Inthe days of the gay and graceless Charles, Bow-street was the Bond-street of London. In the taverns of that quarter were the true homes and haunts of the British poets. That they were much better for all their drinking and worship of the small hours, I more than doubt. Pope tried the pace, but found it killing, and had the wisdom to go and live at Twickenham, and cease to play the part of a man about town. Describing Addison’s life at this period, he says, “He usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button’s, and dined there, and stayed there five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me.I hurt my health,and so I quitted it.” But the wits died off, and Tom’s, Will’s, Button’s became desolate, and in their place the Cyder Cellars grew famous.
You know Maiden-lane, where an old hair-dresserhad a son born to him, who, under the name of Turner, won his way to the first rank amongst English painters,—where Voltaire, “so witty, profligate, and thin,” lodged at the house of a French peruke-maker, and corresponded with Swift, and Pope, and the other literary men of the times,—where Fielding laid the foundation of an eternal fame,—where Andrew Marvell refused courtly bribes, and in sublime poverty proudly picked his mutton-bone: there, some long time since, stood a mansion, the residence, in a green old age, of that Nell Gwynne of whom, with a strange perversity, the world speaks as kindly as if she were a Grace Darling, or a Florence Nightingale, or a Margaret Fuller, or an Elizabeth Fry. A portion of the old house still remains, with its ancient wainscotting. Well, on the site of this mansion was, and is, the Cyder Cellars, the oldest house of its class in London, actually referred to in a rare pamphlet now extant in the British Museum, entitled “Adventures Under-ground in the Year 1750.” In those days to drink deep was deemed a virtue, and the literary class, after the exhausting labours of the day, loved nothing better than to sit soaking all night in the Cyder Cellars,where all restraints were thrown on one aide,—where the song was sung and the wine was quaffed, and men were fools enough to think they were getting happy when they were only getting drunk. I can understand why the wits went to the Cyder Cellars then. Few of them lived in a style in which they would like to receive their friends. In a place like the Cyder Cellars they could meet after the theatres were closed, and the occupations of the day over, and sup and talk and drink with more freedom than in any private house; and no doubt many were the ingenuous youths who went to the Cyder Cellars to see the learned Mr. Bayle, or the great Grecian Porson, or the eminent tragedian Mr. Edmund Kean, and thought it a fine thing to view those distinguished men maudlin, or obscene, or blasphemous, over their cups. But the wits do not go to the Cyder Cellars now. Even the men about town do not go there much. I remember when that dismal song, “Sam Hall,” was sung—a song in which a wretch is supposed to utter all the wretchedness in his soul, all his sickness of life, all his abhorrence of mankind, as he was on his way to Tyburn drop. Horrible as the song was—revoltingas it was to all butblazémen, the room was crammed to suffocation,—it was impossible often to get a seat, and you might have heard a pin drop. Where are the crowds that listened to that song? My own companion—where is he? A finer young man, with richer promise, I knew not. He had a generous disposition, a taste for study, and was blessed with the constitution of a horse; he had received a liberal education; his morals had been carefully attended to; his parents were people of large property, and this son I always deemed his mother’s favourite son; and now in his very prime, when he might have been a blessing to society, when in his successful professional career his parents might have reaped a reward, when the heart of some loving, tender, trusting woman might have joyed in his love, when fair young children, calling him father, might have clustered round his knees, he is dying, I am told, before their very eyes, slowly, and with agony, from the terrible effects of drink. And does it not really seem as if there were a curse attaching to those connected with the trade? A week or two since, had you been passing down Bridges-street into the Strand late on a Saturday night, or early on a Sundaymorning, on a door-step, in spite of the pouring rain, you might have seen a woman, in her rags and loneliness, trying to gather a few hours of sleep. She was too weak to pursue her unhallowed calling, and had she been so disposed on that cold, wet night, it would have been of little avail had she walked the streets. The policeman as he goes his monotonous rounds tells her to move on. She wakes up, gets upon her legs, hobbles along, and then, when he is past, again, weary and wayworn, seeks the friendly door-step. The policeman returns; “What, here still?” he exclaims. Ah yes! she has not power to move away. She is weak, ill, dying. The friendly police carry her to the neighbouring hospital. “She cannot be received here,” says Routine, and she is taken to the workhouse. Again she is taken to the hospital, admitted at last—for is she not a woman, and a young one, too?—not more than twenty-five, it appears,—and on her face, stained with intemperance and sin, there is the dread stamp of death—in this case, perhaps, a welcome messenger; for who would live, fallen, friendless, forsaken, with a diseased body and a broken heart? “The spirit of a man can sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit whocan bear?” Peace be with her! in another hour or two she will have done with this wretched life of hers, and have gone where “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” More than usual official cruelty is visible in this case, for all that is given her between her admission and her death is a simple cup of tea; and the coroner’s verdict very properly censures the hospital authorities. Well, what connexion, you ask, is there with this girl’s sad fate and the jollity of the Cyder Cellars? Only this, that her father made the Cyder Cellars so popular a place of resort. If I go there again I shall think of Louisa Regan, who began life as the daughter of a successful publican, who had been a governess in a nobleman’s family, at the early age of twenty-five rescued from the streets by policemen, and dependent on charity for a bed on which to die. In the foaming cup, in the glitter of the gas, while the comic singer was most comical, or the sentimental singer most sentimental, I could not be oblivious of her fate. Is there not poison in the bowl? Is there not madness in the merriment? To the night so bright does there not come a dolorous morrow? You may sing and laugh the hours away in theCyder Cellars for a while, but you must pay your reckoning, and then, I imagine, you will doubt whether the amusement was worth the price. Youth generally pays too dear for its whistle. Youth is finding this out; at any rate the days of the Cyder Cellars are numbered, and now, with its Judge and Jury andPoses Plastiques, it collects comparatively few.
Let me ask, need the amusements of our leisure hours be thus based on false principles? Cambridge, in one of the pleasantest papers in the “World,” says, “Among the numbers who have changed a sober plan of living for one of riot and excess, the greatest part have been converted by the arguments in a drinking song.” Life is real, life is earnest. It is a battle-ground which requires heart and muscle, and where only the brave can conquer; but if I drop for half-an-hour into a music hall, I learn that pleasure is the great aim of life, and that gin can make me jolly and a genius.
