The Politeness Ethic and the Development of the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England
The Politeness Ethic and the Development of the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England
Rosalind Lee Beng Tan
A thesis submitted in fulfilment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
School of Social Sciences
University of New South Wales
March 2015 Originality Statement
‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in this thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’
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Signed by Rosalind L B Tan
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Acknowledgements
This thesis embodies the humanistic scholarship and the exemplary mentorship of my principal supervisor, Professor Andrew Metcalfe. It is built on his ascetic practice, nurtured through his emphasis on rationality, and sustained till the end by the inspiration of his politeness. It has been an exhilarating and soul-nourishing experience and this thesis will not be possible without the guidance and devotion of Professor Metcalfe.
I wish to extend my heartfelt appreciation to the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales. In particular, I would like to thank Associate Professor Paul Jones for his guidance, and my joint supervisor, Dr Claudia Tazreiter, for her faith in me and for her encouragement throughout my candidature. I have also benefited much from the interest and support of the panel members of the Annual Progress Reviews. I wish to thank Professor Ann Game, Professor Elizabeth Fernandez, Associate Professor Helen Meekosha, Associate Professor Leanne Dowse, Associate Professor Rogelia Pe-Pua, and Dr Mary Zournazi. I have also thoroughly enjoyed the thesis-writing courses conducted by Associate Professor Sue Starfield and Dr Michael Wearing. I am grateful for the kindness and friendship extended to me by Associate Professor Alan Morris, now researching at the Centre for Local Government, University of Technology, Sydney, as well as Professor Ursula Rao, now directing the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. I extend my grateful thanks to my special friend, Dr Monica Laura Vaquez Maggio for her friendship. I would also like to acknowledge the support, kindness and assistance of Ms Anita Sibrits for ensuring that I got the supervisor’s feedback when I was writing in the bush.
At UNSW, my candidature was supported by the efficiency and kindness of the staff at the Inter-Library Loan section of the Library, the Technical Support Service, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, as well as the School of Graduate Research. During my literature research in England on Wedgwood and the production and consumption of porcelain and earthenware, I was privileged to have received the generous help of Kevin Salt at the Wedgwood Museum, as well as the kind assistance of the librarians at the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Library.
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My thesis writing would not have been possible without the constant encouragement and enduring faith of my special friends and loving family. They were instrumental in sustaining the flickering candle light when it was almost extinguished during a thunderstorm. I would like to thank most heartily Andrew and Tracey for standing by me and holding my hands when the going got tough. Gerry and Neil gave me courage to persevere when I stumbled. David and Juliet checked on my progress and listened to my trials with sympathy. Toby and Helen supported with their interest in my thesis argument. Ian and Janie sustained me as I struggled to find my voice. Pauline and Darryl nourished me with their positivity. Lucinda and Martin supported me in my endeavour. Alison and Richard energised me with their intellectual curiosity. Bill and Liz spurred me on through engaging discussions. Kyril and Terry did not doubt my ability to complete the thesis. Dianne and Geoff gave me reason to be tenacious. I acknowledge their embrace as I inch my way up, slowly but surely.
I have a large contingent of the most faithful and devoted cheerleaders from Canada, Singapore and England who hauled me out of the crevasses with their moral strength and emotional support. First and foremost, I cannot thank my sister, Hazel, enough for seeing me through and insisting that I must look for a dedicated supervisor, who has the best interests of the students at heart, and who extends himself beyond the call of duty. She could not have been more ‘spot-on’ with that counsel. I want to thank Hazel for assuming the role of an examiner in guiding me through writing my introduction and conclusion, the two most difficult chapters of the whole thesis.
In the last year, the constant nourishment provided by my special friends and family members, Francisca in Perth and Swee Peng in Singapore, has been indispensable in energising me to keep the faith and finish the race. I thank Meng Eng for her implicit faith and interest in my progress. Dorothy, Lee Lee and Linda have all pushed me closer to the finish line with their encouraging words. I thank Mrs Loong for feeding the chickens, Sugar and Nice, and attending to my veggie patch whilst I studied. I thank James and Angela for helping me sort out my computer problem. I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to Pearlyn for giving me the much needed support before, during and after the Singapore Book Fairs, so that I could focus on my thesis writing. I want to thank Thian Poh, Min Hao and Min Jie for their thoughtfulness and practical help when I had to struggle with thesis writing and selling books. The timely visits of my god-children Gabriel, Lionel, Isabelle, Crystalle, Candice and Annabel during my thesis writing gave me the much needed opportunity to relax
iii and recharge. I want to thank them all for waving their flags and dancing along with their pom-poms right till the end.
The rousing support from Vic and Michael in England came loud and clear. I thank them for their constant encouragement and interest in my progress. Their love and friendship, as well as interest in my thesis, encouraged me to strive on. In particular, I want to acknowledge their hospitality and generosity during my two-week research stint in England. I thank Nigel and Gilly, Alistair and Mrs Doreen Drake for believing in me and cheering me on.
The thesis writing is a collaborative effort. It is a joint mobilization exercise from the very beginning. There is no way I could have done it alone. Nicholas Drake has been my examiner, supervisor, co-researcher, and collaborator throughout this journey. He is also the gardener, the cook, the washer-upper, the handyman, the courier pigeon and the best helpmate. Not only did he have to endure late nights listening to my various hypotheses, but he also had to keep my body and soul together. I have been nourished on the sweetest and freshest sweet corn, peas, broccoli, cabbages, zucchinis, cucumbers, chillies, tomatoes, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, artichoke, radishes, capsicums, ladies fingers, garlic, brinjals and celery. As the head gardener, he delighted me with the most beautiful lavender, roses, irises, gladioli, camellia, sweet peas and dahlia. It is his pursuit of perfection and interest in classical symmetry and proportion, in life and aesthetics, which inspired me to study eighteenth-century England. Nicholas’s ascetic approach to cultivating the land and ensuring that the best yields are coaxed from the veggie garden, as well as his pursuit of perfection, convinced me that politeness is not an ethical and aesthetic orientation appropriated only by the Georgian English.
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Thesis Abstract
The transition of the age of enlightenment has been interrogated in several ways. Weber traces the relationship between asceticism and the rise of capitalism in the seventeenth century. Elias discusses the cultivation of civilitè, founded on rationalization, social constraints and self-restraint, in interrogating the making of the French courtiers and the bourgeois society. In analysing the development of the public sphere, Habermas identifies the importance of conversation, predicated on rationality and sociability. Foucault stresses the disciplining of the self to prepare the individuals to participate in the public sphere.
To contribute to the above dialogue, this thesis interrogates the idiom of politeness as a constituent of the ethical and aesthetic landscape of eighteenth-century England. It analyses the themes of asceticism, rationality and sociability implicit in the three key components of politeness: self-cultivation, social interaction and cultural construction. To trace the rise and pursuit of politeness, this thesis refers to the works, letters and personal notes of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, the writings of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele as encapsulated in the Spectator, personal correspondence of Josiah Wedgwood, one of England foremost capitalists, as well as secondary historical literature.
In The Protestant Ethic, Weber establishes the congruence between Calvinism and the spirit of capitalism. This thesis interrogates the life of Josiah Wedgwood, a non- Calvinist, to illustrate that capitalism in the post-puritan era did not function on a mechanistic foundation as suggested by Weber. Rather, it proposes that the ethic of politeness, rooted in asceticism and predicated on rationality and sociability, exerted its influence on the new class of gentlemen, represented by Wedgwood in his role as a capitalist, cultural producer and citizen-patriot.
Using empirical evidence from secondary literature, and the case study of Wedgwood, this thesis argues that the reformulation of the Continental courtly notion of civilitè provided a new polite idiom that expanded the stratum of the social elite, and established a new basis for the political legitimacy and social identity of the ascendant commercial class. It concludes that the ethic of politeness, which facilitated the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance, also supported the development of the public sphere in eighteenth-century England, as theorised by Habermas.
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Table of Contents
List of Figures
Introduction………………………………………………………………………...... 1
PART ONE: Socio-Historical Paradigm
Chapter 1: The Weberian Paradigm…………………………………………………….11
1.1 The Methodological Procedure 1.2 Spirit of Capitalism 1.3 Doctrine of Predestination and the Notion of Calling 1.4 Limitations and Research Implications
Chapter 2: The Cultivation of the Modern Self……………….………………………24
2.1 The Ethics of the Concern of the Self 2.2 Civilité and the Civilizing Process 2.2.1 Civilité and Court Society 2.2.2 Civilité and Bourgeois Society 2.2.3 The English Parliamentarians and National Code of Affect-Control
Chapter 3: Political Stability, Religious Toleration, Cultural Construction and the Civic Paradigm of Politeness……………………………………………………………35
3.1 Overview of Political, Religious and Cultural Order of Post-1688 England 3.1.1 Political Supremacy and Religious Toleration 3.1.2 Liberty and Cultural Construction 3.2 The Civic Paradigm of Politeness 3.2.1 The Rise of Commerce and the Sublimation of Passions 3.2.2 The Rise of Commerce and the Practice of Civic Virtue 3.2.3 The Rise of Commerce and the Emergence of the Aristocratic-Bourgeois Alliance
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Chapter 4: Habermas and the Bourgeois Public Sphere……………………….50
4.1 Emergence of the Public Sphere 4.2 Development of the Public Sphere 4.2.1 Development of the Literary Public Sphere and the Salons 4.2.2 Development of the Political Public Sphere and the Coffee Houses 4.3 Review of Critique of The Structural Transformation
Chapter 5: Interpretation of the Cambridge Platonists…..………….…………..68
5.1 The Cambridge Platonists as Promoters of Christian Sentimentalism 5.2 The Cambridge Platonists as Theologians of Rationality
Chapter 6: Interpretation of Shaftesbury …………………………….……………77
6.1 Rejection of the Aristocratic Aesthetics 6.2 Ethic of Emotional Hedonism and Aesthetic Relativism
PART TWO: Empirical Evidence
Chapter 7: Shaftesbury as an Interpreter of Politeness……………………………84
7.1 Aristocratic Lineage and Political Participation 7.2 Fulfilment of Political, Civic and Family Duty
Chapter 8: Shaftesbury’s Interpretation of Politeness……………………………..100
8.1 Asceticism in Self-Cultivation 8.2 Sociability in the Transformation of Civic Personality 8.3 Polite Cultural Construction and Collaboration in the Public Sphere
Chapter 9: The Spectator and Coffee House Sociability…………………………..115
9.1 Editors of the Spectator 9.2 Aim and Appeal of the Spectator 9.3 Coffee House Sociability
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Chapter 10: Polite Cultural Construction by the Aristocratic-Bourgeois Alliance …………………………………………………………………………………………….125
10.1 The Kit-Cat Club 10.2 The Dilettanti Society 10.3 The Literary Club 10.4 The Lunar Society of Birmingham
Chapter 11: Conversation and Sociability in the Bluestocking Salons…………146
11.1 Elizabeth Montagu: Queen of the Bluestockings 11.2 Conversation in the Salons as Participation in the Public Sphere
Chapter 12: Participation of the Bluestockings in the Public Sphere…………..163
12.1 Elizabeth Montagu: Literary Criticism 12.2 Elizabeth Carter: Theological Disputation and Classical Translation 12.3 Catherine Macaulay: History Writing 12.4 Angelica Kaufmann: History Painting 12.5 The Legacy of the Bluestockings
Chapter 13: Wedgwood’s Polite Self-Cultivation………………………………….191
13.1 Wedgwood’s Apprenticeship and Partnership 13.2 Wedgwood’s Ethical and Aesthetic Orientation: Partnership of Mutual Polish 13.3 Wedgwood’s Scientific Progress: Collaboration of the Lunar Men 13.4 Wedgwood’s Pursuit of Perfection and Efficiency 13.4.1 Pursuit of Artistic Perfection 13.4.2 Pursuit of Factory Efficiency
Chapter 14: Wedgwood’s Polite Cultural Construction and Collaboration……219
14.1 Wedgwood as an Artist 14.2 Wedgwood as a Cultural Collaborator 14.3 The Cultural Legacy of Wedgwood
Chapter 15: Wedgwood’s Polite Participation in the Public Sphere……...... 239
15.1 Wedgwood as a Civic Leader 15.2 Wedgwood as a Defender of Liberty
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Conclusion…………………………………………………………….………………251
References……………………………………………………………………………..262
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Will’s Coffee House……………………………………………….…....59
Figure 2: Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683)……………………………………...74
Figure 3: Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)……………..……………….....85
Figure 4: John Locke (1632-1704)…………………………………………………89
Figure 5: Shaftesbury’s Country House at St Giles, Dorset..…………………..90
Figure 6: Joseph Addison (1672-1719)…………………………..……………….117
Figure 7: Richard Steele (1672-1729).……………………………………….……117
Figure 8: Lloyds Coffee House……..……………………………………….……121
Figure 9: John Somers, Baron of Evesham (1651-1716)………………………...128
Figure 10: Jacob Tonson (1655-1736)………………………………………………129
Figure 11: William Congreve (1670-1729)..………………………………….……131
Figure 12: Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)……………………………………….134
Figure 13: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)………………………………………135
Figure 14: David Garrick in the Character of Richard III……………………….137
Figure 15: Garrick with the Bust of Shakespeare………………………………...139
Figure 16: Mr and Mrs Garrick by the Shakespeare Temple at Hampton…….140
Figure 17: Dr Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802…………………………….…………141
Figure 18: Portland House at Bulstrode…………….……………………………151
Figure 19: Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702-1771)…………………………………….154
Figure 20: David Hume (1711-1776)………………………………………………155
Figure 21: Lord George Lyttleton (1709-1773)……………………………………156
Figure 22: Portman House (1781)..………………………………………………...161
Figure 23: Lady Elizabeth Montagu (1718-1800)..…………………….………….165
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Figure 24: Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806)………………………………….………….171
Figure 25: Catherine Macaulay (1731-1791)…………………………….………...... 173
Figure 26: Angelica Kaufmann (1741-1807)….……………………………………..178
Figure 27: Sappho (1775)……………………………………………………………..179
Figure 28: The Artist in Character of Design (1782)…………………………….....180
Figure 29: The Judgment of Hercules (1713)……………………………………….181
Figure 30: Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy (1762)………………………...182
Figure 31: Self-Portrait: Hesitating Between The Arts of Music and Painting (1791)……………………………………………………………………….183
Figure 32: The Paintress of Macaroni’s (1772)……………………………………...184
Figure 33: Abelard and Eliosa (1775-8)……………………………………………...185
Figure 34: The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (1779)…….……………..…...186
Figure 35: The Distributions of Premiums in the Society of Arts (1792)…………188
Figure 36: Illustration of Wedgwood Family Pottery Works in Burslem………..194
Figure 37: Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795)…………………………………………...195
Figure 38: Sarah Wedgwood (1734-1815)…………………………………………...196
Figure 39: Thomas Bentley (1731-1780)……………………………………………..198
Figure 40: Etruria Hall (1771)………………………………………………………..200
Figure 41: Wedgwood’s First Day’s Vases (1769)………………………………....202
Figure 42: Matthew Boulton (1728-1809)…………………………………………...205
Figure 43: Dr Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)…………………………………………206
Figure 44: James Watt (1738-1819)…………………………………………………..206
Figure 45: James Keir (1735-1820)…………………………………………………...208
Figure 46: John Whitehurst (1713-1788)…………………………………………….210
Figure 47: Wedgwood’s Pyrometer (1782)…………………………………………215
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Figure 48: The Frog Service – a serving dish (1774)……………………………….222
Figure 49: Black Basalt Bust of Shakespeare (1743-1820)………………………….224
Figure 50: Blue Jasper Portrait Medallion of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820)……..225
Figure 51: Blue Jasper Portrait of Captain Phillip Cook (1738-1814)…………….226
Figure 52: Wedgwood’s London Showroom………………………………………227
Figure 53: Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803)…………………………...... 230
Figure 54: Pair of Blue and White Jasperware……………………………………..232
Figure 55: The Portland Vase (1790)……………………………………………...... 234
Figure 56: The Pegasus Vase (1791)…………………………………………………235
Figure 57: The Slave Medallion (1788)………………………………………………246
Figure 58: Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790)…………………………………………..252
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Introduction
A Singaporean Perspective
This thesis began as a personal attempt to understand why neo-classicism still resonates today, as seen in the antique collections and interior decorations of some English and Australian homes. The desire of the English to connect with the past stands in contrast to the value-orientation of postmodern Singaporeans, whose general appreciation of the new, involves a rejection of all things old. Having developed from a small fishing village and a colonial outpost, we think of our past in terms of powerlessness and stagnation. Thus, most Singaporeans decorate their homes with the latest gadgets and most up-to-date furniture, as a sign of progress.
Not only did I notice that the English seem to venerate the past, I also noticed that neo-classical reproductions of the Georgian period are particularly associated with the notion of good taste. People talking about the neo-classical decorations often identified with them, as if they were a credo, a practical embodiment of what the person believes. I have learnt that this notion of good taste in the neo-classical tradition is related to the attributes of symmetry and proportion, as well as a disdain for ostentation, but I wanted to understand what else was involved. How far did this aesthetic reach in people’s lives in the past?
To my postmodern Singaporean eye, neo-classicism initially suggested affectation, a sense of snobbery or maybe an attempt to seek the beauty of the past because of disenchantment with the present. Indeed, the pursuit of cultural refinement has popularly been read as conspicuous consumption, an attempt by the aspiring class to seek a mark of social distinction, to present proof of pecuniary prowess. Such an argument is found in leading sociological accounts of Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1934), Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), and Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984). These theorists characterise human beings as insecure and plagued by the need to put on a show of respectability to fortify their sense of wellbeing. This type of argument, however, can lead to one-sided and ahistorical analyses which do not consider the value-orientations of a specific group of people in a specific socio- historical milieu. For this reason, I decided that I would focus my study on the specific period of eighteenth-century England, when this neo-classical style became popular, as a mark of good taste but also, I found as a pursuit of an ethic of politeness.
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The notion of politeness intrigues me. In my Confucian upbringing in Singapore, politeness means respect for authority and deference to the elderly. The society is regarded as one big family with the government acting as its patriarchal head. It works like a fully-integrated machine where everyone has a specific role, rights and responsibilities. The rulers make the decisions and the people implement them. The parents give instructions and the children obey them. The teachers instruct and the pupils obey. Politeness ensures social harmony and minimises discord as there is respect for political authority, economic leadership and social hierarchy.
However, in my interaction with the family and friends of my English husband, I begin to detect that politeness has quite a different interpretation, and is friendlier and less hierarchical. Politeness is embedded in social intercourse, in the form of conversation. At dinner parties in Singapore, conversations are, by and large, non- confrontational, which is how we understand politeness. The emphasis is on the need to show agreement and to hide disagreement, for fear of offending others. However, in my interactions with the English, I see the opposite situation in operation: conversations are opportunities for collisions and disagreements. There is far less concern to forge a consensus and more interest in encouraging everyone to have a say. There is use of humour and raillery, as well as the pitting of wits and use of rhetoric. This is all quite intimidating to straight-talking Singaporeans, unused to the sophistication of verbal interchanges, and I find myself wondering what it is that makes the English talk the way they do. At our recent Christmas party, my husband was laughed at for his strident comment that scientists have attained full knowledge about the universe, and his Cambridge-trained friend was in turn scoffed at for making naïve economic predictions. Everyone laughed at everyone else and nobody minded the collisions.
Besides the sociability engendered at social gatherings, I also notice a palpable sense of community and sociability encouraged at the University of New South Wales. In the pursuit of learning, the Confucianist emphasis on self-discipline, industry and perseverance is akin to the asceticism of the Puritans, which emphasised individualism and discouraged sociability. Intellectual achievements are meant to measure the individual merit of the scholars, and not be seen as the result of a collaborative effort. By contrast, a spirit of collaboration and sociability between the lecturers and the students was alive in the Sociology 101 lectures I attended. I was particularly pleased to find myself in a large auditorium where the lectures were conducted in a friendly and egalitarian manner. Hierarchy was dismissed and the discussions were guided by the rules of rationality and sociability. There was no one
2 lecturing up there on the rostrum, and no need to scribble down notes like I was used to in Singapore. The students could sit back and relax and actually enjoy the sessions as they were invited to express their opinions and collectively consider the work of Martin Buber and Roland Barthes. I think most of the students found that such an egalitarian and engaging approach to learning liberating.
Politeness and the Cultivation of the Self and Society
I have presented three ways in which the English and Australians were to distinguish themselves: that of looking to the past as a source of inspiration; that of using conversation as the medium to engender sociability; and that of encouraging collaborative deliberations and participation in public discourses, unhindered by external forces. To help me understand these distinctive cultural attributes, I look back to the history of the making of modern England in the eighteenth-century, to trace evidence of a psychological sanction that could have promoted a more egalitarian approach to social interaction and participation in the public sphere. I also consider the interpretation of such an ethical orientation in the context of the structural transformation in the religious, political, economic and social realms of eighteenth-century England.
In “The Uses of Eighteenth-Century Politeness”, Paul Langford suggests that politeness “is a difficult [word] to pin down…because ‘politeness’ as we use it today has such a bland superficiality about it” (2002: 311). He points out ‘politeness’ in the study of linguistics is interpreted as a non-problematic term connoting mainly the strategies individuals adopt to smooth social relations, especially in conversations. However, he argues, citing Raymond Williams, that politeness in eighteenth-century England, is “a key word, with a meaning and implications that open doors into the mentality of a period” (2002: 311).
In “Politeness for plebes: Consumption and social identity in early eighteenth- century England”, Lawrence Klein concludes that “English eighteenth century was an age of politeness”, corresponding “to a range of distinctive social and cultural practices in eighteenth-century England” (1995a: 362). He points out that the vocabulary of politeness, used as an analytic construct, included “attentiveness to form, sociability, improvement, worldliness, and gentility” (2002: 869). In “The Civic Paradigm and Shaftesbury”, Michael Crozier elaborates that the programme of politeness recommended “polite sociable intercourse…in which there is developed a
3 sensitivity to others’ needs and perceptions as well as to how oneself is perceived” (1995: 77).
What interests me in this list are the way politeness tied together a concern for personal cultivation with a sense of worldly improvement, and the way in which it reconciled the interests of “the country gentlemen and the urban merchant” (Crozier 1995: 77). My focus is to understand the psychological sanction of the ethic of politeness on self-cultivation, social interaction and cultural construction on a collaborative basis. I am interested in the way it brought together the notion of asceticism with a sociable and optimistic civic vision, based on a lively public sphere.
This thesis assesses the sociological importance of the notion of politeness as interpreted and promoted by influential members of the ruling political party, the Whigs, and pursued by the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance in the long eighteenth century beginning from the 1688 Revolution. This is a sociological argument based on historical evidence. To situate the argument, I have borrowed the sociological insights of Max Weber, Norbert Elias and Jürgen Habermas in their respective analyses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England.
In the following analysis, I research the rise, progress and pursuit of politeness, as an ethical and aesthetic orientation, in eighteenth-century England. I present evidence to suggest that a new cultural paradigm was advanced at this time, rooted in asceticism and predicated on rationality and sociability. I submit a sociological interpretation of the works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, whom I identify as a key interpreter of the ethic of politeness. In this discussion, I sharply distinguish my analysis from the one offered by Colin Campbell in his book, “The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism” (1987). I also provide evidence to demonstrate that this polite cultural model promoted collaboration between cultural producers and the aristocracy. In Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Times, Opinions, published in 1711, Shaftesbury insisted that “all Politeness is owing to Liberty”, a claim which, in Klein’s interpretation, “conjoined two discursive phenomena: on the one hand, the language of politeness, and on the other, the civic tradition in English political discourse” (Klein 1989: 584). Viewed in this way, politeness is central to the development of a public political discourse in early eighteenth-century England.
This ethic of politeness, as interpreted by Shaftesbury and his philosophical allies, represented a turning point, away from the despotism of the courts and medieval ways, and towards a liberating modernity that facilitated the participation of the
4 patriot-citizens in the public sphere. It generated an ethos that was not orientated to an established standard of virtue, but instead based virtue on the never-ending pursuit of learning, as both private and civic good. Rather than turning people inward, in pursuit of salvation, this ethic turned them outward, so that attention to others and care for others was indistinguishable from the care of the self. Implicit in the ethic of politeness, I argue, is an opposition to acquisitive individualism. Just as self-cultivation could only be complete in its articulation in social intercourse, individual acquisition of knowledge and cultural refinement were to be seen as morally corrupt if they were not pursued as part of civic duty. Here, then, was an ethic that maintained some of the asceticism of Puritanism but that transformed it in ways that turned out to be of great historical significance.
The rise of modern England was characterised by an emphasis on intellectual exchange, cultural collaboration and scientific co-operation. The age of enlightenment represented a revolution in daring to know and thinking for oneself. Its practical approach to egalitarianism was to be found in its adoption of conversation as the ideal medium of social interaction and moral reformation. In the ethic of politeness, the city, and gradually the towns, were to provide the public space, through coffee houses, tea-tables, concert halls, theatres, pleasure gardens and private salons, which admitted and invited private persons to come together to form a public. Such cultural institutions facilitated the development of a civil society where citizens found themselves, connected by both a concern for common good, and a respect for the differences between them. Politeness encouraged the development of all forms of human creativity and ingenuity that were to contribute to public welfare. In such a polite polity, active participation was encouraged, and rationality and sociability were its passwords. It was in the public sphere that there can be a realization of self-cultivation.
Thesis Synopsis
My investigation starts at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ends his pessimistic account of the spirit of capitalism being stripped of its moral foundation. Weber focuses his study strictly on the specific relationship between the attributes that make up the spirit of capitalism and the key tenets of Calvinism, but my account of eighteenth-century men and women is concerned with the relation between the ethic of politeness and the civic spirit that came to change the cultural practices and political structure of
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England. This change involved, as Habermas has argued, both an increased interdependence between the state and the people, as well as the alliance between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in its commercial expansion. The key contention here is that the pursuit of virtue, which is central to the making of humanity, is not articulated exclusively in the language of religion. Weber insists that the decline of Puritanism in the eighteenth century resulted in the imprisonment of the spirit and soul of the English in its pursuit of materialism, but I suggest, on the contrary, that the ethic of politeness as rehabilitated by Shaftesbury and his philosophical allies legitimised the pursuit of civic virtue in the collaborative cultural construction in the public sphere.
Habermas explains that the public sphere means “first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed” (1964: 49). He judges that the public sphere began to take shape with the termination of the religious war and with the institution of parliamentary monarchy, arguing that the political, economic and social transformation of England from the 1688 Revolution up till the end of the eighteenth century in its continuity as “uniquely suited to the study of a critically debating public’s gradual assumption of the functions of political control” (1992: 62). Following the analysis of Habermas, this thesis focuses on investigating the coterminous advancement of the ethic of politeness and the development of a public sphere in eighteenth-century England.
This thesis is divided into two parts. Part 1 establishes the sociological foundation and Part 2 borrows these perspectives to analyse the empirical evidence. I begin Chapter 1 with a discussion of the methodological procedure of this thesis. To situate my argument I provide a review of Weber’s central argument on the overarching influence of the theology of Calvinism on the behaviour of the seventeenth-century capitalists. I conclude with a critique of the limitations of Weber’s thesis and the implications for this current research.
In Chapters 2, 3 and 4, I establish the socio-historical paradigm of the polite culture. Chapter 2 provides the sociological perspective of Foucault on the ethic of self-care as a practice of freedom. It also considers Elias’s analysis of the cultivation of the notion of civilité in the French court and bourgeois society. In particular, it looks at Elias’s observation of an English innovation of gentlemanliness appropriated by the eighteenth-century parliamentarians. Chapter 3 presents an overview of the key ideological concerns of the intelligentsia, theologians and political elites in eighteenth-century England. It focuses on the Whig promotion of the ethic of politeness, which provided the emergent bourgeois group of merchants, financiers,
6 capitalists and industrialists with, a new sense of political and social legitimacy. It must be emphasised that this historical survey is to situate the interpretation of Habermas’s key arguments of the public sphere, and the analysis of the promotion and pursuit of politeness in eighteenth-century England. There is no attempt to engage in any in-depth discussion on the multiplicity of views on the emergence of the civic tradition.
In Chapter 4, I present Habermas’s key arguments on the constitution of the literary and political public sphere in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. This Habermasian paradigm is central to the thesis. It indicates the significance the emergence of critical publicity in the coffee houses and the salons in eighteenth- century England. This analysis also considers the critique of what some consider as Habermas’s idealized liberal bourgeois public sphere. It concludes that the Habermasian model is best interpreted as an example of the Weberian ideal type to enable researchers to make comparative analyses with the different modes of public spheres across time, space and culture.
Before proceeding to examining the empirical evidence to illustrate the promotion and pursuit of politeness, I pause in Chapters 5 and 6 to address the hypothesis of Colin Campbell, presented in The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (1987). Campbell has intended his book to comment on and to complement the analysis of Weber’s work on The Protestant Ethic. Campbell’s work is of particular relevance because he has identified the third Earl of Shaftesbury as the founder of a new ethic, that of emotional hedonism, which is fundamentally different from this thesis’s interpretation of an ethic of politeness, rooted in asceticism and civic virtue. In Chapters 5 and 6, I challenge Colin Campbell’s interpretation of Cambridge Platonism and his attribution of emotional hedonism to Shaftesbury.
Part 2 which begins with Chapter 7, examines the empirical evidence on the interpretation and appropriation of the ethic of politeness by the men and women in the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance. Specifically, it assesses how their cultural construction paved the way for the public participation of the English. I should say, that I will use the terms, England and English loosely, focussing on the English, but potentially including other inhabitants of the British Isles. In this vein, I should also note that I will maintain reference to the masculine gender when it reflects the tenor of the times. Where both genders are included in the analysis, they will be specified.
Chapter 7 focuses on Shaftesbury, as a major interpreter and innovator of the politeness ethic. This chapter provides a biographical sketch, as well as an account of
7 his philosophical foundation and cultural politics. Chapter 8 examines the three related notions of self-cultivation, social interaction and cultural collaboration, to provide a composite picture of the polite cultural template designed by Shaftesbury to guide the English elites in taking over from the courts and church in the construction of its liberal modernity. Chapter 9 reviews the role of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, the philosophical and political allies of Shaftesbury, in their rehabilitation of the coffee houses as social sites for the practice of politeness. Chapter 10 provides evidence of the cultural collaboration between the titled and the talented in the refinement of taste. It discusses: the cultural contribution of a group of political and economic elites who came together to form the informal Kit-Cat Club; the connoisseurs of neo-classicism who formed the Dilettanti Society; members of the Literary Society; as well as the self-made and educated men from the Midlands, who constituted the Lunar Society of Birmingham.
Having examined the role of gentlemen in England’s cultural construction, I also examine the role of women in the English patriarchal society. Chapter 11 considers the role of women of influence, nicknamed the Bluestockings, in the development of the public sphere. This role relied on their hosting of mixed-gender salons that privileged conversation as the medium of learning and social intercourse. Chapter 12 assesses the contribution of these women through their literary and artistic productions.
This thesis concludes with a 3-part discussion of one of England’s foremost capitalists, Josiah Wedgwood, as a polite gentleman, who pursued the ethic of politeness through his classical reproductions. I argue that, in his role as a capitalist, Wedgwood exhibited the ascetic rationalism of a Weber puritan. However, his social, cultural and political life reflected the psychological sanction of the ethic of politeness. Chapter 13 looks at Wedgwood’s pursuit of politeness through his self- cultivation, based on his collaborative endeavours with members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. Chapter 14 assesses Wedgwood’s pursuit of politeness through his role as an artist and cultural collaborator. Chapter 15 investigates the extent to which Wedgwood, as a self-made man of humble origins, was enabled, through the idiom of politeness, to participate in the political realm of the public sphere.
The case study of Wedgwood illustrates that the middle class interpreted and appropriated the politeness ethic in their own terms to meet their own needs. The practice of politeness was not to be found only in the theatres, concert halls, assembly rooms, and salons in London, frequented by the rich, but also in the coffee
8 houses, public libraries, reading societies and in clubs which were open to all in the provincial towns. The strength of politeness was its fluidity and flexibility. Unlike the doctrinal rigidity and uniformity insisted upon by the Puritans, politeness was open and inclusive. In its interpretative amenability, politeness lent itself as an egalitarian construct that could be applied across locale, class, gender and religion.
In this thesis, eighteenth-century England is interpreted within the context of a reformation of civility, where enlightened philosophers advanced the pursuit of civic virtue through an attainment of knowledge and through cultural collaboration in the public sphere. The term ‘politeness’ may have limited resonance to many English or Australian men and women today. However, many of the social practices and cultural institutions that we are familiar with today in Australia were constructed in the idiom of politeness in eighteenth-century England. In our social practices, we expect our politicians to behave with decorum and to observe rules of gentlemanliness. We feel aggrieved when our successful corporations and individuals do not do their part to contribute to public good. We value the principle of civic participation and make our voices heard through conversations, emails, Facebook and Twitter. In our cultural institutions, we uphold the virtue of learning through public institutions such as universities, colleges and schools. We encourage the exercise of rationality and the engendering of sociability in our study groups, work teams, social forums, dinner parties and even our backyard barbecues.
In the following chapters, I present a sociological interrogation of the ways in which the ethic of politeness enabled the English to devote themselves to the pursuit of civic virtue through the regimen of self-cultivation, practice of social intercourse and process of cultural collaboration. I suggest that such a code of morality prepared the English as individuals to come together as a public to assume responsibility for the making of a good society in the eighteenth century.
I have come to understand and experience that politeness means facilitating collective deliberations and encouraging different points of views at social gatherings, in the lecture theatres and also in thesis writing. This thesis represents a collaborative effort, in which, under the humanistic mentorship of supervisors and in the collegial spirit of the university, I hope to be able to contribute to the making of knowledge to further the understanding of ourselves.
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Part One: Socio-Historical Paradigm
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Chapter 1: The Weberian Paradigm
Introduction
This thesis investigates the pursuit of civic virtue and the participation of the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance in the public sphere, facilitated by the idiom of politeness, in eighteenth-century England. It builds on the sociological paradigm of Weber, which theorises that the ethical orientation of a society is one of the most important factors to consider in analysing social behaviour. In The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism (2003), Weber insists on the overarching influence of ascetic Christianity on the rise of capitalism.
Weber maintains that it is not just the rational, technical and scientific elements that facilitated the development of modern Western capitalism. He states categorically that the spirit of modern capitalism could not have derived independently or exclusively from selfishness, greed or pure lust for gold. Rather, he insists on “the influence of certain religious ideas on the development of an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system” (2003: 27). In Weber’s estimation, the ascetic rationalism of the Protestant ethic is one distinctive factor that is able to account for the rise of modern capitalism, and more particularly, he identifies the Calvinist doctrine of predestination as the source of the motivation of the capitalists in their drive to accumulate profits.
In Weber’s analysis, participation in the new economic order in seventeenth-century England was not prohibited by the Protestant churches. On the contrary, it was given a new religious significance. The capitalists saw the profit-making opportunities as a responsible discharge of their religious duty, and as a way to gain personal assurance of their providential approbation. Weber argues that such an interpretation of economic activity had an enormous impact on the development of capitalism in the West, enabling the Puritans to respond confidently to the practical demands of the rationalization of Western economies. In other words, Calvinistic other-worldliness provided a moral and genuine way for the believers to conduct themselves. They believed that their participation in the capitalistic ventures was ordained by God and its results would be approved by God. Puritan other- worldliness unshackled them from traditional values and ways.
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Weber ends his thesis on a pessimistic note. He claims that when the Puritan impulse exhausted itself at the end of the seventeenth century, the English society sustained itself mechanistically, devoid of an ethical system. He uses the metaphor of the iron cage not just to describe the rationalised and bureaucratised economy, but also to characterise the state of imprisonment of the modern world with the rise of materialism. Contrary to the pessimistic view of Weber, I argue that eighteenth- century England found a new sense of optimism after the attainment of parliamentary monarchy with the 1688 Revolution. In particular, I propose that the ethic of politeness, supported by moderate theology and promoted by civic thinkers, provided a new way of thinking and living in the post-puritan world.
To situate my argument, I review Weber’s key arguments in this chapter. I summarise his description of the spirit of capitalism and ascetic Christianity, and highlight its congruence. I also single out the incompatibility of Calvinism with the development of commerce and culture in eighteenth-century England. I conclude with an analysis of the limitations of Weber’s exploratory essay, and an explanation of how this thesis follows on from his study.
Before presenting the central argument contained in The Protestant Ethic, I discuss the methodological procedure of the Weberian paradigm, which I too am employing in this thesis.
1.1 The Methodological Procedure
In "Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences", published in 1905, Weber rejects any attempt to apply universal principles to account for specific historical phenomenon. Rather, to allow him to study history sociologically, he relies on the researcher’s normative judgment, on the selection of subject matter, and, crucially, on the use of the analytical construct of the ideal type. In observing and interpreting specific concrete historical reality, Weber’s key concern is to establish the basic “problem of the relationship between general sociological concepts and propositions on the one hand, and concrete historical reality on the other” (Shils 1977: 1). What preoccupies him is the connection between evaluative viewpoints and empirical knowledge. To put it in Shils’s term, the “value relevance” of concrete events. It is such an emphasis that is to distinguish the social sciences from the natural sciences.
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It enables the researcher to look at the features of a social institution as if it were a logically consistent whole, unaffected by other institutions, concerns and interests.
Fundamental to Weber’s sociology is the search for what motivates social action. He argues that it is the uniformities of social actions that make it possible for researchers to derive certain social laws that model social behaviour. This being so, Weber does not establish universal principles to understand social behaviour of all peoples across time, space and culture. He emphasises the importance of selecting a particular group of social actors and understanding their behaviour within a specific social context and historical milieu. What Weber takes from his analysis is expressed in terms of ideal types, which are not to be misunderstood as findings from empirical historiography.
Weber first develops the concept of the ideal type in his arguments against the economist Carl Menger in his paper “Objectivity in the Theory of Social Sciences and of Social Policy” (Cahnman 1964: 103-27). Menger sought to establish naturalistic laws, based on what he claimed was a universal egoistic or acquisitive drive. Weber maintains instead that economic theories do not provide universal laws, but present models upon which real life comparative analyses can be made. Weber insists on the construction of these models:
An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those onesidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (Shils & Finch 1977: 90).
Weber’s typology is not a description of concrete reality or even of the essential features of such a reality. Rather it is “an ideal limiting concept with which a real situation, or action, is compared” in order to appraise its “objective possibility” and “adequate causation” (Shils & Finch 1977: 90, 93). Gerth and Mills (1946: 60) point out that “As general concepts, ideal types are tools with which Weber prepares the descriptive materials of world history for comparative analysis”. Each ideal type is inadequate on its own to describe social action. But by highlighting the typical or
13 logically consistent features of social institutions, it provides a conceptual standard that allows historical comparisons to be made. Such an analytical construct is more useful than a very general abstract or a specific historical example. Weber uses it to analyse a broad suprahistorical phenomenon such as capitalism, as well as a specific historical occurrence, such as the development of the Protestant ethic in seventeenth- century England.
The measure of an ideal typical argument is not to be found in its ability to validate a hypothesis. Rather, it is to suggest plausibility, affinity and congruence among the related social phenomena studied. It is largely important for provoking more historical-sociological dialogue. Accordingly, this thesis, which adopts the Weberian paradigm, does not claim to have provided any definitive view on the promotion and pursuit of the culture of the politeness. It serves the limited objective of stimulating more discussions on how cultural construction could have been articulated in the making of modern England. The sociological interpretation of the culture of politeness is explored and understood in its own terms rather than with reference to a body of generalized rules and theories. I set out to develop the ethic of politeness as an ideal type, and use this construct to explore the possibility that such an ethic could have facilitated what Habermas argues was the development of the public sphere.
Having provided an account of the methodological procedure adopted in this thesis, I proceed to review and critique Weber’s Protestant Ethic, contextualised in seventeenth-century England. I would like to reiterate that this thesis is not a refutation of Weber’s central argument. Rather, it is a follow-up of his analysis of the economically-empowered capitalists and their participation in eighteenth-century English cultural construction.
1.2 Spirit of Capitalism
In analysing the rise of Western capitalism, Weber insists that rationalization, which permeated the Western culture in the seventeenth century, was more characteristic of the Occident than any other cultures in the world. He posits that the Western form
14 of capitalism was not to be understood as a mere impulse to pursue profits. Rather, he suggests that capitalism “may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse” (2003: 17). Weber regards Western capitalism as the pursuit of profit, and as the re-investment of profits to generate even higher profits, in a continuous, purposeful, calculated and rational manner. To survive and flourish, capitalists were required to take advantage of all profit-making opportunities.
By the spirit of capitalism, Weber refers to a peculiar philosophy of avarice which had an ethical basis. The characteristics of such an ethos were: “the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit” and, above all, “the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself” (2003: 51). He uses the American capitalist, Benjamin Franklin, as an exemplar of this spirit, and he insists capitalist success was used by Puritans as a way to seek assurance of God’s grace and the certainty of their salvation. The adherents’ commitment to capitalism became a test of their moral fibre which demanded that their whole life be rationalised in an ascetic way. Profits were maximised through a methodical and systematic management of the businesses; it required severe self-control. Furthermore, the discipline required of them gave the work itself its intrinsic dignity. Weber insists that ascetic Protestantism exerted upon its adherents a particular ethical posture, and it in turn brought out a particular business ethic that demanded an ascetic orientation.
According to Weber, what was critical for the development of capitalism was a compatible mind-set or an appropriate attitude. “Labour must,” Weber said “be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling” (2003: 62). Claiming that such an attitude could not have evolved naturally, nor been evoked using financial incentives, Weber argues that it was a religious foundation that provided the capitalist with the inner strength to overcome all obstacles that came his way.
Weber asserts that the Western capitalist required the clarity of vision and ability to act honestly and industriously in order to succeed. More important than mere capital acquisition and accumulation, was asceticism’s role in facilitating the development of a rational bourgeois economic life, that was confident of its virtue. He maintains that the bourgeois asceticism was “above all the only consistent influence in the development of that life. It stood at the cradle of the modern economic man” (2003: 174). Weber concludes:
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One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism, and not only of that but of all modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling was born…from the spirit of Christian asceticism (2003: 180).
1.3 Doctrine of Predestination and the Notion of Calling
Having characterised the spirit of capitalism, Weber surveys the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. This doctrine taught that God, in his infinite wisdom and power, had already decided arbitrarily and irrevocably, the salvation or damnation of every individual. Nothing could change this state of affairs: not good deeds, not sacraments, not even the mediating power of the priests. No one was supposed to know the state of his salvation. Puritans were taught to assume that they were saved and not to doubt God.
Such a doctrine, Weber claims, exerted a psychological sanction on the way the adherents led their lives. It “gave a direction to practical conduct and held the individuals to it” (2003: 97). He elaborates that:
the connection of that morality with the idea of the after-life…absolutely dominated the most spiritual men of that time. Without its power, overshadowing everything else, no moral awakening which seriously influenced practical life came into being in that period (2003: 97).
Weber reiterates, “in order to attain that self-confidence, intense worldly activity is recommended as the most suitable means. It and it alone disperses religious doubts and gives the certainty of grace” (2003: 112). He emphasises that the Puritans had translated their inner-worldliness into the devotion to a calling in order to gain assurance of their state of salvation. In the religious discourse, asceticism meant faithful engagement in strenuous and protracted effort on behalf of God’s purpose. The adherents sought to function as dutiful and active instruments in obedience to God’s will. Calvinism saw the world as willed into existence by God, the Creator who had total mastery over it. Accordingly, the adherents, as the instruments of God, must harness all the resources under their control to maximise returns. In practising inner-worldliness, the adherents had to expend time, energy and creativity through their economic activity. The paradox of Calvinism as interpreted by Weber is that the adherents were held in a constant state of tension even as they tried to reduce this tension through their ascetic and rational conduct. Disconnected
16 from their fellowmen and alienated from God, the adherents strove to gain a sense of relief and comfort from their ceaseless exertions.
To highlight the Calvinist’s insistence on individualism, Weber observes that there had been a shift of responsibility for religious affairs from that of the Church as a whole to the individual believers. This meant that mere church attendances and the taking of sacraments were inadequate to appease God and to honour his glory. The individual believer must assume personal responsibility in appeasing God. Such a responsibility extended to the way the adherent made use of his economic resources and opportunities to maximise profits for divine glory. Such a sense of personal responsibility is said to be founded on the concept of calling, as developed by Martin Luther, the leader of the Reformation.
According to Luther, salvation was a gift from God and not the reward for good works. Thus what was expected of the believer was a responsible response of gratitude and commitment to fulfilling the duties that God had assigned to that person in this world. Weber argues that such a notion had given religious and moral significance to the everyday work of the ordinary people. The Lutherans preached that God was not necessarily to be served by retreat into any form of monastic asceticism. On the contrary, the believers had to engage in what Weber terms other- worldly asceticism. The sole duty of a believer was to fulfil all the obligations imposed upon the person by virtue of his or her position in the world.
The Puritan concept of calling was invariably measured in moral terms. Success in one’s calling provided proof of the elect’s state of salvation and God’s favour. It also invoked the concept of “private profitableness”, which, Weber argues, not only legitimised and facilitated but also enjoined the pursuit of the highest profit on moral grounds. Weber quotes Richard Baxter, a leading Puritan, who insisted that God in all his divine knowledge had seen it fit to provide his elect with the opportunity to gain even higher profits than that of all his neighbours. And in such a case, it would be regarded as breaking the law of God if the adherent should refuse the opportunities to maximise profits; he would be seen as neglecting his role as God’s faithful steward. The Calvinist injunction was to labour for God’s glory and not for the gratification of the flesh.
Wealth acquisition and possession were to be seen as the special gifts of God, destined to be used to bring honour to God. The sober, self-made men of the middle class were accorded the highest ethical distinction. They could count on the Calvinist belief that God would favour the faithful in the material sense. What drove the
17 ascetic middle class Protestants in their pursuit of capitalism, according to Weber, was the conviction that they were the elect of God, chosen to bear witness to his grace and his favour through the success of their capitalistic ventures, if they were entrepreneurs, or their industry, if they were labourers. It was this attitude toward life that “played its part in developing that formalistic, hard, correct character which was peculiar to the men of that heroic age of capitalism” (2003: 166).
According to Weber, then, “asceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing” (2003: 172). He argues that such an attitude towards work was “the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here called the spirit of capitalism” (2003: 172).
1.4 Limitations and Research Implications
Whilst Calvinism had legitimised profit accumulation and enabled the capitalists to devote themselves to their private enterprises, I argue that it did not or could not respond to the challenges that were brought about by the increased economic and social interdependence in the age of commerce and culture. I will make this point by reviewing, in the next chapters, the arguments of Elias and Habermas, which consider the significance of structural transformations in eighteenth-century England.
I argue that there are two ways in which Calvinism, as interpreted by Weber, obstructed rather than facilitated co-operation between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.
The first characteristic which made Calvinism incompatible with the age of increased economic and social interdependence was its insistence on individualism and non- sociability. According to Weber, capitalism, like salvation, demanded individual effort and discouraged display of brotherly affection. Business transactions were not to be negotiated as sociable tasks in a collegial spirit. It was the duty of each capitalist to maximise his profits, within the bounds of legality and honesty, and in doing so, his desire was to collect evidence to relieve his personal anguish. It was not God’s intention or in the capitalist’s interest to show any sociability in the discharge of his calling. Not only was there no need for sociability, the adherents were also instructed to be on the lookout not to admit the non-elect into their congregation. They were not encouraged to enjoy fellowship for fellowship sake. The capitalists
18 were to curb any display of emotionality at work, and social relations were important only to the extent that they increased the productivity and efficiency of the enterprise.
Weber claims that Calvinism was constituted solely of this exclusive trust in God. He frequently cites Puritan literature warning against any trust in the friendship of men: “Even the amiable Baxter counsels deep distrust of even one’s closest friend, and Bailey directly exhorts to trust no one and to say nothing compromising to anyone. Only God should be your confidant” (2003: 106). Despite the necessity of membership in the true church, “the Calvinist’s intercourse with his God was carried in deep isolation” (2003: 107). To reinforce the individualism of Protestantism, Weber highlights that the most widely read book of the period was John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It reinforced the overarching importance of gaining an assurance of one’s personal salvation. The adherent’s personal salvation took centre stage. Bunyan described how the pilgrim abandoned his wife and children, and staggered forth across the fields in search of his own salvation.
According to Weber, the adherents saw the fulfilment of their daily tasks as assuming a peculiarly objective and impersonal character. They were to serve the objective interests of the rational organisation but to mistrust the expression of sociability, which was not in accordance with God’s purpose. Human endeavours were not to serve the utility of the human race, but meant only for the promotion of God’s greatness. Thus fellowship had no intrinsic importance to adherents in their search for God’s favour. The social dimension to the practice of Calvinism was not important in itself, but only meant to constitute proof of “the spiritual aristocracy of the predestined saints of God within the world” (2003: 121). In Weber’s doctrine of proof, it was the economic success of the capitalists that gave them a group identity as God’s elect, and it was this proof of election that allowed the saved to be distinguished from the damned. Weber points out that an invisible gulf had permeated every aspect of social life as sects were formed to reject those whom they assumed God had already rejected (2003: 122).
The second area of incompatibility between Calvinism and increasing economic and social interdependence is found in its demand for abstemious living, for all profits to be used for God-related purposes or used for reinvestment to reap greater profits as further assurance of God’s grace. Although such a demand was congruent with the initial spirit of capitalism, a steward-like conception of wealth proved problematic in an age of increased affluence and success in international trade, where consumption was seen as necessary for economic development.
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Weber explains that what was prohibited by ascetic Protestantism was the “superior indulgence of the seigneur and the parvenu ostentation of the nouveau riche” (2003: 163). The capitalists could not use the profits made for any personal indulgence. Weber observes that ascetic Protestantism had rejected all forms of:
sensuous and emotional elements in culture and in religion because they were considered to be useless to salvation and a promotion of sentimental illusions and idolatrous superstitions. Thus it provides a basis for a fundamental antagonism to sensuous culture of all kinds (2003: 105).
The most urgent task of Calvinist asceticism was to put a stop to the spontaneous and impulsive enjoyment, and as a means to bring order into the conduct of its adherents.
It is clear that in its prohibition against appreciation of any form of cultural refinements, ascetic Calvinism had undermined its relevance in the eighteenth century. I contend that, because Weber focused exclusively on the impact of the rigid doctrines as preached of John Calvin and his Puritan disciples, he overlooked theological revisions which legitimised the making of a good society through cultural construction and consumption.
R. H. Tawney shares such an evaluation. In his Foreword to The Protestant Ethic (Tawney 2003: 7-8), he challenges Weber’s insistence on the uniformity of the influence of Calvinism. He points to evidence that that the spirit of capitalism was also evident in the Venice and Florence of the fourteenth century and Antwerp of the fifteenth century, and he claims that Weber relies too much on the teachings of John Calvin in composing his picture of the pious bourgeois conducting his business as a calling summoned by God: “The Calvinism which fought the English Civil War, still more the Calvinism which won an uneasy toleration at the Revolution, was not that of its founder” (Tawney 2003: 9). Tawney points out that John Calvin had erected a theocracy administered by a dictatorship of ministers in Geneva, where “the rule of life had been an iron collectivism” (quoted in Weber 2003: 10). By contrast, John Knox, leader of the Scottish Presbyterian Movement, was more interested in enforcing a godly discipline. The Calvinism of the seventeenth century had repudiated the social ethics of its founder and struck a balance between this and other worldliness. Tawney suggests that the adherents were persuaded that “godliness hath the promise of this life, as well as of the life to come” (quoted in Weber 2003: 10). He reiterates that Weber has failed to consider the evolutionary
20 path that Calvinism had undertaken and its subsequent impact on attitudes and behaviour.
This thesis addresses this issue by considering the theological revision of the influential Anglican clergymen from Cambridge University, which emphasised practical morality. More importantly, it analyses the rising influence of civic humanists such as the third Earl of Shaftesbury at the end of the seventeenth century, and his philosophical allies Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Weber assumes that life for the middle class capitalists progressed mechanistically with the decline of ascetic Protestantism. I will present evidence to suggest that the humanistic theology and philosophy promoted towards the end of the seventeenth century was predicated on the sovereignty of reason in establishing one’s faith in God. The outcome of such a humanistic theology was to pave the way for the participation of the English in worldly activities in the pursuit of civic virtue, rather than for reward in the afterlife, as dictated by Calvinism. This revised theology also legitimised the use of reason to question and even to reject the orthodoxy of Calvinism, principally the doctrine of predestination and the nature of mankind.
At this point I want to clarify that although I take the notion of asceticism from Weber’s analysis of Christianity, I will be referring to an asceticism that increasingly owes more to a Socratic morality. In ‘Technologies of the Self’, Foucault explains that the morality of Christian asceticism is different from that of the practice of self-care articulated in the Stoic tradition. In the Stoic tradition, asceticism, which involves self-discipline, self-discourse and reflection, was articulated in order to prepare the individuals to engage in civic action. Foucault explains that “in teaching people to occupy themselves with themselves, [Socrates] teaches them to occupy themselves with the city” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 148). However, Foucault notes eight centuries later, St Gregory of Nyssa, in his treatise On Virginity had given asceticism an entirely different meaning. He clarifies that St Gregory reinterpreted asceticism to refer to “the movement by which one renounces the world and marriage as well as detaches oneself from the flesh and, with virginity of heart and body, recovers the immortality of which one has been deprived” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 148). Foucault comments that the Christian tradition sees self-care as immoral as to know oneself means renouncing oneself.
The overarching significance of Calvinism can be found in its emphasis on a devotion to self-discipline, which led to the empowerment of the bourgeoisie. Poggi (1983: 110) argues that in their commitment to profit accumulation, with its accompanying demand of thrift, honesty and sobriety, capitalists had naturally
21 evolved into a distinctive collectivity. In this thesis, however, I want to extend this observation to suggest that the bourgeoisie, who had been transformed into a visible economic entity, was further empowered by the more Socratic ethic of politeness, which allowed them to form a new political, cultural and economic alliance with the aristocracy, which in turn set up the cultural conditions for a public sphere. I argue that it is in the embrace of the Socratic morality of asceticism, predicated on rationality and sociability, that the English were able to lead a life focused on the pursuit of learning and civic virtue.
Conclusion
This thesis builds upon the claim of Weber’s sociology that ethics are important in understanding social actions within each socio-historical context, because they provide symbols of affiliation and standards of membership. In searching for congruity between a set of ideals and a course of social actions, Weber insists that he does not mean to claim a cause-effect relationship. What he hopes to show are the meaningful correspondences between ideals and actions. In The Protestant Ethic, Weber explains how a disenfranchised group of people of humble origins, the parvenus, pursued economic success in a society dominated by the aristocracy in seventeenth-century England, Germany, Holland and America. He says that Calvinist theology provided this group with the moral legitimacy to regard profit accumulation as a duty, not a vice.
