements. Given the demand for British fiction abroad, the imaginary encounter may well have had a comparable impact not only among British readers, but also among continental European markets keen on immediate translations of British novels, plays, poems, histories, and philosophical treatises. The personal and fictional experiences of the people and places mentioned in this volume thus exemplify larger topics, such as the influence of specifically British practices of sociability on sociable practices in the rest of Europe (or vice versa); the reception, appropriation, or transfer of local and regional customs; the expectations travellers brought to other countries concerning conversation and/or conviviality; the emergence of tourism as a practice of sociability closely tied to the spreading of (fictionalized) travel accounts, and travel writing as a means of literary production and consumption in Europe throughout the long eighteenth century. On a more practical level, this raises various questions: how did sociable meetings between individuals of different cultures actually proceed, and which meetings proved to be meaningful or influential in the long run (for instance by being described in letters preserved for publication)? What was the importance of gender in areas of sociability that go beyond those notions of politeness in which women held sway, at least nominally? What happened if sociability turned sour? Not all initially sociable encounters ended in mutual understanding, let alone an advancement of politeness or civilization. Failures in the expectation of finding sociability and explorations of unsociable outcomes need to be explored as well: not for nothing is the term “encounter”, which has no entry of its own in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755), made use of to explain the sense of “affront” (s.v. ‘affront’, 95:3). Encounters can be hostile indeed, and it is interesting to note the cultural rather than personal reasons why:

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which convictions in the field of sociability contributed to confrontational encounters? Johnson himself makes an appearance in the first part of this volume, concerned with examples of actual, personal encounters between British and continental travellers and tourists, and the ways and means—for instance using literary texts as guidelines—by which these travellers dealt with, and puzzled over, cultural differences in the field of sociability. The descriptions of such encounters, frequently revealed by means of private correspondences, offer a rich field for contemporary scholars in which to conceptualize sociability. In the second chapter, Allan Ingram outlines the travel impressions of Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale on their first, and for Johnson only, tour to France, the prejudices they brought and shed on this trip, the difficulties they faced, and the languages they used to get by—in Johnson’s case, Latin rather than French determined his personal encounters, since he was more at ease conversing with French priests who spoke Latin than with literary people who did not. In the third chapter, Sebastian Domsch focuses on the significance of various encounters, in Corsica as well as Britain, between James Boswell, Pascal Paoli, and Samuel Johnson, and the ways in which the sociable aspects of their (anticipated) meetings were framed to fit in somewhere between expectations of Roman simplicity, the noble savage, and actual urbanity. The impact of British travellers’ sociable interests on continental European spaces—such as spa cities, and even, somewhat paradoxically given the nature of sociability, graveyards, which began to attract tourists, is outlined in the next two chapters: Helen Williams sketches the crossover from fact to fiction, and fiction to fact, in the wave of literary pilgrimages following the publications of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–67) and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768): readers hoped to see the graves of the fictional Maria, and were lured by entrepreneurial hosts to places where they experienced an intensely social form of shared grief, feeling spiritually, if not actually, connected to a community of readers. The last chapter of this part, by Mascha Hansen, outlines in detail how the Belgian, or as it was then known, the German Spa attracted tourists such as Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Carter, who went abroad in search of health and society in 1763, visiting nunneries and monasteries rather than graveyards on the road, and braving the war-torn roads to cross into Germany. Travelling, at that time, was not so prevalent that their friends could dispense with frequent letters giving a blow-by-blow account of things done

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and people visited, and the topics raised in these letters shed a light on the polite sociability of European travels. The second section deals primarily with sociable cross-overs in the various fields of cultural practices such as dancing and private theatricals, moving on to encounters in the larger sphere of commerce. Cultural differences attracted and repelled, and occasionally turned out to be decisive for (economic) success or failure, so that the precautions taken to avoid cultural conflicts, especially in times of war, for instance by studying manuals, in turn spurred further commercial enterprises, not only in the literary marketplace. Travel writing itself was one such marketable activity, and as Annick Cossic outlines in Chap. 6, the eccentric and rather quarrelsome Philip Thicknesse’s attempts to rival the publications of Tobias Smollett led to further (actual and imaginary) cross-cultural encounters as both vied to be the foremost authority on travel in France. Susanne Schmid in turn considers the theatrical imports from Germany that the traveller, writer and socialite Elizabeth Craven, by then Margravine of Anspach, brought onto the semi-private London stage at Brandenburgh House with the help of semi-professionals. Craven felt obliged to tone down the political implications of Schiller’s Robbers (1781) in her stage-production in order not to attract further criticism, but at the same time she was able to present a play that would not have been stageable at all in one of the public theatres, despite the sentimental appeal of its characters. In Chap. 8, Kimberley Page-Jones discusses the shifting attitudes towards the waltz, another import from Germany, as it slowly made its way from the Continent to Britain, and the political assumptions that crept in with it: like the Robbers, the waltz seemed a dangerous imposition not only on British moral codes due to its display of women’s bodies but also in political terms, being closely associated with the Revolution in France. The question how to avoid conflict is prominent in Alain Kerhervé’s contribution on model commercial letters, which brought the various polite phrases to be used by anyone corresponding in European languages such as French, Spanish and Portuguese to the attention of aspiring British merchants. Politics, here, too, were considered a taboo topic, whereas the degree of familiarity and friendship to be displayed in such letters remained a controversial issue: which would further trade most? In the third part, fictional encounters are given prominence, including imaginary conversations in the form of philosophical dialogues. How did literary or philosophical encounters highlight notions of sociability, which images of cultural transfer were used, and how were these read and

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received by an increasingly heterogeneous readership? Katrin Berndt focuses on aspects of friendship, a central concern in Frances Brooke’s The History of Lady Julia Mandeville (1763). Berndt argues that the capacity to sustain friendship is used not only to illustrate character but as a central plot-driving device, proving the versatility of the concept of sociability. The absence of friendship for most of Robinson Crusoe (1719), by contrast, serves to highlight the sociable nature of human beings, Jakub Lipski claims: drawing on other writings by Daniel Defoe, he proves the importance of conversation to both Crusoe and Defoe himself, as well as the novel’s early promotion of the advantages of natural sociability in simple surroundings before the onset of colonialism. Chapter 12 shifts the discussion to the realm of philosophical encounters: Patrick Müller returns to the roots of the enlightened concept of sociability as outlined in the works of Anton Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury. An ardent Whig, Shaftesbury considered the fundamental wellbeing of the nation to be based on its global relations, and battled adversarial opinions in less sociable encounters of the kind that Johnson might have called affronts. Michael Szczekalla picks up the notion of fundamentalism in the last chapter, which serves to tie up the volume’s various expeditions into the Enlightenment by a detailed discussion of the argumentative encounter between David Hume and Joseph de Maistre. Taken together, the essays in this volume contribute to the claim that there is a perceptible shift towards a more tolerant stance on all things foreign in the late eighteenth century (Black 1999, 213; 230), but with regard to political controversy, the picture is more complex: while the polite letter deemed politics a taboo subject, and actual personal encounters between women may have excluded such discussions, politics were a frequent topic in mixed meetings, and any transfer of cultural practices or mores sparked political debate and social critique in the newspapers of the time. Travel and literature generally served to facilitate women’s participation in British sociability but female forays into the world of travel writing or that of theatrical productions were usually accompanied by controversy and criticism. Nevertheless, cultural sociable exchange was a vibrant area of eighteenth-century life, via consumption, commerce, and practical experience: Britishness, then as now, relied on a mode of successful adaptation to, and adaptation of, foreign impulses, and the Enlightenment must be seen as a truly European, and truly sociable, enterprise.

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Bibliography Barczewski, Stephanie. 2013. Country Houses, Travel and the Cosmopolitan Identity of the British Elite in the Eighteenth Century. In The British Abroad Since the Eighteenth Century, ed. Martin Farr and Xavier Guégan, 2 vols, vol. 1, 38–55. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Black, Jeremy. 1999. The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century. London: Sandpiper Books. Capdeville, Valérie, and Alain Kerhervé, eds. 2019. British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Challenging the Anglo-French Connection. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Cohen, Michèle. 2019. Foreword. In British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Challenging the Anglo-French Connection, ed. Valérie Capdeville and Alain Kerhervé, xiii–xv. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Cowan, Brian. 2019. ‘Restoration’ England and the History of Sociability. In British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Challenging the Anglo-French Connection, ed. Valérie Capdeville and Alain Kerhervé, 7–24. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Craciun, Adriana, and Mary Terrall, eds. 2019. Curious Encounters: Voyaging, Collecting, and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Farr, Martin, and Xavier Guégan. 2013. Introduction. In The British Abroad Since the Eighteenth Century, ed. Martin Farr and Xavier Guégan, 2 vols, vol. 1, 1–15. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldsmith, Sarah. 2017. The Social Challenge: Northern and Central European Societies on the Eighteenth-century Aristocratic Grand Tour. In Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour, ed. Rosemary Sweet et al., 65–82. London and New York: Routledge. Johnson, Samuel. 1755. A Dictionary of the English Language. Accessed March 6, 2020. https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/affront-­noun/. Lilti, Antoine. 2007. Le monde des salons: sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Fayard. ———. 2015. The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-­ Century Paris. Translated by Lydia G.  Cochrane. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pennington, Montagu, ed. 1807. Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Carter; with a New Edition of Her Poems, to Which are Added Some Miscellaneous Essays in Prose, Together with her Notes on the Bible, and Answers to Objections Concerning the Christian Religion. London, printed for F.C. and J. Rivington. Porter, Roy. 2001. Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World. London: Penguin Books.

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Prendergast, Amy. 2015. Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schmid, Susanne. 2013. British Literary Salons of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sweet, Rosemary, Gerrit Verhoeven, and Sarah Goldsmith, eds. 2017. Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour. London and New York: Routledge.

PART I

Conceptualizing Sociability: Travel and Tourism

CHAPTER 2

The Cham on the Seine: Dr Johnson in Paris (and Mrs Thrale) Allan Ingram

It was in the autumn of 1775, when he was turning sixty-six years old, that Samuel Johnson was taken on an extended visit to Paris—his first and only trip away from the British Isles—by Mr and Mrs Thrale, along with the Thrales’ eldest child, Queeney, then coming up to her eleventh birthday, and Queeney’s tutor in Italian, Joseph (or Guiseppe) Baretti. They left London on 15th September and were away for almost two months, finally arriving back in Dover on 11th November. The whole trip was financed, of course, by Thrale—a cost, according to Baretti, of eight hundred and twenty-two  louis d’or, or around £700  in English money at the time (Journals 57, 57n3).1 They crossed from Dover and travelled on by carriage from Calais to Paris (celebrating Queeney’s birthday on 17th September, hotly followed by Johnson’s on 18th) by way of St Omer, Arras, Amiens, Neufchatel, Rouen, Vernon and St Germain before taking up their Paris lodgings, which Mrs Thrale found “not only” convenient but elegant (Journals 90), on 28th. These had been arranged, as had so much else on this trip, by Baretti. They stayed until the end of October,

A. Ingram (*) Newcastle, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_2

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leaving Paris, where, as Mrs Thrale put it, “we have spent a Month of extreme Expence, some Pleasure & some Profit” (Journals 149), on 1st November and travelling back to Calais by way of St Denys, Chantilly, Noyon, Cambrai, Douay, Lisle and Dunkirk. Johnson’s assessment of the experience, sadly, as expressed in a letter to Edmund Hector, written on 16th November, was somewhat blunt: “I have seen nothing that much delighted or surprised me” (Letters II, 274). He expanded on this a little, writing the same day to Lucy Porter: Paris is not so fine a place as you would expect. The palaces and Churches however are very splendid and magnificent, and what would please you, there are many very fine pictures, but I do not think their way of life commodious or pleasant. (Letters II, 276)

It had been exactly two years since Johnson’s famous and successful tour to Scotland and the Hebrides with James Boswell—indeed, Johnson’s account of it, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, had been published in January, eight months prior to the Paris trip. The Hebrides had been followed by a visit to North Wales between early July and the end of September 1774, with Mr and Mrs Thrale, which had gone much less well. Johnson was distinctly unimpressed by Wales or the Welsh, finding their country, as he wrote to Boswell on his return, “so little different from England, that it offers nothing to the speculation of the traveller” (Letters II, 149), and their clergy in particular marked mainly by their ignorance (Diary 111). He did, however, concede some points of minor interest, including that “Denbigh is not a mean town” (Letters II, 149), and that “the sound of the Welsh, in a continued discourse, is not unpleasant” (Diary 90). More positively, he found some of the Welsh castles very striking: “I did not think there had been such buildings”, he wrote of Caernarvon Castle in his unpublished diary of the excursion, “it surpassed my ideas” (Diary 106). To John Taylor, on 20th October, though, he wrote as bluntly as he would a year later about France: But Wales has nothing that can much excite or gratify curiosity. The mode of life is entirely English. I am glad that I have seen it, though I have seen nothing, because I now know that there is nothing to be seen. (Letters II, 151)

Apart from Scotland, then, Johnson would seem to have been an unpromising traveller or travelling companion, and his capacity, when abroad, for meaningful sociable encounters therefore extremely limited. Boswell, no

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doubt with the Scottish trip in mind, had written to Bennet Langton on 24th October, while Johnson was still in France, that “this journey to Paris is an excellent incident in his life. I am exceedingly curious to have some account of it from him” (Years 170n5) and the very same day he wrote to Johnson asking “Shall we have A Journey to Paris from you in the winter?” (Life 643). He adds: You will, I hope, at any rate be kind enough to give me some account of your French travels very soon, for I am very impatient. What a different scene you have viewed this autumn, from that which you viewed in autumn 1773! (Life 643)

Johnson in his reply of 16th November wrote, deflatingly: Paris is, indeed, a place very different from the Hebrides, but it is to a hasty traveller not so fertile of novelty, nor affords so many opportunities of remark. I cannot pretend to tell the publick any thing of a place better known to many of my readers than to myself. We can talk of it when we meet. (Letters II, 274)

Boswell himself, who as a young man on the Grand Tour had spent time in many of the great cities of Europe, and had hangovers and sex in most of them (though not necessarily at the same time), was clearly disappointed: “It is to be regretted that he did not write an account of his travels in France”, he adds in the Life, because “his very accurate observation, and peculiar vigour of thought and illustration, would have produced a valuable work” (Life 645). Boswell, of course, would not have known of the misgivings with which Johnson had approached even the Hebrides excursion. He had written from Newcastle to Mrs Thrale, on 12th August 1773: You have often heard me complain of finding myself disappointed by books of travels, I am afraid travel itself will end likewise in disappointment. One town, one country is very like another. Civilized nations have the same customs, and barbarous nations have the same nature. There are indeed minute discriminations both of places and of manners, which perhaps are not unworthy of curiosity, but which a traveller seldom stays long enough to investigate and compare. The dull utterly neglect them, the acute see a little, and supply the rest by fancy and conjecture. (Letters II, 50)

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Johnson himself would not have known of the transformative effect of the Hebrides experience on his own capacity to write books of travel: but his general expectation was still, especially after the North Wales venture, one of anticipated disappointment. Nevertheless, Johnson was far from displeased to have the opportunity to visit Paris. As Robert DeMaria Jr reminds us, he had since his childhood identified “himself with a unified, late Latin European cultural heritage” and especially with “the great works of European humanism”, including Petrarch and “the likes of Buchanan, Scaliger, Erasmus, Heinsius, and Burman”. DeMaria repeats from Boswell the report of Johnson at Oxford being heard muttering in his room: “I’ll go and visit the Universities abroad. I’ll go to France & Italy. I’ll go to Padua” (DeMaria Jr 1993, xi– xii).2 After France, moreover, the Thrales and he were arranging to go to Italy the following spring—thus enabling Johnson to fulfil the whole of his student intention—though that trip was cancelled after the death of one of the Thrale children. Even so, this whole period suggests Johnson’s readiness to travel, notwithstanding his own reservations about what the curious traveller might find that could not equally well be found at home. That said, Johnson did not set himself up at all promisingly for his first ever trip to the continent. Part of this was down to the fundamentals of Johnson’s personality—at least, according to the sometimes unreliable Baretti. As he wrote in a marginal note in his copy of Mrs Thrale’s (by then Mrs Piozzi’s) publication in 1788 of Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson: Johnson was not fit to travel, as every place was equal to him. He mused as much on the road to Paris as he did in his garret in London, as much at a French Opera as in his room at Streatham. During our Journey to and from Paris he visited five or six libraries, which is the most idle thing a Traveller can do, as they are but to be seen cursorily. With men, women and children he never cared to exchange a word, and if he ever took any delight in any thing, it was to converse with some old acquaintance. New people he never loved to be in company with, except Ladies when disposed to caress and flatter him. (Journals 3n3; Piozzi 1788, I, 315)

More strictly a matter of Johnson’s own choice, however, was, as Boswell reports, his decision to speak not in French but only in Latin:

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While Johnson was in France, he was generally very resolute in speaking in Latin. It was a maxim with him that a man should not let himself down, by speaking a language which he speaks imperfectly […]. Though Johnson understood French perfectly, he could not speak it readily […]. (Life 659–60)

Latin, however, he “spoke with wonderful fluency and elegance” (Life 661). Again, according to Boswell, the London comic actor and dramatist, Samuel Foote, who was in Paris at the same time, described the impact of the resolutely English Johnson upon the Parisians.3 His “description of my friend while there”, says Boswell, was abundantly ludicrous. He told me, that the French were quite astonished at his figure and manner, and at his dress, which he obstinately continued exactly as in London;―his brown clothes, black stockings, and plain shirt. (Life 659)

He did, though, purchase a new Parisian wig while there, and this Boswell applauds later, along with an overall improvement in his dress sense, when commenting on events taking place in April 1778, after Johnson requests his advice in buying himself a new pair of silver buckles. Probably this alteration in dress had been suggested by Mrs. Thrale, by associating with whom, his external appearance was much improved. He got better clothes; and the dark colour, from which he never deviated, was enlivened by metal buttons. His wigs, too, were much better; and during their travels in France, he was furnished with a Paris-made wig, of handsome construction. (Life 973)

This, no doubt, was not the wig mentioned by Mrs Thrale herself at Dunkirk on the way home when, entertained to afternoon “Tea and Cards” at the house of Captain Andrew Frazer, the British Commissary, the “French Company” present “seemed much diverted with the odd Appearance of Johnson’s Wig & Queeney’s Cap and refrained from laughing out with the greatest Difficulty […]” (Journals 163–64). There are clearly other, native, perspectives on the experience of travel in a different country, apart from laughter, suppressed or otherwise, at the encounter with the bizarre. As Howard Weinbrot has shown, Johnson was by no means unknown as a literary figure by the time of his Paris visit, though his reputation was more partial, and less controversial, than when he took his anti-Scot prejudices with Boswell to Scotland. His Dictionary,

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certainly, had been presented by the British chargé d’affaires to the Académie Française on 12th June 1755 (Weinbrot 2005, 271), by which time he was already known for his Rambler essays, which had been commented on in print and translated, at least in part. In Weinbrot’s summary: the French journals involved tended to agree that “Johnson’s style is demonstrably un-French, scholastic, and more elevated than entertaining or lively”. However, they agreed too over his “admirable breadth of topics”, his “sustained elegance and quality of mind”, and his “confidence in the reader” as well as his “morality” (Weinbrot 2005, 273). As for Rasselas, the third work for which he was known, Weinbrot reminds us that its popularity was such that by the end of the eighteenth century it “would be used to teach English to French readers” (Weinbrot 2005, 275). Interestingly, though, Weinbrot’s concluding remarks on Johnson’s later reputation among the French indicate something not far removed from the impressions reported by Foote: After about 1786 for many across the channel Johnson becomes a learned version of the English eccentric, a quirky and diminished John Bull rather than the widely acclaimed man of letters able to instruct the Académie Française in the art of lexicography. (Weinbrot 2005, 288)

The reason for this is the force of the portrait painted by Bowell of the man himself, first in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which was published in 1785, and subsequently the Life. As Weinbrot continues: Post-Boswellian commentators reject and redefine the earlier French history of literary response. Johnson the author then had been called England’s most instructive and fecund writer, all of whose works deserved preservation. Once the verbal and visual replace the intellectual Johnson, once those parts replace or distort the whole, he is merely the repugnant if well-­meaning alien barbarian. (Weinbrot 2005, 288)

One wonders how far a visit in person, albeit without any fanfares or widespread publicity, assisted in paving the way for such a dramatic turnaround in Johnson’s standing in the country he was in the process of disparaging. One of Johnson’s earliest encounters during his French travels, though, was most promising, notwithstanding his uncompromising appearance, his Latin and, it must be said, his general prejudice against things French.

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In fact, given that it took place at a Benedictine library in Rouen, it is indicative both of the strengths and the weaknesses of Johnson as a traveller and as a sociable being. Mrs Thrale describes the event: In the Afternoon we went to a Library belonging if I mistake not to the Benedictines; here we picked up an Abbé who conversed in Latin with Mr Johnson, who had hitherto been unlucky in not finding Company he could talk to―nobody resorting to us on that Acct but an old stupid Priest […]. However with this Abbé or Chanoine as they called him he seemed wholly at his ease. (Journals 82)

They meet again at supper the next day “where Johnson […] entered into a most ingenious Argument with him concerning the demolition of the Jesuits” (Journals 84–85). Finally, the Abbé, Abbé Roffette, comes to bid them farewell a day later, when “We read & chatted, & criticized and Johnson’s Eulogium upon Milton in Latin was truly sublime. Mr Thrale invited the Abbé to return with us, and Mr Johnson promised to shew him Oxford” (Journals 85–86). The message here about Johnson as a traveller is obvious: he is perfectly prepared—indeed eager—to enter into sociable relations with those he meets, but strictly on his own terms. They must speak the language of his choosing and engage with his interests and his prejudices. Nothing else is worthwhile for him. In reality, this very much confines his social circle while away to people he knows already and to members of the church, a ready-made group able at least to begin to appreciate the demands Johnson makes and to have the capacity to satisfy them. His visit to the journalist, Élie Catherine Fréron, for example, neatly illustrates the impediments he was imposing on himself, both by choice and by nature: “He spoke Latin very scantily”, records Johnson, “but seemed to understand me […]. I was pleased with my reception” (Journals 173). A cordiality similar to that with the Abbé, on the other hand, develops in Paris with Father William Cowley, an Englishman, with whom he presumably spoke English, who was Prior of the English Benedictines at the monastery of St Edmund the King. “I am very kindly used by the English Benedictine friars”, wrote Johnson to Robert Levet on 22nd October, adding rather ruefully, but “upon the whole I cannot make much acquaintance here” (Letters II, 272–73). Mrs Thrale writes more fully in her journal:

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Mrs Strickland then introduced us to a Convent of English Benedictine Monks, the Prior of which Society was particularly civil & shewed us the Corpse of James the 2d: deposited here & the Model of his Face in Plaister of Paris or Wax […]. (Journals 97)

The Prior is one of a party invited to dine at their lodgings the next day, 4th October, and, says Mrs Thrale, seemed “learned & polite, and likes me, I believe, which is always the first good Quality in my Eyes” (Journals 99). A week later, on 12th October, he is part of a larger group on a trip to the Gobelins, where they admire the tapestries (Journals 110–11). Father Cowley even provides Johnson with a cell for his personal use at the monastery, where he can retreat and read when he wishes. Johnson spends his final day in Paris, 31st October, there, eating with them and using the library. He reports in his journal: I lived at the Benedictines, meagre day, Soup meagre, herrings, eels, both with sauce. Fryed fish. Lentils, tasteless in themselves. In the library, where I found Maffeus Historia Indica […]. I parted very tenderly from the Prior and Friar Wilkes. (Journals 186)

Both Cowley and Wilkes subsequently visited England, in fact, with Johnson supplying Wilkes, who came to see him in London in May 1776, with letters of introduction to his old Oxford college, Pembroke, and Mrs Thrale reporting to Johnson in September 1777 of Father Cowley’s visit to the Thrales, informing him that “He enquires much for you” and that “A Cell is always kept ready for your Use, he tells me” (Journals 224). Johnson responds: “I am glad that my cell is reserved. I may perhaps some time or other visit it, though I cannot easily tell why one should go to Paris twice. Our own beds are soft enough” (Letters III, 75). Father Cowley, Father Wilkes, Luke Joseph Hooke, Librarian of the Sorbonne (Journals 181), Sir Henry Gough and Henry Keene (Journals 183), Captain Killpatrick (Journals 183), who “finds the way to Johnson’s heart by abusing the French, & knows how to flatter Baretti who defends them” according to Mrs Thrale (Journals 141), Sir George Colebrooke and Sir George Rodney (Journals 183–84), Colonel Drumgould (Journals 186): these are just some of the fellow countrymen with whom Johnson socialized, visited, and dined while in Paris, sometimes in company with the Thrales and Baretti, at other times alone. Sociable encounters, certainly, but not of the kind one needed to visit Paris to experience. Johnson

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did see a good deal of what France had to offer, and did enjoy some of it. The Palais Royal he describes as “very grand, large and lofty, a very great collection of pictures. Three of Raphael―two Holy Family―one small piece of M.  Angelo. One room of Rubens. I thought the pictures of Raphael fine” (Journals 173). While visiting Versailles (“a mean town” with “Mean shops against the wall” [Journals 177]), they go “to see the looking glasses wrought”, and Johnson inserts in his otherwise very perfunctory and memorandum-style journal a full and detailed description of the grinding and polishing of the mirrors, the equipment and substances used and the several stages of the operation (Journal 178–79). The library of St Germain he finds a “very noble collection” (Journal 185), while many of the churches and cathedrals are also praised, such as, on the very last page of his unfinished journal, that at Cambrai: It is very beautiful, with chappels on each side. The Choir splendid. The Balustrade in one part brass. The Neff very high and grand. The altar Silver as far as it is seen. The vestments very splendid. (Journals 188)

Against all this, however, are the many discomforts, shortcomings and national failings of the French, and these Johnson seems to find insuperable. “His dislike to the French”, says Mrs Thrale (Mrs Piozzi) in Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, “was well known to both nations, I believe” (Piozzi 1786, 73). Nothing in his visit of 1775 seems to have given him reason seriously to question that dislike, unlike his journey to Scotland two years earlier, when going with an equally well-established and well-­ known antipathy he produced as a result one of his most thoughtful and eye-opening publications. His judgement of France and the French, though, as expressed in a letter to John Taylor after his return, shows nothing that has stimulated thought or changed anything in his view, still less prompted any desire to publish: The French have a clear air and a fruitful soil, but their mode of common life is gross, and incommodious, and disgusting. I am come home convinced that no improvement of general use is to be gained among them. (Letters II, 277)

Mrs Thrale, however, is a different matter. While sharing much of Johnson’s distaste for French habits, French food, French manners and French hotels, she developed while abroad a keen appreciation of just

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what it was that France had to offer, and was far more willing to suffer the inconveniences in order to engage with the beauty, interest and cultural distinctiveness of French civilization. Travelling between Rouen and Vernon, for example, on their way to Paris, they see the vineyards along the banks of the Seine: This was the first Day I ever saw a Vineyard, and of course the first day I was disappointed on that Side. Nothing but the Value of the Fruit can make one pay any Respect to the Tree during Growth, it is short & ragged & not half so pretty to the Eye as a Hop Garden […]

but, she adds, “it is wonderfully pleasing to pluck ripe Grapes as you drive along a high Road” (Journals 87). That afternoon, we sat on the Bridge, & enjoyed the beautiful View of the Seine, which winding among Islands, and watering the most fertile Plains in the World perhaps, delight(s) the Eye inexpressibly, & fill(s) the Heart with Gratitude to the great giver of all things. (Journals 87)

Her journal is largely written up, unlike Johnson’s sketchy and incomplete notes, and, being written at the time, her reactions have the virtue of immediacy and honesty. Moreover, they were not intended for publication, giving her a freedom from reserve or diplomatic nicety. She agrees, for example, with Baretti’s observation that “Extremes of Magnificence & Meanness meet at Paris”, adding that “Extremes of every sort are likewise perpetually meeting”: today I walked among the beautiful Statues of [the] Tuilleries, a Place which for Magnificence most resembles the Pictures of Solomon’s Temple, where the Gravel is loose like the Beach at Brighthelmstone, the Water in the Basin Royale cover’d with Duck Weed, & some wooden Netting in the Taste of our low Junketting Houses at Islington dropping to Pieces with Rottenness & Age. (Journals 93)

This is on 1st October, after they have been in France almost two weeks. She is learning, in other words, that in encountering other cultures one must develop a sense of balance, not expecting the replication of what at home is taken as normal, and being open to surprise, difference and other forms of beauty. And, she finds, this extends to people as well. She might, even on 3rd November, on their way home, agree with her husband: “Mr

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Thrale says the common People are hideously ugly & so they are” (Journals 152), but that has by no means prevented her from appreciating—and praising—for example the popular theatre of the Paris boulevards: We spent the Evening at the Boulevards, & saw a Boy dance among Rows of Eggs with surprizing Agility. The Players in France seem to be better than ours, even their lowest performers are not without some degree of Merit […]. (Journals 123)

Even Johnson, writing of the same evening, concedes: “At the Boulevard saw nothing, yet was glad to be there. Rope dancing, and farce. Egg dance” (Journals 174). Individuals too, and not only the Abbé Roffette, are treated warmly, and written of by Mrs Thrale in glowing terms. These include the Lady Abbess of the Benedictine Priory of Saint-Louis in Rouen, Madame de Barbançon, who chats “agreeably with Mrs Strickland & me” of “Literature, of Politics, of Fashions, of everything” and comes across as “a mighty pleasing Woman indeed” (Journals 81) and, in Paris, the architect Julien-David Le Roy, who “provides us a Variety of Entertainment” (Journals 120) and is listed as one of the “People who have pleased me best” (Journals 149). In some cases, though, the new acquaintances are persisted with in spite of their perceived shortcomings. Mme du Boccage, the celebrated author, for example, goes out of her way to make herself agreeable, and to welcome Johnson as well as Mrs Thrale, but while meeting her often and spending a good deal of time with her they remain disgusted by the lack of hygiene observable in her habits of hospitality: she has a “pot to spit in […] on her Table” and her servant serving the coffee “put in Sugar with his Fingers” (Journals 102). Hygiene, food, attention to finer details, as well as the vastness of the social gulf and a narrow-minded national pride (they “are perpetually adding with a Sneer―You have no such fine Things in England I believe” she comments at one point [Journals 116]): these are Mrs Thrale’s abiding criticisms of things French, and Johnson certainly endorsed many of them, while adding extra dislikes of his own. But what is so refreshing about Mrs Thrale as a traveller is her readiness in spite of all to be captivated by what she sees, by the genuine sociability of her encounters, her willingness to enter into the spirit of what for her was entirely new. On the evening of 30th September, for example, they “drove round the Foire St Ovide”, which was held where the Place de la Concorde now is.4 It “exhibited”, she writes,

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a Show totally new to me: there stands in the middle of a large open Place an Equestrian Statue of Lewis 15th: & round it―but at a considerable distance―are Shops which form a Circus of the gayest Appearance I ever saw and perfectly singular―the Shops are temporary, & slight enough of course, but adorned with a sort of Frippery Finery, Ribbons, Looking-Glasses, Cutlery, Pastry, every thing―one can imagine that is at once brilliant & worthless―but which when illuminated with numberless Lights gives an Air of Festivity which not even the Philosophy of an Englishman can despise nor the Stupidity of a Dutchman neglect. Lamps formed into Pyramids surround the Statue, & the Circus of Shops at a proper distance, glittering in the Eyes of a Crowd of Spectators, who walk around this gay Place every Evening, tempt some to buy & some to talk. (Journals 92)

Leaving aside the casual national stereotyping, nothing could better encapsulate Mrs Thrale’s sociability as a tourist. The recognized gap between what is seen and what is known will always be there, between the brilliance and the worthlessness, as it may be with the people one encounters, but to be truly sociable one must be prepared to suspend, if only for a short while, one’s preconceptions and prejudices and give oneself over to the magic of the occasion. Within six years, of course, Henry Thrale was dead, and three years later, in 1784, Mrs Thrale was Mrs Piozzi, having controversially married her daughter’s Italian dancing master, Gabriel Piozzi. There was, in consequence, a near permanent rift in the friendship with Johnson, who reacted to the marriage extremely badly. Almost exactly nine years after her departure for France with Thrale, Johnson, Queeney and Baretti, Hester Piozzi left England, in September of 1784, with her new husband. They would travel at a leisurely pace through France to Italy, and thence to Austria and Germany. They stayed away almost three years, not returning to England until March 1787. One of the earliest entries in her journal of the trip gives an indication of the perspective she now brings to this, her second visit to France: We pass’d through Boulogne yesterday, but saw nothing of it except the Situation, which is beautiful;―The Fish was very fine too, I had forgotten the plenty of Game at every Inn, but my Maid will not easily forget the French Cuisine: I never saw a Creature so enjoy herself. We are indeed all of us but too happy. (Journals 195)

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Notes 1. A louis d’or was supposedly equivalent to around seventeen English shillings. See https://msu.edu/~williss2/carpentier/part1/louisdor.html (accessed 11 January 2018). 2. The Boswell reference is to Life, 53, and see n. 2 for Boswell’s identification of his source. As Clark notes in his chapter “Samuel Johnson: The Last Choices, 1775–1784”: “There are few studies of the Paris tour.” Clark discusses Johnson in Paris from a political angle, not least in terms of Jacobitism, but the studies he notes comprise only Thomas M. Curley, Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel, where the French trip is used as part of an argument “for the importance to Johnson of Lockeian epistemology” (2012, 79–112); Brian Jones, “Dr Johnson in Paris,” which looks at Johnson’s sight-seeing; and Wallace Kirsop, “Samuel Johnson in Paris in 1775”, which deals with Johnson as a tourist, his social and intellectual engagement while in Paris, and “with what is revealed about his involvement in the world of books and of bibliography.” (1995, 222n8). 3. On the contemporary reputation of Johnson as a writer and intellectual in France, see Weinbrot, Aspects of Samuel Johnson, especially chapter 12, “Johnson Before Boswell in Eighteenth-Century France: Notes Toward Reclaiming a Man of Letters” (270–300). 4. Until 1772 it had been held at what is now Place Vendôme.

Bibliography Boswell, James. 1962. Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1774–1776, ed. Charles Ryskamp and Frederick A. Pottle. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. 1998. Life of Johnson, ed. R.W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, Jonathan. 2012. Samuel Johnson: The Last Choices, 1775–1784. In The Politics of Samuel Johnson, ed. Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill, 168–222. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Curley, Thomas M. 1976. Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. DeMaria, Robert Jr. 1993. The Life of Samuel Johnson: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell. Accessed January 11, 2018, https://msu.edu/~williss2/carpentier/part1/louisdor.html. Johnson, Samuel. 1816. A Diary of a Journey into North Wales in the Year 1774, ed. R. Duppa. London: Robert Jennings. ———. 1992. The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jones, Brian. 1988. Dr Johnson in Paris. Quadrant 32: 98–100.

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Kirsop, Wallace. 1995. Samuel Johnson in Paris in 1775. David Fleeman Memorial Lecture: Johnson Society of Australia. Piozzi, Hester Thrale. 1788. Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell. Piozzi, Hester Lynch. 1887. Anecdotes of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1786). London: Cassell and Company Limited. Thrale, Hester Lynch, and Samuel Johnson. 1932. The French Journals of Mrs. Thrale and Doctor Johnson, ed. Moses Tyson and Henry Guppy. Manchester: Manchester University Press and the John Rylands Library. Weinbrot, Howard D. 2005. Aspects of Samuel Johnson: Essays on his Mind, Arts, Afterlife, and Politics. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press/Associated University Presses.

CHAPTER 3

Enlightened Fratriotism: Boswell in Corsica, Paoli in London Sebastian Domsch

When it comes to sociable encounters in eighteenth-century Europe, the Scottish lawyer, diarist, and biographer James Boswell would be a good case study at any time, but maybe no episode encapsulates the wide-­ ranging effects that such an encounter can have better than his 1765 meeting with Pascal Paoli, the Corsican Generalissimo who almost managed to make the Mediterranean island independent and founded the first democracy in modern history. In the following, I would like to redraw our attention to this event and its several contexts, and see how different notions of the social played a role in shaping its significance. James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck, born in Edinburgh in 1740, is of course today best known as the monumental biographer of Samuel Johnson, and to specialists as one of the most arduous and fascinating diarists of the eighteenth century, but for most of his adult life he was known to the general public as “Corsica Boswell”, mainly because of the 1768 publication of his Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to That

S. Domsch (*) Greifswald, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_3

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Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. Already in this book, Boswell starts to develop his particular approach to biography, one which he finds shared by Johnson himself (or puts into his mouth to give it legitimacy): “He said […] nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him” (Boswell 1952, 474). The book is divided into two parts, a general “Account” of Corsica, particularly its geography and history, and a “Journal” of Boswell’s own travels on the island, which is almost completely taken over by his meeting with Paoli.

Extending the Salon: Boswell’s Journey to Corsica Why would Boswell want to go to Corsica as part of his Grand Tour, why was it an extraordinary decision, and what was the significance of that place for the rest of Europe? To answer these questions, we will need a little bit of context. Corsica has a long history of half-successfully fighting off foreign powers and invaders, but the most persistent of these invaders had been the Republic of Genoa, which occupied the island in 1347, and which since that time had to deal with constant uprisings and rebellions every few years, that were then quelled with the help of mercenaries hired by Genoa for that purpose. For centuries, this became an established pattern that had no more than local significance, but in the eighteenth century, Corsica was gradually drawn into the struggles for hegemony of the larger European powers. In 1729, it was Austrian forces who regained Corsica for Genoa, but in 1746, the French came to the Republic’s help. Now the French at that time were interested neither in subduing the whole island for themselves, nor in securing it complete for Genoa. Their main objective was instead to keep it out of the hands of the British. Therefore, they established a few strongholds in the lower regions of the island and left the Corsicans in the mountainous heartlands more or less to themselves (Day 1964, 1). The Corsicans were now effectively self-governed (though nominally still under Genoese control), and that proved quite a challenge in itself. Being united merely in their hate of foreign occupiers, they quarrelled intensely amongst each other, particularly along the feudal clan lines that had always dominated their society. As a remedy, the Supreme Council in 1755 asked a young Corsican exile named Pasquale de Paoli, then at Naples, to assume the rank of Generalissimo. Paoli came and started a parallel course of military action and civil reform that pushed back almost

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all the remaining Genoese, and that started to turn Corsican society from one that was only known for warlike barbarism and bloody vendettas to a modern nation built on the democratic principles of the Enlightenment (Day 1964, 2). Still, Corsica remained almost completely off the beaten track for the ordinary European traveller. British citizens in particular were under an injunction of their government not to help the “Corsican rebels” under Paoli. It was a remote, dangerous, and prohibited place with nothing that the Grand Tourist would usually seek—glorious remnants of an ancient past or the polite society of modern courts. As one historian put it, “Corsica is as unknown to us as Japan or California” (qtd. in Boswell 2006, xviii). But it did provide something for those who were interested in glorious promises for the future. In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written in his Social Contract: There is still one country in Europe that is fit for legislation: the island of Corsica. The valour and constancy shown by the worthy Corsicans in regaining and defending their freedom fully entitle them to be shown by some wise man how to preserve it. I have a presentiment that this small island will one day be the amazement of Europe. (Rousseau 1999, 86)

Rousseau was indeed asked by an unauthorized Corsican to write a constitution for the nation’s impending independence, and Paoli encouraged this, realizing full well the publicity value of such a move (Zaretsky 2015, 206). The document was never finished, but Rousseau was working on it in 1764, when a young traveller from Scotland came calling. Rousseau talked to him about Corsica, his project of writing a constitution for it, and the Corsican struggle for freedom. All of this worked on Boswell (Danziger 1995, 31), who anyway wished, as he said, “for something more than just the common course of what is called the tour of Europe”, and created in him the desire to visit the remote island. A few weeks later he wrote to Rousseau from Italy: I am determined first to go to Corsica, as I told you at Môtiers. […] I cannot restrain myself from paying a visit to those brave islanders who have done so much for their independence, and who have chosen M. Rousseau as their legislator […] It will be singular if they hang me for a spy. If you care for me, Sir, then write me immediately. This is too romantic a project for me to forego. I am serious. (Qtd in Brady and Pottle 1955, 80–82)

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Boswell, very sensibly, did not want to appear as a spy and endanger his life, but in asking Rousseau for letters of introduction before going to Corsica, he also strove to extend the social sphere of Enlightened Europe to a place that was in many respects frontier territory. This is apparent in his initial comment to Rousseau at their first meeting, when he learns that the philosopher will not go to the island: Would you do me the favor of making me your ambassador to Corsica? Do you need an ambassador? I offer you my services. Monsieur Boswell, ambassador extraordinaire to the Island of Corsica on behalf of Monsieur Rousseau! (Boswell 2008, 290)

So Boswell acted as an intermediary, but not as a messenger, for relaying content. This is already happening with the request to Rousseau and the communication that arises out of it. What Boswell offered is to extend the social sphere all the way to the remote place that is Corsica, a place that Rousseau had not the least intention of travelling to. Boswell’s trip can be seen as a constant recalibration of his expectations as to what kind of sociability he would encounter. The framing through Rousseau and the little that was known about the islanders initially suggested the idea of either a “Barbarian” society or one of noble savages, depending on one’s political sympathies. Approaching the island by boat brought a stark reminder of this: The worthy Corsicans thought it was proper to give a moral lesson to a young traveller just come from Italy. They told me that in their country I should be treated with the greatest hospitality; but if I attempted to debauch any of their women, I might expect instant death. (Boswell 2006, 165)

One might be tempted to think that Boswell’s notoriety as a libertine had preceded him, but it is more likely that the Corsicans wanted to point out the difference in social manners between the Italy the travellers had just left and the Corsica they were about to enter. And indeed, whatever Corsica provided Boswell with, it was the only place in which he lived for an extended period where he did not even attempt to start an affair. Instead, he immediately started to feel the appeal of what he perceived to be Romantic Corsican primitivism, and he did his best to go native:

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My Corsican guides appeared so hearty, that I often got down and walked along with them, doing just what I saw them do. When we grew hungry, we threw stones among the thick branches of the chestnut trees which overshadowed us, and in that manner we brought down a shower of chestnuts with which we filled our pockets, and went on eating them with great relish; and when this made us thirsty, we lay down by the side of the first brook, put our mouths to the stream, and drank sufficiently. It was just being for a little while, one of the “prisca gens mortalium, the primitive race of men,” who ran about in the woods eating acorns and drinking water. (Boswell 2006, 173)

But, of course, that was only one of the things that Boswell had come for. He wanted more than merely a return to the state of nature, he was looking for an emerging nation struggling for its freedom. Boswell landed at the northern tip of the island and proceeded inwards, to the mountainous city of Corte, the de facto capital of the independent part of Corsica. Unfortunately, Paoli at the time was away further south, but here Boswell got a glimpse of a nation in the making, and what he saw delighted him with its “ancient simplicity”, as he calls it elsewhere. Since he felt that he needed some sort of passport to protect him in this part of the journey, he called at the house of the Great Chancellor of Corsica, who ordered the passport to be made out immediately, and while his secretary was writing it, entertained me by reading to me some of the minutes of the general consulta. When the passport was finished, and ready to have the seal put to it, I was much pleased with a beautiful, simple incident. The Chancellor desired a little boy who was playing in the room by us, to run to his mother, and bring the great seal of the kingdom. I thought myself sitting in the house of a Cincinnatus. (Boswell 2006, 172–73)

It was the lack of pomp and circumstance that impressed Boswell, the simple merging of the official with the domestic, signifying an almost Arcadian state in the development of civilization and society, when there is organization and refinement enough to have a Chancellor and a general consulta, but not yet the over-refinement and corruption that poisoned social intercourse in the European courts. It is not the only time that Boswell compares the Corsicans to the early Romans or to the Spartans. Boswell was not yet satisfied, but travelled on a soon as possible, until he finally reached the town of Sollacarò, where he could finally meet Paoli, who in his mind had already assumed a mythic size.

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When I at last came within sight of Sollacarò, where Paoli was, I could not help being under considerable anxiety. My ideas of him had been greatly heightened by the conversations I had held with all sorts of people in the island, they having represented him to me as something above humanity. I had the strongest desire to see so exalted a character; but I feared that I should be unable to give a proper account why I had presumed to trouble him with a visit, and that I should sink to nothing before him. I almost wished yet to go back without seeing him. These workings of sensibility employed my mind till I rode through the village, and came up to the house where he was lodged. (Boswell 2006, 174)

It is interesting to note that the main reason that Boswell cites for his anxiety was that he could not give a sufficient reason for wanting to meet Paoli. He had not had the same reservations about meeting Rousseau or Voltaire, because they obviously were part of the international Republic of Letters, where a sociable interest in each other was a given, but here was a warrior chief that seemed to come straight out of Plutarch. Earlier, the common Corsicans had decided that Boswell must be a British ambassador, because they had no notion of the Grand Tour, so why should Paoli be different? And indeed, if one is to believe the account that Frances Burney gives in a letter dated 15th October 1782 about Paoli’s own version of the encounter, the Generalissimo did at first suspect him to be a spy because of his characteristic trait of noting down everything: He came, he said, to my Country, & he fetched me some Letter of recommending him, but I was [xxxxx i word] of the belief he might be an impostor, & I supposed in my mente he was an Espy; for I look away from him, and, in a moment, I look to him again, & I behold his Tablets!—Oh! he was to the work of writing down all I say!—Indeed I was angry! But soon I discover he was no imposter, & no Espy, & I find I was myself the monster he was come to discern. O, [Boswell] is a very good man; I love him, indeed;— so chearful! so gay! so pleasant!—but, at the first, Oh! I was indeed angry. (Burney 2012, V, 125)

Boswell tried to flatter Paoli by once more drawing the comparison to Rome, saying “I am come from seeing the ruins of one brave and free people: I now see the rise of another” (Boswell 2006, 175). Paoli mildly rebuked him, but the ice was broken, and Boswell gets invited into the circle of Paoli and the men that surround him. And here, Boswell indeed found a small but weighty pocket of the kind of sociable life that he was accustomed to:

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Some of the nobles who attended him, came into the room, and in a little we were told that dinner was served up. The General did me the honour to place me next him. He had a table of fifteen or sixteen covers, having always a good many of the principal men of the island with him. He had an Italian cook who had been long in France; but he chose to have a few plain substantial dishes, avoiding every kind of luxury, and drinking no foreign wine. (Boswell 2006, 176)

Still, characteristically, there is some “ancient simplicity” mixed in, and it is a social gathering not merely of wits, or generally polite society, but of “heroes”, and Boswell continues: “I felt myself under some constraint in such a circle of heroes”. But then Paoli keeps on talking, and Boswell recognizes to his surprise that he is also fully able to participate in the Republic of Letters: The General talked a great deal on history and on literature. I soon perceived that he was a fine classical scholar, that his mind was enriched with a variety of knowledge, and that his conversation at meals was instructive and entertaining. Before dinner he had spoken French. He now spoke Italian, in which he is very eloquent. We retired to another room to drink coffee. My timidity wore off. I no longer anxiously thought of myself; my whole attention was employed in listening to the illustrious commander of a nation. He smiled a good deal, when I told him that I was much surprised to find him so amiable, accomplished, and polite; for although I knew I was to see a great man, I expected to find a rude character, an Attila king of the Goths, or a Luitprand king of the Lombards. (Boswell 2006, 179)

The final seal of approval for Paoli’s sociability is reached when Samuel Johnson first meets him in London in 1769: Dr. Johnson went home with me, and drank tea till late in the night. He said, ‘General Paoli had the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.’ He denied that military men were always the best bred men. ‘Perfect good breeding: he observed, “consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners”’ (Boswell 1952, 410)

It is the person of Pascal Paoli who serves, first for Boswell himself and later, through Boswell’s account and then through Paoli’s own presence in London, for the European public, as a bridge between the “noble savage” notion about Corsicans and the Enlightened hopes that were

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connected to their project of achieving “liberty”. Paoli was a hero who was at the same time ancient and modern, free from civilization’s sins and yet able to hold his own in a sociable gathering, something he was surely aware of, as Boswell’s comments on his dress show: “He used to wear the common Corsican habit, but on the arrival of the French, he thought a little external elegance might be of use, to make the government appear in a more respectable light” (2006, 175). Anna Laetitia Barbauld, who was inspired to start her own career as a poet by Boswell’s Account of Corsica, wrote in her own poem on the island about Paoli: […]                 see the Man, Born to exalt his own, and give mankind A glimpse of higher natures: just, as great; The soul of counsel, and the nerve of war; Of high unshaken spirit, temper’d sweet With soft urbanity, and polish’d grace, And attic wit, and gay unstudied smiles: Whom heaven in some propitious hour endow’d With every purer virtue: gave him all That lifts the hero, or adorns the man. (Barbauld 2002, 63)

This not only made Paoli and the Corsican cause “anschlussfähig” within European social discourse (as was proven by Paoli’s success in London’s polite society), for Boswell it presented an actual ideal of sociability, an improvement to the state of polite social intercourse in his own time. As LaVolpa writes: One of the paradoxes of the art [of being polite] was that its aesthetic of natural comportment, and indeed the air of freedom with which it endowed that aesthetic, required unremitting restraint in the presentation of self and above all in the performative use of language—and a certain irremovable anxiousness about incurring the disapproval of others. That is why Boswell experienced polite sociability not simply as a liberating alternative but also as a relentlessly exacting regimen. (LaVolpa 2011, 96–97)

That is probably one of the reasons why Paoli appealed so strongly to Boswell, because in him this restraint did not seem forced or merely performed, but natural:

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How much superior is this great man’s idea of agreeable conversation to that of professed wits, who are continually straining for smart remarks, and lively repartees. They put themselves to much pain in order to please; and yet please less than if they would just appear as they naturally feel themselves. A company of professed wits has always appeared to me, like a company of artificers employed in some very nice and difficult work, which they are under a necessity of performing. (Boswell 2006, 193)

Paoli, in Boswell’s estimation, is not performing an ideal of social intercourse, he embodies it, and it is exactly this which makes that ideal so affective for him. Directly and indirectly, Boswell emphasized the positive influence that the presence of Paoli had on him. This might in part be attributed to Boswell’s tendency for hero worship, but it also agrees with the general focus on sociability in Scottish theories of the self and self-formation. As Ahnert and Manning point out: “A particularly distinctive feature of the Scottish science of man was its emphasis on the close relationship between the development of the moral self and social life […]; moral self-control, it was believed, was nurtured by sympathy with others” (2011, 6). And, as the example of Boswell and Paoli shows, not just any others, but those others who are the embodiment of an ideal. In the Journal, Boswell writes about Paoli’s influence: “From having known intimately so exalted a character, my sentiments of human nature were raised, while, by a sort of contagion, I felt an honest ardour to distinguish myself, and be useful, as far as my situation and abilities would allow”. And a little bit later: “the General, whose conversation improved upon me, as did the society of those about him, with whom I gradually formed an acquaintance” (2006, 176).

Concentrating the Salon: Paoli in London Almost immediately after returning to Italy, Boswell began what Douglas Day has called “one of the most remarkable puffing campaigns in English literary history” (Day 1964, 9), writing and publishing anonymously a number of brief pieces about the situation of Corsica, gradually hinting at a mysterious Scottish traveller, who was revealed to be no other than James Boswell just shortly before Boswell’s actual return to England. There, he started lobbying for the Corsican cause, asking for an audience with William Pitt, soliciting articles by prominent Englishmen about the

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desirability of an alliance with Corsica and publishing it as British Essays in Favour of the Brave Corsicans; By Several Hands in 1768, and working as a fundraiser for Corsica, sending a substantial amount of guns and ammunition to the island, the government embargo notwithstanding (Pittock 2015, 53). In 1769, he appeared at David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee in an authentic Corsican dress complete with pistols and musket and a cap of his own making with the inscription “Viva la liberta”. But the main part of his efforts was the publication of his Account and Journal, which were instant bestsellers and made Boswell immediately famous in the literary world. But while readers were certainly grateful for the information on Corsica that Boswell had gathered and presented in the first part of the book, it was the more personal, anecdotal second part, the Journal, that captured everyone’s imagination, and its main draw was undeniably the portrait of Paoli. In reality, Boswell had spent only about a week in Paoli’s company, but he made it sound like much more, and the description of Paoli and his conversation take up the biggest chunk of the journal. So where Boswell appeared to the Corsicans an envoy of European society, what he did in the Journal was to invite the European public (in the first year after its publication, it was translated into Dutch, German Italian, and twice into French [Boswell 2006, i]) to Paoli’s table in order to enjoy his society. All the while, Corsica itself unfortunately failed to live up to expectations. In 1768, the Genoese sold their rights to Corsica to the French, who subsequently started to move in seriously and successfully against Paoli and his troops. He barely escaped, and arrived in England on 21 September 1769, to begin his long exile. There is no space here to go into detail about that part of the sociable encounter (see Beretti and Vivien 2014), but, not least because of Boswell, Paoli was a great success in London society. According to Antoine Lilti “Pascal Paoli had been welcomed in London by curious crowds, thanks to the publicity Boswell orchestrated in support of the Corsican” (Lilti 2017, 257). Boswell immediately rushed to greet him as a long-lost friend, and only a few days later he managed to stage an encounter that must have meant more to him than any other before or after, with Boswell again in the role of ambassador or intermediary: On the evening of October 10, I presented Dr. Johnson to General Paoli. I had greatly wished that two men, for whom I had the highest esteem, should meet. They met with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their own abilities,

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and of the abilities of each other. The General spoke Italian, and Dr. Johnson English, and understood one another very well, with a little aid of interpretation from me, in which I compared myself to an isthmus which joins two great continents. (Boswell 1952, 409)

This meeting also brought a rather curious return of the morally improving qualities of sociability to the fore. If one follows Boswell’s account, the first topic that these two pillars of virtue and restraint find to talk about—is cheating on one’s wife: The General asked him, what he thought of the spirit of infidelity which was so prevalent. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, this gloom of infidelity, I hope, is only a transient cloud passing through the hemisphere, which will soon be dissipated, and the sun break forth with his usual splendour.’ (Boswell 1952, 410)

One can only imagine how these two, towering over their shared ward, cast some sly glances at Boswell during this debate.

