Schemes of moral and social reform might be described as utopian. Individuals, institutions and theories of political and economic improvement all strove to make people and the society in which they lived better, progressive, perhaps even perfect or ideal. For many individuals and institutions discussed in previous chapters, the promulgation of Christianity was seen to be the basis on which moral and social lives should be grounded. Creating an ideal, utopian state or nation was for many educators, politicians and philanthropists and, indeed, church leaders, such as Malcolm Quin, a driving force behind their moral and social-building schemes. Unlike other chapters in this book, this one analyses a particularly small community and a very modest musical repertory. But Quin was part of a much larger movement that included the adoption of Christian or pseudo-Christian teachings in moral discourses and the striving for a better social and communal life.

It has been remarked that the nineteenth century was ‘the most utopian century of modern times’. The Marquis de Condorcet (1743–94), Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and Karl Marx (1818–83) are just some of those whose social and political efforts were aimed at rebuilding, or devising anew, social organisation and belief. Auguste Comte (1795–1857) was another inspiration for utopian causes. The influence of Comte in many countries around the world facilitated the establishment of many organisations, including some that described themselves as churches, to help people to pursue a freer range of worship or lifestyle. While some Utopian societies were all-embracing and required living in compounds or strictly regulated communities, the various positivist churches and chapels were established as places of worship only, so arguably could only loosely be described as utopian movements, though the theology of their hymns, discussed in this chapter, may suggest otherwise. However, adopting Comte's positivism to various degrees, positivist communities sprang up in many parts of the world, especially in Britain. An example of such a community was Malcolm Quin's positivist church, which sought to break free from Catholicism in pursuing a new moral and ethical sensibility, in which music was to play a central role.

In his book Morality, first published in 1878, James Platt offered the following guidance to his readers:

Platt's plan for moral improvement is placed firmly on the individual; however, the cultivation of a moral life is not undertaken alone. Institutions such as publishers, adult education schools, charities, social reformers and religious organisations all have a part to play in shaping the moral life of the individual and, to varying degrees, music plays a role in these personal and collective efforts.

The aim of this book is to show how music-making – for example, singing, playing a musical instrument and dancing – was utilised to promote morality and social reform in the long nineteenth century. While the social, political, intellectual, economic and musical history of the nineteenth century are well-trodden areas of research, the study of morality and its relationship to schemes of social reform – expressed through music-making – have been less well explored. This book will show that a large range of musical activities was used to promote personal and collective moralities. Underpinning these activities were values such as the cultivation of masculinity, the propagation of Christianity, the advancement of the British Empire, and the provision of pleasure and pursuit of happiness through engagement with the arts. Yet not all these ideals were equally valued. During this period, morality and social sobriety, gender stereotypes, the place of organised religion in civil life and the ethics of nation-building were contested as moral programmes and social reform agendas criss-crossed a myriad of musical and other agendas.

The book focuses on Britain with reference to the US and occasionally Australia, though it is not, by strict definition, a comparative study. There are references in the book to related moral and social issues of the day in Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and Sweden, though these locales make only minor appearances.

When I began research for this book, I was concerned primarily with scouting out literature on topics such as virtue (and vice) and morality (and immorality), and the misguided notion that, given the essentially British focus of the book, I would discover significant gems in the writings of and about Queen Victoria. The first few months of research led to a significant amount of exasperation because the road to Queen Victoria led virtually nowhere, and the writers of religious tracts and books were usually so angry and spiteful they presented as unappealing characters with which to work. Yet, I knew that somewhere there had to be a much more interesting pile of primary sources on which to base this book.

Over time, a more complex and absorbing narrative about morality surfaced in the broader range of material I tracked down in libraries and archives. Away from the writing of pedants and doomsayers was a tranche of literature on morality – and related topics. It was these related topics that caught my attention: ethics; civility; utilitarianism; nation-building and empire; and moral discourses linked to aesthetic pleasure and psychological wellbeing. These are the main, broad, topics that I pursued and that have informed this project. It is not a book about pitting sacred morality against secular morality or privileging the voices and theories of the great moral philosophers. Rather, it is aimed at capturing a wide-ranging picture of everyday or lived morality in the nineteenth century.