Oneof the peculiar institutions of the country is the square. Charles Knight says:—“The Piazza, Place, Platz, of Italy, France, or Germany, have little in common with it. Its elements are simple enough—an open space of a square figure, houses on each of the four sides, and an enclosed centre with turf, a few trees, and, it may be, flowers; and there is a square.” There are fashionable squares, all alive with the sound of carriage-wheels and the chaste accents of a thousand flunkeys; there are city squares, dull, dark places, with old red-brick houses, and a stunted, smoke-dried shrub or two in the middle. Then there are respectable squares, which never were fashionable, nor ever aimed to be such; and then there are squares which were once fashionable, but now are sadly gone out of repute. One of the chief of these is Leicester-square. Do our readers remember how Queen Caroline found time to be the mother of sevenpromising children, of whom the eldest, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was a continual source of sorrow and vexation to both his parents? “He resembled,” writes Horace Walpole, with his usual sneer, “the Black Prince only in dying before his father.” Well, there was a house built before the Commonwealth, called Leicester-house. Hither came this young, dissipated, short-lived Prince, and fixed his court. When he passed away, and the wits wrote—
“Here lies Fred,Who was alive,And is dead,”
“Here lies Fred,Who was alive,And is dead,”
still the place had the prestige of fashion. It gradually assumed the shape of a square, and became the dwelling-place of men truly great. Sir Isaac Newton resided near the square, in a house yet standing, and known to fast men as Bertolini’s,aliasthe Newton Hotel. Where now we see the Sablonière Hotel, Hogarth once dwelt, and at a later time Sir Joshua Reynolds lived on the opposite side of the square. In its neighbourhood Sir Charles Bell made his discoveries respecting the nervous system, and here the renowned John Hunter lived. In later times Wordsworth made it the scene of hisMoon-gazers; and if he could term it “Leicester’s busy square,” still more is that epithet appropriate to it at the present time. It is true that the Great Globe is not a success; that the Panopticon failed; that the Western Literary Institution did not flourish; that the place is not literary or scientific, nor even business-like, for by daylight the shops look seedy, and the wares exhibited are somewhat of the cheapest. But at night a change comes over the spirit of its dream. Here, from cheap lodging-houses hard by, from cold garrets or dark and dusty two-pair backs, crawl out to walk its flagstones, or taint its air with the smoke of cheap cigars, men of all nations and tongues—French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Poles—the scoundrels and patriots of Europe. There is business here now; the air is laden with the sickly odour of a thousand dinners. Hotels andcafésandrestaurantsare lit up and gay. Mr Smith opens the Alhambra on Sundays and week-days for Music for the Million; and women, rouged and dressed as much as possible like the nude figures, degrade our conceptions of Venus, and Sappho, and the Syrens, and others of our classic acquaintances, by the exhibition of them in questionablegroupings tolerated asposes plastiques. Wine-shades attract us; we hear the clink of billiards. This house we know to be a betting house—that to be a hell. A man runs up against us. He turns round and apologizes. I catch a glimpse of his face. I see at once that he is a billiard-room shark. Look at his pale face, his cold eye, his hard mouth; and don’t play with him, however civil. Above all, don’t imagine from his exterior that he is a gentleman. A gentleman does not wear slop-shop clothes nor mosaic gold.
You wish to sit down. Well, as it is past the midnight hour, we will go into thisCafé Chansante. At any rate the foreigners have more taste than ourselves. The pretty young girls, French or German, at the bar give the place a pleasant appearance, and the mirrors on all sides reflect the gay forms and faces here assembled. But we pass into the concert room, where some Spanish minstrels in national costumes are singing national airs. As you are not musical and cannot understand these distinguished foreigners, let us see who are here, the Swiss Kellner, with his wonted civility, having first brought us a cup of coffee and a cigar. I don’t know why it isso, but it always struck me that of all asses the English ass is the greatest. How conspicuous, for instance, are those three young fellows sitting at the small marble table in front of us. Most likely they are medical students. Of course they are drinking and smoking, and have female companions, respecting whose character there can be no doubt. How happy are they in their conceit—in their insolent laugh at the foreigners round them—in their vulgar shouts of derisive applause. Talk to them, and you will be astonished to find how morally dead they are, how narrow is their range of thought, how obsolete are all their ideas, how suppressed are all their sympathies: not even the beer they drink can be heavier. Yet these lads are to teach the next age its medical science—and in the last death-struggle, when we would save the life we love, with broken hearts and streaming eyes we shall appeal to them in vain. In England the general practitioner will always be under-bred so long as the night-house and the casino absorb the hours science imperiously claims. But pass on to this next table. Look at this girl all radiant with beauty and smiles—beautiful even in spite of her long-lost virtue and life of sin. For,
“You may break, you may ruin, the vase if you will,But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”
“You may break, you may ruin, the vase if you will,But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”
The man seated by her side is in love with her. It may be for her love he has given up mother, sister, betrothed, home, his fair name, his prospects in life, his hopes of heaven; and she no more heeds his passionate vows than does the rock the murmur of the waves at its feet; and already her wanton eye glances round the room for other victims to sacrifice to her vanity and pride. Oh, the deceit and craft and hardness of women such as she! And yet on account of such in distant village-homes there is sadness, and the mother and sister deny themselves many a luxury, and grayhaired fathers mourn over their lost and loved—their Benjamins—born and nurtured to come to such an end. Perhaps at the next table the picture is reversed; that woman is beautiful, and her face has a smile, and there is a flush upon her cheek, and the wine has driven from her heart for a while bitter memories; but she is not happy, though loud be her laugh; and if she dared to sit and think of the hour when she fell, and of the mire and dirt along which she has crawled, of what she is now in her rustling silks, and what she was in her peasantdress then—eyes full of grief, and dim with tears, would look into her own; and out of that gilded room, and away from all the song and laughter and wine, would she not rush home to die? Yet if she now sells herself to pay to-morrow’s baker’s bill, is she to be trod on by the high-born beauty that goes up to God’s altar with one for whom she has no love, for an establishment that will make her bridesmaids yellow with well-bred jealousy? But we are all gay here. Is not the room light and cheerful? Is not the whole aspect all mirth-inspiring? Does not dull care flee the flowing bowl? Jolly fellows are sitting and telling each other tales which you would be sorry your sister should hear, and which no mother would believe would be ever heard by son of hers without a manly protest. Women are laughing and drinking as if theirs were not lives of shame. Sated men about town languidly smoke, and the eye of the gloomy refugee sparkles, and his heart beats quicker, as he hears the song of his father-land. The hours hasten on—the company depart—the wanton beauty, flushed with conquest, rides off in the Hansom, or it may be in her private brougham, to her luxurious rooms; while her sister, shiveringin the cold night, begs us for two-pence with which to purchase a bed of straw. Poor forlorn one! in another year thou wilt lie down in another bed, only to wake up when the last trump shall sound!
Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, and theTimesare all eloquent in the praise of alcohol. It lifts us above this dull earth, it fires our genius, it gives to us the large utterances of the gods. Barry Cornwall tells us—
“Bad are the timesAnd bad the rhymesThat scorn old wine.”
“Bad are the timesAnd bad the rhymesThat scorn old wine.”
Leigh Hunt translates “Bacchus in Tuscany,” and sanctions such lines as the following—
“I would sooner take to poisonThan a single cup set eyes onOf that bitter and guilty stuff yeTalk of by the name of coffee;”
“I would sooner take to poisonThan a single cup set eyes onOf that bitter and guilty stuff yeTalk of by the name of coffee;”
and theTimeseverywhere inculcates the idea that, without wine, poetry and eloquence and wit were dumb and dead. Was Sidney Smith witty, was Shelley a poet, or was he who in old times drew away the Hebrew multitude from the crowded streets of Jerusalem out into the desert,whose food was locusts and wild honey, whose raiment was a leathern girdle—was he not eloquent, as he warned the terror-stricken mob that hung upon his lips of the wrath to come? Facts are not in favour of the wine-drinkers. Of Waller Dr Johnson writes, “In a time when fancy and gaiety were the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller was forgotten. He passed his time in the company that was highest both in rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude him. Though he drank water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr Saville said that ‘no man in England should keep him company without drinking, but Ned Waller.’” “In Parliament,” says Burnet, “he was the delight of the House, and, though old, said the liveliest things of any of them.” The truth is, men have often reserved the outpourings of their mind for the social glass, and have fallen into the natural mistake of believing that it was the glass, and not the opportunity and the action of mind upon mind, that elicited a certain amount of joyous fun. I must quote an anecdote from Sir Walter Scott’s Life to illustratemy meaning. He tells us one of his school-fellows was always at the top of the class. Young Scott found that when asked a question the lad alluded to was in the habit of fumbling one peculiar button. Scott cut off that button. The next time the poor fellow was asked a question, as usual he put his hand to fumble the friendly button—alas! it was gone, and with it his power, and he speedily lost his place. The writers I have quoted, to be consistent, should argue it was the button that made that lad sharp and clever.
But if you still doubt, let us test the thing practically. In Bolt-court, Fleet-street, there is a tavern bearing the honoured name of Dr Johnson. Dr Johnson lived in this court, and hence, I suppose, the sign; but the Doctor was a total abstainer. He found he could not be a moderate drinker, so he verily gave up the drink altogether. He told that precious ass, Boswell, to drink water, because if he did that he would be sure not to get drunk, whereas if he drank wine he was not so sure; and Boswell, to whom the idea seems never to have occurred, prints the remark as an astonishing instance of his hero’s sagacity. But I pass on to modern times. Inthis Dr Johnson’s Tavern is situated “The City Concert Room.” I suppose the City does not care much about concerts, asIhave generally found it very thinly attended. It is a handsome room, and perhaps there are about fifty or sixty gentlemen, chiefly young ones, present. You do not see swells here as at Evans’s. They are all very plain-looking people, from the neighbouring shops, or from the warehouses in Cheapside. Just by me are three pale heavy-looking young men, whose intellects seem to me dead, except so far as a low cunning indicates a sharpness where money is concerned. One of them is stupidly beery. Their great object is to get him to drink more, notwithstanding his repeated assurances, uttered, however, in a very husky tone, that he must go back to “Islin’ton” to-night. A lady at one end of the room, with a very handsome blue satin dress and a very powerful voice, is screaming out something about “Lovely Spring,” but this little party is evidently indifferent to the charms of the song. Just beyond me is a gent with a short pipe and a very stiff collar. Iwatch him for an hour, and whether he is enjoying himself intensely, or whether he is enduring an indescribable amount of inward agony, Icannot tell. A little farther off is another gent with a very red scarf, equally stoical in appearance. Behind me are two verdant youths, of limited means I imagine; but they have the pleasure of speaking to the comic singer, and take tickets for that interesting gentleman’s benefit. But the comic singer comes forward, and sings with appropriate action of the doings of a little insect very partial to comfortable quarters. That song I have known fifteen years. I have heard Sharp sing it, Ross sing it, Cowell sing it. Night after night in some drinking room in some part of London or other is a beery audience told—
“Creeping where no life doth be,Arare old plant is the lively flea.”
“Creeping where no life doth be,Arare old plant is the lively flea.”
And after a pursuit very vividly pantomimed, the little stranger is suffered to be caught, and to tell the catcher that it is his father’s ghost, doomed for a season to walk the earth and nip him most infernally, and so on. Now I am sure that every one in the room has heard this dozens of times before, yet old men are laughing as if it was an absolute novelty. Talk about alcohol brightening men’s intellects! When I come to such places as this, it always seemsto me to have a precisely contrary effect. Men could not sit and hear all these stale witticisms unless they drank. Sober, I am sure they could not do it, not even if they were paid for it; and yet all seem enraptured. I remark, however, one exception. Two waiters help to a seat by my side a very dirty little man with red eyes, and generally shabby appearance. The waiters set down by him a glass of grog, offer him a cigar, and then playfully shaking their fingers at him, as if to intimate he had better be quiet, leave him to his fate. After a few minutes of deep thought, he looks to me and beckons. I take no notice. He repeats the signal. I lean forward.
“Very o-old, sir.”
“What do you mean?” we ask.
“The comic singer very o-old, sir.”
We intimate as much.
“But get him on a fresh piece, sir, and see how he can go-o.” Here our friend began rolling one arm rapidly round the other, to give us an idea of the comic singer’s powers.