Bibliography Ahnert, Thomas, and Susan Manning, eds. 2011. Character, Self, and Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Barbauld, Anna Letitia. 2002. Selected Poetry and Prose. Peterborough: Broadview. Beretti, Francis, and Frances Vivien. 2014. Pascal Paoli en Angleterre. Trente-trois annies d’exil et d’engagement. Corte: Editions Alain Piazolla. Boswell, James. 1952. Life of Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. The Journal of His German and Swiss Travels, 1764. Edited by Marlies Danziger. New Haven: Yale University Press. Brady, Frank, and Frederick A.  Pottle. 1955. Boswell on the Grand Tour. Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765–1766. Melbourne: William Heinemann. Burney, Frances. 2012. The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney. Volume V: 1782–1783, ed. Lars E. Troide and Stewart J. Cooke. Montreal et al.: McGillQueen’s University Press. Danziger, Marlies K. 1995. Boswell’s Travels through the German, Swiss, and French Enlightenment. In Boswell, Citizen of the World, Man of Letters, ed. Irma S. Lustig, 13–36. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Day, Douglas. 1964. Boswell, Corsica, and Paoli. English Studies 45 (1): 1–20.

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La Volpa, Anthony. 2011. The Not-So-Prodigal Son: James Boswell and the Scottish Enlightenment. In Character, Self, and Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Thomas Ahnert and Susan Manning, 85–103. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lilti, Antoine. 2017. The Invention of Celebrity, 1750–1850. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pittock, Murray. 2015. James Boswell. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1999. The Social Contract. Translated by Christopher Betts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zaretsky, Robert. 2015. Boswell’s Enlightenment. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Communing with the Fictional Dead: Grave Tourism and the Sentimental Novel Helen Williams

In Volume 7 of Laurence Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67), Tristram takes a grand tour. During his continental excursion he interpolates a tale which he claims is one of his main motivations for visiting France, a love story: “There is a soft aera in every gentle mortal’s life, where such a story affords more pabulum to the brain, than all the Frusts, and Crusts, and Rusts of antiquity, which travellers can cook up for it” (VII.31.628).1 Tristram hereby sets up literature against history (“antiquity”), prioritising fiction over fact, before introducing and recounting to his readers the tale in question, the story of Amandus and Amanda. Amandus returns home after being imprisoned in Morocco, and Amanda searches for him, till,——going round, and round, and round the world——chance unexpected bringing them at the same moment of the night, though by different ways, to the gate of Lyons, their native city, and each in well known accents calling out aloud,

H. Williams (*) Newcastle, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_4

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          Is Amandus still alive?           Is my Amanda they fly into each others arms, and both drop down dead for joy. (VII.31.628)

Before his trip to France, Tristram undertakes his research on Lyon, reading widely, and fixates on his discovery “in some Itinerary, but in what God knows——That sacred to the fidelity of Amandus and Amanda, a tomb was built without the gates, where to this hour, lovers call’d upon them to attest their truths” (VII.41.628–29). Nicola Watson’s The Literary Tourist (2006) explores two forms of Romantic and nineteenth-century literary pilgrimage: visiting the birth-­ places and graves of authors on the one hand, and landscapes approximating their fictional worlds on the other, attributing both of these practices to the nineteenth-century rise in cultural nationalism. What remains under-researched, however, is tourism to ‘graves’ of literary characters during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sterne’s Amandus and Amanda episode represents a practice of grave-visiting which anticipates William Godwin’s remarks in “Essay on Sepulchres” (1809), in which he expresses a desire to visit graves of characters from fiction: to an imaginary person I do not refuse the semblance of a tomb. As has been already observed, poetical scenes affect us in somewhat the same manner as historical: I should be delighted to visit the spot where Cervantes imagined Don Quixote to be buried, or the fabulous tomb of Clarissa Harlowe. (Godwin 1993, 24)

Godwin wishes to commune with the spirits of Clarissa and Don Quixote via their graves, despite the fact that they never existed, and thereby connects a fictional past with the real present. But that present, too, is a fictional construct; Clarissa and Don Quixote’s tombs are merely ‘semblances’ of tombs. For Tristram, as for Godwin, the literary grave’s inauthenticity, or its relation to fiction rather than the “frusts” of antiquity, is its main appeal. As Paul Westover argues in Necromanticism, Travelling to Meet the Dead (2012), Godwin’s essay envisions “a republic of letters built on shared reverence for canonized forefathers” (Westover 2012, 65). For Godwin, canonized forefathers  include not only major authors and historical figures but also fictional characters from stories by then established as classic, suggesting that by communing with the fictional dead we commune with fellow readers (65). Drawing on the work of anthropologists

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like Victor Turner, who argues that pilgrimage facilitates “social, spiritual connection”, briefly dissolving discontinuities between past and present, self and other, and living and dead, Westover argues that this shared value system is what transforms grave tourism from a solitary pursuit to a communal activity: “the pilgrim, even if solitary, becomes part of a society of believers” with “shared cultural heritage and identity” (65).2 From the 1770s onwards gravesites of characters from Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) and Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth (England, 1791; America, 1794) appeared across Germany and in America. Just as, to borrow Leo Braudy’s terms, the sentimental novel “rejects the older shapes of intellectual self-consciousness” and “addresses itself to the problem of presenting and explicating character” (Braudy 1973, 6), so too does the kind of literary pilgrimage played out in real landscapes exemplified by these fictional tombs, which ignored the distinction between fact and fiction. Pilgrimages to such tombs were one of the many ways in which readers reached their own extra-textual conclusions about these narratives and their characters, participating in the process David Brewer has called “imaginative expansion” in The Afterlife of Character (2005). Like sentimental tourism to literary graves, imaginative expansion is inherently social, with readers imagining themselves “as part of larger virtual— and occasionally actual—communities devoted to the sharing and circulation of these further adventures”; for readers of Sterne, this entails being a member of a club of “true feelers” (Brewer 2005, 5; 155). Constucting and then visiting literary graves enabled mourners to present themselves as card-carrying members of such a ‘society’. This essay traces the emergence of a unique form of literary afterlife, graves for fictional characters, which was a means by which readers could express the heightened sensibility characteristic of the sentimental novel tradition through communing with favourite dead characters and thereby other sentimental readers. But as Ann Jessie Van Sant has argued, sensibility, and particularly the feminized and physiological body which performs or displays it, is “inherently parodic” in that it contradictorily “combines debility with refinement”, heightening our sense of its constructedness (2004, 98; 3; 103). In relation to the tragic outcomes for female characters characteristic of the sentimental novel, in which women are variously deceived, assaulted or raped, and frequently die, Patricia Meyer Spacks has argued that “It’s possible to read such narratives as displays of female masochism, but there is also something aggressive in their formulations of

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cause and effect, their insistence that women’s sheltered lives, limited opportunities, nurture the seeds of their destruction” (1974, 31). We should not ignore, therefore, the gendered dimension of tourism arising from sentimental stories featuring tragic sentimental heroines. Grave hunting itself tended most often to be a communal rather than a solitary activity, furthering both fictional and literal sociability in this period, and both men and women went on such pilgrimages. But such a practice depends on whilst also questioning narratives which frame female sexuality, other than that which conveniently concludes with marriage, as tragedy. Given that the practice of visiting literary graves, though satirized by Sterne, enabled visitors to imagine themselves belonging to a “society of believers”, they facilitate readers’ mourning and therefore provoke collective criticism of sentimental literary culture’s framing of female sexuality without marriage as causing only social ostracism, suffering and death.

The Tomb of the Lovers As readers of Tristram Shandy well know, Tristram’s attempt to visit the tomb of Amandus and Amanda is a comic tale of deferral. He is prevented from leaving his hotel by an ass hovering on the threshold. When the ass is beaten, causing the animal to bolt, Tristram’s breeches are torn open in the process, “in the most disastrous direction you can imagine”. His second attempt at leaving the hotel is hindered by a commissary (the very man who had beaten the ass), serving him an unexpected travelling bill. He then realizes that he has misplaced his remarks and retraces his steps to find them torn into curling papers by the chaise-vamper’s wife. Tristram finally resumes his ‘classic’ travel itinerary, chasing historical sites including an ancient clock and the college of the Jesuits, but his main goal is to visit  the tomb of the lovers. Sterne ramps up the sentiment in this scene. Tristram seeks out the tomb in solitude so that he may bask in his feelings, and tears gather in his eyes in anticipation of seeing the edifice: As I knew the geography of the Tomb of the Lovers, as well as if I had lived twenty years in Lyons, namely, that it was upon the turning of my right hand, just without the gate, leading to the Fauxbourg de Vaise——I dispatch’d François to the boat, that I might pay the homage I so long ow’d it, without a witness of my weakness.—I walk’d with all imaginable joy towards the place—when I saw the gate which intercepted the tomb, my heart glowed within me——

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—Tender and faithful spirits! cried I, addressing myself to Amandus and Amanda—long—long have I tarried to drop this tear upon your tomb———I come———I come——— When I came—there was no tomb to drop it upon. (VII.40.643)

In a letter of November 1764, Sterne describes this volume of Tristram Shandy as a “laughing good tempered Satyr against Traveling”.3 One of this episode’s targets is armchair tourism: Tristram cannot hear of Lyons, nor so much as see a Lyons-waistcoat, without calling to mind his desire to visit the tomb of the lovers and—at the same time—the books that inspired that desire. The story of the tomb of the lovers, as Sterne’s source, Jean Aimar Piganiol de la Force, also pointed out, had been retold in Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée, to which Van R. Baker suggests Sterne alludes in the phrase “call’d upon them to attest their truths” (1976, 11). In this episode Sterne foregrounds Tristram’s reading (“in some Itinerary, but in what God knows”), showing how far his desire to visit the tomb is a product of the print culture of tourism. As many scholars have argued, all of Tristram’s knowledge of Lyon he has learned from Jacob Spon, and yet he claims to know “the geography of the Tomb of the Lovers, as well as if I had lived twenty years in Lyons”. What has not been explored is the degree to which literary tourism in particular is satirized here, as Sterne’s allusion to Astrée suggests. Indeed, the tale’s literary qualities stand out, especially the focus on Amanda as sentimental heroine:

Amandus——He Amanda——She——

each ignorant of the other’s course, He——east She——west Amandus taken captive by the Turks, and carried to the emperor of Morocco’s court, where the princess of Morocco falling in love with him, keeps him twenty years in prison, for the love of his Amanda—— She——(Amanda) all the time wandering barefoot, and with dishevell’d hair, o’er rocks and mountains enquiring for Amandus——Amandus! Amandus!——making every hill and valley to echo back his name——

Amandus! Amandus!

at every town and city sitting down forlorn at the gate. (VII.31.627–28)

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The deliberate rhyme of the first two lines, typeset as if they were a poem, exaggerate the tale’s literary qualities, as does the detail with which Tristram embellishes his account of Amanda’s search. It is not the fact of the lovers’ death but the story that accompanies it, complete with sentimental heroine, which motivates Tristram’s desire to visit the grave, prematurely prompts his tears in response to imagining himself there, and fuels his disappointment when he discovers it does not exist. Sterne bases his literary tomb on one from his source text, Piganiol’s Nouveau Voyage de France (1724) (New et al. 1984, 483). As Baker has pointed out, Sterne knew that the tomb had not survived, as he had read Piganiol’s description of it, which notes its destruction in 1707 and its having become the subject of myth (Baker 1976, 12). Due to the fact that the inscription had worn away, “le Tombeau des deux amans”, or “the tomb of the lovers”, becomes the subject of diverse compelling interpretations as recorded by Piganiol and allows Tristram to turn the site into a literary destination, just like the “Ecrivains” before him: “Comme il n’y restoit point d’inscription, & qu’aucun Auteur ancien n’en a parlé, plusieurs Ecrivains ont donné l’effort à leurs conjectures”, embellishing the rumour “de deux amans qui moururent de joye en se revoyant après une longue absence” (Piganiol 1724, 203).4 By the time that Piganiol is writing, and Sterne reading, the tomb has been dismantled, and becomes in both writers’ texts a romanticized signifier of absence. Sterne makes a joke of this absence, in having Tristram read not Piganiol but Spon, whose text was published before the tomb’s destruction, thereby curating his narrator’s touristic disappointment. With the tale that Tristram recounts about Amandus and Amanda, Sterne stresses the sentiment of the scene, and Tristram’s anticipation of seeing the tomb, only in order to undermine it. Tristram’s troublesome and expensive journey to Lyon, his boredom with the traditional sights, and his difficulties in simply getting out of his hotel and onto the tourist trail at all, underline this bathos: the function in Tristram Shandy of the Amandus and Amanda tale, and, indeed, of Tristram’s visit to Lyons more broadly, is to poke fun at literary pilgrimage by revealing the absence on which it is based. In a study of seventeenth-century visitors to Milton’s house on Bread-Street—a site of absence due to its having been razed to the ground in the fire of London—Aaron Santesso argues that early modern literary tourists did not depend on material evidence for a successful pilgrimage; the scarcity of objects or architecture stimulated the traveller’s imagination in a more “interrogative” way than the kind of “possessive”

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tourism which followed, involving the passive consumption of pre-­ packaged heritage experiences (Santesso 2004, 394). Part of the appeal of Milton’s house and therefore, the tomb of the lovers, in this reading, is possible only through the absence of an inscription, which thereby opens up the place to literary interpretation, allowing “ecrivains” and their readers to imagine themselves in communication with the tomb’s supposed, but unconfirmed, incumbents. For Tristram, his touristic desires rest not on the spot where the lovers were supposedly reunited and died, but on the tomb itself, as monument: his literary touristic experience depends less upon location and more upon the visible marker of a tombstone which, in providing a melancholy monument, can stimulate the desired emotional response in memory of the sentimental story. In this act of tourism Tristram aims, but comically fails, to claim membership of a community of travel writers before him in a bid to feel part of a lineage of lettered men of feeling, as well as of a community of readers, the tourist-lovers, to enhance his own amorous credentials by association. As Godwin suggested, “poetical scenes affect us in somewhat the same manner as historical”, but the prospect of delighting in melancholy fictions had been considered long before, in 1757, by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. In his discussion of tragedy, Burke argues that readers’ pleasure arises not only from our relief at being free of “the evils which we see represented” (Burke  2015, 38), in this case, romantic suffering and death. We do not “shun with the greatest care all persons and places” that excite pain; rather, we seek them out. Indeed, graves to fictional characters could be considered within the ranks of the “affecting arts”, like poetry and painting, which Burke describes as particularly adept at “grafting a delight on wretchedness, misery, and death itself” (39; 38). On “How WORDS influence the passions”, Burke argues that we take an extraordinary part in the passions of others, and that we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by any tokens which are shewn of them; and there are no tokens which can express all the circumstances of most passions so fully as words; so that if a person speaks upon any subject, he can not only convey the subject to you, but likewise the manner in which he is himself affected by it. Certain it is, that the influence of most things on our passions is not so much from the things themselves, as from our opinions concerning them; and these again depend very much on the opinions of other men, conveyable for the most part by words only, Secondly, there are

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many things of a very affecting nature, which can seldom occur in the reality, but the words which represent them often do; and thus they have an opportunity of making a deep impression and taking root in the mind, whilst the idea of the reality was transient; and to some perhaps never really occurred in any shape, to whom it is notwithstanding very affecting, as war, death, famine, &c (Burke 2015, 137–38).

Keen readers of Tristram Shandy will notice that Sterne himself shares Burke’s belief that words can invoke our passions, as both he and Burke borrow from Epictetus. The quotation inspiring Burke’s passage also serves as the epigraph to Sterne’s novel: “Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men”. As Brian Michael Norton points out, this line exemplifies Epictetus’s philosophy on “the ways an individual’s mental responses to the world contribute to his or her well-being” (Norton 2006, 409). For both Hume and Sterne, words and opinions (and, by extension, fictions) that depict death—as in the tragedy of Amandus and Amanda—can be more affecting, because more frequently and easily  encountered, than death itself, and provoke in the onlooker an experience amounting to the sublime. An inscription on the tomb of Amandus and Amanda, therefore, would be particularly emotive. In Tristram’s disappointment, Sterne seems to be questioning the motivations behind such an experience. As Susan Lamb suggests, “In Shandy Sterne is primarily interested, as were so many of his contemporaries, with using tourism to enable satire of tourists, of their culture, and even of certain travelogue readers” (2009, 151). Tristram’s embarrassment at failing to discover a monument on which to drop his tears is reflected in his refusal to recount his feelings: “No matter how, or in what mood—but I flew from the tomb of the lovers—or rather I did not fly from it—(for there was no such thing existing) and just got time enough to the boat to save my passage” (VII.41.643). His sharp change of subject, underlined by the fact that this sentence opens a new chapter, reinforces the impression we get that he feels foolish. Sterne’s comic anti-climax positions Tristram’s journey firmly within the category of sentimental literary tourism whilst also gently undermining the assumptions, emotions, and performances with which such a practice was associated. Sterne also hints that Tristram’s motivations are sexual. Whilst both Amandus and Amanda undergo suffering in Sterne’s story, the degree to which Amanda, “barefoot” with “dishevell’d hair”, “sitting down forlorn” at the city gates anticipates his description of Maria, the lovelorn icon of

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the sentimental novel, reveals his interest in the sentimental heroine as desirable tourist attraction. Dishevelled hair in this period, as Susan Lamb points out, was a visual code for sexual experience and madness (180). Like Amanda, Maria has a similarly unkempt, if attractive, hairstyle, with “all but two tresses, drawn up into a silk net, with a few olive-leaves twisted a little fantastically on one side——she was beautiful; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her——” (IX.24.783). With Maria, Tristram is finally able to display the sensibility he was prevented from performing at the tomb of the lovers. Upon hearing her playing her evening service to the Virgin when passing in his chaise, Tristram’s postilion tells her story, prompting Tristram to jump out of his vehicle in order to visit her. Maria’s pet goat enables him to invite her to draw a comparison between himself and the beast before he recognizes the innuendo in his own words and chastizes himself for it: “I would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever Rabelais scatter’d” (IX.24.784). The sensibility in this scene is highly sexualized, but it is also satirically undercut by Tristram’s chirpy change of tone: Adieu, Maria!—adieu, poor hapless damsel!——some time, but not now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips——but I was deceived; for that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walk’d softly to my chaise. ———What an excellent inn at Moulins! (IX.24.784)

Sterne highlights Tristram’s inability to provide lasting support for the suffering girl through the contrast of the comforting inn with the misery of the previous scene, satirically casting sentimental tourism as trivial and therefore distasteful. The heightened sensibility of the Maria scenes in Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey rest on the fact of Maria’s broken engagement; a virgin or married woman would not have the same appeal. As Lamb points out, “Maria’s overwhelming desire for the man she was to marry legitimated her madness, and her madness, in turn, legitimated a display of sexuality and desire impossible for a virtuous, chaste, and sane woman” (2009, 185). Lamb has gone so far as to suggest that Yorick’s visiting of Maria in A Sentimental Journey is a comic satire of the eighteenth-century sex tourism that regularly took place on the Grand Tour. That Yorick’s journey is explicitly a literary form of touristic desire is clear in that he  carries Tristram Shandy as a guide book shaping his

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itinerary, most obviously in his decision to visit Maria (Newbould 2013, 40). Yorick admits, “’Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures—but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them” (Sterne 2002, 149). By invoking Cervantes, Yorick confirms that his tourism makes him feel as if he belongs to a quixotic order of knights, or a community of readers, seeking out suffering for sentimental experiences. And like Yorick, eighteenth-century tourists scoured Sterne’s works for guidance on how best to travel, carrying his books along with them, or, as the next section will show, designing new touristic experiences inspired by them (Newbould 2013, 41).

The Death of Maria, and Her Graves When short of Sternean sites of literary tourism on which to drop their tears, some readers simply created their own and looked no further than to A Sentimental Journey for directions. The most obvious source providing hints for how one might most effectively commemorate Sterne’s characters is the scene in which Yorick visits the grave of the monk, Father Lorenzo: [I]n my last return through Calais, upon enquiring after Father Lorenzo, I heard he had been dead near three months, and was buried, not in his convent, but, according to his desire, in a little cemetery belonging to it, about two leagues off: I had a strong desire to see where they had laid him—when, upon pulling out his little horn box, as I sat by his grave, and plucking up a nettle or two at the head of it, which had no business to grow there, they all struck together so forcibly upon my affections, that I burst into a flood of tears:—but I am as weak as a woman; and I beg the world not to smile, but to pity me. ( Sterne 2002, 27)

W.G. Day has identified two eighteenth-century graves to Sterne’s Maria in Germany. Jobst Anton von Hinüber’s Marienwerder, an English landscape garden near Hanover in Germany, was first described in print in an anonymous pamphlet published in 1777 but probably written in 1774.5 The gardens, navigated by twisting and turning pathways, led to a model cemetery devoted to Sterne which, as Day has pointed out, “may be seen as the culmination of the experience” (Day 2004, 254). In it, Father Lorenzo was commemorated with a black cross crowned with a snuff-box.

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Such a grave-marker not only seeks to commemorate the dead fictional character in a similar way to the fantastical tomb of Clarissa imagined by Godwin but also memorializes Yorick’s visit to it, where he takes out his snuffbox in honour of his friend. The grave’s snuffbox invited visitors, therefore, to connect with the fictional Lorenzo and to do so in a ritual which also enabled them to commune with Yorick as sentimental tourist. Maria was allocated a white cross edged with black, inscribed “Maria of Moulines” and decorated with a wreath with her own words: “Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio!” There was also a memorial to Trim, consisting of a grave with a drum sitting on two crossed spears, engraved with the line from Tristram Shandy: “Honest Trim | Weed his Grave clean, ye Men of Goodness, | for he was your Brother” and a grave marker for Yorick, which comprised a white cross inscribed with the words “Alas! poor Yorik [sic]”.6 Each of these inscriptions invites the reader to commune with the dead, but by quoting Sterne’s novels they also claim every visitor as a member of his community of readers. The gravesites in Marienwerder were not a unique phenomenon. For a time, eighteenth-century performance artist Louise von Ziegler lived as if she were Maria, leading a lamb around her gardens in Darmstadt where she also installed a grave for her alter ego toward the end of the century (Hewett-Thayer 1905, 90). Gräfin Cristina von Bruhl, member of the circle of Goethe and Schiller, had begun a literary garden in 1791 in the Seifersdorfer Valley at Radeburg, near Dresden. By 1792 one visitor, Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker, recorded 43 memorials and buildings there (cit. in Day 2004, 252). Of those, 32 survive and some have been restored. Father Lorenzo was commemorated here with a gravestone and also with a hut or hermitage. His grave “is situated in a small garden planted with violets and encircled by willow. Behind the fence one can see a large rough stone with a staff, a sack and a snuff-box” (Becker cit. in Day 2004, 252–53). This hut has a sort of dual purpose, being dedicated both to fictional and real beings: The Graf, who had long thought of erecting a memorial to his wife, but at the same time did not want to contradict her own wish which had been to dedicate his hut to the memory of the good Lorenzo, decided to combine both ideas. He pretended that Lorenzo had chosen St Christine (the name of the Gräfin) as his patron and protector, thereby extolling her virtues and her good deeds. This is why one finds inside a painting of her in costume appropriate to the role, as well as several paintings in the small chapel which

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allude to her exemplary characteristics. Outside, over the door are the words: Dedicated to Lorenzo. (Becker cit. in Day 2004, 253)

The Graf honours his wife but the person literally inscribed upon it, who to the visitor probably appeared as its primary dedicatee, is a fictional character: Father Lorenzo of A Sentimental Journey. The Gräfin is cast as a historic religious heroine, commemorated in literary-biblical terms, and in the slippage between Christine and St Christine, she joins a community of sentimental heroines. This combination of the real and the fictional is paralleled in the Graf’s dedication of the site to ‘Lorenzo’, a name embodying both author and character. For the Graf, this fusion of reality with fiction was a device to help alleviate his grief, one which might bring him some comfort through the invocation of his and his wife’s favourite fictional world. From the 1770s, then, characters from both of Sterne’s novels became a fashionable component of the Romantic literary landscape in Germany. They were part of the material apparatus by which readers could demonstrate their “ethical, aesthetic, and physiological” credentials that Stephen Ahern ascribes to the cult of sensibility (Ahern 2007, 11). But to facilitate tear-dropping of the kind anticipated by Tristram after reading the story of Amandus and Amanda, not only did tombs have to be constructed but literary deaths had also to be fabricated. In A Sentimental Journey, Sterne anticipates—but never narrates—the unhappy ending of Maria through his use of archaic, quasi-religious language when Yorick departs: “Adieu, poor luckless maiden!—imbibe the oil and wine which the compassion of a stranger as he journieth on his way, now pours into thy wounds—the being who has twice bruised thee can only bind them up for ever” ( Sterne 2002, 154). In this conflation of a worldly farewell with the invocation of the Christian afterlife, Yorick anticipates Maria’s death even if it does not happen within the novel itself. Yorick was joined by a community of readers who imaginatively expanded Sterne’s narrative. W.B. Gerard tells us that readers were expected to make assumptions about Maria’s life between the publication dates of Sterne’s novels (Gerard 2006, 141). Indeed, Brewer celebrates the opportunities that Sterne created for his readers to expand his fiction and become co-authors (155). Just as the Graf stretched the narrative of A Sentimental Journey to incorporate St Christine, many readers expanded the story of Maria beyond that which appears on Sterne’s pages. As Gerard argues, Sterne’s description of Maria’s “alteration in the second instance by circumstances that took place in the interval [after

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Tristram Shandy] implies the continuing, independent existence of the character beyond the pages of the book and assists in the construction of an illusion of a convincing, ‘living’, character who is merely documented by Sterne’s text and not invented by it” (141). Except what is striking about the literary and touristic afterlife of Maria is that she is a not living but rather a dead vehicle for practising sentimental literary mourning. Maria’s life is cut short in a range of anonymously-authored continuations and imitations of Sterne’s works, especially the songs which emerged in the late 1780s. John Mould’s 1785 work, titled “Sterne’s Maria”, or, later, “Moulines Maria: A Favorite Ballad taken from Sterne”, articulates Maria’s grief through the immediately recognisable vignette of her sitting beneath a poplar tree with her pipe. The closing lines of the final stanza hint at what will happen next: “Maria, luckless maid, adieu! | Thy sorrows soon must cease; | For Heav’n will take a Maid so true | To everlasting peace”.7 As Gerard notes, the musical afterlife (or death) of Maria suggests a widespread interest in Maria’s end, and further songs took this as an invitation to kill off Maria.8 This is true of a popular song which circulated in London in 1789, “Sterne at the Tomb of Maria”: All night her shroud before her past, The owl cry’d, and raven too; At eve Maria breath’d her last, And prov’d these omens true: Her spirit’s now in heav’n repos’d, Which here sad vigils kept; Whose wounds on earth were never clos’d, Whose sorrows never slept. Yet, ere I bid my last adieu, While in thy clay cold bed, Accept the tear of friendship true, Which o’er thy grave I shed; While life remains, thy hapless love In mem’ry e’er shall live; May’st thou in heav’n those blessings prove, Which earth could never give.

The persona participates in literary pilgrimage, keeping alive, or wallowing in, Maria’s unhappy love, positing a relationship between the heroine and the reader framed as “friendship true”. The words for the song were

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published by Sarah Hodgson in the popular ladies’ diary, The Ladies’ Own Memorandum-Book for 1790, which picked the most fashionable songs of the previous year for publication. The title is particularly interesting in that it places the speaker, ‘Sterne’, at her tomb. But in having the song written for a woman (‘Miss George’ is recorded as the singer of the original version), and in printing it in a diary compiled by a woman for women, the verses encourage female readers (or listeners) to place themselves in Sterne’s position, bidding their last goodbyes to Maria and shedding tears over her grave (Hodgson 1790, n.p.). The graves to Maria in Germany, in situ before 1777, reveal how far the process of killing off Sterne’s sentimental heroine had begun before even the ballads were popular. The gardens, like the songs that followed, depended not upon a sense of historic accuracy or sensitivity to the original narrative. Just as the absence of an inscription on Sterne’s tomb of the lovers leaves the site ripe for reinterpretation, graves to Maria were rather based on imagined or wilfully reinterpreted text. Sterne’s texts became sites of negotiation, over which readers wishing to join communities of “friendship true” might exaggerate the pathos of the original story in order to create further opportunities for the display of sensibility and of literary creativity. But these moments of creativity hint, too, at some dissatisfaction with the limbo in which Sterne leaves his Maria within his novels, and the implications of that stasis for female agency. In commemorating—and killing—Maria, Sterne’s readers proposed to heal wounds which “on earth were never clos’d”, bestow “blessings” on the girl “[w]hich earth could never give”, and to thereby practice a form of criticism of both the text and the social order from which it emerged. They rehabilitated through commemorating their broken-hearted, and later grieving, literary heroine, taking cues from grave-visiting in Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey.

The Cult of Charlotte In Charlotte Temple, a tragic narrative of Charlotte’s seduction by Montraville and his abandonment of her whilst pregnant with his child, Susanna Rowson, like Sterne, anticipates and directs grave tourism within her fiction. The tragic narrative of Charlotte Temple follows the title character’s seduction by Montraville and his abandonment of her whilst she is  pregnant with his child.  Perhaps because of its subtitle, “A Tale of Truth”, some readers, like one contributor to the Critical Review, were

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initially unsure whether or not it was fiction: “We should feel for Charlotte, if such a person ever existed, who for one error scarcely perhaps deserved so severe a punishment. If it is a fiction poetic justice is not, we think, properly distributed” (Critical Review 1791, 469). Charlotte, like Clarissa before her, did not deserve to have been written into the grave. But the novel was a tragedy, a fact indicated by Rowson through prolepsis from early on in the narrative. Charlotte herself, despite her youth, often anticipates dying without seeing her beloved parents again, and she is frequently perceived as near-dead by onlookers, from at least halfway through the novel. When the kindly Mrs Beauchamp finds that she lives opposite her, she foresees Charlotte’s end: “she saw the melancholy so conspicuous in her countenance, and her heart bled at the reflection, that perhaps deprived of honour, friends, all that was valuable in life, she was doomed to linger out a wretched existence in a strange land, and sink broken-hearted into an untimely grave” (Rowson 1991, 77). On arriving in New York, Charlotte learns that she is pitied by Mrs Beauchamp for being the mistress of the rakish and deceptive Montraville. Rowson devotes an entire chapter to Charlotte’s reflections on how, if she were married and neglected by her lover, she could reflect with pleasure that she does not deserve neglect. However, the “poor girl by thoughtless passion led astray” is cast out from society and, as Rowson reveals, must inevitably die: she feels herself a poor solitary being in the midst of surrounding multitudes; shame bows her to the earth, remorse tears her distracted mind, and guilt, poverty, and disease close the dreadful scene: she sinks unnoticed to oblivion. The finger of contempt may point out to some passing daughter of youthful mirth, the humble bed where lies this frail sister of mortality; and will she, in the unbounded gaiety of her heart, exult in her own unblemished fame, and triumph over the silent ashes of the dead? Oh no! has she a heart of sensibility, she will stop, […] address the unhappy victim of folly— […] Then, as she stoops to pluck the noxious weed from off the sod, a tear will fall, and consecrate the spot to Charity. For ever honoured be the sacred drop of humanity; the angel of mercy shall record its source, and the soul from whence it sprang shall be immortal. (69)

What concerns Rowson is not necessarily the death of her heroine, whose “oblivion” is quickly announced, but how the girl’s remains might be received by passers-by. The woman of sensibility is the mourner created by

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Rowson to address the bones of the not-yet dead Charlotte and to commune with the fallen woman. Charlotte’s imagined grave becomes a useful vehicle for demonstrating the “heart of sensibility” of the “passing daughter of youthful mirth”. In calling Charlotte a “sister of mortality” Rowson hints that the reader-visitors, the daughters of mirth, are related to her, if separate by circumstance; they are a community. Her use of gendered terms reveal how far Rowson imagined grave-visiting as a feminine, and as a potentially proto-feminist, act. Though Charlotte “feels herself a poor solitary being”, Rowson’s gendered familial language suggests that this story is more than simply a warning against pre-marital sex. Rather, it unites women beyond selfish “triumph” in sociable solidarity, and potentially towards collective action. Rowson’s didactic description of sentimental sympathy has Sternean echoes. Here, you can’t help but think of Trim’s epitaph (“weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness” [VI.25.544]) and Yorick plucking the nettles from Lorenzo’s grave. She includes a Shandean address to “My dear Madam”, the reader, who has contracted her brow into a frown of disapprobation, and whom the author has to reassure. Sterne’s sentimental recording angel, who drops a tear upon Toby’s curse “and blotted it out for ever” (VI.8.511) becomes in Rowson’s text “the angel of mercy.” Charlotte’s cry, “Alas! poor, forsaken Charlotte” (75), when she realizes that Montraville has lost interest in their relationship, echoes Sterne’s celebrated “Alas, poor YORICK!” (II.12.35). Sterne’s works set the terms by which we read the demise of Charlotte Temple. The sentimental novel had already established its literary protocols for grieving. Spencer D.C. Keralis has shown how the American publication history of Rowson’s novel, complete with frontispiece portraits of the heroine, contributed to the “cult of Charlotte” that followed (Keralis 2010, 25). As Brewer notes, “the characters for whom further adventures were invented tended to be those whose immateriality was paradoxically guaranteed by the sheer material proliferation of different and differing editions, formats, and performances” (6). The cult of Charlotte was amplified by the fact that the novel was purported to be truth, and readers early on developed a myth that it had been based on the life of Charlotte Stanley, mythologized as having been in a similarly fraught relationship with Rowson’s cousin, John Montresor (Davidson 1986, xxxvii). Whilst the grave associated with Charlotte Temple is that of a real woman who lived in Manhattan in the eighteenth century, evidence about who is actually buried beneath the tombstone does not survive. For many visitors, it was

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irrelevant. Tourism to the grave of ‘Charlotte Temple’ may have begun at the turn of the century but went unrecorded until an 1829 correspondent to the New York Daily Advertiser, having heard rumour of the sentimental literary site, requested information about the location of the stone (New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, 2nd November 1829). The gravesite was popularized in the press when in 1846 a fire destroyed the house believed to have been the place where Charlotte died: The house in which Charlotte Temple died, in this city, was burned down about ten days ago. The house in which the evidence of her shame, and her seducer’s infamy, first saw the light, is still standing, not far from the asylum for the aged and infirm colored women, and near the lower Croton reservoir. The history of her life describes the house as being situated in the country, in a pleasant place, from which a fine view of the East river may be obtained. Charlotte Temple was buried in Trinity church-yard, and the loiterer among the graves and broken stones, may still find the humble grave, with the tablet at its head.9

The correspondent, recording the fire of a site of notable literary heritage, encourages readers to search out the tomb as a similarly significant place from the story. By 1852, “the large plate of iron which bore the inscription” was allegedly removed “by thievish boys”, and stories about throngs of weeping visitors were common in New York newspapers of that decade (New York Correspondence, 8th May 1852). Thousands of pilgrims travelled to the churchyard to lay locks of hair and the burned remains of love letters on the grave (Davidson 1986, xiii). In 1864 a correspondent to the Portsmouth Journal wrote a full itinerary of places to visit associated with the heroine, culminating with the grave, bemoaning the fact that “Old Tree House, where the girl on which the tale was based was said to have died”, had recently been demolished and, after a brief campaign to turn it into a literary house, P.T. Barnum had failed to preserve it within his museum (Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics, 26th March 1864). This was probably especially disappointing since Barnum had staged a dramatic adaptation of Charlotte Temple as part of the museum’s repertoire throughout the 1850s.10 Occasionally journalism on the wider phenomenon of visiting literary graves was satirical, as in a piece in The People of 1857 which joked that “A distinguished literary tourist was once found in a paroxysm of tears over the supposed tomb of Washington, at Mount Vernon, but it turned out

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only to be the ice-house. This reminds us of the traveller who, while weeping over what he thought the grave of Collins, the poet, was aroused from his reverie by the sexton saying, ‘That’s the grave of Collins, the cobbler; Collins, the poet, is buried yonder’”.11 The joke, like Sterne’s own disappointment of Tristram at the tomb of the lovers, represents the complexity at the heart of the practice of visiting graves to fictional characters: tourism to authors’ graves might be comically undermined if undertaken at the wrong site, but visiting graves to fictional characters thrived despite their inauthenticity. Even Charlotte’s grave was not immune to criticism in the press: “Among a crowd of common-place head-stones, lies a dark slab out of which has been picked and carried away the marble slab that did adorn it; all that now remains to identify the grave it covers are the words, cut in the stone CHARLOTTE TEMPLE. And this is the spot where repose the ashes of that poor girl, over whose story more tears have been wept than have yet fallen for all the dead of the great battles that Europe is witnessing” (Plattsburgh Republican, 22nd September 1855). As the writer notes, tourists had gradually picked away at the marble, taking chunks of the stone away as a souvenir of their sentimental journeys. And yet the tourism continued. In 1869 the Troy Weekly Times recorded that the cavity which once held a lead inscription was being used as a receptacle for flowers (The Troy Weekly Times, 1st May 1869). Visitors to the grave of Charlotte Temple mourned their heroine, taking inspiration from Rowson’s final funeral scene, which processes through a realistic New York city landscape, and from the protocols for commemoration which Rowson had directed throughout the novel before Charlotte’s death ever took place. Moreover, the narrative that defined those protocols was itself shaped by the rituals of sentimental touristic practice inscribed within Sterne’s novels, Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey, and was preceded by a similar cult of Maria which saw graves fabricated in English-style gardens in late eighteenth-century Germany. Rowson places her own readers into situations whereby they respond to death using Sternean cues, but ultimately Charlotte Temple and the graves dedicated to Maria and Charlotte represent late-century readers’ reinterpretation of the sentimental heroine outside of that satiric framework but one which, through pilgrimage and tears—whether performative or otherwise—stage sympathy for, and potentially a critique of, the social constraints which enabled Rowson to craft such a tragic, because believable, ending.

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The graves to Maria and Charlotte function as material cultural continuations of Sterne and Rowson’s works. Those to Maria join the ranks of Sterneana of the late eighteenth century demonstrating an appetite for consuming the sentimental elements of Sterne’s texts in isolation from their original satiric framing. While readers could undertake this tourism with a degree of self-satisfaction in being virtuous themselves compared to the example of virtue in distress before them, that is not to say that the cult of Charlotte, or indeed, the cult of Maria, was not self-aware. Tristram’s search for the tomb of the lovers had presented readers with both the sentimental opportunities afforded by literary tourism whilst also framing that practice in such a way as to invite laughter, critique, and to make readers aware of its constructedness. Similarly, the newspaper reports mapping Rowson’s fiction onto the geographical landscape of Manhattan, New York, participate in the self-conscious construction of literary heritage. Visitors to the grave of Maria had greater imaginative leaps to undertake than those to the grave of Charlotte: they would have had to suspend disbelief that they were, in the first instance, in a location taken from the novel, and in the second, at a grave dedicated to a once-living (and now-­ dead) person. But both of these graves gave visitors the opportunity to participate in an imagined community of readers of sensibility and to demonstrate through literary pilgrimage their membership credentials. In expanding Sterne’s story to narrate a death for Maria, and in co-opting the grave of a real young woman as Charlotte’s, these constructed touristic experiences also enacted a critique of sentimental femininity by acknowledging its limitations and by facilitating tear-dropping at the social constraints which meant female sexuality outside the marriage plot only ever ended in tragedy.

Notes 1. Laurence  Sterne, 1978,  The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,  Volume 2 of The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, ed. Melvyn New and Joan New. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. vol. VII, chapter 31, 628. Citations from now on will appear in text and comprise the volume, chapter, and page: VII.31.628. 2. In the dissolution of boundaries Westover draws from Nico H. Frijda. 3. Sterne, to Robert Foley (11th November 1764), in Sterne (2009), letter 141, 392. 4. For a reliable English translation, see New et al. (1984, 484–85).

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5. W.G.  Day states that it is internally dated 28th December 1774 (Day 2004, 254). 6. By the time German author Friedrich von Matthison visited the gardens in 1785, uncle Toby had been also added to the cemetery. Friedrich von Matthison, Letter to the Hofrath von Köpken in Magdeburg of 17th October 1785 (in Hewett-Thayer 1905, 89). Unfortunately, on visiting these graves, Day found that they have largely disappeared. 7. The copies I have consulted are ‘Sterne’s Maria’ (Dublin: Printed by J. Hill, 1787), National Library of Ireland, Joly Music 3409; ‘Mouline’s Maria: A Favorite Ballad taken from Sterne’ (Dublin: Published by E. Rhames, No. 16 Exchange Street), National Library of Ireland, Add. Mus. 838. 8. See, for example, those documented by J.C.T. Oates (1971, 313–315). 9. Originally published in the New York Sunday Despatch and reprinted as cited in The Sun, 3rd March 1846. 10. See for example, advertisements in New-York Daily Tribune, 2nd May 1857. 11. Presumably referring to the poet William Collins. The People, 7, 30th May 1857.

Bibliography Ahern, Stephen. 2007. Affected Sensibilities: Romantic Excess and the Genealogy of the Novel 1680–1810. New York: AMS. Baker, Van R. 1976. Sterne and Piganiol de la Force: The Making of Volume VII of Tristram Shandy. Comparative Literature Studies 13: 5–14. Becker, Wilhelm Gottlieb. 1792. Das Seifersdorfer Thal. Leipzig: Voss und Leo. Dresden: Hofkupferstecher Schultze. Braudy, Leo. 1973. The Form of the Sentimental Novel. Novel 7: 5–13. Brewer, David. 2005. The Afterlife of Character, 1726–1825. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Burke, Edmund. 2015. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. Paul Guyer, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Critical Review. 1791, 1. Davidson, Cathy N., ed. 1986. Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth. New  York: Oxford University Press. Day, W.G. 2004. Sternean Material Culture: Lorenzo’s Snuff-box and his Graves. In The Reception of Laurence Sterne in Europe, ed. Peter de Voogd and John Neubauer, 247–258. London: Continuum. Gerard, W.B. 2006. Laurence Sterne and the Visual Imagination. Aldershot: Ashgate. Godwin, William. 1993. Essay on Sepulchres. In Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin: Essays, ed. Mark Philp, 1–30. London: Pickering.

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Hewett-Thayer, Harvey Waterman. 1905. Laurence Sterne in Germany: A Contribution to the Study of the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Keralis, Spencer D.C. 2010. Pictures of Charlotte: The Illustrated Charlotte Temple and Her Readers. Book History 13: 25–57. Lamb, Susan. 2009. Bringing Travel Home to England: Tourism, Gender and Imaginative Literature in the Eighteenth Century. London: Associated University Press. ‘Moulines Maria: A Favorite Ballad taken from Sterne’ (Dublin: Published by E.  Rhames, No. 16 Exchange Street), National Library of Ireland, Add. Mus. 838. New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette. 1829, November 2. New York Correspondence. 1852, May 8. New-York Daily Tribune, 1857, May 2. New, Melvyn, Richard A. Davies, and W.G. Day. 1984. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: The Notes. In Volume 3 of the Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Newbould, Mary-Céline. 2013. Adaptations of Laurence Sterne’s Fiction: Sterneana, 1760–1840. London: Ashgate. Norton, Brian Michael. 2006. The Moral in Phutatorius’s Breeches: Tristram Shandy and the Limits of Stoic Ethics. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 18: 405–423. Oates, J.C.T. 1971. Maria and the Bell: Music of Sternean Origin. In The Winged Skull: Essays on Laurence Sterne, ed. Arthur H. Cash and John M. Stedmond, 313–315. London: Methuen. Piganiol de la Force, Jean Aymard. 1724. Nouveau Voyage de France. Paris: Delaulne. Plattsburgh Republican. 1855, September 22. Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics. 1864, March 26. Rowson, Susanna. 1991. Charlotte Temple. In Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple, ed. Ann Douglas, 2nd ed., 1–132. London: Penguin Books. Santesso, Aaron. 2004. The Birth of the Birthplace: Bread Street and Literary Tourism before Stratford. English Literary History 71: 377–403. Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1974. Ev’ry Woman is at Heart a Rake. Eighteenth-Century Studies 8: 27–46. Sterne, Laurence. 1978. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Volume 2 of The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, ed. Melvyn New and Joan New. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. ———. 2002. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Volume 6 of The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, ed. Melvyn New and W.G. Day. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. ———. 2009. The Letters, Part 1, 1739–1764. Volume 7 of The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, ed. Melvyn New and Peter de Voogd. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

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‘Sterne’s Maria’ (Dublin: Printed by J. Hill, 1787), National Library of Ireland, Joly Music 3409. The Ladies’ Own Memorandum-Book: Or Daily Pocket Journal. 1790. Ed. Sarah Hodgson. London: Robinson. The People. 1857, 7. May 30. The Sun. 1846. March 3. The Troy Weekly Times. 1869, May 1. Van Sant, Ann Jessie. 2004. Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watson, Nicola. 2006. The Literary Tourist: Readers and Places in Romantic and Victorian Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Westover, Paul. 2012. Necromanticism: Travelling the Meet the Dead, 1750–1860. London: Springer.

CHAPTER 5

Medicinal Sociability: British Bluestockings and the Continental Spa Mascha Hansen

In the summer of 1763, a party including two well-known Bluestockings set out to pay a visit to Spa in Belgium in search of health as well as pleasure: William Pulteney, Lord Bath, in one coach, taking his friend Dr Douglas, later Bishop of Salisbury, with him, and Edward and Elizabeth Montagu in another, picking up Elizabeth Carter at Dover. The group eventually consisted of not just five but in fact twenty-seven people, including a “regiment of servants” and “horses innumerable”, according to Mrs Montagu (1923, I, 44; 47). They crossed from Dover to Calais, where they landed on 4th June, and travelled on via Lille, Brussels, and Liège, the full train eventually harbouring “a coach, a vis-à-vis, a post-­ chaise, and a chasse marine, with ten or twelve out-riders” (Carter in Pennington 1807, Memoirs 181).1 Travelling leisurely, they arrived at Spa on 16th June, where they spent the customary time allotted for taking the waters, two months. From thence they moved on into Germany, visiting Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf, taking another detour on the way back to

M. Hansen (*) Greifswald, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_5

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England via Utrecht, Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam, finally landing in Dover again on 19th September. In 1763, Mrs Montagu was forty-four, her husband seventy-one, Lord Bath seventy-nine (he was to die a year later), and Elizabeth Carter forty-­ five. Among them, they suffered from various ailments they hoped to alleviate—coughs, headaches, weakened nerves and, in the case of Lord Bath, grief for the loss of his eldest son, who had recently died of a fever in Spain. They went abroad in search of health, and as the Spa waters had already proven their efficacy in the case of Lord Bath, or so Montagu claimed (1923, I, 44), other continental spas do not seem to have been taken into account. Elizabeth Montagu both instigated and organized this tour: a trip to Spa in Belgium demanded a different kind of planning and preparation than the Montagus’ usual trip to Tunbridge Wells, and Montagu took to it with some relish. Spa is first mentioned in connection with Elizabeth Vesey, a fellow Bluestocking, whose husband seems to have contemplated a trip already in May 1761 (Carter 1817, I, 103). Perhaps this spurred Mrs Montagu’s ambition to be among the fashionable travellers to Spa, as indeed planning for the trip began almost a year before they set out, Montagu told her sister, the novelist Sarah Scott: “Last September … I started ye thought of going to Spa instead of Tunbridge this summer, which we all talk’d of some time, with great alacrity, except Mr. Montagu, who prudently threw in ifs and buts, doubts and quandaries” (1923, I, 44). Well-skilled in the management of her husband, Montagu carefully refrained from referring to the subject again for a while, waiting for a good opportunity. In the meantime, she spurred on Lord Bath to prevail on Mr Montagu to agree to the trip. A “very kind and obliging” (1923, I, 44) letter by Lord Bath finally clinched the deal, silenced Mr Montagu’s doubts, and set the coach rolling. Indeed, the lure of Spa must have been particularly high at the time: the Seven Years’ war had just ended with the treaty of Hubertusburg in February 1763. Historian Richard Bates considers Spa’s “golden age” to have begun that very year, with an astonishing 5000-plus visitors from Britain alone during the following twenty-five years (this number excludes the lower ranks, such as servants accompanying their employers).2 Spa relied on a fairly exclusive society, and its visitors were considered important enough to be announced in printed lists once a year.3 In the face of emerging tourism, and fierce competition from other continental spa towns such as Baden Baden or Pyrmont, Spa had joined the eighteenth-­ century European trend of urban rebuilding, devising increasingly

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ambitious ways and means to enhance its attractiveness to elite patients and tourists, for whom sociable activities were a ‘must have’ even at that time. By 1770, according to Bates, Spa boasted two casinos (the famous Redoute was built in 1762), an assembly room, and a theatre (2017, 133).4 Apart from redesigning its urban infrastructure, Spa, like other resorts, also began to pay attention to its natural surroundings, since beautiful landscapes attracted tourists who were less keen on gambling; besides, moderate exercise such as walking was considered to contribute to the medical efficacy of the waters (see Köhler 2017, 69). However, the lure of nature was mostly used as yet another marketing ploy, Barbara Benedict points out, since spa reality meant that “a dazzling array of luxuries” was on offer to stimulate consumption, and many of the opportunities for physical exercise that were promoted, such as “bowling, bathing, promenading, [or] dancing”, in fact necessitated urban facilities (1995, 206).5 By catering to various tastes, Spa, like other resorts, was able to accommodate “a remarkable complexity of social and cultural encounters” (Köhler 2017, 67). Partly, of course, this was in keeping with a larger trend in tourism: “travel culture to northern Europe was an overwhelming, enthusiastic engagement with contemporary power, society and culture in its multiple forms”, as Sweet, Verhoeven, and Goldsmith prove (2017, 6; see also Cowan 2019, 11).6 And yet, as Burkhard Fuhs and Richard Bates argue, this was also due to the peculiar “elasticity” of fashionable aristocratic spa towns, where an international nobility in particular could count on, and communicate with, an admiring public in more or less neutral territory, away from their own court etiquettes, while the supportive members of the upper bourgeoisie could bathe in the aristocracy’s limelight (see Fuhs 1992, 45–46; 55), and impress their friends at home with reports of the foreign kings and queens, dukes and duchesses they had walked, or even conversed, with (Bates 2017, 133). Clearly, the “history of water has a prominent social dimension. […] The ways they relax and their choice of destination intersect with beliefs about what is appropriate for their social role” (Anderson 2002, 2). The recovery of health, thus, did not depend on the health-restoring properties of their (chalybeate, sulphuric or diuretic) waters alone, but on sociability, or as Carter put it in a letter to Elizabeth Vesey, speaking of Tunbridge Wells: “if you do not find health in the spring, you will at least acquire good spirits from the society” (1809, IV, 26).7 The medicinal qualities of taking the waters in conjunction with the accompanying effect of sociability were well-touted by eighteenth-century spas and their

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physicians: the resident physician at Spa, Dr Jean Philippe Limbourg had published the Nouveaux Amusements des Eaux de Spa in 1763, clearly a popular book that summer since Elizabeth Carter refers to it in her letters (1809, III, 224). It was to be translated into English within a year of its publication, and claims in the very preface that amusement is necessary to render the water efficacious (Limbourg 1763, 2). Spa offered various options for light to moderate exercise such as scrambling up the local mountains, which the Bluestockings enjoyed, or a coach ride to the various springs—called pouhons—located outside of the town, to be taken according to prescription. These were a few miles apart and thus required some exertion on the part of the patients, who were encouraged to take the waters directly at the source, where they would often find an opportunity to meet and greet fellow sufferers.8 From Spa, travellers generally moved on to Aix la Chapelle for a short stop, as did the Bluestockings (Memoirs 222). Richard Bates has called this popular tour the “petit tour” of the continent to distinguish it from the better-known grand tour (2017, 127). Apart from Montagu and Carter, he lists David Garrick, Richard Sheridan, Lady Mary Coke and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, among those who paid a visit to Spa in the second half of the eighteenth century (129).9 The Bluestockings and their entourage thus travelled on soon to be very well-trodden paths; to Montagu, Carter, and their correspondents, however, this was as yet unfamiliar territory, leading to a sizeable number of letters to and from the continent. Among other tourist topics, they frequently discuss the similarities and differences between British and European spa sociabilities: Elizabeth Montagu had been visiting British watering places such as Tunbridge Wells every year during the spa season—the summer—to steady her nerves, and Elizabeth Carter, too, felt well-equipped to compare the drawbacks and advantages of various spas. Like so many other members of the upper and middle ranks of eighteenth-­ century society, the Bluestockings valued watering places precisely for their easy access to fashionable society, their frequently adopted pose of setting themselves at a distance from all aspects deemed fashionable in society notwithstanding. The trip to Spa in Belgium thus remained well within the range of typical Bluestocking activities, and it was undertaken to confirm rather than shake typical Bluestocking notions of liberty and nationality. It also served their purpose to investigate further into women’s presence in private and public spaces, providing the Bluestockings with another opportunity to “enlarg[e] what they termed their ‘sphere of

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action’” (Eger 2010, 106).10 Alison Hurley similarly considers the Bluestockings’ decided preference for spas to be a way of “asserting women’s rights to access” the public domain (2006, 9). This particular spa trip allowed them to voice their opinions concerning European attractions, fashions, and manners, and to give travel advice to an attentive readership at home, many of whom would have accepted their authority in matters of continental sociability. However, their letters from this particular trip also reveal the social distinction between these two Bluestockings, which in turn led to rather discrepant experiences of Spa’s peculiar mixture of continental and international, bourgeois and aristocratic sociability.

