DISCUSSION CLUBS
It is the condition of a public-house that it must do a good business some way or other. Mr Hinton, who has just got his license for Highbury Barn, says the dining apartment fell off and he was obliged to institute Soirées Dansantes. Sometimes the publican gets a female dressed up in a Bloomer costume; sometimes he has for his barman a giant, or a dwarf, or an Albino, or a Kaffir chief – actually as an attraction to decent people to go and drink their pot of beer. I find the following advertisement in the Morning Advertiser: —
“The Sheep-eater of Hindostan. – To be seen, the Sheep-eater of Hindostan, representing an exhibition which took place on the 3rd of March, 1796, before Colonel Patrick Douglas and other officers of a battalion of Native Infantry, and a great concourse of the inhabitants of the military station of Futtehghur. It is engraved from a sketch, taken on the spot by a native artist, and under the inspection of Major-General Hardwicke, F.R.S. The Sheep-eater was a native of India, about thirty years of age, five feet nine inches high, slender, well formed, and rather muscular. He was attended by a very old man, whom he called his father or preceptor, termed by the natives Gooroo or Priest, who stated he had formerly followed the same practice. He was above the ordinary stature of the natives of India, and wore his hair, which was of great length, coiled into the form of a turban; and his beard was twisted like a rope, and nearly reached his feet, being five feet eight inches in length. The exhibitor began his operation by raising the sheep from the ground with his teeth. He then threw the animal on its back, and, with his teeth and hands only, separated the limbs, and stript the flesh from the bones. After mixing dust with the meat, by rubbing it on the ground, in that dirty state he swallowed what he tore off. The last part of the operation was chewing the leaves of a plant, the local name of which is Madaar (asclepias gigantea), and the milky juice, which is of a very corrosive nature, he swallowed. Having made a collection of money, and the assemblage of people being much increased, he offered to eat a second sheep, and actually commenced the operation as before. It may be proper to observe, that the sheep in most parts of India are as small as the Welsh sheep of Great Britain. No. 1. represents lifting the sheep from the ground with his teeth only. 2. Having thrown the sheep on its back, he extends the limbs, preparatory to No. 3. 3. Ripping the animal open from the flank to the breast. 4. Having removed the intestines, &c, he buries his head in the body, to drink the blood collected. 5. Exhibiting his face, after this sanguinary draught. 6. Having devoured every portion of flesh from the bones, he chews the plant Madaar. 7. After changing his waist-cloth, he returns with his Gooroo, or preceptor, and offers to eat the second sheep, for the satisfaction of the increased number of spectators.”
I do not give the name of the spirited proprietor, but in his advertisement he declares he intends exhibiting it over the bar for a short time gratuitously. This is rich; it is like the doctor’s advice gratis.
Now in the same manner the publicans provide a weekly discussion meeting for that part of the public that loves to hear itself speak. There is one at the Belvidere, Pentonville; another at the Horns, Kennington. Fleet-street is much favoured. There are the Temple Forum, the Cogers’ Hall, and another large room in Shoe-lane. These are gratuitous, like the picture in the above advertisement – that is, you are expected to sit and drink all night. The most celebrated one is that which meets not far from the Temple, presided over by the editor of a Sunday paper, and assisted by several reporters connected with the daily journals. One of them not long since contested an Irish borough on Protestant principles, but unfortunately, instead of being returned, found himself in gaol for election expenses. Besides these, there are many third and fourth-rate literary men – a class, I fear (I speak of the minors), the most braggart, lying, and needy under heaven – men who are going to do wonders, but who never do – whose success, if such a term may be applied to their career, arises simply from their power of brag, and from the possession of an enviable amount of self-esteem. Then there are briefless barristers, but too happy to have an opportunity of airing their dictionaries, and tradesmen, and clerks, all fancying that there is no need why they should hide their talents under a napkin. Still these places do not flourish, and there are more bad speeches made than good ones. You are cooped up in an inconvenient apartment, suffocated by tobacco-smoke, and very unpleasantly affected by the beer and gin-and-water which every one feels bound to consume. The waiter is in the room, and you are expected to give your orders. The speaking is a secondary consideration. The first thing you are required to do is to drink. I have how in my mind’s eye a young fellow who was a great man at one of these places. He was a clerk with limited means, but he came to these places night after night, and drank and spent his money freely. It is the old tale over again. He was intrusted with his employer’s cash. He applied some of it to liquidate his expenses. He was unable to replace it. Discovery was