“Pity he don’t give something new,” repeats our friend. Another assenting nod on our part and the conversation ceases. But we suppose itis with comic singers as with others. “A man who has settled his opinions does not love to have the tranquillity of his convictions disturbed,” wrote Dr Johnson, and a comic singer does not like to have the bother of learning fresh songs. But the comic singer was applauded and encored, and then he treated us to a monologue, in which he describes how he, the drunken husband, stays out all night, and makes it up with his “old ooman” when he gets home; and in the course of his remarks of course he declares teetotalism is humbug, that there was truth in wine, but he’d be blessed if there was any in water; that the man who would drink the latter would be a muddy cistern—forgetting all the while thetu quoquethe water-drinkers would very fairly urge, on the authority even of Mr Henry Drummond; and then I came away, thinking that if drinking made men witty and light-hearted, I had been very unfortunate on the night of my visit. Once upon a time, as the writer was in the Cave of Harmony, the polite manager asked him his opinion of a new comic singer. Having given it, the red-faced little man turned to us with a sigh, and said, “Ah, sir, you have no idea what a dearth there isof comic talent now-a-days.” And truly he was right. There is little fun and comedy and wit anywhere. I know not where they are; I know where they are not. You will not find them in the taverns where men sit all the evening listening to music for which they do not care, and drinking all the while. How should there be, since wine is now admitted to be the product of the laboratory, not of the grape?
Was instituted for the combined purpose of encouraging drinking, and what its admirers term the noble art of self-defence. There was a time when boxing was in fashion; when but few of our noblemen and gentlemen did not take lessons in the pugilistic art. “Ican assert, without fear of contradiction,” writes Pierce Egan, “thatIfurnished the present Duke of Buccleuch with a pair of boxing-gloves and all the volumes of ‘Boxiana’ during his studies at Eton College.” Prince George of Cambridge learnt the rudiments of the art from young Richmond; the late Duke of Portland was a pupil of that Jackson whose name is familiar to all readers of Byron. At the first public dinner of the Pugilistic Society, held at the Thatched House Tavern, 1814, a baronet, Sir Henry Smith, was in the chair; and it is a fact, when the war with France was terminated, and the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia,accompanied by Blucher and Platoff, visited this country, that not anything they had witnessed appeared to interest them more than the sparring matches between Jackson, Tom Crib, Belcher, Old Dutch Sam, at adéjeunergiven by Lord Lowther at his mansion. Indeed, so delighted were those great masters of the art of war with the combats between those first-rate boxers, that Messrs Blucher and Platoff had a second exhibition by their own express desire at the Earl of Elgin’s house. Actually even in the House of Commons Mr Wyndham favoured the House with a description, warm and glowing, of a recent contest between Richmond and Maddox, of which he had been a spectator; and it is not long since Mr Gully, a prize-fighter, represented Pontefract. The late George IV., when Prince of Wales, was also a spectator at the fight upon a stage on Brighton Downs between Tom Tyne, a distinguished boxer, with a publican of milling notoriety. The latter was killed by a blow on his temple, and died almost upon the instant. The royal debauchee never attended another, but his brother, the late William the Fourth, was often a spectator of the matches on Moulsey Hurst. In this respect the age has made progress.Our noblemen no longer patronize the prize-ring. Our young princes have a purer taste. Yet the institution, with all its brutality and blackguardism, still exists, and in theAdvertiser, side by side with an article bewailing the spread of German neology in our dissenting colleges, or speaking evil of such earnest workers in the wide field of philanthropy as Maurice or Kingsley, you will read of one of the beastly prize-fights which still disgrace the land. But theAdvertiseris the publicans’ paper, and it is a fact easily understood, that the prize-fighter, when his day is over, generally keeps a public-house, which is generally called a sporting-house. A warm admirer of them writes, “Fun, civility, mirth, good-humour, and sporting events are the general theme of conversation to be met with over a cheerful glass at the above houses.” Ben Caunt’s, in St Martin’s-lane, is perhaps the principal one, but there are some five or six besides in various parts of the metropolis. Let us enter one. In spite of the assurance of civility and good humour, I don’t think you will stay long, but will feel on a small scale what Daniel must have felt in the lions’ den.
We enter, we will say, Bang Up’s hostelry, about ten on a Thursday evening; there is Bang Up at the bar, with his ton of flesh and broken nose. Many people think it worth while to go and spend one or two shillings at Bang Up’s bar, merely that they may have the pleasure of seeing him, and consider him cheap at the money. I don’t admire their taste. I once spent an evening with the Norfolk Giant, and I did not find him very witty or well informed. But let us walk up-stairs, having first paid sixpence to a doorkeeper, by appearance a negro, for which we are to receive a certain amount of refreshment, if beer and grog come rightly under that denomination; at length we find ourselves in a very ordinary room, with very extraordinary people in it. First, there are the portraits—imprimisBang Up, looking grosser and more animal than ever. Secondly, Mrs Bang Up, the exact counterpart of her bosom’s lord; then a tribe of Bang Ups junior, of all sizes and sexes, attract our astonished eyes. Then—for the room is a complete Walhalla—we have portraits of sporting heroes innumerable, with villanous foreheads, all “vacant of our glorious gains,” heavy eyes, thick bull necks,and very short croppy hair. Here Gully vanquishes Bob Gregson, “the Lancashire champion,” one of the finest and most formidable men of the day. There Jack Randall and Ned Turner display “a fine science and capital fighting,” almost unparalleled, and so on; for the list is long, and it is one we do not care to repeat. We seat ourselves at the further end of the room, with a few gentlemen drinking gin and smoking cigars. Twenty or thirty mean-looking men are seated along the side; they are mostly dirty, and have broken noses; they are not very conversational, but seem chiefly to be deeply engaged in smoking. At length the waiter brings out some boxing gloves; one man takes off his coat and waistcoat, possibly his shirt, and puts them on; another does the same—they stand up to each other, the gents at the table encourage them, and the seedy men with broken noses look on very knowingly; they spar for some time, till the one feels that he cannot touch the other, and throws down the gloves; a small collection is then made for the noble art of self-defence, which, I presume, is divided amongst the performers; other actors come upon the stage, and the friendly contests are maintainedtill Bang Up closes his public-house for the night. As I came out, it was a great consolation to me to think that there are not many such places in London. The style of men thus created are, I fear, neither useful nor ornamental. They have a nasty ticket-of-leave look, and I would fain dispense with their company in quiet back streets during the small hours. One other thought may console you; the sporting public-house, once popular, now attracts but a few, and that few a weak and vicious class. Is not this matter of encouragement?
