On Christmas Eve, in the midst of a dense fog that filled one’s throat and closed one’s eyes, and rendered the vast City one huge sepulchre, as it were, peopled by ghosts and ghouls, I spent a few hours in what may be called studies at the bar.
First, I turned my steps down Whitechapel way. It is there the pressure of poverty is felt as much as anywhere in London, and as it was early in the evening I went there, I saw it under favourable circumstances, for the sober people would be shopping, and the drunken ones would scarcely have commenced that riot and quarrelling which are the result in most cases of indulgence in alcohol. From the publican’s point of view, of course, I had nothing to expect but unmitigated pleasure. The stuff they sell, they tell us, is the gift of a good Providence, sent us in order to alleviate the gloom and lighten the cares of life. “It is a poor heart that never rejoices,” and on Christmas Eve, when we are thinking of the birth of Him who came to send peace on earth and goodwill amongst men, a little extra enjoyment may be expected. In some bars ample provision had been made for the event; decorations had been freely resorted to, and everything had been done to give colour to the delusion that Christmas jollity was to be produced and heightened by the use of what the publican had to sell. Almost the first glimpse I got of the consequences of adherence to this doctrine was at a corner house in Whitechapel, before I got as far as the church, where from the side-door of a gin-palace rushed out a little dirty woman with a pot of beer in her hand, followed by a taller one, who, catching hold of her, began to hit her. On this the attacked woman took a savage grip of the front hair of her opponent, who began to scream “Murder!” with might and main. A crowd was formed immediately, in the expectation of that favourite entertainment of a certain section of the British public—a free fight between two tipsy women; but, alas! they were too far gone to fight, and, after a good deal of bad language, the woman with the porter pursued her victorious way, while the other, almost too drunk to stand, returned to the bar, to rejoin the dirty group she had left, and to be served again—contrary, as I understand, to the law of the land—with the liquor of which she had already had more than enough. In that compartment everything was dirty—the women at the bar and the man behind it, nor was there a spark of good feeling or happiness in the group. There they were—the wives and mothers of the people—all equally besotted, all equally wretched. Oh heavens, what a sight!
And this reminds me of what I saw at a bar in the Gray’s Inn Road, in one of the largest of the many houses opened for refreshment, as it is called. In one compartment there were some thirty or forty wretched, dirty, ragged people, mostly women. One of them was in a state of elevation, and was dancing to a set who were evidently too far gone to appreciate her performance. With tipsy gravity, however, she continued her self-appointed task. Ah, poor thing! thought I, you are gay and hilarious now—to-morrow you will lie shivering in the cold—possibly crying for a morsel of bread. You have a garret to sleep in, and nothing to look forward to but the hospital or the workhouse. Heaven wills it, says the pietist. Heaven does nothing of the kind. In the mad debauchery I saw in that bar I am sure there must have been spent money that would have given the wretched topers happier homes, better dinners, and a future far happier than that which I saw hanging over them.
In Chancery Lane I came on several illustrations of the joyous conviviality of the season. One poor fellow just before me came down with a tremendous crash. Another nearly ran me down as he steered his difficult way along the slippery street and through the gloomy fog. Another merry old soul had given up all attempt to find his way home, and had seated himself on a doorstep, planted his hat on one side of his head, put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and there, asleep, with a short pipe in his mouth, and his legs stretched out, looked as mournful and seedy an object as anyone could desire to contemplate. He had evidently been having a pleasant evening with his companions over a social glass, merely keeping up good old English customs, wishing himself and everyone he knew a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
At the gin-palaces near the railway termini, and in those bordering on any place of general marketing, the crowd of customers was enormous, and the class was far superior to those I saw in Drury Lane or Whitechapel, or the Gray’s Inn Road. They were real respectable working men and their wives, who had been out marketing for the morrow, and who, proud of their success in that direction, and of the store of good things they had collected for the anticipated dinner, had to treat themselves with a parting glass ere they went home. It was a busy time for the men at the bar. In one large public with four or five compartments, I reckoned there must have been nearly a hundred customers. It was quite an effort for anyone to get served; he had to fight his way through the mob to pay his money and get his glass, and then to struggle back to a quiet corner to drink off its contents with a friend or his wife, but there was no drunkenness.