What I have attempted to illustrate in this book is that in the nineteenth century the cultivation of good character, for both the individual and social groups, invoked language and action involving a process of emancipation, or ‘moral management’ (a term I have borrowed from Rosemary Golding), in turning people away from vulgarity, illness or bad manners to refinement, health and good manners. Indeed, I have shown that authors, educators and philanthropists promoted a life that raised a person from barbarism, ignorance, vice and bad taste, relieving a person of their ‘animal propensity’ and ‘torpid indolence’. These same writers wrote extensively on the need to cultivate the mind, through reasoned and rational recreation. They wrote of the virtue of attaining wisdom and knowledge. They advocated the pursuit of noble and Christian virtues and sincerely strove to enable women, men and children to be happy and charitable.

The pursuit of morality, the fashioning of good character and the formation of civil society were not merely the domain of educational institutions such as the mechanics’ institutes or powerful men such as economists and politicians. Women ran effective campaigns and established significant national enterprises that harnessed the interest of hundreds of thousands of people in Britain and beyond. Their altruism (arguably misplaced, at times), coupled with financial and other backing from patrons and supporters, mobilised a swathe of activities for the moral good of the individual and the social wellbeing of the wider community. Through various philanthropic enterprises they provided an infrastructure for moral improvement from people of a variety of classes.

Philanthropy encompassed a large variety of charitable work across the nineteenth century, including teaching, fundraising, political activism, and almsgiving. Institutions supporting philanthropy included hospitals, publishers, and public and private charities, as well as special-interest branches of these establishments catering for the provision of reading materials, housing and music. This chapter focuses on the philanthropic work of two influential women, Hannah More (1745–1833) and Octavia Hill (1838–1912), providing two contrasting examples of the way philanthropic enterprises were undertaken at opposite ends of the nineteenth century. Importantly, neither More nor Hill was a philanthropist with a single mission: they undertook various charitable activities, as did many women of the century. The comparison highlights two very different approaches to philanthropy while taking account of the value they placed on music. When their philanthropy is examined in the context of some of their other writings (for example, More on politics), we understand the ways these women set about ‘raising the moral tone of the nation’ in which music was often part and parcel. Despite the ubiquity of philanthropy across the century, it was not always well received by society at large, as we saw in the previous chapter. For example, More came into question for her often contradictory stance on issues to do with the education of women, while Hill was sometimes accused of condescending to the subjects of her charitable causes.

HANNAH MORE

Hannah More's legacy has been extended in many directions, such were the multifaceted aspects of her many writings and charitable acts. Invari-ably credited with advancing the education of women on the one hand, she has been criticised for stifling their ambitions on the other hand.

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) is an especially important figure in the history of nineteenth-century morality because through self-instruction he cultivated his own moral sensibility on the one hand and a fashioning of economic and political theory on the other hand, in which personal and social interests overlapped and interconnected. His interests in music, literature, religion, politics and aesthetics played significant parts in the fashioning of his own character and that of the public good in his suggested reforms to the British postal service and the labour market. The way in which Jevons’ worlds so significantly overlapped provides an extraordinary exemplar of how his personal and public interests meshed. This chapter shows how concepts of utility and progress married with narratives of personal morality and the public good. This type of synthesis had, in fact, been part of British life and culture in some ways before the advent of Jevons’ work in music, aesthetics and political and economic theory.

The year 1749 was a watershed in British life and letters, marked by the publication of the first edition of David Hartley's influential book Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. This book, and the hundreds of books and pamphlets like it by other authors that followed in its wake over the next 150 years, attempted to provide a systematic rationale for a morality often tied to economic or political theory. The moral schemes and codes put forward by these writers were usually rules and regulations about how individuals might mould themselves in service to their fellow countrymen, women and children. This vast range of literature was often a combination of moral philosophy and economic and political theory; for example, David Hume's Essays Literary, Moral and Political (1770), Jeremy Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780), William Paley's The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), John Stuart Mill's The Principles of Political Economy with their Applications to Social Philosophy (1848), and many more books besides. In addition to his work on political economy, the letters, diaries and essays by W.S. Jevons demonstrate the extent to which music, along with reading and a love of architecture, for example, kindled a sense of personal wellbeing and nurtured a public advocate for social reform.

