Part 3

It has also been remarked by scrupulous observers, that this people perform almost the whole of their public devotions in a posture which rather accommodates their indolence, than expresses their respect for the object of their worship. If this be the fact, it is not a little extraordinary; since they use a liturgy which prescribes _kneeling_ and _standing_, as well as _sitting_; and which contains distinct instructions, when each is to be used. I can, indeed, account, without much difficulty, for the disuse of _kneeling_; because the structure of the pews does not always admit of it: besides that, it is a posture into which people cannot be expected readily to fall in public, who have not much practice in private. But I cannot so easily account for their refusing to _stand_: for this is notoriously an attitude to which they are sufficiently accustomed. And that they do not consider the posture in which a thing is done, indifferent, is manifest from the zeal with which they rise from their seats, and expect others to do the same, when about to join in a loyal chorus. I wonder it has not occurred to them, that there is some indecency, not to say impiety, in _rising_ from their seats to sing the praises of their King, and _keeping_ them while they sing the praises of their GOD.

I have before delivered it as my opinion, that this people comply with the custom of public worship, rather from influence than from conviction; and this opinion receives some confirmation from the pains they take to remove those impressions which the offices of religion may have made upon their minds. In the metropolis, the visit to the house of God is succeeded, as soon as may be, by the drive into the Park. Here they meet with a prodigious concourse of persons of their own description; and have the most charming opportunities of seeing the world, exhibiting themselves, and conversing upon the opera of the preceding evening, or the parties for the ensuing week. The effect of this drive, upon their animal spirits and the whole frame of their mind, is just what might have been expected. Though they have so recently assisted at the most awful solemnities, they can now relax into the most idle levity or the most boisterous mirth; and satisfying themselves that they have done their duty, by remembering the Almighty in the first part of the day, they take no common pains to forget him during the remainder.

In the vicinity of the metropolis, and in other places of Fashionable residence, other expedients are resorted to, in order to produce the same happy effect. No sooner has the priest pronounced his _Morning_ benediction, than the carriage which has conveyed the family to church must be driven round the neighbourhood; and the bells and knockers of twenty doors announce, that the restraints of public worship are at an end. This pleasant divertisement is not lost upon the great body of the inhabitants. Persons the farthest removed from all Fashionable pretensions, rejoice with their superiors at this speedy termination of the Sabbath; and, with a servile imitation of _their_ example, pursue their pleasures in some house of entertainment, instead of seeking a _second_ blessing in the house of God. {66}

Though there is something very lively and ingenious in this method of dissipating religious impressions, yet I think it might be an improvement upon the plan, not to allow them to be made at all. Experiments to this effect have been actually tried by some persons of no mean condition, in the Fashionable World, who have wholly renounced the habit of public worship; and these experiments would probably have been tried upon a much larger scale, had it not been for the consideration of setting a pernicious example: for it seems to be a maxim among many of them, that persons in a dependent state _may_ really be benefited by the offices of devotion. With a charity, therefore, that does them honour, they make a sacrifice of their feelings and their time to the interests of their inferiors; and when it is considered, how much whirling in a carriage, gaping, gadding, and gossiping, it takes them, to recover the true tone of dissipation, it will be seen that the sacrifice is not inconsiderable.

In observing thus largely upon the religion of the Fashionable World, I have furnished a sufficient clue to their _moral_ character. If, from some hints which have been thrown out in this and the preceding chapter, rigid Christians should be led to infer, that it is no better than it should be, they must be reminded, that people of Fashion have a standard peculiar to themselves; and that, therefore, what are deviations from _our_ standard, are very often near approximations to _theirs_. In fact, they have acted in this respect with the same convenient policy by which they have been guided in framing every other part of their system. Pleasure being the object upon which a life of Fashion terminates, it was sagaciously enough foreseen, that an unbending morality would be utterly incompatible with the modes, and habits, and plans, of such a career. There remained therefore no alternative, but that of frittering away the strength and substance of the morality of the Gospel, till it became sufficiently tame and pliable for the sphere of accommodation in which it was to act. The consequence has been, that while they employ the same terms to denote their moral ideas, as are in use among Christians in general, yet they limit, or enlarge, their signification, as expediency requires. Thus modesty, honesty, humanity, and sobriety—names, with stricter moralists, for the purest virtues—are so modified and liberalized by Fashionable casuists, as to be capable of an alliance with a low degree of every vice to which they stand opposed. A woman may expose her bosom, paint her face, assume a forward air, gaze without emotion, and laugh without restraint, at the loosest scenes of theatrical licentiousness; and yet be, after all,—a _modest_ woman. A man may detain the money which he owes his tradesman, and contract new debts for ostentatious superfluities, while he has neither the means nor the inclination to pay his old ones; and yet be, after all,—a very _honest_ fellow. A woman of Fashion may disturb the repose of her family every night, abandon her children to mercenary nurses, and keep her horses and her servants in the streets till day-break,—without any impeachment of her _humanity_. So the gentleman of Fashion may swallow his two or three bottles a-day, and do all his friends the kindness to lay them under the table as often as they dine with him; yet, if constitution or habit secure him against the same ignominious effects, he claims to be considered—a _sober_ man.