Although Weber insists on the decisive influence of the rationality of Calvinism on Western form of capitalism, he also admits that “other faiths as well necessarily had a similar influence when their ethical motives were the same in this decisive point, the doctrine of proof” (2003: 125). He acknowledges that the psychological sanction which conditioned the ascetic character of religion could have been furnished by various different religious motives, and that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was only one of several possibilities. Nevertheless, he maintains that in comparison with the non-Calvinistic ascetic movements, Calvinism not only had “a quite unique consistency, but that its psychological effect was extraordinarily powerful” (2003: 128).
I admit that the “unique consistency” of Calvinism facilitated the rise of capitalism, but I also argue that its dogmatism and insistence on Christian asceticism failed to legitimise cultural construction and consumption to meet the aspirations of the new
22 aristocratic-bourgeois alliance in the age of commerce in the eighteenth century. I do not challenge Weber’s thesis on the relationship between Christian asceticism and the spirit of capitalism. What I want to do is give an account of the interpretation and appropriation of the politeness ethic in post-puritan England.
This thesis continues from where Weber concludes his analysis of the Puritan capitalists in England at the end of the seventeenth century. It re-opens Weber’s pessimistic analysis of a mechanistic post-puritan world, and a modern world imprisoned by the care for external goods. It borrows the theme of asceticism and adopts the notion of calling, but notes a shift from Christian to Socratic morality; using these concepts, it will interrogate the phenomena of self-cultivation, social interaction and cultural construction, articulated through the idiom of politeness.
I argue that by the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, a new liberating intellectual and cultural movement, interpreted as the ethic of politeness, was to build upon the economic empowerment that the bourgeois society had attained through their commitment to Calvinist theology. The politeness ethic was to legitimise the bourgeoisie’s pursuit of cultural refinement. Where Protestantism saw vanity and vice in high culture production and consumption, I argue that politeness bestowed dignity and virtue. In particular, I investigate the influence of politeness in the transformation of the civic personality, which facilitated the participation of the bourgeoisie as citizen-patriots in cultural construction, predicated on rationality and sociability, in the public sphere.
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Chapter 2: The Cultivation of the Modern Self
Introduction
The study of asceticism by Weber is central to an analysis of the history of Western subjectivity. He highlights that it was ascetic Christianity that had disciplined the seventeenth-century capitalists to facilitate the development of a new economic structure, that of capitalism.
Besides Weber, Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias have also contributed to the social theory on the cultivation of the modern self. In his analysis of relations of power, Foucault emphasises the ethics of self as a practice of freedom (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 18-24). He refers to the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, that of Socrates and his disciples Xenophon and Epictetus, in their promotion of a life of self-discipline. Through the practice of self-care, individuals transform themselves into self- managing citizens. Whilst Foucault looks to the individuals to consciously apply techniques of the self to turn themselves into modern subjects, Elias examines how the increased interdependency in the civilizing process has intensified the social constraint towards self-constraint (1968).
Although the three theorists apply different analytical and explanatory logic in conceptualizing the historical sociology of subjectivity, Robert Van Krieken comments that they were basically concerned “with the social history of subjectivity and with the impact of a particular kind of society – rational, disciplined, civilized – on the human psyche” (1990 :355). Van Krieken explains that their work “converges on the notion that there has been ‘societalization of the self’, a transition in European history from a social order based on external constraint…to one dependent on the internalization of constraint” (1990: 355).
In this chapter, I will discuss Foucault’s thinking on self-care, to enable me to interpret Shaftesbury’s emphasis on a regimen of self-cultivation in his philosophy of politeness. To provide a historical and sociological background for the rise of politeness, I refer to the insights of Elias in The Court Society (1969), illustrating its Italian and French lineage. In particular, I refer to Elias’s observation of the English innovation of a national code of gentlemanliness, because this helps account for the peaceful transfer of power in eighteenth-century England. In the following chapter, I
24 will frame the progress of politeness in the context of the development of the public sphere, as theorised by Jürgen Habermas.
2.1 The Ethics of the Concern of the Self
In Chapter 1, I have pointed out Foucault’s distinction between the moralities of asceticism based on Christian and Stoic traditions. The former enforced asceticism as self-renunciation and detachment from social relationships to enable the individual to be freed from the stain of worldly immorality. The latter encouraged the practice of self-care, not as a form of repression or containment of appetites, but as a form of moral reflection, conducted through the keeping of diaries on one’s struggle with one’s soul, through letter-writing and through moral reflection via writing and conversation. Self-care in the Stoic tradition involved self-criticisms and self- discipline to enable the individuals to care for others based on the principles of civic virtue.
Foucault observes that a practice of the self has been important in Western societies ever since the Greco-Roman period, and says that such practices of the self were a lot more autonomous in the Greek and Roman civilization, before they were “taken over to a certain extent by religious, pedagogical, medical, or psychiatric institutions” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 26). In Foucault’s term, self-care is not a coercive practice, but “an exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, and to attain to a certain mode of being” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 26). The practices of self-care are seen as practices of freedom in which individuals “are able to define admissible and acceptable forms of existence or political society” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 26).
Admitting that the exercise of practices of freedom does require a certain degree of liberation, Foucault elaborates, “Liberation paves the way for new power relationships, which must be controlled by practices of freedom” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 27). In asserting that freedom must be practised ethically, Foucault defines ethics as “the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 28). He illustrates that in the Greco-Roman world, “the care of the self was the mode in which individual freedom - or civic liberty, up to a point – was reflected as an ethics” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 28).
Amongst the Greeks, according to Foucault, concern for the self was necessary for right conduct and the proper practice of freedom. Knowing oneself was pivotal to
25 forming and surpassing oneself, as well as mastering the appetites that threatened to enslave and overwhelm the person. Individual freedom was important to the Greek, and the practice of self-care hoped to thwart the horror of being enslaved to another city, to people around you, or to your own passions. Claiming that the concern with freedom was an essential and permanent problem in the full eight centuries of ancient culture, Foucault concludes that, “in antiquity, ethics as the conscious practice of freedom has revolved around this fundamental imperative: ‘Take care of yourself’” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 28). Taking care of yourself required not just having knowledge of the self; Foucault elaborates that it also required “knowledge of a number of rules of acceptable conduct or of principles that are both truths and prescriptions” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 29).
To the Greeks, the freedom of the individual was an ethical problem in the sense that “éthos was a way of being and of behaviour. It was a mode of being for the subject, along with a way of acting, a way visible to others” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 28). Foucault insists that “extensive work by the self on the self is required for this practice of freedom to take shape in an éthos that is good, beautiful, honourable, estimable, and exemplary” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 29). Although he insists on the primacy of care of the self, Foucault maintains that this care is also a way for caring about others. It implies a relationship with others in so far as the care of the self manifests itself in the way a person discharges his social responsibilities as a citizen- patriot, husband and father. Self-care also requires the mentorship of a counsellor, a guide, a friend, who is not afraid to be truthful.
According to Foucault, Greek writers did not think that the care of the self was an exaggerated form of self-love that led to the neglect others. In his account, it was only during the Christian era that there arose a denunciation of self-care “as a form of self-love, a form of selfishness or self-interest in contradiction with the interest to be shown in others or the self-sacrifice required” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 28). Foucault does not suggest that Christianity is responsible for this denunciation, but he does point out that there is a paradox in the care of the self in Christianity. While striving to achieve one’s salvation is a Christian way of caring for oneself, salvation is, at the same time, to be attained through the renunciation of the self. Foucault notes, in presenting the notion of salvation as a matter of afterlife, that Christianity “upsets or at least disturbs the balance of the care of the self” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 32). Unlike Christianity, the Greco-Roman philosophy accepted death, arguing that the reputation one left behind was the only meaningful form of afterlife.
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Foucault insists that there is a fundamental relationship between philosophy and politics, and he points out that care of the self was seen as an indispensable part of the preparation to enter politics, because it allowed a good ruler to learn how to care for others. In Foucault’s terms, spirituality, defined as “the subject’s attainment of a certain mode of being and the transformations that the subject must carry out on itself to attain this mode of being”, was identical to philosophy, defined as “the development of the knowing subject” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 36). To Foucault, the importance of philosophy resides in its commitment to question “domination at every level and in every form where it exists, whether political, economic, sexual, institutional, or what have you” (Rabinow and Rose 1990: 42).
I will refer to Foucault’s insights on the practice of self-care in my interpretation of Shaftesbury’s personal regimen of self-discipline in Chapter 7. I illustrate that Shaftesbury, having immersed himself in the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, added a Stoic element to the interpretation and practice of Christian asceticism prevalent in his days.
2.2 Civilité and the Civilizing Process
Whereas Weber and Foucault stress the importance of ascetic practices, Elias attributed the self-discipline of civilisation to the impact of social changes on psychic life. He asserts that to gain “a real understanding” of the process of rationalization in Western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, it is necessary to trace “the changes of human interdependencies in conjunction with the structure of conduct and, in fact, the whole fabric of men’s personality at a given stage of social development” (1982: 285). His argument is that individuals respond to the social pressure for self-constraint because they stood to reap greater social advantages than if they did not exercise such discipline. Elias focuses on the increased interdependency of social relationships, arguing that it required different forms of behaviour if the individuals were to fit in successfully. Like Weber though, Elias traces the influence of an ethic, the courtly notion of civilité, to account for the significance of self-discipline in modern life.
To trace the Continental lineage of the ethic of politeness, I review Elias’s analysis of the concept of civilité, and its insistence on rationalization, social constraint, self- consciousness, and self-discipline in the French court and the bourgeois society. I
27 also refer to Elias’s observation about a unique pattern of gentlemanly behaviour exercised by the parliamentarians in eighteenth-century England.
2.2.1 Civilité and Court Society
Elias traces the emergence of the concept of civilité amongst the Italian courtiers in the sixteenth century and argues that this concept became central to the civilizing process of the court society in seventeenth-century France. According to Elias, civilité has been used as “an expression and symbol of a social formation”, embracing the most diverse nationalities in Europe, since the second quarter of the sixteenth century (1994: 42-43). He adds that its importance was best understood when it became a common language in the court society of the Italians and then the French.
The most influential publication on the concept of civilité was De civilitate morum puerilium (On civility in children), written by Erasmus of Rotterdam, and published in 1530. The central theme of Erasmus’s treatise was that it was important for the young people from the upper class to cultivate the art of good behaviour. The treatise gave specific instructions on assuming outward bodily propriety such as bodily carriage, gestures, dress, and facial expressions. It taught the aristocratic young people how to behave and relate to others at holy places, banquets, amusements and even in the bedchambers. Elias argues that this publication met a social need of the time. It had more than 130 editions, 13 of them appearing in the eighteenth century. The English translation appeared in 1532. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, a whole genre of books providing instructions on civilized conduct appeared in France and England, directly and indirectly influenced by Erasmus’s treatise.
The concept of civilité was developed into a fine art in the court society of Louis XIV, allowing the king to institute a system of control over the competing groups of courtiers vying for royal favours. Elias stresses that each courtier had to pay particular attention to the nuances of his bearing, speech, manners and appearances as they had prestige values, which affected his standing in the court. He explains, “the competition of court life enforces a curbing of the effects in favour of calculated and finely shaded behaviour in dealing with people” (1969: 111). Key interests were at stake and there was little room for spontaneous expression of feelings. The pressure came not just from other courtiers, but from ascendant classes. Elias emphasises that the courtiers “observe and polish everything that distinguishes
28 them from people of lower rank”, in order to provide a social counterweight to the bourgeoisie (1982: 304). The importance attached to the cultivation of civilité is judged by Elias to be “a symptom of change, an embodiment of social processes” (1994: 44). The courtiers needed such an outward distinction, especially in the context of the rising power of the bourgeoisie.
Despite his emphasis on external pressures toward self-restraint, Elias explains that, in a pacified society, self-restraint became so ingrained from childhood that it acted as an automatic self-supervision of the individual’s drives. The result of such a strong social suppression of the old drive impulses was that the previous warrior mentality became inaccessible at the conscious level (1998: 59). In courtly circles, Elias elaborates, the tensions and the passions that were fought over among men in the warrior society were now worked out within the individual person. The battle in a sense had moved within.
According to Elias, with more peaceful constraints exerted on the courtier by his relations with others, a superego, conscience or reason emerged within him and it “endeavours to control, transform, or suppress his affects in keeping with the social structure” (1998: 60). As a result, continual tensions were felt as the wishes of the “superego” and the desires of the “unconscious” were negotiated within the person. In the court society, where there was increased interdependence, the social constraint invariably exerted pressure on the individual to assume greater self- constraint over his impulses and passions in order to smooth social intercourse.
In exploring the civilizing process of the French court, Elias emphasises the significance of Mirabeau, a landed nobleman, who, in the 1760s, challenged the way in which the concept of civilité was put to use by the courtiers. He was first among the French enlightened thinkers to object to the use of civilité as a social strategy to gain personal advantage. He insisted that civilité should encompass more than just the cultivation of outward behaviour. He proposed that the pursuit of a softening of manners, urbanity, politeness, and a dissemination of knowledge must not be articulated as a mask, but as a substance of virtue (Elias 1994: 32).
The rehabilitation of the courtly notion of civilité suggested by Mirabeau was further developed in the 1770s by the French physiocrats such as Baudieu, D’Alembert, Raynal and Holbach. This signalled the collaboration of the French bourgeois reform movement with enlightened thinkers from the aristocracy. They aimed to pursue a higher kind of society, one in which there was “the idea of a standard of morals and manners”, encompassing social tact and consideration for others (Elias 1994: 39).
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In this thesis, I argue that Mirabeau and the French physiocrats were prefigured by figures such as Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury’s rehabilitation of the aristocratic ethic of civilité took the form of politeness, in which he emphasised the cultivation of morals and manners. Shaftesbury crafted a new polite cultural template in his 1711 publication Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, offering it for the appropriation by the social elites in England. The interpretation of politeness by Shaftesbury is discussed in Chapter 7.
2.2.2 Civilité and Bourgeois Society
In examining the rise of bourgeois society in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elias underscores that the changes in personality structure varied in consonance with changes in the structure of human relations in societies, as parts of an overall civilizing process. The individual was not to be understood as standing outside the society in which he was a member. Thus the civilizing process was to be understood primarily as an expression of the intertwining of the personality structure with the changing relationships in the social structure.
Elias observes that there was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an increase in both the interdependence and the interpersonal tensions of individuals, as a result of co-operation and competition in the accumulation of capital and wealth. He argues, consequently, that the pattern of constraints was even more compelling than in the courtly circles. He reasons that as social functions became more differentiated under the pressures of competition in a complex society, there arose a need for people to attune their behaviour to that of others in order to fulfil their respective social functions (1998: 52). In his view, it was the constant intertwining of the goals, plans and actions of individual people, and the bonds they placed on each other, that provided the medium for the civilizing process.
In bourgeois society, Elias explains, the exercise of self-control for social reasons became more embracing as it included all human relationships. At the personal level, each person had to learn self-control in order to suppress their affective tendencies, so as not to suffer the disagreeable consequences of its indulgence. At the trade and professional level, success required that individuals learn to practise restraint so that profits could be channelled into savings and investments, to build the businesses. Elias assesses that those who developed personalities that suited them to the demands of the new pattern of interdependence succeeded better in
30 social contests. He insists that even as agencies of social controls became more refined, so did the ambitious controlling agency forming within the personality. (1982: 303).
Elias notes that the development of the personality and social structure of bourgeois society cannot be fully grasped without taking cognizance of three factors: first, the slow defunctionalisation of the clergy, and its corresponding loss of power; second, the pacification of the nobility; third, the gradual rise of the commoners. In addition, he singles out the growth of the urban market and the expansion of trade and capital as necessary factors to the making of the bourgeoisie. Each one of these elements fed into transforming the functions and powers of nobility and bourgeoisie, “where greater foresight and a stricter regulation of libidinal impulses” were required (Elias, 1983: 290). These elements led towards a “strengthening of the less affective, less fantasy-oriented modes of thought and experience” (Elias 1983: 291).
Like Weber, the distinctive trait that Elias perceives in the civilizing process of court society and bourgeois society in the West is “the rationalization of consciousness, the change from magical-traditional to rational forms of thinking” (1982: 290). He views the role of enlightened individuals as “levers within the larger workings of society” (1983: 291). Elias considers these thinkers only as “interpreters and spokesmen of a social chorus… [T]hey were not on their own the originators of the type of thought prevalent in their society” (1983: 291).
Borrowing this concept from Elias, I identify Shaftesbury and his political and philosophical compatriots, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, as the foremost interpreters of the culture of politeness at the beginning of the eighteenth century. I also illustrate the appropriation of the ethic of politeness, rooted in self-discipline, by presenting in the last three substantive chapters of this thesis, a case study of one of England’s foremost bourgeois capitalists, Josiah Wedgwood.
2.2.3 The English Parliamentarians and National Code of Affect-Control
Although Elias focuses on the study of the cultivation of civilité in the French court and bourgeois society, he has made pertinent observations on the development of civilized conduct among the English parliamentarians in the eighteenth century. He notes that the French bourgeoisie had adopted the aristocratic manners and morals with little modification, because they were assimilated into the court society early. By contrast, Elias notes that there was evidence of mutual assimilation of
31 behavioural and ethical codes between the English upper and rising classes. He argues that this resulted in the creation of a quintessential English national culture. He observes, “the English national code of conduct and affect-control showed very clearly…a peculiar blend between a code of good manners and a code of morals” that was discernible right up to the nineteenth century (1982: 310).
This blend of good manners and morals, based on affect-control, was further considered in Quest for Excitement, Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (1986). Elias argues that in eighteenth-century England, when the cycles of violence had calmed down between the Royals and the Puritans, the parliamentarians agreed to resolve their political differences entirely by non-violent means and in accordance with agreed rules that both sides observed. He insists that special conditions were needed for the effective functioning of tension-tolerance in the English parliamentary regime. It was
dependent on the effectiveness of a country’s monopoly of physical violence, on the stability of a society’s internal pacification. That stability, however, is to some extent dependent on the personal restraint-level of the human beings who form these societies (1986: 27).
In the course of the eighteenth century, Elias points out, the issues that once divided the English nation lost their former significance. It became clear that the Hanoverians were secure in their rule, and that there was no possibility of a Stuart return. Religious tensions also subsided. The political cleavage was instead between different factions of landowning groups represented by the Whigs and the Tories, who dominated both Houses of Parliament. The Whigs were made up of wealthier aristocratic families of quite recent descent. They had been firm opponents of Catholic James II and his son, and more tolerant towards the dissenters, who refused to subscribe to the Thirty Nine Articles of the Anglican Church. The Tories, made up of older aristocratic families and a larger proportion of untitled gentry, leant towards Catholicism, and had supported the exiled James II.
Elias notes that there had arisen in England a unique social formation, a class of landowning gentry, who did not belong to the peerage and did not sit in the House of Lords, but who were well represented in the House of Commons. Theoretically, this class of gentry acted as an intermediary group between the urban craftsmen, traders and merchants on the one hand, and the landed aristocracy on the other. However, in reality, the parliamentarians as a whole were united by their common landed interests, and the interests of the men of commerce and industry were not
32 adequately defended. The landed gentry were united by “the social conventions of landed society, by a cultural tradition of their own which distinguished the landed classes, nobility and gentry alike…in terms of their social rank as well as their manners, to be gentlemen” (1986: 31).
In Elias’s estimation, Robert Walpole, the Whig who became England’s first Prime Minster in 1722, began to steer the parliament from violence, towards a more civilized conduct. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke, another Whig statesman, recognised the need for opposition in parliament based on peaceful resolution of differences. Less than one hundred years after the English Civil Wars, the two parliamentary factions had adopted entirely non-violent means in their fight for control of government.
Elias points out that the peaceful transfer and sharing of power through peaceful elections presupposed a high level of self-restraint. The smooth rotation of rival groups according to agreed rules was regarded by Elias as a novel innovation in English civilization.
As both sides gradually lost their distrust of each other and gave up relying on violence and the skills connected with it, they learned instead, and in fact they developed, the new skills and strategies required by a non-violent type of contest. Military skills gave way to the verbal skills of debate, of rhetoric and persuasion, all of which required far greater restraint all round and identified this change very clearly as a civilizing spurt (1986: 34).
Unlike France, the English, since the 1688 Revolution, were no longer subject to the absolutist rule of the king. In particular, Elias attributes the pacification of the English parliamentarization to the shift of power from the king and court to the self- ruling oligarchy. In analysing the emergence of this English national code of good manners and morals, Elias observes that because of the relatively short courtly phase in England, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie had much more time to make contacts and form alliances. This meant that the amalgamation, which took place over a longer period than in France, enabled the English gentry and bourgeoisie to share a “common foresight, and a similar pattern of firmly differentiated self- control” (1982: 318).
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Conclusion
Van Krieken notes that, like Foucault, Elias is reluctant “to identify a subject of power”, as both see “the dynamics of power as lying more within the fabric of everyday life” (1990: 361). Whilst Weber admits the influence of the ascetic Christianity and rational bureaucracy, and Foucault emphasises the disciplinary techniques of the Stoics, Elias places greater emphasis on “requirements emanating from increased competition and social dependency” (Van Krieken 1990: 361). Despite such analytical differences, Van Krieken comments that all three share a common emphasis on the “sense of self-discipline emerging as a strategy of self- advancement for ruling social groups, the court aristocracy, the administrative and legal elites, the bourgeoisie” (1990: 362).
In his analysis of the progress of parliamentarization in England, Elias notes that the interests of the men of commerce were not adequately defended. In Chapter 4, I present Habermas’s argument that such a parliamentary failure motivated private men to come together in their own defence. I will suggest that the idiom of politeness, which promoted rationality and sociability, rooted in the Socratic morality of asceticism, enabled the cultivation of a civic personality which contributed to the development of the public sphere.
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Chapter 3: Political Stability, Religious Harmony, Cultural Construction and the Civic Paradigm of Politeness
Introduction
In the preceding chapter I have reviewed Foucault’s and Elias’s insights on the development of the disciplined moderns in the civilizing process, where individuals had internalised societal constraints and were able to participate as members of a society. In particular, I have highlighted Elias’s observation of a gentlemanly code of sentiment and conduct among the English parliamentarians in eighteenth-century England. Elias attributes the maintenance of a non-violent transfer of power between the political parties to two key factors. Firstly, the political parties were relatively pacified after experiencing the traumas of the civil war from 1642 to 1651. Secondly, they responded to a cultural tradition that strove towards attaining a more civilized state.
This chapter provides a historical context to situate my interpretation of Habermas’s insights on the constitution of the public sphere in seventeenth- and eighteenth- century England, as well as my discussion of the empirical evidence in the promotion and pursuit of politeness. Broadly, it surveys the politico-religious and cultural tenor of eighteenth-century England. Specifically, it focuses on the intellectual climate that the Whig ideologists inherited and co-created in their endeavour to provide an ethical and aesthetic orientation to legitimise money- making and cultural construction as compatible acts of virtue in the idiom of politeness.
I trace the emergence of a new social formation, the new men of commerce, finance and industry, who had gained sufficient economic power to demand a legitimate role in political decision-making. I argue that their social position was enhanced by the opportunities provided through the polite culture, which facilitated their participation in cultural construction and consumption, as well as participation in the public sphere. In particular, I examine the ideological uses of the ethic of politeness by the ascendant political party, the Whig. To do this, I borrow the insights of Albert Hirschman (1977), J. G. A. Pocock (1985), J. C. D. Clark (1985), Lawrence Klein (1994), H. T. Dickinson (1995) and Michael Crozier (1995) to situate the rise of politeness in the civic paradigm.
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3.1 Overview of Political, Religious and Cultural Order of Post-1688 England
The 1688 Glorious Revolution in England was a watershed, politically, religiously and culturally. From the political and religious perspective, it had prevented Britain from entrapping itself in another disastrous civil war over the issues of succession and religion. James II, the legitimate English successor, had been dethroned because of his Catholic proclivity; and his close relations with the absolutist rule of his cousin, Louis XIV. The Protestant succession of King William III and Queen Mary II in 1689 had delivered a new sense of freedom and optimism for the Protestants, both from the Whig and Tory parties. The eighteenth-century witnessed the political ascendancy of the Whigs, the traditional country party in opposition. They had facilitated the installation of the Protestant monarchs.
England enjoyed unprecedented wealth due to the expansion in long-distance trade and colonization, which gave her access to resources to stimulate her industrialization efforts. The increased interdependence between the gentry and the commercial class, as well as between the state and the public, provided new social dynamics that tended to encourage new class realignment and the development of a public sphere. Culturally, the English court had relegated its authority to the confident aristocratic-bourgeois alliance, which was determined to fashion itself as the new arbiters of taste.
The following section provides an overview of the political supremacy of the Whigs and the attainment of relative religious harmony contributed by the Cambridge theologians. It also suggests cultural construction in the public sphere took place in the context of increasing press freedom and personal liberty, and of a concomitant decline in the cultural influence of the court and church.
3.1.1 Political Supremacy and Religious Toleration
During much of the eighteenth century, the nature and organization of the Whig party appealed to the ambitious and hard-headed. It gained the support of the new men of commerce and industry who wanted to take advantage of the “financial innovation, the change in foreign policy, and the growth of the executive” in the Whig government (Dickinson 1973: 16). Successful landowners also supported the Whigs as they welcomed the opportunity of augmenting their income by court appointments, careers in the administration or service in the armed forces.
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The Whig party was not only abreast of the economic advances of the age; it was also the more highly organised party. There were, naturally, personal rivalries and differences over issues, but on the whole, Whigs were united in rejecting the principles of divine right and indefeasible hereditary succession. In accepting Parliament’s right to alter succession to the Crown in order to safeguard the Protestant Settlement, they accommodated a limited monarchy balanced by a powerful Parliament. Like the pre-Revolution Tories, however, the Whigs promoted the idea and practice of authoritative, centralised, even militarist government (Kenyon 1977: 202). They endorsed the doctrine of passive obedience and permitted legitimate resistance only in specific and narrowly defined instances.
After the death of Queen Anne in 1714, it was the superior discipline of the Whig party and the greater coherence of its political philosophy that allowed it to triumph over the numerically stronger Tories in ensuring a peaceful Hanoverian succession (Dickinson 1973: 39). The Hanoverian reign witnessed the Whig supremacy of a one- party government. Although they came to power proclaiming to be the people’s party, in practice, lacking a strong political opponent, they became more conservative. Real power was held by a narrow oligarchy of large landowners, financiers and merchants. In his pamphlet An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), Edmund Burke admitted to the conservatism of the Whigs:
What we did (in 1689) was in truth and substance, and in a constitutional light, a revolution not made but prevented. We took solid securities; we settled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in our law. In the stable, fundamental parts of our constitution we made no revolution, nor any alteration at all (quoted in Kenyon 1977: 208).
Besides maintaining a conservative political culture, the Whigs also managed to sustain religious moderation throughout the eighteenth century. Whilst vigilantly opposed to Catholicism and the threat of a Jacobite uprising to restore the Stuart king, the Whigs were loyal to the principle of religious toleration in granting the dissenters the freedom of worship.
Such a strategy had been put in place by the Whig founder, the first Earl of Shaftesbury. In 1679, he claimed that, “popery and slavery, like two twin sisters, go hand in hand”, and argued that Great Britain, as the Protestant Israel, was peculiarly twinned with liberty (quoted in Colley 2009: xxi). The Whigs imbued Protestantism with a superior degree of liberty. They made strategic use of Protestantism to bolster their support and consolidate their power in the relative political calm of eighteenth-
37 century England. However, such a conviction was not a purely Whig argument; it was also a common strategy adopted by clerics and pamphleteers demanding reforms and political change (Colley 2009: 396).
On the whole, Anglicans and the various non-conformists focused on living a decent life. In the place of religious enthusiasm and doctrinal rigidity, sociability and manners in religion were encouraged (Klein 2002: 889). John Tillotson, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1691 to 1694, was claimed to have embodied a polite style of preaching based on simple and refined discourse (Rivers 1991, I: 49). Leading Anglican divines like Edward Fowler (1632-1714), the Bishop of Gloucester, had begun to adopt the language of politeness and portrayed Christ as the representation of “a marvellously conversable, sociable and benign temper” (Rivers 1991, I: 83).
It was the polite Cambridge theologians, nicknamed the latitudinarians, who promoted the religious mentality of “theological breath or vagueness” to accommodate doctrinal differences, whilst insisting on the primacy of practising civic virtues (Gascoigne 1989: 4). Whilst conforming to the parliamentary regime and the restored church and king, the latitudinarians also favoured including as many English Protestants as possible within the Anglican Church. This inclusive approach to acceptable theological and intellectual debate did much to open up the eighteenth- century church and the English Establishment more generally (Gascoigne 1989: 21). Norman Sykes points out that although the latitudinarian’s theological temper transcended party line, in practice “latitudinarianism was generally associated with Whig political principles” (quoted in Gascoigne 1989: 5). Whilst it was the organisational efficiency and doctrinal consistency of the Whigs that paved the way for political stability, it was the polite Cambridge theologians who helped to absorb the Enlightenment into the main stream of English life rather than leaving it to become a potentially subversive and even revolutionary movement (Porter 1981: 17- 18).
These moderate Anglican theologians afforded a pattern of reasonable Christianity, described as a rational and natural religion, and stood for an attitude and a temper of moderation and tolerance, supporting reconciliation with the dissenters. They were the first polite Anglicans to have emerged in England. They focused on the importance of adopting a proper moral outlook of life, restoring the Book of Common Prayer to its role as the accepted guide to unfanatical worship. They also supported reconciliation with the dissenters. Their polite theology complemented the establishment of a Whig order based on rationality and sociability. The emergence of a rational religion towards the end of the seventeenth century aimed at
38 moderating, or replacing the dogmatism of the Puritans, supported the new inclusive Whig cultural paradigm (Pocock 1985: 219). Pocock explains that in battling the fanaticism of the Puritans and wearing away their doctrinal rigidity, the preachers of practical morality facilitated the rise of a polite culture.
More support for polite culture came from John Locke, the political theorist of the Whig party, who championed the philosophy of liberty and toleration in the new political regime of William and Mary. In his Two Treatises of Government (2003 [1689]), Locke refuted the accepted Tory insistence of an absolutist monarchy deriving authority from a patriarchal view of society. He also denied that men were born into subjection, but insisted that men were born free and equal before God. He overthrew the doctrine of hereditary monarchy as divine right. The government was not supreme and could be overthrown by society if it violated principles of liberty. According to Locke, the great and chief end of men uniting in commonwealths was the preservation of their liberty and property. Government was created as a trustee to protect life, liberty and property and the only obligation man had to government was his moral obligation (Laslett 1988).
In Letters concerning Toleration (1689-1692), Locke provided a philosophical justification for every man to hold and profess whatever opinions he chooses without state molestation, so long as these opinions are not a threat to the stability or morality of society (Dickinson 1995: 167). Despite denying civil liberties to the Roman Catholics or atheists, as their religious convictions or disbelief was seen as a threat to the Protestant nation, Locke promoted the utilitarian argument that “toleration should be granted whenever it could be expected to promote civil order and social harmony” (quoted in Dickinson 1995: 167).
3.1.2 Liberty and Cultural Construction
In the arena of cultural construction, the liberty of the press was a significant factor. The Whigs were ready to grant the press freedom of expression in civil matters as long as it was not libellous, seditious or subversive. The press pledged advancement of truth and justice. There was no pre-publication censorship and even the conservative William Blackstone (1723-1780), the leading English jurist and judge, supported the demand for a free press:
The liberty of a free press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state… Every free man has an undoubted right to lay what sentiment he pleases
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before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity…Thus the will of individuals is still left free; the abuse only of that free will is the object of legal punishment (quoted in Dickinson 1995: 169).
On the whole, the granting of press freedom did not encourage anarchy or licentiousness as the editors generally subscribed to a natural law that “all men had a duty to pursue what was ‘right’, should exercise responsibility and must regulate their freedom” (Dickinson 1995: 169). The overarching principle was that although there was freedom of thoughts, there was no absolute right of action, which must accept restraints of the law of the land.
In such an atmosphere of press freedom, newspapers increased in London as well as in the provincial towns. In 1700, there were only eight provincial newspapers, but in 1727, there were 25. The Swiss traveller de Saussure wrote in 1727:
All Englishmen are newsmongers. Workmen habitually begin the day by going to coffee rooms in order to read the daily news. Nothing is more entertaining than hearing men of this class discussing politics and topics of interest concerning royalty (quoted in Plumb 1950: 30).
Men of all classes were eager to gather in the coffee houses clubs and even pubs to enjoy the undisturbed company of their friends and to have “quick interchange of opinion” and “for quick, active discussion of personalities and policies that touched their lives” (Plumb 1950: 32).
Whilst the press gained liberty and the English gained greater optimism and confidence to participate in the public sphere, the court and the church declined in their cultural influence. Apart from upholding the civic virtues of decency, justice and morality, the newly installed Protestant King William III and Queen Mary II were uninterested in modelling themselves as the arbiters of taste or in capitalising on cultural refinements to enhance the prestige of the court. In its royal seclusion and cultural remoteness, the Protestant court was a stark contrast to the splendour seen in the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-47), Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and Charles I (1625-49). The Stuart reign of Charles II and James II had seen renewed but failed attempts to emulate the French court in restoring splendour, and positioning the court as the cultural authority. With the death of Charles II and the exile of James II, the court had lost cultural sovereignty. Moreover, the power of court culture had
40 already receded during the civil war. The Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell had assumed a puritanical stance, removing the conspicuous cultural signs upon which the monarch had built the image of his pre-eminence (Brewer 1995: 342).
The Whig supporters of the Protestant succession, along with the Tories and the Jacobites, supporters of the dethroned James II, were all united in their opposition to the monarchy asserting its cultural ascendancy. It did not mean that the court had no role in the cultural construction in the eighteenth century. Rather, it constituted only one of many sources of patronage. Secure in their political ascendancy and economic prowess, the Whig ideologists responded to the cultural vacuum through their advancement of the idiom of politeness. This idiom facilitated public participation of the commercial class in the cultural construction and consumption that was led by the aristocracy.
Like the court, the Church of England had lost its cultural pre-eminence. The removal of all religious relics and ornaments during the Interregnum left the church devoid of any ecclesiastical art (Brewer 1995: 342). It could no longer derive cultural authority from its role as repository of artistic magnificence. More importantly, there was a growing demand for religious sentiment, ideology and institutions to be subjected to social and civil discipline. The idiom of politeness was advanced in part to encourage the Church of England and the Puritan sects to dispense with their rigidity and narrow-mindedness.
Another development had also created a need for a new cultural paradigm. This was the emergence of the new patterns of urban development that brought together new populations (Borsay 1989). This new kind of urbanism, which first emerged in the West End of London, was replicated throughout the key provincial cities and towns all over Britain in the eighteenth century. The participants in the cultural discourse of these new urban centres included the traditional landed aristocrats, greater and lesser gentry, professionals, as well as men of commerce and their families. The heart of this new urban culture was to be found in coffeehouses, clubs, assemblies, gardens, exhibition and concert halls, play houses and theatres, as well as the intimate spaces of the family home. Both polite and commercial at the same time, culture in these locations was to be publically constructed.
The ethic of politeness facilitated the participation of the aristocratic-bourgeois alliance in the public sphere. Peter Earle (1989: 6-7) points out that the landed classes were inextricably tied to the ascendant commercial class as their younger sons invested in businesses, and intermarriage forged family connections. Porter (1982:
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63) argues that the English society was a finely calibrated gradient of social conditions, and the pursuit of politeness became a common aspiration. The pursuit of politeness provided a common idiom for the construction of respectability for many and pursuit of virtue for some.
3.2 The Civic Paradigm of Politeness
To trace the rise of politeness, this section reviews the structural transformation that confronted the Whig ideologists as they gained political ascendancy after the 1688 Revolution. I argue that the Whig ideologists sought opportunities to enhance their cultural supremacy and fill the void being left by both the court and the church. In doing so, they also challenged the cultural ascendancy that their opponents, the Tories, had enjoyed in the Restoration court of Charles II. The Whigs accused their political opponents of assuming the courtly form of civility only to gain personal advantage. They rehabilitated the aristocratic code of civilité by rephrasing it in the more inclusive idiom of politeness, a form of civic humanism based on the Stoicism of the ancient Greeks, which privileged self-cultivation and the pursuit of civic virtue. In this way, the Whigs rehabilitated the courtly code as an ethic that facilitated the development of the new public sphere, and the mixture of classes and interests that assembled there.
In the post-1688 era, England was no longer a society to be ruled politically, economically and culturally by the court and the traditional elites. With the promotion of the idiom of politeness, the narrow stratum of elites expanded to assimilate the ascendant commercial class. Clearly, the idiom of politeness did not endeavour to institute egalitarianism or erase all class distinctions, but it did give legitimacy to the new class of commercial men, identifying them as co-defenders of liberty, along with the traditional landed gentry. Further, I propose, the idiom of politeness required the ascendant commercial class to acquire knowledge, hone judgment, express opinions and participate in cultural construction and consumption. In the rehabilitated notion of civic humanism articulated through the idiom of politeness, this new group styled themselves as citizen-patriots, assuming a civic duty that they thought neither the church nor the court had the legitimacy or competency to discharge. More importantly, the promotion of an ethic that permitted assimilation of the rising middle class, also, ironically, augmented the cultural power of the aristocracy. In their role as cultural arbiters, the ruling elites now had the support of the talented and educated middle class.
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The following section examines the sublimation of passions, the reconciliation of money making and the construction of culture as acts of virtue, as well as the assimilation of the bourgeoisies into the aristocratic gentlemanly class.
3.2.1 The Rise of Commerce and the Harnessing of Passions
In analysing the rehabilitation of the notion of civic humanism in the age of commerce by the Whig political elites, I refer to the classic work of Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (1977). Hirschman detects the emergence of a new intellectual climate in the eighteenth century that attempted to legitimise interests, both personal and public, in order to counteract the passions of mankind. He notes that at the beginning of the Christian era, the basic guidelines of St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) denounced the three human passions: lust for money, lust for power and sexual lust. Augustine pioneered the principle of suppressing one passion by endorsing another. In this case, the Christians were encouraged to look to the Romans who had demonstrated a love for their earthly fatherland in order to suppress their desire for wealth and praise. Further developed as an aristocratic ideal, this strategy of sublimation saw the striving for honour and glory as marks of virtue and greatness. Hirschman points out that the medieval chivalric ethos had an enduring influence although it was contradictory to the religious teaching of St Thomas Aquinas and Dante, which forbade glory-seeking on both personal and national scale.
In his analysis of the rise of commerce and the harnessing of passions, Hirschman credits Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, statesman and scientist, with making explicit the “idea of controlling the passions by playing one off against the other”, not just in the government of the state, but also in individuals (quoted in Hirschman 1977: 22). According to Hirschman, Montesquieu (1689- 1755) developed this principle into the idea of an “Invisible Hand”, referring to “a force that makes men pursuing their private passions conspire unknowingly toward the public good” in connection with the search for glory (1977: 10). Montesquieu’s argument is that “everyone contributes to the general welfare while thinking that he works for his own interests” (quoted in Hirschman 1977: 10). Such a moral code corresponded to the interests of the new class of money-makers. Capitalists, merchants, financiers and industrialists, especially those in Britain, liked “the idea of harnessing the passions, instead of simply repressing them” (1977: 16). This is the context in which Hirschman understands the work of Adam Smith (1723-1790), the Scottish moral
43 philosopher. Smith pushed the principle of passion harnessing through the publication of The Wealth of Nations (1776), substituting reviled terms such as “passion” and “vice” with neutral words such as “advantage” or “interest” (1977: 19).
In Hirschman’s estimation, “the idea of engineering social progress by cleverly setting up one passion to fight another became a fairly common intellectual pastime in the course of the eighteenth century” (1977: 26). He cites the example of Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789), a French-German author, who called for the rehabilitation of passions through the use of reason:
The interests are true counterweights of the passions; we must not at all attempt to destroy them, but rather try to direct them: let us offset those that are harmful by those that are useful to society. Reason…is nothing but the act of choosing those passions which we must follow for the sake of our happiness (quoted in Hirschman 1977: 27).
The word ‘interest’ played a crucial role in this balancing of passion and reason, and Hirschman notes that moralists began to oppose “the interests of men to their passions and [to contrast] the favourable effects that follow when men are guided by their interests to the calamitous state of affairs that prevails when men give free rein to their passions” (1977: 32).
Money-making and commerce were seen as innocent and the “love of gain” was rehabilitated as a positive passion in eighteenth-century England, to be contrasted to the warfare and violence of aristocratic culture. Commerce was associated with “sweetness, softness, calm, and gentleness and is the antonym of violence” (Hirschman 1977: 59). Hirschman quotes Montesquieu:
it is almost a general rule that wherever the ways of man are gentle (mœurs douces) there is commerce; and wherever there is commerce, there the ways of men are gentle…Commerce…polishes and softens (adoucit) barbarian ways as we can see every day (quoted in Hirschman 1977: 60).
In its initial usage, the term ‘commerce’ connoted politeness, polished behaviour and generally socially friendly demeanour. In relative terms, the men of commerce in the eighteenth century were seen to be peaceful and inoffensive compared with the warriors of earlier times.
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The terms “interest” and “interests” only gained their economic meaning late in the history of the words, and Hirschman notes that it was the third Earl of Shaftesbury; who defined interest as the “desire of those conveniences, by which we are all provided for, and maintained”, and who referred to the “possession of wealth” as “that passion which is esteemed peculiarly interesting” (quoted in Hirschman 1977: 37). Although Shaftesbury validated the legitimacy of interest, he cast the acquisition of wealth as a virtuous activity insofar as it was pursued in moderation:
If the regard toward [acquisition of wealth] be moderate, and in a reasonable degree; if it occasions no passionate pursuit- there is nothing in this case which is not compatible with virtue, and even suitable and beneficial to society. But if it grows at length into a real passion; the injury and mischief it does the public, is not greater than that which it creates to the person himself. Such a one is in reality a self-oppressor, and lies heavier on himself than he can ever do on mankind (quoted in Hirschman 1977: 65).
The language of interests required the harnessing of the passion in the pursuit of money-making. But more than the limited concept of economic commerce, Shaftesbury and his like-minded compatriots were concerned with encouraging commerce in human society. They subscribed to the Enlightenment view in rejecting a tragic and pessimistic view of man and society. David Hume (1711-1776) reflected such a view, when he argued that:
reasons of state, which are supposed solely to influence the councils of monarchs are not always the motives which there predominate;… the milder views of gratitude, honour, friendship, generosity, are frequently able, among princes as well as private persons, to counterbalance these selfish considerations (quoted in Hirschman 1977: 48).
Hirschman provides the opening note on the intellectual order that was inherited by Shaftesbury, the key Whig interpreter of politeness.
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3.2.2 The Rise of Commerce and the Practice of Civic Virtue
According to Pocock, from the 1670s onwards, there were in England two competing doctrines of propertied individualism. The first favoured the gentleman’s or yeomen’s independence in land and arms; the second “praised the mobility of the individual in an increasingly commercial society as teaching him the need for free deference to authority” (1985: 107). The monied interests of the ascendant middle class had emerged to compete with the traditional landed interests of the aristocracy. Whilst the landed interests were legitimised by the traditional civic tradition, which regarded the farmer warriors as the vanguards of liberty, the monied class had yet to find an ideological language to legitimise their economic activity and social identity, and to shield them from accusations of corruption.
The issues of virtue, land and commerce figured prominently in debates among political theorists and civic writers in this period. The landed gentry of both political persuasions, Tory and Whig, still subscribed to the country tradition, claiming that a virtuous political society could only be based on land ownership. They also insisted on the virtue of rustic simplicity, and regarded new forms of cultural sophistication as dangerous to the articulation of political liberty (Klein 1984-85). The role of these farmer warriors was defended by James Harrington, the leading political theorist in seventeenth-century Britain. He maintained that only the owners of land, the freeholders, who were financially independent and able to raise a militia, could be entrusted with defending the liberty of the nation (Klein 1994: 126). In theory, the farmer warriors were not susceptible to corruption because of their financial independence. Harrington had envisioned that the decline of feudalism and emergence of landed proprietorship would redistribute the power of the monarch towards the landholders in general. This in turn meant that the traditional bases of the monarch, namely the Church and the nobility, would give way to a republic of freeholders.
The defenders of this classical civic tradition were opposed primarily to the owners of capital and mobile property, the new economic men who were involved in the specialization and speculation that went on in the newly established stock market (Crozier 1995). They argued that when the viability of the government and politics came under the control of these stock traders, because of the government dependence on bonds floating in the market, there was a need to tame the traders’ impulses, passions and appetites for profits, as well as a need to set a moral limit to their financial machinations. Amongst the traditional landed gentry and classical civic writers, there was heightened suspicion that public corruption was rife in the
46 commercial arena, and that the English society would be morally corrupt if nothing was done to check such excesses (Crozier 1995: 75).
Amidst such suspicions, the Court Whigs found it necessary to reinterpret the civic humanism of Harrington to protect the men of commerce, who constituted their power base. The Whig ideologists insisted that the English were not only to be seen as citizens, but also, and more importantly, as patriots and lovers of their fatherland. They argued that the wellbeing of the nation was now also in the hands of its citizen- patriots, and not just the landed gentry. The corruptive tendencies of the city were to be checked by a civic personality, they argued, one committed to the pursuit of rationality, sociability, and public good. Such a civic personality was not guaranteed by birth, lineage or rank. It had to be cultivated through pursuit of polite learning, arts and sciences and associated cultural refinements as exemplified by the ancient Greeks. In Crozier’s analysis, the claim of the dominant commercial faction of the Whigs, was that “The exercise of virtue is at once a counter to corruption and a renewal of political community”; and it demanded the “recollection of foundational public spirit” to “prevent the decadence of its civic personality” (1995: 69).
Pocock observes that just as the country gentlemen “identified freedom with virtue and located in the past”, the Court Whigs represented by civic writers like Daniel Defoe “identified with wealth, enlightenment, and progress toward a future” (1985: 231). He argues that the defence of urban and commercial life required “a decisive abandonment of the classical…ideal of the citizen as armed proprietor, and his replacement by a leisured, cultivated, and acquisitive man who paid for others to defend and govern him” (1985: 235). Thus a new ideological language was developed by the Court Whigs to emphasise that the men of commerce could legitimately cultivate a civic personality in defence of the political liberty of the nation. The passions of the commerce men were to be tamed by the civilizing influence of politeness, an ethic which could reconcile the diverse interests of the country gentleman and the urban merchant (Pocock 1985: 236-237).
3.2.3 The Rise of Commerce and the Emergence of the Aristocratic-Bourgeois Alliance
In Dickinson’s analysis of eighteenth-century England, both the traditional aristocracy and the new men of commerce accepted the “rule of law, a wider role of parliament and civil liberties for all subjects” (1995: 7). The increasing importance of
47 the commercial sectors of the economy, the growth of towns and the development of a vibrant urban culture contributed to the development of “a lively political culture that involved very large numbers of the non-aristocratic elite in consciously influencing the decisions which affected the public at large and which shaped the political environment in which many people lived” (1995: 7). He argues that it was the assimilation of the new economic group into the political culture of the traditional elites that had facilitated the durability of the aristocratic domination in eighteenth-century England.
According to Dickinson, the governing elites understood the need to respond to the activities of the non-elites, accommodating the growing economic influence and cultural demands of the middling and lower orders of the British society (1995: 8). In doing so, the ruling elites adopted the principle of “consensus and compromise rather than… confrontation and conflict” in its dealings with the new economic group (1995: 8). Although the elites used both the House of Lords and the House of Commons to protect their personal stakes, they made efforts “to increase participation in public affairs and to make government and parliament more accountable to the people at large” (1995: 9). I argue that whilst accommodating the political and cultural aspirations of the new men of commerce through the idiom of politeness, the Whig ideologists also worked towards preserving their own dominance.
J. C. D. Clark (1985) characterises eighteenth-century England as Anglican, aristocratic, and monarchical. Dismissing the view that eighteenth century was an era of bourgeois individualism, Clark insists on the importance of the fact that the landed and mercantile elites were united in deferring to “a common code of manners and values: that of the traditional elite” (Clark 1985: 71). The new men were accepted; but it was on terms set by the aristocracy and gentry. Rather than putting forward competing class ideals and practices, the landed gentry and the new monied men recognised only one class: gentlemen (1985: 90). He stresses that before the 1820s, the “ideal of the gentlemen exercised an intellectual ascendancy” among both the patricians and the plebeians (1985: 92).
Seeking the essence of gentlemanliness, Clark refers to the letters that Lord Chesterfield wrote from 1747 to 1751 to cultivate gentlemanly qualities in his illegitimate son. Clark claims that the Chesterfield letters echoed Montesquieu’s ideals in demanding “engaging, insinuating, shining manners; a distinguished politeness, an almost irresistible address; a superior gracefulness in all you say and do” (quoted in Clark 1985: 101). He dismisses the view that such ideals amounted to
48 mere trappings of eighteenth-century high life. On the contrary, he proposes that the scattered instances as seen in manners, speech, clothes, architecture, furniture, landscape gardening “are best understood as reflections of a principle” (1985: 101).
Unlike Clark, who saw Montesquieu as the promoter of the principle of good manners, Klein (1994) identifies Shaftesbury, the grandson of the founder of the Whig party, as the chief interpreter of the new ideological language and cultural outlook that considered the development of liberty, arts and letters from a civic tradition. He explains that Shaftesbury saw freedom as “the basis for culture just as the decline of freedom dried up culture’s resources” (1994: 148). To illustrate, Klein highlights, “In the lineage and succession of wit, Shaftesbury detected the conjoined ‘Flourishing and Decay of Liberty and Letters’” (1994: 148; Robertson 1990, I: 144). This thesis investigates the constituents and essence of the English idiom of politeness.
Conclusion
In the above analysis, I have provided an overview of the climate of relative political stability and religious harmony in eighteenth-century England. I have also situated the advancement of the idiom of politeness within the civic paradigm, in order to account for its ideological use by the Whigs. In supporting Klein’s attribution of the new ideological language of politeness to Shaftesbury and the Whig ideologists, I am not insisting that they had independently crafted, legislated and created the polite culture. Rather, I argue that they functioned as the interpreters of the social and structural transformation of eighteenth-century England. I suggest that the polite culture was a symptom of the social transformation in the age of commercialization. The empowered rising class, freed from the dictates of the church and influence of the court, had recourse to reason and private judgment, to negotiate a new way of thinking and living.
In harnessing passions as interests and assimilating the monied class into the class of gentlemen, the traditional aristocracy managed to maintain their dominance through the promotion of the idiom of politeness. Predicated on rationality and sociability, the idiom of politeness was to meet the demands of a more stable, more complex and more individuated society, where there was greater division of labour, competition and co-operation.
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Chapter 4: Habermas and the Bourgeois Public Sphere
Introduction
In hypothesising the role of an ethic of politeness in facilitating participation in the public sphere, I borrow the insights of Jürgen Habermas as outlined in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (1962). Habermas charts the emergence and decline of the public sphere from the sixteenth to the twentieth century in three European countries: England, France and Germany. He emphasises the historical condition and the socially-located character of the public sphere, which is based on the interrelations of many personalities: the aristocracy, the intellectuals, the merchants, the financiers, the capitalists, the industrialists, as well as the purveyors of news, the coffee house patrons and the men and women of the salons.
Calhoun considers the multidimensional and interdisciplinary account of The Structural Transformation as “the richest, best developed conceptualization available of the social nature and foundations of public life” (1992: 41). But, the book has also had its critics, of course. In the last decades, researchers have questioned “the idealizing expectations embedded in the institutional arrangements of bourgeois modernity” (Johnson 2006: 13).
The discussion is divided into three sections. Part One and Two present my interpretation of Habermas’s account of the constitution of the public sphere in the literary and political arenas. Part Three reviews the critical reception of the Habemasian paradigm. I conclude by suggesting that Habermas’s analysis is best read as an example of the Weberian ideal type, useful for assisting researchers in making comparative analyses.
4.1 Emergence of the Public Sphere
Different features of eighteenth-century England have been said to manifest politeness. In this thesis I elect to study cultural construction legitimised by the idiom of politeness and used by the ascendant commercial class in the development of their social identities.
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Habermas conceives of the “bourgeois public sphere as a category that is typical of an epoch” (1992: xvii). He argues that the notion of public opinion and public sphere can only be understood when anal
Used historically “as instances of a more general social development” (1992: xviii). Accordingly, Habermas analyses the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere in the context of the mercantilist and capitalist phase of the trading nations in Europe, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. His investigation of the literary and political character of a public sphere is focused on the critical-rational discourse negotiated by educated men and women. For the purpose of this thesis, the following section focuses on Habermas’s argument about the socio-historical conditions that promoted the development of the public sphere in England towards the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth-century.
In his review of the structural transformation of the European trading nations in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, Habermas argues that the rise of the new finance and trade capitalism in Europe ushered in a new social order. He notes that initially the state exerted power over these traders and capitalists, as the commercial exchange developed “according to the rules which certainly were manipulated by political power” (1992: 15). As long as the ruling class participated in this new economic medium only as consumers, their position was not threatened. However, Habermas argues, as soon as the political elites apportioned an increasing amount of their production on their lands for the acquisition of luxury goods obtainable only through long distance trade, they were thrust “into dependence on the new capital” (1992: 16). The relationship between the ruling class and commercial class progressed to a new phase of increasing and intertwining interdependence, which provided opportunities for the latter to assume a greater role in political decision making and cultural construction. Such an argument is congruent with Elias’s view that the greater interdependence in the bourgeois society with the expansion of trade had exerted pressures for self-restraint in the civilizing process.
To put his argument in historical perspective, Habermas situates the emergence of the public sphere in the context of the institutional and financial innovations needed to facilitate the expansion of long-distance trade. According to Habermas, “the traffic in commodities and news manifested their revolutionary power only in the mercantilist phase in which, simultaneously with the modern state, the national and territorial economies assumed their shape” (1992: 17). In his analysis, from the sixteenth century onwards, England assumed its economic and political ascendancy, and entered into a new stage of capitalism, when its merchant companies were
51 organised on a capitalist basis. Habermas has taken a very different starting point in his understanding of the rise of capitalism from that of Weber. He makes no direct or indirect reference to the overarching influence of ascetic Christianity on facilitating the rise of capitalism. He investigates the bourgeois participation in the public sphere, predicated on rationalization and sociability, in the context of the structural transformation of society as necessitated in the mercantile and capitalist phase.
Habermas argues that, not satisfied with limited markets, the European merchant fleets set up new colonies to procure raw materials to fuel their factories at home. They also explored foreign markets to export their manufactured goods. They were no longer the old traders in staple goods. To meet the rising need for capital and to spread the risks of foreign expeditions, financial innovations had to be made. These merchant fleets became stock companies, whose shares could be publicly floated to obtain finance. Habermas adds, “Beyond this, however, they needed strong political guarantees. The markets for foreign trade were now justly considered ‘institutional products’; they resulted from political efforts and military force” (1992: 17). This had created interdependence between the ruling class and the new men of commerce.