Is a great attraction in some places. We knew a whole town upset by the fact that the landlord of the “Swan” had fitted up a billiard-room. I and Wiggins and Foley and Jobson spent at one time, I regret to say, a good deal of time there. I am warning the reader against the follies of my youth; but Foley failed, and Jobson and Wiggins, after having had their debts paid three or four times by their friends, I believe are now following that eminently healthy occupation called gold-digging, somewhere in Australia. Then I think of that little town in South Wales, and of the “Angel,” under whose too hospitable roof we used to meet. One of us was an M.P’s son; he is now, I believe, dragging down a father’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Another of us bore a name dear to every Englishman; he, I believe, is pensioned off by his family, and lives as he can on thehandsome allowance of a guinea a-week. But these London billiard-rooms are fifty times more pernicious. There are some five or six hundred connected with public-houses. There are in all our large thoroughfares separate rooms licensed for this game, but at these drinking often goes on. And thus the two excitements acting on the man, he is impelled downwards with an increasing power. I have seen in these rooms officers and secretaries of public companies in a night losing, I am sure, a quarter’s salary; I have seen young fellows completely ruined. There was not, when I first knew him, a more promising, gentlemanly young fellow than Smethwicke, and now, they tell me, he is in Marylebone Workhouse.
We are told that men are grown-up children. This saying forcibly occurred to me the last time I was in a billiard-room. After I had recovered from the feeling of suffocation which an atmosphere infected by gas and smoke had produced, I observed a number of men with long sticks trying to knock a number of various-coloured balls into any of the six pockets of the billiard-table. At each unsuccessful attempt a chorus of observations were made by the players, notremarkable for their novelty, for the vocabulary of the billiard-room is very limited, such as “Not within a mile”—“I didn’t play for you, Bob”—“It smelt the hole,” &c. &c. At each successful attempt the chorus was still more animated, but not more original, as “Good stroke,”—“Bad flewke”—“On the red,” &c. &c. The game that was being played was called “pool.” A number of people put each 2s.or 3s., as they may choose to arrange it, and they have each a ball of a different colour—red, blue, pink, yellow, white, brown, black. Each player has what is called three lives, and each time he is put in by a player—for they play in turn—he pays sixpence or a shilling, according to arrangement, and loses a life, whilst the successful player is allowed to play again upon the ball which happens to be nearest. The money in the pool is ultimately divided between the two players who have kept their three lives the longest. It will be seen that, if everything is straightforward, the best player has the best chance of dividing the pool or taking the lives. But, unhappily, this game, so child-like in appearance, is not always innocent. It may happen two players, gifted by nature with conveniently elastic consciences,and a very confused notion of right and wrong, may arrange when they play upon each other to purposely avoid putting the ball in. Of course, each time this omission is made it is equal to the owner of the ball having an extra life, and of course makes the division of the pool almost a certainty. Perhaps at the end of the evening the two gentlemen, “who merely play for their amusement,” may be seen under a lamppost dividing the spoil. The other games are pyramids and billiards, which it is unnecessary to describe. I will simply remark that the best player should win the game; but this is not always the case. Alas! for human nature! Sharps lose to win; muffs win to lose (the term “muff” is applied to an indifferent player). After this not very flattering description the reader would doubtless like to know who frequent these places. A very large majority are gentlemen—men who are perfectly incapable of doing anything but what is strictly honest; the minority are billiard sharks. The gentlemen play because it is a source of excitement; the sharks, because it is a source of profit. There are also some who play only for amusement with gentlemen like themselves, and never risk beyonda shilling or so; and others, mere lookers-on, who, fatigued by their daily labours, prefer adolce far nienteto the trouble of theatres, &c., and who read the paper, drink their brandy and water, and smoke their cigar, without either playing or making a bet.
It is not easier to distinguish a gentleman in a billiard-room than elsewhere, but without wishing to be personal, it is desirable the stranger should keep at a distance those individuals who are so very familiar and friendly with every one, and who keep a piece of chalk in their waistcoat pocket. These people cannot be insulted; they carefully avoid squabbles, which may bring about disagreeable insinuations; they prefer pursuing the even tenor of their way, “picking up” as many people as they can. See yonder old man who totters across the room; his trade is swindling, his goods are lies, his recreation is obscenity and blasphemy; his palsied hand can scarcely grasp a cue, and yet there are few who can excel him; by concealing his game carefully he has won, and can win hundreds, from his victims, who, thinking nothing of his skill, are astonished, as he pretends to be himself, at hisluck. The young wife tossing restlessly in herbed, and wondering what can keep her lord so long atbusiness, little knows, when he returns home flushed and excited, that he has been fleeced of money he can ill afford to lose; whilst the sharer of the domestic joys of the billiard shark basks in the sunshine of his momentary good humour, as he displays with a sardonic smile the gold which perhaps never belonged to the dupe who lost it. But the night is closing on us; we have seen enough for once. Come away.
Is situated in one of the leading thoroughfares, and is decorated in an exceedingly handsome manner. The furniture is all new and beautifully polished, the seats are generally exquisitely soft and covered with crimson velvet, the walls are ornamented with pictures and pier-glasses, and the ceiling is adorned in a manner costly and rare. Such places as Simpson’s or Campbell’s in Beak-street, or Nell Gwynn’s, almost rival the clubs, and, indeed, are much smarter than anything they can show at the Milton. Time was when men were partial to the sanded floor, the plain furniture, the homely style of such places as Dolly’s, the London Coffee-house, or the Cock, to which Tennyson has lent the glory of his name. Now the love of show is cultivated to an alarming extent. “Let us be genteel or die,” said Mrs Nickleby, and her spirit surrounds us everywhere. Hence the splendour of the drinking-rooms of the metropolis,and the studied deportment of the waiters, and the subdued awe with which Young Norvals fresh from the Grampian Hills and their fathers’ flocks tread the costly carpets or sprawl their long legs beneath glittering mahogany.