made at last; he is now in Newgate, and his wife – for he was just married – is breaking her young heart with shame and want. The curse of these public-houses is that they lead men into expense and reduce them into poverty, if they do not almost necessitate crime. A discussion is all very well, and the habit of being able to get up and say a few words when occasion requires pertinent and apropos is invaluable, but to acquire that habit it is scarcely worth while to sit all night toping, while Smithers is playing old gooseberry with his H’s, or O’Flaherty raving of the wrongs of the Green Isle. The questions discussed are generally such as are peculiar to the time. Was Lord Cardigan a hero? Does Sir Benjamin Hall deserve well of the public for his conduct with reference to Sunday bands? Does the Palmerston cabinet deserve the support of the country? Would Lord John Russell’s scheme of national education, if carried out, be a public benefit? Let men talk on these subjects if they will, and as long as they will, but I think they will think more clearly, and talk better, and come sooner to a rational decision, if they do not drink. I am sure I have seen the audience and the orators more inflamed by beer than by eloquence, and when turned out into the street after a long sitting, many, I imagine, have seen a couple of moons and double the usual allowance of lamps and police. The worst of it is, that after the discussion is over, there will be always a few stop to have a bit of supper and another glass. I remember, just as the war broke out, I was at one of the places to which I have already referred, the subject was the propriety of erecting on the ruins of Turkey a united Greece. The Philhellenists came down in great force, and young Greeks, Sophocles and Ionides, and many more screaming at the top of their voices, were there as well. What with the excitement of the subject and what with the excitement of the drink, the whole affair settled into a regular orgie, and the tumult of that night still rings wildly in my ear. Dumbiedikes would have stared at the gift of tongues exhibited on that occasion.
If you admire pot-house oratory, then attend one of these places. The chair is generally taken about nine, and the proceedings close at twelve. A gentleman already agreed on commences the discussion, then the debate is left to drag its slow length along, sometimes giving rise to animated discussions, and at other times being a terrible failure. What is considered the treat of the evening is generally something of this sort – An indifferent speaker, perhaps a stranger, gets up and makes a short speech, which brings up one of the old seasoned debaters, great in his own eyes and in those of almost every one present. I assure you he is down upon the modest debutant in fine style, making mincemeat of his facts, and ridiculing his logic. The easier his work is, the more does he labour at it. The audience frantically applaud, and the orator, as he sits down, evidently thinks Brougham could not have slashed an opponent in better style. The gravity of these speakers is really amusing. Did they speak the language of millions – did principles of eternal import dwell upon their tongue – did nations breathlessly wait for their decisions – did they shake the arsenal and fulmine over Greece – they could not set about their work in a more determined manner. And Jones, from his tremendous castigation of Palmerston, or fierce diatribe against Lord John, will sneak off quietly to his back garret in Pentonville, just as we can imagine Diocletian abandoning an empire to plant cabbages at Salone. It is clear some of the speakers are naturally good orators; but the regular stagers have a seedy appearance, and that peculiar redness of the nose or soddenness of the skin which indicates the drinker; and if you go much, you will find a paper with five-shilling subscriptions, and you will be asked to give your name, for the benefit of some prominent debater whose affairs do not seem to have prospered, in spite of their master’s matchless powers of oratory. The truth is, the money has been spent here in drink that was required elsewhere, and wife and children have starved at home while the orator was declaiming against Despotism abroad. I fear the only class benefited by these discussions are the landlords, who point to their door and whisper in your ears; Admission gratis. Yes, that is true; but the egress, ah, there’s the rub! It is that for which you must pay, and pay handsomely, too, as hundreds of poor fellows have found to their cost.
THE CYDER CELLARS
In the days of the gay and graceless Charles, Bow-street was the Bond-street of London. In the taverns of that quarter were the true homes and haunts of the British poets. That they were much better for all their drinking and worship of the small hours, I more than doubt. Pope tried the pace, but found it killing, and had the wisdom to go and live at Twickenham, and cease to play the part of a man about town. Describing Addison’s life at this period, he says, “He usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button’s, and dined there, and stayed there five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me. I hurt my health, and so I quitted it.” But the wits died off, and Tom’s, Will’s, Button’s became desolate, and in their place the Cyder Cellars grew famous.