Greater chains of interdependence were created as trade and the bureaucracy expanded to support one another. In the course of the trade expansion, Habermas points out, the town-based economy was nationalised, and the various state bureaucracies were created to regulate the expansion of trade. This meant that money was needed for the state to maintain itself in the regulation and collection of taxes and duties. The power of the state was now to be found in the sphere of public authority, where its existence depended on a permanent bureaucracy and a standing army to assert its political will. Habermas maintains that besides necessitating the expansion of the state bureaucracies, the trade in commodities had also facilitated the development of the industries on a capitalist basis. Rather than simply depending on trade as a source of wealth, the capitalists now wanted to establish a more permanent and stable base for economic expansion. The state wanted to create employment opportunities in factories for its growing population, and the capitalists aimed to export its manufactured goods as a new source of income.
In Habermas’s view, “civil society came into existence as the corollary of a depersonalized state authority” in the seventeenth century (1992: 19). In the new mercantilist and capitalist phase, economic activities were no longer conducted solely for the support of the private realm of the household. It had gained public relevance as it now functioned under the direction and the supervision of the public authority. For the first time, the economic conditions of the private enterprise had
52 entered the public realm and gained public interest. The modern capitalists had entered the realm of commercial economics, where they had to maximise profits by learning administrative science, the science of finance and even agricultural technology. Habermas underscores the close connection of the private sphere of the civil society with the organs of public authority in the changing economic environment.
Besides emphasising the political and social transformation that has been brought about by the traffic in commodities, Habermas highlights the revolutionary power of the purveyor of news (1992: 24). Political journals first appeared as early as the middle part of the seventeenth century. They contained residual information culled from the private correspondences of merchants, who had first-hand information of trade conditions and news from overseas. The purveyors of information soon recognised news as a commodity and began to print journals, containing news of general interest, to sell to the public. At the same time, the state also saw the opportunity to make use of the press as its official mouth piece for purposes of administration and communication; the press informed citizens of new legislations and official pronouncements.
Habermas points out that educated modern bureaucrats formed the core of a new stratum of “bourgeois” people during this development of a capitalist mode of commerce and industrialization, and during this concomitant modernization of the state. Used as an apparatus of the modern state, they had access to the press. The stratum expanded to include other educated people such as doctors, officers, professors, scholars, school teachers and even pastors. However, Habermas points out that it was only when the capitalist class of merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs and manufacturers entered this stratum that, the bourgeoisie as a group, became the real carrier of the public. Assuming a commanding status in the new sphere of civil society, this class began to create tensions between “towns” and “court” by challenging the latter’s social policies when they affected the public.
The public, led by the affluent and educated bourgeoisie, could now use the press to express their critical-rational views. Besides the political journals, scholarly periodicals providing pedagogical instructions, literary reviews and criticisms also appeared. Habermas underscores that it was in England that the public sphere in the political realm first emerged at the end of the seventeenth century. The bourgeoisie had cast itself loose “as a forum in which the private people, come together to form a public, readied themselves to compel public authority to legitimate itself before public opinion” (1992: 25-26).
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So far I have emphasised the economic transformation that fostered the rise of the bourgeoisie and its public sphere, but I should not end this section without noting Habermas’s emphasis that the English court, which had grown dim since the 1688 Revolution, provided further opportunities for the bourgeoisie’s cultural ascendancy. Puritanical William, sickly Anne, the German Georges I and II, and the domestic farmer George III: none of these monarchs desired to restore the former glory of the Tudor and Stuart reigns. The English court was content to withdraw into royal seclusion and allow the town to assume cultural authority.
4.2 Development of the Public Sphere
Habermas distinguishes the emergence of two forms of public sphere, the literary and the political. He points out that it was the growth of the coffee houses between 1680 and 1730, and the development of the salons in the second half of the eighteenth century, that had strengthened the public sphere in eighteenth-century England (1992: 32). They became the centres of criticism, literary at first and then also political. He insists that a certain parity between the educated of aristocratic society and of the bourgeoisie emerged in the course of the development of the public sphere.
Before discussing the development of the literary and political public spheres separately, I would like to highlight the commonalities of the male-dominated coffee houses and the mixed-gender salons.
In Habermas’s analysis, the sociality of the coffee houses and the salons was essentially characterised by three institutional criteria. Firstly, it was a social intercourse that aimed to minimise the impact of social distinctions, even if it remained mindful of political and economic disparities. The critical-rational discourse was based on the parity of common humanity, in which a better argument could assert itself against social hierarchy.
Secondly, with the loss of the cultural authority of the church and court, as well as the commodification of cultural products, the private person could now make personal interpretation of works of philosophy, literature and art. Through rational communication, they could publicly announce their personal opinions on these works.
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Thirdly, the propertied and educated public, who became readers, listeners and spectators, were implicitly included in the notion of the public. The issues raised in published works became accessible to the public as a whole for the first time. There arose a new form of bourgeois representation as the discussants in the coffee houses and the salons claimed to act as the mouthpiece of the public.
United in these attributes, “held together by the press and its professional criticism”, the coffee houses and the salons functioned as principal cultural sites where the ascendant commercial class was able to engage in public discussion on social policies and to thereby regulate the civil society (Habermas 1992: 51-2).
4.2.1 Development of the Literary Public Sphere and the Salons in England
Habermas argues that in seventeenth-century France, when the Hôtel de Rambouillet replaced the great hall at court, the salon became a key institution, where private citizens could gather to express their views publicly. A site for the assembly of the urban aristocracy and bourgeois intellectuals such as writers, scientists and artists, the salon took over from the court as the site of the public sphere. When it assumed this cultural function on the basis of a rational-critical discourse, the public sphere was transformed (Habermas 1992: 31).
According to Habermas, before the development of the English salons in the second half of the eighteenth century, family members of the educated bourgeois conjugal home had already constituted a public in its own right. The private citizens had begun to read and critique literary and artistic productions in the privacy of their homes. Habermas highlights the importance of the development of the genre of the novel, epitomised by Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), in the development of the literary public sphere. He argues that this genre facilitated the development of a new relation between the author, the work and the public, and opened up communication between the author and the readers. Habermas insists that the novel established for the first time the kind of realism that allowed anyone to enter into the literary action as a substitute for his own. The author and the readers used the relationships between the figures, between the author, the characters, and the reader, as substitute relationships in reality (1992: 50). The written word and the print culture had allowed the private individuals to form a public.
Two years after the publication of Pamela, the first public library was founded in England. Book clubs, reading circles and subscription libraries were also founded.
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The reading public, held together by the print media and its professional criticism, established a public world of letters. The novels were not consumed as a form of personal indulgence in the pursuit of illusionary pleasures. Rather they became platforms that facilitated rational-critical debates in the public. Now, instead of the church or court, private publishers could act as patrons, commissioning literary works. Habermas observes that the “it was only through critical absorption of philosophy, literature, and art that the public attained enlightenment and realized itself as the latter’s living process” (1992: 42). He maintains that the public that formed in the theatres, museums and concerts all had its origins in the bourgeois family.
In the 1750s, as the bourgeois family gained confidence in expressing itself in the world of letters, the more influential and wealthier women took upon themselves the duty of hosting evening parties, where the leading intellectuals of the day were invited to form the public. To cater for such gatherings, architectural changes were made to the grand houses. The lofty raftered hall went out of fashion in favour of smaller intimate rooms. A particularly well-decorated and well-designed room was reserved for the guests to facilitate convivial discussions and rational-critical debates. In the salons, the participants no longer represented the views of the court, as they were not beholden to the king for financial rewards. They acted as the new patrons, to whom almost all the important writers of the eighteenth century had to submit their works for discussion and criticisms before they could be published.
According to Habermas, three elements marked the salon society. Firstly, it was established voluntarily by free individuals. Secondly, its continuance rested on the commitment of the two spouses in hosting such gatherings. Thirdly, it permitted the non-instrumental development of all faculties that marked the cultivated personality. He maintains that all these three elements conjoined in a concept of the pure, absolute and common humanity of mankind. He insists that the salon functioned as a genuine site for sociability. He considers it as “the scene of a psychological emancipation that corresponded to the political-economic one” (1992: 46). He argues that such a sense of emancipation was more than just a bourgeois ideology. The human closeness and opportunity to engage in the rational-critical discourse in these salons was, according to Habermas, a portrayal of the consciousness of psychological freedom experienced by the private people. They believed that they acted as autonomous agents, “emancipated from government directives and controls”, and obeyed only the “anonymous laws functioning in
56 accord with an economic rationality immanent, so it appeared in the market” (Habermas 1992: 46).
In Habermas’s estimation, the salons provided the “bourgeois family with its consciousness of itself” as being capable of realising freedom, especially in the intimacy of their homes (1992: 46). They saw themselves as creating the space to participate freely as private citizens in the making of the civil society, even though, in reality, the bourgeois family was intrinsically subject to institutional regulations and societal constraints in the reproduction of capital.
4.2.2 Development of the Political Public Sphere and the Coffee Houses in England
The pursuit of the parity of humanity based on a rational-critical discourse, and freedom from political domination, formed the central theme in the development of the political public sphere. According to Habermas, three significant events affected the structural transformation of the public sphere in the English society at the end of the seventeenth century.
The first development was the founding of the Bank of England in 1694, and the establishment of the stock market. Habermas assesses that these financial institutions had ushered in a new political and economic reality, a new stage in the development of capitalism (1992: 57). It meant that the economy, which had hitherto been held together by the private loans extended by the men of commerce, could now rely on the granting of credit by the bank or the floating of public shares (1992: 58). It should be noted that this was not a development that the men of commerce were particularly in favour of, as it threatened their pre-eminence, since an alternative source of credit to bourgeois society had become available.
The second development was the Licensing Act of 1695, which eliminated censorship, and gave the public freedom of expression (Habermas 1992: 58). Habermas observes that the freedom from censorship meant that the press could present rational-critical arguments before the new forum of the public. This did not mean that the press could make wild allegations. They were still subject to the strict Law of Libel. Nevertheless, it meant that a legitimate medium existed, via the mass media, to allow the public to register their personal and public opinions on matters that affected them and the country as a whole.
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The third development was the setting up of the first cabinet government, which marked a new stage in the development of parliamentary monarchy. Habermas claims that the parliamentarization of state authority would serve to assist the evolution of the public into a legitimate organ of the state in the closing decade of the eighteenth century.
In addition to these three significant developments paving the way for the bourgeois development of the public sphere, Habermas insists on the pivotal role of the coffee houses. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the bourgeoisie had to wrestle with the court to allow the coffee houses to continue to be used as informal and convivial sites for free expression and interchange of ideas. Habermas highlights that the court of Charles II had viewed the coffee houses, visited by people of various ranks, as seed beds of political unrest. The royalty felt threatened by the uncontrolled discussions and debates that coalesced into public opinions that in turn undermined the sovereignty of the crown. Habermas quotes King Charles II as having complained:
Men have assumed to themselves a liberty, not only in coffee houses, but also in other places and meetings, both public and private, to censure and defame the proceedings of the State, by speaking evil of things they understand not, and endeavouring to create and nourish an universal jealousie and dissatisfaction in the minds of all His Majesties good subjects (1992: 59).
In 1675, Charles II issued a proclamation to close down all London’s coffee houses, but a general public outcry forced him to withdraw the proclamation in a few days. Despite this royal hostility, however, the coffee houses flourished, substantiating the view that the town had already absorbed the culture of the court in engaging in political discussion.
Between 1680 and 1730, the coffee houses reached their golden age as the centre of the public sphere. By the first decade of the eighteenth century, London had already 3,000 coffee houses, each with a core group of regulars. At Will’s Coffee House (see Figure 1), John Dryden was surrounded by the new generation of writers who joined in the battle of the ancients and moderns. At Button’s, Addison and Steele held court. At the Rotary Club, Samuel Pepys met with James Harrington, who presented the republican ideas of his Oceana. Even the loyalists had their favourite coffee house, namely the Sun in Threadneedle Street.
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Figure 1: Will’s Coffee House
(www.ayay.com)
The coffee house was claimed as a new sort of urban territory, accessible and orderly. It was seen as a permeable public institution where familiars, friends and strangers could meet for polite conversation. It was the sociability engendered through conversation at the coffee houses that was significant to the development of the public sphere.
Habermas highlights that the nature of the public sphere was hugely influenced by the publication of two moral weeklies. In 1709, Steele published the Tatler, and in 1712, Addison started the Spectator. Both publications became the focal point for discussions in all the coffee houses. The dialogic and conversational form, as well as the letters of the readers, developed the publications as a medium for the process of mutual enlightenment. Habermas claims that Addison had assumed the role of a censor of manners and morals. His essays focused on encouraging the rich, influential and learned to support charities and schools for the poor, to improve
59 education, and to adopt civilized forms of conduct. He spoke out against gambling, and religious fanaticism. Essentially, Addison encouraged tolerance, “emancipation of civic morality from moral theology”, and underscored the practical wisdom of the philosophy of the ancients (Habermas 1992: 42).
However, there were limits to the development of the public sphere at the beginning of the eighteenth century, as Queen Anne was personally opposed to the involvement of the public in matters of the state. Consequently, the proceedings of the Parliament were held in secrecy. Any publication on the parliamentary debates was deemed breach of privilege and made illegal. It was only in the reign of George I in 1714, that the journals, produced both by the Whigs and Tories, effectively raised the status of the public sphere. In the 1730s, the press, made up of the most widely read Whig London Journal and British Merchant, as well as the Tory publications of Mercator, Craftsmen and the Gentleman’s Magazine, established for the first time “a genuinely critical organ of a public engaged in critical political debate: as the fourth estate” (Habermas 1992: 60). They could now effectively garner the support of the reading public to champion important public causes before parliament.
During the reign of George III, from 1760 to 1820, there was a remarkable progress in the evolution of the public sphere as the press became increasingly critical of the government. The ‘Letters of Junius’, which appeared from 21 November through 12 May 1772 in the Public Advertiser, marked this state of confrontation in a highly visible manner. Through a series of satirical articles, the King, ministers, top military men, and jurists were publicly accused of political machinations, and secret connections of political significance were exposed (Habermas 1992: 60-61)
In the last three decades of the eighteenth century, there were strong indications that the state could no longer exclude the public from deliberations that affected the country as a whole. An incident that strengthened the development of the public sphere was the extraordinary ability of the journalist, William “Memory” Woodfall, who reproduced, verbatim, in the Morning Chronicle, sixteen columns of parliamentary speeches, which he had heard the day before. This incident was the final blow to parliamentary secrecy (Habermas 1992: 62). In 1771, John Wilkes, alderman of London and editor of the Evening Post was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary proceedings. In 1789, Woodfall founded the Woodfall’s Register which pioneered the full reporting of parliamentary debates. This did not mean England was ruled by public opinion, because access to the public sphere was still limited by education and affluence. Rather, it meant that the middle class, whose interests had
60 not been adequately represented by the House of Commons, could now begin to protect their own interests through the organ of the public opinion.
The emergence of the public sphere and the legitimacy accorded to public opinion had made the traditional line of opposition irrelevant. The Whigs, who had traditionally opposed the Tories for colluding with the crown, now adopted a defensive stance when they came to power. The parties swapped strategies depending on who was the prominent power in court. The permanent division was between the ruling party and the party in opposition. The former was invariably represented as corrupt, working for private interest at the expense of public good, championing personal pleasure rather than public good, and succumbing to passion rather than reason.
In the civic tradition, the government was judged as a moral being, and its members were expected to behave as virtuous citizens working towards public good. In the past, the parties that held different political and religious opinions had to resort to wars to settle their differences. Now, with the emergence of the public sphere, the final arbiter was the public. The opposition party would now appeal to “the sense of the people”, “the common voice”, “the general cry of the people” and ”the public spirit” to stake their claims and defeat their opponents (Habermas 1992: 64). The public sphere was a space of critical activity and the public opinion was recognised by the English as an authority to compel lawmakers to legitimize themselves (Habermas 1992: 96). It constituted a tribunal predicated on critical and rational debate that sought enlightenment through the publicity provided by parliament.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the party in power had to acknowledge the influence of the public sphere. It was the Whig politician, Charles James Fox, who eventually acknowledged the legitimacy of the public sphere. In 1792, three years after the outbreak of the French Revolution, he openly deferred to the public on his leadership, proposing:
It is certainly right and prudent to consult the public opinion…If the public opinion did not happen to square with mine; if, after pointing out to them the danger, they did not see it in the same light with me, or if they conceived that another remedy was preferable to mine, I should consider it as my due to my King, due to my Country, due to my honour to retire, that they might pursue the plan which they thought better, by a fit instrument, that is by a man who thought with them…but one thing is most clear, that I ought to give the public the means of forming an opinion (quoted in Habermas 1992: 66).
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Under the pressure of public opinion, Fox discontinued war preparations against Russia. The public could not be marginalised any longer. Fox made the speech with the public in mind. The opinions of the people, arrived at through rational-critical debates among the educated and informed public, had to be taken seriously as part and parcel of the political process. According to Habermas, whilst the 1688 Protestant Succession had secured England against the threat of the absolutism of the crown, it was the emergence of the public sphere, and the coalescence of public opinions, that constituted a check on the absolutism of Parliament.
4.3 Review of Critique of The Structural Transformation
According to Habermas, rationality and sociability were the two most important attributes that facilitated the interactions of a specific bourgeois category: the educated and affluent, in the public and private spaces. He insists that interactions had to pivot on the strength of a face to face argument rather than the weight of one’s social pedigree or economic prowess. This argument has not always been well received, especially by those who have read Habermas’s work as empirical historiography, rather than as Weberian ideal type.
In this section, I will focus on critics who complain about the exclusivity, the non- egalitarianism, and the class and gender biases of Habermas’s analysis of the constitution of the public sphere in eighteenth-century England. Thus I will not deal with critique of his controversial unilinear argument of a degeneration of a “culture debating to a culture-consuming” public in the twentieth century (Habermas 1992: 438).
Geoff Eley suggests that it was not only the literate and polite bourgeois who could put reason to use. He insists that “The liberal desideratum of reasoned exchange also became available for nonbourgeois, subaltern groups” such as the peasantry and working classes (1992: 304). Furthermore, he disputes Habermas’s claim that the values of the public sphere are derived exclusively from the bourgeois stratum. In his estimation, Habermas has discounted the “dynamics of emergence and peculiar forms of internal life” characteristic of the other strata. He points out that Habermas’s dichotomy of “educated/uneducated’ and “literate/illiterate” was unworkable because the liberal public sphere, at the point of its very appearance, “was faced by… a ‘plebeian’ public that was disabled and easily suppressed but also a radical one that was combative and highly literate” (1992: 304).
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According to Eley, Habermas, in presenting an idealistic, egalitarian and critical- rational public sphere, “misses the extent to which the public sphere was always constituted by conflict” (1992: 306). He suggests comparing Habermas’s liberal model of the bourgeois public sphere; with that of the public discourse articulated by the Birmingham Lunar Society. In essence, Eley argues that the public sphere is better understood as “the structured setting where cultural and ideological contest or negotiation among a variety of publics takes place” (1992: 306).
Sharing Eley’s views, Keith Baker (1992: 191-192) claims that Habermas neglects the role of the working class in his account of the emergence of the public sphere. The key point of this critique, as interpreted by Goode, is that Habermas’s narrative has not taken into account the significance of “marginal and subaltern political spaces” occupied by the other social groups (2005: 31).
Besides the general criticism that Habermas is too focused on the interest and predilection of bourgeois society, David Zaret (1992: 215) points out that his account does not include the various historical dynamics that were at work in tandem with the development of the capitalist economy. Goode agrees with such an observation and suggests that Habermas ought to move away from his economy-centric model to one that takes into account the other constituents of modernity, such as the development of mass printing, changes in religious attitudes, and the contribution of scientific and anthropocentric views that increased the confidence and autonomy of the bourgeois class (2005: 34; see also Johnson 2006: 12).
It is with such criticisms in mind that I focus in this thesis on another key constituent of modernity, the influence of the ethic of politeness, arguing that it provided the normative structure; which guided discussions and debates in the various cultural sites in eighteenth-century England and contributed to the development of the public sphere.
Feminist writers have provided some of the most vigorous critique of Habermas’s idealization of a public sphere anchored on parity and rationality. Habermas is criticised for his failure to address the significant contribution of women in his discussion of the constitution of the public sphere. Nancy Fraser points out that Habermas’s theory is ideological as “it rests on a class- and gender-biased notion of publicity, one which accepts at face value the bourgeois public’s claim to be the public” (1992: 116). She also questions whether social inequalities were as effectively bracketed as suggested by Habermas (1992: 119). She is concerned that without participatory parity, there could not be an equal representation by all groups
63 concerned: the men and the women, as well as the socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups.
Responding to such criticisms, Goode (2005: 41) is not convinced that one’s socio- economic status necessarily determines one’s negotiation of the public sphere. He also questions Fraser’s observation that Habermas privileges one”single, comprehensive public sphere” (Fraser 1992: 117). He points out:
Habermas’s reading of the bourgeois public sphere also evokes multiplicity of associations, coffee houses, reading groups and the like which could only be characterised as a public sphere in the singular insofar as the opinions which emerged from them were directed towards each other and towards the same centre of power, namely the state (Goode 2005: 43).
In support of Goode’s observation, I examine the role of the coffee houses, as highlighted by Habermas, but I also study the various modes of public spaces created by the educated and talented men of the Kit-Cat Club, the Dilettanti Society, the Literary Society, as well as the self-taught and self-made men from the Lunar Society of Birmingham in Chapters 10 and 13.
Two other feminist writers, Seyla Benhabib (1992) and Joan Landes (1998) argue that Habermas has not given an adequate treatment of the ideological self-presentation of the bourgeois family. They claim that Habermas is uncritical in his portrayal of a male-dominated conjugal family where the specific idea of human subjectivity does not produce a woman-friendly publicity. Landes points out that Habermas’s emphasis on a discursive norm that is rational, virtuous, and manly excludes the participation and denies the interests of women.
In contrast, Dena Goodman (1994) assesses that a rational public sphere in the eighteenth-century did not necessarily disadvantage the women. She suggests instead that it shaped the feminized character of the woman-led salons in France, where intellectually rigorous conversations were encouraged.
Many of these critics are interpreting the Habermasian paradigm as social philosophers, using his analysis to discuss how the public sphere should be constituted today. In doing so, they are inclined to overlook the historical specificity of this part of Habermas’s argument: that he is interpreting a specific public sphere in eighteenth-century England that was built fundamentally upon a patriarchal society. It is nonetheless true that Habermas could have paid more attention to the interesting gendered effects of the ethic of politeness, and, for this reason, Chapters
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11 and 12, will focus on the role of the English Bluestockings in the development of the public sphere. I illustrate that these women, individually and collectively, challenged the exclusionary bias, and made inroads into the male-only province of literary commentaries, history writing and historical painting.
At the other end of the spectrum, critics who have interpreted The Structural Transformation as an example of a Weberian ideal type have found it to be a most useful resource. Peter Hohendahl (1992) highlights that Habermas demonstrates the close relationship between the political public sphere and the literary public sphere in eighteenth-century England. Instead of arguing in theoretical abstraction, Habermas develops his theory in a cultural context. He points out that Habermas has made a significant point in suggesting that the debate in the literary public sphere prepared the participants to take part in the political public sphere as “cultural concerns cannot be generalized” (Hohendahl 1992: 108).
Craig Calhoun comments that the most significant contribution of the Habermasian paradigm is “to be an immensely fruitful generator of new research, analysis and theory” (1992: 41). He commends the Habermasian paradigm for the way it weaves “economic, social-organizational, communicational, social-psychological, and cultural dimensions of its problems together in a historically specific analysis” (1992: 41).
Lloyd Kramer points out that Habermas’s analysis has engendered creative dialogue between historians and critical theorists (1992: 257). Habermas himself reiterates that the interpretation of social phenomenon offers an opportunity to assess the extent to which and the manner in which “the exercise of domination and power persists as a negative constant, as it were, of history - or whether as a historical category itself, it is open to substantive change” (1989: 250).
Conclusion
The controversies and commendations that Habermas’s sociological model has generated testify to its value. It is fair to concede that Habermas gives an account of only one specific mode of public sphere; - one that he detects in seventeenth and especially eighteenth-century England with the proliferation of the coffee houses and the rise of the newspaper. It is also fair to concede that this bourgeois public sphere was itself “riddled with manifest conflicts, power games and strategic thinking” (Goode 2005: 32).
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I argue that the best way to think of Habermas’s public sphere paradigm is as a Weberian ideal type. In “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere” (Calhoun 1992), Habermas states that his first aim “had been to derive the ideal type of the bourgeois public sphere from the historical context of British, French, and German developments in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries” (1992: 422). He argues that, in investigating a complex social reality, “the formation of a concept specific to an epoch…be stylized to give prominence to its peculiar characteristics” (1992: 422). He highlights that, unlike historians, he has not referred to primary sources but relies on secondary literature. Despite such an approach, his work has been commended by Eley to be “securely and even imaginatively…historically grounded” (quoted in Calhoun 1992: 423). Habermas is not writing as a historian and I agree with Goode that many critical historiographic commentaries on his analysis of this period should be set “aside as somehow peripheral or pedantic” (2005: 29).
Thus the Habermasian model is best used as a measuring rod by researchers for comparative analyses. It is not intended to describe or reflect every aspect of the different modes of public sphere found over time and space. Like Weber and Elias, Habermas uses the methodology of historical excavations in order to develop a normative model of democracy to situate his argument.
In this chapter, I have reviewed Habermas’s arguments on the emergence of the literary and political public sphere, and on the pursuit of the parity and sociability of humanity in the salons and coffee houses of eighteenth-century England. I argue that it was in the context of such a public sphere as theorised by Habermas that the idiom of politeness found its expression. In turn, I also argue that it was also the advancement of the idiom of politeness that helped establish the character of the institutions of the public sphere, such as the coffee houses and the salons. I propose that the idiom of politeness and the public sphere developed in tandem, and in response to the social and structural transformation of the English society in the mercantile and capitalist phase of the civilizing process.
Before proceeding to the analysis of the empirical evidence for the promotion of the ethic of politeness, I would like to reiterate the influence of the third Earl of Shaftesbury. Habermas identifies Immanuel Kant as the philosopher who had reformed Hobbes’s principle ‘auctoritas non veritas facit legem’ (the authority and not the truth creates the law), expressed in The Leviathan published in 1651. He attributes to Kant, the promotion of the use of reason and thinking for oneself as liberation from self-incurred tutelage (1992: 104).
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Such an assertion has been challenged by Roy Porter (2000), who points out that it was Shaftesbury who prefigured Kant in recommending the method of the enlightenment through self-mastery. Porter points out that in 1706, writing to Pierre Bayle, a key figure in the enlightenment, Shaftesbury had identified England and Holland as the two enlightened nation, in which “Letters and Knowledge must advance in greater Proportion than ever” in pursuit of philosophical liberty (2000: 3).
Part Two of this thesis presents empirical evidence to illustrate the affinity between the ethic of politeness and development of the bourgeois public sphere. It begins with an analysis of the influence of the third Earl of Shaftesbury. Before presenting the empirical evidence for the promotion and pursuit of politeness, I pause in the next two chapters to review and challenge Colin Campbell’s attribution of the Cambridge Platonists and Shaftesbury as promoters of the ethic of sentimentalism.
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Chapter 5: Interpretation of the Cambridge Platonists
Introduction
In Weber’s estimation, the decline of Calvinism led to an ethical void in eighteenth- century England. He pays no attention to the theological revisions and philosophical developments in the age of the Enlightenment. For this reason, to complement Weber’s study, Campbell analyses the impact of the theological revision of the Cambridge Platonists in his study of eighteenth-century England. He argues that they had introduced the “other Protestant ethic”, of Christian sentimentalism, towards the end of the seventeenth century. He claims that such a Christian sentimentalism evolved into a self-centred ethic of emotional hedonism in eighteenth-century England. In their respective analyses, Weber and Campbell focus on how Protestantism, in the form of either ascetic rationalism or emotional hedonism, influenced the conduct of the capitalists and consumers.
In The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (1987), Campbell traces the emergence of the ethic of emotional hedonism to two key sources: the theology of the Cambridge Platonists and the aesthetics of Shaftesbury. It is interesting to note that differing interpretations of the psychological sanction emanating from these two sources have led to two different conclusions on cultural production in eighteenth- century England. On the one hand, Campbell argues that Shaftesbury grafted an aesthetic of subjectivity onto the theology of Christian sentimentalism of the Cambridge Platonists to promote the pursuit of illusory pleasures. On the other, I claim that Shaftesbury built upon a theology of ascetic rationalism and practical morality in crafting an ethic of politeness. In saying this, I do not mean to deny the importance of sentimentalism, but I do challenge any equation of it with politeness.
Campbell seeks to understand the psychological sanction exerted on the consuming public from an emotionalist perspective. Borrowing Weber’s notion of the doctrine of proof, by which people seek assurance of their possession of virtue during their lives, Campbell proposes that the romantic consumers interpreted their ability to feel sorrow, empathy, sympathy and pity for the plight of others as a genuine indication of their virtuous state. He insists that the expression of virtue had to emanate from the heart alone. It was not an intellectual and rational reaction but a subjective and emotional response of voluptuousness that was important to cultural production and consumption in eighteenth-century England.
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Before presenting my evidence on the promotion, progress and pursuit of politeness, I devote the next two chapters to reviewing and refuting the interpretations of Colin Campbell. Further to my discussion on religious toleration in Chapter 3, I argue that the theology of the Cambridge Platonists was anchored on the use of reason and the mind, rather than on sentimentalism, as proposed by Campbell. Further, I suggest that Cambridge Platonism provided the ethical foundation upon which Shaftesbury was to articulate his ethic of politeness, predicated on rationality and sociability.
5.1 The Cambridge Platonists as Promoters of Christian Sentimentalism
There were two major shifts in the relationship between religion and ethics in English thought in the period 1660-1780, as explained by Isabel Rivers (1991: 1). The first was represented by the Cambridge Platonists and the next by the group of free thinkers which included Shaftesbury and his philosophical allies, John Toland and Anthony Collins.
The leading members of the Cambridge Platonists included clergyman such as Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683), John Wilkins (1614-1672), John Tillotson (1630- 1694), and Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680). They came to be known as the Cambridge Platonists because they were seen to have grafted the teachings of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero onto Christian theology. They rejected the Calvinist doctrine, which stressed, first, man’s fallen and depraved nature and, second, the arbitrary will of God to select just a few elect to salvation. Instead, they preached an optimistic portrait of human nature, which emphasized the way mankind’s innate capacity for reason and freewill co-operated with providential grace to achieve a virtuous and happy life (Rivers 1991: 1). They were loosely referred to as the latitude-men or the latitudinarians because of their tolerance of doctrinal differences within the Christian churches.
According to Campbell, the restoration of Charles II in 1660 signalled the decline of Puritanism (1987: 107). He attributes this decline to its intolerance, dogmatism and sectarianism, quoting the assessment of the Scottish theologian, John Tulloch, that the uncompromising stance of Puritanism gave the faithful “no scope for free play of Christian thought, while its stern logical consecutiveness directly tended to grate against the edge of this thought” (1987:108). The new theology focused on the God of salvation, who was more interested in willing that all men be saved rather than arbitrarily selecting a few to enjoy the eternal life.
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Campbell argues that it was thinkers like Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), a Dutch pastor and theologian in the seventeenth century, and John Wesley (1703-1791), the major Church of England cleric and Christian theologian in the eighteenth-century, who rose to challenge Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. They propounded the view that “the free activity of the human will was a necessary co-determinant in salvation” (1987: 109). This position opened the way to the Arminian belief that ‘God willeth all men to be saved’ (1987: 109). According to Campbell, “Arminianism represented a truly new spirit in Protestant theology, one which was to find its fullest expression in the writings of the Cambridge Platonists” (1987: 110).
Campbell identifies opposition to the “atheistic, materialistic, deterministic and pessimistic philosophy” of Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679) as a crucial factor that inspired the Cambridge Platonists, and that “operated to push the development of the Cambridge Platonists’ theology in the direction of a Christian sentimentalism” (1987: 115). According to Campbell, the principal Cambridge Platonists such as John Smith and Ralph Cudworth rejected Hobbes’ “treatment of morality as either simply ‘relative’ to our affections or determined by the edict of any earthly Leviathan” (1987: 116). They raised their greatest protest against Hobbes’ portrayal “of human beings being fundamentally motivated by the egoistic passions of pride and self- esteem” (1987: 116). They championed the belief that men made in the image of God must share in his benevolence and that men’s inherent tendency to natural acts of kindness incline them to act instinctively in the interest of others.
Thus far Campbell has pin-pointed the centrality of Cambridge Platonism, which resided in its radical renunciation of man’s innate depravity in favour of innate sociability. I interpret such a revision as a theology of empowerment which liberated the individuals to look outwards to others and to be encouraged to pursue civic virtue. I will show that although Shaftesbury was fundamentally anti-clerical, he was in sympathy with the theology of practical morality preached by Whichcote and Cudworth. I argue that Cambridge Platonism provided a compatible foundation upon which Shaftesbury was to develop his philosophy of politeness, rooted in rationality and sociability.
However, Campbell makes a different interpretation of the theology of the Cambridge Platonists. Intent on developing an ethic of emotional hedonism, he asserts that from the middle of 1680s, the theme of the God of benevolence and the natural goodness of man was given a different emphasis. He emphasises that the anti-Hobbesian Anglican preachers portrayed men as “creatures naturally disposed to impulses of pity and benevolence” (1987: 116). Instead of regarding the shift in
70 doctrinal emphasis as portending the possibility of the pursuit of civic virtue, Campbell assumes that the middle class traded concern for salvation in exchange for assurance of evidence of their innate goodness status as one of the spiritual elect (1987: 117). Campbell claims that under the influence of the Cambridge Platonists, Christian concern shifted from pursuing signs of one’s state of salvation to realizing the divinity within and confirming one’s inward virtue (1987: 117). Like Weber, Campbell retains the assumption that the puritanical middle-class was self-oriented and did not extend beyond the care of their personal wellbeing.
Campbell posits that it was such Christian sentimentalism that was to be the precursor of the romantic ethic, predicated on a pursuit of illusory pleasures. He chooses to focus narrowly on the latitudinarian ideal of compassion to assert that a “benevolent, empathizing man, who moved by pity and compassion to perform acts of charity towards his fellows, exemplifies the idea of holiness as goodness” (1987: 118). His pivotal argument is that the theology of benevolence had tended to focus on the ability of the faithful to express the divinity within them through the voluptuous emotional display of love and compassion towards the plight of others. According to Campbell, the Cambridge Platonists preached that a person could find assurance of their own holiness and virtue only through experience of the emotions of pity and compassion:
This is a doctrine of signs which specifies that individuals of genuine goodness are distinguished by the fact that their charitable acts spring from the tender emotions of pity and compassion. In this way, an optimistic theodicy of benevolence, linking a pietistic strand of Puritan thought to a neo- Platonic philosophy, served to create an ‘emotionalist’ ethic of Christian sensibility (1987: 118).
Campbell acknowledges that the Cambridge Platonists shared the Enlightenment assumption that the truths of religion could be discovered by the individual use of “his own power of reason uninfluenced by tradition or external authority; or by examining the beliefs and values actually held in common by all mankind” (1987: 119). But despite this acknowledgement, Campbell maintains that “What the Platonists emphasized, was not merely man’s common possession of reason, but his common possession of sympathy, benevolence, and fellow-feeling” (1987: 119).
In Campbell’s estimation, such a theology of benevolence met with increasing acceptance among influential clergy in Britain outside the exclusive circle of scholars in Cambridge in the seventeenth and eighteenth century (1987: 119). He argues that
71 they were united in their exaltation of goodness, and in preaching the virtues of charitable feelings and actions (1987: 120). He identifies two key strands of the theology of benevolence articulated by the Platonists (1987: 120). The first was that, since he was made in God’s image, man’s inner being constituted divine goodness and love. The second tenet emphasised the natural expression of feelings of pity and compassion, rather than the mechanical philanthropic actions of charity. He argues that by the early eighteenth century, these two tenets were eventually “supplemented by references to the inherent pleasure which accompanies benevolent emotions and their ensuing acts of kindness” (1987: 121).
To support his interpretation of Cambridge Platonism, Campbell gives a narrow interpretation to a few select quotes from key members in the movement. He quotes William Clagett (1664-1688), chaplain in ordinary to King Charles II in 1677:
To Man only of all Creatures under Heaven, God has given this quality, to be affected with the Grief and with the Joy of those of his own kind; and to feel the Evils which others feel, that we may be universally disposed to help and relieve one another (quoted in Campbell 1987: 120).
Campbell uses this quotation as proof of the Cambridge Platonists’ sentimentalism. He also cites John Tillotson: “There is no sensual Pleasure in the World comparable to the Delight and Satisfaction that a good Man takes in doing good” (1987: 121). Isaac Burrow (1660-1677), a leading Anglican clergy and mathematician, is quoted by Campbell commenting that God had “annexed a sensible pleasure” as “acts requisite toward preservation” of life (1987: 121). Campbell highlights that Burrow insisted that such a sensibility would forcibly entice the individuals into discharging acts of kindness which would “be accompanied with a very delicious relish upon the mind of him that practises it” (1987: 121). He highlights Burrow’s argument that such an act of benevolence carries “with it a more pure and savoury delight than beneficence”, and his conclusion that “A man may be virtuously voluptuous, and a laudable epicure by doing much good” (quoted in Campbell 1987: 121). Campbell also quotes Samuel Parker’s assertion that “all Men feel a natural Deliciousness consequent upon every Exercise of their good-natur’ed Passions” and that they took delight in reflecting upon their virtuous resolution (1987: 122). On this basis, Campbell argues:
Clearly such an obviously self-regarding complacency concerning one’s goodness as is presented here is effectively akin to an indulgence in benevolence for the pleasures which it can bring, whilst it must be
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remembered that it is upon feelings and not actions that the focus is fixed. It is therefore possible to conclude that the cult of benevolence, as preached by the Cambridge Platonists and Latitudinarian Anglican divines of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, did indeed help to stimulate an ‘altruistic’ form of emotional hedonism (1987: 122).
It is reasonable to accept that the theology of the latitudinarians did enjoin the discharge of charitable acts and did approve of the natural consequence of gaining mentalistic pleasure in reflecting upon one’s act of kindness. However it does not necessarily follow that the ultimate focus of the latitudinarians was not on performing the acts of benevolence per se but on encouraging “an indulgence in benevolence for the pleasures which it can bring”. This is the point to which I will now turn.
5.2 The Cambridge Platonists as Theologians of Rationality
This section provides evidence to argue that the Cambridge Platonists, as the name suggests, advanced a classical theology of ascetic rationalism rather than emotional hedonism.
The fundamental position of the Cambridge Platonists was that mankind, made in the image of God, had a natural understanding and appropriation of natural religion. They argued that reason provided understanding of the divinely implanted absolute standard of good and evil, enabling religion and truth to be lived out as virtues. Through reasoned reflection on personal experiences, the individual gained access to God. The religion of the Cambridge Platonists reflected two principles of the classical tradition, those of immersing in moral reflection and of upholding the sovereignty of reason.
In his sermon The Use of Reason in Religion, Benjamin Whichcote (see Figure 2), the leader of the Cambridge Platonists, set out a theological foundation for Christian faith. He argued that mankind could know God by the use of reason. He explained that if reason did not apprehend God, then religion could not be learnt, for there would be nothing in nature to graft it on. C. A. Patrides points out that according to Whichcote, the first principles of life are self-evident in reason. He quotes Whichcote: “For as we say, out of nothing comes nothing, so grant nothing so nothing can be proved. Wherefore it must be within the Reach of Reason, to find that there is a God”. Accordingly, Whichcote added that if God had not made man to know that
73 there was a God; there was nothing that God could have demanded of him (Patrides 1969: 47-50).
Figure 2: Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683)
(www.notable-quotes.com)
Whichcote counselled that people should make natural use of the mind to satisfy themselves about the being of God and his essential perfections. Far from trusting feelings, he argued:
The Mind being superior is not to be subject to the Body, nor to the things of the Body; neither ought there to be an unequal Distribution of Attendance; but according to the Proportion of the Worth and Value. We ought to improve our minds so far, as much over and above, as our Minds do transcend the Body (quoted in Patrides 1969: 49).
Without the use of reason, Whichcote argued, mankind was self-condemned because it had put out “the Candle of God in them” (Patrides 1969: 50). Mankind needed the light of reason and conscience to differentiate good from evil. In Moral and Religious Aphorisms (1753), Whichcote gave a vigorous defence for the primacy of rationality, “Sir, I oppose not rational to spiritual; for spiritual is most rational” (Slater 1753: 108).
Besides Whichcote, John Wilkins, a leading Anglican clergyman and philosopher, commented in the preface to his revised 1675 edition of Ecclesiastes that the most effectual way to persuade or inform the Christian congregation may be done by way of rational explanation and confirmation. As a founding member of the Royal
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Society, Wilkins propounded a new natural theology compatible with the science of his time (McGrath 2001: 242). He underscored the universal and timeless appeal of a theology based on the reason of mankind rather than the fashion and fancy of a particular time or people. To be considered fit and proper, a humane theology must be able to satisfy the rational and moral demand of the human judgment and conscience.
In defence of rationality, John Tillotson (1742: 31-45) listed the six points for discerning true and false revelations. Rule 1 stated that all revelations were to be discerned through the faculty of reason. Rule II emphasised that all supernatural revelation was premised on the truthful principles of natural religion. Rule III posited that all reasoning used in revealed religion must necessarily be controlled by natural religion. Rule IV stressed that a revelation given by God could not contradict the principles of natural religion. Rule V stated that a divine doctrine and revelation must provide good evidence to convince a prudent and considerate man. Rule VI concluded that to prove a doctrine or a revelation from God, the arguments presented must be much stronger than the objections tendered. Permeating every tenet was an emphasis on the exercise of reason. It is evident that Tillotson constructed Christian theology and practice on the basis of a rationality of natural religion, as emphasised by the classical writers.
Joseph Glanvill, Rector of the Abbey Church in Bath (1666-1680) summarised the Cambridge Platonists’ perspective on the congruity between reason and religion in Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (1676). He preached of: “That Reason [which] is a Branch and Beam of the Divine Wisdom; That Light which he hath put into our Minds, and That Law which he hath writ upon our Hearts” (Glanvill 1676: 17-18). To the Cambridge Platonists, there was no religion without reason. In A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion (1665), Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, Vicar of Sutton, Bedfordshire explained the relationship between faith and reason. He described faith as ‘a persuasion of the mind’ (1665: 203). More importantly, he claimed that, without reason, it would be baseless to have faith. He said that accounts of faith would be held in contempt if they could not explain faith in terms of reason.
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Conclusion
This chapter provides evidence to argue that the theology of the Cambridge Platonists privileged the use of reason and the exercise of the mind in its emphasis on practical morality. This does not mean that it denied the importance of charity and the expression of sympathy and kindliness. However, it does mean that the theology of Cambridge Platonism was fundamentally rooted in rationality.
I will soon argue that Shaftesbury’s ethic of politeness, rooted in the asceticism of the classical tradition, was compatible with the rationality and practical morality privileged by the Cambridge Platonists. Before I get to that, however, I want to present and question Campbell’s interpretation of Shaftesbury as a major contributor to the ethic of emotional hedonism.
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Chapter 6: Interpretation of Shaftesbury
Introduction
In The Romantic Ethic, besides insisting on the sentimental influence of the Cambridge Platonists, Campbell claims that the proclivities of the middle class were, ironically, legitimated by the ethical and aesthetic strictures of an aristocrat, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. He insists that Shaftesbury propounded the romantic ethic that encouraged the individuals to discount the dictates of external sources of authority, and to look within themselves, privileging the pursuit of pleasure. Campbell maintains that this emphasis on subjective experience came to dominate the attitude of the middle class in their consumerism. In simple terms, the maxim was: that which brought pleasure must be good and beautiful. Campbell considers this ethic a distinct cultural tradition of the middle-class, based on aesthetic relativism.
Campbell associates Shaftesbury with a romanticism predicated on emotional hedonism, but I argue that Shaftesbury promoted a polite ethic of civic humanism. Whilst Campbell posits that Shaftesbury defined an aesthetic tradition that was appropriated exclusively by the middle class, I propose that he had a larger civic enterprise to pursue. Shaftesbury combined ethics and aesthetics in a virtue-based moral system that appealed to the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance. Politeness, neither puritanical nor sentimental, introduced a neo-classical virtue-based ethic to meet the needs of the commercialization and consumerism of eighteenth-century England.
Shaftesbury and his philosophical allies advanced a new outlook on life that was beyond the religious dictates of the established church and the cultural leadership of the court. Ascetic, civic and rational in its approach, the politeness ethic’s demand for cultivation and learning was not based on the Calvinistic ideology of Weber’s study, but on the natural religion of the ancient Greek Stoics. In particular, I argue, Shaftesbury and the Whig ideologists provided England with the cultural language to negotiate the economic, political and social changes in eighteenth-century England. The Whigs’ programme of civic politeness united the key interests of the English society in the eighteenth century. It functioned as a moral code that guided the modern commercial class in their cultural construction and consumption.
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This chapter focuses on presenting Campbell’s interpretation of Shaftesbury as an emotional hedonist. I will then propose that Shaftesbury, in fact, promoted an ethic of ascetic rationalism and sociability. The full counter-argument is presented in the next two chapters.
6.1 Rejection of the Aristocratic Aesthetics
In setting out his theory of consumerist fantasy, Campbell surveys the cultural landscape of eighteenth-century England to identify two distinct aesthetic traditions: the aristocratic and the middle class. There were in turn two variants of the aristocratic aesthetic: the cavalier and the dandy. He insists rightly that the cavalier ethic of the Renaissance was not the source of emotional hedonism he observed in modern consumerism because it “was an ethic of restraint, of casual yet limited displays of sentiment” (1987: 162). He adds, “Any excess of emotion, whether of anguish or ecstasy, would be unseemly and ungentlemanly, representing bad manners in a courtier” (1987: 162). He notes that it was an ethic that was “other- regarding in orientation” and “naturally inhibited the degree of interest in self- gratification” (1987: 163). He explains that such an aristocratic ethic absorbed the influence of “a classical aesthetic [which privileged] restraint, order and harmony, in the context of respect for Greco-Roman authorities” (1987: 163).
Having dismissed the relevance of the cavalier ethic as the root of emotional hedonism, Campbell next discounts the influence of the dandy ethic, because he cannot reconcile the dandy’s striving for refinement in conversation, manners and attire with the inner-directedness of the middle class. He maintains that such an ethic was cultivated primarily to “display a superiority of self”, as well as the arrogance of the dandy (1987: 168). Moreover, Campbell points out that such an ethic required the “individual to exercise continuous control over all impulses and emotions” (1987: 168). Although the dandy ethic abandoned the centrality of noble birth, Campbell assumes that it could not have appealed to the Puritan middle class because of the dandy’s preoccupation with wealth accumulation to maintain his snobbish and exclusive lifestyle. Unlike Weber, who expresses his fear about the secularizing influence of the wealth amongst the Puritans, Campbell insists that they were still, by and large, introspective and inner-directed in the eighteenth century (1987: 171).
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Campbell continues by insisting that the emphasis on universal laws governing the creation and apprehension of beauty, either by direct rational reflection or by observation and learning, was equally distasteful to the middle class. The aristocratic aesthetic tradition was “too far removed” from middle class interests, he says, and its treatment of the beauty of art was too “unemotional to cater adequately for” the tastes of the middle class (1987: 149). Campbell concludes, then, that in rejecting the aristocratic aesthetic tradition, the middle class was determined “to develop an essentially ‘bourgeois’ aesthetic and norm of conduct” (1987: 150).
Campbell is accurate in pointing out the incongruence between the aristocratic ethic and the ethic of emotional hedonism. The former was other-oriented and the latter self-oriented. However what is problematic is his assumption of a distinct middle- class aesthetic, and his failure to identify the emergence of a new aristocratic- bourgeois alliance and their joint articulation of an ethic of politeness, which emphasised the morality of civic humanism.
6.2 Ethic of Emotional Hedonism and Aesthetic Relativism
While Campbell insists that the middle class had rejected the aristocratic interpretation of neo-classicism, he qualifies that they were not opposed to neo- classicism per se. He argues that the middle class had found themselves in a dilemma in their bid to assert their cultural identity. Brought up in the cradle of Puritanism, which denied all forms of cultural refinements, they had no aesthetic tradition to draw upon. Accordingly, Campbell reasons that they wanted to “adapt essentially neo-classical ideas in such a way as to permit the incorporation of fundamentally Protestant attitudes” (1987: 150). He claims that, as a class, they were determined to replace the aristocratic neo-classical system of aesthetics with a bourgeois version.
In this regard, Campbell identifies Shaftesbury as the promoter of the ethic of sentimental morality. He concludes that the bourgeois aesthetic tradition
was eventually achieved by blending the moral and emotional features…with certain classical ideas in such a way as to produce the philosophy of sentimentalism, and ironically enough, it was an aristocrat, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), who was to contribute most to this alternative ethico- aesthetic tradition (1987: 150).
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In this way, Campbell develops his lop-sided interpretation by arguing that Shaftesbury had built upon the Cambridge Platonists’ theology of benevolence, “in which a sympathetically inspired capacity for benevolence was substituted for ‘reason’ as the characteristic possession of man” (1987: 150). In Campbell’s interpretation, Shaftesbury discouraged the well-bred man from making any moral reflections in performing good deeds. Campbell supports this claim with the following passage, where Shaftesbury talks of the ethical danger of prudence and utility:
He never delivers…or considers of the matter by prudential rules of self- interest and advantage. He acts from his nature, in a manner necessarily, and without reflection; and if he did not, it were impossible for him to answer his character, or be found that truly well-bred man of every occasion (quoted in Campbell 1987: 150).
Besides offering this out-of-context quotation from Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks, Campbell relies on one other secondary source to substantiate his claim. He quotes the observation of Louis Bredvold in The Natural History of Sensibility (1962) that Shaftesbury’s doctrine “reduces the idea of virtue to little more than ‘a matter of passions and feelings’, elevating the ‘moral sense’ above judgment, conventional morality, the law or even conscience” (1987: 151). Campbell endorses this interpretation without offering independent evidence. Instead he requotes from Bredvold the following quotation from Shaftesbury, using it to argue that, Shaftesbury privileged the intuitive faculty in the development of taste:
After all…it is not merely what we call principle, but a taste that governs men. They may think for certain, ‘this is right, or that wrong’…yet if the savour of things lies cross to honesty…the conduct will infallibly turn this latter way. Even conscience, I fear such as is owing to religious discipline, will make but a slight figure where this taste is set amiss (quoted in Campbell 1987: 151).
After this, Campbell summarises, “It is obvious how such a doctrine serves to support the cult of sensibility, asserting as it does that only feelings can be truly relied upon to indicate that which is good” (1987: 151). He then goes further to insist that Shaftesbury saw pleasure as a natural link between goodness and beauty, arguing that Shaftesbury was the earliest British moralist to stress that “it was through feelings rather than reason that these insights were to be obtained” (1987: 151). Shaftesbury made formal rules appear irrelevant in the identification of beauty and the formulation of good, legitimising “emotional indulgence – as an indicator of
80 virtue, a natural conclusion being that whatever aroused feelings of pleasure was both beautiful and good” (1987: 151). Interpreting Shaftesbury’s notion of moral sense as a search for pleasure, Campbell postulates that Shaftesbury had made ethics and aesthetics virtually interchangeable with sensibility. He defines sensibility as typically covering “feeling sorry for oneself, feeling sorry for others, and being moved by beauty, and yet all responses had equal significance as indicators of goodness” (1987: 152).
In contradiction to the evidence which I provide in the next two chapters, Campbell concludes that Shaftesbury was in effect voting against the classical tradition that had stressed the supremacy of reason and the immutable rules governing the definition of good and beautiful:
Thus by making both morality and aesthetics a matter of emotional intuition, Shaftesbury left the way open for the classical test of beauty to be applied to virtue independently of reason or tradition…The fact that a course of action not only ‘felt right’ but, in addition, gave pleasure, could now be advanced as a forceful argument in favour of its propriety (1987: 152).
In Campbell’s analysis, Shaftesbury legitimised the idea that “each person had an innate and intuitive aesthetic sense which could, without the aid of judgment, unerringly know what was beautiful” (1987: 156). Shaftesbury’s “subjectivist” account of sensibility “legitimiz[ed] aesthetic relativism” (1987: 156).
Transposing this account of Shaftesbury’s philosophy onto the consumption phenomenon, Campbell insists that the eighteenth century saw a general rejection of a universal measure of beauty by the middle class (1987: 153). He maintains that they were also increasingly “inclined to be irritated by the aesthetic paternalism of neo- classical writers” (1987: 156). Insisting that by the middle of the eighteenth century, the middle class consumers had decided that they were their own leaders in matters of taste, Campbell adds that they did not need to refer to any aristocratic taste maker and could decide what constituted taste intuitively as individuals. He claims that aesthetic relativism was an important strand championed by the middle class, and that it was in opposition to the aristocratic aesthetic tradition based on a universal law of beauty. In conclusion, Campbell maintains:
the middle classes embarked upon a strenuous campaign to promote an aesthetic which served to endorse their real preferences and to advance a
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character ideal which made appreciation of beauty a matter of genuine emotional sensitivity and responsiveness (1987: 159).
Conclusion
In identifying Shaftesbury as the promoter of the ethic of emotional hedonism, Campbell relies on very scanty evidence. He has not considered the writing of Shaftesbury in its totality, but relies on selective passages from one secondary source, which he interprets according to preconceptions. He looks for a direct relationship between an ethical orientation and a social practice, without taking into consideration the increased interdependence between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, not only in the economic realms, but also in social practices and cultural institutions.
I do not challenge Campbell’s postulation of the romantic ethic and its plausible impact on eighteenth-century consumption of romantic novels and novelties. I think it likely that this ethic did become increasingly important. Nevertheless, I question Campbell’s attribution of Shaftesbury as a major contributor to the romantic ethic, and I insist on the crucial importance of an ascetic phase in eighteenth-century English cultural life. This phase was crucial in the establishment of a new sense of civic virtue and a new sense of a public sphere.
In the following two chapters, I provide an alternative interpretation of the philosophy of Shaftesbury, suggesting that he had articulated an ethic of politeness rather than emotional hedonism. In the case study of Wedgwood, I provide evidence to suggest that the middle class had not abandoned the ascetic rationalism and aesthetic rigidity of neo-classicism, but availed themselves of the aristocratic tradition, rehabilitated as politeness, in their cultural construction and consumption.
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Part Two: Empirical Evidence
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Chapter 7: Shaftesbury as an Interpreter of Politeness
Introduction
Just as the writing of Erasmus on teaching civility to young aristocrats gives a clue to the central concern of the European courts in the sixteenth century, the treatises of Shaftesbury provide evidence of the social and cultural concerns of the gentlemanly class in eighteenth-century England. Shaftesbury (see Figure 3) is important insofar as he was a major interpreter of the idiom of politeness, which enabled the enlightened, the educated and the affluent to exercise cultural and discursive liberty, independent of the dictate of the church and court. The analysis of Shaftesbury is to help us understand the role of the idiom of politeness in the cultural institutions and social practices of eighteenth-century England.