Between Correspondence and Conversation The Bluestocking letters from the Spa tour were carefully composed both for immediate circulation and long-term preservation.11 It is quite likely, too, that Carter and Montagu read each other’s letters and discussed which aspects of Spa life were revealed by whom, so as not to bore their readers with the same descriptions. Both of them, however, also wrote to correspondents other than the friends they shared. Letters from London to Spa only took some five or six days (Bates 2017, 138), and one of the recipients of Carter’s Spa letters, Catherine Talbot, clearly expected regular letters, assuming that her readers in turn had read the British newspapers even before they could get her replies (Carter 1809, III, 45, 49, 54). These Spa letters circulated widely among their acquaintances: Talbot passed Carter’s letters on to Elizabeth Vesey in Ireland, who in turn sent Montagu’s epistles back to Talbot (1809, III, 51, 52, 54). The quick circulation of these letters guaranteed the travelling writers immediate feedback from their audiences: Catherine Talbot, for one, “was disappointed to find Bruxelles so disagreeable a town” (Carter 1809, III, 42), and even added that a gentleman visitor had told her what kind of sightseeing Carter should have done to be able to present that town in a better light. She passed on the comforting news that the season was “thin, wet and dull” at Tunbridge (III, 46), and repeatedly urged Carter to report on people, not places (III, 50). Carter, she hoped, would begin a correspondence with a fellow invalid on her return so as to prolong the pleasure of foreign news. Carter’s letters were at least partly read to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker, with whom the Talbots lived, since Talbot dutifully reports what her mother and Secker thought of Carter’s choice of topics (III, 51). Such limits placed, and demands made, on the letter

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writer may well have daunted less adventurous spirits. Talbot herself felt “genée […] as one does when talking in mixed company,” knowing that her letters would be read by Carter’s travel companions, too, as she admitted to Carter later (III, 57). Talbot’s anxiety about the sparkling tone and substantial contents required of letters which were to furnish material for polite conversations is noticeable in her part of the Spa correspondence: thus, for instance, she made a point of describing the Duke of Richmond’s fireworks, and even a masquerade, since she hoped they would be “talking of all these things in countries where they will certainly figure well in conversation”, and do so with an “honest English vanity” (III, 40). In another letter she imagines Carter and Montagu in “elegant conversaziones” at Spa (III, 43), and hopes that on their return they will not despise “mere English conversation” (III, 55).12 Neither Carter nor Montagu seem to have suffered any such anxieties about their letter writing. The circulation of their letters may nevertheless have hampered their freedom of speech to some extent, and Carter on occasion tells her correspondent that they would talk about some half-concealed topic the next time they met in person: “My English vanity suffers a good deal in some other respects; but these, and sundry other points, I hope we shall talk over next winter” (Memoirs 196). A desire to please their readers may indeed have elicited the emphasis on people rather than places, as friends at home even recommended people to visit on the journey (Carter 1809, III, 56). In turn, they were duly kept up to date about new arrivals from England at Spa, as well as about new acquaintances made anywhere during the trip. Both Carter and Montagu frequently adopt a tone of ironic self-­ observation in their letters, and both report their activities through a sociable, polite filter that needs to be taken into account. Their sociable encounters with their Spa acquaintances, and the effects of sociable amusements on their health, require a closer look at this filter and their notions of what was ‘reportable’: the Bluestocking model of sociable correspondence—itself shaped by other polite correspondences and travel accounts— determined to a large extent how the concomitants of this visit to Spa were being understood and narrated. Nevertheless, it is in these letters that the social distinctions between Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Carter, too often lumped together as prominent Bluestockings, show most clearly. There are noticeable differences in the conception and experience of society in the letters written by the clergyman’s daughter, Elizabeth Carter, whose trip, her biographer surmises, must have been paid for by her friends (Memoirs 169)—though in fact she had come into

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money of her own with the publication of her translation of the Discourses of Epictetus (1758)—and those of the much better connected Elizabeth Montagu. Carter was clearly not at home among the aristocratic society of Spa and its elite rituals, so formal and old-fashioned compared to the more egalitarian patterns of enlightenment sociability she favoured, or those of the clerical middle-class circles she usually moved in at Deal, her home town. Accordingly, Carter considered herself as—and wrote from the position of—a spectator (in fact she was proud to be an “English spectator,” and a “Speculatist”) in her letters, and took her time to adapt to the situation and recover some agency in her new role of fellow patient and travel companion to the Montagus and Lord Bath (Memoirs 170; 190; 207). Montagu, by contrast, had invitations to dinner in almost every town they passed through, and enjoyed her part in Spa society with few signs of discomfort or hesitation.

Sociable Tourism: Company and Companionship For the Bluestockings as for other travellers, tourism was still conducted in an educational frame comparable, if on a much smaller scale, to the grand tour’s “educational dimension” (Sweet, Verhoeven, and Goldsmith 8), and they diligently inspected historical sites of note, usually in combination with hiring a guide (Montagu 1923, I, 48; Memoirs 174). An intriguing feature of the Bluestockings’ tour was the inclusion of monasteries and especially women’s convents, which they visited in almost every place they passed through in order to talk to the nuns, and occasionally to get a glimpse of convent life (Montagu 1923, I, 49; Memoirs 183, 222). Visiting churches as well as cathedrals in order to denounce the distractingly fanciful trimmings of places of Catholic worship was part of the continental tour (Black 1999, 240f), but the Bluestocking interest in nunneries seems to have gone beyond the habit, which they also displayed, of reassuring themselves of the superiority of the Anglican Church, or its superior treatment of women. Nevertheless, their desire to talk to nuns seems to be in keeping with their overall fascination with female lives and female spaces. Sarah Scott’s Millennium Hall had been published the year before, and its portrayal of a harmonious female circle may have spurred a new interest in actual women’s convent life.13 Yet Carter certainly saw these visits not as a conventional part of the ‘sightseeker’s tour’ of the continent but as a “compliment” to the nuns, especially if there were English nuns among them, noting with some surprise that an English convent in Brussels

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actually kept up with English times: “They told us one of their amusements was country dances, and that they had the newest from England” (Memoirs 178–79; 183). Nevertheless, she considered the nun’s gaiety false and their health bad, “which is no wonder from the want of air and exercise in such a confinement” (179). The nuns at Spa even disappointed them, as they appeared to be a mere “parcel of cloistered boarding school Girls who affected a gayety that suited neither their years nor condition”, according to Montagu (1923, I, 55). Their interest in nuns may also be linked to their concern with the sociable aspects of religion: in Carter’s view, religion was a sociable practice, since it required an exchange of ideas, values, and opinions.14 This is emphasized in a letter Carter wrote to Elizabeth Vesey shortly before leaving for Spa, admonishing her to “[r]emember, that Heaven is always represented as a Society” (1809, III, 217). During her stay, Carter penned a letter akin to a sermon to Vesey and then joked that Dr Limbourg would not consider sermon-writing one of “les amusements de Spa” (1809, III, 224). Yet it was so, to her; it was a form of conversation that went beyond the merely polite and superficial, a form of sociability that probed into profundities and could only be conducted among well-tried friends; and she went so far as to question some of the “papists” they met about the Catholic interpretation of the bible, much to the puzzlement of her travel companion: As we returned to our inn, Mrs. Montagu asked me how I could contrive to preserve the gravity of my countenance, and ask so many questions of the priest who shewed us the reliques; but I found no difficulty in it, and I love to hear people tell their own story. (Memoirs 235; see also 239)

Again, this anecdote nicely illustrates the differences between Carter and Montagu in the ways they approached and conversed with those who belonged to a different social stratum: Montagu seems to have expected people to behave according to their place in society, while Carter loved to look beyond and beneath their status in order to find an individual she could converse with. Like other well-connected eighteenth-century tourists, the Montagus and Lord Bath travelled fortified with letters of recommendation, and toured not only the notable sights and objects of the towns they visited, but also the ‘locals’ of note—many of them in fact fellow Britons living abroad. While these would have been members of the upper or upper middle classes for the most part, the eighteenth-century notion of tourism

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also included noting and commenting on the looks and mores of members of the lower classes (coachmen, market women, attendants), and indeed the anticipation, and realization, of meeting with fellow tourists. Carter occasionally reports having talked with the lower sort of people, or at least with those she considered the well-meaning sort: “there is a politesse, and an empressement pour vous servir, among the lower kind of people here, that is very engaging, and I find quite a pleasure in talking to them” (Memoirs 171). Montagu, on the other hand, took some care not to be seen—or heard—to converse with all and sundry. Even though she grandly claimed that “[h]ere you meet all the various orders and professions in which mankind are classed […]. All professions and all Nations are assembled at Spa in the summer”, mingling freely in some sort of Addisonian discourse, she herself was clearly not interested in such ordinary folks but is, in the very same passage, walking with “son altesse Royal” instead (1923, I, 54). Indeed, Montagu’s letters may serve to support Barbara Benedict’s claim that spa resorts subtly supported existing social hierarchies “by feeding visitors’ fantasies of social prominence” (1995, 205). And yet, these were not merely fantasies: Lord Bath had taken the best house in town, the ‘Dauphin,’ and the Montagus and Mrs Carter had taken the one just opposite (the ‘Roi de Prusse’).15 On the Bluestockings’ arrival in mid-June, the “company”—Spa’s elite visitors—was as yet thin, but great numbers were expected to arrive, and indeed, Carter soon announced that no more houses were to be had (Memoirs 202).16 As Lord Bath’s regular dinner guests, they profited from his social standing to socialize with some of the crème de la crème of Spa, such as the Bishop of Augsburg (Joseph Ignaz Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt). Montagu takes some pride in mentioning him to her correspondents, and her dismissive choice of words—“a very good natured and petite man. We have dined with him five or six times” (1923, I, 55)—suggests that he primarily serves to feed her own prominence in the eyes of her correspondent (here Benjamin Stillingfleet). For Carter, by contrast, these dinner occasions proved to be a difficult treat, and rather less then convivial: “The dining with a Sovereign Prince is an affair of more honour than pleasure, and is nothing like society. One circumstance is very awkward to little folks, that the attendants are all men of quality; and we must either choke with thirst, or employ a Count or Baron to bring a glass of water” (Memoirs 190).17 Before setting out, Montagu had even heard that the grand old King Frederick II of Prussia was to put in an appearance, but that turned out to be a false report (he contented himself with ordering bottled Spa

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water instead).18 They had to make do with the Prussian King’s brother, Ferdinand, who stayed for a couple of weeks to the gratification of Spa society. His party included his wife as well as Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, the fiancé of George III’s sister, Princess Augusta, who was to marry him in January 1764, a fact of which the Bluestockings were aware. This illustrious party clearly enhanced the charm of Spa society, but also led to a considerable increase in the formality of Spa life, according to Carter: “I have just been for half an hour to the assembly, where I was tired to death with making forty curtsies; if this direful formality is to continue, I will take care to get but very seldom into the scrape” (Memoirs 189).19

Sociable and Unsociable Activities Carter frequently used the opportunity to escape from this all-too-polite society, including her travel companions, into the surroundings of Spa, which she describes in Romantic terms: [T]he prospect on all sides is in the highest style of savage beauty. The fountain is on the top of a hill, with woods, and rocks, and precipices all round: the walks are delightfully wild; they are deeply shaded with unplanted trees, and the ground broken and diversified with an unbounded irregularity; and all the way one wanders along them, there is the perpetual murmur of springs, unless when it is lost in the dashing of cascades. (Memoirs 185)

Indoor spaces, by comparison, are rarely mentioned, let alone portrayed in any detail, in the Bluestockings’ Spa letters. Carter spent quite some time in the solitude of her own room due to her headaches, and there is a rare description of a room on her arrival at Spa. The decoration of her rooms did not live up to Spa’s reputation as a watering place for the elite: “The walls of the chambers are white washed, and the floors the colour of dirt. They are much in the style of the better kind of rooms in our farm houses” (Memoirs 184). At first, there was little to compensate her for the plain rooms, the dearth of society, the badness of the weather, or the fact that there was little change with regard to her bad health. Some three weeks into their stay, on 18 July, nothing much had changed with regard to the weather: “We are much frustrated at present in our water-drinking here, for there has been such continued and often violent rains for about a fortnight, that the waters are very much hurt, and extremely flat” (Memoirs

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201). Spa, to her, seemed a rather unsociable retreat. Indeed, the weather remained very bad throughout, and life at Spa at first seemed to proceed along a sadly sober routine to Carter: The way of life is much less agreeable here, I think, than at Tunbridge […] We set out for the spring [Géronstère] about six o’clock. It is at least three miles, I believe, from the village, and all the way up hill. The time of drinking lasts a little more than an hour, and then we return to breakfast; but tea is absolutely prohibited to all the water drinkers. There is nothing but mere sauntering from this time till we dress for dinner at two; and about five begin visiting, and going to the rooms; then supper, and to bed before ten. (Memoirs 188)

It was a routine that might benefit the young, she complained, as “the whole town” was asleep by ten (187); by implication, it seems that their elders did not much enjoy such strict regulations—but then, Spa did have a reputation as a health resort to maintain. The public rooms at Spa do not seem to have offered much temptation, either, as Carter generally avoided balls and assemblies since they contributed to her bad headaches. Moreover, she clearly despised most of the people to be met with during the water drinking routines. Carter, for one, denied that there was much of a difference between European sociabilities: “The manners of nations who have so much intercourse with each other, have very little variety, and the language is the same, for every body speaks French” (Memoirs 193–94). Yet her initial boredom at Spa may be due to her disappointment in the conversation on offer, which proved to be mostly superficial chitchat. Things improved considerably when one day at the Géronstère Spring she met a German lady, a Mme de Blum from Brunswick, whose conversation she began to value as their friendship became more intimate. She describes their first meeting in quite some detail, and unabashed pride in British superiority: I was struck by the new appearance of a very elegant figure, and in a dress so perfectly neat, that to the honour of our country be it spoken, we took her for an English woman. With the politest manners, and most engaging gentleness, she has a depth of thought, an extent of reading, an elegance of taste, and a sprightliness of wit, that I should never have expected to have found in a Baronne Allemande.20

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She met with her new friend almost every day, she wrote, but her letters remain teasingly reticent about their acquaintance and the conversations they had, as even Catherine Talbot complained (Carter 1809, III, 51).21 Thus, while Carter had begun by considering Spa sociability rather flat, with people who did not much differ from those she might have met at home (Memoirs 190), things did improve with the advent of the high season at Spa in July, with balls, players and even regular fireworks to entertain the guests (190). In mid-July, Carter reports that Spa began to be “gay, and very magnificent”, with the added benefit that with the growing numbers, “form and ceremony” became less important, until even “these serene and royal personages seem[ed] to be very easy sociable kind of beings” (199–200). New English arrivals got Carter involved in sociable gambling, if of the mildest kind: penny quadrille. To her, this was apparently a game to be indulged in only with compatriots, not with foreigners (Memoirs 202). By contrast, Carter castigated the heavy public gambling Spa also provided as entertainment, and felt the need to distance herself from the more fashionable visitors usually to be met with at the more notorious watering places: “there seems to be none of those fashionable pests of society, the bucks and choice spirits, among us” (Memoirs 212). By now, she dismisses her first and rather negative impressions of Spa as being due to “very relaxed nerves” after a harrowing journey.22 Not only had the sociability of Spa proved medicinal, but she had also adjusted to continental culture.

Culture Contact and Conflict Having begun with the comforting assumption that European nations were all the same, especially in watering places, Carter now began to relish the differences between Belgian and British spa habits. Nevertheless, Montagu’s satirical description of the “metamorphosis of Mrs. Carter” into a French coquette for the amusement of Elizabeth Vesey borders on the malicious: She now began to consider greek was a dead language, and that french words, and a little coquettry, would do better at Spa; so […] she translated her native timidity into french airs, and french modes; bought robes trimmed with blonde and souci denton […] and all the most laboured ornaments of dress; and so soon as she was equip’d, wish’d for a walk in the tuilleries. (1923, I, 48–49)

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Carter knew of this lampoon, as she protests against Montagu’s caricature of her in the next letter to Mrs Vesey, and Catherine Talbot also refers to it in one of her replies (Carter 1809, III, 224). Clearly, their letters circulated, and this particular one by Montagu must have crossed from Belgium to Ireland and on to England in the space of only a few weeks. However exaggerated, it surely implies that some shopping was done, if not quite on the scale suggested, whereas Carter barely mentions shops or even city centre strolls for other than educational purposes. French airs and modes apart, Carter’s complaints, such as the one about the formality of the German princes, generally changed to appreciation: “There is a sociability in the German courts that delights me: their attendants share all their amusements, and dine with them in a family way” (Memoirs 206). Indeed, she came to consider German culture in particular to be akin to that of England, and much more compatible with her notions of taste than that of France, even going so far as to consider the German to be a character “which a good deal resembles our own”—a judgement probably influenced by the Bluestockings’ staunch support of their own Royal family (Memoirs 206).23 By contrast, French mores, to which the English were easily seduced, led to some deplorable habits, Carter noted: “my country-women […] are so polite as at Spa to appear in no other than a glaring Parisian complexion” (Memoirs 206–07). Perhaps because of her own beginning cultural adaptation, Carter’s patriotic stance needed some kind of reassurance, and like many a traveller before her, she wore her xenophobic prejudices lightly. However, statements such as the following should not be taken seriously: “I am glad we do not go to Paris, because […] I have not the least wish to know more than I do about French principles, French manners, French fashions, and French dirt” (Memoirs 230). Clearly, Carter relied on her correspondents’ being able to differentiate between affected dislike—the case here—and serious disapproval. She liked to present herself as a patriot in the John Bull mode by despising all things French in order to amuse her readers, while at the same time frankly confessing that she was quite impressed by the French individuals she met: she actually deplored the fact that there were so few French at Spa (Memoirs 187). “The language to carry you through the world is French”, Carter admitted.24 She was grateful to her father for paying for her French lessons, quipping that the other English visitors spoke French so very ill that she was never put out of countenance by her own blunders (Memoirs 189). A good part—more than a third—of the visitors at Spa were in fact English, according to Carter, but these are not often mentioned in her letters.

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More than once they seem to have proved embarrassing, but Carter does not go into details here (Memoirs 196). In general, though, her playful allusions to her own patriotism make it difficult to decide exactly when and where her genuine patriotism swings into the mild xenophobia she also evinces, for instance about the Dutch, who were denigrated by both Bluestocking travellers. Other visitors seem to have adapted at least some of their cultural preferences to the reigning modes, including rouge, with gusto, but the Bluestockings took their time getting used to foreign manners (Memoirs 243). Some aspects of sociability that might have been of interest in an attempt to assess the cultural encounters taking place are completely left out in the Spa letters of both Montagu and Carter. The most striking of these is food: they do not mention even once what they actually ate during those regular dinners with Lord Bath, nor do they ever comment on local specialities they might have tasted or on any other convivial occasions involving food or drink other than Spa waters. Carter laments that tea was forbidden to them, but we do not know if she was actually under the care of Dr Limbourg, for instance, or even dieting according to a particular regimen during her stay. Considering the importance of continental food, its availability on the road as well as cultural preferences and new tastes to other travellers (see Black 1999, 145ff), their reticence here may be due to refined notions of politeness. Both Montagu and Carter report on their states of health after drinking the waters but not on any specific medical advice, nor do they report ever discussing any dietary requirements with their fellow spa guests. There is no gossip about the health of British acquaintances at Spa—though Carter’s letters hint that there are some things to be said later on. Apart from health and diet, conflicts among the party, which must have occurred at some point one assumes, are completely kept out of the letters: quarrels, one feels sure, would have been avoided at all costs, but even any lighter contentions were not discussed at all. (It is possible that Montagu’s lampoon of a frenchified Carter was the result of a mild dispute between them, but this must remain speculation.) Neither do we hear any more about those twenty-two people who set out with them, the servants, coach drivers, footmen or ladies’ maids. Only once does Carter mention politics, joking that it would be inappropriate not to write about politics when writing from The Hague (Memoirs 234, they talked about the restoration of William Pitt). In fact, this animated letter indicates that politics must have dominated many of their conversations with the influential people they dined with, yet clearly, there are

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topics not to be raised in a polite conversational letter, one that made the rounds among her friends and their relatives (the bed bugs at Cologne were mentionable, however [Memoirs 219]). Travelling through Germany and Holland, the Bluestocking party did note the devastations of the recent war, and also the poverty of the lower classes. As travellers, they may have been the more struck by the sight of the poor since spa towns took measures to keep them out of sight (Blackbourn 15). Montagu now deplores and even “detests” (62) the luxury of the German nobility, whose sociability they had just enjoyed so much at Spa, and its impact on the women of the poor, whose lack of beauty meant they could not “subdue the strong” and had to remain “the slaves of the men”, even, to Montagu’s dismay, doing the men’s job of rubbing down the horses (1923, I, 57; 62). Some of them no longer deserved “to be calld [sic] human”, poverty as well as oppression had debased them “below the human form and human mind” (62). There is no indication that she talked to them, though: for her, they serve to prove the value of British liberty (58), and to highlight the immorality of the (foreign) rich. In a similar vein, Carter condemned the prosperous Dutch towns for their “great appearance of wealth and prosperity, and a much greater want of taste and elegance” (Memoirs 237). After more than three months spent abroad, the travellers longed for home. To Carter, the trip had strengthened rather than questioned her patriotic feelings: “Indeed there is nothing that I have met with abroad that has not served to heighten my ideas of the superior advantages of my own country, and confirm my strong partiality for it”, she wrote, a feeling she shared with many other returning travellers. Such patriotism should not be mistaken for a love of insularity: “and yet if it was in my power, and my health more equal to the fatigue of travelling, I know not but I might be often tempted to make excursions across the sea” (Memoirs 232). Especially during these last few weeks spent travelling, the difference between Carter and the rest of the party, who had taken some benefit from the waters, became more pronounced. During the later stages of their journey, she could not keep up with the others’ sociable pace. From The Hague, she told her correspondent “Mrs. Montagu, and most of the company, are gone to Sir Joseph Yorke’s country-house to supper, but I am already too much spent to be equal to such an expedition, and in great quietness am come home to go to bed” (Memoirs 234). For Montagu, wit and wealth carried the day in any polite society while for Carter, a headache occasionally served to keep at bay any unwelcome French, Dutch, and German attempts at sociability.

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Even with regard to the effects of medicinal sociability, the Spa journey reveals a discrepancy between Montagu and Carter: for Montagu, the journey seems to have worked a treat—a few weeks after their return, she reported to Vesey that her own health had improved considerably, and that she had “brought Mrs. Carter back a coquette, and my Lord Bath a young man” (1923, I, 62). Carter, however, was much more ambiguous about the medicinal success of their trip: she needed to recover from the journey for a few weeks before she admitted to her friend in October that, in the long run, there might have been some benefit to her health (Carter 1817, I, 199).25 In contrast to Montagu, Carter placed emphasis on a different kind of sociability, more intimate, and less showy. Perhaps she even preferred an imaginary, or at least epistolary, conversation to a real one, writing to her Irish correspondent: “Do you ever take me along with you, my dear Mrs. Vesey, in your solitary rambles? It is but fair you should, considering how often you share in mine” (1809, III, 227). Carter liked to pose as an unsociable maverick to her correspondents, for instance in her general preference for solitary walks when rambling through the most romantic environs of Spa rather than submitting to its assembly’s stifling etiquette (Memoirs 187). She extolled the deference everyone paid to Lord Bath, but was glad to escape his company every once in a while (Memoirs 187; 196). On one occasion, she voiced a desire to be outside during a fine storm (Memoirs 214)—actually a mark both of Britishness and unsociability in the heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853): Lucy Snowe despises most of her Belgian fellow-teachers in a manner not completely unlike that of Carter at Spa. Bad health in the form of ‘relaxed nerves’ and the use of nature/culture dichotomies thus may have served as tropes to express Carter’s social unease at various times during their trip, emphasizing the somewhat ambiguous appeal European sociability held for her. Benedict’s claim that “spas reproduced the intimacy, sympathy, and exclusivity characteristic of London coffee house culture” while allowing for a social freedom rarely enjoyed at home (1995, 204), may need to be revised in the case of women: up to a point, they enjoyed social freedom in spa towns, especially when travelling without male supervision. Yet intimacy and sympathy, for some of them at least, required friendship rather than accidental proximity. Nevertheless, the Bluestockings’ trip to Spa proves that, as Astrid Köhler has it, “sociability was central to life” (2017, 70) in spa towns, and to spa health regimes, in the eighteenth century—though individual and class-based preferences for a particular kind of sociability may have differed considerably.

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Notes 1. The letters from which I cite here are taken from the printed editions of Carter’s (ed. Pennington) and Montagu’s (ed. Blunt) letters to various recipients. These printed editions are incomplete, and the choices made may reflect the editors’ taste rather than that of the writers. Pennington even admits to conflating letters to various recipients in his Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Carter (1807, 176), in which he reprints her letters from Spa (abbreviated to Memoirs in the following). For their date of arrival at Calais, see Pennington (1807, 169); Blunt mistakenly dates Montagu’s first letter to her sister from Calais to 4 July. 2. According to David Blackbourn, continental spas could accommodate only a limited number of guests each towards the end of the eighteenth century, about 600 at Pyrmont and perhaps twice that number at Spa (2002, 13), contributing to their reputation of “social exclusivity” (Bates 2017, 133). By comparison, Bath attracted much larger numbers, from Britain as well as the continent: Jan Stobard estimates that during the early eighteenth century, there were “8,000 visitors per  annum; by 1749 this had grown to 12,000 and in 1800 there were 40,000” (2000, 23). Besides water cures, spa towns offered luxurious shopping opportunities, and to Stobard, the rise of the spa town “suggests a wide social, spatial and temporal market for leisure” (2000, 35). Jeremy Black, however, considers Spa to have been a British tourist attraction throughout the century, with numerous visitors already in the late seventeenth century (Black 1999, 56). 3. For 1763, see the Liste des Seigneurs et Dames, qui sont venus à Spa on https://www.swedhs.org/visiteurs/. 4. Spa “owes much of its current appearance to its development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” Köhler claims (2017, 68). And yet, its rapid expansion may have contributed to Spa’s decline in the 1780s, as Bates avers (2017, 140). Crismer, however, dates the decline of Spa to the wars following the French revolution 1794–1815 (1983, 50). 5. Barbara M Benedict numbers the (transformation of) the natural surroundings of spa towns among the attractions of spas, in that “all visitors sought to restore their health by sociability as well as scenery”, or by enjoying a “time out” from their usual surroundings, and even from their histories and identities (1995, 204). 6. Goldsmith argues persuasively that, even during the customary grand tour, the young elite travellers were passing their time in polite company, and that learning how to behave well, and even how to smoothen social gaffes, was very much an intentional part of the tour, which was considered as a “series of social challenges” (Goldsmith 2017, 71).

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7. Annick Cossic claims that illness itself was “a major agent of sociability” in spa towns such as Bath (2017, 537). 8. A full history of Spa’s waters is given in Léon Maurice Crismer, La fabuleuse histoire des eaux de Spa (1983). 9. That the attractions of Spa were not exclusively medicinal was well understood: Lord Russell, biographer of Charles James Fox, claims that the young Fox was initiated into heavy gambling there (Fox I: 33). However, the lure of gambling did not put off more valetudinarian visitors, and according to Bates, the “petit tour” to Spa was popular with women, a sign perhaps of its respectability (128–29). Spa even attracted a sizeable number of single women, according to the guest lists, and indeed Carter’s letters mention some female acquaintances at Spa who seemingly travelled independently, such as Lady Mary Coke. 10. Annick Cossic has argued that women used Spa trips as a form of empowerment, since it generally liberated them from the more limited sphere of their own homes, allowing for new contacts outside of the male-supervised circles of family and acquaintances (2006, 130–31; see also McCormack 2017, 558). 11. Nonetheless, they were not written for immediate publication, and thus did not need the lengthy excuses penned to travel reports such as, for instance, Hester Piozzi’s Observations and Reflections made in the course of a journey through France, Italy, and Germany (1789), purportedly published for the sake of amusing the reader. Piozzi’s preface reveals that she thought about “throw[ing her] thoughts into the form of private letters”—presumably to make them more acceptable—and tongue-in-cheek avers that it was the fault of her old acquaintances, who did not bother to write to her, that she could not publish a correspondence to entertain the public (vi–vii). 12. In one of her replies, Carter reassured Talbot that “Dining with Princes and Princesses to be sure is one way of life, and playing at penny-quadrille is another; but is a mighty good thing in its turn; and I can very cordially accommodate my self to both.” Indeed, the time spent writing to her friends, evinced by long and carefully composed letters, proves her dedication to friendship, and the value she placed on intimate rather than sociable conversation. 13. Visiting (women’s) convents on a tour to France, however, was quite a popular activity on the ‘petit tour’, or so Bates claims (140). Hester Thrale and Samuel Johnson certainly paid such visits, too, on their tour to Paris (see Allan Ingram in this volume). 14. Compare one of her contributions to The Rambler (no XLIV), in which “Religion”, personified as a woman, says: “Society is the true sphere of human virtue” and exhorts the narrator to enjoy “social affection” (Memoirs 455–56).

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15. For more detail concerning their residence, see Daniel Droixhe, “Deux ‘Bluestockings’ à Spa en 1763: Elizabeth Montagu et Elizabeth Carter. 1re partie: les personnages et leur hôtel.” https://www.swedhs.org/visiteurs/ avantcoureurspadois/montagucarter.html. 16. This scarcity of lodgings compared to the demand—Spa was much smaller than, say, Bath—contributed to Spa’s reputation of harbouring an exclusive society, as Richard Bates points out (2017, 133). 17. Carter puzzled over the fact that this bishop was a duke rather than a churchman: “His Highness is extremely well bred and obliging, and looks like a very quiet, good kind of man; but had nothing of an episcopal appearance in his dress; for he was in a blossom coloured coat, with an embroidered star on his breast, and a diamond cross” (Memoirs 188). Augsburg was a prince bishopric of the Holy Roman Empire, with no direct connection to the Bavarian town of Augsburg. 18. For the history of bottled Spa waters, see Crismer (1983, 38–49). 19. A hoop was required to meet the Princess Ferdinand of Prussia, and as Carter was neither possessed of one, nor intended to buy one, she was content to remain a spectator: “I have seen Princess Ferdinand and her Suite at the room, and at the walks, and a most extraordinary sight they are. They are laced within an inch of their lives, their stays excessively stiff, […] But what struck me the most is, that their features are all at a dead stand. I really never did see any thing in the human countenance before, that so much realized the fable of the Gorgon. […] Her French pronunciation Scorche les oreilles, and is absolutely the worst I ever heard” (Memoirs, 195–96). 20. Untraced. She is listed as “Madame la Baronne de Blum, de Bruswick” [sic] in the list of Spa visitors of 1763 (13). For Montagu, tellingly, the Princess Esterhazy, the widow of an Hungarian prince—presumably Donna Mária Anna Louisa dei Marchesi Lunatti-Visconti, the widow of Prince Paul II Anton Esterházy de Galántha who had died in 1762—was the one to be celebrated as “the most polite and accomplished Person I have seen among the foreigners” (Montagu 1923, I:55). Listed as “Son Altesse Madame la Princesse d’Esterhasy” in the list of visitors (14). 21. Nonetheless, Carter kept up the correspondence with Madame de Blum until the latter’s death in 1766, though none of the letters seem to have survived. 22. Carter blamed this relaxation on the spa waters: “The etiquette of Spa is to begin with the Sauveniere spring, by which I was extremely discouraged, as it dejected my spirits to the lowest degree, till I found that even Mrs. M—‘s vivacity could not withstand its influence, from whence I concluded it a common effect” (Memoirs 196). She went on drinking from the other springs, she claimed, since even if they did not alleviate the strength or frequency of her headaches, they gave her better spirits (197).

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23. The one German habit Carter deplored was their ignorance of their own mother tongue, since the German aristocracy preferred to speak French (Memoirs 218). 24. To understand a “papist” at Cologne, however, Carter had to converse with him in Latin (Memoirs, 240). Unlike Johnson, however, she did not mind speaking French (see Allan Ingram in this volume, Chap. 2). Considering the importance of French to the travellers, it is surprising to find Elizabeth Montagu blithely advising her sister in law, who was looking for a school for Montagu’s eldest niece in 1773, that “as to ye french language I do not think it necessary unless for Persons in very high Life, it is rarely much cultivated at schools” (BL Additional Ms 40,663, A.35). 25. Back at home, she told Talbot that she had been much worse in health than she had wanted to admit to her friends (1809, III: 62).

Bibliography Anderson, Susan. 2002. Introduction: The Pleasure of Taking the Waters. In Water, Leisure, and Culture: European Historical Perspectives, ed. Susan Anderson, and Bruce H. Tabb, 1–6. Oxford and New York: Berg. Bates, Richard. 2017. The Petit Tour to Spa, 1763–87. In Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour, ed. Rosemary Sweet, Gerrit Verhoeven, and Sarah Goldsmith, 127–149. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Benedict, Barbara M. 1995. Consumptive Communities: Commodifying Nature in Spa Society. The Eighteenth Century 36: 203–219. Black, Jeremy. 1999. The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century. London: Sandpiper Books. Blackbourn, David. 2002. Fashionable Spa Towns in Nineteenth Century Europe. In Water, Leisure, and Culture: European Historical Perspectives, ed. Susan Anderson and Bruce H. Tabb, 9–21. Oxford and New York: Berg. Carter, Elizabeth. 1809. A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, From the Year 1741 to 1770; To which are Added, Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Vesey, Between the Years 1763 and 1787, ed. Montagu Pennington. 4 vols. London: Printed for F.C. and J. Rivington. ———. 1817. Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, to Mrs. Montagu, Between the Years 1755 to 1800. Chiefly Upon Literary and Moral Subjects, ed. Montagu Pennington. 3 vols. London: Printed for F.C. and J. Rivington. Cossic, Annick. 2006. The Female Invalid and Spa Therapy in Some Well-Known Eighteenth- Century Medical Texts. In Spas in Britain and France in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Annick Cossic and Patrick Galliou, 115–138. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

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———. 2017. Fashionable Diseases in Georgian Bath: Fiction and the Emergence of a British Model of Spa Sociability. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 40 (4): 537–553. Cowan, Brian. 2019. ‘Restoration’ England and the History of Sociability. In British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth-Century: Challenging the Anglo-French Connection, ed. Valérie Capdeville and Alain Kerhervé, 7–24. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Crismer, Léon Maurice. 1983. Die grossartige Geschichte der Wässer von Spa. Translated by H. Beyer. Spa: Spa Monopole. Eger, Elizabeth. 2010. Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Fox, Charles James. 1853. Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, ed. Lord John Russell. 4 vols. London: Richard Bentley. Fuhs, Burkhard. 1992. Mondäne Orte einer vornehmen Gesellschaft: Kultur und Geschichte der Kurstädte, 1700–1900. Hildesheim, Zürich and New  York: Georg Olms. Goldsmith, Sarah. 2017. The Social Challenge: Northern and Central European Societies on the Eighteenth-Century Aristocratic Grand Tour. In Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour, ed. Rosemary Sweet, Gerrit Verhoeven, and Sarah Goldsmith, 65–82. London and New York: Routledge. Hurley, Alison E. 2006. A Conversation of Their Own: Watering-Place Correspondence among the Bluestockings. Eighteenth-Century Studies 40 (1): 1–21. Köhler, Astrid. 2017. Getting Away or Getting Connected: German and English Spa Cultures in the 19th Century. Angermion 10: 67–77. Limbourg, Jean Philippe. 1763. Nouveaux Amusements des Eaux de Spa. Ouvrage instructif et utile à ceux, qui vont boire ces Eaux Minérales sur les lieux. Paris: Printed for F. J. Desoer. Liste des Seigneurs et Dames, qui sont venus à Spa. Accessed January 26, 2020. https://www.swedhs.org/visiteurs/. McCormack, Rose Alexandra. 2017. ‘An Assembly of Disorders’: Exploring Illness as a Motive for Female Spa Visiting at Bath and Tunbridge Wells Throughout the Long Eighteenth Century. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 40 (4): 555–569. Montagu, Elizabeth. 1923. Mrs. Montagu: “Queen of the Blues”: Her Letters and Friendships from 1762 to 1800, ed. Reginald Blunt. 2 vols. London, Bombay, Sydney: Constable and Company. Pennington, Montagu, ed. 1807. Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Carter; with a New Edition of her Poems, to Which are Added Some Miscellaneous Essays in Prose, Together with her Notes on the Bible, and Answers to Objections Concerning the Christian Religion. London: Printed for F.C. and J. Rivington.

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Piozzi, Hester Lynch. 1789. Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany. London: Printed for A. Strahan and T. Cadell. Stobard, Jan. 2000. In Search of a Leisure Hierarchy: English Spa Towns and their Place in the Eighteenth-Century Urban System. In New Directions in Urban History: Aspects of European Art, Health, Tourism and Leisure since the Enlightenment, ed. Peter Borsay, Gunther Hirschfelder, and Ruth-E. Mohrmann, 19–40. Waxmann Verlag: Münster. Sweet, Rosemary, Gerrit Verhoeven, and Sarah Goldsmith, eds. 2017. Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour. London and New York: Routledge.

PART II

Practicing Sociability: Conflict, Commerce, and Cultural Transfer

CHAPTER 6

Philip Thicknesse’s Sociable Encounters in France: The Politics of Eccentricity Annick Cossic-Péricarpin

The very association of Philip Thicknesse (1719–92) with sociability may seem surprising in view of his eccentric life and a career punctuated by countless disputes. Yet in spite of his quarrelsome propensities and his “Dr Viper” nickname, faithfully recalled by his biographer Philip Gosse in his work, Dr Viper, The Querulous Life of Philip Thicknesse (1952), Thicknesse was admired for the “energy” of his writing (Turner 2001, 43), as is demonstrated by a review of his travel books in the Monthly Review: “the point and poignancy of his manner, generally give an agreeable zest to his remarks, and throw an air of novelty over many things with which we were before pretty well acquainted” ([1770], 207). As a matter of fact, Thicknesse was a first-class gossiper and scandal-monger, and his biographer constantly reminds us of his “sociable disposition” (Gosse 1952, 60). The ‘energy’ of his writing praised by some critics stems from his restlessness, which led him to visit, often for professional reasons, various parts of the world ranging from Georgia to France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.

A. Cossic-Péricarpin (*) Brest, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_6

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Quite in character, he died abroad, in France, at the time of the French Revolution, on his way to Italy in 1792.1 An encounter, or “unexpected or casual meeting”, is defined by its brevity and contains an element of chance, yet is deeply rooted in a spatiotemporal framework. Encounters are thus specific modes of social interaction and imply patterns of behaviour that have been studied by Adam Kendon in his work Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters (1990). Encounters in Thicknesse’s case are multi-­ layered, since they involve the foreigner, the addressee, specific literary figures like Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne, and the unknown reader. They are thus dialogic, both time-rooted and timeless. In this essay, two of Thicknesse’s travel writings will be examined, Observations on the Customs and Manners of the French Nation, in a Series of Letters, in which That Nation is vindicated from the Misrepresentations of Some Late Writers (1766)2 and Useful Hints to Those who make The Tour Of France, in a Series of Letters, Written from that Kingdom (1768; second edition 1770),3 a work that is meant to complete the narrative of the same journey undertaken with his family, a somewhat insignificant presence. The time gap between the two—actually just a few months as far as the writing of the letters is concerned, is quite meaningful, since Thicknesse himself admits that his opinion has evolved during this interval: “to which I reply, I have been longer here, and am better informed” (Useful Hints 172; 177). These two works combine the polemical with the practical, and enable us to address the issue of cross-cultural encounters and the inevitable tension between the individual and the nation that they evince. They simultaneously shed light on a lesser-known function of sociability, that is the difficult integration of eccentricity into mainstream society.4 As deviance or idiosyncrasy poses a threat to an accepted model of social interaction, in the case of Thicknesse, the question is how to measure the impact of his sociable encounters abroad on his eccentricity: do they reinforce it, acting as a catalyst, or tone it down? In other words, does eccentricity survive cross-cultural sociable encounters? How does it fit into them? The hypothesis I want to test in this essay is that cross-cultural sociable encounters transformed Philip Thicknesse, effecting a sort of catharsis of his cantankerous and rebellious temper. After a brief review of Thicknesse’s quarrelsome life, a very good example of the union of sociability, conflict and eccentricity, we will turn to his controversial perception of French sociability via his sociable encounters in France, to then consider how the sort of practical sociability that he

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displays leads him to delineate the contours of a national community, very much an imagined one, and roots these cross-cultural encounters in a wider context, that of the creation of a modern state where the individual, and most particularly the eccentric individual, must negotiate his position.

A Brief Presentation of a Querulous Man: Sociability, Conflict and Eccentricity For professional reasons and out of personal taste, Thicknesse, the son of an English rector, travelled extensively and held different positions in different places. He started out as a sixteen-year-old colonist who spent some time in Georgia, where he met John Wesley,5 gossiped on the latter’s love affair with Sophia Hopkey, and developed a fondness for American Indians. He afterwards secured a captainship in an independent company in Jamaica where he chased the Maroons and was made a captive by one of their leaders, Captain Quoha: paradoxically, he was a staunch opponent of abolition, while he had taken the side of the Indians of North America. He managed to obtain a job as officer of the Marines on The Ipswich and soon eloped with Maria Lanove, the daughter of a French Huguenot refugee. The couple spent some time in Bath where they settled in 1749, but Maria and two of their children died unexpectedly. Thicknesse then became the governor of Landguard Fort where he engaged in quite a number of quarrels, one of them causing him to be imprisoned in the King’s Bench.6 After selling the governorship of Landguard Fort, he tried his hand at journalism, which enabled him to earn a living and to publicize his private quarrels. It also gave him a weapon to blackmail his enemies or celebrities whose ‘weaknesses’ he threatened to expose.7 Restlessness was a key feature of his temperament: he could never settle anywhere for a long time either at home in Britain or abroad in France, Italy, Spain or the Netherlands. In England itself, he hovered around Bath, the renowned spa that Sheridan famously nicknamed The School for Scandal and that can be considered as the cradle of a new model of British sociability (see Cossic 2000, 35–93). When he returned there in 1768, he bought a house at no. 9 Royal Crescent, then moved to a cottage—not far from Lansdown Place, in Bathampton—that he afterwards renamed St Catherine’s Hermitage. He found the place highly suitable to his taste for scandal and his interest in health matters, and later published The New Prose Bath Guide for the Year 17788 and The Valetudinarian’s Bath Guide:

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or The Means of Obtaining Long Life and Health (1780). As a “good mixer” (Gosse 1952, 164), he rubbed shoulders with the actors John Henderson and James Quin in the watering-place where Henderson made his début and Quin ended his life.9 He credited himself with being responsible for Gainsborough’s rise to fame, having encouraged him to live there (Sitwell 1933, 215; see also Thicknesse 1788). On the other hand, the very name of his cottage exemplifies a tension between his sociable disposition displayed in Bath during his various stays there and his longing for “solitude and retirement,” which led him to write his memoirs and to strike the figure of the “Ornamental Hermit” (Sitwell 1933, 165). After a while, he would get bored with England again and embark on various tours of the continent with his wife of the time (he was married three times). Thus, he made up a picturesque party when he toured France and part of Spain in 1775 (as is shown by a sketch of Mrs Thicknesse’s pet parakeet and Jocko the monkey riding a horse).10 Initially, he had been “driven out of [his] own country” […]: “my journey was rather undertaken to try how and where I could contrive to live, than to find amusement for myself; much less to furnish entertainment to others”, but he confessed that he “did find an infinite source of amusements; such as were suitable to my age, and turn of mind” (Thicknesse 1778, xvii). The two works that I have selected find their source in travelling—a journey to France in 1766 with his wife and daughter—and therefore participate in sharing an experience of the unknown or the foreign, in acclimatizing, but they also originate in the desire to settle old scores. They are autobiographical and strongly polemical, and fuel the famous literary feud that opposed Thicknesse to Tobias Smollett.11 The issue of the dates of the works is meaningful here: the Observations start with a familiar letter written from Calais and dated 1 May 1766, while Smollett’s Travels through France and Italy (2006) were sold in London on 8 May 1766, which shows that Thicknesse gave a fictitious date as the start of his journey (see Smith 2003). As analysed by Smith, “Smollett and Thicknesse could employ familiar letters without any concern for somehow jeopardizing the legitimacy or authenticity of their texts” (Smith 2003, 353). If sociability involves conflict, as both Adam Ferguson in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1995, 63) and Georg Simmel in The Conflict (1968) have convincingly demonstrated, the number of quarrels both literary—with Smollett, but also with James Makittrick Adair (see A Letter to Thicknesse, 1792 and Curious Facts and Anecdotes, Not Contained in the Memoirs of Philip Thicknesse, Esq., 1790) or with Christopher Anstey—and

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personal—with his own son—that Thicknesse engaged in makes him ideally poised to provide an illustration of the paradoxical link between apparently incompatible concepts.12 One might contend that it is this sort of natural disposition towards conflict and eccentricity that also turns Thicknesse into a true travel writer, a keen observer of cultural differences.13 As Simmel has shown, cultural conflicts are the expression of “the confrontation between two types of loneliness: that of forms and that of individuals” (Simmel 1968, 15). I will not endorse Paul Langford’s assertion that “eccentricity […] was rooted in a fundamental misapprehension of the normal world” (Langford 2000, 303), but rather argue that eccentricity heightens our perception of the “normal world”. As highlighted by Miranda Gill in “Rethinking Eccentricity”, eccentricity has long been seen as an English cultural trait: “Since the 18th century, English culture has been associated (both by the English themselves and by continental observers) with unusual tolerance towards unconventional and peculiar individuals” (Gill 1). Gill adds: “Eccentricity is […] a historically relative and context-dependent term, which must be situated within the broader histories of individualism and deviance” (Gill 2). The difference between eccentricity and originality has been analysed by Langford who considers that historically the term appeared in the 1770s and became popular in the 1790s (Langford, 301). Thicknesse’s eccentricity knew its heyday before the name became widespread in the English language.

Thicknesse’s Controversial Perception of French Sociability: The War with Britain Continued Thicknesse’s sociable encounters, regardless of his eccentricity, were played out against a background of historic enmity and antipathy: “No nation under the sun is so much disliked by the French nation as the English: this dislike is concealed by the good breeding of the better sort; but the petit monde betray it upon most occasions. Nor is any religion so obnoxious to them as Protestantism, nor even the Jewish” (Useful Hints, 55). The reader is not allowed to forget that, and the personal encounters of individuals inevitably lead to generalizations in Thicknesse’s definition of a national character: “An Englishman would have been disheartened, and perhaps despaired of ever acquiring a masterly use of the left hand; but

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a Frenchman seldom despairs, nor is he ever dissatisfied with his person or his abilities” (Useful Hints, 142). Thicknesse, surprisingly against such a context of rivalry between the two countries, but for personal reasons—he blamed Smollett for being responsible for the hostile reviews of some of his writings in the Critical Review—attempts to “vindicate the French nation” following the somehow negative account of France provided by Smollett, dubbed a “travelling historian” in Thicknesse’s Useful Hints (42). The Observations on the Customs and Manners of the French Nation are thus dialogic in essence, and Thicknesse is avowedly answering back, conceiving his own travel narratives as sequels and ‘pocket companions’. Both Observations and Useful Hints sketch out a quadrangular encounter between Thicknesse, the unknown addressee (“Dear Sir”), Smollett, and the unknown reader in a textual space (a “deterritorialised” space or metaphorical space [Deleuze and Guattari 1980, 33]), while officially providing a report on the sociable encounters between a Briton and a French individual in a specific geographical space (a “lieu”): I am much obliged to you for the reviews, Magazines, and other books, which you sent me by my servant and child, who arrived safe and well a few days ago; had you not repeated your desire of such an account as I can give you of this country, I should have held my hand, when I found Mr. Smollett’s Travels through France, etc. made part of the packet. […] I had seen some extracts of these Travels in the news-papers and the magazines, which had excited my curiosity […] I would not lessen the merit of Mr Smollett’s performance, he is certainly a man of genius and learning; but I have no great opinion of the Book Midwives, or Scotch Reviewers […] An English author who even dares in the most modest manner, either to censure a Scotch author or a Scotchman’s conduct is sure of damnation from the pen of the Critical Reviewers: I have experienced this more than once. (Observations 42–43)14

As for Useful Hints, they are from the start presented as a re-reading or a second reading of Smollett’s Travels through France and Italy and as potentially transgressive: Since the publication of the Critical Review of December last, I have accompanied Mr Smollett a second time, through his Travels into France and Italy, and I dare say you will now think me justly entitled to review his travels, or

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rather his tales, without laying any other restraint upon my pen, than what prudence, and attention to myself dictates. (Useful Hints 1)15

Now a close examination of Thicknesse’s sociable encounters on his tours reveals that they follow the same pattern. First, they may encompass an element of chance linked with the mobility of travelling, but, on the whole, Thicknesse makes the most of a network of acquaintances and of letters of introduction: “Since I have been here, I have had the honor to be presented to many people of the first fashion in this kingdom; I say presented, for people of rank and fashion here, never take the least notice of any person that is not properly presented” (Observations 44). He narrates his encounter with the Princess de Beauvau, to whom he was presented by “a lady of the first quality” (Observations 86–87). Thicknesse capitalizes on these encounters and engages in a commerce of encounters, using them to feed his narrative and to promote himself both in France and in Britain. When he meets foreigners, he never really attempts to transform sociable encounters into longer-lasting relationships, since he moves from Calais to Paris, then to St Germain or to Clermont (Useful Hints 249). The permanence of friendship is achieved only with the unknown addressee—“Dear Sir”—who sends him books, for instance as tokens of friendship and benevolence, in a mise-en-abyme gesture, and, one might argue, with the unknown reader. These fleeting encounters enable Thicknesse to be judgmental and pose as an arbiter of taste and morality between the two nations. He thus draws a number of conclusions regarding manners and politeness. In both of his travel narratives, Thicknesse praises the openness of the French nobility, the ease of manners of the French aristocrats that he meets, and their conversation: “The Duke of Orleans’s park and gardens are open to every body […] none of the French nobility shut up themselves and their houses as the English do […]. In France the appearance of a gentleman, and particularly a stranger, is a ticket to go any where” (Observations 38–37). The king himself sets an example when he “enjoys the conversation of a few select friends, without the plague, impertinence, and above all, the parade that generally attends royalty” (Observations 58). Manners are thus displayed at home, in a more or less private space and in public places like gardens—he admires those of St Germain,16—coffee-houses such as the Caffé de Conti (Observations 93)—and places of entertainment like the theatres.17 Needless to say, Thicknesse, following the publication of Observations, was accused of being pro-French, a “Frenchified expatriot,”

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by The Critical Review (Smith 2003, 361). Most importantly, through his Observations and Useful Hints, he seems to endorse the then contentious view that France was what Lawrence Klein has called “the nation of sociability by excellence, the educator of Europe in the art of living” (Klein 1997, 39). Such a Francophile bias on his part clearly functions as a form of retaliation against his native land that had rejected his eccentricity and querulousness. Under those circumstances, the unknown reader is central to Thicknesse’s undertaking, and the sort of sociability that his persona both describes and recommends has a practical and at times professional side. He makes it clear that he remains a soldier: “Now as the public have had a doctor’s and a sailor’s observations through France, suppose you was to print mine for the honour of the soldiers” (Observations 69). He pays great attention to the French fleet and army, as when he reports on a barrack dinner or on the French army and navy whose officers are “stimulated by honour”.18 On the other hand, he asks his reader to make a distinction between the “writer” and the “man”, thereby admitting that he is creating a persona (Useful Hints 20). Both his travel books provide advice to the reader: they are partly conduct books teaching the reader about French sociability and the right behaviour for an Englishman in France. They are meant to be useful, to regulate sociable encounters, a paradoxical agenda for an eccentric. The reader is thus told about the cost of living, the post, transport, the food and hygiene, the banking system. Thicknesse gives detailed information about table manners and eating habits: “In England men destroy their constitutions chiefly by excess of drinking; in France, where wines of most sorts are so delicious, the same injury is done by eating. […] When the cloth is taken away so is the wine” (Useful Hints 178). These are practical observations that should smooth away the difficulties inherent in cross-­ cultural encounters and make them sociable occasions. But Thicknesse, like many of his contemporaries, is also aware of the danger of anti-social behaviour and violence in France: “Scarce a day passes that terrible accidents do not happen from the brutality of coachmen, carmen, and the like” (Observations 80), which are not publicized by the papers: “Paris is not informed of accidents, robberies, murders and the like, by daily papers, as we are in London, and, perhaps, this is one reason why people are less upon their guard” (Observations 81). He also warns the reader against the liabilities of travel sociability: “This shews how very necessary it is to be cautious how you cultivate acquaintance on the road, and what company you keep” (Useful Hints 124).

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It therefore seems undeniable that Thicknesse, using his sociable encounters abroad, and posing as knowledgeable adviser, delineates the contours of a new community at home, very much an imagined one, made up of his readers that he tries to convince and educate, one might even say, to frenchify. It is this ongoing dialogue with his English readership that re-establishes a dialogue with Britain, even if this undertaking looks very much like a celebration of Britain’s arch rival, de facto a betrayal of the mother country. Such a dialogue is not simply that of eccentricity with mainstream sociability, of rebellion with, one might assume, conformity. The ‘practical’ sociability of his Observations and Useful Hints has a much broader scope than that of a guidebook, and enables the author to report on a different type of encounter which is political and involves the confrontation of two models of modernity, what Steve Pincus has called Catholic modernity and has opposed to Protestant modernity (Pincus 2009, 118–79).

From ‘Practical’ Sociability to Nationalism: A Process of Reconciliation and Integration of Eccentricity As a matter of fact, this practical, down-to-earth approach is only a superficial aspect of Thicknesse’s writings. His agenda is not merely polemical in a personal way, as he is involved both in a literary feud with Smollett and in an opposition to the legal system of his country, or merely descriptive— for ‘practical’ use—, it is also political. As was the case with his illustrious countryman, his correspondence with an addressee and a potential readership has strong political undertones (Cossic-Péricarpin 2019, 142–43). Through a sort of contrapuntal technique, he engages in a dialogue with his nation and, against the odds for a rebellious eccentric, participates in its forging. Lawrence Klein has demonstrated that the reformation of manners and the redefinition of politeness were avatars of classical civic humanism: “Many civic writers accepted as a truism that manners were the foundations of civic politics. Manners were, literally, the moral equivalent of free institutions, capable of stimulating the effects of institutions. It was argued that liberty catalysed the greatness of people” (Klein 1989, 592). From the start, Thicknesse makes it clear that the first-person narrator—that is to say, his persona but also himself—belongs to a specific social class, the squirearchy, which gives him access to the French aristocracy and

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to the French court. He distances himself from Smollett but also from the vulgum pecus, the emerging middle class then dubbed “middling orders”, largely made up of tradespeople: [T]he present mode of a multitude of low-bred rich people of England is to make a trip, as it is called, to France, a purse is made up, that is to be spent, no matter how, nor how soon: when the money is gone, the party returns, after having seen Calais, St Omer, Dunkirk, Gravilline and Bullogne; and then they think it necessary to inform all their acquaintance where they have been, by a very unbecoming dress, and a very awkward address; not knowing that an Englishman’s beef and pudding face will not agree with a hat bigger than a trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow, performs it worse in a head of hair dressed a L’aille de Pidgeon, than in a scratch wig (Observations 9).