You know Maiden-lane, where an old hair-dresser had a son born to him, who, under the name of Turner, won his way to the first rank amongst English painters, – where Voltaire, “so witty, profligate, and thin,” lodged at the house of a French peruke-maker, and corresponded with Swift, and Pope, and the other literary men of the times, – where Fielding laid the foundation of an eternal fame, – where Andrew Marvell refused courtly bribes, and in sublime poverty proudly picked his mutton-bone: there, some long time since, stood a mansion, the residence, in a green old age, of that Nell Gwynne of whom, with a strange perversity, the world speaks as kindly as if she were a Grace Darling, or a Florence Nightingale, or a Margaret Fuller, or an Elizabeth Fry. A portion of the old house still remains, with its ancient wainscotting. Well, on the site of this mansion was, and is, the Cyder Cellars, the oldest house of its class in London, actually referred to in a rare pamphlet now extant in the British Museum, entitled “Adventures Under-ground in the Year 1750.” In those days to drink deep was deemed a virtue, and the literary class, after the exhausting labours of the day, loved nothing better than to sit soaking all night in the Cyder Cellars, where all restraints were thrown on one aide, – where the song was sung and the wine was quaffed, and men were fools enough to think they were getting happy when they were only getting drunk. I can understand why the wits went to the Cyder Cellars then. Few of them lived in a style in which they would like to receive their friends. In a place like the Cyder Cellars they could meet after the theatres were closed, and the occupations of the day over, and sup and talk and drink with more freedom than in any private house; and no doubt many were the ingenuous youths who went to the Cyder Cellars to see the learned Mr. Bayle, or the great Grecian Porson, or the eminent tragedian Mr. Edmund Kean, and thought it a fine thing to view those distinguished men maudlin, or obscene, or blasphemous, over their cups. But the wits do not go to the Cyder Cellars now. Even the men about town do not go there much. I remember when that dismal song, “Sam Hall,” was sung – a song in which a wretch is supposed to utter all the wretchedness in his soul, all his sickness of life, all his abhorrence of mankind, as he was on his way to Tyburn drop. Horrible as the song was – revolting as it was to all but blazé men, the room was crammed to suffocation, – it was impossible often to get a seat, and you might have heard a pin drop. Where are the crowds that listened to that song? My own companion – where is he? A finer young man, with richer promise, I knew not. He had a generous disposition, a taste for study, and was blessed with the constitution of a horse; he had received a liberal education; his morals had been carefully attended to; his parents were people of large property, and this son I always deemed his mother’s favourite son; and now in his very prime, when he might have been a blessing to society, when in his successful professional career his parents might have reaped a reward, when the heart of some loving, tender, trusting woman might have joyed in his love, when fair young children, calling him father, might have clustered round his knees, he is dying, I am told, before their very eyes, slowly, and with agony, from the terrible effects of drink. And does it not really seem as if there were a curse attaching to those connected with the trade? A week or two since, had you been passing down Bridges-street into the Strand late on a Saturday night, or early on a Sunday morning, on a door-step, in spite of the pouring rain, you might have seen a woman, in her rags and loneliness, trying to gather a few hours of sleep. She was too weak to pursue her unhallowed calling, and had she been so disposed on that cold, wet night, it would have been of little avail had she walked the streets. The policeman as he goes his monotonous rounds tells her to move on. She wakes up, gets upon her legs, hobbles along, and then, when he is past, again, weary and wayworn, seeks the friendly door-step. The policeman returns; “What, here still?” he exclaims. Ah yes! she has not power to move away. She is weak, ill, dying. The friendly police carry her to the neighbouring hospital. “She cannot be received here,” says Routine, and she is taken to the workhouse. Again she is taken to the hospital, admitted at last – for is she not a woman, and a young one, too? – not more than twenty-five, it appears, – and on her face, stained with intemperance and sin, there is the dread stamp of death – in this case, perhaps, a welcome messenger; for who would live, fallen, friendless, forsaken, with a diseased body and a broken heart? “The spirit of a man can sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” Peace be with her! in another hour or two she will have done with this wretched life of hers, and have gone where “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” More than usual official cruelty is visible in this case, for all that is given her between her admission and her death is a simple cup of tea; and the coroner’s verdict very properly censures the hospital authorities. Well, what connexion, you ask, is there with this girl’s sad fate and the jollity of the Cyder Cellars? Only this, that her father made the Cyder Cellars so popular a place of resort. If I go there again I shall think of Louisa Regan, who began life as the daughter of a successful publican, who had been a governess in a nobleman’s family, at the early age of twenty-five rescued from the streets by policemen, and dependent on charity for a bed on which to die. In the foaming cup, in the glitter of the gas, while the comic singer was most comical, or the sentimental singer most sentimental, I could not be oblivious of her fate. Is there not poison in the bowl? Is there not madness in the merriment? To the night so bright does there not come a dolorous morrow? You may sing and laugh the hours away in the Cyder Cellars for a while, but you must pay your reckoning, and then, I imagine, you will doubt whether the amusement was worth the price. Youth generally pays too dear for its whistle. Youth is finding this out; at any rate the days of the Cyder Cellars are numbered, and now, with its Judge and Jury and Poses Plastiques, it collects comparatively few.
