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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Twice round the clock</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>Or the hours of the day and night in London</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: George Augustus Sala</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: William M'Connel</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 21, 2022 [eBook #69402]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWICE ROUND THE CLOCK ***</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a>[i]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp58" id="illus01" style="max-width: 34.375em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus01.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA,<br> - <span class="smaller">THE AUTHOR OF “TWICE ROUND THE CLOCK.”</span></p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a>[ii]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">TWICE ROUND THE CLOCK;<br> -<span class="smaller"><span class="smaller">OR THE</span><br> -HOURS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT<br> -IN LONDON.</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br> -GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA,<br> -<span class="smaller">AUTHOR OF “A JOURNEY DUE NORTH,” “GASLIGHT AND DAYLIGHT,” ETC. ETC.</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage">ILLUSTRATED WITH<br> -<span class="smaller">A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR, AND NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD,<br> -FROM DRAWINGS BY WILLIAM M’CONNEL.</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">LONDON:</span><br> -RICHARD MARSH, 122, FLEET STREET.<br> -1862.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>[iv]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">PREFACE.</h2> - -</div> - -<p class="center">TO AUGUSTUS MAYHEW.</p> - -<p>Had I not fifty other valid reasons—did I not feel myself impelled to -such a course by the long years of affectionate intercourse which have -cast sunshine on that highway of life, of which the shadier side of the -road has been apportioned to me, I should still, my dear Augustus, -dedicate this book to you. I could show, I hope, my affection and -esteem in other ways; but to address to you the Epistle Dedicatory of -“Twice Round the Clock” is only your due, in justice and in courtesy. -Civility is not so common a quality among the Eminent British -Authors of the day, and mutual admiration is not so plentifully displayed -by our Fieldings and Smolletts of 1859, that we middling and -middle-class ink-spillers can afford to throw away a chance of saying -a kind or civil thing to one another in the right way and in the right -place. Do you, therefore, say something neat and complimentary about -me in the preface to your next book; and I only trust that the task -will confer as sincere a pleasure on you as it confers on me at this -moment.</p> - -<p>But I might still, I must admit, admire you very much, without -that admiration giving you a Right to the Dedication of a Book relating -exclusively to London Life and London Manners in the nineteenth -century. Herein, however, rests, I think, your claim: That you are -the author of a capital book called “Paved with Gold,” replete with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span> -the finest and shrewdest observation drawn from the scenes we have -both delighted to survey, to study, and to describe, and of which book, -although the basis was romantic fiction, the numerous episodes were -picturesque but eminently faithful photographs of fact. I should have -liked, myself, to tell the story of a prize fight, of a ratting match, or -of a boy’s low lodging-house, in my own way, and in these pages; but -I shrank from the attempt after your graphic narratives in “Paved -with Gold.” And, again, have you not been for years the fellow-labourer -of your brother Henry, in those deeply-tinted but unalterably-veracious -studies of London Life, of which we have the results -in “Labour and the Poor” and in the “Great World of London?” -Of how many prisons, workhouses, factories, work-rooms, have you -not told the tale? of how many dramas of misery and poverty have you -not been the chronicler? Let us bow to the great ones of letters, -and, reading their books with a hearty, honest admiration, confess that -the capacity to produce such master-pieces is not given to us; but let -us, on our own parts, put in a modest claim to the recognition and -approval of the public. Please remember the reporters. Please not -to forget the bone-grubbers. Fling a pennyworth of praise to the -excavators and night-watchmen who have at least industriously -laboured to collect materials wherefrom better painters may execute -glowing tableaux of London Life. At least, we have toiled to bring -together our tale of bricks, that by the hand of genius they may be -erected some day into a Pyramid. At least, we have endeavoured to -our utmost to describe the London of our day as we have seen it, and -as we know it; and, in the words of the judicious Master Hooker—of -whose works, my Augustus, I am afraid you are not a very sedulous -student—we have worked early and late on London, and have done our -best to paint the infinitely-varied characteristics of its streets and -its population, “Tho’ for no other cause, yet for this, that Posteritie -may know we have not looselie, thro’ silence, permitted thinges to -pass away as in a dreame; there shall be for men’s information extant -thus much concerning the present state of”—London.</p> - -<p>So you see, my dear friend, that I have dedicated my work to you; -and that, <i>bon grè, mal grè</i>, you have been saddled with the dignity of -its Patron. I might have addressed you in heroic verse, and with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span> -your name in capitals; and, in the manner of Mr. Alexander Pope, -bidden you:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Awake, my <span class="smcap">Mayhew</span>: leave all meaner things</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To low ambition and the pride of kings.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">I believe your present ambition extends only to few-acre farming and -the rearing of poultry, and I might well exhort you to return to your -literary pursuits, and to leave the Dorkings and Cochin Chinas alone. -But I refrain. Am I to insult my Patron with advice? Do I expect any -reward for my dedication? Will your Lordship send me a handful of -broad-pieces for my flattery’s sake by the hands of your gentleman’s -gentleman? Will you put me down for the next vacancy as a Commissioner -of Hackney Coaches, or the next reversion for a snug sinecure -connected with the Virginia Plantations or the Leeward Islands? -Will your Lordship invite me to dinner at your country-seat, and place -me between Lady Betty and the domestic chaplain? May I write -rhyming epitaphs for her ladyship’s pug-dog, untimely deceased from -excess of cream and chicken? Or will you speak to Mr. Secretary in -my behalf, lest that last paper of mine against Ministers in “Mist’s -Weekly Journal” should draw down on me the <i>ex-officio</i> wrath of -Mr. Attorney-General, and cause my ears to be nailed to the pillory? -Can I ever hope to crack a bottle in your Lordship’s society at -Button’s, or to see your Lordship’s coach-and-six before my lodgings -in Little Britain? Let us be thankful, rather, that the species of -literary patronage at which I have hinted exists no longer, and that -an Author has no need to toady his Patron in order to make him his -friend. For what more in cordiality and kind-fellowship I could say, -you will, I am sure, give me credit. When friendship is paraded too -much in public, its entire sincerity may be open to doubt. I am -afraid that Orestes, so affectionate on the stage, has often declined in -the green-room to lend Pylades sixpence; and I am given to understand, -that Damon has often come down from the platform, where he -has been saying such flourishing fine things about Pythias, and in -private life has spoken somewhat harshly of that worthy.</p> - -<p>You will observe that, with the economy which we should all -strive to inculcate in an age of Financial Reform, I have made -these remarks to serve two ends. You are to take them, if you please,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[viii]</span> -as a Dedication. The public will be good enough to accept them -as a Preface. But as the dedicatory has hitherto disproportionately -exceeded the prefatory matter, a few words on my part are due to -that great body-corporate of Patrons whom some delight to call -the “many-headed monster;” some the “million;” some the fickle, -ungrateful, and exigent—and some the generous, forbearing, and -discerning British Public.</p> - -<p>The papers I have now collected into a volume under the title -of “Twice Round the Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night -in London,” were originally published in the pages of the “Welcome -Guest,” a weekly periodical whose first and surprising success -must be mainly ascribed to the taste and spirit of its original proprietor, -Mr. Henry Vizetelly. I confess that I thought as little of -“Twice Round the Clock” in the earlier hours of its publication -as the critics of the <i>Saturday Review</i>—who, because I contributed -for six years to another periodical whose conductor they hold in hatred, -have been pleased to pursue me with an <i>acharnement</i> quite exciting -to experience—may think of it, now. I looked upon the articles as -mere ephemeral essays, of a description of which I had thrown off -hundreds during a desultory, albeit industrious, literary career. -But I found ere long that I had committed myself to a task whose -items were to form an Entirety in the end; that I had begun the -first act of a Drama which imperatively demanded working out to -its catastrophe. I grew more interested in the thing; I took more -pains; I felt myself spurred to accuracy by the conscientious zeal -of the admirable artist, Mr. William M’Connell, whose graphic and -truthful designs embellished my often halting text. I found, to my -great surprise, that the scenes and characters I had endeavoured to -embody were awakening feelings of curiosity and interest among -the many thousand readers of the journal to which I contributed. -The work, such as it is, was in the outset not very deliberately -planned. I can only regret now, when it is terminated, that the -details I have sometimes only glanced at were not more elaborately -and completely carried out.</p> - -<p>It would be a sorry piece of vanity on my part to imagine that the -conception of the History of a Day and Night in London is original.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span> -I will tell you how I came to think of the scheme of “Twice Round -the Clock.” Four years ago, in Paris, my then Master in literature, -Mr. Charles Dickens, lent me a little thin octavo volume, which, I -believe, had been presented to him by another Master of the craft, -Mr. Thackeray, entitled—but I will transcribe the title-page in full.</p> - -<p class="center">LOW LIFE;<br> -<span class="allsmcap">OR, ONE HALF THE WORLD KNOWS NOT HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVE.</span></p> - -<p class="center smaller">Being a Critical Account of what is Transacted by People of almost all Religions, -Nations, Circumstances, and Sizes of Understanding, in the</p> - -<p class="center">TWENTY-FOUR HOURS,<br> -<span class="allsmcap">BETWEEN</span><br> -SATURDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY MORNING.<br> -<span class="smaller">In a true Description of a<br> -SUNDAY,<br> -As it is usually spent within the Bills of Mortality, calculated for the -twenty-first of June.</span></p> - -<p class="center allsmcap">WITH AN ADDRESS TO THE INGENIOUS AND INGENUOUS MR. HOGARTH.</p> - -<p class="center smaller">Let Fancy guess the rest.—<i>Buckingham.</i></p> - -<p>The date of publication is not given; but internal evidence proves -the Opuscule to have been written during the latter part of the reign of -George the Second; and in the copy I now possess, and which I bought -at a “rarity” price, at a sale where it was ignorantly labelled among -the “<i>facetiæ</i>”—it is the saddest book, perhaps, that ever was written—in -my copy, which is bound up among some rascally pamphlets, there -is written on the fly-leaf the date 1759. Just one hundred years ago, -you see. The work is anonymous; but in a manuscript table of contents -to the collection of miscellanies of which it forms part, I find -written “By Tom Legge.” The epigraph says that it “is printed for -the author, and is to be sold by T. Legg, at the Parrot, Green -Arbour Court, in the Little Old Bailey.” Was the authorship mere -guess-work on the part of the owner of the book, or was “Tom Legge” -really the writer of “Low Life,” and, if so, who was “Tom Legge?” -Mr. Peter Cunningham, or a contributor to “Notes and Queries,” may -be able to inform us. I have been thus particular, for a reason: -that this thin octavo is one of the minutest, the most graphic—and -while in parts coarse as a scene from the “Rake’s Progress,”—the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span> -most pathetic, picture of London life a century since that has ever -been written. There are passages in it irresistibly reminding one -of Goldsmith; but the offensive and gratuitous coarseness in the next -page destroys <i>that</i> theory. Our Oliver was pure. But for the dedicatory -epistle to the great painter prefixed, and which is merely a -screed of fulsome flattery, I could take an affidavit that “Low Life” -was written by William Hogarth. And why not, granting even the -fulsome dedication? Hogarth could have more easily written this -calendar of Town Life than the “Analysis of Beauty;” and the sturdy -grandiloquent little painter was vain enough to have employed some -hack to write the prefatory epistle, if, in a work of satire, he had -chosen to assume the anonymous. Perhaps, after all, the book was -written by some clever, observant, deboshed man out of Grub Street, -who had been wallowing in the weary London trough for years, and -had eliminated at last some pearls which the other swine were too -piggish to discern. There, however, is “Low Life.” If you want to -know what London was really like in 1759, you should study it by night -and study it by day; and then you may go with redoubled zest to your -Fielding, Smollett, and Richardson, as one, after a vigorous grind at -his Greek verbs, may go to his Euripides, refreshed. From this thin -little octavo I need not say I borrowed the notion of “Twice Round -the Clock.” I chose a week-day instead of a Sunday, partly for the -sake of variety, partly because Sunday in London has become so -decorous as to be simply dull, and many of the hours would have been -utterly devoid of interest. I brooded fitfully over the scheme for -many months. At first I proposed to take my stand (in imagination) -at King Charles’s Statue, Charing Cross, and describe the Life revolving -round me during the twenty-four hours; but I should have -trenched upon sameness by confinement to singularity; and I chose -at last all London as the theme of description—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“A mighty maze, but not without a plan.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">As a literary performance, this book must take its chance; and I fear -that the chance will not be a very favourable one. Flippant, pretentious, -superficial and yet arrogant of knowledge; verbose without -being eloquent; crabbed without being quaint; redundant without<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi"></a>[xi]</span> -being copious in illustration; full of paradoxes not extenuated by -originality; and of jocular expressions not relieved by humour—the -style in which these pages are written, combines the worst characteristics -of the comic writers who have been the “guides, philosophers -and friends” of a whole school of <i>quasi</i> youthful authors in this era. -I have reviewed too many would-be comic books in my time, not -to be able to pounce on the unsuccessful attempts at humour in -“Twice Round the Clock;” I have sufficient admiration and respect -for the genuine models of literary vigour and elegance extant, not to feel -occasionally disgusted with myself when I have found the most serious -topics discussed with a grotesque grimace the while. It is a bad sign -of the age—this turning of “cart-wheels” by the side of a hearse, -this throwing of somersaults over grave-stones. The style we write in -is popular now; but a few years, I hope, will see a re-action, when a -literary man must be either clown or undertaker, and grinning -through a horse-collar will not be tolerated in the case of a mountebank -otherwise attired in a shroud. Meanwhile, I cannot accuse -myself of pandering to a depraved taste. I neither follow nor lead -it. I cannot write otherwise than I do write. The leopard cannot -change his spots. Born in England, I am neither by parentage nor -education an Englishman; and in my childhood I browsed on a salad -of languages, which I would willingly exchange now for a plain -English lettuce or potato. Better to feed on hips and haws than -on gangrened green-gages and mouldy pine-apples. I read Sterne -and Charles Lamb, Burton and Tom Brown, Scarron and Brantôme, -Boccaccio and Pigault-le-Brun, instead of Mrs. Barbauld, and the -Stories from the Spelling-book. I was pitchforked into a French -college before I had been through Pinnock in English; and I declare -that to this day I do not know one rule out of five in Lindley -Murray’s grammar. I can spell decently, because I can draw; and -the power (not the knowledge) in spelling correctly is concurrent with -the capacity for expressing the images before us more or less graphically -and symmetrically. It isn’t how a word <i>ought</i> to be spelt: it is -how it <i>looks</i> on paper, that decides the speller. I began to look upon -the quaint side of things almost as soon as I could see things at all; -for I was alone and Blind for a long time in childhood. I had so<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii"></a>[xii]</span> -much to whimper about, poor miserable object, that I began to grin -and chuckle at the things I saw, so soon as good Doctor Curée, the -homœopathist, gave me back my eyes. It is too late to mend now. -While I am yet babbling, I feel that I have nearly said my say. This -book, as a Book, will go, and be forgotten; but it will, years -hence, acquire comparative value when disinterred, from the “two-penny-box” -at a bookstall. Old Directories, Road Books, Court-Guides, -Gazetteers, of half a century since, are worth something now. -They are as the straw that enters into the composition of new bricks -or books. Let us bide our time, then, my Augustus, humbly but -cheerfully. <i>You</i> may have better fortune. You write novels and -tales: and the chronicles of Love never die. But if in the year -1959, some historian of the state of manners in England during the -reign of Queen Victoria, points an allusion in a foot note by a -reference to an old book called “Twice Round the Clock,” and which -professes to be a series of essays on the manners and customs of the -Londoners in 1859, that reference will be quite enough of reward for -your friend. Macaulay quotes broadsides and Grub Street ballads. -Carlyle does not disdain to put the obscurest of North German pamphleteers -into the witness-box; albeit he often dismisses him with a -cuff and a kick. At all events, we may be quoted some of these -days, dear Gus, even if we are kicked into the bargain.</p> - -<p class="right">GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS.</h2> - -</div> - -<table> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Four a.m.—Billingsgate Market</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#FOUR_AM">9</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Five a.m.—The Publication of the “Times” Newspaper</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#FIVE_AM">25</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Six a.m.—Covent Garden Market</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SIX_AM">37</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Seven a.m.—A Parliamentary Train</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SEVEN_AM">49</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eight a.m.—St. James’s Park—The Mall</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#EIGHT_AM">65</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Nine a.m.—The Clerks at the Bank, and the Boats on the River</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#NINE_AM">78</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ten a.m.—The Court of Queen’s Bench, and the “Bench” itself</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#TEN_AM">88</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eleven a.m.—Trooping the Guard, and a Marriage in High Life</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ELEVEN_AM">104</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Noon—The Justice-Room at the Mansion-House, and the “Bay Tree”</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#NOON">116</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">One p.m.—Dock London and Dining London</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ONE_PM">128</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Two p.m.—From Regent Street To High Change</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#TWO_PM">142</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Three p.m.—Debenham and Store’s Auction-Rooms, and the Pantheon Bazaar</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THREE_PM">158</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Four p.m.—Tattersall’s, and the Park</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#FOUR_PM">186</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Five p.m.—The Fashionable Club, and the Prisoners’ Van</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#FIVE_PM">200</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Six p.m.—A Charity Dinner, and the Newspaper Window at the General Post-Office</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SIX_PM">218</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Seven p.m.—A Theatrical Green-room, and “Behind the Scenes”</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SEVEN_PM">235</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eight p.m.—Her Majesty’s Theatre, and a Pawnbroker’s Shop</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#EIGHT_PM">251</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Nine p.m.—Half-Price in the New Cut, and a Dancing Academy</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#NINE_PM">268</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ten p.m.—A Discussion at the “Belvidere,” and an Oratorio at Exeter Hall</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#TEN_PM">284</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eleven p.m.—A Scientific Conversazione, and an Evening Party</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ELEVEN_PM">297</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Midnight—The Haymarket, and the Sub-Editor’s Room</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#MIDNIGHT">317</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">One a.m.—Evans’s Supper-Rooms, and a Fire</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ONE_AM">330</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Two a.m.—A Late Debate in the House of Commons, and the Turnstile of Waterloo Bridge</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#TWO_AM">357</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Hour the Twenty-fourth and Last—Three a.m.—A Bal Masque, and the Night Charges at Bow Street</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#HOUR_THE_TWENTY-FOURTH">375</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2> - -</div> - -<table> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Portrait of the Author</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus01"><i>Frontispiece.</i></a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Four a.m.—Billingsgate Market: Carrying Fish Ashore</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus02"><span class="smcap">Page</span> 17</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Four a.m.—Billingsgate Market: The Fish Sold by Auction</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus03">20</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Five a.m.—Publication of the “Times:” Inside the Office</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus04">32</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Five a.m.—Publication of the “Times:” Outside the Office</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus05">33</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Six a.m.—Covent Garden Market: The West End</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus06">41</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Six a.m.—Covent Garden Market: Early Breakfast Stall</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus07">44</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Seven a.m.—Parliamentary Train: Platform of the London and North-Western Railway</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus08">60</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Seven a.m.—Parliamentary Train: Interior of a Third-Class Carriage</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus09">64</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eight a.m.—St. James’s Park</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus10">68</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eight a.m.—Opening Shop</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus11">76</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Nine a.m.—Omnibuses at the Bank</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus12">84</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Nine a.m.—Penny Steamboats Alongside the Pier at London Bridge</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus13">85</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ten a.m.—Interior of the Court of Queen’s Bench</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus14">96</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ten a.m.—Interior of the Queen’s Bench Prison</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus15">97</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eleven a.m.—Trooping the Guard at St. James’s Palace</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus16">109</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eleven a.m.—A Wedding at St. James’s Church, Piccadilly</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus17">113</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Noon—The Justice-room at the Mansion House</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus18">121</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">One p.m.—Dock-Labourers Returning to Work</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus19">137</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">One p.m.—Dining-rooms in Bucklersbury</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus20">141</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Two p.m.—Regent Street</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus21">148</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Two p.m.—High Change</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus22">156</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Three p.m.—Debenham and Storr’s Auction-rooms</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus23">168</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Three p.m.—The Pantheon Bazaar</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus24">177</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Four p.m.—Tattersall’s</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus25">193</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Four p.m.—The Park</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus26">197</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Five p.m.—The Fashionable Club</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus27">212</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Five p.m.—The Prisoners’ Van</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus28">216</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Six p.m.—A Charity Dinner</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus29">229</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Six p.m.—The Newspaper Window at the General Post-Office</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus30">233</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Seven p.m.—A Theatrical Green-room</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus31">244</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Seven p.m.—Behind the Scenes</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus32">249</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eight p.m.—The Opera</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus33">257</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eight p.m.—Interior of a Pawnbroker’s Shop</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus34">265</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Nine p.m.—House of Call for the Victoria Audience</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus35">276</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Nine p.m.—A Dancing Academy</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus36">281</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ten p.m.—A Discussion at the “Belvidere”</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus37">288</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ten p.m.—An Oratorio at Exeter Hall</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus38">296</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eleven p.m.—A Scientific Conversazione</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus39">312</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Eleven p.m.—An Evening Party</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus40">316</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Midnight—Supper-rooms in the Haymarket</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus41">325</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Midnight—The Sub-Editor’s Room</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus42">329</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">One a.m.—Evans’s Supper-rooms</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus43">341</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">One a.m.—A Fire</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus44">349</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Two a.m.—A Late Debate in the House of Commons</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus45">368</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Two a.m.—The Turnstile of Waterloo Bridge</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus46">372</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Three a.m.—A Bal Masque</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus47">381</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Three a.m.—The Night Charges at Bow Street</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus48">392</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span></p> - -<h1>TWICE ROUND THE CLOCK;<br> -<span class="smaller"><span class="smaller">OR, THE</span><br> -HOURS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT IN LONDON.</span></h1> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOUR_AM">FOUR O’CLOCK A.M.—BILLINGSGATE MARKET.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Reader, were you ever up all night? You may answer that you are -neither a newspaper editor, a market gardener, a journeyman baker, -the driver of the Liverpool night mail, Mrs. Gamp the sicknurse, the -commander of the Calais packet, Professor Airey, Sir James South, -nor a member of the House of Commons. It may be that you live at -Clapham, that one of the golden rules of your domestic economy is -“gruel at ten, bed at eleven,” and that you consider keeping late hours -to be an essentially immoral and wicked habit,—the immediate prelude -to the career and the forerunner of the fate of the late George Barnwell. -I am very sorry for your prejudices and your susceptibilities. I -respect them, but I must do them violence. I intend that—<i>bon gré, -mal gré</i>—in spirit, if not in actual corporeality, you should stop out -not only all night but all day with me; in fact, for the space of twenty-four -hours, it is my resolve to prohibit your going to bed at all. I -wish you to see the monster <span class="smcap">London</span> in the varied phases of its outer -and inner life, at every hour of the day-season and the night-season; -I wish you to consider with me the giant sleeping and the giant waking; -to watch him in his mad noonday rages, and in his sparse moments -of unquiet repose. You must travel <span class="smcap">Twice Round the Clock</span> -with me; and together we will explore this London mystery to its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span> -remotest recesses—its innermost arcana. To others the downy couch, -the tasselled nightcap, the cushioned sofa, the luxurious ease of night-and-day -rest. Ours be the staff and the sandalled shoon, the cord to -gird up the lions, the palmer’s wallet and cockle-shells. For, believe -me, the pilgrimage will repay fatigue, and the shrine is rich in -relics.</p> - -<p>Four o’clock in the morning. The deep bass voice of Paul’s, the -Staudigl of bells, has growlingly proclaimed the fact. Bow church -confirms the information in a respectable baritone. St. Clement’s -Danes has sung forth acquiescence with the well-known chest-note of -his tenor voice, sonorous and mellifluous as Tamberlik’s. St. Margaret’s, -Westminster, murmurs a confession of the soft impeachment in -a contralto rich as Alboni’s in “Stridi la vampa;” and all around and -about the pert bells of the new churches, from evangelical Hackney to -Puseyite Pimlico, echo the announcement in their shrill treble and -soprani.</p> - -<p>Four o’clock in the morning. Greenwich awards it,—the Horse -Guards allow it—Bennett, arbiter of chronometers and clocks that, -with much striking, have grown blue in the face, has nothing to say -against it. And that self-same hour shall never strike again this side -the trumpet’s sound. The hour itself being consigned to the innermost -pigeon-hole of the Dead Hour office—(a melancholy charnel-house -of misspent time is that, my friend)—you and I have close upon -sixty minutes before us ere the grim old scythe-bearer, the saturnine -child-eater, who marks the seconds and the minutes of which the infinite -subdivision is a pulsation of eternity, will tell us that the term of -another hour has come. That hour will be five a.m., and at five it is -high market at Billingsgate. To that great piscatorial Bourse we, an’t -please you, are bound.</p> - -<p>It is useless to disguise the fact that you, my shadowy, but not the -less beloved companion, are about to keep very bad hours. Good to -hear the chimes at midnight, as Justice Shallow and Falstaff oft did -when they were students in Gray’s Inn; but four and five in the morning! -these be small hours indeed: this is beating the town with a -vengeance. Were it winter, our bedlessness would be indefensible; -but this is still sweet summer time.</p> - -<p>But why, the inquisitive may ask—the child-man who is for ever -cutting up the bellows to discover the reservoir of the wind—why four -o’clock a.m.? Why not begin our pilgrimage at one a.m., and finish -the first half at midnight, in the orthodox get-up-and-go-to-bed manner?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span> -Simply because four a.m. is in reality the first hour of the working -London day. The giant is wide awake at midnight; he sinks into -a fitful slumber about two in the morning: short is his rest, for at four -he is up again and at work, the busiest bee in the world’s hive.</p> - -<p>The child of the Sun, the gorgeous golden peacock, strutting in a -farmyard full of the Hours, his hens, now triumphs. It is summer; -and more than that, a lovely summer morning. The brown night has -retired, and the meek-eyed moon, mother of dews, has disappeared: -the young day pours in apace; the mountains’ misty tops are swelling -on the sight, and brightening in the sun. It is the cool, the fragrant, -and the silent hour, to meditation due and sacred song; the air is -coloured, the efflux divine turns hovels into palaces, and shoots with -gold the rags of beggars.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“The city now doth like a garment wear</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The beauty of the morning....</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Never did Sun more beautifully steep</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The River glideth at its own sweet will;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And all that mighty Heart is lying still.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I know that the acknowledgment of one’s quotations or authorities -is going out of fashion. Still, as I murmur the foregoing lines as -I wander round about the Monument and in and out of Thames Street, -waiting for Billingsgate-market time to begin, a conviction grows upon -me that the poetry is not my own; and in justice to the dead, as well -as with a view of sparing the printer a flood of inverted commas, I may -as well confess that I have been reading Mr. James Thomson and Mr. -William Wordsworth on the subject of summer lately, and that very -many of the flowery allusions to be found above, have been culled from -the works of those pleasing writers.</p> - -<p><i>Non omnis moriar.</i> Though the so oft-mentioned hours be asleep, -and the river glideth in peace, undisturbed by penny steamboats, the -mighty heart of Thames Street is anything but still. The great warehouses -are closed, ’tis true; the long wall of the Custom House is a huge -dead wall, full of blind windows. The Coal Exchange (which edifice, -with its gate down among the dead men in Thames Street, and its -cupola, like a middle-sized bully, lifting its head to about the level of -the base of that taller bully the Monument, is the neatest example of -an architectural “getting up stairs” that I know)—the Coal Exchange<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span> -troubles not its head as yet about Stewarts or Lambtons, Sutherlands -or Wallsend. The moist wharfs, teeming with tubs and crates of potter’s -ware packed with fruity store, and often deliciously perfumed -with the smell of oranges, bulging and almost bursting through their -thin prison bars of wooden laths, are yet securely grated and barred up. -The wharfingers are sleeping cosily far away. But there are shops and -shops wide open, staringly open, defiantly open, with never a pane of -glass in their fronts, but yawning with a jolly ha! ha! of open-windowedness -on the bye-strollers. These are the shops to make you -thirsty; these are the shops to make your incandescent coppers hiss; -these are the shops devoted to the apotheosis and apodeiknensis (I -quote Wordsworth again, but Christopher, not William) of Salt -Fish—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Spend Herring first, save Salt Fish last,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For Salt Fish is good when Lent is past.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">So old Tusser. What piles of salted fish salute the eye, and make the -mouth water, in these open-breasted shops! Dried herrings, real -Yarmouth bloaters, kippered herrings, not forgetting the old original, -unpretending red herring, the modest but savoury “soldier” of the -chandler’s-shop! What flaps of salt cod and cured fishes to me -unknown, but which may be, for aught I know, the poll of ling which -King James the First wished to give the enemy of mankind when he -dined with him, together with the pig and the pipe of tobacco; or it -may be Coob or Haberdine! What are Coob and Haberdine? Tell -me, Groves, tell me, Polonius, erst chamberlain and first fishmonger to -the court of Denmark. Great creels and hampers are there too, full -of mussels and periwinkles, and myriads of dried sprats and cured -pilchards—shrunken, piscatorial anatomies, their once burnished green -and yellow panoplies now blurred and tarnished. On the whole, each -dried-fish shop is a most thirst-provoking emporium, and I cannot -wonder much if the blue-aproned fishmongers occasionally sally forth -from the midst of their fishy mummy pits and make short darts -“round the corner” to certain houses of entertainment, kept open, it -would seem, chiefly for their accommodation, and where the favourite -morning beverage is, I am given to understand, gin mingled with milk. -It is refreshing, however, to find that the fragrant berry of Mocha -(more or less adequately represented by chicory, burnt horse-beans, -and roasted corn)—that coffee, the nurse of Voltaire’s wit, the inspirer -of Balzac’s brain; coffee, which Madame de Sevigné pertly predicted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span> -would “go out” with Racine, but which nevertheless has, with -astonishing tenacity of vitality, “kept in” while the pert Sevigné and -the meek Racine have quite gone out into the darkness of literary -limbo—is in great request among the fishy men of Billingsgate. Huge, -massive, blue and white earthenware mugs full of some brown decoction, -which to these not too exigent critics need but to steam, and to -be sweet, to be the “coffee as in France,” whose odoriferous “percolations” -the advertising tradesmen tell us of, are lifted in quick -succession to the thirsty lips of the fishmen. Observe, too, that all -market men drink and order their coffee by the “pint,” even as the -scandal-loving old ladies of the last century (ladies don’t love scandal -now-a-days) drank their tea by the “dish.” I can realise the contempt -of a genuine Billingsgate marketeer for the little thimble-sized -filagree cups with the bitter Mocha grouts at the bottom, which, with -a suffocating Turkish chibouque, Turkish pachas and attar-of-roses -dealers in the Bezesteen, offer as a mark of courtesy to a Frank traveller -when they want to cheat him.</p> - -<p>Close adjacent is a narrow passage called Darkhouse Lane, and -here properly should be a traditional Billingsgate tavern called the -“Darkhouse.” There is one, open all night, under the same designation, -in Newgate Market. Hither came another chronicler of “twice -round the clock” with another neophyte, to show him the wonders of -the town, one hundred and fifty years ago. Hither, when pursy, fubsy, -good-natured Queen Anne reigned in England, and followed the -hounds in Windsor’s Park, driving two piebald ponies in a chaise, and -touched children for the “evil,” awing childish Sam Johnson with -her black velvet and her diamonds, came jovial, brutal, vulgar, graphic -Ned Ward, the “London Spy.” Here, in the “Darkhouse,” he saw -a waterman knock down his wife with a stretcher, and subsequently -witnessed the edifying spectacle of the recreant husband being tried -for his offence by a jury of fishwomen. Scant mercy, but signal -justice, got he from those fresh-water Minoses and Rhadamanthuses. -Forthwith was he “cobbed”—a punishment invented by sleeveboard-wielding -tailors, and which subsequently became very popular in her -Majesty’s navy. Here he saw “fat, motherly flatcaps, with fish-baskets -hanging over their heads instead of riding-hoods,” with silver -rings on their thumbs, and pipes charged with “mundungus” in their -mouths, sitting on inverted eel-baskets, and strewing the flowers of -their exuberant eloquence over dashing young town rakes who had -stumbled into Billingsgate to finish the night—disorderly blades in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span> -laced velvet coats, with, torn ruffles, and silver-hilted swords, and -plumed hats battered in scuffles with the watch. But the town-rakes -kept comparatively civil tongues in their heads when they entered -the precincts of the Darkhouse. An amazon of the market, otherwise -known as a Billingsgate fish-fag, was more than a match for a -Mohock. And here Ned Ward saw young city couples waiting for -the tide to carry them in a tilt-boat to Gravesend; and here he saw -bargemen eating broiled red-herrings, and Welshmen “louscobby” -(whatever that doubtless savoury dish may have been, but there <i>must</i> -have been cheese in it); and here he heard the frightful roaring of -the waters among the mechanism of the piers of old London Bridge. -There are no waterworks there now; the old bridge itself is gone; -the Mohocks are extinct; and we go to Gravesend by the steamer, -instead of the tilt-boat; yet still, as I enter the market, a pleasant -cataract of “chaff” between a fishwoman and a costermonger comes -plashing down—even as Mr. Southey tells us that the waters come -down at Lodore—upon my amused ears; and the conviction grows on -me that the flowers of Billingsgate eloquence are evergreens. Mem.: -To write a philosophical dissertation on the connection between -markets and voluble vituperation which has existed in all countries -and in all ages. ’Twas only from his immense mastery of Campanian -slang that Menenius Agrippa obtained such influence over the Roman -commons; and one of the gaudiest feathers in Daniel O’Connell’s cap -of eloquence was his having “slanged” an Irish market-woman down -by calling her a crabbed old hypothenuse!</p> - -<p>Billingsgate has been one of the watergates or ports of the city -from time immemorial. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fabulous history of -the spot acquaints us that “Belin, a king of the Britons, about four -hundred years before Christ’s nativity, built this gate and called it -‘Belinsgate,’ after his own calling;” and that when he was dead, his -body being burnt, the ashes in a vessel of brass were set on a high -pinnacle of stone over the said gate. Stowe very sensibly observes, -that the name was most probably derived from some previous owner, -“happily named Beling or Biling, as Somars’ Key, Smart’s Wharf, -and others, thereby took the names of their owners.” When he was -engaged in collecting materials for his “Survey,” Billingsgate was a -“large Watergate port, or harborough for ships and boats commonly -arriving there with fish, both fresh and salt, shellfish, salt, oranges, -onions, and other fruits and roots, wheat, rye, and grain of divers sorts, -for the service of the city, and the parts of this realm adjoining.”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> -Queenhithe, anciently the more important watering-place, had yielded -its pretensions to its rival. Each gives its name to one of the city wards.</p> - -<p>Some of the regulations concerning the “mystery” of the fishmongers -in old times are sufficiently interesting for a brief notice. -In the reign of Edward I. the prices of fish were fixed—for the best -soles, 3<i>d.</i> per dozen; the best turbot, 6<i>d.</i> each; the best pickled herrings, -1<i>d.</i> a score; fresh oysters, 2<i>d.</i> a gallon; the best eels, 2<i>d.</i> per -quarter of a hundred. In a statute of Edward I. it was forbidden to -offer for sale any fish except salt fish after the second day. In the -city assize of fish the profits of the London fishmongers were fixed at -one penny in twelve. They were not to sell their fish secretly, -within doors, but in plain market-place. In 1320 a combination -was formed against the fishmongers of Fish-wharf, to prevent them -from selling by retail; but Edward II. ordered the mayor and sheriffs -to interfere, and the opposition was unsuccessful. The mayor issued -his orders to these fishmongers of Bridge Street and Old Fish Street, -to permit their brethren in the trade to “stand at stall;” to merchandise -with them, and freely obtain their share of merchandise, as -was fit and just, and as the freedom of the city required. A few years -later some of the fishmongers again attempted to establish a monopoly; -but it was ordered that the “billestres,” or poor persons who cried -or sold fish in the streets, “provided they buy of free fishmongers, and -do not keep a stall, or make a stay in the streets, shall not be hindered;” -and also that persons and women coming from the uplands -with fish caught by them or their servants in the waters of the Thames -or other neighbouring streams, were to be allowed to frequent the -market. With these exceptions, none but members of the Fishmongers’ -Company were to be allowed to sell fish in the city, lest the -commodity should be made dear by persons dealing in it who were -unskilful in the mystery.</p> - -<p>The old churches of London in the immediate vicinity of the fish-markets -contained numerous monuments to fishmongers. That the -stock-fishmongers, or dealers in dried or salted fish, should have -formed so important a portion of the trade is deserving of notice, as -a peculiarity of the times. Lovekin and Walworth, who both acquired -wealth, were stock-fishmongers. The nature of the commodity -was such as to render the dealers in it a superior class to the other -fishmongers. A great store might be accumulated, and more capital -was required than by the other fishmongers, who only purchased from -hand to mouth.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span></p> - -<p>In 1699, an act was passed for making it a free market for the sale -of fish—though the very commencement of the preamble alludes to Billingsgate -having been time out of mind a free market for all kinds of -floating and salt fish, as also for all manner of floating and shellfish. -The necessity of a new act had arisen, as the preamble recites, -from various abuses, one of which was that the fishmongers would -not permit the street hawkers of fish to buy of the fishermen, by -which means the fishmongers bought at their own prices. The extraordinary -dream of making the country wealthy, and draining the -ocean of its riches by means of fisheries, had for above a century -been one of the fondest illusions of the English people; and about -the time that the act was passed, “ways to consume more fish” -were once more attracting the popular attention. The price of fish -at the time was said to be beyond the reach of the poor and even of -the middling classes; and for many days together the quantity received -at Billingsgate was very inconsiderable. To remedy these -evils, carriages were to be constructed, to be drawn by two post-horses, -which were to convey the fish to market at a rate of speed -which was then thought to be lightning rapidity. But though the -project was much talked about, it never came to a head, and ultimately -fell through, the projectors consoling themselves with the axiomatic -reflection—that there are more fish in the sea than ever came out of it.</p> - -<p>But while I am rummaging among the dusty corners of my memory, -and dragging forth worm-eaten old books to the light; while I -have suffered the hare of the minute-hand, and the tortoise of the -hour-hand (the tortoise wins the race), to crawl or scamper at least -half round the clock, Billingsgate Market itself—the modern—the -renovated—a far different place to that uncleanly old batch of sheds -and hovels, reeking with fishy smells, and more or less beset by ruffianly -company, which was our only fish market twenty years ago—New -Billingsgate, with a real fountain in the centre, which during the -day plays real water, is now in full life and bustle and activity. Not -so much in the market area itself, where porters are silently busied in -clearing piles of baskets away, setting forms and stools in order, and -otherwise preparing for the coming business of the fish auction, as -on the wharf, in front of the tavern known to fame as Simpson’s, -and where the eighteenpenny fish ordinary is held twice every day, -except Sunday, in each year of grace. This wharf is covered with -fish, and the scaly things themselves are being landed, with prodigious -celerity, and in quantities almost as prodigious, from vessels moored -in triple tier before the market. Here are Dutch boats that bring eels, -and boats from the north sea that bring lobsters, and boats from Hartlepool, -Whitstable, Harwich, Great Grimsby, and other English seaports -and fishing stations. They are all called “boats,” though many -are of a size that would render the term ship, or at least vessel, far -more applicable. They are mostly square and squat in rigging, and -somewhat tubby in build, and have an unmistakeably fishy appearance. -Communications are opened between the vessels, each other, and the -shore, by means of planks placed from bulwark to bulwark; and these -bulwarks are now trodden by legions of porters carrying the fish -ashore. Nautical terms are mingled with London street vernacular; -fresh mackerel competes in odour with pitch and tar; the tight strained -rigging cuts in dark indigo-relief against the pale-blue sky; the whole -is a confusion, slightly dirty but eminently picturesque, of ropes, spars, -baskets, oakum, tarpaulin, fish, canvas trousers, osier baskets, loud -voices, tramping feet, and “perfumed gales,” not exactly from “Araby -the blest,” but from the holds of the fishing-craft.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus02" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus02.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">BILLINGSGATE MARKET: CARRYING FISH ASHORE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span></p> - -<p>Upon my word, the clock has struck five, and the great gong of -Billingsgate booms forth market-time. Uprouse ye, then, my merry, -merry fishmongers, for this is your opening day! And the merry fishmongers -uprouse themselves with a vengeance. The only comparison -I can find for the aspect, the sights, and sounds of the place, is—a -Rush. A rush hither and thither at helter-skelter speed, apparently -blindly, apparently without motive, but really with a business-like and -engrossing pre-occupation, for fish and all things fishy. Baskets full -of turbot, borne on the shoulders of the <i>facchini</i> of the place, skim -through the air with such rapidity that you might take them to be -flying fish. Out of the way! here is an animated salmon leap. Stand -on one side! a shoal of fresh herrings will swallow you up else. There -is a rush to the tribunes of the auctioneers; forums surrounded by -wooden forms—I mean no pun—laden with fish, and dominated by the -rostra of the salesmen, who, with long account-books in their hands, -which they use instead of hammers, knock down the lots with marvellous -rapidity. An eager crowd of purchasers hedge in the scaly -merchandise. They are substantial-looking, hearty, rosy-gilled men—for -the sale of fish appears to make these merchants thrive in person -as well as in purse. Why, though, should fishmongers have, as a -body, small eyes? Can there be any mysterious sympathy between -them and the finny things they sell?—and do they, like the husband -and wife who loved each other so much, and lived together so long,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span> -that, although at first totally dissimilar in appearance, they grew at -last to resemble one another feature for feature—become smaller and -smaller-eyed as their acquaintance with the small-eyed fishes lengthens? -I throw this supposition out as a subject for speculation for some future -Lavater. Among the buyers I notice one remarkable individual, unpretending -as to facial development, but whose costume presents a -singular mixture of the equine and the piscine. Lo! his hat is tall -and shiny, even as the hat of a frequenter of Newmarket and an <i>habitué</i> -of Aldridge’s Repository, and his eminently sporting-looking neckcloth -is fastened with a horse-shoe pin; but then his sleeves are as the -sleeves of a fishmonger, and his loins are girt with the orthodox blue -apron appertaining, by a sort of masonic prescription, to his craft and -mystery! His nether man, as far as the spring of the calf, is clad in -the galligaskins of an ordinary citizen; but below the knee commence -a pair of straight tight boots of undeniably sporting cut. Who is this -marvellous compound of the fishy and “horsey” idiosyncrasies? Is he -John Scott disguised as Izaak Walton? is he Flatman or Chifney? -Tell me, Mr. Chubb, proprietor of the “Golden Perch;” tell me, -“Ruff,” mythical author of the “Guide to the Turf”—for knowing -not to which authority especially to appeal, I appeal to both, even as -did the Roman maid-servant, who burnt one end of the candle to St. -Catherine and the other to St. Nicholas (old St. Nicholas I mean, -sometimes familiarised into “Nick”), in order to be on the safe side.</p> - -<p>There are eight auctioneers or fish salesmen attached to the market, -and they meet every morning between four and five o’clock at one of -the principal public-houses, to discuss the quantity and quality of fish -about to be offered for sale. The three taverns are known as Bowler’s, -Bacon’s, and Simpson’s. The second of these is situated in the centre -of the market, and is habitually used by the auctioneers, probably on -account of the son of the proprietor being the largest consignee at -Billingsgate.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus03" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus03.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">BILLINGSGATE: THE FISH SOLD BY AUCTION.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span></p> - -<p>As the clock strikes five, the auctioneers disperse to their various -boxes. Below each box are piled on “forms” or bulks the “doubles” -of plaice, soles, haddock, whiting, and “offal.” A “double” is an -oblong basket tapering to the bottom, and containing from three to -four dozen of fish; “offal” means odd lots of different kinds of fish, -mostly small and broken, but always fresh and wholesome. When -the auctioneer is ready, a porter catches up a couple of “doubles,” -and swings one on to each shoulder, and then the bids begin. Soles -have been sold as low as four shillings the “double,” and have fetched -as high as three pounds. There is one traditional bid on record, -which took place in the early part of the present century, of forty -guineas per hundred for mackerel. Plaice ranges from one-and-sixpence -to four shillings the double. The sale is conducted on the -principle of what is termed a “Dutch auction,” purchasers not being -allowed to inspect the fish in the doubles before they bid. Offal is -bought only by the “fryers.” You may see, almost every market -morning, a long, gaunt, greasy man, of that dubious age that you -hesitate whether to call him youngish or oldish, with a signet ring on -one little finger, and a staring crimson and yellow handkerchief round -the collar of his not very clean checked shirt, buy from fifteen to -twenty doubles of one kind or another; and in the season the <i>habitués</i> of -the market say that he will purchase from twenty-five to thirty bushels -of periwinkles and whelks. This monumental “doubler,” this Rothschild -of the offal tribe, resides in Somers Town. To him resort to -purchase stock those innumerable purveyors of fried fish who make -our courts and bye-streets redolent with the oleaginous perfumes of -their hissing cauldrons. For the convenience of small dealers, who -cannot afford to buy an entire double, stands are erected at different -parts of the market for “bumbarees.” We may ask in vain, <i>undè -derivatur</i>, for the meaning of the term, though it is probably of Dutch -origin. Any one can be a bumbaree: it requires neither apprenticeship, -diploma, nor license, and it is the <i>pons asinorum</i> of the “mystery -of fishmongers.” The career is open to all; which, considering the -difficulty of settling one’s children in life, must be rather a gratifying -reflection for parents. The process of bumbareeing is very simple. -It consists in buying as largely as your means will afford of an auctioneer, -hiring a stall for sixpence, and retailing the fish at a swingeing -profit. I think that if I were not a landed gentleman, a Middlesex -magistrate, and a member of the Court of Lieutenancy—vainly endeavouring, -meanwhile, to ascertain my parochial settlement, in order to -obtain admission to a workhouse as an unable-bodied pauper—that I -should like to be a bumbaree.</p> - -<p>Plaice, soles, haddocks (fresh), skate, maids, cod, and ling (the two -last-mentioned fish in batches of threes and fours, with a string passed -through the gills), are the only fish sold by auction. Fresh herrings -are sold from the vessel by the long hundred (130). They are counted -from the hold to the buyers in “warp” fives. Twopence per hundred -is charged to bring them on shore. Eels are sold by the “draft” -of twenty pounds weight—the price of the draft varying from three<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span> -shillings to fifteen. Twopence per draft is paid for “shoreing” or -landing the fish from the vessels. Sprats are sold on board the ships -by the bushel. A “tindal” is a thousand bushels of sprats. When -we come to consider the vast number of these oily, savoury little -fishes that a bushel will contain, the idea of a “tindal” of them seems -perfectly Garagantuan; yet many “tindals” of them are sold every -week during the winter season—for the consumption of sprats among -the poorer classes is enormous. What says the Muse of the Bull at -Somers Town—what sweet stanzas issue from the anthology of Seven -Dials?—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“O! ’tis my delight on a Friday night,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When sprats they isn’t dear,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To fry a couple of score or so</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Upon a fire clear.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“They eats so well, they bears the bell</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From all the fish I knows:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then let us eat them while we can,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Before the price is rose.”</div> - <div class="verse indent4">(Chorus—ad libitum) “O! ’tis my delight,” &c.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The last two lines are replete with the poetry and philosophy of -the poorer classes: “Let us eat them while we can, before the price -is rose;” for even sprats are sometimes luxuries unattainable by the -humble. Exceedingly succulent sprats labour under the disadvantage -of being slightly unwholesome. To quote Mr. Samuel Weller’s anecdote -of the remark made by the young lady when remonstrating with -the pastrycook who had sold her a pork pie which was all fat, sprats -are “rayther too rich.” And yet how delicious they are! I have -had some passably good dinners in my time; I have partaken of -<i>turbôt à la crême</i> at the Trois Frères Provençaux; I have eaten a <i>filet -à la Chateaubriand</i> at Bignon’s: yet I don’t think there is a banquet -in the whole repertory of Lucullus and Apicius—a more charming -red-letter night in the calendar of gastronomy, than a sprat supper. -You must have three pennyworth of sprats, a large tablecloth is indispensable -for finger-wiping purposes—for he who would eat sprats -with a knife and fork is unworthy the name of an epicure—and after -the banquet I should recommend, for purely hygienic and antibilious -reasons, the absorption of a <i>petit verre</i> of the best Hollands.</p> - -<p>To return. As regards salmon, nine-tenths of the aristocratic fish -are brought up by rail in barrels, and in summer packed in ice. -Salmon and salmon-trout are not subjected to the humiliation of being<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span> -“knocked down” by an auctioneer. They are disposed of “by private -contract” at so much per pound.</p> - -<p>Of dried and smoked fish of all kinds the best come from Yarmouth; -but as regards the costermonger and street-vender—the -modern “billestres,” of dried haddocks, smoked sprats and herrings, -entire or kippered—they are little affected by the state of the cured -fish market so long as they can buy plenty of the fresh kind. The -costermonger cures his fish himself in the following manner:—He -builds a little shed like a watch-box, with wires across the upper part; -and on this grating he threads his fish. Then he makes a fire on the -floor of his impromptu curing-house with coal or mahogany dust, and -smokes the fish “till done,” as the old cookery books say. There is -a dealer in the market to whom all fish-sellers bring the skins of -departed soles. He gives fourpence-halfpenny a pound for them. -They are used for refining purposes. And now for a word concerning -the crustacea and the molluscs. Of oysters there are several kinds: -Native Pearls, Jerseys, Old Barleys, and Commons. On board every -oyster-boat a business-like gentleman is present, who takes care that -every buyer of a bushel of oysters pays him fourpence. No buyer -may carry his oysters ashore himself, be he ever so able and willing. -There are regular “shoremen,” who charge fourpence a bushel for -their services; so that whatever may be the market-price of oysters, -the purchaser must pay, <i>nolens volens</i>, eightpence a bushel over and -above the quoted rate.</p> - -<p>Of mussels there are three kinds: Dutch, Exeters, and Shorehams. -They are brought to market in bags, of the average weight of three -hundredweight; each bag containing about one hundred and sixty -quarts, inclusive of dirt and stones. They are sold at from five -shillings to seven shillings a bag. Of periwinkles—or, as they are -more popularly and familiarly termed, “winkles”—there are four sorts: -Scotch, Clays, Isle of Wights, and Maidens. They are sold by the -bushel, or by the “level” or gallon. Crabs are sold by the “kit” (a -long shallow basket) and by the score. Lobsters by the score and the -double.</p> - -<p>At the “Cock,” in Love Lane, and at the “White Hart,” in -Botolph Lane, there is a boiling-house in the rear of the premises. -Each boiling-house consists of a spacious kitchen filled with immense -cauldrons. Here winkle and whelk buyers, who have neither utensils -nor convenient premises sufficient to boil at home, can have it done -for them for fourpence a bushel. Each boiling is performed separately<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span> -in a wicker-basket; crabs and lobsters may likewise be boiled -at these houses. Half-a-dozen scores of the fish are packed in a -large basket, shaped like a strawberry-pottle, a lid is put between -each lot, and the hot-water torture is inflicted at the rate of sixpence -a score.</p> - -<p>If your servant, the writer, were not precluded by the terms of -his contract from taking any natural rest, he might, pleading fatigue, -retire to bed; and, tossing on an unquiet couch, as men must do who -slip between the sheets when the blessed sun is shining, have fantastic -dreams of Ned Ward and Sir William Walworth: dream of the -market-scene in “Masaniello,” and hum a dream-reminiscence of -“Behold, how brightly beams the morning!” which, of course, like -all things appertaining to dreams, has no more resemblance to the -original air than the tune the cow died of. Then fancy that he is a -supernumerary in a pantomime, and that Mr. Flexmore, the clown, -has jumped upon his shoulders, and is beating him about the ears -with a “property” codfish. Then he might be Jonah, swallowed by -the whale; and then Tobit’s fish. Then he would find himself half -awake, and repeating some lines he remembered reading years ago, -scrawled in ink on a huge placard outside the shop of Mr. Taylor, the -famous fishmonger, in Lombard Street. Yes: they ran thus—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“So the ‘Times’ takes an interest in the case of Geils;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I wish it would take some in my eels!”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">What a queer fish Mr. Taylor must have been! Where is he now? -Why, he (your servant) is Taylor—Jeremy Taylor—Tom Taylor—Taylor -the water-poet—Billy Taylor—the Three Tailors of Tooley -Street—Mr. Toole, the toast-master of arts and buttered toast; and—he -is asleep!</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FIVE_AM">FIVE O’CLOCK A.M.—THE PUBLICATION OF THE “TIMES” NEWSPAPER.</h2> - -</div> - -<p class="smaller">“There she is—the great engine—she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter -of the world—her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her -envoys walk into statesmen’s cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder Journal has an agent at -this minute giving bribes at Madrid; and another inspecting the price of potatoes at Covent -Garden.”</p> - -<p class="right smaller">“<span class="smcap">Pendennis.</span>”</p> - -<p>If you have no objection to the statement of the fact, I would beg -to observe that our present station on the clock face, twice round which -we have to go, is now five in the morning; and that at five a.m. the -publication of the “Times” newspaper is, to use a north-country -mining expression, in “full blast.” You abhor the politics of the -journal in question, you say: you consider the “Times” and -“Evening Mail” to be the organ of a company, with limited liability, -composed of the Emperor Alexander, Cardinal Wiseman, Baron -Rothschild, Prince Aali Pacha, Metternich, Doctor Cumming, Baring -Brothers, Lord Palmerston, Mr. Disraeli, Mr. W. J. Fox, and Miss -Martineau. You are offended with the “Times” because the editor -declined to insert that last six-paged letter from you against organ -grinding. Never mind, you must come all the same to see the paper -published. For the publication of the “Times” is a great, an -enormous, a marvellous fact: none the less wonderful for being repeated -three hundred and thirteen times a-year. It is a pulsation of -London’s mighty heart, that should not be neglected. It is the daily -booming of a tocsin, which, year after year, proclaims progress, and -still progress to the nations; which is the joy bell to the good, the -passing bell to the bad, the world is blessed or cursed with; which -rings out ignorance and prejudice and superstition, and rings in knowledge -and enlightenment and truth. The “Times” is not alone in the -possession of a peal of bells of this kind; and many daily, more -weekly, papers ring out, loud and clear, to eager listeners; were your -vassal not one of the modestest of men, he would hint that for the last -dozen years he has been agitating daily and weekly a little tintinnabulum -with what lustiness his nerveless arm will let him. But hard -by St. Paul’s, the cathedral of Anglicanism, is Printing House Square, -the cathedral of Journalism, and in it hangs a bell to which Great<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span> -Tom of Lincoln, Peter of York, the Kolokol of Moscow, and our own -defunct “Big Ben,” are but as tinkling muffineers. For though the -sides of the bell are only paper, the clapper is the great public tongue; -the booming sound that fills the city every morning, and, to use the -words of Mr. Walter Whitman, “utters its barbaric youp over the -house-tops of creation,” is the great Public Voice. Bottle up your -animosities, then, stifle your prejudices, and come and hear the voice’s -first faint murmur at five o’clock in the morning.</p> - -<p>The office of the “Times” and “Evening Mail” is, as all civilised -men should know, situated in Printing House Square and Playhouse -Yard, in the parish of St. Ann’s, Blackfriars, in the city of London. -Now this is very pleasant and comfortable information, and is fit matter -for a studious man to lay to heart; and there exists but one little -drawback to mar the felicity which one must naturally feel at having -the style and title of the press’s great champions’ <i>habitat</i> so patly at -one’s fingers’ ends. The drawback—the kink in the cable, the hyssop -in the wine-cup, the thorn to the rose—is that, with the exception of -Honey Lane market and Little Chester Street, Pimlico, Printing -House Square is the most difficult locality to find in all London. It -is not much use asking your way to it; a map of London, however -elaborate, would not be of the slightest assistance to you in discovering -it: it will avail you little even to be told that it is close to Apothecaries’ -Hall, for where, I should like to know, is that huge musty caravanserai -of drugs, and who is to find it at a short notice? And the intimation -that Printing House Square is not far from Puddle Dock, -would not, I opine, render you great service, intimate as might be -your acquaintance with the shores of the river, both above and below -bridge, and would be scarcely more lucid a direction than the intimation -that the London terminus of the South-Western Railway was -close to Pedlars’ Acre. The “Times” newspaper is somewhere near -all these places; and it is likewise within a stone’s throw from Ludgate -Hill, and not far from St. Paul’s, and within a minute’s walk of -Fleet Street, and contiguous to Blackfriars Bridge, close handy to Earl -Street, and no great distance from Chatham Place. Yet, for all this, -the “Times” office might be, to the uninitiated, just as well placed in -the centre of the Cretan labyrinth, or the maze at Hampton Court, or -the budget of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. The best way to reach -the office is to take any turning to the south side of London Bridge, -or the east of Bridge Street, Blackfriars, and then trust to chance. -The probabilities are varied. Very likely you will find yourself<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span> -entangled in a seemingly hopeless net-work of narrow streets; you -will be jostled into chandlers’ shops, vilified by boys unctuous, black, -and reeking from the printing-machine; pursued by costermongers -importuning you to purchase small parcels of vegetables; and, particularly -after sundown, your life will be placed in jeopardy by a -Hansom cab bouncing up or down the narrow thoroughfare, of course -on its way to the “Times” office, and on an errand of life and death; -the excited politician inside, frantically offering the cabman (he, even, -doesn’t know the way to the “Times,” and has just asked it of a -grimy cynic, smoking a pipe in front of a coal and potato shed) extra -shillings for speed. The grimy cynic, perhaps from sheer malevolence -of disposition, perhaps from the ruffling of his temper naturally incidental -to his being asked the same question about five hundred times -every day, answers morosely that he believes the Hoffice is in Bummondsey, -but he’s blest if he knows hanything more about it. He -will have bad times of it, that grimy cynic, I perpend, for telling such -fibs. Still struggle on manfully, always like the nautical gentleman -in the blue pilot jacket who had had so many domestic afflictions, -and exhorted the passenger to “go down, go down.” Never mind -the regiments of gallinacea that board in the gutter and lodge in -the adjacent coal-cellars, and peck at your feet as though they could -relish your corns. Never mind the infants of tender years who come -tumbling between your legs, sprawl, howling, at your feet, and cast -around appealing glances, which draw cries of “shame!” from vengeful -family-men who have never set eyes on you before, but who evidently -regard you as a peripatetic ogre, going about, of malice prepense, to -trip up children. Never mind the suffocating odour of second-hand -fish, vegetables, fruit, coal-dust, potato sacks, the adjacent gasworks, -gum-benzoin, hartshorn, opium, and other medicaments from Apothecaries’ -Hall. Never mind the noises of dogs barking, of children -that are smacked by their parents or guardians for crying, and then, -of course, roar louder; of boys yelling the insufferable “Old Dog -Tray,” the abominable “Keemo Kimo,” the hideous “Hoomtoomdoodendoo,” -and rattling those abhorrent instruments of discord, the -“bones;” of women scolding, quarrelling, or shrieking domestic -calumnies of Mrs. Armstrong in connection with Bill Boosker, nicknamed -the “Lively Flea,” from garret-windows across the street; of -men growling, and wagon-wheels rumbling, and from distant forges -the yell of the indignant anvil as the ruthless hammer smites it, and -the great bar of iron is beaten flat, the sparks flying up, rejoicing in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span> -a red “ha-ha!” at the ferruginous defeat. Never mind the dangers -of hoop, “hopscotch,” “fly-the-garter,” “thread-the-needle,” “trip-the-baker,” -“tipcat,” and “shove-halfpenny,” for the carrying out of -which exciting and amusing games the juvenile population entirely -monopolise what spare strips of pavement there are. Trust on, be -not afraid, keep struggling; and it is five hundred to one that you -will eventually turn up Printing House Square, over against the -“Times” office. How ever the leviathan of the press manages to -breathe in this close, stifling, elbow-hampering neighbourhood, has -always puzzled me, and has puzzled, I daresay, a great many wiser -than I. How do the archbishops in their coaches and six (it is well -known that those gorgeous prelates write the leading articles, carrying -the necessary stationery in their mitres, and wiping their pens on their -black silk aprons—the B—p of O—x—d, however, always writes with -a pastoral crozier, dipped in milk and honey, or a lamb’s fleece—and -come down to the office at a quarter past nine every evening to correct -their proofs) contrive to squeeze their broad-shouldered equipages -through these bye-lanes? How can the sub-editor’s four-in-hand -pass, the city correspondent’s comfortable yellow chariot, nay, even -the modest broughams of the compositors? Why does not the -“Times” burst forth from the shell it has grown too large for, and -plant its standard on the hill of Ludgate, or by the side of Cheap,—if -it must needs be in the city? The area of Lincoln’s Inn Fields -would be perhaps the most suitable locality for a new office; but it is -indubitable that unless the “leading journal” retrogress and contract -its operation, they will have, some day, to pull down the choking -little nests of back-streets which surround and hem it in, even as they -had to pull down the wall of the dock, bodily, in order to let the -<i>Great Britain</i> steam-ship out.</p> - -<p>What a contrast sequestered Printing House Square, with its old-fashioned -aspect, its quiet, dingy-looking houses, its clump of green -trees within a railing to the left, presents to the gurgling, gasping -neighbourhood which stands in such close propinquity to it! Here is -the great brainpan of journalism; the centre of newspaper activity, -the prefecture of police of the public press. Absolutely necessary is -it that it should be entirely a secret police, the “awful, shadowy, -irresponsible, and yet <i>puissant</i> we” should dominate over the columns -of the daily journal. Will a time ever come, I wonder, when a man -will sign his own articles in a newspaper; receive his reward for -honesty, his censure for tergiversation, from the public? Will a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span> -strange day of revolution ever arrive, when the mystic “we” shall be -merged into the responsible, tax-paying, tangible, palpable, shootable, -suicidable, and kickable “I?” Perhaps never; perhaps such a consummation -would be disastrous. Old Cobbett, in one of his screeds of -passionate contempt in his “gridiron” paper the “Register,” once -said that he should like to have all the newspaper editors and correspondents -in London assembled in Hyde Park, in order that from -their personal appearance the public might judge by what a disreputable-looking -set of fellows they were hoodwinked and nose-led. -There would be no need to hold such a gathering in this scene-painting -age. Walk but into any fashionable photographic studio, and you -shall find all the “sommités” of the press neatly collectionised, and -stuck on pasteboard in the show-room portfolio; and if you entreat -the photographer’s pretty wife civilly, she will point out to you -Doctor Copperbolt of the “Thunderer,” and Bill Hornblower of the -“Penny Trumpet,” in their habit as they live.</p> - -<p>Printing House Square is to me interesting at all times of the day -and night. In the afternoon, the dullest period of its existence, when -the compositors are gone away, the editors not come, the last number -of the last edition of the day’s sheet printed, and the mighty steam-engine -for a time hushed, I wander into its precincts often; make -some small pretexts of taking out a slip of paper, and wending my -way towards the advertising department; but soon retrace my steps, -and, to tell the truth, moon about the square in such a suspicious and -prowling manner, that if they kept any spoons on the premises, I should -most probably be ordered off by the compositor on duty. This was -Playhouse Yard too, once, was it—nay, is still; but where is the old -playhouse—the Globe Theatre, Blackfriars, if I mistake not? Not a -vestige, not a particle remains. The fourth estate has swallowed it -all up. The Press Dragon of Wantley has devoured everything; and -the “Times” seems omnipotent in its home by Puddle Dock. Look -over the door of the advertisement office. Above that portal is a -handsome marble slab, a votive tablet, in commemoration of a great -victory the “Times” once gained, not a legal victory, but one of -power and influence with the people, and especially with the commercial -community, by its exposure, anent the trial of Bogle <i>v.</i> Lawson, -of the most extensive and remarkable fraudulent conspiracy ever -brought to light in the mercantile world. The “Times” refused to -be reimbursed for the heavy costs with which its proprietors had been -saddled in defending the action brought by Mr. Bogle, a banker at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span> -Florence, against the publisher of the “Times,” Mr. Lawson. But -a subscription, amounting to £2,700, had been raised, and this -handsome sum, which the “Times” proprietors refused to accept, -was at last laid out in the foundation of two scholarships at -Christ’s Hospital and the City of London School, for the benefit of -pupils of those institutions proceeding to the universities of Oxford -and Cambridge. Do you remember—are you old enough to remember—the -famous case of Bogle <i>versus</i> Lawson, reader? It would -take me five times the space I can spare for this paper to give you -even the outline of the history of the monstrous fraud from which that -action grew. Suffice it now to say, that Mr. Bogle had been mixed -up—it has been since established innocently—in the great continental -letter of credit forging system, invented, carried out, and pursued -with consummate success by an accomplished scoundrel, the Marquis -de Bourbel, who, when the felonious bubble at length burst, and the -fraud was detected, was in nowise cast down or abashed by that discovery -that had come, and the punishment that seemed imminent, but -with admirable strategy called in his outlying pickets of countesses, -actresses—<i>demi-monde</i> adventuresses—couriers, and sham English -milords, who had been scouring the Continent changing his forged -letters of credit, and, after the unutterable impudence of an appearance -in court during the “Times” trial, gracefully retired into -private life. I, the scribe, <i>moi qui vous parle</i>, have lived in the same -house with this great man. It was at a hairdresser’s shop in the -Regent’s Quadrant, and in an upper chamber of the house in question -did the gallant marquis, assisted by a distinguished countess, who had -formerly danced on stilts, and an English copper-plate engraver, work -off the proofs of his wicked paper money from the counterfeited -plates. I should like to know what became eventually of the Marquis -de Bourbel: whether his lordship was, in the ripeness of his time, -guillotined, garotted, hanged, or knouted. I go for Siberia and the -knout, for, from the peculiar conformation of his lordship’s character, -I don’t think it possible that he could have refrained for long from -forgery. We should have heard of him, I think, had he come to -grief in Western Europe; but Russian bank-notes are very easy to -forge, and Russian prisons and prisoners are seldom brought before -the public eye. They manage those little things better, and keep -them nice and cozy and quiet; and so I go for Siberia and the knout.</p> - -<p>It is, however, as the shades of evening gather round the <i>Cour -des Miracles</i> which encompasses the “Times” office, that the scene<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span> -which it and the Square present becomes more interesting. For -early in the evening that giant steam-engine begins to throb, and, as -the hour advances, the monster is fed with reams on reams of stout -white paper, which he devours as though they were so many wafers.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> -It gets late at Printing House Square; the sub-editors have been for -some time in their rooms; the ineffable mysteries of the “Times”—editors, -proprietors, cabinet ministers, lord chancellors, generals of the -Jesuits, for aught I know, have arrived from their clubs in broughams -and in cabs. Who shall tell? That stout good-humoured looking -gentleman with the umbrella and the ecclesiastical neckcloth, may be -the writer of the comic leading articles, just arrived with his copy. -No; he has vainly tried the door of the advertisement office, which -is closed. Perhaps he is only X. Y. Z., who, in the second column, -entreats P. Q. R. to return to his disconsolate parents; or the inventor -of some new tooth-powder with a Greek name, or the discoverer -of the “fourteen shilling trousers.” It is getting later, and -the windows of the great office are all blazing with gas. The steam-engine -not only throbs; it pants, it groans, it puffs, it snorts, it bursts -into a wild, clanging pæan of printing. Sub-editors are now hard at -work cutting down “flimsy,” ramming sheets of “copy” on files, -endlessly conferring with perspiring foremen. Ineffable mysteries (I -presume) are writing terribly slaughtering articles in carpeted rooms, -by the light of Argand lamps. Do they have cake and wine, I -wonder, in those rooms? Sherry and sandwiches, perhaps, and on -field-nights lobsters. It is getting later, but there is no sign of diminution -yet in the stream of cabs that drive into the Square. Every -one who is in debt, and every one who is in difficulties, and everybody -who fancies that he, or any friend, relation, or connection of his, has -a grievance, and can put pen to paper, four letters together in orthography -and four words in syntax, must needs write a letter to the -“Times;” and of the metropolitan correspondents of that journal, the -immense majority themselves bring their letters down to the office, -thinking, haply, that they might meet the editor standing “promiscuous” -on the door-step, and after some five minutes’ button-holding, -secure, irrevocably, the insertion of their communications. I don’t -at all envy the gentleman whose duty it is to open and read (do they -read them all?) the letters addressed to the editor of the “Times”. -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>What quires of insane complaints, on matters running from the misdelivery -of a letter to the misgovernment of India, from the iniquities -of the income-tax to an overcharge for a sandwich in a country inn, -that editor must have to wade through; what reams of silly compliments -about “your influential journal,” and “your world-known -paper,” he must have to read, and grin in his sleeve at! What a -multitudinous army, what a Persian host, these correspondents must -be! Who are they?—the anonymous ones—what are they like? -Who is “Verax?” who “Paterfamilias?” who “Indophilus?” who -“The London Scoundrel?” who “A Thirsty Soul?” When will Mr. -Herbert Watkins photograph me a collection of portraits of “Constant -Readers,” “Englishmen,” and “Hertfordshire Incumbents?” -Where is the incumbency of that brilliant writer? Who is “<i>Habitans -in Sicco</i>,” and how came he first to date from the “Broad Phylactery?” -and where does “Jacob Omnium” live when he is at -home? I should like to study the physiognomy of these inveterate -letter writers; to be acquainted with the circumstances which first -led them to put pen to paper in correspondence with the “Times;” -to know how they like to see themselves in print, and also how they -feel, when, as happens with lamentable frequency, their lucubrations -don’t get printed at all.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus04" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus04.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">PUBLICATION OF THE “TIMES” NEWSPAPER: INSIDE THE OFFICE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus05" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus05.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">PUBLICATION OF THE “TIMES” NEWSPAPER: OUTSIDE THE OFFICE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span></p> - -<p>It is getting later and later, oh! anxious waiters for to-morrow’s -news. The “Times” has its secrets by this time. State secrets, -literary secrets, secrets artistic and dramatic; secrets of robbery, and -fire, and murder—it holds them all fast now, admitting none to its -confidence but the Ineffables, the printers, and the ever-throbbing -steam-engine; but it will divulge its secrets to millions at five o’clock -to-morrow morning. Later and later still. The last report from the -late debate in the Commons has come in; the last paragraph of interesting -news, dropped into the box by a stealthy penny-a-liner, has -been eliminated from a mass of flimsy on its probation, and for the -most part rejected; the foreign telegrams are in type; the slaughtering -leaders glare in their “chases,” presaging woe and disaster to -ministers to-morrow; the last critic, in a white neckcloth, has hurried -down with his column and a-half on the last new spectacle at the -Princess’s; or has, which very frequently happens, despatched that -manuscript from the box at the “Albion,” where he has been snugly -supping, bidding the messenger hasten, and giving him to procure a -cab the sum of one extra shilling, which that messenger never by any -chance expends in vehicular conveyance, but runs instead with the -art-criticism, swift as the timid roe, so swift indeed, that policemen -are only deterred through chronic laziness from pursuing and asking -whether he hasn’t been stealing anything. By this time the “Times” -has become tight and replete with matter, as one who has dined well -and copiously. Nothing is wanting: city correspondence, sporting -intelligence, markets, state of the weather, prices of stocks and railway -shares, parliamentary summary, law and police reports, mysterious advertisements, -and births, deaths, and marriages. Now let the nations -wonder, and the conductors of the mangy little continental fly-sheets -of newspapers hide their heads in shame, for the “Times”—the -mighty “Times”—has “gone to bed.” The “forms,” or iron-framed and -wedged-up masses of type, are, in other words, on the machine; and, at -the rate of twelve thousand an hour, the damp broad sheets roll from the -grim iron instrument of the dissemination of light throughout the world.</p> - -<p>At five o’clock a.m., the first phase of the publication of the -“Times” newspaper commences. In a large bare room—something -like the receiving ward of an hospital—with a pay counter at one end, -and lined throughout with parallel rows of bare deal tables, the “leading -journal” first sees the light of publicity. The tables are covered -with huge piles of newspapers spread out the full size of the sheet. -These are, with dazzling celerity, folded by legions of stout porters, and -straightway carried to the door, where cabs, and carts, and light express -phæton-like vehicles, are in readiness to convey them to the railway -stations. The quantity of papers borne to the carriages outside by the -stout porters seems, and truly is, prodigious; but your astonishment -will be increased when I tell you that this only forms the stock purchased -every morning by those gigantic newsagents, Messrs. Smith -and Son, of the Strand. As the largest consumers, the “Times” -naturally allows them a priority of supply, and it is not for a considerable -period after they have received their orders that the great body -of newsagents and newsvenders—the “trade,” as they are generically -termed—are admitted, grumbling intensely, to buy the number of -quires or copies which they expect to sell or lend that day. The -scene outside then becomes one of baffling noise and confusion. There -is a cobweb of wheeled vehicles of all sorts, from a cab to a hybrid -construction something between a wheelbarrow and a costermonger’s -shallow. There is much bawling and flinging, shoving, hoisting, pulling -and dragging of parcels; all the horses’ heads seem to be turned -the wrong way; everybody’s off-wheel seems locked in somebody else’s; -but the proceedings on the whole are characterised by much good-humour<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span> -and some fun. The mob of boys—all engaged in the news-trade—is -something wonderful: fat boys, lean boys, sandy-haired -and red-haired boys, tall boys and short boys, boys with red comforters -(though it is summer), and boys with sacks on their backs and -money-bags in their hands; boys with turn-down collars; and boys -whose extreme buttonedupness renders the fact of their having any -shirts to put collars to, turn-down or stuck-up, grievously problematical. -Hard-working boys are these juvenile Bashi-Bazouks of the -newspaper trade. And I am glad to observe, for the edification -of social economists, with scarcely an exception, very honest boys. -I don’t exactly say that they are trusted with untold gold, but of the -gold that is told, to say nothing of the silver and copper, they give a -generally entirely satisfactory account. At about half-past seven the -cohorts of newsvenders, infantry and cavalry, gradually disperse, and -the “Times” is left to the agonies of its second edition.</p> - -<p>As you walk away from Printing House Square in the cool of the -morning, and reflect, I hope with salutary results, upon the busy scene -you have witnessed, just bestow one thought, and mingle with it a -large meed of admiration, for the man who, in his generation, truly -made the “Times” what it is now—John Walter, of Bearwood, -Member of Parliament. Foul-mouthed old Cobbett called him “Jack -Walters,” and him and his newspaper many ungenteel names, predicting -that he should live to see him “earthed,” and to “spit upon his -grave;” but he survived the vituperative old man’s coarse epithets. -He put flesh on the dry bones of an almost moribund newspaper. He, -by untiring and indomitable energy and perseverance, raised the circulation -of the “Times” twenty-fold, and put it in the way of attaining -the gigantic publicity and popularity which it has now achieved. It -is true that Mr. Walter realised a princely fortune by his connection -with the “Times,” and left to his son, the present Mr. John Walter, -M.P., a lion’s share in the magnificent inheritance he had created. -But he did much solid good to others besides himself. This brave old -pressman, who, when an express came in from Paris—the French -king’s speech to the Chambers in 1835—and when there were neither -contributors nor compositors to be found at hand, bravely took off his -coat, and in his shirt-sleeves first translated, and then, taking “a turn -at case,” proceeded to set up in type his own manuscript. Mr. Walter -was one of the pioneers of liberal knowledge; and men like him do -more to clear the atmosphere of ignorance and prejudice, than whole -colleges full of scholiasts and dialecticians.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SIX_AM">SIX O’CLOCK A.M.—COVENT GARDEN MARKET.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>An Emperor will always be called Cæsar, and a dog “poor old -fellow,” in whatever country they may reign or bark, I suppose; and -I should be very much surprised if any men of Anglo-Saxon lineage, -from this time forward to the millennium, could build a new city in any -part of either hemisphere without a street or streets named after certain -London localities, dear and familiar to us all. There is a Pall Mall in -Liverpool, though but an unsavoury little thoroughfare, and a Piccadilly -in Manchester—a very murky, bricky street indeed, compared -with that unequalled hill of London, skirted on one side by the -mansions of the nobles, and on the other by the great green parks. -Brighton has its Bond Street—<i>mutatus ab ille</i>, certainly, being a -fourth-rate skimping little place, smelling of oyster-shells, sand, recently-washed -linen, and babies. I question not but in far-off -Melbourne and Sydney, and scarcely yet planned cities of the Bush, -the dear old names are springing up, like shoots from famous trees. -Antipodean legislators have a refreshment room they call “Bellamy’s;” -merchants in far-off lands have their “Lloyd’s;” there are coffee-houses -and taverns, thousands of miles away, christened “Joe’s,” and -“Tom’s,” and “Sam’s,” though the original “Joe,” the primeval -“Tom,” the first “Sam,” most bald-headed and courteous of old port-wine-wise -waiters, have long since slept the sleep of the just in quiet -mouldy London graveyards, closed years ago by the Board of Health. -On very many names, and names alone, we stamp <i>esto perpetua</i>; and -English hearts would ill brook the alteration of their favourite designations. -Long, long may it be, I hope, before the great Lord Mayor -of London shall be called the Prefect of the Thames, or the Secretary -of State for the Home Department be known as the Minister of the -Interior!</p> - -<p>Foremost among names familiar to British mouths is Covent -Garden. The provincial knows it; the American knows it; Lord -Macaulay’s New Zealander will come to meditate among the moss-grown -arcades, when he makes that celebrated sketching excursion -we have so long been promised. To the play-goer Covent Garden is -suggestive of the glories of Kemble and Siddons; old book-a-bosom -studious men, who live among musty volumes, remember that Harry<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span> -Fielding wrote the “Covent Garden Journal;” that Mr. Wycherley -lived in Bow Street; and that Mr. Dryden was cudgelled in Rose -Street hard by. Politicians remember the <i>fasti</i> of the Westminster -election, and how Mr. Sheridan, beset by bailiffs on the hustings, -escaped through the churchyard. Artists know that Inigo Jones -built that same church of St. Paul, in compliance with the mandate of -his patron, the Earl of Bedford. “Build me a barn,” said the Earl. -Quoth Inigo, “My lord, I will build you the handsomest barn in -England;” and the church is in the market to this day, with its barn-like -roof, to see. Old stagers who have led jovial London lives, have -yet chuckling memories of how in Covent Garden they were wont to -hear the chimes at midnight in the days when they were eating their -terms, and lay over against the “Windmill” in Moorfields, and consorted -with the Bona Robas. Those days, Sir John Falstaff—those -days, Justice Shallow, shall return no more to you. There was the -“Finish,”—a vulgar, noisy place enough; but stamped with undying -gentility by the patronage of his late Royal Highness the Prince of -Wales. Great George “finished” in Covent Garden purlieus; Major -Hanger told his stories, Captain Morris sang his songs, there. In a -peaceable gutter in front of the “Finish,” Richard Brinsley Sheridan, -Esq., M.P., lay down overtaken in foreign wines, and told the guardian -of the night that his name was Wilberforce. A wild place, that -“Finish;” yet a better one than Great George’s other “Finish” at -Windsor, with the actress to read plays to him, the servants anxious -for him to quit the stage, that they might sell his frogged, furred coats, -and white kid pantaloons: the sorry end in a mean chair—unfriended, -unloved, save by hirelings deserted. When the Hope of England is -old enough to wear on his fair head the coronal and the three ostrich -feathers, will <i>he</i> patronise a “Finish?” shall we have another wild -young Prince and Poins, I wonder. To be sure, Mr. Thackeray tells -us that the young nobles of the present age have “Spratts” and the -“back kitchen” to finish up a night in; but, pshaw! the Hope of -England takes the chair at the Royal Institution to hear Mr. Faraday -lecture, and sits on the bench beside John Lord Campbell to see -rogues tried.</p> - -<p>Covent Garden is a very chain, and its links are pleasant reminiscences. -They are somewhat dangerous to me, for my business is -not antiquarian, nor even topographical, just now; and I have but to -do with the sixth hour of the morning, and the vegetable market that -is held in the monks’ old garden. I will dismiss the noble house of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span> -Bedford, though Covent Garden, &c., are the richest appanage of that -ducal entity—simply recording a wish that you or I, my friend, had -one tithe of the fat revenues that ooze from between the bricks of the -Bedford estate. You should not dig, nor I delve, then. We would -drink brown ale, and pay the reckoning on the nail, and no man for -debt should go to jail, that we could help, from Garryowen to glory. -I will say nothing to you of the old theatre: how it was burnt again -and again, and always re-appeared, with great success on the part of -Phœnix. Of Bow Street, even, will I be silent, and proffer nought of -Sir Richard Birnie, or that famed runner, Townsend. Nor of the -Garrick Club, in King Street, will I discourse; indeed, I don’t know -that I am qualified to say anything pertinent respecting that establishment. -I am not a member of the club; and I am afraid of the men -in plush, who, albeit aristocratic, have yet a certain “Garrick” look -about them, and must be, I surmise, the prosperous brothers of the -“green-coats” who sweep and water the stage, and pick up Sir -Anthony Absolute’s hat and crutch in the play. And scant dissertations -shall you have from me on those dim days of old, when Covent -Garden was in verity the garden of a convent; when matins and -vespers, complins and benedictions, were tinkled out in mellow tintinnabulations -through the leafy aisles of fruit trees; when my Lord -Abbot trod the green sward, stately, his signet-ring flashing in the -evening sun; and Brother Austin hated Friar Lawrence, and cursed -him softly as he paced the gravel walks demurely, his hands in his -brown sleeves, his eyes ever and anon cast up to count the peaches on -the wall. Solemn old conventual days, with shrill-voiced choir-boys -singing from breves and minims as big as latch-keys, scored in black -and red on brave parchment music-tomes. Lazy old conventual days, -when the cellarer brewed October that would give Messrs. Bass and -Allsopp vertigo; when the poor were fed with a manchet and stoup at -the gate, without seeking the relieving officer, or an order for the -stoneyard. Comfortable old days, when the Abbot’s <i>venator</i> brought -in a fat buck from Sheen or Chertsey, the <i>piscator</i> fresh salmon (the -water-drops looked like pearls on their silvery backs). Comfortable -old days of softly-saddled palfreys, venison pasties, and Malvoisie, sandalled -feet, and shaven crowns, bead-telling, and censor-swinging. -These were the days of the lazy monks in their Covent Garden. -Lazy! They were lazy enough to illuminate the exquisitely beautiful -missals and books of hours you may see in the British Museum; to -feed, and tend, and comfort the poor, and heal them when they were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span> -sick; to keep art and learning from decay and death in a dark age; to -build cathedrals, whose smallest buttress shall make your children’s -children, Sir Charles Barry, blush; but they were the lazy monks—so -let us cry havoc upon them. They were shavelings. They didn’t -wash their feet, they aided and abetted Guy Fawkes, Ignatius Loyola, -and the Cardinal Archbishop of ——.</p> - -<p>It is six o’clock on a glorious summer’s morning; the lazy monks -fade away like the shadows of the night, and leave me in Covent -Garden, and in high market. Every morning during the summer -may be called market morning; but in the winter the special mornings -are Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It is a strange sight then -in the winter blackness to see the gas glimmering among huge piles -of vegetables hoisted high on carts, and slowly moving like Birnam -Woods coming to a Dunsinane of marketdom. When the snow is on -the ground, or when the rain it raineth, the glare of lights and black -shadows; the rushing figures of men with burdens; the great heaving -masses of baskets that are tumbled from steep heights; the brilliantly-lighted -shops in the grand arcade, where, winter or summer, glow the -oranges and the hot-house fruits and flowers; all these make up a -series of pictures, strange and sometimes almost terrible. There are -yawning cellars, that vomit green stuff; there are tall potato-sacks, -propped up in dark corners, that might contain corpses of murdered -men; there are wondrous masses of light and shade, and dazzling -effects of candlelight, enough to make old Schkalken’s ghost rise, -crayon and sketch-book in hand, and the <i>eidolon</i> of Paul Rembrandt -to take lodgings in the Piazza, over against the market.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus06" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus06.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">COVENT GARDEN MARKET: THE WEST END.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span></p> - -<p>But six o’clock in the glorious summer time! The London smoke -is not out of bed yet, and indeed Covent Garden market would at all -times seem to possess an exemption from over fumigation. If you -consider the fronts of the houses, and the arches of the Piazza, you -will see that though tinted by age, they have not that sooty grimness -that degrades St. Paul’s cathedral into the similitude of a temple -dedicated to the worship of the goddess of chimney-sweepers, and -makes the East India House (what will they do with the India House -when the directors are demolished?) look like the outside of the -black-hole at Calcutta. Smoke has been merciful to Covent Garden -market, and its cornucopia is not as dingy as a ramoneur’s sack. All -night long the heavily-laden wagons—mountains of cabbages, cauliflowers, -brocoli, asparagus, carrots, turnips, and seakale; Egyptian -pyramids of red-huddled baskets full of apples and pears, hecatombs -of cherries, holocausts of strawberry pottles, chair wicker bosoms -crimsoned by sanguinolent spots; and above all, piles, heaps—Pelions -on Ossas, Atlases on Olympuses, Chimborazos on Himalayas, Mount -Aboras on Mont Blancs—of <span class="smcap">Peas</span>, have been creaking and rumbling -and heavily wheezing along suburban roads, and through the main -streets of the never-sleeping city. You heard those broad groaning -wheels, perturbed man, as your head tossed uneasily on the pillow, -and you thought of the bill that was to come due on the morrow. -You too heard them, pretty maiden, in the laced night cap, as you -bedewed that delicate border of dentelle with tears, coursing from -the eyes which should have been closed in sleep two hours since, -tears evoked by the atrocious behaviour of Edward (a monster and -member of the Stock Exchange) towards Clara (a designing, wicked, -artful thing, whose papa lives in Torrington Square) during the -last <i>deux temps</i>. That dull heavy sound was distinct above the -sharp rattle of the night cabmen’s wheels; the steady revolving -clatter of the home-returning brougham: for the sound of wheels -in London are as the waves of a sea that is never still. The -policemen met the market wagons as they trudged along, and -eyed them critically, as though a neat case of lurking about with -intent to commit a felony might be concealed in a strawberry-pottle, -or a drunk and incapable lying perdu in a pea-basket. Roaring -blades, addicted to asserting in chorus that they would not -go home till morning—a needless vaunt, for it was morning already—hailed -the bluff-visaged market carters, interchanged lively jocularities -with them bearing on the syrup giving rhubarb and the -succulent carrot, and lighted their pipes at the blackened calumets -of the vegetarians. Young Tom Buffalo, who had been out at a -christening party at Hammersmith, and had made the welkin ring -(whatever and wherever the welkin may be, and howsoever the -process of making it ring be effected) met a gigantic cabbage-chariot, -as home returning, precisely at that part of Knightsbridge -where Old Padlock House used to stand, and struck a bargain with -the charioteer for conveyance to Charing Cross, for fourpence, a -libation of milk, qualified by some spirituous admixture, and a -pipeful of the best Bristol bird’s-eye. And so from all outlying -nursery-grounds and market-gardens about London: from Brompton, -Fulham, Brentford, Chiswick, Turnham Green, and Kew; from sober -Hackney, and Dalston, and Kingsland, bank-clerk beloved; from -Tottenham, and Edmonton, sacred to John Gilpin, his hat and wig;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> -from saintly Clapham and Brixton, equally interested in piety, sugar-baking, -and the funds, come, too heavy to gallop, too proud to trot, -but sternly stalking in elephantine dignity of progression, the great -carts bound to Covent Garden. One would think that all the vegetable-dishes -in the world would not be able to hold the cabbage, to -say nothing of the other verdant esculents.</p> - -<p>Delude not yourself with the notion that the market-carts alone -can bring, or the suburban market-gardens furnish, a sufficient quantity -of green meat for the great, insatiable, hungry, ravenous monster -that men call (and none know why) London. Stand here with me in -Covent Garden market-place, and let your eyes follow whither my -finger points. Do you see those great vans, long, heavily-built, hoisted -on high springs, and with immense wheels—vans drawn by horses -of tremendous size and strength, but which, for all their bulk and -weight, seem to move at a lightning pace compared with the snail -crawl of the ancient market-carts? Their drivers are robust men, -fresh-coloured, full-whiskered, strong-limbed, clad in corduroy shining -at the seams, with bulging pockets, from which peep blotting-paper, -interleaved books of invoices, and parcels receipts. They are always -wiping their hot foreheads with red cotton pocket-handkerchiefs. They -are always in such a hurry. They never can wait. Alert in movement, -strong in action, hardy in speech, curt and quick in reply, setting not -much store by policemen, and bidding the wealthiest potatoe salesman -“look sharp;” these vigorous mortals discharge from their vans such -a shower of vegetable missiles that you might almost fancy the bombardment -of a new Sebastopol. “Troy,” the old ballad tells us, “had -a breed of stout bold men;” but these seem stouter and bolder. And -they drive away, these stalwart, bold-spoken varlets, standing erect in -their huge vans, and adjuring, by the name of “slow coach,” seemingly -immoveable market-carts to “mind their eye;” wearing out the -London macadam with their fierce wheels, to the despair of the commissioners -of paving (though my private opinion is, that the paving -commissioners like to see the paving worn out, in order that they -may have the “street up” again); threading their way in a surprisingly -dexterous though apparently reckless manner through the maze -of vehicles, and finding themselves, in an astonishingly short space of -time, in Tottenham Court Road, and Union Street, Borough. What -gives these men their almost superhuman velocity, strength, confidence? -They do but carry cabbages, like other market-folk; but look on the -legends inscribed on these vans, and the mystery is at once explained.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> -“Chaplin and Home,” “Pickford and Co.,” railway carriers. These -vegetable Titans are of the rail, and raily. They have brought their -horns of plenty from the termini of the great iron roads. Carts and -carts, trucks and trucks have journeyed through the dense night, laden -with vegetable produce; locomotives have shrieked over Chatmoss, -dragging cabbages and carrots after them; the most distant counties -have poured the fatness of their lands at the feet of the Queen-city; -but she, like the daughter of the horse-leech, still cryeth, “Give! -give!” and, like Oliver Twist, “asks for more.” So they send her -more, even from strange countries beyond the sea. Black steamers -from Rotterdam and Antwerp belch forth volumes of smoke at the -Tower stairs, and discharge cargoes of peas and potatoes. The Queen-city -is an hungered, and must be fed; and it is no joke, I need scarcely -tell you, to feed London. When the King of Siam has resolved upon -the ruin of a courtier, he makes him a present of a white elephant. -As the animal is thrice sacred in Siamese eyes, the luckless baillee, or -garnishee, or possessor of the brute, dare neither sell, kill, nor neglect -it; and the daily ration of rice, hay, and sugar which the albino monster -devours, soon reduces the courtier to irremediable bankruptcy. -Moral: avoid courts. If this were a despotic country, and her Majesty -the Empress of Britain should take it into her head to ruin Baron -Rothschild or the Marquis of Westminster (and indeed I have heard -that the impoverished nobleman last mentioned is haunted by the fear -of dying in a workhouse), I don’t think she could more easily effect -her purpose than by giving him <span class="smcap">London</span> and bidding him feed it for -a week.</p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus07" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus07.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">COVENT GARDEN MARKET: EARLY BREAKFAST STALL.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span></p> - -<p>Very sweet is the smell of the green peas this summer morning; -and very picturesque is it to see the market-women ranged in circles, -and busily employed in shelling those delicious edibles. Some fastidious -persons might perhaps object that the fingers of the shellers -are somewhat coarse, and that the vessels into which the peas fall are -rudely fashioned. What does it matter? If we took this fastidiousness -with us into an analysis of all the things we eat and drink, we -should soon fill up the measure of the title of Dr. Culverwell’s book, -by “avoiding” eating and drinking altogether. The delicate Havannah -cigar has been rolled between the hot palms of oleaginous -niggers; nay, some travellers declare, upon the bare thighs of sable -wenches. The snowy lump-sugar has been refined by means of unutterable -nastinesses of a sanguineous nature; the very daily bread we -eat has, in a state of dough, formed the flooring for a vigorous polka,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> -performed by journeymen bakers with bare feet. Food is a gift from -heaven’s free bounty: take Sancho Panza’s advice, and don’t look the -gift-horse in the mouth. He may have false teeth. We ought to be -very much obliged, of course, to those disinterested medical gentlemen -who formed themselves into a sanitary commission, and analysing -our dinners under a microscope, found that one-half was poison, and -the other half rubbish; but, for my part, I like anchovies to be red -and pickles green, and I think that coffee without chicory in it is -exceedingly nasty. As for the peas, I have so fond a love for those -delicious pulse that I could partake of them even if I knew they had -been shelled by Miss Julia Pastrana. I could eat the shucks; I have -eaten them indeed in Russia, where they stew pea-shells in a sweet -sauce, and make them amazingly relishing.</p> - -<p>But sweeter even than the smell of the peas, and more delightful -than the odour of the strawberries, is the delicious perfume of the -innumerable flowers which crowd the north-western angle of the -market, from the corner of King Street to the entrance of the grand -avenue. These are not hot-house plants, not rare exotics; such do -not arrive so soon, and their aristocratic purchasers will not be out of -bed for hours. These are simply hundreds upon hundreds of flower-pots, -blooming with roses and geraniums, with pinks and lilacs, with -heartsease and fuschias. There are long boxes full of mignionette -and jessamine; there are little pet vases full of peculiar roses with -strange names; there are rose-trees, roots and all, reft from the earth -by some floral Milo who cared not for the rebound. The cut flowers, -too, in every variety of dazzling hue, in every gradation of sweet odour, -are here, jewelling wooden boards, and making humble wicker-baskets -iridescent. The violets have whole rows of baskets to themselves. -Who is it that calls the violet humble, modest? He (I will call him -he) is nothing of the sort. He is as bold as brass. He comes the -earliest and goes away the latest of all his lovely companions; like a -guest who is determined to make the most of a banquet. When the -last rose of summer, tired of blooming alone, takes his hat and skulks -home, the modest violet, who has been under the table for a great part -of the evening, wakes up, and calls for another bottle of dew—and the -right sort.