ers on scientific and philosophic topics far above her capacity; and the Ladies' Calling was a sort of sequel to the Whole Duty of Man, a treatise in morals which had run through many editions. Side by side with these pious volumes stood "Handsome Fielding's" trial for bigamy, Thomas D'Urfey's gross and dissolute songs and plays, and the New Atalantis, a collection of coarse and malicious scandals.1

7. A Fashion

It was no uncommon thing in the early able Garden. part of the eighteenth century for a painted coquette or a roguish old beau to profess a love for Nature and simple out-door life. No sooner, however, did they establish a country seat out of London than they began to make it as artificial as themselves. They laid out the paths in geometrical figures; they dug out artificial grottoes, and lined them with shells and bits of looking-glass that should glitter under the rays of artificial light; they even pruned the trees into cones, pyramids, globes, or fantastic shapes of men and animals.

8. Fashionable Amusements. The Theatre.

Dancing was the only active exercise in which the woman of fashion ever thought of indulging. She went through the mysteries of the masked ball, the complicated steps of the minuet or the country-dance (or, as we should say, square dance), bet with men at the gaming-table, saw Powell, practically the inventor of Punch and Judy,

1 As the author dared not speak of the victims of her slander by their real names, she used feigned ones. To enjoy the full thought of the book, therefore, Leonora got a key.

exhibit his puppet-show in Covent Garden, or visited the opera, which was just then doubly popular because of its novelty in London and its pretentious stage-settings.1 The theatre, however, was still the place where the stranger would turn for the fashionable display of the city. Here, at six o'clock, the world gathered to see and to be seen, to hear and to be heard. The upper gallery held the noisy artizans, mechanics, body-servants and apprentices of the town. "It is observed," says the Spectator, in one of its satires, "there has been a certain person in the upper gallery of the play-house, who, when he is pleased with anything that is acted upon the stage, expresses his approbation by a loud knock upon the benches or the wainscot, which may be heard over the whole theatre. This person is commonly known by the name of the 'trunk maker in the upper gallery.' Whether it be that the blow he gives on these occasions resembles that which is often heard in the shops of such artizans, or that he was supposed to have been a real trunk-maker who, after the finishing of his day's work, used to unbend his mind at these public diversions with his hammer in his hand, I cannot certainly tell. There are some I know who have been foolish enough to imagine it is a spirit which haunts the upper gallery and from time to time makes these strange noises; and the rather because he is observed to be louder than ordinary every time the ghost of Hamlet appears. Others have

1 For satire on opera and puppet-show, see the Spectator, Nos. 5, 13, 14, 18, 22, 29, and 31.

1

reported that it is a dumb man who has chosen this way of uttering himself when he is transported with anything he sees or hears. Others will have it to be the play-house thunderer that exerts himself after this manner in the upper gallery when he has nothing to do upon the roof. But having made it my business to get the best information I could in a matter of this moment, I find that the trunk-maker, as he is commonly called, is a large black man, whom nobody knows. He generally leans forward on a huge oaken plant with great attention to everything that passes on the stage. He is never seen to smile; but upon hearing anything that pleases him, he takes up his staff with both hands, and lays it upon the next piece of timber that stands in the way with exceeding vehemence. After which, he composes himself in his former posture, till such time as something new sets him at work."

9. The Pit.

3

The lower gallery held the plain and substantial citizens, and the pit the barristers, law students and young merchants of note on the Exchange. Well toward the front were the selfappointed critics, like the Templar, who were versed in plays, and whose judgment often determined the fate of a new venture. Fashionable lords and ladies, more conscious of their brilliant costumes than of the performance, hired chairs from the players and sat 1 Dark complexioned..

2 Cudgel.

See pages 56-57 in this volume.

on the stage. Not to be outdone in splendor, the players, whatever the performance, dressed in the latest fashions. Cato would wear a wig, and an ancient British maiden a modern head-dress. Fops in the audience, afraid they were not getting atten-. tion enough by their ogling and finery, picked quarrels and drew their swords. Sydney, in his England and the English in the Eighteenth Century, describes one such affray. "One evening, in 1720, while the celebrated actress, Mrs. Oldfield, was captivating an audience with her impersonation of the Scornful Lady, Beau Robert Fielding . . . insulted a barrister named Fulwood by pushing rudely against him. Fulwood loudly expostulating, the beau clapped his hand upon his sword. Fulwood drew his, and ran it into the body of his antagonist, who walked off exhibiting his bleeding wound to the audience in order to excite the pity of the fair sex. Greatly to his chagrin, the ladies laughed loudly at his misfortune."

10. Differences of Opinion.

The audience did not hesitate to make their opinions of the performance known, and on two important issues were apt to break up into distinct factions.

One

issue was politics. The popularity of the playwright, like that of the author and the clergyman, depended not a little on whether he was a Whig or Tory. The other issue was one of art and morals. Comedies written in the fashion which had prevailed before the days of the Spectator were scandalously immoral. A new school of playwrights, among them the authors

of that journal, was just coming into vogue. It was their purpose to clear the stage of immorality. Not all men of leisure were beaus. Many of them gave their time freely to the serious business of the state, to the encouragement of art, philosophy, science, and letters, or with more modest aims raised the tone of the society they were in by conducting themselves as honest English gentlemen. These men were ready to welcome clean and honest work. Unfortunately, the new school was not satisfied with trying to be pure in morals; it was stiff and pedantic, and wrote, not naturally, but according to arbitrary rules. The Distrest Mother,' which Sir Roger de Coverley is made to puff, was a play of the new school. The editors of the Spectator were determined to make the author popular; his enemies coined from his name, Ambrose Phillips, the epithet namby-pamby.

11. The Coffee House.

"If you would know our manner of living," writes a man of the period, "'tis thus: We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's levees find entertainment at them till eleven, or, as in Holland, go to tea-tables; about twelve the beau monde assembles in coffee or chocolate houses. If it

1 See pages 213-217, in this volume. When the play opens, Andromache, the widow of Hector, is a captive of the Greeks. To save her son Astyanax from death, she finds she must consent to marry her captor Pyrrhus. Immediately after the ceremony, Pyrrhus is slain at the instigation of Hermione, to whom he had long been betrothed. The assassin is a lover of Hermione, by name Orestes.