The Death of Christian Britain

— Men in Discourse and Narrative 1800–1950 —
A man’s time had to be used to personal profit; a man had to increase
‘the capacity of doing’, to be in an ‘habitual course of exertion’ to experience
‘the majesty of industry’. The wealthy man was an idle man: ‘The
gentlemen must think of it. They must be up and doing.’ Laziness was as
much a characteristic of the poor man as of the wealthy. In a short story
of 1832, Miles Atherton was married with two children and was so given
to idleness that he sold his son into ‘slavery’ with a chimney sweep. 122
Talking with friends was explored as a potential source of immorality. Men
talking with men produced ‘vices of conversation’, where discussion of
everything from philosophy to general dialogue could lose moral worth
through the lubrication of alcohol which men craved. 123 The abuse of
alcohol was one area where the ‘secular’ improving magazine often
outshone the religious journals in fervency. Indeed, the central theme of
many improving magazines created in the 1830s and 1840s appeared to be
support of the total abstinence movement. They endlessly cited the ‘moral
statistics’ of drinking in Britain, especially in the cities; in 1853, according
to Chamber’s, there were in Scotland 149 people to every dram shop, 981
people to every baker, 1,067 to every butcher and 2,281 to every bookseller.
124 Equally fascinating to its readership seems to have been the
statistics of crime and punishment. Where the popular ‘unimproving’ press
dwelt on crime, the improving press dwelt on punishment: the numbers in
prison, the types of punishment, and the extent of ratepayer’s burden for
maintaining police forces. 125
The popular press was just as much interested as the evangelical journals
in exploring masculinity and morality. One article in 1833 on ‘The
Domestic Man’ described effeminate men who wore petticoats long after
they had left the nursery, who helped with domestic chores and did the
cooking; it was literally an exploration of a caricature, and arrived at no
particular judgement. 126 Improving magazines quite openly fostered a feminisation
of virtuous sensibilities in men. Chamber’s Journal addressed itself
to the ‘whole moral and intellectual nature of its readers’, impressing ‘sound
moral lessons and elevating human character as far as possible above its
grosser elements’ of animalism and ‘low enjoyments of all kinds’, whilst
cultivating ‘a taste for more refined and innocent pleasures, especially for
those of polite literature’. 127 In so doing, manly virtues of muscular quality
were constantly being mediated. A long article on ‘Courage’ in 1836
explored the various forms this evident virtue could take, and argued that
its supreme form was not a physical but a moral entity: ‘It has been by
the exhibition of strong moral courage that almost all the social improvements
we know have been affected.’ 128
From the 1840s, secular magazines developed different literary genres as
gender-specific methods to deal with religiosity. The use of fiction in family
magazines was primarily aimed at the female readership, but melodrama
was used from the 1860s to upgrade the appeal to men. By 1860, Chamber’s
111