</p> - -<p>It seems early for so many persons to be abroad, not only to sell -but to purchase flowers, yet there is no lack of buyers for the perfumed -stores which meet the eye, and well nigh impede the footsteps. -Young sempstresses and milliner’s girls, barmaids and shopwomen,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span> -pent up all day in a hot and close atmosphere, have risen an hour or -two earlier, and make a party of pleasure to come to Covent Garden -market to buy flowers. It is one of heaven’s mercies that the very -poorest manage somehow to buy these treasures; and he who is steeped -to the lips in misery will have a morsel of mignionette in his window, -or a bunch of violets in a cracked jug on his mantelshelf, even as the -great lady has rich, savage, blooming plants in her conservatory, and -camelias and magnolias in porphyry vases on marble slabs. It is a -thin, a very thin, line that divides the independent poor from the -pauper in his hideous whitewashed union ward: the power of buying -flowers and of keeping a dog. How the halfpence are scraped together -to procure the violets or mignionette, whence comes the coin that -purchases the scrap of paunch, it puzzles me to say: but go where -you will among the <i>pauperum tabernas</i> and you will find the dog and -the flowers. Crowds more of purchasers are there yet around the -violet baskets; but these are buyers to sell again. Wretched-looking -little buyers are they, half-starved Bedouin children, mostly Irish, in -faded and tattered garments, with ragged hair and bare feet. They -have tramped miles with their scanty stock-money laid up in a corner -of their patched shawls, daring not to think of breakfast till their purchases -be made; and then they will tramp miles again through the cruel -streets of London town, penetrating into courts and alleys where the -sun never shines, peering into doorways, selling their wares to creatures -almost as ragged and forlorn as themselves. They cry violets! They -cried violets in good Master Herrick’s time. There are some worthy -gentlemen, householders and ratepayers, who would put all such street-cries -down by Act of Parliament. Indeed, it must an intolerable sin, -this piping little voice of an eight-years old child, wheezing out a -supplication to buy a ha’porth of violets. But then mouthy gentlemen -are all Sir Oracles; and where they are, no dogs must bark nor -violets be cried.</p> - -<p>It is past six o’clock, and high ’Change in the market. What -gabbling! what shouting! what rushing and pushing! what confusion -of tongues and men and horses and carts! The roadway of the adjacent -streets is littered with fragments of vegetables. You need pick -your way with care and circumspection through the crowd, for it is -by no means pleasant to be tripped up by a porter staggering under -a load of baskets, that look like a Leaning Tower of Pisa. Bow -Street is blocked up by a triple line of costermongers’ “shallows,” -drawn by woe-begone donkies; their masters are in the market purchasing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span> -that “sparrergrass” which they will so sonorously cry throughout -the suburbs in the afternoon. They are also, I believe, to be put -down by the worthy gentlemen who do not like noise. I wish they -could put down, while they are about it, the chaffering of the money-changers -in the temple, and the noise of the Pharisees’ brushes as they -whiten those sepulchres of theirs, and the clanging of the bells that -summon men to thank Heaven that they are not “as that publican,” -and to burn their neighbour because he objects to shovel hats. King -Street, Southampton Street, Russell Street, are full of carts and men. -Early coffee-shops and taverns are gorged with customers, for the -Covent Gardeners are essentially jolly gardeners, and besides, being -stalwart men, are naturally hungry and athirst after their nights’ -labour. There are public-houses in the market itself, where they give -you hot shoulder of mutton for breakfast at seven o’clock in the -morning! Hot coffee and gigantic piles of bread-and-butter disappear -with astounding rapidity. Foaming tankards are quaffed, -“nips” of alcohol “to keep the cold out” (though it is May) are -tossed off; and among the hale, hearty, fresh-coloured market-people, -you may see, here and there, some tardy lingerer at “the halls of -dazzling light,” who has just crawled away from the enchanted scene, -and, cooling his fevered throat with soda-water, or whipping up his -jaded nerves with brandy and milk, fancies, because he is abroad at -six o’clock in the morning, that he is “seeing life.” Crouching and -lurking about, too, for anything they can beg, or anything they can -borrow, or, I am afraid, for anything they can steal, are some homeless, -shirtless vagabonds, who have slept all night under baskets or -tarpaulins in the market, and now prowl in and out of the coffee-shops -and taverns, with red eyes and unshaven chins. I grieve to have to -notice such unsightly blots upon the Arcadia I have endeavoured to -depict; but, alas! these things <span class="smcap">are</span>! You have seen a caterpillar -crawling on the fairest rose; and this glorious summer sun must have -spots on its face. There are worse on London’s brow at six o’clock in -the morning.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SEVEN_AM">SEVEN O’CLOCK A.M.—A PARLIAMENTARY TRAIN.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>I know that the part which I have proposed to myself in these -papers is that of a chronological Asmodeus; you, reader, I have enlisted, -<i>nolens volens</i>, to accompany me in my flights about town, at -all hours of the day and night; and you must, perforce, hold on by -the skirts of my cloak as I wing my way from quarter to quarter of -the immense city, to which the Madrid which the lame fiend showed -his friend was but a nut-shell. And yet, when I look my self-appointed -task in the face, I am astounded, humiliated, almost disheartened, -by its magnitude. How can I hope to complete it within -the compass of this book, within the time allotted for daily literary -labour? For work ever so hard as we penmen may, and rob ever so -many hours from sleep as you may choose to compute—as we are -forced to do sometimes—that you may have your pabulum of printed -matter, more or less amusing and instructive, at breakfast time, or at -afternoon club reading hour, we must yet eat, and drink, and sleep, -and go into the world soliciting bread or favours, we must quarrel -with our wives, if married, and look out the things for the wash, if -single—all of which are operations requiring a certain expenditure of -time. We must, we authors, even have time, an’t please you, to grow -ambitious, and to save money, stand for the borough, attend the board-room, -and be appointed consuls-general to the Baratarian Islands. -The old Grub Street tradition of the author is defunct. The man of -letters is no longer supposed to write moral essays from Mount -Scoundrel in the Fleet, to dine at twopenny ordinaries, and pass -his leisure hours in night-cellars. Translators of Herodotus no -longer lie three in a bed; nor is the gentleman who is correcting -the proof-sheets of the Sanscrit dictionary to be found in a hay-loft -over a tripe shop in Little Britain, or to be heard of at the bar of -the Green Dragon. Another, and as erroneous, an idea of the -author has sprung up in the minds of burgesses. He wears, according -to some wiseacres, a shawl dressing-gown, and lies all day on -a sofa, puffing a perfumed <i>narghilè</i>, penning paragraphs in violet -ink on cream-laid paper at intervals; or he is a lettered Intriguer, -who merely courts the Muses as the shortest way to the Treasury -bench, and writes May Fair novels or Della Cruscan tragedies that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span> -he may the sooner become Prime Minister. There is another literary -idea that may with greater reason become prevalent—that of the -author-manufacturer, who produces such an amount of merchandise, -takes it into the market, and sells it according to demand and the -latest quotations, and the smoke of whose short cutty pipe, as he -spins his literary yarn, is as natural a consequence of manufacture as -the black cloud which gusts from Mr. Billyroller’s hundred-feet-high -brick chimney as he spins <i>his</i> yarns for madapolams and “domestics.” -The author-manufacturer has to keep his books, to pay his men, to -watch the course of the market, and to suit his wares to the prevailing -caprice. And, like the cotton-spinner, he sometimes goes into -the “Gazette,” paying but an infinitesimal dividend in the pound.</p> - -<p>Did I not struggle midway into a phrase, some page or so -since, and did it not waltz away from me on the nimble feet of a -parenthesis? I fear that such was the case. How can I hope, I -reiterate, to give you anything like a complete picture of the doings -in London while still the clock goes round? I might take one house -and unroof it, one street and unpave it, one man and disclose to you -the secrets of twenty-four hours of his daily and nightly life; but it -is London, in its entirety, that I have presumed to “time”—forgetting, -oh! egregious and inconsistent!—that every minute over which -the clock hand passes is as the shake of the wrist applied to a -kaleidoscope, and that the whole aspect of the city changes with -as magical rapidity.</p> - -<p>I should be Briareus multiplied by ten thousand, and not Asmodeus -at all, if I could set down in writing a tithe of London’s sayings and -doings, acts and deeds, seemings and aspects, at seven o’clock in the -morning. Only consider. Drumming with your finger on a map of -the metropolis; just measure a few palms’ lengths, say from Camberwell -Gate to the “Mother Redcap,” on the one hand—from Limehouse -Church to Kensington Gravel Pits, on the other. Take the cubic -dimensions, my dear sir; think of the mean area; rub up those -mathematics, for proficiency in whose more recondite branches you so -narrowly escaped being second wrangler, twenty years since; out with -your logarithms, your conic sections, your fluxions, and calculate the -thousands upon thousands of little dramas that must be taking place -in London as the clock strikes seven. Let me glance at a few, as I -travel with you towards that railway terminus which is our destination. -Camberwell Gate: tollbar-keeper, who has been up all night, -going to bed, very cross; tollbar-keeper’s wife gets up to mind the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span> -gate, also very cross. Woodendesk Grove, Grosvenor Park, Camberwell: -Mr. Dockett, wharfage clerk in Messrs. Charter Party and Co.’s -shipping house, Lower Thames Street, is shaving. He breakfasts at -half-past seven, and has to be in the city by nine. Precisely at the -same time that he is passing Mr. Mappin’s razor over his commercial -countenance, Mr. Flybynight, aged twenty-two, also a clerk, but attached -to the Lost-Monkey-and-Mislaid-Poodle-Department (Inland -Revenue), Somerset House, lets himself into No. 7, Woodendesk -Grove, next door to Mr. Dockett’s, by means of a Chubb’s key. Mr. -Flybynight is in evening costume, considerably the worst for the concussion -of pale ale bottle corks. On his elegant tie are the stains of the -dressing of some lobster salad, and about half-a-pint of the crimson -stream of life, formerly the joint property of Mr. Flybynight’s nose and -of a cabman’s upper lip, both injured during a “knock-down and drag-out” -fight, supervening on the disputed question of the right of a passenger -to carry a live turkey (purchased in Leadenhall market) with him -in a hackney cab. Mr. Flybynight has been to two evening parties, a -public ball (admission sixpence), where he created a great sensation -among the ladies and gentlemen present, by appearing with a lady’s -cap on his head, a raw shoulder of mutton in one hand, and a pound -of rushlights in the other; and to two suppers—one of roasted potatoes -in Whitechapel High Street, the second of scolloped oysters in -the Haymarket. He paid a visit to the Vine Street station-house, -too, to clear up a misunderstanding as to a bell which was rung by -accident, and a policeman’s hat which was knocked off by mistake. -The inspector on duty was so charmed with Mr. Flybynight’s engaging -demeanour and affable manners, that it was with difficulty -that he was dissuaded from keeping him by him all night, and assigning -him as a sleeping apartment a private parlour with a very strong -lock, and remarkably well ventilated. He only consented to tear -himself away from Mr. Flybynight’s society on the undertaking that -the latter would convey home his friend Mr. Keepitup, who, though -he persistently repeated to all comers that he was “all right,” appeared, -if unsteadiness of gait and thickness of utterance were to be -accepted as evidence, to be altogether wrong. Mr. Flybynight, -faithful to his promise, took Mr. Keepitup (who was in the Customs) -home; at least he took him as far as he would go—his own doorstep, -namely, on which somewhat frigid pedestal he sat, informing the -“milk,” a passing dustman, and a lady in pink, who had lost her -way, and seemed to think that the best way to find it was to consult<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span> -the pavement by falling prone thereupon every dozen yards or so—that -though circumstances had compelled him to serve his country in -a civil capacity, he was at heart and by predilection a soldier. In -proof of which Mr. Keepitup struck his breast, volunteered a choice -of martial airs, beginning with the “Death of Nelson,” and ending -with a long howl, intermingled with passionate tears and ejaculations -bearing reference to the infidelity of a certain Caroline, surname unknown, -through whose cruelty he “would never be the same man -again.” Mr. Flybynight, safely arrived at Woodendesk Grove, after -these varied peripatetics, is due at the Lost-Monkey-and-Mislaid-Poodle -Office at ten; but he will have a violent attack of lumbago -this morning, which will unavoidably prevent him from reaching -Somerset House before noon. His name will show somewhat unfavourably -in the official book, and the Commissioners will look him -up sharply, and shortly too, if he doesn’t take care. Mr. Keepitup, -who, however eccentric may have been his previous nocturnal vagaries, -possesses the faculty of appearing at the Custom-house gates -as the clock strikes the half-hour after nine, with a very large and -stiff shirt-collar, a microscopically shaven face, and the most irreproachable -shirt, will go to work at his desk in the Long Room, with -a steady hand and the countenance of a candidate for the Wesleyan -ministry; but Mr. Flybynight will require a good deal of soda-water -and sal-volatile, and perhaps a little tincture of opium, before he is -equal to the resumption of his arduous duties. Wild lads, these -clerks; and yet they don’t do such a vast amount of harm, Flybynight -and Keepitup! They are very young; they don’t beat the town every -night; they are honest lads at bottom, and have a contempt for meanness -and are not lost to shame. They have not grown so vicious as to -be ashamed and remorseful without any good resulting therefrom; and -you will be astonished five years hence to see Keepitup high up in the -Customs, and Flybynight married to a pretty girl, to whom he is the -most exemplary of husbands. Let me edge in this little morsel of -morality at seven o’clock in the morning. I know the virtue of steadiness, -lectures, tracts, latch-key-prohibitions, strict parents, young -men’s Christian associations, serious tea-parties and electrifying machines; -but I have seen the world in my time, and its ways. Youth -<i>will</i> be youth, and youthful blood <i>will</i> run riot. There is no morality -so false as that which ignores the existence of immorality. Let us -keep on preaching to the prodigals, and point with grim menace to -the draff and husks, and the fatted calf which never shall be theirs if<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span> -they do not reform; let us thunder against their dissipation, their late -hours, their vain “larks,” their unseemly “sprees.” It is our duty; -youth must be reproved, admonished, restrained by its elders. It has -been so ever since the world began; but do not let us in our own -hearts think every wild young man is bound hopelessly to perdition. -Some there are, indeed, (and they are in evil case,) who have come to -irremediable grief, and must sit aloof—spirits fallen never to rise -again—and watch the struggling souls. But it must rejoice even -those callous ones to see how many pecks of wild oats are sown every -day, and what goodly harvests of home virtues and domestic joys are -reaped on all sides, from the most unpromising soil. Let us not -despair of the tendencies of the age. Young men will be young men, -but they should be taught and led with gentle and wise counsels, with -forbearance and moderation, to abandon the follies of youth, and to -become staid and decorous. Flybynight, with such counsels, and good -examples from his elders—ah, ye seniors! what examples are not due -from you!—will leave off sack and live cleanly like a gentleman; and -Keepitup will not bring his parents’ gray hairs with sorrow to the -grave.</p> - -<p>Seven o’clock in the morning! I have already ventured a passing -allusion to the “milk.” The poor little children who sell violets and -water-cresses debouch from the great thoroughfares, and ply their -humble trade in by-streets full of private houses. The newsvenders’ -shops in the Strand, Holywell Street, and Fleet Street, are all in full -activity. Legions of assistants crowd behind the broad counters, folding -the still damp sheets of the morning newspapers, and, with fingers -moving in swift legerdemain, tell off “quires” and “dozens” of cheap -periodicals. If it happen to be seven o’clock, and a Friday morning, -not only the doors of the great newsvenders—such as Messrs. Smith -and Son and Mr. Vickers—but the portals of all the newspaper offices, -will be crowded with newsmen’s carts and newsmen’s trucks; and -from the gaping gates themselves will issue hordes of newsmen and -flying cohorts of newsboys—boys with parcels, boys with bags, boys -with satchels, men staggering under the weight of great piles of -printed paper. Mercy on us! what a plethora of brainwork is about, -and what a poor criterion of its quality the quantity manifestly -affords! Yon tiny urchin with the red comforter has but half-a-dozen -copies tucked beneath his arm of a journal sparkling with -wit, and radiant in learning, and scathing in its satire, and Titanic in -its vigour; yet, treading on his heels, comes a colossus in corduroy,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span> -eclipsed by a quadrangular mountain of closely-packed paper, quires—nay, -whole reams—of some ragamuffin print, full of details of the -last murder and abuse of some wise and good statesman because he -happens to be a lord.</p> - -<p>Seven, still seven! Potboys, rubbing their eyes, take down the -shutters of taverns in leading thoroughfares, and then fall to rubbing -the pewter pots till they assume a transcendent sheen. Within, the -young ladies who officiate in the bar, and who look very drowsy in -their curl-papers and cotton-print dresses, are rubbing the pewter -counters and the brass-work of the beer-engines, the funnels and the -whisky noggins, washing the glasses, polishing up the mahogany, -cutting up the pork pies which Mr. Watling’s man has just left, displaying -the Banbury cakes and Epping sausages under crystal canopies. -The early customers—matutinal <i>habitués</i>—drop in for small -measures of cordials or glasses of peculiarly mild ale; and the -freshest news of last night’s fire in Holborn, or last night’s division -in the House, or last night’s opera at Her Majesty’s, are fished up -from the columns of the “Morning Advertiser.” By intercommunication -with the early customers, who all have a paternal and respectful -fondness for her, the barmaid becomes <i>au courant</i> with the -news of the day. As a rule, the barmaid does not read the newspaper. -On the second day of publication, she lends it to the dissenting -washerwoman or the radical tailor in the court round the -corner, who send small children, whose heads scarcely reach to the -top of the counter, for it. When it is returned, she cuts it up for -tobacco screws and for curl papers. I like the barmaid, for she is -often pretty, always civil, works about fourteen hours a day for her -keep and from eighteen to twenty pounds a year, is frequently a kinless -orphan out of that admirable Licensed Victuallers’ School, and is, -in nine cases out of ten, as chaste as Diana.</p> - -<p>I should be grossly misleading you, were I to attempt to inculcate -the supposition that at seven o’clock in the morning only the humbler -classes, or those who have stopped up all night, are again up and -doing. The Prime Minister is dressed, and poring over a savage -leader in the “Times,” denouncing his policy, sneering at his latest -measure, and insulting him personally in a facetious manner. The -noble officers told off for duty of her Majesty’s regiment of Guards -are up and fully equipped, though perchance they have spent the -small hours in amusements not wholly dissimilar from those employed -by the daring Flybynight and the intrepid Keepitup to kill time, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span> -have devoted their vast energies to the absorbing requirements of -morning parade. Many of the infant and juvenile scions of the aristocracy -have left their downy couches ere this, and are undergoing a -lavatory purgatory in the nursery. Many meek-faced, plainly-dressed -young ladies, of native and foreign extraction, attached as governesses -to the aristocratic families in question, are already in the school-room, -sorting their pupils’ copy-books, or preparing for the early repetition -of the music lesson, which is drummed and thrummed over in the -morning pending the arrival of Signor Papadaggi or Herr Hammerer, -who comes for an hour and earns a guinea. The governess, Miss -Grissel, does not work more than twelve hours a day, and she earns -perhaps fifty guineas a year against Papadaggi’s fifteen hundred and -Hammerer’s two thousand. But then she is only a governess. Her -life is somewhat hard, and lonely, and miserable, and might afford, to -an ill-regulated mind, some cause for grumbling; but it is her duty to -be patient, and not to repine. What says the pleasing poet?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“O! let us love our occupations,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bless the squire and his relations,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Live upon our daily rations,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And always know our proper stations.”<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Let us trust Miss Grissel knows her proper station, and is satisfied.</p> - -<p>Seven o’clock in the morning; but there are more governesses, -and governesses out of bed, than Miss Grissel and her companions in -woe, in the mansions of the nobility. Doctor Wackerbarth’s young -gentlemen, from Towellem House, New Road, are gone to bathe at -Peerless Pool, under escort of the writing-master. The Misses Gimps’ -establishment for young ladies, at Bayswater, is already in full activity; -and the eight and thirty boarders (among whom there are at present, -and have been for the last ten years, two, and positively only two, -vacancies. N.B.—The daughters of gentlemen only are received)—the -eight and thirty boarders, in curl papers and brown Holland pinafores, -are floundering through sloughs of despond in the endeavour to -convey, in the English language, the fact that Calypso was unable to -console herself for the departure of Ulysses; and into the French -vernacular, the information that, in order to be disabused respecting -the phantoms of hope and the whisperings of fancy, it is desirable to -listen to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. In Charterhouse -and Merchant Taylors’ and St. Paul’s, the boys are already at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> -their lessons, and the cruel anger of Juno towards Æneas, together -with the shameful conduct of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon, are matters -of public (though unwilling) discussion; some private conversations -going on surreptitiously, meanwhile, touching the price of -alleytaws as compared with agates, and the relative merits of almond-rock -and candied horehound. After all, the poor have their privileges—their -immunities; and the couch of the rich is not altogether a bed -of roses. Polly Rabbets, the charity girl, lies snugly in bed, while -the honourable Clementina St. Maur is standing in the stocks, or is -having her knuckles rapped for speaking English instead of French. -Polly has a run in the Dials before breakfast, an expedition to buy a -red herring for father, and perchance a penny for disbursement at the -apple-stall. She is not wanted at school till nine. The most noble -the Marquis of Millefleurs, aged ten, at Eton, has to rise at six; he -is fag to Tom Tucker, the army clothier’s son. He has to clean his -master’s boots, fry bacon, and toast bread for his breakfast. If he -doesn’t know his lesson in school, the most noble the Marquis of -Millefleurs is liable to be birched; but no such danger menaces -Jemmy Allbones at the National, or Tommy Grimes at the Ragged -School. If the schoolmaster were to beat them, their parents would -have the <i>plagosus Orbilius</i> up at the police-court in a trice, and the -Sunday newspapers would be full of details of the “atrocious cruelty -of a schoolmaster.”</p> - -<p>One more peep at seven o’clock doings, and we will move further -afield. Though sundry are up and doing, the great mass of London -is yet sleeping. Sleeps the cosy tradesman, sleeps the linendraper’s -shopman (till eight), sleeps the merchant, the dandy, the actor, the -author, the <i>petite maitresse</i>. Hold fast while I wheel in my flight and -hover over Pimlico. There is Millbank, where the boarders and -lodgers, clad in hodden gray, with masks on their faces and numbers -on their backs, have been up and stirring since six. And there, -north-west of Millbank, is the palace, almost as ugly as the prison, -where dwells the Great Governess of the Land. She is there, for you -may see the standard floating in the morning breeze; and at seven in -the morning, she, too, is up and doing. If she were at Osborne she -would be strolling very likely on the white-beached shore, listening -to the sea murmuring “your gracious Majesty,” and “your Majesty’s -ever faithful subject and servant,” and “your petitioner will ever -pray;” for it is thus doubtless that the obsequious sea has addressed -sovereigns since Xerxes’ time. Or if the Imperial Governess were at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span> -Windsor, she might, at this very time, be walking on those mysterious -Slopes on which it is a standing marvel that Royalty can preserve its -equilibrium. When I speak of our gracious lady being awake and up -at seven o’clock, I know that I am venturing into the realms of pure -supposition; but remember I am Asmodeus, and can unroof palaces -and hovels at will. Is it not, besides, a matter of public report that -the Queen rises early? Does not the Court newsman (I wonder -whether that occult functionary gets up early too) know it? Does -not everybody know it—everybody say it? And what everybody says -must be true. There are despatches to be read; private and confidential -letters to foreign sovereigns to be written; the breakfasts, perchance, -of the little princes and princesses to be superintended; the -proofs, probably, of the last Royal etching or princely photograph to -be inspected; a new pony to be tried in the riding-house; a new dog -to be taught tricks: a host of things to do. Who shall say? What -do we know about the daily life of royalty, save that it must be infinitely -more laborious than that of a convict drudging through his -penal servitude in Portland Prison? I met the carriage of H.R.H. -the Prince Consort, with H.R.H. inside it, prowling about Pedlar’s -Acre very early the other morning, going to or coming from, I presume, -the South-Western Railway Terminus. When I read of her -Majesty’s “arriving with her accustomed punctuality” at some rendezvous -at nine o’clock in the morning, I can but think of and marvel -at the amount of business she must have despatched before she entered -her carriage. If there were to be (which heaven forfend!) a coronation -to-morrow, the sovereign would be sure to arrive with his or her -“accustomed punctuality;” yet how many hours it must take to try -on the crown, to study the proper sweep of the imperial purple, to -learn by heart that coronation oath which is never, never broken! -For my part, I often wonder how kings and queens and emperors find -time to go to bed at all.</p> - -<p>So now, reader, not wholly, I trust, unedified by the cursory view -we have taken of Babylon the Great in its seven-o’clock-in-the-morning -phase, we have arrived at the end of our journey—to another -stage thereof, at least. We have flown from Knightsbridge to Bermondsey, -not exactly as the crow flies, nor yet as straight as an arrow -from a Tartar’s bow; but still we have gyrated and skimmed and -wheeled along somehow, even as a sparrow seeking knowledge on the -housetops and corn in the street kennels. And now we will go out of -town.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span></p> - -<p>Whithersoever you choose; but by what means of conveyance? -By water? The penny steamboats have not commenced their journeys -yet. The <i>Pride of the Thames</i> is snugly moored at Essex Pier, and -<i>Waterman</i>, No. 2, still keeps her head under her wing—or under her -funnel, if you will. The omnibuses have not yet begun to roll in any -perceptible numbers, and the few stage coaches that are still left (how -they linger, those cheerful institutions, bidding yet a blithe defiance to -the monopolising and all-devouring rail!) have not put in an appearance -at the White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly, the Flower Pot in -Bishopsgate Street, or the Catherine Wheel in the Borough. So we -must needs quit Babylon by railway. Toss up for a terminus with me. -Shall it be London Bridge, Briarean station with arms stretching to -Brighton the well-beloved, Gravesend the chalky and periwinkley, -Rochester the martial, Chatham the naval, Hastings the saline, Dover -the castellated, Tunbridge Wells the genteel, Margate the shrimpy, -Ramsgate the asinine, Canterbury the ecclesiastical, or Herne Bay the -desolate? Shall it be the Great Northern, hard by Battle Bridge and -Pentonville’s frowning bastille? No; the fens of Lincolnshire nor the -moors of Yorkshire like me not. Shall it be the Great Western, with -its vast, quiet station, its Palladio-Vitruvian hotel, and its promise of -travel through the rich meadows of Berkshire and by the sparkling -waters of Isis, into smiling Somerset and blooming Devon? No; cab -fares to Paddington are ruinously expensive, and I have prejudices -against the broad gauge. Shall it be the Eastern Counties? Avaunt! -evil-smelling Shoreditch, bad neighbourhood of worse melodramas, -and cheap grocers’ shops where there is sand in the sugar and birch-brooms -in the tea. No Eastern Counties carriage shall bear me to the -pestiferous marshes of Essex or the dismal flats of Norfolk. There is -the South-Western. Hum! The Hampton Court line is pleasant; -the Staines, Slough, and Windsor delicious; but I fancy not the -Waterloo Road on a fine morning. I am undecided. Toss up again. -Heads for the Great Western; tails for the London and North-Western. -Tails it is; and abandoning our aërial flight, let us cast -ourselves into yonder Hansom, and bid the driver drive like mad to -Euston Square, else we shall miss the seven o’clock train.</p> - -<p>This Hansom is a most dissipated vehicle, and has evidently been -up all night. One of its little silk window-curtains has been torn from -its fastenings and flutters in irregular festoons on the inward wall. -The cushions are powdered with cigar ashes; there is a theatrical -pass-check, and the thumb of a white kid glove, very dirty, lying at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span> -the back. The long-legged horse with his ill-groomed coat, all hairs -on end like the fretful porcupine his quills, and his tail whisking with -derisive defiance in the face of the fare, carries his head on one side, -foams at the mouth, and is evidently a dissipated quadruped, guilty, I -am afraid, of every vice except hypocrisy. Of the last, certainly, he -cannot be accused, for he makes not the slightest secret of his propensity -for kicking, biting, gibbing, rearing, and plunging, a succession -of which gymnastic operations brings us, in an astonishingly -brief space of time, to George Street, Euston Square; where the cabman, -who looks like a livery-stable edition of Don Cæsar de Bazan, -with a horse-cloth instead of a mantle, tosses the coin given him into -the air, catches it again, informs me contemptuously that money will -grow warm in my pocket if I keep it there so long, and suddenly -espying the remote possibility of a fare in the extreme distance of the -Hampstead Road, drives off—“tools” off, as he calls it—as though -the Powers of Darkness, with Lucifer and Damagorgon at their head, -were after him.</p> - -<p>I think the Euston Square Terminus is, for its purpose, the handsomest -building I have ever seen, and I have seen a few railway -stations. There is nothing to compare to it in Paris, where the -termini are garish, stuccoed, flimsy-looking structures, half booths -and half barracks. Not Brussels, not Berlin, not Vienna, can show so -stately a structure, for a railway station, <i>bien entendu</i>; and it is only, -perhaps, in St. Petersburg, which seems to have been built with a -direct reference to the assumption of the Imperial crown at some -future period by the King of Brobdignag, that a building can be -found—the Moscow Railway Terminus, in fact—to equal in grandeur -of appearance our columniated palace of the iron road. But the -Russian station, like all else in that “Empire of Façades,” is deceptive: -a magnificent delusion, a vast and splendid sham. Of seeming -marble without it is; within, but bad bricks and lath and plaster.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus08" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus08.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">PARLIAMENTARY TRAIN: PLATFORM OF THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span></p> - -<p><i>Open sesame!</i> Let us pass the crowds of railway porters, who -have not much to do just now, and are inclined to lounge about with -their hands in their pockets, and to lean—in attitudes reminding the -spectator of the Grecian statues clad in green velveteen, and with -white letters on their collars—on their luggage trucks, for the passengers -by the seven o’clock train are not much addicted to arriving -in cabs or carriages which require to be unloaded, and there are very -few shilling or sixpenny gratuities to be earned by the porters, for the -securing of a comfortable corner seat with your back to the engine, or -that inestimable comfort, a place in a first-class carriage whose door -the guard is good enough to keep locked, and in which you can make -yourself quite at home with a bottle of sherry, some walnuts, and a -quiet game at <i>écarté</i> or <i>vingt un</i>. The seven o’clock trainbands are -not exactly of the class who drink sherry and play cards; they are -more given to selling walnuts than to eating them. They are, for the -most part, hard-faced, hard-handed, poorly-clad creatures; men in -patched, time-worn garments; women in pinched bonnets and coarse -shawls, carrying a plenitude of baskets and bundles, but very slightly -troubled with trunks or portmanteaus. You might count a hundred -heads and not one hat-box; of two hundred crowding round the pay-place -to purchase their third-class tickets for Manchester, or Liverpool, -or even further north, you would have to look and look again, and -perhaps vainly after all, for the possessor of a railway rug, or even an -extra overcoat. Umbrellas, indeed, are somewhat plentiful; but they -are not the slim, aristocratic trifles with ivory handles and varnished -covers—enchanter’s wands to ward off the spells of St. Swithin, which -moustached dandies daintily insert between the roof and the hat-straps -of first-class carriages. Third-class umbrellas are dubious in colour, -frequently patched, bulgy in the body, broken in the ribs, and much -given to absence from the nozzle. Swarming about the pay-place, -which their parents are anxiously investing, thirteen-and-fourpence or -sixteen-and-ninepence in hand, are crowds of third-class children. I -am constrained to acknowledge that the majority of these juvenile -travellers cannot be called handsome children, well-dressed children, -even tolerably good-looking children. Poor little wan faces you -see here, overshadowed by mis-shapen caps, and bonnets nine bauble -square; poor little thin hands, feebly clutching the scant gowns of -their mothers; weazened little bodies, shrunken little limbs, distorted -often by early hardship, by the penury which pounced on them—not -in their cradles—they never had any—but in the baker’s jacket in -which they were wrapped when they were born, and which will keep -by them, their only faithful friend, until they die, and are buried by -the parish—poor ailing little children are these, and among them who -shall tell how many hungry little bellies! Ah! judges of Amontillado -sherry; crushers of walnuts with silver nut-crackers; connoisseurs -who prefer French to Spanish olives, and are curious about the yellow -seal; gay riders in padded chariots; proud cavaliers of blood-horses, -you don’t know how painfully and slowly, almost agonisingly, the -poor have to scrape, and save, and deny themselves the necessaries of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span> -life, to gather together the penny-a-mile fare. It is a long way to -Liverpool, a long way to Manchester; the only passengers by the -seven o’clock train who can afford to treat the distance jauntily, are -the Irish paupers, who are in process of being passed to their parish, -and who will travel free. O! marvels of eleemosynary locomotion -from Euston Square to Ballyragget or Carrighmadhioul!</p> - -<p>But hark! the train bell rings; there is a rush, and a trampling -of feet, and in a few seconds the vast hall is almost deserted. This -spectacle has made me somewhat melancholy, and I think, after all, -that I will patronise the nine o’clock express instead of the <span class="smcap">Parliamentary -Train</span>.</p> - -<p>Let us follow the crowd of third-class passengers on to the vast -platform. There the train awaits them, puffing, and snorting, and -champing its adamantine bit, like some great iron horse of Troy -suddenly gifted with life and power of locomotion. By the way, I -wonder how that same wooden horse we are supposed to read about -in Homer, but study far more frequently in the pages of Lemprière, -or in the agreeable metrical romance of Mr. Alexander Pope, really -effected its entrance into Ilium. Was it propelled on castors, on -rollers, or on those humble wooden wheels that quickened the march -of the toy horse of our nonage—the ligneous charger from Mr. Farley’s -shop in Fleet Street, painted bright cream-colour, with spots resembling -red wafers stuck all over him, a perpendicular mane, and a -bushy tail? Very few first or even second-class carriages are attached -to the great morning train. The rare exceptions seem to be placed -there more as a graceful concession to the gentilities, or the respectabilities, -or the “gigabilities,” as Mr. Carlyle would call them, than -with any reference to their real utility in a journey to the north. -Who, indeed, among the bustling Anglo-Saxons, almost breathless in -their eagerness to travel the longest possible distance in the shortest -possible time, would care to pay first-class fare for a trip to Manchester, -which consumes ten mortal hours, when, by the space-scorning -express, the distance may be accomplished, at a not unreasonable -augmentation of fare, in something like five hours? So the roomy -six-seated chariots, with their arm-rests and head-rests, are well nigh -abandoned; and the wooden boxes, which appear to have been -specially designed by railway directors to teach second-class travellers, -who can afford to pay more than third-class fare, that they had much -better pay first-class, and go the entire animal (which, indeed, seeing -how abominable are our second-class carriages in England, is a far<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span> -preferable proceeding), are not much better tenanted. Some misanthropic -men, in Welsh wigs and fur caps with flaps turned down over -the ears, peer at us as we pass, pull up the window-frames captiously, -as though they suspected us of a design to intrude on their solitude, -and, watch in hand, call out in hoarse voices to the guard to warn him -it is time the train had started. What is the use of being in a hurry, -gentlemen? you will have plenty of breathing-time at Tring, and -Watford, and Weedon, and some five-and-twenty other stations, besides -opportunities for observing the beauties of nature at remote -localities, where you will be quietly shunted off on to a siding to allow -the express to pass you by.</p> - -<p>But what a contrast to the quietude of the scarcely-patronised -first and second-class <i>wagons</i> are the great hearse-like caravans in -which travel the teeming hundreds who can afford to pay but a penny -a mile! Enter one of these human menageries where the occupants -are stowed away with little more courtesy or regard to their comfort -than might be exemplified by the master of the ceremonies of one of -Mr. Wombwell’s vans. What a hurly-burly; what a seething mass; -what a scrambling for places; what a shrill turmoil of women’s voices -and children’s wailings, relieved, as in the <i>Gospodin Pomilaïou</i> (the -Kyrie Eleison of the Russian churches), by the deep bass voices of -gruff men! What a motley assemblage of men, women, and children, -belonging to callings multifariously varied, yet all marked with the -homogeneous penny-a-mile stamp of poverty! Sailors with bronzed -faces and tarry hands, and those marvellous tarpaulin pancake hats, -stuck, in defiance of all the laws of gravity, at the back of their -heads; squat, squarely-built fellows, using strange and occasionally -not very polite language, much given to “skylarking” with one another, -but full of a simple, manly courtesy to all the females, and -marvellously kind to the babies and little children; gaunt American -sailors in red worsted shirts, with case-knives suspended to their -belts, taciturn men expectorating freely, and when they do condescend -to address themselves to speech, using the most astounding combination -of adjective adjurations, relating chiefly to their limbs and -their organs of vision; railway navvies going to work at some -place down the line, and obligingly franked thither for that purpose -by the company; pretty servant-maids going to see their relatives; -Jew pedlars; Irish labourers in swarms; soldiers on furlough, with the -breast of their scarlet coatees open, and disclosing beneath linen of -an elaborate coarseness of texture—one might fancy so many military -penitents wearing hair tunics; other soldiers in full uniform, with -their knapsacks laid across their knees, and their muskets—prudently -divested of the transfixing bayonets—which the old women in the -carriage are marvellously afraid will “go off,” disposed beside them, -proceeding to Weedon barracks under the command of a staid Scotch -corporal, who reads a tract, “Grace for Grenadiers” or “Powder and -Piety,” and takes snuff; journeymen mechanics with their tool-baskets; -charwomen, servants out of place, stablemen, bricklayers’ labourers, -and shopboys.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus09" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus09.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">PARLIAMENTARY TRAIN: INTERIOR OF A THIRD CLASS CARRIAGE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span></p> - -<p>Ay, and there are, I am afraid, not a few bad characters among -the crowd: certain dubiously-attired, flash-looking, ragged dandies, -with cheap pins in their foul cravats, and long greasy hair -floating over their coat-collars, impress me most unfavourably, and -dispose me to augur ill for the benefit which Manchester or Liverpool -may derive from their visit; and of the moral status of yonder low-browed, -bull-necked, villanous-looking gentleman, who has taken a -seat in a remote corner, between two stern guardians, and who, strive -as he may to pull his coat-cuffs over his wrists, cannot conceal the -presence of a pair of neat shining handcuffs, there cannot, I perpend, -exist any reasonable doubt. But we must take the evil with the -good: and we cannot expect perfection, not even in a Parliamentary -Train.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="EIGHT_AM">EIGHT O’CLOCK A.M.—ST. JAMES’S PARK—THE MALL.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Of the great army of sightseers, there are few but have paid a -visit to Portsmouth, and, under the guidance of a mahogany-faced -man in a pea-jacket, who has invariably served in his youth as coxswain -to Admiral Lord Nelson, K.C.B., have perambulated from stem -to stern, from quarterdeck to kelson, that famous ship from whose -signal halyards flew out, fifty-three years since, the immortal watchword -“England expects every man to do his duty,” in Trafalgar Bay. -We are (or rather were, till the epoch of the late passport regulations -and the war), an ambitious army of sightseers in this year of questionable -grace, ’59; and nothing less would serve us then for an autumn<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span> -trip than a picnic in the Street of Tombs at Pompeii, a moonlight -polka among the rank docks and charlocks and slimy reptiles of the -Roman Colosseum, a yacht voyage up the gulf of Bothnia, or a four -days’ jolting in a <i>telega</i> from Moscow to the fair of Nishni-Novgorod. -But in the days of yore, when this old hat was new, and Manlius was -consul, and the eleven hours’ route to the Continent existed not, we -went a-gipsying in a less ostentatious manner. The Lions in the -Tower, the Horns at Highgate, the Spaniards at Hampstead, the -Wandering Minstrel at Beulah Spa; and on highdays and holidays a -stage-coach and pleasure-boat journey to Portsmouth, Southampton, -Netley Abbey, Carisbrook Castle, and the Undercliff; these filled up -the simple measure of our pleasure-gadding. We are improved now-a-days, -and go the grand tour like my lord; and are wiser, and better, -and happier—of course.</p> - -<p>When in the noble harbour of Portsmouth you have taken your -wife, your sweetheart, or your friend the intelligent foreigner, to -whom you wish to show the glories of England, and when the -cicerone of the great war-ship has told his parrot-tale about admirals’ -quarter-galleries and officers’ gun-rooms; when at last he has taken -you into the cabin, and at the back shown you the sorrowful inscription -painted on the stanchion, “<span class="smcap">Here Nelson Died!</span>” did never a -sudden desire come across you to be left alone—to have the army of -sight-seers banished five hundred miles away—to be allowed to remain -there in the silent cabin among the shadows, to muse on the memory -of the great dead, to conjure up mind-pictures of that closing scene: -the cannon booming overhead; the terrified surgeons with outspread -bandages, and probes, and knives, knowing that their skill was of no -avail; the burly shipmen crying like little children; and alone tranquil -and serene among that sorrowful group, peaceful as an infant in its -cradle, the Admiral, his stars and ribbons gleaming in the lantern’s -fitful rays, but never with so strong a light as the gory ghastliness of -his death wound; the brave yellow-haired Admiral, with the puny -limbs and giant’s heart, waiting to die, ready to die, happy to die, -thanking God that he had done his duty to his king, and meekly -saying, “Kiss me, Hardy.”</p> - -<p>That inscription in the <i>Victory’s</i> cabin has been to me the source -of meditation frequent and infinitely pleasant. I love to think, -walking in historical streets and houses, that my feet are treading -over spots where men for ever famous have left an imprint of glory. -I peer into the soil, the stones, the planks, to descry the shadowy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> -mark of Hercules’ foot, of the iron-plated sole of the warrior, the -sandalled shoon of the saint, the dainty heel of the brocaded slipper -of beauty. Every place that history or tradition has made her own -is to me a field, not of forty, but of forty thousand footsteps; and I -please myself sometimes with futile wishes that the boundaries of -these footsteps might have been marked by plates of brass and -adamant, as Nelson’s death-place is marked on board his flagship. It -were better, perhaps, to leave the exact spot to imagination; for -though I would give something to know the very window of the -Banqueting House from whence Charles Stuart came out to his -death, and the precise spot where he turned to Juxon and uttered his -mysterious injunction “Remember!” I would not care to know the -particular branch of the tree to which Judas affixed his thrice-earned -halter when he hanged himself: I could spare Mr. Dix the trouble -of telling me the identical spot on the tavern table on which the -coroner laid his three-cornered hat when he held his inquest on the -worthless impostor Chatterton—a “marvellous boy” if you will, but -one who perished in his miserable folly and forgery—and I could -well exempt the legitimacy-bemused courtiers of Louis XVIII. from -perpetuating, as they did in brass, the few inches of soil at Calais -first pressed on his return to France by the foot of that gross fat -man.</p> - -<p>There are two cities in the world, London and Paris, so full of -these footstep memories, so haunted by impalpable ghosts of the -traces of famous deeds, that locomotion, to one of my temperament, -becomes a task very slow, if not painfully difficult, of accomplishment. -’Tis a long way from the Luxor Obelisk to the Carrousel; but it’s a -week’s journey when you feel inclined to stop at every half-dozen -yards’ distance, questioning yourself and the ministering spirits of -your books, pointing your fingers to the paving-stones, and saying—Here -the guillotine stood; here Louis died; here the daughter of -Maria Theresa cast her last glance at the cupolas of the Tuileries; -here Robespierre was hooted; here Théroigne de Méricourt was -scourged; here Napoleon the Great showed the little king of Rome -to the people; here, on the great Carrousel Place, he, arrayed -in the undying gray coat and little hat, reviewed the veterans of -his guard, many and many a time at <span class="smcap">eight o’clock in the -morning</span>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus10" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus10.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">EIGHT O’CLOCK A.M.: ST. JAMES’S PARK.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span></p> - -<p>There! I have brought you round to the subject-matter of this -article, and to the complexion of “Twice Round the Clock” again; -and the stroke is, I flatter myself, felicitous—rivalling Escobar or -Dom Calmet in Jesuitry, Metternich and Menschikoff in diplomacy. -You thought doubtless that I was about to launch into an interminable -digression; you may perhaps have said, scoffingly, that Admiral Lord -Nelson, K.C.B., Maximillien Robespierre, Charles the First’s head, -and the Emperor Napoleon’s cocked hat, could have nothing whatsoever -to do with the Mall of Saint James’s Park at eight o’clock in -the morning. You are mistaken. The allusions to memorable footsteps -were all cunningly devised with a reference to the great Field -of Famous Footsteps—the Mall, which, were the imprint of those -bygone pedal pressures marked out with landmarks, such as those in -the <i>Victory’s</i> cabin, would become a very Field of the Cloth of -Brass. And what better time can there be to muse upon the traditional -glories of the Mall and the fame of its frequenters, than eight -a.m. in sweet summer time?</p> - -<p>I grant the clown, the dunderheaded moneyspinner who votes -that books are “rubbish,” the cobweb-brained fop who languidly declares -reading to be a “bore,” will find in the broad smooth Mall, -just a Mall, broad and smooth, and nought else—even as Peter Bell -found in a primrose by the river’s brim a yellow primrose, and nothing -more. At eight o’clock in the morning, to clown, dunderhead, and -cobweb-brain, the Mall is a short cut from Marylebone to Westminster; -the water-carts are laying the dust; mechanics are going to -work; there are some government offices in the distance; two big -guns on queer-looking carriages; some scattered children; a good -many birds, making rather a disagreeable noise, in the green trees; -and a few cows being milked in a corner. But come with me, dweller -in the past, lover of ancient and pleasant memories, hand-and-glove -friend of defunct worthies, shadowy acquaintances in ruffs and peaked -beards and point lace. Let us deliver dunderhead and cobweb-brain -to the tormentors, and, sitting on a rustic bench beneath a spreading -tree, summon the Famous Footsteps; summon the dead-and-gone -walkers to pace the Mall again. Here they come! a brave gathering, -a courtly throng, a worshipful assemblage, but oft-times a motley -horde and a fantastic crew. Here is Henry the Eighth’s Mall, a park -where that disreputable monarch indulged in “the games of hare and -pheasant, partridge and heron, for his disport and pastime,” and -where he had a deer killed for the amusement of the “Embassador -from Muscovie.” Here is Saint James’s Park in the reign of clever, -shrewish, cruel Queen Bess—a park only used as an appendage to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span> -the tilt-yard and a nursery for deer: here is the “inward park” -(now the inclosure and ornamental water), into which, so late as the -commencement of Charles II.’s reign, access to the public was denied; -and where, in 1660, Master Pepys saw a man “basted” by the -keeper for carrying some people over on his back through the water. -Here is Charles II.’s famous Mall, for the first time broad and smooth, -the park planted and reformed by the celebrated French gardener, -Le Nôtre, laid out with fish-ponds and a decoy for water-fowl; the -Mall itself a vista of half a mile in length, on which the game of Pall -Mall was played, and which, always according to curious Samuel -Pepys, who “discoursed with the keeper of the Pall Mall as he was -sweeping it,” was floored with mixed earth, and over all that cockle-shells, -powdered and spread to keep it fast; which, however, in dry -weather, turned to dust and deadened the ball. In this park of -Charles II. was the fantastic little territory of Duck Island, the -ground contained within the channels of the decoy, and which -London Barataria had revenues and laws and governors appointed by -the king. The Duke of Saint Simon’s friend, Saint Evremond, was -one of these governors; Sir John Flock another. Close to Duck -Island was Rosamond’s Pond, a piece of water whose name bore a -dim analogy to the <i>soubriquet</i> with which, in later years, Waterloo -Bridge has been qualified; for it was in Rosamond’s Pond that forsaken -women came in preference, at even-song, to drown themselves. -There was the Birdcage Walk, where Mr. Edward Storey kept his -Majesty’s aviary, and dwelt in the snug little hut recently demolished, -known as Storey’s Gate. There was the Mulberry Garden, into -which the river Tyburn flows, and so into Tothill Fields and the -Thames; and there was Spring Gardens, where the beaux went to -look at the citizens’ wives; and the citizens’ wives, I hope, to drink -chocolate, but I fear to look at the beaux.</p> - -<p>But the famous footsteps? See, see in your mind’s eye, Horatio, -how the shadows of the old frequenters of the Mall come trooping -along. Here is the founder of the feast himself, King Charles the -Second, witty, worthless, and good-humoured, tramping along the -broad expanse at <i>eight</i> o’clock in the morning, to the despair of his -courtiers, who liked not walking so fast, nor getting up so early. You -can’t mistake the king’s figure; ’tis that swarthy gentleman, with the -harshly-marked countenance, the bushy eyebrows, the lively kindling -gray eye, and the black suit and perriwig. He walks a little in advance -of his suite with an easy, rapid gait, and at his heels follow a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span> -little barking multitude of dogs, black, black and white, or black and -tan, with long silky ears and feathery tails. We may see him again, -and on the Mall, but not at eight o’clock in the morning. It is the -afternoon of a July day, and a court cavalcade comes flaunting in -feathers forth from Whitehall. Here is King Charles, but in a laced -and embroidered suit, and mounted on a gaily-caparisoned charger. -He rides with his hand in that of a lady, in a white laced waistcoat -and crimson petticoat, and who, the chroniclers say, with her hair -dressed <i>à la negligence</i>, “looks mighty pretty,” but she is very dark, -and not very well favoured, and is a poor Portuguese lady who has -the misfortune to be Queen of England, and to have the merriest and -the worst husband in Europe. Here is La Belle Stuart, with her hat -cocked, and a red plume, looking, with her sweet eye, little Roman -nose, and excellent <i>taille</i>, the greatest beauty that the Clerk of the -Acts ever did see in his life. Here is Lady Castlemaine, with a yellow -plume, but in a terrible temper that the king does not take any notice -of her, and in a rage when she finds that no gentleman presses to -assist her down from her horse. Here is “our royal brother,” James -Duke of York, scowling and sulky, on his way through the Park to -Hounslow, to enjoy his prime diversion of the chase, and escorted by -a party of the guards in morions and steel corslets. Memory be good -to us! how the shadows gather around! His Highness Oliver, Lord -Protector of this realm, is being borne along the Mall in a sedan chair. -He crouches uneasily in a corner of the gilded vehicle, as though he -feared that Colonel Titus might be lying <i>perdu</i> under the linden trees, -correcting the proof sheets of “Killing no Murder.” Sir Fopling -Flutter bids his coachman take the carriage to Whitehall, and walks -over the park with Belinda. Now, years later, it is Jonathan Swift -leaving his best gown and perriwig at Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s, then walking -up the Mall, by Buckingham House, and so to Chelsea. It is not -a very well-conducted Mall just now, and Swift tells Stella that he is -obliged to come home early through the park, to avoid the Mohocks. -Now, back again, and to walk with decorous Mr. Evelyn, who is much -shocked to see Nelly Gwynne leaning over her garden wall (overhanging -the park),—she lived at 79, Pall Mall—and indulging in familiar -discourse with “Old Rowley.” Now we are in Horace Walpole’s -time, and the macaroni-cynic of Strawberry Hill is gallanting in the -Mall with Lady Caroline Petersham, and pretty Miss Beauclerc, and -foolish Mrs. Sparre. Now Lady Coventry and Walpole’s niece, Lady -Waldegrave, are mobbed in the park for being dressed in an “outlandish”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span> -fashion. Now, back and back again; and the Duchess of Cleveland -is walking across the Mall on a dark night, pursued by three men -in masks, who offer her no violence, but curse her as the cause of -England’s misery, and prophesy that she will one day die in a ditch, -like Jane Shore. Forward, hark forward, and mad Margaret Nicholson -attempts the life of George III., as he passes in his coach through -the Mall to open Parliament. Backward, and James II. walks across -the park from St. James’s, where he had slept, to Whitehall, to be -crowned. A very few years after his coronation, the Dutch Guards of -William Prince of Orange marched across from St. James’s to turn the -unlucky Stuart out of Whitehall. And now, backwards and forwards, -and forwards and backwards, the famous shadows mingle in a fantastic -reel, a mad waltz of extinct footsteps. Sir Roger de Coverley and -Mr. Spectator saunter under the limes; Beau Fielding minces by the -side of Margaretta; Beau Tibbs airs his clean linen and lackered -sword hilt; Mr. Pope meets Lady Mary’s sedan, borne by Irish chair-men—the -translator of the “Iliad” grins spitefully over his shoulder -and makes faces at Lady Mary’s black boy; Sir Plume instructs Sir -John Burke in the nice conduct of a clouded cane; Goldsmith’s good-natured -man fraternises with Coleman’s “brother who could eat beef;” -Lord Fanny takes off his three-cornered hat to Mr. Moore, the inventor -of the worm powders; Partridge, the almanack maker, discusses -the motions of the heavenly bodies on the banks of Rosamond’s -Pond with Count Algarotti, and becomes so excited that he nearly -adds “one more unfortunate” to the list of Ophelias in Rosamond’s -Pond, by tumbling into the water; Alfieri meets Lord Ligonier—tells -him the measure of his sword, and makes a rendezvous with him for -sunset in Hyde Park; Lord George Gordon passes Westminster to -St. James’s, followed by a mob of yelling, screaming Protestants. -Real people dispute the passage of the Mall with imaginary personages. -The encampment of ’Eighty, the Temple of Concord, and the -Humane Society’s drags, are inextricably mixed up with scenes from -Wycherley and Etherege; and pet passages from the “Trivia” and -the “Rape of the Lock.” I must bring myself back to reason and St. -James’s Park, and eight o’clock in the morning. I must deal henceforth -in realities. Here is one.</p> - -<p>It is the morning of the 30th of January, 1649, and a King of England -walks across the frozen park, from St. James’s, where he has -slept, to Whitehall, the palace of his fathers. Armed men walk before, -armed men walk behind and around; but they are no guards of honour.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span> -They escort a prisoner to the scaffold. The High Court of Justice has -adjudged Charles Stuart, King of England, a traitor, and has decreed -that he shall be put to death by severing his head from his body. -President Bradshaw has put off his red robe, the man without a name -has put on his black mask; the axe is sharpened, the sawdust spread, -the block prepared, the velvet-covered coffin yawns; on its lid is -already the leaden plate with the inscription, “King Charles, 1649.”</p> - -<p>It is not my fault, dear reader, if the spot which your author and -artist to command have selected for illustration of the eighth hour -ante-meridian, be so rich in historical and literary recollections; that -we may fancy every inch of its surface trodden and re-trodden till the -very soil has sunk, by the feet of the departed great; that the student, -and the lover of old lore, must arrest himself perforce at every tree, -and evoke remembrance at every pace. And centuries hence the Mall -of St. James’s Park will be as famous to our descendants for our deeds -as it is now to us for the presence of our ancestors. Is not the Mall -yet one of the most favoured resorts of the British aristocracy? Do -not the carriages of the nobility and gentry rattle over its broad bosom -to dinner parties, to opera, to concerts, and to balls? We have seen -their chariot lamps a hundred times—we humble pedestrians and -plebeians—gleaming among the tufted trees, wills-o’-the-wisp of Belgravia -and Tyburnia. Is not St. James’s Park bounded now as then -by high and mighty buildings: War Office, Admiralty, Stationery -Office, Barracks? Do not the Duke of York’s steps lead from the -Duke of York’s column, between two <i>corps de logis</i>, one occupied by -wings—ethereal wings, though made of brick and stucco, of the House -of Carlton, the abode of George the Great (the great Fritz was called -“<i>der grosse</i>”) of England? And the Mall itself? Is it not overlooked -by Stafford House, the palatial; by Marlborough House, the vast and -roomy, once sacred to the memory of the victor of Ramilies and of -“Old Sarah!” but now given up to some people called artists, connected -with something called the English school, and partially used as -a livery and bait stable for the late Duke of Wellington’s funeral car, -with its sham trophies and sham horses? Does not a scion of royalty, -no other than his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, frequently -condescend to walk from his lodgings in the Stable-yard, Saint James’s, -across the park to those Horse Guards, whose affairs he administers -with so much ability and success? And, finally, at the western extremity -of the Mall, and on the side where once was the Mulberry -Garden, stands there not now a palace, huge in size, clumsy in its proportions,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span> -grotesque in decoration, mean in gross, frivolous in detail, -infinitely hideous in its general appearance, but above whose ugly roof -floats that grandest and noblest of all banners, the Royal Standard of -England, and whose walls, half hospital, half barrack, as they remind -us of, are hallowed as being part of Buckingham Palace, the abode of -our good, and true, and dear Queen? She lives at the top of the Mall. -She comes out by times on the Mall, in her golden coach, with the -eight cream-coloured horses; her darling little daughter passed along -the Mall to be married; let us hope, and heartily, to see more sons -and daughters yet riding to their weddings through that field of -famous footsteps. Let us hope that we may live to throw up our caps, -and cry God bless them!</p> - -<p>Great lords and ladies sweep the Mall no more with hoops and -flowing trains of brocaded paduasoy, nor jingle on the gravel with -silver spurs, nor crunch the minute pebbles with red heels. Broughams -and chariots now convey the salt ones of the earth to their grand -assemblies and solemn merry-makings; and the few aristocrats who -may yet pedestrianise within the precincts, are so plainly attired that -you would find it difficult to distinguish them from plain Brown -or Jones walking from Pimlico to Charing Cross. His Royal Highness -strides over from the Stable-yard to the Horse Guards in a -shooting-jacket and tweed trousers, and in wet weather carries an -umbrella. Nay, I have seen another Royal Highness—a bigger -Royal Highness, so to speak, for he is consort to the Queen—riding -under the trees of the Mall on a quiet bay, and dressed in anything -but the first style of fashion. Were it not <i>scandalum magnatum</i> -even to think such a thing, I should say that his Royal Highness’s -coat was seedy.</p> - -<p>At this early eight o’clock in the morningtide, see—an exception -to the rule, however—perambulating the Mall, a tremendous “swell.” -No fictitious aristocrat, no cheap dandy, no Whitechapel buck or -Bermondsey exquisite, no apprentice who has been to a masquerade -disguised as a gentleman, can this be. Aristocracy is imprinted on -every lineament of his moustached face, in every crease of his superb -clothes, in each particular horsehair of his flowing plume. He is a -magnificent creature, over six feet in height, with a burnished helmet, -burnished boots, burnished spurs, burnished sabre, burnished cuirass—burnished -whiskers and moustache. He shines all over, like a -meteor, or a lobster which has been kept a <i>little</i> too long, in a dark -room. He is young, brave, handsome, and generous; he is the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span> -delight of Eaton Square, the cynosure of the Castor and Pollux Club, -the idol of the corps de ballet of her Majesty’s Theatre, the pet of -several most exclusive Puseyite circles in Tyburnia, the mirror of -Tattersall’s, the pillar and patron of Jem Bundy’s ratting, dog-showing, -man-fighting, horse-racing, and general sporting house, in Cat and -Fiddle Court, Dog and Duck Lane, Cripplegate. Cruel country, cruel -fate, that compel Lieutenant Algernon Percy Plantagenet, of the Royal -Life Guards, the handsomest man in his regiment, and heir to £9,000 -a year, to be mounting guard at eight o’clock in the morning! He is -mounting guard at present by smoking a cigar (one of Milo’s best) on -the Mall. By and by he will go into his barrack-room and draw -caricatures in charcoal on the whitewashed wall. He will smoke a -good deal, yawn a good deal, and whistle a good deal during the day, -and will give a few words of command. For you see, my son, that -we must all earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, and that the -career even of a Plantagenet, with £9,000 a year, is not, throughout, -a highway of rose-leaves!</p> - -<p>From this gay and resplendent warrior, we fall, alas! to a very -prosaic level. As eight o’clock chimes from the smoky-faced clock of -the Horse Guards, I try in vain (I have dismissed my shadowy -friends) to people the Mall with aristocratic visitants. Alas and -indeed! the magnificent promenade of the park, on which look the -stately mansions of the nobles, is pervaded by figures very mean, -very poor and forlorn in appearance. Little troops of girls and -young women are coming from the direction of Buckingham Palace -and the Birdcage Walk, but all converging towards the Duke of -York’s column: that beacon to the great shores of Vanity Fair. -These are sempstresses and milliners’ workwomen, and are bound for -the great Dress Factories of the West End. Pinched faces, pale -faces, eager faces, sullen faces, peer from under the bonnets as they -pass along and up the steps. There are faces with large mild eyes, -that seem to wonder at the world and at its strange doings, and at -the existence of a Necessity (it must be a Necessity, you know), for -Jane or Ellen to work twelve hours a day; nay, in the full London -season, work at her needle not unfrequently all night, in order that the -Countess or the Marchioness may have her ball dress ready.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus11" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus11.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">EIGHT O’CLOCK; OPENING SHOP.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span></p> - -<p class="tb">There is another ceremony performed with much clattering solemnity -of wooden panels, and iron bars, and stanchions, which occurs at -eight o’clock in the morning. ’Tis then that the shop-shutters are -taken down. The great “stores” and “magazines” of the principal -thoroughfares gradually open their eyes; apprentices, light-porters, -and where the staff of assistants is not very numerous, the shopmen, -release the imprisoned wares, and bid the sun shine on good family -“souchong,” “fresh Epping sausages,” “Beaufort collars,” “guinea -capes,” “Eureka shirts,” and “Alexandre harmoniums.” In the -smaller thoroughfares, the proprietor often dispenses with the aid of -apprentice, light-porter, and shopman—for the simple reason that he -never possessed the services of any assistants at all—and unostentatiously -takes down the shutters of his own chandler’s, green-grocer’s, -tripe, or small stationery shop. In the magnificent linendrapery -establishments of Oxford and Regent Streets, the vast shop-fronts, -museums of fashion in plate-glass cases, offer a series of animated -<i>tableaux</i> of <i>poses plastiques</i> in the shape of young ladies in morning -costume, and young gentlemen in whiskers and white neckcloths, faultlessly -complete as to costume, with the exception that they are yet in -their shirt sleeves, who are accomplishing the difficult and mysterious -feat known as “dressing” the shop window. By their nimble and -practised hands the rich piled velvet mantles are displayed, the <i>moire</i> -and <i>glacé</i> silks arranged in artful folds, the laces and gauzes, the innumerable -whim-whams and fribble-frabble of fashion, elaborately shown, -and to their best advantage.</p> - -<p>Now, all over London, the shops start into new life. Butchers -and bakers, and candlestick makers, grocers and cheesemongers, and -pastrycooks, tailors, linendrapers, and milliners, crop up with mushroom-like -rapidity. But I must leave them, to revisit them in all -their glory a few hours later. Leave, too, the Park and its Mall, -with the cows giving milk of a decidedly metropolitan flavour, and -the children and the nursemaids, and the dilapidated dramatic authors -reading the manuscripts of their five-act tragedies to themselves, and -occasionally reciting favourite passages in deep diapason on the -benches under the trees. Leave, too, the London sparrows, and—would -that we could leave it altogether—the London smoke, which -already begins to curl over and cover up the city like a blanket, and -which will not keep clear of the Mall, even at eight o’clock in the -morning.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="NINE_AM">NINE O’CLOCK A.M.—THE CLERKS AT THE BANK, AND THE BOATS ON THE RIVER.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>It is nine o’clock, and London has breakfasted. Some unconsidered -tens of thousands have, it is true, already enjoyed with what -appetite they might their præ-prandial meal; the upper fifty thousand, -again, have not yet left their luxurious couches, and will not breakfast -till ten, eleven o’clock, noon; nay, there shall be sundry listless, -languid members of fast military clubs, dwellers among the tents -of Jermyn Street, and the high-priced second floors of Little Ryder -Street, St. James’s, upon whom one, two, and three o’clock in the -afternoon shall be but as dawn, and whose broiled bones and devilled -kidneys shall scarcely be laid on the damask breakfast-cloth before Sol -is red in the western horizon.</p> - -<p>I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, -when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every -acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black -hole <i>per mensem</i> for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict -jackets, that some M’Culloch or Caird would tabulate for me the -amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of -London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs -are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, -and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to -make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been -sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky; what rivers -have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, -what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny haddocks -and the Yarmouth bloaters, that grace our morning repast. Say, too, -Crosse and Blackwell, what multitudinous demands are matutinally -made on thee for pots of anchovy paste and preserved tongue, covered -with that circular layer—abominable disc!—of oleaginous nastiness, -apparently composed of rancid pomatum, but technically known as -clarified butter, and yet not so nasty as that adipose horror that surrounds -the truffle bedecked <i>pâté de foie gras</i>. Say, Elizabeth Lazenby, -how many hundred bottles of thy sauce (none of which are genuine -unless signed by thee) are in request to give a relish to cold meat, -game, and fish. Mysteries upon mysteries are there connected with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span> -nine o’clock breakfasts. Queries upon queries suggest themselves to -the inquisitive mind. Speculations upon speculations present themselves -to him who is observant. Are those eggs we see in the coffee-shop -windows, by the side of the lean chop with a curly tail, the teapot -with the broken spout, and the boulder-looking kidneys, ever -eaten, and if so, what secret do the coffee-shop proprietors possess of -keeping them from entire decomposition? For I have watched these -eggs for weeks together, and known them by bits of straw and flecks -of dirt mucilaginously adhering to their shells, to be the selfsame -eggs; yet when I have entered the unpretending house of refreshment, -and ordered “tea and an egg,” I have seen the agile but dingy -handmaiden swiftly approach the window, slide the glass panel back -with nimble (though dusky) fingers, convey an egg to the mysterious -kitchen in the background, and in a few minutes place the edible -before me boiled, yet with sufficient marks of the straw upon it to -enable me to discern my ancient friend. Who, again, invented -muffins?—and what becomes of all the cold crossbuns after Good -Friday? I never saw a crossbun on Holy Saturday, and I believe -the boy most addicted to saccharine dainties would scorn one.</p> - -<p>So hungry London breakfasts, but not uniformly well, at nine -o’clock in the morning. In quietly grim squares, in the semi-aristocratic -North-West End—I don’t mean Russell and Bloomsbury, but -Gordon, Tavistock, Queen, and Camden, on the one side, and Manchester -and Portman on the other—the nine o’clock breakfast takes -place in the vast comfortless dining-room, with the shining side-board -(purchased at the sale of Sir Hector Ajacks, the great Indian general’s, -effects), and the portrait of the master of the house (Debenham Storr, -R.A., pinxit), crimson curtain and column in foreground, dessert plate, -cut orange, and—supposed—silver hand-bell in front ditto. This is -the sort of room where there is a Turkey carpet that has been purchased -at the East India Company’s sale rooms, in Billiter Street, and -which went cheap because there was a hole in one corner, carefully -darned subsequently by the mistress of the house. The master comes -down stairs gravely, with a bald head—the thin, gray hair carefully -brushed over the temples, and a duffel dressing-gown. He spends five -minutes in his “study,” behind the breakfast dining-room; not, goodness -knows, to consult the uncut books on the shelves—uncomfortable -works, like Helps’s “Friends in Council,” that scrap of rusty <span class="smcap">Bacon</span>, and -Mr. Harriet Martineau’s “India,” are among the number; but to break -the seals of the letters ranged for him on the leather-covered table—he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span> -reads his correspondence at breakfast—to unlock, perchance, one -drawer, take out his cheque-book, and give it one hasty flutter, one -loving glance, and to catch up and snuggle beneath his arm the copy -of the “Times” newspaper, erst damped, but since aired at the -kitchen fire, which the newsvender’s boy dropped an hour since down -the area. It may be, too, that he goes into that uselessly (to him) -book-furnished room, because he thinks it a good, a grand, a respectable -thing to have a “study” at all. This is the sort of house where -they keep a footman, single-handed—a dull knave, who no more resembles -the resplendent flunkey of Eaton Square or Westbourne -Terrace, than does the cotton-stockinged “greencoat” of the minor -theatres; who is told that he must wear a morning jacket, and who -accoutres himself in a striped jerkin, baggy in the back and soiled at -the elbows, that makes him look like an hostler, related, on the mother’s -side, to a Merry Andrew. The mistress of the house comes down to -nine o’clock breakfast, jingling the keys in her little basket, and with -anxious pre-occupation mantling from her <i>guipure</i> collar to her false -front, for those fatal crimson housekeeping books are to be audited -this morning, and she is nervous. The girls come down in brown-holland -jackets and smartly dowdy skirts, dubious as to the state of -their back hair; the eldest daughter frowning after her last night’s -course of theology (intermingled with the last novel from Mr. -Mudie’s). As a rule, the young ladies are very ill-tempered; and, -equally as a rule, there is always one luckless young maiden in a -family of grown-up daughters who comes down to breakfast with her -stockings down at heel, and is sternly reprimanded during breakfast -because one of her shoes comes off under the table; he who denounces -her being her younger brother, the lout in the jacket, with the surreptitious -peg-top in his pocket, who attends the day-school of the -London University, and cribs his sisters’ Berlin-wool canvas to mend -his Serpentine yacht sails with. The children too old to breakfast in -the nursery come down gawky, awkward, tumbling, and discontented, -for they are as yet considered too young to partake of the frizzled -bits of bacon which are curling themselves in scorched agony on the -iron footman before the grate, the muffins, which sodden in yellow -butter-pools in the Minton plates on the severely-creased damask -table-cloth, or the dry toast which, shrivelled and forbidding, grins -from between the Sheffield-plated bars of the rack. The servants -come in, not to morning breakfast, but to morning prayers. The -housemaid has just concluded her morning flirtation with the baker;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span> -the cook has been crying over “Fatherless Fanny.” The master of -the house reads prayers in a harsh, grating voice, and Miss Charlotte, -aged thirteen, is sent to her bed-room, with prospects of additional -punishment, for eating her curl-papers during matins. The first organ-grinder -arrives in the square during breakfast; and the master of the -house grimly reproves the children who are beginning to execute involuntary -polkas on their chairs, and glowers at the governess—she is -such a meek young creature, marked with the small-pox, that I did -not think it worth while to mention her before—who manifests -symptoms of beating her sad head to the music. How happy, at least -how relieved, everybody is when the master exchanges his duffel -dressing-gown for a blue body-coat, takes his umbrella, and drives off -in his brougham to the city or Somerset House! The children are -glad to go to their lessons, though they hate <i>them</i> at most times, -passably. Miss Meek, the governess, is glad to install herself in her -school-room, and grind “Mangnall’s Questions,” and “Blair’s Preceptor,” -till the children’s dinner, at one o’clock; though she would, -perhaps, prefer shutting herself up in her own room and having -a good cry. The mistress finds consolation, too, in going downstairs -and quarrelling with the cook, and then going upstairs and being -quarrelled with by the nurse. Besides, there will be plenty of time -for shopping before Mr. M. comes home. The girls are delighted that -cross papa is away. Papa always wants to know what the letters are -about which they write at the little walnut-tree tables with the twisted -legs. Papa objects to the time wasted in working the application -collars. Papa calls novel reading and pianoforte practice “stuff,” -with a very naughty adjective prefixed thereunto. This is the sort of -house that is neatly, solidly furnished from top to toe, with every -modern convenience and improvement: with bath-rooms, conservatories, -ice cellars; with patent grates, patent door-handles, dish-lifts, -asbestos stoves, gas cooking ranges, and excruciatingly complicated -ventilatory contrivances; and this is also the sort of house where, -with all the conveniences I have mentioned, every living soul who inhabits -it is uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>As the clock strikes nine, you see the last school-children flock in -to the narrow alley behind St. Martin’s Lane, hard by the Lowther -Arcade, and leading to the national schools. They have been romping -and playing in the street this half-hour; and it was but the iron -tongue of St. Martin that interrupted that impending fight between -the young brothers Puddicomb, from King Street, Long Acre, who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span> -are always fighting, and that famous clapper-clawing match between -Polly Briggs and Susey Wright. At the last stroke of nine there -hurries into the school corridor a comely female teacher in a green -plaid shawl: and, woe be unto her! nine has struck full ten minutes, -when the inevitable laggard of every school appears, half skurrying, -half crawling, her terror combating with her sluggishness, from the -direction of Leicester Square. She is a gaunt, awkward girl, in a -“flibberty-flobberty” hat, a skimping gray cape, with thunder-and-lightning -buttons, an absurdly short skirt, and lace-edged trousers, -that trail over her sandaled shoes. Add to this her slate and satchel, -and she is complete. When will parents cease, I wonder, to attire -their children in this ridiculous and preposterous manner. Hannah -(her name is Hannah, for certain!) left her home in Bear Street in excellent -time for school; but she has dawdled, and loitered, and gloated -over every sweetstuff and picture shop, and exchanged languid repartees -with rude boys. She will be kept in to a certainty this afternoon, -will Hannah!</p> - -<p>Now is the matutinal occupation of the milkwoman nearly gone; -her last cries of “Milk, ho!” die away in faint echoes, and she might -reasonably be supposed to enjoy a holiday till the afternoon’s milk for -tea were required; but not so. To distant dairies she hies, and to all -appearances occupies herself in scrubbing her milk pails till three -o’clock. I have a great affection (platonic) for milkwomen. I should -like to go down to Wales and see them when they are at home. What -clean white cotton stockings they wear, on—no, not their legs—on the -posts which support their robust torsos! How strong they are! -There are many I should be happy to back, and for no inconsiderable -trifle either, to thrash Ben Gaunt. Did you ever know any one who -courted a milkwoman? Was there ever a milkwoman married, besides -Madam Vestris, in the “Wonderful Woman?” Yes; I love them—their -burly forms; their mahogany faces, handsomely veneered by wind -and weather; their coarse straw bonnets flattened at the top; their -manly lace-up boots, and those wonderful mantles on their shoulders, -which are neither shawl, tippet, cape nor scarf, but a compound of all, -and are of equally puzzling colour and patterns.</p> - -<p>The postman is breakfasting in the interval between the eight and -the ten o’clock delivery. Does he take his scarlet tunic off when he -breakfasts? Does he beguile the short hour of refreshment by reading, -between snaps of bread and butter and gulps of coffee, short -extracts from “A Double Knock at the Postman’s Conscience,” by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span> -the Reverend Mr. Davis, Ordinary of Newgate? For if the postman -reads not during breakfast-time, I am wholly at a loss to know, dog-tired -as he must be when he comes home from his rounds at night, -when he can find time for pursuing his literary studies. By the -way, where does the postman lodge? I have occupied apartments -in the same house with a policeman; I was once aware of -the private residence of a man who served writs; and I have taken -tea in the parlour of the Pandean pipes to a Punch-and-Judy; but -I never knew personally the abode of a postman. Mr. Sculthorpe -and Mr. Peacock know them but too frequently, to the postman’s -cost.</p> - -<p>Nine o’clock, and the <i>grande armée</i> of “musicianers” debouches -from Spitalfields, and Leather Lane, Holborn, and far-off Clerkenwell, -and, in compact columns, move westward. Nine o’clock, and the -sonorous cry of “Old clo’!” is heard in sequestered streets chiefly -inhabited by bachelors. Nine o’clock, and another <i>grande armée</i> -veers through Temple Bar, charges down Holborn Hill, escalades -Finsbury, captures Cornhill by a dexterous flank movement, and sits -down and invests the Bank of England in regular form. This is -London going to business in the city.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus12" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus12.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">NINE O’CLOCK A.M.: OMNIBUSES AT THE BANK.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus13" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus13.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">NINE O’CLOCK A.M.: PENNY STEAMBOATS ALONGSIDE THE PIER AT LONDON BRIDGE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span></p> - -<p>If the morning be fine, the pavement of the Strand and Fleet -Street looks quite radiant with the spruce clerks walking down to -their offices, governmental, financial, and commercial. Marvellous -young bucks some of them are. These are the customers, you see at -a glance, whom the resplendent wares in the hosiers’ shops attract, -and in whom those wary industrials find avid customers. These are -the dashing young parties who purchase the pea-green, the orange, -and the rose-pink gloves; the crimson braces, the kaleidoscopic -shirt-studs, the shirts embroidered with dahlias, deaths’ heads, race-horses, -sun-flowers, and ballet-girls; the horseshoe, fox-head, pewter-pot-and-crossed-pipes, -willow-pattern-plate, and knife-and-fork pins. -These are the glasses of city fashion, and the mould of city form, for -whom the legions of fourteen, of fifteen, of sixteen, and of seventeen -shilling trousers, all unrivalled, patented, and warranted, are made; -for these ingenious youths coats with strange names are devised, -scarves and shawls of wondrous pattern and texture despatched from -distant Manchester and Paisley. For them the shiniest of hats, the -knobbiest of sticks, gleam through shop-windows; for them the geniuses -of “all-round collars” invent every week fresh yokes of starched -linen, pleasant instruments of torture, reminding us equally of the -English pillory, the Chinese cangue, the Spanish garotte, the French -<i>lucarne</i> to the guillotine (that window from which the criminal looks -out into eternity), and the homely and cosmopolitan dog-collar! -There are some of these gay clerks who go down to their offices with -roses at their button-holes, and with cigars in their mouths; there -are some who wear peg-top trousers, chin-tufts, eye-glasses, and varnished -boots. These mostly turn off in the Strand, and are in the -Admiralty or Somerset House. As for the government clerks of the -extreme West-end—the patricians of the Home and Foreign Offices—the -bureaucrats of the Circumlocution Office, in a word—<i>they</i> ride -down to Whitehall or Downing Street in broughams or on park hacks. -Catch them in omnibuses, or walking on the vulgar pavement, forsooth! -The flags of Regent Street they might indeed tread gingerly, -at three o’clock in the afternoon; but the Strand, and at nine o’clock -in the morning! Forbid it, gentility! I observe—to return to the -clerks who are bending citywards—that the most luxuriant whiskers -belong to the Bank of England. I believe that there are even -whisker clubs in that great national institution, where prizes are -given for the best pair of <i>favoris</i> grown without macassar. You may, -as a general rule, distinguish government from commercial clerks by -the stern repudiation of the razor, as applied to the beard and moustaches, -by the former; and again I may remark, that the prize for -the thinnest and most dandy-looking umbrellas must be awarded, as of -right, to the clerks in the East India House—mostly themselves slim, -natty gentlemen, of jaunty appearance, who are all supposed to have -had tender affairs with the widows of East India colonels. You -may know the cashiers in the private banking houses by their white -hats and buff waistcoats; you may know the stock-brokers by their -careering up Ludgate Hill in dog-carts, and occasionally tandems, -and by the pervading sporting appearance of their costume; you may -know the Jewish commission agents by their flashy broughams, with -lapdogs and ladies in crinoline beside them; you may know the -sugar-bakers and the soap-boilers by the comfortable double-bodied -carriages with fat horses in which they roll along; you may know -the Manchester warehousemen by their wearing gaiters, always -carrying their hands in their pockets, and frequently slipping into -recondite city taverns up darksome alleys, on their way to Cheapside, -to make a quiet bet or so on the Chester Cup or the Liverpool Steeplechase; -you may know, finally, the men with a million of money, or -thereabouts, by their being ordinarily very shabby, and by their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span> -wearing shocking bad hats, which have seemingly never been brushed, -on the backs of their heads.</p> - -<p>“Every road,” says the proverb, “leads to Rome;” every commercial -ways leads to the Bank of England. And there, in the midst -of that heterogeneous architectural jumble between the Bank of England -itself, the Royal Exchange, the Poultry, Cornhill, and the Globe -Insurance Office, the vast train of omnibuses, that have come from -the West and that have come from the East—that have been rumbling -along the Macadam while I was prosing on the pedestrians—with -another great army of clerk martyrs outside and inside, their knees -drawn up to their chins, and their chins resting on their umbrella -handles, set down their loads of cash-book and ledger fillers. What -an incalculable mass of figures must there be collected in those commercial -heads! What legions of <i>£. s. d.</i>! What a chaos of cash -debtor, contra creditor, bills payable, and bills receivable; waste-books, -day-books, cash-books, and journals; insurance policies, brokerage, -agio, tare and tret, dock warrants, and general commercial bedevilment! -They file off to their several avocations, to spin money -for others, often, poor fellows, while they themselves are blest with -but meagre stipends. They plod away to their gloomy wharves and -hard-hearted counting-houses, where the chains from great cranes -wind round their bodies, and they dance hornpipes in bill-file and -cash-box fetters, and the mahogany of the desks enters into their -souls. Upon my word, I think if I were doomed to clerkdom, that I -should run away and enlist; but that would avail me little, for I am -equally certain that, were I a grenadier, and my commanding officer -made me mount guard, that I should pop my musket into the sentry-box -and run away too.</p> - -<p>So the omnibuses meet at the Bank and disgorge the clerks by -hundreds; repeating this operation scores of times between nine and -ten o’clock. But you are not to delude yourself, that either by -wheeled vehicle or by the humbler conveyances known as “Shanks’s -mare,” and the “Marrowbone stage”—in more refined language, -walking—have all those who have business in the city reached their -destination. No; the Silent Highway has been their travelling route. -On the broad—would that I could add the silvery and sparkling—bosom -of Father Thames, they have been borne in swift, grimy little -steamboats, crowded with living freights from Chelsea, and Pimlico, -and Vauxhall piers, from Hungerford, Waterloo, Temple, Blackfriars, -and Southwark—straight by the hay-boats, with their lateen sails discoloured<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span> -in a manner that would delight a painter, straight by Thames -police hulks, by four and six-oared cutters, by coal-barges, and great -lighters laden with bricks and ashes and toiling towards Putney and -Richmond; by oozy wharves and grim-chimneyed factories; by little, -wheezy, tumbledown waterside public-houses; by breweries, and -many-windowed warehouses; by the stately gardens of the Temple, -and the sharp-pointed spires of city churches, and the great dome of -Paul’s looming blue in the morning, to the Old Shades Pier, hard by -London Bridge. There is landing and scuffling and pushing; the -quivering old barges, moored in the mud, are swaying and groaning -beneath trampling feet. Then, for an instant, Thames Street, Upper -and Lower, is invaded by an ant-hill swarm of spruce clerks, who -mingle strangely with the fish-women and the dock-porters. But the -insatiable counting-houses soon swallow them up: as though London’s -commercial maw were an hungered too, for breakfast, at nine o’clock -in the morning.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="TEN_AM">TEN O’CLOCK A.M.—THE COURT OF QUEEN’S BENCH, AND THE “BENCH” ITSELF.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>The author presents his compliments to the “neat-handed Phillis” -who answers (when she is in a good temper, which is but seldom) the -second-floor bell, takes in his letters, brings up his breakfast, stands -in perpetual need of being warned not to light the fire with the proof-sheets -of his last novel, pamphlet on the war, or essay on the Æolic -digamma, or twist into cigar-lights the cheques for large amounts -continually sent him by his munificent publishers, and exercises her -right of search over his tea-caddy and the drawer containing his -cravats, all-round collars, and billet-doux; the author and your -servant presents his compliments to Phillis—ordinarily addressed by -Mrs. Lillicrap, the landlady, as “Mariar, you ’ussey”—and begs her -to procure for him immediately a skin of the creamiest parchment, -free from grease, a bottle of record ink, a quill plucked from the wing -of a hawk, vulture, or some kindred bird of prey, a box of pounce, a -book of patterns of German text for engrossing, and a hank of red -tape or green ferret, whichsoever, in her æsthetic judgment, she may<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span> -prefer. He would be further obliged if she would step round to the -author’s solicitor, and ask, not for that little bill of costs, which has -been ready for some time, but which he is not in the slightest hurry -for—but for copies of Tidd’s Practice, the Law List, and Lord St. -Leonards’ “Handy Book on Property Law.” For I, the author, -intend to be strictly legal at ten o’clock in the morning. I serve you -with this copy of “Twice Round the Clock” as with a writ; and in -the name of Victoria, by the grace, &c., send you greeting, and command—no, -not command, but beg—that within eight days you enter -an appearance, to purchase this volume. Else will I invoke the -powers of the great <i>ca. sa.</i> and the terrible <i>fi. fa.</i> I will come against -you, with sticks and staves, and the sheriff of Middlesex shall take -you, to have and to hold, wheresoever you may be found running up -and down in his bailiwick. <i>Son nutrito di latte legale.</i> I am fed with -law’s milk at this hour of the morning. Shear me the sheep for -vellum, fill me with quips and quiddities; bind me apprentice to a -law stationer in the Lane of Chancery, over-against Cursitor Street; -and let me also send in a little bill of costs to my publishers, and -charge them so much a “folio,” instead of so much a “sheet.”</p> - -<p>This exercitation over, and the necessary stationery brought by -Phillis, <i>alias</i> “Mariar,” I approach my great, grim subject with -diffident respect. What do I know of law, save that if I pay not, the -Alguazils will lay me by the heels; that if I steal, I shall go to the -hulks; that if I kill, I shall go hang? What do I know of <i>Sinderesis</i>, -feoffors and feoffees, and the law of tailed lands? What of the Assize -of <i>Mortdancestor</i>, tenants in dower, villein entry—of <i>Sylva cædua</i>, -which is, I am sure you will be glad to hear, more familiarly known -as the 45th of Edward the Third? These things are mysteries to me. -I bought the <i>habeas corpus</i> once (the palladium of our liberties is an -expensive luxury), but its custodian scarcely allowed me to look at it, -and, hailing a cab, desired me to “look alive.” I have been defendant -in an action, but I never could make out why they should have done -the things to me that they did, and why John Lord Campbell at -Westminster should have been so bitter against me. I never was on -a jury; but I have enjoyed the acquaintance of an Irish gentleman -whose presence on the panel was considered invaluable at state trials, -he having the reputation of an indomitable “boot-eater.” Finally, I -have, as most men have, a solicitor, a highly respectable party, who, -of course, only charges me the “costs out of pocket.” But what is -the exact measure of “costs out of pocket?” I never knew.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span></p> - -<p>Not wholly destitute of legal literature is your servant, however. -In Pope and Arbuthnot’s Reports (<i>vide</i> Miscellanies) I have read the -great case of Stradlings <i>versus</i> Styles, respecting the piebald horses -and the horses that were pied, and have pondered much over that -notable conclusion (in Norman-French) by the reporter—“Je heard -no more parceque j’etais asleep sur mong bench.” I have followed -the arguments in Bardell <i>versus</i> Pickwick: I have seen the “Avocat -Patelin” and the “Lottery Ticket;” I have paced the Salle des Pas -Perdus in Paris, and Westminster Hall, London; I knew a captain -once who lived in the equally defunct “rules” of the Queen’s Bench; -and I have played racquets in the area of that establishment, as an -amateur(?). So, then, though, in a very humble degree, I conceive -myself qualified to discourse to you concerning legal London at ten -o’clock in the morning.</p> - -<p>The judges of the land—of Queen’s Bench, Exchequer, and -Common Pleas, Chief-Justices, Barons, and Puisne Judges, and Sages -of the Court of Probate, Divorce, and Matrimonial Causes—are mostly -jaunty, elderly gentlemen of cheerful appearance, given in private -life to wearing light neckcloths, buff waistcoats, and pepper-and-salt -trousers, and particularly addicted to trotting down to the Courts of -Westminster mounted on stout hacks—’tis the bishops, <i>par excellence</i>, -who ride the cobs—and followed by sober grooms. There are judges -who, it is reported, make up considerable books for the Derby and -Oaks—nay, for the double event. I have seen a judge in a white -hat, and I have seen a vice-chancellor drinking iced fruit effervescent -at Stainsbury’s in the Strand.</p> - -<p>Parliament Street and Palace Yard are fair to see, this pleasant -morning in Term time. The cause list for all the courts is pretty full, -and there is a prospect of nice legal pickings. The pavement is -dotted with barristers’ and solicitors’ clerks carrying blue and crimson -bags plethoric with papers. Smart attorneys, too, with shoe-ribbon, -light vests, swinging watch-guards, and shiny hats (they have begun -to wear moustaches even, the attorneys!), bustle past, papers beneath -their arms, open documents in their hands, which they sort and peruse -as they walk. The parti-coloured fastenings of these documents -flutter, so that you would take these men of law for so many conjurors -about to swallow red and green tape. And they do conjure, -and to a tune, the attorneys. Lank office-boys, in hats too large, -and corduroys and tweeds too short, and jackets, stained with ink, -too short for them; cadaverous office-runners and process-servers, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span> -greasy and patched habiliments, white at the seams; bruised and -battered, ruby-nosed law-writers, skulking down to Westminster in -quest of a chance copying job; managing clerks, staid men given to -abdominal corpulence, who wear white neckcloths, plaited shirt-frills, -black satin waistcoats, and heavy watch chains and seals, worn, in the -good old fashion, underneath the vest, and pendulous from the base -line thereof, file along the pavement to their common destination, the -great Hall of Pleas at Westminster. The great solicitors and attorneys, -men who may be termed the princes of law, who are at the head of -vast establishments in Bedford Row and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and -whose practice is hereditary, dash along in tearing cabs: you look -through the windows, and see an anxious man, with bushy gray -whiskers, sitting inside; the cushions beside and before him littered, -piled, cumbered, with tape-tied papers. He has given Sir Fitzroy -three hundred, Sir Richard five hundred, guineas, for an hour’s -advocacy. Thousands depend upon the decision of the twelve worthy -men who will be in the jury-box in the course of an hour. See! one -of them is cheapening apples at a stall at this very moment, and tells -his companion (who has just alighted from a chaise-cart) that in that -little shop yonder Marley murdered the watchmaker’s shopman. -Great lawyers such as these have as many noble fortunes in their -hands as great doctors have noble lives. Of the secrets of noble reputations, -doctors and lawyers are alike custodians; and, trustworthy.</p> - -<p>The briefless barristers would like to patronise cabs, but they can’t -afford those luxuries. They walk down Parliament Street arm-in-arm, -mostly men with bold noses of the approved Slawkenbergius pattern, -and very large red or sandy whiskers. Whiskers cost nothing, noses -are cheap—I had mine broken once for nothing, though it cost me -several pounds sterling to get it mended again. Their briefless clothes -are very worn and threadbare, their hats napless, their umbrellas—they -always carry umbrellas—gape at the mouth, and distend at the -nozzle. These barristers are second wranglers, fellows of their college, -prizemen; they have pulled stroke-oar, and bibbed at wine parties -given by marquises. They are very poor and briefless now. The chambers -in the Temple are very high up; the carpet, ragged; the laundress -is a tipsy shrew who pilfers; the boot-boy insists upon serving up -small coal broiled with the mutton chops. It is but seldom, but very -seldom, that they can order a steak at the “Rainbow,” or demand a -bottle of Port from the plump waiter the “Cock.” No attorneys -ascend their staircase; no briefs are frayed in being pushed through the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span> -aperture of their letter-boxes; editors are deaf, and the only magazine -which receives their contributions don’t pay. They cannot help asking -themselves sometimes, sadly and querulously, poor fellows, of what -avail is the grand classical education, tedious and expensive; the -slaving for a degree or for honours; the long nights spent beneath the -glare of the reading lamp, learning and re-learning the palimpsests of -law; of what avail are the joints of mutton and bottles of heady wine -consumed at the keeping-term dinners; of what avail the square of -the hypothenuse, and the knowledge (in the best Latin) that strong -men lived before Agamemnon; of what avail the wig (it is getting -unpowdered), the gown (it is growing threadbare), and the big Greek -prize-books with the College arms emblazoned on the covers? Lo! -there is Tom Cadman, who has been an unsuccessful play-actor and an -usher in a cheap boarding-school, writing leaders for a daily paper in -the coffee-room of the “Albion,” or returning thanks for the press at -a champagne dinner; there is Roger Bullyon, of the Home Circuit, -whose only talent is abuse, who knows no more of law than he does of -the conduct to be expected from a gentleman, who will never, if he live -till ninety, be more than a fluent, insolent donkey, and yet there he is, -with more briefs than he can carry, or his clerk compute the fees on. -But console yourselves, oh, ye briefless ones. Though the race be not to -the swift, nor the battle to the strong, your chance is yet in the lucky-bag; -the next dive may bring it forth splendid and triumphant.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“No one is so accursed by fate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No one so utterly desolate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But some heart, though unknown,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Responds unto his own.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Mr. Right, the attorney, is coming post-haste after you, his waistcoat -pockets distended with retainers and refreshers. In that tremendous -lottery of the law, as wise Mr. Thackeray terms it, who shall say that -you may not be next the fortunate wretches who shall win the prize—the -<i>gros lot</i>? To-day is poverty and heart-sickening hope deferred -and the pawn-shop; but to-morrow may make you the thunderer -before the judicial committee of the Privy Council on the great appeal -from Bombay, Parsetjee-Jamsetjee-Ramsetjee Loll <i>versus</i> Boomajee-Krammajee-Howdajee -Chow. It may make you standing counsel to -the Feejee Islands Company, or defender of group 97 of Railway -Bills. So, despair not, briefless man; but pause before you sell that -sheet anchor of hope, of yours, for old iron.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span></p> - -<p>Barristers in large practice drive over Westminster Bridge’s crazy -arches (the rogues have houses at Norwood and Tulse Hill, with conservatories -and pineries) in small phætons or gleaming clarences, with -sleek white horses. They have wives rustling in sheeny silks and -glowing with artificial flowers, who, their lords being deposited in the -temple of Theseus, are borne straight away to Stagg and Mantell’s, or -Waterloo House; or, perchance, to that glorious avenue of Covent -Garden Market, where they price cucumbers at Mrs. Solomon’s, and -bouquets at Mrs. Buck’s. For, note it as a rule, though it may seem a -paradox, people who have kitchen-gardens and hot-houses are always -buying fruit, flowers, and vegetables. The steady-going old Nisi Prius -barristers, in good practice—sedate fogies—with their white neckcloths -twisted like halters round their necks; pompous old fellows, who jingle -keys and sovereigns in their pockets, as, their hands therein, they prop -up the door-jambs of the robing-room, in converse with weasel-faced -attorneys, are borne to Westminster in cabs. Very hard are they upon -the cabman, paying him but the exact fare, and threatening him with -the severest terrors of the law at the slightest attempt at overcharge; -and much are they maledicted by the badged Jehus as they drive -slowly away. These Nisi Prius worthies are great hands at a rubber of -whist, and are as good judges of port-wine as they are of law.</p> - -<p>Whence comes the Chief, the leader, the great advocate of the day, -who carries attorney and solicitor general, chief-justice, chancellor, peer, -written as legibly on his brow as Cain carried the brand?—how he -reaches Westminster Hall, or how he gets away from it, no man can -tell. He will make a four hours’ speech to-day, drive eight witnesses -to the verge of distraction, blight with sarcasm, and sear with denunciation, -a semi-idiotic pig-jobber, the defendant in an action of breach of -promise of marriage, in which the plaintiff is a stay-maker of the mature -age of thirty-seven. What shrieks of laughter will ring through the -court when in burning accents, in which irony is mingled with indignation, -the Chief reads passages from the love-smitten but incautious -pig-jobber’s correspondence, and quotes from his poetical effusions (they -<i>will</i> write poetry, these defendants) such passages as—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“When you tork</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You are like roast pork.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Or,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Say, luvley chine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will you be mine.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">Two hours afterwards, and the Chief will be on the other side of Westminster -Hall, in the Commons’ House of Parliament, pounding away -on the wrongs of a few people in Staffordshire who object to the odour -of some neighbouring gas-works, and, to use an Americanism, “chawing -up” the ministry at a tremendous rate. How is it that about the -same time he manages to dine with the Merchant Cobblers at their -grand old hall on St. Crispin’s Hill; to take the chair at the festival of -the Association for improving the moral condition of Mudlarks; to -make a two hours’ speech at the meeting for the suppression of street -“catch-’em-alive-O’s;” to look in at half-a-dozen west-end clubs; to hear -Bosio—ah! poor Bosio, ah, poor swan, miasma’d to death in the horrid -marshes of Ingria and Carelia—in the last act of the “Traviata;” and -to be seen flitting out of the bar-parlour of Joe Muttonfist’s hostelry -in Mauley Court-yard, Whitechapel, where the whereabouts of the -impending great fight between Dan Bludyer, surnamed the “Mugger,” -and Tim Sloggan, better known as “Copperscull,” for two hundred -pounds a-side, will be imparted to the patrons of the “fancy?” Tom -Stoat, who knows everything and everybody, says he saw the Chief -at the Crystal Palace Flower Show, and it is certain that he (the -Chief) will be at the Queen’s Ball to-night (he has a dinner party this -evening), and that after the opera he will take a chop and kidney at -Evans’s. And after that? What a life! What frame can bear, what -mind endure it! When does he study? when does he read those mammoth -briefs? when does he note those cases, prepare those eloquent -exordia and perorations? Whence comes the minute familiarity with -every detail of the case before him which he seems to possess, the -marvellous knowledge he displays of the birth, parentage, education, -and antecedents of the trembling witnesses whom he cross-examines? -What a career! and see, there is its Hero, shambling into Westminster -Hall, a spare, shrunken, stooping, prematurely-aged man. He has not -had a new wig these ten years, and his silk gown is shabby, almost to -raggedness. He is no doubt arguing some abstruse point of law with -that voluble gentleman, his companion, in the white waistcoat. Let us -approach and listen, for I am Asmodeus and we are eaves-droppers. -Point of law! Upon my word, he is talking about the Chester Cup.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus14" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus14.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TEN O’CLOCK A.M.: INTERIOR OF THE COURT OF QUEEN’S BENCH.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span></p> - -<p>In with ye, then, my merry men all, to the hall of Westminster, for -the Court of Queen’s Bench is sitting. It is not a handsome court; it -is not an imposing court. If I were to say that it was a very mean -and ugly room, quite unworthy to figure as an audience-chamber for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span> -the judges of the land, I don’t think that I should be in error. Where -are the lictors and the fasces? Where the throned daïs on which the -wise men of the Archeopagus should properly sit? The bench looks -but an uncomfortable settle! the floor of the court is a ridiculous little -quadrangle of oak, like a pie-board; the witness-box is so small that -it seems capable of holding nothing but the shooting “Jack” of our -toyshop experience; and the jury-box has a strong family likeness to -one of the defunct Smithfield sheep-pens, where sit the intelligent jury, -who have an invincible propensity, be the weather hot or cold, for -wiping their foreheads with blue cotton pocket handkerchiefs. A weary -martyrdom some of those poor jurymen pass; understanding a great -deal more about the case on which they have to deliver at its commencement -than at its termination; bemused, bewildered, and dazzled -by the rhetorical flourishes and ingenious sophistry of the counsel on -both sides, and utterly nonplussed by the elaborately obscure pleas that -are put in. But the usher has sworn them in that they “shall will -and truly try” the matter before them; and try it they must. To a -man who has, perhaps, a matter of sixty or seventy thousand pounds at -stake on the issue of a trial, the proceedings of most tribunals seem -characterised by strange indifference, and an engaging, though, to the -plaintiff and defendant, a somewhat irritating <i>laisser aller</i>. The attorneys -take snuff with one another, and whisper jokes. The counsel chat -and poke each other in the ribs; the briefless ones, in the high back -rows, scribble caricatures on their blotting-pads, or pretend to pore over -“faggot” briefs, or lounge from the Queen’s Bench into the Exchequer, -and from the Exchequer into the Bail Court, and so on and into the -Common Pleas; the usher nods, and cries, “Silence,” sleepily; the -clerk reads in a droning monotonous voice documents of the most vital -importance, letters that destroy and blast a life-long reputation of -virtue and honour: letters that bring shame on noble women, and -ridicule on distinguished men; vows of affection, slanderous accusations, -outbursts of passion, anonymous denunciations, ebullitions of -love, hatred, revenge. Some one is here, doubtless, to report the case -for to-morrow’s papers, but no active pens seem moving. The Chief has -not assumed his legal harness yet; and the junior counsel employed in -the case are bungling over their preliminaries. The faded moreen curtains; -the shabby royal arms above the judge, with their tarnished -gilding, subdued-looking lion, and cracked unicorn; the ink-stained, -grease-worn desks and forms; the lack-lustre, threadbare auditory, -with woe-be-gone garments and mien, who fill up the hinderpart of the -auditory: though what they can want in the Court of Queen’s Bench -Heaven only knows; the bombazine-clad barristers, in their ill-powdered -wigs—quite fail in impressing you with a sense of anything -like grandeur or dignity. Yet you are in <i>Banco Reginâ</i>. Here our -sovereign lady the Queen is supposed to sit herself in judgment; and -from this court emanates the Great Writ of Right—the Habeas Corpus. -To tell the truth, neither counsel, jury, nor audience seem to know or -to care much about what is going on; but there are three persons who -sit up aloft—not exactly sweet little cherubs, for they are very old, -wrinkled men—who know the case like a book, and considerably better -than many books; who have weighed the <i>pros</i> and <i>cons</i> to the minutest -hair’s breath, to a feather’s turn of the scale, who are awake and alive, -alive O! to all the rhetorical flourishes and ingenious sophistry of the -advocates, and who will tell the jury exactly what the case is made of -in about a tithe of the time that the junior counsel would take in enumerating -wrongs of which the plaintiff complains, or whose commission -the defendant denies. It is an edifying sight to watch the presiding -judge—that shrivelled man in petticoats—with his plain scratch wig -all awry. Now he hugs his arms within his capacious sleeves; now he -crosses his legs; now, yes, now he twiddles his judicial thumbs; now he -nods his august head, allows it to recline over one shoulder, and seems -on the point of falling off to sleep; now he leans wearily, his cheek in -his hand, his elbow on the bench, first on one side, then on the other; -then he rises, shakes his old head, yawns, and, with his hands in his -pockets, surveys the outer bar through gold-rimmed spectacles. He -seems the most bored, the most indifferent spectator there; but only -wait till the chiefs on both sides have concluded their eloquent bamboozling -of the jury; mark my Lord Owlett settle his wig and his -petticoats then, sort and unfold the notes he has been lazily (so it -seemed) scrawling from time to time, and in a piping, quavering voice, -begin to read from them. You marvel at the force, the clarity, the -perspicuity of the grand old man; you stand abashed before the intellect, -clear as crystal, at an age when man’s mind as well as his body -is oft-times but labour and sorrow; you are astonished that so much -vigour, so much shrewdness, so much eloquence, should exist in that -worn and tottering casket. Goodness knows, I am not an optimist, -and give but too much reason to be accused of <i>nil admirari</i> tendencies; -yet I cannot help thinking that if on this earth there exists a body of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span> -men grandly wise, generously eloquent, nobly impartial, and sternly -incorruptible, those men are the judges of England.