Michael Bailey (ed), Magic and Witchcraft – Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 2: The Early Modern and Modern Eras, Part 5: Magic and Occultism in the Modern West, no. 21.
Magic, Modernity, and the Middle Classes
Karl Bell
On Tuesday evening, 1st April 1890 the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society convened in the Guildhall, Portsmouth to listen to a lecture on witches and witchcraft delivered by Dr. David Nicholson. Perhaps given the intriguing topic, the lecture encouraged larger attendance than normal, although the audience was its usual stolid composition of the town’s social elite, including generals and captains from the military services, doctors and reverends. Nicholson sketched out the changing nature of witchcraft across four broad time periods, describing the modern witch as ‘an outcome of superstition, credulity, and ignorance,’ differing from previous eras in the fact that it had ‘no legal or ecclesiastical sanction.’ Despite this, and the ‘tremendous advances made during the last 150 years in physical science and the education of the people’ Nicholson declared it ‘an undoubted fact that the belief in witchcraft still existed in the present day’. Time did not permit him to develop this point but he concluded by advising his audience not to dwell on the supernatural for it had been ‘the wreck of many an otherwise excellent intellect.’[1]
Such counsel seemed to have fallen on deaf ears with regard to Arthur Conan Doyle, a local doctor, short-story writer and budding novelist, amateur enthusiast of the psychical and the supernatural, and one of the Society’s two honorary secretaries who was present that night. In response to Nicholson’s paper the creator of Sherlock Holmes went on to state that ‘Modern science, far from having destroyed the original idea underlying this topic, had gone a long way to confirm it.’ Citing ‘the investigations of Charcot and other eminent continental scientists into the phenomena of mesmerism and clairvoyance’, Doyle asserted that science seemed to provide evidence of what he termed preternatural rather than supernatural powers that had formerly been associated with witchcraft. Rather unhelpfully a fellow member, Mr H.S. Maclauchlan, added ‘we [are] all superstitious more or less, and we would be rather dull and unimaginative creatures if we were not.’ This encouraged the Society’s other Honorary Secretary, Dr J. Ward Cousins, to reject Doyle’s association between mesmerism, clairvoyance, and ‘what was called witchcraft’ on the grounds that while science was examining human’s extraordinary mental abilities ‘popular explanations of mesmerism and clairvoyance was absolute nonsense.’ For Cousins, older notions of witchcraft had declined in proportion to the advancement of science’s ‘heaven-born truths’ and it was only the latter which ‘the members of that Society would alone entertain.’[2]
This meeting and these exchanges encapsulate the key concerns of this chapter. Engaging with witchcraft as part of a learned discourse which articulated divisions between elite and popular thinking, it also hints at the heterodox nature of elitist responses to the magical imagination. Some promoted ‘modern’ psychical explanations for supposedly supernatural abilities where as others maintained a more blunt scientific dismissal that advanced a direct correlation between the development of modernity and the decline of magic. While historians are increasingly rejecting the reality of this over-simplistic and misconceived formulation it still has to be appreciated as a consciously-constructed ideological discourse which was influential in informing concepts of self and otherness.
The promotion of magical beliefs as both separate and inferior to modern rationalism had been an increasing feature of elite discourses since at least the seventeenth century, and magic’s marginalisation had been aided by its increasing association with perceived inferiors, be it class, gender, or race.[3]This was also informed by what GauriViswanathan has argued was a post-Reformation attempt by mainstream religion to distance itself from more heterodox forms of belief, constructing dichotomies of elite and popular expressions of religion by diminishing the latter into residual superstitious’ traits derived from a pre-Christian past. She also suggests similar urges existed within the developing secular state, claiming that as ‘an engine of demystification’ it could not comprehend beliefs that fell outside mainstream definitions of religion.[4]The role of ‘the state’ in this is questionable, but this chapter will certainly consider specific agencies who simultaneously marginalised heterodox popular beliefs while promoting the mythification of the modern. At the same time there was a change from the eighteenth-century elite’s conscious withdrawal from popular culture to the nineteenth century’s increasingly interventionist approaches. The initial justification for this was located in a desire to break customary traditions to ensure improved worker efficiency and to tame and rationalise popular cultures in line with bourgeois ‘norms’. In the second half of the century intervention was increasingly urged by fears about the degenerative environmental impact of the city on the body, mind and morality of its denizens, concerns laced with growing anxieties about racial and imperial decline by the fin de siècle.[5]
In contrast to subsequent chapters this one focuses on how the popular magical imagination was viewed and used by educated elites. Beginning with an examination of the way magical mentalities informed a sense of social and temporal ‘otherness’, this chapter then considers certain missionaries of modernity - schoolteachers, journalists, and folklorists - who incorporated such ideas into their efforts to encourage consent for a ‘progressive’ modernising vision.[6] Discussing and recording expressions of popular magical mentalities formed part of a politicised discourse in which some amongst the educated elites sought to shape their own identity as the vanguard of modernity.However, it is a key contention of this chapter that the need for a magical ‘other’ in the construction of that vision, and the uncertain outcome of such manipulations, created ambiguity which undermined their efforts. This was made all the more difficult by asignificant element within the middle classes who did not merely theorise about the magical imagination but actively participated in its practices as debunkers, believers, and inquiring seekers, particularly its more ‘modern’ manifestations in the second half of the nineteenth century. As such this chapter explores the flawed implementation of a magical/modern dichotomy that was more an ideological formulation than a reality.
