Chapter IV: Part 4

Is a great attraction in some places. We knew a whole town upset by the fact that the landlord of the "Swan" had fitted up a billiard-room. I and Wiggins and Foley and Jobson spent at one time, I regret to say, a good deal of time there. I am warning the reader against the follies of my youth; but Foley failed, and Jobson and Wiggins, after having had their debts paid three or four times by their friends, I believe are now following that eminently healthy occupation called gold-digging, somewhere in Australia. Then I think of that little town in South Wales, and of the "Angel," under whose too hospitable roof we used to meet. One of us was an M.P's son; he is now, I believe, dragging down a father's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Another of us bore a name dear to every Englishman; he, I believe, is pensioned off by his family, and lives as he can on the handsome allowance of a guinea a-week. But these London billiard-rooms are fifty times more pernicious. There are some five or six hundred connected with public-houses. There are in all our large thoroughfares separate rooms licensed for this game, but at these drinking often goes on. And thus the two excitements acting on the man, he is impelled downwards with an increasing power. I have seen in these rooms officers and secretaries of public companies in a night losing, I am sure, a quarter's salary; I have seen young fellows completely ruined. There was not, when I first knew him, a more promising, gentlemanly young fellow than Smethwicke, and now, they tell me, he is in Marylebone Workhouse.

We are told that men are grown-up children. This saying forcibly occurred to me the last time I was in a billiard-room. After I had recovered from the feeling of suffocation which an atmosphere infected by gas and smoke had produced, I observed a number of men with long sticks trying to knock a number of various-coloured balls into any of the six pockets of the billiard-table. At each unsuccessful attempt a chorus of observations were made by the players, not remarkable for their novelty, for the vocabulary of the billiard-room is very limited, such as "Not within a mile"--"I didn't play for you, Bob"--"It smelt the hole," &c. &c. At each successful attempt the chorus was still more animated, but not more original, as "Good stroke,"--"Bad flewke"--"On the red," &c. &c. The game that was being played was called "pool." A number of people put each 2_s._ or 3_s._, as they may choose to arrange it, and they have each a ball of a different colour--red, blue, pink, yellow, white, brown, black. Each player has what is called three lives, and each time he is put in by a player--for they play in turn--he pays sixpence or a shilling, according to arrangement, and loses a life, whilst the successful player is allowed to play again upon the ball which happens to be nearest. The money in the pool is ultimately divided between the two players who have kept their three lives the longest. It will be seen that, if everything is straightforward, the best player has the best chance of dividing the pool or taking the lives. But, unhappily, this game, so child-like in appearance, is not always innocent. It may happen two players, gifted by nature with conveniently elastic consciences, and a very confused notion of right and wrong, may arrange when they play upon each other to purposely avoid putting the ball in. Of course, each time this omission is made it is equal to the owner of the ball having an extra life, and of course makes the division of the pool almost a certainty. Perhaps at the end of the evening the two gentlemen, "who merely play for their amusement," may be seen under a lamppost dividing the spoil. The other games are pyramids and billiards, which it is unnecessary to describe. I will simply remark that the best player should win the game; but this is not always the case. Alas! for human nature! Sharps lose to win; muffs win to lose (the term "muff" is applied to an indifferent player). After this not very flattering description the reader would doubtless like to know who frequent these places. A very large majority are gentlemen--men who are perfectly incapable of doing anything but what is strictly honest; the minority are billiard sharks. The gentlemen play because it is a source of excitement; the sharks, because it is a source of profit. There are also some who play only for amusement with gentlemen like themselves, and never risk beyond a shilling or so; and others, mere lookers-on, who, fatigued by their daily labours, prefer a _dolce far niente_ to the trouble of theatres, &c., and who read the paper, drink their brandy and water, and smoke their cigar, without either playing or making a bet.

It is not easier to distinguish a gentleman in a billiard-room than elsewhere, but without wishing to be personal, it is desirable the stranger should keep at a distance those individuals who are so very familiar and friendly with every one, and who keep a piece of chalk in their waistcoat pocket. These people cannot be insulted; they carefully avoid squabbles, which may bring about disagreeable insinuations; they prefer pursuing the even tenor of their way, "picking up" as many people as they can. See yonder old man who totters across the room; his trade is swindling, his goods are lies, his recreation is obscenity and blasphemy; his palsied hand can scarcely grasp a cue, and yet there are few who can excel him; by concealing his game carefully he has won, and can win hundreds, from his victims, who, thinking nothing of his skill, are astonished, as he pretends to be himself, at his _luck_. The young wife tossing restlessly in her bed, and wondering what can keep her lord so long at _business_, little knows, when he returns home flushed and excited, that he has been fleeced of money he can ill afford to lose; whilst the sharer of the domestic joys of the billiard shark basks in the sunshine of his momentary good humour, as he displays with a sardonic smile the gold which perhaps never belonged to the dupe who lost it. But the night is closing on us; we have seen enough for once. Come away.

