The Story of Britain by Roy Strong

Author:Roy Strong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

48

The Pursuit of Happiness

Virtually everyone benefited from being a citizen of the richest country, from the grandest duke to the humblest labourer. The wealth pouring in had to be spent, and everywhere we look today we can see evidence of how that was done. In the country elegant houses arose, surrounded by gardens and parkland. In the towns stately squares and ordered terraces sprang up, as well as public buildings such as theatres and assembly rooms. Evidence of this wealth can also be studied in the abundance of surviving artefacts, far more than from the previous century: furniture and textiles, silver and porcelain, musical instruments and illustrated books. These form tangible evidence of a huge social revolution, for such things spoke not only of a desire for comfort but acted as status symbols for a burgeoning middle class, one which aped its betters and which subscribed to the aristocratic code of politeness as the element binding human behaviour. It was not just evidence of the country’s first consumer society, but in addition, an expression of something else that was novel: leisure.

But it was leisure of a kind from which a tinge of guilt was never far absent. All forms of immorality, decadence and dissipation were, of course, firmly condemned. Money gained through hard work and enterprise should at least be seen to be spent on self-improvement. Happiness, which in the previous century had been sought primarily by man in his encounter with God and might be gained in heaven, was now found to embrace the study and the enjoyment of His creation on earth. The puritan ethic that had haunted Stuart England gave way to a joyous delight in social gatherings in coffee houses and clubs, at balls and concerts, lectures and theatres or race meetings. This strong mutual delight in human company was not confined to the world outside but also embraced the one within. It animated the homes of the wealthy and better-off, where the husband’s stern patriarchal attitude towards his wife and children was replaced by a celebration of the joys of family life captured in a new form of picture-making, the conversation piece. In such compositions the whole family across two, and sometimes three, generations come together, engaged in different aspects of the pursuit of happiness, reading, embroidering, music-making, sketching, riding, flying a kite or fishing.

All of this reflected another change. People were meeting each other across a far wider spectrum of the social hierarchy than ever before, something that happened first in London, where a season developed during the residence of the court and the sitting of Parliament, which had become annual. Members of the House of Lords and the Commons needed to be in the capital for several months of the year. They acquired town houses and brought their families with them. As a result a whole new pattern of social life emerged which engendered an abundance of new meeting places, from walking in the Mall to attending theatres.

Outside London the same thing was

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