Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Middling work and play
- 2 Family time
- 3 Hospitable homes
- 4 Crowded stages
- 5 Morality issues
- 6 Risk and the middling sort
- 7 Miscreant sons and the middling sort
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Card games played (or avoided) by the middling sort
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Middling work and play
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Middling work and play
- 2 Family time
- 3 Hospitable homes
- 4 Crowded stages
- 5 Morality issues
- 6 Risk and the middling sort
- 7 Miscreant sons and the middling sort
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Card games played (or avoided) by the middling sort
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The mind of man naturally requires employment, and that employment is most agreeable, which engages, without fatiguing the attention. There is nothing for this purpose of such universal attraction as cards.… The alternate changes in play, the hope upon the taking up a new hand, and the triumph of getting a game, made more compleat from the fear of losing it, keep the mind in a perpetual agitation, which is … too agreeable to be quitted for any other consideration.
I cannot allow any pleasures to be innocent, when they turn away either the body or the mind of a Tradesman from … the application both of his hands and head to his business; those pleasures and diversions may be innocent in themselves, which are not so to him.
AT first glance, the middle classes might be thought of as an unlikely group to indulge in play for money. In an age of unlimited business and personal liability, of uncertain commerce, and of new and vulnerable investment markets, their fortunes and possessions were unprotected and ruin was always a possibility. Time was a precious commodity in itself and not lightly given over to frivolous pursuits. Even in such circumstances, however, people found ways to enjoy their favourite pastimes. The middling sort were, in fact, uniquely qualified to play prudently, relying on the habits and characteristics of their widely varying trades and professions to construct a safety net that allowed them to combine prosperity with play within limits.
The Complete Tradesman: work ethic and professionalism
Historians agree that the eighteenth century's ‘middling classes’ did not constitute a self-conscious ‘middle class’; that sort of coalescence did not occur in England until the nineteenth century. However, merchants, skilled tradesmen, and professionals did have a distinct sense of common purpose, the roots of which extended back to the guilds of the Middle Ages. The eighteenth-century business ideal owed a great deal to the collective honour and fair dealing of the guild structure, while borrowing standards of sober industry and honesty from religious traditions. These values made trust and its financial counterpart, credit, possible, which in turn fostered the smooth function of cooperative commercial networks. Such shared standards, drummed into middling children from an early age, fostered a sense of collective identity, which was strengthened by a shared social network and common amusements.
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- Information
- A Sixpence at WhistGaming and the English Middle Classes 1680–1830, pp. 21 - 36Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015