THE RESPECTABLE PUBLIC-HOUSE

Is situated in one of the leading thoroughfares, and is decorated in an exceedingly handsome manner. The furniture is all new and beautifully polished, the seats are generally exquisitely soft and covered with crimson velvet, the walls are ornamented with pictures and pier-glasses, and the ceiling is adorned in a manner costly and rare. Such places as Simpson's or Campbell's in Beak-street, or Nell Gwynn's, almost rival the clubs, and, indeed, are much smarter than anything they can show at the Milton. Time was when men were partial to the sanded floor, the plain furniture, the homely style of such places as Dolly's, the London Coffee-house, or the Cock, to which Tennyson has lent the glory of his name. Now the love of show is cultivated to an alarming extent. "Let us be genteel or die," said Mrs Nickleby, and her spirit surrounds us everywhere. Hence the splendour of the drinking-rooms of the metropolis, and the studied deportment of the waiters, and the subdued awe with which Young Norvals fresh from the Grampian Hills and their fathers' flocks tread the costly carpets or sprawl their long legs beneath glittering mahogany.

Let us suppose it is about nine or ten in the evening, and we step into one of the numerous establishments which are to the respectable classes what the gin-palace and the beer-house is supposed to be to the class who are not. The reader must pardon my use of the word respectable. It is a word which, from my heart, I abhor, and, as it is commonly employed, merely denotes that a man has an account at a bank. There are but two ways in which human actions can be contemplated--the worldly and the philosophical or Christian. I use the term respectable merely in its worldly acceptation, but I skip this digression and pass on. Undoubtedly at the first blush it is a cheerful scene that first meets our eye. In this box are two or three old friends discussing a bottle of claret, who have not met perhaps since bright and boisterous boyhood, and who may never meet again. Of what manly struggle, of what sorrow that can never die, of what calm pleasures and chastened hopes, have they to tell! No wonder that you see the tear glistening in the eye, though there is laughter on the lip. Pass on; here are some bagsmen red with port, and redolent of slang. In the next box are three or four young fellows drinking whisky and smoking cigars, and of course their talk is of wine and women; but there is hope, nevertheless, for woman is still to them a something divine, and the evil days have not come when they see in her nothing but common clay. Look at this retired old gentleman of the old school sitting by himself alone; yet is he not alone, for as he sips his port memories thicken in his brain, of ancient cronies now sleeping in churchyards far away, of a sainted wife no longer a denizen of this dark world of sin, of daughters with laughing children round their knees, all rosy and chubby and flaxen-haired, of sons with Anglo-Saxon energy and faith planting the old race on a new soil. Cross to this other side and look at these reckless, dissipated fellows, whom the waiter has just respectfully requested not to make so much noise, as it disturbs the other gentlemen in the room. Possibly they are Joint Stock Bank directors or railway officials, and after a few years it will be found that for their revelry to-night a deluded public will have to pay. Here are a host of city merchants discussing politics, and it is wonderful how common-place is their conversation under the influence of alcohol.

"Palmerston is a great man, by ---, he is a great man, sir," says one. "Yes, and no mistake," is the reply. "There is no humbug about Palmerston," says another. And so they ring the changes, originating nothing, gaining nothing, only getting redder in the face and more indistinct in their pronunciation. At length they button over their great coats, pay their bills, and generally very good-naturedly, but very unsteadily, steer towards the door. It may be that a noisy discussion takes place. One man a little more gone than the rest disturbs the harmony of the evening by his flat contradictions, uttered somewhat too rudely, and backed by a blow from the fist on the table, which breaks a couple of glasses. But next morning he apologizes; "It was only my wine contradicting your wine," he says, without any sense of shame. But this rarely happens. The respectable classes have more command of their temper, and do not get so idiotically drunk as the frequenters of low public-houses, and so the _habitues_ are in no hurry to move and leave the light and luxurious room for the muddy streets and the winter night. But they must do so, and young men with their passions unnaturally stimulated, and the conscience proportionately deadened, are left to the temptations which await men who are out in the small hours; and old fogies, believing that if they go to bed mellow, they live as they ought to live, and die jolly fellows, find their way to their respective dwelling-places in a state as lamentable as it is degrading. Yet next Sunday you will see these men at church, and hear them joining in solemn and contrite prayer. Do they think these purple faces tell no tales? Do they think it is only the wife knows how they drink--in respectable company--in respectable hotels? Do they forget that in the midst of their revelry, under the flaming chandeliers, peering over the shoulders of courteous waiters, listening to their vinous laughter and ancient jokes, Death, with his dart, is there? Ay, and one night he will ride home with his victim in the Hansom, and will see him placed, all smelling with drink and under its influence, in the bed, side by side with his wife, and next morning she will as usual give her husband the seidlitz powder or soda water, and leave him to sleep for a short while longer, and when she comes back will find that his is the sleep which knows no waking. And then the inquest will be held--and a medical man will perplex a plain case with useless show of knowledge, and a jury will return a verdict of "Death from natural causes." You and I know better--you and I know that if the man had not gone into the respectable public-house he might have lived another ten years--that it was because he went there night after night, and sat soaking there night after night, that the blood-vessels became gorged and clotted, and that the wonderful machine stood still. "Poisoned by alcohol" is the true verdict--by alcohol sold and consumed in the respectable public-house. How long will society sanction such places? How long will they retard the progress of the nation by wasting energies, and time, and cash, and opportunities that might have been devoted to nobler ends? How long with their splendour--with their gilding and glass--with their air of respectability and comfort, will they attract the unwary, ruin the weak, and slay the strong man in his strength and pride?