</p> - -<p>Come away though, now, Don Cleophas; we must go further afield. -The case that is “on” just now is not of sufficient interest to detain -us; though here is an episode sufficiently grotesque. An old lady is -entitled to some damages, or to some verdict, or to some money or -apology, or, at all events, something from somebody. My Lord Owlett -suggests a compromise, and instructs counsel to ask her what she will -take to settle matters.</p> - -<p>“What will you take?” asks the gentleman in the bob-tailed wig -of the old lady.</p> - -<p>Now the old lady is very deaf, and merely shakes her head at the -counsel, informing the jury, in confidence, that she is “very hard o’ -hearin’.”</p> - -<p>“His Lordship wants to know what you will take?” asks the -counsel again; this time bawling as loud as ever he can in the old -lady’s ear.</p> - -<p>“I thank his lordship kindly,” the ancient dame answers stoutly, -“and if it’s no illconwenience to him, <i>I’ll take a little warm ale</i>!”</p> - -<p>And, amid a roar of laughter from the spectators, we quit the -Court of Queen’s Bench.</p> - -<p>Nor must we linger, either, beneath William Rufus’s carved roof-tree, -so ingeniously heightened, and otherwise transmogrified, by Sir -Charles Barry and his satellites. This is a different Westminster Hall -to that which I knew in my childhood, just after the great fire of ’34. -There was no great stained glass window at the end then, no brazen -Gothic candelabra, no golden House of Lords in the corridor beyond, -where the eye is dazzled with the gilding, the frescoes, the scarlet -benches and rich carpets, and where the Lord High Chancellor sits on the -woolsack, like an allegory of Themis in the midst of a blaze of fireworks. -In my time, the keeper of her Majesty’s conscience and the Great Seal sat -in a panelled room, like a dissenting chapel. Let us hasten forth -from the Great Hall, for it is full of memories. I spoke of famous -footsteps on the Mall, St. James’s; how many thousand footsteps—thousands?—millions -rather, have been lost here in fruitless pacing up -and down! Westminster Hall is always cool: well it may be so; the -dust was laid and the air refrigerated centuries since by the tears and -the sighs of ruined suitors. What a wondrous place the old hall is! -what reminiscences it conjures up—they will <i>not</i> be laid in the Red<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> -Sea—of the gorgeous banquets of the Plantagenets, of the trials of -Laud and Strafford, and of Laud and Strafford’s master; of Mr. Jonathan -Wild’s ancestor walking the hall with a straw in his shoe; of -poor little Lady Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley, her husband, -standing their trial here on a velvet-covered platform in the midst of -the hall, for treason to Bloody Mary. Did they ever cut a state -prisoner’s head off in Westminster Hall, I wonder, as they did Mary -Stuart’s in the hall at Fotheringay? The place is large enough.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus15" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus15.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TEN O’CLOCK A.M.: INTERIOR OF THE QUEEN’S BENCH PRISON.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span></p> - -<p class="tb">Once again I stand within the precincts of the Queen’s Bench; but -where is my Lord Owlett, where the bewigged barristers and the jury-box -with the “twelve honest men” within wiping their semperperspiring -foreheads? I am standing in the centre of a vast gravelled -area, bounded on the south side by a brick wall of tremendous height, -and crowned by those curious arrangements of geometrical spikes -known as <i>chevaux de frise</i>. To the north there is a range of ordinary-looking -houses, the numbers of which are painted very conspicuously -in white characters on a black ellipse above the doors, about which, -moreover, there is this peculiarity, that they are always open. If you -peep through the yawning portals, you will see that the staircases are -of stone, and that the roofs of the rooms on the ground-floor are -vaulted. There are no barred windows, no bolts, bars, or grim chains -apparent, though from the back windows of these houses there is a -pleasant prospect of another high wall, equally surmounted with -<i>chevaux de frise</i>. When the spider has got the fly comfortably into his -web, and has satisfied himself that he can’t get out, I daresay that he -does not take the trouble to handcuff him. In the midst of this -gravelled area stands a pump, known as the “Dolphin;” to the right -of this institution, and somewhat in the back-ground, is a great square -building, called the “State House.” The rooms here are double the -size to those in the houses I have alluded to, and are accorded by the -governor of the place as a matter of favour to those inmates of the—well, -the college—who can afford to fill them with a sufficient quantity -of furniture. Close to the State House is a strong iron gateway, through -which the guardians of the college have a strong disinclination to -allow the under-graduates to pass, unless they be furnished with a -certain mysterious document called “a discharge.” The guardians -themselves are ruddy men with very big keys; but they seem on the -very best terms with the gentlemen whose intended exercise outside -the walls they feel compelled (doubtless through solicitude for their -precious health) to debar, and are continually bidding them “good -morning” in the most affable manner; it being also one of their -idiosyncrasies to rub their noses with the handles of the big keys while -going through the salutation. In days not very remote there were -certain succursals, or chapels of ease, to the college, in the shape of -dingy tenements in the borough of Southwark, extending as far as the -Elephant and Castle; and in these tenements, which were called the -“Rules,” such collegians as were in a position to offer a fantastic -guarantee entitled a “Bail Bond,” were permitted to dwell, and -thence they wrote letters to their friends and relations, stating that -the iron was entering into their souls, and that they were languishing—well, -never mind where—in college. These “rules” were abolished -in the early years of her present Majesty’s reign; and at the same time -a stern Secretary of State prohibited the renewal of a notable saturnalia -called “a Mock Election,” of which no less celebrated an artist than -Haydon painted a picture (he was himself a collegian at the time), -which was bought, for considerably more than it was worth, by King -George IV. The saturnalia was fast falling into desuetude by itself; -but the Home Secretary also interfered to put a stop to the somewhat -boisterous conviviality which had reigned among those collegians who -had money, from time immemorial, and which had converted the -Queen’s Bench into a den of the most outrageous and disgraceful dissipation -and revelry. Under the present not very stringent regulations -(considering what a <i>carcere duro</i> is, the other <i>alma mater</i> of Whitecross -Street, to say nothing of the hideous place called Horsemonger -Lane), the collegians are restricted to the consumption of one quart of -beer—which they may have just as strong as ever they like—or one -imperial pint of wine, per diem, at their option; yet it is a very -curious fact, that no collegian who was flush of cash was ever found to -labour under any difficulty in providing sufficient refreshment for his -friends when he gave a wine party in his room. The payment of rent -is unknown in the college; and it is but rarely that the time-honoured -system of “chummage,” or quartering two or mere collegians in one -room, and allowing the richest to pay his companions a stipulated sum -to go out and find quarters elsewhere, is resorted to. As a rule, the -collegian on his arrival, after spending one night in a vaulted apartment -close to the entrance, and which bears a strong resemblance to -the Gothic vault described in “Rookwood”—an apartment known as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span> -the “receiving ward”—has allotted to him, by solemnly-written -ticket, a whitewashed chamber of tolerable size, moderately haunted by -mice, and “passably” infested by fleas. Straightway there starts up, -as it were from the bowels of the earth, a corpulent female rubicund -in countenance, tumbled in garments, and profuse in compliments, -assuring him that he is the very “Himage of the Markis of Scatterbrass, -which his aunt let him out by composing with his creditors,” or -“Capting Spurbox, of the Hoss Guards, as ’ad champagne hevery -mornin’, and went through the court payin’ nothink.” She, for a -small weekly stipend—say, five shillings—agrees to furnish your room; -and in an astonishingly short space of time you find the bare cube -transformed into a sufficiently comfortable bed-room and sitting-room. -For eighteenpence a week extra you may have a double green baize -door with brass nails, like a verdant coffin, and white dimity curtains -to your windows, with real tassels. In the train of the stout tumbled -female, there always follows a gaunt woman of no particular age, with -ropy hair, a battered bonnet, and scanty garments apparently nailed -to her angular form, who expresses, with many curtsies, her desire to -“do for you.” Don’t be alarmed; she simply means that for three or -four shillings a week she will clean your room, boil your kettle, and -bring up the dinner, which has been cooked for you in the common -kitchen of the college. She, too, has an acolyte, a weazened old man -in a smock frock and knee shorts (though I think that he must be -dead or have left college by this time<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>) who for a shilling a week will -make your boots shine like mirrors; who resides here, and has resided -here for many years, because he can’t or won’t pay thirty pounds, and -who is reported to be worth a mint of money. So here the collegian -lives, and makes as merry as he can under adverse circumstances. The -same tender precautions adopted by the authorities of the college to -prevent the unnecessary egress of those in <i>statu pupillari</i>, are enforced -to preserve a due state of morality among them. There is a chapel, as -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>there is an infirmary, within the walls; the lady collegians, of whom -there is always a small number in hold, are kept in jealous seclusion. -Dicing and card-playing are strictly prohibited, and contumacious contravention -of the rules involves the probability of the recalcitrant -student being immured in a <i>locus penitentiæ</i> called the “Strong -Room.” There he is kept for four and twenty hours, <i>without tobacco</i>. -Horrible punishment! This is in the college attached to her -Majesty’s Bench. Pshaw! Why should I beat about the Bench, or the -bush, any longer, or even endorse the quibble adopted by those collegians -who wish to have their letters addressed to them genteelly, -of “No. 1, Belvidere Place?” That which I have been describing is a -debtors’ jail—the Queen’s Prison, in fact.</p> - -<p>And what of the collegians—the prisoners—themselves? It is ten -o’clock in the morning, and they are sauntering about in every variety -of shabby deshabille, smoking pipes after their meagre breakfasts, -walking arm in arm with one another, or with friends who have come -to see them, and whose ingress is permitted from nine a.m. until seven -p.m. None are allowed to enter after that hour; but those visitors -already in are allowed to stop till nine in the evening. Some of the -collegian prisoners, poor fellows, have women and little children with -them, who are very silly and sentimental, in their illogical way; but -you may depend on it that, in nine out of ten of these groups, the -staple theme of conversation is the probability of the captive being -“out next week.” They are always going to be out next week, these -caged birds; but they die sometimes in the Bench, for all that.</p> - -<p>Don’t you think, too, that it would be as graceful as expedient to -draw a veil over these broken-down men? Even the felons in Pentonville -are allowed to wear masks in the exercise-yard. Why should I, -whose sternest, strongest aim it is to draw from Life, and from the life -only, but who wish to pluck the mote from no man’s eye, to cast a -stone at no glass house built on the pattern of mine own, expatiate in -word-pictures upon the dilapidated dandies, the whilom dashing bucks -in dressing-gowns out at elbows, and Turkish caps with tassels, set, -with a woe-begone attempt at jaunty bearing, on one side, the decayed -tradesmen, the uncertificated bankrupts, the cankers of a calm world -and a long peace, that prowl and shuffle through the yards of a -debtors’ prison? Why, every man of the world has acquaintances, if -not friends, there. Why, poor old Jack, who gave the champagne -dinners we were so glad to be invited to, has been in the Bench for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> -months. Yonder broken-winged butterfly, relapsing, quite against -the order of nature, into a state of grubhood again, may have gone -through his Humanities with the best of us, and may say <i>Hodie mihi, -cras tibi</i>. To-day he is in jail; but to-morrow I, you, my brother -the millionaire, may be taken in execution; and who shall say that -we shall have the two pounds twelve wherewith to purchase the <i>habeas -corpus</i>?</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ELEVEN_AM">ELEVEN O’CLOCK A.M.—TROOPING THE GUARD, AND A MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>I have the fortune, or misfortune, to live in a “quiet street,” and am -myself an essentially quiet man, loving to keep myself in the Queen’s -peace, and minding my own business, though devoutly wishing that -people would not mind it for me in quite so irritating a degree. I -sleep soundly when in health, and never question Mrs. Lillicrap’s -mystifying items in her weekly bill, of “mustard, vinegar, and -mending,” or “pepper, postage stamps, and mother-o’-pearl buttons.” -I never grumble at the crying of babies, remembering that a wise and -good doctor once told me that those dear innocents pass the days of -their nonage in a chronic state of stomach-ache and congestion of the -brain, and console myself with that thought. I can even support, -without much murmuring, the jangling of the pupils’ piano at Miss -Besom’s establishment for young ladies, next door. Distance, and a -party-wall, lend enchantment to the sound, and I set no more store by -it than I do by the chirruping of the birds in the town-bred foliage -at the extremity of Buckingham Street, or the puffing and snorting -of the halfpenny steamboats at the “Fox-under-the-Hill.” I am so -quiet, that I can allow the family of a distant blood-relation to reside -in the parlours for twelve months, without troubling myself about -their health; and I never yet rebelled at the perverse orthography of -the washerwoman, who persists in spelling my half-hose thus: “Won -pare sox.” When I die, I hope that they will lay me in a very quiet -church-yard in Kent, that I know, where some one who cared for me -has been mouldering away peacefully these four years, where the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> -clergyman’s blind white pony will browse upon the salad that I am -eating by the roots; where the children will come and have famous -games—their silver voices and pattering feet upon the velvet turf make -out a pleasant noise, I wot; and where they will write “<i>Requiescat in -pace</i>” upon my gravestone; if, indeed, I leave maravedis enough -behind me for Mr. Farley to cut me an inscription withal.</p> - -<p>Yet, quiet as I am, I become at Eleven o’Clock in the Morning on -every day of the week save Sunday a raving, ranting maniac—a -dangerous lunatic, panting with insane desires to do, not only myself -but other people, a mischief, and possessed, less by hallucination than -by rabies. For so sure as the clock of St. Martin’s strikes eleven, so -sure does my quiet street become a pandemonium of discordant sounds. -My teeth are on edge to think of them. The “musicianers,” whose -advent from Clerkenwell and the East-end of London I darkly hinted -in a preceding chapter, begin to penetrate through the vaster thoroughfares, -and make their hated appearance at the head of my street. -First Italian organ-grinder, hirsute, sunburnt, and saucy, who grinds -airs from the “Trovatore” six times over, follows with a selection -from the “Traviata,” repeated half a dozen times, finishes up with the -“Old Hundredth” and the “Postman’s Knock,” and then begins -again. Next, shivering Hindoo, his skin apparently just washed in -walnut juice, with a voluminous turban, dirty white muslin caftan, -worsted stockings and hob-nailed shoes, who, followed by two diminutive -brown imps in similar costume, sings a dismal ditty in the -Hindostanee language, and beats the tom-tom with fiendish monotony. -Next comes a brazen woman in a Scotch cap, to which is fastened a -bunch of rusty black feathers, apparently culled from a mourning -coach past service. She wears a faded tartan kilt, fleshings, short -calico trews, a velveteen jacket, tin buckles in her shoes, and two -patches of red brick-dust on her haggard cheeks, and is supposed to -represent a Scottish highlander. She dances an absurd fling, interpolated -occasionally with a shrill howl to the music of some etiolated bagpipes -screeded by a shabby rogue of the male sex, her companion, -arrayed in similar habiliments. Next come the acrobats—drum, -clarionet, and all. You know what those nuisances are like, without -any extended description on my part. Close on their heels follows the -eloquent beggar, with his numerous destitute but scrupulously clean -family, who has, of course, that morning parted with his last shirt. -Then a lamentable woman with a baby begins to whimper “Old Dog<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span> -Tray.” Then swoop into the street an abominable band of ruffians, -six in number. They are swarthy villains, dressed in the semblance of -Italian goatherds, and are called, I believe, <i>pifferari</i>. They play upon -a kind of bagpipes—a hideous pig-skin-and-walking-stick-looking -affair, and accompany their droning by a succession of short yelps and -a spasmodic pedal movement that would be a near approach to a -sailor’s hornpipe, if it did bear a much closer resemblance to the war-dance -of a wild Indian. Add to these the Jews crying “Clo’!” the -man who sells hearthstones, and the woman who buys rabbit-skins, the -butcher, the baker, and the boys screaming shrill Nigger melodies, and -rattling pieces of slate between their fingers in imitation of the -“bones,” and you will be able to form an idea of the quietude of our -street. From the infliction of the soot-and-grease-bedaubed and -tambourine-and-banjo-equipped Ethiopian serenaders, we are indeed -mercifully spared; but enough remains to turn a respectable thoroughfare -into a saturnalia.</p> - -<p>I can do nothing with these people. I shout, I threaten, I shake -my fist, I objurgate them from my window in indifferent Italian, but to -no avail. They defy, scorn, disregard, make light of me. They are -encouraged in their abominable devices, not merely by the idlers in the -street, the servant-maids gossiping at the doors, the boys with the -baskets, and the nurse children, but by the people at the windows, who -seem to have nothing to do but to look from their casements all day long. -There is an ancient party of the female persuasion opposite my humble -dwelling, who was wont to take intense interest in the composition of -my literary essays. She used to bring her work to the window at first; -but she never did a stitch, and soon allowed that flimsy pretext to fall -through, and devoted herself with unaffected enjoyment to staring at -me. As I am modest and nervous, I felt compelled to put a stop to this -somewhat too persevering scrutiny; but I disdained to adopt the pusillanimous -and self-nose-amputating plan of pulling down the window -blinds. I tried taking her portrait as she sat, like an elderly Jessica, -at the casement, and drew horrifying caricatures of her in red chalk, -holding them up, from time to time, for her inspection; but she rather -seemed to like this last process than otherwise; and I was obliged to -change my tactics. The constant use of a powerful double-barrelled -Solomon’s race-glass of gigantic dimensions was first successful in discomposing -her, and ultimately routed her with great moral slaughter; -and she now only approaches the window in a hurried and furtive<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span> -manner. I daresay she thinks my conduct most unhandsome. She -and the tall man in the long moustaches at number thirteen, all the -pupils at the ladies’ school next door, the two saucy little minxes in -black merino and worked collars at number nine, and that man with the -bald head shaped like a Dutch cheese, in the parlour at number nine, -who is always in his shirt sleeves, drums with his fingers on the window -panes, and grins and makes faces at the passers-by, and whom I conscientiously -believe to be a confirmed idiot, are all in a league against me, -and have an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the musical <i>canaille</i> -below. They cry out “Shame” when I remonstrate with those nuisances: -they shout and jeer at me when I sally forth from the door, and -make rabid rushes at the man with the bagpipes: they inquire derisively -whether I consider myself lord of the creation? I am tempted—desperately -tempted—to avail myself of my rights as a Civis Romanus, -to summon the aid of the police, and to give one of the grinders, howlers, -or droners in charge. Mr. Babbage, the arithmetician, does it; why -should not I? What progress can I make in “Twice Round the Clock” -in the midst of this hideous din? But then I remember, with much -inward trouble, that I have in public committed myself more than once -in favour of street music—that I have laughed at the folly of putting -down bagpipes and barrel-organs by act of Parliament. I remember, -too—I hope in all its force and Truth—a certain axiom, that the few -must always suffer for the enjoyment of the many—that we are not all -sages in decimals and logarithms—or people writing in books and -newspapers—that the sick, the nervous, the fastidious, and the hypochondriacal, -are but drops of water in a huge ocean of hale, hearty, somewhat -thick-skinned and thick-eared humanity, who like the noisy vagabonds -who are my bane and terror in the quiet street, and admire -their distressing performances. Some men cannot endure a gaping pig; -to many persons the odour of all roots of the garlic family is intolerable. -I hate cats. I had an aunt who said that she could not “abide” green -as a colour. Yet we should not be justified, I think, in invoking the -terrors of the legislature against roast pork, onions, cats, and green peas. -Mr. Babbage must pursue his mathematical calculations in a study at -the back of his house, and I must hie me to the Reading-room of the -British Museum, or turn out for a stroll.</p> - -<p>And in this stroll, which, if the weather be fine, almost invariably -leads towards one or other of the parks, I am frequently permitted to -witness the imposing ceremony of “trooping the guard” in the Palace-yard,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span> -St. James’s. Why her Majesty’s Foot Guards should be “trooped” -at eleven o’clock in the morning, and in what precise evolutions the -operation of “trooping” consists, I am unable to state. Eleven o’clock, -too, does not seem always a rigidly adhered-to hour; for, on the -mornings of the days consecrated to our “Isthmian games,” to the -cosmopolitan Derby, and the more aristocratic, but equally attractive -Ascot Cup, the time taken is nine instead of eleven, doubtless for the -convenience of the heavy guardsmen, who, with heavy cigars protruding -from their heavy moustaches, and heavy opera-glasses slung by their -sides, go solemnly down to the races in heavy drags.</p> - -<p>To the uninitiated, “trooping the guard” appears to consist in some -hundred and fifty grenadiers in full uniform, their drums and fifes and -their brass band at their head, marching from the Horse Guards, across -the parade ground, and along the Mall to the Palace-yard, where the -Queen’s colours are stuck into a hole in the centre, where the officer on -guard salutes them, where the other officers chat in the middle of the -quadrangle, and where officers and men, and a motley crowd of spectators, -listen to the enlivening strains of the brass band playing selections -from the popular operas of the day. No complicated manœuvres seem -to be performed; the automaton-like inspection of the “troops” takes -place on the other side of the park; and when the colours are firmly -fixed, and left in charge of a sentry, the “troops” file off again, the -officers repairing to their clubs, and the soldiers to their barracks, while -the brass bandsmen at once subside into private life, and become civilians -of decidedly Cockney tendencies.</p> - -<p>Hungry men are said, sometimes, to lull the raging of their appetites -by sniffing the hot, and, to some noses, fragrant breeze which is emitted -from between the gratings of an eating-house. To some the contemplation -of eel pies, smoking rounds of beef, rumpsteak pies, and pen’orths -of pudding, shining in the glory of dripping, and radiant with raisins, -is almost as satisfying as the absolute possession of those dainties. It is -certain that contented spirits do yet exist, by whom the sight of the -riches and the happiness of others is accepted as a compensation for -the wealth and the felicity which they do not themselves enjoy. It is a -very pleasant mental condition, this—to be able to stare a pastrycook’s -window out of countenance, and partake of, in imagination, the rich -plum-cakes, the raspberry-tarts, and the lobster-patties, without coveting -those dainties; to walk up Regent Street, and wear, mentally, the -“ducks of bonnets,” the Burnouse cloaks and the Llama shawls, which -poverty forbids us to purchase; to walk through the Vernon or -Sheepshanks collections, and hang up the delightful Landseers, Websters, -and Mulreadys in fantastic mind-chambers of our own; to call Hampton -Court and Windsor our palaces, and St. James’s and the Green our -parks; to fancy that the good people who have horses and carriages, -and jewels, and silks, and satins, have but a copyhold interest in them, -and that the fee-simple of all these fine things is in us. Such imaginative -optimists can sit down unmurmuringly to a Barmecide feast; the -“Court Circular” pleases them as much as an invitation to the Queen’s -ball; a criticism on “Lucrezia Borgia” at the opera delights them as -much as an actual stall at Covent Garden; and Mr. Albert Smith’s -Egyptian Hall ascent of Mont Blanc, and his more recent Chinese -entertainment, are to them quite as full of interest and adventure as -a real pilgrimage to Chamouni, a toilsome scramble up the “Grands -Mulets,” a sail in a sampan on the Canton river, or a “fightee -pigeon” with the “Braves” in Hog Lane.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus16" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus16.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ELEVEN O’CLOCK A.M.: TROOPING THE GUARD AT ST. JAMES’S PALACE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span></p> - -<p>The immortal young ladies who have been occupied in their eternal -crochet-work any time since the siege of Troy, and who are called the -Fates, have decided that it is better for me to be Alone. I am condemned -for life to soliloquise. None of the young women with whom -I have (to adopt the term current in domestic service) “kept company,” -would, in the end, have anything to do with me. They were -very punctual in sending me cards—one sent me cake, but that was -long ago—when they were married. One said I squinted, another -that I was ill-tempered, and a third wondered at my impudence. Joan -went off to Australia to join her cousin the digger, who, having done -well at Bendigo, had written home for a wife, as he would for a Deans’ -revolver. Sarah married the linendraper (I am happy to state that he -manifested himself stupid and ferocious, and went, commercially, to the -dogs within six months after marriage); as for Rachel, she positively -fell in love with the tailor who came to measure me for my wedding -suit, and married <i>him</i>. A nursemaid with a perambulator nearly -tripped me up the other day, and sitting in that infantile chariot was -Rachel’s eldest. Even the young lady who sold sardines at Stettin, and -who, while I was waiting three years since for the ice to break up in -the Baltic, undertook to teach me the prettiest German I ever heard in -Deutschland, evinced a decided partiality for a certain baker with a -Vandyke beard, who was a member of the Philharmonic Society of that -town on the Oder, and at length jilted me for a trumpeter in a dragoon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span> -regiment, a burly knave in a striped and fringed uniform, all red and -yellow, like a flamingo. The heartless conduct of the grocer’s daughter -towards me has already been recorded in print. So I am alone. Not -repining, however, but taking pleasure in other people’s children, with -the additional consolation of not having their little frocks and perambulators -to pay for, and passably content to sit on a mile-stone by the -great roadside, and smoke the calumet of peace, watching the wain of -life, with youth on the box and pleasure in the dickey, tear by, till the -dust thrown up by the wheels has whitened my hair, and it shall be -time enough to think of a neat walking funeral for One.</p> - -<p>Now, do you understand why I alluded to the pleasures of imagination -in connection with the contemplation of cook-shops, pictures, and -palaces? Now, do you comprehend how a hopelessly solitary man—if -you put a single grain of philosophic <i>hachisch</i> into that pacific calumet -of his—can derive so much pleasure and contentment from the sight of -other folk’s weddings? I say nothing of courtship, which, on the part -of a third party, argues a certain amount of, perhaps, involuntary eavesdropping -and espionage, but which, when the boys and girls love each -other sincerely, is as delightful a sight as the sorest of eyes, the sorest of -hearts, could desire to witness. What pretty ways they have, those -simple young “lovyers!” what innocent prattlings and rompings, -what charming quarrels and reconciliations! Edward would dance with -Miss Totterdown last night; Clara flirted most shamefully with Wertha -Bjornsjertnjöe, the Scandinavian poet, and Lady Walrus’s last lion. -What confiding billings and cooings! how supremely foolish they are! -and what an abhorrent thing is common-sense in love at all! Wondrously -like ostriches, too, are Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy. They hide -their pretty heads in each other’s bosoms, and fancy they are totally invisible. -They have codes of masonic telegraphy, as legible as Long -Primer to the meanest understanding. I reckon among my friends a -professor of photography in fashionable practice, and marvellous are the -stories he has to tell of the by-play of love that takes place sometimes -in his glass studio. For you see, when, in order to “focus” a young -couple before him, he throws the curtain of the camera over his head, -Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy are apt, in the sweet ignorance of love, to -fancy that the operator can’t see a bit what is going on; so Jenny -arranges Jemmy’s hair, and gives the moustache a twist, and there is a -sly kiss, and a squeeze, and a pressure of the foot or so, and a variety -of harmless endearing blandishments, known to our American cousins<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span> -(who are great adepts at sweet-hearting) under the generic name of -“conoodling,” and all of which are faithfully transmitted through -the lens, and neatly displayed in an inverted position on the field of -the camera, to the edification of the discreet operator. Oh, you -enamoured young men and women, you don’t know that the eyes of -domestic Europe are always fixed on you, and that your pretty -simperings and whimperings form a drama which becomes the source -of infinite amusement and delight to the philosophic bystanders. And -is it not much better so, and that our lads and lasses should court in the -simple, kindly Anglo-Saxon way, than that we should adopt foreign -manners, and marry our wives, as in France, starched and prim from -the convent or the boarding-school? Away with your morose, sulky, -icy, ceremonious courtships. The Shepherd in Virgil, the moralist -said, grew acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. -But he did not dwell there in sulky solitude, I will be bound. The -rock was most probably the Rocher de Cancale, where he sat and ate -<i>dinde truffée</i>, and quaffed Chambertin, with his Psyche, in a new bonnet -and cream-coloured gloves, by his side. And they went to the play -afterwards, and had merry times of it, you may be sure.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus17" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus17.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ELEVEN O’CLOCK A.M.: A WEDDING AT ST. JAMES’S CHURCH, PICCADILLY.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span></p> - -<p>I am very fond of weddings, and, to abandon for a moment the -egotism and engrossing self-sufficiency which so delightfully characterise -my sex, I fancy that the sight of the solemnisation of matrimony -has equal charms for that better part of creation, whose special vocation -it is, under all circumstances, to be married and happy, but who are -oft-times, alas! as hopelessly celibate as the Trappist. One can scarcely -go to a wedding without seeing some of these brave knights-errant, -these <i>preux chevalières</i> of womanhood, these uncloistered nuns, these -hermits in a vale of wax lights and artificial flowers, clustering in the -galleries, or furtively ensconced in pews near the altar. They are very -liberal to the pew-openers, these kind old maids, and are always ready -with smelling-bottles if there be any fainting going on. They take -their part in the crying with praiseworthy perseverance, and echo the -responses in heartrending sobs; they press close to the bride as she -comes down the aisle on the arm of her spouse, and eye her approvingly -and the bridesmaids criticisingly; then go home, the big Church -Service tucked beneath their mantles—go home to the solitary mutton -chop and bleak shining hearth, with the cut paper pattern grinning -through the bars like a skeleton. There are some cynics who irreverently -call old maids “prancers,” and others who, with positive -brutality, accuse them of leading monkeys in a place which I would -much rather not hear of, far less mention. They are, to be sure, somewhat -stiff and starched, have uncomfortable prejudices against even the -moderate use of mild cigars, and persist in keeping hideous little dogs -to snap at your ankles; but how often would the contemptuous term -“old maid,” were its reality known, mean heroic self-sacrifice and self-denial—patience, -fortitude, unrepining resignation? No man, who -is not a Caliban or Miserrimus, need remain, his life long, a bachelor. -The Siamese twins married; the living skeleton was crossed in love, -but afterwards consoled himself with a corpulent widow; the hunch-backed -Scarron found a beautiful woman to love and nurse him; and -General Tom Thumb turned benedict the other day. But how many -women—young, fair, and accomplished, pure and good and wise—are -doomed irrevocably to solitude and celibacy! Every man knows such -premature old maids; sees among a family of blooming girls one who -already wears the stigmata of old maidenhood. It chills the blood to -see these hopeless cases, to see the women resign themselves to their fate -with a sad meek smile—to come back, year after year, and find them -still meek, smiling, but sad, confirmed old maids. It is ill for me, who -dwell in quite a Crystal Palace of a glass house, to throw so much as a -grain of sand at the windows opposite, but I cannot refrain from sermonising -my fellows on their self-conceited bachelorhood. What dullards -were those writers in the “Times” newspaper about marriage -and three hundred a year! Did Adam and Eve have three halfpence -a year when they married? Has the world grown smaller? Are there -no Australias, Americas, Indies? Are there no such things as marrying -on a pound a week in a top garret, and ending in a mansion in -Belgrave Square? no such things as toil, energy, perseverance? husband -and wife cheering one another on, and in wealth at last pleasantly -talking of the old times, the struggles and difficulties? We hear a -great deal now-a-days about people’s “missions.” The proper mission -of men is to marry, and of women to bear children; and those who are -deterred from marriage in their degree (for we ought neither to expect -nor to desire Squire B. to wed Pamela every day) by the hypocritical -cant about “society” and “keeping up appearances,” had much better -send society to the dogs and appearances to the devil, and have nothing -more to do with such miserable sophistries.</p> - -<p>This diatribe, which I sincerely hope will increase the sale of -wedding-rings in the goldsmiths’ shops forty-fold, brings me naturally<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span> -to the subject of the second cartoon, by which the ingenious artist who -transcribes my inky men and women into flesh and blood, has chosen to -illustrate the hour of eleven o’clock in the morning. Here we are at a -fashionable wedding at St. James’s Church, Piccadilly.</p> - -<p>If I had the tongue or pen of Mr. Penguin, the urbane and aristocratic -correspondent of the “Morning Post,” I should give you quite a -vivid, and at the same time a refined, description of that edifying spectacle—a -marriage in high life. How eloquent, and, by turn, pathetic -and humorous, I could be on the bevy of youthful bridesmaids—all in -white tulle over pink glacé silk, all in bonnets trimmed with white -roses, and with bouquets of camelias and lilies of the valley! How I -could expatiate, likewise, on the appearance of the beauteous and high-born -bride, her Honiton lace veil, her innumerable flounces; and her -noble parents, and the gallant and distinguished bridegroom, in fawn-coloured -inexpressibles and a cream-coloured face; and his “best man,” -the burly colonel of the Fazimanagghur Irregulars; and the crowd of -distinguished personages who alight from their carriages at the little -wicket in Piccadilly, and pass along the great area amid the cheers of -the little boys! They are all so noble and distinguished, that one -clergyman can’t perform the ceremony, and extra parsons are provided -like extra oil-lamps on a gala night at Cremorne. The register becomes -an autograph-book of noble and illustrious signatures; the vestry-room -has sweet odours of Jocky Club and Frangipani lingering about it for -hours afterwards; the pew-opener picks up white satin favours tied -with silver twist. A white rose, broken short off at the stem, lies -unregarded on the altar-steps; and just within the rails are some -orange-blossoms from the bride’s coronal. For they fall and die, the -blossoms, as well as the brown October leaves. Spring has its death as -well as autumn: a death followed often by no summer, but by cold and -cruel winter. The blossoms fall and die, and the paths by the hawthorn -hedges are strewn with their bright corses. The blossoms droop -and die: the little children die, and the green velvet of the cemetery is -dotted with tiny grave-stones.</p> - -<p>See, the bridal procession comes into garish Piccadilly, and, amid -fresh cheers and the pealing of the joy-bells, steps into its carriages.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Happy, happy, happy pair!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">None but the brave,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">None but the brave,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">None but the brave, deserve the fair.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">So sings Mr. John Dryden, whilom poet laureate. Let us hope that -the brides of St. James’s are all as fair as the bridegrooms are brave, -and that they all commence a career of happiness by that momentous -plunge into the waters of matrimony at eleven o’clock in the morning. -With which sincere aspiration, I will clap an extinguisher on the -Hymeneal torch, which I have temporarily lighted, and so to read the -births, marriages, and deaths in the “Times.”</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="NOON">NOON.—THE JUSTICE-ROOM AT THE MANSION-HOUSE, AND THE “BAY TREE.”</h2> - -</div> - -<p>The red-whiskered, quick-tempered gentleman, who carried the shiny -leather bag and the bundle of sticks—umbrella and fishing-rods tied -together like the fasces of a Roman lictor—and who wore a cloak gracefully -over his forty-shilling suit of heather tweed, “thoroughly well -shrunk,” the gentleman who, at Morley’s Hotel, Trafalgar Square, and -at twenty minutes before twelve, engaged a Hansom cabman, No. 9,009, -and bade him drive “like anything” (but he said like something -which I decline to mention) to the London Bridge Terminus of the -South-Eastern Railway, has thrust his bundle of sticks, &c., through -the little trap-door in the cabriolet’s roof, and has savagely ordered the -driver to stop, or to drive him to Jericho, or to the deuce. But the -high-towering Jehu of 9,009 cannot drive to the dominions of the -deuce, even as did “Ben,” that famous Jarvey of the olden time, immortalised -in the ballad of “Tamaroo.” He can drive neither to the -right nor to the left, nor backwards nor forwards; for he is hemmed -in, and blocked up, and jammed together in the middle of the Poultry; -and just as a sarcastic saloon omnibus driver behind jeeringly bids him -“keep moving,” accompanying the behest by the aggressive taunt of -“gardner;” and just as the charioteer of the mail-cart in front affectionately -recommends him not to be in a hurry, lest he should injure -his precious health, Twelve o’Clock is proclaimed by the clock of St. -Mildred’s, Poultry; and cabman 9,009 has lost his promised extra -shilling for extra speed, and the red-whiskered gentleman has lost his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span> -temper, and the train into the bargain, and there will be weeping at -Tunbridge Wells this afternoon, where a young lady, with long ringlets -and a white muslin jacket, will mourn for her Theodore, and will not -be comforted—till the next train arrives.</p> - -<p>It is noon, high noon, in the City of London. Why did not the incautious -cabman drive down Cannon Street, the broad and unimpeded? -or why did he not seek his destination by crossing Waterloo Bridge—he -of the red whiskers would have paid the toll cheerfully—and tread -the mazes of Union Street, Borough? Perhaps he was an inexperienced -cabman, new to its dædalian ways. Perhaps he was a prejudiced and -conservative cabman, adhering to the old Poultry as the corporation -adhered to the old Smithfield, and detesting newfangled thoroughfares. -Perhaps he was a misanthropic cabman, whose chief delight was to -make travellers lose trains. If such be the case, he has his wicked will -now; and the red-whiskered gentleman, sulkily alighting, scowlingly -pays him his legal fare, leaves him grumbling, and retires himself -moodily muttering, conscious that he has nearly two hours before him -through which to kick his heels, and not knowing what on earth to do -with himself. Be of good cheer, red-whiskered, shipwrecked one. -Comfort ye, for I am here, the wanderer of the clock-face, and the -dweller on the threshold of time. I will show you brave sights, and -make your heart dance with mulligatawny soup and Amontillado sherry -at the “Cock,” in Threadneedle Street. You are not hungry yet? -Well, we will stroll into the Stereoscopic Company’s magnificent emporium -in Cheapside, and mock our seven senses with the delusions of -that delightful toy, which, if Sir David Brewster didn’t invent, he -should properly have invented. You care not for the arts? Shall we -cross by King Street, and have a stare at Guildhall, with Gog and -Magog, and the monument that commemorates Beckford’s stern resolve -to “stand no nonsense” from George III.? Or we may stroll into -Garraway’s, and mark how the sale of sandwiches and sherry-cobblers -may be combined with the transfer of land and the vending of freehold -houses. There is the auction-mart, too, if you have a fancy to see -Simony sales by auction, and advowsons of the cures of immortal souls -knocked down for so many pounds sterling. There is the rotunda of -the Bank of England, with its many-slamming, zinc-plated doors, and -its steps and flags worn away by the boots of the ever-busy stockbrokers. -We will not go into the Dividend Office, for I have no dividends to -draw now, and the sight makes me sad; neither will we enter the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span> -Great Hall where William the Third’s statue is (prettily noticed by -Mr. Addison in a full-bottom-wigged allegory in the “Spectator”), and -where the urbane clerks are for ever honouring the claims upon the old -lady in Threadneedle Street; giving “notes for gold” and “gold for -notes.” We will not enter, because we don’t want any change just -now; and one of the Brothers Forrester, who is sure to be hovering -about the court-yard, in conversation with yonder cock-hatted beadle -in blazing scarlet, might think we came for gold or notes that didn’t -belong to us. The Bullion Office we cannot visit, for we haven’t an -order of admission; and there is one place especially, O rubicund-headed -traveller, where we will be exceedingly cautious not to show -our faces. That place is the interior of the Stock Exchange. I am -not a “lame duck;” I never, to my knowledge, “waddled;” I never -attempted to pry into the secrets of the “bulls” and the “bears;” my -knowledge of stockjobbing is confined to the fact that I once became -possessed, I scarcely know how, only that I paid for them, of fifty -shares in a phantom gold-mining company; that I sold them, half an -hour afterwards, at half-a-crown premium to a mysterious man in a -dark room, up a court off Cornhill, who to every human being who entered -his lair handed a long list covered with cabalistic figures, with the -remark that it was “very warm,” and which—the list, not the weather—I -believe contained the current prices of stocks, though it might -have related to the market value of elephants, for aught I knew; that -I pocketed the fifty half-crowns, and that I have never heard anything -of the phantom company from that day to this. Vice-Chancellor -somebody will be down upon me some day as a “contributory,” I -suppose, and I shall be delivered over to the tormentors; but, meanwhile, -I will tell you why I won’t take my red-whiskered friend into -the Stock Exchange—why I should like mine enemy to go there as -soon as convenient. I have heard such horrible stories of the tortures -inflicted by the members of the “House,” upon unwary strangers who -have strayed within its precincts; of the savage cries of “two hundred -and one,” the shrieks, the yells, the whistles, and the groans; the -dancing round the captive, the covering him with flour, the treading on -his miserable toes, the buffeting of his wretched ears, the upripping of -his unhappy coat-collar, and chalking of his luckless back; the “bonneting,” -the “ballooning,” and the generally fiendish cruelties which -intruders upon the speculators for the “account” have to suffer, that -I would sooner venture without permission behind the scenes of a well-regulated<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span> -theatre, or attempt to beard the lion in his den, or walk up, -unannounced, into the sanctum of the editor of the “Times” newspaper, -or pay a morning call in a Choctaw wigwam, myself being a Pawnee or -a Sioux, at war with my friends the C.’s, or pass through Portugal -Street, Cursitor Street, or Chancery Lane, at any hour of the day or -night, if my affairs should happen to embarrassed, than trust myself -to the tender mercies of the members of the Stock Exchange. They -are the staunchest and most consistent of Conservatives.</p> - -<p>Whither, then, away! Why, bless me, how stupid I have been! -The Mansion House police-court opens at noon precisely, and we may -enjoy, gratuitously, the sight of the Corporation Cadi, the Cæsar of -Charlotte Row, the great Lord Mayor of London himself, dispensing -justice to all comers. By the way, I wish his Lordship would render -unto us one little modicum of justice, combined with equity, by ridding -us of the intolerable swarm of ragged, disgusting-looking juvenile -beggars, who beset pedestrians at the doors of Messrs. Smith, Payne, -and Smith’s banking-house, and of the scarcely less intolerable importunities -of the omnibus cads who are wrestling for old ladies and -young children on the very threshold of the Mansion House. Here -we are at the Municipal Hall of London’s Ædiles; architecture grand -but somewhat gloomily florid, like George the First, say, in a passion, -his bulbous Hanoverian jaw flaming from his perturbed perriwig—glowering, -half-angry, half-frightened, as he tears his embroidered coat-tail -from the grasp of Lady Nithsdale, and obstinately refuses pardon -for that poor Jacobite lord yonder cooped up in the gloomy Tower -under sentence of death, but who, thanks to his wife’s all-womanly -devotion (well did Madame de Lavallete imitate her bright example to -save <i>her</i> chivalrous husband just one hundred years afterwards), will -cheat the headsman’s axe and George’s Hanoverian malice yet. The -attic storey was evidently clapped on as an afterthought, and threatens -to tumble over on to the portico; the whole is profusely ornamented, -like everything civic, and reminds me generally of a freestone model of -the Lord Mayor’s state carriage, squared in the Corinthian manner, and -the gilt gingerbread well covered with smoke and soot.</p> - -<p>Not by that door in the basement will we enter, which is flanked -by announcements relative to charity dinners, and youths who have -absconded from their friends. Within that eternally-gaslit office is the -place of business of the Eumenides of finance, whose grim duty it is -to pursue forgers and bank-robbers through the world. There dwell,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span> -for thief-catching purposes, the terrible Forresters. Not by that door -in Charlotte Row. Don’t you see the handsome carriage, with the fat, -brown, gaudily harnessed horses drawn up before it, and the superb -powdered footmen sucking their bamboo-cane tops? How odd it is -that you can always tell the difference between a footman appertaining -to one of the high civic dignitaries, and the flunkey of a real patrician. -The liveries, on a drawing-room day, for instance, are equally rich, -equally extravagant in decoration, and absurd in fashion; both -servitors sport equally large cocked-hats, equally long canes, and have -an equal amount of powder dredged over their heads; yet, on either -flunkey’s brow are the stigmata “East” or “West” of Temple Bar, -stamped as legibly as the brand of Cain. The door in Charlotte Row -is his Lordship’s private entrance; and her Ladyship is very probably -at this moment preparing to go out for an airing. Not by that other -lateral door in George Street—that low-browed, forbidding-looking -portal. That is the prisoners’ entrance. There the grim cellular van -brings and waits for the victims of Themis. There it sets down and -takes up, if not the chief actors, at least those who are most deeply -interested in the moving drama which is every day enacted in the -police tribunal of the Mansion House.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus18" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus18.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">NOON: THE JUSTICE-ROOM AT THE MANSION HOUSE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span></p> - -<p>So—up this broad, roomy flight of granite steps on the Lombard -Street side of the Mansion House frontage—on through a double -barrier of swing-doors at the corresponding angle beneath the portico; -and in less time than it would take to accept a bill (an operation in -comparison to the celerity of which a pig’s whisper is an age, and the -pronunciation of the mystic words “Jack Robinson” a life-long task), -we are within the sanctuary of municipal justice. The first thing that -strikes the stranger, accustomed as he may be to frequenting other -police-courts, is the unwonted courtesy of the officials, and their -gorgeous costumes. About Bow Street, Lambeth, Westminster, there -hangs an indefinable but pervading miasma of meanness and squalor. -A settled mildew seems to infest the walls and ceiling, a chronic dust -to mantle the furniture and flooring. No one connected with the -court, officially or otherwise, with the single exception of the Magistrate—who, -always smug and clean shaven, and in a checked morning -neckerchief and a high shirt collar, looks like a judicial edition of -Major Pendennis—seems to have had his clothes brushed for a week -or his boots blacked for a month. A dreadful jail-bird odour ascends -from the ill-favoured auditory. The policemen are shabby in attire -and morose in manner. The buckles of their belts are dull, and their -buttons tarnished. They hustle you hither and thither, and order -you in or out in a manner most distressing to your nerves; and the -gloomy usher thrusts a ragged Testament into your hands, and swears -you as though he were swearing <i>at</i> you. But at the Mansion House -there is a bluff, easy-going, turtle-and-venison-fed politeness generally -manifest. You enter and you emerge from the court without being -elbowed or shoved. The city policemen are more substantial-looking, -well to do, and better natured men than their metropolitan <i>confrères</i>. -Some of them have the appearance of small freeholders, and others, I -am sure, have snug sums in the savings’ banks. As to the jailers, -ushers, court-keepers, warrant-officers, marshalmen, and other multifarious -hangers-on of civic justice, they are mostly men of mature age, -rosy, bald and white-headed sages, who remember Sir John Key and -the great Sir Claudius Hunter, and mind the time when Mr. Alderman -Wood rode on horseback at the side of Queen Caroline’s hearse, on the -occasion of the passage of that injured lady’s funeral procession through -the city. As to their attire, it is positively—if I may be allowed the -use of a barbarism—“splendiferous.” Stout broadcloth, bright gilt -buttons, with elaborate chasings of civic heraldry, scarlet collars, with -deep gold lace: none of your paltry blue blanketing, horn buttons, and -worsted gloves. No doubt, when in full uniform, the “splendiferous” -functionaries all wear cocked-hats. Maybe, feathers. There is one -weazened creature who flits in and out of a side door, to the left of -the Lord Mayor’s chair, and is perpetually handing up printed forms to -his Lordship or to the chief clerk. I don’t know exactly what he is, -whether the Lord Mayor’s butler, or the sword-bearer’s uncle, or the -city-marshal’s grandfather, or the water-bailiff’s son-in-law; but the -front of his coat is profusely ornamented with bars of gold braid, like -pokers from Crœsus’s kitchen, and on his shoulders he wears a pair of -state epaulettes, the which give him somewhat of a military appearance, -and, contrasting with his civilian spectacles and white neckcloth, -would produce an effect positively sublime if it were not irresistibly -ludicrous. The home of Beadledom—its last home, I am afraid, after -the exhaustion of the Windsor uniform, and that of the Elder -Brethren of the Trinity House—will be at the Mansion House.</p> - -<p>The architect who has contrived the new Justice-room in this stately -edifice must have been, if not a man of genius, at least one of original -conceptions. The old police-court—sacred to the manes of Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span> -Hobler—was simply a Cave of Trophonius and Den of Despair. -There was no light in it—“only darkness visible;” and when you -peered at the misty prisoner in the dock, you were always reminded -of Captain Macheath in his cell, when the inhuman Mr. Lockit -wouldn’t allow him any more candles, and threatened to clap on extra -fetters in default of an immediate supply on the captain’s part of -“garnish” or jail fees. But the Palladio who has arisen to remedy -these defects has contrived to introduce a considerable amount of light—only -it labours under the trifling disadvantage of being all in the -wrong place. The Lord Mayor, with his back to the window, sits in a -reflected light, just as does Wilkie’s portrait of the Duke of York; -and the fine effect of the city arms carved on his chair, to say nothing -of his Lordship’s gold chain and furred robe, is thereby totally lost. -Mr. Goodman and the clerks, who are all very gentlemanly-looking -individuals, much given to all-round collars and parting their hair -down the middle, fill up commitments and make out summonses in a -puzzling haze of chiaro oscuro; the reporters are compelled to pore -over their “Times” with their noses close to the paper (for no one -ever saw a police reporter do anything save read the newspaper, though -we are sure to read a verbatim narrative of the case in which we are -interested next day), and the general audience is lost in a Cimmerian -gloom. To make amends, there is plenty of light on the ceiling, and -some liberal patches of it on the walls, and a generous distribution of -its bounty on the bald heads, golden epaulettes, and scarlet collars of -the marshalmen. We can’t have everything we want, not even in the -way of Light. Let us be thankful that there is some of it about, even -as it behoves us to be exceedingly grateful that there is such a vast -amount of wealth in the world. Other people possess it—only, we don’t.</p> - -<p>This, then, is the justice-room of the Mansion House. I have not -given you, <i>seriatim</i>, a George Robins’s catalogue of its contents, but by -bits and bits I trust you will have been enabled to form a tolerably -correct mind-picture of its contents. My Lord Mayor in the chair, -clerks before him, reporters to the right, marshalmen left; spectacled -official at the desk in the left-hand corner—the summoning officer, I -think—audience not too tightly packed into a neat pen at the -back of the court; dock in the centre, and the prisoner—Ah! the -prisoner!</p> - -<p>Did it never strike you, in a criminal court of assize—“the judges -all ranged, a terrible show,” the solemn clerk of the arraigns gazing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span> -over the indictment, the spectators almost breathless with excited -curiosity, rays from opera glasses refracted from the gallery, Regent -Street bonnets and artificial flowers relieving the dark mass of the menfolk’s -dress, the bar bewigged, the eloquent advocate for the defence -thundering forth genteel philippics against the eloquent counsel for the -prosecution—did it never strike you, I say, what a terrible fuss and -bother, and calling on Jupiter to lift a wagon wheel out of a rut, what -a waste of words, and show, and ceremonial all this became, when its -object, the End to all these imposing means, was one miserable creature -in the dock, with spikes, and rue, and rosemary before him, accused of -having purloined a quart pot? As for the prisoner who is this day -arraigned before the mighty Lord Mayor—but first stand on tiptoe. -There he is, God help him and us all! a miserable, weazened, ragged, -unkempt child, whose head, the police reports will tell us to-morrow, -“scarcely reached to the railing of the dock.” He has been caught -picking pockets. It is not his first, his second, his third offence. He -is an incorrigible thief. The great Lord Mayor tells him so with a -shake of his fine head of hair. He must go to jail. To jail with him. -He has been there before. It is the only home he ever had. It is his -preparatory school for the hulks. The jail nursing-mother to thousands, -and not so stony-hearted a step-mother as the streets. He is nobody’s -child, nobody save the police knows anything about him, he lives -nowhere; but in the eyes of the law he is somebody. He is a figure -in a tabular statement, a neat item to finish a column in a report, -withal. He is somebody to Colonel Jebb and Mr. Capper of the -Home Office, and, in the end, the Ordinary of Newgate, the sheriffs, -and, especially, somebody to <span class="smcap">Calcraft</span>. He is somebody to whip, -somebody to put to the crank, and into “punishment jackets,” and to -“deprive of his bed and gas,” and gag, and drench with water, and -choke with salt, and otherwise torture <i>à la mode de</i> Birmingham -(Austin’s improved method), somebody to build castellated jails for, -somebody to transport, somebody to hang.</p> - -<p>There are reformatories, you say, for such as these. Yes, those admirable -institutions do exist; but do you know, O easily-satisfied optimist! -that police magistrates every day deplore that reformatories, niggardly -subsidised by a State grudging in every thing but jails, and gyves, and -gibbets, are nine tenths of them full, and can receive no more inmates, -even though recommended to them by “the proper authorities?” But -the streets are fuller still of strayed lambs, and though wolves devour<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span> -them by the score each day, the tainted flock of lost ones still increases -and increases.</p> - -<p>I must tell you, that before the “case of wipes,” as an irreverent -bystander called the <i>procès</i> of the pickpocket, was gone into (a good-for-nothing -rascal that <i>filou</i>, deservedly punished, of course), what are -called the night charges were disposed of. As I shall have something -to say of the manners and customs of these night charges at another -hour in the morning and in another place, I will content myself with -informing you now, that a blue bonnet and black silk velvet mantle, -charged with being drunk and disorderly in Cheapside the night before, -were set at liberty without pecuniary mulct, it being her, or their, first -offence; but a white hat with a black band, surmounting a rough coat, -cord trousers, and Balbriggan boots, who had fought four omnibus conductors, -broken eighteen panes of glass, demolished sundry waiters, and -seriously damaged the beadle of the Royal Exchange (off duty, and -enjoying the <i>dulce deripere in loco</i> in the shape of cold whiskey-and-water -in a shady tavern somewhere up a court of the Poultry)—all in -consequence of their (or his) refusal to pay for a bottle of soda-water, -was fined in heavy sums—the aggregate cost of his whistle being about -six pounds. The white hat was very penitent, and looked (the face -under it likewise) very haggard and tired, and, in addition to his, or its, -or their penalty, munificently contributed half a sovereign to the poor -box. My Lord Mayor was severe but paternal, and hoped with benignant -austerity that he might never see the white hat there again; in which -hope, and on his part, I daresay the white hat most cordially joined.</p> - -<p>I never could make out what they are always doing with paupers at -the Mansion House. I never pay his Lordship a visit without finding -a bevy of the poor things pottering about in a corner under the care of -some workhouse official, and being ultimately called up to be exorcised -or excommunicated, or, at all events, to have something done to them, -under the New Poor Law Act. This morning there are at least a -dozen of them, forlorn, decrepit, shame-faced, little old men, cowering -and shivering, although the day is warm enough, in their uncomfortable-looking -gray suits. Pauper females seem to be at a discount at -the Mansion House, save when, brazen-faced, blear-eyed, and dishevelled, -they are dragged in droves to the bar to be committed to Holloway -prison, for a month’s hard labour, for shivering innumerable panes of -glass, throwing cataracts of gruel about, and expressing an earnest -desire to lacerate with sharp cutlery the abdominal economy of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span> -master of the City of London Union. Of incarnations of male impecuniosity, -there is a lamentable plenty and to spare.</p> - -<p>The pickpocket is succeeded by a distinguished burglar, well known -in political—I beg pardon, in police—circles. There is no absolute -charge of felony against him at present, and the only cause for his -appearance to-day is his having been unfortunate enough to fall in with -an acquaintance, who knew him by sight, in the shape of a city police-constable, -who forthwith took him into custody for roaming about with -intent to commit a felony. My Lord having heard a brief biographical -sketch of his career, and being satisfied that he is a “man of mark” in -a felonious point of view, sends him to Holloway for three months, -which, considering that the fellow has committed, this time, at least, no -absolute crime, seems, at the first blush, something very like a gross -perversion of justice, and an unwarrantable interference with the liberty -of the subject. When subsequently, however, I gather that a few inconsiderable -trifles, such as a “jemmy,” a bunch of skeleton keys, a -“knuckle duster,” and a piece of wax candle, all articles sufficiently -indicative of the housebreaker’s stock-in-trade, have been found in his -possession, I cease to quarrel with the decision, and confess that my -burglarious friend’s incarceration, if not in strict accordance with law, -is based on very sound principles of equity. After the housebreaker, -there are two beggar women and a troop of ragged children—twenty-one -days; and a most pitiable sight to see and hear—beggar woman, -children, and sentence, and their state of life into which it has <i>not</i> -pleased Heaven to call, but cruel and perverse man to send them. Then -an Irish tailor who has had a slight dispute with his wife the night -before, and has corporeally chastised her with a hot goose—a tailor’s -goose, be it understood—to the extent of all but fracturing her skull. -He is sent for four months’ hard labour, which is rather a pleasurable -thing to hear, although I should derive infinitely more delectation from -the sentence if it included a sound thrashing.</p> - -<p>But, holloa! we have been here three-quarters of an hour, and it is -close upon one o’clock. Come, my red-whiskered friend, I think we -have had enough of the Mansion House Justice-room. Let us make a -bow to his Lordship, and evaporate. You want some lunch, you say—you -are hungry now; well, let us go and lunch accordingly; but where?</p> - -<p>I mentioned Garraway’s and the Cock. There is the Anti-Gallican, -famous for soups. There is Birch’s, with real turtle, fit for Olympian -deities to regale upon. There is Joe’s in Finch Lane, if you feel disposed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span> -for chop or steak, sausage or bacon, and like to see it cooked -yourself on a Brobdignagian gridiron. No: you want something simple, -something immediate; well, then, let us go to the Bay Tree.</p> - -<p>I never knew exactly the name of the street in which the Bay Tree -is situated. I know you go down a narrow lane, and that you will -suddenly come upon it, as a jack-in-the-box suddenly comes upon you. -The first time I was taken there was by a friend, who, just prior to -our arrival at the house of refection, took me up a dark entry, showed -me a small court-yard, and, at its extremity, a handsome-looking stone -building. <i>That is Rothschild’s</i>, he said, and I thought I should have -fainted. I am not a City man, and when I come eastward, it is merely -(of course) to make a morning call on my friend the Governor of the -Bank of England, or the Secretary for India for the time being, at his -palace in Leadenhall Street. When I travel in foreign parts, my -brougham (of course) takes me to the London Bridge Terminus. -Authors never come into the City now-a-days, save to visit their bankers -or their publishers. Authors ride blood horses, dine with dukes, and -earn ten thousand a year. Such, at least, is the amount of their income -surmised to be by the Commissioners of Income Tax, when they assess -them arbitrarily and at such a figure their opposing creditors declare -their revenue should be estimated, when they petition the Court for the -Relief of Insolvent Debtors.</p> - -<p>I never sat down in the Bay Tree; though its premises include, I -believe, vast apartments for smoking and punch-bibbing purposes. I -never looked one of the innumerable assistants (are they barmen or -barmaids?) in the face. I was always in such a hurry. All I know -of the establishment is, that it is a capital place to lunch at, and that -everything is very excellent and very cheap; and that the thousands -who resort to it between eleven and three, always seem to be in as -desperate a hurry as I am.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ONE_PM">ONE P.M.—DOCK LONDON AND DINING LONDON.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>This modest series of papers brought me, at the time of their composition, -into great trouble, which was very nearly resulting in my -complete discomfiture. Perhaps the severest of my trials was having -to write the book at all, possessing, as is my misfortune, of course, a -constitutional disinclination for the avocation to which I have devoted -myself (as a <i>gagne pain</i>, or bread-winning mean). I didn’t so much -mind the ladies and gentlemen, who, since the commencement of the -periodical in which these articles were originally published—ladies and -gentlemen personally quite unknown to me—who overwhelmed me with -correspondence; some denouncing, others upbraiding, many ridiculing, -and a few—a very few—eulogising yours to command. I didn’t so -much object to the attentions of those professional begging-letter -writers, who are good enough to include authors in their list of possible -contributaries, and who were profuse lately in passionate appeals (in -bold, clerkly hands) for pecuniary assistance; for though, like Bardolph, -I have nothing, and cannot even coin my nose for guineas, or my blood -for drachmas, it is not the less flattering to a man’s minor vanities to -receive a begging letter. I can imagine an old pauper out for a holiday, -coming home to the workhouse, quite elated at having been accosted in -the street by a mendicant, and asked for a halfpenny. I could bear -with equanimity—nay, could afford to smile at—the people who went -about saying things (who <i>are</i> the people who go about saying things, I -wonder!) who ingeniously circulated reports that I was dead; that I -wrote these papers under a pseudonym; that they were plagiarisms from -some others written twenty years ago; and that I never wrote them at -all. I disregarded such insinuations serenely; for who among us is -exempt from such bald chat? The very stupidest have their Boswells—the -very meanest have those to envy them, as well as the Great and -Learned! There are people at this very moment, who are going -about saying that Jones has pawned his plate, that the bailiffs are -in Thompson’s country house, that Robinson has written himself -out, that Brown has run away with Jenkins’s wife, that Muggins<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span> -has taken to brandy-and-water, that Simpkins murdered Eliza Grimwood, -that Larkins cut Thistlewood’s head off, and that Podgers was -tried at the Old Bailey, in the year ’thirty-five, for an attempt to set -the Thames on fire. But I was infinitely harassed while the clock was -ticking periodically—the efforts I had to make to keep it from -running down altogether!—by the great plague of “Suggesters.” -From the metropolitan and suburban postal districts, from all parts of -the United Kingdom—the United Kingdom, pshaw! from the Continent -generally, and from across the broad Atlantic (fortunately, the return -mail from Australia was not yet due)—suggestions poured in as thickly -as letters of congratulation on one who has just inherited a vast fortune. -If there had been five hundred in lieu of four-and-twenty hours in -“Twice Round the Clock,” the Great Suggestions I received had stomach -for them all. The Suggesters would take no denial: I was bound -under terrific penalties to adopt, endorse, carry out, their hints,—else -would they play the dickens with me. I <i>must</i> have a sing-song meeting -for nine p.m.; the committee of a burial club at ten; the dissecting-room -of an hospital at eleven; a postal receiving-house, a lawyer’s -office, a rag, bones, and bottle shop, the tollgate of Waterloo Bridge, -and the interior of a Hammersmith ’bus, at some hour or other of the -day or night. The Suggestions were oral as well as written. Strange -men darted up on me from by-streets, caught at my button with -trembling fingers, told me in husky tones of their vast metropolitan -experience, and impressed on me the necessity of a graphic tableau of -Joe Perks, the sporting barber’s, at one o’clock in the morning. Low-browed -merchants popped from shady shell-fish shops, and, pointing to -huge lobsters, asked where they could send the crustaceous delicacies with -their compliments, and how excellent a thing it would be to give a view -of the aristocracy supping at Whelks’s celebrated oyster and kippered -salmon warehouse after the play. And, finally, a shy acquaintance of -mine, with a face like an over-ripe Stilton cheese, and remotely connected -with the Corporation of London—he may be, for aught I know, a ticket-porter -in Doctors’ Commons, or a hanger-on to the water bailiff—favoured -me with an occult inuendo that a word-picture of the Court of -Common Council will be the very thing for four p.m., fluttering before -my dazzled eyes a phantom ticket for the Guildhall banquet. In vain -I endeavoured to convince these respectable Suggesters, that the papers -in question were not commenced without a definite plan of action; that -such plan, sketched forth years since, duly weighed, adjusted, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span> -settled, after mature study and deliberation, not only so far as I am concerned, -but by “parties” deeply learned in the mysteries of London -Life, and versed in the recondite secret of pleasing the public taste, had -at length been put into operation, and was no more capable of alteration -than were the laws of the Medes and Persians. But all to no purpose -did I make these representations. The Suggesters wouldn’t be convinced; -their letters continued to flow in. They found out my address -at last (they have lost it now, ha, ha!), and knocked my door down; -bringing me peremptory letters of introduction from people I didn’t -know, or didn’t care five farthings about, or else introducing themselves -boldly, in the “Bottle Imp” manner, with an implied “You must learn -to love me;” they nosed me in the lobby, and saw me dancing in the -hall, and my only refuge at last was to go away. Yes; the pulsations -of time had to beat behind the dial of a clock in the rural districts; and -these lines were written among the hay and the ripening corn, laughing -a bitter laugh to think that the postman was toiling up the quiet street -in London with piles of additional suggestions, and that the Suggesters -themselves were waiting for me in my usual haunts, in the fond expectation -of a button to hold, or an ear to gloze suggestions within.</p> - -<p>I tried the sea-shore; but found London-super-Mare sweltering, -stewing, broiling, frying, fizzing, panting, in the sun—like Marseilles, -minus the evil odours—to such an extent, and so utterly destitute of -shade, that I was compelled to leave it. The paint was blistering on -the bright green doors; the shingly pavement seemed to cry out “Come -and grill steaks on me!” the pitch oozed from the seams of the fishing-boats; -the surf hissed as it came to kiss the pebbles on the beach; the -dial on the pier-head blazed with concentric rays; the chains of the -suspension bridge were red hot; the camera obscura glared white in -the sunshine; the turf on the Steyne was brown and parched, like a -forgotten oasis in a desert; the leaves on the trees in the pavilion -gardens glittered and chinked in the summer breeze, like new bright -guineas; the fly-horses hung their heads, their poor tongues protruding, -their limbs flaccid, and their scanty tails almost powerless to flap away -the swarms of flies, which alone were riotous and active of living creation, -inebriating themselves with saccharine suction in the grocers’ -shops, and noisily buzzing their scanmag in private parlours; the flymen -dozed on their boxes; the pushers of invalid perambulators slumbered -peacefully beneath the hoods of their own Bath chairs; the ladies in -the round hats found it too hot to promenade the cliff, and lolled instead<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span> -at verandahed windows, arrayed in the most ravishing of muslin morning -wrappers, and conversed languidly with exquisites, whose moustaches -were dank with moisture, and who had scarcely energy enough to yawn. -The captivating amazons abandoned for the day their plumed hats, -their coquettish gauntlets, their wash-leather sub-fusk garments with -the straps and patent-leather boots, and deferred their cavalcades on the -skittish mares till the cool of the evening; the showy dragoon officers -confined themselves, of their own free will, to the mess-room of their -barracks on the Lewes road, where they sipped sangaree, smoked -fragrancias, read “Bell’s Life,” and made bets on every imaginable -topic. The hair of the little Skye terriers no longer curled, but hung -supine in wiry hanks; the little children made piteous appeals to their -parents and guardians to be permitted to run about without anything -on; the two clerks at the branch bank, who are sleepy enough in the -coldest weather, nodded at each other over the ledgers which had no -entries in them. The only sound that disturbed the drowsy stillness of -the streets was the popping of ginger-beer corks; and the very fleas in -the lodging-houses lost all their agility and vivacity. No longer did -they playfully leap—no longer archly gyrate; they crawled and crept, -like their low relatives the bugs, and were caught and crushed without -affording the slightest opportunity for sport. It was mortally hot at -London-super-Mare, and I left it. Then I tried that English paradise -of the west, Clifton; but woe is me! the Downs were so delightful; the -prospect so exquisitely lovely; the Avon winding hundreds of feet -beneath me, like a silver skein, yet bearing big three-masted ships on -its bosom; the rocks and underwood so full of matter for pleasant, lazy -cogitation, that I felt the only exertion of which I was capable, to be -writing sonnets on the Avon and its sedgy banks, or making lame -attempts at pre-Raphaelite sketches in water-colours; or thinking -about doing either, which amounts to pretty nearly the same thing. -So I came away from Clifton too, and hung out my sign <span class="smcap">Here</span>. (It is -<span class="smcap">There</span> now: swallows have come and gone, snows have gathered and -melted, babies prattle now who were unborn and unthought of then.) -Ye shall not know where Here was situated, oh, ye incorrigible Suggesters. -No more particular indices of its whereabouts will I give, -even to the general public, than that close to my study was a dry -skittle-ground, where every day—the hotter the better—I exercised -myself with the wooden “cheese” against the seven and a-half pins -which were all that the dry skittle-ground could furnish forth towards<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span> -the ordinary nine; that over-against this gymnastic course was an -<i>étable</i>, a “shippon,” as they call it in the north, where seven cows -gravely ruminated; and that, at the end of a yard crowded with -agricultural implements which old Pyne alone could draw, there was a -Stye, from which, looking over its palings,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“All start, like boys who, unaware,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ranging the woods to find a hare,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Come to the mouth of some dark lair:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where, growling low, a fierce old bear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lies amid bones and blood.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Not that any fierce or ancient member of the ursine tribe resided -therein; but that it was the residence of a horrific-looking old sow, a -dreadful creature, that farrowed unheard-of families of pigs, that lay -on her broadside starboard the live-long day, winking her cruel eye, -and grunting with a persistent sullenness. The chief swineherd proudly -declared her to be “the viciousest beast as ever was,” and hinted darkly -that she had killed a Man. The chief swineherd and I were friends. -He was my “putter-up” at skittles, and did me the honour to report -among the neighbouring peasantry, that “barrin’ the gent as cum here -last autumn, and was off his head” (insane, I presume); I was “the -very wust hand at knock-’em-downs he ever see.” It is something to -be popular in the rural districts; and yet I was not three miles distant -from the Regent Circus.</p> - -<p class="tb">My eyes are once again turned to the clock face. It is One o’Clock -in the Afternoon, and I must think of London. Come back, ye memories: -open Sesame, ye secret chambers of the brain, and let me transport -myself away from the dry skittle-ground, the seven grave cows -and the vicious sow, to plunge once more into the toil and trouble of -the seething, eddying Mistress City of the world.</p> - -<p>There are so many things going on at one o’clock in the day; the -steam of life is by that time so thoroughly “up,” that I am embarrassed -somewhat to know which scenes would be the best to select from the -plethora of tableaux I find among my stereoscopic slides. One o’clock -is the great time for making business appointments. You meet your -lawyer at one; you walk down to the office of the newspaper you may -happen to write for, and settle the subject of your leading article, at -one. One o’clock is a capital hour to step round to your stockbroker,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span> -in Pope’s Head Alley, Cornhill, and do a little business in stocks or -shares. At one o’clock the Prime Minister, or his colleagues, have -resignation enough to listen (with tolerable patience) to some half -dozen deputations who come to harangue them about nothing in particular; -at one o’clock obliging noblemen take the chair at public -meetings at the Freemasons’, or the London Tavern. At one o’clock—from -one to two rather—the aristocracy indulge in the sumptuous -meal known as “lunch.” At one o’clock that vast, yet to thousands -unknown and unrecked of city, which I may call Dock London, is in -full activity after some twenty minutes’ suspension while the workmen -take <i>their</i> lunch.</p> - -<p>The ingenious and persevering artist who constructed that grand -model of Liverpool, which we all remember in the Exhibition of 1851, -and which is now in the Derby Museum of the city of the Liver, did -very wisely in making the Docks the most prominent feature in his -model, and treating the thoroughfares of the town merely as secondary -adjuncts. For the Docks are in reality Liverpool, even as the poet has -said that love is of man’s life a part, but woman’s whole existence. -Our interest in the Queen of the Mersey commences at Birkenhead, and -ends at Bramley Moore Dock, on the other side. I say Bramley Moore -Dock, because that was the last constructed when I was in Liverpool. -Some dozens more may have been built since I was there. Docks are -like jealousy, and grow continually by what they feed on. We can ill -afford to surrender so noble a public building as St. George’s Hall, so -thronged and interesting a thoroughfare as Dale Street; yet it must -be confessed that the attention of the visitor to Liverpool is concentrated -and absorbed by the unrivalled and magnificent docks. So he -who visits Venice, ardent lover of art and architecture as he may -be, gives on his first sojourn but a cursory glance at the churches and -palaces; he is fascinated and engrossed by the canals and the gondolas. -So the stranger in Petersburg and Moscow has at first but scant attention -to bestow on the superb monuments, the picturesque costumes; his -senses are riveted upon the golden domes of Tzaaks and the Kremlin. -Liverpool is one huge dock; and from the landing-stage to West -Derby island, everything is of the docks and docky. The only wonder -seems to be that the ships do not sail up the streets, and discharge -their cargoes at the doors of the merchants’ counting-houses. But in -London, in the suburbs, in the West-end, in the heart of the city oft-times, -what do we know or care about the docks? There are scores<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span> -of members of the Stock Exchange, I will be bound, who never entered -the dock gates, and those few who have paid a visit to Dock London, -may merely have gone there with a tasting-order for wine. When we -consider that in certain aristocratic circles it is reckoned to be rather a -breach of etiquette than otherwise to know anything about the manners -and customs of the dwellers on the other side of Temple Bar, even as -the by-gone snob-cynic of fashion and literature professed entire ignorance -as to the locality of Russell Square, and wanted to know “where -you changed horses” in a journey to Bloomsbury—unless, indeed, my -Lord Duke or my Lady Marchioness happen to be a partner in a great -brewing and banking firm, under which circumstances he or she may -roll down in her chariot to the city to glance over the quarterly balance -sheet of profit; when we consider that this world of a town has cities -upon cities within its bosom, that in the course of a long life may never -be visited; when we think of Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Somers -Town, Clerkenwell, Hoxton, Hackney, Stepney, Bow, Rotherhithe, -Horsleydown—places of which the great and titled may read every -day in a newspaper, and ask, languidly, where they are,—we need -no longer be surprised if the Docks are ignored by thousands, and -if old men die every day who have never beheld their marvels.</p> - -<p>Coming home from abroad often, with an intelligent foreigner, I -persuade him to renounce the Calais route and the South-Eastern -Railway, and even to abjure the expeditious run from Newhaven. I -decoy him on board one of the General Steam Navigation vessels at -Boulogne, and when his agonies of sea-sickness have, in the course of -half a dozen hours or so, subsided—when we have passed Margate, -Gravesend, Erith, Woolwich, Greenwich even—when I have got him -past the Isle of Dogs, and we are bearing swiftly on our way towards -the Pool—I clap my intelligent foreigner on the back, and cry, “Now -look around (Eugène or Alphonse, as the case may be); now look around, -and see the glory of England. Not in huge armies, bristling with -bayonets, and followed by monstrous guns; not in granite forts, -grinning from the waters like ghoules from graves; not in lines of -circumvallation, miles and miles in extent; not in earthworks, counter-scarps, -bastions, ravelins, mamelons, casemates, and gunpowder magazines—shall -be found our pride and our strength. Behold them, O -intelligent person of foreign extraction! in yonder forest of masts, in -the flags of every nation that fly from those tapering spars on the -ships, in the great argosies of commerce that from every port in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span> -world have congregated to do honour to the monarch of marts, London, -and pour out the riches of the universe at her proud feet.” After this -flourishing exordium—the sense of which you may have heard on a -former occasion, for it forms part of my peroration on the grandeur of -England, and, if my friends and acquaintances are to be believed, I -bore them terribly with it sometimes—I enter into some rapid details -concerning the tonnage and import dues of the port of London; and -then permit the intelligent foreigner to dive down below again to his -berth. Sometimes the foreign fellow turns out to be a cynic, and -declares that he cannot see the forest of masts for the fog, if it be -winter—for the smoke, if it be summer.</p> - -<p>But the docks of London—by which, let me be perfectly understood, -(I do not, by any means, intend to confine myself to the -London Docks) I speak of Dock London in its entirety: of the -London and St. Katherine’s, of the East and West India, and the -Victoria Docks—what huge reservoirs are they of wealth, and energy, -and industry! See those bonding warehouses, apoplectic with the -produce of three worlds, congested with bales of tobacco and barrels -of spices; with serons of cochineal, and dusky, vapid-smelling chests -of opium from Turkey or India; with casks of palm-oil, and packages -of vile chemicals, ill-smelling oxides and alkalis, dug from the bowels -of mountains thousands of miles away, and which, ere long, will be -transformed into glowing pigments and exquisite perfumes; with shapeless -masses of india rubber, looking inconceivably dirty and nasty, yet -from which shall come delicate little cubes with which ladies shall -eraze faulty pencil marks from their landscape copies after Rout and -Harding—india rubber that shall be spread over our coats and moulded -into shoes, yea, and drawn out in elastic ductility, to form little -filaments in pink silk ligatures—I dare not mention their English -appellation, but in Italian they are called “<i>legaccie</i>”—which shall -encircle the bases of the femurs of the fairest creatures in creation; -with bags of rice and pepper, with ingots of chocolate and nuggets -and nibs of cocoa, and sacks of roasted chicory. The great hide -warehouses, where are packed the skins of South American cattle, of -which the horns, being left on the hides, distil anything but pleasant -odours, and which lie, prone to each other, thirsting for the tan-pit. -See the sugar warehouses, dripping, perspiring, crystallising with -sugar in casks, and bags, and boxes.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> How many million cups of tea -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span>will be sweetened with these cases when the sugar is refined! how -many tomesful of gossiping scandal will be talked to the relish of -those saccharine dainties! what stores of barley-sugar temples and -Chantilly baskets for the rich, of brandyballs and hardbake for the -poor, will come from those coarse canvas bags, those stained and sticky -casks! And the huge tea warehouses, where the other element of -scandal, the flowery Pekoe or the family Souchong, slumbers in -tinfoiled chests. And the coffee warehouses, redolent of bags of Mocha -and Mountain, Texan and Barbadian berries. And the multitudinous, -almost uncataloguable, mass of other produce: shellac, sulphur, gum-benzoin, -ardebs of beans and pulse from Egypt, yokes of copper from -Asia Minor; sponge, gum-arabic, silk and muslin from Smyrna; flour -from the United States; hides, hams, hemp, rags, and especially -tallow in teeming casks, from Russia and the Baltic provinces; -mountains of timber from Canada and Sweden; fruit, Florence oil, -tinder, raw cotton (though the vast majority of that staple goes to -Liverpool), indigo, saffron, magnesia, leeches, basket-work, and wash-leather! -The ships vomit these on the dock quays, and the warehouses -swallow them up again like ogres. But there is in one dock, -the London, an underground store, that is the Aaron’s rod of dock -warehouses, and devours all the rest. For there, in a vast succession -of vaults, roofed with cobwebs many years old, are stored in pipes and -hogsheads the wines that thirsty London—thirsty England, Ireland, -and Scotland—must needs drink. What throats they have, these -consumers! what oceans of good liquor their Garagantuan appetites -demand! Strange stories have been told about these docks, and the -thirsty souls who visit them with tasting-orders; how the brawny -coopers stride about with candles in cleft sticks, and, piercing casks -with gimlets, pour out the rich contents, upon the sawdust that covers -the floor, like water; how cases of champagne are treated as of as little -account as though they were cases of small beer; how plates of cheese-crumbs -are handed round to amateurs that they may chasten their -palates and keep them in good tone of taste; how the coopers are well -nigh infallible in detecting who are the tasters that visit these “wine -vaults” with a genuine intention of buying, and who the epicureans, -whose only object in visiting the London Docks is to drink, gratuitously -on the premises, as much good wine as they can conveniently carry. -Strange, very strange stories, too, are told of the occasional inconvenience -into which the “convenient carriage” degenerates; of respectable -fathers of families appearing in the open street, after they have -run the tether of the tasting-order, staggering and dishevelled, and -with bloodshot eyes, their cravats twisted round to the backs of their -necks like bagwigs, and incoherently declaring that cheese always -disagreed with them. I am candidly of opinion, however, that the -majority of these legends are apocryphal, or, in the rare cases when -they have a foundation in fact, belong to the history of the past, and -that commercial sobriety, in the highest order, is the rule in the wine -vaults of the London Docks.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus19" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus19.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ONE O’CLOCK P.M.: DOCK-LABOURERS RETURNING TO WORK.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span></p> - -<p>But the Ships! Who shall describe those white-sailed camels? who -shall tell in graphic words of the fantastic interlacing of their masts -and rigging, of the pitchy burliness of their bulging sides; of the -hives of human ants who in barges and lighters surround them, or -swarm about their cargo-cumbered decks? Strange sight to see, these -mariners from every quarter of the globe; of every variety of stature -and complexion, from the swarthy Malay to the almost albino Finn; -in every various phase of picturesque costume, from the Suliote of the -fruitship, in his camise and capote, to the Yankee foremast-man in his -red shirt, tarry trousers, and case-knife hung by a strand of lanyards -to his girdle. But not alone of the maritime genus are the crowds -who throng the docks. There are lightermen, stovedores, bargees, and -“lumpers;” there are passengers flocking to their narrow berths on -board emigrant ships; there are entering and wharfingers’ clerks travelling -about in ambulatory counting-houses mounted on wheels; there are -land rats and water rats, ay, and some that may be called pirates of -the long-shore, and over whom it behoves the dock policemen and the -dock watchmen to exercise a somewhat rigid supervision—for they will -pick and steal, these piratical ne’er-do-weels, any trifle, unconsidered -or not, that comes handy to their knavish digits; and as they emerge -from the dock-gates, it is considered by no means a breach of etiquette -for an official to satisfy himself, by a personal inspection of their -garments, that they don’t happen to have concealed about them, of -course by accident, such waifs and strays as a bottle of Jamaica rum, -a lump of gutta percha, a roll of sheet copper, or a bundle of -Havannah cigars.</p> - -<p>But a clanging bell proclaims the hour of one, and the dock-labourers, -from Tower Hill to the far-off Isle of Dogs, are summoned -back to their toil. Goodness and their own deplenished pockets only -know how they have been lunching, or on what coarse viands they have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span> -fed since noon. Many have not fed at all; for, of the motley herd of -dock-labourers, hundreds, especially in the London Docks—where no -recommendation save strength is needed, and they are taken on their -good behaviour from day to day—are of the Irish way of thinking; and, -wonderfully economical, provident, self-denying are those much maligned -Hibernians when they are earning money. They are only spendthrifts -and indolent when they have nothing. They will content themselves -with a fragment of hard, dry bread, and the bibulous solace of the -nearest pump, and go home cheerfully at dusk to the unsavoury den—be -it in Whitechapel or in Bloomsbury or in far-off Kensington, for they -prefer strangely to live at the farthest possible distance from their place -of daily toil—where their ragged little robins of children dwell like so -many little pigs under a bed. And there they will partake of a mess of -potatoes, with one solitary red herring smashed up therein, to “give it a -relish.” They will half starve themselves, and go as naked as the -police will permit them to go; but they will be very liberal to the -priest, and will scrape money together to bring their aged and infirm -parents over from the “ould country.” That is folly and superstition, -people will say. Of course, what people say must be right.</p> - -<p>Some dock-labourers lunch on too much beer and too little bread; -for they are held in thraldom by certain unrighteous publicans, who -still pursue, with great contentment and delectation to themselves, but -to the defrauding, ruin, and misery of their customers, the atrocious -trade, now well nigh rooted from the manufacturing and mining -districts, known as the “tommy-shop” system. I think I need -scarcely explain what this system is, for, under its twin denomination -of “truck,” it has already formed a subject for Parliamentary inquiry. -Let it suffice to say, that the chief feature in the amiable system consists -in giving the labourer a fallacious and delusive credit to the amount of -his weekly wages, and supplying him with victuals and drink (chiefly -the latter) at an enormous rate of profit. The labourer is paid by his -foreman in tickets instead of cash, and invariably finds himself at the -end of the week victimised, or, to use a more expressive, though not so -genteel a term, diddled, to a heart-rending extent. Dock-labourers who -are in regular gangs and regularly employed, are the greatest sufferers -by this unjust mode of payment. As to the casual toilers who crowd -about the gates at early morning in the hope of being engaged for -a working day, they are paid half a crown, and are free to squander or -to hoard the thirty pence as they list. That industrious and peaceable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span> -body of men, the coalwhippers, groaned for a long period under the iniquities -of the truck system; they are now protected by a special Act -of Parliament, renewed from time to time; but the dock-labourers yet -eat their bread leavened by a sense of injustice. There are none to help -them; for they have no organisation, and very few friends. It is perfectly -true that the dock-companies have nothing whatsoever to do with -the social servitude under which their labourers groan; and that it is -private speculators who work the system for their own aggrandisement; -but the result to the labourer is the same. I don’t think it matters to -Quashie, the negro slave, when he is beaten, whether the cowhide be -wielded by Mr. Simon Legree, the planter, or by Quimbo, the black -driver.</p> - -<p>Look at these labourers, and wonder. For it is matter for astonishment -to know that among these meanly-clad, frequently ragged men, -coarse, dirty, and repulsive in aspect, there are very many who have -been tenderly bred and nurtured; who have been, save the mark, -gentlemen! who have received University educations and borne the -Queen’s commission. And here also are the draff and husks of foreign -immigration; Polish, German, and Italian exiles. They have come to -this—down to this—up to this, if you choose; come to the old, old level, -as old as Gardener Adam’s time, of earning the daily bread by the sweat -of the brow. It were better so than to starve; better so than to steal.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus20" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus20.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ONE O’CLOCK P.M.: DINING ROOMS IN BUCKLERSBURY.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span></p> - -<p>What time the dock-labourers have finished lunch, another very -meritorious class of human ants begin their prandial repasts. With -just one thought at the vast number of merchants’, brokers’, shipping-agents’, -warehousemen’s, wholesale dealers’ counting-houses that exist -in London city, you will be able to form an idea of the legions of clerks, -juniors and seniors, who, invariably early-breakfasting men, must get -seriously hungry at one p.m. Some I know are too proud to dine at -this patriarchal hour. They dine, after office hours, at Simpson’s, at the -Albion, at the London, or, save us, at the Wellington. They go even -further west, and patronise Feetum’s, or the Scotch Stores in Regent -Street, merely skating out, as it were, for a few minutes at noon, for a -snack at that Bay Tree to which I have already alluded. Many, and -they are the married clerks, bring neat parcels with them, containing -sandwiches or bread-and-cheese, consuming those refreshments in the -counting-house. In the very great houses, it is not considered etiquette -to dine during office-hours, save on foreign-post nights. As to the -extremely junior clerks, or office-boys, as they are irreverently termed, -they eat whatever they can get, and whenever they can get it, very frequently -getting nothing at all. But there are yet hundreds upon -hundreds of clerks who consume an orthodox dinner of meat, vegetables, -and cheese—and on high days and holidays pudding—at one p.m. -Their numbers are sufficient to cram almost to suffocation the eating-houses -of Cheapside, the Poultry, Mark Lane, Cornhill, and especially -Bucklersbury. Of late years there has been an attempt to change the -eating-houses of Cheapside into pseudo “restaurants.” Seductive -announcements, brilliantly emblazoned, and showily framed and glazed, -have been hung up, relating to “turtle” and “venison;” salmon, with -wide waddling mouths, have gasped in the windows; and insinuating -mural inscriptions have hinted at the existence of “Private dining-rooms -for ladies.” Now, whatever can ladies—though I have the -authority of Mr. Charles Dibdin and my own lips for declaring that -there are fine ones in the city—want to come and dine in Cheapside for? -At these restaurants they give you things with French names, charge -you a stated sum for attendance, provide the pale ale in silver tankards, -and take care of your hat and coat; but I like them not—neither, I -believe, do my friends, the one-o’clock-dining clerks. Either let me go -to Birch’s or the Anti-Gallican, or let me take my modest cut of roast -and boiled, my “one o’ taters,” my “cheese and sallary,” at an eating-house -in Bucklersbury—such a one as my <i>alter ego</i>, Mr. M’Connell, has -here presented for your edification. And his pictured morals must eke -out my written apophthegms—for this sheet is full.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="TWO_PM">TWO P.M.—FROM REGENT STREET TO HIGH CHANGE.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>I breathe again. I see before me, broad-spread, a vista of gentility. -I have done, for many hours to come, with shabby subjects. No more -dams I’ll make for fish—in Billingsgate; nor scrape trencher, nor wash -dish, at second-rate eating-houses; nor fetch firing at requiring in -Covent Garden or the Docks. Prospero must get a new man, for -Caliban has got a new master: Fashion, in Regent Street.</p> - -<p>I declare that when I approach this solemnly-genteel theme, my<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> -frame dilates, my eyes kindle, my heart dances. I experience an -intense desire to array myself in purple and fine linen, knee shorts, -lace ruffles, pink silk stockings, diamond buckles, and a silver-hilted -sword; to have my hair powdered, and my jewelled <i>tabatière</i> filled -with scented rappee; to sit with my feet on a Turkey carpet, before a -table inlaid with <i>marqueterie</i>, wax candles in silver sconces (the candles -all green, with fillagree <i>bobeches</i>) on either side; and then—while my -Dulcinea in a hoop petticoat, a point lace apron, red-heeled <i>mules</i>, a -<i>toupet</i> and a <i>mouche</i> on the left cheek, her feathered fan, painted by -Fragonard on the finest chicken-skin, lying beside her—plays the -minuet from “Ariadne” in an adjoining and gilded <i>salon</i>, decorated -in the <i>Style Pompadour</i>, on the harpsichord; and on pink scented -note-paper, with a diamond pointed pen and violet ink—the golden -pounce-box at my elbow—then under these circumstances and with -these luxurious appliances around me, I think I could manage to devote -myself to the task of inditing matter concerning Regent Street in the -smoothest dythrambics. This is rather a violent contrast to the dry -skittle-ground, the cows, and the depraved sow which inspired me in -the last chapter; but only take my subject into consideration: only -permit me to inoculate you with one drop of the ethereal nectar which -should be quaffed by every writer who would look upon Regent Street -from a proper point of view. Ladies and gentlemen moving in the -polite circles have—but that is long ago—accused me of being of -Bohemia, and to that manner born; of writing a great deal too much -about the Virginian weed in its manufactured state, and the fermented -infusion of malt and hops; publishers have refused to purchase my -novels because they contained too many descriptions of “low life;” -because my heroes and heroines were too frequently ragged and forlorn -creatures, who didn’t go into “society,” who didn’t go to church, who -were never seen at the May meetings in Exeter Hall, but who went to -public-houses and penny-gaffs instead. Oh, lords and ladies! oh, -brilliant butterflies of society! oh, respectable people of every degree! -whose ear coarse language wounds, but who would have, believe me, to -undergo much coarser deeds from the ragged ones you despise, were it -not for the humble efforts of us poor pen-and-ink missionaries; O salt -ones of the earth! think that you are but hundreds among the millions -of the tattered and torn, who have never studied the “Handbook to -Etiquette,” nor heard of Burke and Debrett, and who would eat peas -with their knives if they had any peas to eat—Heaven help them!<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span> -They are around and about you always. I have no greed of gain in -advocating their cause, for I am unknown to them, and am of your -middle class, and am as liable to be stoned by the ragged ones for -having a better coat than they any day. But woe be to you, -respectables, if you shut your ears to their plaints and your eyes to their -condition. For the stones may fly thick and fast some day; there -may be none to help you, and it may be too late to cry for help.</p> - -<p>I have heard Regent Street compared to the Boulevard des Italiens, -to Unter-den-Linden at Berlin, to Broadway at New York, to the -Montagne de la Cour at Brussels, to the Corso de’ Servi at Milan, to -the Toledo at Naples, to George Street, Sydney, and to the Nevskoi -Perspective at Petersburg. In my opinion, Regent Street is an amalgamation -of all these streets, and surpasses them all. Their elements -are strained, filtered, refined, condensed, sublimated, to make up one -glorious thoroughfare. Add to this, the unique and almost indescribable -<i>cachet</i> which the presence of English aristocracy lends to every place it -chooses for its frequentation, and the result is Regent Street. Of the -many cities I have wandered into and about, there is but one possessing -a street that can challenge comparison with—and that, I must confess, -well nigh equals—the street that Nash, prince of architects, built for -the fourth George. At a right angle from the pleasant waters of the -river Liffey, there runs a street, wide in dimensions, magnificent in the -proportions of its edifices, splendid in its temples and its palaces, though -many of the latter, alas! are converted now into hotels, now into linen-drapers’ -shops; but on a golden summer’s afternoon, when you see, -speeding towards the column of Nelson in the distance, the glittering -equipages of the rich and noble, who yet have their dwelling in Eblana; -the clattering orderlies, on sleek-groomed horses, and with burnished -accoutrements, spurring from the Castle towards the Post Office—and, -beauty of beauties, the side walks on either hand converted into parterres -of living flowers, the grand and glorious Irish girls, with their bright -raiment and brighter eyes; you will acknowledge that Regent Street -has a rival, that beyond St. George’s Channel is a street that the -triumphal procession of a Zenobia or a Semiramis might pass down, -and that the queen of streets is Sackville Street, Dublin.</p> - -<p>Do you know, youth of the present generation—for I fondly hope -that I have good store of juveniles among my readers—that Regent -Street has its antiquities, its archæologia, its topographical curiosities? -Mr. Peter Cunningham knows them all by heart; I am not about to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> -steal from the “Handbook of London” of our modern Camden; but -will just tell you, in my desultory way, that, in the days when the -Mews reared their head, an unsightly mass of brick buildings, in the -area which is now Trafalgar Square; when Carlton House loomed -at the eastern end of Pall Mall, instead of the ugly post erected as a -monument of national gratitude to the Royal Duke who paid nobody; -when the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, was hemmed in by a cobweb -mass of dirty tenements, and Hungerford Market was yet a mass of -fishy hovels ungraced by Hungerford Hall and Mr. Gatti’s penny-ice -shop; when the old “Courier” newspaper office stood (over-against Mr. -Cross’s older Exeter ’Change, with the elephant’s tusks displayed outside, -the shops beneath, and Chunee and the wild beasts all alive and -roaring upstairs) in the space that now forms the approach to Waterloo -Bridge; and when the vicinity of Temple Bar was blocked up by a -brick-and-mortar <i>cloaca</i>, since swept away to form what is now termed -Picket Place. Are you at all aware, neophytes in topographical lore, -that the area of Regent Street the superb, was occupied by mean and -shambling tenth-rate avenues, among which the chiefest was a large, -dirty highway, called Great Swallow Street? Old Fuller (I don’t -know why he should be called “old” so persistently, for he did not -attain anything like a venerable age) was in the habit of collecting -information for the “Worthies of England” from the tottering crones -who sat spinning by the ingle-nook, and from the white-headed grand-sires -sunning themselves on the bench by the almshouse door. In like -manner, I owe much of the information I possess on the aspect of London -streets, at the time just previous to my nonage, to communing with -nurses and nurses’ female friends. The good folks who tend children, -seldom deem that the little pitchers they say jestingly have long ears, -will suck their lore in so greedily, or retain it so long.</p> - -<p>My personal acquaintance with Regent Street dates from the year -’thirty-two, when I remember a great scrambling procession of operatives, -with parti-coloured flags, emblazoned with devices I could not -read, passing down it. Mrs. Esner, who was then attached to my -person in a domestic capacity (she often calls upon me now, and, -saying that she “nussed” me, expatiates on the benefits of a pound of -green tea), told me that these operatives belonged to the “Trades -Union.” She said—though the good woman must have exaggerated—that -they were half a million in number, and I recollect her portending, -in a grave low voice, that there would be riots that night. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span> -don’t think that any occurred; but long after, whenever I saw a crowd -I used to ask whether “there would be any riots” that night, just as I -might have inquired whether there would be any bread-and-butter for -tea. This was about the time that they used to call the great Duke -of Wellington “Nosey,” and “Sawbones,” and to break his windows. -I was too young to know then, that the Athenians grew tired of hearing -Aristides called “The Just;” and that a nation once grumbled at -having to pay for the palace it had bestowed upon that John Churchill, -Duke of Marlborough, who won the battle of Blenheim. I think, too, -there must have been something about the Cholera in my earliest recollections -of Regent Street; yet, no: I lived in North Audley Street at -that time, and opposite the mansion of the great Earl of Clarendon; -for, as clearly as though it were yesterday, I see now in the eye to -which the attention of Horatio, friend of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, -was directed—a hot autumn afternoon. I am at the nursery-window -in sad disgrace, and pouting because I have wrenched the sprightly -wooden hussar from the horse which had the semi-circle of wire with -the bullet at the end fixed in his stomach, and who used, with that -impetus, to swing so deftly. There is much commotion in the great -earl’s mansion; for one of the servants partook too plentifully last -night of gooseberry-fool after a rout his lordship gave—where are the -“routs” and the “gooseberry-fools” now?—and she is dead this morning -of cholera morbus. My female <i>entourage</i> are unanimously exacting -in calling it cholera “morbus.” The undertaker’s men bring the body -out; the shell gleams white in the afternoon’s sunshine, and it is begirt -with cords; “for,” says the domestic oracles behind me, “it was so -mortal swole that it would ’ave bust else.” A horrible rumour runs -about, that the coffin has been “pitched and sealed.” What can -“pitching and sealing” mean? There is a great crowd before the -earl’s door, who are violent and clamorous, because rumour—a servant’s -hall, an area gate, a coachman from-the-house-to-his-wife-in-the-mews -rumour—bruits it about that the body has not been washed. My -nurse says that they will have to send for the “padroll” with “cut-lashes.” -All these things sink into my little mind; and then the -whole sequel, with a train of years behind it, fade away, leaving me -with but one more recollection—that we had a twopenny cottage-loaf -boiled in milk that day for dinner, which was consequently swollen to -twice its natural size; and which the Eumenides of the nursery authoritatively -assured me was, with brown sugar, the “best puddin’ out.” -I know now that congested loaf to have been an insipid swindle.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span></p> - -<p>I am again in Regent Street, but at another window, and in another -house. There is no nurse now, but a genteel young woman, aged about -thirty—she asked me once, for fun, how old she was, and I guessed, in -all youthful seriousness, fifty, whereupon she slapped me—to take care -of me. Her name is Sprackmore, she has long corkscrew ringlets, and -is very pious, and beneath her auspices I first study the “Loss of the -<i>Kent</i> East Indiaman,” and the “Dairyman’s Daughter.” She has fits, -too, occasionally. I am just of that age to be a hollow-eyed little boy -in a tunic, with a frill and a belt, and to be dreadfully afraid of the -parent I used a year before to love and caress with such fearless confidence. -They say I am a clever child, and my cleverness is encouraged -by being told that I am not to ask questions, and that I had much -better go and play with my toys than mope over that big volume of -Lyttelton’s “History of England,” lent to me by Mr. Somebody, the -lawyer—I see him now, very stout and gray, at the funeral whenever -any of us dies: of which volume—it is in very shabby condition—I -break the top-cover off by letting it fall from the chair, which is my -reading-desk. I suffer agonies of terror and remorse for months, lest -the fracture should be discovered, though I have temporarily repaired -it by means of a gimlet and a piece of twine. Then, one bright day, -my cousin Sarah gives me a bright five-shilling piece—I take her to -the opera now, but she always remembers my childish dependence upon -her, and insists upon paying the cab home—and take Lyttelton’s “History,” -still with great fear and trembling, to a bookbinder’s in Broad -Street, Golden Square, who tells me that the “hends is jagged,” and -that there must be a new back, lettering, and gilding to the book. He -works his will with it, and charges me four shillings and sixpence out -of the five shilling-piece for working it; but to tell of the joyful relief -I feel when I bring Lyttelton’s “History” back safe and sound! I do -not get rid of my perturbation entirely, however, till I have rubbed the -back against the carpet a little to soil it, in order that it may not -look too new. Oh! the agonies, the Laocoon-like conscience windings, -the Promethean tortures, that children suffer through these accidental -breakages! Oh! the unreasoning cruelty of parents, who punish children -for such mischances! So I am the little boy in a tunic; and I -daresay that, with my inquisitiveness, and my moping over books, I -am an intolerable little nuisance. I am at the Regent Street window, -and much speculation is rife as to whether the King, who is lying -mortally sick at Windsor, is dead. For it is within a few minutes of -eleven, and at that time the well-known troop of Horse Guards pass on -their way to St. James’s; and it is reasonably inferred that, if King -William be gathered to his fathers, the standard will be furled. The -Guards pass; they wore helmets, with plumes above them shaped like -black mutton chops—not the casques with the flowing horse-hair they -wear now; and to be sure the standard is furled, in a species of drab -umbrella case. The King is dead for sure; nay, he does not die for a -full week afterwards; the flag was merely furled because the day was -dark and lowering, presaging rain.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus21" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus21.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TWO O’CLOCK P.M.: REGENT STREET.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span></p> - -<p>I told you hours since that I lived in the house in Regent Street in -which the Marquis de Bourbel forged his letters of credit.