About ten days ago he let into the pit great
numbers of bear-garden _bruisers_ (that is the term), to knock down
everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.
I was sitting very quietly in the boxes contemplating all this. On a
sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with
blackguards armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience.
This raised the greatest uproar."
Mrs. Delany, whose character has excited so much admiration in her own
and in succeeding generations, left, in her autobiography and letters,
a picture of the society about her as seen by one of the most refined
and cultivated women of the time. Like many others, she was struck with
disgust at the coarseness and immorality which surrounded her. "It is
enough to make one a cynic, to shun the world, and shut oneself up in a
tub as Diogenes did; but I must acknowledge, though the age is very
degenerate, that it is not quite void of perfection. I know some
persons that still reconcile me to the world, and that convince me that
virtue is not fled, though it is confined to a few."[133] "The men have
so despicable an opinion of women, and treat them by their words and
actions so ungenerously and inhumanly."[134] "The women were never so
audacious as now; this may well be called the brazen age.
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