NIGHT-HOUSES.

Plutarch begins one of those biographies which in all times have been the charm of childhood and age, by remarking that, "If things are implicated in a dependence upon definite numbers, it is a necessity that the same things must often happen, being effected by the same means." Thus is it, life in all its broad aspects is everywhere the same. All over the globe there is a wonderful uniformity in human habits. Men who work hard--as a rule--rise early, and go to bed early. Night is the time for rest. So far at least there is harmony between God's law and man's. The men and women who transgress are for the most part waifs and strays. Such are the denizens of our streets by night--such are they who crowd, not alone the night public-houses, but night coffee-houses of our metropolis.

Here in London these houses are of all kinds. For instance, let us enter one in the Haymarket. The rooms are as smart as gilding and ornamented paper and plate-glass can make them. The waiters are got up regardless of expense. The coffee is good, but dear. The men and women are of the kind usually met with in this locality during the small hours. The greater part are fools enough to think it worth while to buy a little worldly wisdom at a price--it may be at the loss of their bodies and souls--none but madmen would think of paying. In such places as these you are as sure to be injured as if you sat all night carousing in a public-house. These women with forced smiles on their painted cheeks are the veritable Harpies. Theirs is the true sardonic laugh. Do you remember one way in which that ancient phrase is accounted for? Sardinia, it was said, was noted for a bitter herb which contracted the features of those who tasted it. Pausanias says it is a plant like parsley, which grows near springs, and causes people who eat it to laugh till they die; and these women, have they not eaten a bitter plant, and do they not laugh and die? Beware of the women. Beware of the men. See how their cunning eyes glisten if you change a sovereign. If they can get you into a neighbouring public-house and rob you, they will be rather pleased than otherwise. Look at that tall dark fellow watching us. It was only the other day he met a man here, as he might you or I, and decoyed him into a public-house close by, where his confederates were waiting, and robbed him of forty pounds when they thought their victim was sufficiently "fuddled" with champagne. He and such as he are not particular who they rob. They do not spare the women, I assure you.

Let us now turn towards Covent-garden. The debauchery of Covent-garden is not what it was. Obscenity is banished from the Cave of Harmony, and better hours are kept; but there are night coffee-houses about here, dirty, shabby places, patronised by dirty, shabby people. How weary and wayworn are the women! They have been walking the streets for hours--they have been dancing in neighbouring saloons--they have paraded their meretricious charms, and here they sit, hungry, tired, sleepy, and 't is three o'clock in the morning. No home have they to go to but some wretched room for which they pay a sum equal to the entire rent of the house. There is little gaiety here; the poor comic nigger, with his banjo and his double entendre playing with all his might, in the hope that some gent will stand a cup of coffee and a muffin, can scarce raise a laugh. Timidly one asks, "Will you treat me to a cup of coffee, sir?" Yes, forlorn one. If your sin is great, so is your punishment; once you might have been a dainty little wife, and now what are you? I say it sorrowfully, the scum of the streets, garbage for drunken lust.

Let us go a little further on, not into that house, there are only thieves and pickpockets there, and we might be bullied, which is not pleasant. Ah, here's the house we are looking for; it has done a good trade this many a year, for is there not a cab-stand opposite, and cabby knows the value of a cup of coffee on a cold winter's night. Never mind the smell; as business is carried on uninterruptedly during the twenty-four hours, and as the company belongs to that part of the population not guilty of an inordinate attachment to soap and water, and to whom cheap baths are a myth, it cannot be matter of surprise if there be about the place "an ancient and fish-like smell." But here comes the landlord. "Good morning, gents;" in an under voice, "you had better mind your pocket; there are some strange characters here. A cup of coffee? Yes, sir. Now then, sir, you had better wake up, it is time for you to be off. You've had a good hour's sleep." "Why not let him sleep?" "Why, you see, sir, such fellows would stay here all night and fill up the house, and not spend a penny; and business is business." A curious medley is here of sleepy, half-tipsy, sickly unfortunates. Yet even here the line is drawn; the door opens, and we dimly discern a mass of rags; so does our landlord, as he rushes to exclude the would-be customer. "What, you are trying it on again, are you? you know you can't come here. Why, you see, sir, if we let such fellows in, the place would swarm with--," (the reader must supply the blank). But we take the hint, and not unreluctantly depart.

