Let’s define the term cult. I’m using it to mean a relatively small group led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader.
Some of them grow, develop, transcend the need for the single leader, and become religions. Some of them make no particular impact on society as a whole and fall quietly apart when the leader dies. Some explode spectacularly when their beliefs lead them to break laws. My cult is based on historical precedent.
As to the reactions of my cult members to the corruption of their leaders, that, too, is based on historical precedent. Those who have been forced to see that their cult beliefs are untrue will, according to their natures and the reactions of those closest to them, go down fighting, adopt the beliefs of their invaders or rescuers, give up all beliefs and become determined cynics, or choose to die.
Whatever support is offered, whatever the evidence that they have been lied to, ultimately, each person makes their own choice about how to respond.
My cult might appear extreme on the surface, but a brief examination of cults in history will show cults with far more bizarre beliefs—and practices—than those adopted in Famberwold’s “Heaven.”
Were there cults in Regency England? I’m sure there were, just as there were in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. By the definition above, we could include the Quakers (mid-17th century) and the Shakers (mid-18th century), both of which sects went on to become religious sects within Christianity.
In 1837, not many years after this book is set, John Humphrey Noyes wrote to a friend, “In a holy community,” he wrote to a friend, “there is no more reason why sexual intercourse shall be restrained by law than why eating and drinking should be, and there is as little occasion for shame in the one case as in the other.” This was in the United States, and he went on to found a religion that included, among its beliefs, that John Humphrey was perfect and without sin.
And the rest of the nineteenth and the twentieth century produced many other cults, some even more bizarre.
We cannot expect to know how many charismatic leaders preached in their own backyards, developed a small group of followers, and were never heard of beyond their neighbourhoods.
As for violent or abusive cults, I cannot point you to solid evidence. Lots of gossip and even court cases, but at this distance, we don’t know how much was lies by critics for political gain—or neighbours for straightforward social or financial gain, for revenge or out of mass hysteria.
The Hellfire Club of the 18th century also doesn’t quite qualify. Their quasi-religious ceremonies (if they really happened) were theatre, not something the men involved really believed. The Cult of Reason (the Marquis de Sade was a proponent) and the Cult of the Supreme Being (Robespierre’s personal favourite) in post-Revolution France certainly had true believers, but they, too, don’t quite qualify, because even their believers knew they were manufactured religions.
The Marquis de Sade certainly taught a cult of the body, a veneration of the physical, and the sexual as channels of transcendence, and may well have been an influence on a young Famberwold.
None of these are as compelling as actual court, newspaper or survivor accounts and I cannot point you to any. However, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. We know that violent or abusive cults in modern times have only come to light when someone in their ranks speaks out, often after many years of abuse.
And that is in recent times. We are talking about early nineteenth century England, before the birth of the investigative journalist, at a time when the Government feared revolution and had the power to quash reports, and when any survivor who spoke of what they had been through was likely to face social exclusion.
So why not? My cult is possible.
I choose to believe that my cult is depressingly likely, but that its downfall is equally likely. And in that, this is a hopeful story. If such evil exists, it will ultimately overreach, as evil inevitably does. And then, if those who value goodness band together, evil can be overcome. The darkness will end. The sun will rise again. And in the morning, life—and love—will be worth having.