View of manners continued-The Duke of Queensberry-Club-life-Excessive Gaming-Excesses of Charles Fox-Dress-Conversation-The Squires of England-The Country JusticeThe Clergy of England-The Universities-Professional Classes-The Mercantile ClassThe Lower orders-The Rabble-Mobs-Police of London-The Prisons--Social Reformers -Howard-Coram-Hanway-Raikes-Education-Rise and Growth of Methodism. A FEW years after the beginning of the present century, there was to be seen in Piccadilly, on every sunny day, an emaciated old man sitting in a balcony, holding a parasol. The coachman of the Bath road as he drove by would tell some wondering passenger that there was the wicked duke of Queensberry; that he kept a man in readiness to follow any female not insensible to the bewitching ogles of his glass eye; that his daily milk bath was transferred to the pails of the venders of milk around Park-lane; with many other tales, more befitting the days of the second Charles than of the third George. This very notorious nobleman died in 1810, at the age of eighty-six. As Dr. Johnson was the link between the varying literature of two periods, 1737-1783.] THE DUKE OF QUEENSBERRY-CLUB-LIFE. 103 the duke of Queensberry was the link between the changed profligacy of two generations. He had flourished as the earl of March and a lord of the bedchamber in the times when to violate every decency of life was to establish a claim to wit and spirit; when " at the rehearsal, on Wednesday night, of the Speech, at lord Halifax's, lord Lichfield came extremely drunk, and proposed amendments ;"* when sir Francis Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1762, held his frantic orgies with his brother " Franciscans" at Medmenham Abbey, drinking obscene toasts out of a sacred chalice; when George Selwyn said, with as much truth as wit, when one of the waiters at Arthur's Club was committed on a charge of felony, "What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate." Queensberry lived on, into an age of comparative decorum, which to him was as insipid as he thought the Thames seen from his Richmond villa: "I am quite tired of it-there it goes, flow, flow, flow, always the same." He had no resources for amusement out of the libertine society of the turf and the gaming-house. Even these resorts had become decent. He could no longer sup with the duke of York (the brother of George III.) as in 1776, " with some of the opera girls." "Information, as acquired by books, he always treated with great contempt."§ There was nothing left for him to do, as a vigorous octogenarian, but to sit in the balcony at the corner of Park-lane, gazing upon "the full tide of human existence;" or retire to his drawing-room to enjoy what Wraxall calls a "classic exhibition," which if the unrefined passers-by had chanced to see they would have broken every window of that mansion of ill-fame. He had utterly neglected the duties of his station; he had regarded his tenantry as the mere slaves of his will, and the poor upon his estates as vermin that might be buried in the ruins of dilapidated hovels. Sir Walter Scott described, in 1813, the rebuilding of the cottages at Drumlanrig, by the duke of Buccleugh (the inheritor of the estate), for pensioners who, in the days of" old Q." were "pining into rheumatisms and agues, in neglected poverty."|| 66 Time has removed the veil that hid the Club-life of Queensberry and his set from the gaze of contemporaries. We are now permitted to see the fine gentlemen of the days of Chatham and lord North pursuing their vocation of gambling with the assiduous perseverance of the most money-getting tradesman. If they were ruined there were two resources against starvation-a place, or a wife. "You ask me how play uses me this year," writes the hon. Henry St. John to Selwyn in 1766; I am sorry to say very ill, as it has already, since October, taken 8007. from me; nor am I in a likely way to reimburse myself soon by the emoluments of any place or military preferment, having voted the other evening in a minority." This distinguished honourable, for whose misfortunes it was the bounden duty of the government to have provided a refuge, became lord Bolingbroke. He still pursued his calling with indifferent success in 1777, when Charles Townshend writes to Selwyn, "Your friend lord Bolingbroke's affairs are in a much more pros 104 EXCESSIVE GAMING. [1737-1783. perous state than those of the public. He is gone down to Bath in pursuit of a lady, who he proposes should recruit his finances. It is said she has accepted his proposal."