The Night Side of London Part 5

Come here in the summer-time, and the attendance is then numerous; and of a Sunday evening, on the lawn before the Barn, or in the bowers and alcoves by its side, what vows have been uttered only to be broken; and what snares have been set for youth, and beauty, and innocence; and how many have come here with gay hearts who have left with them bruised beyond the power of man to heal! Even in this room itself, what changes have been wrought by the magic hand of time! Where are the Finsbury radicals-all beery and Chartist, who here dined; the demagogues who duped them, the hopes they cherished, the promises they made? One after another have the bubbles burst, have the leaders palpably become shams, have the people woke up to disappointment and despair; and yet the nation has yet to learn that it is only by individual righteousness its salvation can be wrought. The dancing, instead of speech-making, is a sign of the times. Accompanied as it is by less drinking, let us hope it is a favourable sign. Let us judge in the spirit of charity and hope.

But let us not be too sanguine,-it was during the terrors of the French Directory, when the

"Streets ran so red with the blood of the dead, That they blush'd like the waves of h.e.l.l,"

that Paris became a city of dancers, and that the art reached a climax unknown before or since.

BOXING NIGHT.

I am rather out of conceit with Christmas boxes. I have been wished the compliments of the season by no less than six individuals this very morning, and for those good wishes I, poor man though I be, with family of my own to work for, have had to pay half-a-crown each. I grow suspicious of every smiling face I meet. I walk with my hands in my pocket, and my eyes cast down. I wonder how it fares with my strong-minded wife at home. I know she will have had a rare battle to fight. She will have had the Postman-and the Dustman-and the Waits-and the Sweep-and the Turnc.o.c.k-and the Lamplighter-and the Grocer's lad-and the Butcher's boy; and if she compounds with them at the rate of a s.h.i.+lling a-piece, she may bless her stars. I feel that I cannot stand much of this kind of work, and that for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year I shall have to pay rather handsomely. Stop at home-tie up your knockers-say you are sick or dead, or a shareholder in the Royal British Bank, still you cannot escape the tender mercies of a London Boxing day.

Mind, I have not one word to say of the various good wishes and gifts offered by friends and relatives to each other as pledges of esteem and goodwill. I would be the last to find fault with the customs originating in the warm heart of love, and honoured by the sanction of the whole civilized world. By all means let us reverence them ten-fold. But I have a right to complain that I am compelled to pay for mercenary goodwill, and that on me, or such as me, a tax is levied which does no good in most cases, and frequently does an immense amount of harm. When I read, as I am sure to do, in the police reports of the next day, that, "yesterday, being the day after Boxing day, the time of the magistrates was chiefly occupied with cases of drunkenness," am I not right in wis.h.i.+ng that I had kept the money in my own pocket? Some of my friends would do that, but then for the next twelve months they are hampered and inconvenienced in a thousand ways. As a wise man, I choose the least of two evils, but I am an unwilling victim nevertheless. But a truce to my meditations; let us look at London on a Boxing night. By daylight you would scarce know London. A new race seems to have invaded the streets, filled the omnibuses, swarmed in the bazaars and the Arcade, choked up the eating-houses and the beer-shops. Smith with his Balmoral boots, Brown with his all-round collar, Jones with his Noah's Ark coat, Robinson with the straight tile, which young England deems the cheese, delight us no more with their sn.o.bby appearance and gentish airs; to-day this is the poor man's holiday. You can tell him by the awkwardness with which he wears his Sunday clothes, by the startling colour of his ties, by the audacious appearance of his waistcoat. If he would only dress as a gentleman dresses, he would look as well, but he must be fine. Well, it matters little so long as he be happy, whether he is so or not; and let him pa.s.s with his wife and children, all full of wonder and delight as they stare in at the shop windows and think everything-how happy are they in the delusion!-that all that glitter is gold. Let us wish them a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

And now the dull, dark day, by the magic power of gas, has been transformed into gay and brilliant night. The thousands who have spent the day sight-seeing are not satiated, and are flocking round the entrances of the various theatres. Let us stand on the stage of the Victoria, and see them to the number of fifteen hundred mounted upon the gallery benches. Through the small door near the ceiling they come down like a Niagara, and you expect to see them hurled by hundreds into the pit. What a Babel of sounds! It is in vain one cries "Horder!" "'Ats off!" "Down in front!" "Silence!" Boys in the gallery are throwing orange peel all over the pit; Smith halloos to Brown, and Brown to Smith; a sailor in a private box recognises some comrades beneath, and immediately a conversation ensues; rivals meet and quarrel; women treat each other to the contents of their baskets-full of undigestible articles, you may be sure, with a bottle of gin in the corner. The play-it is that refres.h.i.+ng drama, the "Battersea Brigand"-proceeds in dumb-show; but the pantomime, the subject of which is, "Wine, War, and Love, and Queen Virtue in the Vistas of Light or Glitter,"-with what a breathless calm, that is ushered in. It is an old silly affair.