The night public-house has, I confess,--and I am glad to do so,--lost somewhat of its popularity in latter years. At one time it was common everywhere; now it is in only a few streets that it exists and pollutes the atmosphere. In the Strand, in the Haymarket, in Oxford-street, night-houses were numerous; but the one to which I more immediately refer was situated in the neighbourhood of Tottenham-court-road. Since then, Mr Spurgeon has been preaching in that locality, but I dare say the night-house exists nevertheless.

Let us suppose it is about two in the morning, and with the exception of one or two amiable garotters, a few sleepy police, and some three or four women, the regular population of the neighbourhood may be safely considered to have been long in bed. The gas-lamps shine almost exclusively on yourself. You look up at the windows and you see no lights save where, perhaps, poverty may be stitching for bread, or where Death may have come an unbidden guest and borne away the fairest and the best beloved. At this hour the young bride in all her beauty may be struck down in mortal agony, or the wee pet lamb, whose little silver laugh had so often dispelled the dark cloud that gathered round the home, or the grey-haired man, having just reached the goal, and achieved an independence, may find himself left in this bleak, dark, wide world alone.

Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all--
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death.

And now let us forget all this, and knock at this door, above which streams a mellow light, and from which we hear sounds of boisterous gaiety. Is it not open yet? Then give another rap. Ah, it is all right now. "Take care of your pockets," says Cerberus, in a low voice,--"there are some rum blokes here." We will, my friend.

Yes, they must be rum blokes who come here into this filthy, stinking shop, and amongst this filthy, ragged, swearing crew of reprobates. If you wish to see a set of fellows whose mere looks would hang them, I think they are about us now. Even the landlord seems uncomfortable in their presence, and wisely allows as little as possible of temptation in his house or on his person. He knows, I believe, they would as soon rob him as any one else, and his small ferrety eyes are evidently wide awake. Indeed, none of the party look as if they had much honest sleep, and in the daylight, I imagine, would present a somewhat seedy appearance. We generally think cabmen not scrupulously honest, but perhaps these cabmen, with ancient great coats and well muffled up, are the honestest fellows here. Then of course there is an Irish "widder," with melancholy face and a string of ballads, such as "Mary Blane," "The Red, White, and Blue," "Cheer, boys, cheer," all of which she is willing to dispose of on the most reasonable terms. A decayed swell, probably a railway director in the great year of bubbles, with extraordinary sponges--an article I should have thought quite as unsaleable as soap to the _habitues_,--and a jockey-like looking person with knives with most wonderful and unaccountable blades, or with some fancy work-boxes or other articles equally ingenious and useless. Women are here, of course, in the last stage of their profligate career, driven out of decent houses, unfit to associate with the well-dressed and the young--wrinkled, repulsive, red. As you see them drink, quarrelling, screaming, and cursing, as they always do till turned out to go God knows where, can you imagine that the difference between them and your own mother is merely that of circumstance, and education, and habit?--perhaps merely the difference produced by drink. I can tell you that little hag was once a rich man's leman, and robed herself in silk and satin, and quaffed her costly wine; and now hark how piteously she begs a drop of gin, ere she staggers to her wretched garret and straw to dream of a youth and gaiety now no longer hers. Here she has warmth, light, and society, and the night-house exists for such as she; and if, as is quite as likely as not, she is in league with some of the men around us, here she brings her victim, and then, stupified by drink, she has only to decoy him down some dark passage, and he becomes an easy prey to the sneaking thief who comes skulking up behind. But let us listen--

"Me and my pal we was a-going along the Hedgware-road, and we sor"--

"Hold your tongue," is the courteous reply.

"What do you mean by making all this row?" cries the landlord, with a horrid oath.

"Now, then, old buffer, another quartern of gin."

"And a screw of tobacco, master, if you please."

"Well, old gal, what'll you drink?"

"Well, I don't mind, what'll you stand?"

"Suppose we has arf and arf."

"Ay, to be sure."