He is constantly class-conscious and draws an unflattering portrait of the French poor that he portrays as in a far worse condition than the English poor, which to him is a sign of wisdom: “They keep the poor very poor, and they are very wise in so doing: the industrious poor do not want, and if poor do not want, I do not pity their poverty. […] I quite agree with Mandeville, that charity-schools educate a great number of thieves and whores, who would have been honest and useful, if they had been unlearned” (Observation 53). He praises England for its comparative cleanliness, for in France “the dirt and poverty of the numerous poor […] renders it very inferior to England in that respect” (Observations 40). As for the aristocracy, their very openness and ease lead the British traveller to question the sincerity of the French and to admit that France can be a land of imposition and the politeness of the French “artful” (Useful Hints 24): “The French people of REAL fashion are certainly well bred […] I have dined at some English Tables of fashion, where had I not been properly asked, I should have thought I had offended in coming, from a total disregard. If the latter is owing to more sincerity, the former is most agreeable” (Observations 105).19 He realizes that the French have two types of politeness, one for foreigners and one for the natives: “[they] pique themselves in shewing a particular species of politeness to foreigners, which, however, after all, you will find to consist more on what they say, than in what they do” (Useful Hints 227). Thicknesse actually shows the weaknesses of the French model of politeness and refinement, alienated from virtue and encouraging or

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tolerating a marked lack of reserve or of modesty in particular in the behaviour of French women.20 Paris is presented as encouraging adultery and licentiousness (Useful Hints 161–70). He thus, albeit unwittingly—as a debunking of French sociability would prove Smollett right—participates in the Whig undertaking of defining politeness along British terms: “the Whigs sought a design for British culture that evaded what they thought of as the perversities of a court culture and that created a new moral center around an alternative sociability” (Klein 1997, 45). His works exemplify the tension between the French ideal of politeness centred on the court and the monarch particularly in the seventeenth century and the English ideal of politeness that was “relocated outside the court”.21 Contrary to Smollett, he does not accuse the French of being effeminate and does not raise the issue of cross-cultural sociable encounters in gendered terms. What emerges from Thicknesse’s account of France is that the French nation is fettered because France is the land of absolutism where “the multitude are slaves to a few, and the poor are truly so” (Useful Hints 55). He thus debunks the model promoted by Madeleine de Scudéry in the seventeenth century, for whom “absolute monarchy” was a prerequisite for “perfect sociability” (Klein 1990, 96). Although he praises the French monarch when he manages to witness the levee of the sovereign and even to have a glimpse of the royal hunt, he does not fail to observe the effects of censorship, the absence of freedom of speech, which affects the way people interact and the resort to body language, or as he puts it, “the great action the French make use of in their ordinary conversation, for which we are apt to laugh at them”.22 Absolutism means an oppressive justice system, a “speedy execution of justice” (Useful Hints 253–54) and overall “less honesty, and less generosity in France than in England” (235). Thicknesse corroborates this assertion by referring to the treatment of madness in France, concluding that “it is a national disgrace; it is a disgrace to humanity” (Useful Hints 254–55).23 Moreover, the freedom of the British and their material prosperity allow them to travel more than the French (Useful Hints 108). Yet in Observations, he questioned the “boasted liberty in England [that] he would never call a free country”.24 Absolutism was linked with Catholicism, and the defence of Protestantism had been at the root of the Glorious Revolution. Thicknesse was writing at a time when the Protestant model of modernity had triumphed in Britain over the Catholic model of modernity, as contended by Pincus (179–221). Thicknesse, whose first wife was the daughter of a

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French Huguenot, remains loyal to his faith while in France, but entrusts the care of his daughter’s education to Catholic nuns. His attitude is at first one of religious toleration and he admits that the symbols of the Catholic faith can be effective deterrents for the poor: “the great number of crosses, crucifixes, faints, &. That are to be seen in every corner of the towns in France, and upon the public highways, are a continual memento to the poor, and a check to their committing violence to travellers” (Observations 53). He confesses that “to say the truth, there is nothing so very alarming in the Roman Catholic religion to one who is a good Christian, when we hear their articles of faith expounded by men of sense and candour” (Useful Hints 68). He shows a degree of respect for monastic life (Useful Hints 236), but is fully aware of the religious persecution of Dissenters in a Catholic country. The superiority of Britain in establishing a modern nation is thus acknowledged by Thicknesse in the political and religious fields, but also in the economic one. Like Smollett (Travels 283–84), he praises the British economic system supported by a laisser-­ faire ideology, later advocated by Adam Smith in The Origin of the Wealth of Nations (1776). In France, the peasants are oppressed by the fermiers généreaux who live in an “incredible” luxury (Useful Hints 41) and the king is “now spending the revenues of 1772, and the subjects are deeply oppressed” (Useful Hints 60). The gap that seemed to separate Smollett from Thicknesse in Observations is partly bridged in Useful Hints where his apostrophe “A la Smolletta” (Useful Hints 24) rings rather affectionate than aggressive, a far cry from his sarcasms in Observations, where he argued that Smollett’s middle-class origins made him unfit to understand the refinement and politeness of the French nation and that his stay in Nice could not qualify him to report on French manners (90). Yet, while sharing some of Smollett’s views on the superiority of Britain (Useful Hints 93; 103) he simultaneously excludes him from his imagined community on account of his Scottishness; his sociable encounters with Scotsmen, “a migrating nation” (Useful Hints 214), in France trigger his customary Smollett-­ bashing: “a Scotch writer should speak with some degree of modesty, when he speaks of the dirty customs of other countries” (Useful Hints 192). Britain, for Thicknesse, is deeply disunited; ironically, he considers himself to have been born “in that unlucky part, at present, of Great Britain called England” (Useful Hints 19). England is for him “little England” (Useful Hints 133) while Smollett rediscovered his Britishness in France (see Cossic-Péricarpin 2019, 143).

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It is therefore through nationalism that Thicknesse tones down his eccentricity and reconciles himself to his native land. This reconciliation is also that of originality with mainstream sociability, which is not surprising since, as asserted by Langford, “originality was the natural and necessary outcome of the legal and political rights which Englishmen enjoyed. […] Ruthless conformity was incompatible with the English tradition. A nation that had the power to change its government whenever it liked would naturally assume that it could change everything else” (Langford 2000, 288).25 Eccentrics were part of the national landscape and their Englishness linked both to the freedom of the English nation and to the English malady, that is melancholy: “the eccentric was an original whose faults were on the right side” (Langford 2000, 304). Eccentricity having become a national characteristic in the second half of the century, Thicknesse could have exaggerated this feature of his personality and staged it: this is what he did when he travelled with a parakeet and a monkey to Spain, in a fit of intentional eccentricity, or “eccentricity by intention” (Langford 302). On the other hand, in France, he restrained his individuality in his writings, showing a disparity between the writer/the man and his persona who showcased his affiliation with mainstream Englishness more than his individuality. Kant’s analysis of eccentricity applies more to Smollett than to Thicknesse: “[The Englishman] easily becomes an eccentric not out of vanity but because he concerns himself little about others, and does not easily do violence to his taste out of complaisance or imitation” (Kant 1960, 104). Nevertheless, the integration of eccentricity into the national character is highly problematic and raises the wider issue of self and society, or self in society. As shown by Langford, “indulgence of individual idiosyncrasy was by definition antisocial” (Langford 2000, 292). The problem was compounded by the association of politeness with modernity and of originality with ancient times and great “antisocial potential” (Langford 2000, 293). Thicknesse’s reappraisal of the British nation while officially providing practical indications to the English traveller in order to regulate cross-­ cultural encounters, raises the issue of the appropriation of the French model of sociability by the English. If one takes the example of the visit of ceremony, it may have been imported from France but it was clearly conducted along different lines in the two countries (Useful Hints 226).26 The second issue raised by these cross-cultural sociable encounters is that of the language barrier: for Thicknesse “the French tongue is more adapted

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to wheedle in than ours; and perhaps that is one reason why it bids so fair to become universal” (Useful Hints 243) while he contends that the French may be good at the art of conversation, but not at conversing with nature (Useful Hints 63). The very style of Thicknesse’s writing mirrors a phenomenon of hybridity; the language thus created by the travel writer reflects the position of his persona, a sort of in-betweenness, as for instance in this sentence: “the Doctor was pleased to be in the humour pour faire le brave, and did it dans une bonne heure” (Useful Hints 7). Thicknesse mastered the French language—he could speak it—while Smollett could not overcome the language barrier. In the concluding remarks of both travel books, Thicknesse reiterates his love of his country and his rejection of mimicry, which, to him, is not justified (Useful Hints 164). Cultural transfers were encouraged by the French court and English ambassadors, effective cultural intermediaries,27 but Thicknesse actually celebrates the superiority of English politeness as closer to the model of civic humanism that had been adapted by the British under the influence of the Whig agenda of the creation of a British model of sociability, and pledges a new, more informed, allegiance to his country: “besides, it made me feel more sensibly how dear my own country was to me. I thought when I left it, I did not love it but I soon found my resentment was only partial” (Useful Hints 155). Ironically, writing these travel books both as a way of settling old scores and as guidebooks for the prospective English traveller turns out to have a far different result. Both Smollett and Thicknesse start their journey in a mood of rebellion, sharing the same bilious disposition, later developed in the character of Matthew Bramble in Smollett’s last work, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771; 2009). Both end up reasserting a national identity, one his Britishness, the other his Englishness. Eccentricity, which means departure from the centre, “a certain divergence from the norm, a kind of safety valve for pursuits that might be plausibly tolerated […] as genteel eccentricity [permitted] any kind of individuality that could be classified as harmless” (Langford 2000, 303), here works as a catalyst, an agent of reconciliation of the individual with the nation. In this respect, my initial hypothesis—i.e. that sociable encounters abroad trigger a catharsis of destructive emotions such as spleen and anger—has been validated. The two books under consideration not only effect a reconciliation of the individual with his homeland, but also an embryonic reconciliation of the two travel writers.

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Thicknesse’s sociable encounters abroad have been narcissistic encounters with the self and have temporarily bridged the gap that separated the eccentric from the mainstream sociability of his native land, and by so doing have had a healing effect on his disabled mind. Thicknesse, the healer of invalids in Bath who had developed gallstones and the author of The Valetudinarian’s Bath Guide, is ultimately healed by his journey to France. This is linked with the writing process and with a form of travelling that entertains the traveller and his prospective readership. It is precisely his eccentricity—i.e. his position far from the centre—that made him clear-sighted in his appraisal of the two rival societies, the French and the English. As he himself realized, the journey to a foreign country purged him of his bilious temper and cured him of his melancholy. But the power of sociable encounters abroad is not an everlasting one, since, once back home, the eccentric reverts to his eccentricity in the same way as the invalid is likely to fall ill again once he has left the healing waters of a spa. Like Smollett, who died abroad, Thicknesse could never permanently get rid of his idiosyncrasies and relapsed once back in England: hence the centrifugal force of his narratives and the return to the Continent at the end of his life, testifying to the resilience of individuality and eccentricity.

Notes 1. According to Gosse, he “rejoiced that ‘liberty had stolen into France’” but “deplored the situation of the unfortunate King—‘weak but not guilty’” (309). In his will, a last token of his eccentricity and querulous character, he donated his hand to his son: “I leave my right hand, to be cut off after my death, to my son Lord Audley; I desire it may be sent to him, in hopes that such a sight may remind him of his duty to God, after having so long abandoned the duty he owed to a father, who once so affectionately loved him” (quoted in Sitwell 2006, 184). 2. This travel narrative is made up of twenty-two letters addressed to the same male acquaintance at Bath, “Dear Sir”. It starts in Calais on May 1st 1766 and after a few stops in various northern cities, the traveller stays in Paris, then writes from St. Germain in August where he rents a house (68) before going to Boulogne and Calais at the end of October on the way back to Britain. 3. Useful Hints to Those who Make The Tour Of France is conceived as a sequel to the first and has thirty-three letters presumably sent to the same male addressee. Letter XXII in Observations is dated “Calais, October 21st 1766, while Letter I in Useful Hints is dated “St. Germain’s [sic] en Laye,

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Jan. 12, 1767”. Saint-Germain-en-Laye immediately locates Thicknesse in a nexus of quality people as it still is a posh suburb of Paris and it is from there that most of the letters of the book are sent. James II when he was driven out of his kingdom lived in its castle, built for Louis XIV with the exiled court until his death in 1701. As a travel narrative, Useful Hints can thus be considered as fairly static, the persona moving in the vicinity of St. Germain (see 233) or at the end of the stay, to Clermont and then on to Calais in August 1767. 4. Thicknesse, in his The Memoirs and Anecdotes of Philip Thicknesse, defined himself as an eccentric: “[a gentleman] like myself rather eccentric” (1788, II, 286–87). 5. John Wesley (1703–91), considered as the founder of Methodism, whose reawakening of the religious faith in Britain was somewhat at loggerheads with the ideal of polite sociability which was defined at the time. 6. Edith Sitwell wrote that “he was one of those unfortunate people who cannot move one step in life without being injured by one person, insulted by another, so that he was forced to engage in perpetual warfare in order to preserve his dignity” (1933, 167). The King’s Bench prison was built on St George’s Fields, London, and closed in 1869. 7. For a chronology of this part of his life, see Gosse 15–153. 8. This was conceived as a rival to Christopher Anstey’s bestseller, The New Bath Guide (1766). Thicknesse himself was satirized by Anstey in his long epistolary poem, and probably represented as Captain Cormorant (see Cossic 2010, 199–200, n64). 9. John Henderson (1747–85) was an acclaimed actor who played famous Shakespearean roles on the London stage: he had been sent to Bath by Garrick in 1772 and stayed there until 1777. James Quin (1693–1766), after a stage career in London, retired to Bath where he spent the last fifteen years of his life. 10. For the illustration, “The Thicknesse Family on Journey to Spain”, see Gosse (1952, 225). In Useful Hints, Thicknesse’s family—his wife and daughter—are scarcely visible and they appear quite episodically (see letter XXXI, Useful Hints 245–46). 11. Tobias Smollett gave a very pungent description of France in his travel book, Travels through France and Italy, published in 1766. For an analysis of Smollett’s cultural ambivalence, see Cossic-Péricarpin (2019, 142): “the sociability which he ended up celebrating at the end of the tour was a far cry from the cheerfulness and ease of manners associated with continental sociability”. 12. Adair sarcastically refers to Thicknesse’s “profound knowledge […] of the altercative and vituperative arts” (15). Thicknesse has recorded the argument in his memoirs (1751, II, 289–90).

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13. I would like to suggest here that conflict and eccentricity are interrelated: conflict fuels eccentricity and eccentricity fuels conflict. 14. The feud between Smollett and Thicknesse is not only cultural but also political: “Thicknesse’s opposition to Smollett’s anti-Wilkes and pro-Bute position is vigorous and combines […] political principles with personal opportunism” (Turner 2001, 68). 15. Thicknesse subtly presents his homeland as a land of censorship and posits his narrative as transgressive and therefore likely to lead to his imprisonment at worst or at the very least to his ostracization. In Observations he had also strongly criticized his country’s libel laws (Observations 77). He also implies a David-versus-Goliath dimension in his fight against a sort of established literary caste. 16. St Germain “is a prospect superior to any pleasing view in the whole world” (Observations 39). 17. “[T]he French comedies are infinitely superior to ours; in tragedy, we as much excel them” (Useful Hints 242). 18. See Useful Hints 89–90: “the superiority of our fleets, which will ever remain so, till the French find out that land officers are as unfit to command single ships, or conduct sea-fights, as their landseamen, if I may use the expression, are of sustaining them”, and Useful Hints 215; 193: “and that excellent discipline and order which is here so well attended to, rendered it, in point of shew, much superior to any thing of the kind I have ever seen elsewhere”. 19. This sign of refinement—openness and ease—was contrasted with the view “that the English were indeed free but that their freedom was, as history suggests, a remnant of their Gothic barbarity, preserved by the accident of insularity” (Langford 2000, 279). 20. “An innocent, modest, blushing country girl is not to be seen in this part of France, [Flanders]” (Observations 26). Also, “London is a virtuous city, compared with Paris” (Useful Hints 55). Heterosexual relationships are insignificant in both Observations and Useful Hints where the choice of a male correspondent throws homosexual sociability deliberately into light. A few observations are made on French women and their make-up: “the quantity of rouge put on by ladies here is very singular, and to outdo what nature ever did, very absurd” […], “which is in England a mark of another kind” (Observations 79). 21. See Klein (1990, 93–99). Yet as Klein shows, the model of the monarch as exemplar of politeness advocated by Madeleine de Scudéry is different from what the chevalier de Méré “who sought to define a sociability that was distinct from the interactions of the Court” sketched out: the monarch “missing an experience of politeness” because of flattery as the flatterers’ panderings “murdered sociability” (Klein 1990, 99).

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22. The “We” (the italics are mine) is strikingly inclusive, signalling the return of the eccentric to English sociability and Englishness. See Observations 69–70: “a Frenchman durst not speak in plain French; and, therefore, a shrug of the shoulders, an elevated arm, a contracted brow, or a gathering up, as it were, of one’s whole body, may be, and frequently is, as well understood as words; and yet for these bodily actions, a man cannot be conveyed to the Bastile”. 23. This interest in madness and the treatment of lunatics is not surprising on the part of an eccentric (see Langford who considers that eccentricity verges on madness: Englishness Identified: “defining the line which divided eccentricity and mental instability [is] difficult” [2000, 302]). Thicknesse had been accused of being “insane” by The Critical Review (Turner 2001, 72). 24. There is a personal grievance here, as Thicknesse considered himself a victim of English libel laws (Observations 75). 25. Originality cuts across class boundaries: “originality had nothing to do with status, class, or rank, though foreigners often associated it with blue blood […] English travellers must often have been tempted to live up to these expectations” Langford (2000, 285). Langford refers to Steele who, in The Guardian, echoed the argument developed by Sir William Temple in his Essay upon Poetry (Richard Steele, The Guardian, 26th Aug. 1713, n°144). 26. On the visit of ceremony, see also Langford (2000, 280): “Rules of visiting, for example, existed all over Europe, but the English practice was extraordinarily elaborate, moving Southey to admit that ‘The system of visiting in high life is brought to perfection in this country’”. 27. The French king had an English post-chaise and English hunters (Useful Hints 132). In Useful Hints 145, Thicknesse gives an example that shows the king is all-powerful in the appointment of ambassadors and knowledge of Europe insufficient.

Bibliography Adair, James Makittrick. 1790. Curious Facts and Anecdotes, Not Contained in the Memoirs of Philip Thicknesse, Esq. London: Printed for J. Ridgway. Anstey, Christopher. 2010. The New Bath Guide. 1766. Edited by Annick Cossic. Bern, Oxford: Peter Lang. Cossic, Annick. 2000. Bath au dix-huitième siècle: les fastes d’une cité palladienne. Rennes: PUR. Cossic-Péricarpin, Annick. 2019. Competing Models of Sociability: Smollett’s Repossession of an Ailing British Body. In British Sociabiity in the Long Eighteenth Century: Challenging the Anglo-French Connection, ed. Valérie Capdeville and Alain Kerhervé, 127–143. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.

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Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1980. Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Ferguson, Adam. 1995. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. 1767. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gill, Miranda. “Rethinking Eccentricity”. Accessed September 20, 2019. https:// www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rethinking-­eccentricity. Gosse, Philip. 1952. Dr Viper, The Querulous Life of Philip Thicknesse. London: Cassell & Company LTD. Kant, Immanuel. 1960. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Translated by John T. Goldwait, Berkeley: California University Press. Kendon, Adam. 1990. Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klein, Lawrence. 1989. Liberty, Manners and Politeness in Early Eighteenth-­ Century England. The Historical Journal 32 (3): 583–605. ———. 1990. Politeness in Seventeenth-Century England and France. Cahiers du dix-septième 4: 97–100. ———. 1997. The Figure of France: The Politics of Sociability in England, 1660–1715. In Exploring the Conversible World: Text and Sociability from the Classical Age to the Enlightenment, ed. Elena Russo. Yale French Studies, no 92, 30–45. Yale University Press. Langford, Paul. 2000. Englishness Identified: Manners and Character 1650–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Monthly Review, 57 [1770]. Pincus, Steve. 2009. 1688: The First Modern Revolution. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Simmel, Georg. 1968. The Conflict in Modern Culture and Other Essays. Teachers College Press. Sitwell, Edith. 1933. Bath. London: Faber and Faber. ———. 2006. The English Eccentrics. London: Pallas Athene Ltd. Smith, Amy Elizabeth. 2003. Tobias Smollett and the Malevolent Philip Thicknesse: Travel Narratives, Public Rhetoric and Private Letters. Huntington Library Quarterly 66, n°3/4. Studies in the Cultural History of Letter Writing: 349–372. Smollett, Tobias. 2006. Travels through France and Italy. 1766. London: Centaur Press. ———. 2009. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, ed. Lewis Knapp and Paul-­ Gabriel Boucé. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thicknesse, Philip. 1766. Observations on the Customs and Manners of the French Nation, in a Series of Letters, in which That Nation is vindicated from the Misrepresentations of Some Late Writers. London. ———. 1770. Useful Hints to Those who make The Tour Of France, in a Series of Letters, Written from that Kingdom. 2nd edition. London.

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———. 1778. A Year’s Journey through France and Part of Spain. London. ———. 1788. A Sketch of the Life and Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough. London. ———. 1788–91. Memoirs and Anecdotes of Philip Thicknesse, Late Lieutenant Governor of Landguard Fort and Unfortunately Father to George Touchet, Baron Audley. 3 vols. London. Turner, Katherinve. 2001. British Travel Writers in Europe 1750–1800. Studies in European Cultural Transition. Aldershot, Burlington; USA; Sydney: Ashgate.

CHAPTER 7

Elizabeth Craven, Private Theatricals and Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers Susanne Schmid

On 7th March 1795, the Oracle and Public Advertiser (2) carried a notice about the following major theatrical event: THE MARGRAVINE OF ANSPACH Commenced her THEATRICAL ENTERTAINMENTS for the season, on Thursday last, at Brandenburgh House, which was numerously attended by persons of the first distinction. Besides the PROLOGUE, there was performed MARGARET of ANJOU. The Characters were— Margaret — Her Serene Highness. Edward (her son), Miss Le Texier. The Robber, — The Hon. Mr. Keppel Craven. There was also LE RETOUR IMPREUVE, a French Comedy in one act. The characters were performed by M.  Le Texier, Hon. Mr. Keppel Craven, Madame Le Texier, Madlle. E. Berkeley, Madlle. G. Berkeley, Madame Le Comtesse de Linieres, M. Le Comte Benincasa, Le Comte D’Alet, M. Le Baron de Pursay.

S. Schmid (*) Berlin, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_7

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The Margravine of Anspach,1 or Elizabeth Lady Craven, was an avid performer: Involving family and acquaintances, the plays which she directed, adapted and in which she herself acted, were staged within her social circle. As was frequently the case, her fifteen-year-old son Keppel Richard Craven, the child closest to her, participated in this production, as did her hired theatre manager, Antoine Le Texier, together with members of his own family. Her theatrical activities, which drew on a variety of established and adapted texts, as well as plays written by herself, coincided with the climax of the fashion for private theatres. The performances were embedded into sociable events, accompanied and followed by dinners or suppers, concerts, even balls. This article will map out the scope of her theatre work and take the German writer Friedrich Schiller’s controversial drama The Robbers (1781), which she performed in 1798, albeit in a severely abbreviated and depoliticized version, as an example. Elizabeth Craven was a prolific author of plays, poems and stories, a translator, successful theatre manager, adventurous traveller and popular hostess, who has received less attention than she merits, possibly because much academic criticism as well as original source material is in French and German. Born to Augustus, fourth earl of Berkeley, she was married to William Craven at the age of sixteen, and after giving birth to seven children, separated from him in 1783. Both of them had engaged in love affairs. In the wake of scandal, she left England in 1783 for France, where she encountered Karl Alexander, Margrave of Anspach-Bayreuth, whom she soon came to call “brother”, although they were presumably lovers. Between 1785 and 1786, she went on the tour described in A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789a). Her extensive travelling took her through France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Greece. She then lived with the Margrave at Triesdorf, where she built up a court theatre; and when both his wife and her husband died in 1791, they married within a few weeks and came to London. Not only did they encounter severe disapproval from the Court, where they were not received, but they also had to face the fact that several of the new Margravine’s seven children gave her the cold shoulder, as did some members of the bon ton. They bought a villa, Brandenburgh House, at Fulham, where the famous theatricals were staged. In 1806, the Margrave died. The Margravine herself eventually retreated to Naples, where she died in 1828. While, again and again, eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-­ century women’s writings remained unpublished, or suffered belated

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publication by finding their way into print only posthumously, Craven’s books appeared in her lifetime, but not always under her own name. Of her remarkable literary output, no complete edition exists. Scholars have so far paid some attention to A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople, aligning it with Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), but have taken far less interest in her other writings.2 Craven was highly productive, yet the exact nature of her authorship is not always easy to pin down. Especially when it comes to her theatre work, by its very nature a collaborative endeavour, it is difficult to figure out to what extent dramatic texts performed on her stage as well as their later published versions were composed by herself, whether she revised already existing texts by other playwrights and whether she received help, for example from her son Keppel, a frequent performer and active participant in the Brandenburgh House theatre. Like the hosting of sociable activities, her thespian endeavours aimed at attracting elite members of society as guests on a large scale and at thereby cementing her own social position.

Private Theatres and Theatricals There is hardly a family in high or low life, that has not its theatre of some kind or other, and its occasional performers. Not only Brandenburgh-house, but many a noble house of less notoriety is frequently opened for these dramatic exhibitions. Thither you see assembled animals of every description, like those in Noah’s ark, clean and unclean; pure and impure; grave and gay; gamblers and grumblers; who, dissatisfied with themselves and every thing around them, take refuge here. (Graves 1801, 58)

Richard Graves’s polemical anti-theatrical essay of 1801 bears witness to the vogue for private performances, which was at its height in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Privately staged plays were, as Catherine B. Burroughs points out, no “avant-garde movement” (2004, 187) but rather, as Gillian Russell observed, a “key social ritual” (2007, 191), exclusive but certainly not as private as the name denotes.3 Their popularity results at least partly from the 1737 Licensing Act, an instrument of censorship which gave two London patent theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, an effectual monopoly for staging plays in public. Moreover, every new play performed in public needed to be licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. What the censor was not concerned with were private theatricals. These became increasingly popular in all echelons of

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society. They could be small and local events, performed in schools, or within families, involving friends and neighbours. At the other end of the spectrum were lavish and expensive performances, which were brought to the attention of the public through metropolitan newspapers such as the Morning Chronicle and The Times. The theatricals under scrutiny here are those staged by a social elite, in big houses, even in purpose-built theatres, some of which were opulently decorated and rivalled the London theatres. Like the public playhouses, these larger private theatres employed visual effects by using painted scenes, issued admission tickets4 and had playbills including a play and an afterpiece, sometimes a prologue and/or epilogue. If the private theatres at Richmond House and Brandenburgh House catered to London’s elite, others did so in the countryside, for example at Wynnstay in Denbighshire. The performances were costly: money was spent on costumes, scene painters, musicians and professional actors, who supported the cast. Even when large, audiences of aristocratic private theatres remained socially exclusive, and the performances often occurred in contexts of further sociable activities such as balls and suppers, and on special days like the host’s or the hostess’s birthdays. The theatricals were situated between public and private, and thus took place in the same in-­ between space as assemblies, balls and dinner parties. They offered women many opportunities for developing creative and managerial skills, for writing and acting, and allowed far more female participation than the major patent theatres in London.5 Although actresses like Sarah Siddons and Elizabeth Farren achieved stardom in the public theatres, a woman appearing on the public stage took the risk of tainting her reputation. Private performances, however, enabled women to explore the fascinating world of the theatre. It would be wrong to assume that the boundary between public and private theatres was impermeable or even clearly demarcated. Theatre-­ specific personnel, such as actors and scene painters who worked for the patent theatres, were occasionally hired for private venues. Private theatricals were announced and reviewed in the papers. The same texts could be performed in both types of playhouses. The example of Schiller’s drama The Robbers, translated into English in 1792, staged in an abbreviated version in Brandenburgh House in 1798 and as a retitled adaptation, The Red Cross Knights, in Haymarket Theatre in 1799, proves that a text could be revised or even rewritten for individual productions. Moreover, the same prologues and epilogues, not necessarily considered to belong to one dramatic text only, were recited and recycled in both types of houses. Another

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example of a dramatic text meandering across boundaries is documented by the actor John Fawcett’s advertisement in The Morning Herald on 5th April 1799: “Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden. Mr Fawcett respectfully informs the Nobility, Gentry, his Friends, and the Public at large, that his BENEFIT is fixed for FRIDAY the 19th instant, when a very favourite COMEDY will be acted […]” (1). Under the benefit system, each actor in a patent theatre could once a year choose a play and keep the evening’s profit (Brooks 2011, 3). According to the records published in the monumental The London Stage, the main play in the performance on 19th April was the comedy A Cure for the Heart Ache, followed by a first afterpiece, a medley of passages from various plays, and then by a second afterpiece, an opera (Hogan 1968, 2164), in regard to which Fawcett’s advertisement had promised “that her Serene Highness the Margravine of ANSPACH has, with unprecedented kindness and liberality, lent him, for that night, the Manuscript of an Opera, in Two Acts, written by her Serene Highness, and acted at Brandenburgh House Theatre with uncommon applause” (3). The performance records provide the information that this opera was no other than The Princess of Georgia; it was a piece with music partly written by Craven and performed at Brandenburgh House in 1798 (Rosenfeld 1978, 67, 183).6 Presumably Fawcett, who acted in all three pieces, used her name for marketing purposes, to render his performance more attractive and to increase his profit. A further example of a dramatic text crossing the boundaries dates from Craven’s theatre work before her time at Brandenburgh House: her three-act comedy The Miniature Picture was originally performed privately at Benham House, Newbury, then at Newbury Town Hall for the benefit of the poor in April 1780, and in May of that year in Drury Lane (Rosenfeld 1978, 55, 190n6).

Authorship: “[…] but I confess I have added” Craven did not possess a concept of authorship that centred on the notion of the solitary Romantic genius, the creator of a new work of art. If one considers how and where she obtained her models and themes, it is only fair to say that she sometimes preferred adaptation over the creation of an entirely new oeuvre. A good example is her anonymously published Modern Anecdote of the Ancient Family of the Kinkvervankotsdarsprakengotchderns: A Tale for Christmas 1779, a humorous love story with obstacles, set in Germany. A young woman, Cecil, is enamoured of a young man, whom her father, a baron with a strong belief in the value of ancestry, considers

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unsuitable. Locked up as a punishment, Cecil escapes by disrespectfully piling ancestral portraits on top of each other to be able to reach a window. Thus, Craven questions family background as the most important criterion for the making of matches in elite circles. She also lets Cecil, whose disrespectful use of the portraits is a performance full of erotic innuendo, become an active sexual agent. According to the “Dedication”, the original anecdote, which had reached the author via some detours, “was prettily written in French, by a German Lady, who passed some time in England with the late Madame Pushkin Moushkin” (n.p.). Craven admits that she had extended the story: “but I confess I have added personages, supposed circumstances, and given descriptions which I never heard or read of any where”.7 The slim book was dedicated to Horace Walpole, whose Castle of Otranto also famously plays with a fictitious translator and invents its own textual history. Craven’s somewhat long-­ winded explanation of the story’s authorship may be a deliberate imitation of Walpole’s game with the reader. Unclear is not only whether, prior to her own publication, a French or German anecdote existed as a printed or manuscript text but also to what extent she adapted it. The Anecdote later became the basis for a comedy by Miles Peter Andrews, performed at the Haymarket in 1781 (Ley 1904, 57). Hans Ley’s survey of her writings lists thirteen English and eight French plays.8 Differentiating between originals written by Craven herself, reworked translations and adaptations is sometimes difficult. Craven, like many other writers of her time, considered texts as raw materials, to be used, adapted and performed, and then to be re-adapted by someone else in due course. She recycled materials but did not aim to produce a final, definite and literary version of a drama. The eighteenth-century development from “a theatre of words” to “a theatre of spectacle” (West 2014, 287) rendered such rewriting more acceptable because the main interest lay in producing successful, spectacular and well-attended performances rather than great dramatic texts. Among Craven’s comedies is a translation or imitation of Antoine de Ferriol de Pont-de-Veyle’s French play Le Somnambule (1739), performed as The Sleep-Walker in 1778, and printed by Walpole’s press at Strawberry Hill. Walpole ran a private press for his own as well as his friends’ literary productions; being published there led to increased visibility as an author in one’s own circle and to being conceived as part of his sociable network. She also translated for the Margrave’s theatre in Germany, and for her own stage in Brandenburgh House. The three-act comedy Nourjad, for example, which takes Frances Sheridan’s

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oriental tale The History of Nourjahad (1767) as its model, was staged in French in Anspach sometime between 1787 and 1789 and was published in French (1789c) by a local German publisher, together with lyrics for a ballet, entitled Nourjad et Fatme. A German (1790) and an English version (1803) followed. Among Craven’s own plays were comedies such as The Miniature Picture (1780) and Love in a Convent (1805). Some plays, like The Yorkshire Ghost (1794), were never printed and have been lost. Apart from the texts she composed or adapted herself, she also took an interest in classics: a performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was planned in 1796 but then abandoned; John Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed was played in 1795. Craven, whose travelogue Journey Through the Crimea abounds with descriptions of spectacular encounters, linked her experience of travelling to her dramatic work. Several of the plays performed at Brandenburgh House carry titles reminiscent of her tour through the East, Russia, Turkey and Greece in particular, and offered orientalist phantasmagorias to the audience: The Smyrna Twins (1796) with Turkish scenes and magnificent dresses, the opera The Princess of Georgia, where the harem’s chief appears on stage, as well as the Turkish tale Nourjad (1803), featuring a sultan. The orientalizing spectacles were conveyed not only through the story unfolding in the dialogues but also through costumes and scenery.

The Theatre: “The Muse Thalia Holds Imperial Sway” Craven’s prolific activities as the manager of the Brandenburgh House stage are predated by earlier theatrical activities in England, at the time of her first marriage, and even more during her time in Germany. After arriving at Anspach in 1787, she converted an old building into a theatre and became its manager: Every Thursday I went into the theatre at ten o’clock, and at two the Margrave came to take me away, to return to Triesdorf to dine. I was chief manager; and with M. Azimon, who was sub-governor to the pages, and my troop, we always contrived to keep the most profound secrecy as to what we intended to represent (Craven 1826, I, 191).9

While at Anspach, Craven wrote French pieces and translated English texts to furnish her little court theatre with material (1826, I, 201–02). To the

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local nobility, it was a place of meeting and social interaction: she gathered a little court around her and got its members to act in plays she wrote or adapted. The above-mentioned French edition as well as the German translation list among the actors the Baroness of Schilling, Baron Eichler d’Auritz, Baron von Woelwarth, Baron von Gemmingen and others, names which also appear as subscribers in the French edition, whose preface explains that the actors belonged to her court and that the plays gathered here had been acted between August 1787 and 1789 (Craven 1789b, n.p.). Among these plays is Nourjad, which Craven had written for the Margrave’s birthday. Henry Angelo, a well-known fencing master, visited Anspach at that time and later remembered: “a grand party of nobility and the corps diplomatique on that day were invited” (1830, II, 306). Some of them participated as actors, as did “Milady”, her son Keppel Craven, and Angelo, a keen amateur, who took over Nourjad’s part, although with some reservations: “I was to be the beloved (Nourjahad) buffo caracato,— no great figure for a prince,—and to be fallen in love with by a princess (Margravine), who was to represent herself as an enchantress (Fatima)” (1830, II, 306). One reason for involving him was that Craven had apparently not managed to enlist anyone else willing to study the lengthy text for this role. It was in her boudoir that Angelo, according to his own comic account, was ordered to accept the role of Nourjad. Subsequently and not unexpectedly, he was teased by other members of her court. In imitation of a lover’s plight, he fell ill prior to the performance, suffering, however, not from love but from stage fright. Angelo’s story highlights the fact that the group of actors could be reinforced by any traveller or visitor, and that the acting was a fundamental part of the court’s sociable interaction. When Craven, now married to the Margrave, moved back to England in 1791, her great time as renowned theatre manager and writer began. In the great house near Hammersmith, situated on the river Thames and bought for 8,500 pounds, they hosted numerous gatherings. The largest part of Craven’s theatrical activities at Brandenburgh House occurred in the 1790s and early 1800s, until the Margrave’s death on 5th January 1806. The Margravine had her own theatre, “erected near the water side, in a castellated form, resembling an ancient ruin. It was one of the most elegant and convenient private theatres ever built in this kingdom”, The Gentleman’s Magazine nostalgically enthused in 1822, after the theatre’s decorations had been sold and the house had been demolished (299). The private playhouse was opened in April 1793, with a Prologue, two short

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plays, Fanfan et Colas and Le Poulet, a supper, a masquerade and a ball (Broadley and Melville 1914, I, lxxix). Among the 100 guests attending was the Prince of Wales. Craven’s private theatricals also involved hired professionals. In 1792, the well-known theatre manager M.  Le Texier accepted a position at Brandenburgh House (Rosenfeld 1978, 59), which meant that apart from acting and writing for the theatre, he was also in charge of running the couple’s huge parties, or “fêtes”. Since the working relationship between Le Texier and the Margravine deteriorated and was terminated within a few years, even leading to a Chancery Case, some of their financial transactions and the ensuing arguments are documented (Vesey 1827, 322–28): Le Texier, who initially obtained a salary of 120 pounds per annum, also received 1,100 pounds per quarter “for providing the table of the Margrave”, but soon found that the sum was insufficient for the “very expensive fêtes and entertainments” (Vesey 1827, 323). He complained that the Margravine had asked him to lay out his own money, and that he had not been fully reimbursed. The court proceedings also highlight the tasks of a hired theatre man, which ranged from reading plays in French to supervising the building of a pavilion. Such experienced staff from the bigger playhouses was frequently hired for elite private theatricals, either for longer periods or for specific performances. During the performances, Elizabeth Craven’s son Keppel regularly played opposite his mother (Hawley 2014, 199, 208). Since more than one play was on the playbill, she herself occasionally acted twice in one day. Notices in the daily press give a picture of how the personal and the theatrical were intertwined: “To-morrow there is to be a Grand Fête at Brandenburgh-house, which the MARGRAVINE of ANSPACH gives in celebration of the Birthday of her Son, the Hon. Mr. KEPPEL, who, that day, will enter his eighteenth year. There is to be a Theatrical Sketch, but nothing in the Musical way” (The True Briton, 13th April 1796, 3). His participation as actor and writer was mentioned occasionally by the press alongside his mother’s efforts. Mother and son even held roles that cast them in the relationship of lovers, or brothers (Hawley 2014, 208). Angelo ironically commented that the Margravine often played “the daughter or pert chambermaid” and Keppel “the lover, or the intriguing lackey” (1830, II, 32–33). Judith Hawley has suggested that rather than employ an outmoded Freudian model, one should assume that Craven enjoyed her social power and narcissistically “adopted a masculine position” (2014, 201, 208).

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The plays Craven wrote, translated, adapted and directed were, together with the accompanying fêtes and other events, performances of her financial and cultural capital. An article in the Register of the Times sketches the programme of the reopening of her theatre after a period of refurbishment on 5th March 1795. The information provided there goes beyond the initially cited article from the Oracle and Public Advertiser in describing the entire event. It commenced with airs and choruses written by Craven, and music from the Italian composer Paesiello, followed by a historical one-act play, Margaret of Anjou, which her friend Edward Jerningham had written in 1777, a French one-act comedy, and an Italian pastoral. The Margravine impressed the audience as writer, and as performer in the prologue and the historical play. The newly refurbished theatre had undergone a “total internal alteration”, while “several new scenes and decorations have been added” (66). Wigstead, a well-known scene painter, had been hired to supervise the latter task. The theatrical performance was followed by a supper and a ball. The article names the two most prestigious visitors, the Duchess of Cumberland and the Duke of Norfolk. That the guests were still dancing when “Phoebus roused from the embraces of his Thetis” (66), that is, at sunrise, is clear proof of the evening’s success. Among the reasons to attend was not only the artistic quality of the entertainment. The suppers seem to have been opulent, as an enthusiastic description by Angelo, frequent actor and guest, shows: A long table, spread with a profusion of massive plate, vases, plateaus, chandeliers, &c. The first coup d’œil was a grand sight to any one. Here was a pleasant interval, after hours seated in a hot theatre; and having much influence with Mr. Browne, the house-steward, I could order anything I chose to call for; often I procured old hock and champagne, which were very acceptable to those whom I took to see the supper-room (1830, II, 311–12).

Access to Brandenburgh House was also a desirable marker of status. Angelo’s autobiography throws an interesting light on the ticketing system, which motivated amateur actors to participate: the performers obtained six tickets each that they could give to family and friends. They also demonstrated their social status in being able to introduce friends to this elite circle: “I need not be afraid of mentioning how many I have introduced to the supper table. On one occasion I had the Margravine’s permission to fill a coach, and what was very gratifying to my pride, I was

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enabled to present the family of the late Rev. George Glasse to the levee which always preceded the supper” (1830, II, 311). At a time of war with France, her predilection for plays in French or plays translated and adapted from French, presumably with the help of Le Texier, took a new turn. Being an Honorary Freeman to the Fishmongers’ Company, she organized a fête in July 1794, during which The Yorkshire Ghost and Les Poissardes Anglois were staged. In an act of social cross-­ dressing, the Margravine appeared as “a Billingsgate girl”, a gin-sipping fishwife in praise of her country (“John Bull is a very good soul”), as the Whitehall Evening Post reported (19th–22nd July 1794,  3; Sporting Magazine 1794, 232).10 In its review of the performance, The Times relates the anecdote that when some “distressed” French emigrants had gone to Billingsgate in search of affordable food, they had not only been “loaded” with fish but had received further help from the generous fishwomen, who had made a subscription for them (21st July 1794, 3). At a period of war with the French, Craven’s performances thus showcased British national virtues. She also skilfully used the genres of prologue and epilogue, which in Georgian private and public theatres were staple elements of the performance, thereby addressing audiences and establishing further links with them (Bolton 2014, 36). As texts, they were unstable in that they were not permanently attached to one play only but could be appended variously, or altered to fit an occasion. They could be recited by important persons: well-known actors, writers, or theatre managers. Sometimes they were printed on their own, or reprinted in newspapers, thereby providing a flavour of the performance: thus, the epilogue of The Yorkshire Ghost, the play delivered before the Fishmongers’ Company, was published in the Whitehall Evening Post, allowing us a glimpse of an otherwise lost dramatic text. Craven was not only the author but also the performer of such appended recitals. A print entitled “Prelude”, which has survived, was probably written for the opening of the theatre in 1793.11 The fairy Queen Mab, in all likelihood played by the Margravine, conjures up the banners of England and Prussia, after which furies enter, “trampling under the foot the Banner of France”, as the stage direction explains (4). Addressed by Queen Mab, the “rebellious fiends”, rebuked and warned against the British, sink down, while fairies sing and even the River God Thames offers support. An alternative to the “pomp” and “falsehood” (6) found at Court, the new theatre and its activities would be “magic”, “harmonious” and

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“happy” (8). The “Prelude” constitutes a public presentation of a patriotic agenda, demonstrating a union between Prussia and England at a time of war against revolutionary France. The Margravine, who in the final line promises that “The Muse Thalia holds imperial sway” (10), thus indicates that her house symbolizes a cultural and political union, that it is a safe haven in more than one sense.12

The Margravine’s Robbers: Free from “Jacobinical Speeches” Elizabeth Craven’s treatment of the German playwright Friedrich Schiller’s notorious Robbers, which took the shape of a rather severe depoliticizing of his ideas, is an example of the cross-cultural encounters staged in the Brandenburgh House theatre. Schiller’s play, printed in 1781 and first staged in Germany in 1782, had reached Britain fairly soon. As early as 1787, an article in the Edinburgh Magazine condemned the ambivalent attraction emanating from a play written “in the very worst taste”, but also abounding with “sublime strokes” that enforce “a horrible kind of interest” (225). The drama was highly successful in revolutionary France, and the National Assembly appointed Schiller a French honorary citizen in 1792. A first English translation of 1792 quickly went into several editions. Its author was Alexander Fraser Tytler, who had carefully pruned the text, abbreviating and toning down a number of scandalizing passages.13 The Robbers’ dynamic plot, centring on a conflict between two brothers, Karl and Franz, an old father, Amalia, Karl’s sweetheart, and a band of outlaws, corresponded to the prevailing fashion of melodrama, but the political message, the critique of the feudal system as well as the outlaws’ crude brutality, were unacceptable on the British stage. In June 1798, the parody The Rovers appeared in The Anti-Jacobin. Another free translation, or rewriting, was J. G. Holman’s The Red Cross Knights, set in Spain and performed on 21st August 1799 at Haymarket Theatre. Holman’s first attempt at staging The Robbers had been circumvented by the censor in 1792. A review of the 1799 performance in the London Chronicle referenced Schiller’s play, “totally unfit for the English stage”, as a model, justifying the transformation of this text so “hostile to the institutions of civilized life”, while adding only some moderate praise for the adaptation with its completely reworked text (180). Despite the fact that Schiller himself was no Jacobin, the play soon “came to figure an

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amorphous, pan-European threat” to the English, as Peter Mortensen has suggested (2004, 155). In general, contemporary German literature— sentimentalism, the Gothic mode, high-flung political ideas as those in The Robbers, likewise Kotzebue’s politically moderate plays—was sometimes considered to be of low taste and immoral if not dangerous (Mortensen 2004, 1, 9). Craven, hardly likely to endorse the social criticism voiced in Schiller’s play, performed The Robbers in June 1798 in Brandenburgh House in a version free from “Jacobinical Speeches that abound in the Original”, as the “Preface” promises (Craven 1799, n.p.). She (or her son Keppel, to whom this work has been ascribed [Lady’s Monthly Museum 1798, 58; Morning Herald 1798, 3])—did not produce her own translation, however. A comparison of Schiller’s drama, Tytler’s translation and the Brandenburgh House version (published in 1799) show that she must have worked from Tytler, administering substantial cuts and expurgating many more passages likely to be objectionable (see Willoughby 1921, 304–06). Although the prologue of the Margravine’s 1799 text promises that the new play had been “prun’d with British care” (3) a review in the Morning Chronicle found fault even with the mutilated version: “The democratic points of this heavy Play were mostly cut out; but the tendency remains” (1798, 3). Much of this pruning occurred on the level of plot: like Tytler, the Margravine situates the play in the early sixteenth century and thus far back in history, whereas the second edition of Schiller’s original explicitly sets it in the mid-eighteenth century and thus close to the present. The Robbers were highly controversial in Germany due to the outspoken critique of the feudal system, and many German performances cut the text, too, not out of aesthetic but out of political motivations. In the Margravine’s rendering, the scenes are much shorter, and the number of robbers, who appear less uncouth and aggressive, is diminished. Essential characters are endowed with new, less controversial plotlines. She may have administered cuts not only to reduce infuriating content but also to obtain a short, action-packed piece with dynamic dialogues. For example, both Tytler and the Margravine rearranged act I: In Schiller’s drama, scene I.i, which commences with Franz’s intrigues, fuelled by rivalry with his gifted brother, is emotionally highly complex. This scene is briefer in Tytler, who cut Franz’s long monologues and thus also his display of self-­ hatred. In Craven’s adaptation, so much text is omitted that the detailed exposition of Franz’s evil nature fails to take shape, so that the play’s action is foregrounded.

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Occasionally, Tytler shifted scenes: In Schiller’s drama, scene I.i shows Franz and his father, and I.iii Franz and Amalia, whereas I.ii presents the robbers in the forest. Tytler merged I.i and I.iii into one single scene, followed by the forest scene. This structure was followed by Craven. Especially in act IV and V Craven discards a lot of text by not only condensing Tytler’s passages but by cutting vital plot elements. The five scenes of Schiller’s act IV are reworked severely: where Tytler rearranges the plot, shifting text between the scenes, Craven’s act IV consists of one scene only, a very condensed version of Schiller’s scene IV.v. The fate of the central female character Amalia, Karl Moor’s beloved, is altered: She quickly disappears from the Brandenburgh House stage. As in the German original, she has an argument with Franz in act III, but Craven then makes her permanently withdraw to a convent, whereas Schiller and Tytler let Amalia reappear among the outlaws (with slightly varying dying scenes) in the final act. Kosinsky, a dissatisfied nobleman, appears in Tytler but not in Craven. Franz, Karl’s infamous brother, commits suicide in Schiller’s play in act V. In Tytler’s translation, he is pursued across the stage by robbers, whereas he falls into the robbers’ hands in the Margravine’s version and is carried off. Craven also changed the robbers considerably: The first scene among the robbers (Schiller I.ii)  is dominated by Spiegelberg’s derisive, highly provocative bragging and his biting critique of society, which are partly retained in Tytler’s (39–43) but severely cut in Craven’s version (23). Another example is the monologue about the rings in II.iii (Schiller), where Karl talks to a monk who has offered himself as a go-between. When Karl Moor elaborates on the symbolically charged four rings, taken from men who had abused their power, these objects symbolize the elite’s corruption and hypocrisy. Tytler retains much of this very dynamic speech (although his “commissary” is no churchman). In Craven’s version, this passage is omitted, so that Karl’s justification, the abuse of power by the mighty, is missing. Changes also occur on the linguistic level. For example: in I.i, Schiller’s “schwarzer giftiger Lügner” [black, poisonous liar] (16) is a “black infernal liar” in Tytler (3) but only “a liar” in Craven’s text (6). Swear words, criticism of church and clerics as well as sexual content, allusions to sexual violence, are removed or toned down. All in all, Craven reduced the play’s potential to stir controversy. Her outlaws are far less immoral and dangerous than in the original. The performances took place on 29th May and 6th June 1798 (Rosenfeld 1978, 68). The reviews provide a glimpse of the performance.

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According to The Morning Chronicle, Karl Moor was played by Keppel Craven, Franz by Mr Wynne, Old Moor by Mr Hamilton, Spiegelberg by Mr Wade, Hermann by Sir Walter James, Schweitzer by Mr Joseph Maddox and Amalia by the Margravine herself. Keppel and his mother faced one another on stage, playing lovers amidst their theatrical friends. In the role of Amalia, Craven displayed “sensibility” and “tenderness and passion”, as the Morning Chronicle suggested (apparently, the acting was so powerful that “a Lady in the upper boxes fainted away” [3]), while the Lady’s Monthly Museum praised her “classical propriety” (58). The epilogue was followed by a farce, W. C. Oulton’s All in Good Humour, with the Margravine appearing as a country girl. Afterwards, select guests were invited for supper. Considering Craven’s previous stage practice and her predilection for pastorals, one may assume that her Robbers were staged as a celebration of rural life. Two new scenes, probably backdrops, were highly praised: “a sunset, on the banks of the Danube” and “the moonlight, in the forest of Bohemia” (Lady’s Monthly Museum, 59).14 She even added an epilogue to emphasize the innate nobility of the Robin-Hood-­ like robbers, whom her pen had completely depoliticized. The true robbers, she argued, were the “Pamphleteers”, the newspapers, that “now call at fire and murder every day; Yet say we’re safe, if we will fight or pay” (103). This is an allusion to a journalistic practice in which an editor threatened to disclose—frequently false—rumours in his paper unless the victim would buy his silence. Attacking the press, the Margravine’s epilogue boldly declared that she envisioned herself as a “Captain” (103) heading a group of “Robbers” (104) who aimed to achieve universal good. Thus, her play ended on a denial of the robbers’ cause. Her rewriting and production shows that she wanted to create a spectacular performance, not a literary masterpiece. Through this dialogic engagement with the press, she also marked her territory and defied criticism.15 She proved that as theatre manager, she was aware of new developments: “the fashionable and sombre writings of the German school have not been neglected”, The Monthly Mirror remarked in praise in 1801 (11). A further play that may have drawn on the success of her Robbers was The Gauntlet (1804), about which little is known. The most detailed information appears in the autobiography of the indefatigable Angelo, who believes that it was yet another adaptation of Schiller’s play. Rosenfeld, however, doubts this (1978, 72–73, 192n75). The Gauntlet as Angelo describes it is set in Germany, with banditti, whose leader Wolfanga (Angelo) is planning to rob the Bishop of Fulda. A fight with a prince

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disguised as a wood cutter (Keppel) leads to Wolfanga’s death. Tongue in cheek, Angelo improved his death scene through adding a monologue of his own making: “I gave them my dying speech, and following my instructor, favoured the audience with sundry groans and struggles, which, to use a newspaper puff, received unbounded applause”, but incurred the Margravine’s displeasure (1830, II, 34). A prologue or epilogue, printed in The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1804, invites the audience’s admiration and uses military imagery, at a time of war between England and France, thus casting her theatre again as a patriotic venue (Craven 1804, 552). Craven’s European theatre functioned on several levels. As a thriving performance space near London, predominantly open to a wealthy elite, it added an international component to metropolitan theatrical life. Craven brought German, French and Italian plays, music, and lay as well as professional performers together with local and international guests, while her thespian endeavours also served to highlight her own political views. Her theatre was at the centre of a number of sociable activities, which she conducted with and for family and friends. Thus, she fulfilled the female role of a great hostess and combined it with that of a creative agent. Private theatricals allowed women to participate in the theatre to an extent which would not have been acceptable on the public stage. The press reactions to the demolition of Brandenburgh House in 1822 and six years later to her death bear witness to her impact. In 1822, The Gentleman’s Magazine mythologically imbued its “former grandeur and magnificence” (298) by citing Virgil in the Latin original (“Campus [sic] ubi Troja fuit”) to compare its disappearance to that of Troy.

