Syphilis and Sociability
Syphilis and Sociability
The Impolite Bodies of Two Gentlemen, James Boswell (1740–1795) and Sylas Neville (1741–1840)
This essay considers the stain on one’s position within civil society represented by venereal disease. Drawing on the diaries of Boswell – for whom regular doses of syphilis seem to have been regarded as an amatory hazard – and Neville, the essay explores the increasing prominence and importance of the sphere of sociable intercourse in the eighteenth century, which necessitates, for Boswell at least, a clear division between his private selfhood and conduct and his public demeanour. In contrast, Neville’s episodes of the pox seem to have exacerbated his incipient paranoia and annoyance with a world around him that refuses to acknowledge his gentlemanly qualities. Both men’s reaction to their condition as related through their diaries reveals for Leigh Wetherall-Dickson a shifting notion of private identity formed in response to the relatively new phenomenon of sociable intercourse.
Keywords: Venereal disease, Male body, Social history, Eighteenth Century Literature
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