Constructing the Modern ‘Self’ and ‘Otherness’
Christopher Lehrich has argued that magic possesses ‘an unusual power to manifest … division’ and it proved a highly adaptable tool for constructing ‘otherness’ in this period.[7] The eighteenth-century elite’s public disavowal of the reality of witchcraft had been a means of both disassociating themselves from, and defining themselves against the lower orders. In a series of sermons delivered in the early mid-1790s M.J. Naylor enhanced the sense of difference when he declared that those ‘who have moved only in a superior sphere, and whose minds have been cultivated by a more refined education, must undoubtedly deem it almost impossible for rational beings to believe and defend such absurdities’ but a ‘strong predilection for the marvellous … formed a distinguished and striking feature in every rude, uncultivated mind’.[8] Such comments defined how the educated should think of themselves as much as how they should perceive the lower classes.
These views were repeated throughout the nineteenth century, reiterating simplistic dichotomous notions of intelligence and ignorance, progress and backwardness, superiority and inferiority, which conveniently bifurcated into crudely perceived elite/plebeian divides. In 1827 J.S. Forsyth claimed that ‘superstition’ was ‘principally confined to the uneducated portion of the community’ who ‘even in the most enlightened periods, are not entirely exempt from belief in powers of sorcery and magic’.[9]Similarly, in 1853 S.S. Madders asserted that superstition lurked ‘in the darkest corners of the darkest alleys of poverty and ignorance’ in mid-century Norwich.[10]Propagated in works that addressed a predominantly educated readership, such notions reinforced and even helped justify an imagined social order. Viewing magical beliefs as symptomatic of inherent inferiority and weakness contributed to broader contemporary debates which tended to associate intellect and morality with social position. This found its most blatant expression amongst those members of Manchester’s bourgeois elite who believed that the physical separation of the town’s middle and working classes helped explain a perceived decline in proletarian morals and an attendant increase in urban social unrest.[11]
Closer to home, ‘superstition’ informed middle-class perceptions of their household employees, especially (female) domestic staff who were seen as particularly attracted to magical divinations. The efforts of itinerant fortune-tellers seeking magical trade at the kitchen door or servants’ entrance of prosperous households prompted middle-class fears of their homes being assailed by irrationalism and ignorance. Importantly, this anxiety stemmed not so much from the external nuisance as concern for the internal rot, from lower-class servants who were complicit in enabling magical ideas to penetrate the domestic domain. These servants could have a powerful impact on the minds of children in the middle-class household. George Goodwin was not unique in blaming nurses and servants for an early belief in magic or ghosts when he later condemned his ‘ignorant servant-maid’ for pointing out an old woman who possessed the “evil eye”, and thus inflicted him with her beliefs.[12]
In one unusual account this influence went beyond mere belief. In May 1800 the home of Mr Rood, a wealthy wine merchant who lived in the High Street, Old Portsmouth was disrupted by apparent poltergeist activities. On the morning of Sunday 4th May the bells used to summon servants within his house started ringing ‘without any perceptible agency whatever’ and continued every fifteen minute throughout the rest of the day. After falling silent for the night, the commotion began again at nine o’clock the next morning, this time louder and ‘with much greater violence’ than before. Mr Rood, perturbed by the seeming loss of control over his own household, took the wires from the bells and muffled the clappers. Yet the cacophony continued, becoming so violent that the bracket upon which one bell had hung was pulled ‘at least half a foot’ out of the wall and ‘would have required more strength than any inhabitant of the place is said to possess’. Suspicion finally fell upon one of his servants as ‘the cause of this supernatural event’. The girl had a reputation. When previously employed by Mr Binstead, a shoe-maker, in Lombard Street, his residence had been filled with ‘the most tremendous noises’, as if the building was ‘being wrenched … from [its] foundations’. She had been described as often appearing to be ‘combating with Spectres or Demons’ which tipped her into ‘the greatest state of terrifick agitation’. Binstead had discharged her from his service and two days after the disturbance in Rood’s household a local newspaper recorded that he had done the same despite her having been a good servant. The extent to which prejudices against the girl’s supposed supernatural powers were located in her class, gender, or a powerful combination of both obviously remains open to interpretation.[13]
The stereotype of the superstitious servant enabled employers to re-assert a sense of separation within the shared domestic sphere.[14] Domestic servants were a necessity for the maintenance of both household and public status, but the nature of their work required them to traverse the boundaries between public and private, being of the household but not of the family. This could have potential risks for the reputation of their employer. On 28th May 1887 Dr Royston Pike was horrified to find that not only had his home in Elm Grove, Southsea, been associated with one of the numerous local cases of fortune telling but that its mention in the Hampshire Telegraph had been picked up by the metropolitan press too. In an effort to clear his household’s association with the taint of magical beliefs Pike immediately sent a letter to the editor of the Hampshire Telegraph, requesting that the paper should contradict the fortune-teller’s statement that he had paid her twenty pounds for her services. Pike’s printed statement declared ‘It is absolutely false, as I have never, in any way, encouraged such a vile system of imposition.’[15] The servants who had supposedly granted the fortune teller access were not mentioned, though, as we will see next chapter, they were most likely the origin of this public embarrassment.