Let me ask, need the amusements of our leisure hours be thus based on false principles? Cambridge, in one of the pleasantest papers in the “World,” says, “Among the numbers who have changed a sober plan of living for one of riot and excess, the greatest part have been converted by the arguments in a drinking song.” Life is real, life is earnest. It is a battle-ground which requires heart and muscle, and where only the brave can conquer; but if I drop for half-an-hour into a music hall, I learn that pleasure is the great aim of life, and that gin can make me jolly and a genius.
LEICESTER-SQUARE
One of the peculiar institutions of the country is the square. Charles Knight says: – “The Piazza, Place, Platz, of Italy, France, or Germany, have little in common with it. Its elements are simple enough – an open space of a square figure, houses on each of the four sides, and an enclosed centre with turf, a few trees, and, it may be, flowers; and there is a square.” There are fashionable squares, all alive with the sound of carriage-wheels and the chaste accents of a thousand flunkeys; there are city squares, dull, dark places, with old red-brick houses, and a stunted, smoke-dried shrub or two in the middle. Then there are respectable squares, which never were fashionable, nor ever aimed to be such; and then there are squares which were once fashionable, but now are sadly gone out of repute. One of the chief of these is Leicester-square. Do our readers remember how Queen Caroline found time to be the mother of seven promising children, of whom the eldest, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was a continual source of sorrow and vexation to both his parents? “He resembled,” writes Horace Walpole, with his usual sneer, “the Black Prince only in dying before his father.” Well, there was a house built before the Commonwealth, called Leicester-house. Hither came this young, dissipated, short-lived Prince, and fixed his court. When he passed away, and the wits wrote —
“Here lies Fred,
Who was alive,
And is dead,”
still the place had the prestige of fashion. It gradually assumed the shape of a square, and became the dwelling-place of men truly great. Sir Isaac Newton resided near the square, in a house yet standing, and known to fast men as Bertolini’s, alias the Newton Hotel. Where now we see the Sablonière Hotel, Hogarth once dwelt, and at a later time Sir Joshua Reynolds lived on the opposite side of the square. In its neighbourhood Sir Charles Bell made his discoveries respecting the nervous system, and here the renowned John Hunter lived. In later times Wordsworth made it the scene of his Moon-gazers; and if he could term it “Leicester’s busy square,” still more is that epithet appropriate to it at the present time. It is true that the Great Globe is not a success; that the Panopticon failed; that the Western Literary Institution did not flourish; that the place is not literary or scientific, nor even business-like, for by daylight the shops look seedy, and the wares exhibited are somewhat of the cheapest. But at night a change comes over the spirit of its dream. Here, from cheap lodging-houses hard by, from cold garrets or dark and dusty two-pair backs, crawl out to walk its flagstones, or taint its air with the smoke of cheap cigars, men of all nations and tongues – French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Poles – the scoundrels and patriots of Europe. There is business here now; the air is laden with the sickly odour of a thousand dinners. Hotels and cafés and restaurants are lit up and gay. Mr Smith opens the Alhambra on Sundays and week-days for Music for the Million; and women, rouged and dressed as much as possible like the nude figures, degrade our conceptions of Venus, and Sappho, and the Syrens, and others of our classic acquaintances, by the exhibition of them in questionable groupings tolerated as poses plastiques. Wine-shades attract us; we hear the clink of billiards. This house we know to be a betting house – that to be a hell. A man runs up against us. He turns round and apologizes. I catch a glimpse of his face. I see at once that he is a billiard-room shark. Look at his pale face, his cold eye, his hard mouth; and don’t play with him, however civil. Above all, don’t imagine from his exterior that he is a gentleman. A gentleman does not wear slop-shop clothes nor mosaic gold.