<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> I think -that I am qualified to speak of the place, for, walking down it the -other day, I counted no less than eleven houses, between the two -circuses, in which I had at one time dwelt. But they were all early, -those remembrances, and connected with the time when the colonnade -of the Quadrant existed—“<i>La ville de Londres</i>,” as the foreign engravers -of pictorial note-paper used grandiloquently to call it. Whatever -could have possessed our Commissioner of Woods and Forests to -allow those unrivalled arcades to be demolished! The stupid tradesmen, -whose purblind, shop-till avarice led them to petition for the -removal of the columns, gained nothing by the change, for the Quadrant, -as a lounge in wet weather, was at once destroyed; and I see now -many of the houses, once let out in superior apartments, occupied as -billiard-rooms and photographic studios, and many of the shops invaded -and conquered by cheap tailors. The Quadrant colonnade afforded -not only a convenient shelter beneath, but it was a capital promenade -for the dwellers in the first-floors above. The <i>entresols</i> certainly -were slightly gloomy; and moustached foreigners, together with some -gaily-dressed company still naughtier, could with difficulty be restrained -from prowling backwards and forwards between Glasshouse Street and -the County Fire Office. But, perambulating Regent Street at all hours -of the day and night, as I do now frequently, I see no diminution in -the number of moustached, or rouged, or naughty faces, whose prototypes -were familiar to me, years agone, in the brilliant Quadrant. As -to the purlieus of the County Fire Office, they are confusion, and a -scandal to London and its police. The first-floor balconies above were -in my childhood most glorious playgrounds. There I kept preserves<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span> -of broken bottles and flowerpots; on those leads I inscribed fantastic -devices in chalk and with penknives, drawing silver diagrams through -the cake of dust and dried refrain that covered the metal; and often -have I come to domestic grief through an irresistible propensity for -poaching on the balconies of the neighbours on either side. Still in -a state of tunic-hood, I remember a very tall, handsome gentleman, -with a crimson velvet under-waistcoat—I saw his grave in Perè la -Chaise last winter—who was my great aider and abettor in these juvenile -escapades. He had a wondrous weapon of offence called a “sabar-cane,” -a delightful thing (to me then), half walking-stick, half pea-shooter, -from which he used to discharge clay pellets at the vagrant -cats on the adjoining balconies. He it was who was wont to lean over -the balcony, and fish for people’s hats with a salmon-hook affixed to -the extremity of a tandem-whip; he it was who came home from the -Derby (quite in a friendly manner) to see us one evening, all white—white -hat, white coat, white trousers, white waistcoat, white neckerchief, -white boots, to say nothing of the dust and the flour with which -he had been plentifully besprinkled at Kennington Gate. He had -won heavily on some horse long since gone to grass for ever, was very -merry, and insisted upon winding-up our new French clock with the -snuffers. He it was who made nocturnal excursions from parapet to -parapet along the leads, returning with bewildering accounts of bearded -men who were gambling with dice at No. 92; of the tenor of the -Italian Opera, who, knife in hand, was pursuing his wife (in her nightdress) -about the balcony, at No. 74; and of Mademoiselle Follejambes, -the <i>premier sujet</i> of the same establishment, who was practising <i>pirouettes</i> -before a cheval glass at the open window of No. 86, while Mademoiselle -Follejambe’s mamma, with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief tied round -her old head, was drinking <i>anisette</i> out of a tea-cup. You must be -forbearing with me, if, while I speak of Regent Street, I interlard my -speech with foreign languages a little. For, from its first erection, the -Quadrant end of Regent Street has been the home of the artistic -foreigners who are attracted to London during the musical and operatic -season, less by inclination for the climate and respect for the institutions -of England, than by a profound admiration for the circular -effigies, in gold, (with neatly milled edges) of her Majesty the Queen, -which John Bull so liberally bestows on those who squall or fiddle for -him, provided they be of foreign extraction. Let me not be too unjust, -however, to Bull. Find him but a real English tenor, and J. B. will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span> -smother him in bank-notes, and deafen him with plaudits. From the -balconies of Regent Street, I have seen the greatest <i>cantatrici</i> and -<i>ballerine</i> of this age. The Grand Cham of tenors, who has <i>never</i> been -replaced—no signor Mario, no Signor Giuglini, no Signor Mongini, no -Signor Tamberlik, no Mr. Sims Reeves, no Mr. George Perren—the -incomparable Rubini, had lodgings opposite, once, to where we dwelt, -at a shawl shop. I have watched the sedulous care which that -eminent man took of his health, marvelled at the multitudinous folds -of silk or woollen stuff, like the turban of an Asiatic, with which he -encircled his invaluable throat when he took out-door exercise. I -have seen, through his open window, the basso of basso’s, Papa Lablache, -the man with the lion’s head, the Falstaffian abdomen, and the -ten times stentorian lungs, eat maccaroni for twenty-seven consecutive -minutes, till he seemed determined to outdo all the ribbon-swallowing -conjurors who had ever lived. We used to say that he was practising -for Leporello. He had a kindly heart, Papa Lablache, and preserved a -kindly remembrance of the hearty English people, among whom he -made his fortune. Though he would sometimes facetiously declare, that -when his voice was no longer fit to be heard in a Continental city, he -would come to England to settle, and sing “<i>Fra questi sordi</i>” among -these deaf ones—for whom he would still be quite good enough—his -heart never cooled towards the old country; and, moribund at Naples, -when the supreme Hour was fast arriving, he raised himself on his -couch, and essayed to sing a song he loved very well—“Home! sweet -Home!” But, as the silver cord loosened, he murmured, “<i>Mi manca -la voce</i>”—“My voice fails me;” and so died.</p> - -<p>To say nothing of a dreadful German basso, one of the regular -line-of-battle ship voices, with 56-pounders on the first deck, who was -once a next-door neighbour in the Quadrant, and when he used to call -for his servant thus,“<span class="smcap">PaoOlo!</span>” shook the flower-pots on our own -balcony; or of an egregious fiddler, with long hair, who, in imitation -of his predecessor, Paganini, gave out that he had sold himself to the -devil, but who was, I believe, an arrant humbug with a mania for practising -in the open air—it may have been as a medium of advertisement—and -used to attract large crowds in the street beneath listening to -his complicated fiddlements. Yet I must spare a word for Madame—I -really forget whom, but it ended with “heim,” I think—who had the -six-and-thirty Austro-Sclavonic children who used to perform the -mirror dance and other terpsichorean feats at her Majesty’s Theatre<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span> -and whom she used to drill on the balcony like soldiers. They made -a tremendous noise, these tiny <i>figurantes</i>, and in the hours of recreation -were not unaccustomed to fight among themselves. Then Madame -Somethingheim would sally forth on the balcony and cut savagely into -their poor young bodies with a switch, and after much howling on their -part, and chasing to and fro on hers, restore peace.</p> - -<p>The colonnades are as fruitful to me in recollections as the balconies. -How many miles of daily walks have I gone over, the hand of -a toddling little sister in mine, and with strict injunctions not to stray -beyond the shadow of the columns, and with prohibitions, under dreadful -menaces, of venturing in Air Street on the one side or Vigo Lane on -the other! I wore, I remember, then, an absurd blue cloak, too short -for me, and lined with red, and with a brass clasp somewhat resembling -the ornament on a cartouch box. This cloak chafed and fretted me, -and was the bane and terror of my existence; for I knew, or fancied I -knew, that every passer-by must know that it had never been made -for me, which, indeed, it never had, having formerly been of far larger -dimensions and the property of an officer in his Majesty’s light infantry. -I believe that there was a domestic ukase promulgated for our -benefit against crossing the road; but we did cross it nevertheless, with -many looks to the right and the left, not only to secure ourselves against -threatening carriage wheels, but with reference to the possible appearance -of parents and guardians. There was a delightful bird-stuffer’s shop -at the corner of a court, with birds of paradise, parrots, and hummingbirds -of gorgeous plumage, and strange creatures with white bodies and -long yellow beaks and legs that terrified while they pleasured us. Then -there was the funeral monument shop, with the mural tablets, the obelisks, -the broken columns, the extinguished torches, and the draped urns in -the window, and some with the inscriptions into the bargain, all ready -engraved in black and white, puzzling us as to whether the tender -husbands, devoted wives, and affectionate sons, to whom they referred, -were buried in that grisly shop—it had a pleasant, fascinating terror -about it, like an undertaker’s, too. There was Swan and Edgar’s, -splendid and radiant, then as now, with brave apparel (how many times -have I listened to the enthusiastic cheers of Swan and Edgar’s young -men, on the occasion of the proprietors giving their annual banquet to -their <i>employés</i>?), and even then replete with legends of dishonest fares, -who caused a cab to halt at the Regent Street entrance, got out, said -they would be back in a moment, and then darting through the crowded<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span> -shop, knavishly escaped at the Piccadilly end. There was the Italian -statuary shop, with Canova’s Graces, the crouching Venus, and the -birds round a vase in alabaster; and, above all, there was Mrs. Lipscombe’s -shop—I don’t mean the staymaker’s, but the one next to that, -the filter shop, with the astonishing machines for converting foul and -muddy water, like gruel, thick and slab, into a sparkling, crystal -stream. What a miracle it seemed to me that the goblet, filled to the -brim, and yet into which, from the filter above, drops continually fell, -never overflowed! How I used to watch the little cork ball, kept in -a continually bounding state of agitation by the perpendicular jet of -water—watch it with almost breathless agitation, when, every now and -then, the centre of gravity would be lost, and the little ball would -tumble in the basin beneath—the whole was covered by a glass shade—till, -caught up once more, it would be sent in eddying whirls higher -than ever! I have seen the same experiment tried since with bigger -balls—and of marble—very like twenty-four pounders—at the <i>Grandes -Eaux</i> of Versailles, and in the gardens of Peterhoff. Stone Neptunes -and Tritons surrounded the basin, and the jets of water, forty feet high, -sent the spray flying in the faces of the spectators; but none of these -hydraulic displays ever came up, in my opinion, to the tiny squirt, -with the little cork ball, underneath the glass shade, in Mrs. Lipscombe’s -window. Does she make stays and sell filters yet, I wonder! What a -curious mixture of avocations! I know of none stranger since the -names of M. Fenwick de Porquet and Mrs. Mary Wedlake were amalgamated, -and inquiries as to whether we “bruised our oats yet,” were -alternated with pressing questions of “<i>Parlez vous Français?</i>”</p> - -<p>When I thus walked the Regent Quadrant, twenty years since, it -was haunted by a class of men, now, I am happy to believe, almost -entirely extinct. We have plenty of rogues in our body corporate yet. -The turf has its blacklegs and touts; the nightside of London is -fruitful in “macemen,” “mouchers,” and “go-alongs.” You must not -be angry with me for using slang terms; for did not a clergyman, at a -highly-respectable institution, deliver a lecture on slang the other day, -and did not the “Times” quote him? We are not free from skittle-sharps, -card-cheats, “duffers,” and ring-droppers; nay, even at remote -country race-courses, you may find remnants of the whilom swarming -tribe of “charley-pitchers,” the knavish gentry who pursue the games -of “under seven or over seven,” “red, black, leather and star,” or -inveigle the unwary with “three little thimbles and one small pea.” -But a stern and righteous legislation has put down nine-tenths of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> -infamous dens where any fool who chose to knock was fleeced to the -last lock of wool. If a man wants to be vicious (in the gambling way) -now, he must have the <i>entrée</i> to the abodes of vice, and a nodding -acquaintance with the demon. A neophyte is not allowed to ruin -himself how and where he likes. In the days of which I make mention, -Regent Street and its purlieus abounded in open gambling houses, and -to the skirts of these necessarily hung on a deboshed regiment of rogues, -who made their miserable livings as runners, and decoy-ducks, and -bravos to these abominable nests. They were called “Greeks,” and -two o’clock in the afternoon was their great time for turning out. -From what infected holes or pestiferous garrets in Sherrard, or Brewer, -or Rupert Street, they came, I know not; but there they were at the -appointed hour, skulking with a half sheepish, half defiant stride up -and down Regent Street. Miserable dogs mostly, for all their fine -clothes—always resplendently, though dirtily, attired. They wore -great white coats, shiny hats, and mosaic jewellery, which was just then -coming into fashion. There was another fashion, in which they very -nearly succeeded, by adopting, to drive out, and make permanently -disreputable: that of wearing moustaches. They used to swagger -about, all lacquered, pomatumed, bejewelled, and begrimed, till I knew -them all by sight and many of them by name and repute. There was -Jack Cheetham, the lord’s son, he who was thrown out of the window -at Frascati’s, and killed the Frenchman in the Bois de Vincennes. -There was Captain Dollamore, who married the rich widow, and was -arrested for her milliner’s bill the week afterwards. There was Charley -Skewball; he was called Charley, but he was a baronet, had once been -a gentleman, and was the greatest rogue unhung. Mr. Thackeray -knows these men well. They are his Count Punters, Major Loders, -M. de Caramboles, Hon. Algernon Deuceaces; but they are extinct -among us as a class, O Titmarsh; and simple people, who read your -admirable novels, wonder whom the monsters are that you draw. They -are dead; they are at the hulks; they are feebly punting at the few -remaining gambling places on the Rhine: they flaunted in the bad -prime of their manhood when I was a child. I have outgrown them; -and only now and then, when I am out very late, collecting materials -for “Twice Round the Clock,” I come upon a stray Jack or Charley—ragged -and drivelling, his fine feathers all moulted or smirched, his -occupation quite gone—who sidles up to me and calls me “Your -honour,” and with salt-rheumy lips, whimpers forth a supplication for -“A penny towards a night’s lodging.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span></p> - -<p>When our dear Queen Victoria was crowned, I began to lose sight -of Regent Street—lost sight of it by degrees altogether, and came not -back to it, as an observer, for many years. I rather avoided the place, -for I had a bitter baptism of physical misery in the beginning of my -working life: wanting food and raiment, not through prodigality (that -came afterwards), but through sheer penury and friendlessness. And -Regent Street, for all my querulous childhood, was associated with too -many memories of happier days gone for ever. You know what the -Italian rhymester says—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">“Nessun maggior dolore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Che ricordarsi del tempo felice</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nella Miseria.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>An Englishman has stolen the thought in some lines about “a -sorrow’s crown of sorrow,” whose summing up I forget; but the sense -of the passage is that the times are exceedingly hard, when, destitute -and footsore, you pass by a house, and glance at the windows once -lighted up by feasting in which you participated; when you think of -the rooms, once swept by the robe of the woman whom you loved, but -that now, house, windows, rooms, are the portion of strangers. I say -I went away from Regent Street, and came not back. There were -reasons. I became of the Strand and Fleet Street a denizen, and -Temple Bar entered into my soul. For I was affiliated to a great -mystery of Masonry, called Literature, and had to follow the behests of -my mother lodge. You don’t see much of Regent Street, during your -apprenticeship, if you begin at the lowermost degree, I can assure you. -Now I am a master-mason, free and accepted, and can hold my own; -albeit I shall never be an Office-bearer, or “Grand,” of my lodge, or -rise to the superlatives of the Royal Arch or the Thirty-third.</p> - -<p>Behold Regent Street at two p.m., in the accompanying cartoon. Not -without reason do I declare it the most fashionable street in the world. -I call it not so for the aristocratic mansions it might possess; for the -lower parts of the houses are occupied as shops, and the furnished -apartments are let, either to music or operatic celebrities or to unostentatious -old bachelors. But the shops themselves are innately -fashionable. There was a dash of utilitarianism mingled with the -slightly Bohemian tinge of my Regent Street of twenty years ago; -there were bakers’ shops, stationers, and opticians, who had models of -steam engines in their windows. There was a grocer not above selling -orange marmalade, brown sugar, and Durham mustard. I remember -buying a penny cake of chocolate of him one morning; but I find the -shop now expanded into a magnificent emporium, where are sold wines, -and spirits, sweetmeats and preserves, liqueurs and condiments, Bayonne -ham, Narbonne honey, Bologna sausages, Russian caviare, Iceland moss, -clotted cream, and <i>terrines</i> of <i>pâté de foie gras</i>. Indeed, Regent Street -is an avenue of superfluities—a great trunk-road in Vanity Fair. -Fancy watchmakers, haberdashers, and photographers; fancy stationers, -fancy hosiers, and fancy staymakers; music shops, shawl shops, jewellers, -French glove shops, perfumery, and point lace shops, confectioners and -milliners: creamily, these are the merchants whose wares are exhibited -in this Bezesteen of the world.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus22" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus22.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TWO O’CLOCK P.M.: HIGH CHANGE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span></p> - -<p>Now, whatever can her ladyship, who has been shopping in Regent -Street, have ordered the stalwart footman, who shut the carriage door -with a resounding bang, to instruct the coachman to drive her to the -Bank for? Her ladyship’s own private bank is in a shiningly aristocratic -street, by Cavendish Square, embosomed among green trees. -She does not want to buy ribbons or lace on Ludgate Hill, artificial -flowers in St. Paul’s Churchyard, or fine linen in Cheapside. No; she -has a very simple reason for going into the city: Sir John, her liege -lord, is on ’Change. He will be there from half-past two to three, at -which hour High ’Change, as it may be called, closes, and she intends -to call for him, and drive him to the West-end again. By your leave, -we will jump up behind the carriage, heedless of the stalwart footman; -for we are in the receipt of fern-seed, and invisible.</p> - -<p>Going on ’Change seems to be but a mechanical and mercantile -occupation, and one that might with safety be entrusted to some -confidential clerk; yet it is not so; and the greatest magnates of -commerce and finance, the Rothschilds, the Barings, the Huths, the -legions of London’s merchant-princes, are to be found chaffering in -the quadrangle every day. In the old Exchange, they used to point -out the particular column against which the elder Rothschild was wont -to lean. They called the old man, too—marvellous diplomatist in -financial combinations as he was—the Pillar of the Exchange. You -know that the colonnades—whose ceilings are painted in such elaborate -encaustic, and with such a signal result in ruin from damp and smoke—are -divided into different promenades, variously designated, according -to the nations of the merchants who frequent them. Thus—there are -the Italian Walk, the Spanish Walk, the Portuguese Walk, the -Danish Walk, and—a very notable walk it is too—the Greek Walk.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span> -Here you may see, jabbering and gesticulating, the crafty, keen-eyed, -sallow-faced Smyrnians, Suliotes, Zantrites, and Fanariotes, individuals -much given to speculations in corn, in which, if report does -them no injustice, they gamble most egregiously.</p> - -<p>Three o’clock strikes—or rather chimes—from the bell-tower of Mr. -Tite’s new building. The quadrangle of the Exchange is converted -into an accurate model of the Tower of Babel. The mass of black-hatted -heads—with here and there a white one, like a fleck of foam on -the crest of a wave—eddies with violence to and fro. Men shout, -and push, and struggle, and jostle, and shriek bargains into one -another’s ears. A stranger might imagine that these money and -merchandise dealers had fallen out, and were about to fight; but the -beadle of the Exchange looks on calmly; he knows that no breach of -the peace will be committed, and that the merchants and financiers -are merely singing their ordinary pæan of praise to the great god -Mammon. Surely—if there be not high treason in the thought—they -ought to pull down Mr. Lough’s statue of Queen Victoria, which -stands in the centre of the quadrangle, and replace it by a neat effigy -of the Golden Calf.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THREE_PM">THREE P.M.—DEBENHAM AND STORR’S AUCTION-ROOMS, AND THE PANTHEON BAZAAR.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>The travelled reader has visited that astonishing <i>atelier</i> of mosaics and -<i>pietra dura</i> in Florence maintained at the charges of the late Grand -Duke of Tuscany, (he has been signally kicked off thronedom, since -the first writing of these presents), and has watched with admiring -amazement the patient ingenuity with which the artisans adjust the -tiny little vitreous and metallic fragments, that, firmly imbedded in -paste, make the fruits and flowers, the birds and angels of the mosaic. -What an impossible task it is, apparently, to form the microscopic -bits into comely shapeliness, symmetrical in form and glowing with -rich colours! yet how deftly the artists accomplish their task! how the -work grows beneath their nimble hands! What astonishing memories -these <i>maître</i> mosaicists must have, remembering to a pin’s point where -the high lights on the petals of a rose will fall, and storing up in their -minds archives of the eyelashes of the Madonna, precedents for every<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span> -scintillation of the rays in the golden nimbus round His head! The -mosaicists of Rome, and Florence, and Venice—though the glorious -art has well-nigh died out in the Adriatic city—are the real administrative -reformers, after all. The right thing in the right place is their -unvarying motto, and they are never found putting the round men in -the square holes, or <i>vice versâ</i>.</p> - -<p>I have been led into this train of thought by the contemplation of -the exigencies of “Twice Round the Clock.” Time, my slave for -once, though he has been my stern and cruel master for years and -years, and at whom I mean to throw a dart when this series shall be -completed—Time, who is my bond servant, to fetch and carry, to hew -wood and draw water for yet a span, has culled from the wild garden -of Eternity, and thrown at my feet, a heterogeneous mass of hours, -minutes, and seconds, and has said with a mocking subserviency—“There, -my master, there are the hours of the day and night, and -their minutest subdivisions; try and paste them on your printed -calendar; try and reconcile your men and women to them; try and -apportion in its proper measure of time each grain of sand to the -futile rivings and strivings of your conceited humanity. You have -stumbled on from hour to hour since the sun was young, telling, with -indifferent success, the good and bad deeds that are done in London as -the relentless needle pushes round and round the dial. Here, then, is -Three o’Clock in the Afternoon. Take it; see what you can make of -it, and much good may it do you!” And as Time, or the vagrant -thought I have embodied for the nonce, says this, he sticks his tongue -into his cheek, as though he thought that three o’clock in the afternoon -were rather a poser to me.</p> - -<p>Old man with the scythe and hour-glass, I defy thee! I will admit -that three o’clock post meridian, requires much deliberation and cogitation, -in order to give the millions of human marionettes, of whom I -hold, temporarily, the strings, their suitable employment; but it is -rather from a profusion than a paucity of scenes and things germane to -the hour that I am embarrassed. At three, ’Change is still going on, -though its busy time, the acmè of its excitement, is over. As the clock -strikes four, the city of London is in full pant; the clerks rush up -Cheapside, and dive down the wealthy narrow lanes, their bursting bill-books -(secured by leather-covered chains tied round their bodies) charged -with “three months after date, please pay to the order,” which they -cram into letter-boxes for acceptance. The private banking houses in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span> -Lombard Street are in an orderly uproar of finance. The rattling of -shovels is incessant; office-boys cast thousands of pounds, in notes, bills, -and money, to the cashier, carelessly, across the counter, paying vast -sums in to their masters’ accounts; and the mighty partners—in checked -neckerchiefs, buff waistcoats, and creaking boots: tremendous bank-partners, -who are baronets, and members of Parliament, lords even—stalk -back from ’Change, pay a farewell visit to the bank parlour, have -a short but solemn confab with confidential subordinates, relative to -coming transactions at the clearing-house, and then enter their carriages, -and are borne to clubs, to the House of Commons, to Greenwich dinners, -or, perchance, if they have a dinner-party at home, to their magnificent -villas at Putney and Roehampton. What a colony of bankers dwell -there! the <i>sommités</i> of the <i>haute finance</i> seem to entertain as decided a -partiality for the banks of the Thames, as the stockbrokers do for -Brixton and Tulse Hill. Rare lives these money keepers lead—scattering -in the West that which they gather in the East. Graperies, pineries, -conservatories, ice-houses, dinner-parties, balls, picnics; all these do -they enjoy: they, their comely wives and handsome daughters. They -marry into the aristocracy! they have countesses and marchionesses in -their list of partners. It is not so many centuries ago since the bankers -were humble sellers of gold plate, dwelling in Lombard Street and the -Chepe, and following the great courtiers round the quadrangle of the -Exchange, intreating their lordships’ honours to be allowed to keep their -cash. Worthy individuals, however, are the majority of these bankers, -and it is but very rarely indeed that they make ducks and drakes of -their customers’ moneys. They are not so very proud either, for all -their splendid carriages and horses; and here, upon my word, is Baron -Lionel de Rothschild tearing up Ludgate Hill in a common Hansom -cab; but he, like the bad man whom Martial in an epigram declares -not to be so much vicious as vice itself, is less a Banker than a -Bank.</p> - -<p>As three o’clock grows old, and the tide of business shows unmistakeable -indices of an ebb at no very remote period, so far as the city is -concerned, that same business is at the West-end in its extremest -activity. The shops of the West Strand, Piccadilly, Oxford and Regent -Streets, are thronged with customers, chiefly ladies; the roadway is -encumbered with carts and carriages; and street avocations—the minor -commerce of the mighty mart—are in full swing. Thick-necked and -beetle-browed individuals, by courtesy called dog-fanciers, but who in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span> -many cases might with as much propriety answer to the name of dog-stealers—forbidding-looking -gentry, in coats of velveteen, with large -mother-o’-pearl buttons, and waistcoats of the neat and unpretending -moleskin—lurk about the kerbs of the purlieus of Regent Street and -Waterloo Place (the police drive them away from the main thoroughfares), -with the little “dawgs” they have to sell tucked beneath their -arms, made doubly attractive by much washing with scented soap, and -the further decoration of their necks with pink or blue ribbons. -Here is the little snub-nosed King Charles—I hope the <i>retroussé</i> -appearance of his nasal organ is not due to the unkind agency of -a noose of whipcord—his feathery feet and tail, and his long -silky ears, sweeping the clean summer pavement. Here is the Newfoundland -pup, with his bullet head and clubbed caudal-appendage, -winking his stupid little eyes, and needing, seemingly, an enormous -amount of licking into shape. Here is the bull-dog, in his full growth, -with his legs bowed, his tail inclining to the spiral, his broad chest, -thin flanks, defined ribs, moist nozzle, hare lip, bloodshot eyes, protruding -fang, and symmetrical patch over one eye; or else, in a state -of puppyhood, peeping from his proprietor’s side-pocket, all pink and -white like a morose sucking-pig become a hermit. Here is the delightful -little toy English terrier, with his jet-black coat, erect neck, and tan -paws; and here the genuine Skye, gray or brown, like an unravelled -ball of worsted. See, too, grimacing at all who come to view, like a -mulatto at a slave auction, who fancies himself good-looking, the -accomplished French poodle, with his peaked nose, woolly wig, leggings, -and tail band, and his horrible shaved, salmon-coloured body. He can -dance; he can perform gun-drill; he can fall motionless, as though -dead, at the word of command; he can climb up a lamp-post, jump over -a stick, hop on one leg, carry a basket in his mouth, and run away when -he is told that a policeman is coming. You can teach him to do anything -but love you. These, and good store of mongrels and half-breeds -that the dealer would fain palm upon us as dogs of blood and price, frisk -and fawn about his cord-trouser covered legs; but where is the toy-dog -<i>par excellence</i>, the playful, snappish, fractious, facetious, charming, -utterly useless little dog, that, a quarter of a century since, was the -treasure of our dowagers and our old maids? Where is the Dutch pug? -Where is that Narcissus of canine Calibanism, with his coffee-coloured -coat, his tail in a ring like the blue-nosed baboon’s, his crisped morsels -of ears, his black muzzle, his sharp, gleaming little teeth, his intensely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span> -red lips and tongue? Is he extinct, like the lion-dog from Malta, the -property of her Majesty the Queen, and the “last of his race,” whom -courtly Sir Edwin Landseer drew? Are there no more Dutch pugs? -They must exist somewhere. Cunning dealers owning <i>recherché</i> kennels -in the New Road or at Battle Bridge, or attending recondite “show -clubs,” held at mysterious hostelries in the vicinity of Clerkenwell, -must yet have some undoubted specimens of the pug for sale. There -must be burghers yet, in the fat comfortable houses at Loo by the -Hague, or in the plethoric, oozy vicinage of Amsterdam—there must -be Tietjens, and Tenbroecks, and van Ramms, and van Bummels, whose -pride it is, amidst their store of tulip bulbs, china vases, cabinet pictures -by Breughel and Ostade, lacquer-work from Japan, and spice-boxes from -Java, to possess Dutch pugs in the flesh. But the creature is seen no -more in London streets, and we must be content with him on Hogarth’s -canvases, in Linacre’s engravings, or modelled in china, as we see him -in the curiosity shops. I have indeed seen the elephant—I mean the -Dutch pug—alive and snarling, once in my life. He was led by a -bright scarlet ribbon—scarlet, mind, not pink or blue—attached to his -silver collar; and there must have been something in the appearance of -my youthful legs (I was but five, and they were bare, plump, and -mottled) that excited his carnivorous propensities, for, long as is the -lapse of time, I remember that he rushed at me like a coffee-coloured -tiger. His mistress was a Duchess, the grandest, handsomest Duchess -that had ever lived (of course, I except Georgina of Devonshire) since -the days of that Grace of Queensberry of whom Mr. Thackeray was good -enough to tell us in the “Virginians.” She, my Duchess, wore a hat -and feathers, diamonds, and a <i>moustache</i>—a downy nimbus round her -mouth, like that which Mr. Philip insinuates rather than paints in his -delightful Spanish girls’ faces. I see her now, parading the cliff at -Brighton, with her black velvet train—yes, madam, her train—held up -by a page. She was the last duchess who drove down to Brighton in a -coach and six. She was the last duchess who at Twelfth-night parties -had a diamond ring baked in the cake which was to be distributed by -lots. Before she came to her coronet, she had been a singing woman at -a playhouse, had married a very foolish rich old banker, and, at his -death, remarried a more foolish and very poor duke. But she was an -excellent woman, and the relative to whom she left the bulk of her -wealth, is one of the most charitable, as I am also afraid she is one of the -most <i>ennuyée</i>, ladies in England. I am proud of my reminiscence. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span> -is not every one that has seen a Dutch pug and the Duchess of St. Albans -alive.</p> - -<p>Body of me! here am I wasting my time among the dog-fanciers—(when -the name of the man in the iron mask, the authorship of -“Junius,” the murderer of Caspar Hauser, and the date of the laws of -Menu, shall be known, it shall also be patent to all men why trafficking -in dogs and horses seem necessarily connected with roguery)—here am -I descanting on poodles and pug-dogs, when, with quick observant eyes, -I should be noting the hundred little trades that are being driven at -three o’clock in the afternoon. The feverish industry—the untiring -perseverance—the bitter struggle, and all for yon scanty morsel of -bread, and a few inches of space for repose at night in a fourpenny -lodging-house! Follow the kerb-stone from the County Fire Office to -St. Martin’s Lane. See the itinerant venders of catch-’em-alive-o’s, of -cheap toys, of quires of writing-paper, sealing-wax and envelopes, all -for the small charge of one penny; see the industrials who have -walking-sticks, umbrellas, gutta-percha whips, aërated balls, locomotive -engines and statuettes of Napoleon in glass phials, that make us -wonder, as with flies in amber, however they, the engines and statuettes, -got there; the women who have bouquets to dispose of—how many -times have they been refreshed beneath the pump, this droughty day?—the -boys and girls in looped and windowed raggedness striving to sell -fruit, flowers, almanacks, pencils, fusees—anything, to keep the wolf -from the door. He is always at the door, that wolf—always at that -yawning portal, and his name is Famine. The worst of the brute is, -that he comes not alone—that he has a friend, a brother wolf with -him, who hankers round the corner, and is always ready to pop in at -the door at the slightest suspicion of a summons. This wolf is a full-paunched -rogue, and liberal, too, of succulent, but <i>poisoned</i> food to his -friends. This is the thief wolf, the gallows wolf, the Calcraft wolf. -<i>Lupus carnifex</i>. He keeps up an incessant whining baying, which, -being interpreted, means, “Work no more. See how hard the life is. -What’s the good of working? Come and Steal.” Look here, my lords -and gentlemen—look here, my right honourable friends—look here, -my noble captains—look here, your honours’ worships—come out of -your carriages, come out of your clubs, come out of your shooting-boxes -in the Highlands, and your <i>petites maisons</i> in the Regent’s Park, and -look at these faded and patched creatures. I tell you that they have -to rise early and go to bed late—that they have to work hours and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span> -hours before they can turn one penny. They have never been taught; -they are seldom fed, and more seldom washed; but <i>they don’t steal</i>. -I declare that it is a wonder they do not—a marvel and a miracle they -do not. They remain steadfastly honest; for, in the troubled sea of -their lives, Almighty Mercy has planted a Pharos, or light-house. The -night is pitchy black oft enough; the light revolves—is for a time -invisible—and the poor forlorn, tempest-torn man watches the blank -horizon in all but mute despair; but the blessed gladdening gleam -comes round again, as we have all seen it many a time on the ocean, -and, sighing, the honest man resolutely keeps on his course.</p> - -<p>Following the kerb-stone myself from the before-mentioned County -Fire Office to St. Martin’s Lane, and passing through Leicester Square—which, -what with the Alhambra “Palace” and its hideous American -posters, the Great Globe, and the monster <i>cafés chantants</i>, I begin -to be rather uncertain about recognising—passing, not without some -inward trembling, the stick shop at the corner of the lane, while on -either side of the portal those peculiarly ugly carved clubs—the very -Gog and Magog of walking-stickery—keep watch and ward, I cut -dexterously through the living torrent that is flowing from Charing -Cross toward St. Giles’s (they were villages once, Charynge and Saint -Gyles’s—ha! ha!) and commence the ascent of New Street, a feat well -nigh as disagreeable, if not as perilous, as that of Mont Blanc. I hate -this incorrigible little thoroughfare; this New Street. It is full of bad -smells, mangy little shops, obstructions, and bad characters. There is -a yawning gin-palace at its south-western extremity. The odours of its -eating-houses—especially of a seedy little French <i>pension bourgeoise</i> -about half way up—are displeasing to my nostrils. The cigars vended -in New Street are the worst in London, and the sweetstuff shops are -mobbed—yes, mobbed—by children in torn pinafores who <i>never</i> have -any pocket handkerchiefs. Of late days, photographers have hung out -their signs and set up their lenses in New Street; and if, passing -through the street, you escape being run over by a wagon or upset by -an inebriated market-gardener, you run great risks of being forcibly -dragged into the hole tenanted by a photographic “artist,” and -“focussed,” willy nilly. Thoroughfares, almost inconceivably tortuous, -crapulous, and infamous, debouch upon New Street. There is that -Rose Street, or Rose Alley, where, if I be not wrong in my topography, -John Dryden, the poet, was waylaid and cudgelled; and there is a -wretched little haunt called Bedfordbury, a devious, slimy little reptile<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span> -of a place, whose tumble-down tenements and reeking courts spume forth -plumps of animated rags, such as can be equalled in no London -thoroughfare save Church Lane, St. Giles’s. I don’t think there are -five windows in Bedfordbury with a whole pain of glass in them. Rags -and filthy <i>loques</i> are hung from poles, like banners from the outward -walls. There is an insolent burgher of Bedfordbury, who says I owe -him certain stivers. Confound the place! its rags, its children, its red -herrings, and tobacco-pipes crossed in the windows, its boulders of -whitening, and its turpentine-infected bundles of firewood!</p> - -<p>The pursuit of New Street, thus maledicted, brings me to King -Street, Covent Garden, a broad, fair, well-conducted public way, against -which I have no particular prejudice; for it leads up to Covent Garden -Market, which I love; and it contains within its limits the Garrick -Club.</p> - -<p>Before, however, you come to the Garrick, before you come to the -coffee-shop where there is that strange collection of alarming-looking -portraits; before you come to Mr. Kilpack’s cigar divan and bowling-alley, -you arrive at the door of an unpretending, though roomy mansion, -the jambs of whose portals are furnished with flattering catalogues relative -to “this day’s sale,” and the pavement before whose frontage is -strewn with fragments of straw and shreds of carpeting. It is strange, -too, if you do not see half a dozen or so burly-looking porters lounging -about the premises, and a corresponding number of porter’s knots, the -straw stuffing bulging occasionally from rents in their sides, decorating -the railings, as the pint pots do the iron barriers of the licensed victuallers. -This mansion contains the great auction-room of Messrs. Debenham -and Storr. Let us enter without fear. There is scarcely, I think, -so interesting an exhibition in London; yet, in contradistinction to the -majority of London exhibitions, there is nothing to pay.</p> - -<p>In this monstrous amalgam of microcosms, London, a man may, if -he will only take the trouble, find that certain places, streets, rooms, -peculiar spots and set apart localities, are haunted by classes of people -as peculiar as the localities they affect, and who are seldom to be found -anywhere else. In the early forenoon, long before business hours commence, -the benches of the piazza of the Royal Exchange have their -peculiar occupants—lank, mystic-looking men, mostly advanced in -years, and shiny in threadbare blackclothdom. They converse with -one another seldom, and when they do so, it is but in furtive whispers, -the cavernous mouth screened by the rugose hand, with its knotted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> -cordage of veins and its chalkstoned knuckles, as though the whisper -were of such commercial moment that the locutor feared its instantaneous -transport to the ears of Rothschild or Baring, and the consequent -uprising or downfalling of stocks or corn, silk or tallow. Who are -these men, these Exchange ghosts, who haunt the site of Sir Thomas -Gresham’s old “Burse?” Are they commission agents come to decay, -bankrupt metal brokers, burnt-out, uninsured wharfingers, lame ducks -of the Stock Exchange, forced even to “waddle” from the purlieus of -Capel Court? There they sit day after day—their feet (lamentably -covered with boots of fastidious bigness, for, alas! the soles are warped, -the sides crack, the heels are irrevocably lopsided) beating the devil’s -tattoo on the stone pavement, their big cotton umbrellas distilling a -mouldy moisture, or a pair of faded Berlin gloves, quite gone and -ruined at the fingers, lying on the bench beside them. Their battered -hats oscillate on their heads through overloading with tape-tied papers, -and oft-times, from the breast-pocket of their tightly-buttoned coats, -they drag leathern pocketbooks, white and frayed at the edges like the -seams of their own poor garments, from which pocketbooks they draw -greasy documents, faded envelopes, sleezy letters, which have been -folded and refolded so often that they seem in imminent danger of -dropping to pieces like an over-used passport at the next display. -With what an owl-like, an oracular, look of wisdom they consult these -papers! What are they all about? The bankruptcy of their owners -thirty years ago, and the infamous behaviour of the official assignees -(dead and buried years since)? their early love correspondence? their -title-deeds to the estates in Ayrshire, and the large pasture lands in -the Isle of Skye? Who knows? But you never see these ghostly -time-waiters anywhere but on ’Change, and out of ’Change hours. -Directly the legitimate business of that place of commercial re-union -commences, they melt away imperceptibly, like the ghost of Hamlet’s -father at cock-crow, coming like shadows and so departing.</p> - -<p>The dreadful night dens and low revelling houses of past midnight -London, the only remnants left among us of the innumerable “finishes” -and saloons and night-cellars of a former age, have also their peculiar -male population, stamped indelibly with the mint-mark of the place, -and not to be found out of it, save in the dock of the adjacent police-court. -Where these <i>ruffiani</i>, these copper captains and cozening buz-gloaks, -are to be found during the day, or even up to midnight—for in -the gallery even of any decent theatre they would not be admitted—must<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span> -remain a secret; perhaps, like the ghoules and afrits, the bats and -dragons of fable, they haunt ruinous tombs, deserted sepulchres, church-yards -sealed up long since by the Board of Health; but so soon as two -or three o’clock in the morning arrives, they are to be found wherever -there are fools to be fleeced or knaves to plot with. You study their -lank hair and stained splendid stocks, their rumpled jay’s finery and -rascal talk, their cheap canes and sham rings; but they, too, fade away -with the dawn—how, no man can say, for the meanest cabman would -scorn to convey them in his vehicle—and are not beheld any more till -vagabondising time begins again.</p> - -<p>“Supers,” too—or theatrical supernumeraries, to give them their -full title—are a decidedly distinctive and peculiar race; and though -reported, and ordinarily believed, to exercise certain trades and handicrafts -in the daytime, such as shoemaking, tailoring, bookbinding, -and the like, my private belief is that no “super” could exist long in -any atmosphere remote from behind the scenes or the vicinity of the -stage-door of a theatre. Look, too, at the audience of a police court: -look at the pinched men who persist in attending the sittings of the -Insolvent Debtors’ Court in Portugal Street, or hang about the dingy -tavern opposite, and who consume with furtive bites Abernethy biscuits -and saveloys, half hidden in the folds of blue cotton pocket-handkerchiefs. -Yes, the proverb reads aright—as many men, so many minds; -and each man’s mind, his idiosyncrasy, leads him to frequent a certain -place till he becomes habituated to it, and cannot separate himself -therefrom. There are your men who delight in witnessing surgical -operations, and those who never miss going to a hanging. There is a -class of people who have a morbid predilection for attending coroners’ -inquests, and another who insist upon going to the Derby, be the -weather wet or dry, cold or hot, though they scarcely know a horse’s -fore from his hind legs, and have never a sixpenny bet on the field. -There is a class who hang about artists’ studios, knowing no more of -painting than Mr. Wakley does of poetry; there are the men you meet -at charity dinners, the women you meet at marriages and christenings. -Again, there is a class of eccentrics, who, like the crazy Earl of Portsmouth, -have an invincible <i>penchant</i> for funerals—“black jobs,” as the -mad lord used to call them; and finally, there are the people who -haunt <span class="smcap">Sales by Auction</span>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus23" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus23.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">THREE O’CLOCK P.M.: DEBENHAM AND STORR’S AUCTION-ROOMS.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span></p> - -<p>Walk into Debenham and Storr’s long room, and with the exercise of -a little judgment and keenness of observation, you will be enabled to -recognise these amateurs of auctions in a very short space of time, and -to preserve them in your memory. They very rarely bid, they yet -more rarely have anything knocked down to them; indeed, to all -appearances, the world does not seem to have used them well enough to -allow them to buy many superfluities, yet there they stand patiently, -hour after hour, catalogue in hand—they are always possessed of -catalogues—ticking off the amount of the bids, against the numbers -of the articles which they never buy; you should remark, too, and -admire, the shrewd, knowing, anxious scrutiny which they extend to -the articles which are hung up round the room, or which are held up -for inspection by the porter, as the sale proceeds. They seem actually -interested in the cut of a Macintosh, in the slides of a telescope, in the -triggers of a double-barrelled gun; they are the first to arrive at, the -last to leave the Sale; and then, in the close of the afternoon, they -retire, with long-lingering footsteps, as though—like the gentleman -for whom a judge of the land and twelve honest men had settled that a -little hanging was about the best thing that could be done, and who -so often fitted the halter, took leave, and traversed the cart—they were -“loath to depart,” which I am willing to believe they are. I imagine -to myself, sometimes, that these men are cynical philosophers, who -delight in the contemplation of the mutabilities of property; who -smile grimly—within their own cynical selves—and hug themselves at -the thought, not only that flesh is grass, that sceptre and crown must -tumble down, and kings eat humble pie, but that the richest and the -rarest gems and gew-gaws, the costliest garments, the bravest panoplies, -must come at last to the auctioneer’s hammer.</p> - -<p>Perhaps you would like to know what they are selling by auction at -Debenham and Storr’s this sultry July afternoon. I should very much -like to know what they are not selling. Stay, to be just, I do not hear -any landed estates or advowsons disposed of: you must go to the -Auction Mart in Bartholomew Lane if you wish to be present at such -Simoniacal ceremonies; and, furthermore, horses, as you know, are -in general sold at Tattersall’s, and carriages at Aldridge’s repository in -St. Martin’s Lane. There are even auctioneers, I am told, in the -neighbourhood of Wapping and Ratcliffe Highway, who bring lions -and tigers, elephants and ourangoutangs, to the hammer; and, finally, -I must acquit the respectable firm, whose thronged sale-room I have -edged myself into, of selling by auction such trifling matters as human -flesh and blood.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span></p> - -<p>But from a chest of drawers to a box of dominoes, from a fur coat to -a silver-mounted horsewhip, from a carpenter’s plane to a case of -lancets, from a coil of rope to a silk neck-tie, from a dragoon’s helmet -to a lady’s thimble, there seems scarcely an article of furniture or -wearing apparel, of use or superfluity, that is not to be found here. -Glance behind that counter running down the room, and somewhat -similar to the narrow platform in a French <i>douane</i>, where the luggage -is deposited to be searched. The porters move about among a heterogeneous -assemblage of conflicting articles of merchandise; the clerk -who holds aloft the gun or the clock, or the sheaf of umbrellas, or -whatever other article is purchased, hands it to the purchaser, when it -is knocked down to him, with a confidential wink, if he knows and -trusts that customer, with a brief reminder of “money” and an out-stretched -palm, signifying that a deposit in cash must be forthwith paid -in case such customer be not known to him, or, what will sometimes -happen, better known than trusted. And high above all is the auctioneer -in his pulpit, with his poised hammer, the Jupiter Tonans of the sale.</p> - -<p>And such a sale! Before I have been in the room a quarter of an -hour, I witness the knocking down of at least twenty dress coats, and -as many waistcoats and pairs of trousers, several dozen shirts, a box of -silk handkerchiefs, two ditto of gloves, a roll of best Saxony broadcloth, -a piece of Genoa velvet, six satin dresses, twelve boxes of artificial -flowers, a couple of opera glasses, a set of ivory chessmen, eighteen -pairs of patent leather boots—not made up—several complete sets of -carpenters’ tools, nine church services, richly bound, a carved oak -cabinet, a French bedstead, a pair of china vases, a set of harness, -three boxes of water colours, eight pairs of stays, a telescope, a box of -cigars, an enamel miniature of Napoleon, a theodolite, a bronze -candelabrum, a pocket compass, twenty-four double-barrelled fowling-pieces -(I quote <i>verbatim</i> and <i>seriatim</i> from the catalogue), a parrot cage, -three dozen knives and forks, two plated toast-racks, a Turkey carpet, -a fishing-rod, winch, and eelspear, by Cheek, a tent by Benjamin -Edgington, two dozen sheepskin coats, warranted from the Crimea, a -silver-mounted dressing-case, one of eau-de-Cologne, an uncut copy of -Macaulay’s “History of England,” a cornet-à-piston, a buhl inkstand, -an eight-day clock, two pairs of silver grape-scissors, a poonah-painted -screen, a papier-maché work-box, an assortment of variegated floss-silk, -seven German flutes, an ivory casket, two girandoles for wax candles, -an ebony fan, five flat-irons, and an accordion.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span></p> - -<p>There! I am fairly out of breath. The mere perusal of the -catalogue is sufficient to give one vertigo. But whence, you will ask, -the extraordinary incongruity of the articles sold? We know when a -gentleman “going abroad” or “relinquishing housekeeping,” and who -is never—Oh dear, no!—in any manner of pecuniary difficulty, honours -Messrs. So-and-So with instructions to sell his effects, what we may -look forward to when the carpets are hung from the windows with the -sale-bills pinned thereon, and the auctioneer establishes a temporary -rostrum on the dining-room table. We know that after the “elegant -modern furniture” will come the “choice collection of pictures, statuary, -and <i>virtù</i>,” then the “carefully-selected library of handsomely-bound -books,” and then the “judiciously assorted stock of first-class wines.” -But what gentleman, what tradesman, what collector of curiosities and -odds and ends even, could have brought together such an astounding -jumble of conflicting wares as are gathered round us to-day! The -solution of the enigma lies in a nutshell, and shall forthwith be made -manifest to you. The articles sold this afternoon are all <i>pawnbrokers’ -pledges unredeemed</i>, and this is one of Messrs. Debenham and Storr’s -quarterly sales, which the law hath given, and which the court awards. -Your watch, which your temporary pecuniary embarrassments may -have led you to deposit with a confiding relative thirteen months since, -which your renewed pecuniary embarrassments have precluded you -from redeeming, and which your own unpardonable carelessness has -made you even forget to pay the interest upon, may be among that -angling bundle of time-pieces which the clerk holds up, and on which -the auctioneer is, at this very moment, descanting.</p> - -<p>The eloquence of the quarterly sale does not by any means resemble -the flowery Demosthenic style first brought into fashion among -auctioneers by the distinguished George Robins. Here are no ponds -to be magnified by rhetoric into fairy lakes, no little hills to be amplified -into towering crags, no shaven lawns to be described as “boundless -expanses of verdure.” The auctioneer is calm, equable, concise, but -firm, and the sums realised by the sale of the articles are reasonable—so -reasonable, in fact, that they frequently barely cover loan and interest -due to the pawnbroker. But that is his risk; and such is the power of -competition in trade, that a London pawnbroker will often lend more -upon an article than it will sell for. In the provinces the brethren of -the three golden balls are more cautious; and in Dublin they are -shamefully mean in their advances to their impoverished clients; but it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span> -is in Paris <i>par excellence</i>, that the great national pawning establishment, -the Mont de Piété, manifests the most decided intention, by the -microscopic nature of its loans, of taking care of itself.</p> - -<p>Much noise, much dust, and an appreciable amount of confusion, -must necessarily, my patient friend and companion, exist at every -auction, though it must be admitted, to the credit of Messrs. Debenham -and Storr, that their proceedings are always marked by as much -regularity and decorum as the nature of their transactions will admit -of. For auctioneering is the Bohemianism of commerce; and whether -it be the purser of a man-of-war selling the effects of a deceased Jack -Tar before the mainmast; an impromptu George Robins, with a very -large beard, knocking down red flannel shirts, jack-boots, and gold -rocking-cradles at the Ballarat diggings; my former friends, the fish -salesmen, brandishing their account-books over their piscine merchandise -in Billingsgate; or the courtly Robins, <i>in propriâ personâ</i>, -eloquently bepuffing the Right Hon. the Earl of Cockletops’s broad -acres, which he has been honoured with instructions to sell, in consequence -of the insolvency of his Lordship, there always enters into the -deed of selling something wild, something picturesque, and something -exciting. It is strange, too, how soon the virtues of auctioneering are -apt to degenerate into vices; and how thin a barrier exists between its -legitimate commercial business and an imbroglio of roguish chaffering.</p> - -<p>So is it on the turf. There, on the velvet verdant lawn before the -Grand Stand at Epsom, sits, or stands, or reclines, my Lord the -immaculate owner of Podasokus or Cynosure. Betting-book in hand, -he condescends to take the odds from Mr. Jones, who may have been a -journeyman carpenter ten years since, but whose bare word is good -now for a hundred thousand pounds. The peer and the plebeian bet -together amicably; they respect their parole agreements; they would -disdain to admit the suspicion of a fraud in their transactions; they -are honourable men both, though they might, I acknowledge, do something -better for a livelihood than gamble on the speed of a racehorse; -yet, all honourable men as they are on the turf, within two feet of -them, <i>outside</i> the Grand Stand railing, are some hundreds of turfites -depending for their existence upon exactly the same means—betting, -but who cheat, and lie, and cozen, and defraud, and swagger about in -an impudent boastfulness of roguery, till the most liberal-minded -member of the non-cheating community must regret, almost, that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span> -old despotic punishments are gone out of vogue, and that a few of -these rogues’ ears cannot be nailed to the winning post, a few of them -tied up to the railings of the Grand Stand and soundly swinged, and a -few more placed in neat pillories, or commodious pairs of stocks beneath -the judge’s chair. Like the honourable betters inside, and the thievish -touts outside, electioneering is apt to suffer by the same disreputable -companionships; and within a few stones’ throw of Garraway’s, there -may be pullulating an infamous little watch-box of dishonesty, where -a thick-lipped, sham Caucasian auctioneer, is endeavouring, with the -aid of confederates as knavish as he, to palm off worthless lamps, -lacquered tea-trays, teapots of tin sophisticated to the semblance of -silver, and rubbishing dressing-cases, upon unwary country visitors, -or even upon Cockneys, who, were they to live to the age of Methuselah, -would never be thoroughly initiated into the ways of the -town.</p> - -<p>And now stand on one side: the auction company—it is nearly four -o’clock—stream forth from Debenham’s. I spoke of the amateurs of -auctions—the people who persist in attending them, but who rarely -appear to become purchasers of anything. There is not much difficulty, -however, in discerning who the people are who are really bidding and -really buying. Here they come, bagged and bundled, and gesticulating -and jabbering. They are Jews, my dear. They are the hook-nosed, -ripe-lipped, bright-eyed, cork-screw ringleted, and generally oleaginous-looking -children of Israel. They cluster, while in the sale-room, -round the auctioneer and his clerk, who (the last) seems to have an -intimate acquaintance with them all. They nod and chuckle, and -utter Hebrew ejaculations, and seem, all the while that the sale is -proceeding, to be in an overboiling state of tremour and nervous excitement. -A sale by auction is to them as good—better—than a play; so -is everything on this earth, in, about, or in the remotest connection -with which, there is something that can be bought, or something that -can be sold, or something that can be higgled for. If ever you attend -auctions, my friend and reader, I should advise you not to bid against -the Jews. If it seem to you that any one of the Caucasian Arabs has -set his mind upon the acquisition of an article, let him bid for it and -buy it, a’goodness name; for if you meddle with the matter, even by -the augmentation of a sixpence, he will so bid and bid against you, -that he will bid you, at last, out of your hat, and out of your coat, -and out of your skin, and out of your bones; even as the cunning man<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span> -of Pyquag, that Diedrich Knickerbocker tells of, questioned Anthony -van Corlear, the trumpeter, out of his fast-trotting nag, and sent him -home mounted on a vile calico mare.</p> - -<p>There are some here, who are dissatisfied with the bargains they -have made, and are squabbling in a lively manner on the foot pavement. -Mark, I entreat you, among them, those dusky-faced females, -mostly given to the loose and flabby order of corpulency, who are -shabbily dressed, yet with a certain tendency to the wearing of lace -bonnets, and faded cashmeres, and who have moreover a decided penchant -for golden bangles and earrings, and rings with large stones -that do not shine. You cannot make up your mind at once that they -are Jewesses, because they have a conflicting facial resemblance to -Gipsies. During the sale they have been reclining, not to say squatting, -on the broad goods counter in shabby state, like second-hand -sultanas, making bids in deep contralto voices, or mysteriously transmitting -them through the intermediary of glib Jew boys with curly -heads. These commercial females must be reckoned among the -million and one mysteries of London. I imagine them to be the -ladies dwelling in remote suburbs or genteel neighbourhoods gone -to decay, who, in the columns of the “Times,” are always expressing -a desire to purchase second-hand wearing apparel, lace, jewellery, and -books, for the purpose of exportation to Australia, and for which they -are always willing to pay ready money, even to the extent of remitting -post-office orders in immediate return for parcels from the country. -They, too, I think, must keep the mysterious “ladies’ wardrobe shops” -known to the Abigails in aristocratic families, and which are, a little -bird has told me, not altogether unknown to the patrician occupants -of the noblest mansions of the realm. Thus, there seems to be a perpetual -round of mutation and transmutation going on among clothes. -The natural theory of reproduction here seems carried to its most -elaborate condition of practice; and, bidding adieu to Debenham and -Storr’s, the chaffering Jews, and the dusky ladies’ wardrobe women, -my mind wanders to Rag Fair, thence to the emporium of Messrs. -Moses and Son, and thence, again, to Stultze, Nugee, and Buckmaster, -and I end in a maze of cogitation upon the “Sartor Resartus” of -Thomas Carlyle.</p> - -<p>Come, let us struggle into the open, and inhale the flower-laden -breeze that is wafted from Covent Garden market. There, we are in -King Street; and, I declare, there is my aunt Sophy’s brougham, -with my identical aunt and my cousin Polly in the interior of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span> -vehicle. They are bound, I will go bail, either to the Soho Bazaar or -to the Pantheon, in Oxford Street. Jump up behind; fear no warning -cry of “whip behind” addressed to the coachman by malevolent street -boy, disappointed in his expectations of an eleemosynary ride. Remember, -we are invisible; and as for the dignity of the thing, the -starched, buckramed, and watchspringed-hooped skirts of my female -relatives take up at least three and a half out of the four seats in the -brougham: the remaining moiety of a place being occupied, as of -right, by my aunt’s terrier, Jip, who threatens vengeance with all his -teeth on any one who should venture to dispossess him.</p> - -<p>I told you so. They have passed Charles Street, Soho, whisked -by the Princess’s Theatre, and alighted beneath the portico of the -Pantheon. The affable beadle (whose whiskers, gold-laced hat-band, -livery buttons, and general deportment, are as superior to those the -property of the beadle of the Burlington Arcade, as General Washington -to General Walker) receives the ladies with a bow. He is -equalled, not surpassed, in polished courtesy, by his brother beadle at -the conservatory entrance in Great Marlborough Street, who bows -ladies out with a dignified politeness worthy of the best days of -Richelieu and Lauzun.</p> - -<p>So into the Pantheon, turning and turning about in that Hampton-Court-like -maze of stalls, laden with pretty gimcracks, toys, and <i>papier -maché</i> trifles for the table, dolls and children’s dresses, wax flowers -and Berlin and crotchet work, prints, and polkas, and women’s ware -of all sorts. Up into the gallery, where you may look down upon a -perfect little ant-hill of lively industry. And, if you choose, into that -queer picture-gallery, where works by twentieth-rate masters have -been quietly accumulating smoke and dust for some score years, and -where the only conspicuous work is poor shiftless Haydon’s big -nightmare picture of “Lazarus.” They have lately added, I believe, -a photographic establishment to the picture-gallery of the Pantheon; -but I am doubtful as to its success. It requires a considerable amount -of moral courage to ascend the stairs, or to enter the picture department -at all. The place seems haunted by the ghosts of bygone -pictorial mediocrities. It is the lazar-house of painting—an hospital -of incurables in art.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus24" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus24.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">THREE O’CLOCK P.M.: THE PANTHEON BAZAAR.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span></p> - -<p>I am not aware whether any of my present generation of readers—people -are born, and live and die, so fast now-a-days—remember -a friend of mine who dwelt in an out-of-the-way place called Tatty-boy’s -Rents, and whom I introduced to the public by the name of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span> -Fripanelli. He was a music-master—very old, and poor, and ugly; -almost a dwarf in stature, wrinkled, decrepit; he wore a short -cloak, and the boys called him “Jocko;” indeed, he was not at -all unlike a baboon in general appearance. But Fripanelli in his -time—a very long time ago—though now brought to living in a back -slum, and teaching the daughters of chandlers’ shopkeepers, had -been a famous professor of the tuneful art. He knew old Gaddi—Queen -Caroline’s Gaddi—well: he had been judged worthy to preside -at the pianoforte at Velluti’s musical classes; and he had even written -the music to a ballet, which was performed with great <i>éclat</i> at the -King’s Theatre, and in which the celebrated Gambalonga had danced. -To me, Frip. had an additional claim to be regarded with something -like curiosity mingled with reverence; for he had positively been, in -the halcyon days of youth, the manager of an Italian opera company, -the place of whose performance was—wherever do you think?—the -Pantheon, in Oxford Street. Now, as I stand in the lively bazaar, -with the prattling little children, and the fine flounced ladies, I -try to conjure back the days when Fripanelli was young, and when -the Pantheon was a theatre. From here in the vestibule—where the -ornamented flower-pots, and the garden-chairs of complicated construction, -and the busts with smoky cheeks and noses, and marvellously -clubbed heads of hair, have their <i>locus standi</i>—from here sprang -the grand staircase. There was no Haydon’s picture of Lazarus for -our grandfathers and grandmothers in hoops and powder—you must -remember that Fripanelli looks at least two hundred and fifty years -of age, and is currently reported to be ninety—to stare at as they -trotted up the degrees. Yonder, in the haven of bygone mediocrities -in the picture-gallery, may have been the crush-room; the rotunda at -the back of the bazaar, where now the vases of wax-flowers glimmer -in a perpetual twilight, must have been the green-room; the conservatories -were dressing-rooms, and the stage door was undoubtedly -in Great Marlborough Street. How I should have liked to witness -the old pigtail operas and ballets performed at the Pantheon, when -Fripanelli and the century were young. “Iphigenia in Aulis,” -“Ariadne in Naxos,” “Orestes and Pylades,” “Daphnis and Chloë,” -“Bellerophon,” “Eurydice,” the “Clemency of Titus,” the “Misfortunes -of Darius,” and the “Cruelty of Nero”—these were the lively -subjects which our grandfathers and grandmothers delighted to have -set to Italian music. Plenty of good heavy choruses, tinkle-tankling -instrumental music, plaintive ditties, with accompaniments on the fife -and the fiddle, and lengthy screeds of droning recitatives, like the -Latin accidence arranged for the bagpipes. Those were the days of -the unhappy beings of whom Velluti and Ambrogetti were among the -last whom a refined barbarity converted into <i>soprani</i>. The Italians -have not many things to thank the first Napoleon for; yet to his -sway in Italy humanity owes the abolition of <i>that</i> atrocity. They dig -up some of the worthy old pigtail operas now, and perform them on -our modern lyric stage. A select audience of fogies, whose sympathies -are all with the past, comes to listen, and goes to sleep; and -“Iphigenia in Aulis,” or “Ariadne in Naxos,” is consigned to a -Capuletian tomb of limbo. Days of good taste are these, my masters, -when aristocratic ears are tickled by the melodious naughtinesses of -the great Casino-and-Codliver-oil opera, the “Traviata;” by the -Coburg melodrama, mingled with Mrs. Ratcliffe’s novel, and finished -with extracts from Guicciardini’s “Annals”—called the “Trovatore,” -[who was it fried that child, or broiled him, or ate him: Azucena, -Leonora, the Conde di Luna, Mrs. Harris, all or any of them?] or by -the sparkling improbabilities of “Rigoletto,” with its charming -Greenacre episode of the murdered lady in the sack. We manage -those things so much better now-a-days. And the ballets, too; do -you know positively that in the pig-tail opera times, the lady dancers -wore skirts of decent length? do you know that Guimard danced in a -hoop that reached nearly to her ankles, and that Noblet wore a corsage -that ended just below her armpits, and a skirt that descended -far below her knees? Do you know, even, that Taglioni, and Ellsler, -and Duvernay, the great terpsichorean marvels of twenty years since, -disdained the meretricious allurements of this refined and polished -age, that calls garters “elastic bands,” and winces at a grant of -twenty pounds a year for providing living models for the students of -the Dublin Academy?—that strains at these gnats, and swallows the -camel of a ballet at the opera! Oh, stupid old pig-tail days, when -we could take our wives and sisters to hear operas and see ballets, -without burning with shame to think that we should take, or they -suffer themselves to be taken, to witness a shameless exhibition, fit -only for the <i>blasé</i> patricians of the Lower Empire!</p> - -<p>In the memoirs of old Nollekens, the sculptor, you will find that he -was an assiduous frequenter of the Italian Opera at the Pantheon, to -which he had a life admission—it did not last <i>his</i> life though, I am -afraid—and that he sat in the pit with his sword by his side, and a -worsted comforter round his neck. This must surely, however, have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span> -been before the days of Fripanelli’s management. It is hard to say, -indeed, for the Pantheon has been so many things by turns and nothing -long. Once, if I mistake not, there was wont to be an exhibition of -wax-work here; once, too, it was famous as a place for masquerades -of the most fashionable, or, at least, of the costliest description. Here -Charles Fox and Lord Maldon, with dominoes thrown over their laced -clothes, and masks pressed upon their powdered perukes, reeled in -from the chocolate houses and the E. O. tables; here, so the legends -say, the bad young prince, who afterwards became a worse old king, -the worthless and witless wearer of the Prince of Wales’s three ostrich -plumes—here George III.’s eldest born met the beautiful Perdita. He -ill-treated her, of course, afterwards, as he ill-treated his wives (I say -wives, in the plural number, do you understand?) and his mistresses, -his father, his friends, and the people he was called upon to govern. -He lied to, and betrayed, them all; and he was <i>Dei gratiâ</i>, and died in -the odour of civil list sanctity, and they have erected a statue to his -disreputable memory in Trafalgar Square.</p> - -<p>Soft, whisper low, tread softly: the Pantheon was once a church! -Yes, there were pews in the area of the pit, and free-sittings in the -galleries. There is a singing, buffooning place in Paradise Street, -Liverpool, where they dance the Lancashire clog-hornpipe, yell comic -songs on donkeys’ backs, perform acrobatic feats, juggle, strum the -banjo, clank the bones, belabour the tambourine, stand on their heads, -and walk on the ceiling. This place is called the Colosseum, <i>but it -was once a chapel</i>. The pews, with very slight alteration, yet exist, -and on the ledges where the hymn-books were wont to lie, stand now -the bottles of Dublin stout and ginger-pop. I do not like these violent -revolutions, these galvanic contrasts. They are hideous, they are unnatural, -they are appalling. To return to the Pantheon—I still follow -the legends—after it had been a masquerading temple and a wax-work -show, and then a church, it was changed once more into a -theatre; but <i>mark what followed</i>. One Saturday night the company -were playing “Don Giovanni,” and midnight had struck before the -awful tramp of the Commendatore was heard re-echoing through the -marble corridors of the libertine’s palace, and the last tube of maccaroni -stuck in Leporello’s throat; but when, the finale being at its approach, -and to cap the climax of the catastrophe, twelve demons in flame-coloured -garments, and bearing torches flaming with resin, rose from -trap-doors to seize the guilty Don, the manager, who had been watching -the scene from the wing, rushed on the stage with a screech of horror,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span> -crying out, “<i>There are thirteen! There are thirteen!</i>” And so there -were! A solitary demon, with flaming eyes, a tail of incredible -length, and bearing <i>two</i> torches, appeared, no man knew whence—<i>he</i> -hadn’t come up a trap to the foot-lights (the audience screaming and -fainting by scores), danced a ghastly <i>pas seul</i>, cut six, and disappeared -in a blaze of livid-coloured fire, which had <i>not</i> been provided in the -usual iron pans by the property man.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Whether he took Don Giovanni -or the manager away with him the legend does not state; but it is -certain that the latter went bankrupt a month afterwards, of course as -a punishment for his sins; whereupon the lease of the Pantheon was -purchased by a sober-minded speculator, who forthwith converted it -into a bazaar, as which it has greatly thriven ever since.</p> - -<p>I am very fond of buying toys for children; but I don’t take them -to the Pantheon for that purpose. I fear the price of the merchandise -which the pretty and well-conducted female assistants at the stalls have -to sell. I have been given to understand that incredible prices are -charged for India-rubber balls, and that the quotations for drums, -hares-and-tabors, and Noah’s arks, are ruinously high. I have yet -another reason for not patronising the Pantheon as a toy mart. It -frequently happens that I feel slightly misanthropic and vicious in my -toy-dealing excursions, and that my juvenile friends have sudden fits -of naughtiness, and turn out to be anything but agreeable companions. -Woe betide the ill-conditioned youngsters who cause me to assume -the function of a vicarious “Bogey!” But I serve them out, I promise -you. To use a transpontine colloquialism, ungenteel but expressive, I -“warm them.” Not by blows or pinches—I disdain that; not by -taking them into shops where they sell unwholesome pastry or -deleterious sweetstuff—I have no wish to impair their infantile powers -of digestion; though both processes, I have been given to understand, -are sometimes resorted to by child-quellers; but I “warm” them by -taking them into toy shops and buying them <i>ugly toys</i>. Aha! my -young friends! who bought you the old gentleman impaled on the area -railing while in the act of knocking at his own street door, and who -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span>emitted a dismal groan when the pedestal on which he stood was -compressed? Who purchased the monkey with the horrible visage, -that ran up the stick? who the dreadful crawling serpent, made of the -sluggishly elastic substance—a compound of glue and treacle, I believe—of -which printers’ rollers are made, and that unwound himself in a -shudderingly, reptile, life-like manner on the parlour carpet? Who -brought you the cold, flabby toad, and the centipede at the end of the -India-rubber string, with his heavy chalk body and quivering limbs, -the great-grandfather of all the irreverent daddy-long-legs who -wouldn’t say their prayers, and were taken, in consequence, by those -elongated appendages, and thrown, with more or less violence, downstairs? -This is about the best method I know for punishing a refractory -child. There is another, an almost infallible and Rarey-like -process of taming juvenile termagants in the absence of their parents; -but it entails a slight modicum of physical cruelty. Say that you -are left alone with a child, too young to reason with, and who <i>won’t</i> -behave himself. Don’t slap him: it is brutal and cowardly on your -part; besides, it <i>leaves marks</i>, and you don’t want to make an enemy -of his mother. Don’t make faces at him: it may spoil the beauty of -your own countenance, and may frighten him out of his little wits. -<i>Shake him.</i> Shake him till he becomes an animated whirligig. He -isn’t appalled; he is only bewildered. He doesn’t know what on -earth the unaccustomed motion means: then wink at him, and tell him -that you will do it again if he doesn’t behave himself; and it is perfectly -wonderful to see to what complete submission you can reduce -him. It is true that a grown person must be a callous brute to try -such measures with a defenceless infant; but let that pass—we can’t -get on in the world without a little ruffianism. I have heard, even, -that in the matrimonial state a good shaking will from time to time—but -soft!</p> - -<p>The young ladies who serve behind the counters at the Pantheon, -are much given to working the spiky cobweb collars in which our -present belles delight, and which are worked in guipure, or crotchet, -or application, or by some other process with an astounding name of -which I am profoundly ignorant. To their lady customers they behave -with great affability. The gentlemen, I am pleased, though mortified -to say, they treat with condescension mingled with a reserved dignity -that awes the boldest spirit. It is somewhat irritating, too, to know -that they can be as merry as grigs among themselves when they so -choose; and it is a bending of the brows, a clinching of the fists, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span> -a biting of the lips matter, to see them flitting from stall to stall, -romping with one another in a pastoral manner, and retailing merry -anecdotes, which may possibly be remarks on your personal appearance. -Yet I have known a man with large whiskers (he went to the bad, and -to Australia, and is now either high in the government or in the police -over there) to whom a young lady assistant in the Pantheon, on a very -wet day, once lent a silk umbrella. But he was always a bold man, -and had a winning way with the sex.</p> - -<p>It is time, if you will excuse my mentioning it, that we should quit -this labyrinth of avenues between triple-laden stalls, all crowded with -ladies and children, whose voluminous <i>jupons</i>—the very babes and -sucklings wear crinoline now—render locomotion inconvenient, not to -say perilous. Pass the refreshment counter, where they sell the arrowroot -cakes, which I never saw anywhere else, and let us enter the conservatory—a -winter garden built long ere Crystal Palaces or Jardins -d’Hiver were dreamt of, and which to me is as pleasant a lounge as any -that exists in London: a murmuring fountain, spangled with gold and -silver fish, and the usual number of “winking bubbles beading at the -brim;” and good store of beautiful exotic plants and myriad-hued -flowers. The place is but a niche, a narrow passage, with a glass roof -and a circle at the end, where the fountain is, like the bulb of a thermometer; -but to me it is very delightful. It is good to see fair young -faces, fair young forms, in rainbow, rustling garments, flitting in and -about the plants and flowers, the fountain and the gold fish. It is good -to reflect how much happiness and innocence there must be among -these pretty creatures. The world for them is yet a place for flirting, -and shopping, and dancing, and making themselves as fair to view as -they and the looking-glass and the milliner can manage. The world is -as yet a delightful Pantheon, full of flowers—real, wax, and artificial, -and all pleasant—sandal-wood fans, petticoats with worked edges, silk -stockings, satin shoes, white kid gloves, varnished broughams, pet -dogs, vanille ices, boxes at the opera, tickets for the Crystal Palace, -tortoise-shell card-cases, enamelled visiting-cards, and scented pink -invitation notes, with “<i>On dansera</i>” in the left-hand bottom corners, -muslin slips, bandoline, perfumes, ballads and polkas with chromo-lithographed -frontispieces, and the dear delightful new novels from -Mudie’s with uncut leaves, and mother-o’-pearl paper knives with coral -spring handles to cut them withal. They have kind mammas and -indulgent port-wine papas, who bring them home such nice things from -the city. They sit under such darling clergymen, with curls in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span> -centre of their dear white foreheads; they have soft beds, succulent -dinners, and softly-pacing hacks, on which to ride in coquettish-looking -habits and cavalier hats. John the footman is always anxious to run -errands for them; and their additional male acquaintance is composed -of charming creatures with white neckcloths, patent leather boots, -irreproachable whiskers, and mellow tenor voices. Oh! the delightful -world; sure, it is the <i>meilleur des mondes possible</i>, as Voltaire’s Doctor -Pangloss maintained. It is true that they were at school once, and -suffered all the tyranny of the “calisthenic exercises” and the French -mark, or were, at home, mewed up under the supervision of a stern -governess, who set them excruciating tasks; but, oh! that was such a -long time since, they were so young then—it was ever such a long -time ago. You silly little creatures! it was only the day before -yesterday, and the day after to-morrow——. But “gather ye rosebuds -while ye may,” and regard not old Time as he is a-flying. For -my part, I will mingle no drop of cynicism in the jewelled cup of your -young enjoyment; and I hope that the day after to-morrow, with unkind -husbands and ungrateful children, with physic-bottles and aches -and pains, and debts and duns, may never come to you, and that your -pretty shadows may never be less.</p> - -<p>You see that I am in an unusual state of mansuetude, and feel for -the nonce inclined to say, “Bless everybody”—the Pope, the Pretender, -the Pantheon, the pretty girls, and the sailors’ pig-tails, -though they’re now cut off. Every sufferer from moral <i>podagra</i> has -such fits of benevolence between the twinges of his gout. But the -fit, alas! is evanescent; and I have not been ten minutes in the conservatory -of the Pantheon before I begin to grumble again. I really -must shut my ears in self-defence against the atrocious, the intolerable -screeching of the parrots, the parroquettes, the cockatoos, and the -macaws, who are permitted to hang on by their wicked claws and the -skin of their malicious beaks to the perches round the fountain. The -twittering of the smaller birds is irritating enough to the nervously -afflicted; but the parrots! ugh! that piercing, long-continued, hoarse -shriek—it is like a signal of insane communication given by a patient -at Hanwell to a brother lunatic at Colney Hatch. The worst of these -abominable birds is, that they cannot or will not talk, and confine -themselves to an inarticulate gabble. However, I suppose the fairest -rose must have its thorns, and the milkiest white hind its patch of -darker colour; so it is incumbent on us, in all charity, to condone -the ornithological nuisance which is the main drawback to a very<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span> -pretty and cheerful place of resort. Only, I should like to know -the people who buy the parrots, in order that I might avoid them.</p> - -<p>As we entered by Oxford Street, with its embeadled colonnade, it -becomes our bounden duty to quit the building by means of that -portal which I assumed to have been in days gone-by the stage-door -of the pig-tail opera-house, and which gives egress into Great Marlborough -Street. I can’t stand the parrots; so, leaving my aunt (I -wish she would lend me a hundred pounds), and my cousin (I wish -she would lend me a kiss, and more sincerely do I wish that either of -them existed in the flesh, or elsewhere but in my turbid imagination); -leaving these shadowy relatives genteelly bargaining (they have -already purchased a <i>papier maché</i> inkstand and a coral wafer-stamp), -I slip through the conservatory’s crystal precincts, inhale a farewell -gust of flower-breeze, pass through a waiting-room, where some tired -ladies are resting till their carriages draw up, and am genteelly bowed -out by affable beadle No. 2.</p> - -<p>And now, whither away? Shall I cross the road, and commence -the first of a series of six lessons in dancing from Miss Leonora -Geary? Shall I visit the harp and pianoforte establishment of Messrs. -Erard, and try the tone of an “upright grand?” Shall I hie me to -Marlborough Street police-court, and see how Mr. Bingham or Mr. -Hardwick may be getting on? No: I think I will take a walk down -Regent Street (one cannot too frequently perambulate that delightful -thoroughfare at the height of the season), turn off by Vigo Lane, and -take a stroll—a five minutes’ stroll, mind, for I have an appointment -close to St. George’s Hospital, and Mr. Decimus Burton’s triumphal -arch, as soon after four as possible—down the Burlington Arcade.</p> - -<p>I remember once refecting myself at a public dinner—the Tenth -Anniversary Festival of the Hospital for Elephantiasis, I think it was—when -my next neighbour to the right (to the left was a rural dean) -was a gentleman in a white waistcoat that loomed large like the lateen -sail of a Palermian felucca, and whose convivial countenance was of -the exact hue and texture of the inside of an over-ripe fig. He took -remarkably good care of himself during dinner time, had twice spring -soup, and twice salmon and cucumber, led the waiters a terrible life, -and gathered quite a little grove of bottles of choice wine round him. -I am bound to say that he was not selfish or solitary in his enjoyment, -for he pressed a peculiar Sautern upon me, and an especial Chateau -Lafitte (the landlord must have known and respected him), with a -silver label hanging to its bottle neck, like the badge of a Hansom<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span> -cabman. He also recommended gosling to me, as being the very -thing to take after lamb, in a rich husky voice, that did one good to -hear. At the conclusion of the repast, after we had dabbled with -the rosewater in the silver-gilt shield, which it is the custom to -send round, and which nobody knows exactly what to do with—I -always feel inclined to upset it, for the purpose of eliciting an -expression of public feeling, and clearing the atmosphere generally; -and when the business of the evening, as the absurd system of indiscriminate -toast-giving is termed, had commenced, and the professional -ladies and gentlemen were singing something about the “brave and -bearded barley” in execrable time and tune, of course in the most preposterously -irrelevant connection with the health just drank—either -the Army and Navy, or the two Houses of Parliament—my neighbour -with the ripe fig countenance turned to me, and wiping his moist lips -with his <i>serviette</i>, whispered these remarkable words: “Sir, a public -dinner is the sublimation of an assemblage of superfluities.” He said -no more during the evening, filled up his name, however, for a handsome -amount in the subscription-list (his name was announced amid -thunders of applause by the secretary, but I really forget whether he -was a general or a wholesale grocer), and went away in anything but -a superfluous state of sobriety. But his words sank deep into my -mind, and they bring me at once to the Burlington Arcade.</p> - -<p>Which is to me another sublimate of superfluities: a booth transplanted -bodily from Vanity Fair. I don’t think there is a shop in its -<i>enceinte</i> where they sell anything that we could not do without. -Boots and shoes are sold there, to be sure, but what boots and shoes? -varnished and embroidered and be-ribboned figments, fitter for a fancy -ball or a lady’s chamber, there to caper to the jingling melody of a -lute, than for serious pedestrianism. Paintings and lithographs for -gilded boudoirs, collars for puppy dogs, and silver-mounted whips for -spaniels, pocket handkerchiefs, in which an islet of cambric is -surrounded by an ocean of lace, embroidered garters and braces, -fillagree flounces, firework-looking bonnets, scent bottles, sword-knots, -brocaded sashes, worked dressing-gowns, inlaid snuff-boxes, -and falbalas of all descriptions; these form the stock-in-trade of the -merchants who have here their tiny <i>boutiques</i>. There are hair-dressers’ -shops too; but I will be bound that their proprietors would -not be content with trimming a too luxuriant head of hair. They -would insist upon curling, oiling, scenting, and generally tittivating -you. They would want you to buy amandine for your hands, kalydor<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span> -for your hair, dentifrice, odonto, <i>vinaigre de toilette</i>, hair-brushes -with ivory backs, and tortoiseshell pocket-combs with mirrors appended -to them. They would insist that you could not live without -<i>pommade Hongroise</i> and <i>fixatures</i> for the moustaches, or Frangipani -for the pocket-handkerchief. I have very few ambitions, but one -is to become the proprietor of a house in the Burlington Arcade, and -forthwith to open a chandler’s shop in the very midst of its vanities -and its whim-whams. The reproof, I trust, would be as stern, though -I am afraid it would have as little effect, as that of the uncompromising -patriots of the reign of terror, who planted the parterres of -the Tuileries gardens with potatoes. To the end of time, I perpend, -we shall have this hankering after superfluities, and little princesses -will ask their governesses why the people need starve for want of -bread, when there are such nice Bath buns in the confectioners’ shop -windows.</p> - -<p>But the clock of St. James’s warns me that I am due at Hyde -Park Corner, and passing by yet another beadle, I emerge into -Piccadilly.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOUR_PM">FOUR P.M.—TATTERSALL’S, AND THE PARK.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Was there not a time when Hyde Park Corner was the Ultima Thule -of London, and Kensington was in the country?—when Hammersmith -was far away—a district known only to washerwomen and nursery -gardeners—and Turnham Green and Kew were places where citizens -took their wives to enjoy the perfection of ruralisation? Was it not -to the Hercules’ Pillars at Hyde Park Corner that Squire Western -sent his chaplain to recover the snuff-box, which the worthy landed-gentleman -and justice of the peace had left there when he halted to -bait? Was not Hyde Park Corner a rendezvous for highwaymen, -where they listened with eagerness for “the sound of coaches;” and -parted, some towards Fulham, some towards Hounslow, some towards -the Uxbridge road, where they might meet full-pouched travellers, -and bid them “stand and deliver?” I remember, myself, old Padlock -House at Knightsbride, standing in the midst of the roadway, -like Middle Row in Holborn, or the southern block of Holywell Street<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span> -in the Strand, with the padlock itself fixed in the grimy wall, which, -according to the legendary wishes of a mythical testator, was never to -be pulled down till the lock rotted away from its chain, and the chain -from the brick and mortar in which it was imbedded. The cavalry -barracks at Knightsbride seemed to have been built in the year One, -and we boys whispered that the little iron knobs on the wall of the -line of stables, which are, it is to be presumed, intended for purposes -of ventilation (though I am not at all certain about the matter yet) -were miniature portholes, at which fierce troopers, with carbines -loaded to the muzzle, and ready pointed, kept guard every day, in -order to repel the attacks of the “Radicals.” Alack-a-day! but the -“Radicals” seem to be getting somewhat the better of it at this -present time of writing. Kensington High Street seemed to belong -to a hamlet of immense age; the old church was a very cathedral—built, -of course, by William of Wykeham; and as for Holland House, -there could not be any doubt about that. It came in naturally with -the Conqueror, and the first Lord Holland.</p> - -<p>Hyde Park Corner before the battle of Waterloo must have been a -strange, old-fashioned-looking place. No Apsley House: the site was -occupied by the old woman who kept the apple-stall, or the bun-house, -or the curds and whey shop, and who wouldn’t be bought out, -save at enormous prices, by his late Grace, Field-Marshal Arthur -Duke of Wellington. No triumphal arch; and, thank good taste, no -equestrian statue of the late F. M. Arthur Dux, &c., on the summit -thereof. No entablatured colonnade, with nothing to support, towards -the Park. No Achilles statue. A mean, unpicturesque, common-place -spot, I take it. What could you expect of an epoch in which -the Life Guards wore cocked hats and pig-tails, the police-officers -red waistcoats and top boots, when the king <i>de jure</i> was mad, and the -king <i>de facto</i> wore a wig and padded himself? A bad time. We -have a lady on the throne now who behaves as a sovereign should -behave, and London grows handsomer every day.</p> - -<p>I declare that it does; and I don’t care a fig for the cynics—most -of them ignorant cynics, too—who, because they have accomplished a -cheap tour to Paris, or have gone half-way up the Rhine, think themselves -qualified to under-rate and to decry the finest metropolis in the -world. I grant the smoke—in the city—and I confess that the -Thames is anything but odoriferous in sultry weather, and is neither -so blue nor so clear as the Neva; but I say that London has dozens -and scores of splendid streets and mansions, such as I defy Paris,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span> -Vienna, Berlin, or St. Petersburg—I know their architectural glories -by heart—to produce. I say that Pall Mall beats the Grand Canal -at Venice; that Regent Street, with a little more altitude in its buildings, -would put the Boulevard des Italiens to shame; and that Cannon -Street makes the Nevskoi Perspective hide its diminished head. -Some of these days, when I can get that balance at the banker’s I -have been waiting for so long, I shall sit down and indite a book -entitled, “A Defence of London, Architecturally Considered,” the -which I shall publish at my own expense, as I am certain no publisher -would purchase the copyright.</p> - -<p>Take Hyde Park Corner. Between the Brandenburg Thor at -Berlin and the Puerta del Sol at Madrid, you will not find a gayer, -more picturesque, more sparkling scene. Ugly and preposterous as -is the man in the cocked hat, who holds the rolling-pin and is wrapped -in the counterpane, on the top of the arch, we are not for ever giving -ourselves wry necks in the attempt to look up at him; and the arch -itself is noble and grandiose. Then, opposite, through the <i>a giorno</i> of -Mr. “Anastasius” Hope’s colonnade, that supports nothing, you catch -a glimpse of the leafy glories of Hyde Park—carriages, horses, horsewomen, -Achilles’ statue, and all. And again, to the right of the arch, -is St. George’s Hospital, looking more like a gentleman’s mansion -than an abode of pain; and to the left the ever-beautiful, ever-fresh, -and ever-charming Green Park. And then far away east stretches -the hill of Piccadilly, a dry Rialto (only watch it at night, and see the -magical effects of its double line of gas-lamps); and westward the -new city that the Londoners have built after their city was finished, -beyond the Ultima Thule. Magnificent lines of stately mansions, -towering park gates, bring us to the two gigantic many-storeyed -edifices at Albert Gate, which were for a long time christened “Gibraltar,” -because they were supposed to be impregnable, no tenant -having been found rich or bold enough to “take them.” Taken they -both were at last, however. The further one, or at least its lower -portion, has been for a considerable period occupied by a banking -company; while the near one—ah! that near Gibraltar, has had two -strange tenants—the representatives of two strange fortunes. There -dwelt the Railway King, a gross, common, mean man, who could not -spell very well, Rumour said: but to him—being king of iron roads -and stuffed with shares even to repletion, such shares being gold in -those days, not dross—came the nobles of the land, humbling themselves -on their gartered knees, and pressing the earth with their coroneted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span> -brows, and calling him King of Men, that he might give them -shares, which he gave them. So this gross man was “hail fellow -well met” with the nobles, and was drunk at their feasts and they at -his, and he sat in the Parliament House, and made laws for us; and -when he sent out cards of invitation, the wives and daughters of the -nobles rose gladly in the night season, and having painted their faces -and bared their necks, and put tresses of dead men’s hair on their -heads, they drove in swift chariots to Albert Gate, and all went merry -as a marriage bell.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“But, hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">It was indeed the great knell of universal railway smashdom, the St. -Sepulchre’s boom of found-out humbug. So down went the Railway -King, and down into the kennel toppled the iron crown—not so much -of Lombardy, this time, as of those Lombards whose arms are three -golden spheres. An iron crown to moralise over, that; and of which, -as of a red-hot halfpenny, the motto reads appositely—“<i>Guai a chi -la tocca</i>,” “Woe be to him who touches it.”</p> - -<p>Albert Gate, the near house, yet saw lighted rooms, and great -revelry and feasting, and a brave tenant; no other than Master Fialin -Persigny, Ambassador of France. Courtly, witty, <i>rusé</i> Persigny -Fialin! the nobles and princes were as glad to come to his merry-makings -as in the old time, when the now broken-down Railway Stag -held high court there. Crafty Fialin! he must have rubbed his -hands sometimes, with a sly chuckle, as, from the upper chambers of -his splendid house, he tried to descry, far off at Kensington, a now -waste spot where once stood <span class="smcap">Gore House</span>. And, oh! he must have -sung—“What a very fine thing it is to be Ambassador-in-law to a -very magnificent three-tailed Bashaw of an Emperor, and to live at -Albert Gate.” Not so many years since, though, master and man -were glad to take tea at Gore House, with the beautiful Woman who -wrote books, and the handsome Count who painted portraits; when -the Bashaw’s bills were somewhat a drug in the discount market, and -his ambassador did not precisely know how to make both ends meet. -All of which proves that the world is full of changes, and that fortune -is capricious, and that master and man have made an uncommonly -good thing of it.</p> - -<p>Don’t be afraid of a sudden raid on my part towards the lands that -lie beyond Brentford. My present business lies close to Hyde Park -Corner, close to St. George’s Hospital. We have but to turn down<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span> -Lower Grosvenor Place, and lo and behold, we are at our destination—<span class="smcap">Tattersall’s</span>.</p> - -<p>I suppose the British Empire could not progress prosperously -without Tattersall’s; so, I suppose, we must cry Tattersall’s and the -Constitution! Tattersall’s and our Ancient Institutions! Tattersall’s -and Liberty! And, indeed, of the last there seems in reality to be -much liberty, and equality, and fraternity in all connected with horse-racing; -and at Tattersall’s, though the resort of the most patrician -turfites, the democratic element is appreciably strong. So long as -both parties pay their bets, dukes and dustmen, Jews and jockeys, -seem to meet upon a cheerful footing of “man to man” at this -peculiarly national establishment.</p> - -<p>The astute prophets who vaticinate in the Sunday newspapers, -and who never can, by the remotest chance of possibility, be wrong -in their calculations, are in the habit of speaking of the sporting -transactions at Tattersall’s as “Doings at the Corner.” I think it -would be slightly more appropriate if they were to characterise them -as “Doings at the Corners,” for of corners, and a multiplicity of -them, Tattersall’s seems made up. It is easy enough to distinguish -the whereabouts of the great temple of horse-racing, for from Hyde -Park Corner far down Grosvenor Place, you will find at FOUR -O’CLOCK (business has been going on throughout the afternoon), a -serried line of vehicles, with the horses’ heads towards Pimlico. -Equipages there are here of every description and grade. Lordly -mail phætons, the mettlesome steeds impatiently champing at the -bit, and shaking their varnished, silver-mounted, crest-decorated -harness; slim, trim, dainty gentlemen’s cabriolets (I am sorry to -see that those most elegant of private vehicles are becoming, year -after year, fewer in number), with high wheels and tall gray horses, -and diminutive, topbooted tigers, squaring their little arms over the -aprons; open carriages and pairs, with parasolled ladies within (for -even rank and beauty do not disdain to wait at Tattersall’s while my -Lord or Sir John goes inside to bet, and perhaps also to put something -on the favourite for Lady Clementina or the Honourable Agnes); -gigs and dog-carts, sly little broughams with rose-coloured blinds and -terriers peeping from beneath them, and whose demure horses look -as though they could tell a good many queer stories if they chose; -taxed carts, chaise carts, and plain carts, that are carts and nothing -else. I should not be at all surprised indeed to see, some fine afternoon, -a costermonger’s “shallow,” donkey, greenstuff-baskets and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span> -all, drawn up before Tattersall’s, while its red ’kerchiefed, corduroyed, -and ankle-jacked proprietor stepped down the yard to inquire after -the state of the odds. There is, you may be sure, a plentiful sprinkling -of Hansom cabs among the wheeled things drawn up. The -Piccadilly cabmen are exceedingly partial to fares whose destination -is Tattersall’s. Such fares are always pressed for time, and always -liberal; and they say that there are few Jehus on the stand between -the White Horse Cellar and Hyde Park Corner who do not stand to -win or lose large sums by every important racing event.</p> - -<p>When you arrive at a building called St. George’s School of -Medicine, and at the door of which, at most times of the day, you -will find lounging a knot of medical students, who should properly, I -take it, in this sporting locality, have a racing and “down-the-road” -look, but who, on the contrary, have the garb and demeanour of -ordinary gentlemen—(What has become of the old medical student -whom Mr. Albert Smith used to caricature for our amusement, with -his shaggy overcoat, white hat, lank hair, short thick stick, staring -shawl, short pipe, and slangy manners and conversation? Is he -extinct as a type, or did he never exist, save in the lively imagination -of that popular writer, and whom I hope all good luck will attend?)—When -you have passed this edifice, sacred to Galen, Celsus, -Hippocrates, and the rest of the Faculty of Antiquity, it will be -time for you to turn down a narrow lane, very like one leading to an -ordinary livery-stable, and to find yourself suddenly in a conglomeration -of “corners.” At one corner stands a building with a varnished -oak door, that does not ill resemble a dissenting chapel with a genteel -congregation, and fronting this, screened from the <i>profanum vulgus</i> -by a stout railing, sweeps round a gravelled walk, surrounding a -shaven grass-plat of circular form. This is the famous “Ring,” of -which you have heard so much; and the building that resembles a -dissenting chapel is none other than Messrs. Tattersall’s subscription -rooms. Within those to ordinary mortals unapproachable precincts, -the privacy of which is kept with as much severity as the interior of -the Stock Exchange, the great guns of the turf discharge their broadsides -of bets. They do not always confine themselves to the interior, -however; but, when the weather is fine and betting hot, particularly -on settling days, when there is an immense hubbub and excitement -possessing every one connected with the turf, from the smallest stable-boy -up to Lords Derby and Zetland, they come forth into the open, -and bet round the grass plat. Now cast your eyes to the right (you<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span> -are standing with your back to Grosvenor Place), and you will see a -low archway, passing through which a hand points to you the spot -where Mr. Rarey, the horse-tamer, had his office; while on the other -side is a counting-house, somewhat dark and mysterious in aspect, -where the names and prices of more racers and hunters than you or I -ever heard of are entered in Tattersall’s bulky ledgers. Beyond the -archway stretches a spacious court-yard, the centre occupied by a -species of temple, circular in form, with painted wooden pillars and a -cupola, surmounted by a bust of George IV. Beneath the cupola is -the figure of a fox sedent and regardant, something like the dog of -Alcibiades, and looking, in troth, very cunning and foxy indeed. To -the right, looking from the archway, are stables, with a covered penthouse -in front; to the left, another archway, with more stables and -coach-houses.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus25" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus25.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">FOUR O’CLOCK P.M.: TATTERSALL’S.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span></p> - -<p>Tattersall’s is a curious sight at all times, and has something pervading -it quite <i>sui generis</i>. Even when the ring is deserted by the -gentleman turfites, and when no sales by auction of race-horses, -hunters, carriage-horses, carriages, or fox-hounds, are proceeding in -the court-yard (the auctioneer’s rostrum is close to the king-crowned, -fox-decorated temple), there is ample food for observation and amusement -in the contemplation of the extraordinary array of hangers-on, -who, at all times and seasons, summer and winter, are to be found -about the purlieus of the Corner. I do not so much speak of the -mere grooms, stable-boys, coachmen, and helpers, who have horses to -mind or carriages to look after. You may find their prototypes down -every mews, and in every livery-stable. The originals to whom I -allude are to be seen only here, and on race-courses, hanging about -the grand-stand and the weighing-house. They are entirely different -to the nonchalant individuals who, in short coats, and a straw in their -mouths, haunt the avenues of Aldridge’s Repository, in St. Martin’s -Lane. They would appertain, seemingly, to a superior class; but -from top to toe—laterally, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally—they -are unmistakeably horse-flesh loving, and by horse-flesh living, -men. It is not but you will find white neckcloths and black broadcloth -in their attire, but there is a cut to the coat, a tie to the neckcloth, -that prevents the possibility of error as to their vocation. They -are sporting men all over. Hard-featured, serious-looking, spare-limbed -men mostly, much given to burying their hands in their coat-pockets -(never in their trousers), and peaceably addicted to the wearing -of broad-brimmed hats. Now, the general acceptation of a -“sporting” man would give him a tall, shiny hat, with a narrow -brim, and considerably cocked on one side; yet I do verily believe -that, were these men attired in buttonless drab, brown beavers, -striped worsted hose, and buckles, that they would preserve the same -sporting identity. They are the wet Quakers of the turf. What the -exact nature of their multifarious functions about horses may be, I -am not rightly informed. I conjecture them to be trainers, country -horse-dealers, licensed victuallers with a turn for sporting, gentlemen -farmers who “breed a colt” occasionally, or, maybe, perfectly private -individuals led by an irresistible penchant to devote themselves to the -study and observation of horses, and led by an uncontrollable destiny -to hang, their lives-long through, about the Corner. Hangers-on of -a lower grade there are in plenty. Striped-sleeved waistcoats, -corduroy or drab cloth smalls and leggings; nay, even the mighty -plush galligaskins of coachmanhood, top boots, fur and moleskin caps, -sticks with crutches and a thong at the end, to serve, if needful, as -whips; horseshoe scarf pins, and cord trousers made tight at the -knees, and ending in laced-up boots. These—the ordinary paraphernalia -of racing attire—are to be met with at every step; while the -bottommost round of the sporting ladder is to be found in a forlorn -creature in a stained ragged jerkin, that once was scarlet, matted hair, -and naked feet. <i>He</i> hangs about the entrance, calls everybody -“captain,” and solicits halfpence with a piteous whine. I suppose -he is a chartered beggar, licensed to pursue his harmless mendicancy -here. Perhaps he may have kept hounds and harriers, carriages and -horses—may have spent ten thousand a year, gone to the dogs, and -turned up again at Tattersall’s. Who knows? You had better give -him the benefit of the doubt, and, commiserating his ragged-robin -appearance, bestow sixpence on him.</p> - -<p>Now let us take a peep at the magnates who are jotting down -the current state of the odds in betting-books. Look at them well, -and wonder. Why, all the world’s a ring, and all the men and -women in it merely betters. To come more nearly towards exactitude, -it seems as though a good portion of at least the male part of the -community had sent representatives to Tattersall’s, while the genuine -sporting element does not seem by any means so strong as you might -reasonably expect. The genus “swell,” with his long surtout, double-breasted -waistcoat, accurately-folded scarf, peg-top trousers, eyeglass, -umbrella, and drooping moustache, is perhaps predominant. -And our friend the “swell” is indeed a “welcome guest,” in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span> -“ring,” for he has, in the majority of instances, plenty of money, is -rather inclined to bet foolishly—not to say with consummate imbecility—so -long as his money lasts he pays with alacrity, and it takes -a long time to drain him dry even at betting, which is a forcing -engine that would empty another Lake of Haarlem of its contents in -far less time than was employed to drain the first.</p> - -<p>Your anxious sporting man, with lines like mathematical problems -in his shrewd face, is not of course wanting in the assemblage. Here, -too, you shall see the City dandy, shining with new clothes and -jewellery, who has just driven down from the Stock Exchange to see -what is going on at “Tat’s,” and who is a member of the “Ring” as -well as of the “House.” But those, perhaps, who seem the most -ardent in their pursuit of the fickle goddess, as bearing on the Doncaster -St. Leger, are certain florid elderly gentlemen, in bright blue -body coats, with brass buttons and resplendent shirt-frills, and hats of -the antique elegant or orthodox Beau Brummel form and cock.</p> - -<p>Such is the outward aspect of the Ring. Into its penetralia, into -the mysteries of its combinations, I, rash neophyte, do not presume -to inquire. They are too awful for me. I am ignorant of them, nor, -if I knew, should I dare to tell them. I should expect the curtain of -the temple to fall down and overwhelm me, as befell the rash stranger -who ventured to watch from, as he thought, a secure point of espial, -the celebration of the mysteries of Isis at Thebes. Besides, I never -could make either head or tail of a betting-book. <i>Poeta nascitur non -fit</i>, say the Latins. <i>On devient cuisinier mais on nait rôtisseur</i>—“One -may become a cook, but one is born a roaster,” say the French; and -I verily believe that the betting-man is to the manner born, and that -if he does not feel an innate vocation for the odds, he had much better -jump into a cauldron of boiling pitch than touch a betting-book—which -theory I offer with confident generosity for the benefit of those -young gentlemen who think it a proper thing and a fast thing to make -up a book for the Derby or the Oaks, whether they understand anything -about the matter or not.</p> - -<p>To all appearances, the Ring and the Subscription-room, with the -adjacent avenues for the outsiders (you should see the place on the -Sunday afternoon before the Derby) are quite sufficient to take up all -the accommodation which the “Corner” can afford; but there are -many other things done within Messrs. Tattersall’s somewhat crowded -premises. There is the auctioneering business; the sales, when whole -studs are brought to the hammer, and thousands of pounds’ worth of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span> -horseflesh are disposed of in the course of a few minutes. There are -the days for the sale of all manner of genteel wheeled vehicles, which -have been inspected on the previous day by a committee <i>de haut goût</i>, -of which ladies belonging to the <i>élite</i> of fashion are not unfrequently -members. For the cream of nobility is, oft-times, not too proud to -ride in second-hand carriages.</p> - -<p>One more episode of “Corner” life, and I must quit the queer, -motley scene. Down below the Subscription-room is another corner -occupied by an old-fashioned hostelry, called the “Turf Tap,” and -here the commonalty of Tattersall’s frequenters are to be found at any -hour of the day, occupied with the process of sustentation by liquid -refreshment. And yet, though the place is almost entirely “used” -by sporting men, it has very little the appearance of a “sporting” -public-house. No portraits of “coaching incidents,” or famous prize-fighters, -decorate its walls; no glass-cases containing the stuffed -anatomies of dogs of preternaturally small size, and that have killed -unheard-of numbers of rats in a minimum of minutes, ornament its -bar-parlour; no loudly-boisterous talk about the last fight, or the next -race coming off, echoes through its bar; and the landlord hasn’t a -broken nose. The behaviour of the company is grave and decorous, -almost melancholy; and on the bench outside, wary-looking stablemen, -and sober grooms, converse in discreet undertone on “parties” -and “events,” not by them, or by any means, to be communicated -to the general public. Tattersall’s is a business-like place altogether, -and even its conviviality is serious and methodical.</p> - -<p>I think I should like to ride a horse and take a turn in Rotten -Row, if I only knew how to accomplish the equestrian feat; but I am -really afraid to adventure it. There are some people who do things -capitally which they have never been taught; and who ride and drive, -as it were, by intuition. Irishmen are remarkable for this faculty, -and I do not regard as by any means a specimen of boastfulness, the -reply of the young Milesian gentlemen to the person who asked him -if he could play the fiddle, that he did not know, but that he dared -say he could, <i>if he tried</i>. But I am afraid that the mounting of the -easiest-going park hack would be too much for your obedient servant, -and that the only way of insuring security, would be to get inside the -animal and pull the blinds down; or, that being zoologically impossible, -to have my coat skirts nailed to the saddle; or to be tied to the -body of my gallant steed with cords, in the manner practised in the -remotest antiquity by the young men of Scythia on their first introduction -to a live horse, and their commencement of the study of equitation. -I passed three days once at the hospitable mansion of a friend -in Staffordshire, who, the morning after my arrival, wanted me to do -something he called “riding to hounds.” I said, “Well out of it,” -respectfully declined the invitation, and retired to the library, where -I read Roger de Wendover’s “Flowers of History” till dinner time. -I daresay the ladies, who all rode like Amazons, thought me a milk-sop; -but I went to bed that night without any broken bones. I -have an acquaintance, too, a fashionable riding-master at Brighton, -a tremendous creature, who wears jack-boots, and has a pair of -whiskers like the phlanges of a screw-propeller. He has been -obliging enough to say that he will “mount” me any time I come -his way, but I would as soon mount the topmost peak of Chimborazo.