Chapter XVII: Part 17

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 _in re_ 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 _attachés_ 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 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.

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 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 “_Gentilhomme Verrier_.” 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.

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 _Chargé d’Affaires_, 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’ 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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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 _his_ 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 _bon mots_ 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 “_terrible Palmerston_” the firebrand of the Continent, the bugbear of foreign oligarchs, the grim “_Caballero Balmerson_” naming whom Spanish contrabandistas cross themselves, the abhorred “Palmerstoni” whom papal gensd’arme 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.

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.

“On our re-admission,” we quote from the “Times” newspaper of 185—, the results of the division were announced as follows:—

For the second reading of the bill 284
Against it 307
---
Majority against the Government 23

The bill was consequently lost.

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.

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.

* * * * *

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.

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.”

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.

“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—

“Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of the world,”

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.

HOUR THE TWENTY-FOURTH AND LAST—THREE A.M.—A BAL MASQUE, AND THE NIGHT CHARGES AT BOW STREET.

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 _real time_ arrived, and the _real hour_ was stricken on the bell, the prediction of the white dove was verified, and the bad Lord Lyttelton, shrieking, gave up the ghost.

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 _stunde_ 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 forth. _Missa est._ Judgment is over, and execution is come; and I may say, with Lord Grizzle in “Tom Thumb:”

“My bodye is a bankrupt’s shop,
My grim creditor is death,”

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.

“I wish I were a geese,
For they lives and dies in peace,
And accumulates much grease,
Over there.”

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.

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 _morals_, 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 _odium theologicum_. 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 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! _Eh! laissons la_ 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 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.

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 _do_ dissipate. The _salle de danse_ 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 academy—not so much as a “free-and-easy” or a “sixpenny hop.” Shopboys don’t rob the till to come to a _bal masqué_ 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 _débardeur_ costume. There is, to be sure, a floating population of Bohemians—citizens of the world of London, belonging to the theatres, _enfants perdus_ 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 _that_ 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.

But to the general public—the social Zouaves are but a drop of water in the sea—a _bal masqué_ 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 _galant homme_, 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 _de rigueur_, 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 _bouquet_, and the intermediate refreshments, ices, coffee, lemonade, and what-not; and the cabs and the wild revelry in the wicked Haymarket purlieus afterwards. You see I have led you to the very end of the chapter, and that a night at a _bal masqué_ will make an irremediable hole in a ten-pound note.

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 _l’œil du maître qui engraisse le cheval_, so it is the “swell” who makes the _bal masqué_ 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 _tiraillement_. 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.

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 _titi_ 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 _contraltro_, 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. _She_ 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.

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 _bizarre_ 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 _fanées_ 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.”

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 _ruffiani_ (by which I do not at all mean “ruffians”) and _bona robas_ 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 _tambour_ in Europe. At beating the _chamade_ 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, _maestro_ of the ambrosial ringlets, the softly-luxuriant whiskers and moustaches, _gracilis puer_ of the embroidered body-linen, the frogged pantaloons, the coat with _moire antique_ 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 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 _do_ 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 _chef_: and I tell you that he could cook, when he chose, like St. Zita, the patroness of the Genoese _cuisinières_. And I think I know, and that I can tell, a _compôte_ from a cow-heel, having dined as well and as ill, in my time, as any man of my age and standing.

What shall I say of the moving, living, kaleidoscope, twinkling and coruscating in the vast _enceinte_? Indeed, it is very difficult to say anything a bout the outward similitude of a _bal masqué_ 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 _et autres_, 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 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 _fracas_ 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 _cagoules_ 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 _travestisements_ 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—

“The needy villain’s general home,
The common sew’r of Paris and of Rome.”

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 _cloaques_ of the Haymarket and Soho, disgorge the bearded and pomatumed scum of their stale _pot-au-feu_-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 _forestieri_; fellows who are “known to the police” in Paris, and have a second home at the _Depôt de la Prefecture_—affect the cheap, but thoroughly masquerade costume of the _Pierrot_. 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 _camisole de force_ 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 _Pierrot_. 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 _Pierrot_; and these elegancies are foreign to our phlegmatic manners.

Another favourite costume with the _bal masqué_ 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 “_le grand homme_” Napoleon III., his nephew, “_le petit homme_” so this must be necessarily “_l’oncle-t-homme_”—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 _postillons de Longjumeau_, 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, 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 _bal masqué_.

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 _bacchantes_ and _psoropaphæ_ 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 _en crinoline_. 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 _débardeurs_ only mock me, and tell me that I am a fogey.

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 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.

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. _Tout cela sent son marchand d’habits._ 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 _corsages_, have graced the forms of the fair-haired daughters of nobles at fancy balls. Great actresses, or _cantatrici_, 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? Perhaps they are lounging here as Swells, not recognising their old uniforms and academics, now worn by sham Abraham men and _franc-mitous_. Who can tell? Where is the pinafore of our youth, and the first shooting jacket of adolescence? “_Où sont les neiges d’antan?_” Where are the last winter’s snows?