Politeness encompassed a personal and social dimension, and it also had an ethical and aesthetic referent. On the personal level, it subjected the individuals to the ascetic practice of self-examination and self-management, to enable them to cultivate their minds, and control their passions and appetites. On the societal level, practised in company, it facilitated harmonious interaction and cultural construction in the public sphere, predicated on rationality and rules of good breeding. It encouraged people of different opinions to come together to debate and discuss with ease and humour in order to polish one another. The articulation of ethics and aesthetics were regarded as inextricably bound. The production and consumption of cultural refinements were only legitimate insofar as it had a moral function. In the idiom of politeness, culture was the cultivation of the mind and the articulation of public good.
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Figure 3: Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
(en.wikipedia.org)
Used as a social register, politeness defined the sociability of the gentlemen and gentlewomen. It expressed an “idealised vision of human intercourse, peopled by gentlemen and ladies, sited in the drawing room or coffeehouse, engaged in intelligent and stylish conversation about urbane things, presided by the spirit of good taste” (Klein 1994: 8). It subjected cultural and discursive discourse under new social disciplines founded on the classical tradition.
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Advanced as a cultural paradigm, it legitimised forms of cultural practices and prescribed standards for the pursuit of learning, as well as development of architecture, painting, sculpture, music and writing. Politeness rejected the dogmatism and puritanism of church leaders, and the repressiveness of the Restoration court of Charles II. The church and court were no longer seen as the cultural legislators. The traditional sources of authority, including the church, were subject to new social disciplines. The established church and the various sects were encouraged to be tolerant, and to assume the reasonable and benevolent position of Cambridge Platonism. On the whole, politeness was not irreligious. It was complementary to the reasonable and reason-based theology of the Cambridge Platonists. It legitimised the freedom to discuss and examine everything, including the power of the court, the tradition of the church and the privilege of the aristocracy.
The idiom of politeness was encapsulated in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, the magnum opus of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. It appeared in thirteen editions between 1711 and the 1790s. One way to assess the influence of Shaftesbury is to consider the sustained attack on him by leading philosophers and Anglican divines in England. Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch philosopher resident in England, and the author of The Fables of the Bees (1714), claimed that Shaftesbury’s moderate middle path would prepare men only for the role of Justice of Peace, and not for the robust world of politics and commerce (Klein 1994: 2). Shaftesbury was also attacked by the leading Anglican Bishop George Berkeley. In his book, The Minute Philosopher (1732), Berkeley crafted an apology for the Christian religion. He defended its excellence and usefulness against the prejudice and ingratitude of free thinkers such as Shaftesbury. Under the direction of Berkeley, another attack was launched in 1751 by John Brown, who refuted Shaftesbury’s false formula for living in Essays on the Characteristics of Lord Shaftesbury (Robertson 1900: xxiii). The attacks on Shaftesbury by the influential Anglican divines were triggered by the fear that Characteristicks was undermining the power of the established church. These criticisms indicated the extent of Shaftesbury’s influence.
Most popularly regarded as the founder of the “moral sense school”, Shaftesbury influenced the thinking and writing of Joseph Addison, Henry Fielding, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and David Hume. In later editions of An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Hutcheson declared that the writings of Shaftesbury “will be esteemed while any reflection remains among men” (quoted
86 in Robertson 1900: xiv). Oliver Goldsmith, an influential English writer, commented in 1759 that Shaftesbury had “more imitators in Britain than any writer” he knew (quoted in Grean 1967: ix). Voltaire had noted the influence of Shaftesbury on Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (Robertson 1900: xxv). Pope himself was to claim that “to his knowledge the Characteristicks had done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the works of the infidelity put together” (quoted in Robertson 1900: xxvii).
Outside England, Shaftesbury had influenced Voltaire and Diderot in France, as well as Leibniz, Kant, Goethe and Herder in Germany (Grean 1967: xi). On reading “The Moralists”, Leibniz said, “I found in it almost all of my Theodicy before it saw the light of day”, and claimed that if he had read it before he published his own work in 1710, he “should have borrowed its great passages” (quoted in Grean 1967: ix). In 1745, Denis Diderot reproduced Shaftesbury’s treatise Inquiry Concerning Virtue as his Essai sur le Mèrite et la Vertu. A French translation of the whole works of Shaftesbury was published in Geneva in 1769, and ten years later, in 1779, a complete German translation of the Characteristicks was published. Johan G von Herder, the German thinker, considered Shaftesbury as the ‘Plato of Europe’, the virtuoso of humanity. In 1794, he claimed that Shaftesbury had exerted a marked influence on the best minds of the eighteenth century by striving and encouraging the search for the true, the beautiful and the good (Grean 1967, ix).
This chapter provides the background for the analysis of Shaftesbury presenting him not as the founder of emotional hedonism, as interpreted by Campbell, but as a major interpreter of the ethic of politeness, and a legislator to the construction of England’s national culture in the eighteenth century. To understand his philosophical interests and civic enterprise, I examine Shaftesbury’s aristocratic lineage, and trace his political career in the House of Commons and House of Lords. The evidence suggests that in acknowledgment of his political ineptitude, Shaftesbury assumed the role of a philosopher in articulating a cultural paradigm to encourage the English to focus on self-cultivation, social intercourse and cultural construction in the public sphere. Perhaps as Mandeville said, Shaftesbury was not suited to the rules of political contest in his day, but he played a major role in changing those rules.
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7.1 Aristocratic Lineage and Political Participation
Anthony Ashley Cooper was born in 1671 at Exeter House, the London residence of his grandfather, the first Earl of Shaftesbury and founder of the Whig party. The first Earl, a formidable politician, was a supporter of parliamentary monarchy, an enemy of Catholicism, as well as a sympathiser of the dissenters and free thinkers. Lord Ashley was twelve when his grandfather died in exile in Holland, accused of treason. He had been accused of plotting against the Duke of York, to prevent him from assuming the English throne on the death of his brother Charles II. After the death of the first Earl, Lord Ashley witnessed how the court, with the support of the Tories, undermined the power and influence of his family. Although the court could not pursue the charge of treason, they forced the sale of Shaftesbury’s estate to pay part of the debts incurred by the first Earl. It has been argued that Lord Ashley dedicated his life and philosophy not simply to justify his grandfather’s principles “but to live a public life so exemplary as to counter the opprobrium laid on the first earl” (Voitle 1984: 7).
The leading philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704) (see Figure 4), was both doctor and political advisor to the first Earl. He was chosen to supervise the education of the young Lord Ashley, who was groomed as the successor to his grandfather’s political legacy at the age of four. His father, the second Earl, had contracted a debilitating disease which disqualified him from taking a political office of any prominence. Under the supervision of Locke, Lord Ashley was brought up to pursue virtue, as well as develop sociability. In a letter to Edward Clarke in 1693, Locke explained his philosophy in training young gentlemen:
I place virtue as the first and most necessary of those endowments that belong to a man or a gentleman; as absolutely requisite to make him valued and beloved by others, acceptable or tolerable to himself…And to teach him betimes to love and be good natured to others is to lay early the true foundation of an honest man (quoted in Brinton 1956: 116-117).
Locke also emphasised the importance of good breeding. He counselled fathers not to interpose their authority but to use reason in training the young:
Keep them from vice and vicious dispositions…and a gentle persuasion in reasoning…and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures sooner than is imagined. ‘Tis a pride should be cherished in them,
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and, as much as can be, made the greatest instrument to turn them by (quoted in Brinton 1956: 119).
Figure 4: John Locke (1632-1704)
(www2.hlss.mmu.ac.uk)
Under the strict discipline of Elizabeth Birch, daughter of a dissenting minister, and scholar in classical studies, Lord Ashley learnt the importance of ascetic practice. He led a sheltered life at his grandfather’s household, isolated from his parents, two brothers and four sisters, as well as fashionable youths of his rank. At eleven, he was sent to a private school, and the following year to Winchester College, where he was treated indifferently by many teachers and students. It seemed that the trial of the Whig leaders in June 1683 had reminded the Winchester school community of his grandfather’s disloyalty to the king. Although Lord Ashley acquired a love for classical studies, he found the public regimented life and his poor treatment at Winchester intolerable. The experience convinced him to avoid further education at Oxford or Cambridge University which was dominated by the Anglican Church.
In 1686, following the aristocratic tradition of the time, Lord Ashley received his father’s permission to undertake a three-year Grand Tour of the Mediterranean, under the guardianship of Sir John Cropley, a wealthy Londoner from a commercial and professional background (Rand 1900: xix). During these travels, he was exposed to the works of the Italian masters in painting and sculpture, and acquired first-hand experience in examining and contemplating what were considered the most refined
89 and tasteful works of antiquities. He also made the acquaintance of intellectuals in Europe, and experienced the civilitè of courtly receptions.
In 1689, on his return to England at the age of eighteen, Lord Ashley began to take over from his bed-ridden father the responsibility for managing the family estates and interests. In the management of his country estate at St Giles, Dorset (see Figure 5), he worked to improve the yields of his tenant farmers by teaching them “Bolder Husbandry” (Barker-Benfield 1996: 110). This involved erecting enclosures, crop rotation, penning sheep to manure the fields, increasing arable land and expanding his water meadows. In 1690, Lord Ashley was also called upon to manage family affairs. The marriage of his parents broke down, and his mother, Lady Dorothy, suffered chronic illness such as fever, convulsion, and hysteria. Her family, the Manners, an established aristocratic family, whose forebears had been the king’s knights since the fourteenth century, persuaded the second Earl to have her cared for at the Manners’ estate at Haddon Hall. They also asked for a maintenance allowance of £400, which the Earl refused. The Manners requested Lord Ashley to prevail upon his father and, when he failed to do so, his mother refused to see him for the next ten years.
Figure 5: Shaftesbury’s Country Estate at St Giles, Dorset
(en.wikipedia.org)
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In 1694, amidst managing the estate and the family affairs, Lord Ashley started working on his first treatise, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue. In a letter to Locke at this time, he insisted that, unlike Hobbes and Descartes, he was not interested in philosophising to gain personal credit or amuse the world, and stir up jealousies. He wrote:
[F]or my part, I am so far from thinking that mankind need any new Discoverys, or that they lye in the dark and are unhappy for want of them…the thing I should ask of God should bee to make men live up to what they know, and that they might bee so wise as to desire to know no other things then what lay plain before them (quoted in Voitle 1984: 66).
In the same letter, he indicated his intention to seek self-knowledge through labour, study and learning:
What I count True Learning, and all wee can profit by, is to know ourselves…Whilst Such are Philosophers and Such Philosophy, whence I can Learn ought from, of this kind; there is no Labour, no Studdy, no Learning that I would not undertake (Voitle 1984: 66).
Lord Ashley was immersed in the teachings of Stoicism. He was not content to gain self-knowledge from the Bible, as recommended by Locke. He aimed to erect a moral system based on rational principles espoused by the ancients he admired. Even though Lord Ashley maintained political sympathy with Locke’s circle of friends, his philosophy was beginning to diverge from that of his mentor. He was drawn to a circle of intellectuals with Huguenot background, based in Holland (Voitle 1984: 67). They included Paul d’Aranda (1652-1712), a merchant; Benjamin Furly (1636-1714), a Quaker merchant and polymath; Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736), a prominent Huguenot sceptic, Arminian minister and editor of the Bibliothèque Universalle; Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), author of the Dictionnaire Universalle; and Phillip van Limborch (1633- 1722), an Arminian Minister. Lord Ashley admired this group of older intellectuals for their integrity, sobriety, love of learning and their promotion of free thinking.
Although Lord Ashley was an official member of the Anglican Church, he rejected its intolerance for the dissenters, and its insistence on subscription to Calvinist dogmas. However, he believed it unwise to make public his opposition to the established church, preferring to use gentle persuasion and the power of reason to assert his influence. Indeed, Lord Ashley had begun to design a moral system independent of the doctrines of the revealed religion and the Bible. The thrust of his
91 philosophy was civic and social in nature. It was a philosophy of pragmatism that would enable men and women of learning to achieve their potential, live in harmony with themselves and others, and take guidance from principles of beauty and virtue.
In 1695, Lord Ashley was elected a burgess for the Dorset seat of Pool (Klein 1994: 16), and he took his seat in the House of Commons. In his first parliamentary speech, in January 1696, Lord Ashley supported the passing of the Treason Trials Bill, which favoured the rights of the accused and limited the power of the court to presecute. His support of the bill incurred the disapprobation of the Court Whigs (Klein 1994: 136). In principle, the Whigs, who recalled the treason trials of their compatriots, William Russell and Algernon Sidney, were in support of the bill, but the passing of such a bill in 1696 would disdvantage the court in prosecuting Jacobites and other conspirators against William III. Lord Ashley was accused of not sustaining the political ascendancy of the Whig party, which was dependent on the favour of the king.
Another incident was to further alienate Lord Ashley from the Court Whigs. In 1697, after the war with France, parliament proposed a motion to reduce the standing army to one quarter of what William had hoped for. Basing his opinion on the founding principle of the Whig party, to stymie the power of the sovereign and defend the liberty of the citizens, Lord Ashley voted for the motion (Klein 1994: 137). However, he was again criticised for his lack of party spirit. Lord Ashley was disappointed that in voting against the bill, the Court Whigs had placed the interests of the court and party before the public. Throughout his short political career, he often found himself at odds with the Court Whigs, whom he thought were more determined to ensure their ascendancy than to uphold party principles.
John Toland, a defender of toleration and free thinking, gave an account of how Lord Ashley’s youthful idealism and Stoicism had earned him the distrust of the Court Whigs.
He so heartily expostulated with such as he met of those Apostate Whigs, he opposed all of them so much by his Interest in and out of Parliament, and so livelily represented the treachery and baseness of the Measures they were following, that they cou’d not endure him. They gave out that he was splenetick and melancholy; whimsical and eaten up with vapours…But becoming an Eyesore to them, as being an eternal reproach upon their conduct, they strain’d their inventions to turn his best qualities into defects. They gave out that he was too bookish, because not given to Play, nor
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assiduous at Court; that he was no good Companion, because not a Rake nor a hard Drinker, that he was no Man of the World, because not selfish nor open to Bribes (quoted in Voitle 1984: 78).
When parliament dissolved in 1698, Lord Ashley resigned, with the intention of retreating to Holland, and advancing his political ideals through the philosophical avenue. In the same year, he collaborated with Toland to publish The Danger of Mercenary Parliaments. They accused the Court Whigs of betraying their founding principles of defending the country’s liberty, and of discarding the notion that the public safety could be “further improv’d and confirm’d by the Advantages of a suitable Conversation” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 72). The Court Whigs were criticised for exceeding the bounds of moderation. They were accused of having fallen in with the “Arbitrary Measures of the Court”, and of compromising themselves as “the most active Instruments for insalving their Country” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 72).
Before retiring to Holland, to seek the inspiration of the Huguenot intellectuals, Lord Ashley introduced himself to the public with his publication of a collection of the sermons of the founder of Cambridge Platonism, the moderate and benevolent Anglican divine, Benjamin Whichcote. In the Preface, Lord Ashley objected to Hobbes’s insistence that mankind was guided by fear, the master passion. In publicly announcing his support of the humane principle of sociability and public good, as well as the sovereignty of reason as promoted by Whichcote, Lord Ashley was giving the public a glimpse of his philosophic foundation of virtuous sociability and rationality. Implicit in this philosophy was recognition of a benevolent being who had created the universe in the best possible way to enable mankind to pursue perfection, but absent were the doctrine of predestination and the insistence on mankind’s depravity. The most pressing goal of mankind was to discharge their duty on earth as patriot-citizens.
In his retirement in Holland, Lord Ashley’s renewed friendship with the French intellectuals reinforced his negative view of revealed religion. In the Inquiry of Virtue, published anonymously in 1699, Lord Ashley restated Bayle’s view articulated in Pensèe diverses sur la comète (1682), that “an atheistic society can be morally superior to a misdevoted one” (Voitle 1984: 86). The enlightened thinkers were opposed to the expression of religious enthusiasm without a sound rational basis. They insisted that ridicule rather than harsh penalties was the best weapon against folly. Like Bayle, Lord Ashley concluded that orthodox Christianity as it was practised was incapable of making men morally better. Both men deplored what they saw as superstition, hypocrisy and ignorance acting as authority in contemporary religion. However,
93 whist Bayle’s theodicy was undergirded by pessimism, predicated on the admission of the human state of sinfulness, Lord Ashley’s philosophy was animated by the optimism and ambition of a revival of the ancient virtues of Stoicism. He spent much time discussing the works of the ancient Greeks with Le Clerc, who had written sixteen theological treatises, and translated works of Locke. Le Clerc extended Lord Ashley’s influence in Europe by translating some of his writings. Lord Ashley was to reciprocate his assistance by becoming Le Clerc’s patron when he inherited the earldom.
Whilst Lord Ashley enjoyed his intellectual retreat centred on conversation, the meeting of minds and the pursuit of self-cultivation, he was nonetheless convinced that, as a true Stoic, he had to respond to the demands of the world. On March 27, 1699, Thomas Stringer, the former secretary to the first Earl, appealed to Lord Ashley’s civic and family duty when urging him to return to England to defend his political legacy.
Reputation & honour should be the dearest unto you & the greatness of it doth not arise from what a man is in himself but as he Stands & Acts with relation to his Country…And it is never to be obtained by a private or retired Living, but whosoever quits the world will be forsaken by it. God almighty hath blessed you with a fortune & ability suitable to your quality for which you must be accountable. And soe it is a duty to put yourselfe into such a post as may be useful to the System you belong [to] (quoted in Voitle 1984: 94).
Lord Ashley struggled with Stringer’s appeal. He despaired at the thought of the compromises that would be required in order to serve the court. Nevertheless, he returned to London but did not act on Stringer’s counsel immediately. When Stringer learnt of his return and heard the rumours that Lord Ashley was preparing to retire to Wesphalia, he appealed directly to him again on May 5, 1699.
Yet I hope better things from the Grandson of one of the greatest & wisest, as well as the best of men. It is impossible for me to believe that a person of such early ripeness & worthy Principles who hath already set his hand to the plow & perform’d such eminent services for his Country, should now turn back or sink soe low in despair, as wholly to desert his duty unto it…” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 97).
Using the language of civic humanism, Stringer enjoined that in a time of vice and corruption, it was only “by the helpe of worthy Patriots England hath hereto been
94 preserved”, and he appealed to Lord Ashley as belonging to a group of men who was “fixed and steady in their endeavours to save a perishing Kingdom (quoted in Voitle, 1984: 98). In September that year, Lord Ashley was further importuned by his close friend, John Cropley, with the message that society was looking forward to his return. The death of the second Earl on 2nd November, 1699 settled the matter, leaving Lord Ashley with no choice. He had become the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and had to assume his seat in the House of Lords.
7.2 Fulfilment of Political, Civic and Family Duty
In 1700, when Shaftesbury entered the House of Lords, the political climate had changed for the Whigs, as William had begun to slide towards the Tories. Although Shaftesbury was impressed by the civic humanism of some members of the Country Tories, the bribery accusations against high-powered Tories Henry Guy, Speaker John Trevor and Thomas Osborne confirmed his opinion of the corruption of the Tories. Thus, in the House of Lords, Shaftesbury focused on raising the moral and political stature of the Whigs. In the election of 1701, he worked towards producing a Whig victory in Dorset, and the adjacent counties of the south-west, areas traditionally dominated by the Tory magnate, Sir Edward Seymour. Shaftesbury was given an opportunity to rise in politics when he was offered the post of the Secretary of State by the king. He turned it down, ostensibly because of his poor health, but it may be that he had concluded that he was unable to assert his moral influence directly in the political arena. Despite his lack of a formal political role, Shaftesbury was consultant to William and he helped compose the last speech of the king on 31 December, 1701 (Rand 1900: xxiv).
The political power of the Whigs declined during the reign of Queen Anne (1702- 1714). Suspicious of the loyalty of Shaftesbury, the court under Queen Anne removed him from the Vice-Admiralty of Dorset, a privilege which his family had held for three generations. In 1702, Shaftesbury wrote a pamphlet Paradoxes of State, in which he tried to unite the concerns and interests of the country and court factions of the two parties (Klein 1994: 140). He argued that liberty had been achieved with the accession of the Protestant monarch, the passing of the Bill of Rights and successive legislations to secure the liberty of the English. Instead of expending energy battling each other, Shaftesbury counselled that the Whigs and the Tories should unite in preventing France from imposing an absolutist rule in Europe.
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In 1703, Shaftesbury was exhausted after two years of busy electioneering work. He returned to Holland for his second retreat, where he kept company only with Furly and Bayle. He kept up with the court intrigues through the letters of John Cropley. He also kept up correspondence with the British emissary Sir Rowland Gwin in Holland. However, Shaftesbury had only a brief retreat. In August 1704, pressed by his steward John Wheelock, he returned to his family estate at St. Giles. In the twelve months following his return to England, he suffered a period of severe illness.
On December 2, 1704, when Shaftesbury thought he was dying, he wrote to a fellow free thinker and friend, Anthony Collins, to acknowledge the affection of his mentor, Locke. He admitted that he had relished a “Scene of Friendship of long duration, with much and solid Satisfaction, founded in the Consciousness of doing Good for Goods sake” with Locke (quoted in Voitle 1984: 229). He ended the letter by asserting that “I have never yet serv’d God or Man but as I Lov’d and lik’d, having been true to my own and Family Motto which is LOVE, SERVE” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 229). This friendship did not mean intellectual accord, though. Four years after Locke’s death, he wrote to his protégé, Michael Ainsworth, to criticise Locke for denying the eternal standard of morals.
Thus virtue, according to Mr Locke, has no other Measure Law or Rule, than Fashion & Custome. Morality Justice Equity, depend only on Law Will and God indeed is a perfect free agent in his sense, that is free to anything however ill, for if he wills it, it will be made Good; Virtue may be Vice, & Vice Vertue in its turn, if he pleases. Thus neither Right or Wrong, Virtue or Vice, are anything in themselves, nor is there any trace or Idea of em naturally imprinted on human Minds (quoted in Voitle 1984: 230).
In 1706, Shaftesbury was to mourn the passing of a mentor, Pierre Bayle. In his tribute to Bayle, he highlighted the primacy of constant disputes, debates and arguments, based on rationality, which were mediated through conversation. As a result of the constant debates, Shaftesbury found that their friendship had improved, and he insisted that the scepticism of Bayle had taught him the importance of passing the test of piecing ‘Reason’ (Voitle 1984: 221).
Two years later, in July 1708, disillusioned and disenchanted with his inability to exert moral influence in politics, Shaftesbury confided in a close friend, Benjamin Furly:
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I have none that seek my Opinion – and so I am free of the Burden of justifying Courtiers & Great Men, which to such a one as I am, is a hard task at best; since great Men will have great Faults, and when their Politics are good their Morals will be ill and their lives give Scandall to such Formall Liver as I am (quoted in Voitle 1984: 282).
However, Shaftesbury had not given up hope of discharging his civic duty. In 1708, he published his Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, and dedicated it to his patron, Lord Somers, the leader of the Court Whigs. This publication was written in response to the stir caused by the recent French Huguenots immigrants to England. They had caused public confusion through speaking in foreign tongues, unknown to them, to give evidence that they had been empowered by the Holy Spirit to relay the messages of God. Shaftesbury was against the court and church imposing draconian measures to restrain these religious enthusiasts. Instead, through the publication of this letter, he had championed the use of reason, raillery and ridicule to discourage such acts of religious extravagance. Two years later, he dedicated to Lord Somers another treatise, Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour. This was his attempt to convince the English society of the importance of discouraging ignorance, and pursuing virtue for virtue’s sake (Voitle 1984: 294).
Throughout his adulthood, Shaftesbury had suffered chronic respiratory problems, and, by 1709, he was living on a day-to-day basis. Determined to fulfil his final duty to his family, in July 1709, he asked for the hand of Jane Ewer, a distant relation. On 25 August, a few days before the marriage, Shaftesbury wrote to Wheelock, “There is nothing on Earth wanting to me; & I have fulfilled in all respects the Injunctions of my Grandfather & have taken care of his honour & Name & Posterity…” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 302). Shaftesbury was married at Beechworth on August 29, 1709. Sixteen months later, on 9th February, 1711, an heir was born, and he appointed his friends, John Cropley and Lord Halifax, as the child’s godfathers. Cropley had been his lifelong correspondent. Halifax was regarded by Shaftesbury as a lover and defender of liberty, who could provide moral guidance to little Lord Ashley. To ensure that his death would bring no complications for his family, he appointed as his trustee of his estate, his compatriot, General James Stanhope, a military man admired by Shaftesbury for his courage, affability and Stoicism.
Shaftesbury’s political life was fraught with difficulties. He was maligned by the Tories and even his own party for adhering too rigidly to the founding principles of the Whigs, and campaigning against what he saw as the injustice and corruption in politics (Klein 1994: 134). However, he remained loyal to his party. On publishing his
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Characteristicks on March 30, 1711, Shaftesbury impressed upon Lord Somers that the publication was a Whig project. He said, “…if my Good-Humour be quite spent, I have Courage however left to attack & provoke a most malignant party, with whom I might easily live on good Terms, to all the advantages imaginable” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 369). He had hoped that his philosophical deliberations would expose the corruption and false sense of superiority of the Tories. He noted that the Tories had claimed “sovereignty in Arts & Sciences…Presidentship in Letters”, as well as asserting the academic virtues of their alma maters, Oxford and Cambridge University. Through his publication, Shaftesbury hoped that the Tories
who treated the Poor Presbyterians as unpolite, unform’d, without Rivall Literature or Manners, will perhaps be somewhat moved to find themselves treated in the same way, not as Corrupters merely of Morals & publick Principles, as the very Reverse or the Antipodes of Good Breeding, Scholarship, Behaviour, Sense & Manners (quoted in Voitle 1984: 369).
During his earlier visit to Italy, Shaftesbury had befriended the Neapolitan intellectuals who grouped around the aged Don Giuseppe Valetta, a philosopher, a doctor of civil law and an economist. He had observed that, for half a century, Valetta had used his philosophical learning and writing to direct the civil and cultural life of the Naples. Shaftesbury had conversation with Valetta and was impressed by how he had used his library, his museum of antiquities, classical texts, and Renaissance books on philosophy and science to enrich the cultural life of the Neapolitans. In his retreat to the warmer clime of Naples in the last year of his life, Shaftesbury appeared to emulate the example of Valetta. He completed two treatises on art, A Letter Concerning Design, and A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules (Grean 1967: xv). In November 1712, his treatise on Hercules first appeared in French, in the language in which it was written, and in English the following year. Shaftesbury had hoped to give instructions on the historical painting of The Judgment of Hercules as a work of beauty to transmit morals. In February 1713, Shaftesbury succumbed to his illness, and the second edition of the Characteristicks, which he had revised in Naples, was published in 1714.
Conclusion
This biographical sketch provides the background to analyse the ideological significance of Shaftesbury’s cultural politics, predicated on ascetic rationalism and
98 virtuous sociability. The evidence suggests that Shaftesbury was not a political animal from the start. He was too devoted to the pursuit of virtue and learning, and too dedicated to the Stoicism of the ancient philosophers to be able to exploit the power of politics to the advantage of the Whigs. His cultural politics is better understood as his personal devotion to the principles of civic humanism.
The publication of Characteristicks in 1711 was the culmination of a regimen of introspection in self-understanding, self-discipline and self-management. As Shaftesbury was opposed to the gravity of the sermons preached in church, and of the lectures given at the universities, he had chosen to offer an anthology of his thoughts presented in an accessible manner: a combination of letters, dialogues, soliloquys, and reflections. His work was to be read as the model of moral reformation he had developed for himself. Shaftesbury recommended a moderate, practical balancing of moral integrity and virtuous sociability. He insisted that the cultivating of a social self, congruent with the philosophical self, required the development of a balance in character, becoming “this middle Genius, partaking neither of hearty mirth nor Seriousness” (quoted in Klein 1994: 96).
The following chapter interrogates Shaftesbury’s interpretation of philosophical worldliness through the idiom of politeness.
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Chapter 8: Shaftesbury’s Interpretation of Politeness
Introduction
In interrogating the interpretation of politeness in eighteenth-century England, it is important is to understand how such an ethical and aesthetic orientation influenced the English in relating to their contemporary reality. In the words of Foucault, the aim is to understand the voluntary choice made by people in adopting:
a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presenting itself as a task. No doubt a bit like what the Greeks called an éthos” (Rabinow and Rose 1994: 48).
Eighteenth-century England witnessed the formation of capitalism and the expansion of trade. Its social harmony was constituted by a new aristocratic- bourgeois alliance, which was able to assert itself in the art of government. It was a privileged period ready for the advancement of a new way of thinking and living. In this analysis, the polite culture is examined as a constituent of the age of enlightenment. Specifically, it attempts to understand the philosophical worldliness of Shaftesbury as championing a visible transformation of the moral and cultural landscape of eighteenth-century England.
In contrast to Calvinism, which demanded detachment from the concerns of the world and discouraged fellowship, Shaftesbury’s philosophy was focussed on worldly interests articulated in the medium of rationality and sociability. It encouraged the men and women of learning to take an active part in civic and cultural life as an expression of self-government. Unlike the Puritans who lived for the afterlife, as dictated by the religious leaders, the polite people were concerned with engaging in the temporal life as independent-minded patriot-citizens. Unlike Campbell’s romantics, who lived to create and consume a culture based on the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures, the polite people aspired to a life of rationality and sociability.
I investigate the sociological importance of the culture of politeness in the context of Weber’s pessimism about a post-puritan ethical void, and in the context of Campbell’s claim that emotional hedonism was the overarching ethical orientation in eighteenth-century England. This investigation shares the assessment of Lawrence
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Klein, who notes that the study of politeness “helps delineate both the continuity and the break between the courtly world explored by Norbert Elias and the public sphere described by Jürgen Habermas” (1994: 14). In Elias’s terms, I consider the Whig ideologists led by Shaftesbury, and supported by Addison and Steele, as a ‘lever’, an influential group of ‘spokesmen of a social chorus’, who propagated the transformation of a polite civic personality.
Elias regards the practice of civilitè in the French court of Louis XIV as essential to the making of the social distinction of the courtiers, to set them apart from the lower classes. In contrast to civilitè, politeness, as reformulated by Shaftesbury and his Whig compatriots, was intended to de-accentuate class distinctions based on birth and lineage. Instead of holding the elite stratum closely-knit, as a distinctive group, the pursuit of politeness allowed the rising class admission into the newly created class of gentlemen and gentlewomen. In the new polite culture, a cultivated person was a person of manners and morals, regarded as the epitome of humanity.
This chapter examines the idiom of politeness as a component in the civilizing process of eighteenth-century England. Using Elias’s terms, the internalization of constraints by the ascendant commercial class could be interpreted as a means of generating personal advantages amidst the greater interdependence and intertwining of social relationships in eighteenth-century England. Nevertheless, for Shaftesbury and his Whig compatriots, who were the disciples of Stoicism, self- cultivation and internalization of constraints could be better understood as evidence of self-government.
This chapter provides evidence to oppose Campbell’s assertion that Shaftesbury had recommended dispensing with universal standards of beauty and truths based on the classical tradition. On the contrary, it illustrates that the themes of asceticism, rationality and sociability were implicit in the pursuit of politeness. It begins with an analysis of Shaftesbury’s emphasis on a personal regimen of self-cultivation to prepare the individuals to engage in society. It proceeds to examine his insistence that natural affections and the pursuit of sociability were central to the transformation of the civic personality. In particular, it examines his definition of good breeding and his conflation of self and public interests. The discussion ends by examining Shaftesbury’s cultural paradigm. Specifically, it looks at his emphasis on the development of a right taste, and on securing rationality and sociability as the foundation of a national culture of liberty.
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8.1 Asceticism in Self Cultivation
As a Member of Parliament, Shaftesbury had witnessed the corruption and compromises of the political parties. He had been unable to convince even members of his own party, the Whigs, to place the defence of liberty as the ultimate goal in politics. Denied a political voice after ill health forced his resignation from parliament, Shaftesbury sought the literary avenue to assert his philosophical influence. He was determined to defend the political legacy of the Whig party based on liberty. In his retreat to Holland, he developed a personal model of reformation of morals and manners to encourage the men and women of learning to defend liberty through virtuous sociability, grounded on an ascetic practice.
Adopting a Socratic practice of self-care, Shaftesbury encouraged civic action and engagement with society as opposed to mere philosophical musing for speculation and self-gratification. He was attracted to Socrates’s philosophy because it was not delivered with “Solemn & Severe Character”, and not confined to the traditional centres of moral and intellectual authority: the court, the church and the universities. It was philosophy that was made accessible to the citizens in public squares, and delivered through “a more open free & polite Conversation” (quoted in Klein 1994: 42).
The Socratic teachings were particularly meaningful to Shaftesbury because Socrates was the progenitor of the philosophy of the sublime, the comic, the methodical, and the simple (the polite), each associated with one of his four disciples (Klein 1994: 43). In his “Soliloquy” (Robertson 1900, I: 166-167), Shaftesbury spelt out the appeal of each of these four disciples. Plato, who was of “noble Birth and lofty Genius aspired to “Poetry and Rhetorick”, took the sublime path. Antisthenes, who was of “mean Birth, and poorest Circumstances”, took the satiric and comic route. Aristotle promoted the methodical and scholastic way of philosophising. The fourth disciple was Xenophon of Athens, a historian, scholar and mercenary.
To Shaftesbury, Xenophon was “another noble Disciple, whose Genius was towards Action, and who prov’d afterwards the greatest Hero of his time”. Xenophon appealed to Shaftesbury because he “took the genteeler Part, and softer Manner. He join’d what was deepest and the most solid in Philosophy, with what was easiest and most refin’d in Breeding, and in Character and Manner of a Gentleman”. Xenophon represented “that natural and simple Genius of Antiquity” consisting of “Chastity, Simplicity, Politeness, Justness”. Xenophon was Shaftesbury’s hero because he was the embodiment of the refinement of the gentleman and solidity of
102 the scholar. He sought knowledge and philosophy, and was dedicated to civic action. In Xenophon, Shaftesbury saw a model for the idealised English gentlemen.
Another such model Shaftesbury found in the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus, who taught that individuals should examine and control their own actions through rigorous self-discipline. He was important to Shaftesbury because he was a philosopher who was engaged in a public activity (Klein 1994: 43).
In his personal regimen of self-care based on the Stoic model Shaftesbury wrestled with the potency of passions such as “Anger, Ambition, Desires, Loves – eager & tumultuous Joys, Wishes, Hopes transporting Fancyes, extravagant Mirth, Airyness, Humour, Fantasticalness, Buffoonery, Drollery” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 152). Concerned about the ravage and destruction caused by such passions, “once they have broke their Boundaries & forc’d a passage” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 152), he was determined to introduce a new moral order to his own world, which he judged was dominated by “enthusiastic religious irrationalism, by hedonism, and by the vicissitudes of political and social flux” (quoted in Voitle 1984: 137).
Despite the claims of Campbell, Shaftesbury did not recommend subjectivity in ethics or aesthetics. Neither did he privilege the cultivation of emotional hedonism based on a personal interpretation of pleasure as an index of goodness. Rather, over a period of fifteen years, beginning from his first retreat to Holland in 1698, Shaftesbury subjected himself to the asceticism of Stoical meditations which he recorded in his notebooks, called ‘Exercises’. In doing so, he appeared to be following Socrates, who “maintained that society, right and wrong were founded in nature, and that nature had meaning, and was herself, that is to say, in her wits well- governed and administered by one simple and perfect intelligence” (quoted in Rand 2005: xi). The main purpose of undertaking such an ascetic regimen was to find such a natural governance, to improve himself and to attempt to transform a philosophy into life, so that he would be able to better care for others.
Shaftesbury started his notebooks by recording the despair he experienced when “thus frequently in other Losses of Mind not knowing wch way to turn, when beset, when urg’d, when divided in opinion on Family & Publick – Emergencyes, & in reality Distracted thus. Restless Nights. Throws. Labours. Groans” (quoted in Klein 1994: 72). In discharging his civic role, Shaftesbury wrestled with his divided self. He saw himself as a sociable being, who enjoyed interacting with others, as well as a reclusive self, who did not empathise or sympathise with others. Whilst he yearned
103 for detachment and isolation, yet he believed that it was his duty to engage with society on the basis of honesty, friendliness and justness.
Despite Campbell’s assertion that Shaftesbury promoted an ethic of sensibility, Shaftesbury did not recommend the English to be self-oriented and to respond to the doctrine of proof in which the possession and expression of emotions of sympathy and pity was pivotal. Instead he preached an ethic of self-restraint, in order to prepare the individuals to be other-oriented, based on an ethic of Stoicism. Instead of sensibility, Shaftesbury inspired the English to awaken their innate sense of sociability. Having said this, though, he did not imply that they should rely on spontaneity, for he continually insisted that sociability had to be cultivated to realise its full potential. Rather than being allowed to veer to excesses of selfishness, he reasoned that the self had to be subjected to discipline, based on an internalization of constraints. Politeness as an ethical and aesthetic tradition was not based on a personal interpretation of beauty and virtue. It had to subject itself to the universal standard of nature and reason (Klein 1994: 82). According to Shaftesbury, self- cultivation was necessary to sustain sociability in society. Thus, he recommended that he and others attended to the “sharpening, steeling, and…hardening, moulding, casting and polishing the right images…according to art and discipline” in order to learn the “figures, proportions and symmetry of life” (Rand 2005: 242). Shaftesbury’s internalization of restraints exemplifies both Foucault’s ethics of self-care, and the asceticism that Elias assessed was intrinsic to a civilizing process.
Amongst the most important tasks in the disciplining of the self was a conscious attempt to avoid the dangers of social life. Shaftesbury steered away from inane conversations. He disciplined himself by avoiding “entertainments given by others and by persons ignorant of philosophy” as he believed that keeping company with such characters was bound to stain one’s character (quoted in Klein 1994: 77). More important than avoiding undesirable company, Shaftesbury focused on cultivating an interiority that would defend him against the onslaught of the fashionable world. It was not only the world that was to blame for his impolite ways; he was aware of his proclivity to indulge in conspicuous consumption such as the building of grand houses, collection of paintings and hosting of carnivals (Klein 1994: 78). Shaftesbury acknowledged that these outward forms did not constitute politeness in themselves. He also discounted the courtly civilitè he was exposed to during his Grand Tour. He asked:
What are all those Forms & manners wch come under the notion of good- breeding? The affected smiles, the fashionable Bows, the Tone of Voice, & all
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those supple, caressing & ingratiating ways? What is this but Embroidery, Guilding, Colouring, Daubing?” (quoted in Klein 1994: 78).
Long before Mirabeau, Shaftesbury had seen through the veneer of civilitè. Whereas Campbell sees Shaftesbury legitimising the effusive display of emotions, Shaftesbury in fact worked towards “extinguishing, killing that wrong sort of Joy & enliven’d Tempe” and undermining that “Exuberant, Luxuriant Fancy” (quoted in Klein 1994: 84). Shaftesbury emphasised that the cultivation of the mind was a necessary education of emotions. He depended on rationality and moral reflection to develop the good taste: an ethical and aesthetic discernment of what was right and just, and a rejection of that which was wrong and corrupt. It was the training of the inward eye that was critical to the reformation of the self. The focus was not, as hypothesised by Campbell, a spontaneous response to that which was good, but rather a contemplative assessment of right and wrong based on self-cultivation.
Shaftesbury recommended soliloquy, a technique of articulating one’s thoughts, a form of self-converse, natural guidance of emotion and the training of the mind. To Shaftesbury, the mind was best cultivated through the articulation of debates one had with oneself clearly and intelligibly in words.
These are the Dialogues that are to be studdyed, & dwelt upon, written, meditated, revolv’d. These are the Discourses we should be vers’d in…Let me learn to reason & discourse thus with my own Mind: that I may be no longer inconsistent with my Self & my own Reason, and live in perpetual Disorder & Perplexity. Let me examine my Ideas, challeng & talk with them thus, before they be admitted to pass (quoted in Klein 1994: 89).
Shaftesbury maintained that the individual had to develop an inner voice in order to develop the resolve to act morally: “Am I talk’d with? Or do I talk?...for something still there is yt talks within and leads that very Discourse wch leads in Action & is wt we call conduct” (quoted in Klein 1994: 89). From Shaftesbury’s perspective, the practice of self-discourse was necessary for public discourse, and the making of the self was indispensable to the making of a polite society.
8.2 Sociability in the Transformation of Civic Personality
Self-cultivation was not the sole responsibility of the individuals; it was a collective endeavour. It had to be supported by a new philosophical outlook that was
105 anchored on the notion of sociability. To pave the way for self-cultivation, Shaftesbury attacked the egoism of Hobbes’ philosophy. He accused the philosophers and practitioners of self-love of misguiding the English society through their rejection of the principle of loving and doing good for goodness sake. He was unconvinced that acts of virtue were the outcome of prudential calculation, as insisted by Hobbes. Shaftesbury rebutted, “The question would not be, ‘who loved himself, or who do not’, but ‘who loved and served himself the rightest, and after the truest manner” (Robertson 1900, I: 81).
Besides rejecting the philosophy of egoism, Shaftesbury also criticised the Puritanical sects for preaching a religion of “Moroseness, Selfishness, and Ill-will (quoted in Klein 1994: 32). He was not against religion. However, he qualified that religious beliefs were useful insofar as they supported and encouraged moral conduct in their adherents. He reformulated the notion of virtue by disassociating it from the Christian doctrine of future rewards and punishments, supported by Locke. He defined the autonomy of virtue as a valuable object in itself. Politeness was Shaftesbury’s attempt to prescribe the relation of the self to others; it was a philosophy of sociability.
In contrast to the positions taken by Hobbes and Locke, Shaftesbury strove to advance “a style of sociability that was neither so sociable that it sacrificed integrity nor magisterial in a way that repelled others” (Klein 1994: 96). He recommended to the social and political elites to place:
MORALS on the same foot, with what in a lower sense is call’d Manners, and to advance PHILOSOPHY (as harsh a Subject as it may appear) on the very Foundation of what is call’d agreeable and polite” (Shaftesbury 1711, III: 163).
To be agreeable and polite, social relations had to be grounded on sociability. In Shaftesbury’s philosophy, it was natural affection that was to bind the individual to his society as it deferred to the good of mankind, without sacrificing one’s interest. Shaftesbury persuaded that individuals should work towards “the good of that System or Public, and to its own good, all is one, and not to be divided” (quoted in Klein 1994: 58). He insisted that the most important duty of men and women was “to learn how to submit all of his affections to the rule and government of the whole; how to accompany with his whole mind that supreme and perfect mind and reason of the universe” (quoted in Rand 2005: 6). The call for subjection to the discipline of reason and public interests provided incontrovertible evidence that Shaftesbury could not
106 possibly be identified as a major contributor to the ethic of emotional hedonism as asserted by Campbell.
The articulation of sociability on its own was not good enough for Shaftesbury. He insisted, “in a sensible Creature, that which is not done through any affection (consequently with no knowledge, consciousness or perception at all) makes neither good nor ill in the nature of that Creature” (quoted in Klein 1994: 55). To be considered virtuous, the moral action had to emanate from a recognition of and affection for such acts of morality. He emphasised that the pursuit of virtue was to produce mental pleasures that were far more superior to the sensual. It is possible that Campbell has misinterpreted Shaftesbury’s call on the development of affection for the practice of morality as evidence of his ethic of sensibility. What Shaftesbury meant was that if one did good deeds without an understanding or developing an affection for doing the right thing, the person had not quite cultivated sociability in its true sense.
In his commitment to sociability, Shaftesbury admitted self-affection as a constituent of sociability, insofar as it was “Preservative of the Kind it-self, and conducting to its Welfare and Support” (Robertson 1900: I: 74). To Shaftesbury, man was a social animal, and that there was no man without society. It was only with the articulation of sociability amongst kindred and companions, that “a Clan or Tribe is gradually form’d; a Publick is recognised” (Robertson 1900 I: 74). Virtuous sociability was to be grounded in “the pleasure found in social entertainment, language, and discourse” (Robertson 1900 I: 74). Politeness was grounded in lived reality of social intercourse mediated through lively conversations, and not constituted by a constant pursuit of unattainable novelties and pleasures, as hypothesised by Campbell.
In his advocacy of virtuous sociability, Shaftesbury adopted a language familiar and of interest to the aristocracy. “To philosophize,” he said, “is but carry Good-Breeding a step higher” (Robertson 1900, II: 255).
For the Accomplishment of Breeding is, To Learn whatever is decent in Company, or beautiful in Arts: and the sum of Philosophy is, To Learn what is just in Society, and beautiful in Nature, and the Order of the World (Robertson 1900, II: 255).
A language of blood and birth became, in this way, a language conjoining ethical and aesthetic concerns.
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Whereas Campbell claims that Shaftesbury grafted the aesthetics of the classical tradition upon the morality of Protestantism, Shaftesbury’s language of politeness shows the influence of the ethical and aesthetic concerns of the Greek philosophers. Learning what constituted virtue and beauty was to be the key concern of the polite society. In Shaftesbury’s term, the well-bred gentle people appreciated “BEAUTY in outward Manners and Deportment”, and in culture, “a Beauty in inward Sentiments and Principles”, which was encapsulated in the notion of taste (Robertson 1900, II: 251). Protestantism, in both its ascetic and sentimental forms, had no concept of taste and provided no legitimacy for production or consumption of cultural refinements. However, according to Shaftesbury, a well-bred person must “aim at what is excellent, aspire to a just taste, and carry in view the model of what is beautiful and becoming” (Robertson 1900, II: 225). This was not based on any Biblical injunctions or precedence but through the moral reflection advocated by the Stoics.
The rule of asceticism was implicit in the development of virtuous sociability. The well-bred individuals had to regulate their manners and morals “according to the perfectest ease and good entertainment of company’, as well as “to the strictest interest of mankind and society” (Robertson 1900 II: 256). Shaftesbury concludes that it was the study of “the taste of beauty and the relish of what is decent, just, amiable” that would perfect the character of the well-bred individuals (Robertson 1900, II: 256).
8.3 Polite Cultural Construction and Collaboration in the Public Sphere
The cultural paradigm of politeness privileged the exercise of discursive liberty. Shaftesbury observed that the English lived in a society where criticism was legitimate. He noted that England as a free nation accorded no privilege to imposture and “that neither the Credit of a Court, the Power of a Nobility, nor the awfulness of a Church can give her Protection, or hinder her from being arraign’d in every Shape and Appearance” (Robertson 1900, I: 9). To Shaftesbury, the culture of liberty could only take root beyond the courtly and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He envisioned a liberty that “can only polish & refine the Spirit as well as Witt of Man” (quoted in Klein 1994: 195). He reiterated that the culture of liberty had to admit “Freedome of Reason in the learn’d world, & Good Government & Liberty in the civil world” (quoted in Klein 1994: 195).
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The polite cultural paradigm admitted “no ambitious Monarch” who purchased “flattery from every profession and science” through offers of secret pensions (Robertson 1900 I: 145). Shaftesbury’s rejection of a courtly model was based on his observation that “’tis not the nature of a Court (such as courts generally are) to improve, but rather corrupt a Taste. And what is in the Beginning set wrong by their example, is hardly ever afterwards recoverable in the Genius of a Nation” (Rand 1914: 23). He decried the cultural legacy of the Stuarts, which was closely aligned with the French absolutist court. He blamed the failure to develop a right taste in music to the influence of the Restoration court of Charles II (Klein 1994: 193). Shaftesbury disapproved the Gothic-based architectural idiom of the leading architect, Christopher Wen. His main contention was that the English court of the Stuarts had betrayed the elegance of classical values.
While the culture of politeness stripped royalty of its cultural authority, Shaftesbury assigned them a new role. He appealed to royalty to encourage the “increase and flourishing of Letters” and to “be the patrons of wit, and vouchsafe to look graciously on the ingenious pupils of art” (quoted in Robertson 1900: I: 140). Besides the royalty, Shaftesbury also appealed to the nobility to facilitate the construction of a polite culture. He argued that England needed “its poets, rhapsoders, historiographers, antiquaries of some kind”, whose job was to “record the achievements of civil and military heroes” (Robertson 1900, I: 146).
In a government where the people are sharers in power, but no distributers or dispensers of rewards, they expect it of their princes and great men that they should supply the generous part, and bestow honour and advantages on those whom the nation itself may receive honour and advantage…The Arts and Sciences must not be left patronless (Robertson 1900, I: 148).
Rejecting the courtly model, Shaftesbury validated the potential of the patriot- citizens, “We shou’d find better Fund within ourselves, and might, without such assistance, be able to excel by our own virtue and emulation” (Robertson 1900, I: 145- 146). His post-courtly cultural paradigm was built on the assumption that the gentlemen of the land would find, through self-cultivation, the inner resources to contribute to the construction of the national culture. The public was no longer going to stay passive, docile and meek. They were challenged to question and doubt. They were to participate in the public sphere and work towards a culture of liberty and rationality. Shaftesbury was explicit that the discerning public was integral to the development of a national culture. He maintained that “the people are no small Partys in this Cause. Nothing moves successfully without ‘em. There can be no PUBLICK,
109 but where they are included” (Rand 1914: 22). Shaftesbury was amongst the first moderns who had recognised and legitimised the development of the public sphere in society’s strive towards an egalitarian and emancipated form of self-rule, as theorised by Habermas.
To the ‘aspiring geniuses’, Shaftesbury disabused them of the notion that works of beauty was dependent only on genius and “a natural rapidity of style and thought” (Robertson 1900, I: 151). He insisted that there was no such thing as “a lucky Flight, a Hit of Thought, or flowing Vein of Humour” (Robertson 1900, I: 152). Even though a polite work of art should belie the pains and labours endured by the artist, Shaftesbury maintained that, in every science and every art, the real masters rejoiced in nothing more than “in the thorough search and examination of their performances, by all the rules of art and nicest criticism” (Robertson 1900, I: 153). Shaftesbury therefore advised aspiring geniuses to attend to “that main the preliminary of self-study and inward converse…They should add the wisdom of the heart to the task and exercise of the brain, in order to bring proportion and beauty into their works” (Robertson 1900, I: 180). Like philosophers, they had to develop judgment and correctness, “which can only be attained by thorough diligence, study, and impartial censure of themselves” (Robertson 1900, I: 181). Once again, Shaftesbury insisted that asceticism and rationality were central to the production of culture. In the concluding chapters, I provide the case study of Wedgwood to illustrate the way in which he had conformed to Shaftesbury’s counsel on devotion to self-cultivation.
The same logic underpinned political discourse, as promoted, in polite form, by Shaftesbury (Klein 1994: 201). Both the orators and the audience had to subject themselves to the polishing process. Shaftesbury insisted that the improvement in the domain of oratory was to spread to every aspect of culture, “from Musick, Poetry, Rhetorick, down to the simple Prose of History, thro all the plastic Arts of Sculpture, Statuary, Painting, Architecture, and the rest” (Robertson 1900, II: 242). All forms of cultural refinements were to apply the standard of good taste in its articulation, and the development of this good taste began with “the narrowest of all conversations, that of soliloquy or self-discourse” (Robertson 1900, II: 252). Here we see Shaftesbury’s characteristic way of tying together the personal and the public, the element of the public sphere in the interior conversation of citizens, and the element of interior life in their public debates. As he put it, “The sources of this improving art of self-correspondence [are derived] from the highest politeness and elegance of
110 ancient dialogue and debate, in matters of wit, knowledge, and ingenuity (Robertson 1900, II: 252).
Shaftesbury declared conversation, the dialogue with others, as the heart of his culture of politeness. The growth of the person was the growth of the society, and vice versa.
And nothing…can so well revive this self-corresponding practice as the same search and study of the highest politeness in modern conversation. For this, we must necessarily be at the pains of going further abroad than the province we call home…to gather views and receive light from every quarter in order to judge the best of what is perfect, and according to a just standard and true taste in every kind (Robertson 1900, II: 252).
Campbell sees Shaftesbury as a sentimentalist who argued that the individuals respond naturally to beauty and goodness. In reality, Shaftesbury argued that the development of good taste “can hardly come ready formed with us into the world” (quoted in Klein 1999: 408). It could not be brought about simply by the “good faculties, senses or anticipating sensations and imaginations”; it could not be “begotten, made, conceived or produced without the antecedent labour and pains of criticism” (quoted in Klein 1999: 408). This labour, this education, was the work of sociable conversation, of a lively public sphere. Good taste could only be formed via self-cultivation and made possible through conversation among people who were open to learn from the best around the world.
In advancing such a new model of collective cultural construction, Shaftesbury was aware that the English public had been disadvantaged on two fronts. Firstly, he noticed that they were “so sparing in the way of dialogue, which heretofore was found the politest and best way of managing even the graver subjects” (Robertson 1900, II: 6). They were discouraged from engaging in discussion and debates by their fear of using reason, of suspending belief and criticising religious orthodoxy. He observed that they were too ready to accept even the weakest hypotheses advanced to them without examining them (Robertson 1900, II: 7-8).
Shaftesbury chided the English public for being “too lazy and effeminate, and withal a little too cowardly, to dare doubt” (Robertson 1900, II: 8-9). He observed that the discipline of holding onto hypotheses, suspending judgment, and initiating inquiry was practised only “among the better sort, and as an exercise of the genteeler kind”, and by great men in their intervals from office, in their highest stations, and in their
111 retirement (Robertson 1900, II: 9). However, for the rest of the English public, he pointed out that “that way of dialogue, and patience of debate and reasoning [had] scarce a resemblance left in any conversations at this season in the world” (Robertson 1900, II: 9). We see here Shaftesbury’s insistence that patience was an ascetic virtue that underlay to hold doubt and enter dialogue.
Secondly, Shaftesbury observed the fundamentally unequal relationship between the public and the traditional cultural authorities. He commented that the public had been denied a level playing field as the “written treaties of the learned” and the “set of discourses of the eloquent” provided no opportunities to teach the public the use of reason (Robertson 1900, I: 49). Moreover, he accused the courtiers of using orations to move passions, and declamations to terrify, exalt, ravish or delight society (Robertson 1900, I: 50). The clerics were also criticised for affecting a superiority over the public by forcing them “to hear what they dislike” and robbing them of “their privilege of turn” (Robertson 1900, I: 53).
In advancing conversation as the ideal medium for participation in cultural construction, Shaftesbury had offered an egalitarian mode of participation. He argued that “A free conference is a close fight”, whereas all the sermons and lectures were “merely a brandishing or beating the air” (Robertson 1900, I: 50). He commented that it was a distasteful experience for the public to be obstructed and to be manacled in conferences. To Shaftesbury, the dialogue gave “the fairest hold”, and enabled an “antagonist to use his full strength hand to hand upon even ground” (Robertson 1900, I: 52).
Having identified the primacy of conversation as the ideal medium of intercourse, Shaftesbury dispensed rules to guide its conduct. Upholding the model of the ancients, Shaftesbury reiterated that free dialogues and debates should be “commonly laid at table, or in the public walks or meeting places” (Robertson 1900: I: 51). It was in such informal social settings that individuals would have the opportunities to use humour, wit and reason in expressing their opinions. In defending the use of humour and ridicule in conversation among men of sense and learning, Shaftesbury assured that it was only through critical appraisals that “the right Measure of every thing will soon be found” (Robertson 1900, I: 10).