And so the hours pass, and the place gets hotter, and stinks more and more every hour, for the men and women have not a very pleasant effluvium, and the hubbub becomes more intense. You tell me you would rather not stay here long. Well, I am quite of your opinion, for a couple of gentlemen with pale faces have been eyeing us most attentively ever since we have been here, and I confess their appearance is not prepossessing. Their short hair seems to indicate an acquaintance with one of the public establishments of the metropolis, with whose inmates it is not well to be too familiar. They are dressed in fustian, with thick boots well studded with nails, a kick from which on the head when a man is down would soon settle his business; and with their close-fitting caps, Belcher handkerchiefs, and heavy animal faces, are certainly not very pleasant-looking young men. I should be sorry to intimate my suspicions to them, as they may be noblemen in disguise, and might feel hurt at my want of charity. In the mean while, as the door is being opened and the coast is clear, I avail myself of the opportunity, and leaving the night-house, am soon dreaming in my feverish slumber that I have just been garotted and left for dead at the door of my domestic establishment, to the intense agony of my wife and children,--of course, by the two amiable young people aforesaid,--and I feel for some days after as if I had suffered terribly from a species of night-mare. So hideous is the life, so degraded the company, so revolting are the scenes, at these night-houses, I know not why the law permits them to be open. I am sure they can answer no good or moral end. Mr Norton, a few days since, said, in deciding a case at the Lambeth police-office, he hoped a law would soon be passed to close night-houses. On this head the police magistrates are unanimous.

HIGHBURY BARN.

A writer in _Chambers's Journal_ some time since called attention to the peculiar attractions of Highbury Barn. What are these attractions? I confess that the place has connected it with the eating and drinking associations of years; that here generations of cockneys have dined; that here, Sunday after Sunday, they have come to drink bottled stout and smoke; that it is extensively patronized by shopmen and milliners; that the society is not of the most refined order; and that the love made in it is not of the noblest and purest character. I cannot understand how _Chambers_ could have been got to puff up such a place to the public. I am sure the decent public will not thank _Chambers_ for the puff.

Highbury Barn is an admirable illustration of the way in which Acts of Parliament are evaded. In 1852 Mr Hinton applied for and obtained a license for music, and he stated in his petition on that occasion, that his object was to have the license as an adjunct to dinner-parties, a great number of which were held there; and at that time he had no idea whatever of having dancing in the place. In 1854, however, a different state of things arose, and, from a combination of causes, the parties and festivals at Highbury Barn fell off, and competition was so great, that Mr Hinton, having a large establishment, in which a great deal of capital was invested, was compelled to do something to meet the public taste, as he says, or, as I might say, to create it. Accordingly, on Whit Monday of that year, he opened his establishment for musical entertainments with the band of the Grenadier Guards. This was considered by the magistrates as an infraction of his agreement with them, and his license was refused. But Mr Hinton was not beaten; he had his large capital invested, and somehow or other the public must be got into his house. An ingenious plan was devised, by which Mr Hinton was enabled to carry on his music and dancing without a license, and yet be secure from the penalties incurred by the breakers of law. There is an assembly called Almack's, frequented by the _elite_ of the land, held in Willis's Rooms. Those rooms are not licensed according to Act of Parliament, yet all the leaders of _bon ton_ there congregate, and they would be liable to be taken up as rogues and vagabonds under the Act. But the dancing is carried on there by an association, under the auspices of which tickets are sold. Well, Mr Hinton adopted a similar plan. The Highbury Club was formed, and the club kindly provided the youthful votaries of pleasure with the desired amusement. If we are to believe Mr Hinton, the result has not been very advantageous, as his receipts on the sale of alcoholic liquors fell off 600 pounds--a statement rather difficult to reconcile with his former one, that he found his customers had left him, and that he must do something to call them back. Be that as it may, Mr Hinton has now his license, though three clergymen connected with the district concurred in stating that parties on leaving the Barn were disorderly and riotous, and disturbed the quiet of the locality, and that the licensing of that establishment would have a very demoralizing effect.

And now let us go to Highbury Barn. As we walk alone Highbury-place, we pass by many a father of a family grumbling at the idea of having his quiet invaded by parties coming home from the Barn; and yet there was a time, probably, when he heard the chimes at midnight; and the chances are, so wretchedly are our lads educated, that while the father is at home reading his religious magazine, the son is being initiated into fast life at the Barn. But on we go through a dark passage, admirably adapted for a garotte walk, till we come to the place of rendezvous. We pay sixpence and walk in. The first thing that strikes us is the Master of the Ceremonies. We are amazed,--in the distant West never have we met a more distinguished swell. His attitude is faultless; his raven hair is parted in the middle; his dark eye is turned in a languishing manner upward to the orchestra. In the intervals between the dances he walks up and down the room in an abstract and poetic manner, and Melancholy marks him for her own. You believe in the doctrine of metamorphoses as you look at him. He is a star fallen upon evil days. Beneath that faultless black dress-coat there lies the soul of a Beau Brummel or a Nash. Well, then, may there be a tinge of sadness on his cheek, and a cloud upon his brow. But let us leave him awhile and look about us. What a noble room! we shall not see a finer one in London. At one end is a gallery; at the other a raised platform with very comfortable seats and tables. All round the room are illustrations of oriental scenery, and over the bar is the orchestra. But the place is not so crowded as we might expect, and the visitors are quieter than in the casinos of the West; the men and women are most of them much younger,--the men, many of them, have an exceedingly juvenile appearance, and think it fine to dance with young ladies of uncertain occupations, and to drink brandy-and-water and smoke cigars; but they have yet to cut their wisdom-teeth. As Thackeray says,