The cultivation of manners (a term used interchangeably with ‘morals’) was vital to character formation, civility and civilisation and was written about extensively in the hundreds of etiquette books published in the nineteenth century in Britain and North America. It was agreed that a well-mannered woman provided stability and cohesion in the home and was, at times, regarded to be an icon of nation and empire. Improving the individual, as well as society, was what etiquette books sought to do. Books on manners and etiquette for women (and sometimes men) were written and read widely. Instructions were provided on the conduct of daily life, from how to arrange the text on an invitation card to how to carve roast lamb. Music sometimes played a part in the books that sought to define and shape social hierarchies, whether it be hosting and participating in music-making at private gatherings, dancing or attending public performances. This chapter begins by discussing the social spheres addressed by etiquette books, then outlines the aims and content of such books, before analysing them for the light they shed on the theory and practice of leading a moral life. It shows that claims of rational recreation, amusement and moral education were far from universal, and greatly influenced by differing values across class, gender and demography.

Scholars have long argued that etiquette books were a means to control and regulate the domestic sphere. The notion that nineteenth–century culture was cultivated in a domestic or private (or feminine) sphere in contrast to a public or political (or masculine) sphere has long been debated. The separation of spheres might explain divides such as class and gender but, as some scholars have pointed out, it detracts from recognising the fluidity of the movement of people between the spheres. David Kennerley and Phyllis Weliver have provided such a critique. Kennerley is sceptical about the very concept of spheres as they relate to music, arguing that they are a twentieth-century intellectual construct overlaid on a society that did not think in terms of spheres, and where musical performance was neither a strictly private nor public undertaking. In her work on the Gladstone salon, Weliver argues that visitors to the salon came from a diversity of backgrounds – and spheres – and thus employs the term ‘social sphere’ or a ‘sub-sphere’ to account for the plurality of those at work or play in the salon.

Moral management and the building of individual and collective character extended from childhood and the private sphere into public institutions such as the mechanics’ institutes. The mechanics’ institutes provided a blend of scientific, literary and occasionally musical classes and endeavours that sought to provide a holistic approach to the formation of the young man and, in some cases, the young woman. As we will see below, the membership of mechanics’ institutes was rarely comprised solely of mechanics, and occasionally included women in their administration and student profile. The range of activities and classes was extremely broad in most cases, opening up a vast world of knowledge for young men and women. The desire to cultivate a young and mostly working-class mind was seen to be a good investment for individual and social wellbeing. As we have seen in previous chapters, reference to cultivating and concentrating the mind, improving the intellect, and undertaking leisure and other activities, such as musical games and concerts from which aesthetic pleasure could be derived, were central to all schemes of moral education. The mechanics’ institutes offered such activities in spades, but they were never far from controversy, including vastly different values placed on the value of music in the formation of a moral sensibility.

The establishment of the mechanics’ institutes came after the founding in 1753 of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce that had very similar aims and aspirations. Its Royal Charter described its function as ‘bestowing pecuniary and honorary rewards for meritorious works in the various departments of the fine arts, for discoveries, inventions, and improvements in agriculture, chemistry, mechanics, manufactures, and other useful arts’. In many ways the Society set the pattern for the mechanics’ institutes: an extremely varied curriculum, in which music was often part and parcel of a smorgasbord of scientific and creative instruction. Unlike the mechanics’ institutes, the Society did involve itself in music education through the Royal Academy of Music and the efforts of various musicians such as John Ella.

Even though hundreds of mechanics’ institutes and similar institutions were established for the education of working men across the Anglophone world, their history cannot be said to be a collective one.