Notes 1. In referring to the Margravine of Anspach as “Elizabeth Craven”, this essay follows other recent criticism, e.g. Hawley (2014). Some studies use “the Margravine”, a title translated from the German and carried probably by no-one else in Britain. 2. See, for example, Winch (2014). For a thorough reading, see Franke (1995). 3. One example of such private theatricals is dealt with in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814), where the planned staging of Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows (1798), an adaptation of a 1791 play by August von Kotzebue, disrupts domesticity. 4. The British Museum Collection Online displays a set of admission tickets, among them one for the “Brandenburgh House Theatre” (The British Museum Collection Online).

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5. For private theatricals see Russell (2007), Rosenfeld (1978), Hawley (2018, 95–98), Burwick (2011a, 104–06), Schmid (2012). 6. Rosenfeld (1978), to whom I am indebted, has unearthed many but not all contemporary reviews. In dating the plays and performances, I have followed her in most instances. 7. For doubts about her authorship, see Monthly Mirror (1801, 9). 8. For her literary production see Rosenfeld (1978), and also Ley (1904). Ley is very thorough but apparently could not access all sources. 9. For her time in Anspach and reflections on theatre, see particularly her Memoirs (1826, I, 192–268). See also Gasper (2017, 161–91). 10. The female fishmongers of Billingsgate were notorious for their accent and their rude language. 11. The British Library holds a privately printed copy, albeit with no date. 12. After the Margrave’s abdication in 1791, the Margraviate was taken over by Prussia. The Margravine probably had this situation in mind when she emphasized the political loyalty of her house. 13. For an account of the play’s reception in Great Britain, see also Willoughby (1921) and Burwick (2011b). 14. Mr Pugh, a scene painter, had done the work: since the spectacle was all-­ important, Craven had again hired a well-known professional. On scene painting see Rosenfeld (1981). 15. On “dialogicity”, see Domsch (2014, 343).

Bibliography Angelo, Henry. 1830. Reminiscences. 2 vols. London: Colburn and Bentley. Bolton, Betsy. 2014. Theorizing Audience and Spectatorial Agency. In Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre, 1737-1832, ed. Julia Swindells and David Francis Taylor, 31–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Broadley, A. M., and Lewis Melville. 1914. Introduction. In The Beautiful Lady Craven: Original Memoirs, ed. A. M. Broadley and L. Melville, 2 vols. I:xiii– cxxxvi. New York: Lane. Brooks, Helen E.  M. 2011. ‘One Entire Nation of Actors and Actresses’: Reconsidering the Relationship of Public and Private Theatricals. Nineteenth Century Theatre & Film 38 (2): 1–13. Burroughs, Catherine B. 2004. ‘A Reasonable Woman’s Desire’: The Private Theatrical and Joanna Baillie’s The Tryal. In Joanna Baillie: Romantic Dramatists; Critical Essays, ed. Thomas C.  Crochunis, 187–205. London: Routledge. Burwick, Frederick. 2011a. Playing to the Crowd: London Popular Theatre, 1780–1830. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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———. 2011b. Schiller’s Plays on the British Stage, 1797–1825. In Who Is This Schiller Now? Essays on His Reception and Significance, ed. Jeffrey L.  High, Nicholas Martin and Norbert Oellers, 302–20. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer. [Craven, Elizabeth]. 1779. Modern Anecdote of the Ancient Family of the Kinkvervankotsdarsprakengotchderns: A Tale for Christmas 1779. London: printed for the author. Craven, Elizabeth. 1789a. A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople. London: Robinson. ———. 1789b. Nourjad et Fatme. In Nouveau théâtre de Société d’Anspac et de Triesdorf, ed. Etienne Asimont, 235–42. Anspach: Messerer. ———. 1789c. Nourjad, un Comédie en trois actes. In Nouveau théâtre de Société d’Anspac et de Triesdorf, ed. Etienne Asimont, 159–234. Anspach: Messerer. ———. 1790. Nurjad oder der gute Genius. Translated from the French by Johann Jakob Christian von Reck. Schwabach: Mizler. ———. 1799. The Robbers; A Tragedy: In Five Acts … With a Preface, Prologue and Epilogue, Written by Her Serene Highness the Margravine of Anspach. London: Printed for W. Wigstead and M. Hooper, n.p. ———. 1803. Nourjad, Comedy in Three Acts. Hammersmith: Roberts. ———. 1804. Address for ‘The Gauntlet’, A Drama, of Three Acts, Performed at Brandenburgh House. Gentleman’s Magazine, June, 74: 552. ———. 1826. Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach, Written by Herself. 2 vols. London: Colburn. [Craven, Elizabeth]. Prelude [n.p., privately printed, n.y.]. British Library, shelfmark: General Reference Collection 840.l.34.(7.) Domsch, Sebastian. 2014. The Emergence of Literary Criticism in 18th-Century Britain: Discourse between Attacks and Authority. Berlin: de Gruyter. Edinburgh Magazine. 1787. Remarkable Effect Produced by the Representation of a Tragedy in Germany. October, 6: 225–27. Faulkner, Thomas. 1822. Account of Brandenburgh House, Hammersmith. Gentleman’s Magazine, October, 92: 297–99. Franke, Susanne. 1995. Die Reisen des Lady Craven durch Europa und die Türkei, 1785–1786: Text, Kontext und Ideologien. Trier: WVT. Gasper, Julia. 2017. Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European. Wilmington: Vernon University Press. Graves, Richard. 1801. Theatrico-Mania: An Essay on the Rage for Private Theatrical Exhibitions. In Senilities; or, Solitary Amusements: In Prose and Verse, 57–68. London: Longman and Rees. Hawley, Judith. 2014. Elizabeth and Keppel Craven and the Domestic Drama of Mother-Son Relations. In Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830, ed. Laura Engel and Elaine M.  McGirr, 199–215. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

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———. 2018. Dibdin and the Dilettantes. In Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture, ed. Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley and Ian Newman, 94–107. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Journal des Luxus und der Moden. 1798. Aufführung der Räuber im Privattheater von Brandenburghouse. October, 13: 576–77. Ley, Hans. 1904. Die litterarische Tätigkeit der Lady Craven, der letzten Markgräfin von Ansbach-Bayreuth. Erlangen: Junge. London Chronicle. 1799. Haymarket Theatre. Aug. 22. August 20–22, 85: 180. Monthly Mirror. 1801. Biographical Sketch of the Margravine of Anspach. 12: 9–12 Morning Chronicle. 1798. Anspach Theatre. May 31: 3. Morning Herald. 1798. June 4: 3. ———. 1799. April 5: 1. Mortensen, Peter. 2004. British Romanticism and Continental Influences: Writing in an Age of Europhobia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Oracle and Public Advertiser. 1795. The Margravine of Anspach. March 7: 2. Register of the Times. 1795. Brandenburgh House. 4: 66. Rosenfeld, Sybil. 1978. Temples of Thespis: Some Private Theatres and Theatricals in England and Wales, 1700–1820. London: Society for Theatre Research. ———. 1981. Georgian Scene Painters and Scene Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Russell, Gillian. 2007. Private Theatricals. In The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830, ed. Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn, 191–203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiller, Friedrich. 1792. The Robbers. A Tragedy. Translated from the German of Frederick Schiller. Translated by Alexander Fraser Tytler. London: Robinsons. ———. 2014 [1781]. Die Räuber: Text und Kommentar, 6th ed. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Schmid, Susanne. 2012. Mary Berry’s Fashionable Friends (1801) on Stage. The Wordsworth Circle 43 (3): 172–77. Sporting Magazine. 1794. Brandenburgh House. July, 4: 232. The British Museum Collection Online. Accessed October 6, 2019. https://www. britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx ?objectId=3612904&partId=1&searchText=Brandenburgh+House&page=1. The Lady’s Monthly Museum. 1798. Brandenburgh House. July 1: 58–59. The London Stage 1660–1800. 1968. 5 vols, Part 5: 1776–1800, ed. Charles Beecher Hogan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. The True Briton. 1796. April 13: 3. Times. 1794. Brandenburg House Theatre. July 21: 3. Vesey, Francis. 1827. Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery from the Year 1789 to 1817. Vol. 5. 2nd ed., 322–28. London: Brooke.

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West, Shearer. 2014. Manufacturing Spectacle. In The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre, 1737–1832, ed. Julia Swindells and David Francis Taylor, 286–303. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitehall Evening Post. 1794. Brandenburgh House. July 19–22: 3. Willoughby, L.A. 1921. English Translations and Adaptations of Schiller’s ‘Robbers’. Modern Language Review 16 (3/4): 297–315. Winch, Alison. 2014. ‘If Female Envy Did Not Spoil Every Thing in the World of Women’: Lies, Rivalry, and Reputation in Lady Elizabeth Craven’s Travelogues. In Women, Travel Writing, and Truth, ed. Clare Broome Saunders, 91–105. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 8

“The English can’t waltz, never can, never will”: The Politics of Waltzing in Romantic Britain Kimberley Page-Jones

As Thomas Raikes reported in his Personal Reminiscences published in 1856, “no event ever produced so great a sensation in English society as the introduction of the German Waltz in 1813” (Raikes 1856, 240). Britain’s (un)sociable encounter with the German waltz dates back to the revolutionary decade1 and this chapter intends to show how all fields of cultural and social life had their say on this foreign dance, condemning it as a disruptive force before its gradual incorporation into English sociable manners. Samuel Taylor Coleridge encountered waltzing couples as he was touring Germany in January 1799. In a letter to Tom Poole, he details a Ländler performed in Ratzeburg, this vision leading him to brood over the unchaste attitude of German women indulging in this dance:

K. Page-Jones (*) Brest, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_8

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I am pestered every ball night to dance, which very modestly I refuse—They dance a most infamous dance called the Waltzen—There are perhaps 20 couple—the Man & his Partner embrace each other, arms round waists, & knees almost touching, & then whirl round & round, the whole 20 couple, 40 times round at least, to lascivious music. This they dance at least three times every ball night—There is no Country on the Earth where the married Women are chaste like the English—here the married Men intrigue or whore—and the Wives have their Cicisbeos (Letter 269 to Thomas Poole, Griggs 1975, 458 [4th January 1799]).

Coleridge captures here the components of the anti-waltz sentiment: the “lascivious music”, the whirling motion, the firm embrace of the German couples, to which he opposes the British values of modesty and chastity. At that time, waltzing had reached the shores of Britain but had not yet become an “official” social dance; it was nonetheless increasingly fashionable in a limited number of assembly rooms. To grasp the extent of this anti-waltz sentiment, however, we have to read the intrusion of waltzing in a highly volatile political context. The foreign dance was intricately linked to the perception of the continent as an “alien entity”2 after war had been declared by France to Britain and Holland in 1793 (Black 2010, 65), and to the presence of foreigners on British soil, more specifically of Hanoverian soldiers after 1803.3 The anti-waltz argument thus served as a focal point for anti-continental sentiments; as this leisure practice reached Britain, it rapidly aroused nationalistic prejudices and encapsulated the fear of continental contamination through manners, fashion and sociable practices. Waltzing debates were also a response to a crisis in social and gender relations. Indeed, British social dances were, at that time, strictly regulated and standardized through ball-room rules and dancing treatises. As shown by Skyles Howard, already from the Renaissance, discourses and debates on appropriate British dances were common controversies: The imaginative authority that dancing exerted as a formative social practice is witnessed by the energetic attempts to gain control of it, with arguments for and against citing the identical fables and features, but turning them one way or the other to exalt dancing or condemn it. (Howard 1996, 31)

As modernity tightened the control of women’s manners, property and education, ball-room rules of etiquette quite naturally participated in the eighteenth-century development of cultural and social forms of control

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designed to monitor and supervise the liberation of the body. The importance of such discursive practices can better be understood in the light of Michel Foucault’s writing on the central role of the body in power relations. The philosopher notes that the early nineteenth century saw the decline of the representation of the monarch’s body as the repository of power and its replacement by the social body: […] it’s the body of society which becomes the new principle in the nineteenth century. It is this social body which needs to be protected, in a quasi-­ medical sense. In place of the rituals that served to restore the corporal integrity of the monarch, remedies and therapeutic devices are employed such as the segregation of the sick, the monitoring of contagions, the exclusion of delinquents. (Foucault 1980, 55)

Coinciding with the emergence of physiological and medical theories, new political and aesthetic discursive practices emerged at the end of the eighteenth century to ensure the corporal integrity of the social body. Waltzing, as an “unnatural” dance, invalidated by doctors, emerged as a potential form of liberation of the body and thus prompted discourses reinstating the proper sociable norms to which female bodies in particular should be subjected. A closer analysis of waltzing debates will show that the organs of power performed a preventive role through sociable amusements by deciding that what was good for the individual’s body would be good for the national body, and for public morals. To a certain extent, the language of waltzing, acting as a counter-culture, invented a new body language for women but also a new role for them within the social body. The intrusion of the German dance into British society was perceived as disruptive and potentially transformative (Wilson 2016), as some “pro-waltz” advocates suggested it as a model for a new form of gender interaction. In that sense, the politics of waltzing captured the female desire for a more egalitarian society (Katz 1983, 528), for individual achievement and assertiveness and for more creative and adventurous relationships. Drawing from Foucault’s interpretation of the relationship between the corporal body, the social body and power, this chapter will cross-reference various discourses to show how the narratives of the disruptive waltz reflected deep concerns about the influence of continental leisure forms on the regulation of the British social body. After examining how Hogarth’s “line of grace” structured both dancing patterns and female bodies, I will discuss the popular and aesthetic reception of waltzing in 1811 and 1812.

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I will then show how the medical discourse was harnessed to condemn the disgraceful waltz and conclude with the study of a Morning Post poem by Charlotte Dacre that captured the potential of the waltz as a transformative social force.

William Hogarth’s “line of grace”: Shaping the English Body, Normalizing the Social Body One of the most influential dancing-masters in the early nineteenth century was Thomas Wilson. His 1808 manual An Analysis of Country Dancing ran to four editions and all copies rapidly sold out. His London dance academies and the balls he hosted allowed Wilson to spread his method in various fashionable places in London. He was well aware that traditional English dancing, though in need of codes and values, also had to keep up with fashion trends. His method was thus constantly adjusted to the new tastes of the English gentry and he aptly appropriated foreign dances into his English country-dance method. A footnote in his very first 1808 manual argued that country dancing was “doubtless of English origin, and derived its name from being the original dancing of this country” (Wilson 1822, xvi). Quoting from the Psalms—“[…] let the children praise his name in the dance” (xiv)—Wilson legitimated dancing as a graceful, rational and extremely demanding amusement to push aside any accusations of its being a “criminal amusement” (xiv). For Wilson, acquiring “ease and grace” was the greatest challenge for all beginners since the body of John Bull, as Leigh Hunt jocularly remarked in his London Journal, was not naturally shaped for dancing: “the English prefer the pleasures of the table and sedentary amusements, with their gout, apoplexy, shortness of breath, spindle-shanks, and rum-puncheon bellies” (10th September 1834). Wilson’s manual detailed the figures performed by the dancers, how their bodies should be positioned individually and in relation to the other and to the rest of the group. For Wilson, what mattered was less a knowledge of the figures than the “ease and grace” which are “the ornaments of the structure; for without these embellishments the most correct dancer would be inferior to an automaton figure” (1822, 144). Interestingly, his set of rules is as much about figures as about dance gestures, the translation of “ease and grace” into body control: “a graceful elevation of the head”, “an easy sway of the whole frame”, “the hands gently raised to turn with”, “the arms curved […] without making angles”,

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“the toes pointed downwards, and […] turned greatly outwards” (1822, 188). The “etiquette” of the ball-room, a set of codes and rules published in conclusion of Wilson’s manual, is described as “those general principles of politeness, which like the laws of nations, must invariably be preserved in all assemblies” (1822, 189). On the following plate, Thomas Wilson refers to Hogarth’s “line of grace”, the serpentine line, according to the painter the most beautiful line to be found in nature (Fig. 8.1). Wilson’s country dance method was in effect much inspired by William Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty, in which Hogarth commented on the perfect lines dancers should be able to achieve. For Hogarth, the idea of beauty did not reside in perfect proportions but rather in the “pleasing turns and intertwisting of the lines” naturally found in animated life. The body in itself is composed of waving and serpentine lines: “There is scarce a straight bone in the whole body (…) and the muscles annexed to them, tho’ they are of various shapes […] generally have their component fibres running in these serpentine lines” (1772, 55). The body, having been shaped thus, defines grace and elegance and, once in action, “all movements being as lines” (140), its motions consequently had to be suited to its forms. For Hogarth, the Minuet was one of the finest dances, as it “contains […] a composed variety of as many movements in the serpentine lines as can well be put together in distinct quantities” (147). Any dance divested of the serpentine line, “the line of grace and beauty”, whether shaping the body of the dancer or organizing the pattern of the dance, ran the risk of becoming “low, grotesque & comical” (148). The beauty […] depends upon moving in a composed variety of lines, chiefly serpentine, governed by the principle of intricacy […] the dances of the barbarians are always represented without these movements, being only composed of wild skipping, jumping and turning around, or running backwards & forward, with convulsive shrugs, and distorted gestures. (Hogarth 1772, 150)

In line with this theorization of grace and beauty in the posture, gesture and action of the body, Thomas Wilson’s etiquette of the ball boom gave a detailed description of what was not acceptable: looking down at one’s feet, getting close to one’s partner by “bending the arm at the elbow, thereby producing two angles, instead of one serpentine line”, or holding the hand of the lady “too fast” which is “vulgar in the extreme” (Wilson

c

B b

d

A

Fig. 8.1  Thomas Wilson, An Analysis of Country Dancing, London: W. Calvert, 1822, p. 65 (fig. 7)

N.B HOCARTH says this is the most beautiful Figure in Country Dancing ; the Figure altogether is a cypher of SS’s, or a number of serpentine lines interlacing or intervolving each other.

This shews the whole of the hey together. The Lady at B moves in the line b, the Lady at A in the line d, and the Lady at C in the line c, they all follow their respective lines till they return back to their places.

C

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1822, 186). Hogarth’s aesthetic theory turned both the Minuet and the English country-dance into the most graceful dances that dominated ballrooms and assemblies. Furthermore, they were acceptable because they were “open-couple” and “figure-based dances”: they were sociable dances, not intimate dances. Now the waltz, locking the dancers in an embrace-like hold with its double whirling movement, was a radical contradiction of these aesthetic norms. No longer regulated by Hogarth’s line of grace, the dance instead implied the personal involvement and creativity of each partner.

The Aesthetic and Popular Reception of the Dis-graceful Waltz A few months after his first encounter with the “lascivious” dance, Coleridge was travelling through Rübeland in the Harz district and came across villagers celebrating Whit Tuesday around a May Pole hung with garlands. Now began a Dance / the Women (danced) very well / & in general I have observed throughout Germany that the Women [in the] lower ranks degenerate far less from the Ideal of a Woman than [the Men] from that of man./ The Dances were Reels & the Walzen; but chiefly [the] latter. This dance is in the highest circles sufficiently voluptuous; but here, the motions etc were far more faithful Interpreters of the Passion or rather appetite, which doubtless the Dance was intended to shadow out.-Yet even after that giddy Round & Round is over, the walking to music, the woman laying [her] arm with confident affection on the man’s shoulders, or [among the Rustics] round [his] Neck, has something inexpressibly charming in it.—(Letter 281 to Mrs S.T. Coleridge, Griggs 1975, 506–07 [17th May 1799])

Coleridge is still a partial observer, judging the behaviour of German rustic women according to “the Ideal of a Woman” (506). He seems to acknowledge the prettiness of the scene and signs of rustic tenderness, but an allusion to Hogarth a few lines further—“O that I were an Hogarth!— What an enviable Talent it is to have [a G]enius in Painting!” (507)—suggests that, were he able to paint, he would turn the whole scene into an expression of jingoistic distrust of foreign culture and foreign social dances. As the description unfolds, the villagers he depicts are increasingly younger and thus the threat to married women’s chastity subsides. When

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describing infants whirling “round & round”, Coleridge, at last, seems able to enjoy the scene and expresses some kind of aesthetic fascination for the whirling movement of the waltz. [B]ut what most pleased me was a little Girl of about 3 or 4 years old, certainly not [mor]e than 4, [who] had been put to watch a little Babe of exactly a year old (for one of our party had asked) & who was just beginning to run away.—The Girl teaching h[im to walk] was so animated by the Music that she began to waltse with him, & the [two babes] whirled round & round hugging & kissing each other, as if the Music had ma[de them mad—] I am no judge of music—it pleased me! (Griggs 1975, 507)

Coleridge’s allusion to the “power” of the waltz to take possession of the body and “madden” it reflects the collective belief that unruly motions could act as unsettling factors in sociable places. According to Mark Knowles, dancing, since the Elizabethan period, had reflected the order of society, so the disorderly dances of the common folk had to be shunned in favour of well-structured and well-regulated social dances (Knowles 2009, 4). Yet, Coleridge’s anti-waltz sentiment may have been prompted as much by the waltz as performed as by the literary motif of the waltz. Before the continental dance reached the English dance floors, the literary waltz had been introduced in Britain in 1783 with the translation of Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther by Daniel Malthus, a book that was an immediate success. A preface nonetheless warned the reader that this work was not a novel but a mere “picture of that disordered state of mind, too common in our own country.” Commenting on the waltz in April 1800, the Ipswich Journal quoted Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther to warn of its dangerous and seductive power: Some idea of the Waltze may be formed from the following remark from the celebrated Sorrows of Werther:—“To hold in my arms, (says Werther) the most lovely of women, to fly with her like the wind and lose sight of every other object! But I own to you, I then determined that the woman I loved, and to whom I had pretensions, should never do the waltze with any other man.”

As Rémi Hess puts it, Werther established the whirling motion of the waltz as a motif of melancholic love but also as a symbolic rupture in the proxemic distance imposed by codified social dances:

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L’interaction entre les spectateurs et les danseurs est redéfinie. Les danseurs ne se trouvent plus sur une scène. Les éléments de cette danse se situent moins dans une attitude de communication avec l’ensemble du groupe. Le couple individualisé est sa propre référence, il est centré sur lui-même et dégagé, voire libéré, des liens formalisés et chorégraphiés avec les autres danseurs et les spectateurs. […] La danse est privatisée. […] Ce qui était auparavant équilibre géométrique, proportion et structure, et qui trouvait son expression métaphorique dans les formes de danse et de commerce à la cour, en particulier dans le menuet, est dorénavant intégré dans le corps du danseur qui danse dans le monde.4 (Hess 2013, 42–43)

In line with Foucault’s argument on how power engenders both codes of behaviour and forms of resistance to these codes, Rémi Hess suggests that the intrusion of the waltz in English culture was also a sign of “escapism”, the figuration of a desire to escape a culturally imposed social mechanism. Lord Byron was another curious observer and commentator of the “waltz” effect. In the midst of a waltzing controversy, he wrote in 1812, while in Cheltenham, his famous apostrophic hymn to the waltz: Wide and more wide thy witching circle spreads, And turns—if nothing else—at least our heads; With thee even clumsy cits attempt to bounce, And cockney’s practice what they can’t pronounce. Gods! how the glorious theme my strain exalts, And Rhyme finds partner Rhyme in praise of “Waltz!” (Byron 1821, 17)

More or less in line with the anti-waltz sentiment, it is sometimes assumed that his hymn was a way to take revenge for a dance that he could not perform because of his lame foot.5 Yet Byron’s 1816 journal shows quite a different view as he witnessed waltzing couples in the Swiss village of Brientz: “[…] pretty music and excellent waltzing none but peasants; the dancing much better than in England; the English can’t waltz, never can, never will” (Moore 1831, 295). His poem was thus less a satire on waltzing in itself than on the emergent middling class adapting their unfit bodies, in the name of fashion, to a new foreign amusement. William Childers, in his close examination of the poem, believes that Byron’s poetic text was not just about “the grievances of an infirm celebrity”, it was also “a running attack upon the Germanic invasion of English life and letters under the first four Georges” (Childers 1969, 82). If the British literary response to waltzing, at least that of Coleridge and Byron, was an ambivalent one,

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accepting the gracefulness of the motion when witnessed abroad yet refusing to endorse the waltz as a trope for romantic melancholia or its incorporation into British leisure culture, the conservative discourse was downright deprecating. At that time, dancing was valued in the political discourse and encouraged as a sociable amusement as long as it served public morals. William Cobbett, for instance, asserted that dancing was “at once rational and healthful”, as long as it had “no tendency to excite base and malignant feelings” (160). However, the whirling motion of the waltz jarred with the intricate yet symmetrical pattern of the country dance or the Minuet. In 1811, the Morning Post hosted a fascinating debate between waltzist and anti-waltzist parties. The debate was prompted by a letter, signed ‘Cato’, which warned of the danger of waltzing on public morals. A few extracts of these letters are worth quoting since they show how the revolutionary context impacted the debate on sociable amusements. Cato opens his letter by dismissing the waltz as a “dance of a lewd and licentious nature, imported from those stews of contamination on the continent” (Morning Post, 19th July 1811). Drenched in puritanical language, his letter quickly steered the debate into a political terrain: “This harlot dance sprang from that hot bed of vice which entombed the laws, the liberties, the morals and the religion of nations and can only be cultivated […] to the overthrow of those virtues which form the safeguard of British female innocence”. For Cato, not only was waltzing jeopardizing the truly English values of female sociability—modesty and reserve—It carried such a degrading potential that the whole fabric of society was under threat. This is how a letter signed by “A Friend to Public Morals”, written a few days later, articulated the intricate connection established between the foreign dance and revolutionary ideas: I believe it will not be denied that the French revolution, that Pandora’s box of modern ills, was occasioned more by the corruption of morals than by any other single cause whatsoever; neither will it, I conceive, be denied, that the same cause, by extinguishing that manly and independent spirit which characterized former times, has paved the way to that state of servile and abject degradation, in which the far greater part of the European Continent is now plunged. Now if the dance in question really has an injurious tendency with regard to morals […] there is no absurdity whatever in supposing, that its prevalence on the Continent has had its share in contributing to the production of those revolutionary consequences which the whole civilized world has so much cause to deplore. (Morning Post, 27th July 1811)

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Waltzing is here tied up with revolutionary France. Gillray’s engraving, published in 1800, had satirized this connection: the female waltzist grotesquely represented by a corpulent Jacobin woman who has a firm hold on her scrawny partner, who cannot choose but stare at the woman’s breasts (this was becoming a typical detail of engravings on waltzing) (Fig. 8.2). The etching suggests a two-fold anxiety: an erosion of traditional social values (the waltz as a couple dance) and a dread of revolutionary absorption; the obscenity of the scene is thus symbolically charged with the potentiality of revolutionary contamination. Moral causes went hand in hand with political effects as stated by “the Friend to the Public Morals”: “the decay of [good morals] […] is the natural and unvariable cause of the decline of, and fall of nations”.

Pathologizing the Waltz The female waltzer thus became a symbol of the revolutionary element spreading on the European continent. Repeatedly in these anti-waltz letters the idea of a contamination of the social body by the Jacobin female body is evoked. When Cato warns against the “licentious contamination of this Saturnalian dance”, he suggests to a certain extent that the health and the security of the nation are enshrined as much in the body politic as in the female body. The waltz then was reconfigured as a social malady and one of its symptoms, giddiness, was frequently emphasized as endangering the natural equilibrium of the female body and, by extension, of the social order considered as the guardian of female modesty and chastity. A watercolour drawing of a waltzing party by Edward Francis Burney (1800 or 1814) combines pictorial and linguistic signs to suggest the detrimental effect of the dance on the individual and collective bodies (Fig. 8.3). These couples are waltzing on an air played by lewd musicians, “the Favorite Waltz of Mad./ Madame La Comtesse Tournée la Tête”. The symmetrical order of the assembly room is disrupted from all parts by these falling bodies and disgraceful positions. The etiquette at the entrance of the ball room is only displayed to conceal the debauchery taking place inside. The couple at the centre seems to be the only guardian of order, modesty and reserve. Yet the features of the male partner are feminized, suggesting a blurring of sexual identities and a loss of manly virtues. Framed in their embrace is the only couple not whirling or tumbling but

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Fig. 8.2  James Gillray, “Waltzer au Mouchoir” (1800), Hand-coloured etching published by Hannah Humphrey, National Portrait Gallery, London

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Fig. 8.3  Edward Francis Burney, “The Waltz” (late eighteenth, early nineteenth century), Watercolour drawing, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

those have a kind of spectral quality, as if they were the embodiment of a moribund sociability leaving the scene. Waltzing women in the foreground are either fainting or, as they are dwarfing the men, in the process of becoming male figures themselves. Scraps of papers, torn or burnt, are strewn across the dance floor and, acting as linguistic signs, they reinforce the idea that all these bodies are under threat of the falling sickness, in other words, of epilepsy. On the bottom right corner of the drawing, a newspaper advertises a waltz, then a cure for this sickness. A poem pinned on the wall, Paradise Lost, provides a sort of caption for the whole scene: “Grace was not in their steps / Heaven out of their heads / In all their gestures / Giddiness … Folly”. The vertigo of waltzing has none of the romantic taste of Goethe’s Werther, instead, dancers fall back into disease and lust: physical, mental and moral effects are closely intertwined. The medical language used here invades the pictorial scene to condemn the physiological effects of this new body language taught to members of the fashionable society.

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This watercolour drawing thus shows how the Brunonian interpretation of the human body was harnessed for the control of the social body. The writings of physiologists John Brown and later Thomas Beddoes had indeed spread the idea that the body was regulated by a vital principle called excitability, whose disruption would trigger nervous disorders, melancholia or mania. Beddoes’s medical treatise Hygeïa, published in three volumes in 1802 and 1803, can be read as a medical, social and cultural method to reform the social manners and habits of the British gentry. Beddoes was indeed alarmed by the “artificial modes” of “the luxurious and the indolent”, “destroying the balance of action in the system” (165). For Beddoes, mind and body were intricately connected; thus, improper food or bodily habits (“gluttonous debauchery”, “frequent use of strong liquors”, or frequent sexual intercourse) would affect the mind and induce vertigo, and inversely, any mental activities prompting a wrong association of ideas (novel or poetry reading, browsing newspapers, skipping from one topic of conversation to another) would affect bodily functions. Thomas Beddoes devoted a whole chapter to this nervous disorder called vertigo that was part of a host of symptoms—chills, shivers, heats, tremor, insomnia—affecting the nerves of the British ladies and gentlemen, who, without proper treatment, would fall into epilepsy, hysteria or hypochondria. As a concomitant to absolutely all nervous affections, giddiness was a particularly dreadful sign of a diseased body and mind, and a foreboding sign of the falling sickness. Weakening the body but also the mind, as it “dissolves the connection between the ideas and muscular actions”, vertigo was “one of the most incurable forms of nervous complaint” (156). Any repetition of a mental or physical exertion producing giddiness would, in the long run, create a habit, impair the “power of organs,” and induce a “nervous malady”. Waltzing is not explicitly referred to by Beddoes but, as it belonged to the fashionable amusements of the gentry and involved a double whirling motion and a violent succession of images, he most probably would have regarded it as a fatal practice for “delicate females” and other valetudinarians. Erasmus Darwin, quoting from Platernus, mentions a possible connection between apoplectic death and “violent exertions in dancing” (429). The cultural persistence of the association of giddiness with nervous disorder affecting sociable amusements can be seen in Donald Walker’s Exercises for Ladies calculated to preserve and improve beauty and to prevent and correct personal defects founded on physiological principles (1836):

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There are, however, several dances that should be abandoned by very delicate females, on account of their causing too violent emotions, or an agitation which produces vertigo and nervous symptoms. […] Vertigo is one of the great inconveniences of the waltz; and the character of this dance, its rapid turnings, the clasping of the dancers, their exciting contact, and the too quick and too long continued succession of lively and agreeable emotions, produce sometimes, in women of a very irritable constitution, syncopes, spasms and other accidents which should induce them to renounce it. (Walker 1836, 149)

“Waltzing was made for souls of noble daring”: Charlotte Dacre’s heroic waltz Up to now I have discussed male discourse, whether aesthetic, medical or popular, warning against or satirizing the waltz’ effects mostly on the female body. Yet some women seized the potential of the waltz to disrupt social order and to transform it by allowing the female body to indulge freely in the pleasure of the waltz, and the persistence of waltzing and its introduction to assembly rooms can certainly be seen as the cultural and social expression of “pleasure against moral norms of decency and chastity” (Foucault 1980, 56). This idea of the vertigo of waltzing, creating a new body language and incorporating signs of pleasure and gentle erotic desire, was captured in a poem published during the 1811 Morning Post debate. The author used the nom de plume Adlitam Asor; if we read it backwards, Rosa Matilda. Rosa Matilda was another pen name for Charlotte Dacre, the author of the highly controversial Gothic novel Zofloya (1806), one of the first to depict a female character, Victoria, as a cruel and jealous woman, driven by the devil to seek pure selfish pleasure and the fulfilment of her sexual desires. Dacre’s waltz poem, “The Waltz, an Heroic Ode, in defence of that most popular and admired dance”, was written in reaction to Cato’s moralizing letter. She may also have had Byron in mind, with whom she was engaged in a battle of words when writing this poem (McGann 2002, 55). Indeed, as she deflates all the anti-waltz arguments and ascribes them to the aged or disabled bodies of conservative critics, Byron’s club foot may be alluded to in these lines: Quizzes, lame, blind, and deaf, and ancient misses, Waltzing detest, and follow it with hisses;

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And why? the reason cannot be mistaken, Pleasures they hate, they can no more partake in, Since they can’t hobble through the Waltz on crutches (Morning Post, 26th August 1811)

She exhorts female dancers to take to the dance floor and waltz with passion, ease and grace: If you are women, don’t give up the passion: Dance, dance the Waltz, and dance it in a passion. Dance it with spirit, and with ease, d’ye see, Dance it with grace,- I mean, that’s dance it free; There’s no harm in the Waltz. (Morning Post, 26th August 1811)

Waltzing, under the pen of Rosa Matilda, becomes an expression of a somewhat seductive pleasure. Yet if the poem flirts at time with eroticism, she constantly reasserts the innocence of the waltzing “communion”; the interweaving bodies do not signify debauchery or confusion but “platonic” love: “The waltz is rather a firm bond of union / Of friendship, love and innocent communion”: This intercourse of soul is all platonic. The moving glances, sweet agreeable sighs, The powerful language of the hands and eyes; The gentle pressures, delicate and tender, For you with ease, must to all these surrender; And, smiling, on one side recline your head, For ease is grace, as I before have said: And without ease and grace, I must repeat, The Waltz is but a stupid sort of treat. (Morning Post, 26th August 1811)

As with the waltz music, the poem combines a soothing rhythm with a more aggressive one; waltzing then captures the potential of the female body to become “intrepid”, “warlike”, to be aroused from the constraints of normative discourse: The music slow, then quick, then slow again, Prepar’d them for the horrors of the plain;

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The slow, when to soft pipes and tabors moving, Tho’ fierce in war, they tender grew, and loving; The quick, when to the sound of drum and fiddle, They seiz’d each other tight about the middle, Meaning the battle’s heat; then slow again, When wounded, dying, groaning, strew’d the plain. This was the Waltz. (Morning Post, 26th August 1811)

A musical and physical language devoid of words and dogmatic assertions, Charlotte Dacre’s waltz was first invented by the “famed Amazons” to “fight great Theseus”. The irregular rhythm of the music, as described by the series of run-on-lines, enables them to gather strength and infuse courage into their bodies to face the enemy. The waltz here becomes a martial art and an act of rebellion against the supremacy of men and male discourses. The waltz is intricately connected with revolutionary ideals, too, but in an ambiguous way, as Dacre’s examples are borrowed from mythology rather than from history. No longer either new or continental, the waltz is “[n]early coeval with the days of NOAH”. Charlotte Dacre dreams of the lost origin of a waltzing society where women were freed from the domination of men. When she brings the waltz back to the English dance floor, she tones down its martial innuendoes: “For my own part, the Waltzing I delight in, / It makes nights pass in love, instead of fighting.” In a way, the transformative power of the waltz may be something of the past since it has been assuaged by British culture but traces of its subversive energy remain and invigorate the female waltzing body. Rewriting the origin of this “ancestral” dance, she also lampoons the obsessive need of conservative discourse to trace the origin of the dance in order to stigmatize the country of its origin, be it France, Germany or Switzerland. Turned into a mythological and therefore universal language, it transcends national borders and, as such, “Should welcome be, from Scythia, Greece or Germany.” Rosa Matilda’s “Heroic Ode” is a female response to male discourse on sociable practices whether aesthetic, poetic, medical or cultural, whether those of Byron, Coleridge, Cato, Gillray, Hogarth or Wilson, whose waltzing bodies bear the marks of post-­ revolutionary anxieties. This chapter has shown how the convergence of multiple discourses shaped the waltzing body as a potentially adulterous body and, by extension, as a component within the social body that could adulterate it. The

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waltzing debates also show how forms and modes of sociability can become political organs of control or resistance in unstable, volatile political contexts. The intensity of the anti-waltz sentiment captured the anxiety of a nation urged to believe in the possible contamination and adulteration of British society by alien continental sociable amusements. From 1814, prejudice over waltzing slowly gave way; some newspapers even described, with some kind of admiration, the tsar Alexander waltzing at Burlington House with Lady Jersey in June 1814, just before the Conference of Vienna that was to carve a peaceful Europe. Interestingly, two years later, it was codified by dancing-master Thomas Wilson. His Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing, the Truly Fashionable Species of Dancing (1816) “purified” the waltz from its continental origins to make it a truly British sociable art. The “correct” waltz was to abandon “the primitive principles” of its origin and was to be taught by private teachers to the higher classes as “a means of improving taste” (xxxiv). With waltzing ‘anglicized’ by dancing manuals and officially accepted in ball-rooms, the debate was now over; educational control guaranteed the ruling out of “the manner of waltzing adopted in foreign countries” (xxxi).

Notes 1. The “official” introduction and approval of waltzing in Britain is usually dated to 1812 by dance historians, the year the waltz was first seen at Almack’s, then the most fashionable of assembly rooms (Richardson 1960, 63). 2. See Black (2010, 177) on the perception of British travelers to Europe. 3. They were known as the King’s German Legion, “a force of predominantly exiled Hanoverian soldiers who formed an important part of the British Army’s European resistance to Napoleonic France” (Wishon 2011, 190). 4. “The way spectators and dancers interact is redefined. Dancers are no longer on stage. The elements of this dance are less related to the group as a whole. The individualized couple is its own reference, self-centered and freed from standardized and choreographed connections with other dancers and spectators. […] Dancing becomes a privatized affair. […] What used to be geometrical balance, proportion and structure, and which found its metaphorical equivalent in courtly forms of dance and commerce, in particular with the Minuet, is now integrated in the body of the dancer, dancing in the world.” (author’s translation) 5. “With his malformed right calf and ankle, Byron was able to fence, box, ride, walk and above all, swim. But running was difficult for him—and dancing

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impossible. Castlereagh was a better dancer than Byron would have been, but the poet is never recorded as even trying it. One of his most anguished adolescent experiences was watching his beloved Mary Chaworth dance with other Nottinghamshire youths. Sour grapes may indeed therefore be part of the motivation behind the poem [Waltz: An Apostrophic Hymn].” (Cochran 2009, 1)

Bibliography Beddoes, Thomas. 1803. Hygëia, or, Essays Moral and Medical on the Cause Affecting the Personal State of Our Middling and Affluent Classes. 3 vols. Bristol: J. Mills. Black, Jeremy. 2010. The British and the Grand Tour. London: Routledge Revivals. Byron, George Gordon N. 1821. Waltz: An Apostrophic Hymn. London: W. Clarke. Childers, William. 1969. Byron’s ‘Waltz’: The Germans and Their Georges. Keats-­ Shelley Journal 18: 81–95. Cobbett, William. 1968. Cobbett’s England: A Selection from the Writings of William Cobbett, ed. John Wesley Derry. London: Folio Society. Cochran, Peter. 2009. Waltz. Accessed March 23, 2020. https://petercochran. files.wordpress.com/2009/03/waltz.pdf. Darwin, Erasmus. 1794. Zoonomia or, the Laws of Organic Life. 2 vols. London: J. Johnson. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon. New-York: Pantheon Books. Griggs, Earl Leslie. 1975. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Volume 1: 1795–1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hess, Rémy. 2013. La valse: un romantisme révolutionnaire. Paris: Métailié. Hogarth, William. 1772. The Analysis of Beauty. London: W. Strahan. Howard, Skyles. 1996. Rival Discourses of Dancing in Early Modern England. Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 36 (1): 31–56. Katz, Ruth. 1983. The Egalitarian Waltz. In What is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism, ed. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen, 521–532. New York: Oxford University Press. Knowles, Mark. 2009. The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. McGann, Jerome. 2002. Byron and Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moore, Thomas. 1831. Letters and Journal of Lord Byron: with Notices of his Life. Francfort: H.L. Brönner. Raikes, Thomas. 1856. A Portion of the Journal Kept by Thomas Raikes, Esq., from 1831 to 1847. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans.

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Richardson, Phillip J.S. 1960. The Social Dances of the Nineteenth Century in England. London: Herbert Jenkins. Walker, Donald. 1836. Exercises for Ladies Calculated to Preserve and Improve Beauty and to Prevent and Correct Personal Defects Founded on Physiological Principles. London: Thomas Hurst. Wilson, Thomas. 1816. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing, the Truly Fashionable Species of Dancing. London: Sherwood, Nelly, and Jones. ———. 1822. An Analysis of Country Dancing. London: T. Craft. Wilson, Cheryl A. 2016. The Arrival of the Waltz in England, 1812. In BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History. Accessed March 23, 2020. http://www.branchcollective. org/?ps_articles=cheryl-­a-­wilson-­the-­arrival-­of-­the-­waltz-­in-­england-­1812. Wishon, Mark. 2011. Interaction and Perception in Anglo-German Armies 1689–1815 (Ph.D. Thesis). University College London.

CHAPTER 9

Sociable Encounters in Model Commercial Letters Alain Kerhervé

Over eighty letter-writing manuals or secretaries were produced in Britain between 1700 and 1788, most of which combined a few pages of theory with many practical models of letters. These works may be considered the results of two trends, manuals derived from French letter-writers on the one hand, and manuals of truly English composition and inspiration on the other. The main purpose of those manuals was to teach codes of epistolary writing which permitted the ‘profane’ to gain access to what could be defined as epistolary sociability, that is the assertion of one’s self in sociable groups (from family to Court; see Bernard 2000; Hoock-Demarle 2008). Among those so-called secretaries, a few were specialized in business writing, as if to suggest that the epistolary exchanges of merchants were different from all the others gathered in the same manuals. So far, though, critical academic material on the subject is absent, most studies of correspondences focusing, to pick up the categories of Clare Brant’s seminal Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture (2006), on the letters

A. Kerhervé (*) Brest, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_9

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of parents, lovers, criminals, citizens, travellers, historians, Christians, but not on those of merchants. I am going to examine if there were any “sociable encounters” in those manuals, which, unlike most of the others, comprised model letters allegedly sent over to various countries in Europe and around the world. In order to do so, I will begin with a quick presentation of the available sources, to select one of them more particularly. I will then provide insights into the commercial networks defined by the manuals in order to finally discuss the place granted to sociable encounters in the manuals.

Available Sources Very little has been said on the theory of business letter-writing in the eighteenth century, perhaps because it took some time before it was differentiated from other forms of epistolary writing. When one considers the full title of one of the first secretaries in the English language, A Flying Post (1678), one notices that the letters contained are said to be “upon all occasions both of love and business”, and that no difference is made afterwards nor is any business letter properly differentiated in the manual. Although Daniel Defoe’s enterprise when publishing The Complete English Tradesman, in Familiar Letters in 1726 (reprinted in 1727, 1732, 1738, 1745) was much more comprehensive than the teaching of commercial epistolary correspondence, it still comprised a section devoted to business letters, his method being based on a few principles illustrated by examples and counter-examples of what should and should not be written by merchants. George Bickham’s 43-pages The United Pen-Men for Forming the Man of Business was published in 1743; it contained just a one-page section devoted to epistolary writing, “Letters of business”, which shows two model letters without any theoretical advice attached. Peter Hudson’s A New Introduction to Trade and Business (first printed in 1758 and running to eight editions by 1801) comprised a short section on “Commercial and Epistolary Correspondence, exemplified in various Forms of Business and Familiar Letters”. It only contained four commercial letters to which were added four familiar letters. In 1769, the exiled French Huguenot Pyron du Martre, known as Porny in Britain, printed a manual entitled Modern Letters whose main purpose, as stated in his introduction, was to improve the French language skills of his pupils.1 It contained a section of 27 commercial letters in

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French and English, introduced by a few theoretical elements on the “mercantile style”, further developed in Porny’s 1782 edition of the manual, entitled Models of Letters, which actually contained fewer models (19). In 1799, William Keegan published Le Négociant universel, ou recueil de lettres originales de commerce, écrites par les meilleures maisons de Russie, Hollande, Angleterre, France, Espagne, Portugal, Allemagne, Italie, Turquie, &c.. Although all the letters and the title were in French, it was printed and sold in London, as well as in Bristol, Edinburgh and Hamburg; all of its subscribers were British, and some pages, the Preface for instance, are written in English without any translation. Moreover, the manual was dedicated “to the Merchants of Great Britain” (i). The most comprehensive manual containing models of business letters published in Britain in the eighteenth century must have been Epistolae Commerciales by Charles Wiseman. First published in 1779, the manual is composed of 146 model letters in two parts, without any further subdivisions (which differentiates it from other, non-commercial secretaries in which letters were most often classified into categories). In part I, 75 letters are presented in English, French and Spanish (3 letters per page, the English version in the centre); in part II, 71 letters in English, Spanish and Portuguese are given (similarly with the English letter in the middle). It also contains lists of words, “Mercantile and Maritime Vocabularies of each Tongue”, that is in the five previously mentioned languages, plus a few examples of invoices and bills of loading.2 After a dedication to Lord Edward Hawke, President of the Maritime School on the Banks of the Thames, before the models are presented, Wiseman provides his readers with two introductory notes. First an introduction mainly aims to define commerce, “is the buying, felling, or bartering goods or merchandise, in order to profit by the same” and its importance to the state: “without commerce the greatest monarchs, and wealthier states and kingdoms can make no figure”. He explains that merchants must become experts in “commercial science” to ensure that “the honour and respect due to [their] sovereign would [not] be tarnished”. Thus his manual is justified. The second introductory section, “mercantile observations,” deals with the style to be used in trade, more precisely, with the “mercantile style”, which must be “precise, clear, comprehensive, and yet laconic, containing multum in parvo [much in a few words]”.3 Moreover, it contains the “lex mercatoria” merchants must be well-­ acquainted with. He finishes with six paragraphs on the use of French

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words (“faire le necessaire, to do the needful”; “en argent comptant, i.e. in ready money”) as technical terms in all European languages. Although the letters are not classified any further, they offer examples of letters in a large number of situations (offering a new correspondence, with the double-meaning of the word, starting or ending a partnership, checking the quality, the reception or sending of goods, orders, payment and debts, etc.) and are also entertaining in particular because of the variety of the goods exchanged: in order of frequency cloth (18 letters), books (5), diamonds (4), wool (4), corals (2), silk (2), stockings (2), and many more items of clothing (laces, handkerchiefs) as well as food products (herring, musk wine, olive oil, almond, cinnamon, sugar); however, the nature of the merchandise is not mentioned in all letters, a fair number of them dealing with money matters instead. Thus the teaching of a commercial style is based on actual exchanges of the period. The different epistolary networks defined in the manuals are also grounded in actual commercial exchanges of the period.

European Networks and Possible Contacts If the manuals define a large European network of commercial partnerships, the question of exchanges in Europe also raises that of the language to be used in those exchanges. A European framework is to be seen on the two maps made from the letters contained in Epistolae commerciales and Négociant Universel. The sources available clearly show that many models of letters passed from one European country to another in the eighteenth century, whilst the few letters contained in seventeenth-century manuals exclusively dealt with exchanges within Great Britain (Fig. 9.1). The 179 letters in Keegan’s Négociant universel define a large European commercial space, including Algiers in North Africa, Malta and the Mediterranean Sea, Constantinople and Smyrna in Turkey, Saint Petersburg and Riga in Russia. Two main directions stand out, the width of the arrows being proportional to the number of letters exchanged in the manual: the London-Livorno exchanges on the one hand and the Saint-Petersburg-London axis on the other, the city of London, with seventy letters (22 sent, 48 received) being the busiest city in Europe. However, those commercial exchanges also concern the gulf of Genoa (Livorno, Genoa, Civita-Vecchia), the Atlantic Arc (from Gibraltar to Liverpool and Dublin, via Cadiz, Lisbon, Porto, Bordeaux and Saint Malo) and the Channel (Fig. 9.2).

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Stockholm

151

St-Petersburg

Riga Edinburgh Dantzig Dublin

Porto

Lisbon

Constantinople Smyrna Algiers

Malta

Fig. 9.1  Letter movements in Négociant universel (1799)

The names of the places from which letters are exchanged in Wiseman’s Epistolae Commerciales provide a rather similar picture of European exchanges in the eighteenth century, at least of letters allegedly selected from “the original letters, as they stand in the Copy-books of the most eminent and principal Merchants in Europe”, to quote Wiseman’s words from the front page of the manual. However, one notices that those places which were not systematically mentioned in the letters, but only in an occasional series of twelve letters arranged in chronological order, very probably did not correspond to real exchanges since they invariably associate cities beginning with the same initials: Aleppo and Algiers, Berlin and Brussels, Copenhagen and Constantinople, Dresden and Dublin, Edinburgh and Evora, Florence and Faro, Genoa and Grenoble, Ispahan and Inverness, Leghorn and London, Moscow and Milan, Naples and Narbonne, Oporto and Orleans, to take the example of the first twelve letters of the manual only. Still, it confirms the idea that a theoretical

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Stockholm Inverness Edinburgh

Copenhagen

Emden Dublin

Moscow

Berlin Dresden

Brussels

London

Rouen Orléans Nantes La Rochelle Grenoble Narbonne

Salamanca

Porto

Barcelone

Venise Genoa Livorno Florence Constantinople

Alicante

Lisbon Evora Faro

Genève Milan

Cadix

Grenada

Ispahan

Algiers

Aleppo

Alexandrie

Fig. 9.2  Letter movements in Epistolae Commerciales (1779)

European framework of commercial correspondence was being defined in the long eighteenth century, while colonial and transatlantic exchanges remain extremely rare in the manuals. However, one can then wonder about the language or languages used in those exchanges. The message of Wiseman’s commercial letters is unclear. Whilst it highlights its author’s translating skills, it does not explain what language should be used under which circumstances. One may suggest that it depended on the intended readership of the manual, but since it was mainly meant for English merchants or students of the Maritime school, why provide letters in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese? The fact that the letters in the English language occupy a central position on all pages probably suggests that it was meant to be the language in which British merchants should learn to write letters, even though they might have been expected to be able to understand letters in other languages (hence the interest of having examples of them), notably

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in French since more than half of Wiseman’s “mercantile observations” deal with the central place of a number of “French words” used as “technical terms”, which are commonly “Anglicised, Italianised, Hispanised, and Lusitanised as it were”. Among those words are the phrases and words “faire le nécessaire”, “procurer le nécassaire” (“to procure the needful or that which is required”), “provision” (“furniture of necessaries”), “bonification” (“improvement”), “notifier” (“to notify”). Still, to Wiseman, the English language prevailed. However, the purpose of the editor, who had also authored A Complete English Grammar in 1764, was openly advocated in the preface of the manual: to serve “the glory of the British empire” by “extending the maritime and commercial interest of this kingdom”.4 In the preface of Négociant universel, William Keegan clearly states that his manual is meant for young gentlemen intending to take on a commercial business, and that they need to master the French mercantile style in which most European transactions are performed: My principal design is to assist youth, by putting into their hands original letters of commerce, abounding in variety of instruction, and well calculated to form their minds, not only in acquiring a knowledge of the French language, a just and accurate mercantile style, but also in imbibing real notions of business, which, I imagine, will be very useful to Schools, and not only so, but peculiarly suited to such persons as are not thoroughly competent to hold a foreign correspondence. The French language is of well-known utility in commerce, the greatest part of mercantile transactions being carried on through the medium of it, and it is also universally adopted in Schools. A previous superficial tincture will not benefit young gentlemen much in their clerkships: a grammatical accuracy and precision in writing are requisite. Their letters should be written in a clear, unequivocal, and merchant-like manner, by which means they would be read with pleasure by the correspondents; they would beget respect and confidence; their abilities would receive an additional lustre; in a Word, they themselves would become intrinsically useful at an early period, with less trouble to their superintendents. (1799, iv)

According to Keegan, French seems to be the language of commercial correspondence across Europe. Paradoxically enough, the work was afterwards translated into English in 1820, with the same geographical references kept, thus blurring the initial message associated with the language

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and authenticity of the letters; perhaps suggesting that the language of European exchanges had moved to English in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The questions linked with the languages are further prolonged with those of national identity, which should be almost absent from commercial exchanges, in particular in times of war—or so Wiseman’s “Mercantile Observations” insist: A merchant, who writes to foreign countries, should be very sparing and reserved in respect to political news (especially in war time more than any other period), otherwise he may chance to bring himself into trouble, and have his letters stopped if not opened, which may not only be attended with personal disgrace, but perhaps injure him in his credit, which is to support him in trade. (1779, v)

As suggested here, a letter from Wiseman’s Epistolae Commerciales suggests that exchanges are not interrupted in war-time (Fig. 9.3): However, the writers of other letters worry about the fact that “war will be declared between Spain and France” (II.46), estimating that “at a juncture so critical and dangerous as that of war time, it is very difficult and inconvenient to contract with strangers” (I.37), or rejoicing at the idea that “the passage should be made clear which will be very soon by a general peace that is to be concluded with France” (I.58). All the letters concerned are undated. We should remember that those letters thus do not directly refer to precise historical events but provide a background to exchanges which may be made complex, beyond the choice of a language, in times of war, even if merchants abstain from showing any national bearing.