* The reputation of lord Sandwich has survived as one of the most profligate in his private life, and one of the meanest in his public career. His club-gambling has given a name to "a bit of beef between two slices of bread," the only food he took for four-and-twenty hours without ever quitting his game.t Common men pass away from the gambling clubs, whether to insolvency, or suicide, or death in a duel, without much sympathy from their fellows, who, like lord Sandwich, are too much absorbed in their thirst for lucre to take warning from the fate of those they call their friends. The right hon. Tom Foley is sold up. The rev. Dr. Warner gives an amusing account of the proceedings to George Selwyn. The creditors could not take the heir-looms; but every personal article was sold, whether of the right honourable or his lady. "He and she are left there among their heirlooms, chairs and tables, without any thing to put upon them, or upon themselves, when the clothes on their backs become dirty." The hon. John Damer shot himself at the Bedford Arms in 1776. Lord Carlisle, who at this time was himself plunged in difficulties, says of this event," It is a bad example to others in misery. . There never appeared anything like madness in him, yet the company he kept seemed indeed but a bad preparation for eternity." § At Bath, Nash dealt rather severely with the duellist gamesters, for a few mischances might have thinned the numbers of his votaries by a general panic. He forbad the wearing of swords, " as they often tore the ladies' dresses, and frightened them;" and when he heard that a challenge was given and accepted, he immediately procured an arrest for both parties. On the 24th of June, 1776, Gibbon, writing to his friend Holroyd, and dating from Almack's, says: "Town grows empty; and this house, where I have passed very agreeable hours, is the only place which still unites the flower of the English youth. The style of living, though somewhat expensive, is exceedingly pleasant, and, notwithstanding the rage of play, I have found more entertaining and even rational society here than in any other club to which I belong." Amongst "the flower of the English youth" was the earl of Carlisle, who, when Gibbon thus wrote, was in his twenty-eighth year. He was a man of talent; ambitious to be a poet and a statesman; happy in his marriage; fond of his children; surrounded with every worldly advantage. In July, 1776, he writes to Selwyn: "I have undone myself, and it is to no purpose to conceal from you my abominable madness and folly. I never lost so much in five times as I have done to-night, and am in debt to the house for the whole." A few days after this loss of ten thousand pounds, he again writes to his friend, "I do protest to you that I am so tired of my present manner of passing my time-however I may be kept in countenance by the number of those of my own rank and superior fortune-that I never reflect upon it without shame." Lord Carlisle abandoned his dangerous course when not too late. This was not the case with one of far higher intellect. There is no scenic representation of the horrors of gambling so truly pathetic as the history of Charles Fox, nor one which conveys more fearful warnings. * "Selwyn and his Contemporaries," vol. iii. p. 247. 1737-1783.] EXCESSES OF CHARLES FOX. 105 The precocious son of lord Holland was furnished, by the overweening fondness of his father, with guineas to stake at the gaming-table at Spa, when he was a boy of fifteen. "Let nothing be done," said the rival of Chatham, "to break Charles's spirit; the world will effect that business soon enough." He soon was in Parliament. The acquirements of the young politician were as extraordinary as his abilities. His profligacy was as remarkable as either. Lord Brougham says: "The dissipated habits of the times drew him, before the age of manhood, into the whirlpool of fashionable excess. The noble heart and sweet disposition of this great man passed unscathed through an ordeal which, in almost every other instance, is found to deaden all the kindly emotions." Yet these excesses, at that period of his life when his transcendant powers had placed him in the first rank as a party leader, materially diminished the confidence which the nation would otherwise have reposed in him, and not unjustly rendered him obnoxious to his sovereign. They had probably a more fatal consequence in the encouragement of the heir-apparent in a course of profligacy, which the lower nature of the prince of Wales cherished into that confirmed sensuality which rendered him unfit for the duties of his high station, and made him odious as a sovereign to a people who would otherwise have supported him with something better than "mouth-honour." In 1772, Fox was a lord of the Admiralty, opposing, as a member of the government, the petition of some of the clergy that subscription to the thirty-nine articles should not be enforced at the Universities. Gibbon writes, "Charles Fox prepared himself for that holy work by passing twentytwo hours in the pious exercise of hazard; his devotion only cost him about five hundred pounds an hour-in all, eleven thousand pounds." Lord Carlisle said of him at this period: "He is