Relatively high amounts of free time plus cultural (class) expectations of what you'll do with it, minus the incredible on-demand availability of low-culture en

Relatively high amounts of free time plus cultural (class) expectations of what you'll do with it, minus the incredible on-demand availability of low-culture entertainment we have today. Given those circumstances and a half-decent mind and you're almost guaranteed to be amazingly (in modern estimation) accomplished at one or more of: (playing) music, board/card games, science, mathematics, languages, visual arts, and literature/letters. Imagine a world with no recorded anything except what's written on paper. Music? Someone near you has to be playing/singing it, or you won't get to hear it, which means a much higher demand for people who can play music somewhat well and more participation in music-making on average. Movies? TV? Ha. You mean theater or home recitation of verse or drama. Just try to go a year without recorded audio-visual entertainment, video games, or instant on-demand up-to-the-minute news, even without the benefit of a large passive income and with having to work for a living (unlike many of the notable 19th century intellectuals). I bet your activities in that time will look a hell of a lot more "cultured" and self-improving than usual. You might take up or get better with an instrument, build more things, see more live performances, brush up on your math skills, read more, get really good at cooking, draw (more), spend more time outdoors, play more sports and be more physically active in general, et c. If you live with others doing the same thing, after a month of evenings together reading e.g. Wordsworth or Homer or Milton aloud might start to seem like a really great idea. Broaden the circle of people doing this and maybe putting on a little small-cast performance of some Shakespeare begins to appeal. And so on. [EDIT] I should add no cars, no airplanes, trains common only from the mid-19th century. Way more walking and horse-riding or carriage use (for the rich) and a far smaller area in which one existed on a typical day, even for the wealthy (relative to modern wealthy people, at any rate).