The Hum-Fum Gamboogee Society48
The first general meeting of this excellent society took place on Thursday, at the residence of one of its most powerful supporters; and, considering the skeleton state of the metropolis, was satisfactorily attended. We have received an account of the proceedings, under a promise not to mention the names of the committee; and the word “confidential” written diagonally in one corner of our correspondent’s letter, prevents our giving the report as fully and satisfactorily as we could wish.
The great Gamboogee himself, however, was present, and explained the nature and intention of the society very succinctly. It may perhaps be necessary to quote for our readers this account of their general views, as detailed by his Lordship.
In the first place, it appears to the excessively correct persons who compose this grave body, that a Christian should never be merry—that it is the bounden duty of all well-disposed persons to groan and sigh, and make themselves as uncomfortable as possible during their stay upon earth; and in order to render themselves apparently subservient to the regulations which they propose to lay down for others, the members have their seats provided on the hardest possible benches, the president being compelled to sit in very thin silk breeches, upon a horse-hair bottomed stool, without either arms or back, i.e., while they are in public!
Every member is bound, on similar occasions, to wear large worsted stockings, with the tightest possible shoes, stiff stocks, and hats considerably too small for their heads. Thus accoutred, it is their intention to effect, under the authority they very frequently have on their tongues, a total reformation in society.
They intend to begin with Brookes’s and Boodle’s, which are to be consigned forthwith to the superintendence of four respectable Dowagers; and the direction of Almack’s is to be vested in the hands of six able ministers, to be selected by the great Gamboogee himself for that purpose, next May, previously to the commencement of the ensuing winter season.
In order to prevent the shameful impositions practised upon the credulity of minors of fashion and fortune, by unprincipled women of no property, the Hum-Fum Gamboogees have opened establishments for the reception of young gentlemen of worldly propensities, which are to be placed under the surveillance of most active and pious men.
Similar receptacles for young ladies, whose flagrant desires lead them into the abominable vices of dancing or singing, will be prepared, where, in rooms hung with black, and from which the much too comfortable glare of day will be excluded, they will be taught to see, in their proper colours, the enormity of those crimes of which they have been guilty, and which their sinful mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, have been rash and vile enough to commit in a similar way.
It appearing to the Hum-Fum Gamboogees that the sun is by far too great a blessing for such wretched creatures as we are, they recommend a careful seclusion during the day, and suggest that wet or windy nights are the most suitable occasions for taking exercise.
A total abstinence from wine is earnestly desired to be observed by the young gentlemen of London, whose interests the Hum-Fums have very near their hearts; and they mention weak black tea as a substitute, or a proportion of that excellent succadaneum for Hyson, chopped hay, which was seriously recommended to the attention of the world, a short time since, through the columns of the Morning Post.
Several well-dressed and respectable elderly gentlemen, with umbrellas, will attend in Hyde Park every day, until the abomination of frequenting such places be utterly abolished, to escort young men to pious ordinaries, where it is recommended they should dine, in order to prevent those unnatural sins, flirting, dangling, and making the amiable.
A vast many devout minor agents of the society will be employed to divest the pockets of persons of snuff-boxes, it never having been required by nature to feed one’s nose.
It is strongly recommended that every one should abstain from frequenting play-houses, and in order to effect this great object, or at all events to render the performances sufficiently disagreeable to be quite correct, it is suggested that the company of performers, who acted at the Haymarket Theatre last season, be the only persons licensed to exhibit in the metropolis.
The Hum-Fums will visit the houses of their neighbours, after the fashion of that most excellent brother corporation, the Bible Society, and will make it their business to enquire into the state of every man’s domestic affairs; in order, if possible, to rescue from degradation the servants of London, whose subordination (although, by the active endeavours of similar unions, they are getting gradually independent of their masters and mistresses,) is derogatory to the dignity of the human character.
The Hum-Fums will distribute amongst the domestics such works as may tend to elevate their minds, open their intellects, make them dissatisfied with debasement, and enable them, by the blessing of Providence, to rise superior to that oppression by which the sinful luxuries of society have humiliated them. Several Hum-Fums of the highest character for dulness and gravity will attend in the kitchens and servants’-halls of each parish, to edify their tenants every evening from eight till twelve.
It will be the study of the Hum-Fums to impress upon the soldiers of this kingdom the sin and shame of carrying muskets and bayonets for pay, and of slaughtering their fellow-creatures for no cause whatever; and by the way in which they expect to be enabled to make their light shine, they hope to convince their brethren in arms that officers are but men, and that obedience from one man to another is by no means necessary to salvation.
The sailors they intend to leave entirely to the pious society called the Bethel Union, convinced that nothing the Hum-Fums can do will more effectually emasculate and sanctify at the same time the sea service, and purge it of its worldly power to do mischief, than the blessed exertions of that inestimable institution.
Riding in carriages, especially on Sundays, they most energetically denounce; and it is proposed to solicit the several lessees of the turnpike trusts round London to allow ministers, selected by a council of Hum-Fums, to be placed at the different toll-gates, to dissuade the infatuated people from enjoying the sun and air of heaven on the only day which they have to themselves, and on which, in obedience to the Decalogue, they do no manner of work.
