A CHILD OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. SHE is a type of what was in those days sufficiently unique-a child regarded as a responsible being by parents whose own obligations to the rising generation were engraven on heart and mind-and William Wogan, in first setting down, and then leaving for us, these records1 of his little daughter's upbringing, written with the intimacy, and again with the freedom, of the diarist who does not expect to be overlooked, has done a service to his own generation and time. For it is noticeable how certainly the position of children in any social system is its touchstone, the test of its true understanding of human nature-which surely alone means progress? It takes time for us to learn how to begin at the beginning, to start in the arena, and not from the top benches. And so such little contemporary details of child-life as these of my Kitty Wogan take hold of sympathy and interest, first, because they may well inspire a suspicion as to just how far our ways are really an advance-we think them very considerably so-upon those of two centuries ago in all that concerns the care of the young lives coming on; and secondly, because they carry with them an undercurrent of meaning-a 'lead,' so to speak, into that picturesque region of history which is written by manners and customs rather than facts-and so vitalise a good deal that seems dead and buried in a bygone period. In every age of renaissance there must be some strong characteristic peculiarly its own, stamping it with the individuality of a transition period, whether this be in manners, literature, or religion. If our century belongs to the humanitarian, at once democratic and freethinking, the Augustan was pre-eminently the age of class distinctions, racial prejudices, hard-and-fast lines drawn between set and set directly it became question of thought, taste, and the conception of life's uses. This because it was transition, all manner of diverse influences warring for the mastery, and people instinctively withdrawing into their own little shells the more by way of protest. The taint of the Court which Grammont describes struck up alongside of the 'nonjuring' element. In high places the code of morals sat loose: never had society been more vicious, politics more corrupt, religion more farcical, fashion more shamelessly dissolute. But the 'cooled Puritan spirit' lay in wait. Into manners and literature there was sweeping a purifying tide of contrary impulse, serious and self-disciplined, independent alike of the 'slime at the bottom or scum on the surface' of the stream; for, as Gay in his famous 'Beggar's Epilogue,' Molièresque in cynical appraisement of contemporary morality, puts it, 'there is such a similitude of manners in high and low life that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine gentleman imitates the gentleman of the road, or the gentleman of the road the fine gentleman!' And the town roared with delight over this by way of proving its truth. English national life was, as usual, working out its own salvation in the great middle classes, and though by birth, circumstance, and marriage-his wife came of the ChesterfieldsMr. William Wogan was able to claim place where he pleased, it was to this section by tradition of character, culture, and creed, that he chose to belong, a fair representative in private life of that growing school of thought and conduct to which the eighteenth century owes its credit and its charm. The Wogans need little 'placing,' for, like most great families, they have put their own names for themselves upon the roll of history. All Pembrokeshire folk, all Irishmen, and all Jacobites, at any rate, may claim them as household words. Originally from Florence, where it is said (but this in ages too remote to identify) they were denominated Ughi, as Englishmen they crop up first in Pembrokeshire, to all intents and purposes indigenous to the soil. From the middle of the eleventh century, however, Ireland claimed them, and henceforward they were to be first and foremost Irishmen. So Here in 1295 is Sir John Wogan, Justiciar and First Governor of Ireland, with a salary from King Richard of 500l. a year (on which to maintain twenty men-at-arms as retinue); here in 1446 is his descendant, Richard, Lord Grand Chancellor. important a part did an Edward play in the Civil Wars as to win the distinction of being one of the only two Irish gentlemen mentioned by Clarendon, a likely forbear to the more celebrated Charles of Rathcoffy (they were all generically styled Wogans of Rathcoffy, though their estates were numerous enough), nephew to the Duke of Tyrconnell, who, with the Missets, carried off the Sobieski Princess from her convent, in the teeth of Austria, providing a bride as the smallest thing he could do to serve his exiled King, James 'the Chevalier.' It was probably for this he received, in 1719, the 'citizenship' of Rome, and perhaps owed to it his friendship with Cardinal Gualterio. A race they were of gallant and adventurous men, full of the dash and pluck and courtier graces no true Irishman is without, with the romantic ardour born, perhaps, of that remote touch of Southern blood, and a record behind of loyal and honourable work honourably performed, the best guarantee for good conduct to come. Miss Kitty, who was really rather a naughty child, seems to have absorbed all the lighter qualities from her ancestry, leaving to her father the stern residuum. He apparently forsook Ireland for London, settling down in Spring Gardens, Westminster. The region had associations for him. A King's scholar, and captain of Westminster School in 1699, he must have sufficiently impressed his world with his talent and discretion, since we find him, when in his twentieth year, commissioned by Bishop Spratt, the then Dean of Westminster, and the Earl of Rochester, to transcribe the first four or five books from the original MSS. of Lord Clarendon's 'History,' to