The men and women of the respectable working class are not drunkards. They have too much sense for that, but they were merry, and a little inclined to be too talkative and heedless. For instance, a party of four went straight from a public-house to a railway station at which I happened to be waiting. One couple were going by the train home—another couple had come to see them off. The wife of the travelling party was fat and heavy, and in her jolly, careless mood, induced by the evening’s conviviality, as the train came up she missed her step and fell between the wheels and the platform. Fortunately the train had come to a standstill, or that woman and her husband and her family would have had anything but a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
In one place, patronised by navvies and their wives, there was such a hideous exhibition of indecency that I may not record it. “Why don’t you interfere?” said a gentleman to the pot-boy. “Oh,” was the reply, “you can’t say anything at this season of the year. It is best to leave them alone.”
In such low neighbourhoods as Drury Lane it seemed to me that the men preponderated; indeed, at many places they were the only customers. One could not much wonder to find them in such places. Either they live in the low lodging-houses close by, where they pay fourpence a night for a bed, or they have a room for themselves and families in the neighbourhood. In neither case is there much peace for them in what they call their home. They are best out of doors, and then comes the attraction of the public-house, and on Christmas Eve in the dull raw fog almost the only bright spot visible was the gleam of its gaudy splendour, and as a natural consequence bars were pretty well filled. They always are in poor neighbourhoods of a night, and especially such as have a corner situation. It is always good times with the proprietors of such places, even if trade be bad and men are out of work, and little children cry for bread and old people die of starvation and want. A corner public-house is never driven into the bankruptcy court.
But let me change the scene. These low neighbourhoods are really disgusting to people of cultivated minds and refined tastes. I am standing in a wonderfully beautiful hall. On one side is a long counter filled with decanters and wineglasses. Behind these are some lively young ladies, fashionably dressed, and with hair elaborately arranged. The customers are chiefly young men, whom Albert Smith would have described as gents. They mostly patronise what they call “bittah” beer, and they are wise in doing so, as young men rarely can afford wine, and “bittah” beer is not so likely to affect the few brains they happen to have about them. Of course a good deal of wine is drunk, and there is a great demand for grog, but beer is the prevailing beverage; and as to tea and coffee and such things, they are unfairly handicapped, as the Hebe at the bar charges me sixpence for a small cup of coffee, while the gent by my side pays but twopence for his beer; nor can I say that he pays too much, as he has the opportunity thus afforded to him of talking to a young lady who has no refuge from his impertinence, and who is bound to be civil unless the cad is notoriously offensive, as her trade is to sell liquor, and the more he talks the more he drinks. But the mischief does not end here. Many a married man fancies it is fun to loll over the counter and spoon with the girls behind. He has more cash than the gent, and spends more. If he is not a rich man he would pass himself off as such; he drinks more than is good for him; he makes the young ladies presents; he talks to them in a sentimental strain, and it may be he has a wife and family at home who are in need of almost the necessaries of life.
In many cases the end of all this is wretchedness at home and loss of character and means of subsistence; if he is in a house of business he lives beyond his income, and embezzlement is the result. If he be in business on his own account his end is bankruptcy, at any rate his health is not benefited by his indulgence at the bar, and to most men who have to earn their daily bread loss of health is loss of employment and poverty, more or less enduring and grinding and complete. What the gin-shop is to the working man, the restaurant and the refreshment bar are to the middle classes of society. There is no disgrace in dropping in there, and so the young man learns to become a sot. Planted as they are at all the railway termini, they are an ever-present danger; they are fitted up in a costly style, and the young ladies are expected to be as amiable and good-looking as possible, and thus when a young man has a few minutes to spare at a railway terminus, naturally he makes his way to the refreshment bar.