Night agents of the society will be regularly posted at the doors of all public-houses within the bills of mortality, to check the ingress of sinners to such places; and in order more effectually to promote the devout intentions of the society, Messrs. Whitbread (whose very name inspires respect), Mr. Calvert, and Mr. Buxton have intimated a zealous desire to leave off brewing the liquor which the wretched sinners are so depraved as to swallow in those receptacles for vice.
No rank of society will be free from the surveillance of this pious body. At the Opera, a superior class of agents will be always in attendance to superintend the friendly intercourse of the best families, and by an assiduous watchfulness over the manners and conversations of the various parties, many of those heartrending divisions in society which shock morality will be doubtless prevented.
The Hum-Fums earnestly recommend frequent physicking and bleeding, with a view to the moderation of worldly appetites; and suggest, in the hope of keeping up an incessant feeling of the wretched state to which we are reduced, that all persons between the ages of fifteen and sixty should wear perpetual blisters.
The Hum-Fums earnestly request subscriptions to carry their spiritual benefits into effect, and they would impress upon the minds of those who are hastening to perdition in the same abominable and destructive road, which every one of their ancestors and relations have taken, that all things are subservient to the principles which the Hum-Fums teach, and that without money the Hum-Fums cannot exist.
After the proceedings in which this development of their views was made, the Hum-Fums nominated thirty-five treasurers and sixty-eight secretaries at respectable salaries. Most of the Hum-Fums being decidedly hostile to the establishment in State as well as Church, this was considered the only virtuous mode whereby to provide for those persons, who, though in humbler life had always relied upon the Hum-Fums for support, and whose laudable exertions in exciting a proper melancholy, and a substantial discontent, deserve the highest praise.
The Hum-Fums, after this part of the ceremony, proceeded to sing psalms and hymns, the productions of the Rev. Mr. Smith, of Penzance, whose meritorious conduct under his call, from the station of boatswain in His Majesty’s service, to the ministry, demanded their warmest admiration.
Miss Rebecca Engleheart presented the society with a small pasteboard windmill, in the hopper of which were three shillings and ninepence halfpenny, which she had collected by the exhibition of her little toy.
The great Hum-Fum Gamboogee was extremely gratified by this specimen of pious ingenuity, and put the sails of the model into rapid motion, which excited great gratitude and applause.
Two Otaheitean watermen and a New Zealand coppersmith were elected Hum-Fums: they spoke at length of the benefits which their respective nations had received from the exertions of the society, and the latter presented to the society the heads of his elder brother and his sister-in-law, which he had cut off since his notions of property had been matured under its benign influence.
At this period of the proceedings an interruption took place which threatened the unanimity of the society; this, considering the society, as we do, to be one, of which all the members ought to hang together, created a very unpleasant feeling.
One of the members, more lukewarm than the rest, inquired by what authority the Hum-Fums were to take upon themselves the charge of correcting their neighbours, and setting the world in general to rights; adding a doubt as to the obedience of a nation like England, famed for its independence, and envied for the blessings of religious toleration, to the dicta of a committee of Hum-Fums. “For,” said the pious member, “although I speak under correction, and with all due deference to the great Hum-Fum Gamboogee and my sanctified brethren, I do not see the right by which we, being only men like themselves, are, in a country of liberty, to control our fellow-creatures in their recreations and amusements; seeing, that if they are to go to perdition for doing that, which has been ordinarily done in Great Britain for the last four or five centuries, we are to conclude that all our forefathers have forfeited their hopes of happiness hereafter, because the system of Hum-Fumism did not exist; which reflection is not only melancholy, but, as I am bound to trust, not founded in fact. Moreover, sir,” added the brother, addressing himself to the most venerable Gamboogee, “your Lordship must know, that in Roman Catholic countries the Sunday is universally a day of gaiety; that dances, and even plays, are performed on that day; and since, I believe, many of the great Hum-Fums who now hear me, voted in another place in favour of the Roman Catholics, they should be cautious, while they cry for the admission of such levities with one breath, not to condemn, with another, to eternal punishment the Protestants, who, although it must be confessed they contrive, even in these times of distress, to enjoy themselves on Sundays, confine themselves to a walk or drive into the country, with their wives and children, and a harmless regale of their pipes and their pots, their buggies and their bottles, or their carriages and their claret, as the case may be——”
“Harmless!” said the great Hum-Fum, the buckles of his wig standing on end!
“And I doubt much,” continued the former speaker, “whether the very proceedings we are about to adopt will not sicken those of moderately pious lives, and——”
“Sicken, sir!” interrupted the great Hum-Fum—“look at the navy, sir! Do you not perceive that the blessed institution, the Bethel Union, of which Master Phillips and myself are the main props, has taken the navy under its care—that we are to control the pleasures of the sailors—to correct their propensities—dock them of their girls and their grog—and allowance them even in pig-tail? If this experiment succeed—if the navy submit to this most proper control and purification, why should not the army and the laity generally submit to it too? What did Oliver Cromwell do, sir? Had not he a preaching army?——”
Here a considerable noise of coughing took place; for though the ultra Hum-Fums were too much involved in zeal to think of analogies, the designing and radical Hums, who had merely joined the society for political purposes, felt that the mention of old Noll might throw the more moderate into a train of thoughts for which they had not as yet been sufficiently prepared.
The confusion caused the great Gamboogee to cease; when a servant entered and whispered his Lordship. What the communication was we were unable to learn, as an adjournment was immediately moved and carried. The fact is—dinner was ready.