There would be no end of going over all the eccentricities of Fashionable morality. To those who exact that truth which allows of no duplicity, that honour which scorns all baseness, and that virtue which wars with every vice, I question but every thing in the morals of this people would appear anomalous and extraordinary: but to those who consider, how necessary a certain portion of wickedness is to such a life of sense as these people must necessarily lead, it will not be matter of surprise that there should be so little genuine morality among them; the wonder will rather be—that there should be any at all.

CHAP. IV

EDUCATION.

NO people in the universe expend larger sums upon the education of their children than people of Fashion. It is a maxim with them to commence the great business of instruction in the very earliest period of life; and if the system of education corresponded with the pains bestowed upon it, and the price at which it is purchased, no persons would do more honour to society than the subjects of the Fashionable World. As it is, they are not a little ornamental to a nation. They are not, it is true, either the columns or the base of the building; they neither support nor strengthen it: but they supply the place of reliefs, and hangings, and other superadded decorations.

Religion is allowed a respectable place among the studies of the nursery. All those useful tables of instruction are assiduously employed, which teach, who was the _first_, the _wisest_, the _meekest_, and the _strongest_ man; and the nursling is carefully conducted, by a catechetical process, into the theory and practice of a Christian. As, however, the child advances to boyish or girlish years, this religious discipline is pretty generally relaxed, in order to allow sufficient scope for the cultivation of those modish pursuits, which mark the man and the woman of Fashion.

And here I cannot help remarking, how anxious the greater part of Fashionable parents are, to guard the minds of their children against the _permanent_ influence of that religion, which they yet have caused them to be taught. The fact is, that they would have them acquainted with the technical language, and expert in the liturgical formalities of Christianity; for these acquirements can neither disparage their character, nor impede their pleasures: but a serious impression of its truths upon their hearts, might disaffect them to the follies and vices which they are destined to practise; and therefore is the thing, of all others, that is most to be dreaded. The parents are, to say the truth, not a little hampered by the engagements under which they have bound the child, on the one part; and the character which they wish him to sustain, on the other. To leave him in ignorance of a covenant in which he has been involuntarily included, would be a fraud upon his conscience; and yet, to have him renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh, would be the utter ruin of his Fashionable reputation. What other course, then, can parents thus circumstanced pursue, than that of inculcating these lessons before they can be understood, and removing their impression before they can be practised?

It is, I presume, upon the principle of precaution already mentioned, that our Fashionable young men are not always intrusted to the care of persons distinguished for the practice of piety. It is not impossible, indeed, that, either from the conversation, the connexions, or the example of the preceptor, the pupil may contract certain habits, which it was not the precise object of his education to produce. But then the evil is not so great as fastidious moralists would insinuate. For, as the youth is to figure in the circles of Fashion, he will only have learnt, a little before the time, those practices which are to form a part of his manly character: and though it might, perhaps, be as well, if he did not learn to swear and rake quite so soon; yet it is some consolation, that he has escaped those methodistical impressions, which would have prevented him from swearing and raking as long as he lived.