Fig. 9.3  Part of a war-time letter in Epistolae Commerciales (1779, 26)

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Business and Sociability Although the relationships defined in the model letters were extremely codified and often limited to strictly professional terms, the degree of familiarity occasionally permitted, it seems, more personal encounters. Indeed, a tension inherent in the manuals is that of the distance that should be taken whilst corresponding with trade partners. The same epistolary posture is found in Defoe’s, Porny’s and Hudson’s theories: He that affects a rambling and bombastic style, and fills his letters, with long harangues, compliments, and flourishes, should turn poet instead of tradesman, and set up for a wit, not a shopkeeper. (Defoe 1726, 17) In short, a tradesman’s letters should be plain, concise, and to the purpose; no quaint expressions, no book phrases, nor any double meanings— yet they must be full and sufficient to express what is meant, so as not to be doubtful, much less unintelligible. (Defoe 1726, 19) I know this affectation of style is accounted very grand, and thought modish, and has a kind of majestick greatness in it; but the best merchants in the world are come off from it, and now choose to write plain and intelligibly; much less should it be practised by country tradesmen, citizens, and shop-keepers, whose business is plainness and mere trade. (Defoe 1726, 22) Letters from Merchants and Tradesmen should be explicit and compendious. In the wording of orders and advice, much circumspection and exactness is rather to be used, than florid and eloquent language. Ceremony and compliments must be banished from them, or at least used very sparingly; because in Matters of Trade, nothing must be regarded but what is useful; and moreover, the Merchant who wants his time, must husband and employ it profitably. (Porny 1782, 257)

In both Defoe and Porny, “compliments” are excluded from commercial letters, while they constitute an essential, if not the essential trait of all other epistolary exchanges—familiar or formal. Hudson’s paragraphs on the topic are similar: The style of a Letter of Business should be clear, expressive and concise, containing full information of the Business transacted or requested, without Digressions or unnecessary Form. Articles of public Intelligence, so far as such Intelligence is legal, may without Impropriety, be mentioned by a Merchant in Letters of Business. But Matters of Friendship, and private Confidence, should be confined to separate Letters. (Hudson 1758, 62)

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Hudson further advises against “matters of friendship and private confidence” in commercial letters. Those elements are echoed in one of Chesterfield’s letters to his son, 10th December 1751, at a time when he was going through the trouble of setting himself up in the world, offering him advice on his business correspondence: The first thing necessary in writing letters of business, is extreme clearness and perspicuity; every paragraph should be so clear and unambiguous, that the dullest fellow in the world may not be able to mistake it, nor obliged to read it twice in order to understand it. This necessary clearness implies a correctness, without excluding an elegance of style. Tropes, figures, antitheses, epigrams, etc., would be as misplaced and as impertinent in letters of business, as they are sometimes (if judiciously used) proper and pleasing in familiar letters, upon common and trite subjects. In business, an elegant simplicity, the result of care, not of labor, is required. Business must be well, not affectedly, dressed, but by no means negligently. Let your first attention be to clearness, and read every paragraph after you have written it, in the critical view of discovering whether it is possible that any one man can mistake the true sense of it; and correct it accordingly. (Chesterfield 1783, 119, letter 46)5

Is it possible to speak of sociable encounters when the codes almost excluded the individual from the exchanges to the benefit of commercial concerns? In this case, the codes of epistolary commercial sociability present a scarcity of sociable signs. However, the theory was not always followed strictly, even in the commercial secretaries, being defined already at the end of the seventeenth century, as in the following letter taken from A Flying Post (1678, p. 9): A Merchant to his Father in the West-Indies. Mr. Johnson, I have sent you over some goods for you to dispose of in the ship called the Woodstrange, Captain Stout Commander; you will find the particulars and the prices of them, in the Bill herein enclosed. I hope you will give me no occasion to doubt your care in putting of them off to the best advantage; however, I think it behaves me to assure you, to have a quick eye to find out how the Markets go with you, and if there is not many of those costs of Commodities arrived at Virginia (as I hope there is not) then I do not question but you will sell mine at a good advantage; therefore pray be diligent and make an enquiry after those concerns: for in your good management of my affairs in those parts depends my whole livelyhood. I would have you

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traffick them away for Tobacco only, and return my venture back by the same Vessel, this with my prayers for good success is all at present. London, November 25, Your loving Friend 1676 W.P.

Clearly enough, the main points of the letter deal with receiving goods (I. 1), studying the market (I. 7), and returning goods (last sentence). However, a certain gap is easily perceived between the content of the letter and its closing formula “your loving friend”, which was not frequent, even in familiar letters, and suggests feelings of the heart. A similar tendency to include feelings can be traced in the Epistolae Commerciales. To pick up on the previous example, when one considers the closing formulae or subscriptions used in Wiseman’s Epistolae Commerciales, they rarely show such signs of familiarity. Seventy-five out of 136 closing formulae are not entirely developed, but combine partial elements with “etc.”, the more frequent examples being “(I) am, etc.”, “(I) remain, etc.”, with or without the first person pronoun. When they are complete, they mostly use the basic structure “your humble servant” (used on three occasions) with several variants using pronouns or adjectives: “your most humble servant(s)” (19 occurrences), “your very humble servant” (6), “your most obedient humble servant” (1), “your ever esteemed, humble servant” (1), “your ever esteemed and humble servant” (1). More surprising, because absent from most other epistolary manuals in the eighteenth century, but still showing humility and deference towards the addressee, the phrase “kissing your hands” is added to the closing formulae of nine letters: “Kissing your hands, I remain your humble servant”, “Kissing your hands, I remain”, “Kissing your hands, remain etc.” Still, a few subscriptions probably convey more particular familiar messages: “we are with all imaginable attachment and regard, Sir, etc.” or “sincerely yours”, which was very probably still a positive politeness marker unless its presence in the manual suggests that it was already developing into a routine marker of formal correspondence (see Bijkerk 2004). Those elements were not underestimated by the author of the manual since some of them were revised in the second edition, in which what were probably considered to be marks of familiarity were erased in a few places: for instance the original subscription “I am, kindly saluting you, your most humble servant” (letter I.3) was simplified to “I am your most humble servant” in the second edition.

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The opening formulae are even more varied: while 83 of them are reduced to a single noun, “Sir” (65 occ.), Gentlemen (16 occ.) and Ladies (2 occ.), 56 combine them with adjectives suggesting more friendly links “Dear Sir” (30 occ.), “Dear Gentlemen” (11 occ.), “Dear Friend” (1), “Good Sir” (2 occ.), “My very good sir” (1), “Our good friend”, “Our worthy good friend”, “Worthy friend”, “Worthy Sir” (7 occ.). However, it is extremely difficult to justify from the content of the letters why “Sir” was preferred to “Dear Sir” and vice versa, with the exception of letters 1–15 in part II, which constitute a follow-up correspondence and display much more numerous signs of friendliness, the last letter of the series ending with the subscription “I remain with the highest sentiments of gratitude and veneration your, etc.”. Business letters proved to be closer to familiar letters in that they readily expressed sympathy in their opening formulae, all the more so as the writers had known each other for a while (see Austin 2004). The contents of a few letters confirm the difficulty to strictly adhere to cold commercial links in a number of cases: several letters mention the health of the partners (letters I.10, I.28, II.20, II.29, II. 38) while several others even more bluntly express marks of friendship. When expressed, friendship usually involves preferential commercial links. In letter I.3, a merchant clearly explains, “I can serve my friends more advantageously than any one else in this city”, in letter I.6, another tradesman hopes that his addressee “will be of the number of his good old friends”, in letter I.50, the writer acknowledges that he is “always used to serve [his] friends with the best sort”, in letter II.5, one hopes that he has been used “like a friend as well in the sort as the lowest prices”. Letter II.67 begins by mentioning the “advantages which those friends gain who deal with you” and suggests the enlargement of the friendly circle. In the only letter written by two women, the addressee is called “Our worthy good friend, Sir” and the subscription reads “Your friends and servants” (II.40). Letter I.45 provides an exceptional example of a familiar letter based on the fact that the two correspondents have met in the near past. The circumstances are expressed in the first lines in which the addressee’s “civility and politeness” are praised, “sentiments” are evoked and friendship alluded to. Letter II.28 is another example of the kind. The last letter of the manual (II.69), aptly signed by a certain Charles Triste (the surname meaning “sad” in French), provides a second exceptional example in which feelings are openly expressed following the catastrophe caused by a violent hurricane.

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In fact, contrary to the other manuals, John Charles May’s theory, in Commercial-Letters (1768), included the possibility of expressing friendly links in commercial letters: Those judge wrong, who suppose that the power of friendship, did not belong to merchants letters. Probably the old proverb: Trade admits of no friendship, gave rise to this opinion, by the old compilers. The meaning may be quite otherwise explain’d. Which is this: in trade, a relation shall have no advantage before a stranger, we deal with. Expressions, of tender friendship, are always more agreeable. They pass well enough in letters, through which, we acquaint our correspondents with marriages, deaths, &c. And, should merchants, who by an agreeable, and useful correspondence of many years, really become friends, not express it, on account of their being merchants: Nevertheless, the language of friendship is subject to various limitations, according to a shorter or longer acquaintance with the correspondent, equality of rank, and other circumstances … (May 1768, 2)

Thus, in several cases, the theory of the commercial letter also included hints that trade should be based on familiarity and social links with trading partners. Although they were grounded on long-lasting correspondences with select partners, trading letters were conceived, in most cases, as sheer messages of essential utility, regardless of the persons writing or receiving them, thus questioning the possibility of real encounters or any sociability. However, considering the exceptions to the rules that can be noticed in certain letters supposed to have been models, one can imagine that real commercial partners were also liable to insert more personal statements and more familiarity in their writings. A study of actual commercial letters should be done to confirm or contradict that hypothesis. What is sure is that Wiseman’s manual was heavily plagiarized in other letter-writing manuals, as was very often the case with similar manuals in the following years (The Correspondent: Containing a Collection of English and French Letters, as Also a Regular English Correspondence for the Use of Compting-­ houses (Hamburg: Bohn, 1783), with an introduction in German, and in more general works: A General Dictionary of Commerce, Trade, and Manufactures: Exhibiting Their Present State in Every Part of the World; and Carefully Comp. from the Latest and Best Authorities (R. Phillips, 1810). Even if the theory of commercial letters wavered about the best choice of language for the exchanges, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Confessions,

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suggests that some of them may have been translated by either the writers or the recipients, since he himself occasionally translated commercial letters from Italian into French: Ainsi tout mon travail après mon burin était de transcrire quelques comptes et mémoires, de mettre au net quelques livres, et de traduire quelques lettres de commerce d’italien en français. Thus all my work, after engraving, was to copy some accounts and bills, to write over fairly a few books, and translate commercial letters from Italian into French. (Rousseau 1783, I: 115)

Notes 1. “[I] do not offer these letters to the public as a complete performance, having caused them to be printed merely for the rendering the attainment of the epistolary style easy to my scholars, whilst they are improving themselves in the French language” (Porny 1769, v). 2. Those elements will not be examined in the present study. 3. The phrase “laconic in expression” is repeated further down (Wiseman 1779, v). 4. The preface was dedicated to Admiral Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke (1705–81), who had previously carried several victories over the French fleet and had then served five years (1766–71) as First Lord of the Admiralty, in the government of William Pitt. 5. Also see “The simplicity and clearness of Cardinal d’Ossat’s letters, show how letters of business ought to be written: no affected turns, no attempt at wit, obscure or perplex his matter; which is always plainly and clearly stated, as business always should be” (Chesterfield 1783, Letter 20, 20th July 1747).

Bibliography Austin, Frances. 2004. Heaving This Importunity: The Survival of Opening Formulas in Letters in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 4. Accessed March 18, 2020. www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/heaving_this_importunity.htm. Bernard, Jacques-Emmanuel. 2000. La Sociabilité épistolaire chez Cicéron. Paris: Honoré Champion. Bickham, George. 1743. The United Pen-Men for Forming the Man of Business. London: Printed for Henry Overton at the White Horse without Newgate.

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Bijkerk, Annemieke. 2004. Yours Sincerely and Yours Affectionately. On the Origin and Development of Two Positive Politeness Markers. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5 (2): 297–311. Brant, Clare. 2006. Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Chesterfield, Philp Dormer Stanhope, Earl of. 1783. Letters Written by …. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to his Son … Together with Several Other Pieces … Published by Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope. London: Patrick Wogan. Defoe, Daniel. 1726. The Complete English Tradesman, in Familiar Letters. London: C. Rivington. Hoock-Demarle, Marie-Claire. 2008. L’Europe des Lettres. Réseaux épistolaires et construction de l’espace européen. Paris, Albin Michel. Hudson, Peter. 1758. A New Introduction to Trade and Business. London: Sold by Paul Vaillant. Keegan, William. 1799. Le Négociant universel, ou recueil de lettres originales de commerce, écrites par les meilleures maisons de Russie, Hollande, Angleterre, France, Espagne, Portugal, Allemagne, Italie, Turquie, &c. London: Baylis. May, John Charles. 1768. Commercial Letters. Bremen: John Henry Cramer. Porny, Antoine Pyron. 1769. Modern Letters in French and English. Divided into Two Parts. Part I. Contains Fifty Letters, With Their Answers, on a Variety of Familiar Subjects, Equally Entertaining and Instructive. Part II. Includes some Observations on Commercial Stile, with Models of Letters, Bills, &c. Relative to the Mercantile business. To Which are Annexed Accurate Directions with Regard to the Proper form of Writing to Superiors, Equals, and Inferiors. The Whole Designed for the Instruction and Improvement of Such Young Gentlemen and Ladies as are Desirous of Acquiring the True Style and Exact Manner of French Epistolary Correspondence. By Mr. Porny. French-Master at Eton-College. London: Printed for J. Nourse, and S. Hooper, in the Strand. ———. 1782. Models of Letters in French and English... To which are Annexed Accurate Directions with Regard to the Proper Form of Writing to Superiors, Equals, and Inferiors. London: Printed for C. Nourse and G. Robinson. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1783. Les Confessions, livre 2. Translated in The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau: with The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Translated from the French. Dublin: Printed for Messrs. Whitestone, Lynch, Gilbert, Colles, Moncrieffe, Porter, Wilson, Beatty, Burton, Jenkin, Exshaw, Walker, Burnet, White, Byrne, N. Cross, and J. Cash. Wiseman, Charles. 1779. Epistolae Commerciales; or, Commercial Letters. London: Printed for the author, and sold by B. Law.

PART III

Fictionalizing Sociability: Conversation, Friendship and Philosophy

CHAPTER 10

‘Musick in their Company’: (Per)Forming Friendship and Early Enlightenment Sociability in Frances Brooke’s The History of Lady Julia Mandeville Katrin Berndt

This chapter will discuss the significance of friendship in The History of Lady Julia Mandeville (1763) in order to define this first novel by British writer Frances Brooke (1724–89) as a narrative that reflects early Enlightenment sociability because it explores how the latter’s ideals can be translated into cultural practice. In particular, it will argue that Brooke introduces several virtues and principles, which were identified with friendship by British Enlightenment thinkers such as Jeremy Taylor, Jeremy Collier and Francis Hutcheson, as qualities to distinguish her characters and their sociable interactions. In addition, friendship functions as a structural principle: while title, eponymous heroine and sequence of events label Brooke’s epistolary novel as a heterosexual romance, its plot—the

K. Berndt (*) Halle (Saale), Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_10

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design that gives meaning to these and other major and minor elements— contrasts and occasionally counteracts this narrative convention, for it privileges friendship relations and manifestations. This strategy represents an eighteenth-century genre innovation: by separating story from plot, Brooke combines sentimental appeal with an ethical validation of the ideals of both personal friendships and communal sociability, examining how these were pursued and realized within a socio-economic hierarchy defined by hereditary and patriarchal authority. In this way, the novel shows that hierarchical conventions undermine rather than enable enlightened sociability, a reading corroborated by the eventual and tragic congruence of plot and story that blames patriarchal presumption for the fatal end of the young lovers. A renowned novelist, journalist, translator and theatre manager, Brooke portrayed not only more obvious friendship values such as sympathy and a disinterested regard for others in a novel which combines epistolary style with Gothic, melodramatic and realist elements. She also employed the friendship motif to illustrate contemporaneous conventions of socio-­ economic (in)dependence and the benefits of sociability, and to ponder the extent to which virtues such as kindness and mutual respect actually figure in notions of charity, familial obligation, and romantic love. The History of Julia Mandeville features homo- and heterosocial friendships, creating a broad-minded representation of sociability whose participants are shown to rely on their friends in order to navigate the codes of social interaction. What is more, the proposed ideals associated with friendship serve to evaluate her characters’ adherence to their own convictions and to assess whether their ideals can be realized in line with their professed virtuousness. With regard to the fictional consideration of enlightened sociability, this chapter will investigate two aspects of the novel’s representation of friendship. First, it will look at the social and personal interactions of main narrator Lady Anne Wilmot, whose central position is founded upon her friendship with all major and several of the minor characters, and whose letters contemplate particular aspects of different early enlightenment friendship virtues and their realization. Second, it will discuss the performative significance of the Belmont estate, the main setting and centre of sociability in the novel, where a “temple of love and friendship” (Brooke 2013, 107)1 is built as an exclusive meeting place for the local landowning families, and as a symbol of the values for which the estate is supposed to stand.

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To briefly recount the story: upon one of her regular visits to Belmont, the young widow Lady Anne Wilmot renews her acquaintance with Henry Mandeville, the son of an impoverished cousin of the Earl of Belmont who has just returned to Britain after spending some formative years in France and Italy. Their letters connect their growing and soon intimate friendship with the sequence of events: Henry, the sentimental hero of the novel, falls in love with Julia, the eponymous heroine and daughter of the Earl of Belmont. Julia returns his feelings, but their romance is ill-fated because Henry’s humble background renders him unsuitable for the virtuous heiress—or so everyone, including the young lovers, believes. Too late does Henry learn that they had actually been intended for one another for years to preserve the family’s property and title: Lord Belmont and Col. Mandeville, Henry’s father, had decided to raise and educate their children in such a way as “to cultivate similar taste and principles [in them], keeping Julia isolated in the innocence of the country, and ensuring that Henry does not place his affections elsewhere” (Steiner 2013, xvii). The fathers do not disclose their machinations even when they have succeeded, however. Instead, they begin to prepare their children’s wedding and send a note inviting Henry, but without telling him why. When the young man hears about the imminent ceremony, he jealously challenges a purported rival to a duel, is fatally wounded, and dies after having finally been informed that the wedding was supposed to join him and Julia in marriage. Consumed by grief, Julia passes away soon afterwards, leaving the families and their friend Lady Anne in shock and mourning. In addition to the tragic romance, through which Brooke “probes Rousseau’s educational scenario [including his discussion of subjection and obedience] within the bounds of civil society” (Steiner 2013, xvii), the homodiegetic perspectives of the main correspondents investigate friendship as quality and practice of enlightened sociability. Lady Anne and Henry introduce themselves and further minor characters through their self-perceptions as well as through reflections on their own and others’ sociable behaviour and its consequences. Some of the minor characters also contribute the occasional epistle, and Lord Belmont in particular offers his views on the significance of enlightened friendship and sociability, as will be shown below. This narrative economy gives space to different kinds of characterization, allowing readers to compare Lady Anne’s ironically detached perspective with Henry and Julia’s sentimental and emotionally engaged observations and the—initially—complacent positions of Lord and Lady Belmont (see also Steiner 2013, xii). These different

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perspectives on friendship values and the performance of sociability in the novel will be examined with regard to the Enlightenment conceptualizations outlined below.

Friendship Virtues and Enlightened Sociability In British Enlightenment culture, friendship forms a building block of sociability, describing both pleasant and consensual interactions and the anticipated and beneficial result of social encounters that contribute to the cohesion of a society. One of its most influential theorists was Anglican cleric Jeremy Taylor, whose treatise A Discourse of the Nature and Offices of Friendship (1662) established major concerns of the British Enlightenment discourse on friendship, which then significantly influenced later philosophers like Jeremy Collier and Francis Hutcheson. As Naomi Tadmor has shown, Taylor’s treatise enjoyed continued popularity in the eighteenth century, evidenced not least by Samuel Richardson’s references to Taylor’s Discourse in his correspondence and in Clarissa (Tadmor 2001, 239). Taylor aimed to translate the ideal of the beneficent friendship associated with ancient philosophy into early modern cultural practice: his treatise aligned Aristotle’s three forms of amity—that is virtuous, pleasant, and useful friendships—with Christian notions of charity to create an all-encompassing and “unashamedly instrumental” (244) concept of friendship, which he conceives as most pleasing and most useful [when it is] also most reasonable and most true […]. Friendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counsellor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and improvement of what we mediate. (Taylor 1969, 71; 77)

Unlike Aristotle, Taylor is not interested in considering the different forms of appearance that friendship may assume. He sees their existence first as a consequence of man’s natural inability to develop universal friendship, or charity, and second as a result of people’s changing and varied needs, which require different forms to be satisfied (74). Therefore, he only briefly stops to concede that “[s]ome friendships are made by nature; some by contract; some by interest; and some by souls. And in proportion to these ways of uniting, so the friendships are greater or less, virtuous or natural, profitable or holy, or all this together” (86). Taylor is much more

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intrigued by friendship as a factor that gives excellence to relationships founded on a different basis. According to him, ‘Friendship is the greatest bond in the world,’ […] for it is all the bands that this world hath; and there is no society, and there is no relation that is worthy, but it is made so by the communications of friendship, and by partaking some of its excellencies. For friendship is a transcendent, and signifies as much as Unity can mean, and every consent, and every pleasure, and every benefit, and every society, is the mother or the daughter of friendship. (86)

Since Taylor praises friendship as an attribute that refines and augments the quality of a variety of relationships, he consequently examines different forms of bonding with respect to their potential for developing friendship, for example familial ties such as the connection between father and son, and the affection between married couples. Friendships among relatives are generally viewed as problematic, because the institution of the family is defined by hierarchical relations: familial bonds lack the predisposition for equality, which alone enables “the free and open communicating counsels, and the evenness and pleasantness of conversation” (Taylor 1969, 87) that define friendship. Although Taylor does not deny the regard for others that results from blood ties—for example, he sees in fraternity the “preliminary disposition to friendship” (88–89)—he hastens to emphasize that friendship is always superior to familial loyalties: “brotherhood is or may be one of the kinds of friendship [… but it is only] a cognation of bodies, [whereas] friendship is an union of souls which are confederated by more noble ligatures” (89, 90). His propositions are endorsed by his contemporary Saint-Évremond, who is convinced that “[t]he great Distance between Sovereignty and Subjection, does not admit that Union of Affections, which is necessary to love well” (1714, 118). According to the French thinker and essayist, this central importance of equality in friendships is one of the reasons why it must be valued not only as a pillar of civil society, but also as civilizing justice in order to endow the exertion of the law with humane quality. Furthermore, friendship serves to enhance reasonable conduct and self-restraint with two sentiments he considered indispensable in modern society: passion and compassion (Saint-Évremond 1714, 122). While Taylor recognizes family members as ‘natural’ friends, wedlock is regarded in different terms. Invoking the biblical assertion that “A friend and companion never meet amiss, but above all is a wife with her

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husband” (The Bible, The Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 40: 23), Taylor describes “marriage [as] the queen of friendships” (Taylor 1969, 90) for it combines affection resulting from individual choice with loyalty demanded by custom. In general, he also approves of the idea of friendship between women and men, who possess, he argues, an equal capacity for this virtuous form of sociability: I cannot say that women are capable of all those excellencies by which men can oblige the world; […] but a woman can love as passionately, and converse as pleasantly, and retain a secret as faithfully, and be useful in her proper ministries; and she can die for her friend as well as the bravest Roman knight. (94)

In his view, homo- and heterosocial friendships share the same qualities, for men and women are distinguished not by unequal virtuous capacities, but by the different spheres they inhabit in society, including their differences in position. Taylor’s praise of female friends’ aptitude for devotion and sacrifice was to find further endorsement in David Hume’s wish that the fairer sex would join the “League, offensive and defensive, against our common Enemies, against the Enemies of Reason and Beauty, People of dull Heads and cold Hearts” (Hume 1987, 536). Another influential proposition of Taylor’s was his demand that friendship must never become a “mere bargain [… because it] is not good to make a reckoning in friendship; that’s merchandise […], and amongst true friends there is no fear of losing anything” (Taylor 1969, 88, 84). Whether friendship should be dismissed as a form of barter was a repeatedly considered issue, and not all eighteenth-century essayists agreed with Taylor’s conviction that the bond both represented and encouraged a conflation of virtue and benevolence. Sir Thomas Burnet (1714) derided exaggerated stories about noble friendships between men in history when he insisted that the “Idea of [friendship] is always Great and Pleasing in the Imagination. It did well enough in the Theory, but made a scurvy Figure in the Practice [… because] that Dear Thing, Self, commonly surmounts the Virtue, however Great and heroic in appearance” (Burnet 1714, 34). Our concern for the well-being of our friends, he continues, results from self-interest rather than other-regard. His argument anticipates Immanuel Kant’s view that friendship is “an idea” rather than “an experience” (Kant 1991, 211), for Burnet sees the heightened virtue ascribed to the

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relationship as merely serving to conceal its actual source and meaning (self-love and its disguise, respectively): Thus Friendship is Barter’d betwixt Man and Man, in the several Degrees of the World; [… and] all proceed from the same Motive, the Love of themselves. Nature has so Contriv’d it, that there should be a Mutual Dependence; an Intercourse of Benefits: So that tho’ there is not such a Thing, in reality, as Friendship in the World, yet it’s necessary there should be an appearance of it. (46–47)

Burnet locates the virtuous impact of friendship in people’s endeavours to present ‘an appearance’ of friendship. He endows such performance in polite society—“an Entercourse of Services; a Traffick of Benefits, which Rises or Falls according to the Degree of the Obligation” (36)—with greater significance for enlightened sociability than any inherent qualities the bond may command. Another contributor to the enlightened friendship debates was Jeremy Collier, who took up and substantiated Taylor’s idea that want and virtue are not opposites, but mutually beneficial in friendship. In the context of eighteenth-century sociability, Collier considered the reconciliation of beneficent affection and utilitarian motives as the original impetus for friendship, a bond through which people’s selfish impulses can be dignified, and which hence contributes to civilizing them. Friendship is, therefore, a crucial factor in rendering man sociable. Another value he considers essential for the well-being of a community is “general Kindness and Good Will, which establishes the Peace, and promotes the Prosperity of a People. […] Without this Virtue, the publick Union must unloose” (Collier 1969, I, 158). According to Collier, kindness shown towards others is a natural propensity of man, because it is “not agreeable to the Attributes of God to suppose, that he has made the Nature of Man such, that according to his Original Inclinations, he should be unconcerned about the Happiness of his Neighbour” (I, 155). This natural kindness is tied to his rejection of the idea that friendship is derived from emotional need and self-love, stressing that while such motives indeed exist, their pursuit will diminish “the Agreeableness of Society [… for] when People have nothing but Fears, and Jealousies, and Plots in their Heads, there is no Musick in their Company” (I, 160; emphasis in the original). While covetousness and pride are responsible for people’s aversion to the happiness of others (I, 156–57), a benevolent disposition “multiplies friends; and disarms the

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Malice of an Enemy” (I, 166). With such a prospect in mind, those who display “Coldness and Disaffection” must be responded to with charity, “the Temper of God” (I, 175), because only such kindness will “Reform the injurious Person” (I, 164). Moreover, acting charitably and kind is both genuinely other- and self-regarding, and hence virtuous, for “we should be pleased with our Pleasure, because it brings us the good News, that our Minds are rightly disposed” (I, 170). In other words, the act of loving our neighbour as we love ourselves requires a certain amount of self-love in the first place. Therefore, self-interest accompanied by a sincere delight in other people’s well-being should be seen as strengthening rather than impairing human relationships, a dictum also propagated by the novelist Henry Fielding, who claimed he did “not know a better general definition of virtue, than that it is a delight in doing good” (Digeon 1925, 24). Both Collier and Fielding proceed here from Aristotle’s precept that “[i]f there is to be friendship, the parties must have good will towards each other, i.e. wish good things for each other, and be aware of the other’s doing so, the feeling being brought about by one of the three things mentioned” (Aristotle 2002, 5, 210). Last but not least, the correlations between sociability, benevolence, and utilitarian considerations are addressed in the work of Francis Hutcheson, the “father of the Scottish Enlightenment” (Campbell 1982, 167–85). Hutcheson rejects Taylor’s idea that self-interest is at the heart of love, and instead argues that happiness is occasioned by moral sense because it takes pleasure in the well-being of others. Consequently, sociable encounters and exchanges are a source of virtuous fulfilment: Who ever pretended to a Taste of these Pleasures without Society? Or if any seem violent in pursuit of them, how base and contemptible do they appear to all Persons, even to those who could have no expectation of Advantage from their having a more generous Notion of Pleasure? Now were there no moral Sense, no Happiness in Benevolence, and did we act from no other Principle than Self-love; sure there is no Pleasure of the external Senses, which we could not enjoy alone, with less trouble and expence than in Society. But a Mixture of the moral Pleasures is what gives the alluring Relish; ’tis some Appearance of Friendship, of Love, of communicating Pleasure to others, which preserves the Pleasures of the Luxurious from being nauseous and insipid. (Hutcheson 2004, 166–67)

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Sympathy and other-regard consequently precede reason (Hutcheson 1747, 14), whereas the bond of friendship naturally commits “the cultivation of selfhood” to the “selfless devotion to others” (Chen 2008, 214). In Hutcheson’s understanding, “Benevolence is natural to us, [and] a little attention to other natures will raise in us good will towards them” whereas our “moral Sense […] approves all particular kind affection or passion, as well as calm particular benevolence abstractly considered” (Hutcheson 1999, 19; 25; emphases in the original). In this appreciation, general benevolence has to accompany more individual fellow-feeling in order to tie the pursuit of happiness to compassion and the regard for the well-­ being of others. As the brief discussion of enlightened friendship ideals has shown, this bond and its qualities represent a conjunction of principles which are usually conceptualized as distinctive. Notably, Samuel Johnson also combines sentimental affections with the reliable equanimity of long-term companionship when he enumerates the essential characteristics of friendship: That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both. We are often, by superficial accomplishments and accidental endearments, induced to love those whom we cannot esteem; we are sometimes, by great abilities, and incontestable evidences of virtue, compelled to esteem those whom we cannot love. But friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness, and its permanence from the other[.] (Johnson 1991, 90; emphasis added)

Johnson’s considerations bring full circle the debate initiated by Jeremy Taylor a century earlier; they also extend the critical appreciation of the different forms of friendship to include both the means used to actualize them, and the aims to which they can be pursued.

‘Virtues of the Same Kind’: Equality and Kindness in the Friendships of Lady Anne Wilmot Lady Anne’s friendships with Henry, with Julia Mandeville, and with Lady Belmont are distinguished by different friendship virtues and also represent different aspects of British sociability. Two fundamental values proposed by Enlightenment friendship discourse are realized in Lady Anne

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and Henry’s connection: they demonstrate, first, that a heterosocial relation has the same capacity for virtue as a homosocial bond, and second, that equality in virtue and understanding outweighs differences in situation, gender, and income. In fact, mutual recognition of their “equal virtue on each part, [… and] virtue of the same kind” is shown to form the very foundation of their friendship. Their first letters, addressed to otherwise silent recipients, contain accounts of Lady Anne and Henry’s immediate and increasing intimacy with one another, and praise their respective new friend’s virtues and superior features. For example, Lady Anne is impressed with Henry’s “understanding” that is “of the most exalted kind, and has been improved by a very extraordinary education”, she also admires his “ardent love of independence” even though—or because—it is “not quite so well suited to his [lack of] fortune” (13). Henry’s qualities as a friend are drawn in similarly remarkable colours: His heart is warm, noble, liberal, benevolent: sincere, and violent in his friendships, he is not less so, though extremely placable, in his enmities; scorning disguise, and laying his faults as well as his virtues open to every eye: rash, romantic, imprudent; haughty to the assuming sons of wealth, but to those below him, ‘Gentle / As Zephyr blowing underneath the violet’. (13–14)

Calling upon Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (IV.ii.171–72; see Brooke 2013, 135n64) to adequately portray his merits, Lady Anne twice invokes Henry’s modest socio-economic station, not with the aim to belittle, but to compliment him. For both references not only emphasize that the friends’ “equal virtue” offsets their difference in rank and wealth, but they also distinguish Henry’s amiable and morally principled character as excelling beyond the limits his financial situation would prescribe. His sense of independence is not warranted by his income, and his disdain for rich heirs, who appear to be undeserving of their fortune, is adequately complemented by his kindness towards those of lower rank. Lady Anne’s appreciation of Henry’s sociable qualities fully corresponds with Taylor’s claim that the worth of friendship supersedes other relations and benefits (Taylor 1969, 86). Moreover, Anne Wilmot’s acknowledgement of their different positions in life sheds light on her own principles, including the fact that she does not judge an individual’s worth on the basis of his rank and income, and is open to embrace a young man as a friend irrespective of his inferior

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circumstances. The heterosocial character of their friendship also includes, of course, their different sex, but in contrast to wealth and rank, gender conventions and/or romantic interest are not given much consideration when they form their friendship. Neither Henry nor Lady Anne questions their increasing familiarity in terms of sexual difference. Lady Anne jokes about her admiration for Henry’s attractive physical features (“the prettiest fellow in the world”), but her letters are addressed to her long-time admirer Col. Bellville; they are clearly intended to tease him, but not to actually rouse his jealousy (13). To securely locate her admiration for “Il divino Enrico” (14) in a context not of passion, but of fashionable aesthetics and (Catholic) courtly culture, Lady Anne resorts to the Italian here, “the language of Love and the Muses” (20) and of polite manners (see McGirr 2007, 23). Interestingly, her association of animated affection and politeness with Italian nobility is mirrored in the history of Henry’s Bildung: three years before the onset of the story, Henry’s father had approached Italian acquaintances, the Count and Countess Melespini, asking them to turn his “unexperienced, [… but] warm and affectionate” son into “a gentleman, a man of honour and politeness, with the utmost dignity of sentiment and character, adorned by that easy elegance” he identified with their particular kind of sociability (109). Col. Mandeville went so far as to suggest that the Countess should encourage Henry’s romantic interests, both to render her lessons in virtuous sensibility more persuasive and to prevent his falling in love with another—and actually available—woman. The Countess obliges, and Henry leaves Italy slightly heartbroken but competent in the polite ways that inform the sociable interactions of the sexes. As outlined above, Lady Anne’s swiftly established intimacy with Henry becomes the central friendship of the narrative, and overcomes inequality in station and wealth because the companions share ‘virtue in kind’, but their intimacy does not have to battle with inherent gender differences: this aspect reflects another of Taylor’s propositions, that is, his recognition that women are just as capable as men of being excellent friends. Lady Anne’s appreciation of Henry’s independence of mind and unorthodox views is mirrored in his admiration of her “superior character” that is distinguished by an “animation which is the soul of beauty” (6). He also displays a rather mature understanding for her seemingly dismissive attitude to love, and respects her decision to remain unmarried after the death of her first husband. As the reader learns from Henry’s epistles, an unhappy marriage was the price for her freedom, for she was

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given by her father to “a very rich country gentleman” who died after four years, leaving her, in Henry’s words, “young and rich, at full liberty to return to the cheerful haunts of men, with no very high ideas of matrimonial felicity, and an abhorrence of country life, which nothing but her friendship for Lady Belmont could have one moment suspended” (6). Since her husband’s passing, Lady Anne has enjoyed the financial security that underpins women’s social and consequently personal freedom in particular, a privilege she is most unwilling to give up even for Col. Bellville, the man she loves. Henry’s abovementioned contempt for undeserved wealth is shown to include disdain for the treatment of women as property, a principle that inspires his sympathy for Lady Anne’s resolution to protect her independence. Interestingly, Brooke also alludes to an eighteenth-­century gender difference here that reflects not just on the main characters’ friendship, but on their general situation in life. The novel compares the gender-specific opportunities at their command to achieve and enjoy freedom of mind: whereas Henry’s romantic libertarianism does not have to be supported by his financial means, Lady Anne’s spirited and unconventional views are made possible only by her having achieved material self-reliance.2 Another crucial aspect of the equality that distinguishes Anne Wilmot and Henry’s friendship is their attempt to conceive of and sympathize with their friend’s opinions and sentiments. Michael McKeon had argued that “the sympathetic internalization of the other’s point of view as if it were one’s own” is one of the key innovations by which Jane Austen’s characters would achieve “both self-knowledge and ethical sociability” (McKeon 2005, 717). Brooke’s novel somewhat anticipates this modern novelistic feature insofar as she shows her characters struggling with their psychological comprehension of a friend’s perspective, failing to ‘internalize’ the latter, and compensating for this failure with kindness. Lady Anne’s friendship with the sentimental heroine is a particular case in point, for while these two characters have similar material circumstances and rank, they very much differ in experience, temperament, inclination, humour, and in their ability to deal with their own feelings. At the beginning of their acquaintance, Lady Anne is frequently exasperated with the “amiable ignorant” (40), and pities Julia’s naiveté and undisguised indulgence of her passion for Henry: I really tremble for my fair friend; young, artless, full of sensibility, exposed hourly to the charms of the prettiest fellow upon earth, with a manner so

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soft, so tender, so much in her own romantic way […] if we were en confidence indeed, it might be bearable: but the little innocent fool has not even a secret. (29)

In spite of such mockery, Lady Anne comes to admire the younger woman’s “sincerity” (62), and she comforts Julia when Henry leaves the Belmont estate. At this point of the story, the novel includes three (of only four in total) letters by Julia, written to her equally sensitive friend Emily, with whom Julia expects to find “sweet indulgence to all my faults” (62), a comfort she does not believe Anne Wilmot would be able to provide. Julia describes her reluctance to confide in Lady Anne, whose “sprightliness of […] character intimidates me” (62) even though the latter has proven to be sympathetic to the lovers’ plight. Julia’s letters illustrate the gap in rational capacity between her and Lady Anne, for while the heroine uninhibitedly gushes about her despair (“He is gone, the whole house in tears: never was man so adored, never man so infinitely deserved it. He pressed my hand to his lips, his eyes spoke unutterable love”), the young widow continues to believe that Julia nourishes an obsession she will eventually overcome: “she has […] mentioned hopes which are founded in madness: I ventured gently to remonstrate, but there is no reasoning with a heart in love. Time and absence may effect a cure” (62). When she later reports to Emily that she has now confided in Lady Anne, Julia is shown to have been unaware of the fact that her affection for Henry has long been observed by the latter, whereas Lady Anne has remained oblivious to what Steiner describes as “the lovers’ total codependence on finding happiness in nothing but each other” (xiv). However, when Julia seeks Lady Anne’s consolation, she finds that her friend “merits all my confidence […]. She sees my weakness, and kindly strives to hide it from others, whilst her delicacy prevents her mentioning it to myself: she has a tender and compassionate heart, and my [initial] reserve [has been] an injury to her friendship” (62). Lady Anne’s fellow feeling is, as Julia acknowledges, occasioned not by internalizing the heroine’s heightened sensibility, but by concern for the younger woman’s well-being. Their alternating epistles are a striking example of two friend characters who fail to conceive of the other’s point of view, and who substitute their lack of understanding with another friendship value: kindness. The significance of this virtue and its execution is further demonstrated in the impact it has on the friend who exhibits it. For the experience of her own kindness renders Lady Anne less judgmental not only of the

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weaknesses of others, but also allows her, who had judged herself harshly for her inability to maintain close friendships (53), to be more forbearing of her own character. The bond between these very different women provides a fictional example of what Collier anticipated an enlightened friendship could achieve, that is to “reform [a person’s] injurious” attitudes, and of how acting kindly benefits both oneself, and the other party. The affinity between Lady Belmont and Lady Anne differs considerably from the latter’s friendship with Julia. Often considered in the context of Anne Wilmot’s reflections on Belmont, it serves to communicate different aspects of enlightened sociability. The women are equal in many respects— in situation, education, interest and understanding—but differ in their experience of marriage and attitude to convention. Early on in their acquaintance, Lady Anne has much praise for the Earl and his wife and the ways in which they have established Belmont as the local centre of virtuous sociability: Till this morning I had no notion how much Lord and Lady Belmont were beloved, or, to speak with more propriety, adored in their neighbourhood […]. Belmont is the court of this part of the world, and employs its influence, as every court ought to do, in bringing virtue, politeness, and elegant knowledge into fashion. (40)

Anne’s appreciation of the estate’s communal function is mirrored by Henry’s admiration of the aristocratic couple. The sentimental hero thinks particularly highly of the Mandevilles because each of them combines sociable values associated with the different sexes: the Earl is “commanding, and full of dignity” but also displays “domestic virtues [… for he is] the tender, the polite, attentive husband, the fond indulgent parent, the warm unwearied friend” (5). His perfection is mirrored in rather than complemented by his wife’s, who shows “the strength of reason and steadiness of mind generally confined to the best of our sex” in accordance with her “domestic character” that is “most lovely; indeed all her virtues are rendered doubly charming, by a certain grace, a delicate finishing, which is much easier to feel than to describe” (5). Lady Belmont’s sentimentalized je ne sais quoi qualities could be responsible for Lady Anne’s initial reluctance to wholly immerse herself in the vision of virtuous sociability projected by the Earl and the Countess. For rather than feeling encouraged to emulate the friendship virtues they emanate, Lady Anne confesses that “I begin extremely to dislike myself” in the company of

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such “forcible, […] irresistible […] examples [of] superior life! who can know Lord and Lady Belmont, without endeavouring to imitate them? and who can imitate them without becoming all that is amiable and praise-­ worthy?” (40). Who indeed—not even the glamorous couple themselves, as the story’s development and outcome suggest, which cast a rather unflattering light on the Earl in particular. The novel’s privileging of Lady Anne’s perspective communicates subtle doubts about the perfection of Belmont and its owners long before the machinations of the fathers are exposed. Lord Belmont is not the paragon of virtue he envisions himself to be, and he obscures his exertion of power in ways that frustrate the ends to which it is directed—in this respect he is, again, similar to his wife, as the latter’s friendship with the main character illustrates. For although she has observed that she accumulates self-­ consciousness in the company of Lord and Lady Belmont, Lady Anne admits to beginning to follow their example in spite of her own preferences: I go constantly to chapel. ’Tis strange, but this lady Belmont has the most unaccountable way in the world of making it one’s choice to do whatever she has an inclination one should, without seeming to desire it. One sees so clearly that all she does is right, religion sits so easy upon her, her style of goodness is so becoming, and graceful, that it seems want of taste and elegance not to endeavour to resemble her. (14)

Lady Belmont appears to be just as fully in command of “non-coercive” powers as her husband, and her friendship with Lady Anne is shaped by her attempt to execute an “invisible and unremitting tutelage” that comes to be questioned only when they threaten the main character’s hard-won independence of mind and wealth (Steiner 2013, xviii). In one of only three letters written from Lady Anne to Henry (others are referred to, but not included), the young widow repeats a disconcerting consultation she had with Lady Belmont, who gave her “a serious lecture about [her behaviour towards] Bellville”, Lady Anne’s admirer and regular correspondent (67). The Countess believes that Lady Anne should either stop encouraging the Colonel’s affection for her, or marry him, for their intimacy provokes “aspersions on [your] character” from those unthinkingly repeating “the opinions of the world” (68). In addition to respecting their society’s conventions, it would “be most prudent to break off a connexion, which can answer no purpose but making both unhappy” (69) when pursued without the object of marriage. Her recommendations

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are made in the spirit of “true friendship” whose “task” it is to “tell disagreeable truths” (68), as Lady Anne is willing to concede without agreeing with her friend. At first deliberately flippant and evasive, she swiftly and completely refuses to accept Lady Belmont’s admonitions, and calls upon friendship virtues herself to defend her continued acquaintance with Col. Bellville, which she confesses to be the first pleasure of my life; the happiest hours of which have been past [sic] in his conversation; nor is there any thing I would not sacrifice to my passion for him, but his happiness; which, for reasons unknown to your Ladyship, is incompatible with his marrying me. (69)

These “reasons unknown” are that Col. Bellville, of humble situation, would require a wealthy match, but Anne Wilmot would lose the fortune she inherited from her late husband when marrying again (74). In her attempt to ward off Lady Belmont’s remonstrance, she rhetorically twists the elder friend’s argument by calling her “unreasonable” when expecting Lady Anne to be willing to “give up [being …] mistress of my own actions” and become “a tame domestic, inanimate [… because] the malice of a few spiteful old cats” who find her independence, including her friendships, discreditable (68). The qualities of her relationship with Col. Bellville, Anne Wilmot insists, are not only beyond reproach, but, as I have shown elsewhere (Berndt 2017, 57–58), they are in accordance with the virtues of friendship that an enlightened sociability is supposed to venerate, and to practice: There is an enchantment in this friendship, which I have not force of mind to break through, he is my guide, my guardian, protector, friend; the only man I ever loved, the man to whom the last recesses of my heart are ever open […]. Relieved from [the] galling chains [of her marriage], I have met with a heart suited to my own; born with the same sensibility, the same peculiar turn of thinking: pleased with the same pleasures, and exactly formed to make me happy[.] (69; emphasis added)

Like her affection for young Henry, Anne Wilmot’s friendship with Col. Bellville is distinguished by ‘virtue in kind’ and equality of understanding. The novel leaves this assessment unquestioned. The dialogue of the two main characters transmutes into a monologue in which Lady Anne admits that, after her miserable first marriage, it was through observing Lord and

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Lady Belmont that she saw conjoined for the first time “the attention, the tender solicitude of beginning love, with the calm delight and perfect confidence of habitual friendship” (69). It is therefore not surprising that Lady Belmont is unperturbed by the younger woman’s rejection of her unsolicited interference, she leaves the scene “perfectly satisfied” and resolves to “invite Bellville” to the estate (70).

Staging Sociability: A Narrative Performance of Friendship Values The significance of the Belmont estate as a main setting and discursive topos of enlightened sociability problematizes both certain forms of friendship and the performance of its virtues. As outlined above, Jeremy Taylor questioned the capacity of blood relations to overcome structural family hierarchy and to develop genuine friendship bonds, which he saw as superior to familial loyalties. He also rejected an understanding of friendship as a form of barter, because friends would never run the risk of futile commitment in a relationship in which the benefit for one is the virtuous pleasure of the other. Sir Thomas Burnet dismissed such ideas as fiction, and insisted that selfishness would always prevail, even in the noblest characters and their actions (see Burnet 1714, 34). A more useful attempt to implement virtue in sociable encounters, he argued, would be the effort to only appear to adhere to friendship virtues, since the demonstrative display of such values was a pillar of polite society (36). The History of Lady Julia Mandeville seems to corroborate Burnet’s proposition with its repeated and enthusiastic delineations of the enactment of sociability conducted by Lord and Lady Belmont on their estate. The further development of the story and its tragic ending, however, clash violently with the bucolic happiness of the beginning, suggesting that Brooke viewed critically and aimed to call into question the mere performance of friendship values. In the novel, the Belmont estate exemplifies the conflict between a social hierarchy structured by patriarchal convention and eighteenth-century ideas of sociability promoting the friendship virtue of equality. Lord Belmont is shown to model his property on what he aims to impersonate as a character, but while he invests considerable effort both in appearing as a benign patriarch, and in enacting this vision in local performances of sociability, the dynamic of the plot exposes him as pursuing his own desire without tying it with the disinterested

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consideration demanded by, for example, Hutcheson. In this way, Brooke also challenges Burnet’s views, as the following examples will demonstrate. Henry introduces Lord Belmont in accordance with the latter’s self-­ perception as the generous benefactor at the heart of the local community, and characterizes him as “the friend of virtue, the support of the unhappy, the delegate of heaven itself” (90). His estate is rendered in similarly idealizing terms as structured by “the strongest idea of patriarchal government [where …] Lord Belmont enjoys the most unmixed and lively of all human pleasures, that of making others happy” (7). Several times Henry emphasizes Lord Belmont’s “benevolent mind” that feels virtuous delight “in communicating happiness to others” (17), and his encounters with the local population seem only to confirm his assessment: The surprize, the gaiety of the scene, the flow of general joy, the sight of so many happy people, the countenances of the enraptured parents, who seemed to live over again the sprightly season of youth in their children, with the benevolent pleasure in the looks of the noble bestowers of the feast, filled my eyes with tears, and my swelling heart with a sensation of pure yet lively transport, to which the joys of courtly balls are mean. (8)

The main correspondent Lady Anne adopts a similar tone when she describes the amusements that Lord Belmont offers his tenants on Sunday: “For my own part, having seen the good effect of this liberty in catholic [sic] countries, I cannot help wishing, though a zealous protestant, that we were to imitate them in this particular” (119). Again, Lady Anne valorizes a continental sociability that she believes to be more animated and charmingly polite than its British counterpart. Her consideration of Lord Belmont’s actual virtuousness, however, is prescient: she describes him somewhat equivocally as “condescending to the pleasures of the young” (20), indicating that Lord Belmont’s toleration of youthful passions could also be read as haughtiness. And indeed, the letters Lord Belmont writes to Henry in order to put the finishing touches to the young man’s education show him to be happily oblivious of Henry’s passion for Julia, which lays the foundation for the misconstruction that brings about the death of his daughter and would-be son-in-law. The rhetorical idiosyncrasies of the text subtly anticipate the potential conflict between the friendship ideal and its performance from the beginning. In one of the few epistles not contributed by the main

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correspondents, Lord Belmont responds to a letter from his neighbour Mr Barker, a member of the landed gentry who informed him that due to an “unforeseen inevitable misfortune” he will have to sell his land and property (21). Because he wishes to protect his tenants, Barker asks Lord Belmont to acquire his estate since that would prevent “the ready purchaser” Mr Westbrooke, “who, with the merciless rapacity of an exchangebroker, watches like a harpy the decline of every gentleman’s fortune in this neighbourhood” (21). Mr Westbrooke is of course a cit, a London merchant whose fortune successfully established him and his family in the country, albeit not in the esteem of his new neighbours. To lend weight to his request, Mr Barker resorts to a rhetoric of benevolence and charity that seems to have been inspired by Thomas Burnet’s propositions about the necessary staging of virtuousness: he stresses his motivation to assume responsibility for his tenants, emphasizing the “tender affection” he has for them and their “happiness” which alone preoccupies him rather than his own “hard fate” (21). The “obedient and devoted servant” Mr Barker not only seeks to employ the social hierarchy to serve his purposes here, but affirms its legitimacy when he styles his own actions as benevolent and assigns covetousness and greed to those of the cit. And Lord Belmont responds in like manner: seeking to live up to the virtuous model of the aristocratic estate owner, he offers Mr Barker a—literally—disinterested loan, taken from his “fund which I call the bank of friendship, on which it is my rule to take no interest, which you may command to its utmost extent” (22). Not only would Mr Barker be able to ward off the “greedy Leviathan […]” that is Mr Westbrooke, Lord Belmont elevates his neighbour into the position and status of one of the “worthy” and esteemed “independent country gentlemen” who represent “the strength and glory of this kingdom, and the best supports of our excellent constitution” (21). Lord Belmont’s pompous diction suggests that Brooke viewed critically the benevolent condescension that serves to render the already ostensibly gracious patriarch even more virtuous. The Earl’s exchange with Mr Barker presents him as engaging in the ‘appearance’ of friendship which Burnet saw as an essential component of enlightened sociability. However, in light of Lord Belmont’s failure to establish a more intimate friendship with Henry, which would have prevented the tragedy, the novel’s characterization of such appearances of virtuous other-regard becomes qualified: it corresponds with the “instrumental kinship-based [form of] friendship and patronage [that was] prevalent” (Tadmor 2001, 270) in the early eighteenth century. As outline above, Burnet’s understanding contrasted

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with the approaches of early Enlightenment thinkers like Taylor, who dismissed this socio-economic practice as mere bargaining since it does not adhere to any notions of Christian charity, and hence fails to establish virtuous social encounters.

Conclusion The narrative description of the final events refers to earlier performances of sociability in order to emphasize both the significance of friendship virtues and the tragedy of the story. “Belmont, once the smiling paradise of friendship” is drawn now as a place of past pleasures and present melancholy and despair, where Lady Belmont agrees to see only those friends who “will hear her talk of her child” (128). Critics such as Barbara M. Benedict have argued that the novel’s ultimate tragedy was caused by the sentimental hero’s inability to live up to the Rousseauvian values of his education, for it was “Harry’s own fear, rather than his father’s prohibition, which […] convinced [him] that his poverty disqualifie[d] him” from marrying Julia, rather than any deliberate discouraging from either of the involved fathers (Benedict 1992, 11). According to Steiner, however, the novel’s structural distribution of narrative space, dedicated to the characters’ dwelling on their grief, is less unanimous in apportioning blame, for it allows them to “reflect upon their roles in the events and envisage a future with a conscience burdened by the guilty realization that their own dealings played into the hands of fate” (xvi). Furthermore, the narrative focus blames “[c]oncerns of property prompted by pride” for the disastrous results of the fathers’ scheme, and so represents Rousseau’s view that […] the invention of property [… has] made social equality impossible and transformed the instinct for self-preservation (amour de soi) into active egotism (amour proper), the latter being identifiable in the novel with the ‘over-solicitude’ to continue the ‘grandeur’ of lineage. (Steiner 2013, xvi)

However, it is not Lord Belmont’s brief epistolary confession (128) that his misguided manipulations have caused the tragedy that dominates the atmosphere and mood of the novel on its final pages, but Lady Anne’s letters that recount the characters’ emotional terror and sadness. They frame Lord Belmont’s self-reproach, but do not discuss the question of his guilt: they highlight the friends’ possible means of conveying comfort to one

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another. In this way, the concluding epistles provide not only a stark contrast to the main correspondents’ earlier displays of the bucolic happiness at Belmont, a contrast that again denounces the false appearance of a mere staging of sociability. Lady Anne also reaffirms the significance of enlightened friendship virtues, which are deployed at the end to enable a different kind of beneficence: it is not by resisting, but by soothing grief, that we must heal the wounded heart. There is one pleasure to which they can never be insensible, the pleasure of relieving the miseries of others: to divert their attention from the sad objects which now engross them, we must find out the retreats of wretchedness; we must point out distress which it is in their power to alleviate. (129–30)

The ‘musick’ at Belmont has assumed a minor key, but it is still dedicated to accompanying the cast of friend characters. Their attempts to alleviate one another’s suffering perpetuate the novel’s emphasis that the reconciliation of self-interest and regard for others is not only virtuous, but pleasant.