Unlike the persecuting spirit exemplified by the Restoration court of Charles II, Shaftesbury justified a gentler approach. He insisted:
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All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring Rust upon men’s Understandings. ‘Tis a destroying of civility, Good Breeding, and even Charity itself, under pretence of maintaining it (Robertson 1900, I: 46).
It was clear to Shaftesbury that the fundamental premise for the conduct of conversation in the development of a public was a policy of toleration, and accommodation of different opinions. He elaborated that the ancient Greeks had tolerated “the Visionarys and Enthusiasts of all kinds” and permitted philosophy as “a Balance against Superstitions” (Robertson 1900, I: 14). Shaftesbury outlined that such a policy of toleration allowed learning and science to flourish, and did not cause superstition and enthusiasm to rage to such an extent that it led to” Bloodshed, Wars, Persecutions, and Devastations in the World (Robertson 1900, I: 15).
In response to the argument that the legitimation of discursive liberty and policy of toleration would encourage the public to create mischief at public assemblies, Shaftesbury qualified, “I am writing to you in defence of the liberty of the club, and that sort of freedom which is taken amongst gentlemen and friends who know one another perfectly well” (Robertson 1900, I: 53). To Shaftesbury, conversations among men and women of learning were supervised by the implicit rules of rationality and sociability which tended to eliminate falsehood and excess.
In dedicating his last treatise Letter Concerning Design to the leader of the Whigs, Lord John Somers, in 1712, Shaftesbury reiterated the indispensability of the participation of the public in cultural construction. He asserted, “When the free spirit of a Nation turns it-self this way [that is towards the arts]; Judgments are form’d; Criticks arise; the publick Eye and Ear improves; a right Taste prevails, and in a manner forces its way” (Rand 1914: 22). Shaftesbury reasoned that through practice, the public would hone their judgment of the characters of men and manners and develop their taste in assessing the merits of artistic expressions and scientific inventions (Rand 1914: 22).
In the final analysis, Shaftesbury’s advancement of a polite cultural paradigm as a collective endeavour was to enable the English whom he considered as “so mighty a People, all sharers (tho’ at so far a distance from each other) in the Government of themselves” (Rand 1914: 23). In Shaftesbury’s terms, it was only when the public had the opportunity to exercise both discursive and cultural liberty in the public sphere,
113 that they were truly empowered to cultivate good taste as a nation of free people, untrammelled upon by the courtly and ecclesiastical powers.
Conclusion
In the idiom of politeness, liberty expressed through self-cultivation, social interaction and cultural construction was not a merely theoretical concept. I have pointed out in Chapter 1 that ascetic Protestantism had empowered the bourgeois society as an economic entity. In this chapter, I have likewise argued that politeness, articulated as a form of refinement that subjected individuals to self-control and society to the disciplines of sociability, provided an accessible medium to which the middle class could turn to legitimise their role as cultural producers. The goal was to nurture the independence of the individual who conformed to the rules of good breeding, displaying unpretentiousness and regard for public good. Politeness embodied honesty and elegance in personal demeanour and artistic pursuits.
In this chapter I have argued that Shaftesbury’s account of politeness articulates an asceticism that had increasing influence in eighteenth-century England. It produced a change both in the inner and public lives of citizens, especially those of the alliance between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. It gave public conversation a new priority, and a new rational basis, and in these ways was important in the development of a public sphere.
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Chapter 9: The Spectator and the Sociability of the Coffee Houses
Introduction
In the analysis of the development of the public sphere, Habermas identifies the Spectator as pivotal to the rehabilitation of the coffee houses as sociable sites. On the one hand, Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks legitimised public discourse as the ideal medium for self-cultivation and cultural construction. On the other, the Spectator provided the topics for and dictated the tone of public discussion in the coffee houses and at tea tables. Both publications worked hand in hand to guide the English in the pursuit of politeness.
The Spectator, published in 1711, was regarded as England’s most influential moral periodical in the eighteenth century. It helped to shape the form, progress and direction of discursive and cultural institutions. The language of politeness adopted by the Spectator reinforced the parity of common humanity in public participation, where the advantages and authority of birth and lineage did not hold sway and where debates and discussions depended on the strength of argument. Readers of the periodical were encouraged to express and exchange personal opinions on issues that mattered to them. The coffee houses, guided by the Spectator, provided opportunities for men to practise the art of reasoning and the use of wit, humour, ridicule and raillery to separate the wheat from the chaff, in the manner advanced by Shaftesbury, and its editors, Addison and Steele.
The Spectator was an immediate success as it spoke a language that the urban gentry and non-gentry understood and wanted to learn from. John Gay (1685-1732), an English poet enthused, “The Spectator is in everyone’s hands, and a constant topic for our morning conversation at the tables and coffee houses” (quoted in Porter 2000: 194). Vicesimus Knox, a cleric, school master and man of letters, claimed that everyone had digested the moral lessons implicit in the periodical (Marr 1971: 57). Samuel Johnson commented that, before Steele and Addison, “England had no masters of the common life. No writers had yet undertaken to reform either the savageness of neglect, or the impertinence of civility” (Firth 1939 II: 362). James Boswell reported that Addison and Steele had influenced the way the men of the coffee houses regarded London, and the importance they attached to polite urban behaviour. The Spectator introduced a polite way of thinking and living to modern city life (Brewer 2013: 41).
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To complement the account of Shaftesbury as a key interpreter of politeness, this chapter examines the role of the non-gentry Whigs, Addison and Steele, through their publication of the Spectator. It examines the Spectator’s practical interpretation of the idiom of politeness and its influence over the coffee house sociability.
9.1 Editors of the Spectator
The editors, Joseph Addison (see Figure 6) and Richard Steele (see Figure 7), were representatives of the educated, talented and ambitious ascendant commercial class, of non-gentry background. As members of the Whig party, they contributed to the political and cultural discourse of the post-puritan English society.
Joseph, born in 1672, was the son of Dr Lancelot Addison, a pastor at the Wiltshire parish. On graduation, he tutored at Magdalen College, Oxford. Later, he sought distinction in the literary and political world. His translation of Virgil’s Georgics in 1694, and his poem, The Campaign, composed in praise of the triumphs of the Duke of Marlborough at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, brought him political success. He became a Commissioner of Appeal, and Under Secretary of State under Lord Halifax’s government. From 1708 to 1713, Addison was Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Wharton. As a committed Whig, Addison regarded commerce as necessary to the prosperity of England. He saw the need to bolster England’s naval prowess to check the power of the absolutist courts of Spain and France. He defended the liberty of the individual against the traditional cultural authority.
The co-editor, Richard Steele, was the son of a minor Anglo-Irish gentleman from Dublin. He gained entry into Oxford two years after Addison in 1689. On graduation, he joined the Life Guards of the House of Cavalry, and resigned in 1705 as a commissioned officer. In 1706, he was appointed a Gentleman Waiter to the husband of Queen Anne, Prince George of Denmark. The next year he was given a more active post of Gazetteer, the government news writer. He was a supporter of the Hanoverian succession and became a Whig member of parliament in 1713 for Stockbridge.
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Figure 6: Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
(www.nndb.com)
Figure 7: Richard Steele (1672-1729)
(www.totalpolitics.com)
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9.2 Aim and Appeal of the Spectator
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, there was a concerted effort by moral campaigners to denounce the debauched lifestyles commonly associated with the restoration court of Charles II. Whig ideologists were among them. Klein points out that Shaftesbury’s preference for the Socratic model was complemented by Addison’s formulation of the Spectator project based on Cicero’s appraisal of Socrates. In Tusculan Disputations, Cicero described Socrates as “the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil” (quoted in Klein 1994: 42).
Echoing Cicero, Addison and Steele declared their intention to “recover the age out of its desperate state of folly and vice” (quoted in Barker-Benfield 1996: 61). In the language of politeness, Addison intended the Spectator to improve civic life by relocating philosophy in a public sphere:
It was said of Socrates, that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables, and Coffee-Houses (Bond 1965, I: 44).
The Spectator was intended to be a self-help guide for an aspirational bourgeois readership. In essence, it was a “complex blend of traditional values, of which stoicism remained a key component” (Carter 2001: 25). In remodelling the seventeenth-century civic humanist concepts of virtuous behaviour, they recommended the pursuit of “an important Whig and broader enlightenment maxim, namely mankind’s natural propensity for company” (Carter 2001: 25).
For Addison, England was made up of elegant aristocrats, accomplished gentlemen, worthy merchants, and industrious authors. These men were not regarded as social equals, but each person was encouraged to cultivate the qualities of gentlemanliness in their respective stations in life. He maintained that all men and women were entitled to the enjoyment of civility, and to assume responsibility for the making of sociability. He aimed to create an urbane society made up of both the traditional country squire and the modern men of commerce, who could share the commercial profits and cultural refinements, articulated through the idiom of politeness.
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Like Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks, the Spectator considered the mind as the pre- eminent human faculty to be cultivated (Borsay 1989: 263). Addison insisted that the follies of the mind could only be improved by a constant and assiduous culture. The Spectator was addressed primarily to all “who have made Thinking a Part of Their Business or Diversion, and have anything worthy to impart on these Subjects of the World” (quoted in Brewer 2013: 92). In facilitating the development of the public opinion founded on sociability, Steele insisted:
This sort of intelligence will give a lively image of the Chain of mutual Dependence of the Humane Society, take-off impertinent Prejudices, enlarge the Minds of those, whose views were confined to their own Circumstances; and, in short, if the Knowing in several Arts, Professions, and Trades will exert themselves, it cannot but produce a new Field of Diversion, an Instruction more agreeable that has yet appeared (quoted in Brewer 2013: 93).
Implicit in this assessment was the call for toleration and the pursuit of politeness by people of different backgrounds, involved in different professions and interests. The readers of the Spectators were encouraged to exercise self-restraint and temper their minds with caution, prudence and reason. The sociable gentlemen were admonished not to subscribe to the theatricality of external forms of worship; neither should they seek to become an insipid courtier with an overemphasis on external appearances (Klein 1998: 166).
Fundamental to the aim of the Spectator was the attempt to reduce religious and political differences. Although Addison was a committed Whig, he disapproved of the furious party spirit that exerted itself in civil wars and bloodshed, and filled the nation “with spleen and rancour”, and extinguished “all seeds of good nature, compassion, and humanity” (quoted in Borsay 1989: 281). In the spirit of virtuous sociability, Addison advocated that the English should no longer regard themselves as Tories or Whigs, but they should consider the man of merit as a friend, and the villain, an enemy.
Just as the Spectator disapproved of political divisiveness, it also argued that the various religious sects should subject themselves to the discipline of sociability. They were counselled to adopt an affable demeanour and sociable temper. It argued that the agreeableness and comeliness of the religious evangelicals would enhance their appeal, and win them respect and love, rather than engender distaste through their sourness and ill humour (Bond 1965, III: 40).
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The Spectator appealed to the urban population because it enjoined mutual respect and collaboration in an age where there were increasing networks of social relations based on mutual dependence. As with the making of the bourgeois society in France, as analysed by Elias, the making of the polite society in England required the exercise of cultural and discursive liberty of the ascendant class in conjunction with the aristocracy.
Included in the periodical were news coverage, a miscellany of essays, letters and information, all of which provided for the enlargement of the imagined community of politeness. Moral reformation and social improvement were made the central features from the start. However, adopting the politeness of the ancients, the Spectator abandoned the sermonising stance of the religious literature and adopted a light and conversational style. It contributed to the development of the public sphere by inviting readers to send in their opinions on various aspects of life. The effect was that, together with the editors, the readers spoke and developed the language of politeness. Mr Spectator set about town uniting “merriment with decency”, while, by example as much as word, instructing in taste and morality (Porter 2000: 195). There is, in this conjunction, an asceticism that is not severe, like Weber’s Puritanism, and an optimism and goodwill that are not sentimental, like Campbell’s romanticism.
9.3 Coffee House Sociability
The Spectator exerted its greatest influence in the coffee houses, which were at their peak towards the end of the seventeenth century and in the early part of the eighteenth century. By moving the cultural centre from the court and church to the coffee houses, Addison and Steel could be seen as forging the connection between politeness and the commercial economy (Klein 1996: 50). The coffee houses were integral to the commercialization and urbanization of England. They provided neutral sites for men of commerce to congregate informally to transact businesses. They functioned as offices with accompanying facilities of a mailroom, boardroom, desk space and a café. In the 1690s, shipping and insurance services were centred on Lloyds Coffee House (see Figure 8) in Lombard Street. The modern stock market had originated from Jonathan’s Coffee House in Exchange Alley (Brewer 2013: 38).
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Figure 8: Lloyd’s Coffee House
(www.anglophile.ru)
The coffee houses admitted an egalitarian mix of patrons, ranging from tradesmen, physicians, Fellows of the Royal Society to statesmen (Bond 1965, V: 211). The participants in the public sphere at St Paul’s Coffee House, which included capitalists like Franklin, theologians like Price and private men like Dr Jeffries, were described by James Boswell:
I went to a club to which I belong. It meets every other Thursday, at St Paul’s Church Yard. It consists of clergymen, physicians, and several other professions. There are of it. Dr Franklin, Rose of Chiswick, Burgh of Newington Green, Mr Price who writes on morals. Dr Jeffries, a keen Supporter of the Bill of Rights, and a good many more…conversation goes on pretty formally, sometimes sensibly and sometimes furiously (quoted in Brewer 2013: 41)
Abbè Prèvost, an eminent French author, noted during his tour of London in 1728 that he was impressed “to see a lord, or two, a baronet, a shoemaker, a tailor, a wine-
121 merchant, and a few others of the same stamp poring over the same newspapers. Truly the coffee houses…are the seats of English liberty” (Porter 2000: 20).
Throughout the eighteenth century, the coffee houses were integral to the lives of the urban population. Lawyers met at Alice’s and Hell Coffee House, close to Westminster Hall. The Tories met at the Cocoa Tree and the Whigs at Arthur’s. Booksellers met at Chapter Coffee House, where Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets was commissioned in 1777. Artistic and literary notables such as William Hogarth, and Jonathan Richardson gathered at Old Slaughter’s Coffee House. The dancing masters and opera singers have their favourite meeting place at the Orange in Haymarket.
In functioning as meeting places for commercial transactions, political discussions and social interactions, the coffee houses played a pivotal role in strengthening the public sphere to shape the cultural life of the English society. Various cultural activities encouraged in the idiom of politeness took place at the coffee houses. The Chapter Coffee House contained a library of the latest publications. Lectures on science, medicine and oratory were also held at coffee houses. The Great Piazza Coffee House in Covent Garden was fitted out with a small theatre for oratory. Books, prints, pictures, medals and curios were often exhibited at Garraway’s in Exchange Alley before they were being auctioned by specialist dealers (Brewer 2013: 39).
At the coffee houses, the Spectator, provided polite rules of engagement. Addison reiterated the key tenet of politeness: articulation of both self-interests and public good in the context of fellowship. He insisted:
When men are thus knit together, by love of Society, and not by a Spirit of faction, and don’t meet to censure or annoy those that are absent, but to enjoy one another; When they are thus combined for their Improvement, or for the Good of others, or at least to relax themselves from the Business of the Day, by an innocent and cheerful Conversation, there may be something very useful in these little Institutions and Establishments (quoted in Brewer 2013; 41).
The excitement of the coffee houses was based on recognition of their social innovation, their role in developing a public sphere that produced a sense of citizenship. Over and above facilitating business transactions, they encouraged men to express and exchange opinions on issues ranging from the price of a bale of tea to
122 the passing of parliamentary bills. They offered legitimate opportunities to men who had not been invested with any public authority to affect decision making at the highest levels.
Under the auspices of the Spectator, such participation required self-restraint and rational discussion. The cultivation of this rational and sociable public was a complement to the pattern of gentlemanliness of the English parliamentarians as detected by Elias. Men of learning were trained by the idiom of politeness to relate in a non-violent manner. Elias posits that, in general, gravitation towards peaceful and non-confrontational mode of co-operation was possible only in societies where there was a monopoly of force. It could be argued that the threat of physical force became attenuated because of adherence to the notion of good taste.
Addison was pleased to report from his observation of the goings on at the coffee houses that the entertainments of the patrons:
are derived rather from Reason than Imaginations: Which is the Cause that there is no Impatience or Instability in their Speech or Action. You see in their Countenances they are at home, and in quiet Possession of the present Instant, as it passes, without desiring to Quicken it by gratifying any Passion, or prosecuting any new Design (Bond 1965, V: 208).
Personifying Mr Spectator, Addison set himself up as the arbiter of standards and ubiquitous commentator on every coffee house that he visited. He characterised the patrons with the polite Addisonian persona so that it transcended their individual identities as a cleric, bureaucrat, man of fashion, merchant, country gentlemen, or soldier. They were presented as the “cosmopolite, the very epitome of sweet reason, composure and tolerant pluralism” (Porter 2000: 88). According to Addison and Steele, philosophy had to be rescued from the monkish seminaries, which bred pomposity, and exercised in the coffee house to breed civility. They maintained that what was needed in the polite culture was discussion, not disputation, conversation, not controversy, politeness not pedantry.
Conclusion
Under the rehabilitation of Addison and Steele, the coffee houses which wished to attract the new polite class turned their back on the libertinism represented by the restoration court of Charles II. This did not mean that all the coffee house patrons
123 pursued a polite lifestyle. What the Spectator did was to craft a polite idiom to encourage the men of the city and the country, men from the gentry and non-gentry, to improve their manners and refine their taste, in order to capitalise on the new age of commercialization and the urban renaissance. Addison and Steele used the coffee houses as an embodiment of the institution of urban life.
The emphasis on rationality did not suggest the absence of appetites and passions. Rather, these drives were to be harnessed, and the legitimate sentiment that was encouraged was that of benevolence and concern for public good, and a sense of fraternal sociability. The social constraints intrinsic to a civilizing process, and the personal restraints necessary to create social harmony, were consciously calibrated in the coffee house interactions.
Such coffee house conversations did not mean a democratization of culture. What it meant was that cultural construction became relatively more accessible to the non- gentry than it had been under the courtly model of civilité. The good breeding required for entry was polite self-restraint and liberty, rather than traditional authority. Cultural construction had extended into the public sphere, where the aspiring class who shared the ethical and aesthetic orientation of the idiom of politeness could participate.
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Chapter 10: Polite Cultural Construction by the Aristocratic- Bourgeois Alliance
Introduction
The Whig politicians, who had wrested power from the Tories after the 1688 Revolution, assumed a new sense of purpose at the turn of the century. Having achieved a measure of political liberty, the Whig ideologists based their cultural reconstruction of England on the classical civic model of an active engagement in the world. They assumed the responsibility of refining the ethical and aesthetic judgment of the English; they aimed to construct a national culture that was stripped of the dogmas of the established church.
The construction of a national culture outside the influence of the ecclesiastical authority did not imply that the English society was now supported by a merely mechanical foundation, as suggested by Weber. Nor did the English abandon their civic duty in order to indulge in self-centred emotional hedonism, as proposed by Campbell. I argue that politeness provided an imagined community of taste to which people could aspire, despite their political and religious differences.
Culture was seen as indispensable to the refining of the commercial society, safeguarding it against corruption. Crozier points out that Shaftesbury’s form of argumentation saw the uncoupling of cultural production “from the suspicion of ‘corruption’ and ‘luxury’, and [deeming it] an integral part of virtuous life” (1995: 85). Shaftesbury’s classical model of cultural construction was upheld right up till the second half of the eighteenth century. The ‘sociable man’ of Addison and Steele’s Spectator had to cultivate taste in art, literature and music and be able to talk agreeably about such subjects in company. Such a community of taste admitted the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance, who bought books, collected prints and attended plays and concerts. Cultural construction and consumption that required the cultivation of taste were inextricably tied to the scientific inventions and commercial developments in liberal modernity. Adam Smith and David Hume insisted that the increased social and economic intercourse had polished the manners and refined the taste of the English.
As a result of the cultural decline of the English court and the Protestant prohibition on indulgence in cultural refinement, the arts in seventeenth-century England had
125 seemed poorly developed in comparison with the cultural life on the Continent. London aware of its inferior state of cultural refinement was keen to develop the elegance and refinement of good taste in the arts. Such a task was facilitated by the abolition of press censorship, existence of religious toleration and the freedom to worship. In the idiom of politeness, the cultural refinement in eighteenth century England was not based on the genius of individual artists. Rather it was a collaborative process that involved the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance.
In 1730, Charles Molloy, editor of the Fog’s Weekly Journal (1728-36), characterised politeness in the art of eighteenth century England:
Poets and Philosophers are the fit Ornaments…of a polite and sensible Court, such as was that of Augustus, but Fidlers, Singers, Buffoons, and Stockjobbers, would best suit the Court of a Tiberius or a Nero, where Stupidity, Lewdness, and Rapine sat in Council, and exerted all their Strength, in Opposition to every Thing that was sensible” (quoted in Brewer 2013: 26).
In 1762, Lord Kames, the Scottish advocate and philosopher dedicated his Elements of Criticism to George III, persuading the king to moderate the excesses of a commercial society by supporting morally edifying fine arts:
The Fine Arts have ever been encouraged by wise Princes, not simply for private amusement, but for their beneficial influence in society. By uniting the different ranks in the same elegant pleasures, they promote benevolence…To promote the Fine Arts in Britain, has become a greater importance than is generally imagined (quoted in Brewer 2013: 30).
Lord Kames further counselled that the flourishing of commerce which engendered opulence, appetite for pleasure, sensual gratification and selfishness had infected “all ranks, [extinguishing] the amor patriae, and every spark of public spirit” (quoted in Brewer 2013: 30-31). “To prevent or retard such fatal corruption”, he recommended that the promotion of the Fine Arts, “will excite both public and private virtues. Of this happy effect Ancient Greece furnishes one shining instance” (quoted in Brewer 2013: 31).
During this cultural reconstruction, England was led by a group of powerful aristocratic elites who worked in collaboration with the aspirational and talented from the rising middle class. In the first half of the century, this cultural paradigm was supported by Court Whigs with classical education and a love of the antiquities. Whilst the aristocracy exerted a greater cultural influence from the 1690s to the
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1720s, the cultural contribution of a group of educated and talented men from the bourgeois society was to contribute more significantly to the development of the public sphere in the second half of the century.
In the preceding two chapters, I have discussed Shaftesbury’s classicization, as well as Addison and Steele’s practical interpretation of the idiom of politeness. This chapter examines the individual as well as the collective contribution of members of four clubs: the Kit-Cat Club, the Dilettanti Society, the Literary Club, and the Lunar Society. It illustrates how key members of these fraternities discharged their civic duties in defining and implementing the principles of polite community. Assuming leadership as tastemakers, they laid the foundation of a national culture, disseminating what they considered good taste. Whilst the Spectator contributed to the pursuit of politeness in the coffee houses, it was the men in the new aristocratic- bourgeois alliance that set the standard for literary and artistic productions. They flourished on the foundation of friendship, a common love of learning, as well as an interest in artistic creations and scientific discoveries.
10.1 The Kit-Cat Club
In the 1690s, the Kit-Cat Club, made up of some fifty-five Whig men of different social background, became through subscriptions and collaborations, the most important patrons and producers of literary and artistic creations (Brewer 2013: 42). The aristocratic members, together with the non-titled notable literary writers such as William Congreve and John Vanbrugh, “self-consciously set about trying to direct the course of English civilization in the new century” (Field 2009: 6). They considered it their patriotic duty to guide and nurture native talent, encompassing every art form from prose, poetry, music and the theatre to painting.
Chief among the club members was Shaftesbury’s patron, John Somers (see Figure 9), Baron of Evesham, who was to become the leader of the Whig cabinet and personal advisor of King William. The other two major tastemakers were Shaftesbury’s personal correspondents, General James Stanhope, first Earl of Stanhope, and Francis Godolphin, second Earl of Godolphin and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1735-1740. The Club also included two of England’s most powerful and richest men, Sir Robert Walpole and William Cavendish. Walpole was the first Earl of Orford and Prime Minister from 1721 to 1742. William Cavendish, the second Duke of Cavendish, was Lord President of the Council from 1716 to 1717, and again
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Figure 9: John Somers, Baron of Evesham (1651-1716)
(en.wikipedia.org)
from 1725-1729. Aristocrats from the estates in Dorset, Manchester, Halifax, Somerset, Lincoln, Scarborough, Bath, Montagu and Newcastle were also active members of the Club.
The Kit-Cat Club was founded by Jacob Tonson (See Figure 10), the leading London publisher, to spearhead his business. He set out to bring notable literary figures such as Vanbrugh, Congreve, Matthew Prior and George Stepney into companionable relations with members of the aristocracy, who could be courted as patrons. The broad membership of the Club implied a hierarchy based on values such as sense and wit rather than birth and wealth. The Kit-Cat authors perpetuated the idea that a well-rounded nobleman must be a generous patron. The aristocrats were reminded that “there was a parallel value system, independent of inheritance, in which the
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Figure 10: Jacob Tonson (1655-1736)
(www.publishing.cdlib.org)
nobly born were expected to compete, if not with their own literary talent then at least as discerning patrons” (Field 2009: 37). Tonson’s club allowed the two sets of elites to mingle and enjoy the reflection of each other’s company.
The Kit-Cat had a polite composition which included infamous rakes such as the Earl of Dorset but also the polite gentlemen, Addison and Steele, who spoke of tempering aristocratic vice with polite probity. In private, the nobility indulged in the extravagant traditions of the courtier and rake, but in public, they “furthered an urban ideal of cultured conversation and Whig politeness” (Brewer 2013: 43).
Ideologically, politeness founded on self-cultivation placed both the titled and the non-titled on equal footing. They shared a similar aspiration, to be acknowledged as men of sense, wit and taste based on a worldly asceticism of learning and cultivation, rather than deriving their social identity based on the fortune of birth. Such an ideology favoured collaboration between the gentry and non-gentry. It allowed them to fulfil their common public goals without sacrificing their personal interests. The non-gentry gained access to a community of gentleman through publishing their works. The aristocracy claimed their gentlemanliness in exercising their artistic literary judgment as patrons, and, more importantly, as connoisseurs and disseminators of good taste.
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In rejecting the court, the Kit-Cats adopted a pose of fraternal equality, looking up to each other and to the cultivated public in their effort to refine the arts. One of the most important examples of such a principle was seen in the portraiture painting executed by Sir Godfrey Kneller, the court painter, who altered the genre of portraiture painting introduced by Van Dyck in the early seventeenth century. Instead of the grand self-absorption of the court portrait, Kneller’s life-size portrait embodied a sense of intimacy in which the Kit-Cats looked out of the picture and at the viewer. They were painted as conscious of being observed by a spectator and reciprocated by looking back. The portraits of all the members represented an idealization of a society of equals engaged in civilized conversation (Brewer 2013: 43) (see Figure 9, 10 and 11). By popularising the principle of fraternal equality in portraiture painting, the Kit-Cats allowed gentlemen of different ranks and wealth to legitimately avail themselves of the form, asserting their dignity and worth as citizens.
Besides portraiture painting, the Kit-Cats acting as self-styled custodians of English theatre, decided on literary works that they considered suitable for production. Their sponsorship of plays and operas meant that playwrights who expressed their classical taste had much greater opportunities to influence the taste of the wider public. This was indicative of a culture war waged by the Club against what it saw as a coarsening of the English culture. The Kit-Cat critics were “unified, for example in their distaste for the popular entr’acte entertainments (rope, dancers, singers, trained animals, tumblers and acrobats)”, which were added to even the most serious plays (Field 2009: 75). They did not approve of the mechanical innovations in scenery and special effects that appealed to the audiences. Matthew Prior saw such stage innovations as sinking the stage in their aping of the French farce.
Unlike the Puritans, the Kit-Cats did not presume to instruct through their plays, lest it should give offence to the sensibility of the audience. In his most important work, The Way of the World, William Congreve (see Figure 11) sought to reflect his view of the urbane society in which he moved. He underscored “the primacy of male friendships, bonded as much by clubbing and card-playing as business contracts and kinship” (Field 2009: 76). Through the play’s hero, Mirabell, a suave and socially adept young London gentleman, Congreve exemplified a different kind of morality. He highlighted Mirabell’s integrity and assumption of moral duties in attending to the welfare of one of his ex-mistresses. Congreve exposed the affectations of Mirabell’s male friends and showed that “the mutual exposure of faults and fears” were simultaneously “cruel and affectionate” (Field 2009: 77). He showcased that
130 through conversations and criticisms, they were polishing one another, “balancing on their tightropes of wit above great social uncertainty” (Field 2009: 77).
Figure 11: William Congreve (1670-1729)
(www.britannica.com)
Congreve’s play was also radical in introducing a new attitude towards marriage, one that did not require the total subjugation of women. In the famous ‘proviso scene’, he gave an account of how partners in the 1700s assessed their loss of rights when they were to bind themselves in the marriage contract, his characters Mirabell and Millamant laying out their conditions of engagement. Trying to preserve her rights as a person, Millamant expressed her fear “to dwindle into a wife” (quoted in Field 2009: 77). Such a scene had been popularly interpreted as promoting equality between the sexes, as Congreve had depicted a couple well matched in their knowledge of literature and their wit. It was a play that drew on Congreve’s personal friendship with strong women. In 1695, he wrote, “We may call them the weaker Sex, but I think the true Reason is because our Follies are stronger and our Faults the more prevailing” (quoted in Field 2009: 77).
Because they saw themselves as a cultural vanguard, the Kit-Cats were not surprised when the play was not popular upon premiere in March 1700. Dryden congratulated Congreve on the ingenious work and Steele consoled that there were few refined in
131 the audience. The Kit-Cats continued their role as taste legislators undeterred, taking legitimacy from the fact that, as men of independence, they were the most impartial critics, with breeding to make them arbiters of taste. This sense of empowerment did not go unnoticed or uncriticised, of course, but itself became a topic of conversation in the public sphere. Satirical writers such as Ned Ward (1667-1731), mocked their pretensions as too ideological:
[T]hey began to set themselves up for Apollo’s court of judicature, where every author’s performance, from the stage poet to the garret-drudge, was to be read, tried, applauded, or condemned, according to the new system of Revolutionary Principles (quoted in Field 2009: 80).
The rehabilitation of the theatre was to be continued by the next generation of arbiters of taste represented by David Garrick, actor-manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, and a key member of the Literary Society founded by Samuel Johnson.
10.2 The Dilettanti Society
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Kit-Cat Club was succeeded by the Dilettanti Society. However their influence was limited to the publication of works of classical antiquities. The libertine sensibility of the key members of the Dilettanti Society became a liability. They were criticised by Samuel Richardson in Clarissa and Hogarth in The Rake’s Progress for pursuing pleasure without responsibility.
The Dilettanti Society, founded by Sir Francis Dashwood, brought together gentlemen who had completed the Grand Tour. Not only had these men met to learn to appreciate ancient Greek art, they had also become collectors of ‘virtu’ which they carried home for closer study. Members of the club were determined to “purify British taste along neoclassical lines” (Field 2009: 373). The Society’s first members included Sir James Grey, whose publication on the excavations at Herculaneum received public acclaim. The other influential members were Lords Sandwich, Charlemont, Bessborough, Holdernesse and Hamilton, all avid collectors of classical antiquities. Together, they strove to turn collecting into the science of connoisseurship. It was not enough for them to understand the technical aspects of ancient art. What was more important was for the connoisseurs to “explain a picture’s virtues and beauties” and the role of the artist in such a creation (Brewer 2013: 209).
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Advancing a culture based on classicism, the Dilettanti Society in 1744 sponsored a three-year study of Greek and Roman art and architecture by James Stuart (1713- 1788) and Nicholas Revett (1720-1804). Between 1762 and 1814, four lavishly illustrated volumes of The Antiquities of Athens were published. Subsequent sponsorships of overseas study of Nicholas Revett, Richard Chandler, an Oxford lecturer and artist William Pars resulted in the publication of the Ionian Antiquities in 1770. These two important publications inaugurated a new phase in the study of classicism and in the collection of antiquities in the second half of the eighteenth century.
10.3 The Literary Club
Eclipsing the Kit-Cat Club and the Dilettanti Society, the Literary Club founded by Samuel Johnson (see Figure 12) in 1764, was to become most influential in the second half of the century (Brewer 2013: 45). It progressed under the leadership of Sir Joshua Reynolds (see Figure 13) and included Edmund Burke, Dr Christopher Nugent, Burke’s father in law, Oliver Goldsmith, James Boswell, and Sir John Hawkins. It started as an informal society of friends. However by 1791, it had thirty five members, who now included Sir Joseph Banks botanist; David Garrick, theatre manager; Edward Gibbon, historian; Adam Smith, political economist; and Charles James Fox, politician. Unlike the Kit-Cat Club, it admitted more members from the literary and artistic professions than the aristocracy. Generally, it was a politically neutral club, although Fox and Reynolds, both committed Whigs, were among its most influential members.
The Literary Club shared the interests of the Kit-Cats, but also produced biographies, literary criticisms, as well as publications that centred on medicine, science, oriental languages and literature, political economy, botany and travel, theology, history, and history of music (Brewer 2013: 47). It had a more encompassing range of interests than its predecessors. The members helped one another by subscribing to each other’s publications. They offered introductions to book sellers, wrote prologues and verses, praised and promoted each other’s books, plays and poems. In general they acted as the arbiters of taste in talking up each other up as major figures. They had a collective identity and political power to substantiate their taste. As much as they assumed the role of taste legislators, they played the role of cultural custodians. They shaped, protected and conserved
133 traditions, in literature, music and painting, in full consciousness of history and posterity.
Figure 12: Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
(upload.wikimedia.org)
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Figure 13: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
(en.wikipedia.org)
To give a sense of the milieu in which the Literary Society thrived, I will focus on the career of one member, David Garrick (1717-1779), the actor-manager, who was to assert his influence in the development of the public sphere in the theatre. Born in Lichfield, Garrick was a pupil of Samuel Johnson at the Edial Hall School. When he bought a share in the Drury Lane Theatre and partnered James Lacy in 1747, he was to rehabilitate the theatre as a site of politeness and recast actors and actresses as respectable cultural producers. Unlike the Kit-Cat members who used their wealth to assert their cultural dominance, Garrick had to rely on the public taste he sought to refine.
There are no hopes of seeing a perfect stage, till the public as well as the managers get rid of their errors and prejudices: the reformation must begin with the first. When the taste of the public is set right the managers and actors must follow it or starve (quoted in Brewer 2013: 88).
This awareness of the public’s power and responsibility is clear in the prologue that Samuel Johnson wrote for Garrick in 1747:
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Ah! Let no censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public voice. The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live. Then prompt no more the follies you decry, As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die; ‘Tis yours this night to bid the reign commence Of rescued Nature and reviving Sense; To chase the charms of sound, the pomp of show, For useful mirth, and salutary woe; Bid scenic Virtue from the rising age, And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage (quoted in Brewer 2013: 283)
It was said that Garrick was able to deliver the beauty and morality of Shakespeare’s works through every gesture, every look in his eye and every modulation in his voice, that he was a master in drawing the audience into Shakespeare’s moral universe (see Figure 14). But while his acting encouraged the public to attend the theatres and therefore become part of the public sphere, this success was underpinned by his efforts to maintain a dialogue with the public. To keep his audience engaged, Garrick successfully pursued a policy of mixing a repertoire of classical drama with more popular material (Brewer 2013: 265). He also worked hard to keep theatre, and in particular his productions, at the centre of public attention. Through controversies he initiated as a critic, through his praise for some and his condemnation of others, he invited the public to express their opinions and to pronounce their judgements on the performance of the actors: on their gestures, expressions and individual foibles. In this way, attention in the public sphere cleansed theatre of stigma it still carried from the Protestant prejudice against a playhouse.
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Figure 14: David Garrick in the Character of Richard III
(en.wikipedia.org)
Garrick’s commitment to politeness, the populace and the public sphere set him a challenge when it came to managing audiences. On the one hand, the raucous nature of the eighteenth-century theatre-going public captured an important aspect of the spirit of politeness. Here was an assembly that was the Nation in microcosm, with everyone free to respond. Theophilus Cibber described the theatrical audience of the time as “Noble, Gentle, or Simple, who fill the Boxes, Pit, and Galleries…as King, Lords and COMMONS…make the great body of the Nation” (quoted in Brewer 2013: 283). On the other hand, such an assembly, without polite self-restraint, loses its wit and dialogue and becomes dominated by the loudest or most powerful. Part of Garrick’s attempt to raise the public standing of plays and their performers, therefore, took the form of taming and educating an audience that was not used to listening in silence or appreciating the small gestures of a performance. No longer
137 were the actors to be treated as private property, to be cheered and jeered; no longer was the nobility allowed to be seated on stage or to interrupt the performances. New rules of politeness were drawn up and applied in the Drury Lane Theatre.
The sense of the theatre as a microcosm of the nation, with its part in free dialogue, and with Shakespeare as its script writer and moral spokesman, underlay Garrick’s project and his popularity (see Figure 15). It is well illustrated by the endings he gave to two productions. In his 1759 performance of Harlequin’s Invasion, a Christmas pantomime performed at the height of the Seven Year War with France, he linked his play to a patriotic call to use comedy, tragedy and the Bard to defend the nation against a French invasion. The pantomime was full of stirring patriotic songs and ended with an effigy of Shakespeare chasing the French from the stage. In the stage direction of The Shakespeare Jubilee, produced in 1769, the cast and audience joined in a chorus of praise for William Shakespeare. Such empathy between audience and actors was considered distinctively English by foreign tourists in the eighteenth-century. Brewer observes that the English stage was a microcosm of the English society, a place where much liberty was accorded to the ordinary man (2013: 284). As images of the time make clear (see Figures 15 and 16), this English sense of a free public sphere involved a strange blend of the neo-classicism associated with the elites and a national culture associated with their native literary figure, Shakespeare.
In the idiom of politeness, Garrick was not just an actor-manager, he was also a polite gentlemen. At his residence, Hampton on the Thames (see Figure 16), he focused on self-cultivation and maintained a library that included significant collection of plays, fine illustrated books, a print collection consisting of more than 1,000 engraved portraits and several series of engravings of famous works of art. In cultivating his taste he also collected two hundred paintings of works attributed to Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Guido Reni, Van Dyck, Watteau, Peitro Perugino and contemporary British artists. Besides the members of the Literary Clubs and the fellow Bluestockings who met at Lady Montagu’s salons, Garrick also cultivated a
138 wide circle of aristocratic Whigs centred around Lord Burlington and the Duke of Devonshire. He also kept up with many of his literary friends such as Thomas Becket and William Warburton.
Figure 15: Garrick with the Bust of Shakespeare
(www.folger.edu/The Folger Shakespeare Library)
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Garrick who retired in 1776, played his part as a gentleman, and contributed to the establishment of the theatre as a public sphere where the public were invited to express and refine their taste.
Figure 16: Mr and Mrs Garrick by the Shakespeare Temple at Hampton
(en.wikipedia.org)
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10.4 The Lunar Society of Birmingham
Although London was the centre of cultural reconstruction at the beginning of the eighteenth century, clubs and societies in the provincial towns such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle also asserted their influence in the second half of the century. The most influential was the Lunar Society, founded by Dr Erasmus Darwin (see Figure 17) of Lichfield. The first Lunar link was forged in 1757 between Darwin, an Oxford theorist, and Matthew Boulton, a self-taught technologist. Together with key members of the society, such as Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt and Joseph Priestley, these men dedicated themselves to the pursuit and diffusion of knowledge, the exercise of reason, and the promotion of artistic and scientific developments (Brewer 2013: 410). The Lunar men met once a month at full moon in support of one another’s scientific discoveries and artistic interests. A 1778 letter of Erasmus Darwin gave a glimpse of the nature of the fraternity: “Lord! What inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical and pyrotechnical, will be on the wing, bandy’d like a shuttlecock from one to another of your troop of philosophers!” (quoted in Uglow 2003: 265). Like their counterparts in London, these enlightened men favoured the medium of conversation in exercising cultural and discursive liberty.
Figure 17: Dr Erasmus Darwin
(en.wikipedia.org)
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It was in the Lunar Society that “science, Dissent and political reformism joined forces…Science was acclaimed as integral not just to utility but to the civilizing process” (Porter 2000: 427). James Watt and Matthew Boulton invented the steam engine, John Whitehurst invented the “pulsation engine”, a water-raising device and Wedgwood produced jasperware to facilitate the reproduction of classical antiquities. Darwin was a scientist and a poet. He made prototypes of the steam engines and experimented with a speaking machine. In The Botanic Garden, Darwin shared his scientific discoveries and theories of the cosmos, as well as his botanical knowledge (Brewer 2013: 475). The pursuit of learning was seen as a vanguard in the fight against tyranny. Joseph Priestley considered the “rapid progress of knowledge…[as] the means under God, of extirpating all terror and prejudices, and of putting an end to all undue and usurped authority in the business of religion as well of science…(quoted in Golinski 1992: 81).
There is evidence of collaboration and consultation within and without the Lunar Society. Before, during and after the Lunar meetings, these men consulted one another, sending papers to be criticised by their friends. From 1766 onwards, the Lunar men also met at Slaughter’s Coffee House in St Martin’s Lane whenever they visited London. They exchanged ideas with botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, instrument maker Jesse Ramsden and engineer John Smeaton. Richard Edgeworth described their London meetings as encapsulating “the first hints of discoveries, the current observations, and the mutual collision of ideas” (Edgeworth 1844: 118).
In the idiom of politeness, science was considered a gentlemanly and cultured pursuit as it required self-cultivation, facilitated sociability and contributed to public good. Ten of the Lunar men were admitted as Fellows of the Royal Society by the end of the century. Hailing from different backgrounds, Priestly revealed the basis of their collaboration:
We had nothing to do with the religious or political principles of each other. We were united by a common love of science, which we thought sufficient to bring together persons of all distinctions, Christians, Jews, Mohametans, and Heathens, Monarchies and Republicans (quoted in Uglow 2003: xiv).
Educational background, political and religious differences did not stand in the way of their friendship and collaborative effort. Nevertheless, it is interesting that with the exception of Bolton, who was an Anglican and a Tory, most of them were Whigs of non-conformist or atheist background. In the group, only Erasmus Darwin,
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Thomas Day and Richard Edgeworth attended Oxford. Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood were principally self-taught.
Besides their scientific inventions, Boulton, Wedgwood and a close associate of the Lunar men, Thomas Bentley, also made significant contributions to cultural refinements through their collaboration with the talented, and the patronage of the titled. Besides working with Watt on the invention of the steam engine, Boulton also branched into the manufacture of silver plate and ormolu for the aristocratic tastemakers. Together with Wedgwood, who specialised in the reproduction of classical antiquities such as vases, Boulton studied leading publications such Antiquities of Athens written by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett. They also worked in collaboration with the leading architects of classicism, William Chamber, the king’s architect, as well as Robert and James Adams. Wedgwood was able to put together his first collection of Etruscan vases, based on the 450 engravings published in Sir William Hamilton’s Antiquès, Etrusques, Grecques et Romaines published in 1776.
Wedgwood and Boulton saw their production and trade as a civic duty, a patriotic battle against the French. When Bentley encouraged Wedgwood to outshine Sèvres through his production at Burslem, he wrote on 13th September 1769, ”Conquer France in Burslem? My blood moves quicker. I feel my strength increase for the contest…I say we will fashion our Porcelain after their own hearts, and captivate them with the Elegance and simplicitie of the Antients” (quoted in Uglow 2003: 198). Boulton also vowed to make his ormulo simpler and less ornate than the French ware. In this endeavour, the producers were supported by their aristocratic patron, Lady Elizabeth Montagu, who wrote to Boulton in October 1771, “Go on then Sir, to triumph over the French in taste & to embellish your country with useful inventions & elegant productions” (quoted in Uglow 2003: 198). In the same letter, Montagu expressed the sentiment that was representative of the civic reputation accorded to the producers of neo-classical ware:
The pleasure I received there, was not of the idle & transient kind which arises from merely seeing beautiful objects. Nobler Tastes are gratified in seeing Mr Boulton & all his admirable inventions. To behold the secrets of Chymistry, & the mechnick powers, so employ’s & exerted, is very delightful. I consider the Machines you have at work as so many useful subjects to Great Britain of your own Creation, the exquisite Taste in the forms which you give them to work upon, is another national advantage (quoted in Uglow 2003: 211-212)
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Boulton and Wedgwood disseminated the good taste through their interpretation of classicism. The emulation was not a servile reproduction of works of superficial beauty, but it was driven by the excitement and wonder of the scientific discoveries that made it possible. Through their assiduous study and relentless experiments, the producers discovered the most suitable materials to reproduce the works of antiquities. Their works contributed to the neo-classical phase of cultural construction in eighteenth-century England. The cultural contribution of Wedgwood is developed further in Chapter 13.
The Lunar men led and showed the people in the provincial towns of Birmingham, Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield how they could participate in the public sphere in significant ways. They responded to the emerging forces of commerce and industrialization and established the economic and social foundation of England in the eighteenth century. They responded to the new demands of the ascendant class for new goods, considered necessary to polite living, such as clocks, prints, earthenware, curtains, and cutlery (Styles 1993: 536). The Lunar men were not self- important aristocrats or power-seeking politicians. They were gentlemen who built roads, constructed canals, invented steam engines, improved glassmaking and ceramic making, to make life better for themselves and others in the new age. They were motivated by both self-interest and public good, whose indivisibility was legitimated by the idiom of politeness.
Barthèlemy Faujas St Fond, a French geologist and a visitor to the Lunar Society in the 1770s, recalled the days he spent “in the midst of the arts and industries, and in the society of enlightened men and amiable women” in Birmingham. He commented, “Nothing can equal so peaceful a charm; the mind is fed and inspirited; the head is filled with facts, and the heart with gratitude. Such was our experience in the town which we could not leave without regret” (1907, II: 357).
Conclusion
In the eighteenth century, the clubs of the aristocrats, as well as the societies of the artists and scientists, were prominent participants in the public sphere. They had taken over from the court and the church, and fashioned themselves as communities of taste and knowledge helping to form public opinions. They dictated the creation of works of art and the imagination.
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If Shaftesbury, Addison and Steel were to be credited with advancing the language of politeness, it was the Kit-Cat Club, the Dilettanti Society, the Literary Club and the Lunar Society which established an urban ideal of politeness. Through conversation, collaboration and cultural construction based on asceticism, rationality and sociability, these men of learning shaped the neo-classical phase of the civilizing process of England in the eighteenth century. The aristocrats through their wealth and influence discharged their civic duty as patrons of the art. The talented, learned and self-taught men of non-gentry background co-operated with the social elites in shifting the cultural centre from the court into the public domain. They were not necessarily all men of exemplary conduct, but this collective cultural movement could not have occurred without the language of politeness and its capacity to bring together “independent life…integrity in office & a passion for the common weal” (Uglow 2003: 56).
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Chapter 11: Conversation and Sociability in the Bluestocking Salons
Introduction
In interrogating the age of enlightenment, Lorraine Daston interprets the metaphor of the light used in the eighteenth century as “a sociable light”. Specifically, she refers to the light that radiated from letters, treatises, memoirs, novels, journals and conversations. According to Daston,”enlightenment was kindled by argument, explanation, demonstration, and discussion with a network of interlocutors” (1999: 497). In analysing the French enlightenment, Dena Goodman insists that “the central discursive practices of the Enlightenment Republic of Letters were polite conversation and letter writing, and its defining social institution was the Parisian salon” (1994: 3). Lawrence Klein (2001) observes that many people in eighteenth- century England used conversations to organise not only their perceptions of the world, but also to facilitate their engagements with the world. In regarding knowledge as grounded in conversation, Richard Rorty (1980) suggests that a post philosophical culture should be centred on conversations. When seeking a prototype for this model, Rorty turns to the salon “where hermetic thinkers are charmed out of their self-enclosed practices” (Rorty 1980: 317).
The rational discourses were recommended by Shaftesbury, who referred to the Athenian model in which politeness was located in dialogues and free debates engendered in the public spaces (Crozier 1995: 84). He was concerned about the way in which rational discourses in the eighteenth century had lost its credit because of their formality. He recommended that conversations could be made “more agreeable and familiar” with the use of “humour and gaiety (quoted in Klein 1999: 37). According to Klein, Shaftesbury “sought a rapprochement between philosophy and the world that would create, with philosophical worldliness, a new model of public discourse” (Klein 2001: 156).
In the second half of the century, Hume also assigned particular importance to conversation as the ideal means of social interchange, in the progress of civil society:
Among the arts of conversation, no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companion, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so
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natural to the human mind. A good-natured man, who is well educated, practises this civility to every mortal, without premeditation or interest (Hume 1963: 127-128).
The foregoing chapters have discussed the role of gentlemen as participants in coffee house sociability and as patrons of literary and artistic production. In the fraternity of the gentlemen, sociability was embraced and an alliance was forged between the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the idiom of politeness. In this chapter, we leave the male coffee house and look at the new venues for mixed-gender sociability that were opened up by the idiom of politeness. The eighteenth-century saw a softening of patriarchal attitudes, articulated in the idiom of politeness, making it easier for women of rank and talent to carve a role for themselves in the cultural public sphere. In the polite culture, the capacity for rationality was seen as “that great instrument of humanity and liberation” (Porter 2000: 332). The polite idiom as interpreted by Addison included the tea-tables as social sites where women discussed philosophy (Bond 1965, I: 44).
This chapter examines the reformulation of the French concept of the salon by a group of British women of rank and affluence, to advance their role as cultural producers in the public sphere. Nicknamed the Bluestockings, men and women from the gentry and non-gentry classes first met in the 1750s, in the homes of three wealthy women: Lady Elizabeth Montagu (1720-1800), Elizabeth Vesey (1715-1791), and Frances Boscawen (1719-1805) (Eger and Peltz 2008: 21). The Bluestockings reshaped the notion of the salon to pursue a “more rigorously virtuous and apolitical identity than their French sisters” (Eger 2012: 60). They operated outside the political province. Their discussions were focussed on literary works, with the aim of providing opportunities for both men and women to practise the use of reason. Like their French counterparts, as analysed by Goodman (1994: 6), the Bluestockings saw themselves as a civilizing force in both history and contemporary society.
Whilst the male Bluestockings were encouraged to lead in the exercise of discursive and cultural liberty, the female Bluestockings met with societal resistance. Eighteenth-century England was a patriarchal society where women were considered inferior to men and incapable of cultivating rational thinking. They were discriminated against ideologically and practically. According to William Blackstone (1723-1780), the leading jurist of the eighteenth century, “the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband” (1979: 430). Women had no political or public role. William Alexander in The History of Women, from the Earliest Antiquity to
147 the Present Time (1779), delineated the role of women. The constitution allowed a woman to be queen, he noted, “but by law and custom we debar her from every other government but that of her own family…We neither allow women to officiate at our altars, to debate in our councils, nor to fight for us in the field” (quoted in Colley 2009: 243).
It was not just the law and custom, but the general condescending attitude of men that women had to overcome in their fight for the right to exercise reason in the public sphere. Setting down his Advice to a Daughter (1688), the Earl of Halifax counselled “that there is Inequality in the Sexes, and for the better Oeconomy of the World, the Men, who were to be the Lawgivers, had the larger share of Reason bestow’d upon them” (quoted in Porter 2000: 322). Halifax was supported by his fellow peer, Lord Chesterfield who claimed that women “have an entertaining tattle and sometimes wit, but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never in my life knew one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together” (quoted in Porter 2000: 322).
The discrimination was, of course, discussed by aristocratic women. In 1753, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu observed “There is no part of the world where our sex is treated with so much contempt as England…we are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art is omitted to stifle our natural reason” (1861, II: 242). Lady Elizabeth Montagu expressed the same opinion, complaining in 1762 to the Earl of Bath:
Distinguish’d talents expose Women to a great deal of envy, & seldom assist them in making their fortunes. It is hard to say whether Women remarkable for their understanding suffer most from the envy of their own sex or the malice of the other, but their life is one continual warfare (quoted in Eger 2012: 97).
Given this context, one might deduce that the English enlightenment confined women to the management of the household, and permitted only men to exercise discursive and cultural liberty. However, the role of women in the eighteenth- century public sphere in England has recently been re-evaluated. There have been several recent historical studies of women’s political and literary agency. They include the works of Linda Colley (1994), Amanda Foreman (1998), Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson (2000), as well as Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus (2005). Collectively, they trace the roles, representations and responsibilities of women in eighteenth-century England.
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John Brewer identifies Anna Margaretta Larpent (1758-1832), daughter of Sir James Porter, a self-made and self-taught man, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, as a personification of a cultured woman with classical taste. She started the day with self-examination, and read two chapters of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man before taking her breakfast. Larpent devoted a typical day to reading, instruction, natural history, art and the theatre. For Larpent, recreations were not meant to be frivolous, entertaining or amusing, but edifying. According to Brewer, Larpent aspired to what she called “a refinement which can only be felt in the pure pleasure of intellectual pursuits” (quoted in Brewer, 2013: 56). Larpent’s overriding concern was cultivating herself as a refined persona; her “version of good life is one devoted to self- improvement through literature, the arts and learning” (Brewer 2013: 56).
Lawrence Klein (1995b) expresses his scepticism of Vivien Jones’ insistence on “the natural association between women and the private sphere, domesticity and leisure” in her anthology Women in the Eighteenth Century (1990: 5-6). He argues that “women in the eighteenth century had public dimensions to their lives”, adding that “engaging in those public practices involved a consciousness that they were behaving publicly and that their behaviour implied its own sanction” (1995b: 102). In Klein’s evaluation, although women were barred from the magisterial public sphere and could not assume political office, nonetheless, they participated in the civic public sphere: “a sphere of social, discursive and cultural production” (1995b: 104).
Elizabeth Eger argues that the women of rank and education in eighteenth-century England played a visible and active role in the construction of a national culture. She points out that the civic humanism as reformulated by Addison and Hume was constituted by “public spaces, locations of assembly, commerce and leisure” (2003: 191). Within such spaces, women of rank and education played a formative role in establishing the codes of sociability.
This re-evaluation of the public role of women has, I contend, highlighted the importance of the idiom of politeness. It provided a significant albeit restricted opportunity for women of rank and ability to participate in the cultural public sphere. Evaluating the public role of women in the polite culture, Stephen Copley, in “The Fine Arts in Eighteenth-Century Polite Culture”, comments:
The humanist tradition cannot find any place for women in the ranks of its active citizens. In contrast…the position of women in polite culture is ambiguous, as they are offered ‘simultaneous enfranchisement and restriction’ in polite texts that appear at first sight committed to the
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celebration of thoroughly ‘feminized’ values. Nowhere is this clearer than in the area of taste, and in the practice and appreciation of fine arts (1992: 25).
My aim in this chapter is to document the commitment of the Bluestockings from the 1760s up till the 1790s, as they strove to negotiate the cultural public sphere through their conversation in the salons. Specifically, I begin by examining the circumstances that nurtured Elizabeth Montagu into becoming the most influential salonnière in eighteenth-century England. I conclude by analysing how the mixed-gender sociability of the Bluestocking salons shaped the women’s participation in the public sphere and their pursuit of a meaningful life.
