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Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS A Noteworthy Synthesis of Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia* The scholarly and readable volume which Carl and Jessica Bridenbaugh have devoted to Philadelphia in mid-eighteenth century makes a significant contribution to a significant theme. The thirty-five years immediately pre- ceding the outbreak of the American Revolution witnessed the growth of Philadelphia from a town of 13,000 to over three times that size and the second city of the Empire it was about to repudiate. Contemporaneously there took place a remarkable deepening of cultural life. Both of these developments were furthered by Philadelphia's contacts with the sea. "The steady passage of Delaware-built ships . produced two results ... it yielded wealth to the merchants of Philadelphia and their dependents, and it brought to the Pennsylvania capital not only the material commodities of comfortable living, but also larger cargoes of people and ideas," enrich- ing "not only the pockets but the minds of its citizens." "After 1735 it is an anachronism to speak of Philadelphia as the Quaker City." On the eve of the Revolution Friends numbered only one seventh of the population, the Presbyterians being the strongest denomination numer- ically. "In this period of generally declining religious enthusiasms Phila- delphia churches exercised probably more influence upon the social and political than upon the spiritual lives of their communicants." Congrega- tions tended to be divided along linguistic or national lines, while "wealth was largely concentrated in the hands of Friends and Anglicans" and "all looked upon the latter as the stronghold of aristocracy." More productive than the churches of that free association of peoples so necessary to the growth of the democratic spirit were the many clubs organized in Philadelphia during this period. They ran the gamut from "glutton clubs" to Franklin's Junto and "The Society meeting weekly for their Mutual Improvement in Useful Knowledge." "Perhaps the most im- portant organizations in the city were the seventeen fire companies, which . had come by the seventies to involve a membership of from five to seven hundred citizens. Persons of all ranks and nationalities joined to form these bodies," and "convivial, benevolent, or political functions occupied the membership of all companies quite as much as the satisfaction of the natural desire in men of all ages to attend fires." In 1740 "the Quaker system of schools comprised the town's principal educational facilities," with Anthony Benezet the most famous teacher in * Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin, By CARL and JESSICA BRIDEN- BAUGH. (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1942. xvii, 393 p. #3.50.) 166 1943 BOOK REVIEWS l6j its "English School," and with emphasis on utilitarian studies, "writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, French and German—though 'not the whole vari- ation of the nouns and irregular verbs.'" Other denominations also estab- lished schools for the education of their youth, and many private teachers formed classes in a wide variety of subjects classical as well as useful. "As early as 1743 Franklin had conceived a plan for a quasi-public academy to prepare boys for business and civil life," but it was not until 1751 that the first classes were held in what was to become the University of Pennsyl- vania. By the end of the colonial period, education, whether parochial, public, or private, male or female, aristocratic or democratic, was definitely a business in Philadelphia, and almost complete literacy prevailed. Phila- delphians even took a hand in the education of other localities, sending out teachers, and aiding in the organization of at least two institutions of higher learning, the Academy of Newark, later the University of Delaware, and the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. To supply the market created by this expanding educational program, forty-two printers, Franklin and the Bradfords foremost among them, were at work in Philadelphia in the period under discussion, putting out fifteen newspapers, several magazines, and innumerable books and pamphlets. The number of book stores increased from five in 1742 to thirty in the seventies, and some specialized in certain types of books. Gentlemen such as James Logan, Samuel Powel, Richard and William Peters, Francis Hopkinson, and Dr. John Morgan accumulated valuable private libraries, while others joined together to form circulating libraries. Three of these eventually merged with Franklin's Library Company of 1742, and the combined col- lection was installed in Carpenters' Hall in 1773. James Logan bequeathed his library to the city and it was opened to the public in 1768, housed in a one-story brick building on the corner of Sixth and Walnut Streets. Increased reading led to attempts at literary production. James Logan stood first among classical scholars of the colonies, publishing scientific papers in Latin in Europe and America. William Smith, brought to Phila- delphia in 1753 by Franklin