How we learnt the pleasure principle
From The Times
August 19, 2006
by Ed Smith
CONSUMING PASSIONS Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain by Judith Flanders
LEISURE IS NOW SO central to our lives that we take it for granted. Shopping malls come supersized, flights are cheaper than rail tickets, computer games create entire imagined worlds, iPods adorn even unfashionable ears.
There are so many ways to pursue leisure that it is a wonder people have time to do anything else. How would we cope without things to buy, holidays to plan, sports matches to watch? It was the Victorians who organised and modernised what we now recognise as the leisure world. They mass-produced books and newspapers, professionalised sport, developed the concept of tourism and turned shopping into a pursuit. Not everyone was impressed. In Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot complained that “even idleness is eager now — eager for amusement: prone to excursion trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels”.
Supply spurred demand, and leisure was here to stay. Underpinning it all were the twin Victorian qualities of energy and economic spirit. No one set out to create entire new leisure industries, merely profitable corners of the market. The realm of leisure, like the Empire, was an accidental by-product of the pursuit of profit. But once it existed, the Victorians made a virtue of it.
In Consuming Passions, Judith Flanders explores the origins and architects of this revolution. Human ambition is obviously a big part. The department store was up and running by the end of the 19th century, but Gordon Selfridge took it to a new level. Window displays were not simply to convey information about stock, he said, but to create desire. He opened the doors of Selfridge’s to all-comers, invited them in with theatrical displays, and counted his money.
But technology, that headless horseman of history, capable of altering society without intention or care, was behind many of the changes. New theatre-goers parted with their cash not just for dialogue, but for special effects, such as the newly invented “limelight” and extravagant stage machinery suspended above the stage.
The technology of the written word changed, too. Newspapers flourished with cheaper paper, Linotype machines mechanised typesetting. Books could be reprinted at a fraction of the cost, making reading more affordable — much to the satisfaction of entrepreneurs such as W. H. Smith.
At the heart of this web of pleasures was improved travel. In the 18th century, travel was mainly the preserve of a wealthy minority. The railways changed everything: the seaside came within reach, the middle classes could visit country houses, football teams could be supported in person, the sights of London were within striking distance. The opening of the Tube in 1863, the world’s first underground railway, made trips to the West End a reality for shoppers.The travel industry looked further afield, as Thomas Cook opened up Europe and the world to the middle classes.
John Ruskin was appalled, complaining that Cook had “made race courses of the cathedrals of the earth”. The novelist Charles Lever agreed, fearing that Cook was bringing to Europe “everything that is low-bred, vulgar and ridiculous”. Perhaps these were the prototype football hooligans? Or it may have been simple snobbery — as Evelyn Waugh would later say, “the tourist is the other fellow”.
No book with such ambitious scope could include everything, but one or two omissions are baffling. The chapter on sport focuses on racing, football and cycling — three sports from different parts of the class spectrum. Nonetheless (and I may be biased), I was surprised that a study of Victorian “sporting life” did not mention W. G. Grace, regarded as the “second most famous man in England”. He was the first great sporting celebrity — the David Beckham of his day. And of all the commodities that the Victorians gave us, celebrity is now among the most deep-seated.
Consuming Passions is richly detailed, perhaps too much so. There may be a little too much evidence hanging on too few provocative ideas. Each chapter has memorable quotations and telling statistics, but there is a danger of them being lost among dozens of others. The thematic structure and number of examples slow the narrative drive — perhaps it is more a book to dip into rather than read straight through.
I felt increasingly like a shopper at an enormous sale, looking at goods piled to the ceiling. Many might be worth buying, but after a while my enthusiasm for foraging waned. A little more boutique treatment — fewer clothes and more shelf-space — would have been refreshing. But Consuming Passions is an impressive achievement, authoritative, serious and ambitious. Perhaps even a touch Victorian?