Notes 1. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition of the novel. 2. I would like to thank Clíona Ò Gallchoir for pointing out this aspect in her response to my paper at ISECS 2019.

Bibliography Aristotle. 2002. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Christopher Rowe; with introductions by Christopher Rowe and Sarah Brodie. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benedict, Barbara M. 1992. The Margins of Sentiment: Nature, Letter, and Law in Frances Brooke’s Epistolary Novels. ARIEL—A Review of International English Literature 23 (3): 7–25. Berndt, Katrin. 2017. Narrating Friendship and the British Novel, 1760–1830. London: Routledge. Brooke, Frances. 2013. The History of Lady Julia Mandeville. Edited by Enit Karafili Steiner. London: Pickering & Chatto. Burnet, Sir Thomas. 1714. Essays Divine, Moral, and Political. London: n.p.

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Campbell, T.D. 1982. Francis Hutcheson: ‘Father’ of the Scottish Enlightenment. In The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. R.H. Campbell and Andrew S. Skinner, 167–185. Edinburgh: John Donald. Chen, Jeng-Guo S. 2008. Ethic and Aesthetic Friendship: Francis Hutcheson and Bernard Mandeville’s Debate on Economic Motivation. EurAmerica 38 (2): 211–242. Collier, Jeremy. 1969. Of General Kindness. In Essays upon Several Moral Subjects. Part I. Anglistica and Americana 35. I, 147–175. Hildesheim: Olms. Digeon, Aurelien. 1925. The Novels of Fielding. London: Routledge. Hume, David. 1987. Of Essay Writing. In Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller, 533–537. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Hutcheson, Francis. 1747. A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy. Glasgow: Robert Foulis. ———. 1999. On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions with Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Introduced and annotated by Andrew Ward. Manchester: Clinamen Press. ———. 2004 [1725]. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Johnson, Samuel. 1991. The Rambler No. 64 (27 October 1750). In The Norton Book of Friendship, ed. Eudora Welty and Ronald A.  Sharp, 90–92. New York: Norton. Kant, Immanuel. 1991. Lecture on Friendship. In Other Selves. Philosophers on Friendship, ed. Michael Pakaluk, 10–217. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. McGirr, Elaine. 2007. Eighteenth-Century Characters. A Guide to the Literature of the Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McKeon, Michael. 2005. The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1979. Emile or On Education. Edited and translated by A. Bloom. New York: Basic Books. Saint-Denis, Charles, Seigneur de Saint-Évremond Marguetel de. 1714. Upon Friendship. In The Works of St. Evremond. Translated from the French. Vol. II. 117–126. London: J. Churchill. Steiner, Enit Karafili. 2013. Introduction. In The History of Lady Julia Mandeville. by Frances Brooke, ed. Enit Karafili Steiner, xi–xxiv. London: Pickering & Chatto. Tadmor, Naomi. 2001. Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Jeremy 1969. A Discourse of the Nature and Offices of Friendship. In Jeremy Taylor. The Whole Works, vol. I.  Anglistica and Americana 67, ed. Reginald Heber. 69–98. Hildesheim: Olms. The Bible. Authorized King James Version. 2008. With an Introduction and Notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 11

Robinson Crusoe: Speech, Conversation, Sociability Jakub Lipski

To put it provocatively (in a volume like this one), this chapter is concerned with Robinson Crusoe’s for the most part solitary life on the island, from the shipwreck to the encounter with Friday and its aftermath. My aim is to shed light on Robinson’s longing for, and by extension Defoe’s commentary upon, sociability; sociability—not society. A lot could be said about Robinson’s attitude to society, his paradoxical desire for and fear of company. Robinson himself is aware of this paradox, especially in the aftermath of the footprint episode; as he puts it: “To Day we love what to Morrow we hate; to Day we desire what to Morrow we shun; to Day we desire what to Morrow we fear” (Defoe 2017a, 172). Indeed, these issues have not escaped the attention of critics (see e.g. Novak 2001, 535; Marsh 2011, 92–93; Reid and Reid 2015, 109–10).1 The question of Robinson’s need for a “sociable encounter”, I would like to argue, is at least to some extent a different story, however, and I will illustrate this by focusing on solitary Robinson’s desire for conversation, rather than just company;

J. Lipski (*) Bydgoszcz, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_11

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conversation understood both as an every-day sociable practice and as a socio-cultural ritual—the art of conversation—in Defoe’s time. Unlike J. J. Rousseau several decades later, who advocated a reunion with nature and promoted a new, sentimentalized ideal of solitude, a number of Defoe’s contemporaries and predecessors elaborating upon isolation and the state of nature already pondered the possibility of man’s devolution, a backwards process of man becoming like an animal.2 Speech loss was treated as one possible symptom of this. Samuel von Pufendorf, for example, a philosopher whom Defoe read and referred to, concludes his discussion of the solitary man’s degeneration by noting that he becomes “unable to utter but an inarticulate Sound” (cited in Novak 1963, 27). There were also rumours that Alexander Selkirk, a model for Crusoe, devolved into an animal state and lost the use of speech (Novak 1963, 33); moreover, a number of contemporary travel accounts, some of them certainly known to Defoe, described other cases of marooned loners who could not speak. Ian Watt notes: “In Defoe’s sources for Robinson Crusoe what actually happened to the castaways was at best uninspiring. At worst, harassed by fear and dogged by ecological degradation, they sank more and more to the level of animals, lost the power of speech, went mad, or died of inanition” (Watt 2001, 88). Watt again refers to this when commenting on Robinson’s “Utopian mentality” (a term he takes from Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia [1936]): Thanks to this character trait, Watt points out, Crusoe’s experience is different from what would normally happen to castaways in more or less contemporaneous accounts (87–88). As I will show, even if that were the case, the fear of devolution is nevertheless a shadowy presence throughout.3 Man’s devolution would also become a common trope in the Robinsonade tradition. One popular way of hinting at the castaway’s transformation into a beast-like “savage” was by elaborating on the motif of cannibalism. In Defoe’s own Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), “the young Woman” whom Robinson saves recounts the hunger she experienced when on board the ship: “had my Mistress been dead, as much as I lov’d her, I am certain, I should have eaten a Piece of her Flesh” (Defoe 2017b, 117). In Robert Paltock’s Peter Wilkins (1751), this potential threat is realized to the full: when a group of survivors including the protagonist are stranded on a boat drifting at sea, it takes fifteen days for them to turn to cannibalism. Paltock does not spare us the details:

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On the fifteenth day in the morning, our Carpenter, weak as he was, started up, and as the sixth Man was just dead, cut his Throat, and, whilst warm, would let out what Blood would flow; then, pulling off his old Jacket, invited us to Dinner, and cutting a large Slice off the Corpse, devoured it with as much seeming Relish, as if it had been Ox Beef. (Paltock 1973, 41)

For solitary castaways, one should think, speech loss would have been the next step in the process of becoming beast-like again. One vivid example can be found in Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island (1874). Here the issues of devolution should be seen in the Darwinian context, with marooned Tom Ayrton reduced to an animal-like being, barely able to use his tongue. Let us return to Defoe’s castaway. Having started to feel at home on the island, sometime after the shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe, in an admirably methodical and systematic manner, makes an attempt to analyse the pros and cons of his “Condition”. He does so “very impartially, like Debtor and Creditor” and writes down the following: Evil

Good

I am cast upon a horrible desolate Island, void of all hope of Recovery. I am singl’d out and separated, as it were, from all the World to be miserable. I am divided from Mankind, a Solitaire, one banish’d from humane Society. I have not Clothes to cover me. I am without any Defence or Means to resist any Violence of Man or Beast. I have no Soul to speak to, or relieve me.

But I am alive, and not drown’d as all my Ship’d Company was. But I am singl’d out too from all the Ship’s Crew to be spar’d from Death; and he that miraculously sav’d me from Death, can deliver me from this Condition. But I am not starv’d and perishing on a barren Place, affording no Sustenance.

But I am in a hot Climate, where if I had Clothes I could hardly wear them. But I am cast on an Island, where I see no wild Beasts to hurt me, as I saw on the Coast of Africa: And what if I had been Shipwreck’d there? But God wonderfully sent the Ship in near enough to the Shore, that I have gotten out so many necessary things as will either supply my Wants, or enable me to supply my self even as long as I live. (Defoe 2017a, 106)

For the most part, the note reveals a balanced structure, with each disadvantage being alleviated by a corresponding advantage. Each but one, that is, which, significantly, is written down twice. First, there is no logical

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balancing to Robinson’s observation that he is “banish’d from humane Society”. Second, by way of end-weight principle, there is no relieving counterargument to the castaway’s closing observation that he has nobody to “speak to”. These two seem to be interrelated here, but this is not the case throughout the narrative, when fear of the Other plays out. That the longing for an interlocutor, a body to converse with or speak to (Robinson uses the phrases interchangeably), is not necessarily tantamount to a need for society was aptly conceptualized in Robert Zemeckis’s Cast Away (2000): Wilson does not pose any threat that might go with confrontation with the Other—he will not disobey his master nor ask difficult questions—but successfully manages to perform his role of a body to “speak to”, even if he is bound not to respond. Robinson returns to the issue repeatedly, at times making clear that conversation is basically the only thing he misses, all the rest being provided by the natural abundance around him. The loss is also foreshadowed by two episodes in the early section of the novel, that is, before the shipwreck. First, when imprisoned by the Moors, Robinson considers a plan of escape, but laments having “no Body to communicate it to” (Defoe 2017a, 70). Then, when a successful businessman in Brazil, he grows tired of his status, having “no body to converse with” but his Portuguese neighbour (83). Deprived of a speaking companion, Robinson searches for compensation. Having mentioned the formation of his island “family”, first consisting of two cats and one dog, Robinson claims that the latter satisfied his desire for company in all but one: “I only wanted to have him talk to me, but that would not do” (105). When on exploring the island he sees an “Abundance of Parrots”, he catches one of those and decides to tame it and teach it to speak (138). The process is a time consuming one, but after “some Years” Robinson manages to teach the parrot to call him by his name. The narrative context for Poll’s becoming, in a way, an articulate member of Crusoe’s family shows that when the need for conversation is at least partially satiated, Robinson’s attitude towards his solitary life on the island is that of acceptance and even happiness. In the paragraph that immediately follows the one reporting Poll’s becoming a domestic, Crusoe writes: I gave humble and hearty Thanks that God had been pleas’d to discover to me, even that it was possible I might be more happy in this Solitary Condition, than I should have been in a Liberty of Society, and in all the Pleasures of the

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World. That he could fully make up to me, the Deficiencies of my Solitary State, and the want of Humane Society by his Presence, and the Communications of his Grace to my Soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his Providence here, and hope for his Eternal Presence hereafter. (Defoe 2017a, 140, emphasis mine)

Robinson finds consolation in God’s presence, and in the doings of his grace and providence, the most recent manifestation of which is the extension of his animal family. His “family”, his “own Thoughts” and “even God himself” (157)—these are the compensatory speaking companions that make Robinson conclude at one point that his solitary life is “better than sociable”, with the possible assumption that as long as one’s solitude is compensated for, it might not be worth taking the risk of a confrontation with others. The appearance of Poll also results in the first instances of Robinson’s transcending the bonds of necessity and prayer, as he labels his conversations with the parrot a diversion: Within  Doors, that is, when it rained, and I could not go out, I found Employment on the following Occasions,  always observing, that all the while I was at work I diverted my self with talking to my Parrot, and teaching him to Speak, and I quickly learn’d him to know his own Name, and at last to speak it out pretty loud POLL which was the first Word I ever heard spoken in the Island by any Mouth but my own. (Defoe 2017a, 145)

Crusoe’s favourite domestic, Poll, not only diverts him during the wet seasons, but, as we read later on, kindly greets him on his coming back from his explorations: “Robin, Robin, Robin Crusoe, poor Robin Crusoe, where are you Robin Crusoe? Where are you? Where have you been?” (162). This leads the hero to call the parrot “the sociable Creature” (162). A pictorial moment following the scene shortly after depicts Robinson and his “little Family” at dinner: It would have made a Stoick smile to have seen, me and my little Family sit down to Dinner; there was my Majesty the Prince and Lord of the whole Island; […] attended by my Servants, Poll, as if he had been my Favourite, was the only Person permitted to talk to me. My Dog who was now grown very old and crazy, and had found no Species to multiply his Kind upon, sat always at my Right Hand, and two Cats, one on one Side the Table, and one

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on the other, expecting now and then a Bit from my Hand, as a Mark of special Favour. (Defoe 2017a, 166)

Referring to the iconography of contemporaneous royal family portraits, and foreshadowing, as it were, the genre of the conversation piece that would become popular in the 1720s, the scene constitutes a climactic point in Robinson’s compensatory practices, inventing for himself what might oxymoronically be labelled “solitary sociability”. Such moments, among other aspects, have recently led Pat Rogers to conclude that Crusoe should be considered as an archetype of the “homo domesticus”, rather than homo œconomicus, as he persistently attempts to “keep up a simulacrum of family life” (Rogers 2018, 63–64; see also Fig. 11.1). Just when we are meant to believe that in this state of affairs Robinson is perfectly fine, and that missing a body to converse with can be compensated for by a speaking parrot, self-analysis and prayer, almost exactly half way through the novel, the narrative reaches its turning point in the footprint scene. The episode makes the hero reconsider his stance on society, thus giving way to further reflections upon the paradoxical state of fear and desire: “to Day we desire what to Morrow we fear” (172). Reconsidering his situation, Robinson no longer seems to appreciate the above-mentioned compensatory practices and declares instead that he is “condemn’d to what I call’d silent life” (172).4 Though his “family life” indicates that he has not remained silent so far, the lack of conversation is again taken to be a major struggle on the island. But it takes only a while for him to ease his anxiety. In line with the “ups and downs” kind of narrative that Defoe was practising, once Crusoe is again safe in the assurance that “no Savages would come to the Place”, he returns to his compensatory practices. Significantly, the first thing he mentions is the “Diversions and Amusements” offered by Poll and also “two more Parrots which talk’d pretty well and would call Robin Crusoe” (190). Then he concludes the passage by saying that he “began to be very well contented with the life [he] led” (190). As before, when Crusoe was shaken out of his peaceful life by the footprint, this momentary happiness is brought to an end by “a dreadful Sight” of a cannibal feast and canoes full of “savages”. What this episode clarifies is the difference between fear of company and desire for a sociable encounter. Shortly after Robinson is terrified by the sight of canoes, he is woken up by what he later understands to be the sounds of a shipwreck. Agitated, with “a strange longing or hankering of Desires”, he rushes to

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Fig. 11.1  George Cruickshank, Crusoe and Poll the Parrot in dialogue, 1831. (Photo: Phillip V. Allingham. Courtesy of The Victorian Web)

the ship in search of but “one Companion, one Fellow-Creature to have spoken to [him], and to have convers’d with!” (195). This makes Robinson ponder human nature, not merely to the conclusion that man is a social animal, but, more importantly from my perspective, to the conclusion that man is a sociable animal: “[I] realiz[ed] the Comfort, which the Conversation of one of my Fellow-Christians would have been to me” (195).

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The juxtaposition of cannibals and fellow-Christians not only illustrates the difference between mere society, which Robinson fears, and sociability, which he desires, but also implies the kind of sociability he desires. He longs for conversation, but this longing cannot be satisfied by “savages” who can (in his view) produce beastly sounds at best. In the essay on “The Immorality of Conversation” taking up Chapter 3 of Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720), Defoe-Crusoe writes: CONVERSATION is the brightest and most beautiful Part of Life; ’tis an Emblem of the Enjoyment of a future State; for suitable society is a heavenly Life; ’tis that Part of Life by which Mankind are not only distinguish’d from the inanimate World, but by which they are distinguish’d from one another. Perhaps I may be more particularly sensible of the Benefit and of the Pleasure of it, having been so effectually mortify’d with the Want of it: But as I take it to be one of the Peculiars of the rational Life, that Man is a conversible Creature; so ’tis his most compleat Blessing in Life, to be blessed with suitable Persons about him to converse with. (Defoe 2017c, 102)

What draws attention here is the repetitious use of the adjective “suitable”. Defoe then makes clear that by “suitable” he means someone who “is always a good Man, a religious Man” (Defoe 2017c, 103), whose speech is justly regulated by “Religion and Virtue” (Defoe 2017c, 105). This is the way, Defoe-Crusoe continues, to avoid the “immorality” of conversation, constituted by such sins as drunkenness, affectation, conceitedness and others. On the one hand, then, the marooned Robinson longs for a “moral” conversation, a possibility to speak to a “Fellow-­ Christian”, a “suitable” person; on the other hand, he finds compensation in the essence of speech, that is, in simple words spoken to him. There is an implied dialectic between “natural” speech and discourse; a dialectic that was memorably fictionalized in the final part of J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, in which mute Friday opens his mouth to produce a “slow stream, without breath, without interruption” (1987, 117), a passage that can be interpreted as an indication of the limits of Western discourse, and a hint at the possibility of “natural” speech, undistorted by discursive and ideological constraints. I would like to argue that the same dialectic can be discerned when the ideological implications of conversation underlined in Serious Reflections and the later sections of Robinson Crusoe are juxtaposed with what the Robinson-Friday relationship is like at the beginning. At the

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same time, the dialectic of nature and discourse becomes compromised by Robinson’s tendency to impart those ideological dimensions to what he takes to be Friday’s nature. Put differently, the climactic encounter with Friday and its aftermath illustrate two patterns of change: from “savagery” to sociability, and from “natural” sociability to sociable practices stained by Western discourse and ideology. And to complicate matters even further, what is first taken to be “nature” in the course of the narrative comes to be interpreted ideologically. At first, Friday, who at this point is still referred to as “my Savage”, wins Crusoe’s favour and manages to convince him of his “sociable potential”, so to speak, by means of language. Even if it is not a language Robinson understands, it clearly shows Friday in a different light, one which makes Crusoe realize that there is more to this “savage” than cannibalism: “he spoke some Words to me, and though I could not understand them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear, for  they were the first sound of a Man’s Voice, that I had heard, my own excepted, for above Twenty Five Years” (Defoe 2017a, 208). This emotional moment highlights an essential, atavistic value of speech and conversation, without or irrespective of the discursive element. It implies an ideal of natural sociability, where the two human beings derive pleasure from dialogic company without any other agenda. Language learning remains at the core of the following education of Friday as conducted by Robinson, and accordingly, the hero reports on Friday’s progress, making clear that Friday’s improved English skills are what pleases him the most: “I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my Business to teach him every Thing, that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make him speak, and understand me when I spake, and he was the aptest Schollar that ever was” (212). Again, as before, this observation leads to Robinson’s conclusion that he might well remain on the island for good. Shortly after, in the well-known scene modelled on dramatic dialogues, Robinson quotes the first lengthy conversation they had: the conversation between “Master” and “Friday”. The way the conversation is introduced helps to problematize Friday’s transformation from “savagery” into sociability. Robinson introduces the scene thus: This was the pleasantest Year of all the Life I led in this Place; Friday began to talk pretty well, and understand the Names of almost every Thing I had occasion to call for, and of every Place I had to send him to, and talk’d a

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great deal to me; so that in short I began now to have some Use for my Tongue again, which indeed I had very little occasion for before; that is to say, about Speech; besides the Pleasure of talking to him, I had a singular Satisfaction in the Fellow himself; his simple unfeign’d Honesty, appear’d to me more and more every Day, and I began really to love the Creature; and on his Side, I believe he lov’d me more than it was possible for him ever to love any Thing before. (Defoe 2017a, 215)

Friday’s “simple unfeign’d Honesty” is what predisposes him for the role of a conversational companion. For one thing, the qualities might be seen as relating Friday to the ideal of the “noble savage”, demonstrating a genuine sensibility by virtue of not being spoilt by civilisation, an idea that is best conceptualized in the vivid description of Friday. For another thing, though, the same description can be given a counter reading—one that discerns in Friday an already existent sociable element; that is to say, individual qualities that make his progress from “savagery” to sociability possible, things that would not necessarily be found in the other representatives of his nation. In other words, Friday becomes Robinson’s sociable companion solely by way of some “non-savage” features that he allegedly possesses. This is highlighted by Robinson when he focuses on Friday’s face: He had a very good Countenance, not a fierce and surly Aspect, but seem’d to have something very manly in his Face, and yet he had all the Sweetness and Softness  of an European in his Countenance too, especially when he smil’d. (Defoe 2017a, 209)

Just as Robinson does not recreate civilisation out of nothing (he would have failed if he had not reclaimed some of the remnants of civilisation from the wreck), the emergence of sociability on the island should not be seen in evolutionary terms. Rather, it happens as a manifestation of the doings of Providence: Robinson comes across a “savage” who turns out to be naturally predisposed for a sociable encounter by virtue of his mysteriously inherent European qualities. These features of Friday lead me to the immediate background to Defoe’s focus on speaking and conversation: the early eighteenth-century discussion of the art of conversation. English normative discourse on the art of conversation in the first decades of the eighteenth century attempted to distinguish between French civility, associated with appearances and affectation, and what might be termed English naturalness, which, in the

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words of John Tillotson, quoted in the Spectator, was a result of “the Old English Plainness and Sincerity” (Steele 1711, 372–74). English conversation was to be “a quest for sincerity, for true natural eloquence”, as Alexis Tadié puts it (2003, 31). Civility as a social mask was to give way to “the whole space of sensibility” (Tadié 2003, 32). Robinson’s early conversations with Friday, set against the backdrop of what at least to some extent can be considered a state of nature, illustrate the ideal of natural conversation deprived of the dressing of affected civility. With this condition met, the conversation may take on the desired form. Paradoxically, what prevents the two from continuously enjoying the blessings of unspoilt and unaffected sociability in the form of natural conversation is Crusoe’s own understanding of conversation as a civilizational practice, as discussed in the before-quoted essay on “The Immorality of Conversation” from Serious Reflections. When J. M. Coetzee in his Nobel acceptance speech (2003) provocatively remarked that “Robinson Crusoe thought there was too much speech in the world”, he apparently (re) articulated some of the central concerns of his own Foe. Defoe’s Crusoe, on the contrary, knows very well how to exist in a world of speech. His daily pragmatics does not only manifest itself in his survivalist ventures but also in how he uses speech for civilizational practices. The early atavistic moments, when he cherishes the words articulated by Poll and then Friday, including those he could not make any sense of, are gradually superseded by ideologically informed discourse, first and most notably in the scene when Friday is given his new name and learns to say “Master”. In what follows, the two discuss issues from politics to religion (including Robinson’s missionary work, which turns Friday into a “suitable” conversation companion in the light of his theory), but are never again close to the implied ideal of natural sociability. Arguably, this ideal seems to be merely a vanishing shadowy presence, possibly even unintentional. The two other dramatic encounters to follow do not explore this possibility at all. When Robinson saves the Spaniard from captivity, he starts a “serious Discourse” with him, with the intention of securing his position if he decides to help the Spaniard reunite with his castaway countrymen. Robinson’s doubts are dispelled by the Spaniard’s pompous speech full of conversational clichés and ideological markers: He answer’d with a great deal of Candor and Ingenuity, That their Condition was so miserable, and they were so sensible of it, that he believed they would abhor the Thought of using any Man unkindly that should contribute to

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their Deliverance; […] That he would make Conditions with them upon their solemn Oath, That they should be absolutely under my Leading, as their Commander and Captain; and that they should swear upon the Holy Sacraments and the Gospel, to be true to me, and to go to such Christian Country, as that I should agree to, and no other; and to be directed wholly and absolutely by my Orders, ’till they were landed safely in such Country, as I intended […] (Defoe 2017a, 237–38)

When towards the end of the narrative Crusoe saves the English captain, the encounter itself is introduced in a manner re-invoking Robinson’s simultaneous fear of and desire for society; that is, the initial “Joy of seeing a Ship, and one who I had Reason to believe was Mann’d by my own Country-men” is soon counterbalanced by the terrifying thought that they may be “Thieves and Murtherers” (Defoe 2017a, 241). Consequently, far from enjoying the pleasures of conversation, Robinson is again first and foremost interested in securing his position. To this end, he employs alienating devices, such as speaking in Spanish and defining himself as a messenger from heaven, and then offers a straightforward formulation of his conditions, in which he resembles a businessman rather than a castaway who has a chance to speak to his countrymen after twenty-eight years: Well, says I, my Conditions are but two. 1. That while you stay on this Island with me, you will not pretend to any Authority here; and if I put Arms into your Hands, you will upon all Occasions give them up to me, and do no Prejudice to me or mine, upon this Island, and in the mean time be govern’d by my Orders. 2. That if the Ship is, or may be recover’d, you will carry me and my Man to England Passage free. (Defoe 2017a, 246–47)

Indeed, a long distance separates “Poor Robin Crusoe”, speaking to his parrot to do justice to an atavistic desire for sociable company, from Robinson the King of the Island, masquerading as a Spaniard and laying out his business terms for prospective mutual gain (see Fig. 11.2). All in all, despite some promising hints, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe fails to offer a comprehensive view on idealist “natural” sociability. To be given more, one needs to turn to the Robinsonade tradition and trace the ways in which this implied ideal has been taken up and developed. One rewarding reading would be the already-mentioned Peter Wilkins, where the eponymous castaway falls for a beautiful winged woman. Their first verbal exchanges are basically meaningless, the two not being able to understand

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Fig. 11.2  George Cruickshank, Crusoe and Friday encounter the captain of a British ship whose crew have mutinied, 1831. (Photo: Phillip V. Allingham. Courtesy of The Victorian Web)

each other, but the mysterious Youwarkee’s speech offers a pleasure beyond the realm of discourse: “she uttered a Language I had no Idea of, though in the most musical Tone, and with the sweetest Accent I ever heard” (Paltock 1973, 107). As their relationship develops, they learn each other’s languages and communicate using a combination of the two. And even if Paltock’s Wilkins does have his imperialist moments, Peter and Youwarkee’s hybrid conversations, doing justice to the different but here complementary identities of the castaway and the Other can be interpreted

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as an ideal form of sociable dialogue that is hinted at in Crusoe but remains largely underdeveloped as a result of Robinson’s belief in the centrality of discourse—a barrier to genuine encounter, memorably conceptualized in Coetzee’s Foe.

Notes 1. Novak also uses the above quote as an epigraph to his Robinson Crusoe chapter in Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions (2001, 535). 2. This ideal was best reflected in Reveries of the Solitary Walker (1782; English translation in 1783). See Rousseau (1979). 3. In a different context, G. A. Starr writes about Defoe’s theory of passions and remarks that “the passions that most worry Defoe are the ones that turn men into beasts” (2018, 82n8). 4. For an excellent discussion of Defoe’s complex treatment of the theme of silence, see Sherman (2009, 12–31).

Bibliography Coetzee, J.M. 1987. Foe. London: Penguin Books. ———. 2003. Nobel Lecture: He and His Man. Accessed March 5, 2020. https:// w w w. n o b e l p r i z e . o r g / p r i z e s / l i t e r a t u r e / 2 0 0 3 / c o e t z e e / 2 5 2 6 1 j-m-coetzee-nobel-lecture-2003/ Defoe, Daniel. 2017a. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). The Novels of Daniel Defoe, vol. 1, ed. W. R. Owens. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2017b. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). The Novels of Daniel Defoe, vol. 2, ed. W. R. Owens. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2017c. Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720). The Novels of Daniel Defoe, vol. 3, ed. G. A. Starr. London and New York: Routledge. Marsh, Nicholas. 2011. Daniel Defoe: The Novels. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Novak, Maximillian E. 1963. Defoe and the Nature of Man. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2001. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paltock, Robert. 1973. The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, ed. Christopher Bentley. London: Oxford University Press. Reid, Susan, and David Stuart Reid. 2015. Men as Islands: Robinsonades from Sophocles to Margaret Atwood. Palo Alto: Academica Press. Rogers, Pat. 2018. Robinson Crusoe: Good Housekeeping, Gentility, and Property. In The Cambridge Companion to “Robinson Crusoe”, ed. John Richetti, 49–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1979. Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Translated by Peter France. London: Penguin. Sherman, Stuart. 2009. Defoe’s Silences. In Defoe’s Footprints: Essays in Honour of Maximillian E.  Novak, ed. Robert M.  Maniquis and Carl Fisher, 12–31. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Starr, G.A. 2018. Robinson Crusoe and Its Sequels: The Farther Adventures and Serious Reflections. In The Cambridge Companion to “Robinson Crusoe”, ed. John Richetti, 67–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steele, Richard. 1711. The Spectator 103 (June 28), ed. Henry Morley, vol. 1, 372–74. London: George Routledge and Sons. Tadié, Alexis. 2003. Sterne’s Whimsical Theatres of Language: Orality, Gesture, Literacy. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate. Verne, Jules. 1874. The Mysterious Island. London: Sampson Low. Watt, Ian. 2001. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Zemeckis, Robert, dir. 2000. Cast Away. 20th Century Fox.

CHAPTER 12

Reshaping the Leviathan: A Commonwealth Built around Sociable Encounters in Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks Patrick Müller

Arguably, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, was among the British thinkers of the Enlightenment whose programme of sociability had the most far-reaching effects throughout the eighteenth century, both in Great Britain and on the Continent. It was the sheer scope of the concept as a central term in the Earl’s Characteristicks that determined his impact on later theories and practices of sociability. The term itself was embedded in, and cannot be understood detached from, a cluster of related ones, first and foremost politeness or polite conversation, but also toleration, taste, and, ultimately, virtue (see Gill 2000).1 First published in 1711, when Great Britain was on the verge of being torn apart by party feuds while the War of the Spanish Succession was still raging in Europe, the appeal of Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks has to be attributed to the philosophical and political agenda behind it. For one, the spirit of antagonism that he experienced personally as a staunch Country Whig and grandson of the notorious first Earl influenced his thinking to an

P. Müller (*) Dresden, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_12

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extraordinary degree;2 but also the war in Europe, with its potentially far-­ reaching implications for the future of Britain, was paramount in shaping his fixation with the necessity of social cohesion as a prerequisite for political stability. The confessionally charged military conflict he followed with great interest from the safe distance of his dwelling in London, or his ancestral seat in Dorset, made him spell out a cultural theory which sought to overcome political and religious strife. What we find in Characteristicks is, then, an almost utopian alternative to the antagonisms on the Continent and within British intellectual circles (see Müller 2016, 103–24). What was at stake in this antagonistic encounter was nothing less than the interpretation of the cultural legacy of the English nation in the wake of the Glorious Revolution: in doing so, Shaftesbury argued that at this particular point in time, only Whiggism provided the intellectual foundation for an open-minded cultural programme that would guarantee the sociable encounters necessary for the English nation to thrive, both internally, through benevolent ideological debate, and externally, through cosmopolitanism.

Unsociable Encounters: Humanist Classicism, Sensus Communis, and the Leviathan of Dogmatism While the focus is on examining the different aspects of Shaftesbury’s ideologically charged theory of sociability to be found in Characteristicks, this approach will be supplemented by brief glances at the Earl’s private writings and also the works of art he commissioned, showing how deeply ingrained the ideal of sociableness was in his thinking. Given the all-­ encompassing range of ‘sociability’ in Characteristicks, it is impossible to define the term with any concision. As usual, Shaftesbury’s thought as represented in that most eclectic of philosophical works requires careful attention to his comprehensive approach. There are several potential synonyms for sociability as a form of Sensus Communis in the text of the same name, for example “publick Spirit […] social Feeling or Sense of Partnership with Human Kind” (72 [106]),3 yet what lies at the heart of Shaftesbury’s ideas is a comprehensive refutation of psychological egoism.4 His main target being of course Thomas Hobbes, Shaftesbury built his argumentative edifice on the premise that there is a Sensus Communis naturally ingrained in human nature. As early as 1694, the young Shaftesbury wrote to John Locke about his understanding of “True Learning”, which

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included the study of how “to bee Sociable & Good towards all men” (Correspondence 204). A few years later, in one of the Askêmata-notebooks that will be taken into account in greater detail below, the Earl already sketched the nucleus of his theory of sociability: What remains, then, but that the thing yt is Just, Sociable, & in appearance tending to ye Good of Mankind; that, & that alone thou should’st intend, & that perform as far as lyes in thee, without regard to what was in time past, or to what shall be in time to come, or to what is now present in this Age. (147)

This programme rests on three fundamental assumptions: that sociability should extend towards all mankind and, as such a universal duty, also be time-transcending; moreover, it is an imminently practical, and not just a theoretical concept. As so often, the Earl found the ideal he aspired to spelled out in classical thought and literature. Interestingly, he refers to the interpretations and subsequent definitions of the term by “most ingenious Commentators” (Sensus Communis 70 [103]) of classical texts such as Meric and Isaac Casaubon, Claudius Salmasius, and Thomas Gataker to describe Sensus Communis as signifying Sense of Publick Weal, and of the Common Interest; Love of the Community or Society, natural Affection, Humanity, Obligingness, or that sort of Civility which rises from a just Sense of the common Rights of Mankind, and the natural Equality there is among those of the same Species. (Sensus Communis 70 [104])

The reference to these influential commentators serves Shaftesbury to give the Sensus Communis almost political sanction, to introduce it as the logical conclusion to be drawn from a universal dictate of nature, “the common Rights of Mankind, and the natural Equality there is among those of the same Species”. What is even more noticeable, however, is that the initial reference is to Juvenal’s Satires 8.73 (“rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna”) in which the concept is employed to “[satirize] the pompous use of social class and pedigree in civil affairs” (Bayer 2017, 91), it being “rarely” found among “the Nobility and Court” (Sensus Communis 70 [103]). In Juvenal, Sensus Communis “is a principle of thoughtful kindness derived from an awareness of the commonality all have with each

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other as human beings as opposed to feelings of pomposity and superiority” (Bayer 2017, 91–92). From this point onwards, Shaftesbury carries the reader through a maze of quotations in a learned footnote referencing the humanists’ editions of Marcus Aurelius, Horace, Seneca and Cicero (see Notes 272–78 [103–05]). It is instructive to have at least a cursory look at what these writers and especially their commentators made of the concept, in particular of Marcus Aurelius’ artificial term koinonoemosune which denotes “a shared sensibility upon which society and civility depend”. In fact, “it is the sentiment necessary for society itself to function” (Bayer 2017, 92). Hans-Georg Gadamer was well aware of this passage from Shaftesbury’s Sensus Communis. He identifies it as a locus classicus in the genesis of modern interpretations of the term and emphasises in how far the Earl understood “the validity of the humanistic interpretation based on the Roman classics”, reminding us that in Characteristicks the concept is “a social virtue, a virtue of the heart more than of the head” (Gadamer 2013, 23).5 The classically inspired criticism of corrupted and incompetent statesmen, along with the blatant display of learning in this context, aptly introduces the target audience Shaftesbury had in mind: a cultured elite of prospective philosopher statesmen who, in order to avoid the corruption satirized by Juvenal and Horace, should be well-versed in classical philosophy, or, to be more precise, in the cultures of the Greek Polis and the Roman Republic as opposed to that of the Roman Empire with its degenerate politics. As stated before, the principal target of Shaftesbury was Hobbes’s moral psychology, but significantly so as part of the Leviathan’s political theory. For Shaftesbury, Hobbes’s state of nature was based on unsound assumptions about human nature: “’Tis ridiculous to say, there is any Obligation on Man to act sociably, or honestly, in a form’d Government; and not in that which is commonly call’d the State of Nature” (Sensus Communis 76 [109]). The argumentative thread that follows refers back to the Earl’s own Inquiry concerning Virtue, first published in 1699, that is, more than ten years before Sensus Communis (see Müller 2012, 67–88). For inclusion in Characteristicks, Shaftesbury revised the text significantly. There, he argues that if a thoroughly unsociable person were to exist, “this was doubtless a very melancholy Creature, and […] in this unsociable and sullen State he was like to have a very disconsolate kind of Life” (46 [16]). The man, or presumably even the woman, who “voluntarily shuns Society, or Commerce with the World, must of necessity be morose and ill-natur’d”

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(240 [137]). The upshot is that Shaftesbury regarded such a miserable existence as the result of a “total Apostacy from all Candour, Equity, Trust, Sociableness, or Friendship”. A lack of sociability is, consequently, the “compleat immoral State” or, in other words, synonymous with “absolute Degeneracy” and vice (150 [82]).6 In Sensus Communis, Shaftesbury points out the political implications of such “Depravity” (Inquiry 152[82]) in more straightforward terms than in the Inquiry, which administers its political agenda subcutaneously, carefully veiled by Shaftesbury’s detailed exposition of virtue ethics. The “Abuse or Irregularity of that social Love, and common Affection, which is natural to Mankind” is now classified as “the very Spirit of Faction […]. For the Opposite of Sociableness is Selfishness. And of all Characters, the thorow-selfish one is the least forward in taking Party” (84 [114–15]). The conclusion drawn here is that his readers have to understand that selfishness and sociableness are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they converge: Tis the height of Wisdom, no doubt, to be rightly selfish […] To be without Honesty, is, in effect, to be without natural Affection or Sociableness of any kind. And a Life without natural Affection, Friendship, or Sociableness, wou’d be found a wretched one, were it to be try’d. ’Tis as these Feelings and Affections are intrinsecally valuable and worthy, that Self-Interest is to be rated and esteem’d. A Man is by nothing so much himself, as by his Temper, and the Character of his Passions and Affections. (92 [121])

In philosophical terms, Shaftesbury here explains how (in his view) sociability helps to adequately channel the selfish propensities of human nature towards love of mankind and the common good. Politically speaking, this translates into a directive for any proper statesman to channel his passions and affections fully towards the public good, or common weal; otherwise, he is corrupt. This of course refers back to the satires of Juvenal and Horace mentioned before, and this move enables Shaftesbury, by implication, to reflect on the bitter party feuds raging in England at the time (see Jost 2018, 135–47). So far, it may seem as though he was merely referring to people unwilling to pledge their allegiance to any party at all due to their selfish character, but the context of the Inquiry, with its veiled critique of traditional divine right theories, ushers in the true thrust of his argument which can only be understood by taking a closer look at the religious implications of Shaftesbury’s views on sociability.

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In The Moralists, first conceived in 1703/4 as The Sociable Enthusiast, Shaftesbury has his protagonist Theocles speak about the fierce unsociable way of modern Zealots; those starch’d gruff Gentlemen, who guard Religion as Bullys do a Mistress, and give us the while a very indifferent Opinion of their Lady’s Merit, and their own Wit, by adoring what they neither allow to be inspected by others, nor care themselves to examine in a fair light. (72 [218–19])

For Shaftesbury, the “Gentlemen” mentioned here were the High-­Church Tories, which he often depicted as sympathizers with Catholicism and champions of absolutism, that is, Jacobite supporters of France in the War of the Spanish Succession. The unsociable practice they are charged with is based on their fundamental lack of sociable disposition: according to the terms employed in this passage, the “Zealots” are unable (or rather “unwilling”) to have their own religious ideas thoroughly scrutinized. In short, religiopolitical dogma is a major obstacle to the spirit of sociableness, and therefore has to be regarded as an aberration from human nature. Significantly, dogmatic religion is here personified as a “Mistress”, a choice of term which serves as a delicate counterpart to the lofty conception and personification of “Lady Philosophy” found in the emblem devised for the text (Fig. 12.1). The upshot is clear: dogmatic religion is a principal obstacle to sociability, whereas philosophical scrutiny inevitably leads to the enlightened love for mankind, the prototype of which he regarded as ingrained in nature, and, consequently, as a principle of natural religion. If misunderstood, however, religion corrupts human nature. Throughout Characteristicks, such corrupt dogmatists are the Earl’s real enemies and, in a classical vein, the antithesis to the sociable philosopher-statesmen he wished to resuscitate. In fact, Egypt is identified as the place where first Religion grew unsociable, and among different Worshipers bred mutual Hatred, and Abhorrence of each others Temples. The Infection spreads: Nations now profane one to another, war fiercer, and in Religion’s Cause forget Humanity: whilst savage Zeal, with meek and pious Semblance, works dreadful Massacre; and for Heaven’s sake (horrid Pretence!) makes desolate the Earth. (Moralists 306 [387–88]; see Askêmata 165n3)

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Fig. 12.1  Detail from the emblem for The Moralists (1714/15)

This image of religious wars can of course be applied to the conflict then raging in Europe. The full implications of Shaftesbury’s attack are found in the overtly satirical Miscellaneous Reflections in which the inextricable connections between the political and religious realms (see Klein 1994, 9) are ultimately spelled out: ’Tis a Fact indisputable, that whatever Sect or Religion is undermost, tho it may have persecuted at any time before; yet as soon as it begins to suffer

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Persecution in its turn, it recurs instantly to the Principles of Moderation, and maintains this our Plea for Complacency, Sociableness, and Good Humour in Religion. The Mystery therefore of this Animosity, or rising Indignation of my devout and zealous Reader, is only this; “That being devoted to the Interest of a Party already in possession or expectation of the temporal Advantages annex’d to a particular Belief; he fails not, as a zealous Party-Man, to look with jealousy on every unconformable Opinion, and is sure to justify those Means which he thinks proper to prevent its growth”. He knows that if in Matters of Religion any one believes amiss, ’tis at his own peril. If Opinion damns; Vice certainly does as much. (140 [111])

The implicit image of the High-Church Tory ruthlessly persecuting non-­ conforming Dissenters reveals how deeply entangled party politics were with religion. For Shaftesbury, zeal and superstition were not least portentous signs of a persecuting spirit, and, by implication, for unsociableness. In a religious sense, sociability denoted a Horatian moderation and toleration of diverging religious opinions to the Earl. In this way, his theory of sociability enabled him to identify and satirically attack the political and religious enemy whose misconduct he sought to expose throughout Characteristicks.7 In this light, Shaftesbury’s tongue-in-cheek use of religiously charged concepts such as “Apostacy” and “Degeneracy” in the Inquiry, meant to characterize the spirit of unsociableness, can be fully understood: associating the lack of sociability with a violation of human nature and, ultimately, sin, he was holding up the terminological mirror to his antagonists, applying their own language to define their shortcomings. In doing so, he wished to expose the dogmatic abuse of religion as a vice that had to be eradicated for British society to thrive: it turns into the corollary of Hobbes’s psychological egoism, into the epitome of the spirit of faction, and, eventually, the destruction of sociability.

Practical Sociability: The Private Regimen as the Art of Life In The Moralists, Shaftesbury gives us an example of how he envisions sociability to work in practice. This dialogue and the essay Soliloquy show us in how far sociability is really an ability, a discursive technique that requires training and exercise to be properly practised (see Gill 2018, 1110–31). The Moralists carries us through the process of discussing the principal questions of human existence through various encounters: in the

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setting of a landscape garden, Theocles, the lover of God, and Philocles, the lover of mankind, ponder questions of cosmology and virtue that illustrate the proper mindset and deportment of the polite gentleman-­ philosopher who takes his public vocation seriously. Taking us to this rural haven, from which the protagonists eventually “return’d to the common Affairs of Life” (384 [443]), The Moralists also refers back to the self-­ encountering practice of the soliloquy: the truly sociable man has to indulge in profound conversation with the self in order to refine his ideas, which can then, in turn, be used in public conversation.8 Sociability, as exemplified in The Moralists, is a see-sawing between introspection through retirement and polite conversation. It is a skill that has to be constantly trained in order to be properly developed. In fact, the art of conversation was for Shaftesbury an important factor in both the private and public spheres. He valued it as a way to purge the mind of prejudice (through the internal dialogue with the self) and as the proper expression of sociability in political terms: Whatever Savages [these fierce Prosecutors of Superstition] may appear in Philosophy, they are in their common Capacity as Civil Persons, as one can wish. Their free communicating of their Principles may witness for them. ‘Tis the height of Sociableness to be thus friendly and communicative. (Sensus Communis 56 [90])

Publicly avowed and thus made into a subject for discussion, even principles which were diametrically opposed to his own were not regarded as dangerous by Shaftesbury, whereas “Principles […] conceal’d from us, and made a Mystery […] might become considerable” (Sensus Communis 56 [91]).9 In this passage, the Earl concedes that openly debating controversial views was the proper way to achieve political compromise, at least in theory. As we have seen, in other places of Characteristicks he drew an image of the “Savages” which made them appear as the dogmatically misguided antithesis to the sociable public-spiritedness he saw as part and parcel of a thriving commonwealth. Since philosophy was for him an eminently practical affair, this see-­ sawing between private and public life was implemented in Shaftesbury’s own life. Two extended retirements to Holland in 1698/99 and 1703/4 enabled him not only to study in the copious library of the Quaker merchant Benjamin Furly, but also to encounter and converse with leading intellectuals of the time such as Pierre Bayle and Pierre Coste. To boot, at

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some distance from his ancestral seat in Dorset, St Giles’s House, Shaftesbury created himself a private space called “The Philosopher’s Tower” to which he could retire to spend hours musing about philosophical texts and ideas.10 How rigidly he followed his own tenets throughout these retreats can be seen in his private philosophical regimen, the Askêmata, in which Shaftesbury carefully jotted down his ideas about life and philosophy. Eventually, many of the passages from these two notebooks were recast and used in the texts that formed Characteristicks, most notably The Sociable Enthusiast and its successor, The Moralists. The ultimate aim of Askêmata was to define the true scope and meaning of life, which turned out to be “stoical truly Socratick” for the Earl. This classical context explains why the Earl later introduced the Sensus Communis through the backdoor of humanist editions of classical texts: somewhat paradoxically, “ye Socratick Spiritt” finds its most notable expression in “the sociability of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius” (Correspondence 203). In these two writers, Shaftesbury found an understanding of “philosophy as progress towards goodness for the benefit of the commonwealth, training as prerequisite for all that is good and honourable in a citizen, self-­ control as the foundation of all virtue, care of self as a civic duty” (SE II 6,21). What is more, two of the works of art the Earl commissioned reflect his ideal of sociability. For one, there is the famous portrait of Shaftesbury and an unidentified figure (c. 1701/2) by the German expatriate John Closterman. There are several interpretations of the painting, yet what is important for the context of sociability is David Leatherbarrow’s remark that it represents the “struggle to maintain a balance between the contemplative or philosophical life and the active or political life” (2004, 167),11 that is, the before-mentioned see-sawing between the practice of soliloquy and polite public conversation. Even more important in this context is the double portrait of the third Earl and his brother Maurice Ashley.12 The “interactive” (Solkin 1995, 241) quality of this double portrait can only be understood in the context of The Sociable Enthusiast: like Theocles and Philocles, Shaftesbury (on the right) and Maurice Ashley appear to be out ‘roving’ in order, as the Ionic Apollonian temple in the background (which is of course a symbol of the liberal arts) and Maurice Ashley’s explanatory gesture suggest, to discuss questions of philosophy in the spirit of brotherly love and friendship. The painting thus encapsulates the liberal Socratic dialogue which informs the structural framework of the Earl’s philosophical magnum opus. Actually, “the crucial point was to represent the pair as

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men possessed of those ‘natural affections’ which originated in the private confines of the family sphere and ultimately led ‘to the good of the public’” (Solkin 1995, 241). The landscape in this portrait has been associated with a passage in The Moralists (Part II, Section IV), where Theocles takes the example of an oak as a starting point for his meditation on the unity of world and cosmos. Correspondingly, the oak, springing from one trunk in the background, can be seen as a symbol of brotherly love, quite literally between the two brothers or, on a larger scale, between humanity (Baur-­ Callwey 2007, 123–24). Ultimately, the harmony of the divinely ordained cosmos which defined the meaning of human life is the anchor of Shaftesbury’s philosophy, and therefore first and foremost also the anchor of sociability. Writing to Locke in September 1694, Shaftesbury had already roughly outlined this programme: If there bee any one yt knows not, or beleives not yt all things in ye Univers are done for the best, & ever will goe on so, because conducted by ye same Good Cause; If there bee any one who knows nothing like this of God, or can think of Him constantly in this manner; and who cannot see yt hee himself is a Rationall& Sociable Creature by his nature, & has an End to wch he should refer his slightest actions; Such a one is indeed wanting of knowledg. (Correspondence 202)

Miscellaneous Reflections, the last text written for Characteristicks and the only one not published separately before the first edition of that collection came out, explicitly outlines the trajectory from sociability to belief in cosmic harmony: [I]n Creatures who by their particular OEconomy are fitted to the strictest Society and Rule of common Good, the most unnatural of all Affections are those which separate from this Community; and the most truly natural, generous and noble, are those which tend towards Publick Service, and the Interest of the Society at large. (268 [222–23]).

A little later, the Earl widens his gaze to embed mankind in the order of things: he is not only by Nature sociable, within the Limits of his own Species, or Kind; but in a yet more generous and extensive manner. He is not only born to Virtue, Friendship, Honesty, and Faith; but to Religion, Piety, Adoration,

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and a generous Surrender of his Mind to whatever happens from that Supreme Cause, or Order of Things, which he acknowledges intirely just, and perfect.’ (270 [224])

This transition, which moves, just like the dialogue in The Moralists, from empirical observation of natural beauty to philosophical contemplation of this beauty as a divine work of art, is captured emblematically in the engraving entitled “Triumph of Liberty”, introducing the second volume of Characteristicks that contains the Inquiry and The Moralists. The emblem shows “the sociable in nature: in the [empirical, PM] upper border, a bee-hive to the left, an ant-hill to the right, and in the centre a landscape with herding animals and a flock of ‘Volatiles’” (SE II 6, 102n2). The philosophically inspired lower border represents, in a reference to Thomas Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth, the chain of being, the empirically observable and representable order of the universe (Figs.  12.2 and 12.3). As a matter of fact, yet another of Shaftesbury’s private, introspective texts exemplifies his fundamental beliefs. The beginning of the unpublished “Prayer” concisely reveals his concept of the Deity as the Eternall Parent of Men & all things. the Spiritt Life & Power of the Univers: from Whome all Order Harmony & Beauty is derivd: in Whome every thing Exists: and by whome all things are Sustain’d & Ruled, so as to hold One Order, to Concurr in One, and in their Variety of Operations to make One Compleat & Perfect Whole. (II 6,535)

In the course of this encounter with his religious self, the Earl implores the Deity

Fig. 12.2  Detail from the Upper Border to the Frontispiece of the third volume of Characteristicks

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Fig. 12.3  Detail from the Lower Border to the Frontispiece of the third volume of Characteristicks that nothing may ever Turn mee from this, & make me to Loose my Naturall & Right Affection here, or towards Mankind in generall: that thus also, as Man, I may bee truly a Man, a Fellow-Citizen, a Brother amongst Men; and never be transported through any Abhorrence Enmity or Anger to Loose that Character of Humanity Love, Kindness, Benignity, wch: whenever I Loose, I become Savage & Unnaturall, no longer a Fellow-Creature. (538)

How to Avoid Unsociability: Satire and the Real Thrust of Shaftesbury’s Sociable Encounters Shaftesbury defined sociability as a discursive strategy, a skill the innately sociable animal man has to continuously nurture. Sociability is embedded in the Earl’s idea of the art of life, it requires the refinement of the self which will in turn foster the ability to promote the common good most effectively. At the same time, however, Shaftesbury was keen to delineate what it meant to fail to properly cultivate sociableness: one turned into a dogmatic enemy of the commonwealth and the divine plan, a lover of persecution and tyranny, in short: into a Jacobite Tory. His decidedly Whig theory of sociability thus evokes the fundamental political and religious rift running through England at the time, a rift he aimed to close. Another important question to consider is why Shaftesbury actually introduced his definition of the Sensus Communis in the context of classical philosophy in general, and with references to Roman satire in particular. In fact, throughout Characteristicks the distinction between the benevolently disposed Horatian satire and its aggressive Juvenalian counterpart is transferred to the political culture of contemporary England (see Schmidt-­ Haberkamp 2002, 125–34). Unsurprisingly, Shaftesbury saw himself in the Horatian tradition he associated with tolerance and constructive

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argument. The Tories, on the other hand, were aligned with Juvenal’s abusive approach. But Shaftesbury gave this distinction yet another twist: pointing out in the main text of Sensus Communis that Juvenal’s initial attack on nobility and court was merely negative and destructive (or could “be thought more than ordinary satirical” [Sensus Communis 70 (103)] by the undiscerning), his footnote adds another dimension. In doing so, he put himself in a position to claim that Tory High Church satirists, for example Swift, not only were religious zealots but also fundamentally misunderstood and misapplied the principles of Juvenalian satire (see Müller and Alvarez 2019, 313–42). Rather than being a satirical flame thrower, Juvenal was also a man of compromise with a constructive appeal: the footnote closes with the quote “Hæc nostri pars optima Sensûs” (Satires 15.133), meaning that the Sensus Communis is the best part of us as human beings. Shaftesbury’s propagandistically charged argument runs that the dogmatically blinded Tory zealot-satirists forgot about the satiric norm when they attacked their Whig enemies. They merely exposed the Whigs’ weaknesses without offering a viable alternative: they remained trapped in the posture of ravagers of good sense and manners, and, ultimately, of politeness and sociability. Therefore, they could only be destroyers of the commonwealth with their absolutist and dogmatic ideas, oppressing the minds of the people. The ideal society of the Tories was, in his view, a Hobbesian, Swiftian and, from a modern perspective, Orwellian, kingdom of darkness and oppression in which the sociable propensities of Man were stifled. The Whig alternative, as expressed in the emblematic engraving Shaftesbury devised for the Inquiry concerning Virtue, was an enlightened commonwealth in which Man was free and thus enabled to refine his sociable propensities to the utmost (for the source of this idea in Marcus Aurelius, see II 6, 301n1). Looking at Shaftesbury’s correspondence, especially at letters written to close friends, we can see that, taken to its logical extreme, the vision of sociability we find in Characteristicks is almost utopian. In a letter to James Stanhope, written 307 years before the Brexit referendum, he talks about political “Ballance” on a European scale, about bringing in a Manner the whole World under one Community; or at least to such a Correspondence, and Intercourse of good Offices and mutual Succour, as may render it a more humane World than it was ever known, and carry the Interest of human Kind to a Greater Hight than ever. (Shaftesbury to James Stanhope, 7th November 1709)

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Whether he thought that such a universal “cosmopolis” might technically be possible remains more than dubitable, but the fact that he was ready to envision such a greater commonwealth reveals in how far he had imbibed the ideals of sociability that he did not only want to preach but also to practice (see Alvarez 2018, 177–95 for Shaftesbury’s views on cosmopolitanism). For Shaftesbury, the concept of sociability served various purposes: first of all, it was a catalyst through which he interpreted classical philosophy to filter its true wisdom. What he learned there was that sociability was part of the divinely ordained plan for mankind and that, consequently, it had to be regarded as the art of life which consists in rigidly moulding the self into a sociable creature through a private regimen. Last but not least, he embedded all this into the propagandistic framework of Characteristicks to make a point about the practice of political, ideologically charged satire. On this level, sociability gained the status of natural law. As a cultural programme, designed to point out and eventually also overcome these antagonisms, Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks therefore had a decidedly English tinge. However, its three volumes cannot be understood detached from the context of the War of the Spanish Succession—and as such, they were a European cultural manifesto. In fact, Coste worked hard to make it known on the Continent, while Leibniz read Shaftesbury and thought fit to formulate a detailed reply. Scottish and German Enlightenment thinkers savoured the Earl, the young Diderot adored Characteristicks, and it has been argued that even Sarah Fielding’s, Jane Austen’s, and William Godwin’s works continued to disseminate fundamental Shaftesburian ideas about the sociable nature of man.13 Shaftesbury’s comprehensive approach to philosophy as the art of living properly, and to sociability as part and parcel of that programme, helps to explain and understand this widespread appeal. Seeing the good life as a work of art, and social intercourse as the most important and refined of all arts, the Earl could define sociability as fundamental to the survival of, and enduring peace in, any society. Although he did believe in the superiority of British culture, especially in terms of its mixed constitution and balance of power (see Taraborelli 2014, 194), Shaftesbury could also widen his gaze to entertain the notion of supra-national sociability, a truly cosmopolitan ideal of peaceful coexistence in the world at large: being a “Citizen of the World” captures the essence of what it “is to be a man” (Askêmata 83). However, he did not only regard sociability as an anthropological term. At the same time, it was a concept which helped him define a

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cultural norm or standard and delineate a political agenda. That cultural norm was in turn used as his satirical norm, meant to expose his political enemy as an enemy to sociability and, consequently, to the divine plan. Whig sociability was for Shaftesbury nothing less than the foundation of a well-functioning, libertarian commonwealth based on humane values. Since he regarded such sociability as grounded in timeless truths first apprehended and formulated by classical, heathen authors (and not in Scripture, the words of which could, to his mind, only too easily be dogmatically distorted), he believed in the adaptability of these principles to other social contexts. The ultimate aim of his philosophy was to show first of all how the individual could mould himself into the philosopher-statesman required for sociability to thrive, and second, to show the upsides of the republican ideals he favoured (see Müller 2018, 115–33). This, of course, entailed a clear image of what could happen to society if it was run by High Church-­ Tories: it would of necessity turn into an unsociable dystopia characterized by tyranny and religious as well as political persecution in the name of misguided Christianity. In short: sociability was one of Shaftesbury’s most cherished philosophical and religiopolitical principles, which is why it could serve him as a tool to reformulate the cultural heritage of Europe, arguing it should focus on the heathen piety of classical cultures rather than on its Christian legacy. In doing so, he was trying to fundamentally define sociability’s potential to shape the communal spirit of mankind once and for all. Shaftesbury had indeed come a long way since the writings of Hobbes, although both men were working towards “the long-­ term preservation of the commonwealth” (Gaskin 1996, xv). The ‘Sage of Malmesbury’ tried to find a cure for a country torn by civil war, one based on observations that triggered his theory of psychological egoism and, eventually, the haunting image of “that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH […] which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural” (Hobbes 1996, I, I; 7). Shaftesbury attempted to destroy that bugbear of “sovereignty [as] an artificial soul” (I, I; 7) in favour of a state in which ‘natural’ sociability, sustained by constant intellectual encounters among people aiming to promote the commonwealth, reigned supreme in order to avoid both domestic and multilateral conflicts.