You wish to sit down. Well, as it is past the midnight hour, we will go into this Café Chansante. At any rate the foreigners have more taste than ourselves. The pretty young girls, French or German, at the bar give the place a pleasant appearance, and the mirrors on all sides reflect the gay forms and faces here assembled. But we pass into the concert room, where some Spanish minstrels in national costumes are singing national airs. As you are not musical and cannot understand these distinguished foreigners, let us see who are here, the Swiss Kellner, with his wonted civility, having first brought us a cup of coffee and a cigar. I don’t know why it is so, but it always struck me that of all asses the English ass is the greatest. How conspicuous, for instance, are those three young fellows sitting at the small marble table in front of us. Most likely they are medical students. Of course they are drinking and smoking, and have female companions, respecting whose character there can be no doubt. How happy are they in their conceit – in their insolent laugh at the foreigners round them – in their vulgar shouts of derisive applause. Talk to them, and you will be astonished to find how morally dead they are, how narrow is their range of thought, how obsolete are all their ideas, how suppressed are all their sympathies: not even the beer they drink can be heavier. Yet these lads are to teach the next age its medical science – and in the last death-struggle, when we would save the life we love, with broken hearts and streaming eyes we shall appeal to them in vain. In England the general practitioner will always be under-bred so long as the night-house and the casino absorb the hours science imperiously claims. But pass on to this next table. Look at this girl all radiant with beauty and smiles – beautiful even in spite of her long-lost virtue and life of sin. For,
“You may break, you may ruin, the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”
The man seated by her side is in love with her. It may be for her love he has given up mother, sister, betrothed, home, his fair name, his prospects in life, his hopes of heaven; and she no more heeds his passionate vows than does the rock the murmur of the waves at its feet; and already her wanton eye glances round the room for other victims to sacrifice to her vanity and pride. Oh, the deceit and craft and hardness of women such as she! And yet on account of such in distant village-homes there is sadness, and the mother and sister deny themselves many a luxury, and grayhaired fathers mourn over their lost and loved – their Benjamins – born and nurtured to come to such an end. Perhaps at the next table the picture is reversed; that woman is beautiful, and her face has a smile, and there is a flush upon her cheek, and the wine has driven from her heart for a while bitter memories; but she is not happy, though loud be her laugh; and if she dared to sit and think of the hour when she fell, and of the mire and dirt along which she has crawled, of what she is now in her rustling silks, and what she was in her peasant dress then – eyes full of grief, and dim with tears, would look into her own; and out of that gilded room, and away from all the song and laughter and wine, would she not rush home to die? Yet if she now sells herself to pay to-morrow’s baker’s bill, is she to be trod on by the high-born beauty that goes up to God’s altar with one for whom she has no love, for an establishment that will make her bridesmaids yellow with well-bred jealousy? But we are all gay here. Is not the room light and cheerful? Is not the whole aspect all mirth-inspiring? Does not dull care flee the flowing bowl? Jolly fellows are sitting and telling each other tales which you would be sorry your sister should hear, and which no mother would believe would be ever heard by son of hers without a manly protest. Women are laughing and drinking as if theirs were not lives of shame. Sated men about town languidly smoke, and the eye of the gloomy refugee sparkles, and his heart beats quicker, as he hears the song of his father-land. The hours hasten on – the company depart – the wanton beauty, flushed with conquest, rides off in the Hansom, or it may be in her private brougham, to her luxurious rooms; while her sister, shivering in the cold night, begs us for two-pence with which to purchase a bed of straw. Poor forlorn one! in another year thou wilt lie down in another bed, only to wake up when the last trump shall sound!