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus26" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus26.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">FOUR O’CLOCK P.M.: THE PARK.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span></p> - -<p>I beg to state that this short essay on horsemanship is <i>àpropos</i> of -Hyde Park and notably of Rotten Row, into which I wander after -quitting Tattersall’s, and where, leaning over the wooden rails, I contemplate -the horsemen and horsewomen caracoling along the spongy -road with admiration, not unmixed with a little envy. What a much -better, honester world it would be if people would confess a little more -frequently to that feeling of envy? For Envy is not always, believe -me, grovelling in a cavern, red-eyed and pale-faced, and gnawing a -steak sliced off her own liver. Envy can be at times noble, generous, -heroic. If I see a gay, gallant, happy, ingenious boy of eighteen, and -for a moment envy him his youth, his health, his strength, his innocence, -the golden prospect of a sunshiny futurity, that stretches out -before him, does it follow that I wish to deprive him of one of those -gifts, or that I bear him malice for possessing them? I declare it does -not follow. I say to him—<i>I, curre</i>! “Good luck have thou, with -thine honour—ride on;” and as I go home to my garret, if I envy the -bird as he sings, need I shoot him? or the dog as he lies winking and -basking in the sun, need I kick him? or the golden beetle trudging -along the gravel, need I trample on him? But people cry fie upon the -envy that is harmless, and must needs assume a virtue if they have it -not; and concerning that latter quality my private belief is, that if -Virtue were to die, Hypocrisy would have to go into the deepest -mourning immediately.</p> - -<p>I am glad to say that I am not by any means alone as I lean over -the rails. Whether it is that they can’t or won’t ride, I know not; but -I find myself surrounded by groups of exquisites, who, to judge by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span> -their outward appearance, must be the greatest dandies in London. -For once in a day, I see gentlemen dressed in the exact similitude of -the emblazoned cartoons in the “Monthly Magazine of Fashion.” -I had always, previously, understood those pictorial prodigies to be -gross caricatures of, and libels on, at least the male portion of the -fashionable world. But I find that I am mistaken. Such peg-top -trousers! such astounding waistcoat patterns! such lofty heels to the -varnished boots! such Brobdignagian moustaches and whiskers! such -ponderous watch-chains, bearing masses of coins and trinkets! such -bewildering varieties of starched, choking all-round collars! such -breezy neckties and alarming scarves! Ladies, too—real ladies—promenade -in an amplitude of crinoline difficult to imagine and impossible -to describe; some of them with stalwart footmen following -them, whose looks beam forth conscious pride at the superlative -toilettes of their distinguished proprietresses; some escorted by their -bedizened beaux. Little foot-pages; swells walking three, sometimes -four, abreast; gambolling children; severe duennas; wicked old bucks, -splendidly attired, leering furtively under the bonnets—what a scene -of more than “Arabian Nights” delight and gaiety! And the green -trees wave around, around, around; and the birds are on the boughs; -and the blessed sun is in the heavens, and rains gold upon the -beauteous Danaës, who prance and amble, canter and career, on their -graceful steeds throughout the length of Rotten Row.</p> - -<p>The Danaës! the Amazons! the lady cavaliers! the horsewomen! -can any scene in the world equal Rotten Row at four in the afternoon, -and in the full tide of the season? Bois de Boulogne, Course at Calcutta, -Cascine at Florence, Prado at Madrid, Atmeidan at Constantinople—I -defy ye all. Rotten Row is a very Peri’s garden for beautiful -women on horseback. The Cliff at Brighton offers, to be sure, just as -entrancing a sight towards the end of December; but what is Brighton, -after all, but London-super-Mare? The sage Titmarsh has so christened -it; and the beauties of Rotten Row are transplanted annually to the -vicinity of the Chain Pier and Brill’s baths. Watch the sylphides as -they fly or float past in their ravishing riding-habits and intoxicatingly -delightful hats: some with the orthodox cylindrical beaver, with the -flowing veil; others with roguish little wide-awakes, or pertly cocked -cavaliers’ hats and green plumes. And as the joyous cavalcade streams -past, (I count the male riders absolutely for nothing, and do not deem -them worthy of mention, though there may be marquises among them) -from time to time the naughty wind will flutter the skirt of a habit,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span> -and display a tiny, coquettish, brilliant little boot, with a military heel, -and tightly strapped over it the Amazonian riding trouser.</p> - -<p>Only, from time to time, while you gaze upon these fair young -daughters of the aristocracy disporting themselves on their fleet -coursers, you may chance to have with you a grim town Diogenes, who -has left his tub for an airing in the park; and who, pointing with the -finger of a hard buckskin glove towards the graceful <i>écuyères</i>, will say: -“Those are not all countesses’ or earls’ daughters, my son. She on -the bay, yonder, is Laïs. Yonder goes Aspasia, with Jack Alcibiades -on his black mare Timon: see, they have stopped at the end of the -ride to talk to Phryne in her brougham. Some of those dashing -delightful creatures have covered themselves with shame, and their -mothers with grief, and have brought their fathers’ gray hair with -sorrow to the grave. All is not gold that glitters, my son.”</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FIVE_PM">FIVE O’CLOCK P.M.—THE FASHIONABLE CLUB, AND THE PRISONERS’ VAN.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>The English are the only “Clubable” people on the face of the -earth. Considering the vast number of clubs which are more or less -understood to flourish all over the Continent, and in the other hemisphere, -it is within possibility that I shall be accused of having uttered -something like a paradox; but I adhere to my dictum, and will -approve it Truth. Not but that, concerning paradoxes themselves, I -may be of the opinion of Don Basilio in the “Barber of Seville,” -expressed with regard to calumny. “Calumniate, calumniate,” says -that learned casuist; “calumniate, and still calumniate, <i>something will -always come of it</i>.” So, in a long course of paradoxes, it is hard but -that you shall find a refreshing admixture of veracity.</p> - -<p>Do you think you can call the French a “clubable” nation, -because in their revolutions of ’89 and ’48 they burst into a mushroom -crop of clubs? Do you think that the gentleman whom a late complication -of political events brought into connection with a committee -of Taste, consisting of twelve honest men assembled in a jury-box,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span> -and whom, the penny-a-liners were kind enough to inform us, was in -his own country known as “Bernard le Clubbiste,” could be by any -means considered as what we called a “club-man?” Could he be -compared with Jawkins or Borekins, Sir Thomas de Boots, Major -Pendennis, or any of the Pall Mall and St. James’s Street bow-window -loungers, whom the great master of club life has so inimitably -delineated? No more than we could parallelise the dingy, garlic-reeking, -revolutionary club-room on a three-pair back at the bottom -of a Paris court-yard, with its “tribune,” and its quarrelsome patriots, -to the palatial Polyanthus, the Podasokus or the Poluphlosboion. -French clubs ever have been—and will be again, I suppose, when the -next political smash affords an opportunity for the re-establishment -of such institutions—mere screeching, yelling, vapouring “pig-and-whistle” -symposia; full of rodomontading stump orators, splitting -the silly groundlings’ ears with denunciations of the infamous -oppressors of society—the society that wears pantaloons without -patches, and has one-and-ninepence in its pockets; yelping for communism, -equal division of property, and toothpicks, solidarity, nationalities, -and similar moonshine-and-water ices; “demanding heads,” -with fierce imprecations about universal fraternity, till their own -troublesome bodies—for society’s mere peace and quietness’ sake—are -securely shackled and straight-waistcoated up, and carted away in -police-vans to deep-holded ships, whence, after much salutary sea-sickness, -they are shot out on the shores of conveniently pestilential -Cayennes and Nouka-Hivas. A plague on such clubs and clubbists, -say I, with their long hair, flapped waistcoats, and coffee-shop treasonable -practices. They have done more harm to the cause of Liberty -than all the wicked kings and kaisers, from Dionysius to the late -Bomba—now gone to his reward, and who is enjoying it, I should -say, hot and hot by this time—have done to the true and heaven-ordained -principle of royalty.</p> - -<p>In Imperial Paris there are yet clubs of another sort existing, -though jealously watched by a police that would be Argus-eyed if -its members were not endowed with a centuple power of squinting. -There are clubs—the “Jockey,” the “Chemin de Fer,” and establishments -with great gilded saloons, and many servitors in plush and -silk stockings; but they are no more like our frank English clubs -than I am like Antinous. Mere gambling shops and arenas for foolish -wagers; mere lounging-places for spendthrifts, sham gentlemen, gilt-fustian -senators, and Imperialist patricians, with dubious titles, who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span> -haunt club-rooms, sit up late, and intoxicate themselves with alcoholic -mixtures—so aping the hardy sons of Britain, when they would be ten -times more at home in their own pleasant, frivolous Boulevard <i>cafés</i>, -with a box of dominoes, a glass of sugar-and-water, and Alphonso the -<i>garçon</i> to bring it to them. Such pseudo-aristocratic clubs you may -find, too, at Berlin and Vienna, scattered up and down north Italy, -and in Russia, even, at Petersburg and Moscow, where they have -“English” clubs, into which Englishmen are seldom, if ever, -admitted. Some English secretaries of legation and long-legged -<i>attachés</i>, have indeed an <i>ex-officio</i> entry to these continental clubs, or -“<i>cercles</i>,” where they come to lounge and yawn in the true Pall Mall -fashion; but they soon grow tired of the hybrid places; and the -foreigners who come to stare and wonder at them, go away more tired -still, and, with droll shrugs, say, “<i>Que c’est triste</i>!” The proper -club for a Frenchman is his <i>café</i>; for, without a woman to admire -him or to admire, your Monsieur cannot exist; and in the slowest -provincial town in France there is a <i>dame de comptoir</i> to ogle or be -ogled. The Russian has more of the clubable element in him; but -clubs will never flourish in Muscovy till a man can be morally certain -that the anecdote he is telling his neighbour will not be carried, with -notes and emendations, in half an hour, to the Grand Master of Police. -As for the German, put him in a beer-shop, and give him a long pipe -with his mawkish draught, and—be he prince, professor, or peasant—he -will desire no better club; save, indeed, on high convivial occasions, -when you had best prepare him a cellar, where he and his -blond-bearded, spectacled fellows may sit round a wine-cask, and play -cards on the top thereof.</p> - -<p>I don’t exactly know how far the English club-shoot has been -grafted on the trunk of American society, but I can’t believe that the -club-proper flourishes there to any great extent. I like the Americans -much, recognising in them many noble, generous, upright, manly -qualities; but I am afraid they are too fond of asking questions—too -ignorant or unmindful of the great art of sitting half an hour in the -company of a man whom you know intimately, without saying a word -to him, to be completely clubable. Moreover, they are a people who -drink <i>standing</i>, delighting much to “liquor up” in crowded bar-rooms, -and seldom sitting down to their potations—a most unclubable -characteristic. All sorts of convivial and political <i>réunions</i> -exist, I am aware, in the United States, to a high degree of organisation; -and I have heard glowing accounts of the comfortable, club-like<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span> -guard-rooms and stations of the New York volunteers and firemen; -but I can’t exactly consider these in the light of clubs. They -are not exclusive enough—not concrete enough—not subject to the -rigid but salutary discipline of that <i>Imperium in Imperio</i>, or rather, -<i>Rempublicam in Republicâ</i>, the committee of a club.</p> - -<p>In England, the Ancient Order of Druids were undeniably the first -clubmen, keeping things remarkably snug, and delighting much in -house-dinners at the sign of the Misletoe, where a roasted Ancient -Briton was no rare dish. It might aid, too, to clear up the puzzling -enigma of Stonehenge—who built it, and how, and why?—if we were -to look upon Druidism in a purely club-light. I should like to know -whence the money came which the Megatherium or the Mastodon -Clubs in Pall Mall cost to build. We know that Captain Threadbare, -late of the Rifles, that the Hon. Jemmy O’Nuffin, respectively members -of those grand <i>cénacles</i>, didn’t find the money; that they never -paid anything towards their clubs, save the entrance fee and the subscription; -and that they dine there, nine months out of the year, for -eighteen-pence. Other members did, do, will do the same; yet there -the club stands, stately and superb, with its columns of multi-coloured -marbles, its stately halls, its sumptuous furniture, its army of liveried -lacqueys. A belted earl might ruin himself in building such a mansion; -yet Captain Threadbare and Jemmy O’Nuffin call it their club, -and it is theirs to all intents and purposes. Cunning men, when you -express excusable wonder at the thing, whisper, “Debentures!” and -debentures seem in truth to have been the seven hundred times seven -gifted servants, who have hoisted this Fortunio of a place to its proud -position. Why should not Stonehenge have been built by debentures?</p> - -<p>The old Saxon Wittenagemotte must have been strongly impregnated -with the club element; and the resemblance of clubs to parliaments -has come down to this day. What, after all, is our much-vaunted -British House of Commons but a club of the first water, -somewhat more exclusive than its brethren of St. James’s, and black-balling -its scores of candidates every general election? It has its -reading-rooms, coffee-rooms, and smoking-rooms; the members lounge -in and out, and loll on forms and benches, just as they would do in -Pall Mall; and while some five hundred members indulge in the real -<i>dolce far niente</i> of club life, smoking, and reading, and dawdling, and -dozing, and refreshing themselves, and never troubling themselves -about club matters, save when they are called upon to vote, the affairs<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span> -of the club (and of the nation too, by the way) are managed by a -snug little committee, who do all the work and all the talking, and are -continually popping themselves into snug little berths connected with -the management of that other great club which lies beyond the walls -of St. Stephen’s, and is called the Country.</p> - -<p>And the middle ages, sunk as the unthinking believe them to have -been in barbarism, had their clubs, and brave ones too. Thorough -clubmen were the old Freemasons; secret and sturdy, and swift in -action; and it’s O! to see the club-houses they erected in the fanes -that are yet the pride and glory of our cathedral towns. When you -look at their crenelated towers, and at the strange sculptures in the -rich spandrils of their arches, in their groins and corbels, in their -buttresses and great rose windows, and cunningly-traced roodscreens -and carved bench-ends, you shall find copious store of club-marks, -and secret signs, and passes only known to themselves, and, grotesque -and frivolous as to the uninitiated they seem, truly drawn from the -innermost arcana of the great mystery of masonry. The old Vehmgericht, -too, with its grim symbols, and warnings of the cord and -dagger—may not that be considered as a club? The Flagellants and -the Rosicrucians, were not those queer sects clubs? and what were -the Council of Trent, and the Diet of Worms, but select clubs, frequented -by ecclesiastical and political “swells?”</p> - -<p>I am not about to confound the convivial club—with its one room -and its quaint rules, ancient or modern—with its latest perfection, all -Portland stone and plate-glass, gas chandeliers, and luxurious ottomans. -Before, however, I come to the fashionable club of 1859, I -may be permitted, I hope, to discourse for awhile on the jovial clubs, -high, low, and middle class, which have made this metropolis cosy -and picturesque for at least two centuries.</p> - -<p>There can be little doubt that the Restoration gave a marvellous -incentive to club-life in London. On the one hand, the sour Puritans -and fierce Independents, driven into holes and corners by the advent -of Charles II., had other places of meeting than the conventicles -where they offered their surreptitious worship; and at these stray -places of re-union, they comforted and refected themselves in their -own grim, uncomfortable fashion. On the other hand, the Cavaliers -had their riotous assemblages, where they met to sing “Down among -the dead men,” and drink their king’s health on their knees; the -revival of humorous and theatrical literature filled the taverns and -coffee-houses with wits and dramatists, instead of pedants and theologians;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span> -table companions formed into knots, and knots into throngs, -and these at length formed themselves into clubs, where they could -jest and criticise, argue and carouse, at their ease, without the fear of -interlopers; and though, so late as the days of Foote and Chatterton, -a stranger of good address and brilliant conversation could form a -rallying coffee-house acquaintance with the most famous wits of the -town, it was difficult for him to be admitted into their inner circle; -even as, in our own time, a man may find plenty of conversation in a -railway carriage or an hotel coffee-room, at a German Spa or a charity -dinner, but must not feel surprised if his voluble acquaintance of -the previous evening cut him dead the next time he meets him. -The change of succession at the Revolution gave an impetus both to -the establishment and to the exclusiveness of the clubs. While -William, the Dutchman, held his uneasy, hooked-nose pre-eminence -in this country, innumerable were the dim taverns in whose securest -rooms stealthy clubs, with cabalistic names, were held; where, when -the club-room doors were tightly closed, Captain Henchman, late of -Roper’s horse, turned out to be Father Slyboots, high up in the order -of Jesus, where sympathy was openly avowed for Sir John Fenwick, -and the exiles of St. Germains were yet spoken of as the possessors -of the Crown; and where, after William’s death, the health of “the -little gentleman in black velvet,” meaning the molehill over which, -according to the Jacobites, the king’s horse had stumbled, when -William fell and dislocated his collar-bone, was enthusiastically drunk. -It would have been hard, too, if the days of Queen Anne—the -Augustan era in which Swift, Gay, Pope, Addison, Prior, Bolingbroke, -Somers, and Dorset, held their glorious sway of intellect—had -not been fruitful in the production of clubs; and it is to the first -quarter of the eighteenth century that we may trace the birth of our -most famous clubs. The accession of George the First, embittering -as it did a new question of the succession to the throne, gave a fresh -lease of popularity to the Jacobite clubs, which had languished somewhat -during the reign of Anne, for sheer want of something to conspire -about. They were held all over London: in taverns and mug-houses, -in the purlieus of Westminster and the Mint in Southwark, -and in the multitudinous courts and alleys about Cornhill and the -Exchange. How I should like to have seen one of these old honest, -wrong-headed Jacobite club meetings! There was our old friend -Captain Henchman, <i>alias</i> Father Slyboots, grown gray in conspiring; -always in active correspondence with Rome and St. Germains, Douai<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span> -and St. Omer, and, as of yore, fiercely hunted by Mr. Secretary’s -messengers, from his Majesty’s Cockpit, at Whitehall. There were -old Roman Catholic baronets and squires, from Lancashire and -Cheshire, who would as soon have thought of surrendering their ancestral -faith in the false and fickle Stuarts, as of abandoning their old -shields of arms and trees of descent; there were hot-headed young -counsellers from the Temple; and otherwise steady-going Jacobite -mercers, and goldsmiths, and vintners, whose loyalty to the dethroned -house had somewhat of a commercial tinge in it, as you see now -radical hatters and grocers proud to blazon the Royal arms above -their doors, and the Lord Chamberlain’s warrant in their windows, as -“purveyors, by appointment, to her most Gracious Majesty.” The -landlord was a staunch Jacobite, of course; how, indeed, should he -be otherwise? His grandfather had fought at Naseby field; and his -father had furnished one of King Charles the Second’s madams with -clove-gillyflower water, and had never been paid for it. The drawer -was Jacobite to the backbone (he turned traitor afterwards, it is true; -was the means of hanging half the club, and retired with a handsome -competence to the plantations, where he was exceedingly prosperous -in the export of tobacco and the import of kidnapped children, and died -elder and deacon)—but who but he brought in the great China bowl -filled with a clear fluid, across which the company drank, with clasped -hands, the toast of “The king over the water.” Ah, days of furious -party and faction differences, but of self-sacrificing honour and loyalty, -ye shall return no more! It was lucky for the Jacobite club-men when -their convivialities were not interrupted by the irruption through the -window of a party of the Foot Guards, who had climbed over the -adjoining tiles. Traitors were always in their camp: spies always -watching them. The English ambassador in Paris knew of their -goings on, and revealed their bacchanalian machinations to wary Mr. -Secretary at the Cockpit; and every now and then would come a tide -of evil days, and the venue of the club would be changed; Father -Slyboots would go into closer hiding, baffling pursuit as a verger of -Westminster Abbey, compounding with skippers of smuggling luggers -for conveyance to Dunkirk or Fecamp, crouching in the “priest’s -hole” of some old Roman Catholic mansion of the North country, or -indeed, good man, as the times were very bad, purchasing a stout horse -and betaking himself to the road with Captain Macheath and Cornet -O’Gibbet, and Duvalising travellers,—of course confining himself to -those who were of the Hanoverian way of thinking. Not the first<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span> -honest man who has turned highwayman: besides, was it not for the -greater glory of Church and King? When the club had its next -meeting, it might be in ’16 or in ’46 (for the century was quite gray-headed -before the Jacobite clubs quite died out), there would be a -lamentable hiatus here and there in the list of members. Where was -Sir William Flowerdeluce?—Shot at Sheriffmuir. Where Colonel -Belmain?—Hanged at Carlisle. Where young Christopher Layer, the -barrister, gallant, devoted, enthusiastic?—His head was rotting on a -spike, over Temple Bar, within sight of his old chambers. Where -Jemmy Dawson, the pride, the pet, the pearl of the Jacobites, the -dashing swordsman of Townley’s ill-fated Manchester Regiment?—Go -ask the judge and jury, go ask the hangman, go ask the veiled lady -in the black coach, who follows the fatal hurdle to Kennington -Common, and sits out the hideous drama, and when she sees the -heart of him she loves cast into the flames, and his fair limbs dismembered -by the executioner, swoons and dies.</p> - -<p>I have been reading a little old book, bearing the date of 1725, -which professes to give a “Complete Account” of the principal clubs -of London and Westminster. Its authorship is anonymous; yet I -think I can discern traces of a certain fine Roman hand, well-known -to me, in its composition, and I don’t think I am in error in ascribing -it to Mr. Ned Ward, the scurrilous though amusing author of the -“London Spy.” Its contents must be taken, of course, <i>cum grano -salis</i>, with the other lucubrations of that diverting vagabond; yet I -am ready to believe that many of his clubs were then existent. Some -of them, indeed, have come down to our own times. According to the -writer of the “Complete Account,” there was the “Virtuous Club,” -established as a succursal to the Royal Society (which, indeed, was -little more than a club at its commencement), at the Golden Fleece, a -tavern in Cornhill, whence they moved to the Three Tuns, in Southwark: -a queer locality, indeed, for the white-neckclothed savants, -who now have their habitat in Burlington House. The chronicler -treats them somewhat contemptuously, as collectors of “pickled -maggots and mummies’ toenails,” and seems considerably to prefer the -“Surly Club,” held at some out-of-the-way place near Billingsgate -Dock, whose members had “a stoker to attend their fire”—I did not -know the appellation “stoker” was so old—a skinker to ignify their -pipes, and a chalk accountant to keep a trencher register of the club -reckoning, lest the landlord below should be tempted to augment the -scot by means of a double-notched chalk. The principal feature of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span> -“Surly Club” appeared to lie in the members being all surly, ill-tempered, -wrangling chuffs, who were bound to abuse each other -and the world generally, at their every time of meeting. I believe -that there are London clubs, not yet extinct, which carry out the -principles of the “Surly Club” in a remarkably undeviating manner. -Then there was the “Split-Farthing Club,” instituted by a society of -usurers and money-spinners, who met together in the dark, in order to -avoid the expense of candle or lamp-light, and of which the Hopkins -immortalised by Pope was a distinguished member. The “Ugly -Club” (which yet flourishes, I believe,) owed its foundation to a -superlatively ugly fellow by the name of Hatchet (whence the term -“hatchet-faced”), who had a nose of such immense size, that he was -one day in the street charged by a butcher-boy with overturning a -tray full of meat, when his head was at least a foot distant therefrom. -A violent attempt was made to break up the “Ugly Club” by a -committee of spinsters, who made unheard-of attempts to marry the -members <i>en masse</i>, but in vain. Jack Wilkes was elected perpetual -president of the “Ugly Club,” early in the reign of George III., and -Honorè Gabriel Riquetti, Count de Mirabeau, who had some slight -connection with the first French Revolution, was unanimously chosen -an honorary member on his visit to England. I must not forget to -mention the “Unfortunate Club,” held at the sign of the “Tumbledown -Dick,” in the Mint. To have been at least once bankrupt (a -fraudulent failure was preferred), or to have come in some way in -collision with the laws of the country, was a <i>sine quâ non</i> in the qualification -for a member of the “Unfortunates.” The Market Women’s, -or “Flat-cap Club,” was at one time quite a fashionable place of -meeting, being frequented by many of the wild gallants from the Rose, -and Tom King’s coffee-house, who treated the lady company to burnt -brandy and flowing “Winchesters” (<i>i. e.</i>, Winchester measures) of -“powerful three thread”—our modern porter. Then there was the -“Lying Club,” among whose voluminous rules were these, that the -chairman was to wear a blue cap and a red feather, and that if any -member, in the course of an evening, told a lie more impudent and -egregious than he, the chairman, could manage to cap, he was at once -to vacate the chair in favour of the superior Mendax. There was a -very stringent rule, inflicting a severe fine upon any member who -should presume, between the hours of nine and eleven of the clock, to -tell one word of truth, unless, indeed, he prefaced it with the rider of -“By your leave, Sir Harry”—Sir Harry Gulliver being the name of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span> -the original chairman of the club. There was the “No-Nose Club,” -the “Beggars’ Club,” the “Thieves’ Club,” and the “Northern or -Yorkshire Tyke’s Club;” and, to sum up, there was a horrific assembly, -founded in the reign of Charles II., and called the “Man-killing -Club.” The members of this savage corporation were debased Life-guardsmen, -broken-down bullies, and old scarified prize-fighters. -The prime qualification for membership was the commission of homicide. -The “Mohocks,” “Scourers,” and “Sweaters” of Queen -Anne’s time, were, as may readily be imagined, highly prominent -members of this murderous fraternity, which might have flourished -much longer but for the interference of the Sheriff’s hangman in -ordinary, who disposed of the members with such amazing despatch -and persistence, that the club could not at last form a quorum, and -was so dissolved.</p> - -<p>The “Irish Fortune-hunters’ Club” I am somewhat chary of recognising, -for I am afraid that it existed only in the lively fancy of Mr. -Ned Ward or his imitator. There is, indeed, a copy of some resolutions -of the club appended to the “Complete Account,” but I am -inclined to consider them apocryphal. Leave, by these resolutions, is -given to Captain Donahoo to change his name to Talbot Howard -Somerset; Captain Macgarret is empowered to change the place of his -nativity from Connemara to Cornwall; and Lieutenant Dunshunner is -presented with a suit of laced camlet at the club expense, in order to -his successfully prosecuting his suit with Miss Bridget Tallboys, “with -ten thousand pounds fortune; in the event of which happy consummation, -he is to repay the price of the suit with interest, and moreover to -release from his captivity at the Gate-house the club secretary, therein -confined on suspicion of debt.”</p> - -<p>Very different is the bran-new modern club whose interior my -faithful artist has depicted, and whose appearance at five o’clock -in the afternoon I am now called upon to describe. Gentlemen members -of clubs, these gorgeous palaces are but the growth of one generation. -Your fathers had, it is true, their Wattier’s, the Cocoa-Tree, -White’s, and Boodle’s, but those were considerably more like gambling-houses -than clubs. To obtain admission was exceedingly difficult, and -to remain a member was, save to men of immense fortune, absolutely -ruinous. Hundreds of the superior middle-classes, nay, even of the -aristocracy, who would consider themselves social Pariahs now-a-days, -if they did not belong to one or more clubs, were perfectly content, a -score of years since, to frequent the coffee-rooms of hotels and taverns.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span> -A modern London club is the very looking-glass of the time; of the -gay, glittering, polished, improved utilitarian, material age. Nothing -more can be done for a palace than the fitters-up of a modern club -have done for it. The march of upholstering intellect is there in its -entirety. It must be almost bewildering to the modest half-pay -captain or the raw young ensign, to the country gentleman, the book-worm -fellow of his college, or the son of the country squire, fresh -from dog-breaking and superintending the drains on his father’s -estate, to find themselves suddenly transferred from the quiet lodgings -in St. Alban’s Place, the whitewashed barrack-room, the ivy-grown -parsonage, the tranquil oak-sporting rooms of “Keys” or “Maudlin,” -the dull comfort of the country mansion-house, to this great hectoring -palace, of which he is the twelve-hundreth part proprietor, and -where he may live on the fatness of the land, and like a lord of the -creation, for twenty guineas entrance fee, and a subscription of ten -guineas a year. He has a joint-stock proprietorship in all this -splendour; in the lofty halls and vestibules; in the library, coffee-rooms, -newspaper and card-rooms; in the secretary’s office in the -basement, and in the urbane secretary himself; in the kitchen, fitted -with every means and appliance, every refinement of culinary -splendour, and from whence are supplied to him at cost prices dishes -that would make Lucullus wild with envy, and that are cooked for -him, besides, by the great <i>chef</i> from Paris, Monsieur Nini Casserole, -who has a piano and a picture-gallery in the kitchen—belongs, himself, -to a club, little less aristocratic than his masters’, and writes his -bills of fare upon laced-edged note-paper. From the gorgeous footmen -in plush and silk-covered calves, which the flunkeys of duchesses -could scarcely rival, to the little foot-page in buttons; from the letter-racks -to the French-polished peg on which he hangs his hat in the -hall; from the books in the library to the silver spoons in the plate-basket; -from the encaustic mosaic on the pavement of the hall to -the topmost turreted chimney-pot—he has a vested interest in all. -He cannot waste, he cannot alienate, it is true; he can but enjoy. -Debentures have taken care of that; yet the fee-simple is in part -his; he is the possessor of an entailed estate; yet, for all purposes of -present enjoyment, he sits under his own roof on his own ground, and -eats his own mutton off his own plate, with his own knife and fork. -Oh! the wonderful workings of debentures, and the inestimable -benefits they confer on genteel persons with expensive tastes and -small incomes! Do you know that a man may drink wines at his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span> -club, such as, were he to order them at an hotel, the head waiter -would hold up his hands at the extravagance of the order, or else -imagine that he had Rothschild or Mr. Roupell dining in No. 4 box; -nay, might perchance run round to the chambermaid to ask how much -luggage the gentleman had. Rare ports, “worn-out ports,” grown -colourless from age and strength, that cannot be looked at without -winking—wondrous bitter Sherries—strange yellow Rhine wines, that -gurgle in the glass when poured out—Claret that has made bankrupt -the proprietors of the <i>vignobles</i> who grew them, or else sent them mad -to think their stock was out—indescribable Cognacs—Maraschinos -and Curaçoas that filtrate like rich oil: all these are stored by special -wine-merchants in the cellars of the club. The chief butler himself, -a prince among the winepots, goes forth jauntily to crack sales, and -purchases, standing, the collections of cunning amateurs in wines. -You shall smoke such cigars at a club as would make Senor Cabana -himself wonder where they were purchased. Everything is of the best, -and everything is cheap; only the terms are, as the cheap tailors -say, “for ready money.” Tick is the exception, not the rule, at a -club; though there have been Irish members who have run goodly -scores in their time with the cook and the waiter.</p> - -<p>A man may, if he be so minded, make his club his home; living -and lounging luxuriously, and grazing to his heart’s content on the -abundant club-house literature, and enjoying the conversation of club -friends. Soap and towels, combs and hair-brushes, are provided in -the lavatories; and there are even some clubs that have bed-rooms in -their upper storeys, for the use of members. In those that are -deficient in such sleeping accommodation, it is only necessary to have -a tooth-brush and an attic in an adjacent bye-street; all the rest can -be provided at the club. Thus it is that, in the present generation, -has been created a type peculiar thereunto—the club-man. He is all -of the club, and clubby. He is full of club matters, club gossip. He -dabbles in club intrigues, belongs to certain club cliques, and takes -part in club quarrels. No dinners are so good to him as the club -dinners; he can read no journals but those he finds in the club news-paper-room; -he writes his letters on the club paper, pops them into -club envelopes, seals them with the club seal, and despatches them, if -they are not intended for postage, by the club messengers. He is -rather sorry that there is no club uniform. He would like, when he -dies, to be buried in a club coffin, in the club cemetery, and to be followed -to the grave by the club, with members of the committee as -pall-bearers. As it is, when he has shuffled off this mortal coil, his -name appears on a board among the list of “members deceased.” -That is his epitaph, his hatchment, his <i>oraison funêbre</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus27" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus27.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">FIVE O’CLOCK P.M.: THE FASHIONABLE CLUB.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span></p> - -<p>The great complaint against clubs is, that they tend towards the -germination of selfishness, exclusiveness, and isolation; that they are -productive of neglect of home duties in married men, and of irrevocable -celibacy in bachelors. Reserving my own private opinion on -this knotty point, I may say that it is a subject for sincere congratulation -that there are no ladies’ clubs. We have been threatened with -them sometimes, but they have always been nipped in the bud. It is -curious to see how fiercely this tolerant, liberal, large-headed creature, -Man, has waged war against the slightest attempt to establish a club -on the part of the gentler sex. From the Parisian malecontents of the -first revolution, who broke into the lady assemblies of the <i>Jacobines</i> -and <i>Tricoteuses</i>, and broke up the clubs in question by the very expeditious -process of turning the fair members into the street, after subjecting -them to a castigation whose use is ordinarily confined to the -nursery; from those ungallant anti-clubbists (they all belonged to -clubs themselves, you may be sure) to Mr. Mark Lemon, who, in a -<i>petite comédie</i>, brought the guns of satire to bear with terrible effect on -an incipient agitation for lady clubbism, such institutions, on the part -of the ladies, have always been put down, either by violence or by -ridicule. The Tyrant Man is even, I am informed, disposed to look -with jealousy on the “committees of ladies” which exist in connection -with some deserving charities, and on the “Dorcas societies” and -“sewing circles” of provincial towns; and all meetings to advocate -the rights of woman, he utterly abhors.</p> - -<p>I daresay that you would very much like to know the name of the -particular club, the tableau of which adorns this sheet, and would -feel obliged if I would point out the portraits of individual members: -you would be very much pleased to be told whether it is the Carlton, -the Reform, the Travellers’, the Athenæum, the Union, the United -Service Senior or Junior, the Guards, the Oriental, the Oxford and -Cambridge, the Parthenon, the Erectheum, the Wyndham, Whyte’s, -Boodle’s, or the Army and Navy. No, Fatima; no, Sister Anne. -You shall not be told. Clubbism is a great mystery, and its adepts -must be cautious how they explain its shibboleth to the outer barbarians. -Men have been expelled from clubs ere now for talking or -writing about another member’s whiskers, about the cut of his coat, -and the manner in which he eats asparagus. I have no desire for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span> -such club-ostracism; for though, Heaven help me, I am not of Pall -Mall or St. James’s, I, too, have a club whose institutes I revere. -“<i>Non me tua fervida terrent, dicta, Ferox</i>:” I fear not Jawkins, nor -all the Borekins in Borekindom; but “<i>Dii me terrent, et Jupiter -hostis</i>:” I fear the awful committee that, with a dread complacency, -can unclub a man for a few idle words inadvertently spoken, and blast -his social position for an act of harmless indiscretion.</p> - -<p>Clubs, after all, are rather pleasant institutions than otherwise, yet -they have not escaped the lash of the moralist. Turning over, as I -dismiss the subject, the leaves of my little old book, I come on the -following passage: “Though the Promotion of Trade, and the Benefits -that arise from Conversation, are the Specious Pretences that every -Club or Society are apt to assign as a Reasonable Plea for their Unprofitable -Meetings, yet more Considerate Men have found by Experience -that the End thereof is a Promiscuous Encouragement of -Vice, Faction, and Folly, and the Unnecessary Expense of that Time -and Money which might much better be Employed in their own -Business, or spent with much more Comfort in their Several Families.” -I don’t say what the ladies’ verdict will be on this opinion, though I -can divine it; but I take off my hat to the moralist, capital letters -and all, and, leaving him to grumble, will be off to the club.</p> - -<p>Stay, stay, <i>siste viator</i>: I have an appointment. When have I not? -I begin to think that I am the Wandering Jew, and there is decidedly -no rest for the soles of my feet. Still the cry is “onward.” Wherever -that club of mine may be situated, it is clear that I must bend my -course towards Bow Street, Covent Garden.</p> - -<p>And why to Bow Street, an’t please you? To gaze upon the resuscitated -glories of the Royal Italian Opera? To dine at Nokes’s -succulent restaurant, where erst was the “Garrick’s Head?” To -obtain an order for admission to the workhouse from the relieving -officer of the Strand Union Office? To hire theatrical costumes at -Mr. May’s? or to bail a friend out of the station-house? Not so. -And yet my business has something to do with the metropolitan -police. I wish to witness the departure of the <span class="smcap">Prisoners’ Van</span>.</p> - -<p>About five p.m. the ladies and gentlemen who, through the arbitration -of Mr. Hall, Mr. Jardine, or Mr. Henry, stipendiary magistrates, -have settled their little differences with Justice, are conveyed to those -suburban residences, in which, for the benefit of their health, and in -the interests of society, it is judged necessary, <i>par qui de droit</i>, they -shall for a stated term abide. The vehicle which bears them to their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span> -temporary seclusion enjoys different names; some technical, others -simply humorous. By some it is called “Her Majesty’s Carriage,” -from the fact that the crown and the initials “V. R.” are painted on -the panels. More far-fetched wags call it “Long Tom’s Coffin.” -The police and the reporters, for shortness, call it “The Van.” In -this vehicle the malefactors who have in the course of the day been -arraigned before the tribunal of the Bow Street Police-court, are conveyed -to the various jails and houses of correction in and about the -metropolis, there to undergo the several terms of imprisonment and -hard labour, as the case may be, to which they have been sentenced. -Sometimes the court sits late, and the van does not take its departure -before half-past five; but five is the ordinary time when the great -black, shining, cellular omnibus, drawn by two strong horses, with its -policeman driver, and policeman conductor in a snug little watch-box, -rolls away from Bow Street. It is a prison on wheels, a peripatetic -penitentiary, a locomotive hulk. Criminals both in and out of prison -regard it with a species of terror, not unmixed with admiration, and, -as is their wont, they have celebrated it in that peculiar strain of -ballad poetry for which London roguery has been so long distinguished. -In that celebrated collection of dishonest epics, the “Drury Lane -Garland,” in fit companionship with “Sam Hall,” “County Jail,” -“Seven years I got for priggin’,” and the “Leary Man,” I find a -ballad on the subject of the Bow Street chariot of disgrace, of which -the refrain is—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Sing Wentilator, separate cell,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Its long, and dark, and hot as well.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sing locked-up doors—git out if you can,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>There’s a crusher outside the prisoners’ wan!</i>”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">A “crusher,” or policeman, there is indeed, not only in the little -watch-box on the exterior, to which I have alluded, but in the narrow -corridor between the cells into which the carriage is divided in the -interior. It is the former functionary’s duty to keep the outer door -securely locked; the latter to take care that no communication takes -place between the passengers confined in this penal omnibus, either -through the ventilators on the roof, or by talismanic tappings at the -panels which divide them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus28" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus28.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">FIVE O’CLOCK P.M.: THE PRISONERS’ VAN.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span></p> - -<p>When the hour of departure arrives, you see the pavement and -carriage-way of Bow Street studded with a choice assemblage of the -raggedry, ruffianry, felonry, misery, drunkardry, and drabbery, whom -the infamous hundred of Drury, and the scarcely less infamous tithing -of Covent, have cast out into a thoroughfare which, two hours hence, -will be re-echoing to the wheels of carriages bearing noble lords and -ladies to listen to the delicious Bosio (alas!) in the “Traviata,” or the -enchanting notes of Tamberlik in “Otello.” London is full of violent -contrasts; but this is the grimmest in the whole strange catalogue. -See, the warder in the watch-box has descended from his perch, and -with a patent key opened the portal of the van, revealing a second -janitor inside. And now the passengers destined for the lugubrious -journey come tumbling out of the court door, and down the steps -towards the van. Some handcuffed, some with their arms folded, or -their hands thrust in their pockets in sullen defiance; some hiding -their faces in their grimy palms for very shame. There are women as -well as men, starved sempstresses, and brazen courtezans in tawdry -finery. There are wicked graybeards, and children on whose angel -faces the devil has already set his indelible brand. There are ragged -losels rejoicing to go to jail as to a place where they shall at least have -bread to eat and a bed to lie on; there are dashing pickpockets in -shiny hats and pegtop trousers braided down the seams. There are -some going to prison for the first, and some for the fiftieth time. One -by one they are thrust rather than handed into the van. The shabby -crowd gives a faint, derisive cheer, the door bangs, the policeman-conductor -ensconces himself in his watch-box, and the Prisoners’ Van -drives off.</p> - -<p>The Pharisee thanked Heaven that he was not “as that Publican.” -Down on your knees, well-nurtured, well-instructed youth, and thank -Heaven for the parents and friends, for the pastors and masters, to -whose unremitting care and tenderness, from your cradle upwards, -you owe it that you are not like one of these miserable Publicans just -gone away in the prisoners’ van. But thank Heaven humbly, not -pharisaically. A change at nurse, the death of a parent—one out of -the fifty thousand accidents that beset life—might have thrown you -into the sink of misery and want, foulness and crime, in which these -creatures were reared, and you might have been here to-day, not gazing -on the spectacle with a complacent pity, but trundled with manacles -on your wrists into this moving pest-house, whose half-way house is -the jail, and whose bourne is the gallows.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SIX_PM">SIX P.M.—A CHARITY DINNER, AND THE NEWSPAPER WINDOW AT THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Some years ago, at the cozy little dining club held in my friend -Madame Basque’s back-parlour, in the Rue de la Michodière, and -the city of Paris, I had the advantage of the friendship of one of the -most intelligent and humorous of the American gentlemen. There is -such a personage—the vulgar, drawling, swearing, black-satin-vested, -stove-pipe-hatted, whittling, smoking, expectorating, and dram-drinking -Yankee loafers, who infest the Continent, notwithstanding; and a -very excellent sample of the accomplished and unpretending gentleman -was the American in question. He had paid a visit to England, in -which country his sojourn had been of about three months’ duration; -but he frankly confessed to me that having come purposely unprovided -with those usually tiresome and worthless figments, letters of introduction—the -very Dead-Sea apples of hospitality, goodly on the -exterior, and all dust and ashes within—he had not, with the exception -of his banker, who asked him to dinner once as a courteous -acknowledgment of the ponderosity of his letter of credit, possessed -one single acquaintance, male or female, during his stay in the metropolis -of the world. I asked him whether he had not felt very lonely -and miserable, and sufficiently inclined, at the end of the first week, to -cast himself over any given bridge into the river Thames. Not in the -slightest degree, he replied. I politely hinted that perhaps, as an -American, he possessed the genial facility, common to his countrymen, -of making himself at home wheresoever he went, and of forming -agreeable travelling acquaintances, occasionally ripening into fast -friends, by the simple process of saying “Fine day, stranger.” Not -at all, he replied. He kept himself to himself, and indeed he was of -a disposition, save in casual moments of unbending, quite surprising -for its saturnine taciturnity. At all events, I urged, he could not have -amused himself much by prowling about the streets, sleeping at -hotels, dining in coffee-rooms, frequenting theatres and singing-rooms, -and wandering in and out of museums; but I was wrong again, he -said. He had seldom been so jolly in his life. I began to think -either that he was quizzing me—“gumming” is the proper Transatlantic -colloquialism, I think—or else that he was the Happy Man<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span> -described in the Eastern apologue. But then, the Happy Man had, -as it turned out, no shirt; and my American was remarkable for displaying -a vast amount of fine linen, both at breast and wristbands, -profusely decorated with studs, chains, and sleeve-buttons. How -was it, then, I asked, giving the enigma up in sheer bewilderment. -“Wall,” answered my friend with his own peculiar dry chuckle, “I -used to ride about all day on the tops of the omnibuses; and very fine -institutions for seeing life in a philosophical spirit, those omnibuses of -yours are, sir.” He said Sir—not “Sirree,” as Anglo-Americans are -ordinarily assumed to pronounce that title of courtesy. I understood -him at once; saw through him; had done the same thing myself; and -admired his penetrative and observant aptitude.</p> - -<p>Never ride inside an omnibus—I apostrophise, of course, the men -folks; for till arrangements are made (and why should they <i>not</i> be -made?) for hoisting ladies in an easy-chair to the breezy roof—they -can manage such things on board a man-of-war—the vehicular ascent -is incommodious, not to say indecorous, for the fair sex. But Ho, ye -men, don’t ride inside. A friend of mine had once his tibia fractured -by the diagonal brass rod that crosses the door; the door itself being -violently slammed to, as is the usual custom, by the conductor. -Another of my acquaintance was pitched head foremost from the -interior, on the mockingly fallacious cry of “all right” being given—was -thrown on his head, and killed. Inside an omnibus you are -subjected to innumerable vexations and annoyances. Sticks or parasols -are poked in your chest and in the back of your neck, as a polite -reminder that somebody wants to get out, and that you must seize the -conductor by the skirt of his coat, or pinch him in the calf of the leg, -as an equally polite request for him to stop; you are half suffocated -by the steam of damp umbrellas; your toes are crushed to atoms as -the passengers alight or ascend; you are very probably the next -neighbour to persons suffering under vexatious ailments, such as -asthma, simple cold in the head, or St. Vitus’s dance; it is ten to one -but that you suffer under the plague of babies; and, five days out of -the seven, you will have a pickpocket, male or female, for a fellow-passenger. -The rumbling, the jumbling, the jolting, and the concussions—the -lurking ague in the straw when it is wet, and the -peculiar omnibus fleas that lurk in it when it is dry, make the interior -of one of these vehicles a place of terror and discomfort; whereas -outside all is peace. You have room for your legs; you have the -fresh air; you have the lively if not improving conversation of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span> -driver and the conductor, and especially of the right-hand box-seat, -who is invariably in some way mysteriously connected with dogs and -horses, and a great authority thereupon. Finally, you have the -inestimable advantage of surveying the world in its workings as you -pass along: of being your own Asmodeus, and unroofing London in a -ride from the White Horse Cellar to Hammersmith Gate. The things -I have seen from the top of an omnibus!—more markedly in the -narrow streets through which, from the main thoroughfare being -blocked up by the incessant paving, lighting, sewerage, or electric -telegraph communications of underground London, one is compelled -to pass. Now a married couple enjoying an animated wrangle in a -first-floor front; now a servant-maid entertaining a policeman, or a -Life Guardsman, with a heart’s devotion and cold shoulder of mutton, -in a far-down area; now a demure maiden lacing her virgin bodice -before a cracked triangle of a looking-glass, at an attic window; now -lords and ladies walking with parasols and lapdogs, and children in -the private gardens of noble mansions, screened from the inquisitive -pedestrians by sullen brick walls; now domestics hanging out the -clothes in back-yards (seen over the roofs of one-storey houses), -malicious birds of prey waiting, doubtless, round the corner for the -fell purpose of pecking off their noses, while the astute King is in his -counting-house on the second floor counting out his money, and the -Queen, with the true gentleness of womanhood, is in the front kitchen, -eating bread and honey in confident security, recking little of the -four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, or of the song of sixpence—or -rather of five shillings—which I am this day singing about them -all, in consideration of an adequate pocketful of rye. So shall you -look down and see those things; but chiefly shall you enjoy delectation -and gather experience from the sight of the men and women who -are continually passing beneath you in carriages and in cabs; yea, -and in carts and barrows. Varied life, troubled life, busy, restless, -chameleon life. The philosopher may learn much by reading the -tradesmen’s names over the shop-fronts, which—he will never read -them as he passes along the pavement—will give him quite a new -insight into nomenclature. But only let him consider the carriages -and the cabs, and he may learn wisdom in the ways of mankind in -every rood of ground he traverses.</p> - -<p>Sweethearting in cabs and carriages; passionate appeals for mercy; -men brawling and fighting; lunatics being borne away to captivity; -felons, shackled and manacled to the chin, being taken to jail, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span> -perhaps to death, by stern policemen and jailers; frantic women -kneeling on carriage-floors, women with dishevelled hair, streaming -eyes, clasped hands raised to a Heaven which is never deaf but is -sometimes stern, a weeping child clinging to their disordered dress, -and money and jewels cast carelessly on the carriage cushions; -gamblers carding and dicing; knaves drugging fools; debtors in the -charge of sheriff’s officers; roysterers gone in drink; the “fatal -accident” on its way to the hospital, lying all bruised and bloody -across the policeman’s knee; the octogenarian in his last paralytic -fit, and the mother suckling her first infant. All these dramas on -four wheels may be seen by him on the top of the omnibus, who -may, if of a caustic turn, rub his hands, and cry, “Aha! little do -you reck that a chiel is above you taking notes, and, faith, that he’ll -print them!”</p> - -<p>You see, there are some elements of sadness, nay, of deep and -terrible tragedy, in these vehicular panoramas—the unconscious show-vans; -but at Six o’Clock in the Evening the cabs and carriages -on which you look down offer, mostly, a far pleasanter spectacle. -They are full of people going out to dinner. Some in broughams, -coupés, double-bodied carriages, and the occupants of these are ladies -and gentlemen, attired in the full panoply of evening costume, and -whom, at the first blush, you might take for members of the highest -aristocracy. But they are not so. They simply belong to the first-class -genteel circles, the very superior middle ranks; the dwellers in -Lower Belgravia—Brompton, Kensington, and Pimlico; or in Lesser -Tyburnia—Bayswater and Notting Hill. They have all the airs and -graces, all the allurements, of the titled and the exclusive; but they -have not the genuine Hall-mark of nobility and fashion; they are but -Britannia metal, electro-gilt in a very superior manner. The undeniable -Patricians, the satraps of our modern Persian splendour, do -not dine (would not supper be a more appropriate term?) till half-past -seven, or even eight, post meridian. They can have, I should -imagine, but scant appetites for their dinner at that advanced period -of the evening, unless, indeed, they partake of it in the ancient Roman -manner, lolling on the <i>triclinium</i>, crowning themselves with flowers, -and following, between the courses, the swinish examples of Apicius -and Lucullus. Better, I take it, a mutton chop at the Cock, or -the Cheshire Cheese, than these nasty Ancient Roman repasts. -It is true our moderns stay their aristocratic stomachs early in the -afternoon with a copious lunch of hot meats and generous wines; and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span> -they say that her blessed Majesty herself, like a good, sensible woman, -makes her real dinner at two o’clock, with her little children, in the -nursery, and takes but a mere bite and sup at the grand stall-fed feast -of gold plate in the evening.</p> - -<p>But there are plenty of good dinners going on at six o’clock in the -evening, and plenty of good diners-out to attend them. Masters in -Chancery, who are renowned judges of port-wine, dine at six. Six, for -half-past, is the dinner-hour for East India Directors. Let us hope -that their dinners will continue to be as good as of yore, though the -new India Bill leaves them nothing to direct. Members of Parliament, -during the session, dine whenever they can, and sometimes not at all; -but on “no House” days, six o’clock—always taken with a reservation -for the half-past, for “six o’clock sharp” is entirely gone out of -fashion, save with Muswell Hill stock-brokers, Manchester Square -proctors, Bedford Row solicitors, and people who live in Bloomsburia—is -the great time for them to drop into their clubs, sneer over the -evening papers, gnash their teeth because there may happen to be no -leading articles eulogistic or abusive of them therein, and <i>prendre des -informations</i>, as the French say (though why I could not just as well -say it in English, save that the cook at the club is a Frenchman, -puzzles me), about what there may be good for dinner. But I must -not forget that I am on the top of an omnibus, looking down on the -people in the broughams and the cabs. Admire that youthful exquisite, -curled, and oiled, and scented into a sufficient semblance of the -“Nineveh Bull,” with whom Mr. Tennyson was so angry in “Maud.” -His glossy hair is faultlessly parted down the occiput and down the -cranium behind. White as the fleece of Clarimunda’s sheep is his -body linen. Stiff as the necks of the present generation is his collar. -Black as Erebus is his evening suit. Shining like mirrors are the little -varnished tips of his jean-boots. Severe as the late General Picton -is the tie of his cravat. This <i>gracilis puer</i> is going to dine in Thurlow -Square, Brompton. That gold-rimmed lorgnon you see screwed into -his face, to the damaging distortion of his muscles, will not be removed -therefrom—nor during dinner, nor during wine-taking, nor during the -evening party which will follow the dinner, nor during the “little -music,” the dancing, the supper, the shawling, the departure, and the -drive home to his chambers. He will eat in his eyeglass, and drink in -his eyeglass, and flirt and polk in his eyeglass. I am almost persuaded -that he will sleep in his eyeglass (I knew a married lady who used to -sleep in her spectacles, which led to a divorce: <i>she</i> alleged the cause to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span> -be systematic cruelty, but what will not an enraged woman say?); and -I should not be in the least surprised if he were to die in his eyeglass, -and be buried in his eyeglass, and if the epitaph on his gravestone were -to be “<i>veluti in speculum</i>.”</p> - -<p>Down and down again, glance from the omnibus summit, and see -in that snug, circular-fronted brougham, a comfortable couple, trotting -out to dinner in the Alpha Road, St. John’s Wood. Plenty of lobster -sauce they will have with their salmon, I wager; twice of boiled chicken -and white sauce they will not refuse, and oyster patties will they freely -partake of. A jovial couple, rosy, chubby, middle-aged, childless, I -opine, which makes them a <i>little</i> too partial to table enjoyments. They -should be well to do in the world, fond of giving merry, corpulent -little dinners of their own, with carpet dances afterwards, and living, -I will be bound (our omnibus is ubiquitous, remember) at Maida Hill, -or Pine Apple Gate. There is another couple, stiff, starched, angular, -acrimonious-looking. Husband with a stern, Lincoln’s Inn conveyancing -face, and pilloried in starch, with white kid gloves much too -large for him. Wife, with all manner of tags, and tags, and odds and -ends of finery fluttering about her: one of those women who, if she -had all the rich toilettes of all King Solomon’s wives on her, would -never look well dressed. I shouldn’t like to dine where they are -going. I know what the dinner will be like. Prim, pretentious, -dismal, and eminently uncomfortable. There will be a saddle of mutton -not sufficiently hung, the fish will be cold, the wines hot, and -the carving-knives will be blunt. After dinner the men will talk -dreary politics, redolent of stupid Retrogression, and the women will -talk about physic and the hooping-cough. Yet another couple—husband -and wife? A severe swell, with drooping moustaches of immense -length, but which are half whiskers. Transparent deceit! A -pretty lady—gauzy bonnet and artificial flowers, muslin jacket, skirts -and flounces oozing out at the sides of the carriage; hair <i>à la</i> Eugénie, -and a Skye terrier with a pink ribbon. I know what <i>this</i> means. -Greenwich, seven o’clock dinner (they are rather late, by the way, but -they pass us on London Bridge, and the coachman will drive rapidly), -water souché, whitebait, brown bread and butter, and iced punch; -cigar on balcony, and contemplation of the moon. Ride on, and be -happy. Rejoice in your youth—and never mind the rest. It will -come, O young man, whether you mind it or not.</p> - -<p>Hallo! there he is. I thought so. With a red face, shaven to the -superlative degree of shininess, with gills white and tremendous, with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span> -noble white waistcoat, and from time to time nervously consulting his -watch, lest he should be half a minute behind time with the spring soup, -rides by in a swift Hansom, the old gentleman who is going to a Charity -Dinner. Blessings on his benevolent, gastronomic old head, he never -misses one. He is going as quick as double fare will convey him to -the London Tavern. Quick! oh thou conductor, let me descend, for I -must take a Hansom too, and follow my venerable friend to the London -Tavern; and, by cock and pye, I will go dine there too.</p> - -<p>I think my readers must be by this time sufficiently acquainted -with the fact that I am endowed with a very nervous temperament. -Indeed, were I to say that I start at my own shadow, that I do fear -each bush an officer, that I am continually in terror of Sudden Death, -that I would rather not go upstairs in the dark, and that (which is not -at all incompatible with a nervous organisation) in circumstances of -real moment, in imminent life-peril, in a storm, in a balloon, in a -tumult, and in a pestilence, I am perfectly master of myself, and, with -a complete Trust and Reliance, am quite contented and happy in my -mind: when I state this, I don’t think I need blush to own that I am -as mortally afraid now of the boys in the street as in the old days when -they pelted me with sharp stones because I preferred going to school -quietly instead of playing fly-the-garter in the gutter. I am afraid of -my last schoolmaster (he is quite bankrupt and broken, and pays me -visits to borrow small silver occasionally), and yet call him reverentially, -“Sir.” I am afraid of ladies—not of the married ones, in whom -I take great delight, talking Buchan’s “Medicine,” Acton’s “Cookery,” -and Mrs. Ellis with them, very gravely, till they think me a harmless -fogey, hopelessly celibate, but sensible; not of the innocent young -girls, with their charming <i>naïveté</i> and pretty sauciness; but of the -“young ladies,” who are “out,” and play the piano, and sing Italian -songs—of which, Lord bless them! they know no more than I do of -crochet-work—and who fling themselves, their accomplishments, and -their low-necked dresses, at men’s heads. I am afraid of policemen, -lest in an evanescent fit of ill temper they should take me up, and -with their facile notions of the obligations of an oath, swear that I was -lurking about with intent to commit a felon; and, transcendentally, I -am afraid of waiters. I watch them—him—the Waiter, with great -awe and trembling. Does he know, I ask myself, as he fills my tumbler -with iced champagne, that half-and-half is a liquid to which I am -more accustomed? Does he know that, sumptuously as I dine to-day, -I didn’t dine at all yesterday? Is he aware that Mr. Threadpaper is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span> -dunning me for that dress-coat with the watered-silk facings? Can -he see under the table that the soles of my boots are no better than -they should be? Is it within his cognizance that I have not come to -the Albion, or the London Tavern, or the Freemasons’, as a guest, but -simply to report the dinner for the “Morning Meteor?” Does he -consider the shilling I give him as insufficient? Shilling! He has -many more shillings than I have, I trow. He pulls four pounds in -silver from his pocket to change one a crown-piece. To-day he is -Charles or James; but to-morrow he will be the proprietor of a magnificent -West-end restaurant, rivalling Messrs. Simpson and Dawes at -the Divan, or Mr. Sawyer at the London. So I am respectful to the -waiter, and fee him largely but fearfully; and, were it not that he -might take me for a waiter in disguise, I would also call him “Sir.”</p> - -<p>I no sooner arrive at the London Tavern, <i>pari passu</i> with the old -gentleman with the gills and the white neckcloth, than I feel myself -delivered over to the thraldom of waiterdom. An urbane creature, -who might pass for a Puseyite curate, were not the waitorial stigmata -unmistakeably imprinted on him, meets me, and tells me in an oleaginous -undertone, which is like clear turtle-soup, that the Anniversary -Festival of the Asylum for Fatuous Monomaniacs is on the second -floor to the right. A second waiter meets me at the foot of the stair-case, -and whispers discreetly behind the back of his hand, “Two -storeys higher, sir.” A third waylays me benevolently on the first-floor -landing, and mildly ravishes from me my hat and stick, in return -for which he gives me a cheque much larger than my dinner ticket; -which last is taken from me on the second floor by a beaming spirit, -the bows of whose cravat are like wings, and who hands me to a Dread -Presence—a stout, severe man with a gray head, who is in truth -the head-waiter at this Anniversary Festival, and who with a solemn -ceremony inducts me into the reception-room.</p> - -<p>Here, in a somewhat faded, but intensely respectable-looking apartment, -I find about fifty people I don’t know from Adam, and who -are yet all brothers or uncles or cousins-german, at the least, of my -rubicund white-waistcoated friend. And, to tell the truth, I don’t -know him personally, though his face, from meeting him at innumerable -festivals, is perfectly familiar to me. So are those of the other -fifty strangers. I have heard all their names, and all about them; -but one is not expected to remember these things at public dinners. -You take wine with your next neighbour; sometimes converse with -him about eating and drinking, the merits of the charity, the late<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span> -political tergiversation of the chairman, the heat of the weather, the -fine voice of Mr. Lockey, and the pretty face of Miss Ransford, and -there an end. Your interlocutor may be to-morrow the lawyer who -sues you, the author whose book you will slaughter in a review, the -Commissioner of Insolvency who may send you back for eighteen -months. To have met a man at a public dinner is about as valid a -claim to the possession of his acquaintance, as to have met him in the -Kursaal at Hombourg, or on the steps of the St. Nicholas Hotel at New -York. After some twenty years of public dining together, it is not, I -believe, considered a gross breach of etiquette to make the gentleman -who has been so frequently your fellow <i>convive</i> a very distant bow -should you meet him in the street; but even this is thought to be a -freedom by some rigid sticklers for decorum.</p> - -<p>In genteel society, the half hour before dinner is generally accepted -as a time of unlimited boredom and social frigidity, but there you have -the relief, if not relaxation, of staring the guests out of countenance, -making out a mental list of the people you would not like to take wine -with, and turning over the leaves of the melancholy old albums, every -page of which you have conned a hundred times before. But in the -half hour (and it frequently is a whole one) before a public dinner, -you have no albums or scrapbooks to dog’s-ear. There is no use in -staring at your neighbours: the types of character are so similar—big -and crimsoned sensuous faces looming over white waistcoats, with a -plentiful sprinkling among them of the clerical element. You can’t -smoke, you can’t (that is, I daren’t) order sherry and bitters. If you -look out of the window, you see nothing but chimney pots, leads, and -skylights, with a stray vagrant cat outrunning the constable over them; -and the best thing you can do is to bring an amusing duodecimo with -you, or betake yourself to one of the settles, and twiddle your thumbs -till dinner-time. But, joy, joy, here are quails in the conversational -famine; here is a welling spring in the wilderness. The door opens, -and the sonorous voice of the head-waiter announces <span class="smcap">The Chairman</span>.</p> - -<p>Very probably he is a lord. A philanthropic peer, always ready -and willing to do a kind turn for anybody, and to the fore with his -chairmanship, his set speeches, and his fifty-pound note for “fatuous -monomaniacs,” “intellectual good-for-nothings,” or “decayed bailiffs.” -He may be a regular dining-out lord, a not very rich nobleman, who -has grown gray in taking the chair at charity dinners, and who is not -expected to give anything to the institution save the powerful weight -of his presence and influence. He may be a young lord, fresh caught,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span> -generously eager (as are, I am rejoiced to say, the majority of our -young lords now-a-days) to vindicate the power and willingness for -usefulness of his order; striving to show that there is not so much difference -between his coronet and the Phrygian cap, save that one is -made of velvet and the other of red worsted (ah! that irreconcileable -red worsted), very impulsive, very imprudent, sometimes slightly imbecile, -but full of good intentions and honest aspirations; or he may be -a member of Parliament, a veteran of the back benches, burning to -make up for his silence in the House by his eloquence in the forum of -a tavern dinner. He may be a worthy banker or merchant, who gets -through the speech-making before him in a business-like manner, and -does not allow it in the least to interfere with the consumption of his -proper quantum of wine; or he may be, as is very frequently the case, -a lion—the “great gun”—the last blast of Fame’s trumpet for the -hour: a lawyer, a traveller, a philosopher, or an author, whom the -managing committee have secured, just as the manager of a theatre -would secure a dwarf, a giant, a wild beast tamer, a blind piper, or a -sword swallower, to enhance the receipts of the exhibition.</p> - -<p>About thirty of the fifty people I don’t know from Adam gather -immediately in a circle round the chairman. The few who have the -honour to be on speaking terms with him jostle him sociably, and -shake hands with him with a rueful expression of contentment. Those -who don’t know him rub their hands violently, breathe hard, stare -fixedly at him, and whisper to one another that he is very like his -portrait, or that he isn’t at all like his portrait, or that he is getting -old, or that he looks remarkably young, or some equally relevant -banalities. The remaining twenty guests gather in the window-bays, -and stare at nothing particular, or else read the printed prospectus of -the Asylum for Fatuous Monomaniacs, and wonder how many of the -fine list of stewards announced may be present on the occasion. As -for the chairman, he takes up a position with his back safely glued (so -it seems) to the mantelpiece, and preserves a dignified equanimity, -working his head from side to side in his white neckcloth like that -waxen effigy of Mr. Cobbett, late M.P. for Oldham, which terrifies -country cousins by its vitality of appearance (those drab smallclothes -and gaiters were a great stroke of genius) at Madame Tussaud’s.</p> - -<p>By this time a crowd of more people you don’t know from Adam, -and often outnumbering the fifty in the waiting-room, have gathered -on the staircase, the landing, and have even invaded the precincts of -the dining saloon, where they potter about the tables, peeping for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span> -napkins which may contain the special cards bearing their name and -denoting their place at the banquet. These are the people who <i>do</i> -know one another; these are the stewards, patrons of the charity, or -gentlemen connected with its administration. They are all in a very -excellent temper, as men need be who are about to partake of a capital -dinner and a skinful of wine, and they crack those special jokes, and -tell those special funny stories, which you hear nowhere save at a -public dinner. Then, at the door, you see a detachment of waiters, -bearing fasces of long, blue staves, tipped with brass, which they distribute -to sundry inoffensive gentlemen, whose real attributes are at -once discovered, and who are patent to the dining-out world as -Stewards. They take the staves, looking very much ashamed of them; -and, bearing besides a quaint resemblance to undertakers out for a -holiday, and in a procession, which would be solemn if it wasn’t funny, -precede the chairman to his place of honour.</p> - -<p>The tables form three sides of an oblong quadrangle: sometimes the -horse-shoe form is adopted. In the midst, in a line with the chairman, -and as close to his august presence as is practicable, is a table of -some ten or a dozen <i>couverts</i>, devoted to some modestly-attired gentlemen -(some of them not in evening costume at all), whose particular -places are all assigned to them; who for a wonder seem on most intimate -terms mutually, and take wine frequently with one another; who -are waited upon with the most sedulous attention, and have the very -best on the table, both in the way of liquids and solids, at their disposal. -They apply themselves to the consumption of these delicacies -with great diligence and cheerfulness; but they do not seem <i>quite</i> sufficiently -impressed with the commanding merits of the Royal Asylum -for Fatuous Monomaniacs. I wonder what special business brings -these gentlemen hither. At some distance from this table, towards the -door, but still in a line with the chairman, you see a pianoforte, and a -couple of music-stands; partially concealed behind a crimson baize -screen, beneath the gallery at the end, sit some stalwart individuals, of -martial appearance, and superbly attired in scarlet and gold lace, whom -you might easily, at first, mistake for staff officers, but whom their -brass trombones and ophicleides speedily proclaim to be members of the -band of one of the regiments of Guards. And high above all, supported -on the sham scagliola Corinthian columns, with the gilt capitals, -is a trellised balcony, full of ladies in full evening dress. What on -earth those dear creatures want at such gatherings,—what pleasure -they can derive from the spectacle of their husbands and friends over-eating -and sometimes over-drinking themselves, or from the audition -of stupid speeches, passes my comprehension. There they are, however, -giggling, fluttering, waving tiny pocket-handkerchiefs, and striving -to mitigate the meaty miasma of the place by nasal applications -to their bouquets or their essence bottles; and there they will be, I -presume, till public dinners go out of fashion altogether.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span><a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus29" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus29.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">SIX O’CLOCK P.M.: A CHARITY DINNER.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span></p> - -<p>I do not think I am called upon to give the bill of fare of a public -dinner. I have no desire to edit the next republication of Ude, or -Doctor Kitchener, Soyer, or Francatelli; besides, I could only make -your and my mouth water by expatiating on the rich viands and wines -which “mine host” (he is always mine host) of the Albion, the -London Tavern, or the Freemasons’, provides for a guinea a-head. -You remember what I told you the friend with the face like an over-ripe -fig said of public dinners—that they were the sublimation of -superfluities; and, indeed, if such a repast be not one of those in which -a man is called upon to eat Italian trout, Dutch dory, Glo’ster salmon, -quails and madeira, Cherbourg pea-chicks, Russian artichokes, Macedonian -jellies, Charlottes of a thousand fruits, Richelieu puddings, -vanilla creams, Toulouse leverets, iced punch, hock, champagne, claret, -moselle and burgundy, port, sherry, kirschwasser, and pale brandy, I -don’t know the meaning of the word superfluity at all.</p> - -<p>Some three hours after the company have sate down to dinner; -after the “usual loyal and constitutional toasts,” with the usual musical -honours; after the toast of the evening—“Prosperity to the Royal -Asylum for Fatuous Monomaniacs”—with its accompanying (more -or less) eloquent speech from the noble or distinguished chairman, -beseeching liberal pecuniary support for so deserving an institution; -after the prompt and generous response, in the way of cheques and -guineas, from the guests; after a tedious programme of glees and -ballads has been got through, and the chairman has discreetly vanished -to his carriage; after the inveterate diners-out, who <i>will</i> tarry long at -the wine, have received one or two gentle hints that coffee awaits their -acceptance in an adjoining apartment; and about the time that the -feast begins to wear a somewhat bleared and faded aspect (the lights -cannot grow pale till they are turned off, for these are of the Gas Company’s -providing), the waiters slouch about with wooden trays, full of -ruined dessert-plates, cracked nuts, muddy decanters, and half-emptied -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span>glasses; cherry stalks, strawberry stems, squeezed oranges, the expressed -skins of grapes, litter the tables; chairs are standing at all -sorts of eccentric angles; and crumpled and twisted napkins are thrown -pell-mell about. There is an end to the fine feast: the cates are eaten, -the wine drunk. Lazarus the beggar might have taken his rags out of -pawn (had he indeed any such rags to mortgage), and his thin-limbed -little brats might have grown plump and rosy on a tithe of the money -that has been wasted this night in guttling and guzzling. Wasted? -Oh! say not wasted, Cynic; take the mote from thine own eye. -Grumbler, for shame! I have done ill, I think, to caricature the name -even of any public charity. Let the “Fatuous Monomaniacs” be -numbered with the rest of my exploded fantastic conceits. Let this -rather be remembered: that the tavern feast of superfluities is prolific -in generous and glorious results; that from this seemingly gross and -sensual gathering spring charity, love, mercy, and benevolence. -Pardon the rich dinners and rare wines; look over the excess in -animal enjoyments; forgive even the prosy speeches; for <i>the plate has -gone round</i>. To-morrow Lazarus shall rejoice in his rags, and blind -Tobias shall lift up his hands for gratitude; the voice in Rama shall -be bushed and Rachel shall weep no more; and all because these good -gentlemen with the rosy faces and the white waistcoats have dined so -well. For these dinners are for the benefit of the sick and the infirm, -the lunatic and the imbecile, the widow and the orphan, the decayed -artist and the reduced gentlewoman, the lame, the halt, the blind, the -poor harlot and the penitent thief, and they shall have their part in -these abundant loaves and fishes; and the sublimation of superfluities -must be condoned for the sake of those <i>voluntary contributions</i> which -are the noblest support of the noble charities in England. Remember -the story of the Pot of Ointment. These superfluities yield a better -surplus than though the spikenard was sold for an hundred-pence and -given to the poor.</p> - -<p>A very cream of waiters has taken good care of me during the -evening. He now fetches me my walking gear, and as he pockets my -modest “largesse,” whispers confidentially that he has had the honour -of “seeing me afore;” and, blushing, I remember that I have met him -at private parties. It is well for me if I can slip downstairs quietly, -hail a cab, and drive to one of the operas; for an act of the “Trovatore” -or “Lucrezia Borgia” are, in my opinion, far better than Seltzer -water in restoring the balance of one’s mind after an arduous public -dinner. But it oft-times happens that a man in your memorialist’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span> -position has to pass a <i>quart d’heure de Rabelais</i>, worse than paying the -bill, after one of these festive meetings. For, in a roomy apartment -downstairs, lighted by waxen tapers, such things as pens, ink, and -paper, coffee, cognac, and cigars, are, by the forethought of the liberal -proprietors of the establishment, laid out for the benefit of those merry -gentlemen you saw upstairs at the small table in a line with the chairman, -where they were so well taken care of; and if circumstances -compel me to be in a merry mood to-night, I must hie me into this -roomy chamber, and scribble a column or so of “copy” about the -dinner, which will appear to-morrow morning in the “Meteor.” -Rubbing my eyes as I glance over the damp sheet between my own -warm ones in bed, I wonder who ever could have written the report of -all those elegant speeches. It seems at least a year since I dined with -the “Fatuous Monomanaics.”</p> - -<p class="tb">This is again six o’clock p.m., but not by any means on the same -evening. The occasion could have no possible connection with going -out to dinner, for it happens to be six o’clock “sharp:” and, moreover, -it is on Friday, a day on which it is supposed to be as unlucky -to go out to dinner as to go to sea, to marry, to put on a new coat, to -commence a new novel, to cut your nails, or buy tripe. Now, what -can I be doing in the city on this Friday evening? Certainly not to -perform any of the operations alluded to above. Scarcely on business. -Bank, Exchange, wharfs, Custom-house, money-market, merchants’ -counting-houses, are all closed, and the inner city, the narrow winding -lanes, that almost smell of money, are deserted. What am I doing so -close to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and why do I turn off by St. Martin’s-le-Grand? -For the simple reason, that Friday evening is the very -best one in the seven to witness the spectacle I am going to see—Newspaper -Fair at the General Post Office.</p> - -<p>In the vast vestibule, or hall, of the establishment so admirably -presided over by Mr. Rowland Hill (for I do not reckon the aristocratic -placeman who is, turn and turn about, Whig or Tory, its -nominal chief, for much), and whose fostering care has made it (with -some slight occasional shortcomings) the best-managed and most -efficient national institution in Europe, you may observe, in the left-hand -corner from the peristyle, and opposite the secretary’s office -(tremendous “counts” are the clerks in the secretary’s office, jaunty -bureaucrats, who ride upon park hacks, and are “come for” by -ringlets in broughams at closing time, but who get through their -work in about half the time it would take the ordinary slaves of the -desk, simply because their shrewdness and knowledge of the world -enables them to “see through a case” before the average man of -tape and quill can make up his mind to docket a letter) a huge longitudinal -slit in the panelling above, on which is the inscription “For -newspapers only.” And all day long, newspapers only, stringed or -labelled, are thrust into this incision; and the typographed lucubrations -of the some five hundred men who, for salaries ranging from -twenty shillings to twenty pounds per week, have to think, and sometimes -almost feel, in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, for some sixty millions -of people (I say nothing of the re-actionary influence upon foreign -nations), go forth to the uttermost ends of the earth. But as six -o’clock approaches (and six o’clock sharp is the irrevocable closing -time for the departure of newspapers by the current night’s mail), -they open a tall window above, and the newspapers are no more -thrust, but flung in.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus30" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus30.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">SIX O’CLOCK P.M.: THE NEWSPAPER WINDOW AT THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span></p> - -<p>It is on this congenial ground that I meet those juvenile friends -to whom I introduced a large circle of acquaintances, even in the -second hour of “Twice Round the Clock”—I mean the newspaper -boys. In another page I said, jestingly, that I was afraid of boys. -I must except from the category the newspaper boys. I have been -sadly harassed and teazed by them in their out-of-door or bagful -state, when they go round to purchase newspapers: for I once happened -to be editor of a cheap journal, at whose office there was no -editor’s room. I was compelled, occasionally, to read my proofs behind -the counter, in the presence of the publisher and his assistant, -and I have endured much mental pain and suffering from the somewhat -too demonstrative <i>facetiæ</i> of the young gentlemen engaged in -the “trade.” Verbal satire of the most acutely personal nature was -their ordinary mode of procedure; but, occasionally, when the publication -(as sometimes happened) was late in its appearance, their -playfulness was aggravated to the extent of casting an old shoe at me, -and on one signal occasion a bag of flour. Still the newspaper boy is -the twin-brother of the printer’s devil; and, much as I have seen of -those patient, willing little urchins, I should be a brute if I were hard -to them, here.</p> - -<p>The newspaper boys are, of course, in immense array at the six -o’clock fair on Friday evening. They are varied, as currants are by -sultanas in a dumpling, by newspaper men, who, where the boys -struggle up to the window and drop in their load, boldly fling bags<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span> -full, sacks full, of journals into the yawning casement. There is a -legend that they once threw a boy into the window, newspapers and -all. But at six o’clock everything is over—the window is closed—and -newspaper fair is adjourned to the next Friday.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SEVEN_PM">SEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.—A THEATRICAL GREEN-ROOM, AND “BEHIND THE SCENES.”</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Dear friends and readers, we are approaching the sere and yellow -leaf of our peregrinations “round the clock.” As the year wanes, as -golden August points to the culminating glories of the year, but with -oft-times a dark and impetuous storm presaging the evil days of winter -that are to come, so I feel, hour after hour, that our (to me) pleasant -intercommunications are destined to cease. You have been very forbearing -with me, have suppressed a justifiable petulance at my short-comings, -my digressions, my wayward fancies and prejudices, because -you know (I hope and trust) that I am always your faithful servant -and willing scribe, that (errors excepted, as the lawyers say) I have -but one aim and end in these papers—to tell you the truth about -London, its life and manners; to describe what I have seen, to tell -you what I know; and to place before you, very timidly and under all -correction, certain things which, in my opinion, it behoves you, and -all who have a faith in the better part of humanity, to think about. -Indeed, it is a very great privilege for a writer to be placed face to -face with a hundred thousand critics every week, in lieu of half a -hundred every half-year or so. He is flouted, and jeered, and scouted, -and scolded, and remonstrated with, every time the penny post comes -in; but he makes friends every week. He knows that his words are -winged; he knows that he appeals to men who will understand his -views, and to women who will sympathise with him; and though he -may be as a pedlar, carrying about petty wares—ribbons, and tags, -and small jewellery, and soap, and sweetstuff—he is vain enough to -imagine that he can carry cheerfulness and content into many households;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span> -and that in speaking our common language of hopes and fears, -likes and dislikes, he does not belie his cognomen of a “Welcome -Guest.” If he—if I—thought otherwise, I would tear this sheet, sell -my reversion, buy an annuity of £20 a year, and join the convent of -La Trappe, to wear a cowl, sing matins and complins, eat black -radishes, and dig my own grave, to-morrow.</p> - -<p>Seven o’clock post meridian has brought us at least the artificial -abnegation of daylight, and has subjected us to the <i>régime</i> of gaslight. -You had a twinkle of that unwholesome vapour, under the head of -public dinners; but henceforth Sol will shine no longer on our labours. -It is seven o’clock in the evening, and we are going to the play.</p> - -<p>When I state that the subjects of this article are a Theatrical -Green-Room, and “Behind the Scenes,” I anticipate some amount of -intellectual commotion among the younger, and especially the “fast” -portion, of my readers. Jaunty young clerks, and incipient men about -town, dwelling in decorous country boroughs, will be apt to fancy -that I am about to launch into a deliriously exciting account of those -charmed regions which lie beyond the stage-door; that my talk will -be altogether of spangles, muslin, skirts, and pink tights. Nay, even -my young lady readers may deceive themselves with the idea that I -shall draw a glowing picture of the dangerous, delightful creatures -who flutter every night before theatrical audiences, and of the dear, -naughty, wicked, darling marquises, earls, and baronets who lounge -behind the scenes. <i>Helas! il n’en est rien.</i> I know all about green-rooms, -wings, and prompt-boxes. I have been in the artistes’ <i>foyer</i> -of the Grand Opera, in the flies of her Majesty’s, and in the mezzanine -floor of the Princess’s. I am not about to be cynical, but I must -be prosaic, and mean to tell you, in a matter-of-fact way, what the -green-room and behind the scenes of a London theatre are like at -seven o’clock.</p> - -<p>It is strange, though, what a fascination these forbidden regions -exercise over the uninitiated. I never knew any one yet who was -actuated by an inordinate desire to visit the vestry-room of a church, -or to see the cupboard where the rector and curate’s surplices are -suspended on pegs, or where the sacramental wine is kept. It is -but seldom that I have seen anybody who evinced a particular curiosity -to see a pawnbroker’s ware-room, at the top of the spout, or -to become acquainted with the arcana of a butcher’s slaughter-house -(though I must confess, myself, to having once, as a schoolboy, subscribed -fourpence, in company with about ten others, to see a bullock<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span> -killed)—yet everybody wants to go “behind the scenes.” Some -twenty months since, I had business to settle with a firm of solicitors, -haughty, precise, distant, and sternly business-like, who dwelt in Bedford -Row. I think that some one who was a client of the firm had a -judgment against me, to which was witness one Frederick Pollock, at -Westminster; but let that pass. I settled the matter, and thought -myself well out of the firm and its clutches, when the penultimate -junior partner, a middle-aged, respectable man, with a prematurely-bald -head, asked me to dinner at Verrey’s. He was good enough to -allow me to order the repast, and politely deferred to my preference -for <i>Macon vieux</i> over hot sherry; but, towards the cheese, he hinted -that a man of the world, such as I seemed to be, ought never to be in -difficulties (I have been hopelessly insolvent since the year ’27, in -which I was born), and that he would esteem it a very great favour if -I would take him “behind the scenes” some night. Yes; this man -of tape and quill, of green ferret and pounce, of sheepskins and abominable -processes, positively wanted to see the Eleusinian mysteries of -the interior of a London theatre. I showed them to him, and he is -grateful still. I meet him occasionally at places of public resort. He -is next to senior partner now, but he never hints at six-and-eightpence -when I ask a legal question; and his most valuable act of friendship -is this, that whenever the Sheriff of Middlesex is moved to run up -and down in his bailiwick, with a special reference to my disparagement, -I receive a mysterious message, generally conveyed by a battered -individual, who wipes his face on the sleeve of his coat, and is -not averse to taking “something short,” that there is “something -out” against me, and that I had better look sharp. Whereupon I -look out as sharp as I can for the most convenient tenth milestone out -of Babylon.</p> - -<p>Now, friend and fellow-traveller of mine, do you mind transforming -yourself for the nonce into the friendly solicitor, and coming with me -“behind the scenes?” I know that with these continual metamorphoses -I am making a very golden ass of Apuleius of you; but it is all, -believe me, for your benefit. I don’t want you to stand a dinner at -Verrey’s. I only want you to put on the slippers of patience and the -spectacles of observation, and to follow me.</p> - -<p>There is, the moralist hath said, a time for all things, and that much -libelled institution, a theatre, has among its Bohemian faults of recklessness -and improvidence, the somewhat rare virtue of punctuality. -Even those events of its daily life which depend for the extent of their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span> -duration upon adventitious circumstances, are marked by a remarkably -well-kept average. Theatrical rehearsals generally commence at ten -o’clock in the morning; and though it will sometimes happen, in the -case of new pieces about to be produced—especially pantomimes and -<i>spectacles</i>, that the rehearsal is prolonged to within a few minutes of -the rising of the curtain for the evening performance, the usual turning -of an ordinary rehearsal’s, or series of rehearsals’ lane, is four o’clock -p.m. Then the <i>répétitêur</i> in the orchestra shuts up his fiddle in its -case, and goes home to his tea. Then the young ladies of the <i>corps de -ballet</i>, who have been indulging in saltatory movements for the last few -hours, lay aside their “practising dresses”—generally frocks of ordinary -material, cut short in the manner immortalised by that notable -pedlar, Mr. Stout, in his felonious transaction with the little old woman -who fell asleep by the king’s highway—and subside into the long-flounced -garments of common life, which are to be again replaced so -soon as seven o’clock comes, by the abridged muslin skirts and flesh-coloured -continuations of ballet-girlhood. The principal actresses and -actors betake themselves to dinner, or to a walk in the park, or give -themselves a finishing touch of study in the parts they are not yet -quite perfect in, or, it may be, mount the steep theatrical stairs to the -mountainous regions where dwell the theatrical tailor and tailoress—I -entreat them to excuse me, the <i>costumier</i> and the mistress of the -robes—with whom they confer on the weighty subject of the dresses -which they are to wear that evening. The carpenters abandon work; -the scene-shifters, whose generic name in technical theatrical parlance -is “labourers,” moon about the back part of the stage, seeing that the -stock of scenery for the evening is all provided, the grooves duly -blackleaded and the traps greased, and all the “sinks” and “flies,” -ropes and pulleys, and other theatrical gear and tackle, in due working -order. For, you see, if these little matters be not rigidly and minutely -attended to, if a rope be out of its place or a screw not rightly home, -such trifling accidents as mutilation and loss of life are not unlikely to -happen. That the occurrence of such casualties is of so extreme a -rarity may be ascribed, I think, to the microscopic care and attention -which these maligned theatrical people bestow on every inch of their -domain behind the scenes. They have to work in semi-darkness, and -under many other circumstances of equal disadvantage; but, next to a -fire-engine station and the ’tween decks of a man-o’-war, I do not think -that I can call to mind a more orderly, better-disciplined, better-tended -place than that part of a theatre which lies behind the foot-lights.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span></p> - -<p>Now, mouse-like, from undiscovered holes, patter softly mysterious -females in tumbled mob-caps and battered bonnets, who, by the way, -have been pottering stealthily with brooms and brushes about the pit -and boxes in the morning, disappearing towards noon. They proceed -to disencumber the front of the house of the winding-sheets of brown -holland in which it has been swathed since last midnight. These are -the “cleaners,” and when they have made the house-clean and tidy for -the audience of the evening, dusted the fauteuils, and swept the lobbies, -they hie them behind the scenes, see that the proper provision of soap -and towels exists in the dressing-rooms, perhaps lend a hand to the -scene-shifters, who are completing <i>their</i> afternoon’s labour by scientifically -irrigating the stage with watering-pots; or, if a tragedy is to be -performed, spreading the green baize extending to the foot-lights—that -incomprehensible green baize—that field <i>vert</i> on which Paris dies combatant, -and Hamlet lies rampant, and without whose presence it is considered -by many dramatic sages no tragedy could possibly be enacted.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> -Meanwhile, the property-man has brought to the verge of the wings, -or laid out in trays and hampers, ready to be conveyed below by his -assistants, the necessary paraphernalia and appurtenances for the -pieces in that night’s bill. Shylock’s knife and scales, Ophelia’s -coffin, Claude Melnott’s easel and maulstick, Long Tom Coffin’s mob-cap; -the sham money, sham words, sham eatables and drinkables of -this unreal and fantastic world, are all prepared. Presently the myrmidons -of the wardrobe will take the required costumes from their -frowning presses, and convey them to the dressing-rooms, ready for -the histrionics who are to wear them. High up above all, above ceiling, -and flies, and chandelier, in his lofty skylighted studio, the scene-painter -throws down his “double-tie” brush, bids his colour-grinder -clean his boots, indulges in a mighty wash, and dresses himself for the -outward world. He improves marvellously by the change. But ten -minutes since he was an almost indescribable scarecrow, in a tattered -suit of canvas and list slippers, and bespattered from head to foot with -dabs of colour. And now he turns out a trim gentleman, with a watch-chain, -a moustache, an eye-glass, and kid gloves, and he walks off as -gingerly to the artistic or literary club to which he may belong, as -though he had never heard of size or whitewash in his life.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span></p> -<p>By five o’clock the little industries that have prevailed since the -rehearsal ended are mostly completed; and the theatre becomes quite -still. It is a complete, a solemn, almost an awful stillness. All the -busy life and cheerful murmur of this human ant-hill are hushed. -The rows of seats are as deserted as the degrees of some old ruined -amphitheatre in Rome. The stage is a desert. The “flies” and -“borders” loom overhead in cobweb indistinctness. Afar off the -dusky, feeble chandelier, looks like a moon on which no sun condescends -to shine; and were it not for one ray of golden afternoon -sunlight, that from a topmost window shines obliquely through the -vast dimness, and rescues the kettle-drums in the orchestra from tenebrose -oblivion, you might fancy this place, which two hours hence -will be brilliantly lighted up, full of gorgeous decorations and blithesome -music, and a gay audience shouting applause to mimes and -jesters and painted bayadères, chasing the golden hours with frolic -feet—you might fancy the deserted theatre to be a Valley of Dry -Bones.</p> - -<p>Only two functionaries are ever watchful, and do not entertain the -slightest thought, either of suspending their vigilance, or of leaving -the theatre. At the entrance, in his crabbed little watch-box by the -stage-door, the grim man in the fur cap, who acts as Cerberus to the -establishment, sits among keys and letters for delivery. Of a multifarious -nature is the correspondence at a stage-door. There are -County Court summonses, seductive offers from rival managers to -the popular tragedian of the day, pressing entreaties for orders, pink -three-cornered notes scented and sealed with crests for the <i>première -danseuse</i>, frequently accompanied by pinned-up <i>cornets</i> of tissue-paper -containing choice bouquets from Covent Garden. There are five-act -tragedies, and farces, written on official paper for the manager; solicitations -for engagements, cards, bills, and applications for benefit -tickets. But the grim man at the stage-door takes no heed of them, -save to deliver them to their proper addresses. He takes no heed -either (apparently) of the crowds of people, male and female, who -pass and repass him by night and by day, from Monday till Saturday. -But he knows them all well, be assured; knows them as well as -Charon, knows them as well as Cerberus, knows them as well as the -turnkey of the “lock” in a debtor’s prison. Scene-shifter or popular -tragedian, it is all one to him. He has but to obey his <i>consigne</i> to let -no one pass his keyed and lettered den who is not connected with the -theatre, or who has not the <i>entrée</i> behind the scenes by special managerial<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span> -permission; and in adhering to that, he is as inflexible as -Death. And while he guards the portal, Manager Doldrum sits in -his easy-chair in his manuscript-littered private room upstairs. The -rehearsal may be over, but still he has work to do. He has always -work to do. Perhaps he anticipates a thin house to-night, and is -busy scribbling orders which his messenger will take care shall permeate -through channels which shall do the house no harm. Or he -may be glancing over a new farce which one of the accredited authors -of the theatre has just sent in, and with black-lead pencil suggesting -excisions, additions, or alterations. Or perhaps he tears his hair and -gnashes his teeth in dignified privacy, thinking with despair upon the -blank receipts of the foregone week, murmuring to himself, “Shall I -close! shall I close?” as a badgered and belated Minister of State -might ask himself, “Shall I resign?”</p> - -<p>I wonder how many people there are who see the manager airing -his white waistcoat in his especial stage-box, or envy him as he drives -away from the theatre in his brougham, or joyfully takes his cheque -on Ransom’s for that last “stunning” and “screaming” new farce that -forty pounds were given for, and that ran four nights; I wonder how -many of these outsiders of the theatrical arcana know what a persecuted, -hunted dog, a genteel galley-slave, a well-dressed Russian serf, -is the theatrical manager. He may well be coarse and <i>brusque</i> in his -manners, captious and pettish in conversation, remiss in answering -letters, averse to parting with ready money for manuscripts which are -often never acted, and more often never read. Do you know the life -he leads? Mr. Pope’s existence at Twickenham (or Twitnam), about -the period when he instructed “good John,” his man, to say that he -was sick, or dead, was a combination of halcyon days compared to the -life of a theatrical manager. Are there sons “destined their fathers’ -souls to cross,” who “pen a stanza when they should engross?” are -there men with harum-scarum lunatic projects, with tomfool notions -that they are tragedians, with tragedies and farces, to estimate whose -real value one should make a handsome deduction for the injury done -to the paper on which they are written? are there madcap young -ladies, newly-whipped at boarding-school, who fancy that they have -the vocal powers of Grisi or Bosio, or the tragic acquirements of -Ellen Tree or Helen Faucit (excuse the Kean and Martin marital prefixes: -the old names are <i>so</i> pleasant)? are there mad mothers who -vehemently insist that their skimping daughters can dance like Rosati -or Pocchini? are there “guardians,” in other words the proprietary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span> -slaveholders of dwarfs and contorsionists, precocious pianists, and -female violoncellists? are there schemers, knaves, Yankee speculators, -foreign farmers of singers with cracked voices, bores or insipid idlers—they -all besiege the theatrical manager, supplicate, cajole, annoy, or -threaten him. If he doesn’t at once accede to their exorbitant terms, -they forthwith abuse him scurrilously out of doors. He is a robber, an -impostor, a miser, a Jew. He has been transported. He is insolvent. -He came out ten years since in the provinces, and in light comedy, and -failed. He beats his wife. He was the ruin of Miss Vanderplank, and -sent men into the house to hiss and cry out “pickles” when Toobey -the tragedian was performing his starring engagements, because, forsooth, -Toobey did not draw. He owes ten thousand pounds to Miss -Larke, the <i>soprano</i>. He buys his wardrobe in Petticoat Lane. He -drinks fearfully. He will be hung. I have been an editor, and know -the amenities that are showered on <i>those</i> slaves of the lamp; the people -who accuse you of having set the Thames on fire, and murdered Eliza -Grimwood, if you won’t accept their interminable romances, and darkly -insinuate that they will have your heart’s blood if you decline to pay -for poems copied from the annuals of eighteen hundred and thirty-six; -but to find the acme of persecution and badgering commend me to a -theatrical manager.</p> - -<p>Return we to our muttons. The theatre sleeps a sound, tranquil -sleep for some hundred minutes; but about six it begins to wake again -to fresh life and activity. At half-past six it is wide awake and staring. -The “dressers,” male and female, have arrived, and are being objurgated -by incensed performers in their several <i>cabinets de toilette</i>, because they -are slow in finding Mr. Lamplugh’s bagwig, or Mademoiselle Follejambe’s -white satin shoes. The call-boy—that diminutive, weazened -specimen of humanity, who has never, so it seems, been a boy, and -never will be a man—has entered upon his functions, and already meditates -a savage onslaught on the dressing-room doors, accompanied by -a shrill intimation that the overture is “on.” Let us leave the ladies -and gentlemen engaged in the theatre to complete the bedizenment of -their apparel, and, pending their entrance into the green-room, see -what that apartment itself is made of.</p> - -<p>Of course it is on a level with the stage, and within a convenient -distance of that prompt-box which forms the head-quarters of the call-boy, -and where he receives instructions from his adjutant-general, the -prompter. In country theatres, the green-room door is often within a -foot or so from the wing; and there is a facetious story told of a whilom<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span> -great tragedian, who, now retired and enjoying lettered and dignified -ease as a country gentleman, was, in his day, somewhat remarkable for -violent ebullitions of temper. He was playing Hamlet; and in the -closet scene with Gertrude, where he kills the old chamberlain, who -lies in ambuscade, and just at the moment he draws his rapier, it -occurred to his heated imagination that an inoffensive light comedian, -ready dressed for the part of Osric, who was standing at the green-room -door within reasonable sword range, was the veritable Polonius -himself. Whereupon the tragedian, shrieking out, “A rat! a rat! -dead, for a ducat—dead!” made a furious lunge at the unhappy Osric, -who only escaped instant death by a timely hop, skip, and jump, and -fled with appalling yells to a sofa, under which he buried himself. -Tradition says that the tragedian’s rapier went right through the -wood-work of the half-opened door; but I know that tradition is not -always to be trusted, and I decline to endorse this particular one now.</p> - -<p>Our present green-room is a sufficiently commodious apartment, -spacious and lofty, and fitted up in a style of decoration in which the -Louis Quinze contends with the Arabesque, and that again with the -Cockney Corinthian. The walls are of a pale sea-green, of the famous -Almack’s pattern; and the floor is covered with a carpet of remarkably -curious design and texture, offering some noteworthy specimens of -worsted vegetation run to seed, and rents and fissures of extraordinary -polygonal form. In one corner there is a pianoforte—a grand pianoforte; -at least it may have been at one time deserving of that high-sounding -appellation; but it is now a deplorable old music-box, with a -long tail that would be much better between its legs, and keys that are -yellow and worn down, like the teeth of an old horse. There is a -cheval glass, too, in tolerably good repair, for the <i>danseuses</i> to arrange -their skirts withal; and over the chimney-piece there is another great -glass, with a tarnished frame and longitudinal crack extending over it, -in the sides of which—the interstices of the frame, I mean, not the -crack—are stuck notices having reference to the rehearsals to be held -on the morrow. “All the ladies of the ballet at ten;” “All the company -for reading of new piece at twelve.” So may run the wafered -announcements signed in the fine Roman hand of the prompter or -stage-manager. There are varied pilasters, in imitation of scagliola, -supporting the ceiling; the doors are handsomely panelled with gilt -headings. There are four tall windows in a row, with cornices wofully -dingy, and draped with curtains of shabby moreen. There is good -store of settees and ottomans covered with faded chintz. Everything -about the place bears that “stagey,” unreal, garish, dream-like aspect, -that seems inherent to things theatrical, and makes us, directly we pass -the stage-door, look upon everything, from the delusive banquet on -the imitation marble table, to the paint on the singing chambermaid’s -cheeks, as a mockery and a delusion—as the baseless fabric of a vision, -that will soon fade and leave not a wrack behind. And yet I have -said (<i>vide ante et supra</i>) that “behind the scenes is common-place.” -And so it is; but it is the common-place of dreamland, the every-day -life of the realms of Prester John, the work-a-day existence of the -kingdom of Cockaigne, or of that shadowy land where dwell the -Anthropophagi, and men “whose heads do grow beneath their -shoulders.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus31" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus31.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">SEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.: A THEATRICAL GREEN-ROOM.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span></p> - -<p>What shall I assume the first piece that is to be performed this -night to be? Will you have the “Flowers of the Forest,” the “Poor -Strollers,” “Sweethearts and Wives,” “Pizarro,” the “Padlock,” or -a “Game at Romps?” What do you say to a fine old English comedy, -such as “John Bull,” or the “School of Reform,” with a dissipated -young squire, a gouty, ill-tempered, and over-bearing old lord of the -manor, an intensely-virtuous tenant-farmer, a comic ploughman, a -milkmaid with a chintz gown tucked through the placket-holes, and a -song, and a spotless but a persecuted maiden? No; you will have -none of these! Suppose, then, we take our dear old genial friend, the -“Green Bushes”—long life and good luck to Mr. Buckstone, and may -he write many more pieces as good for our imaginary theatre. See; -the green-room clock points to ten minutes to seven—I left that out in -my inventory of the furniture. The call-boy has already warned the -ladies and gentlemen who are engaged for the first scene, that their -immediate presence is required, and the erst-deserted green-room fills -rapidly.</p> - -<p>See, here they came—the kindly old friends of the “Green Bushes”—Miami -and Jack Gong, and Master Grinnidge; and yet, dear me, -what are these strange, wild costumes mingled with them? Oh! there -is a burlesque after the drama. It is somewhat early in the evening -for those who are to play in the second piece to come down dressed; -but then you are to consider this as a special green-room, a specimen -green-room, an amalgam of the green-room element generally. This -model <i>foyer</i> is to have something of the Haymarket and something -of the Adelphi—the old by-gone, defunct Adelphi, I mean—a spice -of the Olympic, a tinge of the Lyceum, and a dash of the Princess’s, -about it. I except the green-room of Drury Lane, which never resembled<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span> -anything half so much as a family vault, and the green-rooms -of the two Operas, which, though splendidly furnished and appointed, -are almost deserted during the performances, the great <i>tenori</i> and -<i>soprani</i> preferring to retire to their dressing-rooms when any long -intervals of rest occur.</p> - -<p>“Things”—to use a bit of “Green Bushes” <i>facetiæ</i>, invented, I -am willing to believe, by that incorrigible humourist, Mr. Wright, -and which has grown proverbial—“things isn’t as they used to -was;” and the attractions of green-rooms have deteriorated, even -within my time. When I say “my time,” I mean a quarter of a -century; for as I happened to be almost born in a prompt-box and -weaned in a scene-painter’s size-kettle, and have been employed in -very nearly every capacity in and about a theatre—save that of an -actor, which profession invincible modesty and incurable incompetency -prevented me from assuming—I feel myself qualified to speak about -the green-rooms with some degree of authority. To have read a -three-act melodrama to a (scarcely) admiring audience, and to have -called “everybody for the last scene” in a green-room, gives a man, -I take it, a right to be heard.