"Pretty page with the dimpled chin,
That never has known the barber's shear,
All your wish is woman to win;
This is the way that boys begin,--
Wait till you come to forty year."

Come here in the summer-time, and the attendance is then numerous; and of a Sunday evening, on the lawn before the Barn, or in the bowers and alcoves by its side, what vows have been uttered only to be broken; and what snares have been set for youth, and beauty, and innocence; and how many have come here with gay hearts who have left with them bruised beyond the power of man to heal! Even in this room itself, what changes have been wrought by the magic hand of time! Where are the Finsbury radicals--all beery and Chartist, who here dined; the demagogues who duped them, the hopes they cherished, the promises they made? One after another have the bubbles burst, have the leaders palpably become shams, have the people woke up to disappointment and despair; and yet the nation has yet to learn that it is only by individual righteousness its salvation can be wrought. The dancing, instead of speech-making, is a sign of the times. Accompanied as it is by less drinking, let us hope it is a favourable sign. Let us judge in the spirit of charity and hope. But let us not be too sanguine,--it was during the terrors of the French Directory, when the

"Streets ran so red with the blood of the dead,
That they blush'd like the waves of hell,"

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

BOXING NIGHT.

I am rather out of conceit with Christmas boxes. I have been wished the compliments of the season by no less than six individuals this very morning, and for those good wishes I, poor man though I be, with family of my own to work for, have had to pay half-a-crown each. I grow suspicious of every smiling face I meet. I walk with my hands in my pocket, and my eyes cast down. I wonder how it fares with my strong-minded wife at home. I know she will have had a rare battle to fight. She will have had the Postman--and the Dustman--and the Waits--and the Sweep--and the Turncock--and the Lamplighter--and the Grocer's lad--and the Butcher's boy; and if she compounds with them at the rate of a shilling a-piece, she may bless her stars. I feel that I cannot stand much of this kind of work, and that for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year I shall have to pay rather handsomely. Stop at home--tie up your knockers--say you are sick or dead, or a shareholder in the Royal British Bank, still you cannot escape the tender mercies of a London Boxing day. Mind, I have not one word to say of the various good wishes and gifts offered by friends and relatives to each other as pledges of esteem and goodwill. I would be the last to find fault with the customs originating in the warm heart of love, and honoured by the sanction of the whole civilized world. By all means let us reverence them ten-fold. But I have a right to complain that I am compelled to pay for mercenary goodwill, and that on me, or such as me, a tax is levied which does no good in most cases, and frequently does an immense amount of harm. When I read, as I am sure to do, in the police reports of the next day, that, "yesterday, being the day after Boxing day, the time of the magistrates was chiefly occupied with cases of drunkenness," am I not right in wishing that I had kept the money in my own pocket? Some of my friends would do that, but then for the next twelve months they are hampered and inconvenienced in a thousand ways. As a wise man, I choose the least of two evils, but I am an unwilling victim nevertheless. But a truce to my meditations; let us look at London on a Boxing night. By daylight you would scarce know London. A new race seems to have invaded the streets, filled the omnibuses, swarmed in the bazaars and the Arcade, choked up the eating-houses and the beer-shops. Smith with his Balmoral boots, Brown with his all-round collar, Jones with his Noah's Ark coat, Robinson with the straight tile, which young England deems the cheese, delight us no more with their snobby appearance and gentish airs; to-day this is the poor man's holiday. You can tell him by the awkwardness with which he wears his Sunday clothes, by the startling colour of his ties, by the audacious appearance of his waistcoat. If he would only dress as a gentleman dresses, he would look as well, but he must be fine. Well, it matters little so long as he be happy, whether he is so or not; and let him pass with his wife and children, all full of wonder and delight as they stare in at the shop windows and think everything--how happy are they in the delusion!--that all that glitter is gold. Let us wish them a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