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Notes 1. Lawrence E. Klein’s seminal study Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness (1994) provides a comprehensive investigation of the several ramifications of the term throughout the Earl’s thought. 2. For the impact his family background had on young Lord Ashley’s education, see Voitle (1984, 14–15). 3. All references to Shaftesbury’s writings will be to the Standard Edition and will give a short title of the treatise and use the SE pagination, with the corresponding page numbers from the 1714/15 Characteristicks (if available) shown in square brackets. The treatises are: Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (SE I 3); Shaftesbury’s Notes to Characteristicks (SE I 4); The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody and The Sociable Enthusiast (SE II 1); An Inquiry Concerning Virtue (both the 1699 and later versions; SE II 2); Ainsworth Correspondence (SE II 4); Askêmata (II 6); Correspondence 1683–1700 (SE III 1). 4. For an excellent investigation of this aspect, see Gill, “Shaftesbury on Selfishness and Partisanship”, forthcoming. 5. In this passage, Gadamer also claims that Shaftesbury did not regard Sensus Communis “as […] a capacity given to all men, [as] part of the natural law” (23). Although the natural law-tradition is indeed not that important for the Earl, his adoption of the concept of innate ideas meant that he actually did regard the Sensus Communis as an expression of “the inherent capacity of humans for virtue” (Klein 1994, 66). 6. Note the religious overtones of terms such as “Apostacy” or “Degeneracy”. For the significance of this, see the end of this chapter. 7. In his “Shaftesbury on Selfishness and Partisanship”  (forthcoming), Gill argues that Shaftesbury was first and foremost a moral philosopher who sought to overcome partisanship, not so much a political writer, and that fundamentally “Sensus Communis [is] the exact opposite of partisanship”. However, while it is of course absolutely possible to read Characteristicks detached from the context mentioned in the previous chapter (which is to regard it as a purely transcendental philosophical work), I firmly believe that the inclusion of its political context leads to a more profound understanding of it. That is, the full scope of Sensus Communis can only be comprehended if Shaftesbury’s involvement in the partisan politics of the time is taken seriously, and the manifold overt and hidden allusions to contemporary politics throughout Characteristicks suggest the validity of this approach. 8. For a concise introduction to the classical context of the soliloquy, see Jaffro (2007, 74–78).

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9. See the remark in Sensus Communis that “philosophical Speculations, politely manag’d, can never surely render Mankind more un-sociable or un-­civiliz’d” (64 [96]). The words “philosophical” and “political” can be seen as two sides of a coin here. 10. See https://www.angam.phil.fau.de/fields/enst/lit/shaftesbury/shaftes­ bury-­links/media-­gallery/, accessed 16 March 2019. 11. In this portrait, canonical texts of classical wisdom loom large, with editions of Plato and Xenophon lying on the pedestal the Earl rests his hand on; the tome Shaftesbury is carrying is probably his private edition of Epictetus’ Encheiridion. 12. For both portraits, see https://www.angam.phil.fau.de/fields/enst/lit/ shaftesbury/biography/portraits/, accessed 16 March 2019. 13. On the dispersion of Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks on the Continent, see Rebecca Ann Barr (2018, 237–54), Karen Valihora (2010), and Roman Alexander Barton (2018, 275–90).

Bibliography Alvarez, David. 2018. Shaftesbury’s Non-Secular Cosmpolitanism. In Shaping Enlightenment Politics: The Social and Political Impact of the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury, ed. Patrick Müller, 177–195. Berlin: Peter Lang. Barr, Rebecca Ann. 2018. ‘Moral Painting, by way of Dialogue’: Shaftesbury in The Cry. In Shaping Enlightenment Politics: The Social and Political Impact of the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury, ed. Patrick Müller, 237–254. Berlin: Peter Lang. Barton, Roman Alexander. 2018. Radicalising Sympathy: William Godwin’s Reading of Shaftesbury. In Shaping Enlightenment Politics: The Social and Political Impact of the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury, ed. Patrick Müller, 275–290. Berlin: Peter Lang. Baur-Callwey, Marcella. 2007. Die Differenzierung des gemeinsamen männlichen Doppelportraits in England von Hans Holbein d. J. bis Joshua Reynolds. Munich: M-Press Meidenbauer. Bayer, Thora Ilin. 2017. Moral Philosophy and Moral Education. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2013. Truth and Method. Translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Bloomsbury. Gaskin, J.C.A. 1996. Introduction. In Leviathan, ed. J.C.A. Gaskin. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Gill, Michael B. 2000. Shaftesbury’s Two Accounts of the Reason to be Virtuous. Journal of the History of Philosophy 38: 529–548. ———. 2018. Shaftesbury on Life as a Work of Art. British Journal of the History of Philosophy 26: 1110–1131.

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———. Forthcoming. Shaftesbury on Selfishness and Partisanship. In Social Philosophy and Policy. Hobbes, Thomas. 1996. Leviathan, ed. J.C.A.  Gaskin. Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press. Jaffro, Laurent. 2007. Inward Discourse and Moral Philosophy: The Case of the Stoic Soliloquy. Exploration and Dialogue 18: 74–78. Jost, Jacob Sider. 2018. Party Politics in Characteristicks. In Shaping Enlightenment Politics: The Social and Political Impact of the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury, ed. Patrick Müller, 135–147. Berlin: Peter Lang. Klein, Lawrence E. 1994. Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leatherbarrow, David. 2004. Topographical Stories: Studies in Landscape and Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Müller, Patrick. 2012. Rewriting the Divine Right Theory for the Whigs: The Political Implications of Shaftesbury’s Attack on the Doctrine of Futurity in his Characteristicks. In Great Expectations: Futurity in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Mascha Hansen and Jürgen Klein, 67–88. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. ———. 2016. Secular Millenarianism as a Radical Utopian Project in Shaftesbury. In Radical Voices, Radical Ways: Articulating and Disseminating Radicalism in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Laurent Curelly and Nigel Smith, 103–124. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 2018. ‘An equal Commonwealth’: Lord Ashley and the Republican Project of the Late 1690s. In Shaping Enlightenment Politics: The Social and Political Impact of the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury, ed. Patrick Müller, 115–133. Berlin: Peter Lang. Müller, Patrick, and David Alvarez. 2019. Anatomies of Unbelief: Clandestine Dialogues between Swift and Shaftesbury. In Reading Swift: Papers from The Seventh Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift, ed. Hermann J. Real, Kirsten Juhas, and Janika Bischof, 313–342. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Schmidt-Haberkamp, Barbara. 2002. Shaftesbury’s Concept of Ridicule as an Antecedent to Scriblerian Satire. Swift Studies 17: 125–134. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper Third Earl of. 1981–2019. Standard Edition: Complete Works, Correspondence and German Translation, ed. Christine Jackson-Holzberg et.al. Stuttgart: Bad Canstatt. Shaftesbury to James Stanhope. 7th November 1709. The National Archives: TNA: PRO 30/24/27/23, fols 7v–8r. Solkin, David. 1995. ReWrighting Shaftesbury: The Air Pump and the Limits of Commercial Humanism. In Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves, 234–253. London and New York: Routledge.

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Taraborelli, Angela. 2014. Lord Shaftesbury’s Cosmpolitanism. In ‘New Ages, New Opinions’: Shaftesbury in his World and Today, ed. Patrick Müller, 185–202. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Valihora, Karen. 2010. Austen’s Oughts: Judgment after Locke and Shaftesbury. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Voitle, Robert B. 1984. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press.

CHAPTER 13

Hume and de Maistre: Sociable Fundamentalism Michael Szczekalla

Philosophy, in order to become sociable, has to be brought ‘out of the closet’: David Hume was not averse to such an Addisonian project. Several of his essays are in fact “exercises in Addisonianism” (Harris 2015, 165). Though these exercises were also motivated by his scepticism, one should be careful here and avoid being misled by the time-worn though ineradicable cliché, usually based on a facile reading of the final pages of Book I of the Treatise, of Hume as a thinker whose philosophical endeavours had terminated in cognitive despair (1978, 263–74). Hume certainly wanted his scepticism to be powerful enough to allow him to criticize religion; he did not wish it to undermine science. When he chose to leave the ‘closet’, he did not betray his philosophy. On the contrary, in his essay “Of Suicide”, which is, in spite of its subject matter, an Addisonian piece of writing, he declares philosophy “the sovereign antidote” to “superstition and false religion” (Hume 1985, 577). To be effective as an antidote, however, philosophy has to remain a ‘foundationalist’ enterprise.1 Otherwise the philosopher would be ill-equipped to fight what we now call

M. Szczekalla (*) Aachen, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Domsch, M. Hansen (eds.), British Sociability in the European Enlightenment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52567-5_13

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‘fundamentalism’.2 Engaging in such a fight is what Hume wanted to do—not only as the author of a philosophical treatise but also as a historian and essayist as well as a writer of dialogues. It was, arguably, in the last-named capacity that he pursued it most successfully. The success of The Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, his posthumously published critique of ‘natural religion’, can be measured in a variety of ways. We may safely assume that, in spite of its neoclassical trappings, Hume wanted to engage with contemporary detractors of the Enlightenment rather than write an imitation of Cicero’s De natura deorum. His criticism of what we now call the Counter-Enlightenment is in fact uncannily perceptive. I have been encouraged by this perceptiveness to compare Hume’s Dialogues to Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, the fascinating though deeply disturbing entretiens written by the Savoyard diplomat Joseph de Maistre—a major representative of the CounterEnlightenment and a religious fanatic, but also a distinguished writer steeped in English literature who had read Addison (de Maistre 1853, 89) and who cultivated the genre of the dialogue. Dialogic writing presupposes a culture of politeness. This was perfectly understood by both Hume and de Maistre. By creating the fideist Demea, however, Hume gave us the figure of a ‘polite’ or ‘sociable fundamentalist’. De Maistre did exactly the same with Monsieur le Comte, the diplomat’s alter ego in Les Soirées. Though ‘sociable fundamentalism’ may be a contradiction in terms, it lends itself as a unifying conceptual bracket when we want to talk about the representation of religious fanaticism in Hume’s Dialogues and de Maistre’s Les Soirées. There is, of course, an important difference: in the latter, fundamentalist discourse is clearly privileged whereas in the former it appears marginalized. My readings of the Dialogues and Les Soirées are based on the double contention that de Maistre is directly responding to Hume, and that, if we look more closely at the ‘debate’ they are engaged in, we can study the rise of the Counter-­ Enlightenment within a culture of politeness. My comparative readings are further grounded in the assumption that the ‘debate’ between Hume and De Maistre is far from closed. Or should we rather say it has been reopened? At least since ‘post-secularism’ has entered the agenda of the humanities, the legacy of the Enlightenment has become a contested topic once again. Thus it may not be a bad idea to emphasize the conflictual at the expense of the agreeable elements in the ‘sociable encounters’, either imaginary or real, of the long eighteenth century, and also have a glance at recent debates which have found articulation in scholarly works and even in works of fiction.

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In his 2013 The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters, Anthony Pagden mounts a vigorous defence of le siècle des Lumières by engaging with its old and modern detractors. In a French dystopian novel published four years ago, the hero, a disillusioned Parisian academic, submits to a new regime and makes the officially required ‘leap into faith’ to regain his teaching position. In doing so, he follows the example of the freshly appointed president of the Sorbonne, a flamboyant intellectual turncoat who had once been a sympathizer of ‘intégralisme’ before he became a freethinker and then a Muslim (Houellebecq 2015). French integralism has many sources, but there is no denying that de Maistre was among the major figures providing it with intellectual nourishment (Nolte 1995, 67–69). As a critic of the French Revolution and the secularism it had inaugurated, de Maistre was well read in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy, and apart from the cosmopolitan and Anglophile Voltaire, he came to identify British philosophers as his principal enemies. In Hume’s Treatise, de Maistre encountered, arguably in its purest form, the philosophical radicalism that was anathema to him, and yet, though he clearly showed some grasp of Hume’s radicalism, he reserved his unrelenting hostility for Locke rather than Hume: “le mépris de Locke est le commencement de la sagesse” (de Maistre 1862, I, 442). Like many eighteenth- or nineteenth-century conservatives, he often quotes not only extensively but also approvingly from The History of England. However, though he makes intelligent use of Hume’s account of the Puritan Revolution, not only does he seem unaware of the extent to which Hume’s historiography is in fact ‘applied philosophy’, he is also singularly unappreciative of Hume’s irony (Szczekalla 2003, 190–210). While de Maistre seems guilty of a partial misreading of Hume, something much worse has happened in recent eighteenth-century scholarship. There has been an arbitrary repositioning of boundaries which, in the case of Hume and de Maistre, might eventually lead to a complete reversal of the roles traditionally ascribed to them in our histories of philosophy. Thus, whereas Hume’s political and historical writings have earned him the pejorative epithet of a “moderate” (Israel 2010, 15) who, instead of anticipating modernity, entertained ‘politically retrograde’ views that somehow seem to cloud the epistemological breakthroughs of his philosophy, de Maistre scholars have dubbed the Savoyard count “an heir and practitioner of Enlightenment” (Armenteros and Lebrun 2011, 6). How could the diplomat turned writer, we may ask, who was severely critical of

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Hume’s philosophy but admired The History of England, and who was convinced that we have to subordinate “toutes nos connaissances à la religion” (de Maistre 1862, II, 223), receive such an accolade? As I can neither share the view of Hume nor of de Maistre referred to here, my chapter also contends for a reappraisal of eighteenth-century philosophical radicalism by confronting one of its leading practitioners with one of its most outspoken critics, who, far from having the limited horizon of a plain reactionary, entertained—in the words of Isaiah Berlin—“a blood-­freezing vision of the future” (Berlin 1991, 102). I am going to present my assessment by focusing on the art of the dialogue, at which both thinkers excelled, though de Maistre claimed to have written talks (entretiens) rather than dialogues. Both, it is true, showed little appreciation of the aporetic variety of this genre, but Hume was firmly committed to discursive reasoning whereas de Maistre acted as an expounder of (the Catholic) Faith, albeit of dubious orthodoxy. Though, at first sight, Hume may appear a marginal figure among the eighteenth-century thinkers discussed in Les Soirées, I shall argue that the Scottish philosopher not only looms large on de Maistre’s philosophical horizon, but also that Hume anticipated him when he invented the ‘polite fundamentalist’ Demea. In other words, de Maistre has got a literary precursor in Hume’s Dialogues. My notion of a ‘debate’ between Hume and de Maistre is informed by this hyperbolic assertion.

Hume’s Dialogues Much has been written on the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, and one hesitates to make a further contribution to the still proliferating literature. The ‘standard interpretation’ I wish to defend requires us to accept that the Dialogues are fundamentally concerned with an epistemology-­driven critique of natural theology and that, his ostensible recantation in Part XII notwithstanding (Hume 1990, 125ff), the Sceptic Philo is a consistent advocate of such a critique. Our inability to attain any reliable knowledge of the intellectual and moral attributes of the Deity, he seems to say, not only puts paid to the ‘argument from design’ but also to neo-Stoic or Leibnizian theodicies. This interpretation has been challenged—time and again—either by those who, siding with the narrator Pamphilus, want to give the palm to the Stoic Cleanthes, or by those who emphasize the ‘literariness’ of the Dialogues. The latter view has been restated, quite forcefully I think, by Sam Clark in a recent issue of Hume

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Studies where he maintains that “the message [of the Dialogues] is in the whole, in the interaction of all the characters, not in any one character” (Clark 2013, 71). This assessment not only poses a challenge to the natural theology of Clark’s famous early eighteenth-century namesake, who was the inspiration behind Cleanthes, but also to Philo’s scepticism, neither of which is said to have met with Hume’s unqualified approval. It further implies that Demea, the third dialogist, who is chiefly remarkable for his fideistic piety, must also be credited with having made a valuable contribution, a view which I have already endorsed elsewhere (Szczekalla 1998). Not only students of literature enamoured of ambiguity and undecidability may find such an emphasis attractive: readers may simply follow a hint given by the narrator Pamphilus himself, who opines that the dialogic method recommends itself whenever a subject is either too trite or too obscure to merit a full-scale treatment in a treatise. In both cases, the “agreeable amusement” (Hume 1990, 38) afforded by the literary form makes up either for the subject’s lack of novelty or the fact that we must for ever despair of a satisfying conclusion. However, an emphasis on the ‘literariness’ of Hume’s Dialogues by no means prevents us from believing that they expose the poverty of “experimental theism” (Hume 1990, 75). Such an emphasis, I shall argue, can in fact be accommodated within the ‘standard interpretation’, thereby strengthening it even further. This interpretation centres on Cleanthes’ version of the ‘argument from design’ and Philo’s criticism of it. The latter insists that the argument should be based on the assumption that “similar effects” prove “similar causes” and vice versa (Hume 1990, 57). Thus the ‘constant conjunction’ requirement endorsed in Book I of the Treatise and in the 1st Enquiry becomes the real point of contention (Hume 1975, 60–79, 1978, 155–72). In this way, Hume’s account of philosophical probable reasoning is brought to bear on natural theology—with disastrous results: Natural theology deals with singularities, which are—by definition—not amenable to inductive reasoning. Its epistemic domain must forever remain a terra incognita. In Part III, Cleanthes is almost brought to admit that his reasoning, though “irresistible”, is in fact somewhat “irregular” (Hume 1990, 66). Has he already been worsted in argument at such an early stage? Those who would deny this to be the case could point out that his very words will later be echoed by Philo in what seems to be a puzzling argumentative volte-face: “the beauty and fitness of final causes strike us with such irresistible force”, Philo comes to maintain that sceptical objections can be

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dismissed as “mere cavils and sophisms” (Hume 1990, 112). Both dialogists seem to concur, albeit one of them reluctantly, that the argument in favour of ‘intelligent design’, to use the modern jargon word, cannot be grounded in any canons of logic. Nevertheless, it is credited with possessing an irresistible force due to its being—like all probable reasoning— “nothing but a species of sensation” (cf. Hume 1978, 103). However, whereas we depend on such causal inferences in order to cope with the ordinary affairs of our lives, the central proposition of natural theology, as Philo points out in his final statement, “affords no inference” at all “that affects human life” (Hume 1990, 138). How then can the argument be irresistible, we may ask, if it is both logically faulty and devoid of pragmatic utility? Why then does the Sceptic join in with the denunciation of his own objections as “mere cavils and sophisms” (Hume 1990, 112)? It is here that the emphasis on the literariness of the Dialogues may show its force, but not quite in the way the advocates of this hypothesis have intended. Far from diminishing the strength of his counter-­arguments, Philo’s recantation can actually be read as a confirmation once we realize that it has been motivated by (the desire of) friendship. As soon as he has recanted, Philo claims to live “in unreserved intimacy” with Cleanthes (Hume 1990, 125). The Dialogues, however, hardly bear out this claim and they are not meant to. It has often been remarked that Hume’s critique of natural religion cannot be appreciated without an awareness of its Ciceronian context. But not only De natura deorum was a source of inspiration. The same holds true of Laelius where Cicero defines friendship as the “summa consensio” or “complete agreement in one’s inclinations, interests, and views” (Cicero 1990, 126, translation mine), a requirement none of the three dialogists fully meets, least of all Demea, as most readers would probably agree. When Philo makes his plea for friendship, Demea has already left for good. Fundamentalism conflicts with the demands of friendship. Though this may be obvious to the point of sounding trivial, the observation nevertheless fails to do justice to Demea. The complexities of the trilateral relationship he has formed with Cleanthes and Philo are well worth attending to as they contribute to the overall meaning of the Dialogues. Such an interpretative approach not only increases our awareness of the “imaginative-­ aesthetic surplus” (Szczekalla 2012, 64) of the genre, it can also show us where previous critics may have gone astray. Thus Ian Ross has dubbed Demea “a schizoid divine” (Ross 2010, 357) because he is both a fideist and—for a brief moment—a rationalist. This refers to Part IX where

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Demea all of a sudden propounds the “simple and sublime argument a priori” (Hume 1990, 98). I would, however, like to submit that Hume has Demea become a temporary advocate of the ‘ontological argument’ for reasons of narrative economy. A fourth dialogist would have been a highly inconvenient device, and, apart from Demea, who else could have taken ‘the high a priori road’? Cleanthes is too heavily invested in “experimental theism” (Hume 1990, 75) to become a deductivist. Philo would betray his scepticism. Moreover, Demea soon relinquishes his standpoint when he sees that it is untenable. This perfectly accords with what he has said before about the weakness of our reasoning faculty. In his intellectual honesty, he is Philo’s equal. Thus, like Cicero’s De natura deorum, the Dialogues boast an evenly-­ balanced allocation of roles that could hardly be improved on. It is this peculiar quality which makes them one of the most intriguing works of the Enlightenment. An equilibrium is maintained that incorporates different positions by smoothing their mutual antagonism, while a discursive rationality nevertheless leads to the deconstruction of natural theology. As this puts some strain on the trilateral friendship, the equilibrium cannot be perfect. Designed as an exercise in deconstruction and containment, the Dialogues aim at holding the forces of irrationalism at bay. They hide their epistemic debunking by ostensibly accepting the specious validity of arguments based on inductive reasoning in theology. The need to disguise provides the main justification for Philo’s feigned fideism (Szczekalla 1998). Though such a fideistic stance was not uncommon among Enlightenment thinkers, there is a direct genealogy linking it to the position embraced by Cicero’s Cotta, who is both a Sceptic and a priest. This sceptical pontifex rejects the natural theology of the Stoics but claims to be full of respect for the mos maiorum, the religious rites and convictions of his forefathers. Hume was certainly fascinated by the attitude of the Roman elite of the late republic, who combined scepticism with a diligent observance of ‘divine rites’. Pocock has surmised that he even entertained the notion of “an alternative Enlightenment” that rested on a paganized “cultic Christianity” or “religion of the senses” (Pocock 2005, 210). More importantly, we know Hume to have been, like Gibbon, a defender of established churches believing that a university-trained and decently paid clergy would not succumb to the temptation of fanaticism. This is also his attitude in The History of England (1983, III, 134–36). Of course one might say that, in the sober and serene atmosphere of the Dialogues, we get history in an attenuated form, mediated through the

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abstractions of philosophy and theology. Thus, we have Philo and Cleanthes discussing the history of divinity, which is seen as reflecting the vicissitudes of the times, whatever we may think of the discipline’s pretended grip on transcendental verities. The orthodox theologians of today have come to embrace surprisingly liberal views and no longer insist on “the infirmity of human reason” and “the wickedness of man” as their predecessors in less enlightened ages were wont to do, Philo concedes, yet he thinks this smacks of opportunism: “these reverend gentlemen […] know how to change their style with the times” (Hume 1990, 123). Cleanthes, the champion of inductive reasoning in theology, which Philo calls “experimental theism” (1990, 75), might take umbrage at this, but it is Demea who seizes the opportunity and leaves for good, though he had till then formed an alliance with Philo against the Stoic, as both of them were insisting on the infirmity of human reason. Now the true fideist has become disabused, and it is Cleanthes who points this out: “Believe me, Demea, your friend, Philo, from the beginning, has been amusing himself at both our expense” (1990, 75). Cleanthes could not be more right. Partaking of the objectivity of drama, the Dialogues also aim at a total transparency of representation. They no more shrink from exposing Philo’s little dishonesties, in particular the tactical nature of his alliance with Demea, than from showing the poverty of natural theology by demonstrating the weakness of the arguments Cleanthes has mustered in its defence. Philo’s counter-arguments, which may be traced back to the Treatise, are as much Hume’s own as Philo’s dishonesties, which are reminiscent of the epistolary strategy of Hume’s correspondence with some of the liberal-minded Presbyterians of his day (Szczekalla 2003, 55ff.). It may safely be assumed that Hume thought the arguments conclusive and the strategy justified. Perhaps we should think of him as a ‘social epistemologist’, for whom questions of truth have to be dealt with in ways that are to some extent culture specific.

De Maistre’s Les Soirées When, after Hume’s death and amidst a revolutionary cataclysm, conservatives change into reactionaries or worse, Demea becomes de Maistre, or, if you like, Monsieur le Comte of the Soirées, for whom religion, no matter whether natural or revealed, can never be an ‘abstruse’ subject offering ‘agreeable amusement’ to educated gentlemen reared in a culture of politeness. Moving from the New Town of Edinburgh to the banks of the

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Neva, we cannot help observing that this very culture and its neoclassical conventions have survived as a mere husk. With de Maistre, then, we must leave behind the attenuated history of the Dialogues, turn to history proper, and begin with some brief remarks on his Considérations sur la France before we can turn to the Soirées. In the former work, he is still a confident reactionary and an Anglophile, who, when it comes to understanding the recent past, relies on Shakespeare and “le sage Hume”, who is, of course, not the Hume of the Treatise or the Dialogues but of the History. De Maistre not only quotes the Renaissance dramatist on the “cesse of majesty” and the evils that follow from it (de Maistre 1863, 15), sadly unaware of the fact that these words are uttered by a court flunkey, but also concludes his reflections with a chapter-long synopsis of Hume’s ‘revolutionary cycle’ that starts with the parliamentary revolt against Charles I and ends with the Restoration in 1660 as if the Puritan Revolution could provide an exact blueprint for the current situation in France.3 It is Hume who has strengthened him in his belief that the republic will fall to pieces once peace has been established and France will once again have a king. There is nothing to fear but human vices: “les vices sont très-­ justement les bourreaux de l’homme” (de Maistre 1863, 147). This, however, is still a far cry from the false sublimity of de Maistre’s praise of the hangman in the Soirées. It was at the court of St. Petersburg and with the publication of the Soirées that de Maistre became “the first thoroughly modern Catholic”, as Peter Sloterdijk has mischievously called him (Sloterdijk 2014, 54ff.). He was to have his greatest impact on posterity as a representative of such a post-revolutionary ‘demonic Catholicism’ that denounced modernity as the work of Satan at the same time as it seemed to despair of a return to the ancien régime. Like Hume, de Maistre has got three dialogists—Monsieur le Comte, le Chevalier, and the Senator. They engage in eleven consecutive evening talks in a country house situated on the banks of the Neva. Instead of making a dubious claim for “unreserved intimacy” (Hume 1990, 125), they actually live in a “liaison intime” (de Maistre 1862, I, 1). Only once does the peaceful atmosphere get slightly ruffled when the Chevalier insists on quoting Voltaire (de Maistre 1862, I, 237ff.). They seem to have achieved Cicero’s ideal of a voluntatum, studiorum, sententiarum summa consensio. However, their politeness offers the starkest contrast imaginable to the bleak theology all three of them subscribe to, which one hesitates to call Augustinian. The classicism of the Soirées is indeed a mere façade. These gentlemen would be incapable

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of sharing either Cicero’s or Hume’s serenity. What they cling to amidst the revolutionary turmoil that has affected their lives in varying degrees is a firm belief in “le gouvernement temporel de la Providence” (de Maistre 1862, I, 13). Thus, the notorious portrait of the hangman beginning his daily work after a lowly servant of the government has knocked at his door is offered right at the beginning (I, 40). De Maistre exalts the hangman to the position of the chief representative of the state, which must perish should his office ever be suspended. He thereby endows him with a vocation in a providential scheme of things. “L’homme est mauvais, horriblement mauvais” (1862, I, 84). Human justice, whose bloody sword has no need of a scabbard, becomes an instrument of divine retribution—even if it miscarries, the Count maintains, referring dismissively to the fate of Jean Calas. In the second volume, the reader is treated to a long-drawn-out eulogy of warfare that may even keep us wondering whether de Maistre really wishes to see human belligerence as an expression of the cruelty of unredeemed nature rather than get us involved in a proto-Darwinian discourse on “nature red in tooth and claw” (Tennyson) that has completely lost sight of any notion of redemption. On the very first page the Senator tells us “[d]epuis que je pense, je pense à la guerre” (1862, II, 1). This sets the tone and somehow the three dialogists seem to concur that the ravages of war are part of the divine economy of retribution. For all the praise the Count has lavished on the hangman, soldiers may rest assured that, at least in times of war, it is much more honourable to kill an innocent than a guilty man, especially if one considers that the attribution of innocence is always highly problematic (1862, II, 100). Unlike Hume, de Maistre, who in his youth had been taught by Jesuits, concedes that the human will is free. But human beings abuse their freedom. Hence, they must suffer. The wise and virtuous do so uncomplainingly, following an insight, not only of Christian theologians, but of ancient philosophers as well: “toute la sagesse de l’homme était renfermée en deux mots: SUSTINE ET ABSTINE” (1862, II, 52). No wonder, we might say, that it took well-nigh two hundred years before someone hit upon the idea of reading de Maistre as “an heir and practitioner of Enlightenment”. It is, however, unquestionably true that de Maistre had formed his own notions under the impact of Enlightenment thinkers. He studied Rousseau with some care, as Carolina Armenteros has pointed out (Armenteros 2011, 79ff.), and, on occasion, even seems to follow him, though mainly in his declinism. Perhaps, the partial alliance he forms with him is as tactical as Philo’s with Demea. At least Rousseau

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does not number among de Maistre’s chief enemies. This distinction entirely belongs to Bacon, Locke, and Voltaire, whom he collectively accuses of “theophobia” (de Maistre 1862, I, 329). If we want to acquire wisdom, we have to begin by showing a proper contempt for Locke and his ‘way of ideas’. That de Maistre turns the representatives of the socalled moderate Enlightenment into the principal objects of his ire, may be food for thought for those who have come to share the view of Jonathan Israel on what these alleged compromisers had achieved or rather failed to achieve. It is also in the Soirées that Hume receives the curious but highly perceptive verdict that he has employed “le plus de talent avec le plus de sang froid pour faire le plus de mal” (de Maistre 1862, I, 403). There is no need to stress that Hume’s or Philo’s ‘laidbackness’ contrasts sharply with the irascibility of Monsieur le Comte, who happens to be de Maistre’s alter ego, whose anger is stylized into a “colère rationelle” (de Maistre 1862, I, 244), and who is presented as someone who is driven by the Miltonic ambition to justify the ways of God to men (de Maistre 1862, I, 182). In view of the images of universal carnage de Maistre conjures up, this task seems revolting. Though he poses as a Providentialist, his allusion to Christian readings of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue cannot make us ignore his dire pessimism about the secular world (de Maistre 1862, II, 272). There is not the slightest room for benevolence in his view of the divine economy. Perhaps it is permissible to compare him, at least in one respect, to St. Augustine, who had also written dialogues, but ceased to do so when he became a bishop. Why, then, does de Maistre’s oeuvre culminate in this very genre? We may admire his consummate prose and yet ask whether he pays more than lip service to the demands of discursive rationality. It could be argued that he does not even do that when he quotes Augustine on the precedence of authority: “rationem praecedat auctoritas” (de Maistre 1862, I, 132n.). If we ask wherein the imaginative-aesthetic surplus of de Maistre’s use of the dialogue form consists, we must despair of an answer should we cling to the standards set by Hume. Hume has Demea say that “man” becomes aware of the truth of religion chiefly “from a consciousness of his imbecility and misery, rather than from any reasoning”, and Philo instantly concurs (Hume 1990, 103). The Sceptic’s mock approval and the Stoic’s genuine dissent create a meaningful tension that is entirely missing from the Soirées because, in these entretiens, Demea’s fideism is the cognitive norm, which pre-empts any discussion of natural theology. Though de Maistre claims to admire Father

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Malbranche and the Cambridge Platonists, he feels more at home when quoting St. Paul: “La science enfle, mais la charité édifie” (I Cor. 8,1; de Maistre 1862, II, 204). In the Soirées, it seems, charity is talked of as a positive commandment solely for the purpose of science bashing.

A Solvent of Fanaticism Is Demea, then, really a literary precursor of Monsieur le Comte if not of de Maistre himself? This hypothesis makes perfect sense when it comes to understanding eighteenth-century philosophical radicalism and its enemies. Comparing Hume and de Maistre on the subject of religion, I have tried to buttress the plausibility of the standard interpretations of two of their major works. Hume has been called “the complete modern pagan” (Gay 1967, I, 401ff.), de Maistre a leading figure of the Counter-­ Enlightenment and even a proto-fascist (cf. Berlin 1991, 113), views that my readings of the two dialogues are meant to confirm. There is little virtue in denying the more disturbing aspects in de Maistre’s thought, as Armenteros and others have regrettably done, for instance, when making the claim that he was actually worried about the totalitarian consequences of modern democracy (Jean-Yves Pranchère 2011, 49). I think we have to accept that the Enlightenment was triggered off by what has been diagnosed as a “fundamental loss of certainty” (Fulda 2013, 23, translation mine). Hume and de Maistre reacted to this loss in radically different ways. It is, however, of prime importance to emphasize the modernity of both thinkers. De Maistre was no mere reactionary. At least the de Maistre of the Soirées thought the ‘revolutionary hiatus’ (cf. Sloterdijk 2014, 54ff.) unbridgeable. It was this insight and the rage it had unleashed that got him closer to the terrible modernity of the twentieth century than Hume, whose critique of religion and defence of science paved the way for nineteenth-century liberalism. But perhaps the intellectual tensions as well as the playfulness of Hume’s Dialogues could also provide us with a praxeology of how to deal with religion in a post-­ secularist society. Demea travelling to the banks of the Neva should be given the chance to meet someone like Philo rather than his co-­religionists. This praxeology is grounded in the assumption that philosophy embedded in sociability acts as the true solvent of fanaticism. There may be an increasing demand for such a science of human action, of which Philo-­Hume has been an early but accomplished practitioner.

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Notes 1. Hume’s term for such an enterprise is “metaphysics”, by which he means epistemology. When he says in the first Enquiry that “we must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate” (Hume 1975, 12) he argues first and foremost as a critic of religion who must needs be a metaphysician. 2. ‘Fundamentalism’, we should remember, is actually an early twentieth-­ century coinage. It was first used to describe Protestant denominations in the United States that were not mainstream and rejected any form of liberalism in theology. Talking about eighteenth-century Scotland, a similar distinction can be made between traditional Calvinists, who believed in Predestination, and the so-called ‘New Light’ Presbyterians, who, being more liberal-minded, emphasized ethics at the expense of dogma. Hume numbered some of these moderate clergymen among his friends. 3. De Maistre, it could be argued, was neither a sophisticated reader of Hamlet nor of Hume’s History, though he always knew what he was looking for in an author.

Bibliography Armenteros, Carolina. 2011. Maistre’s Rousseaus. In Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of Enlightenment, ed. Carolina Armenteros and Richard A.  Lebrun, 79–103. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Armenteros, Carolina, and Richard A. Lebrun, eds. 2011. Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of Enlightenment. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Berlin, Isaiah. 1991. Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 91–174. London: Fontana Press. Cicero, M.T. 1990. Vom Wesen der Götter/De natura deorum, ed. W. Gerlach and K. Bayer. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ———. 1999. Cato der Ältere—Über das Alter and Laelius—Über die Freundschaft, ed. M. Faltner. Düsseldorf: Artemis und Winkler. Clark, Sam. 2013. Hume’s Uses of Dialogue. Hume Studies 39 (1): 61–76. Fulda, Daniel. 2013. Gab es ‘die Aufklärung’? Einige geschichtstheoretische, begriffsgeschichtliche und schließlich programmatische Überlegungen anlässlich einer neuerlichen Kritik an unseren Epochenbegriffen. Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 37 (1): 11–25. Gay, Peter. 1967. The Enlightenment. An Interpretation. 2 vols. New York: Knopf. Harris, James A. 2015. Hume, An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Houellebecq, Michel. 2015. Soumission. Paris: Flammarion.

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Hume, David. 1975. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1983. The History of England [1778]. 6 vols. New York and Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. ———. 1985. Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. E. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. ———. 1990. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. M. Bell. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Israel, Jonathan. 2010. A Revolution of the Mind. Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origin of Modern Democracy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. De Maistre, Joseph. 1853. Du Pape. Lyon and Paris: J.B. Pélagaud. ———. 1862. Les Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg ou Entretiens sur la Gouvernement Temporel de la Providence. 2 vols. Lyon and Paris: J.B. Pélagaud. ———. 1863. Considération sur la France. Lyon and Paris: J.B. Pélagaud. Nolte, Ernst. 1995. Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche. Munich: Piper. Pagden, Antony. 2013. The Enlightenment and Why it Still Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pocock, J.G.A. 2005. Barbarism and Religion, vol. 2: Narratives of Civil Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pranchère, Jean-Yves. 2011. The Negative of the Enlightenment, the Positive of Order, and the Impossible Positivity of History. In Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of Enlightenment, ed. Carolina Armenteros and Richard A.  Lebrun, 45–62. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Ross, Ian Simpson. 2010. The Life of Adam Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2014. Die schrecklichen Kinder der Neuzeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Szczekalla, Michael. 1998. Philo’s Feigned Fideism in Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Archiv für die Geschichte der Philosophie 80 (1): 75–87. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph.1998.80.1.75. ———. 2003. David Hume: Der Aufklärer als konservativer Ironiker, Dialogische Religionskritik und philosophische Geschichtsschreibung im Athen des Nordens. Heidelberg: Winter. ———. 2012. Towards a Dialogic Consensus on Ethics and Religion: Shaftesbury, Berkeley, and Hume. In Imaginary Dialogues in English, ed. T. Kinzel and J. Mildorf, 61–87. Heidelberg: Winter.

Index1

A Abbé Roffette, 21, 25 Absolutism, 97, 208 Aix la Chapelle, 66 America, 43 Amsterdam, 64 Andrews, Miles Peter, 112 Angelo, Henry, 114–116, 121, 122 Anglophilia, 3 Anspach-Bayreuth, Alexander, Margrave of, 108 Anstey, Christopher, 90, 102n8 Aristotle, 168, 172 Ashley, Maurice, 212 Augustine, 233 Austen, Jane, 122n3, 176, 217 B Bacon, Francis, 233 Baden Baden, 64

Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, 36 Baretti, Joseph, 15, 18, 22, 24, 26 Barnum, P.T., 57 Bath, 79n2, 80n7, 81n16, 89, 90, 101, 101n2, 102n9 Bayle, Pierre, 211 Beauvau, Princess de, 93 Beddoes, Thomas, 140 Belgium, 63, 64, 66, 75 Bickham, George, 148 Bluestocking, 3, 63–78 Bonn, 63 Boswell, James, 8, 16–19, 27n2, 29–39 Brazil, 190 Britain, 1–4, 8, 9, 64, 79n2, 89, 91–95, 97, 98, 101n2, 102n5, 118, 122n1, 123n13, 127–144, 144n1, 147–150, 167, 203, 204 British Isles, 15 Brontë, Charlotte, 78

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

Brooke, Frances, 10, 165–185 Brussels, 63, 69, 151 Bull, John, 20, 75, 117, 130 Burke, Edmund, 47, 48 Burnet, Sir Thomas, 170, 171, 181–183, 214 Burney, Edward Francis, 137, 139 Burney, Frances (Fanny), 34 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 135, 141, 143, 144–145n5 C Calais, 15, 16, 50, 63, 79n1, 90, 93, 96, 101n2, 101–102n3 Carter, Elizabeth, 3, 8, 63–78, 80n9, 80n12, 81n17, 81n19, 81n21, 81n22, 82n23, 82n24 Casaubon, Issac, 205 Casaubon, Meric, 205 Cervantes, Miguel, 42, 50 Cicero, M.T., 206, 224, 228, 229, 231, 232 Clermont, 93, 102n3 Closterman, John, 212 Cobbet, William, 136 Coetzee, John Maxwell, 194, 197, 200 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 127, 128, 133–135, 143 Collier, Jeremy, 165, 168, 171, 172, 178 Cologne, 63, 77, 82n24 Colonialism, 10 Conversation, 1, 7, 9, 10, 34, 35, 37, 38, 67–70, 73, 74, 76, 78, 80n12, 93, 97, 100, 140, 169, 180, 187–200, 203, 211, 212 Corsica, 8, 29–39 Coste, Pierre, 211, 217 Counter-Enlightenment, 224, 234 Craven, Elizabeth, 9, 107–122, 122n1, 123n14

Craven, Keppel Richard, 107, 108, 114, 115, 121 Craven, William, 108 Cruickshank, George, 193, 199 D Dacre, Charlotte, 130, 141–144 de Ferriol de Pont-de-Veyle, Antoine, 112 de Maistre, Joseph, 10, 223–234, 235n3 Defoe, Daniel, 10, 148, 155, 187–192, 194–198, 200n3, 200n4 DeMaria, Robert Jr., 18 Diderot, Denis, 217 Dorset, 204, 212 Douglas, 63 Dover, 15, 63, 64 Dresden, 51, 151 du Martre, Pyron, 148 Dublin, 150, 151 d’Urfé, Honoré, 45 Düsseldorf, 63 E Edinburgh, 29, 149, 151, 230 Egypt, 208 England, 3, 16, 20, 22, 26, 37, 38, 43, 64, 68, 70, 75, 89, 90, 94, 96–98, 101, 103n20, 108, 112–114, 117, 118, 122, 135, 198, 207, 215 Enlightenment, 2, 10, 31, 69, 165–185, 203, 217, 224, 225, 229, 232–234 Epictetus, 48, 212, 220n11 Europe, 1–3, 6, 7, 17, 29–32, 58, 65, 94, 104n26, 104n27, 144, 144n2, 148, 150, 151, 153, 203, 204, 209, 218

 INDEX 

F Farren, Elizabeth, 110 Father Cowley, William, 21, 22 Fawcett, John, 111 Fielding, Henry, 172 Fletcher, John, 113 Florence, 151 Foucault, Michel, 129, 135, 141 France, 2, 8, 9, 16–19, 23–26, 27n3, 35, 41, 42, 75, 80n13, 87–101, 101n1, 102n11, 103n20, 108, 117, 118, 122, 128, 137, 143, 144n3, 154, 167, 208, 231 Fraser Tytler, Alexander, 118 Fratriotism, 29–39 Frazer, Andrew, 19 Frederic II, 71 French Revolution, 2, 79n4, 88, 136, 225 Fréron, Élie Catherine, 21 Friendship, 1, 9, 10, 26, 53, 54, 73, 78, 80n12, 93, 142, 155, 156, 158, 159, 165–185, 207, 212, 228, 229 Furly, Benjamin, 211 G Garden, 24, 50, 51, 54, 58, 60n6, 93, 109, 111, 211 Garrick, David, 38, 66, 102n9 Gataker, Thomas, 205 Genoa, 30, 150, 151 George III, 72 Germany, 8, 9, 26, 43, 50, 52, 54, 58, 63, 77, 108, 111–113, 118, 119, 121, 133, 143 Glorious Revolution, 97, 204 Godwin, William, 42, 47, 51, 217 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 51, 134, 139

239

Gothic, 103n19, 119, 141, 166 Grand Tour, 3–6, 17, 30, 34, 41, 49, 66, 69, 79n6 Great Britain, 98, 123n13, 149, 150, 203 Greece, 108, 113, 143 H The Hague, 64, 77 Hebrides, 16–18 Hector, Edmund, 16 Henderson, John, 90, 102n9 High Church, 208, 210, 216, 218 Hobbes, Thomas, 204, 206, 210, 218 Hogarth, William, 129–133, 143 Holland, 77, 128, 211 Holman, Joseph Georg, 118 Hopkey, Sophia, 89 Horace, 112, 206, 207 Hudson, Peter, 148, 155, 156 Hume, David, 10, 48, 170, 223–234, 235n1, 235n2, 235n3 Hutcheson, Francis, 165, 168, 172, 173, 182 I Ireland, 67, 75 Italy, 3, 18, 26, 31, 32, 37, 87–89, 92, 108, 167, 175 J Jacobite, 208, 215 Jerningham, Edward, 116 Johnson, Samuel, 3, 7, 8, 10, 15–26, 27n2, 27n3, 29, 30, 35, 38, 39, 80n13, 82n24, 156, 173 Juvenal, 205–207, 216

240 

INDEX

K Kant, Immanuel, 99, 170 Keegan, William, 149, 150, 153 Kotzebue, August von, 119, 122n3 L Lady Coke, Mary, 66, 80n9 Landscape, 42, 43, 50, 52, 58, 59, 65, 99, 211, 213, 214 Langton, Bennet, 17 Lanove, Maria, 89 Le Texier, Antoine, 107, 108, 115, 117 Levet, Robert, 21 Liberty, 3, 36, 66, 77, 95, 97, 176, 182, 190, 214 Liège, 63 Lille, 63 Limbourg, Jean Philippe, 66, 70, 76 Locke, John, 204, 213, 225, 233 London, 9, 15, 18, 19, 22, 29–39, 46, 53, 67, 78, 90, 94, 102n6, 102n9, 103n20, 108–110, 122, 130, 138, 139, 149–151, 157, 183, 204 Lord Bath, 63, 64, 69–71, 76, 78 M Makittrick Adair, James, 90 Marcus Aurelius, 206, 212, 216 May, John Charles, 159 Mediterranean, 29, 150 Milton, John, 21, 46, 47 Monarchy, 97 Montagu, Edward, 63, 64, 66–68

Montagu, Elizabeth, 8, 63, 64, 66, 68–71, 74–78, 79n1, 81n15, 81n20, 82n24 Montresor, John, 56 Moscow, 151 Mould, John, 53 N Naples, 30, 108, 151 Nationalism, 42, 95–101 Nationality, 66 Netherlands, 87, 89 New York, 55, 57–59 O Oulton, Walley Chamberlain, 121 P Paesiello, 116 Paltock, Robert, 188, 199 Paoli, Pasquale (Pascal), 8, 29–39 Paris, 15–26, 75, 80n13, 93, 94, 97, 101n2, 102n3 Patriotism, 3, 76, 77 Philocles, 211, 212 Piganiol de la Force, Jean Aimar, 45 Piozzi, Hester Lynch, see Thrale, Hester Pitt, William, 37, 76, 160n4 Poole, Thomas, 128 Porter, Lucy, 16 Prussia, 71, 81n19, 117, 118, 123n12 Pufendorf, Samuel von, 188 Pulteney, William, 63 Puritan Revolution, 225, 231 Pyrmont, 64, 79n2

 INDEX 

Q Quin, James, 90, 102n9 R Radeburg, 51 Raikes, Thomas, 127 Richardson, Samuel, 168 Rome, 34 Rotterdam, 64 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 31, 32, 34, 159, 160, 167, 184, 188, 232 Rowson, Susanna, 43, 54–56, 58, 59 Russia, 108, 113, 150 S Saint-Denis, Charles, Seigneur de Saint-Évremond Marguetel de, 169 Salmasius, Claudius, 205 Schiller, Friedrich, 9, 51, 107–122 Scotland, 16, 19, 23, 31, 235n2 Scott, Sarah, 64, 69 Scudéry, Madeleine de, 97, 103n21 Secker, Thomas, 67 Seneca, 206 Sensus Communis, 204–212, 215, 216, 219n3, 219n5, 219n7, 220n9 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of, 10, 203–218 Shakespeare, William, 113, 174, 231 Sheridan, Ferdinand, 112 Sheridan, Richard, 66, 89 Siddons, Sarah, 110 Sloterdijk, Peter, 231, 234 Smith, Adam, 98 Smollett, Tobias, 9, 88, 90, 92, 95–101, 102n11, 103n14 Snowe, Lucy, 78

241

Sociability, 1–10, 25, 26, 32, 35–37, 39, 63–78, 87–101, 102n5, 102n11, 103n20, 103n21, 104n22, 136, 139, 144, 147, 155–160, 165–185, 187–200, 203–205, 207, 208, 210–218, 234 Sociable encounter, 1–3, 6, 7, 10, 16, 22, 29, 38, 68, 87–101, 147–160, 172, 181, 187, 192, 196, 203–218, 224 Society, 4, 6, 8, 22, 30–33, 35–38, 43, 55, 64–66, 68–72, 74, 77, 80n14, 81n16, 88, 99, 101, 109, 110, 120, 127, 129, 134, 136, 139, 143, 144, 167–172, 179, 181, 187, 190–192, 194, 198, 205, 206, 210, 213, 216–218, 234 Spa, 8, 63–78, 89, 101 Spain, 64, 87, 89, 90, 99, 118, 154 St. Germain, 15, 23, 93, 101n2, 101–102n3, 103n16 St. Petersburg, 150, 231 Stanhope, James, 216 Sterne, Laurence, 8, 41–46, 48–54, 56, 58, 59, 59n1, 88 Stillingfleet, Benjamin, 71 Swift, Jonathan, 216 T Talbot, Catherine, 67, 68, 74, 75, 80n12, 82n25 Taylor, Jeremy, 165, 168–175, 181, 184 Theocles, 208, 211–213 Thicknesse, Philip, 9, 87–101 Thrale, Hester Lynch (Piozzi), 8, 15–26, 80n13 Thrale, Queeney, 15, 26

242 

INDEX

Tillotson, John, 197 Tory, 208, 210, 215, 216, 218 Triesdorf, 108, 113 Tunbridge Wells, 64–66 Turkey, 113, 150 U Utrecht, 64 V Verne, Jules, 189 Vesey, Elizabeth, 64, 65, 67, 70, 74, 75, 78 Villette, 78 Voltaire, 34, 225, 231, 233 von Bruhl, Cristina, 51 von Hinüber, Jobst Anton, 50

W Waltz, 9, 127–144, 144n1 War of the Spanish Succession, 203, 208, 217 Wesley, John, 89, 102n5 Whig, 10, 97, 100, 203, 215, 216, 218 Wilson, Thomas, 130–132, 143, 144, 190 Wiseman, Charles, 149, 151–154, 157, 159, 160n3 Wortley Montagu, Mary, 109 X Xenophobia, 76 Y Yorke, Sir Joseph, 77