</p> - -<p>But, to tell the truth, green-rooms now-a-days are sadly dull, -slow, humdrum places of resort. In a minor theatre they are somewhat -more lively, as there is there no second green-room, and the -young sylphides of the <i>corps de ballet</i> are allowed to join the company. -The conversation of these young ladies, if not interesting, is amusing, -and if not brilliant, is cheerful. They generally bring their needle-work -with them if they have to wait long between the scenes (frequently -to the extent of an entire act) in which they have to dance, -and they discourse with much <i>naïveté</i> upon the warmth or coldness of -the audience with reference to the applause bestowed, the bad temper -of the stage-manager, and their own temporary indisposition from -corns, which, with pickled salmon, unripe pears, the proper number -of lengths for a silk dress, and the comparative merits of the whiskers -and moustaches of the musicians in the band (with some of whose -members they are sure to be in love, and whom they very frequently -marry, leaving off dancing and having enormous families), form the -almost invariable staple of a ballet-girl’s conversation. Poor simple-minded, -good-natured, hard-working little creatures, theirs is but a -rude and stern lot. To cut capers and wear paint, to find one’s own -shoes and stockings, and be strictly virtuous, on a salary varying from -nine to eighteen shillings a week—this is the pabulum of a ballet-girl.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span> -And hark in thine ear, my friend. If any man talks to you about the -syrens of the ballet, the dangerous enchantresses and cockatrices of -the ballet, the pets of the ballet, whose only thoughts are about -broughams and diamond <i>aigrettes</i>, dinners at Richmond, and villas at -St. John’s Wood—if anybody tells you that the majority, or even a -large proportion, of our English <i>danseuses</i> are inclined this perilous -way, just inform him, with my compliments, that he is a dolt and a -teller of untruths. I can’t say much of ballet morality abroad; of -the poor <i>rats de l’opera</i> in Paris, who are bred to wickedness from -their very cradle upwards; of the Neapolitan <i>ballerine</i>, who are -obliged to wear green <i>calzoni</i>, and to be civil to the priests, lest they -should be put down altogether; or of the poor Russian ballet-girls, -who live altogether in barracks, are conveyed to and from the theatre -in omnibuses, and are birched if they do not behave themselves, and -yet manage somehow to make a bad end of it; but as regards our -own sylphides, I say that naughtiness among them is the exception, -and cheerful, industrious, self-denying perseverance in a hard, ungrateful -life, the honourable rule.</p> - -<p>There are yet a few green-rooms where the genus “swell” still -finds a rare admittance. See here a couple in full evening costume, -talking to the pretty young lady in the low-necked dress on the -settee; but the swell is quite a fish out of water in the green-room of -these latter days. Managers don’t care quite so much for his patronage, -preferring to place their chief reliance and dependence on the -public. The actors don’t care about him, for the swell is not so -generous as of yore in taking tickets for the benefits of popular -favourites. Actresses mistrust him, for the swell has given up raising -actresses to the peerage. The ballet-girls are half afraid of him; and -when they don’t fear him, they laugh at him. So the swell wanders -in and out of the green-room, and stares at people uneasily, and at -last escapes to his brougham or his cabriolet at the stage-door. Now -and then a wicked old lord of the unrighteous evil-living school of -British peers, now happily becoming rarer and rarer every day, will -come sniggering and chuckling into a green-room, hanging on the -arm of the manager, with whom he is on the most intimate terms, -and who “My Lords” him most obsequiously. He rolls his scandalous -old eyes in his disreputable, puckered face, seeking some pretty, -timid, blushing little flower, whom he may blight with his Upas gaze, -and then totters away to his stage-box, where he does duty for the -rest of the evening with a huge double-barrelled opera-glass.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span></p> - -<p>Such is the green-room of to-day, quiet, occasionally chatty (for -actresses and actors can be pleasant enough among themselves, in a cosy, -sensible manner, talking about butcher’s meat, and poor’s-rates, and -Brompton omnibuses); but not by any means the glittering Temple of -Radiant Delight that some might feel inclined to imagine it. There -have been days—and I remember them—when green-rooms were very -different places. There were women on the stage then who were Queens -as well as actresses, and had trains of admirers round their flowing -robes. There was a slight nervous man in those days—a famous writer -of plays and books that yet live, and will live while our English language -is spoken—a strange-looking, high-cheek-boned man, with long -hair carelessly thrown away from his forehead, and a piercing eye, that -seemed to laugh to scorn the <i>lorgnon</i> dangling from its ribbon. I have -seen him so, his spare form leaning against the mantel, and he showering—yes, -showering is the word—arrowy <i>bon mots</i> and corruscating -repartees around him. He is dead: they all seem to be dead, those -brilliant green-room men—Jerrold, Talfourd, Kenney, Haynes Bayley, -Hook, A’Beckett. They have left no successors. The modern play-wrights -skulk in and out of the manager’s room, and are mistaken at -rehearsal for the property-men. They forsake green-rooms at night for -drawing-rooms, where they can hear themselves praised, or smoking-rooms -of clubs, where they can abuse one another; and if A. says a -good thing, B. books it for his next <i>petite comédie</i>, which does not hurt -A. much, seeing that he stole it from C., who translated it hot-and-hot -from Monsieur de D., that great plagiarist from Lope de Vega.</p> - -<p>Come, let us leave the green-room to its simple devices, and see what -they are doing “Behind the Scenes.” You and I, we know, are in the -receipt of fern-seed, and can walk invisible without incommoding ourself -or anybody else, be the pressure ever so great; but I should -strongly advise all swells and other intruders, if any such remain, -either to withdraw into the shadiest recesses of the green-room, or to -“get out of that”—to use an Irishism, without the least possible delay. -For “Behind the Scenes” is clearly no place for them. If I were the -manager of a theatre, I would not admit one single person into the -<i>coulisses</i> save those connected with the night’s performance, nay, nor -allow even the <i>employés</i> of the theatre, till the call-boy summoned them -to approach the wing. Madame Vestris established this Spartan rule -of discipline, and found it answer in making her theatre the best-managed -in Europe; but it will be observed that no such <i>ordre du -jour</i> has been promulgated in the theatre behind whose scenes we find -ourselves to-night. What a confusion, what a hubbub, what a throng -and bustle! The <i>dramatis personæ</i>, you will perceive, no longer contemplate -the performance of the “Green Bushes.” Hoops, powder, -brocade, black-patches, high-heeled shoes, bag-wigs, flapped waistcoats, -and laced-hats prevail. This must be some Pompadour or Beau Tibbs -piece—“Court Favour,” or “Love’s Telegraph,” or some last century -dramatic conceit by Mr. Planché or Mr. Dance. How the carpenters -scuffle and stamp, entreating the bystanders, not always in the politest -terms, to get out of the way! Now and again the prompter rushes -from his box, and in a hoarse <i>sotto voce</i>, that would be a shriek if it -were not a whisper, commands silence.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus32" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus32.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">SEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.: BEHIND THE SCENES.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span></p> - -<p>Upon my word, there is that unlucky old Flathers, the heavy man, -who <i>never</i> knows his part; there he is again, evidently imperfect, and -taking a last desperate gulp of study, sitting in the property arm-chair, -on the very brink of the stage. And see there—don’t blush, don’t -stammer, but make as polite a bow as you can—there is Mrs. Woffington -Pegley, in full Pompadour costume, and such a hoop! She is only -twenty-three years of age; has had two husbands; Count Schrechny-synesky, -the Moldo-Wallachian ambassador, is reported to be madly -in love with her; she rides in the park, she hunts, she drives, she owns -a yacht, she has more diamonds and Mechlin lace than a duchess, and -she is the most charming actress of the day. To be sure, she can’t -read very fluently, and can scarcely write her own name, but <i>que voulez -vous</i>?</p> - -<p>Don’t you know that queer, quaint passage in good old Dr. Johnson’s -life, where, soon after the production of his tragedy of “Irene,” -and when the lexicographer had even gone to the extent of appearing -behind the scenes of the playhouse in a scarlet coat and laced-hat fiercely -cocked, he suddenly told David Garrick that he could visit him behind -the scenes no more, assigning his own honest sufficient reason? The -pretty actresses were too much for Samuel. He was but mortal man—mortal -man. Their rosy cheeks—never mind whether the roses were -artificial or not—their white necks, and dainty hands and feet, their -rustling brocades and laced tuckers, disturbed the equanimity of our -great moralist and scholar. He fled from the temptation wisely. Who -can wonder at it? Who, that is not a misogynist, can sufficiently case -himself in brass to withstand the Parthian glances of those pretty dangerous -creatures? Surely they dress better, look better, walk better,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span> -sit better, stand better, have clearer voices, cheerier laughs, more graceful -curtsies, than any other women in the world. But they are not for -the likes of you or me, Thomas. See, there is fat, handsome Captain -Fitzblazer of the “Heavies,” the Duke of Alma’s aide-de-camp, pretending -to flirt with little Fanny Merrylegs, the <i>coryphée</i>, and the -rogue has one eye on Mrs. Woffington Pegley. I wish some robust -scene-shifter would tread on his varnished toes. The Pegley is aware -of the Fitzblazerian <i>œillade</i>, I wager, though she makes-believe to be -listening to young Martinmas, the walking gentleman’s, nonsense. -Come away, Thomas, come away, my friend. Let us strive to be as -wise in our generation as Sam Johnson was in his, and write to Davy -Garrick that we will come “behind the scenes” no more.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="EIGHT_PM">EIGHT O’CLOCK P.M.—HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE, AND A PAWNBROKER’S SHOP.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>I think that I have held out something like a guarantee, in the course -of these papers, that my readers shall be introduced to a fair amount of -fashionable life. How far I have performed my promise it is for them -to judge; but I am not, myself, without misgivings. True it is that, -under my guidance, they have perambulated Regent Street; have dined -off the fat of the land at a Public Dinner; have betted at Tattersall’s; -ridden in the Park; heard the band play at St. James’s; strolled -through the Pantheon Bazaar; and lounged in a theatrical green-room: -but then, have not I, discourteous <i>cicerone</i>, cajoled them into visiting -strange unlovely places, dismal to look upon; persuaded them to hang -up their harps by the willows of the Custom-house quay, and listen to -the slang of oyster-boatmen and bargees, at Billingsgate; forced them -to haunt the purlieus of police-courts, and witness the departure of -prison-vans and their felonious cargoes; to keep bad hours, and associate -with newspaper boys, market-gardeners, paupers, and common people -who travel by parliamentary train; to become acquainted, in fact, with -scenes and people distressingly low and unfashionable? It is true that -I have not taken them to the lanes of Petticoat and Field; to Duke,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span> -his Place; or St. Mary, her Axe; or Bevis, his Marks; or Rag, its -Fair; or Whitechapel, its Butcher Row; or Ratcliff, its Highway; or -Lock, his Fields; or Somers Town, its Brill; or Rats, their Castle; or -Whetstone, its Park; or Jacob, his Island; or Southwark, its Mint; -or Lambeth, its New Cut; or St. Giles, its Church Lane and Hampshire -Hog Lane. If I have not moved them so to travel with me, it is -not, I fear, through any <i>laches</i> of intention or deficiency of will, but -simply because I have at different seasons travelled over every inch of -the road I have named with other readers, and that I have a decent -horror of repeating myself, and respect for the maxim of <i>non bis in -idem</i>.</p> - -<p>Be my demerits granted or disallowed, I have still some time left to -me wherein to make amends. Though it may be my duty, ere we have -finished, to lead you again into dismal and wretched places, you shall -have at least an instalment of fashionable life now; and—follow -honest Sancho’s advice as to not looking the gift-horse in the mouth; -be satisfied with my assurance that this present one is of the pure -Godolphin Arabian lineage, elegant in form, unquestionable in mettle, -electrical in swiftness. The next may be but a sorry nag, spavined, -blown, wind-galled, and sprung. You must take the bad with the -good, in this world, and in all things.</p> - -<p>Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to the Opera—to her Majesty’s -Theatre in the Haymarket; and by eight o’clock it behoves us all to be -in our seats, if we wish to hear the first bars of the overture. It is true -that if we are so fortunate as to possess, or to hire, or to have opera-boxes -given to us, we do not, frequently, make our appearance in the -theatre till past nine o’clock; and that, if we are lessees or renters of -stalls, the ballet has frequently commenced before we condescend to -occupy our seats; but if the pit or the amphitheatre be our destination, -we had much better present ourselves at the entrance immediately the -doors open, and secure seats with what speed we may. It is a peculiarity -of her Majesty’s Theatre that whether the “house” be a good one -or a bad one, there are always, before the termination of the first act of -the opera, some occupants of the pit who are compelled to content themselves -with standing-room.</p> - -<p>Opinions are divided as to the place in the <i>enceinte</i> of the magnificent -theatre where the greatest enjoyment of the performance can be -obtained. To some, a box on the grand tier—vast, roomy, with space -for six to sit abreast—is considered the superlative of operatic felicity.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span> -Others hold out stoutly for the artistic fourth tier, where, they declare, -they can hear and see better than their lowly-placed neighbours. There -are many who abide by the stalls, despite of those who declare that in -the front rows thereof the voices of the singers are drowned by the contiguity -of the braying band. The pit has its defenders, who allege that -distance not only “lends enchantment to the view,” but chastens the -instrumental exuberances of the orchestra; but perhaps the most energetic -advocates of the merits of their own particular seats are the -dwellers in the high-up amphitheatre or gallery, who boldly declare -that it is in that elevated position alone, that you can enjoy, in the full -extent of their beauty, the gems of the opera, and that the sole place fit -for the presence of the genuine amateur is the operatic paradise, ascent -to which is permitted for the sum of three-and-sixpence or half-a-crown.</p> - -<p>Be our election, however, the stalls. From those comfortable -<i>fauteuils</i> let us explore the ample field—see what the open, what the -covert yield; and, as we expatiate over this scene of Man, own that, -though “a mighty maze,” it is “not without a plan.” For there is a -plan of her Majesty’s Theatre in the box-office.</p> - -<p>Am I treading on any one’s toes, disturbing any one’s prejudices, -predilections, or pre-formed opinions, in asseverating that the interior -of Mr. Lumley’s establishment offers, with one exception, the most -magnificent <i>coup-d’-œil</i> of any Opera in Europe that I have seen? -Mark the cunning qualification! I say, <i>that I have seen</i>; for they tell -me that there is an Opera at Barcelona (which nutty sea-port I have -never visited), a theatre surpassing in grandeur, and richness of decoration, -all the lyric temples of the continent or of these isles; and so far as -mere <i>size</i> is concerned, the palm must, I believe, be yielded to Parma, -in which caseous Italian city there exists—yet unexplored by me—a -huge tumble-down, ruinous, leaky, mildewed <i>salle</i>, which is as the Tower -of Babel of Opera-houses the Great Bonassus of theatres. I speak of -the houses which these weak eyes, in the course of many years’ wandering, -have surveyed, through powerful-lensed lorgnettes. Give me her -Majesty’s. Above the dreary Scala, with its naked tiers above tiers, -its <i>sediti chuisi</i>, and the three reserved front rows of the pit, where the -authorities were compelled to put the white-blanketed Austrian officers, -lest they should come to blows (they often squabbled in the lobbies even) -with the spiteful Milanese; the ghastly, dingy, ill-lighted Scala—(it is -bigger by far than her Majesty’s, though)—with its rabbit-hutch-like -private boxes, whose doors are scrawled over with the penny plain and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span> -twopence coloured-like coats of arms of the effete and decadent Lombardian -nobility. Above the boasted Grand Opera at Paris, tawdry, -inconvenient, and chopped up into unreasonable sections. Above the -Burg Theater, at Vienna; the Theatre de la Monnaie, at Brussels. -Above, even, the superb little Opernhaus, at Berlin, which, though a gem -in its way, is but as a diamond <i>aigrette</i> to the Koh-i-noor. Above the -late Royal Italian Opera House, in Bow Street, Covent Garden, London, -which was simply a big theatre, ill-built, and undecorated. For the -solitary exception I have hinted at you must go north, very far north -into Europe, and in the city of Moscow, in the empire of Holy Russia, -you shall find an Italian Opera House unprecedented, I verily believe, -for size, for splendour, for comfort, for elegance, and for taste. It -was not my fortune to be present in Moscow on the occasion of the -coronation <i>fêtes</i>, when the theatre I speak of was opened to the public -preparatory to the regular winter season; but for a description of -its glories I must refer those curious in operatic matters to my friend -Mr. Henry Sutherland Edwards, who was resident many months in the -city of the Kremlin, and whom I sincerely wish I could persuade to do, -in better part, for Moscow the holy that which I have myself endeavoured, -according to my lights, to do for St. Petersburg the mundane.</p> - -<p>Look around you, in the vast arena of her Majesty’s. Wonder and -admire, for such a sight it is not permitted to you often to behold. -Look around, and around again, the enormous horseshoe; look from -base to summit, at this magnificent theatre, glorious with beauties and -with riches. Here are gathered the mighty, and noble, and wealthy, -the venerable and wise, the young and beauteous of the realm. The -prime minister seeks at the opera a few hours’ relaxation from the toils -of office; the newly-married peeress there displays the dazzling diamonds -custom now, for the first time, permits her to wear; the blushing -maiden of seventeen, “just out”—that very day, perhaps, presented -at Court—smiles and simpers in a shrine of gauze and artificial flowers. -Mark yonder, that roomy box on the grand tier, which a quiet, plainly-dressed -party has just entered. There is a matronly lady in black, -with a few bugle ornaments in her <i>coiffure</i>. She ensconces herself in a -corner, her back towards the audience, screens herself with a curtain, -and then calmly proceeds to take a review of the front rows of the -stalls, and the occupants of the proscenium boxes. It is not considered -etiquette to take more than a cursory glimpse of the matronly lady in -black through <i>your</i> opera-glass. Presently there sits down by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span> -matronly lady’s side, a handsome, portly, middle-aged gentleman, in -plain sober evening dress, and with a very high forehead—so high, -indeed, that I don’t think that the assumption that the middle-aged -gentleman’s head inclined to baldness would be unreasonable. In the -opposite angle of the box sits a demure young lady—sometimes a -couple of demure ones—who doesn’t move much or speak much; and -at the back of the <i>loge</i> are two gentlemen in white waistcoats, who -never sit down, and, from the exquisitely uncomfortable expression of -their countenances, would appear to be standing on one leg. Now, -take the hat of your heart off, for your head, according to operatic -sumptuary laws, must be already uncovered, and with your spirit -salaam thrice three times, for the matronly lady is Victoria Queen of -England, and the middle-aged gentleman, inclined to corpulence and -baldness, is his Royal Highness the Prince Consort. The demure ones -are maids of honour or ladies in waiting; and as for the white-waistcoated -uncomfortables (seemingly) on one leg, one may be the tremendous -Gold Stick himself, and the other—who shall say I—the ineffable -Phipps, pride of chivalry and pearl of privy purses.</p> - -<p>On the same tier, but nearer the stage, there is a narrow box, holding -only two persons <i>de face</i>, at whose occupants you may gaze without -any glaring dereliction of the proprieties. See, a lady who screens -herself behind the amber satin drapery, even more completely than her -Majesty, and by her side an elderly gentleman, with a large mouth, a -very stiff white neckcloth, and a very severe aspect, and about whose -tendency to baldness there cannot exist any doubt, inasmuch as his -cranium is as bare and polished as a billiard-ball. It would be a -pardonable guess to presume this individual to be a member of the -College of Preceptors, or a proctor, fresh from Doctors’ Commons; but -if you eye him narrowly through the many-lensed lorgnette, you will -perceive that he wears a little badge of parti-coloured ribands at his -button-holes, and on some evenings you may even discern a brilliant -star tacked on the left breast of his coat. Who is this distinguished -bald one? I must not be personal with less distinguished people than -royalty, and so I will content myself with calling him his Excellency. -His Excellency dwells in an enormous mansion in Belgravia, where he -gives grand parties. His own little cabinet is, I am told, decorated -with charming-coloured lithographs, representing scenes Oriental and -operatic; and, indeed, his Excellency has been throughout his long -and ornamental life a consistent and liberal patron of Terpsichore.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span> -He never misses a new ballet night now. Occasionally, his Excellency -has some business to transact with the Baron Fitzharris, Earl of Malmesbury; -but the old fogies of the clubs, and the chronic alarmists of the -newspapers, are haunted by the notion that his Excellency is perpetually -weaving plots, and entangling British statesmen in the mazes -of his dark diplomacy. For my part, I think that very often, when -his Excellency is supposed to be busily occupied in concocting his -Machiavelian plots, the good man is quietly at home snipping away -the outlines of his favourite coloured lithographs, and pasting them in -albums or on screens. You know what the Chancellor Oxenstiern said -to his son anent the small amount of wisdom with which this world is -governed; and I think as much might be said concerning diplomacy. -But his Excellency has a terrible reputation for undermining, plotting, -and counter-plotting, and is supposed to be, intellectually, a compound -of the dark and crooked astuteness of Talleyrand, Metternich, ex-Inspector -Field, and the late Joseph Ady.</p> - -<p>I might tire you out, and exhaust a space already growing limited, -by drawing portraits of the denizens of opera-boxes. Our glances at -them must be, perforce, rapid, for I dare not linger. See, there (he -comes late, does not seem to enjoy the music much, and stays but for -an hour) seventy-three years worth of learning, of genius, of wit, of -eloquence, and patriotism—that glorious edifice of humanity, of which -the first stone was laid by a young north-country advocate, who was -a friend of Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, and wrote stinging articles in the -“Edinburgh Review.” No man so famous as that whilom chancellor -has her Majesty’s Theatre reckoned among its audience, since the days -when, in spotless white waistcoat, and creaseless cravat, with a silver -buckle behind, the great duke was wont to make his bow at the court -of Euterpe, not because, honest man, he cared much for operas, Italian -or English, but because he considered it to be a matter of duty towards -that aristocracy of which, though a premier duke, he was the prince, -to show himself in their places of resort. He went everywhere, the -brave old boy, to balls and concerts, to routs and banquets. In the -house of feasting, when the goblets were wreathed with flowers, and -the cymbals clashed, there was Duke Arthur, long after his gums were -toothless, his eyes dim, his joints stiffened, and the drums of his ears -muffled. And, next morning, at eight o’clock, you would still see him -on duty, at early service, in St. James’s Church, reading out the responses -to the Psalms as though they were words of command.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus33" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus33.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">EIGHT O’CLOCK P.M.: THE OPERA.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span></p> - -<p>There, in her family box, is the still beautiful marchioness, with -that crop of ringlets unequalled in luxuriance. There, in the stalls, is -Captain Fitzblazer, the Duke of Alma’s aide-de-camp, whom we met -“behind the scenes” an hour since. “Jemmy” Fitzblazer—he is -always known as “Jemmy,” though there are not half-a-dozen men of -his acquaintance who would presume thus familiarly to address him to -his face—is getting very middle-aged and gray-headed now. He is not -slim enough in the waist. Adonis is growing fat. Narcissus has the -gout. Lesbia’s sparrow is moulting. A sad reflection, but so runs the -world.</p> - -<p>I should be wilfully deceiving you, and unworthy the name I have -been always striving to gain—that of a faithful chronicler—if I were to -lead you to imagine that the brilliant theatre is full only of rank, fashion, -wealth, and happiness. Are any of the terms I have used synonymous, -I wonder. There are many aching hearts, doubtless, beneath all this -jewellery and embroidery; many titled folks who are thinking of -pawning their plate on the morrow, many dashing young scions of -aristocracy, who, between the bars of the overture, are racking their -brains as to how on earth they are to meet Mephibosheth’s bill, and -whether a passage through the Insolvent Court would not be, after -all, the best way out of their difficulties. And in the great equality -that dress-coats, bare shoulders, white neckcloths, and opera-cloaks -make among men and women, how much dross and alloy might we not -find among the gold and silver! In the very next box to the mother -of the Gracchi, resplendent among her offspring, in her severe beauty, -is poor pretty lost Mrs. Demmymond, late Miss Vanderplank, of the -Theatres Royal. The chaste Volumnia, who only comes to the opera -once in the season, and always goes away before the commencement of -the ballet, is elbowed in the crush-room by Miss Golightly, who has -one of the best boxes that Mr. Sams can let, and who comes with a head -of flaxen hair one night, and with raven black tresses the next. Captain -Spavin, of the 3rd Jibbers, shudders when he finds his next-stall -neighbour to be his long-suffering tailor; and Sir Hugh Hempenridge, -baronet, is covered with confusion when he feels the hawk-glance of -little Casay, the sheriff’s officer (and none so bravely attired as he) -darted full at him from Fops’ Alley.</p> - -<p>Fops’ Alley! The word reminds me of bygone operatic days, and -I sigh when, looking round the house, I remember how Time, the -destroyer, has left a mark, too, upon these <i>cari luoghi</i>. It is true that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span> -many of those reminiscences may not be worth sighing for; but is there -not always something melancholy in the fading away of old associations? -Where is the Omnibus Box? The longitudinal den answering -to the <i>Loge Infernale</i> at Paris, and the <i>Fosse aux Lions</i> at Madrid, yet -has its customary locality over the orchestra, on the Queen’s side of the -proscenium; but where are its brilliant, witty, worthless occupants? -But one, the gay young prince, who, if report says true, kicked, with -his own royal foot, through the panels of the door of communication -leading from the Omnibus Box to the stage, and for that night—the -night of the famous Tamburini and Coletti disturbance—locked by -special order of M. Laporte, has become a Respectable, holds high -office, does his work well, and occupies himself far more with the subjects -of soldiers’ kit and barrack accommodation, than with squabbles -between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But where are the rest? Where -the dashing spirits and impetuous madcaps of twenty years since? One -is in a lunatic asylum, and another is paralytic, and a third is prowling -about the gambling-places on the Rhine, and the last I saw of a fourth, -was once, in 1852, descending the stairs of the Hotel des Bains, at -Dieppe, when a companion, drawing me on one side as a broken, bowed, -decrepit, sunken-eyed, gray-headed, prematurely-aged man passed us -tottering on a stick, whispered to me, “See! there goes D’Orsay;” -who died a fortnight afterwards.</p> - -<p>A Liberal, I hope—a Democrat, if you will—on some not unimportant -public topics, I cannot help a species of meek wailing Conservatism -upon the decadence of some of our social institutions. This -is the age of abolition—of doing away with and putting down. They -have robbed our grenadiers of their worsted epaulettes. The beefeaters -in the Tower have been deprived of those scarlet and embroidered -tunics, that contrasted so quaintly with the pantaloons and highlows of -everyday life, and thrust into buttoned-up coats and brass buttons. -The barristers’ wigs will go next, I suppose, and the cocked-hat of the -parish beadle—his red plush shorts and buckled shoon are already departed. -I have fears for the opera; I tremble for the days when there -will be bonnets in the upper tiers and paletots in the pit. When I -mind the opera first, it was a subaltern’s, and not a sergeant’s, guard -that kept watch and ward under the portico. The officer on duty had -a right of entrance <i>ex officio</i> into the pit, and it was splendid to see -him swinging his bearskin and flashing his epaulettes in Fops’ Alley. -The very name of Fops’ Alley is becoming obsolete now. The next<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span> -generation will forget its locality. In those days, on drawing-room -nights, the men used to come in their court suits and uniforms, their -stars and badges, the ladies in their ostrich plumes and diamond necklaces, -only taking off their trains. There were opera-hats in those -days—half moon cocked-hats; now the men carry Gibuses like pancakes. -The link boys are disappearing—the leather-lunged, silver-badged -fellows, who shouted so sonorously that Lady Sardanapalias’ -carriage stopped the way. And the glories of the operatic stage; are -not those inconstant singing birds fled now? Can all the Arditis in -the world compensate for Costa, with his coat thrown back, and those -immortal, tight-fitting white kid gloves? He was the first man who -ever succeeded in parting his hair down the back; and now, he too is -growing bald, and he has cajoled Grisi the mellifluous, and Mario the -heroic, to pipe their nightingale notes among the coach-builders of -Long Acre, and the fried-fish shopmen of Drury Lane. Of the glorious -unequalled, unapproachable Four—Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and -Lablache—who once electrified the world in the “Puritani,” three -are dead: the first is in Covent Garden provoking malevolent criticism. -Where are the other Four, the Terpsichorean quartett, the immortals -who danced the <i>pas de quatre</i>! Ah! Mademoiselle Piccolomini, you -are very arch and pretty; ah! Mademoiselle Marie Taglioni, you are -a <i>spirituelle</i> and graceful dancer; but you are not the giants and -giantesses of the old Dead Days.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“You little people of the skies,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What are you when the sun shall rise!”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">But the sun is set, and there is darkness, and I am afraid that I am -prosing <i>in re</i> her Majesty’s Theatre, as old playgoers will prose about -Jack Bannister, sir, and Dowton, and Munden, and Fawcett.</p> - -<p>There is lately come to town, at least within these latter years, an -Italian gentleman by the name of Verdi, to whose brassy screeds, and -tinkling cymbalics, it is expected that all <i>habitués</i> of the opera must -listen, to the utter exclusion and oblivion of the old musical worthies -who delighted the world with their immortal works before Signor -Verdi was born. I have brought you to her Majesty’s Theatre, and -this is unfortunately a Verdi night. You may listen to him, but I -won’t. Thersites Theorbo, the editor of the “Spinet” (with which is -incorporated that famous musical journal the “Jew’s Harp”), may -accuse me of being “perfunctory,” or of being an ass—no one minds<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span> -Thersites Theorbo, knowing him to be a good fellow, much bemused in -Cavendish tobacco and counterpoint; but I will shut my eyes, and -muse upon the bygone glories of the opera. The place is a mass of -memories. Things and books, and scenes and men, and stories, come -teeming on my brain as I sit in my stall, heedless of Signor Verdi and -his musical machinations. From that shelf, well known to me, where -nestle my dog’s-eared Rabelais, my Montaigne, my annotated edition of -Captain Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, my Shakspeare, and -my beloved Jeremy Taylor, I take down garrulous old Pepys, and -read—“Jan. 12, 1667. With my Lord Brouncker to his house, there -to hear some Italian Musique, and here we met Tom Killigrew, Sir -Robert Murray, and the Italian Signor Baptista, who had prepared a -play for the Opera, which Sir T. Killigrew do intend to have up; and -here he did sing one of the acts. He is himself the poet as well as -the musician, and did sing the whole from the words without any -musique prick’d, and played all along on a harpiscon most admirably, -and the composition most excellent.” And then I mind me of an -advertisement in the “London Gazette,” in 1692, setting forth how -“the Italian lady that is lately come over, that is so famous for singing, -will sing at the concerts at York Buildings during the season.” -The season! There was a “season” in William the Deliverer’s time, -then. So I call to mind Dick Steele’s serio-comic announcement in -the fourth number of the “Tattler,” of how “Letters from the Haymarket -inform us that on Saturday night last the opera of ‘Pyrrhus -and Demetrius’ was performed with great applause.” Then from the -beginning of Italian opera in England, a grand trunk line extending to -our days, I shunt off on to innumerable little branches and loop-lines. -I see the Faustina and the Cuzzoni coming to blows—Sir Robert Walpole -backing the first, his lady the second. I am, for the nonce, an -ardent partisan of Mrs. Tofts. Then I have a vision of Mrs. Fox Lane, -in a hoop of preternatural size, bidding General Crewe get out of her -house, because he professed his ignorance as to whom Signora Mingotti -was—the Mingotti who told Dr. Burney that she had “been frequently -hissed by the English for having a toothache, a cold, or a fever, to -which the good people of England will readily allow every human -being to be liable except an actress or a singer.” And then I bow down -in awe before the radiant shadow of Farinelli, great and good, unmoved -by misfortune, unspoilt by fame—Farinelli, whose dulcet notes cured -a Spanish king of madness, who was thought worthy to receive<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span> -the decorations of the orders of St. Jago and of Calatrava—Farinelli, -of whom honest Will Hogarth could not help falling a little foul in the -“Rake’s Progress,” but who was, nevertheless, as singularly modest -and upright as he was unprecedentedly gifted in his art. Unprecedentedly! -recall the word. I bow before a greater shadow, though of -one who wrote, and sang not, save to his pretty wife.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> I see a little -boy, in a grave court suit, and his young locks curling like the tendrils -of the vine, sitting before the harpsichord in the orchestra of the great -theatre of Milan. It is the first night of a new opera, and the opera -is his—this almost suckling. Upstairs, in a box near the chandelier, -is the little man’s father, sobbing, and smiling, and vowing candles to -the Virgin, if his dear child’s opera succeeds. And it does succeed, and -all Milan is full of that small maestro’s, that maestrino’s fame, the next -day. I see him again, years afterwards, grown to be a slight, vivacious -little personage, in a scarlet pelisse and a cocked-hat. He is standing -behind the scenes at the wing of the Imperial Theatre at Vienna, and -it is again the first night of the performance of a new opera—his own. -There is a singer in a Spanish costume, and who must be, I take it, a -species of barber. When he sings a song, commencing “<i>Non più -andrai farfallone amoroso</i>,” the little man in the scarlet pelisse and -cocked-hat begins to beat his palms together in applause, and murmurs -“<i>Bravo! Bravo!</i> Benucci!” But when the singer winds up in that -magnificent exercitation to Cherubino, “<i>Alla vittoria! Alla gloria -militar!</i>” the house comes down with applause. The people shout -out; the fat-headed musicians in the orchestra beat their violin bows -violently against their desks, and (quite in defiance of operatic discipline) -cry “<i>Bravo! Bravo! Viva! viva! grande maestro!</i>” I see -the same little man lying sick and pining on his bed at Salzburg. -The intrigues of Salieri, the ingratitude of courts, the quick forgetfulness -of the public, are nothing to him now. Little does it matter if -he have been indeed poisoned with <i>aqua tofana</i>, or if he be dying of -that common, but denied disease, a broken heart. <i>He has written the -Requiem</i> (recreant Sussmayer will strive to rob him even of <i>that</i> fame -after death), and his last hour is approaching. The poor Swan dies; -and then the sluice-gates of my eyes are opened, and I remember that -this was Johann Wolfgang von Mozart.</p> - -<p>Upon my word and honour there is Van Poggi, the chorus-singer, -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span>on the stage. I am recalled at once from dreamland to actualities. -There is an old operatic saying that her Majesty’s Theatre, in the Haymarket, -could not be complete without Van Poggi, and now behold -that lyrical Widdicomb. According to the same tradition—not always -trustworthy—Van Poggi was the identical chorus-singer who assisted -Velluti to alight from his barge the night the last of those male -<i>soprani</i> made his first appearance (in the opera of the “Crociato in -Egitto”) before an audience who had almost forgotten the fame of the -Pacchierottis, the Rubinellis, and the Marchesis. Van Poggi wears -wonderfully well. Nobody knows his exact nationality: whether he -is a Dutchman, a Dane, or an Italian. His residence has never been -precisely ascertained. The management have no occasion to rout him -up, for he is always punctual at rehearsal. During the vacation he -retires to Paris, where he tells his friends that he is to be found -between ten and four every day in the Long Gallery of the Louvre. -During the London season you may contemplate Van Poggi between -the same hours in Mr. Zerubbabel’s cigar-shop in the Quadrant, at -whose door he generally stands in a Spanish cloak faced with velvet. -He never sang any better or any worse than he sings now; he was -never promoted to play the smallest separate part, such as is from time -to time assigned to the gentleman who appears in the bills as Signor -N. N., or <i>non nominato</i>. It is believed that Van Poggi would faint -if he had to deliver a line of recitative. Yet there is a very general -opinion in operatic circles that her Majesty’s Theatre would come to -hopeless grief if Van Poggi were not among the chorus. At the commencement -of the season there are always anxious inquiries at the box-office -as to whether Van Poggi is secured; and a reply being given in -the affirmative, the lovers of the lyrical drama breathe freely, and the -subscription progresses. No one knows what became of Van Poggi in -the dark and dismal interregnum during which Mr. Lumley was compelled -to close his doors. Mysterious offers of better parts, and better -salaries, had, it is reported, been made to Van Poggi, emanating from a -quarter not a hundred miles from Bow Street, Covent Garden; but the -patriotic chorister scornfully refused them. He was still seen to haunt -Mr. Zerubbabel’s cigar-shop at the commencement of the musical -season; then he suddenly disappeared; and whether he went abroad, -or wrapped himself in the Spanish cloak and so lay torpid for two -years like a dormouse, must for ever remain a matter for speculation. -But it is certain that when the Haymarket Phœnix arose from its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span> -ashes, and light once more shone on its amber satin curtains, there was -Van Poggi, at the first chorus rehearsal, as fresh as paint, and looking -better than ever. And it is moreover reported, that when his Excellency, -whom a combination of political difficulties (which began about -the time some English grenadiers were sent out to Gallipoli) had forced -to leave this country, and who did not return for upwards of three -years, when his Excellency Baron —— made his first visit to his beloved -opera-house, the piece of the evening being “Lucia di Lammermoor,” -he swept the ranks of those preposterous sham Highlanders, -who are discovered singing a sham hunting chorus, anxiously with his -lorgnette, and at last cried out with a satisfied accent: “<i>Bon, voilà</i> -Van Poggi.” He had recognised that chorus-singer in his kilt, and -was thenceforth persuaded that the opera season was safe.</p> - -<p>There is a new ballet to-night, in which the enchanting little Pocchini, -most modest and most graceful of modern <i>danseuses</i>, is to appear; -and Signor Verdi’s opera is very long, and I am aweary of his figments, -and cannot sit them out. Besides, I want your presence, trusty friend -and companion, always in the interest of “Twice Round the Clock.” -We have a little business to transact; and as it is getting towards nine -o’clock, we had better transact it at once. Leave we then the dazzling -temple, let us hie to an obscure retreat, to your servant known, where -we can leave our opera-glasses, divest ourselves of our white cravats, and -throw paletots over our evening dress. There, a few touches, and the -similitude of swells is taken away from us. Now let us plunge into a -labyrinth of narrow streets to attain our unfashionable goal, for, upon -my word, our destination is a pawnbroker’s shop.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus34" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus34.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">EIGHT O’CLOCK P.M.: INTERIOR OF A PAWNBROKER’S SHOP.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span></p> - -<p>Where the long lane from St. Giles’s to the Strand divides the many-branching -slums; where flares the gas over coarse scraps of meat in cheap -butchers’ shops; where brokers pile up motley heaps of second-hand -wares—from fishing-rods and bird-cages to flat-irons and blankets; from -cornet-à-pistons and “Family Encyclopædias” to corkscrews and fowling-pieces; -where linen-drapers are invaded by poorly-clad women and -girls, demanding penn’orths of needles, ha’porths of buttons, and farthingworths -of thread; where jean stays flap against the door jambs, -and “men’s stout hose” gleam gaunt in the shop-windows; where -grimy dames sit in coal and potato-sheds, and Jew clothesmen wrestle -for the custom of passengers who don’t want to buy anything; where -little dens, reeking with the odours of fried fish, sausages, and baked -potatoes, or steaming with reminders of à-la-mode beef and hot eel soup, -offer suppers, cheap and nasty, to the poor in pocket; where, in low -coffee-shops, newspapers a fortnight old, with coffee-cup rings on them, -suggest an intellectual pabulum, combined with bodily refreshment; -where gaping public-houses receive or disgorge their crowds of tattered -topers; where “general shops” are packed to overflowing with heterogeneous -odds and ends—soap, candles, Bath brick, tobacco, Dutch -cheese, red herrings, firewood, black lead, streaky bacon, brown sugar, -birch brooms, lucifer matches, tops, marbles, hoops, brandy balls, packets -of cocoa, steel pens, cheap periodicals, Everton toffy, and penny canes; -where on each side, peeping down each narrow thoroughfare, you see a -repetition only of these scenes of poverty and misery; where you have -to elbow and jostle your way through a teeming, ragged, ill-favoured, -shrieking, fighting population—by oyster-stalls and costermongers’ barrows—by -orange-women and organ-grinders—by flower-girls and match-sellers—by -hulking labourers and brandy-faced viragos, squabbling at -tavern doors—by innumerable children in every phase of weazened, -hungry, semi-nakedness, who pullulate at every corner, and seem cast up -on the pavement like pebbles on the sea-shore. Here, at last, we find -the hostelry of the three golden balls, where the capitalist, whom men -familiarly term “my uncle,” lends money on the security of plate, -jewellery, linen, wearing apparel, furniture, bedding, books—upon everything, -in fact, that is not in itself of so perishable a nature as to warrant -the probability of its rotting upon my uncle’s shelves.</p> - -<p>The pawnbroker’s shop window—the <i>étalage</i>, as our Parisian neighbours -would term it—presents a medley of merchandise for sale; for I -suppose the host of the three balls buys-in sundry articles at the quarterly -sales of unredeemed pledges, of whose aspect you have already had -an inkling in these pages, which he thinks are likely to sell in his particular -neighbourhood. Of course, the nature and quality of the articles -exhibited vary according to the locality. In fashionable districts (for -even Fashion cannot dispense with its pawnbrokers) you may see -enamels and miniatures, copies of the Italian masters, porcelain vases, -bronze statuettes, buhl clocks, diamond rings, bracelets, watches, cashmere -shawls, elegantly-bound books, and cases of mathematical instruments; -but we are now in an emphatically low neighbourhood, and such -articles as I have alluded to are likely to attract but few purchasers. -Rather would there seem a chance of a ready sale for the bundles of -shirts, and women’s gear, and cheap printed shawls; for the saws, and -planes, adzes, gimlets, and chisels; for the cotton umbrellas; for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span> -heavy silver watches that working men wear (though they, even, are not -plentiful); for the infinity of small cheap wares, for sale at an alarming -reduction of prices.</p> - -<p>Let us enter. Behold the Bezesteen of borrowed money. This, too, -might be compared, with a grim mockery, to the theatre; for hath it -not private boxes and a capacious stage, on which is continually being -performed the drama of the “Rent Day,” and the tragi-comedy of -“Lend me Five Shillings?”</p> - -<p>See the pawners, so numerous that the boxes can no longer remain -private, and two or three parties, total strangers to one another, are all -crowded into the same aperture. It is Saturday night, and they are -deliriously anxious to redeem their poor little remnants of wearing -apparel for that blessed Sunday that comes to-morrow, to be followed, -however, by a Black Monday, when father’s coat, and Polly’s merino -frock, nay the extra petticoat, nay the Lilliputian boots of the toddling -child, will have to be pawned again. Certain wise men, political economists -and pseudo-philanthropists, point at the plethora of pawnbrokers’ -shops as melancholy proofs of the poor’s improvidence. But -the poor are <i>so</i> poor, they have at the best of times so very little money, -that pawning with them is an absolute necessity; and the pawnbroker’s -shop, that equitable mortgage on a small scale, is to them rather a -blessing than a curse. Without that fourpence on the flat-iron, there -would be very frequently no bread in the cupboard.</p> - -<p>It is Saturday night, and my uncle, who on other days of the week -shuts at six o’clock in winter and eight in summer time, does not close -his doors, and drives a roaring trade till midnight. The half-pence -rattle, shillings are tested, huge bundles rumble down the spout, and -the little black calico bags, containing the tickets having reference to -the goods desired to be redeemed, and which the assistant will look out -in the warehouse, fly rapidly upwards. It is time now for us to redeem -that trifling little matter which we pawned last Tuesday, on purpose to -have an excuse for visiting the pawnbroker’s shop to-night; and, casting -glances in which curiosity is not unmixed with compassion, go back to -Signor Verdi and her Majesty’s Theatre. Thou, at least, my friend, may -do this—I will leave thee in the vestibule for awhile; for, between the -hours of nine and ten, I have other clock matters to which I must -attend.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="NINE_PM">NINE O’CLOCK P.M.—HALF-PRICE IN THE NEW CUT, AND A DANCING ACADEMY.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>An inedited anecdote of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,—an anecdote passed -over or ignored by Boswell, Croker, Piozzi, and Hawkins,—an anecdote -to allude to which, perhaps, Lord Macaulay might disdain, while Mr. -Carlyle might stigmatise it as an “unutterable sham of mud-volcano -gigability,” but in which I have, nevertheless, under correction, the -most implicit faith, relates that the Sage’s opinion was once asked by -Oliver Goldsmith (Mr. Boswell of Auchinlech being present, of course) -as to whether he approved, or did not approve, of the theatrical institution -known as “half-price?” The Doctor was against it. “Sir,” he -reasoned, or rather decided, “a man has no right to see half an entertainment. -He should either enjoy all or none.” “But, sir,” objected -Goldsmith deferentially, “supposing the entertainment to be divided -into equal halves, both complete in themselves, has not a man a right -to suit his pocket and his convenience, and see only one half?” “Sir, -you are frivolous,” thundered the Doctor; “the man has but Hobson’s -choice: the second moiety of the entertainment. If he go at first -price, he must pay whole price.” “But, sir,” suggested Bozzy with a -simper, “how would it stand, if the man coming at half-price promised -the doorkeeper to go away punctually at nine o’clock, when the second -price commenced?” “Hold <i>your</i> tongue, sir,” said Doctor Johnson, -whereat Mr. Boswell of Auchinlech was abashed, and spake no more -till the kindly old Doctor invited him to tea, with blind Miss Williams -and Mr. Levett the apothecary.</p> - -<p>I am sure that it must be a matter of lamentation for any man with -a well-regulated mind to be under the necessity of disagreeing with so -eminent an authority as Doctor Johnson—with the rough, genial, old -bear, who had had so many sorrows of his own when young; had danced -upon so many hot plates, and to the very ungenteelest of tunes; had -been so pitilessly muzzled and baited by mangy curs, that he yet made -it his delight in age and comparative affluence to take the young bears -under his protection, to assuage their ursine sorrows, and lick them -with a lumbering pity into shape. I am equally certain that few would -even <i>dare</i> to differ from the scholar, critic, poet, dramatist, essayist,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span> -moralist, philosopher, and Christian gentleman, whose pure life and -death in an unbelieving age are an answer for all time to the ephemeral -brilliance of the fribble Chesterfield, the icicle Hume, the stalactite -Gibbon, and the flashy Bristol-diamond Voltaire. Still, in the interests -of the British drama (and assuming my anecdote to be otherwise than -apocryphal), I must, perforce, dissent from the Doctor, and pin my -faith to half-price. The absence of a second price is suitable enough -for such exotic exhibitions as the Italian operas and the French plays; -but I deplored the suspension of that dramatic <i>habeas corpus</i> in the -palmy Lyceum days of Madame Vestris’s management. There is something -supercilious, pragmatical, maccaronyish, un-English, in the announcement, -“No half-price.” How immeasurably superior is the fine -old British placard, now, alas! so seldom seen, “Pit full: standing-room -only in the upper boxes!”</p> - -<p>There is a transpontine theatre, situated laterally towards the -Waterloo Road, and having a northern front towards an anomalous -thoroughfare that runs from Lambeth to Blackfriars, for which I have -had, during a long period of years, a great esteem and admiration. -This is the Royal Victoria Theatre. To the neophyte in London I -frequently point out a brick erection, above the cornice of the pediment, -and say, “My friend, in the days when the ‘Vic.’ (it is popularly -termed the ‘Vic.’) was known as the ‘Coburg,’ that brick slip was -built to contain at its rise—for it could not be rolled up—the famous -‘Crystal curtain,’ which ruined one management to construct, and half -ruined another to demolish. The grand melodramas the Coburg used -to give us—real horses, real armour, real blood, almost real water!” -Those were the days of “Ginevra the Impaled One” and “Manfroni -the One-handed Monk.” There are famous dramatists, actors, scene-painters, -who would look rather shame-faced (though I cannot see why -they should be ashamed) were they reminded, now, of their achievements -in the service of transpontine melodrama at the Coburg. How -stupidly absurd people are in repudiating their beginnings! Buffel, -the millionaire contractor, denies stoutly that he ever carried a hod, -although hundreds of us remember him on the ladder. Linning, the -fashionable tailor, would poison any one who told him he once kept a -beer-shop in Lambeth Walk, and afterwards failed as a tea-dealer in -Shoreditch. One of the most accomplished comedians of the day makes -a point of cutting me dead, because I can recollect the time, and knew -him, when he used to colour prints for a livelihood; and I daresay that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span> -Baron Rothschild—with all the philosophy his unbounded wealth -should properly give him—would not ask me to dinner, if I reminded -him that his grandfather was a pedlar in the Juden-Grasse, at Frankfort. -The next Tamworth baronet, I suppose, will strike the beehive -and “<i>Industriâ</i>” out of the family escutcheon, and assume the three -leeches sable on a field gules <i>semée</i> or, of his ancestors the De la Pills, -who came over with the Conqueror as barber-chirurgeons to the ducal -body. And yet a certain Emperor and King was not ashamed to talk -of the period when he was a “lieutenant in the Regiment of Lafère;” -and the present writer, who is, on one side (the wrong), of the <i>sangre -azul</i> of Spain, is not above confessing the existence of a tradition in -his family, hinting that his maternal grandmother danced on the tight -rope.</p> - -<p>Although I am a devotee of the opera, and am always glad when -Drury Lane doors are open, and mourn over the decadence of the -Lyceum, and wish that the Strand would succeed,<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> and longed for the -day when the resuscitated Adelphi should open its doors, and rejoice at -the prosperity of the Olympic, and think that one of the most rational -and delightful night’s amusements in Europe, may be attained by the -sight of the “Merchant of Venice” at the now closed (so far as Charles -Kean is concerned) Princess’s, I have yet a tenderness, a predilection, -an almost preference, for the Vic. There is a sturdy honesty of purpose, -unity of action, sledge-hammer morality about the rubbishing -melodramas, which are nightly yelled and ranted through on the Victoria -stage, that are productive, I believe, of an intellectual tone, -highly healthful and beneficial. Burkins, the garotter, who is now -in hold in Pentonville for his sins, and is so promising a pupil of the -chaplain, (having nearly learnt the Gunpowder Plot service and the -prohibitions of consanguinity by heart,) has confidentially informed his -reverend instructor that to the melodramas at the Victoria must be -ascribed his ruin. It was the “Lonely Man of the Ocean” that led -him to fall on Mr. Jabez Cheddar, cheesemonger, in Westminster -Broadway, at two o’clock in the morning, split his skull open with -a life-preserver, jump upon him, and rob him of eight pounds twelve, a -silver hunting-watch, and a brass tobacco-box; at which confession the -chaplain orders him more beef and books, and puts him down in the -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span>front rank for his next recommendatory report to the visiting magistrates. -Partaking, in company with some other persons, of the opinion -that Burkins adds to the characteristics of a ruffian and a blockhead, -those of a hypocrite and a Liar, I do not necessarily set much store by -the expression of <i>his</i> opinions on the British drama. But when I find -shrewd police-inspectors and astute stipendiary magistrates moralising -over the dreadful effects of cheap theatres, attended as they are by the -“youth of both sexes,” I deem them foemen worthy of my steel. Good -Mr. Inspector, worthy Master Justice, where are the youth and the -adults of both sexes to go in quest of that amusement, which I suppose -you will concede to them, of some nature, the necessity? Are the -churches open on week nights, and to such as they? and would you -yourselves like to sit under Doctor Cumming, or even Mr. Spurgeon, -from Saturday to Saturday? Are they to go to the Opera, to Almack’s, -to the Carlton Club, or to the conversaziones of the Geological Society? -You object, you say, to the nature of the entertainments provided for -them. Come with me, and sit on the coarse deal benches in the -coarsely and tawdrily-decorated cheap theatre, and listen to the sorrily-dressed -actors and actresses—periwigged-pated fellows and slatternly -wenches, if you like—tearing their passion to tatters, mouthing and -ranting, and splitting the ears of the groundlings. But in what description -of pieces? In dramas, I declare and maintain, in which, for -all the jargon, silliness, and buffoonery, the immutable principles of -right and justice are asserted; in which virtue, in the end, is always -triumphant, and vice is punished; in which cowardice and falsehood -are hissed, and bravery and integrity vehemently applauded; in which, -were we to sift away the bad grammar, and the extravagant action, we -should find the dictates of the purest and highest morality. These poor -people can’t help misplacing their h’s, and fighting combats of six with -tin broadswords. They haven’t been to the university of Cambridge; -they can’t compete for the middle-class examinations; they don’t subscribe -to the “Saturday Review;” they have never taken dancing -lessons from Madame Michau; they have never read Lord Chesterfield’s -Letters; they can’t even afford to purchase a “Shilling Handbook -of Etiquette.” Which is best? That they should gamble in low -coffee-shops, break each other’s heads with pewter pots in public-houses, -fight and wrangle at street corners, or lie in wait in doorways -and blind alleys to rob and murder, or that they should pay their -threepence for admission into the gallery of the “Vic.”—witness the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span> -triumph of a single British sailor over twelve armed ruffians, who are -about to carry off the Lady Maud to outrage worse than death; see the -discomfiture of the dissolute young nobleman, and the restitution of the -family estates (through the timely intervention of a ghost in a table-cloth) -to the oppressed orphan? And of this nature are the vast mass -of transpontine melodramas. The very “blood-and-murder” pieces, as -they are termed, always end with the detection of the assassin and his -condign punishment. George Cruikshank’s admirable moral story of -“The Bottle” was dramatised at the “Vic.,” and had an immense run. -They are performing “Never Too Late to Mend,” now, over the water, -to crowded houses. If we want genteel improprieties, sparkling immoral -repartees, decorously scandalous intrigues, and artful cobwebs of -<i>double entendre</i>, touching on the seventh commandment, we must cross -the bridges and visit the high-priced, fashionably-attended theatres of -the West-end. At a West-end theatre, was produced the only immoral -version of an immoral (and imbecile) “Jack Sheppard,” which -is, even now, vauntingly announced as being the “authorised version”—the -only one licensed by the Lord Chamberlain; and in that “authorised -version” occurs the line, “Jack Sheppard is a thief, but he -never told a lie,” a declaration than which the worst dictum of howling -Tom Paine or rabid Mary Wolstoncraft was not more subversive -of the balance of moral ethics. And, at a West-end theatre, -likewise, his Lordship the Chamberlain authorised the production -of a play, whose story, regarded either as a melodrama or as the -libretto of a trashy Italian opera, has not been equalled for systematic -immorality: no, not by Wilkes; no, not by Aphra Behn: no, -not by Crebillon the younger: no, not by Voltaire in the scandalous -“Pucelle.”</p> - -<p>And have I brought you all the way over Waterloo Bridge in the -evening only to sermonise you! I deserve to be mulcted in three times -the halfpenny toll; and I must make amends by saying nothing whatsoever -about the shot towers, or the Lion Brewery, the London and -South-Western Terminus, and Hawkstone Hall. Here we are, at the -corner of the New Cut. It is Nine o’Clock precisely (I must have flown -rather than walked from the pawnbroker’s in that lane on the Middlesex -side), and while the half-price is pouring into the Victoria Theatre, -the whole-price (there is no half-price to the gallery, mind, the charge -for the evening’s entertainment being only threepence) is pouring out -with equal and continuous persistence, and are deluging the New Cut.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span> -Whither, you may ask, are they bound? They are in quest of their -Beer.</p> - -<p>The English have been a beer-loving people for very many ages. It -gives them their masculine, sturdy, truculent character. Beer and beef, -it has been before remarked, make boys. Beer and beef won the battle -of Waterloo. Beer and beef have built railways all over the world. -Our troops in the Crimea languished, even on beef (it was but hard -corned junk, to be sure) till the authorities sent them beer. There is -a <i>lex non scripta</i> among the labouring English, much more potent than -many Acts of Parliament, and called the “Strong Beer Act.” They -have songs about beer with lusty “nipperkin, pipperkin, and the brown -beer” choruses; and in village parlours you may hear stentorian baritones, -of agricultural extraction, shouting out that “Feayther likes -his beer, he does;” that “Sarah’s passionately fond of her beer, she is;” -and denouncing awful vengeance upon those enemies of the people who -would “rob a poor man of his beer.” Our fingers were brought to the -very hair-trigger of a revolution by the attempted interference of an -otherwise well-meaning nobleman, with the people’s beer; and did not -William Hogarth strike the right nail on the head when he drew those -two terrible pictures of Beer Street and Gin Lane? The authorities of -the Victoria Theatre have preserved, I am glad to say, a wholesome -reverence for the provisions of the Strong Beer Act, and it is, I believe, -a clause in the Magna Charta of the management, that the performances -on Saturday evenings shall invariably terminate within a few minutes -of midnight, in order to afford the audience due and sufficient time to -pour out their final libations at the shrine of Beer, before the law compels -the licensed victuallers to close.</p> - -<p>There are not many gradations of rank among the frequenters of the -Victoria Theatre. Many of the occupants of the boxes sat last night in -the pit, and will sit to-morrow in the gallery, according to the fluctuation -of their finances; nay, spirited denizens of the New Cut will not -unfrequently, say on a Monday evening, when the week’s wages have -not been irremediably dipped into, pay their half-crown like men, and -occupy seats in the private box next the stage. And the same equality -and fraternity are manifest when the audience pour forth at half-price -to take their beer. There may be a few cheap dandies, indeed—Cornwall -Road exquisites and Elephant-and-Castle bucks—who prefer to do the -“grand” in the saloon attached to the theatre; there may be some -dozens of couples sweethearting, who are content to consume oranges,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[274]</span> -ginger beer, and Abernethy biscuits within the walls of the house; but -the great pressure is outwards, and the great gulf stream of this human -ocean flows towards a gigantic “public” opposite the Victoria, and -which continually drives a roaring trade.</p> - -<p>I wish that I had a more savoury locality to take you to than the -New Cut. I acknowledge frankly that I don’t like it. We have visited -many queer places in London together, of which, it may be, the fashionables -of the West-end have never heard; but they all had some out-of-the-way -scraps of Bohemianism to recommend them. I can’t say the same -for the New Cut. It isn’t picturesque, it isn’t quaint, it isn’t curious. -It has not even the questionable merit of being old. It is simply Low. -It is sordid, squalid, and, the truth must out, disreputable. The broad -thoroughfare, which, bordered with fitting houses, would make one of -the handsomest streets in London, is gorged with vile, rotten tenements, -occupied by merchants who oft-times pursue the very contrary to innocent -callings. Everything is second-hand, except the leviathan gin-shops, -which are ghastly in their newness and richness of decoration. -The broad pavement presents a mixture of Vanity Fair and Rag Fair. -It is the paradise of the lowest of costermongers, and often the saturnalia -of the most emerited thieves. Women appear there in their most -unlovely aspect: brazen, slovenly, dishevelled, brawling, muddled with -beer or fractious with gin. The howling of beaten children and kicked -dogs, the yells of ballad-singers, “death and fire-hunters,” and reciters -of sham murders and elopements; the bawling recitations of professional -denunciators of the Queen, the Royal family, and the ministry; the -monotonous <i>jödels</i> of the itinerant hucksters; the fumes of the vilest -tobacco, of stale corduroy suits, of oilskin caps, of mildewed umbrellas, -of decaying vegetables, of escaping (and frequently surreptitiously -tapped) gas, of deceased cats, of ancient fish, of cagmag meat, of dubious -mutton pies, and of unwashed, soddened, unkempt, reckless humanity: -all these make the night hideous and the heart sick. The New Cut is -one of the most unpleasant samples of London that you could offer to a -foreigner. Bethnal Green is ragged, squalid, woe-begone, but it is -quiet and industrious. Here, there is mingled with the poverty a -flaunting, idle, vagabond, beggarly-fine don’t-care-a-centishness. Burkins -in hold in Pentonville for his sins assures the chaplain that the -wickedness of the New Cut is due solely to the proximity of the “Wictoriar -Theayter, that ‘aunt of disypashion and the wust of karackters.” -For my part, I think that if there were no such safety-valve as a theatre<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span> -for the inhabitants of the “Cut,” it would become a mere Devil’s Acre, a -Cour des Miracles, a modern edition of the Whitefriars Alsatia; and that -the Cutites would fall to plundering, quarrelling, and fighting, through -sheer <i>ennui</i>. It is horrible, dreadful, we know, to have such a place; -but then, consider—the population of London is fast advancing towards -three millions, and the wicked people must live somewhere—under a -strictly constitutional government. There is a despot, now, over the -water, who would make very short work of the New Cut. He would -see, at a glance, the capacities of the place; in the twinkling of a -decree the rotten tenements would be doomed to destruction; houses -and shops like palaces would line the thoroughfare; trees would be -planted along the pavement; and the Boulevard de Lambeth would be -one of the stateliest avenues in the metropolis. But Britons never -will be slaves, and we must submit to thorns (known as “vested interests”) -in the constitutional rose, and pay somewhat dear for our -liberty as well as for our whistle.</p> - -<p>In the cartoon accompanying this essay, you will find a delineation -of the hostelry—the tavern—bah! it isn’t a hostelry—it isn’t a tavern; it -is an unadulterated gin and beer palace—whither takes place the rush at -half-price for malt refreshment. I have kept you lingering at the door -a long time; I have digressed, parried, evaded the question; discoursed -upon the transpontine drama, and the moot question of its morality; I -have wandered about the New Cut, and have even gone back to the last -century, and evoked the ghost of Doctor Johnson; I have been discursive, -evasive, tedious very probably, but purposely so. I was bound to -show you the place, but it is better that the pen should leave the fulness -of representation to the pencil in this instance. It is humorous enough, -brilliant enough, full of varied life and bustle enough. I could make -you very merry with accounts of the mock Ethiopian serenaders at the -door, with facetious remarks on the gentleman in the sou’-wester, knee-shorts, -anklejacks, and gaiters, who is instructing the lady in the mob-cap -in the mysteries of the celebrated dance known as the “Roberto -Polveroso,” or “Dusty Bob and Black Sal.” I might be eloquent upon -the subject of the sturdy sailor who is hobnobbing with the negro, the -Life Guardsman treating the ladies, like a gallant fellow as he is, and -the stream of honest, hardworking mechanics, their wives, and families, -who have surged in from the “Vic.” to have their “drop of beer.” But -the picture would still be incomplete. In graver pages—in tedious, -solemn journals only—could be told (and I have told, in my time) the -truth about a gin-shop in the New Cut. I will not descant upon -the crime and shame, the age made hardened, the very babies weaned -on gin. Let us take the better part, and throw a veil over this ugly -position of the night side of London.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[276]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus35" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus35.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">NINE O’CLOCK P.M.: HOUSE OF CALL FOR THE VICTORIA AUDIENCE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span></p> - -<p class="tb">Do you ever read the supplement of the “Times” newspaper? Of -course you do; at least, you must diurnally peruse one column at least -of that succursal to the monster journal, specially interesting to yourself. -Almost every one who can read is anxious to consult the “Times” -every morning for one purpose or other. Either he requires information -about a ship that is going out, or a ship that should be come home; -about a purse he has lost, or a bank-note he has found; about a situation -he wants, or a clerkship he has advertised for competition; about -the wife he has run away from, or the son who has run away from him; -about the horse he wishes to sell, or about the Newfoundland pup he -wants to buy; about his debtor’s bankruptcy, or his own insolvency; -about the infallible remedy for all diseases, for which he has promised -to send a recipe on the receipt of twelve postage-stamps; or the best -curative pills advertised for hypochondriasis and dyspepsia; about the -cheapest sherries, and the best second-hand broughams; about pianofortes -for the million, sales by auction, money to be lent, or money -wanted to borrow; and, chiefest of all, about the “births, deaths, and -marriages,” which announcements are the prime and favourite reading -of the female sex. Indeed, I know one lady—young, comely, accomplished, -good-natured, and married—who never even condescends to -glance at a line of the colossal “Times” newspaper, beyond the “Births, -Marriages, and Deaths;” and very good reading she declares them to be.</p> - -<p>There is a portentous column to which my attention is attracted (I -know not why, for it has never concerned me in the slightest degree), -having reference to dancing. I don’t allude to the casinos, or masquerades, -or public full-dress balls, to which a man may go, lounge -about, stare at the votaries of Terpsichore, and go away again without -ever shaking a leg; but to the advertisements of the professors of -dancing and “drawing-room deportment,” who really mean business, -and give instruction in those elegant and graceful arts, and hold their -academies daily and nightly all over London, from the farthest East to -the extremest West. Now I am myself no dancer. I remember as a -boy, in the grim Parisian <i>pension</i>, or school boarding-house attached to -the College where I had my scant Humanities hammered into me, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span> -certain obese professor, to whom my parents and guardians paid a -certain quarterly sum for my instruction in the poetry of motion. I -remember him well, for whenever we took our walks abroad in Paris, -we could scarcely pass a dead wall without seeing it placarded, or a -<i>porte cochère</i> without seeing it hung, with a little yellow black framed -bill, screened with a wire trellis-work, proclaiming “Boizot” and his -“<i>cours de danse</i>.” This was in ’39; yet last winter in Paris the same -walls and <i>portes cochères</i> still sounded the praises of Boizot. He -appears to be immortal, like Cockle of the pills, Grimstone of the eye-snuff, -and Elizabeth Lazenby of the sauce. The square <i>toqued</i> and -black-gowned professors of the College Bourbon—now Lycée Bonaparte—could -by dint of locking me up in cellars, making me kneel across -sharp rulers and rapping my knuckles with ferulas (for corporal -punishment never—oh! never—enters into the scheme of French -education), impel me to construe Cæsar indifferently well; but Boizot, -in all his <i>cours de danse</i>, failed in teaching me the difference between -<i>cavalier seul</i> and <i>en avant deux</i>—between the <i>pastorale</i> and the <i>chaine -des dames</i>. A more incorrigible dunce at dancing than your humble -servant, never, I believe, existed. In the attempt to instruct me in -the enchanting and vertigo-giving waltz, Boizot made a most lamentable -<i>fiasco</i>, although he resorted to his famous specific of stamping on the -pupil’s toes with heavy-heeled shoes till he made the right steps to the -right time. But our gyrations always ended in my doing all my -waltzing on <i>his</i> toes; and he flung me away from him at last, denouncing -me as a hopeless <i>butor</i>, <i>ganache</i>, <i>cretin</i>, and <i>cancre</i>—a Vandal, -a Goth, an Ostrogoth, and a Visigoth—the three first being terms perfectly -comprehensible to the French schoolboy, but for which it is -difficult to find equivalents in this language. I am sure that Boizot -left me with the utmost dislike and contempt, and with the most -sinister forebodings for my future career. Thenceforth I was released -from the dancing-lessons. In after years, I have heard it reported on -good authority that I once danced a hornpipe at the wedding-breakfast -of a maritime relation of mine; but the exploit, if ever accomplished, -was due more, I opine, to the salmon and cucumber of the nuptial -feast than to the <i>certaminis gaudia</i> of dancing. I essayed seriously -once more to waltz at a Kursaal ball at a German watering-place. -How I tore a lady’s dress, how I tripped myself up, how I was covered -with shame, and had the finger of scorn pointed at me, are yet matters -of history at Bubbelbingen Schlaggasenberg. Thither I will return no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span> -more. Again, when I visited Russia, the first letter of introduction I -presented on my arrival at St. Petersburg brought me an invitation to -a grand ball. It was—Oh, horror! a diplomatic ball; there were not -half a dozen persons in plain clothes in the ball-room; and I stood -lonely and forlorn among a crowd of brilliant guardsmen, be-starred -and be-ribboned ministers, plenipotentiaries, and embroidered <i>attachés</i>, -who are proverbially the best dancers in Europe. I had not even the -miserable safety-valve of crossing over and talking to the non-dancing -dowagers, for, according to Russian custom—one which would delight -the irreverent Mr. Spurgeon—the ladies remain at one end of the <i>salon</i>, -and the gentlemen at the other—a relic of Orientalism—and in strict -isolation, during the intervals between the dances. I was in despair, -and about either to rush out or to recite “My name is Norval,” with a -view towards exciting curiosity and inspiring terror, when the gracious -lady who did the honours for the ball-giving minister, who was a -bachelor, asked me if I didn’t dance? I didn’t say that I had a -sprained ankle, that I was hot, or tired, but I told the truth for once, -and said honestly that I couldn’t. “Don’t you smoke, then?” she continued, -glancing at me with a sort of pitying expression, as though she -were thinking, “I wonder what this gawky Englishman <i>can</i> do?” I -replied that I could smoke a little; whereupon, with her own fair -hands, she opened a door and inducted me to an apartment, where a -score of Boyards and secretaries of legation were smoking Havannahs, -playing <i>préférence</i>, and sipping whisky-punch, and where I stopped -till two o’clock in the morning, became very popular, and positively -sang a comic song. At evening parties in England, alas! they -seldom have a smoking-room, and so I don’t go to them. A non-dancing -man becomes speedily known in society, and the women shun -him.</p> - -<p>I can’t help thinking (of course, on the fox and sour grapes -principle), whenever I see a very accomplished male dancer, as when I -look upon a first-rate amateur billiard-player, on the immense amount -of time the man must have wasted to acquire a useless and frivolous -art. Yet I remember the fox and the grapes, and suppress my rising -sneer. Dancing to those who like it, and can dance gracefully, is an -innocent and cheerful recreation. It does my heart good sometimes to -see the little tiny children in our crowded London courts and alleys -waltzing and polkaing to the Italian organ-grinder’s music; and I -shall be sorry for the day when some new Oliver Cromwell or Puritan<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span> -government—we may have another in time—may denounce and put -down “public dancing and dancing academies.”</p> - -<p>But why should the dancing academy column in the “Times” -advertisements possess more than general attractions for me? Is it -that I have a sneaking inclination to visit one of these establishments -as a pupil; take six private lessons from Miss Leonora Geary, or Mrs. -Nicholas Henderson—I could never dare to face Madame Mélanie -Duval, or the Semiramis of dancing mistresses, Madame Michau Adelaïde—study -the fashionable steps in secret, and then burst upon the -world as an adept in the <i>Schottische</i>, the <i>Cellarius</i>, and the <i>Deux -Temps</i>? Alas! I do not even know the names of the fashionable dances -of the day, and very probably those to which I have alluded are by -this time old fashioned, out of date, rococo, and pigtaily. But I have -a theory that every man must dance before he dies, and that of the -choreographic art we may say as of love—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Whoe’er thou art, thy master see,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who is, or was, or is to be.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And I shall dance, I suppose, some of these days, although my nerves -be shrunk, my blood be cold, and hair white, and Death scrape away -on the fiddle, as in Hans Holbein’s shudder-giving panorama.</p> - -<p>Mr. William M’Connell, however, the young gentleman who is my -artistic <i>fides achates</i> in this horological undertaking, is, I am given to -understand, a complete master of this desirable accomplishment, and -a finished adept in its various mysteries. In this case, therefore, the -leader has become the led, and I am grateful to him for his service as -cicerone in introducing me to the domains of Terpsichore.</p> - -<p>Assume, O reader and spectator—to violate no academical privacy—that -we are in the <i>salle de danse</i> conducted for so many years, and with -so much success, by Mrs. Hercules Fanteague, late of the Royal Operas. -Throughout each day, from morn till dewy eve, does Mrs. Fanteague—a -little woman, who, at no remote period of time, has been pretty—assisted -by her husband, Mr. Hercules Fanteague, a diminutive gentleman, -with tight pantaloons and a “kit,” and a numerous family of sons -and daughters, who all appear to have been born dancing-masters and -mistresses, give private instruction to ladies and gentlemen, who are as -yet novices in the art, or who are too shame-faced to venture upon the -ordeal of public instruction. But, at nine o’clock in the evening, commences -the public academy—the “hop,” as some persons, innocent of -the bump of veneration, call it. There, in the tastefully yet cheaply -decorated saloon, with its boarded floor and flying cupids and sylphides -on the panels—there, where the gas shines, and the enlivening strains of -a band, composed of a harp, piano, and violin, are heard—there, in a -remote section of the apartment—the <i>pons asinorum</i> of the dancing-school—the -adult gentlemen, who are as yet in the accidence or rudiments -of dancing, are instructed in the mysteries of the “positions” -and preliminary steps by Mrs. Hercules Fanteague. The dancing-mistress -is obliged to be very firm and decided, not to say severe, with -her awkward pupils; for some are inclined to blush, and some to laugh -and whisper disparaging jokes to one another, and some to tie their legs -into knots and imitate the action of the old shutter telegraphs with -their arms, and some to sink into a state of stony immobility and semi-unconsciousness, -from which they can only be rescued by sharp words -and pushes. When these hopeful ones are sufficiently advanced in the -elements, they are handed over to lady partners, who, to the sound of -the aforesaid harp, piano, and violin, twirl them about the room till -they are pronounced fit to figure in the <i>soirées</i> of society, and in the -Arabian Night-like scenes of Cremorne and Highbury Barn.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus36" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus36.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">NINE O’CLOCK P.M.: A DANCING ACADEMY.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span></p> - -<p>I once heard a man of the world tell a lady, in gay reproach, that -there were three things impossible of accomplishment to her sex. -“Women can’t throw,” he said, “they can’t jump, and they can’t -slide.” The lady stoutly denied the third postulate, and adduced in -proof her own sliding performances in winter time in the day-room at -boarding school. The first assertion she settled by throwing the peeling -of an apple at him, which fell deftly over his left shoulder, and -formed on the carpet, I am told, the initials of her Christian name. -However this may be with other ladies—for she was fair, and good, and -wise, as “Sydney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother,” though Time has not -thrown a dart at her yet, I know there is one thing a man cannot do. -He cannot dance. He may take lessons of Mrs. Hercules Fanteague -till his hair grows out of his hat, and his nails grow out of his pumps; -he may dance the Crystal Platform at Cremorne to sawdust, but he will -never succeed in making himself more than a capering elephant, or an -ambling hippopotamus, with the facial expression of an undertaker’s -man on duty for the funeral of a very rich “party,” where extra woe is -laid on by Mr. Tressels, regardless of expense.</p> - -<p>Of course I except professional dancers, and I bow reverentially -before the bust of Vestris, “<i>Diou de la Danse</i>” and of the late Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span> -Baron Nathan. I do not remember the first. He died years before I -was born, yet I see him in my mind’s eye on the stage of the Grand -Opera in Paris, swelling with peacock-pride and conscious merit—in -dancing—in full court-dress, his sword by his side, his laced and -plumed <i>chapeau bras</i> beneath his arm, his diamond <i>solitaire</i> in his -laced shirt-frill, leading his son to the footlights, on the night of the -first appearance of the youth, and saying, “<i>Allez</i>, my son, the Muses -will protect you, and your father beholds you.” Was it this son, or a -grandson I—tell me “Notes and Queries”—that was the Armand -Vestris, whom our Eliza Bartolozzi (the famous Madame Vestris) married, -and who was hurried at that dreadful hole at Naples? I see the -<i>Diou de la Danse</i> on a subsequent occasion at rehearsal, when the same -son, being committed to the prison as Fort l’Evêque by the lieutenant -of police (the whole operatic <i>troupe</i>, led by Mademoiselle Guimard, -were in a state of chronic revolt) dismissed him with these magnanimous -words: “<i>Allez</i>, my beloved one. This is the proudest day of your -life. Demand the apartments of my friend the King of Poland. Take -my carriage. Your father pays for all!” But the poor baron, with -his corkscrew ringlets, turn-down collar, and limber legs, I can and do -remember. I have seen him dance that undying <i>pas</i>, blindfold, among -the eggs and tea-things, in the Gothic Hall at Rosherville. But five -Sundays since I was at Gravesend, and over my shilling tea in the -Gothic Hall, I sighed when I thought of Baron Nathan and of happier -days. “Where art thou, my Belinda? There is no one to pull off -my shrimp-heads now.”</p> - -<p>Lo, as I pen these reminiscences of nine o’clock in the evening—pen -them in the “quiet street,” where I am again for a season—though -my boat is on the shore, and my bark is on the sea, and ere -you hear from me again there will be a considerable variation of clocks -between London and Jericho—a fife and tabour announce the advent of -a little dancing boy and girl, with a careworn mother, in the street -below. I look from my window, and see the little painted people -capering in their spangles and fleshings and short calico drawers. It -is against conviction, and against my own written words, and against -political economy, and ex-Lord Mayor Carden; but I think on Mr. -Carrick’s picture of “Weary Life,” and must needs take some pence -from the clock-case, and throw them out to these tiny mummers. -Life is <i>so</i> hard, my brother!</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="TEN_PM">TEN O’CLOCK P.M.—A DISCUSSION AT THE “BELVIDERE,” AND AN ORATORIO AT EXETER HALL.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Exists there, in the whole world, civilised or uncivilised, a nation of -such inveterate grumblers as the English? We grumble at everything. -We are five-and-twenty millions of bears afflicted with perpetually sore -heads. Are we charged sixpence extra for a bed? is the tail of our -mutton-chop underdone? does our mockturtle soup disagree with us? -is a railway train late? or the requisite amount of hop deficient in our -pale ale? does an Italian itinerant split our ears while we are endeavouring -to solve the Seventh Problem in the First Book of Euclid? does the -editor or manager refuse to return the manuscript of our poems or our -farces? do we buy a silk dress that turns out to be nine-tenths cotton? -are we surcharged by the commissioners of income-tax, (<i>they</i> say I make -a thousand a year, I say I don’t <i>make</i> a hundred and fifty; but may -difference of opinion never, et cetera)? forthwith we call for pen, ink, -and paper, and indite a letter to the “Times,” that providential safety-valve -for the great legion of grumblers. What are our public meetings -but organised arenas of grumbling? what the “leaders” in our Sunday -newspapers but extra facilities for grumbling after we have been -grumbling all the week? I think it was Mr. Horace Mayhew, in his -“Model Men and Women,” who told the story of a waiter at a city -tavern, who took but one holiday in the course of the year, and then -enjoyed himself by paying a visit to another waiter at another tavern, -and assisting him in laying the knives and forks. In like manner the -ordinarily-understood holiday for the gentlemen of the daily press—there -being no diurnals published on Sunday—is Saturday; whereupon, -after lying in bed somewhat longer than usual on the sixth day’s morning, -they indulge in the <i>dulce desipere in loco</i>, by writing stinging -leading articles in the journals which publish editions on the Sabbath. -This is due to their inveterate propensity for grumbling. And, mark -me, this licensed and acknowledged grumbling is the surest safeguard -of our liberties, and the safest guarantee for our not drifting from our -snug roadstead of constitutionalism, where we can ride at anchor, and -smile at the timid argosies and caravels of despotism, moored and chained -in the grim granite basins of the inner port, and all without launching<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span> -into the troubled oceans, full of breakers and white squalls, of utter -democracy. We seize upon a wrong, and grumble at it, till, after a few -months’, and sometimes a few years’ grumbling, we find that the wrong -exists no more, and that we have gained another Right. But we have -had no barricades <i>ad interim</i>, no fusillades, no bombardment of private -houses, no declarations of the “solidarity” of anybody, no confiscations, -no deportations, and no guillotinings. Our rulers, grown wise by experience -of smashed windows, pelted heads, and occasional (when the -people were very hard driven) political annihilation, and hurling into -the limbo of red tapism, have of late years placed few or no restrictions -upon grumbling. The noble lord at the head of the Government daily -receives deputations, who grumble at his measures, or at the measures -he won’t guarantee to propose, fearfully. In the Parliament House, no -sooner does our gracious Queen, in her silver bell-like voice, speak the -speech that others have written down for her (I daresay she could write -a much more sensible discourse herself), than Lords and Commons begin -to grumble about the sense of her words, and move amendments to the -address which is to be presented to her. Downstairs, all through the -session, parliamentary committees are grumbling at witnesses, and witnesses -are grumbling at the committee; and in outlying boroughs vicious -electors are grumbling at the members of the Commons’ House of Parliament. -The country newspapers and the London newspapers grumble. -The barristers grumble at the judge, and the judge at the jury. The -public grumbles at the way soldiers are treated by the officers, and the -soldiers (who are about the only citizens who are not addicted to -grumbling) go out and fight and win battles, at which we at home -grumble, because so many lives have been lost. And I daresay the -Prime Minister grumbles because he has the gout, and the Queen on -her throne grumbles because “Punch” caricatures the Prince Consort, -and “Punch” grumbles because the Prince Consort does not often -enough give occasion to be grumbled at. I grumble at being obliged -to write for your amusement, and you grumble because I am not half -amusing enough. We grumble at the cold dinners at school, at the -price of the marriage license, at the doctor’s bill for our first child’s -measles, at the cost of the funeral of Uncle John, who left us all his -money. We grumble because we have to live, and grumble when the -physician tells us that we must die. Does it not all resolve itself into -our purer, better Fielding’s aphorism in “Vanity Fair”—“Ah! -<i>vanitas vanitatum</i>? Who of us has not his hobby, or, having it, is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span> -satisfied?” Yet there is much virtue in having at least liberty to -grumble.</p> - -<p>These thoughts come over me as I wend my way at Ten o’Clock at -night along the New Road—what do they call it now? Euston Road, -Pancras Road, Paddington Road—<i>que scais-je</i>—towards the suburban -district of Pentonville. It won’t be suburban much longer; for Clerkenwell -and Islington, Somers Town and Finsbury, are hemming it in -so closely that it will be engulphed some of these days by a brick-and-mortar -torrent, like the first Eddystone Lighthouse. A pleasant spot -once was Pentonville, haunted by cheery memories of Sir Hugh Myddleton, -the New River Head, Sadlers’ Wells Theatre, and the “Angel” at -Islington—which isn’t (at least now-a-days, and I doubt if it ever was) -at Islington at all. They began to spoil Pentonville when they pulled -down that outrageously comic statue of George IV., at Battle Bridge. -Then they built the Great Northern Railway Terminus—clincher -number one; then an advertising tailor built a parody of the Crystal -Palace for a shop—clincher number two (I am using a Swivellerism). -The pre-ordinate clincher had been the erection of the hideously lugubrious -penitentiary. However, I suppose it is all for the best. The -next step will be to brick up the reservoir, and take down that mysterious -tuning-fork looking erection, which no doubt has something to do with -the water supply of London, and the New River Head; then they had -better turn the Angel into a select vestry-room or a meeting-house for -the Board of Works; and then, after that, I should advise them to demolish -the “Belvidere.”</p> - -<p>Whose connection with grumbling you shall very speedily understand. -At this famous and commodious old tavern, one of the few in -London that yet preserve, not only a local but a metropolitan reputation, -there is held every Saturday evening—ten o’clock being about the -time for the commencement of the mimic Wittenagemotte—one of those -meetings for political discussion, and the “ventilation” of political -questions, whose uninterfered with occurrence, not only here, but in -Fleet Street, in Bride Lane, and in Leicester Square, so much did rouse -the ire of the <i>sbirri</i>, and <i>mouchards</i>, and unutterable villany of Rue de -Jérusalem spydom, in the employ of his Imperial Majesty, Napoleon -III.</p> - -<p>I have run the gauntlet of most of these harmless symposia of -political talk; and with all, save the Westminster Forum, I can claim -acquaintance. I have been one of the Alumni of “Cogers” or “Codger’s”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span> -Hall, Bride Lane, where the gentleman who occupied the chair was addressed -as “My Noble Grand” by the speaker. I have attended a -meeting at the Forum, held at the Green Dragon,<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Fleet Street, where -visitors are invited to join in the discussion; and where, one evening, -joining in the discussion as a stranger, the meeting objected to my -political views, and a vote passed the chair that I was to be thrown out -of the window; from which ignominious exodus I was only rescued by -the advent of a friendly Templar, who had dropped in from chambers -to the Forum to oil his rusty eloquence in time for the coming Western -Circuit. I have dropped in, too, occasionally, at Mr. Wyld’s Reading-Room, -in Leicester Square, and have listened to much drouthy eloquence -on subjects home and foreign. But nowhere have I seen such -tableaux as the governmental journals of Paris have depicted, in the -gloomiest of colours, as images of the political discussion meetings of -<i>perfide Albion</i>. Nowhere have I seen a bowl of blood on the table, the -chairman sitting on a barrel of gunpowder—to be subsequently used -for the conflagration of the Thames—the orator addressing his hearers -from the summit of a pile of ball-cartridges erected on a coffin; or dissentient -members launching <i>abuses</i>, charged with fulminating mercury, -at an unpopular speaker’s head. Dark and dangerous meetings, of -dark and dangerous men, do certainly take place in London. Oppressed, -despairing, starving, outlawed, outraged exiles, do meet in holes and -corners, do plot and conspire, do hurl, in speech, denunciation and -sarcasm, at despots. But you must not go to Fleet Street, to Bride -Lane, to Leicester Square, nor, least of all, to Pentonville, to find them. -The doors of those mysterious meeting-places are “tiled” as securely as -Freemasons’ lodges. Now and then a traitor, by lies and hypocrisy, -gains admittance, but woe to the traitor if he be discovered in his -treason. He dies within the year.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span></p> -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus37" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus37.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TEN O’CLOCK P.M.: A DISCUSSION AT THE “BELVIDERE.”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span></p> - -<p>The “Belvidere” is distinguished above its kindred discussion halls, -by its eminently respectable aspect. The subjects broached are bold -enough, and are as boldly treated; but you are puzzled to reconcile the -full-blown democracy of some of the speakers, with their mild, bank-account-possessing, -rate-and-tax-paying, housekeeping appearance. They -bark but do not bite. The usages and prestige of the place, too, demand -a certain amenity in discussion and forbearance in reply, which throws -an extra tinge of respectability over the whole. Looking at this spacious, -handsome room, panelled and pillared, comfortably and brilliantly -lit, with its doubled rows of mahogany tables covered with bottles and -glasses full of steaming compounds that do comfort the flesh outwardly -and rejoice the spirit inwardly—in strict moderation, mind; looking at -this burly, substantial auditory, ensconced in their cosy chairs, smoking -their cigars, and listening with attentive ears to the orator; looking at -the thoughtful waiter slipping from table to table, administering refreshment -and receiving orders with a subtle swiftness, yet taking, I -will be bound, an ardent mental interest in the discussion; looking at -the grave chairman in his comfortable high-raised <i>fauteuil</i>—you might -fancy this to be one of the parochial “representative councils,” as vestries -are now queerly christened, or a freemasons’ lodge, when, “labour” -being over, “refreshment” commences, or an ordinary club of middle-class -men accustomed to meet one another, and talk upon the topics of -the day over a social glass. And, in truth, were you to suppose this, -you would not be so very far out in your calculation. These are, indeed, -vestrymen—or representative councillors—freemasons, benefit-club, -middle-class men. But the topic of the night is invested with authority, -and its discussion is subject to rules; and the highest compliment -I can pay to the “Belvidere” is that, if in that other Discussion Hall, -held between the months of March and August, in a green-leather and -oak-carving furnished chamber, nigh unto the crypt of St. Stephen’s -Chapel, Westminster, as much sobriety, decorum, and persistence in -adhering to the matter in hand were shown, as in this convivial parliament, -the business of the nation would progress much better, and we -should have much less cause to grumble at most things.</p> - -<p>See a speaker on his legs—a fluent speaker, somewhat of a florid -speaker, occasionally somewhat of a violent speaker, though his violence -is strictly confined to words and gesticulations. What withering sarcasms -he hurls at kings and ministers! How eloquently he tells those -tyrannical puppets that, when they are forgotten, when the force and -direction of personal satire is no longer understood, and measures are -felt only in their remotest consequences, his words shall still be found -to contain principles worthy of being transmitted to posterity! How -sneeringly he assures our rulers that they have but a copyhold interest -in the state, that they cannot waste, that they cannot alienate, and that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span> -the fee-simple is in us! How menacingly he assures the monarchs of -the earth that the crowns which were gained by one revolution may be -lost by another! and how much, listening to his impassioned exordium, -to his whirlwind argument, to his scathing peroration, I become impressed -with a notion that the orator has a capital memory, and has -been an assiduous student of certain letters, which were addressed, in -our great-grandmothers’ time, to Mr. Woodfall, the printer of the -“Public Advertiser,” by a mysterious correspondent—a correspondent -whose motto was, “<i>Stat nominis umbra</i>” and who chose to assume the -pseudonym of “<span class="smcap">Junius</span>.”</p> - -<p>In these orations you are sure to hear a good deal about Catholic -Emancipation, the Test and Corporation Acts, the Spa Fields Riots, -the Peterloo Massacre, the “Piccadilly Butchers,” the “Dorsetshire -Labourers,” Queen Caroline’s Trial, Richmond the Spy, and similar -topics. They are not very amusing, perhaps, but they are of infinite -service in keeping juvenile politicians <i>au fait</i> with the political <i>memorabilia</i> -of thirty or forty years since. I have even heard an ardent -reformer, with scarcely so much as a tuft on his chin, declaim in burning -accents upon the great case of Horne Tooke <i>versus</i> the House of -Commons—“Once a priest forever a priest”—on Jack Wilkes, Number -Forty-five, and the question of general warrants, on the cruelty of -Lord Ellenborough to William Hone, the trial of Colonel Despard, and -the eventualities which might have followed the successful assassination -of Lord Sidmouth by Arthur Thistlewood.</p> - -<p>A staid, middle-aged gentleman follows the reformer, and proceeds, -genteelly, to demolish him. He is a staunch upholder of our ancient -institutions, and sneers at the presumptuous and levelling tendencies of -the age. He has some neat things to say about the “Pig and Whistle” -style of oratory, at which the ardent reformer winces, chews the end of -his cigar, and empties his glass indignantly; and he concludes with a -glowing eulogium on church and state, our glorious constitution, and -our noble aristocracy.</p> - -<p>Ere I leave these placid tribunes of Pentonville Hill, discharging -their harmless philippics at men high in place and power, I muse a -little over the tavern itself, and call to mind a certain story I once heard -respecting it, possessing what foundation of truth I know not, but -which, if not true, is assuredly <i>ben trovato</i>. Thus runs the dubious -legend: You remember the fair young daughter of England, the good -princess, the virtuous daughter of a wicked father, and in whom, from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span> -her cradle to her marriage, the hope and love of this stolid but strong-feeling -nation were centred. You remember her husband: he is a king -at Brussels now. You remember how, when she died, all England -burst into a passionate lament; how thousands went into voluntary -mourning; how clergymen wept in the pulpit, when they discoursed on -her virtues; how an awful darkness and despair seemed to overshadow -the ill-governed land when the news came that the Princess Charlotte -was dead. There is little need to say that her husband (who, I am -glad to believe, loved her very truly and fondly) was at first inconsolable -for her loss, and grieved long and bitterly for her. But time was good -to him, and heaven merciful, and by degrees his sorrow wore away. -Still he was melancholy, pre-occupied, and loved nothing so much as to -be left alone. It was about this time that the then landlord of the Belvidere -began to notice that about eleven o’clock almost every forenoon -during the week a gentleman in deep mourning, and on horseback, -would stop at the door of the tavern, leave his horse in charge of his -groom, enter the large room, call for a pipe and a pint of ale, and -quietly enjoy those refreshments for about the space of one hour. The -room would be at that early hour of the day almost deserted. The -one or two tradesmen who would occasionally drop in for a crust of -bread and cheese, and a peep at the “Times,” would be bidden a civil -“good morning”—in a slightly foreign accent—by the stranger; but -he never entered into conversation; he never read the newspaper; he -“kep hisself to hisself,” the waiter said. But he was so punctual and -so regular in his attendance, that the people of the house came to look -out for his daily visit in his suit of sables, and a special pipe was -laid, a special dish of tobacco prepared, and a special chair and spittoon -arranged, every day for his use. So things went on for many weeks; -till one luckless morning, just after the departure of the black horseman, -a customer of the house—I believe he was a commercial traveller, -who had just returned from a journey in the west of England, and who -had been enjoying his pipe and pint in the society of the taciturn -stranger—called the landlord on one side.</p> - -<p>“Do you know who that chap is?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Not a bit,” answered the host. “Comes here every morning -regular. Pint of mild sixpenny; bird’s-eye; gives the waiter twopence, -and goes away. Groom has a glass of ale sitting on his horse. Pays -his way like a gentleman.”</p> - -<p>“He’s somebody,” said the commercial traveller, significantly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span></p> - -<p>“So I should think,” returned the landlord, quietly.</p> - -<p>“He’s a high fellow,” added the bagman, mysteriously.</p> - -<p>“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the landlord, tranquilly.</p> - -<p>“Why, bless your heart, man alive!” broke out, impatiently, his -interlocutor, “can’t you guess who he is? He’s Prince Leopold of -Saxe-Coburg. I have seen his Royal Highness a hundred times, and -know him by sight as well as I do you.”</p> - -<p>The next forenoon, when the sable horseman arrived, he found a -roll of crimson baize laid down from the pales before the tavern to the -doorway, which was lined by American aloes in tubs. The staircase -was freshly carpeted; in the stranger’s customary place was a table -covered with a crimson cloth, backed by a crimson chair with gilt legs. -The landlady, her daughter, and the barmaid, were all in holiday attire, -and when the unknown rang the bell, the landlord himself, in a blue -coat and brass buttons, and his hair newly powdered, brought him -the beer in a silver tankard, and a wax candle at which to light his -pipe. The black horseman said nothing, drank his ale, and smoked -his tobacco, paid his reckoning, made his way downstairs amidst a -profusion of bows and curtsies, mounted his horse, and—never came -again. So runs the legend. The commercial traveller may have been -wrong in his assertion, or may have been hoaxing the landlord; but I -incline to the belief that this was really Prince Leopold. Why not? -The incident is trifling enough; yet there is something touching in -the picture of the good-natured young German brooding over his bereavement, -yet consoling himself in the simple German fashion, over -his pipe and beer.</p> - -<p class="tb">Friend of mine, if you have the slightest hope or thought that -whither I am now taking thee is one of the gay and merry scenes of -London night-life, prithee dismiss the thought, for thou art in error. -Prithee pull up the collar of thy coat, stiffen thy neckcloth as much as -possible, take that wicked cigar from thy mouth, cast down thine eyes, -and assume a decorum, if thou have it not. We are going to Exeter -Hall.</p> - -<p>Don’t be alarmed: this is not the month of May or the season for -meetings in aid of missions to the Quashiboos, the Rumbatumbas, or -the Oolalooloo cannibals. We are not going to hear John B. Gough -lecture on temperance. We are going to hear an oratorio, conducted -by Mr. Costa—an oratorio in which Mr. Sims Reeves, Mr. Weiss, Miss<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span> -Dolby, and Madame Clara Novello, are to sing—and to listen to a band -and chorus brought to a degree of perfection which only the genius of -such a conductor could insure, or the gigantic resources of the Sacred -Harmonic Society command.</p> - -<p>There would seem to be in an oratorio something essentially germane -to the English mind and character. The sounding recitative and -swelling hymns, the rolling choruses and triumphant bursts of -exultant music, have a strange affinity with the solemn, earnest, -energetic English people, slow to move to anger or to love, but, -when moved, passionately enthusiastic in their love, bloody and -terrible in their great wrath. The French can no more understand -oratorios than they can understand blank verse. I remember going to -see Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” once in Paris. It was winter time, and the -performances took place in Franconi’s great, windy, for-summer-built -horse-riding circus in the Champs Elysées. The band and chorus -shivered as they scraped and sang; the <i>prima donna’s</i> nose and lips -were blue, and the music paper quivered in her hand; the <i>contralto</i> -looked exquisitely uncomfortable at not having to wear a page’s dress -and show her legs. As for the audience, the ladies sat muffled up in -shawls and furs—it was a morning performance—and whispered -among themselves; the men sucked the knobs of their canes, twirled -their moustaches, stared up at the chandeliers, and murmured, <i>Quelle -drôle de musique</i>! They didn’t repeat that oratorio, and I don’t -wonder at it. To the French it was neither fish nor flesh, neither -ecclesiastical nor secular. If the first, they might argue, give us the -chanting priests, the swinging censers dispensing fragrant clouds, the -red-cassocked altar boys, the twinkling tapers, the embroidered -canopies, and the swelling pæans of the concealed choristers. If the -last, let us have a drinking chorus, a laughing chorus, and a dagger -chorus, a <i>prima donna</i> to make her entrance on horseback, a <i>contralto</i> -in tights, a ballet in the second act, and some red fire at the -end. But this is neither mass nor opera.</p> - -<p>They think differently in England. To the seriously-inclined -middle classes the oratorio supplies the place of the opera. And it -behoves you to consider what a vast power in the state those serious -middle-class men and women are. It is all very well for us, men and -citizens of the world, yet living in a comparatively contracted circle of -acquaintances as cosmopolitan as ourselves; it is all very well for us, -who see “no harm” in sitting at home and reading the newspaper,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span> -while our wives go to church; who support Sunday bands, Sunday -steamboats, and Sunday excursion trains, and are agitating now for the -opening of museums, and galleries, and palaces on the Sabbath; who -talk lightly on serious topics, and call clergymen parsons; it is all very -well, I say, for us, travelled, and somewhat cynical as we may be, to -pretend that the “serious” world is an amalgam of bigotry, hypocrisy, -and selfishness, and to ignore the solemn religious journals that -denounce hot dinner on Sundays, or a walk after it, or the perusal -of a secular book on the sacred day, as intolerable sins. Yet how -many thousands—how many millions—of sober, sincere, conscientious -citizens are there, who are honestly persuaded of the sinfulness -of many things which we consider harmless recreations! -who would shrink back in horror, if they heard a tithe of the conversations -that go on every night in hundreds of well-conducted London -drawing-rooms! who look upon dancing as an irreligious and Babylonish -pastime! whose only light reading consists of tracts, missionary -chronicles, and memoirs of sainted cheesemongers, and the beatified -daughters of dairymen! I declare that I never see a theatre in a -country town—where, at least, two-thirds of the population consist of -such as I have described—without wondering at the lunacy of the -person who built it, without marvelling at the idiocy of every fresh -speculator who enters on the management. We may pretend to despise -the Puritan world, write books and farces against them, and quiz the -“Record” or the “Wesleyan;” but it is folly to ignore the vast -numerical strength of these same Puritans. They purchase such books -as “Memorials of Captain Headly Vicars” by thousands; they -subscribe thousands of pounds yearly in an almost insane hope of converting -heathen barbarians to a better faith; they give away millions -of tracts; they flood the platform and the auditory of every public -meeting. It won’t do to ignore them. Cromwell’s Ironsides and Sir -Harry Vane’s Fifth-Monarchy Men have made too deep a mark upon -the people of England to be lightly passed over.</p> - -<p>But the serious world, and that section who are worldly, meet on -neutral ground at an Exeter Hall oratorio. The religionists see no -sin in listening to sacred music; the mundane come to listen with -delight to the immortal strains of Handel, of Haydn, and of Mendelssohn. -“When shall their glory fade” asked Tennyson, singing of the -Six Hundred at Balaclava. When shall the glory of our great oratorio -writers decay? Never—I hope.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span></p> - -<p>A resident at Bethlehem Hospital—he wasn’t either a doctor or a -keeper, but wore, habitually, a strait-waistcoat, took shower-baths very -frequently, and kept his head close shaved—once divided the world into -two classes: people who were mad, and people who would be mad. I, -too—but out of Bedlam, thank heaven!—have made a somewhat analogous -classification. I divide the world into people who have and have -not seen Ghosts. I belong myself to the first class. I am continually -seeing ghosts. I shake hands in the street with friends who have been -dead these ten years. A dear dead sister comes and sits by me at night -when I read, and tells me, with a kiss, that I am a good boy for coming -home so early. I was troubled some years ago with a man with his -head off, who, in that unseemly position, and holding his head on his -knees, sat continually before me. I dismissed him at last as being an -unworthy hallucination, and not a genuine ghost. I meet a good many -ghosts now—friendly ghosts, pleasant ghosts—but chiefly do they -favour me with their company at places of public entertainment. It -may be that I am a bad listener to music or theatrical dialogue, that -I am absent in mind, and <i>distrait</i>; but so surely as I go to a theatre or -concert, so surely do I fall a conjuring up mind-pictures, till the theatre -or the hall, and its occupants, quite fade away, and I find myself in -entirely different company, talking to people who are mouldering in -their graves, or who are thousands of miles away.</p> - -<p>And so the oratorio goes on, the assemblage paying a grave and -decorous attention to the music, and bearing themselves far more like a -congregation than an audience. They are so devotedly rapt in the -magnificent performance, that I expect every moment to hear the vast -mass of them join in the choruses; and when, at the first bar of the -sublime “Hallelujah Chorus,” the hearers all <i>stand up</i>, the singers in -the orchestra seem to me like priests. In truth, I think that to hear -an oratorio, chastens and purifies the mind, and that we go away from -those grand performances wiser and better men. There is a natural -disinclination to return—at least, immediately—to frivolous and trivial -pursuits, after listening to those solemn and ennobling strains. I know -that some exist upon whom music has no effect whatsoever; but I -believe that the vast majority of mankind are influenced for good or -evil by the sound of music. The most heartless woman in the world -whom I know, cries when she hears “Kathleen ma vourneen.” Napoleon -could never listen to “<i>Lascio ch’io piango la cruda sorte</i>,” without -crossing himself. How grandly does John Dryden set forth this theory -in his immortal St. Cecilian Ode! with what exquisite art has he -shown us Alexander moved to alternate joy, pride, shame, weeping, -frenzy, as old Timotheus sweeps the lyre in varied strains!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus38" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus38.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TEN O’CLOCK P.M.: AN ORATORIO AT EXETER HALL.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span></p> - -<p>Now, in sober broughams and in hack-cabs—driven, I hope, by -regenerated cabmen, who give tickets before they are asked for them, -and never charge more than thirty per cent. above the legal fare—or -haply, if the night be fine, on foot, the serious audience, well cloaked -and bonneted, leave the hall. For half an hour afterwards, the Exeter -Hall side of the Strand, both east and west, is dotted with serious -groups in search of the last omnibus, or, perchance, boldly walking -home. I wonder how many of the serious ones know anything of the -thoroughfare. They may traverse it at noonday, or pass down it every -morning for twenty years in omnibuses on their way to the city; but -do they know anything of the night aspect of that most mysterious of -London thoroughfares? It is better, perhaps, that they should not.