Never a dull day
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (229) discusses how lectures and debates played a prominent role in the resort’s cultural development. Both formats enjoyed widespread popularity nationwide during the Victorian era. At Bournemouth, they enabled the dissemination of knowledge among defined audiences, including working and middling people. Content covered a range of subjects. The events often formed part of a group’s social evening. Much of this activity fulfilled a common agenda of mutual improvement.
Victorian Bournemouth (229): formats, broadcasting groups, audiences
Broadcasters
Different types of groups offered lectures as part of their engagement with members. The main sponsors consisted of religious societies, organised education, and hobbyists. Entrepreneurs also saw lectures as commercial content suitable for public entertainment. The different local chapters of the Church of England Working Men’s Union (CEWMU) often employed lecturing as a form of knowledge sharing. During the 1890s, Oxford University’s Extension programme reached Bournemouth. Lectures formed their primary instructional method. Bournemouth’s gardeners established a Mutual Improvement group, for which lectures often occurred. Debating also helped religious groups to stimulate discussion about important subjects. A lay group, the East Cliff Literary and Debating Society, used the same format on occasion. Thus, in every week during the 1890s, a lecture of one sort or another would have occurred. Tea parties or soirees for those attending the lectures extended the process of knowledge sharing.
Audiences
Two social groups formed the main audiences for lectures and debates. Much of the East Cliff community comprised wealthy people, often retired, but perhaps comfortable with debating as a format. Despite Oxford University’s avowed objective to reach working people, the timing and content of their lectures rendered them more suitable to middling people. Afternoon lectures tended to attract respectable spinsters interested in Shakespeare, while labourers worked. The latter group, however, would have encountered lectures (and some debates) at the CEWMU sessions. Such groups wanted to pass the Christian message, but also sought to widen temperance amongst this social segment. Respectable people also tried to encourage cottagers to practise horticulture, both for food provision and temperance. Gardening lectures, thus, would have appealed to both audiences, though working people may have had less interest or funds for orchids and other exotic plants. Horticulture audiences may have combined both social groups.
Victorian Bournemouth (229): lecture subjects
Arts
This subject consisted of both books and music. Authors covered included Dickens, Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Charles Kingsley, Tennyson, and Longfellow. Shakespeare also received attention, with lectures delivered on Henry IV, Henry V, and Richard III. For music, Mendelssohn featured more than once, but the subject otherwise took a more wide-sweeping approach. Shakespearean lectures featured amongst the Oxford University Extension lectures, but CEWMU organisers brought the current authors to their audience. Although each sponsor claimed to address working people, CEWMU appears to have eschewed Shakespeare in favour of more popular, contemporary writers.
Geography
This subject reached its audience often in the form of travelogues. Thus, lecturers consisted of leisured men who could afford both the time and expense of foreign travel. Audiences heard about trips to Norway, Rome, the Himalayas, Siberia, and South Africa. India also featured, including one lecture devoted to ‘Forty Years in India’. The titles of some travelogues suggest that the lecturer aimed for excitement. These included ‘A wild ride through Iceland’, ‘Alpine climbing’, ‘adventures in the Tropics’, ‘how I escaped to freedom’, and ‘entombed in a heathen mine’. Such titles imply commerce as a motive for lecturing.
Horticulture
Gardeners’ MIS had a wide interest in the subject. Individual plants often featured. Lectures covered orchids, marguerites, begonias, and chrysanthemums, the latter enjoying a vogue at Bournemouth during the 1890s. Those having smaller budgets perhaps would have inclined towards lectures about violets, roses and different vegetables. Potatoes and tomatoes will have come within reach of cottagers, but perhaps less so asparagus. Many lectures concerned growing methods. Thus, audiences heard about soils and manures, cross-pollination, hot-water heating, forcing, and seaweeds. The subject of manures included both natural and chemical versions, an early indicator of possible doubts about the latter.
Contemporary
Various subjects featured here. Safe topics included the municipalities, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and ‘Statesmen of Today’. More provocative subjects considered the organisation of unskilled labour, Poor Law reform, socialism, and prohibition. Furthermore, audiences could hear more edgy lectures. For example, slavery, unjust trial and sentence, ‘Delusions of the day’. One day, audiences might hear about producing public periodicals, another about slave life. Topics of this nature, therefore, might elicit a broader range of reactions than lectures on Dickens or Tennyson. They might disturb or touch on subjects already found disturbing by some.
Religion
Although lectures promoted by the CEWMU had a religious context, such sessions appear to have eschewed preaching. The Bible received coverage, including the interesting ‘Is the Empire of Great Britain spoken of in the Bible?’ Biblical subjects also covered the formation and development of the Testaments. Listeners could learn about ‘How Indians search for the soul’. Some, however, also had a sharper edge. High Church ritualism, a hot subject in Bournemouth, featured. Linked to this, audiences could bolster its presence by considering the ‘life and work of the late A.M. Bennett’, the local propagator of such ritual worship.
Other subjects
History formed an important part of the lectures delivered as part of the Oxford University Extension courses. These provided coverage of the Renaissance, the Tudors, and Early Modern England. Others had a more contemporary appeal: ‘development of South Africa’; ‘what I saw in the Tel-el-Kebir campaign’. The latter had the exciting gloss of ‘scenes through the battle smoke’. Science also appeared on the organisers’ agenda. These covered ‘crystals’, ‘electricity’, and ‘Darwin’s theory’. They also looked at such human subjects as laughter, the effects of alcohol, and sweating. Included also here featured ‘Why don’t we all sing?’
Victorian Bournemouth (229): debating subjects
Contemporary relevance
Debates covered subjects touching on politics, religion, and more personal points. The latter included such subjects as elocution, smoking, sociability, and the intriguing ‘Is dancing an innocent amusement?’ Religious topics considered the role of ministers in politics, the relative influences of press and pulpit, as well as compulsory religious education. Even more provoking, however, debates could have a sharp political edge. These included capital punishment, loyalty to the Union, and land nationalisation. On at least two occasions, debaters considered the issue of strikes. They debated the justification of strikes as well as a more micro-matter of whether strikes or lock-outs served best within industrial relations.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (229) explored the wide range of topics addressed through lectures and debates. Lectures typically offered gentle, didactic discussions, sometimes touching on politics and current affairs that could spark passionate views. Debates aimed to provoke active engagement with contemporary issues. This approach enriched Bournemouth’s culture by addressing subjects of both academic and current relevance.
References
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