It may also be considered as some confirmation of the reasoning above employed, that parents introduce their children as early as possible to the amusements of the theatre. Now, though swearing, and raking, and gaming, when carried to excess, are blamed even by persons of Fashion themselves; yet it is notorious, that a reasonable proportion of each is indispensably requisite to a popular character in the circles of refinement. Habits of this sort must not be precipitately taken up. There must be a schooling for the man of pleasure, as well as for the man of letters: and certainly no school exists, in which the elements of modish vice can be studied with greater promise of proficiency, than the public theatres. When it is considered, at what pains the managers of the stage are, to import the seducing dramas of Germany, as well as to get up the loose productions of the English Muse; when it is further considered, how studious the actors and actresses are to do justice, and even more than justice, to the luscious scenes of the piece; to give effect to the equivoques, by an arch emphasis; and to the oaths, by a dauntless intonation:—when to all this is added, how many painted strumpets are stuck about the theatre, in the boxes, the galleries, and the avenues; and how many challenges to prostitution are thrown out in every direction: it will, I think, be difficult to imagine places better adapted, than the theatres at this moment are, to teach the theory and practice of Fashionable iniquity.

What has been observed on the subject of education, though said principally with reference to the male branches of Fashionable families, will yet, with a few changes, be found applicable to the youth of the other sex. The principal points upon which their scheme of education is brought to bear, are those of dissipation and display. A brilliant finger on the piano, wanton flexions in the dance, a rage for operas, plays, and parties, and the faculty of undergoing the fatiguing evolutions of a Fashionable life, without compunction of conscience, sense of weariness, or indications of disgust, are qualifications which she who has acquired, will be considered as wanting little of a perfect education.

The same assiduity is discovered on the part of the parents, to train their girls for the sphere of polite life, as has been already observed with respect to the boys; and the methods that are pursued to accomplish this end, are very nearly the same. The blush of virgin-modesty (it is naturally foreseen) would be extremely inconvenient, not to say absolutely indecorous, in a woman of Fashion; and therefore it is wisely resolved, that such steps shall be taken upon the girl’s growing into life, as may most effectually destroy it. The theatre seems principally to be resorted to for this purpose; and it must be manifest, from what has been already advanced, that no expedient could have been better chosen. As intrigue is the life of the drama, and this cannot be carried on, without expressions, attitudes, and communications between the sexes, of a very particular nature, there is every reason for regarding the stage as a sovereign remedy for the infirmity of _blushing_.

There are other things to be said on behalf of the theatre, as a school of polite morality.

It has already appeared, that the system of Ethics which prevails among people of Fashion, differs materially from the received system of unfashionable Christians. Now, I know not any means by which a stranger, anxious to ascertain, wherein that difference consists, could better satisfy his enquiries, than by visiting the theatres. The doctrine of the stage, therefore, exhibiting (as nearly as possible) the standard morality of polite society, nothing could be better imagined, than to give the embryo woman of Fashion the earliest opportunity of learning to so much advantage, those lessons which she is afterwards to practise through life. What she has imbibed in the nursery, and what she hears in the church, would inspire her with a dread—perhaps a dislike—of many things upon which she must learn hereafter to look with familiar indifference, if not with absolute complacency. She might thus (if some remedy were not provided) be led to take up with certain melancholy principles, which would either shut her out from the society of her friends, or make her miserable among them. But the stage corrects all this; and more than counterbalances the impressions of virtue, by stratagems of the happiest contrivance.

It is worthy of attention, how much ingenuity is displayed in bringing about that moral temperament, which is necessary for the meridian of Fashion. The rake, who is debauching innocence, squandering away property, and extending the influence of licentiousness to the utmost of his power, would (if fairly represented) excite spontaneous and universal abhorrence. But this result would be extremely inconvenient; since raking, seduction, and prodigality, make half the business, and almost all the reputation, of men of Fashion. What, then, must be done?—Some qualities of acknowledged excellence must be associated with these vicious propensities, in order to prevent them from occasioning unmingled disgust. We may, I presume, refer it to the same policy, that in dramas of the greatest popularity, the worthless libertine is represented as having at the bottom some of those properties which reflect most honour upon human nature; while—as if to throw the balance still more in favour of vice—the man of professed virtue is delineated as being in the main a sneaking and hypocritical villain. Lessons such as these are not likely to be lost upon the ingenuous feelings of a young girl. For, besides the fascinations of an elegant address and an artful manner, the whole conduct of the plot is an insidious appeal to the simplicity of her heart. She is taught to believe, by these representations, that profligacy is the exuberance of a generous nature, and decorum the veil of a bad heart: so that having learnt, in the outset of her career, to associate frankness with vice, and duplicity with virtue, she will not be likely to separate these combinations during the remainder of her life.