Let us suppose it is about nine or ten in the evening, and we step into one of the numerous establishments which are to the respectable classes what the gin-palace and the beer-house is supposed to be to the class who are not. The reader must pardon my use of the word respectable. It is a word which, from my heart, I abhor, and, as it is commonly employed, merely denotes that a man has an account at a bank. There are but two ways in which human actions can be contemplated—the worldly and the philosophical or Christian. I use the term respectable merely in its worldly acceptation, but I skip this digression and pass on. Undoubtedly at the first blush it is a cheerful scene that first meets our eye. In this box are two or three old friends discussing a bottle of claret, who have not met perhaps since bright and boisterous boyhood, and who may never meet again. Of what manly struggle, of what sorrow that can never die, of what calm pleasures and chastened hopes, havethey to tell! No wonder that you see the tear glistening in the eye, though there is laughter on the lip. Pass on; here are some bagsmen red with port, and redolent of slang. In the next box are three or four young fellows drinking whisky and smoking cigars, and of course their talk is of wine and women; but there is hope, nevertheless, for woman is still to them a something divine, and the evil days have not come when they see in her nothing but common clay. Look at this retired old gentleman of the old school sitting by himself alone; yet is he not alone, for as he sips his port memories thicken in his brain, of ancient cronies now sleeping in churchyards far away, of a sainted wife no longer a denizen of this dark world of sin, of daughters with laughing children round their knees, all rosy and chubby and flaxen-haired, of sons with Anglo-Saxon energy and faith planting the old race on a new soil. Cross to this other side and look at these reckless, dissipated fellows, whom the waiter has just respectfully requested not to make so much noise, as it disturbs the other gentlemen in the room. Possibly they are Joint Stock Bank directors or railway officials, and after a few years it will be found that for their revelry to-nighta deluded public will have to pay. Here are a host of city merchants discussing politics, and it is wonderful how common-place is their conversation under the influence of alcohol.
“Palmerston is a great man, by ---, he is a great man, sir,” says one. “Yes, and no mistake,” is the reply. “There is no humbug about Palmerston,” says another. And so they ring the changes, originating nothing, gaining nothing, only getting redder in the face and more indistinct in their pronunciation. At length they button over their great coats, pay their bills, and generally very good-naturedly, but very unsteadily, steer towards the door. It may be that a noisy discussion takes place. One man a little more gone than the rest disturbs the harmony of the evening by his flat contradictions, uttered somewhat too rudely, and backed by a blow from the fist on the table, which breaks a couple of glasses. But next morning he apologizes; “It was only my wine contradicting your wine,” he says, without any sense of shame. But this rarely happens. The respectable classes have more command of their temper, and do not get so idiotically drunk as the frequenters of low public-houses, and so thehabituésare in nohurry to move and leave the light and luxurious room for the muddy streets and the winter night. But they must do so, and young men with their passions unnaturally stimulated, and the conscience proportionately deadened, are left to the temptations which await men who are out in the small hours; and old fogies, believing that if they go to bed mellow, they live as they ought to live, and die jolly fellows, find their way to their respective dwelling-places in a state as lamentable as it is degrading. Yet next Sunday you will see these men at church, and hear them joining in solemn and contrite prayer. Do they think these purple faces tell no tales? Do they think it is only the wife knows how they drink—in respectable company—in respectable hotels? Do they forget that in the midst of their revelry, under the flaming chandeliers, peering over the shoulders of courteous waiters, listening to their vinous laughter and ancient jokes, Death, with his dart, is there? Ay, and one night he will ride home with his victim in the Hansom, and will see him placed, all smelling with drink and under its influence, in the bed, side by side with his wife, and next morning she will as usual give her husband the seidlitz powder or sodawater, and leave him to sleep for a short while longer, and when she comes back will find that his is the sleep which knows no waking. And then the inquest will be held—and a medical man will perplex a plain case with useless show of knowledge, and a jury will return a verdict of “Death from natural causes.” You and I know better—you and I know that if the man had not gone into the respectable public-house he might have lived another ten years—that it was because he went there night after night, and sat soaking there night after night, that the blood-vessels became gorged and clotted, and that the wonderful machine stood still. “Poisoned by alcohol” is the true verdict—by alcohol sold and consumed in the respectable public-house. How long will society sanction such places? How long will they retard the progress of the nation by wasting energies, and time, and cash, and opportunities that might have been devoted to nobler ends? How long with their splendour—with their gilding and glass—with their air of respectability and comfort, will they attract the unwary, ruin the weak, and slay the strong man in his strength and pride?
Plutarch begins one of those biographies which in all times have been the charm of childhood and age, by remarking that, “If things are implicated in a dependence upon definite numbers, it is a necessity that the same things must often happen, being effected by the same means.” Thus is it, life in all its broad aspects is everywhere the same. All over the globe there is a wonderful uniformity in human habits. Men who work hard—as a rule—rise early, and go to bed early. Night is the time for rest. So far at least there is harmony between God’s law and man’s. The men and women who transgress are for the most part waifs and strays. Such are the denizens of our streets by night—such are they who crowd, not alone the night public-houses, but night coffee-houses of our metropolis.
Here in London these houses are of all kinds. For instance, let us enter one in the Haymarket.The rooms are as smart as gilding and ornamented paper and plate-glass can make them. The waiters are got up regardless of expense. The coffee is good, but dear. The men and women are of the kind usually met with in this locality during the small hours. The greater part are fools enough to think it worth while to buy a little worldly wisdom at a price—it may be at the loss of their bodies and souls—none but madmen would think of paying. In such places as these you are as sure to be injured as if you sat all night carousing in a public-house. These women with forced smiles on their painted cheeks are the veritable Harpies. Theirs is the true sardonic laugh. Do you remember one way in which that ancient phrase is accounted for? Sardinia, it was said, was noted for a bitter herb which contracted the features of those who tasted it. Pausanias says it is a plant like parsley, which grows near springs, and causes people who eat it to laugh till they die; and these women, have they not eaten a bitter plant, and do they not laugh and die? Beware of the women. Beware of the men. See how their cunning eyes glisten if you change a sovereign. If they can get you into a neighbouringpublic-house and rob you, they will be rather pleased than otherwise. Look at that tall dark fellow watching us. It was only the other day he met a man here, as he might you or I, and decoyed him into a public-house close by, where his confederates were waiting, and robbed him of forty pounds when they thought their victim was sufficiently “fuddled” with champagne. He and such as he are not particular who they rob. They do not spare the women, I assure you.
