Dave's Book Blog: "The Secret History of the Hell-Fire Clubs" by Geoffrey Ashe

Friday, 3 June 2022

"The Secret History of the Hell-Fire Clubs" by Geoffrey Ashe

This is a hugely comprehensive history of the tradition of immoral dissent in post-mediaeval western society from Rabelais to Charles Manson, taking in the hell-fire clubs, the Marquis de Sade and Aleister Crowley on the way. I think it has little pretence to be scholarly, it never questions its sources and it repeats stories that other authorities regard as made-up. Even in what is quite a long book, such a massive breadth means it is a little difficult to have much depth. But as an introduction to the subject it is well-written and easy to read and I learned a number of things I hadn’t known before (including all of the stuff about Rabelais - the author was clearly very well read and has prompted me to add yet more books to my tbr pile).

His thesis is fundamentally that the Hell-Fire clubs first thrived in the atmosphere of optimism during the Enlightenment following the middle ages and that they were given an essential impetus because of the number of bored young men, rich and aristocratic, who, during the long Whig ascendancy under Walpole in George II's England, had no outlet for their energies, the Tory party of the time being disorganised and tainted with Jacobite sympathies, “they dwindled into a mere scattered grumble, with a literary tinge”. (Ch 3)

He very much makes the point that all the idealistic societies proposed in which a group of people could dispense with normal morality depends on (a) them being part of a select elite, both rich and good-looking and (b) on them being served by others:

“Anti-moralists tend to believe in privilege and selection.” (Ch 1)
“magic tended to be an affair of elite groups with elite ethics . . . or nonethics.”
“Unbridled freedom could work only inside a select club. When the random myriads began doing as they willed, or as they pleased, they required curbing. Universal, benign, liberating Nature was not to be trusted.” (Ch 11)

Having said that, the appeal is obvious, and repeated time and again:

“Is it so absurd to suggest that the secret of freedom and fulfillment is to be free and fulfilled?” (Prologue)
“Everybody should accept Nature’s guidance, say “yes” to life, and try all things, good-humoredly, uninhibitedly” (Ch 1)
“if Nature was benign and the rational way to live was to obey her ... then why not be wicked, if that ... was how Nature prompted you to assert your freedom, what right had the sourpuss of Respectability to complain?” (Ch 3)
“What lunacy to believe that God has created us to act in ways which go against Nature, and make us miserable in this world! That he wants us to deny ourselves everything which satisfies the senses and appetites he has given us!” (Ch 5)
“Nature dictates sexual enjoyment, but she does not dictate “normal” sexual mores, and outside western Europe hardly anyone pretends that she does.” (Ch 13)
“Anybody not blinded by Christian or post-Christian prejudice must admit that Nature wouldn’t allow men to enjoy (for example) sodomy if such conduct offended her.” (Ch 13)
“if so-called vice gives you greater pleasure, then the natural and proper course is to scrap virtue. Which will usually be the result if you face facts, because virtue is weaker. Virtue means not doing things. Virtue means timidity, obedience. Virtue means conforming to custom. Vice, on the other hand, is (or should be) bold and adventurous and enlarging." (Ch 13)

Selected quotes:

“Organized goodness has had a long inning and, it must be confessed, often a painful one.” (Prologue)
“The golden rule, as Shaw said centuries later, is that there are no golden rules.” (Ch 1)
"When he [the Messiah] failed to arrive, the Kabbalah offered the ghetto-weary a path of release” (Ch 2)
“In 1736 Bishop Butler—one of the few Anglican clerics of high mental attainments—declared that most educated men had ceased to regard Christianity as even an object of inquiry, ‘its fictitious nature being so obvious’.” (Ch 3)
“the less gifted could make hay while the philosophic sun shone—and, having made it, could roll in it.” (Ch 5)
“No one in England was prepared—yet—to condone stealing or murder also, on the ground that “natural” promptings can inspire crime as well as fornication.” (Ch 5)
“When inmates become sick or unattractive, and cease to please the rest, they are swept out of sight to live in a basement, with nothing to do but fret over their symptoms.” (Ch 7)
“Omne animal post coitum triste est, praeter gallum gallinaceum et sacerdotem gratis fornicantem—Every creature is melancholy after sexual intercourse except a barnyard cock and a priest getting it for nothing.” (Ch 9)
“The real-life Hall-Stevenson was an unbalanced anti-Catholic witch hunter, collector of dirty books, and hypochondriac. Whenever an east wind blew he retired to bed in the belief that he was dying.” (Ch 11)
“Pleasure—your own—is the sole object worth pursuing. This should be done in a scientific spirit, with no restraints whatsoever. The only authentic pleasure is sexual. Other kinds are feeble and limited and should never be allowed to compete. Perversion, so-called, is a higher pleasure than normal intercourse, which has distracting associations of love and parenthood. Furthermore, the essence of the pleasure in sex is egotistic and manipulative. Hence it reaches its height where there is the most selfishness, the most cruelty, the most tyranny over the partner, or rather victim.” (Ch 13)
“Since the secret of the supreme thrill is (in conventional language) evil, an ever-widening repertoire of evil can be built into your sex practices and be made the basis of ever-more-fiery, ever-more-exotic thrills. This is the royal road to an anti-moral superhumanity, which the null virtuous can never hope to rival or to stand up against.” (Ch 13)
“Sade, and Sade alone, pointed out that the only way the Age of Reason could put its philosophy together again was by embracing the consequences. ‘Nature isn’t well planned or benign. She is at best neutral, at worst appalling. But live according to Nature still. Be appalling!’” (Ch 13)
“Love? Merely an entanglement best forgotten. The physical thrill should be the whole thing.” (Ch 13)
“One of his characters does believe in God, for the very logical Sadian reason that God can make life more horrible. You can hope to get your victim damned in the next world as well as tortured in this.” (Ch 13)
“She loved the games men played with death,” (Ch 14)