Harlequin, clown, and pantaloon, are they not all very dreary in their mirth? Yet the audience is in a roar of laughter, and little babes clap their tiny hands, and tears of laughter chase each other down the withered cheeks of age. This night in every theatre of London is a similar scene witnessed. The British public is supposed to be unusually weak at Christmas, and tricks that were childish and stale when George the Third was king, and jokes venerable even in Joe Miller's time, are still supposed to afford the most uproarious amus.e.m.e.nt to a people boasting its Christianity, its civilisation, and enlightenment. Of all conventionalisms those of the stage are the most rigid, antiquated, and absurd.

But the thousands outside who did not get in-what are they about? Look at that respectable mechanic; you saw him in the morning as happy as a prince, and almost as fine; he stands leaning against the lamp-post, apparently an idiot. His hat is broken-his coat is torn-his face is b.l.o.o.d.y-his pockets are empty; not a friend is near, and he is far away from home. It is clear too what he has been about. Come on a few steps further-three policemen are carrying a woman to Bow-street. A hooting crowd follow; she heeds them not, nor cares she that she has lost her bonnet-that her hair streams loosely in the wind-that her gown (it is her Sunday one) is all torn to tatters-or that her person is rudely exposed.

The further we go, and the later it grows, the more of these sad pictures shall we see. Of course we do not look for such in Regent-street, or Belgravia, or Oxford-street, or the Strand. Probably in them we shall meet respectable people staggering along under the influence of drink-but they are not noisy or obstreperous-they do not curse and swear-they do not require the aid of the police. We must go into the low neighbourhoods-into St Giles', or Drury-lane, or Ratcliffe-highway, or the New-cut, or Whitechapel-if we would see the miseries of London on Boxing night. We must take our stand by some gin-palace. We must stay there till the crowds it has absorbed and poisoned are turned loose and maddened into the streets. Then what horrible scenes are realized. Here an Irish faction meet, and men, women, and children engage in a general _melee_, and cries of murder rend the air, and piercing shrieks vex the dull ear of night. There two mates are stripped and fighting, who but this morning were bosom friends, and who to-morrow would not harm a hair of each other's heads. Here a mechanic with a b.l.o.o.d.y head is being borne to the neighbouring hospital, to lie there a few months at the public expense, while his family are maintained by the parish. Again, we meet two wives nursing young babes scared into unnatural silence, clenching their fists in each other's faces, and with difficulty restrained from acts of more savage violence by their drunken husbands. Their day's holiday has come to this. In the metropolis in 1853, the number of public-houses was 5729-the number of beer-shops 3613. These figures give a total of 9342. If on this night we suppose on an average one fight in the course of the evening takes place in each of these drinking shops, we can get some idea of what goes on in London on a Boxing night. In pa.s.sing at midnight down Drury-lane, I see three fights in a five minutes' walk. Enlightened native of Timbuctoo, will you not pity our London heathens and send a few missionaries here!

THE MOGUL,

Not the Great Mogul in Thibet, but the Mogul in Drury-lane, is an increasingly popular place of public amus.e.m.e.nt. I was there a few years since, and it was not more than half full. The other night I could hardly get standing room, though I paid sixpence and went with the operative swells into the gallery. In these days the test of everything is success. We speak well of the tradesman who does the largest business-of the writer whose books sell the most-of the actor or preacher that draws the largest crowd. We do not stop to criticise the manner in which that business is done, the influence of the writer, the doctrine taught by the preacher, or the character of the acting. On the ordinary principle, then, the Mogul is a creditable establishment, for it is a successful one. Indeed, in the present state of society, it is hardly possible to conceive how a place that combines entertainment and drinking together can well be otherwise. In the course of last summer Vauxhall was open a few nights; I was credibly informed that on each night it was supposed not more than half the company paid for admission, the other half having been admitted by means of orders. It is calculated the sale of drink and refreshment to the crowd thus collected will yield a profit sufficient to cover all expenses. Thus it is such places as the Mogul pay. The entrance fee and the sale of intoxicating drinks must amount to a sum out of which a proprietor can extract a handsome profit.