not following the natural bent of his genius; for that would lead him to all serious inquiry and laudable pursuits." In 1778, Fox was in opposition-with a distant prospect of office. Lord Carlisle then says, "I do think it does Charles, or ought to do, great credit, that under all his distresses he never thinks of accepting a place on terms that are in the least degree disreputable." In 1779, the same friend writes, "Charles tells me that he has not now, nor has had for some time, one guinea, and is happier on that account." § Yet though he possessed this extraordinary elasticity of mind-could be found calmly reading Herodotus in the morning after having lost his last shilling the previous night-yet his sense of degradation, when he had to borrow money of club-waiters, and saw his goods seized in execution, must have been somewhat real, however carefully concealed. What might he not have been, great as he was, had he possessed the firmness of Wilberforce, founded upon a juster sense of honour than Fox possessed. Wilberforce has recorded his club-experience when he came up to London, young and rich, the member for Hull, in 1780: "The very first time I went to Boodle's, I won twenty-five guineas of the duke of Norfolk. I belonged at that time to five clubs-Miles and Evans's, Brookes's, Boodle's, White's, and Goostree's. The first time I was at Brookes's, scarcely knowing any one, I joined from mere shyness in play at the Faro table, where George Selwyn kept bank. A friend who knew my inexperience, * Lord Brougham-"Statesmen of the time of George III." § Ibid, vol. iv. p. 165. 106 DRESS-CONVERSATION. [1737-1783. and regarded me as a victim decked out for sacrifice, called out to me, ' What, Wilberforce, is that you?' Selwyn quite resented the interference, and, turning to him, said in his most expressive tone, 'O, Sir, don't interrupt Mr. Wilberforce; he could not be better employed.' Some time after, he was persuaded to keep the bank at a Faro table of one of the clubs. "As the game grew deep," says his son," he rose the winner of six hundred pounds. Much of this was lost by those who were only heirs to future fortunes, and could not therefore meet such a call without inconvenience. The pain he felt at their annoyance cured him of a taste which seemed but too likely to become predominant."+ Pitt once displayed intense earnestness in games of chance, but he suddenly abandoned gambling for ever. He shunned the rock upon which his rival had been wrecked. In the letters of some of the fine gentlemen of the time of George Selwyn, we find them writing about dress much in the style of boardingschool misses-giving their friends in Paris commissions for velvet suits and embroidered ruffles. The Macaroni Club was in great repute at the beginning of the reign of George III. Wraxall, in 1815, laments over the change which forty years had produced: "That costume, which is now confined to the levee, or the drawing-room, was then worn by persons of condition, with few exceptions, everywhere, and every day." Mr. Fox and his friends "first threw a discredit on dress. From the House of Commons, and the Clubs in St. James's Street, the contagion spread through the private assemblies of London." The glories of buckles and ruffles perished in the ascendancy of pantaloons and shoe-strings. "Dress never totally fell, till the era of Jacobinism and of Equality in 1793 and 1794." ‡ Cowper, in the days of his town life, wrote a paper on "Conversation." He holds that it is "in vain to look for conversation, where we might expect to find it in the greatest perfection, among persons of fashion: there it is almost annihilated by universal card-playing; insomuch that I have heard it given as a reason why it is impossible for our present writers to succeed in the dialogue of genteel comedy, that our people of quality scarce ever meet but to game." There is a prevailing opinion, resting chiefly upon the reputation of George Selwyn, that this was the age of conversational wit. The sayings of witty men are always reported very imperfectly. They appear to little advantage without the accessories that gave them point. The anecdotes of Selwyn's "social pleasantry and conversational wit," appear now sufficiently common-place. It does not require any great force of genius to utter such witticisms as these: A member of the Foley family having hurried to the continent to avoid his creditors, Selwyn remarked, "It is a pass-over that will not be much relished by the Jews;" or as this: Bruce having been asked if there were musical instruments in Abyssinia, and replying that he believed he saw only one lyre there, Selwyn whispered, "Yes, and there is one less since he left the country." || More vapid still were the mots of James Hare, which had a prodigious reputation; for example: His report of Burgoyne having been defeated at Saratoga being discredited, Hare said, |