Anti-Morality
Ashe, Geoffrey. The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality. Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2000.
This book was first published in 1974 but I am reading a reprint from 2000. I think it’s curious that Sutton decided to reprint this book (and perhaps disconcerting given my dissertation project), but so far it’s a good book and I’m quite enjoying it.
Ashe begins the first chapter with the motto “do what you will,” tracing this phrase (at least in its most evocative use) to Rabelais’ Gargantua. This was the motto of Theleme, a fictive abbey in Gargantua that is the opposite of all other abbeys; friars and nuns live together, they make money, wear outrageous clothes and generally do everything the opposite of what one would expect from an ordinary monastery. Ashe argues that while Gargantua is a subversive text in many ways, Theleme is the one aspect of the book in which we see a theory of anti-morality realized and put into practice. Rabelais implies that rather than strictly following the edicts of a church, law or some other institution an enlightened common sense (that is, a sort of libertine naturalism) will benefit humans most.
Of particular interest in this first chapter was the following passage:
Anti-moralists tend to believe in privilege and selection. They seldom extend their ideas to mankind at large. But while their philosophy is not for all, it is certainly not solitary either. Their minds run on exclusive clubs, on coteries and enclosures. The phrase ‘Castles in Hell’ is apt, even when the Heaven-defying revolt is as idyllic and Aucassin-like as it is at Theleme. Rabelais’s monks and nuns are disaffiliated. They have opted out of the socially sanctioned religion and ethic… but ot form a society of their own, in its own place.
While Ashe doesn’t push the spatial aspect of the anti-moralist’s society too hard, one can see that an enclosed space of privilege is very important to the kind of freedom that these clubs are after, and vice versa.
In Chapter 4 Ashe describes a loose band of London vagrants called the Mohocks who took their name from the Mohawk Indians in North America and terrorized the streets of London for several years (rumor was that the Whigs were complicit in their terror as part of their effort to take office back from the Tories). There is also a digression in which Ashe addresses the presence of women in these clubs. He notes that it was sparse, though one club called the Kit-Cat Club did allow a few women members, though mostly to ogle and harass them (Lady Mary Wortley Montague was one such member).
Near the end of the chapter Ashe also gives a succinct and interesting history of how these clubs tended to evolve quite organically out of the clientele of certain taverns and coffee-houses:
Toward 1700 each coffee-house and chocolate-house had begun to attract a recognized clientele, often sharing a common interest. There were Whig and Tory coffee-houses, poets’ coffee-houses and so on. The regulars took to using the place for reading and writing, exchanging news and holding meetings and parties. A practice grew up of pooling or ‘clubbing’ expenses. Presently a point might be reached where a group of regulars had a secretary, a dues-paying membership, its own room, eventually separate quarters—and a true club was born. This was how White’s originated, a very early instance founded before the turn of the century. Foreigners were impressed by the English gentleman’s club-ability, which was hard to parallel abroad.
In Chapter Five Ashe outlines the origins of the first Hell-Fire Club and its founder, Philip, Duke of Wharton. Wharton was a notorious libertine and well-known in his day. Ashe paints Wharton as a perennial agitator, alternately a Jacobite, Whig and total political radical. Wharton led a rough life, eventually becoming exiled from England after he professed his allegiance to the Pretender and spending the remainder of his life bumping around on the Continent with little or no money.
What, exactly, occurred at the Hell-Fire Club meeting is obscure. Clearly there were orgies involved, but Ashe insists that orgies wouldn’t have been terribly uncommon among early-18c aristocrats. Members also participated in rituals that mocked sacred aspects of Christianity; they would address each other by sacriligeous names such as Lord Sodom and Lady Gamorrah and would invent various other rituals that would profane Christianity. Ashe argues that Wharton and his fellow members picked up this interest in the occult from their travels on the Continent during their respective Grand Tours. While Wharton’s Hell-Fire Club was short-lived, Ashe argues that the tradition of Hell-Fire clubs continued throughout the century, most notably in Ireland where these forms of semi-organized rebellion were not so easily squashed.
Tags:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: the_post_keytags() in /usr/home/deepfry/public_html/18cblog/wp-content/themes/desert_theme/index.php on line 22