Thus at the Mogul you have a double attraction. Are you a gin-drinker, you can go and get your quartern or half-quartern over the bar-or you can lounge into the concert-room and quietly sit soaking the whole evening; for, as the performance does not close till midnight, the time admits of a man getting "fou" between the commencement and the close of the entertainment. Drury-lane is what may be called a low neighbourhood, devoted princ.i.p.ally to butchers' and bakers' shops, p.a.w.nbrokers'

establishments, and gin-palaces. Pa.s.s these latter any hour of the day you will, and you will find them crowded by laundresses, and charwomen, and haggard old crones from the sister isle, and young wives whose husbands, it may be, are hard at work. There they stand in the streets, with babies in their arms and dirty children in rags by their side, gossiping with women as ill-conditioned as themselves; and as gossiping makes them thirsty, and as drinking makes people drunk, it is not difficult to imagine the state in which many of these women are. In the middle of the day it is very obvious that many of them have had more than enough. How they can afford it always puzzles me-I cannot, I know, and I believe my weekly earnings equal theirs. The p.a.w.nbrokers may help them-but their material guarantees cannot be perpetually forthcoming.

These gin-drinkers live cheap, I grant. They herd in the horrid slums of Drury-lane-and people say sometimes, Can you wonder that such poor wretches drink? but they forget that it is the drink that makes them such poor wretches. The money these women spend in drink would pay for decent apartments and clothes that would be clean and comfortable, not ragged and filthy, and stinking with every abomination. It is not poverty that creates drunkenness, but drunkenness that creates poverty, and the poverty thus created-the dreariest kind of all poverty-abounds in Drury-lane. Well, then, exclaims one of the new school, who believes mankind are to be regenerated by fiddling, does not such a place as the Mogul have a beneficial influence? I will answer this by describing the kind of amus.e.m.e.nt afforded at the Mogul. You are pent up in a room where the air is ten times worse than in any theatre-any crowded chapel-or worse than in the late Reading Room of the British Museum or the House of Commons. You see a little of the worst acting in London-broad farce, chiefly by artists, if I may term them such, who are more remarkable for their weakness than their strength. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I p.r.o.nounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hands," says Hamlet; but actors of the cla.s.s you meet in the Mogul never seem to have heard of the Prince of Denmark. There are some people who doubt whether good acting has a beneficial effect, but there are none who doubt that the effect of bad acting is altogether bad. But the dramatical part of the entertainment const.i.tutes but a small part of the evening's amus.e.m.e.nt. There is a lady who sings sentimental songs, and a gentleman who sings comic ones, and another gent, with dismal voice and weary mien, who declares-

"The _gurls_ of dear Old England Are the _gurls_ of _gurls_ for me-e-eh."

I am not aware that any of these performers sing songs of an objectionable character; and if a sneer is now and then introduced at what common decent people believe to be good, and true, and righteous, and of beneficial tendency, it is only, perhaps, such as would be approved of by the patrons of the Haymarket. You tell me that this is better than sitting all night at a bar drinking; but, I ask, is not this entertainment itself an excuse for drinking? You see the room is full of men and women evidently belonging to the working cla.s.ses; now of all men working men can least afford to waste time in such places. All their future emphatically depends upon themselves. More than most men are they called upon to exercise self-denial and to cultivate their powers, if they would achieve independence. But how can the working men who sit night after night in such places as the Mogul ever hope to rise? yet any night there must be a couple of hundred of such present, for they swarm like bees. They come professedly for the entertainment, but all the while it lasts they are doing a good deal in the drinking line. It is not one gla.s.s or two that will satisfy them; and the worst of it is, that many very clever fellows when once they begin drinking do not know when to leave off. In this respect they are like Dr Johnson, who could either feast or fast, but could never be a moderate drinker. They come to the Mogul-perhaps they would never think of sitting all night in a public-house-but they come to the Mogul for the entertainment, and they finish by drinking as if they had come for the drink alone. The Mogul is indeed an educational establishment, but unfortunately it educes the wrong set of faculties. In Drury-lane, of all lanes in the world, there is the least occasion to a.s.sociate intoxicating drink with happiness.