</p> - -<p>Minute by minute they grow scarcer, and by ten minutes to eleven -there are no serious groups in the Strand. They are all gone home to -supper—hot ones, very probably, for the serious world is not at all unaddicted -to good living—and sober. I, too, have liberty to go and sup, -if I so choose; but not, alas! to bed. Still have I work to do, and -for some hours.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ELEVEN_PM">ELEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.—A SCIENTIFIC CONVERSAZIONE, AND AN EVENING PARTY.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>It is Eleven o’Clock post meridian, and I am once more thrown, with -my clock on my hands, on the great world of London. The insatiable, -restless metropolis is as busy in the night as in the day season; there -is no respite, no cessation, in its feverish activity. One set or class of -mortals may, quite worn and worried out, cast themselves on beds more -or less hard, and sleep; but, forthwith, another section of the population -arise like giants refreshed—the last hour of the night to some is -the commencement, the opening day, to others; and an innumerable -army of conscripts are ready to relieve one another in mounting the -guard of London Life.</p> - -<p>Eleven o’clock, and thousands are yet in the streets, tens of thousands<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span> -still in the pursuit of the avocations by which they earn their -daily (or nightly) bread, hundreds of thousands awake, busy, and -stirring. The children of the aristocracy and some sections of the -middle classes are gone to bed—save those who have been so good that -their fond parents have taken them to the play, which entertainment -they are now enjoying, with delightful prospects superadded of “sitting -up” to supper, perchance of oysters, afterwards. But the children of -the poor do not dream of bed. They are toddling in and out of chandlers’ -shops in quest of ounces of ham and fragments of Dutch cheese -for father’s supper; they are carrying the basket of linen—mother -takes in washing—to the residences of clients; they are eliminating -the most savoury-looking bits of plaice or flounders from the oleaginous -pile in the fried-fish shop; they are fetching the beer and the “clean -pipe” from the public-house; nay—not unfrequently, alas! assisted -by a lean baby in arms—they are fetching father himself home from -the too-seductive establishment of the licensed victualler. Eleven -o’clock at night is the great supper-time of the working classes; then, -by the steady and industrious mechanic, the final calumet is smoked, -the borrowed newspaper read, the topics of the day, the prospects of the -coming week, discussed with the cheery and hard-working helpmate -who sits by the side of her horny-handed lord, fills his pipe, pours out -his beer, and darns the little children’s hose.</p> - -<p>Eleven o’clock: theatrical audiences are at their apogee, and the -last piece is “on.” Convivial clubs are in full action, and the waiters -at the supper-rooms, very tumbled and drowsy during the day, put on -their most highly-starched neckcloths, and begin to rub their eyes, in -preparation for the labours of the night. The linen-drapers’ shopmen, -who have been strolling about Regent Street and Oxford Street since -the shops closed at nine, and who “live on the premises,” begin to -turn in; the proprietors tolerate no gadding about after eleven, and -persistence in keeping bad hours to the extent of hearing the chimes at -midnight, out of doors, would entail reprimand, and perhaps expulsion, -on the offender. At eleven o’clock close the majority of the coffee, chop -houses, and reading-rooms. There are some that will remain open all -night; but they are not of the most reputable description. At eleven -the cheap grocer, the cheesemonger, and the linen-draper, in low-priced -neighbourhoods, begin to think of putting up the shutters; and, by -half-past eleven, the only symposia of merchandise open will be the -taverns and cigar-shops, the supper-rooms and shell-fish warehouses, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span> -night coffee-houses, and the chemists—which last shops, indeed, never -seem to be quite open, or quite closed, at all, and may be said to sleep -with one eye open.</p> - -<p>Eleven o’clock at the West-end is, morally speaking, broad day-light. -Midnight will be high noon. Fashionable life’s current riots -through the veins of West-end streets; mirth, and gaiety, and intrigue, -are heard on staircases and at street corners. And pre-eminently wide -awake, busy, active, and restless just now is the great and mysterious -country of Bohemia, both Upper and Lower. You are beginning to -hear of Bohemia, oh, reflective reader! and of its shady denizens. -Recondite, half-reluctant allusions are made to it in solemn reviews and -portentous magazines. An arch-Bohemian proposed the other day to -write a novel concerning the present condition of his country. The -book actually appeared, but its author stumbled on the threshold of his -own subject. Either he dared not say that which he knew, or he had -over-estimated his knowledge of things Bohemian: and he drew, not -the real country, but an impalpable region full of monsters. But his -was no easy task. After all, who shall say, who can tell, where Bohemia -really is, and who really are Bohemians? They are secretly affiliated, -and to each other known, like freemasons, like the Illuminati and -Brethren of the Rosy Cross of the last century, like Balzac’s “Treize;” -but the outside world knows them not, and oft-times mistakes for a -Bohemian a vile Illyrian, a contemptible Styrian, a worthless Croat, or -a base Bezonian. Is there a king of Bohemia? or is it an oligarchy, -a theocracy, or a red republic? How does a man become a Bohemian, -and can he ever renounce his allegiance to the “friends of Bohemia,” -and become an ordinary citizen of the world? Yet Bohemianism is -ubiquitous. The initiated ones are everywhere. In the House of -Commons, at this very moment, a free and accepted Bohemian is -pounding away at the ministry, and a past grand-master of Bohemianism -is descending the steps of the Carlton. A Bohemian is dancing the -Schottische in Westbourne Terrace, and his brother is passing underneath -Temple Bar, in a cab and in custody, on his way to Mr. Slowman’s -caravanserai in Cursitor Street. There is a Bohemian, in white -kid gloves and a white cravat, sitting in his opera-stall, and he whispers -to his companion to order a Welsh rabbit and a pint of half-and-half -for him at the Club. Some Bohemians are drinking claret at the -Wellington, and others are sleeping among the vegetable baskets under -the tarpaulins in Covent Garden Market. Bohemian No. one has just<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span> -won a hundred pounds at <i>écarté</i>. Bohemian No. two has just pawned -his great-coat. A Bohemian has just gone home to read Plato, and -take a basin of arrow-root for supper. Another has let himself out -with his latch-key, and is on his way to the Haymarket. Oh, marvellous -land! Oh, people yet more marvellous! Despised, derided, -abused by men, ye are yet a power in the state. Bootmakers combine -against ye; but you can turn out governments. Clerks of -county courts issue judgment summonses against ye; but you dine -at princes’ tables. Lands you have not, nor jewels, nor raiment, -nor fine linen, nor pieces of gold, nor pieces of silver; still do ye -travel first-class express; still do you clamour for green fat at mighty -banquets, and turn up your Bohemian noses if the venison be not -hung to your liking; still do you pride yourselves upon being good -judges of Rhine wine and Habana cigars. A peculiar race! And -the most astonishing thing about the Bohemian is this: that he does -not—as the non-Bohemian charitably supposes and reports—die in an -hospital, to be saved from dissection, and humbly buried, only by a -subscription among his Bohemian associates. If he be an ass and a -profligate, he goes to the bad, and serve him right; but the Bohemian, -dying, frequently leaves a great deal more money behind him than yonder -starched man of business, who professed to regard him, during his -lifetime, with a shuddering, pitying horror. The Bohemian, brought, -as it would seem, to the lowest and forlornest state of impecuniosity -and discredit, suddenly starts up as Attorney-General of Yellow-Jack -Island with twelve hundred a year, as Judge-Advocate of the Meridional -Quashiboos, or Consul-General to the Tontine Republic.</p> - -<p>While thus discoursing to you on things in general, I have been -keeping a sharp look-out for the most notable things that are to be -seen in London at eleven p.m. But as we shall have to sit up very late -to-night—or rather early to-morrow morning—I think it right that we -should pass the time till midnight in a quiet and decorous manner. -Not but that we have been exceedingly well-behaved ever since the -commencement of our peripatetics; but life is life, and one can scarcely -go twice round the clock in London without some moral and physical -wear and tear. Suppose we drop in at a Conversazione.</p> - -<p>This (more or less) social <i>réunion</i> is an institution of purely modern -invention. It is the latest device of the fantastically despotic organisation -we call “society,” with the exception of <i>the dansante</i>, or dancing -tea. It might be alleged, but the allegation would be open to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span> -imputation of hypercriticism, that the first conversazione on English -record was the meeting of the Royal Society at which King Charles II. -propounded the famous problem of the live fish in the pail of water: -and another semblance of a conversazione might be found in the assemblage -of antiquaries at the christening of Martinus Scriblerus. But -the real conversazione is quite another affair, and wholly modern. It -is not much more than twenty years old, its establishment following -close on the heels of the fashionable “rout,” which again succeeded the -“assemblies” of our grandmothers and the “drums” of our great-grandmothers. -The modern conversazione means a room or a suite of -rooms thrown open for the reception of a miscellaneous mob of fashionables -or of celebrities, foreign and native, political, literary, scientific, -or artistic. It is a vast menagerie, a “happy family” on a monster -scale, a Noah’s ark upon dry ground, and the birds, beasts, and fishes -crowd and elbow each other, and roar, or yell, or howl, or bark, or low, -or grunt, or squeak, or crow, or whistle, or scream, or pipe, to the infinite -delectation of the host and hostess. The only sounds proper to -the animal or ornithological kingdom are those which might be supposed -to be produced by billing and cooing; for the guests are not—or -do not in general look—very good-tempered, and a favourite manner of -passing the time at a conversazione is to scowl at your neighbour, and -wonder who the deuce he is. But one of the chief advantages connected -with these bringings-together of celebrities, lies in the moderate -sum for which the thing can be done. The conversazione is eminently -cheap. They don’t give these lions any shinbones of beef; tea, coffee, -macaroons, and, at very hospitable houses, sandwiches and wishy-washy -negus, are all that you can reckon upon in the way of refreshment at a -conversazione.</p> - -<p>Of late days, conversaziones, which were ordinarily given by private -persons—the Mrs. Leo Hunters of the <i>beau monde</i>—have been held by -societies literary and learned, nay, even by commercial and financial -companies. I remember myself receiving on one occasion an invite to -a “conversazione” at which the novel principles of a new life assurance -company, and the immense advantages offered to shareholders, assurers, -and annuitants, were to be fully developed and explained. The conversazione -was held at the bran-new offices of the company, smelling -very strongly of recent varnish, putty, and French polish, and of calf -ledgers and day-books yet innocent of entries. There were plenty of -ladies in evening dress, and plenty of gentlemen in white waistcoats,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span> -and flirtation and gallantry were oddly mixed up with the Northampton -Tables and the Institute of Actuaries. We had a neat lecture by a stout -gentleman, in a blue coat buttoned up to the chin, upon the inestimable -blessings of life assurance. Tea and coffee were handed round in the -intervals of his discourse upon bonuses, paid-up capital, and the purchase -of reversions; and an immense sensation was created at the termination -of the lecture by the recitation, on the part of the orator, of a -neat little copy of verses, of which the commencing stanzas, so far as my -recollection will serve me, ran somewhat thus:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“When dear papa went up to heaven,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">What grief mamma endured!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And yet that grief was softened, for</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Papa he was assured.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“He never lodged his policy,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He left it to mamma;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The office paid most cheerfully,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">How happy now we are!”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">This touching effusion was received with great waving of handkerchiefs, -and some sobs, indeed, on the part of the ladies, and I have no doubt -that many of those fair ones on returning home did that night incite, -command, and compel their liege lords and masters forthwith to assure -their lives in the “Amiable and General Fire and Life Assurance -Company” (with which are incorporated the “Good-natured and Law -Life,” the “Equitable and Jocular Fire,” and the “Compassionate -and Confidential Deposit and Loan Association”). The friendly -meeting of the “Amiable and General” was distinguished above other -conversaziones by the fact, that when the ladies had taken their departure, -a capital cold supper, and abundant libations of champagne, -were provided for the directors and their friends, at which repast, -which lasted to a very advanced hour, everybody drank everybody -else’s health with all the honours, and everybody was made a preferential -shareholder. I know that I was; though I am not quite aware -at the present moment of the exact locality of the “Amiable and -General’s” offices, or, indeed, whether that most promising company is -still in existence.</p> - -<p>The strange conversaziones a man may from time to time visit! I -have been to one at the Hanover Square Rooms given by the confraternity -of dentists. Slim gentlemen of Carker-like dental developement -held forth on the transcendant merit of the art of pulling out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span> -people’s teeth, and fiercely denounced the quacks and impostors who -ignorantly tampered with the jaws of her Majesty’s subjects; the room -itself was hung round with the most hideous coloured cartoons, representative -of diverse phases of dental surgery, and I came away haunted -by visions of pink beeswax, thin gold plates, morocco easy chairs, -springs, <i>dents osanores</i>, artificial gums, and those dreadfully clean -hands, the wrists garnished by wristbands as clean, which seem to be -the exclusive property of dentists. I congratulated myself, too, on my -departure, on the fact that no visitor to the conversazione had, for the -pure love of art, pulled out one of my few remaining teeth, just as, -after dining with a schoolmaster, I felicitate myself for having escaped -a caning. There is something in the whiteness of a dentist’s hand, and -in the twinkling of a schoolmaster’s gray eye, that would make me -tremble were I Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.</p> - -<p>But the oddest conversazione I ever attended was not in this -country, but in a foreign land. It was in Paris—and I am speaking -seriously—a conversazione of <i>coiffeurs</i>, of barbers, hair-dressers, and -wig-makers. I declare that I have seldom passed a more agreeable -evening in my life. Everything was conducted on the most intensely -genteel footing, and everybody was ceremoniously polite; although I -must be candid in admitting that a decided odour of pomatum and -freshly-frizzled curls pervaded the <i>salon</i>, which was, indeed, the upstairs -room of a <i>restaurant</i> at Montmartre. There were ladies present, -too; and after some pleasant little discourse, all tending to the glorification -of hair-dressing, an eminent professor of the philocomal art there -present proceeded to a series of practical and illustrative experiments -on the heads of some of the young ladies, in order to show the different -styles of dressing and arranging the head which had prevailed from -the time of François, <i>premier jusqu’ à nos jours</i>, to our own days. -The ladies submitted with charming equanimity to the operation, and -the experimentalist was enabled to submit to public inspection and -admiration a full-blown Ninon d’Enclos, a Mademoiselle de Montpensier, -a Duchesse de Longueville, a Madame de Maintenon, together -with several Du Barris, De la Vallières, Pompadours, Madame -Talliens, Mademoiselle Mars, Charlotte Cordays, and Théroigne de -Méricourts. At the conclusion of the experiments, there was a grand -procession of the ladies variously <i>coiffées</i> round the room, followed by -the triumphant hair-dressers, waving their tongs and combs, and -redolent of puff-powder; then we had <i>orgeat</i> and <i>anisette</i>; and then I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span> -went and supped in the <i>restaurant</i> downstairs with one of the hair-dressers, -who went me halves in a bottle of Beaune, and swore eternal -friendship to me over a <i>Mayonnaise de homard</i>.</p> - -<p>But to return to the conversazione world of London. Suppose we -take a literary one to begin with: say one of Mrs. Van Umbug’s -Thursdays. Mrs. Van Umbug lives at that classically severe mansion, -the “Arena. Gladiator’s Crescent, Nero Square.” Mr. Van Umbug is a -member of Parliament, and sits on the Liberal side of the House, but -nobody takes much notice of him, and he is usually alluded to as Mrs. -Van Umbug’s husband. If you ask the coachman in the adjacent -mews whose horses are those the helper is harnessing to the brougham, -he will probably answer, “Mrs. Van Umbug’s.” The servants in the -house in Gladiator Street, talk continually of “Missus” (who makes -her presence not only seen but felt), but scarcely ever mention -“Master.” The tradespeople usually send in their bills to Mrs. Van -Umbug; and it is certain that it is that lady who issues the invitations -and receives the company at her Thursday conversaziones. Mr. Van -Umbug, M.P., is scarcely ever seen at those gatherings, and when he is, -rarely, manifest, it is in a very meek and subdued manner. He sneaks -in and out as if the house didn’t belong to him (which, indeed, it does -not), and appears desperately afraid of the portly man in black with -the white Berlin gloves who hands round the tea and coffee.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Van Umbug’s mansion is supposed to be furnished in the -highest style of taste and virtu. Hers is quoted as an abode of all -that is elegant, <i>recherché</i>, and <i>distingué</i>. What are taste and virtu, -I wonder? what makes things elegant, <i>distingué</i>, and <i>recherché</i>? Do -chairs that you can’t sit down upon, and spindled-shanked tables, -tottering beneath the weight of gaudily-bound books, containing specimens -of chromo-lithography? do a sham pre-Raphaelite picture or two, -in which a long-legged swain is courting a lady with yellow hair and a -striped dress falling in unnatural folds, under the lee of a marvellously-executed -waterbutt—a curiously-manipulated mangold-wurzel, and a -minutely finished frying-pan occupying the foreground? do scraps of -armour and oak-carvings, supposed to be ancient, but in reality -manufactured the week before last in Wardour Street? do odds and -ends, and Chinese monsters in porcelain, and a Louis Quinze clock, -and the model of a Swiss châlet in box-wood, and an imitation grotto -and aquarium in an ante-room? I suppose these things do.</p> - -<p>This present Thursday at Mrs. Van Umbug’s is a great literary one.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span></p> - -<p>The lions of literature are present in the flesh. Here is the distinguished -Snortup, author of “The Common Objects of the Back-yard,” -“Geology in Joke,” “Trigonometry Judged by Taxation,” “The Extinct -Animals of Eel-pie Island,” and other erudite and ponderous -scientific works. Snortup, who is a Doctor of Philosophy of the University -of Schinckelbrauen, is a heavy man, with a black wig and a -huge black satin stock, in which gleams a cameo bearing a curious -resemblance to an oyster. He snuffs a great deal, and when he speaks -he does not belie his name, but literally snorts. Near him is young -Twiddles, with his auburn hair, his turn-down collar, and Byron tie, -his speckled silk stockings and low shoes, his baby face and falsetto -voice. Twiddles, who writes under the pseudonym of Swedenborg -Scanderberg, has just published a volume of poems of the ultra-spasmodic -order. In passages replete with burning eloquence, he has -spoken of the “moonbeam’s frosty rime, that hoars the head of nature, -and makes last summer’s sapling patriarchal white.” His grand passage -in “Ladye Babbynetta,” in which he alludes to “the hot and -rabid ice, that burns and sears by force of congelation,” has been enthusiastically -spoken of by Sidney Muffins, editor of the “Tomfool” -(with which is incorporated the “Pinchbeck News”) weekly journal. -Muffins is not a poet yet, but he hopes to be one when his whiskers -grow and he has read “Cassel’s Popular Educator.” Meanwhile, he -swears by Twiddles, and fiercely abuses, in print and in person, those -who can’t avoid the conviction that Twiddles is a donkey.</p> - -<p>Do you see that man with the enormous red beard, the black velvet -cuffs, collars, and facings to his coat, and the fez cap? That is O’Roarer. -O’Roarer is a special correspondent to the “Howl” daily newspaper. -O’Roarer went to the Crimea for the “Howl,” during the war; he quarrelled -with a major in a marching regiment, and challenged him to -mortal combat. The general commanding the division was compelled -to request O’Roarer to select some other locality for his hut, and -terrific were the criticisms upon that divisional general’s military conduct, -which subsequently appeared in the “Howl.” Little Eggles, -who was a clerk in the Commissariat Department, who hates O’Roarer, -declares that he was found in Balaclava once returning from a carouse -on board ship, and <i>Bacchi plenus</i>, that he was taken to the main-guard, -and in the morning, notwithstanding his protestations that it was “all -a mistake,” and his assertions of his “responsible position,” he received -the customary hospitality of the main-guard, namely, two dozen lashes.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span> -Eggles adds, with a knowing wink, that the provost-marshal was not -General ——’s nephew for nothing.</p> - -<p>Besides Mr. O’Roarer and his fellows already described, there is the -Honourable Simperkin Blushington, that pleasing novelist and Oriental -traveller. A little to the left, and scowling at the Honourable Simperkin -fearfully, is Leathers, the author of “A Jaunt to Jericho” and -“Seven Years in a Penal Settlement.” Leathers wears a huge cut-velvet -waistcoat, that looks like a fragment from some tapestried window-curtain. -He is not at all clever, is Leathers—has no humour, -observation, or power of description; but he has got a name among the -book-selling trade, somehow, as a “good travelling hand”—a safe man -for two volumes royal octavo with plates and a map—and so soon does -any foreign country, from Canton to British Columbia, begin, from -political or other causes, to attract public attention, so soon is Leathers -commissioned to write his two bulky volumes of travels therein. Ill-natured -people say that he keeps particulars relative to geography -pigeon-holed in his library, and that he never went further than Boulogne, -in the days of the five-shilling fares; but Leathers gets his price, -and can afford to laugh at the evil-speaking. Bonassus, the publisher, -of Bumpus Street, will have Leathers’s portrait in the next edition of -“Rambles in the Island of Perim.”</p> - -<p>I am sure it is very ungallant in me to have been so long silent regarding -the ladies who grace the literary conversazione with their -presence. A man must be, indeed, a brute who could pass over the -charms of Miss Withers, aged forty, authoress of “Crackings of the -Heartstrings,” “Shudderings of the Soul,” “Crinklings of the Spirit-skin,” -“Eyeball Darts,” and other pathetic lyrics. Miss Withers once -kept a boarding-school, but gradually languished into poetry. She -attained considerable celebrity in the time of the Annuals, but on the -downfall of those amusing ephemerides, she betook herself to history, -and is the writer of “Lives of the Wet Nurses of the Princesses of -England,” “Memorials of celebrated Bedchamber Women,” and “The -Silversticks in Waiting before the Conquest”—all works replete with -critical acumen, and brimful of historical lore, though following a little -too closely in the footsteps of a lady who has written an admirable and -genuine History concerning some Queens of England. Miss Withers, -however, has done very well for her publishers and for herself. She -is one of those authoresses who, dying, would never wish to blot out a -line they had written, simply because Heaven has gifted them with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span> -happy mental cecity that prevents them from discerning that nine-tenths -of their works should never have been written at all. You may -see Miss Withers any day in the British Museum Reading-room, vigorously -compiling away at the desk marked “for ladies only.” She has -piles of books around her; she makes the attendants’ lives a torment to -them with the flying squadrons of book-tickets she deposits at the bar; -she walks about the india-rubber flooring with one pen behind her ear -and another in her mouth. She, being tall, bony, severe of aspect, and -much given to snuff-taking, is generally feared by the Museum frequenters. -She wrenches volumes of the catalogue from mild young -clergymen in spectacles and M. B. waistcoats. She follows line after -line of the printed page with her heavy inkstained forefinger. Once -Dedman the pedigree-hunter, who was filling up his ticket opposite -Miss Withers, was venturous enough to ask her the day of the month. -She called him, in a hollow voice, “fellow,” on the spot, snuffed indignantly, -and afterwards spoke of him to the attendant with the red -moustache as an “impertinent jackanapes.” The only person with -whom she condescends to be conversational in the reading-room, is -Eglintoun Beaverup, the famous novelist, satirist, poet, traveller, Quarterly -Reviewer, essayist, epigrammatist and politician, who stood for the -Macbeth district of burghs last general election, and proved in an article -in the “Rampant Magazine,” that the present Duke of Sennacherib’s -grandfather was a pork butcher in Liquorpond Street, and that Sir -Ranulph De Brie’s papa (who was a pawnbroker) owed his baronetcy -to a loan of ten thousand pounds, advanced by him to the Prince -Regent on the security of a pinchbeck watch, which that improvident -scion of royalty, having no other available pawnable property, had -borrowed for the nonce from one of the helpers in his stable. Beaverup -is himself descended from Brian de Bois Guilbert on the father’s side, -and from the original Thane of Cawdor, who slew Duncan, on that of -the mother. Miss Withers will sometimes exchange deadly whispers -with him relative to the mushroom characteristics of our modern -peerage, and the departed glories of soccage and villeinage, infang -theof and outfang theof.</p> - -<p>Ah! and you are there, too, at Mrs. Van Umbug’s conversazione, -little Fanny Gillytin. Even so! behold Fanny in a black satin dress -and a laced <i>berthe</i>, and her yellow wavy hair parted on one side like a -man, seated on an ottoman in deep conversation with Professor Sventurato, -that red-hot republican, formerly one of the tribunes of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span> -Ultramontane Republic; next, under the name of Kibaub Bey, a colonel -in the Turkish service, warring against the Moscovs in Anatolia; then -deputy-assistant quartermaster-general under the immortal Walker, -liberator of Nicaragua; next, an actor at the Variétés Theatre, New -Orleans; next, keeper of an oyster and lager bier saloon, in One-Hundred-and-Twenty-seventh -Street, Ginslingopolis, in the United -States of America; next, of Paris, Milan, Turin, Vienna, and Pesth, -travelling as a broom-girl, an old woman, a Jesuit priest, a waiter at a -<i>café</i>, a Franciscan friar, and a clown to a circus; now of the Whetstone -Park College for Ladies (by whom he is adored), professor of -modern languages; during the foregoing time, and occasionally, a prisoner -in divers cells, wards, casemates, underground dungeons, <i>oubliettes</i>, -<i>piombi</i>, <i>ergastoli</i>, and penal colonies, from all of which he has escaped -by means little short of miraculous. Fanny, they say, is madly in love -with Sventurato, and would marry him, were not the professor already -allied to a Moldo-Wallachian lady, the daughter of a Kaïmakan, whose -heroism effected his escape from the citadel of Comorn, and who afterwards -essayed to poison him in his coffee. Fanny is no less mad after -liberty, by which she means universal democracy, universal spoliation, -and universal smash. She has some private fortune, which she dispenses -liberally among necessitous refugees; and in furtherance of the -sacred cause of liberty—as she understands it—she has written piles of -books. She is the authoress of that flaming epic, “The Tyrant’s -Entrails, or a Maiden’s Wish;” “Crowns and Coffins, or Oligarchs and -Ogres,” an historical retrospect; “Mazzini the Shiloh,” and “Victory -and Vitriol,” those soul-stirring pamphlets. She signs revolutionary -bank-notes; she applauds regicide; she is in correspondence (in a -complicated cipher which every police official from Paris to Petersburg -understands and laughs at) with foreign revolutionary committees. -She visits the Continent sometimes to distribute funds and ammunition. -She would be ready to assume man’s clothes for the benefit of her -adored liberty—as she understands it. Ah! Fanny, Fanny, pause; -ah! rash and foolish girl, for whom to be whipped and sent to bed -would be the better portion, forbear to play with these edged tools! -No second-sight is necessary for the result of these miserable machinations -to be manifest. I see the portico of a theatre brilliantly lighted -up; for a Tyrant and his young innocent wife come hither to-night. -He is hemmed in by guards and police-agents; yet, for all his escort, -desperate men rush forward and throw hand-grenades beneath his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span> -carriage-wheels. A horrible explosion, and then scores of peaceful men, -women, and children, are borne, dead or frightfully mutilated, to the -hospitals; and the Tyrant, safe and sound, bows to a cheering audience -from his box. I see four downcast men sitting between gensd’arme on -the criminals’ bench of a crowded court-house, before stern judges who -have doomed them to death before the very reading of the indictment. -I see a straight-waistcoated wretch sitting in his chair in a gloomy cell, -his head bent down, the governor and the priest standing by, while the -executioner cuts off his hair and shaves the back of his neck. I see a -grim, gray winter’s morning in the fatal Place of the Roquette. A space -is kept clear by thousands of horse, foot, artillery, and police; and, -thrust to the furthermost limits of the place, is a pale-faced crowd surging -like a sea. Then the drums beat, and the dismal procession issues -from a prison to a scaffold. Then, tottering between priests and turn-keys, -come two bare-footed men, with long white shirts over their garments, -and their faces concealed by hideous black veils. But the veils -are removed when they mount the scaffold, when one by one a distorted, -livid face, with white lips, appears, when the executioner seizes the -pinioned criminal, and flings him—yes, flings him, is the word—on -the plank. Then I see the horrible gash in the face as the moribund -strives to shape his mouth to utter his last words on earth; the last -up-turning of the starting eye-balls; but the plank reverses, the rollers -revolve, the slide closes, the spring is touched, the <span class="smcap">knife</span> falls, the -blood spouts, and the heads drop into the sawdust of the red basket. -Liberty, equality, and fraternity, flaming epics, soul-stirring pamphlets, -and complicated ciphers, have come to this miserable end. The Tyrant -is borne through the streets, the people shouting, and the maidens -strewing flowers at his feet. The telegram has been despatched from -the revolutionary committee to the Roquette, and the answer is a corpse -that quivers, the parricide’s shroud, and the headsman’s bloody axe.</p> - -<p>Of course there are some titled folks at Mrs. Van Umbug’s conversazione: -it would not be complete without a literary lord—a harmless -nobleman, generally, who has translated Horace, invented a new metre, -or discovered a new butterfly; and a literary lady—if separated from -her husband all the better, who paints him in the darkest of colours, as -the hero of every one of her novels. And, equally of course, Ethelred -Guffoon is here. Ethelred Guffoon is everywhere. He is one of Mrs. -Van Umbug’s special favourites. She calls him by his Christian name. -He hunts up new lions for her; occasionally he officiates as peacemaker,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span> -and prevents the lions from growling and fighting among themselves. -He rushes from Mrs. Van Umbug’s conversazione to the Pontoppidan -Theatre, to see a new face, which he must criticise; after that he will -sit up half the night to review Mr. Gladstone’s Homer, for the “Daily -Scratcher,” and will be at Somerset House by punctual office hours the -next morning. A man of the age, Ethelred Guffoon—a man of the time, -a good fellow, but frivolous.</p> - -<p>I wonder whether the celebrities one sees at this shadowy conversazione -really represent the literary world—the real people who write -the books and think the thoughts. I am afraid they do not. I fear -that to find the princes of the pen, the giants of the land of letters, I -must go further afield. Lo, here is Great Tom of Chelsea, sitting -cosily, in his back parlour, smoking a pipe of bird’s-eye with Eglintoun -Beaverup, and telling him he is about having his ceilings whitewashed. -Here is Lord Livy poring over Restoration and Revolution broadsides -by his reading-lamp in his lonely chambers in the Albany;—no, not -lonely, the spirits of the old historic men come from their dusty shelves -and clap him on the shoulder, and cry, “Go on and prosper, Thomas -Babington, Lord Livy.” The great Mr. Polyphemus, the novelist, is -bidden to the Duke of Sennacherib’s, and as he rolls to Sennacherib -House in his brougham, meditates satiric onslaughts on “Tom Garbage” -and “Young Grubstreet”—those Tom Thumb foes of his<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>—in -the next number of the “Pennsylvanians.” Mr. Goodman Twoshoes -is reading one of his own books to the members of the Chawbacon -Athenæum, and making, I am delighted to hear, a mint of money by -the simple process. Goldpen, the poet, has taken his wife and children -to Miss P. Horton’s entertainment; Bays, the great dramatist, is sitting -in the stalls of the Pontoppidan Theatre listening with rapt ears to the -jokes in his own farce; and Selwyn Cope, the essayist, is snoring snugly -between the sheets, having to rise very early to-morrow morning in -order to see a man hanged. And where are the working-men of literature, -the conscripts of the pen, doomed to carry Brown Bess, for sixpence -a day, all their lives? Where are Garbage and Grubstreet? In the -worst inn’s worst room, with racing prints half hung, the walls of plaster -and the floors of sand, at once a deal table but stained with beer, sits -Garbage playing four-handed cribbage with an impenitent hostler, a -sporting man who has sold the fight, and a potboy who is a returned<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span> -convict? Sits he there, I ask, or is he peacefully pursuing his vocation -in country lodgings? And Grubstreet, is he in some murky den, with -a vulture’s quill dipped in vitriol inditing libels upon the great, good, -and wise of the day? Wonder upon wonders, Grubstreet sits in a handsome -study—listening to his wife laughing, over her crochet work, at -Mr. Polyphemus’s last attack on him, and dandling a little child upon -his knee! Oh! the strange world in which we live, and the post that -people will knock their heads against!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus39" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus39.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ELEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.: A SCIENTIFIC CONVERSAZIONE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span></p> - -<p>From a literary to a learned or scientific conversazione, at one of -which we are about to take a transient peep, there is but one step; -indeed, literature is always welcome among the good-natured old Dryasdusts, -who are continually raking and rummaging, and rocking the -“placers” and “prospects” of knowledge, and turning up huge masses -of quartz, from which the nimble-fingered chymists of the pen extract -flakes of shining gold. Presto! we leave the Republic of Letters, and -are in the handsome rooms of the Royal Inquiring Society. This -meritorious association (incorporated by Royal charter) is perpetually -asking questions, and, though it often receives insufficient, if not ridiculous -responses, yet manages, at the close of every year, to accumulate -a highly-respectable stock of information on almost every imaginable -topic. The members, I will assume (would that such a society in strict -reality existed), are draughts from all the learned, scientific, philosophical, -antiquarian, and artistic societies in London; and on the first -Thursday in every month during the season, they meet to gloze over -curiosities exhibited for their inspection, to shake hands and crack jokes -with one another—I have even seen the friendly dig in the ribs, accompanied -by the sly chuckle, occasionally administered—and to ask questions -and receive answers. They are “Notes and Queries” (chattiest, -most quaintly-erudite of periodicals) incarnated. But they abjure not -the presence of the gentler, unscientific sex. These rare old boys of -learning and science thread their way through the rooms (sometimes -almost inconveniently crowded, for the Royal Inquiring Society is very -popular) with blooming wives and daughters on their arms. The young -ladies delight in these conversaziones—for a change. They are so -strange, so peculiar, they say. You don’t meet anybody to dance with -or to talk about the weather, or the Crystal Palace, or crinoline, or the -Botanical Gardens; but you see such nice old gentlemen, with dear, -shiny, bald heads, and such wonderful intellectual-looking beings, with -long hair, turn-down collars, and large feet, who smell musty bones with -unpronounceable names, and make extraordinary instruments to whiz -round, and point out places upon maps, and talk <i>so</i> cleverly (but so incomprehensibly -to you, my dears) about rusty coins and the backbones -of fishes, and battered saucepans, which <i>they</i> say are helmets. And -then there are the nice stereoscopes to peep through, and the beautiful -water-colour drawings and photographs to look at, and the old gentlemen -are so quiet and so polite, and so different from the young men one -meets in society, who either stammer and blush or are superciliously -rude and put their hands in their trousers’ pockets. Yes, young ladies, -the bald-headed old gentlemen, the careworn, long-haired, slovenly-looking -men, are quiet and polite. They were, many of them, poor and -humble once; but they have hewn out steps from the rock of knowledge, -whereby they have mounted to that better fortune—European, Worldwide -fame. That quiet man with gray hair, smiles when ministers -press upon him a knighthood or a baronetcy: “<i>Cui bono?</i>” he says; “I -would rather be a corresponding member of the Academy of Honolulu. -When I am old and broke, and past work, you may give me enough for -a little bread in my old days: I take it as a Right, not as a favour,” -just as Turner the painter left in his will the simple direction that he -was to be buried in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.—“St. Paul’s is -for the painters and the warriors, as Westminster Abbey is for the poets -and statesmen; but I want not your honours and titles. Such as you -have, you bestow on your lawyers and your lacqueys; but your captains -are almost ashamed to take the decorations that are shared by footmen -and backstairs cringers.”</p> - -<p>You have readily divined, I hope, why I have instructed the dexterous -limner who illustrates these pages to select for his subject the -scientific, rather than the literary, conversazione. The men of science -do not obtrude their personalities upon the public. Their fame is -known, their influence felt from London to Louisiana, but their portraits -seldom meet the public eye. Those of General Tom Thumb or -the Christy Minstrels would attract more crowds to the print-shop -windows, and sell better. But, good lack! what a commotion there -would be if the portraits of a series of <i>littérateurs</i>, in their habits as -they live, appeared in “Twice Round the Clock!” I should be denounced, -repudiated, vilified, abused, for the artist’s misdeeds. The -great Mr. Polyphemus would crush me mercilessly beneath his iron -heel; Grubstreet would (threaten to) kick me; Garbage would have -me on the hip; O’Roarer smite me beneath the fifth rib; Leathers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span> -devise devices against me to make my existence intolerable; and Ethelred -Guffoon castigate me terribly in his popular paper, “The Half-penny -Cane.” No; let me deal only with the shadows; and those that -the cobweb cap fits, e’en let them wear it.</p> - -<p class="tb">At Eleven o’Clock in the evening, the social institutions known as -Evening Parties assume their gayest and most radiant aspect. I think -that I have already hinted in these pages that I am not a very frequent -visitor at these entertainments. The truth must out: the people -don’t like me. At the last <i>soirée</i> I attended, a fashionable physician, -coming in very late, and throwing out for general hearing the fact that -he had been dining with an earl, I meekly suggested that he should -allow me to rub myself up against him, in order to catch some of his -aristocracy. All the women laughed, but the men looked as though -they would have very much liked to throw me out of the window. -There was one exception—a gentleman with one eye, and a face like a -glass case full of curiosities, so many different phases of expression were -there in it, who came across to me and made friends at once. But I -shall never be asked to that house again; and if I am ill, I won’t send for -the fashionable physician. <i>Timeo Danäos</i>, and the pills they give you.</p> - -<p>Thus circumstanced, I feel it becoming my degree to stay on the -outside of great houses, and, herding among the crowd and the link-men, -to witness the setting down and the taking up of the carriages -coming to or going from evening parties. It has always been my lot -so to stand on the kerb, to be a continual dweller on the threshold. I -have stood there to see people married, to see people buried, and have -murmured: “My turn must come next, surely;” but my time has not -come yet. A king has patted me on the head, and I have sate, as a -child, on the knee of the handsomest woman in Europe. I have been -on the brink of many a precipice; I have attained the edge of many a -cloud. But I have stopped there. I have always been like the recalcitrant -costermonger’s donkey, “going for to go,” but never accomplishing -the journey in its entirety.</p> - -<p>I spoke of link-men. I might tell you a not uninteresting story -regarding those industrials, in these gas-lit days growing day by day -rarer and rarer. The tarred-rope made links are indeed, save on extraneous -foggy nights, grown quite extinct, and are replaced by neat -lanterns; and the time will come when the old red jackets, famous as -a class from Grosvenor Square to the Horticultural Gardens at Chiswick,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span> -from the club-house fronts, on <i>levée</i> days, to the doorways of -evening parties, shall become quite obsolete. But there is a grand old -admiral living now—titled, high in office, before whom even his equals -in rank bow, and who can make post-captains wait in his ante-chambers—who -owes at least half his advancement and social position to the -services of the link-men. Thirty years ago this officer was a young -stripling, cast upon the ocean of London society. He was of good -family, but his acquaintances in the fashionable world were few and far -between, his influence was <i>nil</i>, and his promotion was therefore more -than dubious. But at the Opera, then the King’s Theatre, he happened -to form a shilling-giving on the one side, cap-touching on the -other, acquaintance with a link-man—Silver Tom, I think he was -called, from a silver badge he always wore, presented to him by a noble -marquis whom he had saved from being prematurely scrunched on a -certain dark night between his own carriage wheels and those of the -equipage of a duchess, his grandmamma. “Silver Tom,” moved by -gratitude, and experienced by his (outside) knowledge of the fashionable -world, put the then young and poor lieutenant up to what is vernacularly -known as “a thing or two.” Not a grand entertainment -could be given in Fashionabledom, but on the lieutenant’s arrival in -full evening costume, “Silver Tom” bawled up his name to the footman -in attendance on the door-step (the <i>régime</i> of cards was not so strictly -attended to as it is now); he on the door-step halloaed it out to the -powdered attendant on the first landing; he, in his turn, gave it to the -black-vestmented groom of the chambers, who proclaimed it to the -world in general in sonorous tones, and the bold lieutenant was inducted -to the saloons of reception. Who was to know whether he had -been invited to the feast or not? Not, certainly, the hostess, who, -perhaps, did not know two hundred and fifty of her five hundred guests -by sight. Some had been asked by her husband, some by herself. Not -certainly the guests, who would not have been much surprised if they -had met the Hottentot Venus or the King of the Cannibal Islands. -The lieutenant made his bow and himself comfortable; was sure to -meet some lady or gentleman in society whom he knew, and probably -departed with a list of half-a-dozen newly-formed and valuable acquaintances. -He went on and prospered. Gradually, from being met and -liked at great houses, he received genuine invitations, and, as I have -premised, he made a good end of it at the Admiralty. I hope he pensioned -“Silver Tom.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus40" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus40.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ELEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.: AN EVENING PARTY.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span></p> - -<p>Who is dead by this time, most probably; but I can still stand by -the side of his successor, at the door of the great house, by the lamp -and lantern’s glare, and see the gay company pass in and out. How -the horses champ! how the dresses rustle! how the jewels shine! and -what fair women and brave men are here congregated! Messrs. Weippert’s -or Collinet’s band are upstairs; Messrs. Gunter’s men have -brought the ices; there are flirtations in the conservatories, and -squeezings of hands interchanged on the stairs. Vows of love are -spoken, flowers from bouquets are given; and is it not, after all, the -same old, old story, that boys and girls will love one another, and that -the old people will look on with pretended severity, but with real contentment -in their hearts, and that there will be present a few jealous -and cankered ones, who will look on to envy the others because they -are so happy? Drive envy from your hearts, ye who ride not in gilded -chariots, and move not in the “fashionable circles.” There is as much -truth, love, and gaiety at a “sixpenny hop,” between maid-servants -and journeymen bakers, as at the most refined evening parties.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="MIDNIGHT">MIDNIGHT.—THE HAYMARKET, AND THE SUB-EDITOR’S ROOM.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>Midnight: an awful sound. Supposing you were to be hanged at -three o’clock in the morning, as I am doomed to be, in a literary sense, -how would you like to hear twelve o’clock sound? But three hours -more to live! In three hours “the sheriff he will come,” and the -chaplain, and the hangman, as they came to Mr. Samuel Hall <i>en route</i> -for Tyburn. In three hours the clock will run down; the pendulum -shall oscillate no more; Time shall rest on his scythe; the last grain -of sand shall run out, and of these ephemeral papers you shall say <i>fuit</i>. -We have clomb the hill together, and we will rest together at the foot.</p> - -<p>Glancing over my map of London, and retracing the course of our -peregrinations, I find, with some complacency, that we have not, after -all, left many parts of the metropolis unexplored. We have been to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span> -Camberwell and to Hyde Park Corner; to Pentonville and to London -Bridge; to Billingsgate and to Euston Square. It is true, that we -have not yet penetrated to the interior of Buckingham Palace, or the -condemned cell at Newgate, nor do I think that I shall assume the part -of the Boy Jones or a visiting magistrate for your amusement; but -we have been “behind the scenes” of more places than theatres since -this clock was first wound up. It is not without regret now, that I -linger over and dally with my few remaining hours. They have been very -pleasant ones for me. I shall miss the printer’s boy (for, be it known, -I am about to abandon literature and go into trade, though I have not -yet settled the precise business—corn, or coals, or commission agency). -I shall miss, beyond aught else, the daily deluge of letters from anonymous -correspondents—praising, blaming, complaining, or inquiring, -but all, I am glad to say, very appreciative readers of my shiftless -writings.</p> - -<p>But we have come to the complexion of midnight, and the hour -must be described. It is fraught with meaning for London. You -know that in poetical parlance midnight is the time when church-yards -yawn (they had need to be weary now, for the Board of Health -won’t allow them to receive any occupants <i>intra muros</i>), and graves -give up their dead. And there be other grave-yards in London town—yards -where no tombstones or brick vaults are—that at midnight -yawn and send forth ghosts to haunt the city. A new life begins for -London at midnight. Strange shapes appear of men and women who -have lain a-bed all the day and evening, or have remained torpid in -holes and corners. They come out arrayed in strange and fantastic -garments, and in glaringly gaslit rooms screech and gabble in wild -revelry. The street corners are beset by night prowlers. Phantoms -arrayed in satin and lace flit upon the sight. The devil puts a -diamond ring on his taloned finger, sticks a pin in his shirt, and -takes his walks abroad. It is a stranger sight than even the painter -Raffet imagined in his picture of Napoleon’s midnight review, and -it is, I think, a much better thing to be at home and in bed, than -wandering about and peeping into the mysteries of this unholy London -night life.</p> - -<p>I know this book (to my sorrow) well; have conned its grim -pages, and studied its unwholesome lore, attentively. But I am not -about to make you a too-recondite participant in my knowledge. Were -it not that the appointed hours were meted out to me, and that from one -of the hours—midnight—the Haymarket is inseparable, the wicked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span> -street should find no place here; but I must be faithful to my trust, -and the bad thoroughfare must be in part described.</p> - -<p>Foreigners have frequently pointed out to me a peculiar aspect of -London, and one which appeals strongly to the observant faculties, -and which, nevertheless, may escape us Cockneys who are to the -metropolitan manner born. It is the duality of the huge city, not so -much as regards its night and day side, as in its Sunday and week-day -appearance. And this is not wholly to be ascribed to the shop -shutters being closed. The Strand on Ash Wednesdays and Good -Fridays is still the Strand; but on the Sabbath it would seem as -though every house in the West and East ends had put on its special -Sunday suit, and had decorated itself with a certain smug spruceness -quite marked and distinct. You have a difficulty in recognising your -most familiar streets. Regent Street is quite altered. The aspect of -Piccadilly is entirely changed; and Cheapside is no more like the -Cheapside of yesterday than Hamlet is like Hecuba. The people, -too, are not by any means the same people you meet on week-days. -Not only their clothes are different, but their faces, their manners, -their very gait and bearing, seem changed. You meet people out -walking on Sundays, who during the week are confined to places -where they are hidden from the public gaze, or are at most but half -visible. You see the bar-maids’ skirts and the pawnbrokers’ legs on -Sundays. From Monday to Saturday you can see but their busts. -You may nod to a sheriff’s officer on Sunday without entertaining any -apprehensions as to the piece of paper he may have against you in -that dismal black leather pocket-book of his. The omnibus roofs are -covered, the steamboats’ decks are crowded, the cabs full, the pavement -thronged, the very saddle-horses bestridden by men who seem of -a different race to the outside world of the previous four and twenty -hours. Dirty streets look clean; disreputable streets decorous; and -thoroughfares that were as still as mice during the week, become -quite noisy on Sundays with carriage and cab wheels, as sinners of -wealth and distinction rattle up to the doors of the fashionable chapel.</p> - -<p>It is the privilege of the unique Haymarket to be like its week-night -self on Sunday; but in the six mundane days to be a totally different -Haymarket from the street which it becomes immediately after -midnight. True, by daylight, and during the early part of the evening, -it is that which it will remain all night: a broad thoroughfare inclining -slightly downhill northward; a theatre on its eastern, a colonnaded -opera-house on its western side; a thoroughfare containing a sufficiency<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span> -of shops for the sale of general merchandise, but, predominating above -these, a crowd of hotels, <i>restaurants</i>, cigar-divans, coffee-houses, and -establishments for the sale of lobsters, oysters, and pickled salmon, according -to the seasons in which those dainties are considered most fit -to be enjoyed. But it is not the same—no, not at all the same—Haymarket -to which it will suddenly turn, when the clock of St. -Martin’s church shall proclaim the hour of midnight. The change, -at first imperceptible, is yet in a moment more immense. As though -Harlequin had smitten the houses—and the people also—with his -wand, the whole Haymarket wakes, lights, rises up with a roar, a -rattle, and a shriek quite pantomimic, if not supernatural. The latter -image would, I think, be the most <i>vrai semblant</i>. “Hey for fun!” -“How are you to-morrow?” and “How are you?” are the cries -and the pass-words. The painted Clown (in mosaic jewellery, and all-round -collar, an astonishing cravat, and a variegated shirt) grins his -grin and tumbles on the pavement. He is not above stealing an occasional -sausage, bonneting a policeman, overturning an image-boy’s -stock in trade, or throwing the contents of a fishwoman’s basket about. -Harlequin in a mask and patchwork-suit is here, there, and everywhere, -conjuring money out of people’s pockets, and perpetually pursued -by a vindictive Sprite, habited in the garb of a police constable. -The lean and slippered Pantaloon hobbles over the flags, and grimaces, -with his wicked old countenance, beneath the gas-lamps. And Columbine, -<i>Wallah billah!</i> Columbine in muslins, spangles, and artificial -flowers, is here, there, and everywhere, too, and dances her miserable -jigs to the sorry music of the fife, viol, and tabor, squeaking, scraping, -and thumping at the gin-shop by the corner of the court.</p> - -<p>Midnight: the play is over, and the audience pour from the Haymarket -Theatre. The aristocratic opera season is concluded by this -time of the year, and the lovers of the drama have it all their own way. -Crowds of jovial young clerks and spruce law students cluster beneath -the portico, yet convulsed by the humours of Mr. Buckstone. Happy -families of rosy children, radiant in lay-down collars, white skirts and -pink sashes, trot from the entrance to the dress-circle under the wing -of benevolent papa and stout good-humoured mamma, with a white -burnous, and a tremendous fan; their healthy countenances all beaming -and mantling with smiles, and joyously recalling the jokes of that funny -old man in the farce, or expatiating on the glories of the concluding -<i>tableau</i>, with its tinsel and gold leaf, its caryatides of ballet girls, and -its red and blue fire, in Mr. Talfourd’s last sparkling burlesque.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span> -Happy, happy days and frame of mind, when the theatre can give such -delights as these. Isn’t it better to sit amazed and delighted in the -front row of the dress-circle, or on the third row of the pit, roaring at -the stalest Joe Millerisms, and clapping the hands at the tomfool feats -of tumbling, than to lie <i>perdu</i> in a private-box, now scowling, and -now sneering, like Stricknine, the great theatrical critic, who will go -and sup afterwards at the Albion, on an underdone mutton-chop, and, -calling for pen, ink, and paper, slaughter the inoffensive burlesque -mercilessly. Stricknine can’t write burlesques himself. He can’t -write books; he can only slaughter, and must have been apprenticed -in his youth to Bannister or Slater. And, slaughterer as he is, he is -not equal to the manly business of knocking down a bullock with a -pole-axe. Give him a long keen knife, and he will puncture the neck -of a lamb, and that is all.</p> - -<p>Ethelred Guffoon (who has been to three theatres to-night) bustles -out from his stall with his lorgnette in its shagreen case. Mr. Kickeroe, -Q.C., comes from the pit, shouldering his umbrella. Kickeroe -has been a constant visitor to the pit of the Haymarket any time these -twenty years, though he could easily afford a private box once if not -twice a week. His greatest extravagance is to purchase four upper-box -tickets when Mr. Buckstone takes his benefit. He is an ardent -admirer of the Haymarket five-act comedies; and people say that many -of his most effective and jury-touching perorations have been drawn -from the sentimental “tags” of the Haymarket dramatists. Trotting -down the box-stairs, too, comes vivacious, learned, chatty, kindly, -abusive Mr. Boblink, with his head prematurely white, but his heart -as green as it was thirty years since. Mr. Boblink is generally -beloved, though regarded with a humorous terror for his vituperative -qualities. He expatiates on the necessity of breaking butterflies on -the wheel, although, good man, he would not harm a particle of pollen -on their wings. His fierce language is but the bellow of the blunderbuss: -here is no bullet, not so much as a bit of old hat for wadding in -his gun. He strikes with a wooden sword, and scourges malefactors -with a knout whose lash is made of floss-silk. He wears the mask of -a Gorgon horrible to see; but the mask is transparent as glass, and you -may descry the honest genial face of the man wreathed with sly smiles -behind it. So he goes through life—a <i>bourru bienfaisant</i>—hitting -men sounding thwacks with a bladder full of peas, and recording -sentence of literary death against culprits, knowing full well that the -sentence will never be carried out. To hear Boblink talk, you would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span> -think him the most malevolent creature breathing. He is so different -from smooth, quiet, smiling Mr. Stricknine, (<i>he</i> only scowls when he is -alone) who presses your hand warmly, and immediately betakes himself -to the Albion, there to make a neat <i>fricassée</i> of your reputation, -and, in the most polished and classical language, insinuate that you are -a hopeless fool with dishonest propensities. And yet Mr. Boblink has -a deadly armoury of his own at home, and knows the <i>tierce</i> and the -<i>carte</i> and the “<i>raison démonstrative</i>,” and has, when exasperated, -proved himself so cunning of fence, that I would see him hanged before -I would fight with him in earnest.</p> - -<p>Supper is now the great cry, and the abundant eating and drinking -resources of the Haymarket are forthwith called into requisition. Bless -us all! there must be something very dusty and exhaustive in the -British drama to make this Haymarket audience so clamorous for supper. -By the ravenous hunger and thirst displayed by the late patrons -of the theatre, you would imagine that they had gone without dinner -for a week. You may sup in the Haymarket as your taste would lead, -or as the state of your finances would counsel—if people followed such -counsel—you to sup. You may cut your coat according to your cloth. -Are you rich—there is Dubourg’s, the Hôtel de Paris, and the upstairs -department of the Café de l’Europe. There is no lack of cunning -cooks there, I warrant, to send you up pheasants and partridges <i>en -papillotte</i>; <i>filets</i>, with mushrooms or truffles, culinary gewgaws that -shall cost five shillings the dish. Yea, and cellarers will not be wanting -to convey to you the Roederer’s Champagne, the fragrant Clos -Vougeot, the refreshing Lafitte, and the enlivening Chambertin with -yellow seal; smooth waiters to attend to your minutest wishes, and -bring you the handsome reckoning on an electro-silver plateau, and, -with many bows, return you what odd change there may be out of a -five-pound note. I do not say that the Haymarket contains such gorgeous -supper-houses as the Maison Dorée, the Café de Paris, the Café -Anglais, or Vachette’s; but I have seen some notable <i>parties fines</i> -within its precincts. The Haymarket never was virtuous; so there is -never any question about the cakes and ale, and the ginger that is hot -in the mouth, to be found therein.</p> - -<p>If still your taste leads you towards French cookery—though you -wince somewhat at the idea of claret, Burgundy, and Champagne to -follow—there exists a second-class French <i>restaurant</i> or two where -succulent suppers may be obtained at moderate prices. If unpretending -chops, steaks, kidneys, sausages, or Welsh rabbit, washed down by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span> -the homely British brown stout, and followed perchance by the soothing -cigar, and the jorum of hot anything-and-water: if such be your -ambition, I should advise you not to sup in the Haymarket at all; but -to wait till one o’clock and sup with me. I will show you the whereabouts. -Such chops and steaks and <i>et ceteras</i>, you may indeed obtain -in the neighbourhood, but I like them not. If your funds and your -credit be very low, why, you can enter one of the taverns—if you can -reach the bar for the crowd of Bacchanalians that are gathered before -it, and sup on the quarter of a pork pie, a sausage roll, and a Banbury -cake, washed down by a glass of pale ale; nay, if you be yet lower in -pocket, and your available wealth be limited to the possession of the -modest and retiring penny, you may, at the doors of most of the taverns, -meet with an ancient dame, of unpretending appearance, bearing a flat -basket lined with a fair white cloth. She for your penny will administer -to you a brace of bones, covered with a soft white integument, -which she will inform you are “trotters.” There is not much meat -on them; but they are very toothsome and succulent. It is no business -of yours to inquire whether these be sheep’s trotters or pigs’ -trotters, or the trotters of corpulent rats or overgrown mice. They -are trotters. Look not the gift-horse in the mouth; for the penny was -perhaps a gift, however strictly you may have purchased the trotters. -Eat them, and thank heaven, and go thy ways, and take a cooling -drink at the nearest pump with an iron ladle chained to it, which is, -if I am not mistaken, over-against St. James’s Church in Piccadilly. -Or, perhaps you are fond of ham-sandwiches. The unpretending dame -with the basket will straightway vend you two slices of a pale substance, -resembling in taste and texture sawdust pressed into a concrete -form, between which is spread a veneer of inorganic matter, having -apparently a strong affinity to salted logwood. This is ham! The -concrete sawdust is bread! The whole is a sandwich! These luxuries -are reckoned very nice by some persons, and quite strengthening.</p> - -<p>Or, “another way,” as old Mrs. Glasse says in her cookery book. -At the Coventry Street extremity of the Haymarket stands that celebrated -and long-established institution known as the Royal Albert -Potato Can. At that three-legged emporium of smoking vegetables, -gleaming with block tin painted red, and brazen ornaments, the humble -pilgrim of the Haymarket may halt and sup for a penny. For a -penny? What say I? for a halfpenny even, may the belated and impoverished -traveller obtain a refreshment at once warm, farinaceous, -and nourishing. Garnish your potato, when the Khan of the Haymarket<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[324]</span> -has taken him from his hot blanket-bed, and cut him in two—garnish -him with salt and pepper, eschew not those condiments, they -are harmless, nay, stimulating; but ho! my son, beware of the butter! -it is confusion. Better a dry potato and a contented mind, than -dreadful Irish salt grease—for butter I dare not call it, which may -give you a bilious attack that will last for a month.</p> - -<p>I should like to know what has been the use of my recommending -these various grades of supper to you, from the lordly Café de l’Europe -to the humble Potato Can, when I should have known all along, and -as it were intuitively, that your mind was bent upon oysters, and that -oysters after the play you were determined to have. Come along, -then, a’ goodness’ name, and if oysters are to be the order of the night, -e’en let us have them.</p> - -<p>The London oyster, or rather shell and cured fish shop, for the sale -of lobsters, crabs, pickled and kippered salmon, bloaters, and dried -sprats, is combined with that of the delicious molluscs of which so -many thousands are nightly consumed; the London oyster-shop, and -particularly the Haymarket one, stands, and is a thing apart, among -the notabilia of this metropolis. You know how the French eat -oysters. There is the <i>belle écaillère</i>, generally a hideous old woman of -about sixty, with a snuffy-looking pocket-handkerchief twisted round -her head, who sits at the <i>restaurant</i> door amid a grove of oyster-shells -and hanks of straw, and, in the intervals of oyster-opening, darns -worsted stockings. The nimble <i>garçons</i> come skipping from the -gilded saloons of the <i>restaurant</i> within, and demand their required -dozens and half-dozens from the <i>écaillère</i> without. The bearded frequenters -of the <i>restaurant</i> evidently think it an epicurean and fashionable -thing to commence, or rather precede dinner, by swallowing so -many oysters. There are enterprising <i>bon vivants</i> who will even go so -far as their two dozen: but I dissent from them, for three reasons: -The first, that, in my opinion, oysters should be eaten either alone—of -themselves, by themselves, or for themselves—or that they should -be consumed full twenty minutes before the repast; for the second, -that all French oysters, whether of Ostend, Maremnes, or Canale, are -to me utterly abominable, having—even when they are fresh, which -is seldom—a certain coppery flavour, superlatively nauseous; for the -third, that in the best French <i>restaurants</i>, it is difficult, if not impossible, -to procure Cayenne pepper; and, without that rubicund condiment, -I would give no more for the best “natives” than for a plate of -cold boiled veal without salt. The <i>écaillère</i> element is the only -one prevalent in France relative to the sale of oysters, and the -consumers pick them off the shells with little silver pitchforks, -squeeze lemon over them, and eat them daintily in many mouthfuls. -Fie upon such miminy-piminy ways! Oyster-shops the French don’t -seem to understand at all. At Chevet’s, that vast comestible shop in -the Palais Royal, they keep oysters, and lobsters, and prawns, and -shrimps—keep them as a show in the windows for a week or two, -when, their novelty beginning to wear off, they are disposed of, I presume, -to the nobility and gentry. They tell a story of a Frenchman, -who hoarded up his money, in order to purchase <i>un homard magnifique</i>, -which he had seen at Chevet’s, and to which he had taken a fancy.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[325]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus41" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus41.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">MIDNIGHT: SUPPER-ROOMS IN THE HAYMARKET.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[326]</span></p> - -<p>Americans tell me that though the oyster attains high perfection, -and is held in culinary reverence as high, in the States, anything -resembling our Haymarket oyster-shop is not to be found in New -York. But on Broadway Pavement, during the gay night, brilliant -lamps, sometimes coloured in fantastic devices, invite you to enter underground -temples of oyster-eating. These are called oyster-cellars. -Some are low and disreputable enough, and not impassible to imputations -of gouging, bowie-kniving, and knuckle-dusting; but others are -really magnificent suites of apartments, decorated with mirrors and -chandeliers, and glowing with gilding, mahogany, and crimson velvet; -and here you may consume oysters as small as periwinkles or as large -as cheese-plates—oysters of strange and wondrous flavours—oysters -with <i>bizarre</i> and well-nigh unpronounceable names—oysters cooked in -ways the most marvellous and multifarious: stewed, broiled, fried, -scolloped, barbacued, toasted, grilled, and made hot in silver chafing -dishes like the delicious preparation known as “despatch lobster.” -You wash down suppers in oyster-cellars such as these with Hock and -Champagne; yet for all the splendour and the rarity of the cooking, -and the variety of oysters, I will abide by the Haymarket oyster-shop, -rude, simple, primitive as it is, with its peaceful concourse of customers -taking perpendicular refreshment at the counter, plying the -unpretending pepper-castor, and the vinegar-cruet with the perforated -cork, calling cheerfully for crusty bread and pats of butter; and, -tossing off foaming pints of brownest stout, (pale ale—save in bottles, -and of the friskiest description—is, with oysters, a mistake) contentedly -wipe their hands on the jack-towel on its roller afterwards.</p> - -<p class="tb">As in this real life of ours, Old Age and Infancy often meet on -neutral ground, and the prattle of the child goes forth with hand out-stretched<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[327]</span> -to meet the graybeard’s maundering: so, oh reader, do I -find the beginning and the end of these papers drawing closer and -closer together. Ere many hours they will meet; and their conjunction -shall be the signal for their decay. You will remember how, -when the day was very young, the morning scarce swaddled, and -kicking in his cradle with encrimsoned heels (Aurora, the nurse, had -chafed them), we visited a great newspaper office, and saw the publication -of the monster journal. Now, when midnight itself is fallen -into the sere and yellow, we stand once more within the precincts of -journalism. This is not, however, the monster journal that has all -Printing House Square to roar and rattle in. No: our office is in the -Strand. We are free of the charmed domains. We pass up a narrow -court running by the side of the office, push aside a heavy door, -ascend the creaking staircase, and discreetly tapping at a door, this -time covered with green baize, find ourselves in the presence of Mr. -Limberly, the sub-editor of the “Daily Wagon.”</p> - -<p>Let us cast a glance round the room. What a litter it is in, to be -sure! what piles of newspapers, home and country ones, mangled and -disembowelled by the relentless scissors, cumber the floor! More -newspapers on shelves—old files, these—more on the table; letters -opened and unopened, wet proof-sheets, files of “copy,” books for -review, just sent by the publishers, or returned by the reviewers, after -they have duly demolished the contents and the authors. And all -about the room are great splashes and dried-up pools of ink, and the -ceiling is darkened with the smoke of innumerable candles—gas was, -until very lately, considered anything but orthodox in a newspaper -office, and many sub-editors still find its sharp, harsh, flickering, -though brilliant light, far inferior to the honest, though evil-smelling, -old tallow-candles, in their tin sconces and japanned shades. The -“Daily Wagon,” be it understood, is a newspaper of the good old -Conservative way of thinking—no Liberal notions, or humbug of that -sort: Church and State, strict constitutional and social discipline -(including game-laws, religious disabilities, church-rates, unequal -taxation, rural justices’ justice, and flogging in the army and schools)—the -True Blue British line of politics, in fact. Thus situated, the -“Wagon,” one of whose proprietors is said to be a peer, another a -bishop, and a third a brewer—nothing could be more respectable—sticks -to its old office, its old rooms, and its old staff. The two -former have not been painted within the memory of man; though it -must be admitted that the latter wash quite as frequently as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[328]</span> -<i>employés</i> of the “Morning Cracker,” with its bran-new offices, its -bran-new furniture, its bran-new type, paper, machines, writers—bran-new -everything but ideas. The “Daily Wagoners” affect to -sneer at the “Morning Cracker,” which, in its turn, laughs the -“Wagon” to scorn; but both combine in abusing the monster journal -of Printing House Square. “Wagoner” and “Cracker” are both -high-priced journals. So, of course, they both feel bound to ignore -even the existence of a journal called the “Daily Bombshell,” which -somehow manages to keep up a better staff of writers, and a larger -establishment, to give fresher news, more accurate intelligence, more -interesting correspondence, and reflections on public events incomparably -more powerful, than its high-priced contemporaries, all for -the small sum of one penny. The “Wagon” and the “Cracker” -are in a chronic state of rage at the “Bombshell,” though they pretend -to ignore its existence; but one day the bishop who is interested -in the “Wagon,” hearing that the circulation of the abhorred -“Bombshell” exceeded fifty thousand, while that of his own beloved -journal fluctuated between five and seven hundred, drove down in -almost delirious excitement to the offices of the “Wagon”—drove -down in his own carriage, with his mitre on the panels—and suggested -to Mr. Fitzfluke, the editor, that the price of the paper should forthwith -come down to one penny. But Mr. Fitzfluke shook his head in -respectful deprecation of the proposition, and summoned to his aid -Mr. Limberly, who likewise shook his head, and whispered the magic -word “advertisements.” A grand consultation between the proprietors -took place next day, whereat the brewer came out in a rabidly -conservative point of view, and declared, striking a leathern-covered -table, that he would sooner see his own “Entire” retailed at a penny -a pint, than submit to an imitation in price of the “rubbishing -prints” of a set of “dam radicals.” So the “Daily Wagon” keeps -up its price, and manages to crawl on in a tortoise-like manner, -supported by its advertisements. It sleeps a good deal, and doesn’t -want much to eat; and will bear being trodden on, stumbled -over, nay, occasionally jumped upon, without seeming in the least -to mind it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[329]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus42" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus42.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">MIDNIGHT: THE SUB-EDITOR’S ROOM.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[330]</span></p> - -<p>Mr. Limberly sits, then, in his sub-editorial throne—an unpretending -cane-bottomed arm-chair—surrounded by his <i>attachés</i> and -myrmidons, his good men and true. The electric telegraph messenger—a -spruce lad in the not unbecoming uniform of that recently-formed -corps—has just arrived, bearing a message which may announce either -war in the East or Peace in China, either a fluctuation in the funds at -St. Petersburg, or a murder at Haverfordwest; either the wreck of a -steamer, with all hands lost, on the north-west coast of Ireland, or -the arrival in the Mersey of a clipper ship from Australia, with a few -score thousand ounces of gold in her treasure-room, to say nothing of -the nuggets, the gold dust, and the bankers’ receipts in the pockets of -her wide-awake-hatted passengers. But all is fish that comes to Mr. -Limberly’s net. Leading article and literary criticism, theatrical -notices and prices of railway and mining shares, advertisements and -letters from eulogistic or indignant correspondents, telegrams and -foreign tittle-tattle, fires, murders, fatal accidents, coroners’ inquests, -enormous gooseberries, showers of frogs, the acceptances of the St. -Leger, and the prices of hops in the Borough Market: he looks -upon all these items but as so much “copy,” for which the master -printer is waiting, and which are required to fill the ever-yawning -columns of the “Daily Wagon.” Snipping and pasting, extracting, -excising, revising, and correcting, Mr. Limberly will work late into -the night and early into the morning; but he will not dream of retiring -to rest till the paper itself be “put to bed,”—<i>i.e.</i>, laid on the -printing machine for the requisite number of copies to be struck off; -and even then he will probably go and smoke a cigar at the “Crimson -Hippopotamus,” in the Strand, hard by—the great house of call for -morning journalists—before he hails his matutinal cab, the driver of -which waits for him on the stand, and looks out for him quite as a -regular customer, and rattles over Waterloo Bridge to his well-deserved -bed.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ONE_AM">ONE O’CLOCK A.M.—EVANS’S SUPPER-ROOMS, AND A FIRE.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>In the bleak, timbery city of Copenhagen, so terribly maltreated at the -commencement of the century by Admiral Lord Nelson, K.C.B.; in -that anything-but-agreeable capital of Denmark, where raw turnips -sliced in brandy form a favourite whet before dinner,—where they -blacklead (apparently) the stairs in the houses, and three-fourths of -every apartment are sacrificed to the preposterous exigencies of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[331]</span> -Stove; where the churches are mostly of wood, and the streets are -paved with a substance nearly resembling petrified kidney potatoes; -in Copenhagen, then, I formed, some thirty months since, a transient -acquaintance with an old gentleman in green spectacles. He was a -Dane, formerly commercial, now retired from business. He came -every day, and with unvarying regularity, to take his post-prandial -coffee and <i>petit verre</i> in the <i>speise saal</i> of the hotel then afflicted with -my custom: he generally indulged in the refreshment by dipping a -large lump of sugar in the hot liquid, sucking it, replenishing it, occasionally -replacing the lump, till the cup was emptied; and he snuffed -eternally. These are not such peculiar characteristics of a foreign -gentleman that I have any special cause to dwell upon them here; -but as the hotel was very empty, and I was very dull, I made this old -gentleman—as my incorrigible habit is—a study and a theme. I converted -him into a mental clothes-prop, and hung an infinity of fantastic -notions, theories, and speculations upon him. We soon became, -thanks to the French language and constant proximity, tolerably good -friends. Of course the old gentleman did not delay long in asking me -why I had come to Copenhagen. <i>That</i> question is invariably asked -you—<i>ad nauseam</i>, too—throughout the North of Europe. They begin -at Hamburg, continue at Berlin, return to it in Denmark and Sweden, -and end at St. Petersburg. If a man be not a commercial traveller, -or a diplomatist, a spy, or a negotiator of forged bank-notes, these -Northern people seem utterly bewildered as to his object in coming -to such latitudes. The Rhine, the Mediterranean, the Bosphorus, the -Holy Land, Switzerland, the Tyrol, good; but the North: <i>que diable!</i> -what does he want in that galley? I confess that I was somewhat at -a loss to give a straightforward answer to the old gentleman in green -spectacles. I might have told him that I had come to see the birthplace -of Hans Christian Anderson; but then I was not quite certain -as to whether that delightful Danish writer first drew breath in Copenhagen. -It would have been equally disingenuous to have adduced a -wish to see the famous Thorwaldsen’s Museum as the reason for my -visit; for with shame I acknowledge that, having no guide-book with -me, I had entirely forgotten that the Danish metropolis contained that -triumph of plastic art. It is true that, by attentive study of the -glorious museum, I subsequently atoned for my mnemonic shortcomings. -So, being on the horns of a dilemma, I elected to tell the truth—not -a bad plan under any circumstances—and said that I had come -to Copenhagen for the simple reason that I did not know what to do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[332]</span> -with myself, and would have gone with equal alacrity to Nova Zembla -or to Katamandu; which candid avowal placed me on a most confidential -footing with the old gentleman in green spectacles, and materially -assisted the progress of our intercourse.</p> - -<p>Now, whatever can this Danish old gentleman and his verdant -spectacles have to do with One o’Clock in the morning, and Evans’s -Supper-rooms? You must have patience, and you shall hear. In -subsequent chatty interviews, it came out that the old gentleman had -once upon a time—a very long while ago, more than a quarter of a -century—been in England. His reminiscences of our country were -very dim and indistinct by this time. His knowledge of the English -language, I take it, had not at any time been very extensive, and it -was reduced now to a few phrases and interjections; some trifling -oaths, a few facetious party-cries, current, I presume, at the time of -his visit, and having, mainly, reference to Catholic Emancipation and -the Reform Bill; these, with some odds and ends of tattered conversation, -formed his philological stock in trade. But, even as “single-speech -Hamilton” had his solitary oration, Mrs. Dubsy’s hen her one -chick, and Major Panton his unique run of luck at the card-table, so -my old gentleman had his one story which he persisted in delivering -in English. It was a mysterious and almost incomprehensible legend; -and began thus: “’Ackney Rod! Aha!” Then he would snuff and -suck his lump of sugar, and I would look on wonderingly. Then he -would explain matters a little. “’Ackney Rod. I live there so long -time ago. Aha!” This would lead to a renewed series of snuffings -and suckings, and he would proceed—“Vontleroy he not ’ang. He -rich man, banquier in America. He ’ang in a sospender basket. Aha!” -For the life of me, I could not for a long time understand the drift -about “Vontleroy” and the “sospender basket;” but at length a -light broke in upon me, and I began to comprehend that this wondrous -legend related to Henry Fauntleroy, the banker, who was hanged -at Newgate for forgery, and concerning whose apocryphal rescue from -strangulation—by the means, according to some, of a silver tube in -his windpipe, and, according to others, of an apparatus of wicker-work, -which, suspending him from the waist, so took the strain off his -neck—rumours were current at the time of his death and for a considerable -period afterwards. This cock-and-bull story was well-nigh -all the poor man could recollect about England, and he decidedly -made the most of it.</p> - -<p>And, after all, I have only introduced him as a species of gentleman-usher<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[333]</span> -to another foreign acquaintance—with whom my intercourse -was even more transient, for I met him but once in my life, and -then had only about seven minutes’ conversation with him on the deck -of a steamer—whose knowledge of English and recollection of England -were even more limited. “Ver fine place,” he remarked, referring -to my native land. “Moch night plaisir, London. Sing-song ver -good. Ev’ns magnifique.” There, the secret of my digression is out -now, and I land you—somewhat wearied with the journey, it may be—under -the Piazza of Covent Garden Market.</p> - -<p>Mr. Charles Dickens once declared in print that were he to start -a horse for the Derby, he would call that horse Fortnum and Mason: -the delightful hampers of edibles and drinkables vended by that eminent -firm about the period of Epsom Races being connected with the -most pleasurable of his impressions concerning that exciting sporting -event. I have no doubt that my steamboat acquaintance was not by -any means solitary in his enthusiastic estimate of the “magnifique” -nature of Ev’ns, or <span class="smcap">Evans’s</span>, and its “sing-song;” and his opinion is, -I have reason to believe, shared by many hundreds of English country -gentlemen who patronise the Bedford, the Tavistock, the Hummums, -and other kindred Covent Garden hotels, and who at Evans’s find -their heartiest welcome and their most inexhaustible fund of amusement. -Nor can I see myself, exactly, how this great town of ours -could manage to get on without the time-honoured Cave of Harmony; -for be it known to all men—at least to so many as do not know it -already—Evans’s, though Captain Costigan is no longer permitted to -sing his songs there, and even Colonel Newcome, were he to volunteer -to oblige the company with a song, would be politely requested to -desist by a waiter—is the “Cave,” and the “Cave” is Evans’s. It is -not without a certain sly chuckle of gratulation that I record this fact. -Those friends of mine who have adopted the highly honourable pursuit -of hiding round corners in order to throw, with the greater security, -jagged stones at me as I pass, those precious purists and immaculate -precisians who cry hard upon a writer on London life in the -nineteenth century, because he describes things and places which -every man knows to exist, and whose existence he for one has not the -hypocrisy to deny—these good gentlemen will scarcely be angry with -their poor servant, Scriblerus, for giving a word-picture of a place of -amusement which is immortalised in the first chapter of “The Newcomes.” -And please to observe, gentlemen, that I am not about to -venture on the very delicate ground with respect to the quality of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[334]</span> -songs once sung at Evans’s, and so boldly trodden by Mr. Thackeray. -I have the less need to do so, as that delicate or indelicate ground has -long since—and to the honour of the present proprietor, Mr. Green—been -ploughed up and sown with salt, and the musical programme -rendered as innocuous as the bill of fare of a festival in a cathedral -town.</p> - -<p>And now for the place itself. About a century since, when the -shadowy hero of the “Virginians” was beating the town with my -Lords Castlewood and March, and Parson Sampson, and his black man -Gumbo was flirting with Colonel Lambert’s servant-maids; about a -century since, when in reality Johnson—not so long since emancipated -from sleeping on bulks with that other homeless wretch, and man of -genius, Savage—was painfully finishing his gigantic work, the “Dictionary;” -when Goldsmith was “living in Axe Lane among the -beggars,” or starving in Green Arbour Court; when honest Hogarth -dwelt at the sign of the Golden Head, in Leicester Fields (he had set -up his coach by this time, worthy man, was Serjeant-painter to the -King, and had his country-house at Chiswick); when the wicked, witty -Wilkes was carousing with other “choice spirits” as wicked and as -witty as he, at Medmenham Abbey; when the furious Churchill was -astonishing the town with his talent and his excesses; when Lawrence -Sterne was yet fiddling, and painting, and preaching, while his friend -Hall indited the “Crazy Tales;” when George II., hitherto considered -as a heavy, morose German king, who did not like “boetry and bainting,” -and could not see the fun of the “March to Finchley,” but now -for the first time revealed to us by Mr. Carlyle as a dapper, consequential -little coxcomb—the “<i>mein bruder der comödiant</i>,” “my -brother the playactor” of Friedrich-Wilhelm, was Sovereign of Great -Britain, by the grace of the Act of Settlement and the madness of the -Stuarts—this town of London was full of choice holes and corners, -known under the generic name of “night cellars.” You may see in -Liverpool to this day—and I am told, also, in New York—some -flourishing specimens of these inviting localities, but they have almost -died out in London. The White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly is now -a booking-office; the Shades in Leicester Square (underneath Saville -House), once Pennant’s “pouting house for princes,” is a <i>restaurant</i>; -the cellar of the Ship at Charing Cross is yet a tavern, but is used -more as a waiting-room for passengers by the Kent Road and Deptford -omnibuses; and a whole nest of cellars were swept away by the -Adamses when the Adelphi Terrace, with a worse range of cellars<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[335]</span> -beneath, as it afterwards turned out, was constructed. But the night -cellars of a hundred years ago! What dens, what sinks, what roaring -saturnalia of very town scoundrelism they must have been! We have -but two reliable authorities extant as to their manners and appearance: -Hogarth’s prints, and the pages of the Old Bailey Sessions -Papers. The former are the engraven testimony of a man to whose -honest nature it was utterly abhorrent and intolerable to bear false -witness; the latter is a record that <i>cannot lie</i>. I don’t mean by these -Sessions Papers the collection of trials known as the “Newgate -Calendar.” In these, crimes are dressed up with all manner of -romantic and adventitious details, and occasionally spiced with moral -reflections by the ordinary of Newgate. I mean the real Sessions -Papers, the <i>verbatim</i> reports of the trials—from murder to pot-stealing—taken -officially in short-hand by the Gurneys and their predecessors, -and which, in their matchless <i>extenso</i>, remain, to the inestimable -advantage of our historians and our painters of manners. They date -from the time of Judge Jeffreys, to the last session of the Central -Criminal Court—it may have been the day before yesterday.</p> - -<p>The cellars come out with a perfectly livid radiance in the reports -of these trials. You see the “brimstone” woman, whom Hogarth -pointed out to his friend and sketched upon his thumbnail, spurting -brandy from her mouth at the enraged virago her companion. You -see Kate Hackabout passing the stolen watch to Tom Idle, who is -under the unseen surveillance of one of Justice de Veil or Harry -Fielding’s runners, and the luckless Thomas will be laid by the heels -by daybreak to-morrow. Kate will go to Bridewell, there to be -whipped and to pick oakum. Foote’s Mother Cole is here, you may -be sure; and Tom Rakewell, spending his last guineas among the gamblers -and ruffians. Who else are there? Ferdinand Count Fathom, -you may sure; poets and hack-writers—for Grub Street existed then -in spirit and in truth—making my lord’s gold pieces, which he gave -for that last foolishly-fulsome dedication, fly. Yes; Mr. Peregrine -Pickle, and you are spending your night in the cellar. And Mr. -Thomas Jones, fresh from the western counties,—you, too, are here, -with a laced coat bought out of my Lady Bellaston’s last bank-note. -Ah! Thomas! Thomas! if pure-minded Sophy Western could but -see you in this bad place, among these ruffianly companions!—among -horse-jockeys, highwaymen-captains, unfrocked parsons; deboshed -adventurers, redolent of twopenny ordinaries and Mount Scoundrel in -the Fleet; disbanded lieutenants of phantom regiments; scriveners<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[336]</span> -struck off the rolls, ruined spendthrifts, Irish desperadoes enthusiastic -for the Pretender and other men’s pence, bankrupt traders, French -and Italian rascals flagrant from the galleys of foreign seaports, and -all, according to their own showing, distressed patriots; German -swindlers and card-sharpers, who declare themselves to be Counts of -the Holy Roman Empire, Jew coin-clippers and diamond-slicers, riverside -vagabonds in the pay of the commanders of press-gangs on the -look-out for benighted journeymen, or dissolute lads who have run -away from their apprenticeship or quarrelled with their parents, -recruiting crimps for both sexes, usurers looking for prodigals who -have yet money to lose, bailiffs’ followers looking for prodigals who -have lost all and owe more; and, scattered among all this scum of -frantic knavery and ragabosh, some gay young sprigs of aristocracy, -some officers in the regiment of Guards, some noisy young country -squires of the Western type. This, all garnished with dirt and spilt -liquors, with the fumes of mum, Geneva, punch, wine, and tobacco -smoke, with oaths and shrieks and horrid songs, with the clatter of -glasses and tankards, the clash of rapiers and verberations of bludgeons—is -the London night cellar of a hundred years ago. Round Covent -Garden such places positively swarmed. The Strand, the neighbourhood -of Exeter ’Change, Long Acre, and Drury Lane, reeked with -dens of this description. For hereabouts were the playhouses, and in -their purlieus, as in those of cathedrals, you must expect to find, and -do find, in every age, the haunts of vice and dissipation. It may be -profane to say <i>ubi apis ibi mel</i>: but such is the sorry fact.</p> - -<p>I am to give you notice that this article was originally intended to -be intensely topographical—nay, <i>sant soit peu</i>, antiquarian and archæological. -It was my desire to give you a minute description of the hostelry -called Evans’s Hotel, and whose basement contains the saloon -known as Evans’s supper-room, from the earliest period of authentic -research to the present time. How it emerged from a state of brawling -night-cellarhood, to the dignity of a harmonic meeting; who first -ordered “chops to follow,” and what ingenious spirit originally suggested -the curious principle now in practice, of paying for your refreshment -at the door on quitting the establishment; who instituted the -glee-choir, introduced books of the words, and discovered that baked -potatoes are necessarily associated with bumpers of stout, poached -eggs, and liberally cayenned kidneys; who formed the gallery of portraits -which now graces the walls of the ante-saloon, and who first -dreamed of such an Arabian Night’s succedaneum as a ladies’ gallery.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[337]</span> -All these things it was my firm intention to record, in Roman type, for -your amusement, if not your edification. “Who knows,” I asked myself -enthusiastically, “if I take sweet counsel (hot and strong as well -as sweet, sometimes) of Mr. Paddy Green, most urbane of nocturnal -Bonifaces, and sit reverentially at the feet of Mr. Peter Cunningham, -who, it is rumoured, in the matter of London localities, could, an he -chose, rival the marvellous feat of memory ascribed to old Fuller of -the ‘Worthies,’ who could repeat backwards, and without book, the -names of all the tavern signs on both sides of the way from Temple -Bar to Ludgate: who knows,” I repeated, “but that I shall be able to -submit to the readers of ‘Twice Round the Clock,’ a copy of an unpaid -score left by Oliver Goldsmith at some Evans’s of the past; or put it -upon record that Sir Thomas Lawrence and Major Hanger had claret-cup -together here, on the night that Thurtell was hanged, or that on -the fatal evening when the Catholic Bill passed the Lords, a live bishop—a -hackney coachman’s many-caped coat over his apron and shorts—descended -Evans’s well-worn stairs, ordered a Welsh rabbit, partook -of two ‘stouts,’ and, the tears coursing down his right reverend cheeks, -murmured—‘Britain! oh my country! <i>Delenda est Carthago!</i>’ by way -of chorus to Captain Costigan’s favourite ditty of ‘The Night before -Larry was stretched?’”</p> - -<p>In the famous gardens of the Villa Pallavicini, near Genoa, there is -an artificial piece of water winding between rocks, at the extremity of -which the mimic river seems to lose itself in the blue waters of the -Mediterranean. Nothing of the sort is the case: the sea is, in reality, -more than three hundred yards distant; but the intervening ground -has been so dexterously sloped and masked with groups of plants, that -the optical delusion is marvellous. Of such are the aspirations of -mankind. In such disappointment ended my castles in the air with -respect to Evans’s. It was from across the ocean that I had to respond -to the printers’ wail for “copy:” this article was commenced in view -of the Castle of Rolandseck, on board a Rhine steamer, whose worn-out -engines throbbed as irregularly as though they had palpitation of -the heart. It is being continued now at the sea-side, in bed, gruel on -the one side, sweet spirits of nitre on the other: and where it will be -finished, who can tell? Old Æsop told the soldiers, when they asked -him whither he was going, that he did not know, whereupon they -arrested him for an impertinent. “Was I not right?” he cried; -“did I know that I was going to jail?” “<i>Sait on où l’on va?</i>” echoes -Diderot. How do I, how do you, how does your lordship, how does<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[338]</span> -your grace, how does your majesty, know what will happen the moment -after this? Therefore, take heed of the present time, and make -your wills: the best will, in my humble thinking, that a man can -make, being that strong will and determination to act as justly as he -can in each moment in the which he is permitted to live.</p> - -<p>So you understand, now, why I was compelled to dispense with -the assistance of Mr. Paddy Green and Mr. Peter Cunningham, and -why I am reduced to a dependence on my own personal reminiscences -with respect to Evans’s, without the adventitious aid of recondite -anecdote and historical data. Here is the place as I remember it.</p> - -<p>One o’clock in the morning. Of course we are supposed to be -spending just a fortnight in town, and putting up at the Bedford, or it -would never do to be so early-late abroad. We have been to the play, -and have consumed a few oysters in the Haymarket; but the principal -effect of that refreshment seems to have been to make us ten times -hungrier. The delicate bivalves of Colchester have failed in appeasing -our bucolic stomachs. We require meat. So, says the friend most -learned in the ways of the town to his companion—“Meat at our -hotel we eschew, for we shall find the entertainment of the dearest -and dullest. We will go sup at Evans’s, for there we can have good -meat and good liquor at fair rates, and hear a good song besides.” -Whereupon we walk, till the piazza, about which I have kept you so -long lingering, looms in sight. A low doorway, brilliantly lit with -gas, greets our view. We descend a flight of some steps, pass through -a vestibule, and enter the “Cave of Harmony.”</p> - -<p>Push further on, if you please. You are not to linger in this ante-chamber, -thickly hung with pictures, and otherwise, with its circular -marble tables, much resembling a Parisian <i>café</i>, minus the mirrors -and the rattle of the dominoes. This ante-chamber will be treated of -anon; but your present business is with chops and harmony.</p> - -<p>Passing, then, through this <i>atrium</i>, the visitor finds himself in a -vast music-hall, of really noble proportions, and decorated not only -with admirable taste, but with something nearly akin to splendour. -You see I am at a loss for authorities again, and I cannot tell you how -much of the hall is Corinthian, and how much composite; whether -the columns are fluted, the cornices gilt or the soffits carved, and -whether the Renaissance or the Arabesque style most prevails in the -decorations employed. All I know is, that it is a lofty, handsome, -comfortable room, whose acoustic properties, by the way, are far -superior to those enjoyed by some establishments with loftier philharmonic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[339]</span> -pretensions. At the northern extremity of the hall is a -spacious proscenium and stage, with the grand pianoforte <i>de rigueur</i>, -the whole veiled by a curtain in the intervals of performance. As for -the huge area stretching from the proscenium to a row of columns -which separate it from the ante-chamber <i>café</i>, it is occupied by parallel -lines of tables, which, if they do not groan beneath the weight of good -eatables and drinkables piled upon them, might certainly be excused -for groaning—to say nothing of shrieking, yelling, and uttering other -lamentable noises, evoked by the unmerciful thumping and hammering -they undergo at the conclusion of every fresh exercitation of -harmony.</p> - -<p>Still, the eatables and drinkables do merit a paragraph, and shall -have one. To the contemplative mind they are full of suggestions, and -evidence of the vast digestive powers of the English people. To any -but a race of hardy Norsemen, sons of Thor and Odin, hammerers of -steel, welders of iron, and compellers of adverse elements, men who -are sometimes brought to live when on shipboard upon weevily biscuit -that breaks the teeth, and salted leather, humorously nicknamed beef; -or in trenches, upon rancid pork, toasted on bayonet or ramrod tips; -to any but that unconquerable, hard-headed, and strong-stomached -people, of whom it is sometimes said that they would eat a donkey if -they were allowed to begin at the hind legs, this post-midnight repast -at Evans’s would be full of menace of perturbed slumbers, distraught -dreams, nay, even ghastly nightmares. Your Frenchman, when he -sups, takes his cold salad, his appetising fruit, his succulent partridge, -his light omelette, or, at most, his thin weak <i>bouillon</i>, with a lean cutlet -to follow. He drinks sugar-and-water, wine-and-water, or, on -high holiday nights, a glass or two of champagne; puffs his mild -cigars, and goes to bed, simpering that he has <i>bien soupé</i>. And even -then, sometimes, your Frenchman has dreams, and rising in bed, with -the hair of his flesh standing up, vows that he will sup no more. -Your Italian sups on his three-halfpennyworth of maccaroni. Your -Spaniard rubs a piece of bread with garlic, and eats it, blesses heaven, -and goes to sleep with a cigarette in his mouth. Your gross German -affects the lighter kind of cold meats and salads at supper, and washes -down his spare repast—to be sure, it is the fourth within the twelve -hours—with some frothy beer. The Americans can’t be said to sup, -any more than they breakfast, lunch, or dine. They are always over-eating, -over-drinking, and over-smoking themselves; and were it not -for their indomitable pluck and perseverance, their tendency to dyspepsia<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[340]</span> -would be an insurmountable obstacle to their ever becoming a -great people. <i>For the great peoples have always had strong stomachs.</i> -Homer’s heroes ate beef undone. When the Romans took to made-dishes -and kick-shaws, then came their decadence, and the strong-stomached -barbarians of the North overran them. To make an end of -foreign wanderings, Russian suppers, among the people, are just no -suppers at all. One—or at most two—meals a day, is the rule with -the moujik. In elegant society, the cook might as well provide for -supper painted chickens and lobster salads made of sealing-wax and -cut paper, as any genuine viands. A supper at St. Petersburg, means -champagne and gambling till the next morning.</p> - -<p>But see the suppers set forth for the strong-stomached supporters -of Evans’s. See the pyramids of dishes arrive; the steaming succession -of red-hot chops, with their brown, frizzling caudal appendages -sobbing hot tears of passionate fat. See the serene kidneys unsubdued, -though grilled, smiling though cooked, weltering proudly in -their noble gravy, like warriors who have fallen upon the field of -honour. See the hot yellow lava of the Welsh rabbit stream over -and engulf the timid toast. Sniff the fragrant vapour of the corpulent -sausage. Mark how the russet leathern-coated baked potato at first -defies the knife, then gracefully cedes, and through a lengthened gash -yields its farinaceous effervescence to the influence of butter and catsup. -The only refreshments present open to even a suspicion of effeminacy -are the poached eggs, glistening like suns in a firmament of -willow-pattern plate; and those too, I am willing to believe, are only -taken by country-gentlemen hard pressed by hunger, just to “stay -their stomachs,” while the more important chops and kidneys are -being prepared. The clouds of pepper shaken out on these viands -are enough to make Slawkenbergius sneeze for a fortnight; the catsup -and strong sauces poured over them are sufficient to convince Sir -Toby Belch that there are other things besides ginger, which are apt -to be “hot i’ the mouth,” and, as humble servitors in attendance on -these haughty meats, are unnumbered discs of butter, and manchets -of crustiest bread galore.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[341]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus43" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus43.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ONE O’CLOCK A.M.: EVANS’S SUPPER-ROOMS.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[342]</span></p> - -<p>Pints of stout, if you please, no puny half-measures, pints of sparkling -pale ale, or creaming Scotch, or brownest Burton, moisten these -sturdy rations. And when the strong men have supped, or rather -before they have supped, and while they have supped, and indeed -generally during the evening, there bursts out a strong smell of something -good to drink; and presently you perceive that the strong men -have ordered potent libations of spirituous liquors, hot whiskey-and-water -being the favourite one; and are hastily brewing mighty jorums -of punch and grog, which they undoubtedly quaff; puffing, meanwhile, -cigars of potency and fragrance—pipes are tabooed—taken -either from their own cigar-cases, or else recently laid in from the -inexhaustible stores of the complaisant Herr von Joel.</p> - -<p>“Who will always be retained on this establishment,” the proprietor -good-naturedly promises, and more good-naturedly performs. -“Why,” asks the neophyte, “is it necessary for my well-being, or -the prosperity of this establishment, that the services of Herr von -Joel should always be retained thereon? Why this perpetual hypothecation -of Joel? Can no one else sell me cigars? What am I to -Joel, or what is Joel to me? Confound Joel!” To which I answer: -“Rash neophyte, forbear, and listen. In the days when thou wert -very young and foolish, wore lay-down collars, and had no moustaches, -save the stickiness produced by much-sucked sweetstuff on the upper -lips—in the days when thou wert familiar, indeed, with Doctor -Wackerbarth’s seminary for young gentlemen, but not with Evans’s—Herr -von Joel, young and sprightly then, was a famous Mimic. -In imitating the cries of birds, Herr von Joel was unrivalled, and has -never been approached. In the old days, when he was famous, and -did the lark and the linnet so well, he brought crowds of visitors to -the old supper-rooms, who laughed and wondered at his mimicry, -supped and drank, and smoked, and paid fat scores. So Joel, in his -generation, was a benefactor to Evans’s. And now, when the thorax -is rusty, and the larynx no longer supple, the faithful servant rests -upon “his well-earned laurels”—of tobacco-leaves—among the old -faces of old friends. “His helmet is a hive for bees”—and Havannah -cigars, and “his services will always be retained in this establishment.” -One would shudder to think of Wellington’s old charger, -Copenhagen, being sent to Cow Cross, to the knackers, instead of -ending his days peacefully in a paddock at Strathfieldsaye. No one -likes to hear of Sophie Arnould or Mademoiselle Camargo (the ballet-dancer -who introduced short petticoats) being brought to indigence in -their declining years. Guilbert in the hospital, Camöens starving, -blind Belisarius begging for an obolus, these are pitiable; and to -this day I think the country might have done something for the -widow of Ramo Samee. We give pensions to the families of those -who use their swords well, but I should like to know how many can -swallow them as Ramo did?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_343"></a>[343]</span></p> - -<p>All the while the company have been supping and I have been -prosing, the “Cave of Harmony” has not belied its name. A bevy -of fresh-coloured youths, of meagre stature, of curly hair, in broad -collars and round jackets, such as distinguished you and me, neophyte, -when we were pupils at Dr. Wackerbarth’s, have made themselves -manifest on the stage, and in admirable time and tune have chanted -with their silver-bell voices those rare old glees which were written -by the honest old masters before the Father of Evil had invented -Signor Guiseppe Verdi. Thersites Theorbo (who is an assiduous frequenter -of the Cave at hours when men of not so transcendent a -genius are in bed) Thersites Theorbo, down yonder in the <i>café</i> ante-saloon, -glowering over his grog, cannot forbear beating time and -wagging his august head approvingly when he hears the little boys -sing. May their pure harmony do the battered old cynic good! -Honest old glees! though your composers wore pigtails and laced -ruffles. And none the worse, either, because we owe some of the -most beautiful of them to an Irish nobleman. Do you know who that -nobleman was? Go ask Mr. Thackeray, who, in an absurd copy of -verses, written in barbarous Cockney slang, has brought the “unaccustomed -brine” to these eyes many and many a time. He describes -a stately lady sitting by an open window, beside the “flowing Boyne,” -with a baby on her lap. It is a man child, and not far off is the -father,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“... Most musical of Lords,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A playing madrigals and glees</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon the harpsichords.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And this child’s father was old Lord Mornington, whose son was -Arthur, Duke of Wellington.</p> - -<p>If you scrutinise the faces of these juvenile choristers somewhat -narrowly, and happen yourself to be a tolerably regular attendant at -the abbey church of St. Peter’s, Westminster, it is not at all improbable -that you may recognise one or two young gentlemen whom, -arrayed in snowy surplices, you may have heard trilling forth in shrill -notes their parts of the service among the gentlemen choristers and -minor canons of the Abbey. I wonder if it is very wicked for them -to be found at Evans’s thus late. I don’t mean at one o’clock in the -morning, for they mostly disappear about midnight. Perhaps not so -wicked, for I know there are some people so very religious that they -only think of religion on Sundays; and fancy that week-day transactions -can’t have the slightest connection with the Sabbath. However this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_344"></a>[344]</span> -may be, I must mention it as a curious fact in relation with the moral -economy of Evans’s, that in the old days, when Captain Costigan or -one of his peers, was about to sing anything approaching to a <i>chanson -grivoise</i>, the juveniles were invariably marched out of the room by -a discreet waiter, in order that their young ears might not be contaminated.</p> - -<p>With respect to the remaining harmonic attractions of Evans’s, I -shall be very brief. I believe that on some evenings individuals of -the Ethiopian way of thinking, and accoutred in the ordinary amount -of lamp-black, Welsh wig, and shirt-collars, and provided with the -usual banjo, accordion, tambourine, and bones, are in the habit of -informing the audience that things in general are assuming an appearance -of “Hoop de dooden do;” also of lamenting the untimely -demise of one Ned, an aged blackamoor, who stood towards them in -an avuncular relation, and of passionately demanding the cause of -their master effecting the sale of their persons, by auction or otherwise, -on the day on which they entered into the state of matrimony. -I am given to understand that a gentleman with an astonishing falsetto -voice is a great favourite among the <i>habitués</i>, and that some -screaming comic songs by popular vocalists are nightly given with -immense applause; but I candidly confess that I am not qualified to -speak with any great degree of certitude with respect to these performances. -I go to Evans’s generally very late, and as seldom venture -close to the proscenium. I am content to bide in the ante-saloon, -and to muse upon Thersites Theorbo, glowering over his grog.</p> - -<p>This iracund journalist—to borrow an epithet from Mr. Carlyle—is -not by any means solitary in his patronage of the marble-tabled, portrait-hung -<i>café</i>. To tell the honest truth, as, in Paris, if you wish to -see the actors in vogue, you must go to the Café du Vaudeville—if -the authors, to the Café Cardinal or the Café du Helder—if the artists, -to the Café des Italians—if the students, to the Café Belge—and if -the dandies, to the Café de Paris; so in London, if you wish to see -the wits and the journalist men about town of the day, you must go -to Evans’s about one o’clock in the morning. Then those ineffables -turn out of the smoking-rooms of their clubs—clique-clubs mostly—and -meet on this neutral ground to gird at one another. <i>Autres -temps, autres mœurs.</i> A century since it used to be Wills’s or Button’s, -or the Rose; now it is Evans’s. I should dearly like to draw some -pen-and-ink portraits for you of the wits as they sit, and drink, -and smoke, at one o’clock in the morning; but I dare not. As for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_345"></a>[345]</span> -Thersites Theorbo, he is a shadow. You know what I told you about -clubs; and this place also is a prison-house to me. It is true, -Heaven help me, that I am not affiliated to witcraft myself, that I -am neither priest nor deacon. Still I have been one of the little boys -in red cassocks, who swing the censers, and I dare not reveal the -secrets of the sacristy. But I may just whisper furtively in your ear, -that Ethelred Guffoon is never seen at Evans’s. It makes his head -ache. Mr. Goodman Twoshoes, also, is but a seldom visitor to the -Cave of Harmony. He prefers his snug corner-box at the Albion, -where he can brew his beloved ginger-punch. It is not that the -wits despise the “Cave.” Mr. Polyphemus, the novelist, not unfrequently -condescends to wither mankind through his spectacles from -one of the marble tables; and I have seen the whole “Times” -newspaper—proprietors, editors, special correspondents, and literary -critics—hob-nobbing together at—— <i>Will</i> you hold your tongue, sir?</p> - -<p>One trifling indiscretion more, and I have done with Evans’s. -“It is not generally known,” as accurate, erudite, and amusing Mr. -John Timbs would say, that the sly gallantry of Mr. Green, the proprietor -of the Cave of Harmony, caused him, when his new and -sumptuous music-hall was in course of construction, to move the -architect to build some cunning loop-holes and points of espial connected -with commodious apartments—in other words, with private -boxes, somewhat resembling the <i>baignoires</i> in the Parisian theatres, -whence ladies could see and hear all that was going on without being -seen or heard. A somewhat similar contrivance exists, it will be -remembered, in our House of Commons; I only wish that the fair -ones who there lie <i>perdues</i> during a late debate, were doomed to hear -as little trash as meets their ears from the secluded bowers overhanging -Evans’s. What passport is required to ensure admission -into these blissful regions I know not; but I have it on good authority -that ladies of the “very highest rank and distinction”—to use a -“Morning Postism”—have on several occasions graced Evans’s with -their presence, and with condescending smiles looked down upon the -revelries of their lords.