be used for the first printed edition. The correspondence on this subject is not without interest. Elected in the following year, 1700, to Trinity College, Cambridge, he appears to have taken to literature on his own account. Some works of his are in print; but since few people share Charles Lamb's predilection for the 'printed page,' more interest attaches to such unpublished extant MSS. as his 'Essay in Defence of Church Music,' a production full of the sentiment of the moral philosopher, devoid of fact and any sense of logic, and an 'Ode on the Nativity,' whose rhythm is, unfortunately, not equal to its piety. Piety was the mainspring of this excellent man's life. Here is the first entry on the birthday of his child. Kitty was the only one, born February 21, 1719 :— A Prayer for yo wel Educating of ye Child. To thy care o God I recommend my child. Preserve her from all Evell, ghostly & bodely & Let no misfortune befall her from ye negligence unskilfulness or indiscretion of those who are about her. Support and strengthen her under ye pain and anguish of Teethcutting or other sufferings incident to her tender age. A spoonful of black-cherry water in which two, three, or four drops of spirits of hartshorn had been mixed was the famous child's teething-remedy of the period. But now especially I recommend to thy constant & paternall care, ye health and safety of her better part. What will Life or bodily health avail if ye mind remain corrupted & unsound? What will it profit her to attain to Wit or Beauty, prosperity or wealth, if at last She lose her Soul? And even already ye Symptoms of vice & originall Corruption do appear. Before ye use of speech or Reason, how Early did ye seeds of vice begin to bud. How soon did Nature betray her Disorder! Was not such a man and father typical of a very different school from that of, say, the Chesterfield Oracle? Is it not only fair to his century to quote him? 'Have manners, good breeding, and the graces,' said the Chesterfieldian code. Very little else was considered necessary for girls destined for society town life at any time of that century, least of all its beginning. 'I have been for days confined to my chamber by a cold, which has already kept me from three plays, nine sales, five shows, and four card-tables, and put me seventeen visits behind, for consider, Mr. Rambler, I go to bed late, and therefore cannot rise early. As soon as I am up I dress for the gardens; then walk in the Park; then always go to some sale or show, or some entertainment at the little theatre; then must pay my visits, then walk in the Park, then hurry to the play, and from thence to the card-table.' This from a girl fifteen years old. Card-playing, amongst what we should consider mere babies, was all the vogue; women are all naturally gamblers in the eighteenth century they had the practical opportunities from their infancy. From the Connoisseur' we learn that the education of girls consisted 'in a knowledge of intriguing, dress, and (I may add also) the card-table. In the first of these particulars they constantly receive lessons from the milliners, mantua-makers, and maidservants. When a young lady has got Hoyle's 'Rules' by heart, and is qualified to play a rubber at a Sunday rout, it is a sure mark of her having had a good education!' Of education, as we understand it, girls had none, discounting even the natural venom of that despiser of the sex, Swift, who, writing to a young newly married lady, takes it for granted she can neither read nor spell, and urges her to learn, since she need not be at all afraid of being stigmatised as 'learned '-there is no chance of her ever rivalling the perfection of a schoolboy! 'Culture' began and ended with card-playing, face-painting (freely indulged in by girls of twelve and fourteen), and dancing. You may find in the 'Dancing Master,' already in its fifteenth edition by 1713, no less than 358 different figures for country dances alone. Children of the same class, but brought up in the country, were, on the other hand, to be essentially and nothing but housekeepers. The gentlewoman of the day spent her time 'not in reading of fights and battels of dwarfs and giants, but in working out receipts for broths, possets, caudles, and surfeit waters...' as the Aunt in Steele's 'Tender Husband' puts it. An alternative perhaps to be advised if such was the only literature at her command. Children qua children had no place at all. Continental opinion held English parents to be peculiarly unkind, bringing up their children to be complete strangers to them; their letters, in an age when new terms of endearment were being coined every day, frigid to austerity; 'manners,' as Locke tells us, all important. Parental authority was strained to the utmost; you will find it brought out clearly enough in the novels of manners to which the period gave birth. 'What!' says the Captain in 'Evelina' to his daughter Molly; be so impertinent as to have a taste of your own before my face!' Miss Burney, representative as she is of a later school than Addison's, does but sum up the traditions of her elders. So far as the consideration of them as creatures mentally and morally worth training went, one might almost say that for the most part children of the household counted in with the domestics-Voilà une belle âme pour être immortelle,' as was said by the great lady of her waiting-woman; a sentiment only outrivalled, perhaps, by that yet more famous answer of the Duchesse de -, who, when remonstrated with for allowing her footman to assist at her toilette, replied naïvely, 'Call that a man!' But meanwhile Steele was giving excellent advice to mothers in his 'Ladies' Library,' winding up his treatise with seventy. choice maxims for the training of the young. One can almost see Mrs. Wogan poring over and getting it all by heart as we follow Miss Kitty's fortunes. Published in 1714, she had ample time to imbibe its teaching before her daughter required its aid. |