And now the dull, dark day, by the magic power of gas, has been transformed into gay and brilliant night. The thousands who have spent the day sight-seeing are not satiated, and are flocking round the entrances of the various theatres. Let us stand on the stage of the Victoria, and see them to the number of fifteen hundred mounted upon the gallery benches. Through the small door near the ceiling they come down like a Niagara, and you expect to see them hurled by hundreds into the pit. What a Babel of sounds! It is in vain one cries "Horder!" "'Ats off!" "Down in front!" "Silence!" Boys in the gallery are throwing orange peel all over the pit; Smith halloos to Brown, and Brown to Smith; a sailor in a private box recognises some comrades beneath, and immediately a conversation ensues; rivals meet and quarrel; women treat each other to the contents of their baskets--full of undigestible articles, you may be sure, with a bottle of gin in the corner. The play--it is that refreshing drama, the "Battersea Brigand"--proceeds in dumb-show; but the pantomime, the subject of which is, "Wine, War, and Love, and Queen Virtue in the Vistas of Light or Glitter,"--with what a breathless calm, that is ushered in. It is an old silly affair. Harlequin, clown, and pantaloon, are they not all very dreary in their mirth? Yet the audience is in a roar of laughter, and little babes clap their tiny hands, and tears of laughter chase each other down the withered cheeks of age. This night in every theatre of London is a similar scene witnessed. The British public is supposed to be unusually weak at Christmas, and tricks that were childish and stale when George the Third was king, and jokes venerable even in Joe Miller's time, are still supposed to afford the most uproarious amusement to a people boasting its Christianity, its civilisation, and enlightenment. Of all conventionalisms those of the stage are the most rigid, antiquated, and absurd.

But the thousands outside who did not get in--what are they about? Look at that respectable mechanic; you saw him in the morning as happy as a prince, and almost as fine; he stands leaning against the lamp-post, apparently an idiot. His hat is broken--his coat is torn--his face is bloody--his pockets are empty; not a friend is near, and he is far away from home. It is clear too what he has been about. Come on a few steps further--three policemen are carrying a woman to Bow-street. A hooting crowd follow; she heeds them not, nor cares she that she has lost her bonnet--that her hair streams loosely in the wind--that her gown (it is her Sunday one) is all torn to tatters--or that her person is rudely exposed. The further we go, and the later it grows, the more of these sad pictures shall we see. Of course we do not look for such in Regent-street, or Belgravia, or Oxford-street, or the Strand. Probably in them we shall meet respectable people staggering along under the influence of drink--but they are not noisy or obstreperous--they do not curse and swear--they do not require the aid of the police. We must go into the low neighbourhoods--into St Giles', or Drury-lane, or Ratcliffe-highway, or the New-cut, or Whitechapel--if we would see the miseries of London on Boxing night. We must take our stand by some gin-palace. We must stay there till the crowds it has absorbed and poisoned are turned loose and maddened into the streets. Then what horrible scenes are realized. Here an Irish faction meet, and men, women, and children engage in a general _melee_, and cries of murder rend the air, and piercing shrieks vex the dull ear of night. There two mates are stripped and fighting, who but this morning were bosom friends, and who to-morrow would not harm a hair of each other's heads. Here a mechanic with a bloody head is being borne to the neighbouring hospital, to lie there a few months at the public expense, while his family are maintained by the parish. Again, we meet two wives nursing young babes scared into unnatural silence, clenching their fists in each other's faces, and with difficulty restrained from acts of more savage violence by their drunken husbands. Their day's holiday has come to this. In the metropolis in 1853, the number of public-houses was 5729--the number of beer-shops 3613. These figures give a total of 9342. If on this night we suppose on an average one fight in the course of the evening takes place in each of these drinking shops, we can get some idea of what goes on in London on a Boxing night. In passing at midnight down Drury-lane, I see three fights in a five minutes' walk. Enlightened native of Timbuctoo, will you not pity our London heathens and send a few missionaries here!