</p> - -<p class="tb">Tell me, you who are so quick of hearing, what is that noise above -our heads—it must be in the street beyond—and which dominates the -revelry as the sound of the cannon did the music of the Duchess of -Richmond’s ball before Quatre Bras. It grows louder and louder, it -comes nearer and nearer, it swells into a hoarse continually-jarring<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_346"></a>[346]</span> -roar, as I sit smoking at Evans’s. The sham blackamoor on the stage -pauses in his buffoonery, forbears to smite his woolly pate with the -tambourine; his colleague’s accordion is suspended in the midst of a -phthisic wheeze, and the abhorred bones quiver, yet unreverberate in -the nicoto-alcholoicho-charged air. The rattle of knives and forks, -the buzzing conversation, cease; a hundred queries as to the cause of -the noise rise on as many lips; the waiters forget to rattle the change, -the toper forgets to sip his grog: there is intromission even in the -inspiration of tobacco fumes: then comes the mighty answer—comes -at once from all quarters—caught up, echoed and re-echoed, and -fraught with dread, the momentous word—<span class="smcap">Fire</span>!</p> - -<p>Man, it has been somewhere pertinently observed, is a hunting -animal. The delight in having something to run after: whether it -be a pickpocket, who has just eloped with a watch or a silk handkerchief; -a dog with a kettle tied to his tail, a hare, a deer, a woman, -a fugitive hat, a slaver, a <i>prima donna</i>, a lord’s tuft, an oriental -traveller, a deformed dwarf—something to chase, something to scour -and scud after, something to run down, and ultimately devour and -destroy: such a pursuit enlivens and comforts the heart of man, and -makes him remember that he has the blood of Nimrod in his veins. -The schoolboys at Eton have their “paper chases,” and course miles -through the pleasant playing-fields, crossing brooks, and tearing -through hedges, after a quire of foolscap torn up into shreds. The -child chases a butterfly; the adult exhausts himself and his horse in -racing after a much-stinking fox; and the octogenarian frets his palsied -old limbs, and bursts into a feverish snail’s gallop, after a seat on the -Treasury Bench, or a strip of blue velvet embroidered with “<i>honi soit -qui mal y pense</i>” in gold, and called a garter. There is a wild, engrossing -excitement and pleasure in hunting; the fox-hound, the -otter, the “harmless necessary cat,” would tell you so, were their -speech articulate; but of all things huntable, chasable, rundownable, -I doubt if there be one that can equal a Fire.</p> - -<p>“Fire! fire!” It matters not how late the hour be, how important -the avocations of the moment, that magic cry sets all legs, -save those of the halt and the bed-ridden, in motion—strikes on every -tympanum. “Fire! fire!” as the sound rolls earwards, the gambler -starts up from the dicing-table, the bibber leaves the wine-pots, the -lover rises from his mistress’s feet, the blushing maiden forgets half -of that last glowing declaration, the captive runs to his grated window, -the sluggard sits up on his couch, the sick man turns his head<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_347"></a>[347]</span> -on his pillow to whence issues the portentous cry. Hundreds of impulses -are bound up in the uncontrollable desire that prompts us to -run at once after the “Fire!” Fear: it may be our own premises -that are blazing, our own dear ones that are in peril. Hope and -cupidity: we may be rogues, and there may be rich plunder from a -fire. Duty: we may be policemen, firemen, or newspaper reporters. -Generous emulation, brave self-devotion: there may be lives at stake -and lives to save. Curiosity: it is as good to see a house burned -(when it doesn’t happen to be your own) as a bear baited or a man -hanged. All these may prompt us to follow the howl of the fire-dogs; -but, chiefest of all, is the vague, indefinite, yet omnipotent -desire to swell a pursuing crowd, to join in a hue and cry, to press -to the van of the chasers: to hunt something, in fact.</p> - -<p>I never could understand where a London crowd comes from. Be -the hour ever so late, were the street ever so deserted a moment -before, a man quarrelling with his wife, or cry of Fire, will be sufficient -to evoke the presence of a compact and curious crowd, growing -instantaneously thicker and noisier. Whether they start from the -sewers or the cellar-gratings, or drop from the chimney-pots or the -roof-copings, is indeterminate; yet they gather somehow, and jostle, -squeeze, yell, stamp, and tear furiously. No conscription, no mustering -of the <i>posse comitatis</i>, no summoning of ban and <i>arrière</i> ban, no -“call of the House,” no sending forth of the “fiery cross,” no beacon -signalling, no Vehmgericht convening under penalty of the cord and -dagger, could be half so successful in calling multitudes together as -the one word—<span class="smcap">Fire</span>! A minute past, I was at Evans’s, tranquilly -conversing with the veteran Herr von Joel, and now I find myself -racing like mad up St. Martin’s Lane, towards St. Giles’s. How I -found my hat and donned it I haven’t the slightest idea, and I sincerely -hope that I didn’t forget to pay the waiter for my chop, kidney, -stout, and etceteras. All I know is, that I am running after that -hoarse cry, and towards that awful Redness in the sky; that I tread -upon unnumbered corns; that I hold cheap as air, innumerable -punches and thrusts which I receive from my neighbours; and that -I will not by any means undertake to make oath that I am not myself -also vociferating, “Fire! Fire!” with the full strength of my lungs.</p> - -<p>I thought so. There goes the “Country Fire Office.” There it -goes, dashing, rattling, blazing along—only the very strongest adjective, -used participle-wise, can give a notion of its bewildering speed—there -it goes, with its strong, handsome horses, champing, fuming,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_348"></a>[348]</span> -setting the pavement on fire with their space-devouring hoofs, and -seeming to participate in the fire-hunting mania. They need no -whip; only the voices of the firemen, clustering on the engine like -bees, the loose rattle of the reins on their backs, and the cheers of the -accompanying crowd. The very engine, burnished and glistening, -flashing and blushing in its scarlet and gold in the gaslight, seems -imbued with feeling, and scintillating with excitement—(Oh! critics -of fishy blood, oyster temperament, and tortoise impulses, pardon my -heedless exuberance of epithet)—so gleaming and glittering, and its -catherine-like wheels revolving, and the moon just tipping the burnished -helmets and hatchets of the fire-men, who will have a ruddy -glare on those accoutrements shortly, goes screaming through the -night, the County Fire-engine. The Northern Express blazing over -Chatmoss at speed is a terrible sight to see: that fiery messenger has -subdued the wilderness, and made the waste places, whilom the haunts -of bats and dragons, tremble; but the fast-tearing fire-engine is nobler -and more Human. It cleaves its way through the sleeping city; it -bears the tidings of succour and deliverance. Yon express-train may -convey but a company of chapmen and pedlars, thirsting to higgle in -the cheapest so that they may haggle in the dearest market; but the -five-engine is freighted with brave manly hearts, braced—with little -lust of lucre, God knows! for their pay is but a pittance—to the noble -task of saving human life. That they do so save it, almost every night -throughout the year, save it in the midst of peril to their own, in the -ever-imminent peril of a sudden, hideous, unrewarded death, Mr. -Braidwood and the fire companies know full well. That the best of -the young British painting men, John Everett Millais, should have -chosen the every-day, but none the less glorious, heroism of a fireman -for the theme of a magnificent picture, is good to know; and the very -thought of the picture goes far towards making us forgive the painter -for his asinine “Sir Isumbrasse,” or whatever the abortion was called; -but it would be better if the knowledge of our firemen’s good deservings -were extended beyond Mr. Braidwood and the fire companies. -The deeds of those plain men with the leathern helmets and the trusty -hatchets, have received neither their full meed of praise, nor a tithe -of their meed of reward. I have yet to hear of the Fireman’s Order -of Valour; I have yet to learn that our bounteous Government, so -prompt to recognise diplomatic demerit, to reward political worthlessness, -and to ennoble military failure, have thought it worth their while -to bestow even the minutest modicum of a pension on a fireman. To -be sure, these worldly, unwise men, are, for their own interests’ sake, -disastrously and inexcusably modest, unobtrusive, and retiring. There -is no trumpeter attached <i>ex-officio</i> to the fire brigade. Would you -believe it, that these unambitious men, their glorious labours over, are -content to retire to the sheds where their engines stand at livery, -where they eat bread-and-cheese with clasp knives, read cheap newspapers, -and teach tricks to their dogs? Their principal recreation is -to scrub, polish, tickle, and frictionise the brass and wood work of the -fire-engines to a Dutch pitch of cleanliness, and they are much given, -I am sorry to say, to the smoking of long clay pipes. This is, in -itself, sufficient to ruin them in the estimation of such sages and -public benefactors as ex-Lord Mayor Garden. Let us hope that it is -not his ex-Lordship’s house that is being burned down this November -morning.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_349"></a>[349]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus44" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus44.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">ONE O’CLOCK A.M.: A FIRE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_350"></a>[350]</span></p> - -<p>No—the fire is in the very thickest part of St. Giles’s. Unfaithful -topographers may have told you that the “Holy Land” being swept -away and Buckeridge Street being pulled down, St. Giles’s exists no -more. <i>Ne’n croyez rien.</i> The place yet lives—hideous, squalid, decrepit—yet -full of an unwholesome vitality. Splendid streets have -been pierced through the heart of this region—streets full of mansions -four and six storeys high—affluent tradesmen display their splendid -wares through glistening plate-glass windows. But St. Giles’s is -behind, round about, environing the new erections, sitting like Mordecai -in the gate on the threshold of the brick and mortar and stucco -palaces with which cunning contractors and speculative builders have -sought to disguise the most infamous district in London. The proof -of what I have asserted is very easy. You have but to be invited to -dinner in Gower Street, or to have a morning call to make in Bedford -Square. Take a walk from young Mr. Barry’s bran-new opera-house -in Bow Street, and walk straight a-head—nearly a measured mile to -the Square of Bedford. You pass the gigantic carriage factory, which -I will call by its ancestral name of Houlditch’s—for it always seems to -be changing proprietors—at the corner of Long Acre. You ascend -Endell Street, and greet with satisfaction such signs of advancing -civilisation as baths and wash-houses, and a bran-new dispensary. I -had forgotten to mention that you might have had a back view of St. -Martin’s Hall. Then you cross the area of High Street, St. Giles’s, or -High Street, Holborn, whichsoever you may elect to call it. Then, -still straight a-head, you mount Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, a thoroughfare -dignified by any number of churches, belonging to any number<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_351"></a>[351]</span> -of persuasions. And then you are at your journey’s end, and are -free to call in Bedford Square, to dine in Gower Street, or to go see -the Nineveh Marbles in the British Museum, <i>comme bon vous semble</i>.</p> - -<p>But throughout this pilgrimage, passing by edifices erected in the -newest Byzantine, or early English, or Elizabethan, or sham Gothic -style, you have had St. Giles’s always before, behind, and about you. -From a hundred foul lanes and alleys have debouched, on to the spick-and-span-new -promenade, unheard-of human horrors. Gibbering -forms of men and women in filthy rags, with fiery heads of shock hair, -the roots beginning an inch from the eyebrows, with the eyes themselves -bleared and gummy, with gashes filled with yellow fangs for -teeth, with rough holes punched in the nasal cartilage for nostrils, -with sprawling hands and splay feet, tessellated with dirt—awful deformities, -with horrifying malformations of the limbs and running -sores ostentatiously displayed; Ghoules and Afrits in a travestie of -human form, rattling uncouth forms of speech in their vitrified throttles. -These hang about your feet like reptiles, or crawl round you -like loathsome vermin, and in a demoniac whine beg charity from you. -One can bear the men; ferocious and repulsive as they are, a penny -and a threat will send them cowering and cursing to their noisome -holes again. One cannot bear the women without a shudder, and a -feeling of infinite sorrow and humiliation. They are so horrible to look -upon, so thoroughly unsexed, shameless. Heaven-abandoned and forlorn, -with their bare liver-coloured feet beating the devil’s tattoo on the -pavement, their lean shoulders shrugged up to their sallow cheeks, over -which falls hair either wildly dishevelled or filthily matted, and their -gaunt hands clutching at the tattered remnant of a shawl, which but -sorrily veils the lamentable fact that they have no gown—that a ragged -petticoat and a more ragged undergarment are all they have to cover -themselves withal. With sternness and determination one can bear -these sights; but, heavens and earth! the little children! who swarm, -pullulate—who seem to be evoked from the gutter, and called up from -the kennel, who clamber about your knees, who lie so thickly in your -path that you are near stumbling over one of them every moment, -who, ten times raggeder, dirtier, and more wretched-looking than their -elders, with their baby faces rendered wolfish by privation, and looking -a hundred years old, rather than not ten times that number of days, -fight and scream, whimper and fondle, crawl and leap like the phantoms -a man sees during the access of <i>delirium tremens</i>. I declare that -there are babies among these miserable ones—babies with the preternaturally<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_352"></a>[352]</span> -wise faces of grown up men; babies who, I doubt little, can -lie, and steal, and beg, and who, in a year or so, will be able to fight -and swear, and be sent to jail for six months’ hard labour. Plenty -of the children are big enough to be “whipped and discharged.” -Yes; that is the pleasant tee-totum: “six months’ hard labour,” -“whipped and discharged,” the merry prologue to Portland and the -hulks, the humorous apprenticeship to the penal settlements and the -gallows. And yet people will tell me that St. Giles’s is “done away -with”—“put down,” as the worshipful Sir Peter Laurie would say. -Glance down any one of the narrow lanes you like after passing -Broker’s Row. See the children coming out of the gin-shops and -the pawnbrokers’. Ask the policeman whether every court in the -vicinity be not full of thieves, and worse. Look at the lanes themselves, -with the filthy rags flaunting from poles in the windows in -bitter mockery of being hung out to dry after washing; with their -belching doorways, the thresholds littered with wallowing infants, -and revealing beyond a Dantean perspective of infected backyard and -cloacan staircase. Peep, as well as you may for the dirt-obscured -window panes, and see the dens of wretchedness where the people -whose existence you ignore dwell—the sick and infirm, often the -dying, sometimes the dead, lying on the bare floor, or, at best, covered -with some tattered scraps of blanketing or matting; the shivering -age crouching over fireless grates, and drunken husbands bursting -through the rotten doors to seize their gaunt wives by the hair, and -bruise their already swollen faces, because they have pawned what few -rags remain to purchase gin. But then St. Giles’s doesn’t exist! It -has been done away with! It is put down! “Stunning Joe Banks” -and Bamfylde Moore Carew have been subdued by civilisation and -the march of intellect! Of course.</p> - -<p>Notwithstanding all which there is a terrific fire in the very midst -of St. Giles’s to-night; and that conflagration may do more in its -generation towards the abolition of the district, than all the astute -contractors and speculative builders. The fire is at an oilman’s shop, -who likewise manufactures and deals in pickles, and from the nature -of the combustible commodities in which he trades, you may anticipate -a rare blaze. Blaze! say an eruption of Mount Vesuvius rather; far -high into the air shoot columns of flame, and hanging thickly over all -are billows upon billows of crimson smoke, the whole encircled by -myriads of fiery sparks that fall upon the gaping crowd and make -them dance and yell with terror and excitement.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_353"></a>[353]</span></p> - -<p>The police have very speedily made a sanitary <i>cordon</i> round about -the blazing premises, and let none pass save those who have special -business near the place. The firemen are “welcome guests” within -the magic <i>cordon</i>, as also the fussy, self-important sergeants and inspectors -of police, who often do more harm than good with their -orders and counter-orders. There are some other gentlemen, too, who -slip in and out unquestioned and unchallenged. They don’t pump at -the fire-engines, and they don’t volunteer to man the fire-escape. But -they seem to have an undisputed though unrecognised right to be -here, there, and everywhere, and are received on a footing of humorous -equality by the police, the fire-escape men, the firemen, and the -very firemen’s dogs. They are not official-looking persons by any -means. They wear no uniforms, they carry no signs of authority, such -as truncheons, armlets, or the like. They are rather given, on the -contrary, to a plain and unpretending, not to say “seedy,” style of -attire. Napless hats, surtouts tightly buttoned up to the throat and -white at the seams, pantaloons of undecided length, unblackened -bluchers, and umbrellas, seem to be the favourite wear among these -gentlemen. They are, not to mince the matter, what are termed -“occasional reporters” to the daily newspapers, and, in less courteous -parlance, are denominated “penny-a-liners.” It is the vocation of -these gentlemen (worthy souls for the most part—working very hard -for very little money) to prowl continually about London town, in -search of fires, fallings in and down of houses, runnings away of -vicious horses, breakings down of cabs, carriages, and omnibuses; and, -in fact, accidents and casualties of every description. But especially -fires. Fatal accidents are not unnaturally preferred by the occasional -reporters, because they lead to coroners’ inquests, which have of course -also to be reported; and, in the case of a fire, a slight loss of life is -not objected to. It entails “additional particulars,” and perhaps an -inquiry before the coroner, with an examination of witnesses relative -to the cause of the fire; nay, who knows but it may end in a trial for -arson? There was—and may be now—a gentleman attached to the -combustible department of the press, who was so well known and -practised a hand at reporting conflagrations, that he was christened, -and to some extent popularly known as, the “Fire King.” It was facetiously -suggested that he was unconsumable, made of asbestos, not to -be affected by heat, like Signor Buono Cuore at Cremorne Gardens. -According to the legend current in London newspaper circles, the -“Fire King” had his abode next door to a fire-engine station in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_354"></a>[354]</span> -Waterloo Road, and further to guard against the possibility of missing -one of these interesting, and, to him, remunerative events, he caused -to be inscribed on the door-jamb, in lieu of the ordinary injunction -to “ring the top bell,” this solitary announcement on a neat brass -plate, “Fire Bell.” So, when a fire was signalled within the beat -of that portion of the brigade stationed in the Waterloo Road—or, -indeed, anywhere else if of sufficient magnitude, for the brigade are -not by any means particular as to distances, and would as lief go -down the river to Gravesend or up it to Henley if occasion required—a -stalwart brigadier, his helmet and hatchet all donned, would pull -lustily at the fire-bell, accompanying the tintinnabulation by stentorian -shouts of “Wake up, Charley!” Charley, the “Fire King,” perhaps -at that moment serenely dreaming of new Great Fires of London, -Temples of Diana at Ephesus, and Minsters at York, ignited by -Erostatratuses and Jonathan Martins yet unborn, would sing out of -the window a sonorous “All right!” hastily dress, descend, jump on -the ready-harnessed engine, and be conveyed jubilantly, as fast as ever -the horses could carry him, to the scene of the fire. But two stains -existed on the “Fire King’s” otherwise fair escutcheon. It was -darkly rumoured that on one occasion—it was a very fat fire at a patent -candle manufactory—he had offered to bribe the turncock, so tampering -with the supply of water; and that on another, it being a remarkably -cold winter’s night, he expressed a hope that the main might be -frozen. And yet a more tender-hearted man—“additional particulars,” -and the claim of a wife and large family being put out of the question—than -the Fire King, does not exist.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the oil and pickle man’s house blazes tremendously. -The houses on either side must go too; so think the firemen. Fears -are entertained for the safety of the houses over the way, already -scorched and blistering, and the adjoining tenements within a circle -of a hundred yards are sure to be more or less injured by water, for -the street is wretchedly narrow, and the houses lean-to frightfully. -One extremity of the thoroughfare has been shored up for years by -beams, now rotting. The oil and pickle man is heavily insured, so is -the contractor for army clothing over the way, so is the wholesale boot -and shoe manufacturer next door. It would be a mercy if the whole -decayed stack of buildings were swept away by the devouring, yet -purifying element. Yes, a mercy, surely a mercy. But the miserable -inhabitants of the crumbling tenements that cling like barnacles to the -skirts of the great shops and factories, are they insured? See them<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_355"></a>[355]</span> -swarming from their hovels half naked, frenzied with terror and amazement, -bearing their trembling children in their arms, or lugging their -lamentable shreds and scraps of household goods and chattels into the -open. Are <i>they</i> insured? The fire will send them to the workhouse, -or, maybe, to the workhouse dead-wall—for they have no legal settlement -there, or they are not casual paupers, or they haven’t seen the -relieving-officer, or they are too early, or too late—there to crouch -and die. To be sure, they ought never to have been born. <i>They</i> are -not necessary for the prosperity of the wholesale trade in boots and -shoes, oil, pickles, and army clothing. Why cumber they the earth?</p> - -<p>And still the fire leaps up into the cold morning air. The house -will be gutted out and out, the police now say authoritatively. Happily -there is no danger to be apprehended now for human life within -the blazing pile. The oil and pickle chandler does not dwell in his -warehouse. He has a snug villa at Highgate, and is very probably -now contemplating the motley sky from his parlour-window, and wondering -wherever the fire can be. The only living person who had to -be rescued was an old housekeeper, who persisted in saying that she -had lived in the house “seven and thirty year,” and wouldn’t leave it -while one stone remained on another; which was not so very difficult -a task, seeing that the premises were built throughout of brick. She -had to be hustled at last, and after much to do, into the fire-escape; -but for hours afterwards she led the firemen a terrible life respecting -the fate of a certain tom-cat, of extraordinary sagacity, called Ginger, -which she averred to have left sitting on the lid of the water-butt, -but which very soon afterwards appeared in the flesh, so scorched that -it smelt like burnt feathers, and clawing convulsively at the collar of -a police-constable of the F. division. It is, perhaps, scarcely worth -while to state that in the course of the fire a poor woman is carried -from one of the adjoining hovels dead. She was close upon her confinement, -and the child and she are gone to a more peaceable and -merciful city, where lives, at least, are assured for ever.</p> - -<p>Towards two o’clock, the columns of flame begin to grow slenderer, -less continuous, more fitful. The clanking of the fire-engines does not -decrease, however, in the least, though the firemen joyfully declare -that the fire is “got under.” The surrounding publicans—who, though -they closed at midnight, have all taken down their shutters with marvellous -alacrity—are doing a roaring trade in beer, which is distributed -to the volunteers at the pumps in sufficiently liberal quantities, a check -being kept upon the amount consumed by means of tickets. Where<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_356"></a>[356]</span> -the tickets come from I have no means of judging, but this wonderful -fire-brigade seem prepared for everything.</p> - -<p>So, feeling very hot and dry, and dazed about the eyes with constant -contemplation of the flames, I leave St. Giles’s and the oil and pickle -vender’s warehouse, which, when daylight comes, will be but a heap -of charred, steaming ruins, and wander westward, musing over the fires -I have seen and the fires I have read of. I think of the great fire of -London in Charles’s time—the fire that began at Pudding Lane and -ended at Pye Corner, and in commemoration of which they built that -strange monument, with the gilt shaving-brush at the top—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">“... London’s column, pointing to the skies,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">I think of the great fire at the Tower of London in 1841, of which I -was an eye-witness, and which consumed the hideous armouries built -by William III. and their priceless contents. I think upon the great -scuffle and scramble to rescue the crown and regalia from the -threatened Jewel House, such a scuffle and scramble as had not taken -place since Colonel Blood’s impudent attempt to steal those precious -things. Then my mind reverts to the monster conflagration by which -the winter palace at St. Petersburg was destroyed in 1839; of the -strange discovery then made, that dozens of families lived on the roof -of the palace—lived, and roosted, and died, and kept fowls and goats -there, of whose existence the court and the imperial household had -not the remotest idea; of the sentinel who died at his post, notwithstanding -the imperial command to leave it, because he had not been -relieved by his corporal; and of the Czar himself watching with compressed -lips the destruction of his magnificent palace, and vainly -entreating his officers not to risk their lives in endeavouring to save -the furniture. One zealous aide-de-camp could not be dissuaded from -the attempt to reach a magnificent pier-glass, framed in gold and -malachite, from a wall, whereupon his Imperial Majesty, seeing that -injunction, entreaty, menace were all in vain, hurled, with the full -force of his gigantic arm, his opera-glass at the sheet of crystal, which -was shivered to atoms by the blow. Not an uncharacteristic trait of -Nicholas Romanoff.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_357"></a>[357]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="TWO_AM">TWO O’CLOCK A.M.—A LATE DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, AND THE TURNSTILE OF WATERLOO BRIDGE.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>I never could understand politics (which difficulty of comprehension -of a repulsive topic I share, I am delighted to know, with the whole -charming female sex, for a woman who is a politician is to me no -woman at all). I never could be consistent in public matters. If -my remembrance serve me correctly, I think I began life as a flaming -Conservative. I am now as flaming a Radical; but I admit that I am -most deplorably deficient in consistency. I find myself, while straining -every nerve to defend the cause, to advocate the rights, to denounce -the oppressors of that English people of whom I am one, -frequently halting on ground where Eglintoun Beaverup, the Conservative -<i>par excellence</i>, and I can shake hands; I find myself -acknowledging that “blood is thicker than water,” and that gentle -birth will hold its own in the midst of sarcasms against the tenth -transmitters of foolish faces. I find myself actuated now (as ever in -that I have been consistent) by the same dislike and contempt for the -cruel, capricious, ruffian, unteachable Mob—the base <i>decamisado canaille</i>, -who are not the working classes, or the lower classes, or any -other class, but the Father of confusion and anarchy’s—the scurvy -mob who pelt a Castlereagh to-day and tear a John de Witt in pieces -to-morrow; who slaughtered Rienzi, and yelped for joy when Madame -Roland went to the guillotine; who cried for “justice” upon Charles -Stuart, and danced round the Tyburn tree from which dangled the -rotting corpse of Cromwell; who would trample on Henry Brougham -or John Russell at the present writing, and rend their vitals, if <i>their</i> -mobbish majesty were crossed in one of its wild-baboon whims.</p> - -<p>With this candid confession of my political shortcomings (I mean -to stand some day for the borough of Weathercock), and having thus, -I hope, disarmed criticism, I shall now venture into the (to me) -perilous region of politics. It is Two o’Clock in the morning; we -will even be present in the spirit at a late debate in the “House.”</p> - -<p>Which august assembly has already been designated by some -irreverent wag as a “large house which keeps bad hours.” In truth,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_358"></a>[358]</span> -one needs to be very intimately acquainted, not only with the framework, -but with the minuter organisation of English society and institutions—(how -sick I am, and you must be, of those eternally-recurring -words “institutions” and “society!”)—to understand the causes -of the immoderately late hours kept sometimes by the Lords, but with -much greater frequency by the Commons’ House of Parliament. At -the first blush, there seems no earthly reason why the legislative -business of the nation should not be got over during the day, or, at -the outside, before the night were spent. The French Deputies, -Conventionalists, or Representatives in the National Assembly, in -their stormiest and most prolonged debates, seldom heard the chimes -at midnight; and, ardent parliamentarians as are the Americans, it -is only towards the immediate close of the session that Congress keeps -for two or three days and nights a sort of Saturnalia of untimely -sittings. If report speaks true, the members of the United States -Legislature are only enabled to bear these unwonted vigils by incessant -recurrence to powerful stimulants. “Quislings,” “Fiscal -Agents,” “Stone Fences,” “Bullocks’ Milk,” and the innumerable -tribe of “Cocktails,” are at a premium during these abnormally protracted -debates; the benches of the House and the desks of the -members stand in imminent danger of being whittled away during -the excitement of discussion; the amount of tobacco masticated is -sufficient to ruin the digestive powers of the nation; the spittoons -overflow, and the fretfulness and irritation not unnaturally engendered -by nervous excitement, occasionally finds relief in cowhiding in the -committee-rooms, gouging in the lobbies, and “stand up and drag -out” fights on the august floor itself, occupied by the conscript fathers -of the republic. Thus I have been informed; but it may be that -report tells a fib, after all.</p> - -<p>When we arrive, however, at a just understanding and appreciation -of the mechanism of this wondrous British constitutional watch, -jewelled in ever so many holes as it is, with its levers, and escapements, -and unnumbered compensation balances, the lateness of our -legislative hours will not be by far so much of a mystery to us. We -are altogether a sitting-up late people. The continental theatres are -all closed by eleven. We dismiss our audiences sometimes at midnight, -oftener at half-past, or a quarter to one in the morning. Our -fashionable balls commence when those of other nations are terminating. -We may not dine so late, but then we sup heavily, hours -afterwards. Night life in London does not condescend to commence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_359"></a>[359]</span> -till the “small hours;” yet, in dissipated Paris, you may count the -<i>cafés</i> and supper-rooms on your fingers whose portals are open at one -o’clock in the morning. The “Journal des Debats” goes to press at -four in the afternoon; eight hours later, there is yet often a leader to -be written for the forthcoming number of the “Times.” The only -capital that can equal London in the faculty of “keeping it up” to -any number of hours, is St. Petersburg. There the antipathy which -the Russians entertain for going to bed is solely surpassed by their -aversion to getting up. They turn night into day; but the sturdy, -strong-willed, perverse English work or dissipate nearly “twice round -the clock.” They make the little children go to bed; yet the ambition -even of those younglings is to “sit up late” like the grown -people.</p> - -<p>A French senator gets a thousand pounds a year for wearing a blue -livery coat with a stand-up collar, the whole handsomely embroidered -in gold; kerseymere small clothes, and silk stockings. He drives -down to the Luxembourg in his brougham, about three in the afternoon, -dozes for a couple of hours on a well-stuffed bench, goes home -to dine, drink coffee, play tric-trac, read the “Gazette de France,” or -receive a select circle of pensioned fogies like himself. He wakes up -some fine morning to find himself complimented in the “Moniteur,” -and the gratified recipient of the grand cross of the Legion of Honour. -A member of the French <i>Corps Législatif</i> receives his wages in a comparative -ratio, and pursues an analogous cycle of “duties.” But look -at an English member of Parliament. He receives nothing a year, -and in many cases has little more than that problematical income, -sometimes humorously characterised as “midshipman’s half-pay,” to -live upon. If he be rich, so much the better; but wealth will not -take away a tittle from his hard work. In the early morning, over -his tea and toast, he has an ocean of correspondence, often frivolous, -always wearisome, to wade through. Then he has his blue-books to -dive into, his authorities to consult, his statistics to cram, his speeches -to “coach,” his grievances to hunt up, his exordia to study, his perorations -to practise. Comes the hour of morning calls when he must -be at home, and give audience to the great army of Askers and the -legionary tribe of bores, men who will take no denial, importunate -clients, who want berths in the Post-office for themselves, or reversions -of tide-waiterships for their cousins’ cousins. Happily for the -member of Parliament, Mr. Rowland Hill’s penny-postage system has -abolished the frank-hunting torture, which brought many M.P.’s to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_360"></a>[360]</span> -death’s door, and made more bitterly regret that they had ever been -taught to write their own names. And woe be to the legislator if he -receive not his visitors with courtesy! They probably are constituents, -and a curt answer will frequently send them away charged -with the deadliest schemes against that member’s vote and interest at -the ensuing general election. As a diversion during the morning -calls, the M.P. has to receive some dozens of applications for orders -of admission to the Strangers’ Gallery of the House, he having always -a couple at his disposal. After this, he has, perhaps, to wait upon -the Prime Minister, in Downing Street, at the head of a deputation -respecting the disputed right in a cess-pool; or he may be the chairman -of some parliamentary committee, sitting, <i>de die in diem</i>, to inquire -into the hideous turpitude of a contractor who has sewn so -many pairs of soldiers’ boots without cobblers’ wax. Then, he has -to take a cab to attend the great public meeting for the Evangelisation -of Chinese beggars, held at the Mansion House. He is due -about this time in the board-room of the public company of which -he is a director; and at the special committee of the Benevolent -Institution in which he takes so much interest. A pretty hard -day’s work this, you will acknowledge. Add that the English member -of Parliament has to be, over and above all this, a man of business or -pleasure: with a wife and family very often, with a turn for literature, -or art, or science, or natural history. He is a merchant or -banker, and must drudge in his counting-house, like the meanest of -his clerks, or gabble on ’Change with the nimblest-tongued bill-broker. -He is a great counsel: he cannot plead the cause of “Stradlings -<i>versus</i> Styles,” by deputy, or allow his junior to sum up in the -great will case. He is a celebrity of the fashionable world: he must -pay his morning visits, ride in the Park, show himself at the “Corner,” -lounge through his clubs, drop in at the opera at night; and, after all -this, or rather in the midst of all this, and pervading it like a nightmare, -there is the real business of his life—the “House.” He possesses -some six hundred other colleagues, who are to the full as busily occupied -as he is during the day, yet manage, somehow, to find themselves -behind the Speaker’s chair, or at the gangway, at five o’clock in the -afternoon. He had better not be unpunctual or remiss in his attendance. -Those constituents of his, at Shrimpington-super-Mare, will -call him to a strict account of his stewardship at the end of the -session, and it may go hard with him at the Mechanics’ Institution -or the Farmers’ Ordinary. Under all these circumstances, do you<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_361"></a>[361]</span> -think it so very extraordinary that there should be occasionally a late -debate in the House of Commons?</p> - -<p>You will remark that I have preserved, throughout, a decorous -reticence with regard to the House of Lords. Goodness forfend that -I should have to judge their Lordships by the same business-like -work-a-day standard which I have presumed to apply to the Lower -House. Their Lordships meet early and separate early, as becometh -their degree; yet even the Lords have their field-days, and their -occasions when they sit up late o’ nights. Then the right reverend -bishops come down, booted and spurred, to vote against the heathen; -and paralytic old peers are borne to the House in litters, there to -wheeze forth, in tremulous accents, their unalterable attachment to -Church and State, so dangerously menaced in “another place,” and -from their most noble pockets they pull forth “proxies,” signed by -other peers more paralytic than themselves. But these field-days of -the Lords are few and far between, and the <i>otium cum dignitate</i> is the -easy, comfortable rule with their Lordships. It is but doing them -justice to say, however, that many peers have been members of the -Lower House in their time, and have sat up as late, and battled in -debate as fiercely, as any middle-aged member of her Majesty’s Opposition. -Nor are they all idle, parliamentarily, in the day time. There -are some noblemen—legal peers mostly—who disdain to rest upon -their laurels, and are content to spend the long forenoons in listening -to dreary disquisitions about the wrongs of Parsee traders, and the -visionary pedigrees of claimants to dormant peerages. The Lords’ -committee hear appeals, and it is a wondrous sight to see those old -boys snoozing and twiddling their thumbs on the crimson benches of -their golden chamber. They seem not to listen to the elaborate -word-entanglements of the bewigged pleaders; yet they make remarks -full of sense and pregnant with acumen. You are a young man or -woman, dear reader of this, I hope. You have not much time to -lose. Go straight down to Palace Yard, pass through Westminster -Hall, and up the stone stairs, by the giant brazen candelabra and -the great stained-glass window. So on through the Gothic vestibules -and corridors—never mind the frescoes of Messrs. Dyce and -Company, they are not worth looking at just now. Hie you -quickly to a door-way half-screened by crimson drapery, and edge -your way into the House of Lords. An you take off your hat and -hold your tongue, you may stare about you as much as ever you -please, and hear your fill of the edifying, if not amusing, appeals.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_362"></a>[362]</span> -You may wonder at the Lord Chancellor’s wrinkles and at his ruffles; -you may listen to Floorem, Attorney-General, and Botherem, Q.C., -till your eyes begin to wink, and your head to nod, and your whole -mental framework to grow desperately weary; but you must not go -entirely to sleep. Somnolence may entail a fall on the floor of the -House, which would cause a noise, and would never do; so, unless -you are gifted, like a horse, with the power of going to sleep standing, -I would counsel you to take a cup of strong green tea before you -enter the House, and so string your nerves up to wakefulness. For -diversion, turn away your eyes from the verbose barristers in their -horse-hair, silk, and bombazine, and look at their Lordships. There -are not often more than half-a-dozen of them present—seldom so many -as that. You shall scarcely fail, however, to miss that noble senator—a -capital working man of business he is too—who is possessed by the -curious idiosyncrasy of dressing in the exact similitude of his own -butler: blue coat and brass buttons, yellow waistcoat, pepper-and-salt -pantaloons—not trousers, mind—and low shoes. I think, even, that -his Lordship’s head is powdered. You may object that there is no -reason why a gentleman of the old school, wedded to traditions and -reminiscences of <i>le bon vieux temps</i>, should not wear such a costume as -this, and yet look every inch a nobleman. Nor is there, indeed; but -glance for a moment at Lord Aspendale, and you will confess that, -from hair-powder to shoe-string, there is a permeating flavour of the -side-board and the still-room. Whether his Lordship likes it, or -whether his Lordship can’t help it, it matters little; but the fact is -there, plain and obvious.</p> - -<p>Standing in the narrow Gothic railed-off space reserved for the -public—the throne at the opposite extremity of the House—you may -see on one of the benches to the right, almost every forenoon—Saturday -and Sunday excepted—during the session, a very old man -with a white head, and attired in a simple frock and trousers of shepherd’s -plaid. It is a leonine head, and the white locks are bushy and -profuse. So, too, the eyebrows, penthouses to eyes somewhat weak -now, but that can flash fire yet upon occasions. The face is ploughed -with wrinkles, as well it may be, for the old man will never see fourscore -years again, and of these, threescore, at the very least, have -been spent in study and the hardest labour, mental and physical. -The nose is a marvel—protuberant, rugose, aggressive, inquiring, and -defiant: unlovely, but intellectual. There is a trumpet mouth, a -belligerent mouth, projecting and self-asserting; largish ears, and on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_363"></a>[363]</span> -chin or cheeks no vestige of hair. Not a beautiful man this on any -theory of beauty, Hogarthesque, Ruskinesque, Winckelmanesque, or -otherwise. Rather a shaggy, gnarled, battered, weatherbeaten, ugly, -faithful, Scotch-colley type. Not a soft, imploring, yielding face. -Rather a tearing, mocking, pugnacious, cast of countenance. The -mouth is fashioned to the saying of harsh, hard, impertinent things: -not cruel, but downright; but never to whisper compliments, or -simper out platitudes. A nose, too, that can snuff the battle afar off, -and with dilated nostrils breathe forth a glory that is sometimes terrible; -but not a nose for a pouncet-box, or a Covent Garden bouquet, -or a <i>flacon</i> of Frangipani. Would not care much for truffles either -I think, or the delicate aroma of sparkling Moselle. Would prefer -onions or strongly-infused malt and hops: something honest and -unsophisticated. Watch this old man narrowly, young visitor to the -Lords. Scan his furrowed visage. Mark his odd angular ways and -gestures passing uncouth. Now he crouches, very doglike, on his -crimson bench: clasps one shepherd’s plaid leg in both his hands. -Botherem, Q.C., is talking nonsense, I think. Now the legs are -crossed, and the hands thrown behind the head; now he digs his -elbows into the little Gothic writing-table before him, and buries the -hands in that puissant white hair of his. The quiddities of Floorem, -Q.C., are beyond human patience. Then with a wrench, a wriggle, a -shake, a half turn and half start up—still very doglike, but of the -Newfoundland rather, now, he asks a lawyer or a witness a question. -Question very sharp and to the point, not often complimentary by-times, -and couched in that which is neither broad Scotch nor Northumbrian -burr, but a rebellious mixture of the two. Mark him well, -eye him closely: you have not much time to lose. Alas! the giant -is very old; though with frame yet unenfeebled, with intellect yet -gloriously unclouded. But the sands are running, ever running. -Watch him, mark him, eye him, score him on your mind tablets: -then home; and in after years it may be your lot to tell your children, -that once at least you have seen with your own eyes the famous Lord -of Vaux; once listened to the voice that has shaken thrones and -made tyrants tremble, that has been a herald of deliverance to millions -pining in slavery and captivity; a voice that has given utterance, -in man’s most eloquent words, to the noblest, wisest thoughts -lent to this Man of Men by Heaven; a voice that has been trumpet-sounding -these sixty years past in defence of Truth, and Right, and -Justice—in advocacy of the claims of learning and industry, and of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_364"></a>[364]</span> -the liberties of the great English people, from whose ranks he rose; -a voice that should be entitled to a hearing in a Walhalla of wise -heroes, after Francis of Verulam and Isaac of Grantham; the voice of -one who is worthily a lord, but who will be yet better remembered, -and to all time—remembered enthusiastically and affectionately—as -the champion of all good and wise and beautiful Human Things—<span class="smcap">Harry -Brougham</span>.</p> - -<p>But I must not forget, as I am sorely tempted to do in Westminster -Hall, that it is two o’clock in the morning. This is the last night—the -honourable House are positively determined to divide to-night, -even if the Ministry go out—of the adjourned debate on the Gulliver -Indemnity Bill. The honourable House have been speechifying at a -tremendous rate for the last fortnight on the vexed question as to -whether Samuel Gulliver, master mariner, is or is not to have an -indemnity. Lord Viscount Palmerston, head of the government, says -he shall. The Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, ex-Chancellor of the -Exchequer, and head of the Opposition, says he sha’n’t. Honourable -members in formidable numbers range themselves on either side. -Night after night the House has been ringing with eulogies and -denunciations of Gulliver and his indemnity. The country is in a -ferment, the press in arms, on the Titanic topic. A monster meeting -at Manchester has pledged itself, amid deafening cheers in the Lancashire -dialect and rounds of “Kentish fire,” to support the indemnification -of Gulliver by every legal and constitutional means. The -“Times” newspaper, on its part, declares the indemnity an impudent -swindle, and plainly announces that if Gulliver be indemnified, Great -Britain must be content to remain henceforth and for ever a second-rate -Power. The funds are going up and down like a see-saw, all -with reference to Gulliver. More bets are made in the clubs and -sporting localities <i>in re</i> Gulliver than on the coming Derby, or that -other vexed question whether Bludgin Yahoo, who murdered the old -lady with the crowbar (they say he is beautifully penitent in Newgate, -and that the sheriffs cry to see him eat his daily beefsteak) will -be hanged or not. The Emperor of Brobdignag is vitally interested -in Gulliver, and there were two <i>attachés</i> from the Lilliputian embassy -in the Speaker’s gallery the night before last. Never mind who Gulliver -was, or what was the nature of the losses for which he sought -to be indemnified. It matters as little now as whether Bolgrad was -a hamlet or a town; and even while the conflict was raging, I very -much question whether a hundred members of the House of Commons<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_365"></a>[365]</span> -knew anything about Gulliver personally, or cared two pins about -him or his indemnity. In some respects politics are like fox-hunting. -You want a fast-running, doubling, artful question—the more powerful -in odour the better—to start with; but once run down the fox, -and the question goes for nothing. Sometimes Reynard is scarce; -but even then a red herring will serve at a pinch to bark at and run -after.</p> - -<p>We are in a spacious chamber, not very vast, not very lofty—for -there is a false roof of ground glass, for acoustic reasons—and not -very handsome. A sufficiency of oaken panelling, and windows veiled -with velvet curtains, brilliant but cunningly tempered light—the absolute -lamps invisible. Altogether a comfortable, well-to-do-place—say -something like an enlarged edition of the coffee-room of a terminus -hotel, as they are building terminus hotels now-a-days, or the -newspaper-room of a club fitted up for a general meeting of the -members. A tinge of Gothicism pervades the decorations, here and -there tending to the Elizabethan, but altogether leaning more to the -“convenient” style of ornament. Everything that skill and ingenuity -(duly patented) can devise for the promotion of light, warmth, general -comfort, &c., are here. Enthroned on high, slender galleries above -him, is the Speaker. “Jove in his chair, of the skies lord mayor,” -is a sufficiently tremendous Pagan image. He must find it a somewhat -hard task to keep order on Olympus’ top occasionally. Vulcan -will be wrangling with Apollo and eyeing Mars askant: Venus will be -having high words with Juno, and Minerva boring the celestial company -generally with her strongmindedness; to say nothing of Bacchus, -in the plenitude of fermented grape-juice, volunteering a stave when -nobody wants one; Mercury, labouring under his eternal disability to -keep his hands out of the other gods’ and goddesses’ pockets; and the -arch mischief maker, Cupid, wantoning about on his flyflapper wings, -and setting everybody by the ears. But Jupiter-Speaker has a thrice -more difficult task! Fancy having to preserve discipline among six -hundred and a half gentlemen—young, old, and middle-aged gentles, -all fond of the sound of their own voices; many of whom have dined -copiously, to the making of them noisy; some who have not dined at -all, to the making of them fretful and peevish, not to say quarrelsome. -Poor Mr. Speaker! how weary he must be of the honourable House -and of its honourable members in general, and of the Gulliver’s Indemnity -Bill in particular! Yet there he sits, the image of urbanity -and equanimity, graceful, composed, dignified, though taciturn; his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_366"></a>[366]</span> -wig unmoved, his bands and ruffles uncrumpled. How devoutly he -must wish that the bill were “in committee,” when the mace might -lie under the table, and he himself “leave the chair!” But, alas! the -atrocious measure has not yet been read a second time. The country -need be liberal and the House courteous to the Speaker. Surely, if -any man deserves a handsome salary, free quarters, and a peerage on -retirement, it is that Right Honourable Gentleman. To have to listen, -night after night, to drowthy verbosities, phantasm statements, nightmare -gibberings of incoherent statistics, inextricable word-chaoses of -statements and counter-statements, sham declarations of sham patriotism -bellowed forth with sham energy; to have to hear these tales, full -of sound and fury, told by honourable idiots full of unutterable “bunkum” -(an Americanism I feel constrained to use, as signifying nothingness, -ineffably inept and irremediably pin-perforated windbaggery, -and sublimated cucumber sunbeams hopelessly eclipsed into Dis)—these -must be trials so sore that they need the highest of wages, the -best of living, to be endured even. To induce a man to keep a turn-pike -or a lighthouse, to work in a gunpowder mill, or to accept the -governorship of Cape Coast Castle, you must offer heavy reward. Of -old, in France, glass-blowing was considered to be a trade so dangerous, -and requiring so much abnegation of self, that its professors were -not ranked with the meaner sort of mechanics. Your glass-blower -was entitled to wear a sword, a privilege extended since, I believe, to -printers: (it is lucky they do not exercise it now, or I should be run -through and through a dozen times a day by compositors infuriate at -illegible spider manuscript.) He could blow glass without tarnishing -his ’scutcheon, and was called “<i>Gentilhomme Verrier</i>.” Touching -the Speakership, I think that the mere obligation of hearing men who -hate each other, bandying the epithet of “honourable friend” so -many hundred times in a night, is in itself worth two thousand -a year.</p> - -<p>The House has commenced. The peers’ gallery, ambassadors’ -seats, strangers’, Speaker’s gallery, all full of attentive listeners. -“Distinguished foreigners” are present. The Emperor of Brobdignag’s -ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs has come down from the -Travellers’, where he has been playing whist with the Hospodar -of Wallachia’s <i>Chargé d’Affaires</i>, and lurks in ambush behind the -Speaker. The sparkling eyes of ladies, seeing but unseen, look -down, as at Evans’s, upon the hall. The members’ benches—oaken -covered with green leather, carved ends—are full. The members’<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_367"></a>[367]</span> -gallery (stretching along both sides of the House) is, to tell the truth, -not full, but it is possibly occupied by honourable members who have -retired thither to—listen to the debate, of course. Oddly enough, -they find that the assumption of a horizontal position is the very -best for hearing that which is going on below; or, perhaps, they -only imitate in this Fortunio’s gifted servant. To turn the face -to the wall, also, seems a favourite method of stimulating the auditory -nerve; and some honourable gentlemen are so engrossed in the -exciting debate proceeding in the House, that, at two o’clock in -the morning, they sometimes give vent to their overworked-up -feelings in a deep stertorous nasal sound resembling a snore.</p> - -<p>Up in the reporters’ gallery there, the gentlemen who submit to -“work on an intellectual treadmill for three hundred pounds a year,” -are having hard times of it. The “turns” of stenography are getting -shorter and shorter; but, alas! they have been terribly frequent -during the debate. How unmerciful have been the maledictions bestowed -on Gulliver and his indemnity since five p.m. when the Speaker -was at prayers! Gulliver would be a bold man to venture into the -cushion-benched chamber behind the gallery where the gentlemen of -the Press retire to transcribe their notes. O’Dobbin of the “Flail” -has been dying to hear Tamberlik in “Otello” these six weeks past. -His chief gave him a stall this morning. Gulliver sits in it like a -ghoule on a grave. Dollfus, of Garden Court, Temple, was invited to -Jack Tritail, the newly-made barrister’s, “call” carouse in Lincoln’s -Inn Hall. Gulliver is sitting at the hospitable board, gulping down -the claret like Garagantua. Little Spitters, who was always a ladies’ -man, was to have been a “welcome guest” at a neat villa not far -from Hammersmith Broadway. The fiend Gulliver is at this moment -being called a “droll creature,” and is flirting with the eldest Miss -Cockletop.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_368"></a>[368]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus45" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus45.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TWO O’CLOCK A.M.: A LATE DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_369"></a>[369]</span></p> - -<p>The great chief of the Opposition has spoken. Gloomy, saturnine, -isolated, yet triumphant, sits the eloquent and sarcastic Caucasian. -Those once brilliant black corkscrew ringlets are growing slightly -gray and wiry now, the chin tuft has disappeared, and time and -thought have drawn deep lines in the sallow visage of Benjamin -Disraeli, ruler of the Opposition. His attire, too, is sober compared -with the myriad-hued garb, the flashing jewellery, and vests of many -colours, with which Benjamin was wont to dazzle our eyes in the days -before he slew Robert Peel, and hired himself to the Protectionists—all -in a parliamentary sense. People say, when he wrote “Venetia” -and the “Revolutionary Epic,” he used to wear laced ruffles at his -wrists and black velvet inexpressibles. He is wiser now. He has -turned the half century, and only wears a vest of many colours when -he dons his gold robe as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has worn -it once, and would very much like to wear it again. He has made a -very long, telling, brilliant speech, in which he has said a multitude of -damaging things against Gulliver, his indemnity, and especially against -the noble Viscount at the head of the Government. He has never -been abusive, insulting, coarse, virulent—oh, never! he has not once -lost his temper. He has treated the noble Viscount with marked -courtesy, and has called him his right honourable and noble friend -scores of times; yet, hearing him, it has been impossible to avoid the -impression that if any man was ever actuated by the conviction that -his right honourable and noble friend was an impostor and a humbug, -with a considerable dash of the traitor; and that—without hinting -anything in the slightest degree libellous—his right honourable and -noble friend had been once or twice convicted of larceny, and had failed -in clearing himself from the suspicion of having murdered his grandmother, -that man was Benjamin Disraeli, M.P. for the county of -Bucks. He did not begin brilliantly. He was not in the slightest -degree like Cicero or Demosthenes, Burke or Grattan, or like thee, -my Eglintoun Beaverup, when thou descantest upon the “glorious -old cocks,” the “real tap, sir,” of antiquity. He was, on the contrary, -slow, laboured, downcast, and somewhat ponderous; nor even at the -conclusion of his magnificent harangue, did he throw his arms about, -smite his breast, stamp his foot, or cast his eyes up to heaven—and -the ceiling. The days of weeping and gesticulation, of crumpling up -sheets of paper, cracking slave-whips, flinging down daggers, and -smashing the works of watches, seem to have departed from the House -of Commons. Yet the eminent Caucasian contrived to create a very -appreciable sensation, and certainly shot those barbed arrows of his—arrows -tipped with judicious sarcasm and polite malevolence—with -amazing dexterity and with murderous success. He has made his -noble friend wince more than once, I will be bound. But you cannot -see the workings of that stateman’s face, for (save while addressing -the House) he wears his hat; and the light coming from above causes -the friendly brim to cast the vice-comital countenance into shadow.</p> - -<p>A noticeable man this Hebrew Caucasian, Benjamin Disraeli, with -his byegone literary nonsenses, and black-velvet-trousered frivolities. -Not at all an English Man, trustworthy, loveable, nor indeed admirable,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_370"></a>[370]</span> -according to our sturdy English prejudices. Such statesmen as -Shaftesbury, Ximenes, De Retz, any minister with a penchant for -“dark and crooked ways,” would have delighted in him; but to -upright, albeit bigoted, William Pitt, he would have had anything but -a sweet savour. Even Tory Castlereagh and Tory Sidmouth would -but ill have relished this slippery, spangled, spotted, insincere Will-o’-the-wisp -patriot. I should like very much to have known what manner -of opinion the late Duke of Wellington entertained of Benjamin -Disraeli. It is, of course, but matter of speculation; but I can’t help -thinking, too, that if Arthur Wellesley had had Benjamin in the -Peninsula, he would have hanged him to a certainty.</p> - -<p>Hush! pray hush! Silence, ye cackling juniors on the back -benches; wake up, ye sluggards—only they don’t wake up—the noble -Viscount at the head of the Government is speaking. He begins -confidently enough, but somewhat wearily, as though he were -thoroughly tired of the whole business. But he warms gradually, and -he, in his turn, too, can say damaging things about <i>his</i> right honourable -friend, head of the Opposition. But he never says anything -spiteful—is at most petulant (loses his temper altogether sometimes, -they say), and flings about some <i>bon mots</i> that, were they published in -this week’s “Punch,” would cause a well-grounded complaint of the -growing dulness of that periodical. He speaks long, and to the purpose, -and you can see at once in what stead have stood to him his -long official career, his immense parliamentary experience. Recollect -that John Henry Temple, Viscount Palmerston, has sat in Parliament -for half a century, was Secretary-at-War while Wellington was yet -wrestling with Napoleon’s marshals in Spain, was one of the authors -of the “New Whig Guide,” has formed part of scores of administrations; -and—one of the hardest-worked men of his time—has yet -found leasure to be a beau and lion of fashion in Grosvenorian circles, -and to be called “Cupid”—Grosvenorian circles rather chap-fallen, -crow’s-footed, rheumy about the eyes by this time, rather fallen into -the sere and yellow leaf, now hessians and short waists have gone out, -hoops and pegtops come in. Drollest of all, to think that this smug -elderly gentleman, voluble in spite of tongue-clogging seventy, and -jaunty in spite of evident gout, but quite a decorous, father-of-family, -select vestryman-looking ancient, should be the “<i>terrible Palmerston</i>” -the firebrand of the Continent, the bugbear of foreign oligarchs, the -grim “<i>Caballero Balmerson</i>” naming whom Spanish contrabandistas -cross themselves, the abhorred “Palmerstoni” whom papal gensd’arme<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_371"></a>[371]</span> -imagine to be an emerited brigand who has long defied the pontifical -authority from an inaccessible fastness in the Apennines. I need not -tell you anything more about his speech. You will find it all in -Hansard; and the newspapers of the day gave an accurate summary -of the cheers, the counter-cheers, the ironical cheers, the “Hear, -hears,” and the “Oh, oh’s” which accompanied the harangue, together -with the “loud and continuous cheering” (from his own side of -the House) which greeted its conclusion.</p> - -<p>The longest lane, however, must have a turning; and this desperately -long drawn-out parliamentary avenue has its turning at last. -There have been frenzied shrieks of “Divide—divide!’ numerous -bores who have essayed to speak have been summarily shut up and -coughed down; and at length strangers are ordered to withdraw, and -the division bell rings.</p> - -<p>“On our re-admission,” we quote from the “Times” newspaper -of 185—, the results of the division were announced as follows:—</p> - -<table> - <tr> - <td>For the second reading of the bill</td> - <td class="tdpg">284</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Against it</td> - <td class="tdpg">307</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Majority against the Government</td> - <td class="tdpg bt">23</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p>The bill was consequently lost.</p> - -<p>Next day the Government presided over by the noble Viscount who -wears his hat, goes out of office—the “Times” giving it a graceful -kick at parting, and hinting that it was never anything more than a -disreputable, shameless, abandoned clique, whose nepotism had grown -intolerable in the nostrils of the nation. The Right Honourable Caucasian, -who doesn’t wear his hat, is sent for by a certain friend of his—a -noble Earl, who is generally considered a first-rate hand at making -up a book for the Derby. He in his turn is sent for by his Most -Gracious Sovereign; and, for the next three or four days, there is -nothing but running about and getting upstairs between Buckingham -Palace, St. James’s Square, and Grosvenor Gate; and at the end of -that time, the right honourable Caucasian finds himself snugly ensconced -in Downing Street, with full liberty to wear his gold robe -again.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_372"></a>[372]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus46" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus46.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">TWO O’CLOCK A.M.: THE TURNSTILE OF WATERLOO BRIDGE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_373"></a>[373]</span></p> - -<p>Past, long past two in the morning. The much-suffering House of -Commons at last shut up, and deserted save by the police and the night -watchmen. The last cabs in Palace Yard driven away: the charioteers -grumbling horribly on their boxes, for they have members of Parliament -inside, who never pay more than the legal fare. Irish members -walked round the corner to Manchester Buildings or Victoria Street, -there dwelling. Some members do all but sleep in the House. As -for the noble and defeated Viscount, he trots cheerily home—scorning -either cab or carriage—shouldering his umbrella, as though nothing in -the world had happened to ruffle his equanimity.</p> - -<p class="tb">And now, for the first time since this clock was set in motion, something -like a deep sleep falleth over London. Not that the city is all -hushed; it never is. There are night revellers abroad, night prowlers -a-foot. There is houseless wretchedness knowing not where to hide -its head; there is furtive crime stalking about, and seeking whom it -may devour. Yet all has a solemn, ghastly, unearthly aspect; the -gas-lamps flicker like corpse candles; and the distant scream of a profligate, -in conflict with the police, courses up and down the streets in -weird and shuddering echoes.</p> - -<p>The Strand is so still that you may count the footsteps as they -sound; and the pale moon looks down pityingly on the vast, feverish, -semi-slumbering mass. Here we stand at length by Upper Wellington -Street; a minute’s walk to the right will bring us to the “Bridge of -Sighs.”</p> - -<p>Which never sleeps! Morning, and noon, and night, the sharp, -clicking turnstile revolves; the ever-wakeful tollman is there, with his -preternaturally keen apron. I call this man Charon, and the river -which his standing ferry bridges over might well be the Styx. Impossible, -immobile, indifferent, the gate-keeper’s creed is summed up -in one word—“A halfpenny!” Love, hope, happiness, misery, despair, -and death—what are they to him? “A halfpenny for the bridge” is -all he asks! but “a halfpenny for the bridge” he must have.</p> - -<p>“Please, sir, will you give me a halfpenny for the bridge?” A -phantom in crinoline lays her hand on my arm. I start, and she -hastens through the turnstile—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Anywhere, anywhere,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Out of the world,”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">perhaps. But I may not linger on the mysteries of the Bridge of -Sighs. They are among the “Secrets of Gas,” and the pictured semblance -of the place here must content you.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_374"></a>[374]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="HOUR_THE_TWENTY-FOURTH">HOUR THE TWENTY-FOURTH AND LAST—THREE A.M.—A BAL MASQUE, AND THE NIGHT CHARGES AT BOW STREET.</h2> - -</div> - -<p>When the bad Lord Lyttelton lay on his last bed—thorn-strewn by -conscience—and haunted by the awful prediction of the phantom -which appeared to him in the semblance of a white dove, telling -him that at a certain hour on a certain night he should die, some -friends who had a modicum of human feeling, and wished that -wicked lord well, thinking that his agony was caused by mere terror -of an impending event—half nervous, half superstitious—advanced -the hands of the clock One Hour, and when the fatal one, as it -seemed, struck, his Lordship started up in bed, apparently much relieved, -and cried out joyfully that he had “jockeyed the ghost.” But when -the <i>real time</i> arrived, and the <i>real hour</i> was stricken on the bell, the -prediction of the white dove was verified, and the bad Lord Lyttelton, -shrieking, gave up the ghost.</p> - -<p>Moral: there is not the slightest use in playing tricks with the -clock. Were it otherwise, and were I not deterred by this awful -warning in the case of Lord Lyttelton, I would entreat some kindly -friend to stand on tiptoe, and just push the hour-hand of this clock of -mine back, were it but for one poor <i>stunde</i> of sixty minutes. But in -vain. As well ask Mr. Calcraft to postpone his quarter-to-eight visit -with a new rope, when the law has consigned you to the tender mercies -of that eminent functionary. As well may Crown Prince Frederick -entreat the Governor of Cüstrin to defer the execution of wretched -Lieutenant Katte, “till he can write to the king.” As well may the -unfortunate little Pants, hopelessly embroiled for the fifth time this -morning with his Greek Delectus, implore the terrible Doctor Budd to -spare him the rod this once. As well might I write to the Postmaster-General -to say that it will not be convenient for me to deposit the last -batch of newspapers in the window till half-past six p.m.; or beg the -London and North-Western Railway Company to delay the departure -of the Manchester night express till I have finished my wine and -walnuts at the Victoria Hotel, Euston Square. The fiat has gone<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_375"></a>[375]</span> -forth. <i>Missa est.</i> Judgment is over, and execution is come; and -I may say, with Lord Grizzle in “Tom Thumb:”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“My bodye is a bankrupt’s shop,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My grim creditor is death,”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">who, like a stern sergeant, lays his hand on my collar, and bids me -follow him to jail in the king’s name. I wish I were Punch, for he -not only “jockeyed” the ghost, but the hangman, and the beadle, and -Mr. Shallabalah, and his wife, and the very deuce himself. I wish -I were in a land where time is indeed made for slaves, or where there -are no clocks to cast honest men off their hobbies.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“I wish I were a geese,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For they lives and dies in peace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And accumulates much grease,</div> - <div class="verse indent12">Over there.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">But I am not a Punch nor a “geese,” to endorse the touching transatlantic -locution, however much I may merit the singular application -of the name. I am only your humble servant to command, and this -is the last hour of “Twice Round the Clock,” so I must e’en essay -to make a good end of it.</p> - -<p>We have not been so badly off for public amusements during our -journeyings. We have been to the opera, to the theatre, a dancing-academy, -and to hear an oratorio. We have supped at Evans’s, and -“assisted” at a late debate in the House of Commons; yet I acknowledge, -mournfully, that scores of places of recreation exist in London -to which I could have taken you, and where we might have enjoyed -ourselves very rationally and harmlessly. I should have liked to induct -you to the mysteries of Canterbury Hall, the Polytechnic, Christy’s -Minstrels, and Madame Tussaud’s waxwork show. For I hold to this -creed, sternly and strongly, that public amusements—indoor and outdoor -amusements—are eminently conducive to public <i>morals</i>, and to -the liberty and happiness of the people. Music, dancing, and dramatic -representations, free from grossness and turbulence, are as healthful -and innocent recreations as Temperance Halls, lectures on the comet’s -tail, or monster meetings dedicated to the deification of the <i>odium -theologicum</i>. From my little parlour window at Brighton, I can see a -huge yellow placard disfiguring a dead wall with this inscription:—“Protestants! -attend the Great Meeting to-night!” Bother the -Protestants, (on platforms) I say, and the Pope of Rome too. What<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_376"></a>[376]</span> -have we done that we are to be perpetually set together by the ears by -belligerent Protestants and rampant Romanists? Is the whole framework -of society to be shaken by controversies about the cardinal’s red -stockings or the rector’s shovel hat? They had best both be swept -into the dust-hole, I think, as having no more to do with religion than -my poodle, Buffo, has with the Gunpowder Plot. Will all these roaring -meetings—Protestants and Romanist, or Mumbo-Jumboical—where -blatant stump-orators, paid for their theology by the night, rant, and -stamp, and cook up those eternal Smithfield fires, help the sacred cause -of Christianity one iota? It is long since Sheridan expressed a hope -that there might be no more “scandal about Queen Elizabeth,” and -now, I see, they can’t let that poor old woman rest in her grave. -Some zealous people want to get up a sort of rider to “Guy Fawkes’s -Day,” to commemorate the tri-centenary of her accession. You stupid -firebrands! Of course “the Reformation was a blessing;” but do -you know what will be the result of this raking up of the Elizabethan -scandal? Do you know that there are such books as “Cobbett’s Legacy -to Parsons,” and “Lingard’s History,” besides “Foxe’s Martyrs,” and -a “Thunderbolt for Rome”? Do you know that it may be proved -just six of one and half-a-dozen of the other about Queen Bess? that -while to some she is the Great Protestant Sovereign, the Egeria of the -Reformation, the Heroine of Tilbury Fort, to others she is a vain, cruel, -arrogant old beldame, no better than she should be? who butchered -Mary Stuart, and had Leicester poisoned; and who for every Protestant -her gloomy sister burned, had at least two Papists hanged, drawn, and -quartered, with the pleasant addition of their entrails being torn out -and consumed before their eyes! <i>Eh! laissons la</i> these horrible reminiscences, -and thank Heaven that we live under the sway of good -Victoria, not that of ruthless Elizabeth or bloody Mary. Did the wise, -and merciful, and bounteous Creator, who made this smiling earth, who -has gladdened us with an infinity of good things for our solace and -enjoyment, and for all quit-rent has laid this law upon us that we -should love one another, in testimony of our greatest love for Him, -who is all love and tenderness; did He send us here to squabble and -fight and predict eternal perdition to one another, because there fall -into our hearts a differently-coloured ray of the divine Effulgence? -There is a flaming Protestant here with a broad-brimmed hat, and -who is a vessel of much consequence among his fellow-bigots, who told -an honest butcher some days since that if the Maynooth grant were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_377"></a>[377]</span> -renewed we should have “the thumbscrews in three months;” whereupon -the affrighted butcher plastered all his joints over with handbills -of the great Protestant Meeting, thus, of course, losing all his customers -of the other persuasion. I wish those bells which are eternally jangling -invitations for us to come and thank Heaven that we are not “as that -publican,” would ring a little tolerance and charity into men’s hearts; -would ring out a little more oblivion of phylacteries and pew-rents in -high places, and of the sepulchral whitewash brushes. If the people -who make all this noise and clamour, and who howl out against rational -amusements, led pure and virtuous lives, and set good examples to their -neighbours, this voice should not be raised; but, alas! here is brother -Dolorous at the bar of the court of Queen’s Bench for peculation; here -is Sister Saintly scourging her apprentice; here are Messrs. Over-righteous -in trouble for adulteration of their wares.</p> - -<p>It is by no means incompatible, I hope, with the broad line -of argument I have striven to adopt in these papers, if I honestly -declare that the tableau I am about to describe has not in any way my -approval, nay is, in many respects, much to be reprobated and deplored. -I describe it—in its least repulsive details—simply because it is a very -noticeable feature in modern London life. To have passed it over would -have been dishonest and hypocritical, and I set it down in my catalogue -of subjects at the outset of my task, actuated then, as I am now, by -a determination to allow no squeamishness to interfere with the delineation -of the truth—so long as that truth could be told without offence -to good manners and in household language. A modern masquerade -in London is, to tell the honest truth, anything but an edifying spectacle. -There is certainly no perceptible harm in some hundreds of persons, -of both sexes, accoutred in more or less fantastic dresses, meeting -together in a handsome theatre, and, to the music of a magnificent -band, dancing till three or four o’clock in the morning. But the place -is not harmless: people go there to dissipate, and <i>do</i> dissipate. The <i>salle -de danse</i> of a grand masquerade is a re-union of epicurean passions—an -epitome of vice painted and spangled. And I take a masquerade triumphantly -as an argument against the precisians and sour-faces, who would -curtail the amusements of the people, and viciously thwart them in their -every effort to amuse themselves. Look you here, gentlemen of the -vestry—arch moralists of the parish! look you here, good Mr. Chaplain -of Pentonville, who have got your pet garotter safe in hold for his sins! -This is no penny-gaff, no twopenny theatre, no cheap concert or dancing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_378"></a>[378]</span> -academy—not so much as a “free-and-easy” or a “sixpenny hop.” -Shopboys don’t rob the till to come to a <i>bal masqué</i> at her Majesty’s -Theatre. Your pet garotter didn’t throttle the gentleman in the Old -Kent Road in order to procure funds to dance with Mademoiselle -Euphrosine de la Galette, of the Rue Nôtre Dame de Lorette, Paris, -and attired in a ravishing <i>débardeur</i> costume. There is, to be sure, -a floating population of Bohemians—citizens of the world of London, -belonging to the theatres, <i>enfants perdus</i> of the newspaper press, and -so on, who are admitted gratis to a masquerade: these last Zouaves -of social life, have free admission to coroners’ inquests, public dinners, -ship launches, private views of picture exhibitions, night rehearsals -of pantomimes, and royal marriages. The modern newspaper man -is, in print, the embodiment of Mr. Everybody; in private he is -Mr. Nobody, and doesn’t count at all. Lord Derby is afraid of the -journalist in print, but in the flesh his Lordship’s footman would look -down upon him. “Honly a littery man, let him knock agin,” Jeames -would say. So we go everywhere, even as though we were in the -“receipt of fern seed.” Even the House of Commons has invented -a pleasant fiction for the benefit of the gentlemen of the press, and -humorously ignores their presence during the debates. The Empress -Julia bathed before her male slave. “Call <i>that</i> a man,” she cried, -contemptuously. In the like manner, no account is taken of the -journalist’s extra card of admission or extra knife and fork. He goes -under the head of “sundries,” though he makes sometimes a rather -formidable figure in the aggregate.</p> - -<p>But to the general public—the social Zouaves are but a drop of -water in the sea—a <i>bal masqué</i> is a very expensive affair, and a luxury -not to be indulged in without a liberal disbursement of cash. First, -ticket, half a guinea. Mademoiselle de la Galette’s ticket, if you be -<i>galant homme</i>, five shillings more, if she be in costume; half a guinea -if in domino. Next, costume for yourself, variable according to its -extravagance—a guinea at least. At any rate, if you are content to -appear in plain evening dress, there are clean white kid gloves and -patent leather boots to be purchased. And the supper; and the wine, -for champagne is <i>de rigueur</i>, at twelve and fifteen shillings a bottle! -(You will observe that whenever I grow fashionably dissipated, I begin -to chatter French.) And Mademoiselle de la Galette’s <i>bouquet</i>, and the -intermediate refreshments, ices, coffee, lemonade, and what-not; and the -cabs and the wild revelry in the wicked Haymarket purlieus afterwards.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_379"></a>[379]</span> -You see I have led you to the very end of the chapter, and that a night -at a <i>bal masqué</i> will make an irremediable hole in a ten-pound note.</p> - -<p>For this reason the persons (of the male sex) who visit such a -gathering must be divided into three classes: theatrical and literary -nobodies, coming there for nothing and not caring much about the -place now they are come; young bucks about the town with more -money than wit, who will exist, I am afraid, in every civilised age; and -lastly and chiefly, the “Swells.” I use the term advisedly, for none -other can so minutely characterise them. Long, stern, solemn, languid, -with drooping tawny moustaches, with faultlessly made habiliments, -with irreproachable white neckcloths, with eyes half-closed, with pendant -arms, with feet enclosed in mirror-like patent boots, the “swells” -saunter listlessly through the ball-room with a quiet consciousness that -all these dazzling frivolities are provided for their special gratification—which -indeed they are. As it is <i>l’œil du maître qui engraisse le -cheval</i>, so it is the “swell” who makes the <i>bal masqué</i> pay. Never so -many orders may Mr. Nugent give away; but if the “swell” be not -in town or muster not in force on the eventful night, there will be -wailing in her Majesty’s Theatre, and woe in M. Jullien’s cash-box. -It must be somewhat of a strong till that can stand this <i>tiraillement</i>. -As regards the ladies who are the partners in the mazy dance of these -splendid cavaliers, I may say, once for all, that they are Daughters -of Folly; Mademoiselle de la Galette and her condisciples, English and -French, are there, multiplied five-hundred fold. I don’t think your pet -garotter, good Mr. Chaplain, would be very successful as a Hercules at -the feet of these Omphales.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_380"></a>[380]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus47" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus47.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">THREE O’CLOCK A.M.: A BAL MASQUE.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_381"></a>[381]</span></p> - -<p>I wonder how many sons and scions, or cousins or nephews, or multitudinous -misty offshoots of the titled men who govern us, who own -our lands, our waters, and the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, -and the fish of the sea, are here. I wonder how many threads of connection -there are in this ball-room theatre between these butterflies and -the ermine and the lawn of the House of Peers. How many, how -much? Bah! There is young Reginald Fitzmitre, the Bishop of Bosfursus’s -son, talking to that charming <i>titi</i> in the striped silk skirt and -crimson satin trousers. Reginald is in the Guards. Bishops’ sons are -fond of going into the Guards. Yonder is little Pulex, whose brother, -Tapely Pulex, is Under-Secretary for the Egregious Department. There -Lord Claude Miffin has just stalked in with Sir Charles Shakeypegs -(who is old enough to know better); and upon my word, here comes -that venerable sinner Lord Holloway, with little Fanny Claypainter on -his arm. It won’t do, my Lord; you may disguise yourself as closely -as you will in a domino and a mask with a long lace beard, but I know -you by that side-wise waggle of your Lordship’s head. The Earl of -Holloway has been a very gay nobleman in his time. He married -Miss Redpoll, the famous English <i>contraltro</i>, drew her theatrical salary -with very great punctuality every Saturday afternoon at three o’clock, -and beat her, people said. He was the honourable Jack Pilluler then. -Years elapsed before he came into the title and Unguenton Park. <i>She</i> -died. Advance, then—advance then, my noble swells—to adopt the -style of the gentlemen with the thimble and pea. Advance, this is all -for your delectation. Meanwhile, let your most noble and right reverend -fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins meet in either House of Parliament, -meet at Quarter Sessions, or on borough bench, and make or -expound laws against the wicked, thriftless, hardened, incorrigibly -dissipated Poor. No beer for them, the rogues! No fairs, no wakes, -no village feasts, no harvest-homes, no theatres, concerts, dances, no -tobacco, no rabbits, no bowls, no cricket—but plenty of law, and plenty -of nice hard labour, and wholesome gruel, and strengthening stone-breaking, -and plenty of your sweet aristocratic wives and daughters -to force their way into poor men’s cottages, ask them questions for -which I wonder they don’t get their ears boxed, pry into their domestic -concerns, peep into their cupboards, and wonder at their improvidence -in not having more to eat and drink therein.</p> - -<p>Stand we in the orchestral hemicycle, and watch the garish, motley -scene. Questions of morality apart, one must have jaundiced eyes to -deny that, as a mere spectacle, it is brilliant and picturesque enough. -All that M. Jullien’s <i>bizarre</i> taste and fancy could suggest, or the cunning -skill of experienced scenic decorators carry out, has been done here -to make the place gay, dazzling, and effective. Wreaths of artificial -flowers, reflecting the highest credit upon the paper-stainer and the -paper-cutter’s art, mask the somewhat <i>fanées</i> ornaments of the tiers of -boxes; homely corridors and staircases are pleasantly disguised under -a plentitude of scarlet baize and drugget; the chandelier is of abnormous -size, for any number of glittering festoons have been added to its -crystal abacot; devices in glass and devices in gas twinkle and radiate -on every side: nor is music’s voluptuous swell wanting to incite us to -“chase the glowing hours with flying feet,” and make all things go -“merry as a marriage bell.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_382"></a>[382]</span></p> - -<p>Truly, that well-packed orchestra deserves a more dignified arena -for its exertions than this vulgar dancing-place. A jangling harp, a -wheezy flute, and a cracked-voice violin, with perhaps a dingy old -drum, with two perpetual black eyes in its parchment cheeks where the -stick hits them, like the wife of an incorrigibly drunken cobbler—instruments -such as you may hear tortured any night outside the Moguls -in Drury Dane: these would be quite good enough for the <i>ruffiani</i> (by -which I do not at all mean “ruffians”) and <i>bona robas</i> of a masquerade -to dance to. But this orchestra, numerous as it is, is composed of picked -men: it is an imperial guard of veterans in fiddling, bassooning, and -cornet-à-pistoning. Even the gentleman who officiates at the triangle, -is a solo player; and the fierce-looking foreigner who attends to the -side-drums, is the most famous <i>tambour</i> in Europe. At beating the -<i>chamade</i> he stands alone, and his roll is unrivalled. With shame I -speak it: you shall find among these artists in wind and artists in string -instruments, horns, and clarionettes, tenors and second violins, who, -during the operatic season, are deemed not unworthy to be ruled by the -Prospero wand of the kid-gloved Costa or swayed by the magic fiddlestick -of the accomplished Alfred Mellon. A pretty vocation for them -to have to fiddle and blow for the amusement of ne’er-do-weels in tom-fools’ -costumes, and bold-faced jigs in velvet trousers! Why, they -could take their parts in the symphonies of Beethoven and the masses -of Mozart. And thou, too, Jullien the Superb, <i>maestro</i> of the ambrosial -ringlets, the softly-luxuriant whiskers and moustaches, <i>gracilis -puer</i> of the embroidered body-linen, the frogged pantaloons, the coat -with <i>moire antique</i> facings, the diamond studs and sleeve buttons! -couldst thou not find a worthier tilt-yard for thy chivalrous gambadoes? -Alas! to some men, howsoever talented, charlatanism seems to adhere -like a burr, and will not depart. Jullien must have caught this stain -at the battle of Navarino or at the Jardin Turc, and it has abided by -him ever since. There is not the slightest necessity for this clever, -kindly, and really accomplished musician—to whom the cause of good -and even classical music in England owes much—to be a quack; but I -suppose he can’t help it. He was born under a revolving firework star, -and would introduce blue fire in the Dead March in “Saul.” So it is -with many. They could be Abernethies, but they prefer being Dulcamaras; -they could be Galileos or Copernici, they prefer the fame of -Cagliostro or Katterfelto. There was poor dear Alexis Soyer, as kind a -hearted Christian as you might find, an admirable cook, an inventive<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_383"></a>[383]</span> -genius, a brave, devoted, self-denying man, who served his adopted -country better in the Crimea than many a starred and titled C.B. He -had no call to be a quack; there was no earthly reason why he should -inundate the newspapers with puffs, and wear impossible trousers, or -cloth-of-gold waistcoats, cut diagonally. The man had a vast natural -capacity, could think, ay, and <i>do</i> things; yet he quacked so continually, -that many people set him down as a mere shallow pretender, and some -even doubted whether he could cook at all. He was, nevertheless, a -master of his difficult art, though in his latter days he did not exercise -it much. Grisier grew tired of fencing. Wordsworth did not write -much after he was laureate. Sir Edwin’s brush is passing idle now. -But I have partaken of succulent dainties cooked in their daintiest -manner by the cunning hands of the illustrious <i>chef</i>: and I tell you -that he could cook, when he chose, like St. Zita, the patroness of the -Genoese <i>cuisinières</i>. And I think I know, and that I can tell, a -<i>compôte</i> from a cow-heel, having dined as well and as ill, in my time, -as any man of my age and standing.</p> - -<p>What shall I say of the moving, living, kaleidoscope, twinkling -and coruscating in the vast <i>enceinte</i>? Indeed, it is very difficult to -say anything a bout the outward similitude of a <i>bal masqué</i> that has -not been said a hundred times before. You have taken for granted -the very considerable admixture of plain evening costume, worn by -the swells <i>et autres</i>, which speckles the galaxy of gay costumes with -multitudinous black dots. After this, we all know what to expect, -and whom to find. Paint, patches, spangles, and pearl-powder, tawdry -gold and silver (more brassy and pewtery, rather, I opine), and sham -point lace. Sham fox-hunters, mostly of a Hebrew cast of countenance, -in tarnished scarlet coats, creased buckskins, and boots with tops guiltless -of oxalic acid, brandishing whips that have oftener been laid -across their own shoulders than on the flanks of the “screws” they -have bestridden; and screening their mouths with palms covered by dubious -white kid gloves, or with bare dirt-inlaid knuckles protuberant -with big rings of mosaic jewellery, shouting “Yoicks,” and “Hark-away,” -in nasal accents. Undergraduates, in trencher caps and trailing -gowns, worn by jobbernols, who know far more about Oxford Street -than the University of Oxford. Barristers, more likely to be pleaded -for than to plead. Bartlemy-Fair Field Marshals, in costumes equally -akin to his who rides on the lamentable white horse before the Lord -Mayor’s gingerbread coach, and Bombastes Furioso in the farce. Charles<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_384"></a>[384]</span> -the Seconds, with all the dissolute effrontery of that monarch, but of -his wit or merriment none. Red Rovers and Conrad Corsairs, whose -nautical adventures have been confined to a <i>fracas</i> on board a penny -steamboat; Albanian, and Sciote, and Suliote Chiefs, with due fez, kilt, -yataghan, and lambrochines, in orthodox “snowy camise and shaggy -capote,” and who act their characters in a likelier manner than their -comrades, for they are, the majority, arrant “Greeks.” A few Bedouin -Arabs—a costume picturesque yet inexpensive: a pen’north of Spanish -liquorice to dye the face withal; a couple of calico sheets, for caftan -and burnous, with the tassel of a red worsted bell-pull or so to finish -off with, and you have your Abd-el-Kader complete. Half-a-dozen -Marquises, of Louis the Fifteenth’s time. Plenty of Monks: robes -and <i>cagoules</i> of gray linen, a rope for a girdle, a pennyworth of wooden -beads for a rosary, and slippers cut down into sandals—these are as -cheap as effective. A Knight, in complete armour (pasteboard with -tin-foil glued thereupon); a Robinson Crusoe, always getting into -piteous dilemmas, with his goatskin (worsted) umbrella; a Bear, a -Demon, and a Chinese Mandarin. When I have enumerated these, -I find that I have noticed the <i>travestisements</i> most prevalent among -the English male portion of the costumed mob. But there is another -very appreciable element in these exhibitions: the foreign one. A -century has passed since Johnson told us, in his mordant satire of -“London,” that England’s metropolis was—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">“The needy villain’s general home,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The common sew’r of Paris and of Rome.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">It is astonishing to find how much foreign riff-raff and alien scoundrelry -will turn up at a masquerade. Leicester Square and Panton -Street, the <i>cloaques</i> of the Haymarket and Soho, disgorge the bearded -and pomatumed scum of their stale <i>pot-au-feu</i>-smelling purlieus on this -dancing floor. They come with orders, and don’t sup; rather hover -about the Daughters of Folly and Sons of Silliness, to wheedle and -extort odd silver sums, with which to gamble at atrocious “nicks,” -and tobacco-enveloped gambling dens in Leicesterian slums, yet unrooted -out by lynx-eyed policemen. Homer not unfrequently nods in -Scotland Yard. “None are so blind as those that won’t see,” whisper -the wicked. These foreigners—shameless, abandoned rogues, mostly -throwing undeserved discredit upon honest, harmless <i>forestieri</i>; fellows -who are “known to the police” in Paris, and have a second home at -the <i>Depôt de la Prefecture</i>—affect the cheap, but thoroughly masquerade<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_385"></a>[385]</span> -costume of the <i>Pierrot</i>. Very easy of accomplishment, this disguise. -About one and ninepence outlay would suffice, it seemeth to me. Jerkin -of white calico, with immoderately long sleeves, like those of a <i>camisole -de force</i> unfastened; galligaskins of the same snowy cheapness, and -scarlet slippers; any number of tawdry calico bows of any colour down -the sides, a frill round the neck, where the “jougs” of the pillory or -the collar of the garotte should be; the face, that should be seared with -the hangman’s brand, thickly plastered with flour, so that there would -be no room for the knave to blush, even if the light hand of a transient -conscience smote him on the cheek and bade him remember that he -once had a mother, and was not always aide-de-camp in waiting to -Beelzebub; a conical cap of pasteboard, like an extinguisher snowed -upon; here you have the <i>Pierrot</i>. The Englishman sometimes attempts -him, but generally fails in the assumption. In order to “keep-up” -the character well, it is necessary to play an infinity of monkey-tricks, -to bear kicking with cheerful equanimity, to dance furiously, and to -utter a succession of shrill screams at the end of every dance. Else -you are no true <i>Pierrot</i>; and these elegancies are foreign to our -phlegmatic manners.</p> - -<p>Another favourite costume with the <i>bal masqué</i> is that of the -“Postillon de Longjumeau.” He is as well-nigh extinct in France, -by this chiming, as our own old English post-boys. Railways shunted -him off on to oblivion’s sidings with terrible rapidity. Only, his -Imperial Highness Prince Jerome Napoleon—whom the Parisians persist -in calling “l’Oncle Tom,” because, say they, Napoleon I., his -brother, was “<i>le grand homme</i>” Napoleon III., his nephew, “<i>le petit -homme</i>” so this must be necessarily “<i>l’oncle-t-homme</i>”—or Tom—this -mediocre old gentleman, who throughout his long life has always -been fortunate enough to be lodged, and boarded, and pensioned at -other peoples’ expense (they positively carved out a kingdom for him -once), still keeps up a staff of <i>postillons de Longjumeau</i>, who, with -much bell-ringing, whip-cracking, and “ha! heu hooping!” guide his -fat, white, hollow-backed Norman post-horses, when his Imperial Highness -goes down to St. Cloud or Chantilly in his travelling carriage. It -is a quaint, not unbecoming costume: glazed hat, the brim built at an -angle, broad gold band, cockade as big as a pancake, and multicoloured -streamers of attenuated ribbon; short wig, with club well powdered; -jacket with red facings and turn-up two-inch tails; saucepan-lid buttons, -and metal badge on the left arm; scarlet vest, double breasted; buckskins,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_386"></a>[386]</span> -saffron-dyed; high boots with bucket tops, and greased, mind, -not blacked; long spurs, and whip insignificant as to stock and -tremendous as to lash. This is his Imperial Highness’s postilion, and -this, minus the spurs, is the postilion of the <i>bal masqué</i>.</p> - -<p>And the ladies? I am reticent. I am nervous. I draw back. -“I don’t like,” as the children say. Hie you to the National Gallery, -and look at Turner’s picture of “Phryne going to the bath as Venus.” -Among the wild crew of <i>bacchantes</i> and <i>psoropaphæ</i> who surround that -young person, you will find costumes as extravagant of hues, as variegated, -as strike the senses here. Only, among the masqueraders you -must not look for harmony of colour or symmetry of line. All is -jarring, discordant, tawdry, and harlequinadish. You are in error if -you suppose I am about to descant at length on the glittering semi-nudities -gyrating here. Go to, you naughty queans! you must find -some other inventory-maker. Go and mend your ways, buy horsehair -corsets, “disciplines” and skulls if you will, and repair to the desert, -there to mortify yourselves. Alas! the hussies laugh at me, and tell -me that the only manner in which they choose to tolerate horsehair is -<i>en crinoline</i>. Go to, and remember the fate of a certain Janet Somebody—I -forget her surname—condemned by some Scotch elders, in the -early days of the Reformation, to stripes and the stocks, for assuming -a “pair of breeks.” Alack! the <i>débardeurs</i> only mock me, and tell -me that I am a fogey.</p> - -<p>Three quasi-feminine costumes there are, however, that shall be -pilloried here. There is the young lady in a riding-habit, who is so -palpably unaccustomed to wearing such a garment, who is so piteously -ill-at-ease in it, not knowing how to raise its folds with Amazonian -grace, and tripping herself up at every fourth step or so, that she is -more ridiculous than offensive. There is the “Middy:” a pair of white -trousers, a turn-down collar, a round jacket, and a cap with a gold-lace -band, being understood to fulfil all the requirements of that costume. -The “middy” sneaks about in a most woeful state of sheep-leggedness, -or, at most, essays to burst into delirious gymnastics, which end in -confusion and contumely. And last, and most abhorrent to me, there -is the “Romp.” Romps in their natural state—in a parlour, on a -lawn, in a swing, at a game of blind-man’s-buff, or hunt-the-slipper—no -honest man need cavil at. I like romps myself, when they don’t -pull your hair too hard, have some mercy on your toes, and refrain -from calling you a “cross, grumpy, old thing,” when you mildly suggest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_387"></a>[387]</span> -that it is very near bed-time. But a romp of some twenty-five years of -age, with a cadaverous face, rouged, with a coral necklace, flaxen tails, -a pinafore, a blue sash, Vandyked trousers, bare arms, and a skipping-rope: -take away that romp, I say, quickly, somebody, and bring me -a Gorgon or a Fury, the Hottentot Venus or the Pig-faced Lady! Anything -for a change. Away with that romp, and cart her speedily to -the nearest boarding-school where a lineal descendant of Mother Brownrigge -yet wields her birchen sceptre.</p> - -<p>It is on record that Thomas Carlyle, chiefest among British prose -writing men, once in his life was present, in this very theatre, at a performance -of the Italian Opera. He stayed the ballet, even, and went -away full of strange cogitations. I would give one of my two ears (for -be it known to you I am stone-deaf on the left side, like most men who -have led evil lives in their youth, and could, wearing my hair long, -well spare the superfluous flap of flesh and gristle) if I could persuade -Thomas to visit a masquerade. There would be a new chapter in the -next edition of “Sartor Resartus” to a certainty. For all these varied -fopperies and fineries, dominoes, battered masks with ragged lace, sham -orris, draggle-tailed feathers, tin-bladed rapiers, rabbit-skin and rat’s-tail -ermine, cotton velvet, “pinked” stockings, frayed epaulettes, mended skirts—all -suggest pregnant thoughts of the Bag. <i>Tout cela sent son marchand -d’habits.</i> Not to be driven away is the pervading notion of Old -Clothes of Vinegar Yard and the ladies’ wardrobe shop, of the ultimate -relegation of these sallow fripperies to Petticoat Lane and Rag Fair. Nor -without histories—some grave, some gay, some absurd, some terrible—must -be these mended shreds of gaudy finery. They have been worn by -aristocratic striplings at Eton Montem—defunct saturnalia of patrician -“cadging.” Those dim brocades and Swiss shepherdess <i>corsages</i>, have -graced the forms of the fair-haired daughters of nobles at fancy balls. -Great actresses, or <i>cantatrici</i>, have declaimed or sung in those satins, -before they were disdainfully cast by, abandoned to the dresser, sold to -the Jew costumier, cut down into tunics or pages’ shoulder cloaks, furbished -up with new tags and trimmings. Real barristers and gay young -college lads have worn those wigs and gowns and trencher caps; real -captains have flaunted at reviews in those embroidered tunics and -epaulettes; swift horses have borne those scarlet coats and buckskins -across country, but with real fox-hunters inside. Where are the original -possessors? Drowned, or shot to death, or peacefully mouldering, insolvent, -or abroad, gone up to the Lords, or hanged. Who knows?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_388"></a>[388]</span> -Perhaps they are lounging here as Swells, not recognising their old -uniforms and academics, now worn by sham Abraham men and <i>franc-mitous</i>. -Who can tell? Where is the pinafore of our youth, and the -first shooting jacket of adolescence? “<i>Où sont les neiges d’antan?</i>” -Where are the last winter’s snows?</p> - -<p>But Thomas Carlyle wouldn’t come to this place, at his age and at -this time in the morning; and, between you and me, I think it high -time that we too should depart. In truth, the place is growing anything -but orderly. Champagne and incessant exercise on the “light -fantastic toe” have done their work. Dances of a wild and incoherent -character, reminding one of the “<i>Chaloupe</i>” the “<i>Tulipe Orageuse</i>,” -and the much-by-municipal-authorities-abhorred “<i>Cancan</i>” are attempted. -The masters of the ceremonies seem laudably desirous of -clearing the <i>salle</i>. Let us procure our great-coats, and flee from -Babylon before the masquers grew unroarious.</p> - -<p>A stream of masquerading humanity, male and female, begins to -pour through the corridors and so out beneath the portico. It is -time. Cabs and broughams—the “swells” came in the broughams—sly, -wicked little inventions; policemen hoarsely shout and linkmen -dart about.</p> - -<p class="tb">I thought so. I knew how it would end. A row, of course. That -big <i>Postillon de Longjumeau</i> has borne it with admirable temper for -hours; but the conduct of the Charles the Second Cavalier has been -beyond human forbearance. She—the cavalier is a she—has incited -the <i>Pierrot</i> (an Englishman, for a wonder, and hopelessly gone in champagne) -to knock the postilion down. He wept piteously at first, but, -gathering courage, and not liking, perhaps, to be humiliated in the -eyes of a <i>débardeur</i> in claret-coloured velvet, he kicked up wildly at -the aggressor with his boots. Then the cavalier scratched his face; -then the claret-coloured <i>débardeur</i> fainted; then Mr. Edward Clyfaker, -of Charles Street, Drury Lane, thief, cut in cleverly from between the -wheels of a carriage, and picked Lord Holloway’s pocket of Miss Claypainter’s -cambric handkerchief; then A 22 drew his truncheon and hit -an inoffensive fox-hunter a violent blow on the head; then four medical -students called out “Fire!” and an inebriated costermonger, who had -not been to the masquerade at all, but was quietly reeling home, challenged -Lord Claude Miffin to single combat; then Ned Raggabones -and Robin Barelegs, street Arabs, threw “cart-wheels” into the midst -of the throng; then the police came down in great force, and, after -knocking a great many people about who were not in the slightest -degree implicated in the disturbance, at last pitched upon the right -parties, and bore the pugnacious <i>Pierrot</i> and the disorderly Cavalier off -to the station-house. It is but due to the managers of the masquerade -to state, that no such scandalous <i>melées</i> take place within the precincts -of the theatre itself. The masters of the ceremonies and the police on -duty take care of that: but such little accidents will happen, outside, -after the best-regulated masquerades.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_389"></a>[389]</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus48" style="max-width: 43.75em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/illus48.jpg" alt=""> - <p class="caption">THREE O’CLOCK A.M.: THE NIGHT CHARGES AT BOW STREET.</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_390"></a>[390]</span></p> - -<p>To the station-house, then, to the abode of captivity and the hall -of justice. The complaining postilion and his friends, accompanied by -a motley procession of tag-rag and bob-tail, press triumphantly forward. -Shall we follow also?</p> - -<p>In a commodious gas-lit box, surrounded by books and papers, and -with a mighty folio of loose leaves open before him—a book of Fate, in -truth—sits a Rhadamanthine man, buttoned up in a great-coat often; -for be it blazing July or frigid December, it is always cold at three -o’clock in the morning. Not a very pleasant duty his: sitting through -the long night before that folio, smoking prohibited, warm alcoholic -liquids only, I should suppose, to be surreptitiously indulged in: sitting -only diversified by an occasional sally into the night air, to visit the -policemen on their various beats, and learn what wicked deeds are -doing this night and morning—a deputy taking charge of the folio -meanwhile. Duty perhaps as onerous as that of the Speaker of the -House of Commons: but, ah! not half so wearisome. For the Rhadamanthine -man in the great-coat has betimes to listen to tales of awful -murder, of desperate burglaries, of harrowing suicides, of poverty and -misery that make your soul to shudder and your heart to grow sick; -and sometimes to more jocund narratives—harum-scarum escapades, -drunken freaks, impudent tricks, ingenious swindles, absurd jealousy, -quarrels, and the like. But they all—be the case murder, or be it -mouse-trap stealing—are entered on that vast loose folio, which is the -charge-sheet, in fact; Rhadamanthine man in great-coat being but the -inspector of police on night duty, sitting here at his grim task for some -fifty or sixty shillings a week. Harder task than sub-editing a newspaper -even, I am of opinion.</p> - -<p>He has had a busy time since nine last evening. One by one the -“charges” were brought in, and hour after hour, and set before him in -that little iron-railed dock. Some were felonious charges: scowling,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_391"></a>[391]</span> -beetle-browed, under-hung charges, who had been there many times -before, and were likely to come there many times again. A multiplicity -of Irish charges, too: beggars, brawlers, pavement-obstructors—all -terribly voluble and abusive of tongue; many with squalid babies -in their arms. One or two such charges are lying now, contentedly -drunken heaps of rags, in the women’s cells. Plenty of juvenile -charges, mere children, God help them! swept in and swept out; -sometimes shot into cells—their boxes of fusees, or jagged broom-stumps, -taken from them. A wife-beating charge; ruffianly carver, -who has been beating his wife with the leg of a pianoforte. The -wretched woman, all blood and tears, is very reluctant, even now, to -give evidence, and entreats the inspector to “let Bill go; he didn’t -mean no harm.” But he is locked up, departing to durance with the -comforting assurance to his wife that he will, “do for her,” at the -first convenient opportunity. I daresay he will, when his six months’ -hard labour are over. There was a swell-mob charge, too, a dandy -<i>de première force</i>, who swaggered, and twisted his eye-glass, and sucked -his diamond ring while in the dock, and declared he knew nothing of -the gentleman’s watch, he was “shaw.” He broke down, however, -while being searched, and on the discovery of the watch—for he had -missed the confederate who usually “covered” him—subsided into bad -language, and the expression of a hope that he might not be tried by -“old Bramwell,” meaning the learned judge of that name. Short -work has been made with some of these charges, while the disposal -of others has occupied a considerable time. As the night grew -older, the drunk and disorderly and drunk and incapable charges -began to drop in; but one by one they have been disposed of in a -calm, business-like manner, and the “charges” are either released, or, -if sufficient cause were apparent for their detention, are sleeping off -their liquor, or chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies, in the -adjacent cells.</p> - -<p>“I thought the <i>ball masky</i> would bring us some work,” the inspector -remarks to the sergeant, as the <i>Pierrot</i> is carried, and the -cavalier is dragged, and the postilion and his friend stalk indignantly—the -whole accompanied by a posse of police, into the station: “Now, -then, F 29, what is it?”</p> - -<p>F, or X, or Z, or whatever may be his distinguishing letter or numeral, -gives a succinct narrative of the row, so far as he is acquainted with -its phases, very much in the style of the <i>Act d’Accusation</i> of a French<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_392"></a>[392]</span> -<i>procureur imperial</i>, which is always as damaging as it conveniently can -be made against the person in custody. The postilion follows with <i>his</i> -statement, the cavalier breaks in with an indignant denial of all he has -said, violently insists upon charging the postilion with murder and -assault, and ultimately expresses a desire to know what he, the inspector, -thinks of himself, a wish to tear F 29’s eyes out, and ardent -ambition to “polish off the whole lot.” “Don’t all speak at once,” -remonstrates the inspector, but they <i>will</i> all speak at once, and the -<i>Pierrot</i>, waking up from an intoxicated trance, asseverates, in broken -accents, that he is a “p-p-p-p-pro-f-f-fessional man, and highly res-pe-pe-p-pectable,” -and then sinks quiescent over the front of the dock, in an -attitude very much resembling that sometimes assumed by the celebrated -Mr. Punch.</p> - -<p>“There, take him away,” says the municipal functionary, pointing -with sternly contemptuous finger to the <i>Pierrot</i>. “And take <i>her</i> -away,” he adds, designating the cavalier. “And you, sir,” he continues, -to the postilion, “sign your name and address there, and take -care to be at the court at ten in the morning. And I should advise -you to go straight home, or you’ll be here again shortly, with somebody -to take care of you. I wonder whether we shall have any more,” he -says wearily, to his sergeant, as the captives are removed, and the room -is cleared.</p> - -<p class="tb">It does not so much matter, for the third hour is gone and past, -and as we emerge into the street, the clock of St. Paul’s strikes <span class="smcap">Four</span>. -There! the twenty-four hours are accomplished, and we have progressed, -however lamely and imperfectly, “Twice Round the Clock.” -Good-bye, dear readers—pleasant companions of my labours. Goodbye, -troops of shadowy friends and shadowy enemies, whose handwriting—in -praise, in reproach, in condolence, in sympathy, in jest, -and in earnest—is visible enough to me on many pages laying open -before me at this moment, but whose faces I shall never see on this -side the grave. Your smiles and frowns henceforward belong to the -past, for my humble task is achieved, and the Clock is Stopped.</p> - -<p class="titlepage">THE END.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> A post-prandial paper, called the “Evening Mail,” rarely seen in the metropolis, -but extensively circulated in the provinces, and especially in the colonies, and in the -United States, is published as a species of vesper thunderer at the “Times” office.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> “The Chimes.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> This old man’s name was “Corney,” at least I never knew him by any -other appellation. He had been a collegian for years; and being a Briton who -“stood upon his rights,” and was for “freedom of opinion,” gave the governor -an immense amount of trouble. I think one of the happiest days of Captain -Hudson’s life must have been the one on which “Corney” (who, it turned out, ought -never to have been imprisoned at all) got his discharge. He took lodgings immediately, -I have heard, at a neighbouring coal shed, and brought an action (<i>in formâ -pauperis</i>) against the governor for false imprisonment, and wrongful detention of -property, about once a fortnight.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> Free-grown sugar in the first two: slave-grown sugar in boxes.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> <a href="#Page_30">See page 30.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> I am afraid that this legend must be regarded as what the “Times” newspaper -called, in reference to old Peter Thellusson’s delicate sense of honour, in providing -for a possible restitution of property left in his charge by the ancient -noblesse of France—a “modern myth.” An analogous story, relative to the appearance -of a <i>real</i> demon on the stage, in addition to those forming part of the -<i>dramatis personæ</i>, is related in connection with Edward Alleyn, the actor; and the -supernatural visitation, it is said, caused him to quit the stage as a profession, and -found Dulwich College.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> The ladies appear in the gallery before dinner, quit it after grace has been -said, and are regaled in ante-chambers with ices, coffee, and champagne. They -return when the speech-making, wine-bibbing, and song-singing commence.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> This absurd remnant of a candle-snuffing age, and which is about as consistent -with dramatic proprieties as the performance of the character of Macbeth -by Garrick in the costume of a Captain in the Guards, was abolished—so far as -his admirable Shakspearian revivals were concerned—by Mr. Charles Kean.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> Who married again, and extinguished herself. So did Maria Louisa, so did -Mrs. Shelley. They <i>will</i> marry again, those unconscionable feminines.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> This pretty little theatre has succeeded, thanks to the genius and perseverance -of Miss Swanborough, aided by an admirable company.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> There is a curious story anent this “Green Dragon” tavern, a dim record, -embosomed in the musty records of the “State Trials.” In a note to one of those -chronicles of crimes and suffering, it is hinted at that the daughter of the executioner -of Charles the First was a barmaid at the Green Dragon in the reign of -Queen Anne.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> “He made the giants first, and then he killed them.”—<i>Fielding’s “Tom Thumb.”</i></p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWICE ROUND THE CLOCK ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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