To enter further into the minute details of a Fashionable education, would only be to travel over ground which has been often and ingeniously explored by writers of the greatest eminence. Enough has been said to show, that the system of education adopted by this people, like every other branch of their economy, is adapted to qualify the parties for that polite intercourse with each other, which seems to constitute the very end of their being. And if it be considered, of what nature that intercourse is, it will occasion no surprise, that the education which prepares for it should be expressly adapted to confound the distinctions of virtue and vice; and to inculcate, with that view,—duplicity in religion, and prevarication in morals.

CHAP. V.

MANNERS—LANGUAGE.

THE _Manners_ of this people are remarkably artificial. They appear to do every thing by rule; and not a word, a look, or a movement escapes them, but what has at one time or other been studied. In every part of their demeanour they have reference to some invisible standard, which they call the _Ton_, or the Fashion, (from which latter term they have derived their appellation;) and by this mysterious talisman their manners, their dress, their language, and the whole of their behaviour, are tried. It is singular enough, that this standard which is to fix every thing, is itself the most variable of all things. The changes which it undergoes are so rapid, that it requires a sort of telegraphic communication to become acquainted with them: and though there is no regular way by which they may be known, yet nothing is considered so disgraceful as not to know them.

The fluctuations to which this standard is subject, render it difficult to catch the features of people of Fashion, or to speak with any precision upon the exterior of their character. They are, in fact, moulded and modified by such capricious and indefinable circumstances, that he who would exhibit a true picture of their manners, must write a history of the endless transmutations through which they are compelled to pass. It has, indeed, been remarked by nice observers, that a dissimulation of their sentiments and their feelings, is a feature in the character of this people, which never forsakes them; and that amidst all the revolutions which their other habits experience, this master-principle preserves an unchanging uniformity. Nor is it sufficient to overthrow this reasoning, that, among the innovations of recent times, the manners of people of Fashion have been brought into an affected resemblance to those of their inferiors. The cropped head, and groomish dress of the men, and the noisy tone and vulgar air of the women, would almost persuade a stranger that these are blunt and artless people, and that they love nothing so much as honesty and plain-dealing. The fact, however, is, that though the mode of playing is varied, yet the game of dissimulation is still going on. This condescension to vulgarity is, after all, the disguise of pride, and not the dress of simplicity; and is as remote from the sincerity which it imitates, as from the refinement which it renounces.

An exaggerated opinion of their own importance is, in reality, a prevailing characteristic of the Fashionable World.

The Greeks and Romans were thought to have gone too far, when they called all nations but their own _barbarians_; but people of Fashion go a step farther: for they consider themselves _every body_, and the rest of the world _nobody_. The influence of this sentiment is sufficiently discernible over the whole of their character. It dictates to their affections, and robs them, in many instances, of their spontaneity, their sweetness, and their force. It results from this conceit, that their love is often artificial, their friendship ceremonious, and their charity ungracious. In a word, the whole of their demeanour is such as might be expected from a people, who idolize the most frivolous or the most vicious propensities of human nature; and estimate as _nothing_, the talents, and industry, and virtue, which adorn it.

Their _Language_ would afford great scope for discussion; but the limits which I have prescribed to my work, will not allow me to embrace it. I shall, however, throw together such remarks as may enable the reader to form some judgment of it; and refer him, for more extended information upon it, to those modish compositions in which it is conveyed, and to the circles in which it is spoken.

Their _language_, then, is generally a dialect of the people among whom they reside. They do, it is true, intersperse their conversational dialogue with scraps of French and Italian; they also construct their complimentary phrases with singular dexterity; they have, besides, certain epithets; such as _dashing_, _stylish_, &c. which may be considered as perfectly their own:—but if these be excepted, the rest of their language is, to the best of my judgment, wholly vernacular.

It must not, however, be supposed, that because these people use the terms of the country in which they live, they therefore use them in their ordinary and received acceptation. Nothing can be farther from the fact. I verily believe, that if the whole nomenclature of Fashion were examined from beginning to end, scarcely twenty words would be found, which in passing over to the regions of Fashion, have not left their native and customary sense behind them.

In support of this observation I shall cite, for the reader’s satisfaction, a brief extract from a private memorandum, which I had originally made with a design of constructing a Fashionable glossary.