MDDM18: A Back Room's Back Room

[Dave Monroe]

   "In one of these Ale Venues, somehwere between The
Indian Queen and The Duke of Gloucester, there proves
to be a Back Room's back room,-- for purposes of
univited inspection a pantry, but in fact an Arsenal
for various Mob activities." (M&D, Ch. 29, p. 290)

>From John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination:
English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: U
of Chicago P, 2000 [New York: Basic Books, 1997]), Ch.
1, "Changing Places: The Court and the City," pp. 3-55
...

   "Of course, some of the groups that met regularly
wanted a less indiscriminate environment, and tavern
proprietors and coffee-house owners were glad to
oblige.  While their ordinary customers mingled in a
common room, they offered smaller cahmbers to clubs
and private associations.  Like the less formal and
exclusive groups that met in coffee rooms, clubs were
places or gatherings of people for conversation.... 
Such societies retreated from the openness of the
coffee room and the tavern parlour." (p. 39)

   "But the most powerful club of the early eighteenth
century was the Kit-Cat ...." (p. 40)

   "The Kit-Cats gathered regularly to eat, drink and
toast their favourite beauties.  The libertine,
bibulous values of the Restoration courtier lived on
in the pornographic verses read at their meetings ...
and in the toasting and drinking bouts that
accompanied them....  In private the Kit-Cats
continued the extravagant traditions of the courtier
and rake, but their public patronage furthered an
urban ideal of cultured conversation and Whig
Politeness.  The former had its literary form in the
unpublished manuscript of a ribald poem or song, the
latter in the widely disseminated printyed prose of
the periodical essay.
   "The Kit-Cat Club exemplifies the shift that took
place in the early eighteenth century from court to
city, from raffish courtier to polite man-about-town."

(p. 41)

   "The traditions of the Kit-Cat lived on through the
eighteenth century.  They were to be found in such
clubs as the Dilettante Society, which combined an
interest in classical antiquities with an enthusiasm
for erotica ..." (p. 43)

   "The most influential club of the second half of
the eighteenth century was Dr Johnson's Literary Club
..." (p. 44)

   "While the Kit-Cat Club had been dominated by
aristocrats ... the Literary Club took its tenor from
members of the literary and artistic professions.  It
had wealthy and aristocratic members ... but they were
chosen for their talent.  The Kit-Cat's political
colouring was flamboyantly Whig, but the Literary Club
remained neutral." (p. 45)

   "All these clubs, societies, and less formal
circles fashioned themselves as communities of taste
and knowledge, helping to form opinion.... 
Coffee-house clubs and tavern associations were
involved in all the processes by which culture was
shaped ...." (p. 50)

Note as well, of course, the anachronistic overtones
of "Mob activities" here, despite its referring most
immediately to "the Possibility ... that all the Line
Commissioners, from both Provinces, being political
allies of the Proprietors, are natural and obvious
Effigy Fodder to a Mobility of Rent-Payers" (p. 292)
...

Main Entry: mob 
Pronunciation: 'mäb
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin mobile vulgus vacillating crowd
Date: 1688
1 : a large or disorderly crowd; especially : one bent
on riotous or destructive action
2 : the lower classes of a community : MASSES, RABBLE
3 chiefly Australian : a flock, drove, or herd of
animals
4 : a criminal set : GANG; especially often
capitalized : MAFIA
5 chiefly British : a group of people : CROWD
synonym see CROWD
- mob·bish  /'mä-bish/ adjective 

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

But on "Mob activities" in Pennsylvania at the time,
do see Edwin Danson, Drawing the Line: How Mason and
Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), Ch. 8, "The
Southernmost Point of the City," pp. 79-92, to which
I'll be turning when we get to Ch. 30 of Thomas
Pynchon, Mason & Dixon (New York: Henry Holt, 1997) ...

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