11.1 Elizabeth Montagu: Queen of the Bluestockings
Elizabeth was born in 1720 in Yorkshire to Matthew and Elizabeth Robinson. Her father was a holder of landed property in Yorkshire and a commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. Her mother Elizabeth Drake was an heiress to property in Kent and Cambridgeshire. Elizabeth’s parents were the key influence in her intellectual and moral upbringing. As recorded by her nephew and heir, Matthew Montagu, in The Letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu (1809), her three older brothers were much like their father:
addicted to literary studies and became…distinguished scholars. Their emulation produced a corresponding zeal in their sisters, and a diligence of application unusual in the females of that time. Their domestic circle was accustomed to struggle for the mastery in wit, or the superiority in argument (quoted in Leranbaum 1977: 286).
In addition to the mentoring from their parents and brothers, Elizabeth and her sister, Sarah, learned Latin, French and Italian and studied literature under the tutorship of their grandmother’s second husband, Conyers Middleton, a Cambridge lecturer. During her frequent visits to her grandmother in Cambridge, Elizabeth was encouraged by Dr Middleton to listen to ‘learned’ conversation and summarise the content of the discussion as part of her education (Myers 1990: 28).
Elizabeth’s love for learning could also be traced to her friendship with Margaret Harley, who became the Duchess of Portland, and to her subsequent visits to Margaret’s home in Bulstrode (see Figure 18). Elizabeth came into contact with men and women of learning at Bulstrode. Telling her sister how much she was enjoying
150 this company, she related an incident when a “Dr Young came in & entertain’d my Mental faculties with a feast of Reason” (quoted in Myers 1990: 36). To her friend, Anne Donnellan, she enthused:
Dr Shaw is just come he is full of Laughter & communicates it. Dr. Clark is with us also, he is a very agreeable Companion: Dr Young makes up the Triumviri of Divines, he is all three together he has a head of wisdom, a heart of honesty, & mind of chearfulness. Think how the hours fly in our Society (quoted in Myers 1990: 40).
Figure 18: Portland House at Bulstrode
(www.static.panoramio.com)
In addition to learning from conversation, Elizabeth read a variety of books found in the extensive library of the Portlands. When she went home to Kent, she continued
151 to read the classics, studying Horace in Latin, and the Greek tragedies in the Italian translations, and reading the French translations of Cicero and Homer.
Outside the society of the enlightened men and women found at home, at Cambridge and at Bulstrode, Elizabeth was aware of the societal disapproval of women’s pursuit of learning and cultivation of their mind. At seventeen, she commented, “there is Mohametan Error crept even into the Christian Church that women have no Souls, & it is thought very absurd for us to pretend to read or think like Reasonable Creatures” (quoted in Myers 1990: 41). Elizabeth was, in other words, highly aware of the political implications of her studies. Learning was, for women, an insistence on a role in civic and public life.
In 1742, Elizabeth, aged twenty-two, married Edward Montagu, grandson of the second earl of Sandwich, who owned coalmines at Denton, near Newcastle, and several estates in Northumberland. She became Lady Elizabeth Montagu. After her marriage, besides her devotion to learning, Elizabeth began to assume new responsibilities. In spring and summer, she helped her husband run the collieries in Newcastle. In summer, she retreated from fashionable society to live in her country estate at Sandleford in Berkshire. The intellectual influence and sociability that Elizabeth experienced in her youth were to have a lasting impact on her adulthood. They were to provide her a model for her subsequent hosting of the salons at her London residence in the winter months.
Marriage and the assumption of a title did not make Elizabeth immune to the societal constraints placed on her gender. In a 1760 letter to Lord Lyttleton, Elizabeth spoke of her frustration:
Extraordinary talents may make a Woman admired, but they never make her happy. Talents put a man above the World, & in a condition to be feared and worshipped, a Woman that possesses them must always be courting the World, and asking pardon, as it were, for uncommon excellence (quoted in Myers 1990: 183).
Elizabeth claimed that she had to hide her learning and pretend to read nothing except her grandmother’s recipes for puddings. She did not waver in her conviction that it was necessary for women to develop their mind to become rational creatures. The cultivation of the mind, implicit in the idiom of politeness, was the guiding principle in Elizabeth’s development pf the salon culture. Conversation was engendered to facilitate learning, and undertaken as emancipation from the shackles
152 of ignorance and folly, that were to be found both inside and outside of the uncultivated mind.
Dr Samuel Johnson was responsible for nicknaming Elizabeth “Queen of the Bluestockings”. He commended, “Sir, that Lady exerts more mind in conversation than any Person I ever met with: Sir, she displays such powers of ratiocination, even radiations of intellectual excellence are as amazing (quoted in Hill 1897: 272).
11.2 Conversation in the Salons as Participation in the Public Sphere
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the tea-tables in England had expanded into salons where the Bluestockings, both men and women, became part of the public.
The term, ‘Bluestockings’, was used by the aristocratic circle in 1653 to abuse the Puritans of Cromwell’s ‘Little Parliament’. It was revived in 1756 to signify the egalitarian and domestic nature of the social gatherings of the educated men and women (Eger 2008: 29; Kelly 2001: 170). The popular account was that Benjamin Stillingfleet (see Figure 19), a botanist, attended the gatherings in his workman’s attire of blue stockings, as he could not afford the black silk stockings worn by courtiers (Myers 1990: 6-7). He was a prominent participant in the salons, and was nicknamed the Bluestocking by Montagu. Gradually, this term was used to identify all who attended the salons held in London.
The polite and moderate tone of the Spectator appealed to the Bluestockings. In assuming her role as a salonnière, Montagu drew encouragement and support from the promoter of politeness. She acknowledged Addison for his criticism of those who characterised women in terms of “ignorance, false delicacy, affectation & childish fears”, and for his insistence that women “should be soft not weak, gentle, but not timorous” (quoted in Myers 1990: 123). The Bluestockings supported the construction of a post-courtly cultural model, where the idiom of politeness allowed men and women to jointly discuss and criticise literary productions that ranged from novels to poems, and operas to plays.
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Figure 19: Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702-1771)
(www.izquotes.com)
The institution of the salon culture did not, however, signify the equality between men and women. Masculine support of the literary and artistic endeavours of women could be read in two ways. It could signify the genuine efforts of some men to help women eradicate the patriarchal prejudice. Alternatively, the ‘generosity’ of their support could emanate from their sense of superiority, as an act of condescension. This alternative is suggested by David Hume (see Figure 20), in his essay, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences”. He emphasised the superiority of men as a case of following the laws of nature:
As nature has given man the superiority above women, by endowing him with greater strength both of mind and body, it is his part to alleviate that superiority, as much as possible, by the generosity of his behaviour, and by a studied deference and complaisance for all her inclinations and opinions (quoted in Blanning 2008: 493).
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Figure 20: David Hume (1711-1776)
(www.enotes.com/Library of Congress)
Nevertheless, the involvement of men in an intellectual circle of conversation led by women clearly supported the participation of women in the public sphere and doubtless led to consequences that condescension did not allow men to foresee.
In the 1750s, Montagu started organising breakfast meetings with a small number of like-minded guests, to discuss literary productions with intellectuals like Gilbert West and Lord George Lyttleton (see Figure 21). By 1760, such small literary discussions had turned into evening entertainments with large assemblies. Montagu had forbidden at her convocations the popular pursuits of the elites, namely, card playing and drinking. The focus of such gatherings was self-cultivation and social interaction through rational discussions and criticisms. In the pursuit of learning, conversation was chosen as the medium of rational exchange to enable men and women to participate in cultural construction.
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Figure 21: Lord George Lyttleton (1709-1773)
(www.bbc.co.uk)
The accomplished women who formed the core of the Bluestocking salon included artist Angelica Kaufmann, writers Hannah More, Elizabeth Carter and Charlotte Lennox, the historian Catharine Macaulay, the educational writer and poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld, the actress and playwright Elizabeth Griffith, and the singer Elizabeth Linley (Brewer 2013: 78-9). Regular visitors included Hester Chapone and Catherine Talbot. The male guests included William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, Lord George Lyttleton, Horace Walpole, actor David Garrick and his Austrian wife, a professional dancer, Eva Maria. Amongst the guests were also founding members of the Literary Society: Dr Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Joseph Banks, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith (Dolan 2001: 32).
Montagu made the pursuit of learning and the discussion of literary works the central concern of her salon. In a 1764 letter to Edward Montagu, her husband, she expressed her concern for developing a wider reading audience, and increasing the
156 number of writers. She considered the attainment of knowledge and the establishment of a pool of writers necessary to weed up errors and alleviate “profound ignorance, which is the friend of those destructive & terrible monsters, superstition and Tyranny” (quoted in Eger 2012: 81). This pairing of the superstition and tyranny gives an insight into the simultaneously inward- and outward-looking nature of the politeness project.
Shaftesbury had spoken against the tyranny of the church in imposing on the conscience of its congregation. He had also encouraged the public to take courage to investigate and not believe in the superstitions conjured up by religious enthusiasts. Shaftesbury saw himself as an innovator, whose design was to “advance something new, or at least something different from what is commonly current in PHILOSOPHY and MORALS” (Robertson 1900, II: 251-252). Montagu, in the pursuit of politeness, resolved to do the same. She suggested to Carter that they:
talk & reason, as Angel Host & guest Aetherial should do, of high & important matters. We shall not deign to say a word of Mobs or Ministers; of fashions or the fashionable; of Great who are without Greatness, or the little who are less than their littleness. Pray say you don’t let us talk nonsense! No my dear friend, nor will talk sense, for that is worse. We shall say what has not been said before, or if the substance be old, the mode & figure shall be new (quoted in Eger 2012: 105).
As the letter implies, Montagu was determined to create a new sphere for women’s participation in the public sphere. The Bluestockings were not to stoop to gossip, or cause disharmony by criticising the great or the little. Rather, they were to exercise their discursive liberty by bringing a new perspective on important matters.
Determined that both men and women of all political and religious persuasions should play their roles as cultural producers, Montagu’s salons admitted a diversity of humanity. In writing to Carter, she expressed her delight:
in the prospect of the blue box in which our Sylph assembles all the heterogeneous natures in the World; and indeed in many respects resembles Paradise, for there the Lion sits down by the Lamb, the Tyger dandles the Kid…the Mungo of Ministry and the inflexible partisans of incorruptible Patriots, Beaux esprits and fine Gentlemen, all gather together under the downy wings of the Sylph, and are soothed into good humour (quoted in Eger 2012: 109).
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It is interesting to compare Montagu’s list of attendees with that of Hannah More. Clearly, they put a premium on the diversity as a good in itself. More describes assemblies with “sober Duchess”, “Chase Wits, and Critics void of spleen”, “Physicians, and Whigs and Tories in alliance”, “Poets”, “Just Lawyers, reasonable Beauties”, “Bishops and Countesses”, “Learned Antiquaries”, “travellers” as well as “those who cannot read” (quoted in Eger 2012: 113). In orchestrating the salons, Montagu was concerned that the men and women who gathered at her self- proclaimed “temple of virtue and friendship” were free from pedantry and ignorance. She was keen to facilitate the easy and polite manner in which well-bred men could converse with well-informed and gracious ladies.
The value of such mixed gender sociability was emphasised by Montagu in her 1786 letter to Carter:
no society is completely agreeable if entirely male or female. The masculinisms of men, and the feminalistics of the women, if the first prevail they make conversation too rough, and austere, if the latter, too soft and weak. Discourse led entirely by men is generally pedantick and political (quoted in Eger 2012: 76).
This observation was endorsed from a male perspective by David Hume, who must have had Montagu and her salon society in mind when he talked of the social transformation brought about by the refinement of liberal arts. He noted that the sociable people flocked into the cities and met in clubs and societies where:
both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace. So that, beside the improvements they receive from knowledge and the liberal arts, it is impossible but they must feel an increase of humanity, and from the habit of conversing together, and contributing to each other’s pleasure and entertainment (Hume 1987: 271).
Although there was no specific record of Hume as a key member of the Bluestockings, he had upheld the special role of women in presiding over the conversable world:
What better school for manners than the company of virtuous women, where the mutual endeavour to please must insensibly polish the mind, where the example of female softness and modesty must communicate itself to their admirers, and where the delicacy of that sex puts every one on his guard, lest he give offence by any breach of decency (1963: 134).
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In Gary Kelly’s analysis, conversation was a “discourse of culture and civility in mixed company, replacing both the formality and masquerade of courtly upper-class society and the supposed roughness and coarseness of male-only society or plebeian society” (2001: 165).
Hester Chapone described the nature of the Bluestocking salons in moral terms. She noted that common social gatherings focussed on the pernicious practice of card playing. In contrast, she noted that, at the Bluestocking salons, it was impossible to pass an evening “without something being struck out, that would in some degree enlighten the mind” (quoted in Eger 2012: 111). This mental instruction was associated with moral cultivation. Chapone considered that “the sphere of conversation…gives ample scope for the exertion of that active principle of beneficence in which true virtue consists” (quoted in Eger 2012: 116). She insisted that “the great and irresistible influence” of the Bluestocking salons was based on the effect that “the choice of our company, as well as the mode of our own conversations, has on our habits of thinking and acting, and on the whole form and colour of our minds” (quoted in Eger 2012: 119). Speaking on behalf of the Bluestockings, Chapone maintained that conversation was “the leading circumstance of our lives, and that which may chiefly determine our character and condition to all eternity” (quoted in Eger 2012: 118).
The politeness of the Bluestocking was epitomised by the unimpeded communication of opinions. Hannah More, who was pleased to have met Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Johnson and Elizabeth Carter at Montagu’s salons, reported to her sister that it was “a party that would not have disgraced the table at Laelius, or of Atticus” (quoted in Eger 2012: 107). More described Montagu as embodying the judgment and experience of a Nestor. She was impressed by the diversity of opinions, arguments and reasoning that were exchanged at the Montagu’s salons. They represented, she said, a literary community in which the highest value was placed on the exchange of opinions and rational discussions among equals. She also contrasted the Bluestocking salons with the “tainted affectation and false taste” of the most influential Parisian salon of Madame Ramouillet in the seventeenth century (quoted in Eger 2012: 111).
To house her salons, Montagu invested her inheritance in building a palatial London residence. Eger suggests, “It is important to understand that in some way Montagu viewed the magnificent scale of her house as an example of how to invest riches with moral weight” (2012: 73). Montagu’s comment about the conduct of the third Earl of Carlisle in building Castle Howard was indicative of her personal attitude towards
159 the building of her Portman House (see Figure 22). She commented to Carter, “a Man of great rank and fortune, who from his income constructs such a family seat is far preferable to him, who squanders that income in base and sensual pleasures and enjoyments” (quoted in Eger 2012: 73). The asceticism of the politeness ethic caused Montagu to fear decadence and conspicuous consumption, but it also provided a moral vocabulary to allow her to settle her qualms in terms of public service.
In building Portman House to accommodate her salons, Montagu hoped to bring comfort and convenience to both the inhabitants and visitants. However, more importantly, she hoped to delight and attract the young to her salons and steer them away from “many private Houses where every species of luxury and intemperance spread their snares and offer luscious bates” (quoted in Eger 2012: 75). Montagu, in assuming her role as a salonnière, wrote to her friend William Pepys to express her conviction that:
it is right that Virtue, prudence and Temperance should sometimes keep open House, and shew there is golden mean between churlish severity of manners and lean sallow abstinence in diet; and indecent gayety of behaviour, and that swinish gluttony which ne’er looks to Heav’n midst its gorgeous feast but crams and blasphemes in feeder (quoted in Eger 2012: 74).
Montagu had sought the politeness of the middle path as Shaftesbury had at the beginning of the century, seeking to contribute to public good through her role as a salonnière. In her old age, she was pleased to note that her house had provided “as a kind of protection to young persons entering into the World” (quoted in Eger 2012: 74), that she had founded a model of “an open house that was public enough yet retained a private aspect” (Eger 2012: 74). There is no doubt that Montagu fully appreciated the significance of the public sphere to which she had contributed. In 1790, aged seventy, she wrote to her sister Sarah to outline an ambitious plan. It was an expansion of the polite idiom to create a “little assembly”, which “will be composed of Persons of so many different Nations, that if each should speak his Mother Tongue, it wd resemble the company at ye building the Tower of Babel” (quoted in Eger 2012: 73).
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Figure 22: Montagu House in Portman Square/Ackermann’s Repository of Arts (August 1813) (www.regencyhistory.net)
Conclusion
The salon culture as developed by the Bluestockings could be read as a practical embodiment of the politeness ideal. Shaftesbury noted that philosophy was no longer active in his time because she had been immured in colleges and cells. He lamented that it was the empirics and the pedantics who were the chief pupils of philosophy. Shaftesbury promoted the enlightenment project of politeness in which philosophy was to be constituted of ethical, aesthetic and civic contents.
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In contrast to the social norms of his time, where the priests preached and the learned lectured, Shaftesbury promoted the ideal of the gentlemen as philosophers, and located the realization of such an ideal through conversation in parks and at tables. Addison too had focused on rehabilitating the coffee houses to enable the gentlemen to pursue polite philosophy in the sociability of the coffee house. However, the Bluestockings expanded the Shaftesburian and Addisonian notion of politeness to produce a new space of cultural construction, to which women too could be admitted.
As a group, the Bluestockings, cemented the aristocratic-bourgeois alliance beyond the economic realm. They contributed to the rise of civil society or “construction of a social domain of civility and relationships located between the domestic sphere…and the public, institutional areas of politics and the state” (Kelly 2001: 164). They provided opportunities for men and women to meet in egalitarian sociability. In particular they had created a public space for women to participate in the cultural construction of modern England.
The lively and polite conversation of the salon was a concrete activity that contributed to the civilizing process of eighteenth-century England. It fed into the social and cultural development of the social elites, enlarging the sense of humanity and insisting on the importance of a civic and public sphere. In eighteenth-century England, the salon, under leadership of Montagu, using the ascetic idiom of politeness, reformed the meaning of the public and of liberty. The enlightenment model of intellectual sociability of the salon still provides inspiration to those seeking to revive the culture of conversation, not just at formal institutions, but more importantly as a social practice in lived reality.
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Chapter 12: Participation of the Bluestockings in the Public Sphere
Introduction
In Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, face-to-face encounters among men and women in the coffee houses and salons were pivotal. Such informal encounters were egalitarian as anyone who could converse could participate regardless of their educational background. The Bluestocking salons admitted those who could not read. In such social sites, public opinion can be formed. Habermas underscores, “Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body” (1964: 116). However, Habermas points out that citizens do not only have the freedom to confer and converse in small and large assemblies, they also have the freedom “to express and publish their opinions – about matters of general interest” (1964: 116).
Habermas insists that the mediated circulation of opinions is as central as informal conversations to the construction of the public sphere. He points out that the passing of the Licencing Act of 1695 was central to the development of the public sphere in eighteenth-century England. The media expanded the composition of the public beyond the small assemblies found in the homes, coffee houses and at the salons. The public sphere held together by the press and its professional criticism could now admit a larger section of the public, the literate citizenry, in its rational-critical debates.
The Bluestockings, in their participation in the public sphere, complemented the conversation engendered in the sociability of the salons with their literary and artistic productions. Through their works, The Bluestockings took the lead in examining and discussing opposing ideas to present what they considered as the truth and as virtuous. They were not afraid to challenge the doyens of fine arts in literary criticisms, Anglican divines in theological interpretation, classical scholars in translation of ancient texts, Whig and Tory historians in historical interpretation and Whig interpretation of allegorical paintings. Like their male counterparts in the Literary Society, the Bluestockings were an integral part of the anti-court polite culture that saw the development of a close relationship between the gentry and the professional middle class. However, they extended the idiom of politeness advanced by the Whig ideologists, carving a role for women as legitimate cultural producers.
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In their role as private learners and public writers, the Bluestockings were supported by Hume, who allayed the fear of learned women by insisting that:
all men of sense, who know the world, have a great deference for their [women’s] judgment of such books as lie within the compass of their knowledge, and repose more confidence in the delicacy of their taste, though unguided by rules, than in all the dull labors of pedants and commentators (1963: 570-571).
However, the Bluestockings crossed the intellectual boundary set by Hume. They did not confine their learning to that which suited their ‘delicacy of taste’; they entered the robust male-only discursive order.
Gary Kelly notes that the personal and published writings of the first generation Bluestockings, centred in the circle of Montagu, showed evidence “of influence from Whig and classical republican traditions” (2001: 167). He describes the writing of Montagu as progressive-aristocratic and reflective of anti-court Toryism. Susan Wiseman regards the writings of Catherine Macaulay as epitomising Whig paternalism, designed to sustain a social harmony and stability through a beneficent hierarchical order. She comments that the Bluestocking writing was rooted in a discourse of national civic virtue (2001: 194). On the whole, the Bluestockings were principally women who had grown up in a pious and intellectual environment, tutored by enlightened family members and mentors. Such an intellectual upbringing prepared them to contribute to the making of the humanist intellectual culture promoted at the beginning of the century.
In the previous chapter, I have discussed how the Bluestockings, led by Montagu, paved the way for men and especially women to participate in public life through conversations engendered in the comfort of their homes. In this chapter, I will illustrate that the Bluestockings also availed themselves of the mediated forms of public sphere, that is, through public writing and public art, to participate in the making of a good society. The following sections explore the participation of the Bluestockings in the public sphere through literary criticism, theological disputation and classical translation, history writing and history painting: genres that were traditionally open only to men.
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12.1 Elizabeth Montagu: Literary Criticism
Montagu’s participation in the cultural public sphere started in 1760. Lord Lyttleton included three of her anonymous essays written in the Greek tradition on literary and moral themes in his publication of Dialogues of the Dead. Montagu (see Figure 23) gave a cultural and social critique through her three essays. The first dialogue between Cadmus and Hercules, expressed her opposition of feminised and masculinised cultures, as writing and culture as typified by Cadmus versus male heroic combative action of Hercules (Kelly 2001: 172). Montagu opposed socializing women into thinking that they were only suitable to take part in the less intellectually demanding and combative aspects of cultural production. Her second dialogue between Mercury and a Modern fine Lady opposed cultured domesticity in the name of the courtisation of women. In the guise of Mercury, Montagu accused the fine lady of nurturing her daughters to be fashionable and neglecting their education. She expressed her disdain for treating women as unthinking, frivolous and destined for the fashionable world. In the third dialogue, between Plutarch, Charon and a Modern Bookseller, she attacked the commercialization of culture. She opposed the construction of a feminine literary genre, in the form of novels, and the more intellectual and masculine form of historiography. When her works were published, Montagu wrote to Carter that through writing, she hoped that she was “clearing society of their lowest & meanest follies” (quoted in Myers 1990: 193).
Figure 23: Lady Elizabeth Montagu (1718-1800) (en.wikipedia.org)
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Montagu’s most important literary contribution was An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare, Compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets; With some Remarks upon the Misrepresentations of Mons. De Voltaire (1769). Through this book- length work of literary criticism, Montagu promoted the “emergent ‘national’ culture, cultural modernisation, and classical republican politics in opposition to court culture and politics” (Kelly 2001: 172). In attacking Voltaire’s criticisms of Shakespeare, Montagu was attacking court culture and supporting a national and political self-image that was based on England’s most important literary figure. She also wove into her essay a covert political discourse that supported classical republicanism and the idea of a patriot King.
Reflective of the asceticism in the idiom of politeness, Montagu devoted nine years to the preparation of her essay, which began in 1760. She read and reread Greek tragedies in the English, French and Italian translations. She also studied the dramas of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire and works of Latin and French criticisms. To improve her critical analysis, she read Horace’s ‘Art of Poetry’, the works of Boileau, Le Bossu’s Traite du Poeme Epique (1675), Abbe Du Bos’s Reflexions critiques sur la poesie et sur la peinture (1719) and Father Brumoy’s Le Thestre des grecs (1730). She read Joseph Warton’s Essay on the Genius and Writing of Pope. She had also read and reread Elements of Criticisms by Henry Home, Lord Kames, who had used many examples from Shakespeare to illustrate his critical theories (Myers 1990: 195).
Besides immersing herself in self-study, Montagu conformed to the post-courtly model of cultural construction of collegial collaboration. She sought the encouragement and expertise of the Bluestockings. Besides the encouragement and help of Lyttleton, Montagu also discussed Plato’s views on tragic poetry with Carter, a classical scholar. In the winter of 1765, she sent portions of her work for criticism to Carter, Dr Benjamin Stillingfleet, and Dr John Gregory (Myers 1990: 198).
In deciding to publish her literary criticism of Shakespeare, Montagu had defied the male-only discursive order. Her work was a practical embodiment of her opposition to the delineation of a masculinised and feminised culture. She positioned herself as a literary critic like Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, who had both given their appraisals of Shakespeare. Montagu thought that the 1765 critique of Shakespeare by Johnson was disappointing as “he neglected the scope of the Author” and overlooked “the genius of the great Tragedian” (quoted in Eger 2012; 132). In a letter to Carter in 1766, she explained that public interest had not been served by Johnson’s narrow interpretation of Shakespeare. On her part, she admitted, “I have so much veneration for our Poet, & so much zeal for the honour of our Country” that she
166 considered it her duty to instruct the public on the genius of Shakespeare (quoted in Eger 2012: 132). In this new public sphere, Johnson was Montagu’s adversary, but also her ally, helping her hone her argument. This is the work of mutual polishing that can only progress collaboratively.
In entering the male-only domain of literary criticism, Montagu knew that her effort would incur hostility from some quarters. In 1768, as she worked to complete the essay, she confessed to her sister that she had to do her serious study in her bedroom “because shd I sit with my Shakespeare & Brumoy in Publick, I may appear in the light of Miss Biddy Syphion to any visitors not so used to see ye pen as ye needle in the hands of a Woman” (quoted in Myers 1990: 195). Montagu was referring here to the character of Miss Sidney Bidulph in Frances Sheridan’s novel Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761), in which Miss Bidulph was chided for reading Horace instead of finishing the embroidery of a rose which was in a frame in front of her. This letter about a novel which bears on an experience of writing literary criticism encapsulates the density of the public sphere of ‘letters’ in which Montagu dwelt.
Wanting a fair appraisal of her work, Montagu published her Essay anonymously in May 1769 (Myers 1990: 198). When her father learned of her authorship, she explained that the anonymity was necessary as there was general prejudice against female authors. Additionally, she explained that since both Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson had already published on Shakespeare, her presumption was “sure to incur their envy” or “contempt” (quoted in Eger 2012: 130).
To Montagu’s relief, her book’s first run of 1,000 copies quickly sold out. More importantly, the work was well received by the male literary critics. Reynolds wagered that it was the work of Joseph Warton, author of Essay on the Genius and Writing of Pope. Montagu was favoured by the good review of William Guthrie, who claimed that “the age has scarcely produced a more fair, judicious and classical performance of its kind, than this Essay” (quoted in Myers 1990: 200). John Hawkesworth, another influential critic, commented that though the style was somewhat affected, and the use of language sometimes incorrect, such faults bore “no proportion to the general excellence of the work” (quoted in Myers 1990: 200). James Boswell thought it a piece of criticism which was clearly and elegantly expressed, and which vindicated Shakespeare from the criticisms of Voltaire. Perhaps because of its anonymity, Samuel Johnson complained that “there is no real criticism in it: none shewing the beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the heart” (quoted in Myers 1990: 201). However, he later confessed that, when responding this way, he had not read the entire essay.
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When Montagu’s identity was revealed, there was mixed response. Montagu received congratulatory notes from Edmund Burke, Lord Kames, Hugh Blair, and James Beattie. However she was criticised by the conservatives for stepping beyond her sphere as a woman. The Dowager Countess Gower concluded “therefore her performance must be deem’d a work of supererogation” (quoted in Myers 1990: 199). Nevertheless, when Montagu had the work reprinted in 1777, it carried her name.
Buoyed momentarily by the favourable reception to her literary criticism, Montagu had considered producing another major work, contrasting the achievements of Elizabeth I with that of Catherine de Medici. She was daunted, however, by the enormity of the task and the resilience she would need to break down male chauvinism. She wrote to Carter admitting to her incapacity to undertake such a mammoth task. She confided that as men had routinely considered the reign of Elizabeth successful only because she was assisted by good fortune, she feared:
For the same reason, were I capable of doing justice to her character, & setting it in a true light, the Lords of the Creation wd only say, that I got a good goose quill, had good paper, & sat in a Bow window; by which means I had both ye morning & evening Sun to give me ye assistance of good light, so I leave their high Mightinesses to write about it, & about it” (quoted in Myers 1990: 205).
Montagu was satisfied to rely on her one seminal piece of work as her contribution to a sense of national identity. She saw her defence of England’s literary hero against the attack of a French critic as a discharge of her civic duty and patriotism. Montagu had entered the arena of authorship as a woman, with diffidence and trepidation, but with the practical assistance and moral support of her friends and mentors, she had stepped out of her private sphere and into the public domain. She was to serve as an inspiration to the other Bluestockings with literary ambitions.
Montagu’s Essay inspired Elizabeth Griffith’s Shakespeare Morality Illustrated, published in 1775. Based on Montagu’s comments that Shakespeare was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived, Griffith adopted the style of an educational anthology to focus on morals and manners. She explained that she had focused on the “general oeconomy of life and manners, respecting prudence, polity, decency and decorum…more especially regarding those moral duties which are the truest source of moral bliss – domestic ties, offices and obligations” (quoted in Eger 2012: 134). Griffith’s defence of Shakespeare was based on her claim that “in
168 his universal scheme of doctrine, he comprehends manners, proprieties, and decorums” as they related to personal character and national description (quoted in Eger 2012: 134). The Bluestockings were committed to defend the morality of politeness on a personal and national level, and were happy to find its basis in Shakespeare. In this way they could claim to find their ethic vindicated by a national character.
12.2 Elizabeth Carter: Theological Disputation and Classical Translation
Although Montagu was considered the “Queen of the Bluestocking”, the most learned in the group was Elizabeth Carter. She was the daughter of Dr Nicholas Carter, rector of Woodchurch and Ham in Kent. Through the tutelage of her father, she learnt Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, German and mathematics, and later in life taught herself Portuguese and Arabic (Leranbaum 1977: 285)
In 1731, Carter, at seventeen, established a loyal readership based on her poetry contribution to the Gentleman’s Magazine. Her poems were modest and written to celebrate personal occasions such as birthdays. Like Montagu, Carter’s work expressed a rejection of the fashionable society and court culture. Nicholas Cave, the editor, encouraged the poets who contributed to the magazine to respond and critique the works of their fellow-poets. There was a lively exchange of letters as Carter participated in the public sphere on equal ground with her male counterpart, John Duick. Her contribution to the magazine also won her the attention of Samuel Johnson. To encourage her participation, Johnson dedicated an epigram written in Greek and Latin to Carter, who responded to Johnson in the two languages in the following issue (Myers 1990: 49).
In May 1738, Carter’s translation of the work of Francesco Alagrotti appeared as Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of Ladies, in Six Dialogues on Light and Colours. The work was designed to facilitate the participation of women in scientific discussions. In the same year she also published a collection of poetry Poems upon Particular Occasions. In 1739, Carter provided a translation of the work of M. Crousaz’s An Examination of Mr Pope’s Essay on Man. Her contribution won her the recognition of Reverend Thomas Birch, who, in the History of the Works of the Learned, published in 1739, praised Carter as an influential contributor “in the Republick of Letters, and justly to be rank’d with the Cornelia’s, Sulpicia’s and Hypatia’s of the Ancients, and the Schurmann’s and Dacier’s of the Moderns (quoted in Myers 1990:
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53). With the sponsorship of Birch, Carter’s poems were also included in Bayle’s General Dictionary.
Carter’s earlier work exemplified a self-effacing woman of learning. However, her poems and translations of scientific work belied the depth of her polemics. Carter was among the first women in the eighteenth century to have engaged in a decidedly masculine discursive order, that of controversial theology (Kelly 2001: 174). Using the rational and polemical style of the antic-cleric men of the enlightenment, Carter participated in the long-standing controversy between the hard-line Puritans and the moderate, Latitudinarians in the Anglican Church. She attacked the Anglican Church for its dogmatism in her anonymous Remarks on the Athanasian Creed (1752). The Athanasian Creed subscribed to by the Anglican Church insisted on the Trinitarian doctrine - the notion of the triune God represented by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – and condemned those who refused to subscribe to such a creed. Carter denounced the creed as illogical mystery and called for a re- focus on doctrines that were comprehensible to all, men and women, educated and uneducated. Implicit in her rejection of such a creed was her criticism of the church for denying women and the lower classes access to education and training in highly professionalised discourses (Kelly 2001: 174). Like Montagu, Carter advocated an inclusive national church and argued that both the mind and the heart were equally important in the making of a true faith (Kelly 2001: 174).
Shaftesbury in his personal regimen had laboured over the writings of Epictetus, who taught that individuals should examine and control their own actions through rigorous self-discipline. Epictetus was important to Shaftesbury because he was a philosopher whose self-cultivation was to prepare him to engage in a public activity (Klein 1994: 43). Like Shaftesbury, Carter, a woman given to classical learning and an ascetic practice, venerated the Stoical tradition represented by Epictetus. She was to reinforce the Bluestocking’s intellectual reputation in her translation of All the Works of Epictetus, published under her name in 1758. As a Christian who embraced the spirit of toleration and openness exemplified by the Cambridge Platonists, she saw no contradiction between ancient virtues and Christian morality. Carter’s work was a major contribution to the classical republicanism of the commonwealth tradition, implicit in the ethic of politeness in which a political community was founded for common good. Carter’s translation of Epictetus remained the standard scholarly text until the beginning of the twentieth century (Eger 2012: 7). In honour of her scholastic contribution, Carter was painted in 1765 by Catherine Reed,
170 commissioned by Montagu (see Figure 24). She was dressed in classical robes with quill in hand, her arms resting on a copy of her Epictetus translation.
Figure 24: Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806)
(en.wikipedia.org)
Whilst Shaftesbury’s anti-court patrician culture and politics was addressed to men, Carter’s objective was to make learning accessible to both men and women and to those with no classical education. In opposition to the masculine, aristocratic and heroic tradition, Carter included frequent Biblical references, to make the work more accessible to the middle class readers (Kelly 2001: 175).
After publishing Epictetus (1758), which secured her position as a writer and an income of £1,000 in subscription, Carter left London to retire to Kent (Staves 2006: 309-315). In 1770, she published the writing of her close friend and fellow Bluestocking Catherine Talbot, Reflections on the Seven Days of the Week, posthumously. Talbot’s Reflections was seen as complementary to Carter’s work on the Athenian Creed. It provided a manual for the practice of religion in everyday life,
171 without its focus on complex and incomprehensible religious discourse (Kelly 2001: 175). In her effort to make religion comprehensible to all, Carter called for democratization in the religious realm, to allow as many as possible to seek the truths for themselves and not be held back by illogical mystery, superstition or tyranny.
In her retirement, Carter, who saw herself as a female writer, promoted the works of other women. She was a mentor to fellow Bluestocking Hester Chapone, author of Letters on the Improvement of the Mind. This publication, based primarily on Chapone’s personal letters to her niece, encouraged young women to develop rational understanding through reading. She encouraged young women to learn book-keeping, household management, botany, astronomy, and geology, and to avoid sentimental novels. This advice is particularly interesting in the light of Campbell’s claim that the eighteenth century witnessed a shift away from asceticism and rationality toward sentimentality. His analysis has not taken into consideration the influence of the Bluestockings in their rejection of gothic novels, constructed as part of a feminized culture, and in their promotion of asceticism and rationality among women.
12.3 Catherine Macaulay: History Writing
Catherine Macaulay (1731-1791) (see Figure 25), the daughter of a landed proprietor from Wye, Kent, was educated privately by a governess at home. She had been a prolific reader from her youth. She was interested in “those histories which exhibit liberty in its most exalted state in the annals of the Roman and Greek Republics”, and from her childhood, “liberty became the object of a secondary worship” (Hill 1992: 9). When Carter made her acquaintance at a function at Canterbury in 1757, she was impressed by Macaulay’s knowledge of Spartan laws, the Roman politics, as well as the philosophy of Epicurus. In 1760, Macaulay married a Scottish physician but became a widow six years after the marriage.
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Figure 25: Catherine Macaulay (1731-1791)
(www.commons.wikipedia.org)
Like Montagu and Carter, Macaulay crossed the boundary of gendered political discourse, making a strong political stand in an area where women had not had any jurisdiction. Whilst Montagu challenged Johnson’s appraisal of Shakespeare, Macaulay considered Hume’s History of England, which valorised Charles I as a martyr, as “very artful narration of arts” (quoted in Wiseman 2001: 185). She considered Hume a Tory man with Whig pretensions.
Macaulay devoted twenty years of her life to writing eight volumes of England’s seventeenth-century history, using an interpretative method that paid particular attention to the voice of the people. This can be seen, then, as another attempt to discern a freedom-loving nature inherent in the English national culture. She examined pamphlets and petitions, including the woman’s petitions, the Leveller Agreement of the People, George Thomson’s and John Rushworth’s collections, volumes of Parliamentary History, memoirs, such as Clarendon’s History and those by Whitelock, and Ludlow, as well as Harris’s Life of Cromwell and contemporary
173 historians such as David Hume, Paul de Rapin and John Oldmixon (Wiseman 2001: 186). Thomas Hollis, a political philosopher, supported Macaulay’s work and gave her 145 volumes of books, including many Civil War tracts. She had collected some 6,000 tracts of her own. Macaulay claimed that to provide as accurate an account as possible, she studied the historical roles of different denominations of Republicans such as the Anabaptists, Fifth-monarchy men, the Levellers as well as classical republicans.
In 1763, Macaulay published the first volume of The History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line, stretching from 1603 to 1689. She was the first woman to have published as a historian in eighteenth-century England. In the preface of her book, she said:
From my earliest youth I have read with delight those histories that exhibit Liberty in its most exalted state, the annals of the Roman and the Greek republics. Studies like these excite that natural love of freedom which lies latent in the breath of every rational being, till it is nipped by the frost of prejudice, or blasted by the influence of vice (1763, I: vii; Wiseman 2001: 186).
Macaulay compared England’s history with the ancient republics and lamented that “the majority of the English nation never engaged in the cause of freedom” (quoted in Wiseman 2001: 186). In pursuit of James Harrington’s civic humanism, Macaulay took an uncompromising republican stand in encouraging both the Whigs and Tories to uphold the liberty of the ancients. Macaulay’s History of England illustrated “the politics of English republican historiography and debates on women’s relationship to the political sphere” (Wiseman 2001: 181).
Habermas’s account of the development of the public sphere concentrates on propertied men who, as private people, guided by critical reason, participated in the political realm of the public sphere in eighteenth-century England. This account, however, largely excludes English women, who had no taken-for-granted public role and no role in the world of government and commerce, Macaulay’s version of civic humanism focused on the struggles of the people, both men and women, in the pursuit of liberty and virtue.
The Bluestocking philosophy was embedded in the writing of Macaulay. Her interpretation of English history did not typecast women as affective or sentimental objects. They were featured as villains and patriots, just like men. Elizabeth I, for example, was not a heroine as she made no progress in instituting the republicanism
174 of ancient Greece or Rome. By constrast, Macaulay highlighted the moral fortitude of Rachel Russell who defended her husband’s resistance against the tyrannical rule of Charles II. Baron William Russell (1639-1683) went to the gallows accused of conspiring to assassinate King Charles II. After his execution, Rachel dedicated her widowhood to protesting her husband’s martyrdom. As a result of her perseverance, the capital crime of treason was reversed by a parliamentary bill which received the royal signature in the reign of William and Mary (Anderson 2003: 321). Referring to the Letters of Rachel Russell (1773), Macaulay highlighted Rachel’s support for the principle of legitimate resistance to tyranny, even at the cost of death. She presented Russell as the epitome of public virtue.
Macaulay’s emphasis on public virtue paralleled that of Shaftesbury, who claimed that without the achievement of political freedom there could be no civility, no humanity. In 1781, in the Restoration volume of her History, Macaulay wrote, “[I]n my opinion, religious and moral turpitude, in great measure, flow from politic error” (quoted in Wiseman 2001: 182). She was convinced that political error produced vice (McKeon 1988: 212; Wiseman 2001: 17). Macaulay pointed out that unlike the party men, whose fortune was favoured when it became their turn to rule, the true republicans in the 1660 did not waver in their political convictions even though threatened with “banishment, an ignominious death, or the entire ruin of their fortune” (quoted in Wiseman 2001: 185).
Like Addison and Steele, who guided the coffee house discussion away from party loyalty to a more inclusive political vision, Macaulay hoped that her interpretation of England’s history would “extinguish the baneful spirit of party spirit” and usher in the rule of patriotic virtue (quoted in Wiseman 2001: 183). Macaulay was interested in a vision of republican history, outside Whig and Tory lineages. She was concerned with the establishment of a republic not to advance the cause of a political party or the interest of the money man, but for the good of the people.
Macaulay’s History did not have any claims on English precursors; it was positioned in relation to the classical writing on the ancient republics. Unlike Shaftesbury, she had a pessimistic conclusion of the 1688 Revolution. She argued that England forfeited her chance to give liberty to its people as the 1688 revolution was hijacked by the power-hungry Court Whigs. As a woman who had no political role, Macaulay positioned herself as a model historian, stripped of subjectivity and interest. In the preface of her final volume, she claimed that like those writers who had “an honest contempt of the ill-founded rage and resentment of all denominations of men and interests”, she had “closely adhered to the purest principles of civil and religious
175 freedom” in her historical account (quoted in Wiseman, 2001: 187). She hoped that her disinterested account of history, written by a woman who had no political ambitions, would contribute to the establishment of true liberty.
Macaulay’s historical work was commended by her mentor, Thomas Hollis, as “honestly written, and with considerable ability and spirit; and is full of the freest, noblest, sentiments of Liberty” (quoted in Hill 1992: 39-40). In 1774, James Burgh, a Whig politician, who was known as the foremost propagandist for radical reform, noted that Macaulay wrote “for the purpose of inculcating on the people of Britain the love of liberty and their country” (quoted in Hill 1992: 27). But as a participant in the public sphere, Macaulay also had to face criticism. Horace Walpole made a scathing attack:
The female historian as partial to the cause of liberty, as bigots to the Church and royalist to tyranny, exerted manly strength with the gravity of a philosopher. Too prejudiced to dive into causes, she imputes everything to tyrannic views, nothing to passions, weakness, error, prejudice, and still less to what operates oftenest and her ignorance of which qualified her less for a historian – to accident and little motives (quoted in Hill 1992: 45).
According to Wiseman, Macaulay’s “History engages in a conscious attempt to shape the public sphere through its readers, an attempt reinforced by the distinctions between her History and others” (2001: 187). Macaulay’s writing was important in that she was part of the community of historians, linked through agreements and disagreements. In the male-dominated world of politics, Macaulay’s articulation of republicanism in the discourse of national civic virtue subjected her to satirical attack. She was seen by the conservative males and females as having overstepped the female boundary in her historical and philosophical writings. A fellow Bluestocking Mary Hays commented that in the patriarchal society, Macaulay as a female historian was criticised as “having stepped out of the province of her sex…[and] was attacked by petty and personal scurrilities, to which it was believed her sex would render her vulnerable” (Hays 1803, v: 292).
Macaulay’s attempt to raise the role of women in the public sphere rebounded when her 1770 marriage to William Graham, a man twenty years her junior, was met by satires. Although Macaulay’s interest in women was governed by republicanism, it was “her own femininity that provoked reaction to her politics” (Wiseman 2001: 192). Undaunted by the loss of public favour, Macaulay travelled overseas to pursue her political role. After the American War of Independence, she visited James Otis,
176 an influential revolutionary, and his wife, Mercy Otis Warren, a political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution. George Washington, who invited her to stay at Mount Vernon, regarded Macaulay as “a lady…whose principles are so much and so justly admired by the friends of liberty and mankind” (quoted in Hill 1992: 127).
Macaulay remained an inspiration to the second generation Bluestockings, who found her most important contribution in her Letters on Education with Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects, published in 1790. Mary Wollstonecraft, in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, wrote:
The word respect brings Mrs Macaulay to my remembrance. The woman of the greatest abilities, undoubtedly, that this country has ever produced. – Yet this woman has been suffered to die without sufficient respect being paid to her memory (Tomaselli 1995: 188).
12.4 Angelica Kaufmann: History Painting
Angelica Kaufmann (1741-1807) (see Figure 26) was the most important Bluestocking who reconstructed the visual image of women to one of gentility and learning, through her historical painting. Like Montagu, Carter and Macaulay, she was to override the rules of the gendered artistic world and reshape the representation of women. In the commercialization of culture in the eighteenth century, cultural producers had created women’s periodicals, sentimental comedy and tragedies to satisfy what was considered female taste (Brewer 1995: 341, 356). Brewer points out that Hogarth, the political satirist and social critic, illustrated the anxieties of the English in his depiction of culture in the image of woman as the prostitute, associated with sexual licence, and “its ambiguous status as a realm of sensuality, sense, or reason, and its potential to privilege women” (Brewer 1995: 358). Kaufmann was to recast the image of woman as an embodiment of refinement and culture.
As an accomplished painter in Rome, Kaufmann, the Swiss-born Austrian, came to London in 1766 through the patronage of Lady Wentworth, the wife of the British Ambassador in Venice. Her artistic talent brought her the admiration and friendship of Joshua Reynolds. Her fame in London spread with her excellent portraits of two
177 important taste legislators, David Garrick and Joshua Reynolds. The fame these portraits brought her enabled her to play an important role in the public sphere.
Figure 26: Angelica Kaufmann (1741-1807)
(en.wikipedia.org)
She was able to make inroads in a male-only artistic order, that of history painting, which privileged the depiction of moments in religious narratives or classical allegories. In the Renaissance, as well as the neo-classical period of eighteenth century England, history painting occupied the most prestigious place in the
178 hierarchy of genres. Through the depiction of gestures and expression, the artist was to deliver the moral message implicit in the painting (Blunt 1985: 11-12).
In 1769, Kaufmann was among the signatories to the petition to George III for the establishment of The Royal Academy. Besides Mary Moser, she was the only woman who sat on the Board of Directors of the Academy. From 1769 to 1782, Kaufmann exhibited her paintings on allegorical or classical subjects, becoming an important representative of women in visual arts. In 1780, as part of a didactic programme, she was invited by the Royal Academy to execute four oval ceiling paintings for the council chamber’s new premises at Somerset House in the Strand. The paintings illustrated allegorical female figures representing Invention, Composition, Drawing and Colouring. This allegorical representation of women as the four key components of art made an important public statement, counteracting the image of women associated only with sensuality.
Through the portrait painting of classical subjects such as Sappho (1775) (see Figure 27) and The Artist in the Character of Design (1782) (see Figure 28), Kaufmann “might have appropriated the disguise to make an oblique or direct reference to the uneasy and unusual pairing of women with the label artist or poet” (Perry 1995: 49).
Figure 27: Sappho, Inspired by Love (1775) (www.pinterest.com)
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In entering the cultural public sphere, Kaufmann had to negotiate an artistic language that was predominantly masculine. Perry argues that in making allegorical representations of women both as “subject and object”, Kaufmann could be seen as having broken the established codes of symbolism, indicating that women were no longer satisfied with being portrayed as muses (1995: 50).
Figure 28: The Artist in the Character of Design (1782)
(en.wikipedia.org)
The iconography of the “Choice of Hercules” a story told by Xenophon in his Memoirs of Socrates, had been worked several times in historical painting by Annibale Carracci in 1596, Paolo Veronese in 1578-81 and Nicolas Poussin in mid 1630s (Grant 2001: 77). It focused on the moral theme of a choice between virtue and vice. In the legend, Hercules faced a moral dilemma. He was offered a choice between a life of ease and pleasure, and that of a life of duty and labour for mankind. As we have seen, in 1712, Shaftesbury also turned to this historical painting which he titled it as The Judgement of Hercules (see Figure 29) “to raise the intellectual profile of contemporary painting, to locate painting in the realm of virtue rather than luxury” (Grant 2001: 78). Shaftesbury devoted the last year of his life to writing an essay A
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Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules (1713), in which he instructed the commissioned artist, Paolo de Matthaeis, to take pains to ensure that the painting portrayed the struggle involved in Hercules’ choice. He wanted the painting to be so well executed that it would move the audience to realise that the pursuit of virtue gave the highest pleasure to mankind. In the painting as commissioned by Shaftesbury, virtue and vice were personified and took the form of women. The painting cast women in an ambiguous position. They represented both vice and virtue. Hercules, a male figure, was invested with the ability to make a virtuous decision. Shaftesbury had maintained the classical masculinised rhetoric in associating women with “the animal side of humanity, rather than the rational or intellectual” (Grant 2001: 82).
Figure 29: The Judgment of Hercules (1713) in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
(www.oll.libertyfund.org)
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In 1762, Joshua Reynolds provided a contemporary interpretation of this classical allegory in his Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy (see Figure 30). Reynolds replaced Hercules with Garrick. Virtue and vice were recast as tragedy and comedy. Reynolds associated comedy as pleasurable and tragedy as stern. Like Shaftesbury’s interpretation, Garrick, a male, was portrayed as favouring the virtue associated with stern tragedy.
Figure 30: Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy (1762)
(en.wikimedia.org)
One of Kaufmann’s most important works in reconstructing the image of women was her Self-Portrait: Hesitating Between the Arts of Music and Painting (1791) (see Figure 31). In her reworking of the iconography, Kaufmann provided a radically different interpretation, displacing the classical and contemporary interpretation which emphasised man as the only legitimate moral agent, and which put women in the ambiguous position of purveyor of vice and muse of virtue. Kaufmann assumed
182 the role of Hercules, and she replaced virtue and vice with two polite sister arts, that of music and painting. Kaufmann portrayed as the moral agent did not have to
Figure 31: Self Portrait: Hesitating Before the Arts of Music and Painting (1791)
(www.wikiart.org)
choose either virtue or vice, but, between painting and poetry, two polite arts. It was a bold assertion on two levels. Firstly, she appeared to have placed women on the pedestal, as a model of virtue. Kaufmann had painted a woman who, unlike Hercules a man, was not subject to the struggle between good and evil. Rather, the connotation was that the woman, in pursuit of virtue, only had to wrestle between two sister polite arts. Secondly, by attempting such an allegorical painting, she had placed herself on par with some of the best male painters. The theme of her self- portrait was a bold assertion of women’s part in intellectual and artistic endeavours.
As a public figure, Kaufmann was attacked. She was caricatured as “The Paintress of Macaroni’s” by Richard Dighton, and published by Carington Bowles in 1772 (see
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Figure 32). However, as a cultural producer, Kaufmann inspired younger women such as Maria Cosway, Rosa Florini and Georgiana Keate (Eger 2001: 120). She retired to Rome after her marriage to a Venetian artist. Kaufmann continued to contribute to the Royal Academy and her last exhibit was in 1797.
Figure 32: The Paintress of Macaroni’s (1772)
(www.wikimedia.org)
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12.5 The Legacy of the Bluestockings
The participation of the Bluestockings in the public sphere had exposed them to public scrutiny. They received acclaim, faced indifference and endured criticism. An example of the mockery which Montagu endured was a caricature of Abelard and Eloisa (see Figure 33), published by Bowles and Craver (1775-8), which portrayed Montagu attending favourably to the sycophantic aspiring clergyman-poet William Mason (Eger and Peltz 2008: 43). The caricature was an allusion to the medieval love story of Peter Abelard, who had fallen in love with his eighteen-year old pupil. The satirical attack was made after the death of her husband in 1775 to decry her role as a patron. Mason was seen as soliciting her favour for personal gains.
Figure 33: Abelard and Eloisa
(www.sanderofoxford.com)
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On the other side of the ledger was a painting by Richard Samuel, an assistant secretary at The Royal Academy of Art, who was pivotal in drawing attention to the role of the Bluestockings as cultural producers. In 1779, he portrayed the nine key members of the Bluestocking salon as The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (see Figure 34). The portrait, executed in the neo-classical style, portrayed the women dressed in Greek attire, gathered in the Temple of Apollo, to convey the message
Figure 34: The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain, 1779
(www.standard.co.uk)
that the high culture reconstructed in England was derived from ancient Greece. The women were portrayed as striking “attitudes of conversation and meditative thought, exchanging glances and making gestures of agreement” (Eger 2012: 101). It
186 was exhibited at the Royal Academy in acknowledgment of the contribution of the Bluestockings in writing, painting and music.
Although the painting was exhibited in 1779, an engraving of the original painting appeared in the form of a popular print in the Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum-Book for 1778, (Eger 2012: 5). The publisher had included the names of the nine muses, as well as enumerated their individual achievements, highlighting:
Among the many distinguishing excellencies which this age and country boast, the great figure which many women make in the polite arts, as well as in different branches of learning, may be considered as one of the choicest acquisitions (quoted in Eger 2012:5).
According to Eger, the portrait of the muses “celebrates the relationship between the arts along the lines of the classical humanist model of a harmonious society, capturing the moment when English women as a group first gained acceptance as powerful contributors to the artistic world” (2012: 1). Wiseman highlights that the painting added to the prestige of the women represented as muses and icons of liberty (2001: 191). Kate Davis argues that the image endowed the singular achievements of the women with the celebratory collective identity (2006: 78), but in fact we have seen how these individual achievements relied on a culture of polite sociability.
On the whole, the literary works of the Bluestockings were favourable received by the polite intellectuals. In 1779, an influential clergyman, Vicesimus Knox, in his Essays Moral and Literary, encouraged fathers to teach their daughters Latin and Greek, as well as read the Greek Testament, the Cyropaedia of Xenophon, the Orations of Demosthenes, the Dialogues of Plato and the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer (Eger 2012: 119). He counselled the English to do away with the narrow and unphilosophical prejudices that the female mind was incapable of a degree of improvement equal to that of the other sex: “The present times exhibit most honourable instances of female learning and genius in a Montagu, a Chapone, and a Carter…Learning is equally attainable, and I think, equally valuable, to the women as the man” (quoted in Eger 2012: 120).
Montagu’s contribution as a patron was again publicly endorsed by the taste legislators, when, in 1783, she appeared in a central role in the fifth painting, out of a set of six, completed by James Barry. The six paintings were undertaken to claim the importance of culture in the age of commerce. In his explanatory notes, written to
187 accompany the paintings, Barry explained that the paintings illustrated “one great maxim or moral truth, viz. that the obtaining of happiness, as well as individual and public, depends upon cultivating the human faculties” (1783: 322). Barry’s painting was in support of the philosophy and practice of the polite society, which regarded self-cultivation as necessary for bringing about public good.
In his fifth painting, entitled The Distribution of Premiums in the Society of Arts (see Figure 35), Barry illustrated a young female prize-winner, whose medal was
Figure 35: The Distribution of Premiums in the Society of Arts, 1792
(www.tate.org.uk)
188 admired by a younger girl. He explained in his accompanying notes that he had painted Mrs Montagu, holding the hand of the younger girl “as a distinguished example of female excellence, who is earnestly recommending the ingenuity and industry of a female, whose work she is producing” (quoted in Grant 2001: 97; Barry 1783: 73). Barry showcased Montagu as an ideal patron, a model for emulation (Grant 2001: 97). He had also painted in the Duchesses of Rutland and Devonshire. Samuel Johnson was also included in the painting, as standing among the duchesses of various realms. He was depicted pointing to Montagu, as if drawing attention to her art patronage “as a matter well worthy their graces most serious attention and emulation” (1783: 74). Barry’s painting, then, was a visual representation of the philosophy and practice of the Bluestocking salon, in which women with the support of men, participated in the promotion of the arts, industry and commerce.