Everywhere the idea is a mischievous delusion and a remnant of barbarism, but there it is a positive curse. At the Mogul you will see the sweetheart with her lover, the mother with her child,-it may be the sucking babe,-till midnight, breathing an air of tobacco smoke, the husband and the wife, all you say enjoying themselves in a social way, but all, I say, encouraging an appet.i.te which, if it gets the mastery,-and in the majority of cases it does,-will destroy them without mercy. Were the Mogul simply a gin-palace, it would have far less patronage, it would merely have its share of the general trade; but the fact that it provides musical and dramatic entertainments-that it gives decent people an excuse for drinking-that it attracts those whom a common gin-shop would repel-is that precisely which gives it its power for danger. Such places are decoy shops, the more dangerous as drinking in Drury-lane is really disgusting, and enough to make a man a teetotaller for life. The neighbourhood is rich in warnings, but the _habitue_ of the Mogul soon learns to heed them not.

CALDWELL'S.

A stranger, ignorant of our inner life, and unacquainted with our social system, knowing only that we call ourselves a Christian people, and that we boast that Christianity places woman in a peculiarly favoured position, might dwell among us for awhile, and, seeing how woman is flattered and followed, might imagine that our condition was perfect, and that here, at least, woman, the weak, was sheltered by man, the strong.

In the dazzling ball-room-on the glittering promenade-he might meet the lovely and the fair, and deem that they were no brilliant exception, but as they were sheltered and loved, so were sheltered and loved all of their common s.e.x. Grieved would he be to find out his mistake; yet more grieved would he be to know that the graceful drapery that added to the beauty that everywhere flashed upon his eye was wrought by tender and delicate women, who, pale and wan, slave at the needle from morn till eve, and from eve till again the dim grey of morn gleamed in the east-by women withered before their prime-by women who, for no crime, but from their simple desire to live by the honest and honourable labour of their hands, are shut up in heated and unhealthy rooms, debarred from social duties and joys, and who know nothing of life but its wants and woes-by women who can find in slavery itself nothing more forlorn than their melancholy fate-by women to the majority of whom there is no honest way of escape from the lingering death that besets them, but the grave.

We would guard our readers against giving way to mawkish sentimentalism; _that_ it is not our aim to excite. There are employers who are all they should be; there are milliners' and dressmakers' a.s.sistants who find their labour what all healthy labour is, a blessing, and not a curse.

Nor is every dressmaker shut up in these hot-houses of disease beautiful, nor the daughter of one who has seen better days. It is true that some of these unfortunate girls are the daughters of "clergymen, medical men, and officers;" but it is because they partake of our common humanity-because they have human blood and human hearts-because life was given them that in it they might bless and be blessed-because, in their injuries and wrong, the human family and its Father above are injured and wronged-that we claim for them from society sympathy and redress. We say nothing of the moral danger to which, in a metropolis like this, they are peculiarly exposed. When sin offers so golden a bait, it shows that those who yet continue at their work deserve respect and aid. If some of them have fallen-if some of them, driven by despair, have walked our streets to gain their bread, let us blame the system which has made so infamous and wretched a mode of life seem a change to be desired. Let the cure be adopted; let the work now done be distributed among a larger number of hands; and in this country, at least, there is no lack of persons eager to be employed. In many of the fas.h.i.+onable establishments increased cost of production can be of but little moment. Let employers learn to practise humanity, and let our high-born and influential ladies see to it, that it is no thoughtlessness of theirs that compels their poorer sisters to toil with a sinking frame and a heavy heart. As a nation, we have worked out one problem in civilization; we have shown that the utmost wealth can exist side by side with the deepest poverty-the grossest ignorance with the most cultivated knowledge-the most elevating piety with the most debasing fetichism-the fairest virtue with the most revolting vice. Be it our n.o.bler work to show to the nations of the earth how, while our higher cla.s.ses live in refinement and wealth, there is no cla.s.s, however humble, but can joy in the possession of social happiness and rights.

But what, you ask, has this to do with Caldwell's? Only this, that of the cla.s.s to which I have referred, I believe more may be found of an evening at Caldwell's, than anywhere else in London. It is not all dressmakers who toil thus severely and unnaturally; and few of them are there who do not in the course of the year find time to pay Caldwell's a visit. Who has not heard of Caldwell's _Soirees Dansantes_? Are they not advertised in every paper? Are they not posted in gigantic bills in every street? In quiet country lanes, miles and miles away from town, do we not come across the coloured letters by which Mr Caldwell announces his entertainment to the world? Who is Mr John Caldwell? We will let him speak for himself. He has an establishment in Dean-street, Soho.

