VICTORIAN MORALS
243
twenty-five, was the squire's mistress. (He was married but separated
from his wife.) The young lady, very beautiful, was engaged in
drinking herself to death, while the squire, though "utterly depraved
and wicked" was "an excellent scholar, an admirable linguist, and
a great theologian." There were also two other "mad" visitors who
stayed six months. Tea, coffee, even water, were seldom seen in this
establishment: "Breakfast: leg of mutton, champagne, beer and
brandy. Lunch: shoulder of mutton, champagne, beer and brandy.
Dinner: every conceivable dish (Squire's income £7,OOO-a year),
champagne, beer and brandy." The squire'S wife, in her turn, was
bringing up their one daughter in vice and in linguistic depravity,
in order to spite the squire. At thirteen the daughter was "coarse" in
conversation and always drunk. At last the mistress died, after which
the "party" broke up. The squire himself later died of a "broken
heart."z And similar concatenations, minus the £7,000 a year and
the brandy and champagne, were abundantly evident in the lower
class.
As
for the middle class,
it
is by now quite clear that the later
nineteenth century and the early twentieth century had considerably
overestimated the nature and extent of its prudery and of its inno–
cence. In their private and personal lives there is considerable evi–
dence that the Victorians were much less inhibited and conventional
than we are, generally speaking, today. By this assertion I do not
refer only to the obvious facts of George Eliot's liaison with Lewes,
or Dickens's with Ellen Ternan, or the involved menage of John
Chapman or the
menage
a
quatre
of the Thornton Hunts and the
George Henry Lewes, or any of the extralegal sexual relations which
any Victorian worth his or her salt seemed to get himself or herself
involved with. I mean that the general
attitude
toward the private,
"unsanctified" relation, while in theory it might be rigorous, often
turned out to be in practice remarkably tolerant. Especially was there
tolerance among the Unitarians and Radicals. Thus when Harriet
Taylor, after the birth of her second child, felt depressed and uncer–
tain,
and uncongenial in her intellectual relation to her hearty, busi–
~an
husband, went to see her pastoral counselor, the Unitarian
William Johnson Fox, the minister, instead of advocating fasting and
prayer, determined that she should meet John Stuart Mill, an event
which took place and has since become a part of recorded history.