At the age of sixty-one, Lady Montagu took stock of her contribution. Referring to the men and women who had attended their salons, she wrote to her fellow salonnière, Mrs Vesey:
After supping on Helicon with the nine do they not often condescend to drink tea in Bolton Street or Hill Street? We have lived with the wisest, the best, and most celebrated men of our Times, and with some of the best, most accomplished, most learned Women of any times. These things I consider not merely as pleasures transient, but as permanent blessings; by such Guides and Companions we are set above the low temptations of Vice and folly, and while they were the instructors of our minds they were the Guardians of our Virtue (quoted in Eger 2012: 62-63).
The pioneering work of the first generation Bluestockings was only an eighteenth- century step towards the emancipation of women in their participation as cultural producers, but it was only a step.
Conclusion
In the eighteenth century, the idiom of politeness legitimised the Bluestockings’ pursuit of enlightenment and emancipation through conversation and cultural production. In these endeavours, they were supported by elements of polite society, both Whig and Tory. The polite idiom, which facilitated the cultural collaboration between the aristocracy and the bourgeois intellectuals, also gave women some access to the public sphere.
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Like Shaftesbury’s Characteristics and Addison’s Spectator, the literary and artistic works of the Bluestockings encouraged education for women, to enable them to function as moral agents, and to bring them a little closer to what Habermas called the “emancipation of an inner realm” (1992: 47). The Bluestockings were not prolific in their literary productions, but the contributions of the four key members were significant in the context of a patriarchal society, which denied women education and despised them for their participation in the public sphere. They spoke out against what they considered was an impolite cultural construction that demarcated feminised and masculinised literary genres and gendered cultures, and which recommended novels for women and historiography for men. Through their participation in the public sphere, the Bluestockings produced an inclusive political vocabulary, championing the exercise of liberty and the articulation of a public voice.
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Chapter 13: Wedgwood’s Polite Self-Cultivation
Introduction
At the beginning of this thesis, I compared the attempts of Weber’s Protestant ethic and Campbell’s Romantic ethic to identify the overarching religious orientation that informed the character and conduct of the English in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I contended that both analysts gave insufficient consideration to the emergence and influence of the politeness ethic, rooted in asceticism and predicated on rationality and sociability.
To explore the key tenets of the culture of politeness, this thesis has examined the writings of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, as well as the journal of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. To document a pattern of class realignment through cultural collaboration in a public sphere, it has also investigated the cultural contributions of men and women from the new aristocratic- bourgeois alliance.
Pocock comments that a call to return to the classical tradition signifies more than a return to nostalgia and an attempt to escape from the present (1973: 233-272). He argues that the classicists usually deploy the authority of the classical world to mount a contemporary project. The civic enterprise of Shaftesbury could be seen as such an attempt. In rejecting the medieval inheritance of Gothicism, which he associated with barbarism, as well as the baroque and rococo aesthetic orientation, which he associated with the absolutism of the French court, Shaftesbury looked to the ancients for inspiration. He used the resources of classical teachings to propose a civic enterprise based on the ancient virtues of self-cultivation and civic consciousness. According to Klein, classicism appealed to Shaftesbury because of the Socratic claim that moral wisdom was “constituted from self-knowledge and issuing in self-actualization and self-possession” (1994: 42). Shaftesbury espoused a personal and civic virtue based on a personal regimen of self-cultivation and an engagement in public life. This combination underlay the politeness ethic that supported the development of a public sphere.
Klein explains that, according to Shaftesbury, “Virtue required training and work, for virtue was not merely an affective disposition, but affection raised to a conscious principle in the rational agent by reflection on affection” (1994: 56). Thus sociability
191 and moral autonomy were complementary. The individuals were not to act morally based on the prescriptions of external authority but on the interior resources of affection and reason. Sociability, in Shaftesbury’s term, required the individual’s engagement in society in the pursuit of common humanity in the public sphere, as theorised by Habermas.
In Shaftesbury’s terms, the achievement of political liberty must be accompanied by a cultural reconstruction that was devoid of any association with the absolutism of France. He introduced a post-courtly model of cultural construction to encourage the English to look to themselves, and not to contemporary sources of external authority for enlightenment and emancipation. It was in the context of giving the public a voice in self-government that Shaftesbury enunciated his philosophy of good breeding through self-cultivation and collaboration engendered through easy and informal conversation. His new model of public discourse enabled the non-courtiers and laity to have a voice in the making of a good society. He had set out to achieve “patently moral, aesthetic and political goals…to enhance the virtue, taste and citizenship of gentlemen” in the age of the enlightenment (Klein 2001: 156).
In these three last substantive chapters, I offer as a case study the life of one of England’s foremost capitalists, Josiah Wedgwood, whom I take to be representative of the new class of polite gentlemen. I argue that Wedgwood’s life and his production of neo-classical ware manifested an ascetic practice in self- improvement, a pursuit of sociability, as well as cultural collaboration in the public sphere, consistent with the key tenets of politeness.
This chapter is divided into two parts. Part One traces Wedgwood’s pursuit of self- improvement through the development of an ethical and aesthetic orientation under the mentorship of his business partner, Thomas Bentley, as well as through the mutual polish generated by the sociability of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. Part Two investigates Wedgwood’s pursuit of technical and artistic perfection, as well as factory efficiency. It examines Wedgwood’s practice of asceticism in the pursuit of perfection in his ceramic production. It also studies the efficiency measures he instituted as a capitalist in search of profits. The evidence will show that Wedgwood’s spirit of capitalism did not operate on a mechanistic foundation. Rather, I argue that Wedgwood represented a polite transformation of Weber’s asceticism, in his pursuit of self-improvement, sociability and this-worldliness. In the next two chapters, I will discuss Wedgwood’s collaboration with the aristocracy in his neo-classical reproduction, as well as his participation in the political realm of the public sphere.
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13.1 Wedgwood’s Apprenticeship and Partnership
Josiah Wedgwood, baptised on 12 July 1730, was a fourth-generation potter, who grew up in Burslem, one of the six towns that made up the Potteries in the Midlands. He was brought up to value education and industry by his mother, the daughter of a Unitarian minister in Newcastle-under-Lyme (Burton 1976: 18). Unitarianism saw itself as a rational religion that was based on a belief in one God and toleration for all, including Catholics (Uglow 2002: 169) They were anti-Calvinists in their rejection of the doctrine of the trinity, the doctrine of predestination, as well as the doctrine of original sin.
As a child, Josiah was taught by a couple, Mr and Mrs Blunt, who ran a school at Newcastle. Mr Blunt had studied classics and mathematics, and also had an interest in chemistry and chemical experiments (Burton 1976: 18), and these were the fields which Josiah pursued with interest as an adult. Josiah was also interested in fossil finding and collecting shards of old ceramic ware, dug up from the rubbish dumps in the pot works.
Josiah’s father died in 1737 and the family Churchyard Works was passed on to his oldest brother Thomas. At the age of nine, Josiah had to leave his school at Newcastle and work at the family manufactory (see Figure 36). Five years later, around the time, his mother died, Josiah was legally apprenticed to his brother to learn the art of pottery making. The five-year apprenticeship was in effect a moral guardianship, requiring Josiah to observe strict rules of conduct (Burton 1976: 20). He was not allowed to play cards, dice or any other unlawful games, and was barred from taverns and ale houses (Reilly 1994: 12). He was paid no wages but provided board, food and clothing. It is reasonable to believe that he maintained such rules as his apprenticeship was not terminated.
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Figure 36: Illustration of the Wedgwood Family Pottery Works at Burslem
(www.gaukartifact.com)
In 1745, early in his apprenticeship, Josiah suffered a severe attack of smallpox, which weakened his right knee. Unable to use his leg to work the kick wheel, he had to focus on the art of throwing on the wheel, the most sophisticated skill that any potter had to master (Reilly 1994: 12). The fact that he nevertheless extended his apprenticeship with his brother for three years suggests that he had decided upon pottery making as his life long career. In the circumstances, this decision suggests a sense of calling had developed during his apprenticeship years. In eighteenth- century England, pottery-making was not a prestigious but a labour-intensive business, that involved working in a dirty, hot and smoke-filled environment. Josiah did not see his future in an escape from this hardship, but through a devotion to the possibility of improving the art of pottery making.
On fulfilling his apprenticeship, Josiah Wedgwood (see Figure 37) began what became as his lifelong passion: the sustained methodical experimentation in pursuit of technical and aesthetic improvements. In 1754, he entered into his first partnership with John Harrison and Thomas Adler (Reilly 1994: 12). By 1756, improvements resulting from his continual experiments brought him the attention of
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Thomas Whieldon, one of the most respected potters in England at that time, who invited Wedgwood to be his partner. During the partnership, Josiah made significant improvements to the stone-glaze green ware. By 1759, Josiah had accumulated sufficient capital to start his own pottery business, at the Ivy House Works in Burslem (Reilly 1994: 13).
Figure 37: Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1793)
(www.bbc.co.uk)
In 1764, Wedgwood married Sarah (see Figure 38), his first cousin, who was to inspire him to devote his career to the reproduction of classical antiquities. In marrying Sarah, Wedgwood had not only acquired a life partner but also a cultural collaborator. Sarah brought with her industry, classical education and a shared vision to support Wedgwood in his undertaking.
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Figure 38: Sarah Wedgwood (1734-1815)
(www.bbc.co.uk)
Wedgwood worked hand in hand with Sarah. She assisted him in his production of every significant piece of earthen ware. Wedgwood confessed to Sarah’s indispensable partnership, “I speak from experience in Female taste, without which I should have made but a poor figure among my potts, not one of which, of any consequence, is finished without the approbation of my Sally” (Burton 1976: 73). In the first years of the marriage, Sarah learnt the codes and formulae which Wedgwood used to code his experiments in secrecy. She also kept accounts and gave her opinions on the production and decoration of the ware. Twenty-two years after his marriage, Wedgwood wrote to his patron and friend, Lord Gower:
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I never had a great plan that I did not submit to my wife. She knew all the details of the business, and it was her love for the beautiful that first promoted and inspired me to take up Grecian and Roman art, and in degree, reproduce the Classic for the world (quoted in Hubbard 1894: 79).
In 1766, Wedgwood entered into partnership with his cousin, Thomas, for the making of useful ware. Five years after his marriage, in 1769, Josiah entered into the most important partnership of his life, the Wedgwood/Bentley Partnership. The partnership ended with the death of Bentley in 1780. In the final phase of Josiah’s career, he invited his second son, Josiah II, and his nephew Byerley as partners. Josiah, who inherited £20 from his father, was to bequeath his children a fortune of £500,000 when he died in 1795.
13.2 Wedgwood’s Ethical and Aesthetic Orientation: Partnership of Mutual Polish
Having had little formal education, Wedgwood was largely a self-taught man. This was one basis of his friendship and partnership with Thomas Bentley, a classical scholar and a successful wool merchant.
Because his clay was shipped in and his pottery was shipped through Liverpool, Wedgwood was a frequent visitor to the bustling port city that had prospered on the slave and cotton trade. Liverpool could afford a genteel side, with public walks, with the New Theatre in Drury Lane, and with the Assembly Rooms where Handel’s music was performed (Burton 1976: 36). In 1762, Wedgwood was stranded in Liverpool with knee pains and inflammation, under the treatment of Dr Matthew Turner. To keep Wedgwood entertained, Turner introduced him to Thomas Bentley (see Figure 39).
Born in 1730, Bentley, the son of minor gentry, was educated at the Presbyterian Collegiate Academy of Derbyshire. Upon the completion of his commercial training, Bentley set himself up as a wool merchant. Assuming the role of a civic leader in Liverpool’s public life, he was one of the founding members of the Philosophical Society, the Public Library and the Nonconformist Academy. He was also the founder of the Octagon Chapel which encouraged people of different religious sects to come together in public worship. Bentley was to show his disdain for the slave trade by refusing to ring the bell of the Octagon Church, as was customary, when the slave merchants docked at Liverpool.
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Figure 39: Thomas Bentley (1731-1780)
(www.bbc.co.uk)
This meeting between Wedgwood and Bentley was significant in that it paved the way for collaboration between a gentleman of classical learning and a potter who had no formal education. Their partnership illustrated the ethic of politeness in which, together, with the support of their friends from the Lunar Society and like- minded patrons from the aristocracy, they worked to refine the aesthetic orientation of the English through their classical reproductions.
On his return to Burslem, Wedgwood nurtured his friendship with Bentley through regular correspondence. In the short stay at Liverpool, Wedgwood learnt that Bentley had written a manuscript to encourage female education. In one of his
198 earliest letters, Wedgwood wrote, “I say in behalf of myself and 10,000 fellow sufferers, I do now call upon you to publish the above mentioned book” (quoted in Burton 1976: 38).
Bentley’s literary influence on Wedgwood was evident from the beginning of the friendship. Upon his return to Burslem, Wedgwood pledged subscription to Bentley’s favourite author, James Thomson (1700-1748), a Scottish poet and playwright. On receiving the books, Wedgwood informed Bentley that Thomson’s “descriptions of ancient Greece and Rome are truly grand” and that his emphasis on “these theatres of liberty and publick virtue” was in the strongest light of anything he ever met with (quoted in Burton 1976: 39). Besides the 5,000-line long poem, The Seasons, Bentley and Wedgwood particularly liked Thomson’s poem, Liberty, celebrating the three virtues of British freedom: independent life, integrity in office and a passion for common weal (Burton 1976: 39).
Besides politics, Bentley was Wedgwood’s guide to the world of the intellect. Although Sarah had inspired him to create works of classical beauty in the first place, Bentley was the major influence in Wedgwood’s ongoing classical education. He described Bentley as “My magazines, Reviews, Chronicles & I had almost said my Bible” (quoted in Reilly 1994: 19).
In 1764, a few days after his honeymoon, Wedgwood was ready to work again. He solicited Bentley’s help in translating a treatise on lathes, Plumier’s L’Art Du Tourneur (Burton 1976: 46). In 1765, Bentley was roped in to assist in the Trent Mersey Canal project, as a subscriber and fellow-promoter. Bentley prepared a pamphlet to convince subscribers of the benefits of such a scheme (Burton 1976: 54). After the successful launching of the canal project, Wedgwood continued to consult Bentley about all manner of things: business, scientific matters and family affairs.
In 1766 Wedgwood bought the 350-acre Ridgewood estate for £3,000 to build a new factory and a house for his expanding family. The estate was renamed Etruria to reflect the mission of the manufactory to revive the art of the cultured Etruscans, who dominated the city-states between the Adriatic coast and the Tyrrhenian Sea in the ninth century. Wedgwood wanted his factory to have a classical façade, like that of Boulton’s Soho factory (Uglow 2002: 116). He looked to Bentley as the ‘Capability Brown’, who was to advise on the garden layout and even the architectural design of the house, to be named Etruria Hall (see Figure 40). Bentley produced different plans for Ridgewood estate, and had long sessions with the architect Joseph Pickford, in his role as the connoisseur of polite arts and architecture (Burton 1976: 73).
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Figure 40: Etruria Hall
(www.thepotteries.org)
Whilst Bentley acted as Wedgwood’s cultural authority, Wedgwood acted as his financial planner, insisting that, besides “knowledge & literary wisdom”, Bentley should endeavour after the “wisdom of the Children of the world, in plain English – get money” (quoted in Burton 1976: 64). Profit accumulation was no doubt a key concern, an economic ethic which did not need moral justification in the idiom of politeness. However, what this ethic offered was the notion that there could be a concordance of private interest and public good. As espoused by Shaftesbury, the preservation of individuals was inextricably bound with the welfare of the community to which he belonged. In the idiom of politeness, a gentleman, was a citizen-patriot. In his undertakings, the gentleman was expected to contribute to public good.
In persuading Bentley to join his partnership, Wedgwood realised that the appeal to profit-making alone was ineffectual. In the language of politeness, he appealed to
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Bentley’s sense of civic duty. He encouraged Bentley to apply “the knowledge & abilitys” he had acquired to “benefit his countrymen” (quoted in Burton 1976: 64).
Wedgwood assured Bentley that if he could fall in love with this new business as Wedgwood had done, they could be assured of success. The language that connected Wedgwood and Bentley was the language of polite civic humanism:
I am confident that it would be beyond comparison more congenial, and delightfull, to every particle of matter, sense, and spirit in your composition, to be the Creator as it were of beauty, rather than merely the vehicle or medium to convey it from one hand to another (quoted in Burton 1976: 65).
Such an appeal paralleled Shaftesbury’s call to artists to be the creators of beauty based on an emulation of the standard of universal beauty as embodied in the polite Greek art. The proposed partnership was not only a profit-making enterprise, but also an opportunity for Wedgwood and Bentley to play their civic role as cultural producers in disseminating the classical style which signified polite and public society.
When the partnership was agreed upon in May 1768, Bentley’s first assignment was the translation of influential Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques et romaines by Count de Caylus (1752). In the following year, the partnership celebrated the official opening of the new Etruria works. At the ceremony, six copies of a black Etruscan vase were thrown by Wedgwood, while Bentley turned the wheel (Finer and Savage, 1965: 75). The words Artes Etruriae Rennascuntur were hand painted on the vases to commemorate the rebirth of the art of Etruria by Wedgwood and Bentley (see Figure 41).
The Wedgwood/Bentley partnership ran in tandem with the revival of the classical culture and the cultural promotion of the idiom of politeness. Bentley’s classical education and his knowledge of antiquities and taste of the aristocracy were pivotal to the success of the partnership, as much as Wedgwood’s pursuit of technical improvement was indispensable. Wedgwood commented that Bentley’s letters inspired him “with taste, emulation and everything that [was] necessary for the production of fine things” (Uglow 2002: 56).
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Figure 41: Wedgwood’s First Day’s Vases
(www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk)
Throughout the partnership, Bentley was to act as the voice of reason and moderation when Wedgwood got carried away with extravagant fancies. In October 1769, buoyed by the popularity of their vases, Wedgwood suggested increasing the varieties of wares on sale. Bentley was in favour of securing their own market through producing the most popular line, rather than undermining their very strength by producing untested lines. Wedgwood’s acquiesced to Bentley’s mentorship:
Be it so, my dear friend…let us begin, proceed, & finish our future schemes, our days & years, in the pursuit of Fortune, Fame & the Public Good. You will
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be my Mentor, my Guardian Angel to pluck me from the confines of extravagance, either in Theory, or practice when you find me verging that way. I will answer to the friendly call; lending a willing ear to your instructions, & most gladly join you in the paths you have chalk’d out for us. My talents…are very confined; they lie chiefly in the Potter (quoted in Burton 1976: 87).
This letter sets out the respectful relations underlying their partnership. The business was not just a way to make profits, but was a calling to be nurtured. The pleasure of business came in this satisfaction of good work. As Wedgwood wrote to Bentley:
I think we have reason to rejoice, and are robbing ourselves of what is more value than money if we do not take satisfaction of a prosperous, and very promising business along with us, as a cordial to support us in every hour of toil and fatigue which our avocations necessarily require at our hands (quoted in Burton 1976: 107).
A telling example of this good work is offered by a moral dilemma that Wedgwood faced in September 1769, upon which he sought Bentley’s advice. Wedgwood had become concerned about the increasing incidence of inferior potters trying to gain his trade secrets and producing imitations of his ware. On the one hand, he feared losing customers to his competitors. On the other, he wished for release “from these degrading slavish chains, these mean, selfish fears of other people copying my works” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 81). In the end, Wedgwood accepted Bentley’s counsel:
I am persuaded that it would do me much good in body, more in mind, and that my invention would be so far from being exhausted by giving a free loose to it that it would increase greatly by such a generous exercise of the faculty, and with the help of your Genius and correct taste, we could continue to furnish new and capital improvements (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 82).
Just as Shaftesbury had recorded his personal struggle in self-cultivation, Wedgwood registered a similar experience, using his letters to Bentley as a way to self-awareness. In the same letter, Wedgwood acknowledged his personal struggle to Bentley, “You must not be shocked at seeing such glaring contradictions in one and the same letter: consider them as coming from two distinct beings, or call them if you please the arguings of my outward, and inward man” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 82).
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When Bentley died in November 1780, Wedgwood attended the funeral and burial in the vault of Chiswick Church. He also commissioned James ‘Athenian’ Stuart to erect a monument in memory of Bentley. On the practical side, he ensured that Mary, Bentley’s widow’s future income was organised. In early December, Wedgwood’s nephew, Byerley, organised the auction of all the Wedgwood/Bentley inventory of over 2,000 lots by Christie and Ansell spread over eleven days (Uglow 2002: 324).
The sociability of Wedgwood was acknowledged by Bentley who wrote on 18 December 1778:
A full discussion, or one good conversation…with my dear Friend would probably do me more good than any other application, for I have not any Friend here by whose side I have been accustomed to engage and conquer, and who has the same energy that you constantly possess, when there is occasion for it, either to promote the public good, assist your Friends, or support your own rights (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 262).
Bentley had testified to Wedgwood’s pursuit of politeness as a gentleman and a friend.
13.3 Wedgwood’s Scientific Progress: Collaboration of the Lunar Men
Besides the mentorship of Bentley, Wedgwood benefitted from his association with other members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. As introduced in Chapter 9, this was circle of friends who came from Birmingham and Scotland, Liverpool and Warrington, dedicated to a common pursuit of learning. Largely self-taught, these men “were imaginative experimeters who persisted and persisted in their drive for perfection” (Uglow 2002: 79). Wedgwood was such an experimenter. He had met Erasmus Darwin through Matthew Turner in 1762.
The Lunar Society evolved from the initiative of Erasmus Darwin, an Edinburgh- trained doctor, who was practising in Lichfield. In 1766, Darwin had gathered together Matthew Boulton (see Figure 42), the leading manufacturer of metal goods, and Dr William Small, a Scottish scientist, who had completed his tenure as the professor of Natural Philosophy at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He had returned to England with a letter of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin. The three men began meeting regularly in each other’s houses to enjoy dinner and
204 discuss science and the arts (Burton 1976: 128). Wedgwood became a regular visitor to such meetings. Nicknamed ‘lunatics’ by Darwin, the Society came to include many other eminent scientists and industrialists, the majority of whom were admitted as Fellows to the Royal Society.
Figure 42: Matthew Boulton (1728-1809)
(en.wikipedia.org)
As it was an informal society, and so no membership records were kept, but there is general agreement among historians that the principal Lunar men, in order of age, were: clockmaker and geologist, John Whitehurst (1713-1788); Soho Works founder, Matthew Boulton; earthenware manufacturer, Josiah Wedgwood ; physician, poet and botanist, Erasmus Darwin; scientist and Unitarian minister, Joseph Priestley (see Figure 43); physician and scientist, as well as Thomas Jefferson’s professor, William Small; chemist, geologist, industrialist and inventor James Keir ; engineer, scientist and inventor, James Watt (see Figure 44); botanist, geologist, chemist, physician, William Withering; politician, writer and inventor, Richard Edgeworth ; author and abolitionist, Thomas Day, and arms manufacturer, Samuel Galton Jr (1753-1832). The guests at the Lunar meetings were Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Bentley; John
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Figure 43: Dr Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)
(www.picturesofEngland.com)
Figure 44: James Watt (1736-1819)
(en.wikipedia.org)
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Baskerville, the printer; Samuel Garbett and John Roebuck, the ironworks manufacturers; John Seddon, of Warrington Academy; and James Ferguson, a Scottish astronomer.
The Lunar men initiated an intellectual revolution in the Midlands. They turned Wedgwood into an avid reader. He started to build a library, which included “a polyglot selection: Byrant’s Antiquities, Ferguson’s Astronomy, Thucylides, Xenophon, Pennant’s Tours, A History of England in Letters, and British Biography” (Burton 1976: 131). Of special significance was Wedgwood’s interest in reading Shaftesbury’s hero, Xenophon, presumably under the influence of Bentley. As Wedgwood’s library suggests, the Lunar Society was interested in cultural and artistic issues, but more importantly, it was characterised by the fusion of the men’s ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ scientific pursuits. Their friendship based on the pursuit of learning was inextricably linked with their passion in the common business of life.
One of the earliest projects that saw the participation of the Lunar men was the building of the Trent and Mersey Canal, spearheaded by Wedgwood in 1765. Many of them became subscribers and others like Boulton gained further economic advantage. He became the supplier for metal parts, locks, bolts, brass valves for pistons, copper boxes, taps and rings (Uglow 2002: 119). Small, who had a sizeable share, also contemplated working canal boats by steam.
In 1766, this Lunar nuclear was augmented by the arrival of three classically trained men. They were Richard Edgeworth, an Irish inventor and a classical scholar, from Dublin, his friend, Thomas Day, a liberal-minded abolitionist, as well as James Keir (see Figure 45), a polymath from Edinburgh, and a friend of Darwin. Keir left the army to further his interests in science and industry in Birmingham. Known for his ease and civility, Darwin hosted many evening dinners where these friends met for pleasure and business. Routinely, meetings which started at two would last till eight in the evening. The meal times saw the participation of wives and children, but once dinner was over, out came the instruments, the plans and the models, the minerals and machines. Often the meetings would last the whole night when they were working on a major project. Darwin teased that the discovery of longitude and the legendary philosopher’s stone, an alchemical substance capable of turning base metals into gold or silver, was made possible because he kept “his friends in good spirits and happyness” (quoted in Uglow 2002: 125).
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Figure 45: James Keir (1735-1820)
(www.search.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk)
The Lunar men did not work as an exclusive group. They were in regular communication with the Royal Society, the Society of the Arts and other clubs in the country. Keir, a classical scholar and a man of science, was well connected to the literati in London. He introduced the Lunar men into “a society of literary and scientific men” who met at Slaughter’s Coffee House in St Martin’s Lane. In philosophy, Keir was a devotee of the Stoics and Marcus Aurelius, and in politics a solid Whig (Uglow 2002: 155). He, together with Priestley, was to exert a key influence as the spokesman for liberty in Birmingham.
At the Slaughter House, the Lunar men met with the surgeon John Hunter, the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, the engineer, John Smeaton, and the instrument maker, Jesse Ramsden. Edgeworth described the discussions of these
208 men as the quick talk of “the first hints of discoveries, the current observations, and the mutual collisions of ideas” (quoted in Uglow 2002: 125). There were arguments, and poor ideas were criticised, but the knowledge of each member of the society disseminated through the group, refined the plans and facilitated the individual projects of the men.
On one of his visits to London, Wedgwood was so engrossed in his conversations at the Slaughter’s that Cox, his London manager, had to write to his wife on his behalf:
I expected Mr Wedgwood would have filled up this space but unfortunately for you he is sunk to the Bottom or Center of the earth with three other Deep philosophers and tho’ they are helping him with all their powers I am afraid the last post bell will be here before their thorough emergation” (quoted in Burton 1976: 100).
Based in the Midlands, the Lunar men were united in their fascination with the Derbyshire countryside, which beckoned them with its “old curiosities” and “new industrial wonders” (Uglow 2002: 139). Boulton and Wedgwood had often visited the moorland to relax and take in the beauty of the landscape. However, the Peak District became a site of investigation into minerals and a search for moor stone in pottery making. Wedgwood was keen to find a suitable stone to fuse with clay in order to make earthen ware resemble porcelain in its fineness, porosity and hardness. Boulton was also considering making pottery, and Watt was testing spar for his own Glasgow potworks (Uglow 2002: 141). Darwin explored the hills and the caverns in the hope of identifying new gases. Keir also undertook his own mineralogical and geological survey of Staffordshire.
It was Darwin who discovered the cliff that contained banded purple fluorspar ‘Blue John’, which Wedgwood added to his list of materials as ‘No. 52, radix amthyst’ (Uglow 2002: 146). The Lunar men assisted Wedgwood in his search for the stone in perfecting his ceramic body. Whitehurst (see Figure 46), who had an interest in a mine, had asked his miners to put aside samples of earth and clay to send to Wedgwood. Watt alerted Wedgwood to the raw materials in Cornwall which assisted him in his production of the most refined jasperware, pivotal to the reproduction of the most important classical ware. When the men could not meet, they wrote and shipped to each other samples, objects of interests and inventions, from bones and fossils to vases and urns.
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Figure 46: John Whitehurst (1713-1788)
(en.wikipedia.org)
Wedgwood was fascinated by minerals and he recorded his observations on the artificial crystallization of alabaster on steatites or soaprock, and on the formation of flints such as the ‘Egyptian pebbles’ with their irregular concentric rings (Uglow 2002: 297). He jotted down tables of different earths in various stages of crystallization: siliceous, calcareous and gypseous. He also followed up on inquiries in dissolving and precipitating cobalt and nickel. He read Priestley’s Experiments of Air carefully. To facilitate his experiments, Wedgwood made ceramic equipment: retorts and crucibles, filters and tubes. Having figured out that stoneware mortar allowed him to avoid the danger of contamination and even poisoning, he gave free models to his Lunar friends involved in such research, and even made special equipment to the precise requirements of Watt and Priestley (Uglow 2002: 297).
In the development of his jasperware, Wedgwood worked with Keir in a series of experiments in 1776. Wedgwood used ground glass in his glazes, and Keir suggested he use raw materials of flint glass, giving him the recipe. Keir also spent hours teaching Wedgwood about annealing, the slow cooling of vitreous material (Uglow
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2002: 298). There was reciprocity in the Lunar circle, and Edgeworth noted that “Wedgwood, with his increasing industry, experimental variety, and calm investigation” also contributed to the works of others (quoted in Burton 1976: 130). When Keir was puzzled by the streaky veins or ‘cords’ that often appeared in his glass, making it unfit for fine products such as achromatic lenses, Wedgwood worked on the problem at Etruria, as well as at glassmakers in Liverpool and London, discovering that the waviness of flint glass was due to the different densities of glass attained at different heights in the melting pot. The solution, he told Keir, was found in constant stirring to make the fluid homogenous (Uglow 2002: 298). In 1776, Keir’s translation of the new French treatise Macquer’s Dictionnaire de Chemie contributed much to Wedgwood’s scientific progress. He claimed, “I would not be without it at my elbow on any account. It is a chemical Library” (quoted in Burton 1976: 130). In such ways, the Lunar men extended Wedgwood’s scientific work. They polished his raw techniques, and gave stimulus to new ideas for him to work on.
Besides collaboration in pure scientific pursuits, the sociability of the Lunar men was expressed in practical terms. In the 1760s, they helped Wedgwood improve the efficiency of his manufactory. Whitehurst designed the time pieces to enable Wedgwood to keep the men reporting for work on time. Assisted by Whitehurst, Watt and Edgeworth, Darwin invented the windmill to power the Etruria manufactory.
Joseph Priestley, a key member of the Lunar Society, was a personal correspondent of Wedgwood. In 1779, when Lord Shelburne dismissed Priestley as his librarian and tutor to his children, Wedgwood pledged twenty-five guineas a year to finance his experiments. He also kept Priestley supplied with ceramic equipment such as retorts and crucibles (Burton 1976: 183). In 1780, when Priestley moved to Birmingham, Wedgwood and Boulton discussed plans to raise funds to support him in his experiments. The Lunar meetings were moved to Mondays instead of Sundays to accommodate Priestley’s church duties. To reciprocate, Priestley shared his discoveries freely with Wedgwood (Uglow 2002: 349). In November 1780, Priestly submitted Wedgwood’s pyrometer paper to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society (Finer and Savage 1965: 263), and this led to an invitation to Wedgwood to read his paper to the Royal Society, and then to his admission to the Society as a Fellow the following year (Reilly 1995: 54).
Friendship was a key stimulus of the Lunar men’s scientific endeavours. On the death of their mutual friend Bentley, Priestley wrote to Wedgwood:
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For the pleasure of communicating our discoveries is one great means of engaging us to enter upon and pursue such laborious investigations. Indeed every friend we lose (and none of us have many so justly entitled to that appellation as Mr Bentley was with respect to me) makes life itself of less value, and prepares us for leaving it with less regret (quoted in Burton 1976: 183).
In 1791, the Birmingham riot destroyed the home of the Joseph Priestley as punishment for his support for the French Revolution. Priestley lost all his books, scientific papers, notes and apparatus in the fire. Wedgwood condoled:
Can I be of any use or service to you upon the present occasion? Assure yourself, my good friend, that I most earnestly wish it. Believe this of me – act accordingly, instruct me in the means of doing it & I shall esteem it as one of the strongest instances of your friendship (quoted in Burton 1976: 214).
In the idiom of politeness, the legacy of the Lunar Society was not to be found in the individual achievements, but in the way the members polished one another and contributed to the pursuit of humanity through their conversation, correspondence and collaboration. Bronowski and Mazlish argue that the Lunar men were not merely manufacturers and scientists: they were men anxious to make a whole new culture. They saw “Wedgwood turning the taste of the nation to the simple lines of the Greek vases, and Erasmus Darwin putting science into poetry, both under the same impulse” (1975: 335).
13.4 Wedgwood’s Pursuit of Perfection and Efficiency
This section considers Wedgwood’s ascetic practice as a scientist-potter, in pursuit of perfection, as well as a capitalist in search of efficiency. In his scientific experiments, Wedgwood was hard on himself, pressing on despite his poor health, and not giving in when he met with obstacles. He applied the same approach when it came to the management of his factory as a profit-maximising enterprise. He looked for ways to improve the operation of the factory. He also saw his workers as a factor of production and was determined to improve their productivity. As much as his strict approach to labour management could be seen as tyrannical, it could also be interpreted as congruent to his practice of asceticism in the pursuit of perfection and efficiency. The ethic of industry and discipline he enforced on his workers has to be
212 understood in the context of his ascetic approach in life. Wedgwood’s practice of asceticism was evident in his self-cultivation, as well as management of his workers.
13.4.1 Pursuit of Artistic Perfection
In Wedgwood’s pursuit of perfection, he abandoned the hit-and-miss approach of the Staffordshire potters. He applied himself in the attainment of scientific knowledge. He studied the works of Comte de Lauraguais, who had produced the first recorded French hard paste porcelain (Reilly 1994: 72). Wedgwood’s Commonplace Book also carried evidence that he had studied the work of du Halde and Faujas de St Fond and had consulted with Richard and Josiah Holdship, the partners of Worcester Porcelain works from 1751 to 1759 (Reilly 1994: 72).
Wedgwood worked methodically, driven by his belief that although the pottery business was “at present (comparatively) in a rude, uncultivated state”, it “may easily be polished, and brought to greater perfection” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 58). The potter, in forming the clay into objects of beauty, was in effect engaged in cultivating his own soul in the pursuit of beauty and virtue, as suggested by Shaftesbury.
Throughout his life, Wedgwood responded to pottery making with rigour and vigour. He confided to Bentley of the unparalleled pleasure he derived from his experiments, “And the Fox hunter does not enjoy more pleasure from the chace than I do from the prosecution of my experiments when I am fairly enter’d into the field, and the further I go, the wider this field extends beyond me” (Finer and Savage 1965: 159). The pottery work proved irresistible. Wedgwood admitted to Bentley:
I have not been on Horseback for a week! This morning some business calls me from my Books and vases and trumpery, and I am very thankful for it, for I have scarcely power, of my own mere notion, to quit my present pursuits for a few hours (quoted in Burton 1976: 137).
Wedgwood had dedicated himself to decades of experiments, and in 1767, he discovered the black basalt ware, which enabled him to make finer copies of the neo- classical ware. However, dissatisfied with this latest discovery, Wedgwood continued to carry out thousands of meticulously recorded experiments to make a stoneware body that could absorb a mineral oxide stain throughout (Young 1995: 37). Wedgwood faced tremendous difficulty in extracting impurities from the clay. It
213 was even more problematic to find the right rock to fuse with the clay to enable them to harden and be moulded into different delicate neo-classical designs and shapes (Burton 1976: 138). Nevertheless, in November 1774, Wedgwood announced his discovery of the new refined ceramic body, which he named jasperware. Its fineness, combined with a hardness that matched the strongest stoneware, meant that it needed no glazing and it could be easily polished (Burton 1976: 139). Although it was time consuming and laborious to achieve a consistent level of delicacy in the jasperware, Wedgwood acquiesced to his fate: “Fate I suppose has decreed that we must go on – we must have our Hobby Horse & mount him, & mount him again if he throws us ten times a day” (quoted in Reilly 1994: 80).
Wedgwood soon faced another technical difficulty in eradicating or disguising the imperfections caused by short firing. However, Wedgwood was not to be deterred. He persevered with using old clay to reduce the incidence of the clay cracking in the cooling process. In his letter of 7th March 1779, to Bentley, he reiterated:
We want nothing,…just now but a little more time, and in that article we find ourselves greatly limited, though we husband what little portion is allowed us with tolerable economy, rising before the sun, often before daylight, and pursue our experiments till supper calls us away, and sometimes after, and yet all is too little, much too little, for the business before us (quoted in Finer & Savage 1965: 230).
In this most important phase of his scientific endeavour, Wedgwood faced the problem of a lack of a precise instrument to measure accurately the heat of the kiln (Reilly 1995: 52). Such an instrument would reduce wastage, increase accuracy in firing, and therefore minimise costs of production. This was a different sort of scientific challenge, but Wedgwood set to work on it. His invention of the pyrometer (see Figure 47) in 1782 was instrumental in enabling him to produce some of the finest neo-classical reproductions in the eighteenth century.
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Figure 47: Wedgwood’s Pyrometer (1782)
(en.wikipedia.org)
During the next ten years, Wedgwood continued experimenting with different colours, and shapes. Besides his Experiment and Pattern books, he kept a meticulous record of how each item was fired in the Oven Books (Reilly 1994: 41). Each trial piece was marked with a number that corresponded to an entry in Wedgwood’s ‘Experiment Book’. There were detailed instructions on how the pieces were to be fired.
In 1790, Wedgwood successfully reproduced antiquity’s most important relic, the Barberini Vase, which he named Portland Vase in honour of the owner of the antiquity, the Duke of Portland. This reproduction will be discussed in the next chapter. This reproduction marked the highest point in Wedgwood’s technical career. However, Wedgwood did not rest on his laurels. Three years later, at age sixty-three, Wedgwood began to work on a new series of experiments to improve the quality of his jasperware. Wedgwood was in the midst of his experiments when he succumbed to poor health and died in January 1795.
13.4.2 Pursuit of Factory Efficiency
The asceticism that Wedgwood applied to his scientific experiments was matched by the rationalization he undertook to improve the factory efficiency and labour productivity. The following section provides evidence of Wedgwood’s rationalization of his manufactory.
In 1769, having laid the foundation for an expanded operation through his continual scientific experiments, Wedgwood devoted attention to the rationalization of his manufactory. When the new building at Etruria was completed, providing new
215 workshops and ovens, the priority was to provide greater efficiency and productivity through the division of labour and specialization of tasks.
Wedgwood allocated separate workroom spaces to divide the production processes in a logical order to increase productivity (Blake-Roberts 1995: 74). The first floor rooms had their own external stair cases for access. This was to guard the secrets of production by keeping the workers apart so that they only knew one part of the manufacture and not the whole system (Burton 1976: 89). The different workshops and ovens formed a closed world where the entire industrial process could flow one after another in strict sequence. Raw materials were brought in, and left to weather. Flints were taken to the newly installed grinding mill, and when all was ready the ingredients were mixed in carefully measured proportions. The skilled throwers and modellers had their own separate buildings to mould the raw clay into vases, teacups and urns. Stowkers made handles and spouts, saggar makers prepared the fireproof containers to pack the unbaked ware for firing. Before the pyrometer was invented, the oven-men used their trained eye to judge when the furnaces were ready to bake the ware. Glazers mixed their glazes, and enamellers applied the delicate gilt until the ware was fully decorated and ready for packing (Burton 1976: 89).
To ensure the smooth running of the factory, Wedgwood drew up a set of rules to govern the conduct of his workmen. Covering almost every activity of the workmen, the rules were intended to reduce wastage, ensure regular working practices, deter fraud, and promote cleanliness and sobriety (Blake-Roberts 1995: 74). To maintain punctuality for example, a bell was rung at the appointed time. In the same spirit, Wedgwood introduced the First Pattern Book, as a factory record of cream ware border patterns and their reference numbers (Blake-Roberts 1995: 75). This was meant to ensure standardization of the patterns painted in Etruria and later in London. It was useful also for ordering, for stock control, and as a catalogue for prospective clients. In 1787, the London Pattern Book was also introduced, containing the sketching and drawings of ornamental wares (Blake-Roberts 1995: 75).
In 1770, due to the rapid expansion of his business, Wedgwood experienced a cash flow problem that required him to take drastic action, to reduce costs and increase profits, to keep his manufactory viable. After detailed examination of his cost structure, Wedgwood altered the basis of payment to his workforce, requiring workers to increase their production in order to take home the same pay (Finer and Savage 1965: 129). Holding the running costs constant, and increasing the number of
216 ware produced, Wedgwood was able to reduce the unit cost and increase profits at the same time (Burton 1976: 115).
Wedgwood realised that he needed to expand his aristocratic consumer base by reaching into the mass market. Even with the lower unit costs he had achieved through revised work practices, Wedgwood would not be able to produce ware cheap enough to cater to this market. Accordingly, Wedgwood started using cheaper semi-skilled workers to produce a cheaper ware using moulds. He could no longer depend on a small number of skilled workmen, who could produce only a limited number of very fine individual ware (Burton 1976: 115).
The next significant step Wedgwood took was instituting the apprenticeship system. He found the older workers harder to train and more resistant to change (Burton 1976: 94). By taking in lower paid apprentices at a young age, Wedgwood could train workers capable of taking on a multiplicity of tasks. Moreover, the apprentices might acquire not just the right techniques, but the appropriate devotion to pottery making. The company was proud of the fact that Mr William Hackwood, who rose to become its chief modeller, was the product of Wedgwood’s apprenticeship scheme.
Besides instituting new schemes to improve labour productivity, Wedgwood installed a steam engine in 1782 to enhance the efficiency of his grinding mill (Copeland 2004: 23). Built by James Watt, the engine pumped water to a tank on the upper floor of the building. It flowed to an overshot waterwheel, which was geared to the vertical shaft of the grinding pan. Two years later, the engine was improved to drive a flywheel which could give direct rotative motion to increase its efficiency.
All the major rationalization exercises in the factory operations increased the efficiency of Wedgwood’s productions and facilitated exports to America and the European continent. As much as Wedgwood had subjected himself to labour and pain in the pursuit of polite self-cultivation, he had used the same approach as a potter, perfecting his techniques and as a capitalist, ensuring the maximization of profits.
Conclusion
The above discussion presents Wedgwood as a potter-scientist, a capitalist and a polite gentleman. Whether pursuing self-improvement, perfection in art production
217 or efficiency, Wedgwood operated on the principles of asceticism and rationality. In his dealing with his workers, he was guided by ascetic rationalism as was expected of a capitalist. In his association with the men of the Lunar Society, he was also guided by a commitment to polite sociability. Unlike the unbrotherliness of Calvinism, as discussed by Weber, Wedgwood did not shun his fellowmen and work in isolation. He did not submit himself to the pursuit of a transcendental goal in an afterlife. Rather, he subjected himself to the struggle between his inward and outward man, in response to his personal calling and duty to humanity.
Wedgwood’s primary focus was a continual and combined search for technical improvements and self-cultivation. He sought to produce goods that disseminated the good taste which symbolised the classical virtues of liberty and public good. In Weber’s analysis, Puritans were discouraged from developing friendship with men in order to focus on showing, through their profits, the approval of God. Wedgwood shared the Puritans’ asceticism and rationality, but his spirit of capitalism was also based on friendship and collaboration. He was companionable and committed to public good, and worked closely with his wife Sarah, his partner Bentley and the Lunar men, in the mutual process of polishing rough corners.
In Bronowski and Mazlish’s estimation, Wedgwood was a major a co-creator of a modern and open culture, which looked to the literature of the past and the science of the present:
In their own way, the men of the Lunar Society did as much for their age as the men of the Renaissance did for theirs. In the spirit of such men, the political, economic, and social ideas of a Priestley or a Smith, the cultural ideas of a Wedgwood, went hand in hand with, and in essence were part of, the movement which created the new techniques and science of the Industrial Revolution (1975: 335).
Underlying this new renaissance in eighteenth-century England was the development of a public sphere that changed the way society was governed and culture was generated.
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Chapter 14: Wedgwood’s Polite Cultural Production and Collaboration
Introduction
Promoted by Shaftesbury and appropriated in the cultural construction by taste legislators in the Kit-Cat Club, the Society of Dilettanti, the Literary Society and the Bluestockings, neo-classicism was articulated as a culture of liberty. It was not associated with the Catholic or Anglican Church. It did not have origins in the absolutist court of the French or the decadent court of the Stuarts. Rather, it had origins that seemed unimpeachable, timeless and democratic. At the same time, it seemed progressive and aspirational, pointing to a new England that would emerge from the public sphere of the new aristocratic-bourgeois alliance.
Writing in 1705 to Arent Furly, a liberal-minded English merchant based in Holland, Shaftesbury emphasised that it was “liberty indeed that can polish & refine the Spirit & Soul as well as Witt of Man” (quoted in Klein 1994: 195). Shaftesbury was not referring to just discursive liberty, but also cultural liberty. Thus, he placed the refinement of taste at the centre of the moral discourse. In writing to Michael Ainsworth, his ward, Shaftesbury highlighted that Greece was the “sole polite, most civiliz’d and accomplish’d Nation” (quoted in Klein 1994: 199). Thus an emulation of the politeness of the Ancient Greeks signified civilization and accomplishments to which English society should aspire.
In encouraging the aristocracy to take the lead in cultural construction, Shaftesbury highlighted that it was “that Taste and Relish to which they ow’d their personal Distinction and Pre-eminence” (Robertson 1900, I: 155). It is significant that Shaftesbury emphasised taste, and not birth, lineage, rank or wealth. Read in this context, as discussed in Chapter 8, this emphasis on taste was not simply promoted as a mark of established social distinction, but insisted instead on the need for rigorous work on the self, for education in enlightenment and emancipation. In this sense, it allowed for renegotiation of class alliances. Shaftesbury elaborated that refinement of taste was to be developed “from Musick, Poetry, Rhetorick, down to the simple Prose of History, thro’ all the plastic Arts of Sculpture, Statuary, Painting, Architecture, and the rest” (Robertson 1900 II: 242). With the attainment of political liberty, Shaftesbury thought, the English had not only the ability but the duty to participate in cultural construction, “For in our Nation, upon the foot Things stand,
219 and as they are likely to continue: ‘tis not difficult to foresee that Improvements will be made in every Art and Science” (Robertson 1900 I: 141).
This is the social and historical context in which Wedgwood’s career must be understood. In The Genius of Wedgwood (1995), Hilary Young, an art historian, comments that the production and consumption of Wedgwood ware have usually been attributed to the excitement over excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and to the impact of the Grand Tour. By contrast, Young claims, “that their popularity lay in their fusion of modernity with Classicism, a combination that allowed the middle and upper classes to feel at ease with the march of progress” (1995: 13). Young goes on to suggest that the obsession with the culture of classical antiquity was an expression of the “ideals of progress in the imagery of Classical art” (1995: 13). As Robin Hildyard observes in her biography of Wedgwood, his jasperware became one of the “most prolific and (profitable) media of Enlightenment classicism” (1999: 81-83). Woodruff Smith in Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600-1800 argues that:
Wedgwood and his china constituted, in themselves, significant connections among the cultural contexts that made up respectability….The products themselves were designed to conform to genteel standards of taste, and consciously sold that way….At the same time, the decorative patterns were restrained and chaste, so as to align them also with the maintenance of virtue….Even rational masculinity played a role. To the extent that the eighteenth-century neoclassical aesthetic symbolized or supported the presumption of rationality, Wedgwood’s (and Bentley’s) stylistic decisions could be connected to that presumption (2002: 241-242).
To contribute to this recent re-evaluation of Wedgwood’s relation to the ideals of classicism, this chapter analyses his role as an artist and a cultural collaborator. The evidence shows that Wedgwood conformed to the polite cultural paradigm as promoted by Shaftesbury. He dedicated himself as an artist, working with connoisseurs and the aristocracy to diffuse the seeds of good taste, by emulating the politeness and the public spirit of ancient Greece that he saw embodied in its antiquities.
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14.1 Wedgwood as an Artist
At the beginning of the Wedgwood/Bentley partnership, Wedgwood showed his understanding of the economic foundation and ethical basis of his neo-classical reproductions. He told Bentley: “You have taste, the best foundation for our intended concern, and which must be our Primum Mobilie, for without that all will stand still” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 45). The object of the enterprise, over and above making money, was a refinement of public taste based on the Grecian model.
In advancing a polite cultural paradigm, Shaftesbury counselled artists against representing the “false ornaments of affected Graces, exaggerated Passions, hyperbolical and prodigious Forms” (Shaftesbury 1737: 239). He stressed that nothing was “more fatal, either to painting, Architecture, or the other Arts, than this false Relish, which is govern’d rather by what immediately strikes the Sense, than by what consequently and by reflection please the Mind, and satisfies the Thought and Reason” (Shaftesbury 1737: 239).
In reproducing the classical antiquities, Wedgwood emulated this principle of simplicity, recognising too the need to stimulate the mind rather than the senses. He contrasted the simplicity of his classical antiquities to the “dazzleing profusion of riches and ornaments” of the baroque and rococo ware preferred by the French. He was persuaded that he had produced something “to give them at proper intervals a little relaxation & repose” (quoted in Blake Roberts 1995: 81). Writing to Darwin in June 1789, Wedgwood said, “And first I only pretend to have attempted to copy the fine antique forms, but not with absolute servility. I have endeavoured to preserve the stile and spirit of if you please the elegant simplicity of the antique forms” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 317).
The Frog Service (see Figure 48) which Wedgwood made for the Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great in 1774, exemplified his attempt to emulate the restraint and understated appeal of the works of antiquity. Lady Grey commented on the dinner service, “The whole together does not make a Shew nor strike you at first with beauty, being only painted with Black Colour heightened with a Purple Cast, but each piece is separately extremely pretty & generally very well executed” (Baker 1995: 126). This was perhaps the impact that Wedgwood had intended. His work of art was not made to excite spontaneous sensual pleasures. Rather, it demanded close attention and contemplation for the viewer to discern beauty in the absence of glitter and ostentation.
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Figure 48: The Frog Service (1774) – a serving dish
(www.hermitagemuseum.org)
In promoting classical simplicity, Wedgwood was aware that his works would naturally have a limited market:
Those customers who were more fond of shew & glitter, than fine forms, & the appearance of antiquity would buy Soho Vases, And that all who could feel the effects of a fine outline & had any veneration for Antiquity would be with us. But these we were afraid would be a minority (quoted in Blake Roberts 1995: 80).
However, Wedgwood was also aware of the cultural influence of the social elites. He reasoned that although the consuming public would generally “of themselves choose shewy, rich and gawdy things”, they would be “overruled by their betters in the choice of their ornaments as well as [in] other matters; [they] would do as their architects, or whoever they depended upon in matters of taste directed them (quoted in Young 1995: 18).
As this suggests, Wedgwood saw marketing as a form of education or cultural improvement. In the 1770s, Wedgwood was among the very first few manufacturers
222 to issue sales catalogues in the promotion of merchandise. However, it was not a passive listing of products. Wedgwood attempted a novel approach. In the 1777 Sales Catalogue, Wedgwood drew his customers into Etruria, to give them a glimpse of the grandeur of the neo-classical vision that moved him. Positioning buyers as the preservers of works of genius, he called on their sense of duty, both to the grandeur of the past and to the privilege of living in the age of its rebirth. He commented that it was:
of great consequence to preserve as many fine Works of Antiquity and of the present Age as we can,…for when all Pictures are faded or rotten, when Bronzes are rusted away, and all the excellent Works in Marble dissolved, then these Copies, like the antique Etruscan Vases, will probably remain, and transmit the Works of Genius, and the Portraits of illustrious Men, to the most distant Times (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 253).
Wedgwood saw his duty as the creation of timeless works of beauty that could be passed on, from generation to generation. Underscoring the relationship between art and intellectual and moral development, Wedgwood maintained:
Those who duly consider the influence of the fine arts upon the human Mind, will not think it a small Benefit to the World to diffuse their Productions as widely, and to preserve them as long as possible; for it is evident, multiplying the Copies of fine Works in durable Materials, must have the same Effect upon the Arts as the Invention of Printing has upon the Sciences; by these Means the principal Productions of both Kinds will be for ever preserved; and most effectually prevent the Return of Ignorant and barbarous Ages (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 253).
Wedgwood shared the key concern of Shaftesbury, both aspiring to encourage ethical and aesthetic development through art production and consumption. It was only through the exertion of labour and genius in art production and appreciation that Britain could cultivate politeness and stymie regression to the age of barbarity, where illiberal and tyrannical sentiments prevailed. He encouraged the nobility to purchase busts of famous English literary geniuses such as Shakespeare in order to reinforce their literary heritage (see Figure 49).
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Figure 49: Black Basalt Bust of William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
(www.liveauctioneers.com)
Wedgwood appealed to the aristocracy to disseminate the good taste through their consumption. He invited the participation of those, “who by their Rank and Affluence are Legislators in Taste; and who alone are capable of bestowing Rewards upon the Labours of Industry and Exertion of Genius” (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 213). At this point, his sales pitch shifted from an exhortation to study and restraint to flattery. He encouraged his aristocratic patrons to have models of themselves
224 represented in cameos and intaglios (see Figures 50 and 51). Even this pitch, however, was dressed in the language of duty:
The Art of durable copies at a small Expence will thus promote the Art of making Originals, and future ages may view the Productions of the Age of George III with the same Veneration that we now behold those of Alexander and Augustus (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 228).
Wedgwood added:
Nothing can contribute more effectually to diffuse a good Taste through the Arts, than the Power of multiplying Copies of fine Things…; by which means the public Eye is instructed; bad and good Works are nicely distinguished, and all the Arts receive Improvement (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 229).
Figure 50: Blue Jasper Portrait Medallion of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820)
(www.nma.gov.au)
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Figure 51: Blue Jasper Portrait Medallion of Captain Phillip Cook (1738-1814)
(www.nma.gov.au)
In this way, Wedgwood reproduced the same counsel that Shaftesbury gave when he advised young men to visit Rome and Athens and examine the antiquities first hand. Both men wanted people to train their inward eye to recognise and brood over the universal beauty, embodied in ancient works of art. Their point was not to make connoisseurs of the youths; it was to make them gentlemen, through the cultivation of their mind and soul. Whereas in Shaftesbury’s time, there was no alternative but for the English to travel to the Mediterranean, Wedgwood brought Etruria to England, thereby broadening the appeal of polite values (see Figure 52).
