MDDM18: What, no Floggings?

[Dave Monroe]

"He and Dixon go Tavern-hopping and find
secret-society meetings in the back rooms of every
place they visit.  There is gambling, Madeira,
carryings-on.  Some invite them to join.  ome they do
join.  'What, no floggings?  No bare-breasted Acolytes
in Chains?  No ritual deflorations?  Drinking-games
with Madeira, that's it?'" (M&D, Ch. 29, p. 290)

>From Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth
Century (New York: Penguin, 1982), Ch. 4, "Keeping
Life Going," pp. 143-84 ...

   "English bonhomie gelled into the distinct form of
the club.  'Man is a sociable animal,' wrote Joseph
Addison, 'and we take all occasions and pretences of
forming ourselves into those little nocturnal
assemblies which are commonly known as clubs,'  These
ranged from august bodies such as the Whig Kit-Kat
Club and Dr. Johnson's Literary Club (Johnson deemed
the mark of a gentleman lay in being 'clubbable'), don
to the Ugly Clubs, the Tall Clubs, Farters' Clubs,
Surly Clubs, burial societies and tippling clubs of
ordinary men.  Lancashire weavers won fame for their
musical societies, and gardening clubs flourished.
   "Quinetssentially English was the Sublime Society
of Beefsteks, a convivial club dedicated to the eating
of beefsteaks, founded in 1735.  Anticipating the
Lunar Society of birmingham, the farmers of Aveley in
Essex set up a 'Lunatick Club' in 1763 to meet monthly
at full moon (riding home merry was safer then).  Some
were orgiastic, from the Hell-Fire Club of the rakes
down to a London club which the German Lichtenberg
described in 1770:

it consisted of servants, journeymen, and apprentices.
 On these evenings every member laid down fourpence,
for which he had music and a female gratis; anything
else had to be paid for separately.  Twentry of
thegirls were brought before Sir John Fielding; the
beauty of some of them aroused general admiration [Sir
John, alas, was blind].

"The rise of private aristocratic clubs, like White's
and Almack's, whose gaming tables were the sepulchres
of fortunes, tolled the knell of coffee houses. 
Fashionable 'speculative' freemasonry also took root,
combining the all-male cheer of th club, the
fraternity of trade, and non-denominational lay piety
(English lodges were not politically radical, as they
were on the Continent).  Secret signs and mumbo-jumbo
bound masons together--stability in unity...." (pp.
156-7)

And from Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood:
Freemasonry and th Transformation of the American
Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill: U of North
Carolina P, 1996), Ch. 1, "Newton and Necromancy: The
Creation of the Masonic Fraternity," pp. 9-49 ...

   "By the 1710s, participation in clubs was becoming
a regular part of social lfe among the upper leels of
English society.  The club had first become popular in
the later seventeenth century, simultaneous withthe
evolution of the term itself from a clump to a slect
group of men knotted together.  By theearly eighteenth
century, London hosted an estimated two thousand such
organizations, a circumstance often noted in the
Spectator.  'Man is said to be a Sociable Animal,'
wrote Addison in a 1711 number ....  Whenever 'a Sett
of Men find themselves agree in any Particular, tho'
never so trivial, they establish themselves into a
kind of Fraternity, and meet once or twice a Week,
upon the account of such a Fantastick Resemblance,' 
Th Spectator, fictively set in one such association,
altogether mentions nearly thirty groups ....  As
Addison suggested, the club could be used for a
variety of uses from dissipation and blasphemy, like
the Hell-Fire Club headed by the duke or Wharton, to
simple eating and drinking, like the Beefsteak Club. 
Addison thought the latter the most popular, as they
were 'the points wherein most men agree.'
   "The enormous popularity of the club formed opart
of a larger transformation.  Beginningin London,
English society experienced major changes that rshaped
modes of sociability.  The communal and kinship bonds
thathad hld together village life no longer proved
adequate to the world of increased social diveristy
and widened cultural horizons ....  The club, and its
stepchild Masonry, provided a means of recreating the
close ties of local frindship in a larger, more
cosmopolitian world." (pp. 29-30)

And see, of course, Joseph Addison, The Spectator ...

http://harvest.rutgers.edu/projects/spectator/text/march1711/no9.html

http://harvest.rutgers.edu/projects/spectator/text/may1711/no72.html

Okay, one more ...





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