Gossip. Bathing-suits. Respectability.

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (74) explores society at the resort during its second period as revealed in press clippings. A review of Grantley Berkeley’s book of satirical essays included excerpts about how the author saw Bournemouth’s society. A comment published by a local paper touched on a similar subject. The cuttings suggest the possibility that the social mix of Bournemouth’s visitors had begun to evolve. 

Victorian Bournemouth (74): two satirists

Dickens

Early Bournemouth’s visitors came from the ranks of the affluent and privileged. Press clippings endorsed its fashionable associations. The library held a visitors’ list available for public access, a basis for contacting and networking, both characteristics of affluent social behaviour. Dickens satirised resort society through Mr Pickwick‘s visit to Bath. He introduced such affluent people as Lady Snuphanuph and Colonel Mugsby. There, visitors craved social connections and visible public associations at the soirees, balls, or tea-taking. Thus, for such people, linkage and gregariousness represented social value. ‘The ball-nights in Ba-ath are moments snatched from paradise; rendered bewitching by music, beauty, elegance, fashion, etiquette, and — and — above all, by the absence of tradespeople, who are quite inconsistent with paradise …’ To achieve maximum effect, his cartoon depiction – his reportage – would have depended on a basis of reality. Hence, aspects of Bournemouth’s society may have matched his satire.

Berkeley

This satirist, a contemporary of Dickens, captured Bournemouth’s resort society in his writings. Here, two points have relevance. In the first place, Berkeley described Bournemouth tourists as people who ‘apparently shrink within themselves, remaining in their lodgings or hotels’. The satirist continued: ‘when men and women meet at this watering-place there is no association, no promenade as at other places where the people walk, and not an opportunity sought in which to exchange an idea’. In the second place, he observed that, at quiet Mudeford, a lady out walking needed no footman to protect her against unwanted approaches. Hence, ladies visiting Bournemouth, it seemed, must ‘bob about from dell to dell’ to avoid a ‘concealed serpent and tempting apple’. Only in church, therefore, might a lady find safety. As with Dickens, allowance for satire’s distortion should apply, but, nevertheless, for effect, his portrait should have reflected reality.

Victorian Bournemouth (74): social fear

Gossip

These two observations made by Berkeley may endorse the same point: a visit to Bournemouth may involve social dangers. On the one hand, licentious behaviour appears normal. On the other, even a chance encounter when on the promenade might pose problems. In explanation, Berkeley suggested that fear of gossip played a role. Without woods or wilder places ‘no one at this fashionable watering place would be able to speak to his friend, to walk out, possibly not to sneeze, without its being known to, and canvassed by, the community in their various hiding places’. Gossip, however, provided cement to bind together members of affluent society. Reputation, therefore, had value, for it reassured moneylenders and attracted matchmakers. Gossip would have gone well amongst Bournemouth’s traditional, affluent visitors. Thus, Berkeley may refer to visitors of a different social type, people who saw chance social contact as unnecessary or worse.

Respectability

It seems possible that this form of avoidance bears the mark of behaviour associated with middling-people. F. M. L. Thompson’s book about Victorian middling-people discussed the qualities necessary for inclusion. It ‘emphatically required an unsullied reputation in the community, and that rested on conformity to a code of behaviour in public and in the company of strangers which was carefully defined in the etiquette manuals which multiplied prodigiously in the early nineteenth century to meet the hunger of the upwardly mobile for social instruction’. Thompson emphasised that middling people did not act as killjoys amongst themselves. Venturing outside their social stockade, however, required them to take on protective behaviour. Respectability acted as the cornerstone of this stockade represented by their value-system. Gossip has the objective of fostering doubt and suggestion. It questions respectability, even erodes it. Open, licentious behaviour might trigger gossip of the worst kind.

Victorian Bournemouth (74): analysis

Two-edged sword

Thus, Bournemouth represented both an opportunity and a problem for visiting middling-people. The resort had blossomed as a playground for affluent, privileged people, who defined fashion, embodied it. Social credit, therefore, would accrue to ambitious outsiders who risked a visit to Bournemouth. The resort posed a problem, however, because such people could not participate in the full experience for fear of damaging their valued respectability, sometimes hard-won. Bathing at Bournemouth attracted comment, as this excerpt from the Poole & Dorset Herald shows. Here, you would see no bathing women ‘of the regular blue-flannel pattern, but only a bathing-girl to attend you’ … ‘she is not dressed but very much undressed in a manner I will not attempt to describe’. Bathing or promenading might present these ambitious middling-people with scenes and encounters which put their respectability at risk.

Middling-town

Yet, such middling-people on a visit might have had more in common with the town’s residents than its temporary population. Early Bournemouth’s residential society had tilted from working- to middling-people. Servants, a public sign of respectability, began to appear in the households of successful retailers. The builders became developers. Developers populated the ranks of the Improvement Commission after its establishment in 1856. Middling-people took hold of the local government. Churches of different denominations mushroomed. Wealthy and privileged people continued to visit and even reside in Bournemouth. From time to time, they provided organised opposition to the Improvement Commissioners, but without overt victory. Now, however, they appeared to exist within enclaves. The residents occupying the large houses on the East Cliff provide one example. Middling-life had become more of a norm, so that visitors of the type satirised by Berkeley Grantley perhaps had less to fear.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (74) has explored how satirical comments made about its resort society might show that middling-people now visited a site once dominated by the affluent and privileged. Their arrival perhaps reflected an increasing hold that residents of a similar social position had taken on management of the town.

References

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