In assuring his consumers of his fullest attention to workmanship and pursuit of perfection, Wedgwood highlighted the vocational discipline of his pot making, “Beautiful Forms and Compositions are not to be made by Chance; and they never were made, nor can be made in any kind at a small Expence” (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 264). Wedgwood affirmed that he would “rather to give up the making of any Article, than to degrade it” by compromising on quality (quoted in Mankowitz 1996: 264). However, he reiterated that the artist-producer alone cannot sustain the creation of art. The production of works of beauty required the participation of all. He gave his pledge to his patrons that so long as “the Proprietors of this Manufactory” have “the Honour of thus being patronized, they will endeavour to
226 support the Quality and Taste of their Manufactures” (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 264)
Figure 52: Wedgwood & Byerley’s London Showroom
(austenonly.files.wordpress.com)
It is interesting that in his Sales Catalogue, Wedgwood engaged his customers this way, in his personal voice. Wedgwood wrote with personal conviction using the same language he would when writing to Bentley. It is of course possible that Wedgwood saw this neo-classical style and the associated rhetoric of duty and beauty as little more than a marketing ploy, to induce the patrons to purchase his goods. Doubtless, Wedgwood was a sophisticated marketeer. But given the consistency of these themes throughout his life, it seems more plausible that he was also genuinely moved by the historical potential that he saw in the neo-classical and in the scientific and cultural changes that allowed his business to innovate and grow. This was a time of great collective moment, in which he felt called to play a part, and that part was as artist as much as businessman. For Wedgwood, these were not separate roles. Just as the language of polite neo-classicism allowed people to come together in new ways, it allowed him to feel he could reconcile in private and public self.
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I should point out, finally, that there is no doubt about Wedgwood’s technical and artistic accomplishments have, as he promised, withstood the test of time. Harry Barnard (1862-1933), the artist and modeller, who utilised his art techniques on traditional Wedgwood ceramic bodies such as the jasperware and black basalt commented:
There is not a finer example of the qualities of his black porcelain, or basalts, than this; its highly vitreous nature when fired, and its capability of acquiring an excellent polish with age and ordinary handling and dusting make it a very real rival to bronze…and the extreme hardness of the material rendered it free from any wearing out or deterioration of surface either from constant rubbing or the action of damp or atmosphere, it persevered its original texture as when it left the oven, and even after being buried it quickly revives when the surface accumulation of dirt has been washed away (quoted in Mankowitz 1966: 119).
14.2 Wedgwood as a Cultural Collaborator
In the polite cultural paradigm, Shaftesbury counselled that no artist could work alone. The geniuses of the aspiring artists required the patronage of the royalty and the nobility to bring them to fruition. Cultural construction was a collective endeavour. In fulfilling his role as an artist devoted to the dissemination of good taste, Wedgwood solicited royal patronage and collaborated with the connoisseurs and aristocracy. The following section traces the support of King George III, Queen Charlotte and the royal household. It also details the collaboration of the aristocracy in supporting Wedgwood and Bentley in the discharge of their civic duty.
In the Continental courtly-model, the establishment of the china manufactory came under the royal auspices. In Germany, the Meissen royal manufactory was set up in 1710 by Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony. In France, the Sèvres company founded in 1738, received the support of Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour. It became a royal manufactory in 1759. However, in the post-courtly cultural model in England, the role of the royalty was relegated to that of patronage. The royals did not dictate the mode of cultural construction. In the idiom of politeness, they supported the local geniuses that the public had identified as worth supporting. Nevertheless, royal patronage was still pivotal to the progress of arts in eighteenth-century England.
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In June 1765, Wedgwood received a royal order from Queen Charlotte for an elaborate and technically demanding cream ware tea service of green sprigs set on a gold background (Finer and Savage 1965: 36). Upon the successful completion of the tea service, Wedgwood applied for and received the appointment as ‘Potter to Her Majesty’ in 1767 (Savage and Finer 1965: 37). The King and Queen showed a continued interest in Wedgwood’s manufactures. Wedgwood promised to show the majesties the first copy of every capital improvement.
The royal patronage was acknowledged by Bentley in his letter of 15th December, 1770, to Boardman, his partner in the wool business:
Last Monday Mr Wedgwood and I had the honour of a long audience of their majesties at the Queen’s palace, to present some bas reliefs her majesty had ordered….They expressed…their attention to our manufacture; and entered very freely into the conversation on the further improvement of it….The King is well acquainted with the business, and with the characters of the principal manufacturers, merchants, and artists; and seems to have the success of all our manufacturers much at heart, and to understand the importance of them (quoted in Burton 1976: 108-9).
In 1771 a service made for the King was exhibited at the London showroom. The Queen honoured Wedgwood by visiting his showroom. Wedgwood acknowledged the patronage of the royal family and worked towards securing their continual favour. In 1785, Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, and his brother, Duke of Clarence, also conferred their patronage on Wedgwood (Finer and Savage 1965: 38).
Besides royalty, Wedgwood was able to gain the patronage of the gentry who had classical education, and the success of his Wedgwood’s royal commission gave him greater credibility amongst the aristocracy. One of his earliest patrons was Sir William Meredith, a member for Liverpool from 1761 to 1780. He provided Wedgwood with prints and china patterns to copy from. Wedgwood wrote back in appreciation:
Your goodness for leading me into improvements of the manufacture I am ingaged in, and patronising those improvements you have encouraged me to attempt, demand my utmost attention with such inducements to industry in my calling (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 28).
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In August 1765, Wedgwood informed his brother, John, that the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Gower and Lord Spenser had visited his manufactory and had “bought some things and seemed much entertained and pleased” (quoted in Burton 1976: 50).
Wedgwood was also able to enlist the assistance of influential taste legislators such as Sir William Hamilton (see Figure 53), Sir Roger Newgate, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Bessborough, as well as the Duke of Bedford (Young 1995: 14). Hamilton, in particular, played a key role in Wedgwood’s classical reproductions. He was the British Ambassador to Naples and an antiquarian recognised by Sir Joshua Reynolds as the “doyen of fine taste – the head of the Virtuosi” (Dolan 2004: 179). With his collection of 700 ancient vases, 600 bronzes and 6,000 coins, Hamilton was of immense practical assistance to Wedgwood.
Figure 53: Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803)
(www.emersonkent.co)
Hamilton had published Antiques, Etrsuques, Grecques et Romaines in 1767, based on his collection of vases and engravings excavated from Herculaneum and Pompeii. In doing so, he hoped to provide the manufacturers with models to copy, so they “may
230 draw ideas which their ability and taste will know how to improve to their advantage, and to that of the public” (quoted in Uglow 2002: 147). By August 1772, Wedgwood had copied the designs for his more than one hundred varieties of vases from Hamilton’s four-volume publication on antiquities (Reilly 1995: 49). Hamilton recorded his pleasure, again using the language of duty and beauty:
It is with infinite satisfaction that I reflect on having been in some measure instrumental in introducing a purer taste of forms & Ornaments by having placed my collection of Antiquities in the British Museum, but a Wedgwood and a Bentley were necessary to diffuse that taste so universally, and it is to their liberal way of thinking &…acting that so good a taste prevails at present in Great Britain (quoted in Reilly 1992: 59).
Hamilton’s support of Wedgwood was acknowledged by Reynolds as tending “to the advancement of the Arts, as adding more material for Genius to work upon” (Dolan 2004: 180). Reynolds regarded Wedgwood as more than a potter-capitalist; he was seen as a home-grown genius who was worthy of national support.
Lady Elizabeth Templeton was another important cultural collaborator in the Wedgwood reproductions. She provided designs of domestic scenes that contributed to the appeal of Wedgwood’s jasper ornaments. Among the best-known bas-relief figures were her interpretations of children in Domestic Employment and Maternity and Children (see Figure 54).
There were two other significant female contributors to Wedgwood’s reproductions, who increased the appeal of his work to his aristocratic customers. In the 1780s, Emma Crewe’s designs of Bacchanalian Children were adapted for medallions, vases, teapots and brooches. Her father John Crewe was a Cheshire magnate and her mother a Whig hostess and friend of Fox, Sheridan and Burke. In 1783, Charles Fox sent in the designs of Lady Diana Beauclerk, eldest daughter of the second Duke of Marlborough, which were used on Wedgwood’s jasperware (Uglow 2002: 326).
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Figure 54: Pair of blue and white jasper ware ornamented with reliefs from the
Maternity and Childhood series by Lady Templeton
(www.britishmuseum.org)
In 1775, Wedgwood hired England’s foremost classical modeller, John Flaxman, who worked on the bas reliefs of the tablets of The Apotheosis of Homer in 1779, and The Apotheosis of Virgil in 1786. He was also responsible for the bas reliefs of Hercules in The Garden of the Hesperides made in 1785. It was Flaxman who prompted Wedgwood to reproduce the Barberini Vase, which he saw in the collection of the Duke of Portland in 1784:
It is the finest production of art that has been brought to England, and seems to be the very apex of perfection to which you are endeavouring to bring to your Bisque and jasper…it is…of the grandest and most perfect Greek sculpture (quoted in Uglow 2002: 328).
It was a technical and artistic challenge that Wedgwood could not resist, and the sense of patriotic significance was shared by the Duke of Portland, who loaned the vase to Wedgwood. The Barberini Vase was a Roman cameo cutglass dated about 30-20 B C and considered the most celebrated artefact to have survived from ancient Rome. Wedgwood spared neither time nor expense in ensuring that the vase was reproduced with the greatest care and accuracy: it took him four years of
232 experimentations before he could match the subtlety and delicacy of the original vase (Farrer 2010: 50; Baker 1995: 116).
On 1st May 1790, Wedgwood was finally able to exhibit his Portland Vase (see Figure 55). It was reported in the General Evening Post, the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser on 5 May that Wedgwood had given a private viewing of his Portland Vase first to Queen Charlotte and later that day to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr William Locke, Horace Walpole and several members of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies (Reilly 1994: 227). Wedgwood was gratified by the certification he received from the President of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, declaring the Portland Vase to be a “correct and faithful imitation both in regard to general effect, and the most minute of the parts” (Reilly 1994: 227). He also received the approbation of Sir William Hamilton, one of the previous owners of the original Barberini Vase, who commended, “in short I am wonderfully pleased with it, and give you the greatest credit for having arrived so near the imitation of what I believe to be the first specimen of the excellence of the Arts of the Ancients existing” (Reilly 1994: 227).
On receipt of Hamilton’s approval, Wedgwood wrote to ask his advice on whether he should introduce the cameo cut figures modelled on the Portland Vase in other works and forms:
in which they might perhaps serve the arts, & diffuse the seeds of good taste, more extensively than be confining them to the vase only. For instance, many a young artist, who could not purchase any edition of the vase, would be glad to buy impressions of the heads of the figures, or the whole figures, in a durable material of one colour for studies (Reilly 1994: 220).
Hamilton’s reply to Wedgwood was “you cannot multiply this wonderful performance too much” (quoted in Reilly 1994: 221).
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Figure 55: The Portland Vase (1790)
(www.britishmuseum.org)
Wedgwood did not rest on his laurels; he presented the British Museum with the Pegasus Vase (see Figure 56) the following year (Dolan 2004: 359). He had worked on the bas relief, which was to decorate the Pegasus vase, for more than twelve years. In 1779, Wedgwood submitted this bas relief entitled The Apotheosis of Homer to Hamilton in Naples for his criticism. In June, Hamilton replied, “Your BasRelief astonishes all the artists here, it is more pure & in a truer Antique Taste than any of their performances tho’ they have so many fine models before them” (quoted in Burton 1976: 174). The bas relief was then added to the vase. Uglow suggests that the
234 acceptance of the Pegasus Vase by the British Museum, which held the originals on which Wedgwood’s work was based, was a patriotic endorsement of Wedgwood’s work as constituting a work of art (2003: 160).
Figure 56: The Pegasus Vase (1791)
(www.britishmuseum.org)
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14.3 The Cultural Legacy of Wedgwood
In referring to Wedgwood’s Portland Vase, Reilly comments:
It remains a triumph of perseverance and technique over human fallibility and the capricious nature of clay, a great labour that perhaps should not have been attempted, because true success was unattainable; a lasting reminder of Josiah’s extraordinary ambition, and a tribute to his unending pursuit of excellence through experiment (Reilly 1994: 235).
The Portland Vase signalled more than the personal ambition of an artist. More importantly, the epitome of excellence was a celebration of the collective cultural collaboration that had enabled an aspiring artist like Wedgwood to contribute to the cultural legacy of England. Reilly observes, “Wedgwood’s jasper vases, figures, bough-pots, tablets and medallions were an authentic expression of late eighteenth- century taste” (1994: 236). She alludes to Wedgwood’s “belief in his Etruria as the manufactory for the revival of the arts of antiquity”, suggesting that Wedgwood had considered himself a “Genius calling forth the Fine Arts to adorn Manufactures and Commerce” (Reilly 1994: 235).
The discovery of the jasperware was the result of Wedgwood’s sustained activity of methodical and painstaking experimentation over the last twenty five years of his life. It was to establish Wedgwood’s reputation as the ‘Vase Maker General of the Universe’. Amongst the goods carried on the Macartney Mission of 1792 to China were copies of Wedgwood’s jasper classical vases. The aim of the mission was “to excite at Peking a taste for many articles of English workmanship hitherto unknown there…[and] turn the balance of the China trade considerably in favour of Great Britain” (Berg 2006: 5). Wedgwood must have felt gratified to have been able to submit his earthenware as products of industrial Enlightenment in the service of the British nation.
By the end of the eighteenth-century, Wedgwood had eclipsed the English porcelain makers, as well as the Continental royal manufactories, in producing the world’s finest vases. His wares were avidly sought both in England and overseas. Wedgwood’s work was art, but he sold a commodity that was equally available to those who had learned to appreciate its beauty, and to those who, through their purchase, sought a respectable reputation for good taste. It could be a symbol of the need for restless social and individual cultivation and an inspiration in the pursuit of perfection.
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In Weber’s theory of the paradox of social action, the Protestant ethic which prescribed asceticism produced wealth, then paradoxically caged the Puritans, because of their inability to extricate themselves from the care of external goods (2003: 181). Likewise, in the philosophical context of politeness, the refinement of taste, which was intended as a rigorous exercise in cultural liberty and self- cultivation, could also be used paradoxically as a marketing angle to encourage the purchase of goods that offered the alternative of an average or respectably good taste. Because this show of respectable good taste was available to everyone with the money to pay for it, it had a democratising effect culturally, but the process loosened its connection to the rigorous ethic of politeness that was its origin. Nevertheless, the accessibility of politeness had enabled the English as a nation to embrace the notion of civility.
Conclusion
The above analysis provides the interpretation of Wedgwood as an artist and a cultural collaborator who conformed to the polite cultural paradigm in his cultural contribution. It stands in contrast to the analysis of the historian, Neil McKendrick. In “Josiah Wedgwood and the Commercialization of the Potteries”, McKendrick makes use of the same set of data to characterise Wedgwood principally as an entrepreneur, eager to exploit commercial opportunities to accumulate profits. He assumes that Wedgwood was only a capitalist, and claims that “It was Wedgwood’s commercial triumph to turn that pursuit of ceramic luxury by the rich into the pursuit of useful (albeit fashionably desirable) pottery for many” (1985: 103). Without pausing to appreciate the ethical orientation of Wedgwood’s production and consumption of pottery, McKendrick sees Wedgwood’s success simply as encapsulating “one of the most brilliant and sustained campaigns in the history of commerce exploitation” (1985: 103).
I have argued that Wedgwood was more than a capitalist, and that his success tells us more about the workings of the idiom of politeness than about Wedgwood’s personal genius. Wedgwood was the embodiment of the ethic of politeness that developed through the eighteenth-century English society. His work took the form of a calling, so that it is not possible to dissociate the personal and the public, or the freely chosen and the dutiful, any more than it is possible to dissociate the artist from the scientist from the sociable public man from the businessman. All the aspects came together in the polite progressive and patriotic language of the neo-
237 classical. A narrow focus on Wedgwood’s marketing prowess underestimates the influence of the psychological sanction of the ethic of politeness on the way Wedgwood perfected his works of art, and discharged his role as an artist.
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Chapter 15: Wedgwood’s Polite Participation in the Public Sphere
Introduction
In the period of the Whig hegemony from 1688, England was ruled by a powerful oligarchy, which protected the interest of the ruling party, dependent on the promotion of commerce. Habermas notes that the economic interests of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie were identical. They “encountered one another in Parliament on the basis of social homogeneity that was aristocratic in character” (1992: 62). The House of Lords protected the interests of the landed gentry, but the House of Commons lost its character as an estate assembly when it became dominated by increasing numbers of the sons of the aristocracy. So the interests of the bourgeoisie were now not being represented in Parliament. Habermas points out that with the publication of newspapers in the 1730s such as the Craftsman, the Gentleman’s Magazine and the London Magazine, as well as the Times in 1785, the bourgeoisie were able to form “something like a steadily expanding pre- parliamentary forum” (1992: 62-63). The bourgeoisie debated and discussed the petitions that they were going to submit or had submitted to parliament before the parliamentary proceedings began.
In the second half of the eighteenth-century, the key political concerns centred on the separation of powers and the defence of English liberties. The period witnessed the public involvement in the political debate that broke “the exclusiveness of the Parliament and evolved into the officially designated discussion partner of the delegate” (Habermas 1992: 66). After the speeches of Charles Fox in 1792, the people could no longer be treated as strangers. Habermas maintains that “Step by step the absolutism of Parliament had to retreat before their sovereignty” (1992: 66). The voice of the people was no longer seen as vulgar or common; now called “public opinion”, it was formed “in discussion after the public, through education and information, had been put in a position to arrive at a considered opinion” (1992: 66). It was a right citizens earned through self-cultivation and sociability.
Habermas points out that Edmund Burke legitimated the concept of public opinion as “the vehicle and organ of legislative omnipotence” (quoted in Habermas 1992: 94). He points out that Burke defended the legitimacy of public opinion:
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In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters; that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. They sift, examine, and discuss them. They are curious, eager, attentive, and jealous; and by making such matters the daily subjects of their thoughts and discoveries, vast numbers contract a very tolerable knowledge of them, and some a very considerable one…Your whole importance, therefore, depends upon a constant, discreet use of your own reason (quoted in Habermas 1992: 94).
This final case study chapter analyses Wedgwood’s participation in the political realm of the public sphere as a gentleman and a citizen-patriot, articulated in the idiom of politeness, where there was legitimate conflation of private and public interests. It presents Wedgwood as a representative of the politically conscious men of commerce, who exercised reason and restraint in his participation in the cultural politics of his age. It examines Wedgwood’s role as a civic leader in the promotion of public good through three major projects: the parliamentary petition for a road system in Burslem, the building of the Trent Mersey Canal, the lobbying against restrictive and unfair trade practices. It also examines Wedgwood’s political convictions in his support of the American War of Independence, the French Revolution and the Movement for the Abolition of Slavery.
15.1 Wedgwood as a Civic Leader
As the leading manufacturer in Staffordshire, Wedgwood participated in the economic development of the Potteries. By 1760, toll roads had been built to serve the manufacturers in Newcastle, but Burslem had only muddy wallows. In 1763, Wedgwood became the spokesman for the 150 potteries clustered around Burslem, which employed 7,000 workers. His role involved promotion of the turnpike scheme, meeting with opponents and lobbying of political leaders. Through his efforts, Wedgwood managed to convince Lord Gower, the local landowner and Lord of the Admiralty, to write a petition to Parliament in support of the scheme (Burton 1976: 43). He followed up this success by travelling to London to lobby for the Turnpike Bill in its passage through Parliament.
1765 was an important year in Wedgwood’s participation in the public sphere. He was involved in the biggest infrastructural project of Staffordshire, the promotion of the Trent Mersey Canal project. This plan promised immediate benefit to
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Wedgwood, as the proposed canal would pass through his manufactory, but it also improved the infrastructure of the Potteries by enhancing communication, expanding trade, and lowering transportation costs. The project saw the collaboration between the Duke of Bridgewater and the manufacturers led by Wedgwood, with Wedgwood taking the responsibility for increasing the number of subscribers from Lichfield, Birmingham and Liverpool.
Wedgwood worked through his network of Lunar men. Garbett was responsible for generating support in Birmingham. Bentley persuaded the merchants and the mayor of Liverpool. He was also responsible for writing a pamphlet detailing the movement and consumption of raw materials, the current costs, the savings to be anticipated, and the increased distribution of and volume of trade that would be registered when the canal was built (Finer and Savage 1965: 32). Darwin drafted a 67-page petition which was edited by Bentley. In conveying “the Simplicity of Truth” (quoted in Uglow 2002: 113), Bentley deleted Darwin’s extravagant dedication to Queen Charlotte. In dealing with the aristocracy, Bentley preferred the polite and plain-speaking voice. Wedgwood deferred to Bentley’s opinions and agreed that the petition should capture only salient points on a cost-benefit analysis of the canal project. Besides producing the pamphlet, Wedgwood had to attend to other equally pressing responsibilities:
I have not time to think or write about anything, but the immediate business of the day. Public business I mean, for as to my private concerns I have almost forgotten them, I scarcely know without a good deal of recollection whether I am a Landed Gentleman, an Engineer or a Potter, for indeed I am all three & many other characters by turns (quoted in Burton 1976: 57).
This letter reveals that Wedgwood, a man of little education and common birth, had been empowered in the idiom of politeness, to develop a positive image of himself as a landed gentleman, who was working plainly and rationally towards common good. His political style is reminiscent of Shaftesbury’s essay “Sensus Communis” in the Characteristics. Shaftesbury argued that common sense should not be understood as simply sound judgement, but as “the sense of the common”, meaning “the human aptitude for community and civility” (Klein 1999: 29). It was this concept that Wedgwood called upon when he met opposition from his friends in Liverpool. He wrote to remind Bentley to emphasise the inextricable unity between private interest and public good to his Liverpool friends:
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You have strange heterodox notions amongst you at Liverpool about your Port being ruin’d, your not being principals…Pray who are principals by the rule of common sense, in a design of this sort, but those who will receive the principal advantages from it…Pray now seriously consider what will your Lancashire Canal be without the Derbyshire, Staffordshire, & Cheshire additions – it dwindles so that I can scarce see its importance without of a mental microscope” (quoted in Burton 1976: 57).
Wedgwood was inspired by the idea of the canal system, which would not just benefit his manufactory, but it “might transform British industry and society for ever” (Uglow 2002: 112). He had to convince landowners to sell their land, assure mill owners that they would not lose water power, lobby and organise support among politicians. He had to allay the fears of rival navigation companies, and lead discussions on how the canal would be run. Wedgwood’s participation in the public sphere meant that he had “of necessity mix with the bustling crowd” in public meetings, a public role that exposed him to the “most violent agitation” (Burton 1976: 58).
Finally in 1766, the Trent Mersey Canal Bill received the Royal Assent. The proprietors of the canal decided on a Latin motto, pro patria populoque fluit – ‘It flows for country and people’ (quoted in Uglow 2002: 115). The canal project was conceived and implemented for public good, not just to benefit the individual subscribers.
Wedgwood’s participation in the canal project was an example of the collaboration between state and public in a market economy that was discussed by Habermas. It also represented a practical embodiment of Shaftesbury’s claim that a public sphere allowed a balancing of private interest and public good, in the pursuit of common sense.
A third public issue to which Wedgwood devoted himself involved a series of debates about trade restrictions. Wedgwood argued against such restrictions, making a rational case that brought together his private interests and his claim about public interests. One incidence of this debate arose when a porcelain potter, Richard Champion, applied for an extension of a patent that granted him exclusive use of Cornish china clay and china stone (Burton 1976: 146). Wedgwood lobbied against such an extension arguing that the raw materials were freely available and as such could not be considered as an ‘invention’, in the sense that Watt’s steam engine was an invention. Through the support of his patron Lord Gower, the House of the Lords
242 eventually amended the bill to allow all Staffordshire potters similar rights to use the Cornish clay and stone, when the patent lapsed.
Other occasions where this issue arose concerned the imposition of tariffs on the exports of the Potteries. In 1783, Wedgwood complained to government of unfair treatment that the Staffordshire manufacturers had to endure in their effort to export, highlighting cases where foreign countries had imposed heavy taxes or even total prohibitions on the importation of their ware. In 1785 William Pitt, the Prime Minister, proposed a commercial agreement with the new Dublin government based on non-reciprocal rights, whereby English imports into Ireland faced a tariff but Irish goods came in free (Uglow 2002: 392). Wedgwood organised a campaign. He met with his Lunar friends, Boulton and Garbett, to recommend the establishment of a General Chamber of Commerce to represent the interests of all the main factories in England and Scotland. His efforts failed on two accounts: internal disunity and lack of support from the government.
In February 1786, Wedgwood was back in London, to represent the Staffordshire manufacturers in negotiations on a new Treaty with the French. He was pleased that the Anglo-French Treaty was a triumph for British interests and for laissez-faire economics, which provided for equal rights of travel, residence, purchase of goods and religious toleration between the two countries (Uglow 2002: 400). It was a treaty that accorded with Wedgwood’s liberal principles.
15.2 Wedgwood as a Defender of Liberty
According to Habermas (1992), the English in the eighteenth century did not have a strong party affiliation. The court party was generally criticised as its possession of power made it susceptible to corruption. The opposition party was generally believed to defend the liberties of the people against the tyranny of King and Parliament. Wedgwood, who defended religious toleration, was a natural supporter of the Whigs, but he did not take part in party politics. We have seen the active role he took in lobbying for economic reforms that aided his business. However, he also accepted that it was his civic duty to speak out on important economic and political measures even if he had no vested interest. Just as he was at once a Gentleman, Engineer and Potter, Wedgwood was also a citizen whose self-cultivation was tied to liberty and sociability.
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Wedgwood supported liberal free market economic policies and political policies that supported individual rights and democratic processes. A key test came in 1775, when the American War of Independence broke out. Despite the fact that many of his customers and patrons would have supported the war, Wedgwood sided with the American colonists and expressed disappointment with Lord North for sacrificing 20,000 lives in order to secure tax revenues from the colony. In 1777, Wedgwood pledged a subscription to alleviate the suffering of American prisoners in the jails of England and Ireland (Finer and Savage 1965: 215). When it seemed that England was losing the war, he lamented that England’s “haughtiness, inhumanity and injustice” were to account for its folly and downfall (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 239). He criticised the weakness of Lord North’s attempt to reconcile with the colonists by offering them tax concessions in 1778. He wrote to Bentley:
I have not yet seen a paper in the public prints, nor a speech in the house, that has handled this recantation at all to my satisfaction, nor made that use fit to expose the absurdity, folly and wickedness of our whole proceedings with America (quoted in Burton 1976: 172).
Elsewhere he wrote:
Somebody should be made to say distinctly what has been the object of the present most wicked and preposterous war with our brethren and friends…I am glad that America is free and rejoice most sincerely that it is so, and the pleasing idea of a refuge being provided for those who choose rather to flee from than to submit to the iron hand of tyranny raises much hilarity in my mind (quoted in Tames 2001: 31).
In April 1780, the Society for Constitutional Reform was founded by Major Cartwright. It was in favour of universal suffrage, full and equal representation, the maintenance of the Constitution, and the separation of powers between King, Lords and Commons (Finer and Savage 1965: 250). Having read the pamphlet written by Dr John Jebb, a member of the Society, Wedgwood formed the view that every elected MP, regardless of his personal opinions, must represent the interests of the constituents and vote on a bill accordingly (Finer and Savage 1965: 251). He supported the view of Major Cartwright that ‘every member of the state must either have a vote or be a slave” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 252). He also opposed parliaments which kept one party in power for seven years, arguing that this was a recipe for corruption, and urging that elections should be held at least every three years (Burton 1976: 211-212). Wedgwood wrote to Bentley, who was a member of the
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Society, “If I at this distance can in any way promote their truly patriotic designs, either by my own purse or my services, they are both open to you to command as you please” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 252). Unfortunately, Bentley died soon after and there was no record of Wedgwood’s further involvement in the society, which went on to promote Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Rights of Man.
Wedgwood expressed the humanism of his ethic of politeness through his support of the abolitionist cause. When the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787, Wedgwood extended his support, and, in February 1788, helped to organise a meeting in Staffordshire to draw up a petition to be submitted to Parliament. We know of his attitude through his interchange with Anna Seward, a leading poetess, in Lichfield. Seward rebuffed his attempt to recruit her to his cause, arguing that the abolition of slavery would necessitate the sacrifice of England’s West India commerce. She added that the African slaves would not be able to shake off their bondage as they would soon be sold to the Spaniards. In his reply, Wedgwood insisted on the importance of upholding the spirit of humanity. He argued that abolition would not lead to a decline in the West India commerce as there was already an introduction of machines and a pool of free labour. But he went on to say that even if abolition brought economic disadvantages, he was persuaded that it was “the only probable means of withholding the heavy hand of cruelty and oppression from those who now groan under it” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 310).
To support the abolitionist cause, Wedgwood produced a cameo of a Negro slave (see Figure 57), kneeling with manacled hands raised in supplication, bearing the inscription “Am I not a man and a brother?” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 311). The inscription was adopted as the motto by the Society. At his own expense, Wedgwood produced and circulated several hundred cameos in the cause against slavery.
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Figure 57: The Slave Medallion (1788)
(www.britishmuseum.org.uk)
In February 1788, Wedgwood sent some of the cameos to Benjamin Franklin, who was the President of the Abolition Society in America. Pleased to be fighting a common cause and linking their individual cause to a wider struggle, he wrote:
This will be an epoch before unknown to the World, and while relief is given to millions of our fellow Creatures immediately the object of it, the subject of freedom will be more canvassed and better understood in the enlightened nations (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 311).
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Wedgwood organised the circulation of 2,000 pamphlets written by William Fox entitled “An Address to the People of Great Britain on the propriety of abstaining from West India sugar and rum”. He also met and corresponded with William Wilberforce, the parliamentary leader for the cause of the abolition.
The slave medallions were soon adapted to adorn snuff boxes, shirt pins, coat buttons, bracelets, hat pins and brooches. In August 1788, Thomas Clarkson, the leader of the movement, a clergyman, wrote to Wedgwood’s agent requesting more cameos for distribution. In his History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808), Clarkson recorded that Wedgwood was instrumental in turning popular feeling in favour of the movement:
He made his own manufactory contribute to this end….At length the taste for wearing them became general, and thus fashion…was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity, and freedom (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 311).
Wedgwood was supported by Darwin in his abolition cause. He added Wedgwood’s slave medallion in his Botanic Garden accompanied with a poem. He highlighted the hypocrisy of the English, who amidst its “fair Art” and “meek Religion” had “with murder, rapine and theft” engaged in the slave trade (quoted in Uglow 2002: 412). He appealed to the English to respond to the hunger, wounds and toils carried in the innocent cries of the manacled brethren. Priestley also supported the cause, setting up an Anti-Slavery Committee which opposed “any commerce which always originates in violence and often terminates in cruelty” (quoted in Uglow 2002: 413). Wedgwood was disappointed that the slave trade had not been abolished by Parliament in 1789, but he was confident that the trade could not withstand investigations into its inhuman nature. This was a mark of his faith in a public sphere. Almost twenty years later, the slave trade was finally banned.
During this abolitionist campaign, the French Revolution broke out. Wedgwood’s correspondence traces his response. In July 1789, Wedgwood wrote to William Eden, the English Trade Consul in France, to express his hope that France would soon join England in ensuring that “liberty is established, property assured, and the constitution fixed” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 318). Wedgwood was reaffirming the principles of the 1688 Revolution. In 1789, Wedgwood also wrote to Darwin, commenting:
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I know you will rejoice with me in the glorious revolution which has taken place in France. The politicians tell me that as a manufacturer I shall be ruined if France has her liberty, but I am willing to take my chance in that respect, nor do I see that the happiness of one nation includes in it the misery of its next neighbour (quoted in Tames 2001: 36).
On August 29, 1789, he wrote to a Mr J Barker, who was based in Geneva:
I have no fears, as an Englishman, from the French nation obtaining liberty, but join with you in the truly liberal sentiments that the diffusion of liberty through any nation will add to the security and happiness of the neighbouring ones (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 319-320).
On 31 January, 1790, in further correspondence with Eden, Wedgwood reiterated his view that he did not mind the temporary setbacks to trade as a result of the French Revolution. He held a humanistic perspective and hoped that France “will, by the wisdom of an enlightened age, be in due time better hung and poised than it was before…more in favour of the civil and religious liberties of mankind” (quoted in Finer and Savage 1965: 322).
After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Wedgwood affirmed his commitment to parliamentary reform in a letter to his son, ““I would willingly devote my time, the most precious thing I have to bestow, or anything else by which I could serve so truly noble a cause” (quoted in Burton 1976: 211).
On 14 July 1791, riots broke out in Birmingham in response to a dinner celebrating the storming of the Bastille. These riots, sometimes called the Priestley Riots, destroyed Priestley’s house, including all his books, experimental records and instruments. Priestley was the target because he argued for religious toleration and civic rights, and advocated a future in which good sense and the spirit of commerce, aided by Christianity, and true philosophy, would prevail to bring about universal goodwill (Uglow, 2002: 440). James Keir, who was the organiser of the Bastille dinner, was disappointed that support for The French Revolution “could be misinterpreted as being offensive to a government, whose greatest boast is liberty, or to any who profess the Christian religion, which orders us to love our neighbours as ourselves” (quoted in Uglow 2002: 441).
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When Priestley was housed in Clapton, his Lunar friends rallied around him. Wedgwood and his sons sent money, mortars and apparatus, to help him set up his laboratory. The Whig politicians Lansdowne, Stanhope, Sheridan and Fox stood by him. The Birmingham Riots wounded the men of the Lunar Society deeply as it was, at heart, an attack on all that they believed in: reason, science, freedom, sociability (Uglow 2002: 448).
In the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Birmingham riots, Wedgwood refused to join the political associations set up to pledge loyalty to upholding the constitution and rejecting republicanism. In December 1792, he wrote to his nephew, Byerley, to assure him that he would perform his duty as a patriot and that his actions would testify to his loyalty to the constitution (Burton 1976: 216).
Wedgwood was representative of the class of citizen-patriots who dedicated their lives to the pursuit of self-improvement and social progress that extended beyond or that reframed the profit motivation. We have seen that, as a citizen-patriot, Wedgwood worked towards protecting his personal interest, while arguing also for the public welfare. In this section, though, we have had the chance to see that his participation in the public sphere was not simply a way of advancing self-interest. Throughout his life ran a consistent ethical thread, consistent with the ethic of politeness. It is true that Wedgwood’s business and science made use of patronage, but that did not dissuade him from fearlessly advocating the principles of sociability, liberty and self-cultivation. As Uglow says, Wedgwood was not afraid to defy the “shifting axis of power from metropolis to province, from the money men to industry, from Parliament to the people” (2002: 500).
Conclusion
According to Weber, capitalism by Wedgwood’s time had shed the need for a moral or ethical basis and was able to operate mechanistically. This is not an argument supported by the case study of Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood’s dedication to his work and to his duties and rights in the public sphere reflected the ethical and psychological sanction of the politeness ethic, rooted in asceticism and predicated on the pursuit of rationality and sociability. This ethic drew on the asceticism of the Protestant ethic, but was also radically transformed, becoming sociable rather than privatised, this-worldly rather than next-worldly, progressive rather than tragic,
249 trusting rather than obsessed by sinfulness, rational rather than afflicted by the inscrutability of predestination.
In Chapter 13, I have shown that Wedgwood was guided by a commitment to asceticism in his pursuit of technical and artistic perfection, and that his spirit of capitalism was based on friendship and collaboration. Wedgwood could not have fulfilled his calling as a potter on his own accord; he was supported by the devotion and commitment of his wife, Sarah, as well as the friendship, classical knowledge and scientific expertise of Bentley and the men of the Lunar Society. In Chapter 14, Wedgwood is interpreted as an artist and a cultural collaborator who conformed to the polite cultural paradigm. Once again Wedgwood did not work in isolation. He was only able to discharge his civic role through his classical reproductions because he had the patronage of royalty and the practical assistance of connoisseurs like Hamilton and the patronage of his aristocratic customers who responded to his call for participation in the public sphere through their consumption.
In this last chapter, I have examined Wedgwood as a citizen-patriot who pledged and practised the principles of politeness in his participation in the public sphere. Guided by reason and restraint, Wedgwood took an active part in representing not just his private interests, but those of his community as well. A self-taught man, polished by his interaction with others, Wedgwood was empowered by the idiom of politeness to correspond with the highest political figures such as William Eden, William Wilberforce and Charles Fox. Dignified by his calling as an artist-potter, Wedgwood used his own voice and did not pretend to be other than who he was in his interaction with these powerful politicians. In his participation in the public sphere, Wedgwood learnt the language of persuasion and was able to write petitions for parliamentary consideration. The idiom of politeness, which facilitated class realignment and encouraged the development of a public voice, had given a man like Wedgwood, provincial and unaccustomed to the manners of the classically trained social and political elites, an opportunity to participate in self-government. The polite combination of asceticism and sociability, as preached by Shaftesbury and theorised by Weber, Foucault, Elias and Habermas, provided a practicable paradigm for men like Wedgwood to participate in the making of a good society.
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Conclusion
This thesis shares Weber’s interest in finding out what combination of circumstances in the cultural phenomena of Western civilization “lie in a line of development having universal significance and value” (2003: 13). Weber identifies the system of rationalization as such a development, explaining that it manifested itself in philosophical thinking, law making, fine arts such as sculpture, painting and music making, architecture, science, education, as well as the control of political, economic and social life (2003: 15-16). To Weber, rationality is “the most fateful force in our modern life, capitalism” (2003: 17), and, in his analysis, it was the ascetic rationalism of Calvinism that supported the growth of capitalism in seventeenth-century England.
Whilst Weber focuses on the relationship between religious asceticism and economic behaviour, I have pursued the relationship between humanistic rationalism and cultural construction in post-puritan eighteenth-century England. Whereas Weber is pessimistic about the ongoing role of moral and ethical concerns within capitalism, I argue that humanistic rationalism, articulated through the moral and ethical idiom of politeness, played a crucial role in legitimising cultural collaboration based on the newly-forged alliance of aristocratic and bourgeois gentlemen and gentlewomen.
In this concluding chapter, I address three issues. Firstly, following my literature review, which identified Benjamin Franklin as a friend and correspondent of the members of the Lunar Society, I wish to re-open Weber’s interpretation of Franklin’s spirit of capitalism. Secondly, I reiterate my opposition to Campbell’s attribution of Shaftesbury as the founder of Romanticism and the English as emotional hedonists. Finally, I discuss how this sociological analysis augments the theories of Foucault, Elias and Habermas, and contributes to the understanding of eighteenth-century England.
Politeness of Benjamin Franklin
In the analysis of The Protestant Ethic, Weber overlooks eighteenth-century politeness as a distinct form of asceticism based on civic humanism. At the beginning of this thesis, in Chapter 1, I presented Weber’s thesis on the religious foundation of the
251 seventeenth-century capitalists. Weber identifies Benjamin Franklin (see Figure 58) as representative of the seventeenth-century capitalists, and insists that his spirit of
Figure 58: Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790)
(www.chzu.edu.on)
capitalism “takes on the character of an ethically coloured maxim for the conduct of life” (2003: 51-52). He notes that a superficial reading of Franklin’s maxims, which emphasised the importance of time management, honesty, industry and thrift to assure financiers of the capitalist’s credit-worthiness, would lead one to conclude that “all Franklin’s moral attitudes are coloured with utilitarianism” (2003: 52). However, Weber maintains that Franklin’s moral attitude was influenced by his strict Calvinist upbringing. He points out that Franklin’s “recognition of the utility of virtue to a divine revelation which was intended to lead him in the path of righteousness, shows that something more than mere garnishing for purely egocentric motives is involved” (2003: 53).
Weber espouses that Franklin’s spirit of capitalism “expresses a certain type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas” (2003: 53). He points out that in response to the question “why should ‘money be made out of men’”:
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Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colourless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth: ‘Seeth thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings’ (2003: 53).
It is not easy to see how such a quotation from the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament provided any evidence of Franklin’s Calvinist leaning. It does not emphasise accountability to the arbiter of one’s fate in the afterlife. On the contrary, the call for diligence was meant to enable a man to be accountable to the highest authority on earth. It implied a focus on this-worldliness rather than that of other- worldliness. Weber offers no further discussion but asserts that the legal acquisition of money within the new economic order was to be seen as “the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling” (2003: 54). He concludes unequivocally that “this virtue and proficiency are…the real Alpha and the Omega of Franklin’s ethic” (2003: 54).
Whilst it is easy to see that Franklin’s spirit of capitalism was an expression of “virtue and proficiency in a calling”, it is hard to subscribe to Weber’s unequivocal statement that Franklin’s calling emanated from his devotion to the Calvinist theology. On the contrary, I suggest that Franklin, a friend and correspondent of the members of the Lunar Society, exhibited a civic personality that was sustained by the rationality typical of the Lunar discourses, as well as the sociability typical of the group. I propose that Franklin, like Wedgwood, shows an affiliation with the politeness ethic and a polite toleration of the rigidity of Calvinism.
In England, Franklin enjoyed the sociability of the Lunar men. He met with Matthew Boulton to discuss the application of electricity in their inventions. He also enjoyed the hospitality of Thomas Bentley, Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin and spent time exchanging opinions on their shared scientific and literary interests. Franklin was a personal correspondent of Wedgwood and several key members of the Lunar Society. In 1774, Franklin showed his support of Unitarianism by attending the inaugural session of the first Unitarian church at the Essex Street Chapel, London. In London, he became a member of the ‘Honest Whigs Club’. Later, he founded his own club in America, and called it ‘the Junto’ (Bond and McLeod 1977: 121). He read volumes of the Spectator during his adolescence, and trained himself to write his first published articles, the Silence Dogood Letters, by rewriting Spectator essays from memory (Field 2009: 395).
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Besides exhibiting a civic personality of politeness, Franklin’s honest admission of his religious conviction further undermines Weber’s hypothesis. In a letter to Reverend Ezra Stiles, the president of the Yale University, a month before he died, Franklin wrote:
You desire to know something of my Religion…Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That he governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them (quoted in Brinton 1956: 377).
In the above reply, Franklin insisted on a fundamental anti-Calvinist tenet: that doing good to others was a sufficient condition for one’s assurance of God’s dispensation of justice, thus denying the doctrine of predestination. In the letter to Stiles, Franklin also declared his support of the dissenters, and reiterated his religious toleration of all sects, offering his financial support and goodwill to all religious sects as he wished to live in harmony with all (Brinton 1956: 378). Whilst Franklin could have been influenced by his Calvinist upbringing in his role as a capitalist, his fellowship and collaboration with members of the Lunar Society, as well as his religious sentiments as expressed in this letter, are congruent with the ethic of politeness.
I have paid this attention to Benjamin Franklin in my Conclusion because it neatly sums up my argument with Weber: that he has ignored other non-Calvinist sources of asceticism. More particularly, in linking Franklin back to Calvinism, Weber has overlooked the significance of the politeness ethic, rooted in the Socratic morality of asceticism.
Politeness in Cultural Production
Campbell, in The Romantic Ethic, refers to the influence of Shaftesbury to account for the middle class concern for aesthetics. He claims that Shaftesbury had substituted “intuition and feeling for traditional authority and reason” (1987: 205). He concludes that Shaftesbury was instrumental in “equating goodness and beauty with pleasure, as manifested in emotion, serving as an index of both” (1987: 205). The evidence I have tendered in this thesis stands in stark contradiction to Campbell’s claims.
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Campbell characterises the English in eighteenth century as self-centred individuals; like the Puritans, they focused on seeking evidence of their personal virtue, though now this evidence was sought through a voluptuous expression of sympathy and pity for the plight of others (1987: 204). In contrast to the polite people, like Wedgwood, whose ascetic practice was to contribute to self-cultivation and public good, Campbell’s Romantics were, in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures, devoting their lives to the creation, manipulation and consumption of illusions. Intent on casting themselves as virtuous, ingenuous and passionate, as opponents to ‘society’, Campbell’s Romantics demonstrated their virtue to themselves through “pleasure, something which [they] must prove by creating cultural products which yield pleasure to others” (1987: 204).
My survey of the literary productions of Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Macaulay, and Wedgwood’s classical reproductions has yielded very different interpretations. I have offered evidence to question Campbell’s claim that the “moral inner- directedness so characteristic of the middle class” was necessarily at odds with the aristocratic ethic, which he sees as “a stoic, virility ethic which denied emotionality” (1987: 204). The Bluestockings, made up of men and women from the upper and middle classes, were unequivocal in their insistence on the exercise of rationality and the pursuit of learning and practice of civic virtue. They opposed the construction of a feminised culture where romantic novels were designated as the only suitable literary diet of the women. They discouraged socializing and the portrayal of women as creatures of sentimentality. These cultural producers had not given up asceticism and rationalism to indulge in emotional hedonism. Rather, they lived their life as citizens. They saw themselves working collaboratively towards a progressive England in its cultural renaissance. The consumption of neo-classical style was initially associated with a challenge to sentimental taste, even if the success of the style eventually allowed it to be a mark of conformist respectability rather than an aesthetic provocation.
Campbell sees the Romantic Movement as a culmination of the Protestant ethic. In insisting that the pursuit of pleasure had become the “grand elementary principle of life”, not just in the eighteenth century, but also in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Campbell has underestimated the far reaching significance of politeness in eighteenth-century England. In the eighteenth century, the significance of politeness resided in its fluidity and flexibility, so that it could be appropriated at a level commensurate with the needs and aspirations of people from different social, economic and religious backgrounds. It was a language of humanity that was used
255 to explore the meaning of enlightenment and emancipation. The English public, liberated from the control of the court and church, had enhanced its sense of moral agency. To prepare themselves for engagement with others in the public sphere, people felt responsible for engaging in practices of self-care that involved self- criticism and self-discipline. The English public did not live in isolation, but was firmly rooted in its society, engaged in the public sphere.
As Klein notes, the man of commerce in the eighteenth century was no longer to be understood as “a possessive individualist, a worldly ascetic, a vocational man“, as Weber has said (1995a: 362-363). He had assumed a new civic personality.
Development of a Civic Personality and Participation in the Public Sphere
The ethic of politeness, which emphasised the development of a civic personality predicated on rationality and sociability, facilitated the development of the public sphere in eighteenth-century. I have presented Shaftesbury’s polite cultural template that recommended self-cultivation, social interaction and cultural construction.
In his practice of self-care, Shaftesbury availed himself of the technologies of self- care in the classical tradition, appropriating the Socratic morality of asceticism and looking to the work of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius for moral reflection. He did not attempt to repress or contain his unsociable passions because of external demands, but rather learnt to internalise constraints through moral reflection. Discouraged by his political ineptitude, Shaftesbury retired to Holland in 1700. In his political retirement, he realised that he could better serve his country in his new role as a philosopher. To prepare himself for that task, he dedicated himself to ethic of the practice of self-care so that he could learn to care for others. In Foucault’s estimation, the role of the philosopher was to warn society of the dangers of corruption in society. It was to this end that Shaftesbury dedicated his life to crafting a life philosophy of politeness to facilitate the development of a civic personality to equip the public with moral agency in their participation in the public sphere.
In Shaftesbury’s practice of self-care, there is evidence of constant struggle between his inward-looking man who preferred solitude and retirement, and his outward- looking man who enjoyed the company of others and engagement in the civil society. To help him work through the struggle of his soul, he kept a record of his philosophical reflection in a moral exercise book. He also maintained life-long correspondence with his friends and mentors: French philosopher, Pierre Bayle,
256 liberal-minded dissenter and merchant Benjamin Furley, as well as his former Grand Tour guardian, John Cropley.
Besides the aristocrats, commoners, like Wedgwood, also adopted the Socratic morality of asceticism in the practice of self-care. In the classical tradition of self-care, Wedgwood secured a mentor to guide him. In his struggle with his inner and outer man, Wedgwood looked to Thomas Bentley, his confidante and business partner to chide and correct him and set him on the path of civic virtue. Bentley’s mentorship was evident when Wedgwood confessed to his slavish fears of being overtaken by imitators of his ware. He was counselled by Bentley to be generous and to see the imitation as an expression of good taste that he had sought to diffuse in the first place.
The fluidity of politeness allowed Wedgwood to interpret his role as an artist and cultural collaborator as contributing to civic virtue through the production of classical ware. Such civic politeness appropriated by Wedgwood should not be automatically discounted as pretension or social aping. It indicated a specific process of self-fashioning that was meaningful to those, like Wedgwood, who were not privileged with a classical education, leisure or wealth. It was their personal way of responding to the resonances of politeness as they understood them.
The pursuit of politeness through a rigorous regimen of self-cultivation was also evident in the life of Lady Elizabeth Montagu, who spent nine years preparing for her defence of Shakespeare as England’s literary icon. Likewise, Catherine Macaulay took twenty years to present her interpretation of a seventeenth-century England that was resistant to admitting the public into a share of government. In the relatively mobile society of eighteenth-century England, mediated through the idiom of politeness, the cultural production of patricians like Shaftesbury and Montagu, as well as plebeians like Wedgwood and Macaulay, symbolised and actualised an important element of their identity, that of gentlemanliness and civic virtue. Politeness did not unite the different classes, but it allowed them to converse more openly and find new sources of common cause.
This thesis has augmented Weber’s insistence on the universal significance of asceticism. I have shown that the Socratic morality of asceticism, articulated in the idiom of politeness, exerted a pervasive force in eighteenth-century England that matched the force of the asceticism of Calvinism a century earlier. I further argued that there was a direct relationship between the ethic of politeness and participation in the public sphere. Borrowing the perspectives of Elias and Habermas, I have
257 evaluated its significance in the context of an increased interdependence between the state and the public, as well as between the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the commercial age of eighteenth-century England.
In his survey of the English parliamentarians in the eighteenth-century, Elias (1986) highlights that they were united by a gentlemanly code of sentiment and conduct. He notes in particular that they exhibited a high degree of affect-control which enabled a peaceful transfer of power, without resorting to violence. This study provides an interpretative account of the significance of the ethic of politeness to support Elias’s observation that eighteenth-century English politics was characterised not just by an absence of violence but by a high level of self-restraint exhibited by political opponents. I have identified the ethic of politeness as the English innovation that Elias mentions, which acted “as a civilizing spurt” in its requirement of “verbal skills of debate, of rhetoric and persuasion” (1982: 311).
The case study shows Wedgwood was keen to cultivate a civic personality of gentlemanliness, not just to provide economic advantage in the age of commerce, but also to fashion himself as a gentleman in the discharge of his civic duty. His lack of formal education and low social status did not disadvantage him. Wedgwood was able to seek royal patronage and aristocratic collaboration to support the discharge of his civic duty, legitimised in the idiom of politeness. In Elias’s terms, Wedgwood’s cultivation as a polite gentleman is to be understood as an expression of the interdependence of the age of commerce, as well as a result of the workings of the ethic of politeness on his personal transformation.
The development of the polite civic personality in the civilizing process of eighteenth-century England took place in the context of three factors. The court had lost its role as the cultural authority, the nobility had been pacified through their economic co-operation and the bourgeoisie had risen in importance. I have illustrated that the idiom of politeness enabled the public to cultivate themselves as the new class of gentlemen and gentlewomen to replace the Anglican Church and the Protestant court as cultural arbiters. The nobles were not at war with each other as they shared a common fate, in ensuring the success of the long-distance trade and colonization; that was managed largely by bourgeois men of commerce. These three factors, in the context of the growth of the urban market and the expansion of trade and capital led towards a “strengthening of the less affective, less fantasy-oriented modes of thought and experience” among the new class of gentlemen and gentlewomen (Elias 1983: 291). I have provided evidence of eighteenth-century
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England to support Elias’s argument that the history of civilization is “a history of restraint and self-control” (1982: 311).
In the development of the public sphere, Habermas singles out the salons and coffee houses of eighteenth-century England as centres of rationality and sociability. This thesis extends Habermas’s discussion of the public sphere in eighteenth-century England, beyond the influence of Addison and Steele, to include the role of cultural producers in the Kit-Cat Club, The Dilettanti Society, the Literary Society, and the Lunar Society of Birmingham. It augments Habermas’s insistence on the significance of the salons by providing evidence to illustrate how the Bluestockings participated in the public sphere through conversation, as well as cultural collaboration. I have shown that instead of the church and the court, private men and women could now make personal interpretation of works of philosophy, literature and art. Through rational communication, they could publicly announce their personal opinions on these works. The propertied and educated public, who became readers, listeners and spectators, were implicitly included in the notion of the public. The issues raised in these literary productions became accessible to the public as a whole for the first time.
As theorised by Habermas, the public sphere that developed in the English clubs and salons was characterised by voluntary participation. The founders of such clubs and salons were committed to the twin virtues of rationality and civility, as well as to the cultivation of a civic personality that was not focused on achieving private ends. Participants at Montagu’s salons were not judged as individuals for their ability to outdo their compatriots in maintaining stylised manners and clever conversations to impress others. Rather, they were encouraged to express their opinions and share their knowledge in the pursuit of civic virtue. Both the salonniére Montagu and her guests had expressed satisfaction that the social gatherings provided avenues for the participants to steer away from the vice of the day, such as gambling and drinking, and focus on the cultivation of a civic personality.
As the case study of Wedgwood illustrates, the idiom of politeness was not restricted to the participation in the literary public sphere through sociable clubs and intimate salons. Politeness empowered and enfranchised commoners as gentlemen to make political representation through parliamentary petitions, and through attendance at the Select Committee in defence of public interests. Habermas evaluates that the English Parliament towards the end of the eighteenth century had to admit public opinions informed by well-discussed deliberations. He observes that the public was
259 recognised by the English as an authority to compel lawmakers to legitimize themselves (1992: 96).
In its articulation, the politeness ethic provided opportunities as well as created tensions in the process of self-fashioning, cultural construction, and participation in the public sphere. Wedgwood availed himself of the opportunities to be admitted as a gentleman in the civil society. There were times when he used the polite language to flatter patrons to gain economic advantage. But at other times, when he clearly assumed the role of a citizen-patriot, and was not incapacitated by the need to defend his personal interests, Wedgwood appropriated politeness as an expression of his sociability.
Although clearly limited in its egalitarianism, the polite cultural paradigm expanded the English elite by admitting talented members from the bourgeoisie. Perhaps more important, because of its generation of a public sphere, politeness was a step closer to the ideal of democracy, and a step away from the cultural authoritarianism of the courts. This sociological discussion of the promotion and pursuit of politeness in eighteenth-century England contributes to an understanding of the unique historical processes and events, and in Habermas’s words, “can be interpreted as instances of a more general social development” (1992: xviii).
In analysing the Whig’s idiom of politeness, I have been mindful of Herbert Butterfield’s thesis that in studying the past, the researcher “is trying to understand the past for the sake of the past” (1959:16), and that he or she should never attempt to subordinate the past to the present. He reminds the researcher that “the more we examine the way in which things happen, the more we are driven from the simple to the complex” (1959: 21). In analysing a particular point of history under the microscope, Butterfield reiterates that the researcher “can really visualise the complicated movements that lie behind any historical change” (1959: 21).
Following Weber, I have made no attempt at establishing a causal link between the phenomenon of the ethic of politeness and the development of the public sphere. What this thesis hopes to have achieved is to trace the complex historical change in order to present the sociological implications of the transitions of cultural practices in eighteenth-century England and its affinity with the ethic of politeness. In composing such an idealized version of the culture of politeness as pursued by the
260 aristocratic-bourgeois alliance, I hope to contribute to the continuing dialogue on the making of modern England.
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