THE MOGUL,

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

Thus at the Mogul you have a double attraction. Are you a gin-drinker, you can go and get your quartern or half-quartern over the bar--or you can lounge into the concert-room and quietly sit soaking the whole evening; for, as the performance does not close till midnight, the time admits of a man getting "fou" between the commencement and the close of the entertainment. Drury-lane is what may be called a low neighbourhood, devoted principally to butchers' and bakers' shops, pawnbrokers' establishments, and gin-palaces. Pass these latter any hour of the day you will, and you will find them crowded by laundresses, and charwomen, and haggard old crones from the sister isle, and young wives whose husbands, it may be, are hard at work. There they stand in the streets, with babies in their arms and dirty children in rags by their side, gossiping with women as ill-conditioned as themselves; and as gossiping makes them thirsty, and as drinking makes people drunk, it is not difficult to imagine the state in which many of these women are. In the middle of the day it is very obvious that many of them have had more than enough. How they can afford it always puzzles me--I cannot, I know, and I believe my weekly earnings equal theirs. The pawnbrokers may help them--but their material guarantees cannot be perpetually forthcoming. These gin-drinkers live cheap, I grant. They herd in the horrid slums of Drury-lane--and people say sometimes, Can you wonder that such poor wretches drink? but they forget that it is the drink that makes them such poor wretches. The money these women spend in drink would pay for decent apartments and clothes that would be clean and comfortable, not ragged and filthy, and stinking with every abomination. It is not poverty that creates drunkenness, but drunkenness that creates poverty, and the poverty thus created--the dreariest kind of all poverty--abounds in Drury-lane. Well, then, exclaims one of the new school, who believes mankind are to be regenerated by fiddling, does not such a place as the Mogul have a beneficial influence? I will answer this by describing the kind of amusement afforded at the Mogul. You are pent up in a room where the air is ten times worse than in any theatre--any crowded chapel--or worse than in the late Reading Room of the British Museum or the House of Commons. You see a little of the worst acting in London--broad farce, chiefly by artists, if I may term them such, who are more remarkable for their weakness than their strength. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hands," says Hamlet; but actors of the class you meet in the Mogul never seem to have heard of the Prince of Denmark. There are some people who doubt whether good acting has a beneficial effect, but there are none who doubt that the effect of bad acting is altogether bad. But the dramatical part of the entertainment constitutes but a small part of the evening's amusement. There is a lady who sings sentimental songs, and a gentleman who sings comic ones, and another gent, with dismal voice and weary mien, who declares--

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

I am not aware that any of these performers sing songs of an objectionable character; and if a sneer is now and then introduced at what common decent people believe to be good, and true, and righteous, and of beneficial tendency, it is only, perhaps, such as would be approved of by the patrons of the Haymarket. You tell me that this is better than sitting all night at a bar drinking; but, I ask, is not this entertainment itself an excuse for drinking? You see the room is full of men and women evidently belonging to the working classes; now of all men working men can least afford to waste time in such places. All their future emphatically depends upon themselves. More than most men are they called upon to exercise self-denial and to cultivate their powers, if they would achieve independence. But how can the working men who sit night after night in such places as the Mogul ever hope to rise? yet any night there must be a couple of hundred of such present, for they swarm like bees. They come professedly for the entertainment, but all the while it lasts they are doing a good deal in the drinking line. It is not one glass or two that will satisfy them; and the worst of it is, that many very clever fellows when once they begin drinking do not know when to leave off. In this respect they are like Dr Johnson, who could either feast or fast, but could never be a moderate drinker. They come to the Mogul--perhaps they would never think of sitting all night in a public-house--but they come to the Mogul for the entertainment, and they finish by drinking as if they had come for the drink alone. The Mogul is indeed an educational establishment, but unfortunately it educes the wrong set of faculties. In Drury-lane, of all lanes in the world, there is the least occasion to associate intoxicating drink with happiness. Everywhere the idea is a mischievous delusion and a remnant of barbarism, but there it is a positive curse. At the Mogul you will see the sweetheart with her lover, the mother with her child,--it may be the sucking babe,--till midnight, breathing an air of tobacco smoke, the husband and the wife, all you say enjoying themselves in a social way, but all, I say, encouraging an appetite which, if it gets the mastery,--and in the majority of cases it does,--will destroy them without mercy. Were the Mogul simply a gin-palace, it would have far less patronage, it would merely have its share of the general trade; but the fact that it provides musical and dramatic entertainments--that it gives decent people an excuse for drinking--that it attracts those whom a common gin-shop would repel--is that precisely which gives it its power for danger. Such places are decoy shops, the more dangerous as drinking in Drury-lane is really disgusting, and enough to make a man a teetotaller for life. The neighbourhood is rich in warnings, but the _habitue_ of the Mogul soon learns to heed them not.

CALDWELL'S.

A stranger, ignorant of our inner life, and unacquainted with our social system, knowing only that we call ourselves a Christian people, and that we boast that Christianity places woman in a peculiarly favoured position, might dwell among us for awhile, and, seeing how woman is flattered and followed, might imagine that our condition was perfect, and that here, at least, woman, the weak, was sheltered by man, the strong. In the dazzling ball-room--on the glittering promenade--he might meet the lovely and the fair, and deem that they were no brilliant exception, but as they were sheltered and loved, so were sheltered and loved all of their common sex. Grieved would he be to find out his mistake; yet more grieved would he be to know that the graceful drapery that added to the beauty that everywhere flashed upon his eye was wrought by tender and delicate women, who, pale and wan, slave at the needle from morn till eve, and from eve till again the dim grey of morn gleamed in the east--by women withered before their prime--by women who, for no crime, but from their simple desire to live by the honest and honourable labour of their hands, are shut up in heated and unhealthy rooms, debarred from social duties and joys, and who know nothing of life but its wants and woes--by women who can find in slavery itself nothing more forlorn than their melancholy fate--by women to the majority of whom there is no honest way of escape from the lingering death that besets them, but the grave.