These impressions of the lower classes had wider political implications, particularly after the 1832 Reform Act. With the working class having to pursue their campaign for widening the franchise alone the issue of popular ‘superstitions’ became entangled in discourses about the perceived ‘dangers’ of expanding democratic participation. Such ideas seemed to have been particularly forthcoming during the 1850s. In The Education of the People (1858) James Augustus St. John envisioned the massed gathering of ‘the ignorant’ in one place, pessimistically declaring that such a sight would drive home ‘the prodigious difficulty of enlightening their minds’. Equating ignorance with the lower classes he evoked a stereotypically squalid sketch of men, women, and children ‘in rags, ignorant, hungry, and discontented’, remorselessly labouring all day before they ‘sink into wretched hovels to sleep, or repair to some den of low and degrading debauchery … brutalising themselves still more completely.’ He declared their minds to be ‘inhabited by monstrous forms of superstition’ for ‘civilisation does very little towards extirpating such chimeras from the imagination’.[16]
‘Civilisation’ was a key term in this debate, fusing magical beliefs with both class and racial prejudices. On 7th April 1857, The Times printed a report from a Norfolk magistrate about a local case of witchcraft. Clearly aware of the newspaper’s metropolitan readership, he reported that the supposed beliefs of ‘savages’ were also ‘true of my own neighbourhood’. These associations were reiterated in a speech made before ‘a metropolitan constituency’ later that month by a Major Reed. Using the Times’‘frightful exposure’ of witchcraft beliefs to emphasise ‘the abyss of ignorance upon which we were standing’, he declared that London contained ‘heathens as degraded as could be found in any nation in the world’. Reed went on to argue that while New Zealand’s Maoris were considered to be a ‘“poor benighted savage” … he was in intellect and the quickness of his faculties far superior to our own countrymen.’ Linking this to calls for democratic representation by the working classes Reed expressed the basic fear of the social elites, namely that it was this superstitious mass who ‘by the organic changes alluded to, would be entrusted with the choice of their representatives in Parliament’.[17]Such opinions suggest that the seeming perpetuation of popular magical mentalities was apparent justification for disbarring the masses from the democratic parliamentary process.[18]
This rhetoric flies in the face of a historiographical instinct that has been rightly suspicious of thinking in terms of homogenous social identities. The middle classes were obviously riven by internal divisions, particularly religious, political, and regional affiliations but also their views on the supernatural.[19] For all the attempts to construct a rhetoric of rational self and magical other the middle classes no more shared a consensual view of supernatural beliefs and practices than those lower down the social stratum. As William Jones observed in 1880, ‘It is amazing how common are the private superstitions entertained by many who smile at the superstitions of the ignorant’.[20] Examples of middle-class‘superstitions’ were not widely recorded or publicised. While this self-censorship can be read as an indicator of the successful internalising of a magic/modern dichotomy among the diverse ranks of the middle classes sufficient evidence exists to illustrate that they were equally prone to superstitious behaviours, reminding us that interpretations of ‘popular’ magical mentalities have to allow for a degree of porosity that encompass those beyond the lower classes.[21] In 1836 Mr Bignold, one of the proprietors of the Norwich Yarn Company, deposited coins into the foundation hole of its new factory, demonstrating superstitious impulse when confronted with the uncertainty of financial ventures.[22] A contributor to Manchester Notes and Queries told of a schoolmaster of his acquaintance who wore ‘a gold chain round his neck as a charm against sore-throat’, and who insisted on being at home at the start of the new year for fear that ‘if he omitted to do so some calamity would take place in his family’.[23]
Regardless of these realities, a simplified elite/plebeian divide resonate with aspects of DrorWahrman’s concept of the middle class as a product of an expedient political discourse rather than a socio-economic actuality, with a ‘middle-class’ rhetoric serving to construct an imagined social contingent in need of inclusion in parliamentary reform by the 1830s.[24] Although the second half of the century was marked by the growing plurality of the middle classes it also saw them increasingly aligning with existing elites as they came to dominate local urban institutions and politics.[25] Given this, and despite the reality of a variegated and complex class system, educated views of the magical imagination helped encourage a discourse founded on a more simplistic, dichotomous view of society. Eschewing the terminology and socio-economic implications of ‘middle’ and ‘labouring’ classes, and placing little emphasis on differences of wealth and property, it promoted more encompassing cultural aspects such as education, morality, intellect, and ‘civilised’ behaviours. These qualities helped define a crude opposition between a ‘right-thinking, morally upright’ element in English society and an ignorant, ‘superstitious’ other.[26]