The building cost him nearly four thousand pounds. On boxing-night he had as many as 600 customers, "and on average nights," he tells us, "I have about 200." The charge for admission is eight-pence. Mr Caldwell has a public-house just by, and from that supplies wine, and ale, and spirits. "I have never had a case of drunkenness in my place for years; I am very particular-I never let a drunken man remain." On an average about thirty gla.s.ses of spirits are drunk in the dancing room in the course of an evening, and about forty gla.s.ses of beer. "I believe my place is carried on in as respectable a manner as can be. Some of the first n.o.blemen come; there are some very respectable tradesmen round the neighbourhood, and a great many young people from the neighbourhood. The rooms are princ.i.p.ally supported by the working cla.s.ses." The dancing saloon opens at eight, and is closed at a quarter to twelve. Such is the evidence given by Mr Caldwell himself before the select committee of the House of Commons on public-houses. As is perfectly natural, it is all _coleur de rose_. The union of the first n.o.blemen and the _elite_ of the working cla.s.ses over spirits-and-water, or in the mazy dance, is a beautiful specimen of fraternisation, and the small quant.i.ty of beer and spirits drunk by 200 persons indicates an amount of sobriety rare in places of public amus.e.m.e.nt. I think Mr Caldwell has a little understated the case. I fear he forgot to tell the committee that the drinking at his place was in the refreshment-room down-stairs, not in the dancing-room above; while in the latter the small quant.i.ty he a.s.serts is consumed, I am inclined to think, much more may be disposed of down-stairs. In the course of his own examination some disagreeable truths oozed out. We give a couple of questions and answers in proof of this.-Sir George Grey: "Do you mean to say that the dancing-saloon would have no sufficient attraction for the people unless there were connected with it the facility of obtaining spirituous liquors?" "_I think not_; _the people want a gla.s.s of wine_, _or negus_, _or brandy-and-water_".

Again, Mr Caldwell has been unable to procure a license on account of the opposition of the publicans in the neighbourhood. The Chairman asks, "Do you think the publicans would withdraw their opposition?" "_Yes_, _they begin to find my house an advantage_; _when parties leave my rooms_, _they stand together at the corner of the streets_, _and say_, _We will have a parting gla.s.s_. _They do not all have it at my rooms_."

Now this answer does not well coincide with Mr Caldwell's former evidence. It is quite as much the drink as the dancing that is the attraction, and as to his respectable tradesmen, and the fact of persons not being tipsy, and that of some of the first n.o.blemen coming there, all these a.s.sertions are fairly open to criticism. It was only the other day I heard a London magistrate declare that publicans never could tell when a person was tipsy; and as to respectability, your Robsons, and Camerons, and Sadleirs are always considered highly respectable. Ask the first person you meet about your neighbours. What is the answer? Oh, they are a highly respectable family; they are immensely rich. And as to n.o.blemen coming into such places, I imagine that would be precisely the reason why the judicious father of a pretty girl would prefer her dancing anywhere rather than in Mr Caldwell's establishment in Dean-street. I have not much faith in the benefits of that species of the mixture of all ranks.

Like the Irishman's reciprocity, it is all on one side. Tennyson makes his hero tell Lady Clara Vere de Vere-

"At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare and I retired,- The daughter of a hundred earls, You are not one to be desired."

But perchance a young maiden, led away by the excitement of the hour, could not find it in her heart to address similar language to Lady Clara Vere de Vere's brother. The last victim always believes that she is to be the exception to all general rules; she may transgress, but not pay the penalty-pluck the forbidden fruit, and for doing so not forfeit Eden-plunge wildly into sin, and sorrow, and shame, and yet find peace in her heart and the light of heaven lying on her path; but cause and effect are eternal, and, youth gone, and pleasure gone, and the power to attract gone, and the inward sense of right succeeded by the stings of conscience and the gnawing of remorse, what is left but to weep madly and in vain for

"The tender grace of a day that is dead"?