as Provost of the College, himself wrote in many forms, and consciously sought to foster literary development among young men of promise of such diverse origin as the blue-blooded Francis Hopkinson and Thomas Godfrey, Jr., son of a lowly glazier. Of more natural charm were the diaries kept by Hannah Callendar, Sarah Eve, and Sally Wister. Most prominent was a voluminous literature of controversy, religious and political, written by such men as Franklin, Smith, David James Dove, John Dickinson, Joseph Galloway, James Wilson, and Tom Paine. Native dramatists were not so productive, though Thomas Godfrey, Jr., and Thomas Forrest each had a play produced at the Southwark Theatre. Despite the opposition of Quakers and Presbyterians, plays were acted professionally in Philadelphia in 1749, 1753, and from 1759 until the out- break of the Revolution. "As many as forty different plays, most of them 168 BOOK REVIEWS April well selected, with an equal number of farces or musical afterpieces, were presented in a single season; included were some thirteen works of Shake- speare, usually, it must be confessed, in the diluted versions of Thomson, Dryden, Cibber, or Garrick." The theater accomplished much in the way of general education sweetened with diversion, but unfortunately it also served as a social divisor by giving an aristocracy on the make the occasion for ostentatious display bitterly resented by the powerful middle class, also on the make. Increasingly elaborate church music, folk music brought by immigrants, political songs enjoyed at taverns or clubs, not to mention formal instruc- tion from some thirty teachers, enabled Philadelphia to overtake and pass her sister cities of Boston and Charleston in the encouragement of music. Shops carried or even specialized in sheet music and musical instruments, and all sorts of the latter were made in the city, many of them by German artisans. Various musical societies were organized, and gave soirees in private homes, while students at the College formed the Orpheus Club in 1759. The first subscription series of concerts was organized and directed by Signor Giovanni Gualdo in 1769, in an atmosphere of "Decency, good Manners and silence" at Davenport's Hall. The theater company even produced a few operas, with local gentry forming the orchestra. "In con- trast with the theater, music, which knew no nation and no class, was a cultural force making for social unity in Philadelphia." As in literature, so in the graphic arts, Philadelphians progressed from possession and enjoyment of the products of others to attempts at produc- tion themselves. Prints were sold at first by booksellers, later at print shops, and copies of paintings in European galleries as well as "engraved views of cities, mezzotints, cartoons, 'perspective views of Gentlemen's Seats,' maps and 'history pieces' found a ready market, first with the gentry, and later among all classes." As early as 1743 James Claypoole "opened a shop in Walnut Street where he sold books and 'most sorts of Painter's Colours, ready prepar'd for Use and neatly put up in Bladders.' " Sign painting furnished apprenticeship and a source of income to would-be portrait painters. During this period some thirty-six portraitists immor- talized the features of Philadelphia's leading citizens. "Much of the work was unschooled and poorly executed," but it reveals an honest craftsman- ship which felt no need of "the fashionably aristocratic deceptions of cur- rent English portraiture." Besides James Claypoole this group included Gustavus Hesselius, Matthew Pratt, Henry Groath, William Bartram, William Williams, and Benjamin West. After 1769 Charles Willson Peale of Maryland joined the group. "Just as the Philadelphia school seemed on the verge of genuine accomplishment an unfortunate mutation occurred" in the sending of Benjamin West to Europe for further study. His subse- quent triumphs filled Philadelphians with pride and caused other young men of promise to follow him to London, where they became imitators of English or European traditions instead of perfecting a native American I943 BOOK REVIEWS 169 art. So far as it went, however, painting had already become more natural- ized than either music or the theater. The three most prominent architects of the Philadelphia of this period happened all to be Quakers: Samuel Powel the elder, known as "the rich carpenter," Samuel Rhoads, designer of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and Robert Smith, who was "responsible for the first, and probably the most valid, American style of college building." Nassau Hall at Princeton and the "New College" building at Philadelphia were designed by him, and the former "clearly furnished the pattern for" both Dartmouth Hall and the "college edifice" at Providence, Rhode Island. He also planned Car- penters' Hall, the Walnut Street Prison, and St. Peters Church. These men, along with such cabinetmakers as William Savery and Thomas Tufft, and such silversmiths as Joseph Richardson, Philip Syng, and David Hall, prospered and took their places in the social and philanthropic life of the town.
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