Let us now turn towards Covent-garden. The debauchery of Covent-garden is not what it was. Obscenity is banished from the Cave of Harmony, and better hours are kept; but there are night coffee-houses about here, dirty, shabby places, patronised by dirty, shabby people. How weary and wayworn are the women! They have been walking the streets for hours—they have been dancing in neighbouring saloons—they have paraded their meretricious charms, and here they sit, hungry, tired, sleepy, and ’t is three o’clock in the morning. No home have they to go to but some wretched room for which they pay a sum equal to the entire rent of the house. There is little gaiety here; thepoor comic nigger, with his banjo and his double entendre playing with all his might, in the hope that some gent will stand a cup of coffee and a muffin, can scarce raise a laugh. Timidly one asks, “Will you treat me to a cup of coffee, sir?” Yes, forlorn one. If your sin is great, so is your punishment; once you might have been a dainty little wife, and now what are you? I say it sorrowfully, the scum of the streets, garbage for drunken lust.
Let us go a little further on, not into that house, there are only thieves and pickpockets there, and we might be bullied, which is not pleasant. Ah, here’s the house we are looking for; it has done a good trade this many a year, for is there not a cab-stand opposite, and cabby knows the value of a cup of coffee on a cold winter’s night. Never mind the smell; as business is carried on uninterruptedly during the twenty-four hours, and as the company belongs to that part of the population not guilty of an inordinate attachment to soap and water, and to whom cheap baths are a myth, it cannot be matter of surprise if there be about the place “an ancient and fish-like smell.” But here comes the landlord. “Good morning, gents;”in an under voice, “you had better mind your pocket; there are some strange characters here. A cup of coffee? Yes, sir. Now then, sir, you had better wake up, it is time for you to be off. You’ve had a good hour’s sleep.” “Why not let him sleep?” “Why, you see, sir, such fellows would stay here all night and fill up the house, and not spend a penny; and business is business.” A curious medley is here of sleepy, half-tipsy, sickly unfortunates. Yet even here the line is drawn; the door opens, and we dimly discern a mass of rags; so does our landlord, as he rushes to exclude the would-be customer. “What, you are trying it on again, are you? you know you can’t come here. Why, you see, sir, if we let such fellows in, the place would swarm with—,” (the reader must supply the blank). But we take the hint, and not unreluctantly depart.
The night public-house has, I confess,—and I am glad to do so,—lost somewhat of its popularity in latter years. At one time it was common everywhere; now it is in only a few streets that it exists and pollutes the atmosphere. In the Strand, in the Haymarket, in Oxford-street, night-houses were numerous; but the one to which I more immediately refer was situated inthe neighbourhood of Tottenham-court-road. Since then, Mr Spurgeon has been preaching in that locality, but I dare say the night-house exists nevertheless.
Let us suppose it is about two in the morning, and with the exception of one or two amiable garotters, a few sleepy police, and some three or four women, the regular population of the neighbourhood may be safely considered to have been long in bed. The gas-lamps shine almost exclusively on yourself. You look up at the windows and you see no lights save where, perhaps, poverty may be stitching for bread, or where Death may have come an unbidden guest and borne away the fairest and the best beloved. At this hour the young bride in all her beauty may be struck down in mortal agony, or the wee pet lamb, whose little silver laugh had so often dispelled the dark cloud that gathered round the home, or the grey-haired man, having just reached the goal, and achieved an independence, may find himself left in this bleak, dark, wide world alone.
Leaves have their time to fall,And flowers to wither at the north wind’s breath,And stars to set; but all—Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death.
Leaves have their time to fall,And flowers to wither at the north wind’s breath,And stars to set; but all—Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death.
And now let us forget all this, and knock at this door, above which streams a mellow light, and from which we hear sounds of boisterous gaiety. Is it not open yet? Then give another rap. Ah, it is all right now. “Take care of your pockets,” says Cerberus, in a low voice,—“there are some rum blokes here.” We will, my friend.
Yes, they must be rum blokes who come here into this filthy, stinking shop, and amongst this filthy, ragged, swearing crew of reprobates. If you wish to see a set of fellows whose mere looks would hang them, I think they are about us now. Even the landlord seems uncomfortable in their presence, and wisely allows as little as possible of temptation in his house or on his person. He knows, I believe, they would as soon rob him as any one else, and his small ferrety eyes are evidently wide awake. Indeed, none of the party look as if they had much honest sleep, and in the daylight, I imagine, would present a somewhat seedy appearance. We generally think cabmen not scrupulously honest, but perhaps these cabmen, with ancient great coats and well muffled up, are the honestest fellows here. Then of course there is an Irish “widder,” withmelancholy face and a string of ballads, such as “Mary Blane,” “The Red, White, and Blue,” “Cheer, boys, cheer,” all of which she is willing to dispose of on the most reasonable terms. A decayed swell, probably a railway director in the great year of bubbles, with extraordinary sponges—an article I should have thought quite as unsaleable as soap to thehabitués,—and a jockey-like looking person with knives with most wonderful and unaccountable blades, or with some fancy work-boxes or other articles equally ingenious and useless. Women are here, of course, in the last stage of their profligate career, driven out of decent houses, unfit to associate with the well-dressed and the young—wrinkled, repulsive, red. As you see them drink, quarrelling, screaming, and cursing, as they always do till turned out to go God knows where, can you imagine that the difference between them and your own mother is merely that of circumstance, and education, and habit?—perhaps merely the difference produced by drink. I can tell you that little hag was once a rich man’s leman, and robed herself in silk and satin, and quaffed her costly wine; and now hark how piteously she begs a drop of gin, ere she staggersto her wretched garret and straw to dream of a youth and gaiety now no longer hers. Here she has warmth, light, and society, and the night-house exists for such as she; and if, as is quite as likely as not, she is in league with some of the men around us, here she brings her victim, and then, stupified by drink, she has only to decoy him down some dark passage, and he becomes an easy prey to the sneaking thief who comes skulking up behind. But let us listen—
“Me and my pal we was a-going along the Hedgware-road, and we sor”—
“Hold your tongue,” is the courteous reply.
“What do you mean by making all this row?” cries the landlord, with a horrid oath.
“Now, then, old buffer, another quartern of gin.”
