Exploration of the Inner Poles

“If once a man indulges in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbery; and from murder he next proceeds to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.” — Thomas De Quincey

De Quincey walked a tightrope between the pillars of emancipation and obsession. In his time, there was something bizarrely urgent about libertinage. See Baudelaire, Flaubert, Poe. The exploration of individual abysses was part of freedom, the abolition of prohibitions on thought, and of paralyzing dogmas. The differentiation of personal feelings from social moral concepts enlarged the field of thought. These were explorations of the inner poles.

In his essayistic masterpiece Murder Considered as a Fine Art (first published in 1827), De Quincey unveils secrets of the British upper class. He reveals the existence of a “Society for the Promotion of Vice.” The Hellfire Club was founded by Sir Francis Dashwood (1708–1781) and served as a model for similar societies.

The politician Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer and Chancellor of the Crown from 1762 to 1763, was best known as a libertine. The purpose of his Hellfire Club was sexual perversion. The initiates practiced satanic rites. Dashwood was inspired by his Grand Tour through Europe in 1726, giving his obsessions a classical-antique veneer. Dilettantism was for him not a derogatory term, but an ideal. In 1732 he founded the Society of Dilettanti, which aimed at indulgent combinations of art and culinary delight.

Brotherhoods that indulged in cynicism, despised the morals of the common people, and acted shamefully out of sheer wantonness were the fashion of the 18th century.

Members of the upper class celebrated black masses and held high masses of depravity. De Quincey speaks of an epidemic of noble wickedness that spread throughout England. He mentions the Medmenham Club, which held its secret, bloody meetings in an abandoned Cistercian monastery—Medmenham Abbey in Buckinghamshire. Founded in 1201 by Hugh de Bolebec, the monastery was dissolved in 1536 and temporarily owned by Francis Dashwood, located directly on the Thames.

Prominent members of the Order of the Orgies included George Bubb Dodington (1st Baron Melcombe and spy), John Wildes (politician, journalist, writer, and British Casanova), Charles Churchill (poet and satirist), Robert Lloyd (poet, who died in prison in 1764 completely ruined after years of reckless dissipation), Benjamin Bates (physician and art connoisseur), Paul Whitehead (satirist and club secretary with prison experience), and finally William Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Harrington. The politician and soldier was notorious for his debauchery as the “goat of quality.” He practically lived in Sarah Prendergast’s brothel. His wife, Caroline Stanhope, Countess of Harrington, became the figurehead of the female demi-monde. In response to social ostracism, she founded a club for courtesans—the “New Female Coterie.” The declassed met in the brothel, which served as Caroline’s second living room.

A passionate relationship to murder and manslaughter—within the club of murder artists, one boasted of one’s skill in stabbing people. One insisted on remaining an amateur in every case; murder should not degenerate into work.