Across the ages, prim and proper elders have often asked some variation of this question: “What’s the deal with today’s young people?” This is commonly followed by the self-righteous assertion: “I never acted like that back in my day!” An anonymous author signing himself as “Alva” in the March 12, 1772 issue of the Maryland Gazette voiced that timeless generational putdown while describing his recent bad dream.
It all began after Alva returned home “from the Ball on Tuesday Night, and going immediately to sleep, whilst the Amusement and Transactions of the Evening were strongly imprinted on my Mind.” The dream which followed perhaps “owed its Origin to some previous waking Thoughts, which, as has been observed, frequently and indeed generally are attendant on a Dreamer’s Imagination.”
Alva imagined himself on “an island far distant from this Trans-Atlantic Continent, where Urbanity and Politeness long ago fixed their Throne, and where the Graces are every Evening sacrificed to, at Beauty’s Altar, in resplendent Ball Rooms.” Entering one of these genteel spaces, he didn’t wish to fall “into the Error which Men of my advanced Age commonly do, of preferring their own youthful Times to the present,” but then he proceeded to do just that. His slumbering self witnessed “a total Change in the general Behaviour, at this imaginary Ball, of the young Gentlemen to the young Ladies, from what it used to be in my Time.”
Alva endorsed the idea that when “the Art of dancing was under proper Regulations, it would be a mechanick Way of implanting insensibly in Minds, not capable of receiving it so well by any other Rules, a Sense of Good Breeding and Virtue.” Refined dance skills were outward social indicators of positive inner qualities. But so many of the young men in this imaginary scene weren’t even attempting to dance in a proper manner. Instead, they sat, “absorbed in stupid Indifference, at that youthful Season of Life, when these innocent Intercourses of the Sexes, ought to afford the utmost Gratification, the highest Sensations of Pleasure to the human Breast—unattentive to the Charms of beauty which surround them—engaged with each other at Cards—contemplating their own sweet Persons—guzzling bad Wine and Punch—talking Politicks—or shewing their Learning in vain Attempts to construe Latin and expound Phrases.” Alva was quite put off by “the Change of Manners which had taken Place, since my Time.”
Alva then launched into a display of his own superior learning by referencing a number of ancient and modern authorities—Addison, Sallust, Sir William Temple, Lucian, Lyttelton, Homer, Hesiod, Socrates, and Kevin Bacon in Footloose (OK, I added that last one there)—who had said or written something wise concerning the place of dance in society.
Perhaps, Alva wrote, the ill-mannered male wallflowers in his dream “thought Dancing at best but a trifling Amusement, not an Accomplishment,” or maybe they were turned off by the “Immodesty of Dancing.” Because so many men weren’t willing to get off their lazy duffs, Alva imagined he saw “several beautiful young Ladies, very desirous of dancing, whose Perfection in that Art was known and acknowledged by the Spectators, obliged to be Lookers-on, or…to be each others Partner.” Those few men who were participating “seemed to think they were conferring a Favour upon, and doing an Honour to the Ladies they respectively condescended to dance with.” Others “with a Rudeness or Ignorance peculiar to themselves, the Moment they got to the Bottom of the Set, sat down, in Contempt of Good Manners and the Right the other Couples had, to object to such Behaviour.”
The sleeping Alva was just about “to express my Sentiments to a very sensible and polite Gentleman, who had been pleased to communicate to me his own pertinent Remarks on the Subject before us, when my Indignation, rousing my Animal Spirits, awakened me, fraught with Resentment against these degenerate Islanders.” But his anger “soon subsided, on my recollecting that it was nothing but a Dream.” Fortunately, he recalled, “our Entertainment of the preceding Evening…had been conducted with the greatest Regularity and Politeness.” Thank goodness there were no uncouth hordes of card-playing, punch-guzzling, politics-talking, Latin-construing, navel-gazing boors to be found in Annapolis’s fashionable Assembly Rooms on Duke of Gloucester Street! And let this frightful nightmare be a warning to the town’s young people to keep it that way!
Now awake from his bad dream, Alva could cheerfully expound “on the Happiness of this Province, which from the Gallantry of its young Men, and its Concomitant, Valour, may by their happy Progress, be justly expected, in a few Ages, to equal the most accomplished and celebrated Nations of Antiquity; for here Virtue is countenanced, Learning encouraged, and Beauty admired: And, in another Century, I have not the least Doubt, but that Maryland in the Æras of Politeness, with be enumerated with Athens and Rome.”
You can read the March 12, 1772 issue of the Maryland Gazette beginning here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/scMG17724872/001282/html/m1282-0058.html
Glenn E. Campbell
HA Senior Historian