“And a screw of tobacco, master, if you please.”
“Well, old gal, what’ll you drink?”
“Well, I don’t mind, what’ll you stand?”
“Suppose we has arf and arf.”
“Ay, to be sure.”
And so the hours pass, and the place gets hotter, and stinks more and more every hour, for the men and women have not a very pleasanteffluvium, and the hubbub becomes more intense. You tell me you would rather not stay here long. Well, I am quite of your opinion, for a couple of gentlemen with pale faces have been eyeing us most attentively ever since we have been here, and I confess their appearance is not prepossessing. Their short hair seems to indicate an acquaintance with one of the public establishments of the metropolis, with whose inmates it is not well to be too familiar. They are dressed in fustian, with thick boots well studded with nails, a kick from which on the head when a man is down would soon settle his business; and with their close-fitting caps, Belcher handkerchiefs, and heavy animal faces, are certainly not very pleasant-looking young men. I should be sorry to intimate my suspicions to them, as they may be noblemen in disguise, and might feel hurt at my want of charity. In the mean while, as the door is being opened and the coast is clear, I avail myself of the opportunity, and leaving the night-house, am soon dreaming in my feverish slumber that I have just been garotted and left for dead at the door of my domestic establishment, to the intense agony of my wife and children,—of course, by the two amiable youngpeople aforesaid,—and I feel for some days after as if I had suffered terribly from a species of night-mare. So hideous is the life, so degraded the company, so revolting are the scenes, at these night-houses, I know not why the law permits them to be open. I am sure they can answer no good or moral end. Mr Norton, a few days since, said, in deciding a case at the Lambeth police-office, he hoped a law would soon be passed to close night-houses. On this head the police magistrates are unanimous.
A writerinChambers’s Journalsome time since called attention to the peculiar attractions of Highbury Barn. What are these attractions? I confess that the place has connected it with the eating and drinking associations of years; that here generations of cockneys have dined; that here, Sunday after Sunday, they have come to drink bottled stout and smoke; that it is extensively patronized by shopmen and milliners; that the society is not of the most refined order; and that the love made in it is not of the noblest and purest character. I cannot understand howChamberscould have been got to puff up such a place to the public. I am sure the decent public will not thankChambersfor the puff.
Highbury Barn is an admirable illustration of the way in which Acts of Parliament are evaded. In 1852 Mr Hinton applied for and obtained a license for music, and he stated in his petition on that occasion, that his object was to have thelicense as an adjunct to dinner-parties, a great number of which were held there; and at that time he had no idea whatever of having dancing in the place. In 1854, however, a different state of things arose, and, from a combination of causes, the parties and festivals at Highbury Barn fell off, and competition was so great, that Mr Hinton, having a large establishment, in which a great deal of capital was invested, was compelled to do something to meet the public taste, as he says, or, as I might say, to create it. Accordingly, on Whit Monday of that year, he opened his establishment for musical entertainments with the band of the Grenadier Guards. This was considered by the magistrates as an infraction of his agreement with them, and his license was refused. But Mr Hinton was not beaten; he had his large capital invested, and somehow or other the public must be got into his house. An ingenious plan was devised, by which Mr Hinton was enabled to carry on his music and dancing without a license, and yet be secure from the penalties incurred by the breakers of law. There is an assembly called Almack’s, frequented by theéliteof the land, held in Willis’s Rooms. Those rooms are notlicensed according to Act of Parliament, yet all the leaders ofbon tonthere congregate, and they would be liable to be taken up as rogues and vagabonds under the Act. But the dancing is carried on there by an association, under the auspices of which tickets are sold. Well, Mr Hinton adopted a similar plan. The Highbury Club was formed, and the club kindly provided the youthful votaries of pleasure with the desired amusement. If we are to believe Mr Hinton, the result has not been very advantageous, as his receipts on the sale of alcoholic liquors fell off £600—a statement rather difficult to reconcile with his former one, that he found his customers had left him, and that he must do something to call them back. Be that as it may, Mr Hinton has now his license, though three clergymen connected with the district concurred in stating that parties on leaving the Barn were disorderly and riotous, and disturbed the quiet of the locality, and that the licensing of that establishment would have a very demoralizing effect.
And now let us go to Highbury Barn. As we walk alone Highbury-place, we pass by many a father of a family grumbling at the idea of havinghis quiet invaded by parties coming home from the Barn; and yet there was a time, probably, when he heard the chimes at midnight; and the chances are, so wretchedly are our lads educated, that while the father is at home reading his religious magazine, the son is being initiated into fast life at the Barn. But on we go through a dark passage, admirably adapted for a garotte walk, till we come to the place of rendezvous. We pay sixpence and walk in. The first thing that strikes us is the Master of the Ceremonies. We are amazed,—in the distant West never have we met a more distinguished swell. His attitude is faultless; his raven hair is parted in the middle; his dark eye is turned in a languishing manner upward to the orchestra. In the intervals between the dances he walks up and down the room in an abstract and poetic manner, and Melancholy marks him for her own. You believe in the doctrine of metamorphoses as you look at him. He is a star fallen upon evil days. Beneath that faultless black dress-coat there lies the soul of a Beau Brummel or a Nash. Well, then, may there be a tinge of sadness on his cheek, and a cloud upon his brow. But let us leave him awhile and look about us. Whata noble room! we shall not see a finer one in London. At one end is a gallery; at the other a raised platform with very comfortable seats and tables. All round the room are illustrations of oriental scenery, and over the bar is the orchestra. But the place is not so crowded as we might expect, and the visitors are quieter than in the casinos of the West; the men and women are most of them much younger,—the men, many of them, have an exceedingly juvenile appearance, and think it fine to dance with young ladies of uncertain occupations, and to drink brandy-and-water and smoke cigars; but they have yet to cut their wisdom-teeth. As Thackeray says,
“Pretty page with the dimpled chin,That never has known the barber’s shear,All your wish is woman to win;This is the way that boys begin,—Wait till you come to forty year.”
“Pretty page with the dimpled chin,That never has known the barber’s shear,All your wish is woman to win;This is the way that boys begin,—Wait till you come to forty year.”
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 gayhearts 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 hell,”
“Streets ran so red with the blood of the dead,That they blush’d like the waves of hell,”
that Paris became a city of dancers, and that the art reached a climax unknown before or since.