But we are in Caldwell's,-let us go into the gallery and look down. I know not the name of the new dances, but how the women swim round the room, as the music now hurriedly hastens, now softly dies away. The girl that dances here so modestly to-night in twelve months will have lost her maiden shame, will be dressed in silks and satins, will be dancing at the Argyll, and supping at Scott's or Quin's. That girl they call Rose-and a rose she is, for she might s.h.i.+ne in a Belgravian drawing-room, and walks in beauty as a fairy queen-might have lit up a home with her love, and made a brave heart proud; but here she comes, night after night, and domestic life is to her tame after music and dancing such as she has here. Beauty you will not find much of, nor that overdress which stamps the character of the women at the Casino or the Argyll in unmistakeable terms; and the men are the cla.s.s you usually meet in these places. They may be pickpockets, or they may be peers; you can scared tell the difference in these levelling days. If I had not Mr Caldwell's express a.s.sertion to the contrary, I should certainly say that that young fellow with a pint bottle of champagne in his hand was decidedly drunk,-at any rate, he has very much the appearance of a tipsy person; but the waiters seem to be of Mr Caldwell's opinion, and are still offering him more drink, and the women around seem to think it is rather fun than otherwise. Ah! little do they reflect how such as he, under the influences of drink, forget the decencies of life, the claims of duty, forget even the common instincts of common humanity; so that the wife, whom he has vowed to love, honour, and protect, is abandoned, and the home forsaken, for the orgies of the public-house. Do the women around us ever expect to be the wives and mothers of such, or have they, young and fair as many of them seem, learnt already that recklessness as to the future which robs life of all its glory, and incarcerates the soul in a living grave? I can see, even here, a gaiety more sad than tears. But I need not continue my description; dancing in public rooms in the metropolis is much the same everywhere. Of course the place is all that Mr Caldwell says it is. I believe with him that it is as respectably conducted as establishments of the kind can be; but at the same time Mr Caldwell confesses it leads to drinking, and that is quite reason enough, independently of other obvious considerations, why I come away thankful that no wife or sister of mine is amongst the parties nightly to be met at Mr Caldwell's _soirees dansantes_.

CREMORNE.

"In a set of pictures ill.u.s.trative of Greek customs, it was quite impossible to leave out the _hetaerae_ who gave such a peculiar colouring to Grecian levity, and exercised so potent a sway over the life of the younger members of the community. Abundant materials for such a sketch exist, for the Greeks made no secret of matters of this kind; the difficulty has been not to sacrifice the vividness of the picture of the ordinary intercourse with these women to the demands of our modern sense of propriety," says Professor Becker, in his truly admirable work on the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. In the same manner, and for the same reason, the modern sense of propriety is supposed to be in the way of any very graphic description of Cremorne; yet we have hetaerae almost as bewitching as Aspasia or the Corinthian Lais; and if our students, and learned clergy, and holy bishops write long articles about the Athenian Dionysia only held once a year, why should we not speak of ours which last all the summer, and the scene of which is Cremorne? At the Dionysia the most unbridled merriment and drunkenness were the order of the day, and were held quite blameless. For a while the most sober-minded bade adieu to the stringency of habit, following the well-known Greek maxim-

"Ne'er blush with drink to spice the feast's gay hour, And, reeling, own the mighty wine-G.o.d's power."

So it is in Cremorne. If Corinth had her groves sacred to Aphrodite, so has Cremorne. It offends our modern sense of propriety to speak of such matters. English people only see what they wish to see. If you are true-if you look at real life and say what you think of it, you shock our modern sense of propriety. We may talk about drainage and ventilation, and the advantages of soap, but there we must stop. Keep the outside clean, but don't look within. Thus is it our writers make such blunders.

For instance, good-meaning Mrs Stowe, after she had written Uncle Tom, came here to be lionized, and to write a book about us. She did so, and a very poor book it was. But I must quote one pa.s.sage from "Sunny Memories." In writing of a visit she paid to the Jardin Mobile in Paris, she writes, "Entrance to this Paradise can be had, for gentlemen a dollar, ladies _free_; this tells the whole story. Nevertheless, do not infer that there are not respectable ladies there; it is a place so remarkable that very few strangers stay long in Paris without taking a look at it. And though young ladies residing in Paris never go, and matrons very seldom, yet occasionally it is the case that some ladies of respectability look in. Nevertheless, aside from the impropriety inherent in the very nature of the waltzing, there was not a word, look, or gesture of immorality or impropriety. The dresses were all decent, and, if there was vice, it was vice masked under the guise of polite propriety. How different, I could not but reflect, is all this from the gin-palaces of London! There, there is indeed a dazzling splendour of gas-lights, but there is nothing artistic, nothing refined, nothing appealing to the imagination. There are only hogsheads and barrels, and the appliances for serving out strong drink; and there for one sole end-the swallowing of the fiery stimulant-come the nightly thousands, from the gay and well-dressed to the haggard and tattered, in the last stage of debas.e.m.e.nt. The end is the same, by how different paths! Here they dance along the path to ruin with flowers and music-there they cast themselves bodily, as it were, into the lake of fire." A more unfair comparison, I think, was never drawn; a drinking-shop is much the same everywhere, and in Paris as well as in London, people, to use Mrs Stowe's own words, cast themselves bodily into the lake of fire. We have our Jardin Mobile, but of course Mrs Stowe never went there-as we have known good people confessing to entering theatres in Germany or France who on no account would have gone near one at home. If Mrs Stowe had confessed to going to Cremorne, she would have been cut, and so she went to the Paris Cremorne instead; but to write a true book on England, she should have gone to Cremorne. Look at Cremorne; is it not one, as Disraeli is reported to have said, of the inst.i.tutions of the country? {194} The gardens are beautiful, are kept in fine order, are adorned with really fine trees, and are watered by the Thames, here almost a silver stream.

