56 Ch. 14 Prevalence of gambling. GAMING CLUBS. were admitted to kiss His Majesty's hand in the royal palace, surrounded by the nobles and dignitaries of the realm. This practice conduced much to the popularity of the King, and served to please many persons who either did not want, or could not have, bribes, places, or titles; while it taught the hungry tribe who sought, and might be eligible for more substantial gratifications, that they could only hope for success by conciliating the King's personal favour. But the vice which, above all others, infested English society during the greater part of the eighteenth century, was gaming. Men and women, the old and the young, beaux and statesmen, peers and apprentices, the learned and polite, as well as the ignorant and vulgar, were alike involved in the vortex of play. Horse-racing, cockfighting, betting of every description, with the ordinary resources of cards and dice, were the chief employment of many, and were tampered with more or less by almost every person in the higher ranks of life. The proprietary clubsWhite's, Brookes's, Boodle's -were originally instituted to evade the statute against public gaming-houses. But every fashionable assembly was a gaming-house. Large balls and routs had not yet come into vogue. A ball seldom consisted of more than ten or twelve couples; and the practice of collecting a crowd of fine people to do nothing, is an invention of recent date. When a lady received company, card-tables were provided BALLS AND CARD-PARTIES. Ch. 14. for all the guests; and even where there was dancing, cards formed the principal part of the entertainment. Games of skill were seldom played. Brag, crimp, basset, ombre, hazard, commerce, spadille- the very names of which are hardly known to the present generation — furnished the excitement of play, and enabled people of fashion to win and lose their money without mental effort. Whist was not much in vogue until a later period, and was far too abstruse and slow to suit the depraved taste which required unadulterated stimulants. The ordinary stakes at these mixed assemblies would, at the present day, be considered high, even at clubs where a rubber is still allowed. The consequences of such gaming were often still more lamentable than those which usually attend such practices. It would happen that a lady lost more than she could venture to confess to a husband or father. Her creditor was probably a fine gentleman, or she became indebted to some rich admirer for the means of discharging her liabilities. In either event, the result may be guessed. In the one case, the debt of honour was liquidated on the old principle of the law-merchant, according to which there was but one alternative to payment in purse. In the other, there was likewise but one mode in which the acknowledgment of obligation by a fine woman, would be acceptable to a man of the world. But it was at the proprietary houses above named, that the deepest play took place. For some time, White's 57 58 Ch. 14. Manners and education of women. MANNERS AND EDUCATION was the principal resort of fashionable gamesters; but Brookes's (originally Almack's) was afterwards the most frequented. The lowest stake there was fifty pounds; and it was a common event for a gentleman to lose or win ten thousand pounds in an evening. Sometimes a whole fortune was lost at a single sitting. Deep play is said to have reached a climax before the American war; but I find no trace of its decline for many years after that event. On the contrary, before the French Revolution, there were not more than four or five public tables established in defiance of the law; but at a subsequent period, more than thirty gaming-houses were open every night; and the foreign games of roulet and rouge et noir began to supersede faro and hazard.s The manners of women were a favourite theme of satirical writers for the first half, at least, of the eighteenth century. The great writers of the age of Anne exhibit the prominent foibles of the sex in those days; but neither the exquisite raillery of Addison, nor the polished couplets of Pope, nor the stern censure of Swift, had the slightest effect in producing a reformation. Ladies have in all times resented or despised the discipline of satirists; nor am I aware of any instance in which wit has obtained a victory over fashion. 4 WALPOLE'S Correspondence, passim. $ COLQUHOUN's Police of the Metropolis, p. 140. OF GENTLEWOMEN. Excepting in dress, which is the subject of Ch. 14. ever-varying caprice, the ladies who flourished in the early part of the reign of George the Third, differed little from the ladies who adorned the side-box, or sauntered in Spring-garden, in the days of Anne. The same rage for play, the same appetite for scandal, the same levity of carriage, and the same licentious freedom of conversation, were still prevalent. The education of women, in the former period, was either wholly neglected, or perversely misapplied. The daughter of a country gentleman was taught the duties of a cook; sometimes, also, if her parents were ambitious that she should shine in after-life as an accomplished hostess, she received lessons from a carving-master. The cardinal duty of hospitality, as she heard it inculcated at home, was for the lady to press the guests to eat to repletion; while it was the province of the master of the house to make them drink to excess. This, perhaps, was a fitting education for a young woman who was to become the helpmate of a rude landlord, who regarded a wife as an upper servant, and who thought the company of women an irksome restraint upon the freedom of social intercourse. To a woman of any education or refinement, an English manor-house, during at least the earlier years of the Hanoverian succession, must have been an intolerable home. The library of the LADY MARY WORTLEY'S Letters, edited by Lord Wharncliffe. 59 60 Ch. 14. Mode of life in STATE OF AGRICULTURE. Hall probably consisted of a book of receipts, the 'Justice of the Peace,' a volume of drinkingthe country. songs, a book of sports, and a tract or two against Popery. The country book-clubs, and the London circulating libraries, which convey the newest works to the extremities of Cornwall and Cumberland, within twenty-four hours after they have been laid on the tables of the club-houses in PallMall, had not yet been invented. The countrytown, unless it was one of the first class, had probably not a bookseller's shop, and was dependent for its literary supplies upon the occasional visits of a hawker or travelling agent of a large firm, who opened his pack, or set up a stall on a fair or market-day. The state of the roads, during a great part of the year, was such as to render visiting impracticable. The aspect of the country itself was for the most part dreary and desolate. Agriculture had made comparatively little progress. Patches of cultivation appeared only at intervals between the swamps and wastes which formed the pervading character of the landscape. Five-and-twenty Inclosure Acts only had passed up to the accession of George the Second. During the thirty-three years of that monarch, statutes of this description, which are notable proofs of the progress of civilisation, had increased by one hundred and eighty-two. From 1760 to 1774, upwards of seven hundred Inclosure Acts were obtained. In the same period, the various Highway Acts were consolidated; and four hun |