Though near London, on a summer evening the air is fresh and balmy, the amus.e.m.e.nts are varied, the company are genteel in appearance, and here, as in Paris, they dance along the path to ruin with flowers and music.

If Mrs Stowe gives the preference to the Parisians, she may be right, but I am inclined to dispute the grounds of that preference. The gin-palaces are filled with our sots, with our utter wrecks, with all that is loathsome and low in man or woman. Your son, fresh from home and its sacred influences, is shy of entering a gin-palace at first. He goes there with a blush upon his cheek, and a sense of shame at his heart. He shrinks from its foul companions.h.i.+p, and when he has come out he resolves never to be what he has seen under those accursed roofs. But you take him to Cremorne, or you send him to the Lowther Arcade, or the Holborn Casino, and he is surrounded by temptation that speaks to him with almost irresistible power. The women are well-dressed and well-behaved. The drink does not repel but merely stimulates the hot pa.s.sions of youth, and lulls the conscience. For one man that is ruined in a gin-shop there are twenty that are ruined at Cremorne.

As to the morality of such places, that is not to be settled dogmatically by me or by any one else. Tennyson talks of men fighting their doubts, and gathering strength; in the same manner, men may fight temptation and gather strength, and one man may merely spend a pleasant evening where another may in the same interval of time ruin himself for life. The tares and the wheat, in this confused world of ours, grow side by side.

Unnaturally, we bring up our sons only to pluck what we deem the wheat; and immediately they are left to themselves, they begin gathering the tares, which we have not taught them are such, and have for them at least the charm of novelty. It does not do to say there is no pleasure in the world; there is a great deal. The gra.s.s is green, though, it may be, sad sinners tread it. The sun s.h.i.+nes as sweetly on carrion as on the Koh-i-noor. The lark high up at heaven's gate sings as loud a song of praise, whether villains or lovers listen to its lays. Places are what we make them. I fear there are many blackguards at Cremorne; the women most of them are undoubtedly hetaerae, and yet what a place it is for fun!

How jolly are all you meet! How innocent are all the amus.e.m.e.nts,-the ascent of the balloon-the dancing-the equestrian performances-the comic song-the illuminations-the fire-works-the promenade on the gra.s.s lawn or in the gas-lit paths; the impulses that come to us in the warm breath of the summer eve, how grateful are they all, and what a change from Cheap-side or from noisy manufactories still more confined! By this light the scene is almost a fairy one. Can there be danger here? Is there here nothing artistic-nothing refined-nothing appealing to the imagination? Come here, Mrs Stowe, and judge. You will scandalize, I know, that portion of the religious public that never yet has looked at man and society honestly in the face, but you will better understand the frightful hypocrisies of our domestic life; you will better understand how it is that a religion which we pay so much for, and to which we render so much outward homage, has so little hold upon the heart and life. There is no harm in Cremorne, if man is born merely to enjoy himself-to eat, drink, be merry, and die. I grant, it is rather inconvenient for a young man who has his way to fight in life to indulge a taste for pleasure, to launch out into expenses beyond his means, to mix with company that is more amusing than moral, and to keep late hours; and young fellows who go to Cremorne must run all these risks. It may do you, my good sir, no harm to go there. You have arrived at an age when the gaieties of life have ceased to be dangerous. You come up by one of the Citizen boats to Chelsea after business hours, and stroll into the garden and view the balloon, or sit out the ballet, or gaze with a leaden eye upon the riders, and the clowns, and the dancing, or the fireworks, and return home in decent time to bed; and if you waste a pound or two, you can afford it. But it is otherwise with inflammable youth-a clerk, it may be, in a merchant's warehouse on 30_s._ a-week, and it is really alarming to think what excitements are thus held out to the pa.s.sions, at all times so difficult to control. There are the North Woolwich Gardens-there is Highbury Barn-all rivalling Cremorne, and all capable of containing some thousands of idle pleasure-seekers. Vauxhall, with its drunken orgies, is gone never to return-the place that knows it now will know it no more for ever-but such places are what thoughtless people call respectable, are frequented by respectable people; and amidst mirth and music, foaming up in the sparkling wine, looking out of dark blue eyes, reddening the freshest cheeks, and nestling in the richest curls, there lurks the great enemy of G.o.d and man. Young man, such an enemy you cannot resist; your only refuge is in flight. Ah, you think that face fair as you ask its owner to drink with you; it would have been fairer had it never gone to Cremorne. A father loved her as the apple of his eye; she was the sole daughter of his home and heart, and here she comes night after night to drink and dance; a few years hence and you shall meet her drinking and cursing in the lowest gin-palaces of St Giles's, and the gay fast fellows around you now will be digging gold in Australia, or it may be walking the streets in rags, or it may be dying in London hospitals of lingering disease, or, which is worse than all, it may be living on year after year with all that is divine in man utterly blotted out and destroyed. The path that leads to life is strait and narrow, and few there be who find it.

THE COSTERMONGERS' FREE-AND-EASY.

Every cla.s.s in London has its particular pleasures. The gay have their theatres-the philanthropic their Exeter Hall-the wealthy their "ancient concerts"-the costermongers what they term their sing-song.

I once penetrated into one of these dens. It was situated in a very low neighbourhood, not far from a gigantic brewery, where you could not walk a yard scarcely without coming to a public house. The costermongers are a numerous race. Walk the poor neighbourhoods on a Sat.u.r.day night, and hear the cries,-"Chestnuts all 'ot a penny a score," "Three a penny, Yarmouth bloaters," "Penny a lot fine russets, a penny a lot," "Now's your time, fine whelks, a penny a lot." Well, the itinerant vendors of these delicacies are costermongers. Or in the daytime see the long carts drawn by donkies loaded with greens and other vegetables, all announced to the public in stentorian lungs-these men are costermongers. Listen to those boys calling, "Ho, ho, hi, hi,-what do you think of this here? a penny a bunch, a penny a bunch. Here's your turnips!" Those boys are costermongers' lads. It is seldom they last long as men. They soon lose their voice, and how they pick up a living then no one can tell. Their talk is peculiar. Mr Mayhew tells us their slang consists merely in p.r.o.nouncing each word as if spelt backwards. "I say, Curly, will you do a _top_ of _reeb_ (pot of beer)?" one costermonger may say to another.

"It's _on doog_, Whelkey, _on doog_" (no good, no good), the second may reply; "I've had a regular _troseno_ (bad sort) to-day; I've been doing _dab_ (bad) with my _tol_ (lot)-han't made a _yennep_ (penny), s' elp me-." "Why, I've cleared a _flatchenorc_ (half a crown) a' ready."

Master Whelkey will answer perhaps, "But _kool_ the _esilop_ (look at the police), _kool him_ (look at him). Curly: _Nommus_ (be off), I am going _to do the tightner_" (have my dinner). Would you know more of them, come with me.

Just look at the people in this public-house. A more drunken, dissipated, wretched lot you never saw. There are one or two little tables in front of the bar and benches, and on these benches are the most wretched men and women possible to imagine. They are drinking gin and smoking, and all have the appearance of confirmed sots. They are shoemakers in the neighbourhood, and these women with them are their wives. "Lor' bless you, sir," exclaims the landlord, "they spend all they has in drink. They live on a penny roll and a ha'porth of sprats or mussels, and they never buy any clothes, except once in three or four years, and then they get some second-hand rubbish." And here, when they are not at work, they sit spending their money. Are there none to save them?-none to come here and pluck these brands from the burning? I know they are short-lived; I see in their pale, haggard, blotched, and bloated faces premature death. The first touch of illness will carry them off as rotten leaves fall in November; but ere this be the case, can you not reveal to them one glimpse of a truer and diviner life? But come up-stairs into this concert-room, where about a hundred costermongers and shoemakers are listening to the charms of song. Talk about the refining influence of music! it is not here you will find such to be the case.

The men and women and lads sitting round these shabby looking tables have come here to drink, for that is their idea of enjoyment; and whilst we would not grudge them one particle of mirth, we cannot but regret that their standard of enjoyment should be so low. The landlord is in the chair, and a professional man presides at the piano. As to the songs, they are partly professional and partly by volunteers. I cannot say much for their character. The costermongers have not very strict notions of _meum_ and _tuum_; they are not remarkable for keeping all the commandments; their reverence for the conventional ideas of decency and propriety is not very profound; their notions are not peculiarly polished or refined, nor is the language in which they are clothed, nor the mode in which they are uttered, such as would be recognised in Belgravia.