Dartmoor was full, writes the author of “Convict Life,” with the men whom drink had led into crime—from the mean wretch who pawned his wife’s boots for ninepence, which he spent in the gin-shop, to the young man from the City who became enamoured “with one of the painted and powdered decoy-ducks who are on exhibition at the premises of a notorious publican within a mile of Regent Circus.” At first he spent a shilling or two nightly; but he quickly found that the road to favour was at bottle of Moët, of which his inamorata and her painted sisters partook very freely. The acquaintance soon ripened under the influence of champagne till he robbed his employer, and was sent to Dartmoor. “He told me himself,” writes our author, “that from the time he first went to that tavern he never went to bed perfectly sober, and that all his follies were committed under the influence of champagne.”
Another case he mentions was even worse. At the time of his conviction the young man of whom he writes was on the eve of passing an examination for one of the learned professions; but be had been an habitué of the buffet of let us call it the Royal Grill Room Theatre and a lounger at the stage door of that celebrated establishment, and had made the acquaintance of one of the ladies of the ballet. Under the influence of champagne he also soon came to grief. “In the name of God,” says the writer to young men in London, “turn up taverns.”
But what is to be done? The publican, whether he keeps a gin-palace or a refreshment bar, must push his trade. The total number of public-houses, beershops, and wine-houses in the Metropolitan Parliamentary boroughs is 8,973, or one to each 333 persons. This is bad; but Newcastle-on-Tyne is worse, having one public-house to 160 inhabitants, and Manchester has one to every 164 inhabitants. The amount paid in license-fees by publicans in the Metropolitan district last year amounted to £108,316; the total for the kingdom being £1,133,212. But great as is the number of these places, the trade flourishes. A licensed house in one of the finest parts of London (Bethnal Green), lately sold for upwards of £22,000. Another, a third or fourth rate house in North London, sold for £18,000; other licensed houses sell for £30,000, £40,000, £50,000, and even more. As to the refreshment bars, it lately came out in evidence that a partner in one of the firms most connected with them stated his income to be £40,000 a year. It is said one firm, whose business is chiefly devoted to refreshment bars, pays its wine merchants as much as £1,000 a week.
An effort is being made by a band of British philanthropists, of which the Rev. Mr. Turner is secretary, to put down, if not the opium traffic, at any rate that part of it which is covered by the British flag. Opium is to the Chinese what the quid is to the British tar, or the gin-bottle to the London charwoman. But in reality, as I firmly believe, for the purpose of opening the door to all sorts of bribery and corruption, the traffic is prohibited as much as possible by the Chinese Government, for the ostensible object of preserving the health and morals of the people. This task is a very difficult one. A paternal Government is always in difficulties, and once we Christian people of England have gone to war with the Chinese in order to make them take our Indian-grown opium—a manufacture in which a large capital is invested, and the duty of which yields the British Government in India a magnificent revenue. It is a question for the moralist to decide how far a Government is justified in saying to a people: “We know so and so is bad, but as you will use it, you may as well pay a heavy tax on its use.” That is the practical way in which statesmen look at it, and of course there is a good deal to be said for that view. But it is not pleasant to feel that money, even if it be used for State purposes, is made in a dirty manner; though I have been in countries where the minister of the religion of holiness and purity is content to take a part of his living from the brothel-keeper and the prostitute. Evidently there are many men as ready to take the devil’s money as was Rowland Hill to accept the Bible at his hands.
But I am touching on questions not to be settled in the twinkling of an eye, or by a phrase or two in print. Perhaps I may best serve the cause of humanity if, instead of saying what I think and feel, I merely content myself with describing what I saw in the East-End of London, one Saturday night, in this year of grace one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five.
Have my readers ever been in Bluegate Fields, somewhere down Ratcliffe Highway? The glory of the place is departed. I am writing more Americano, where the wickedest man in the town is always regarded as a hero. The City missionary and the East London Railway between them have reformed the place. To the outward eye it is a waste howling spot, but it is a garden of Eden to what it was when a policeman dared not go by himself into its courts, and when respectability, if it ever strayed into that filthy quarter, generally emerged from it minus its watch and coat, and with a skull more or less cracked, and with a face more or less bloody.
“Thanks to you,” said a surgeon to a City missionary who has been labouring in the spot some sixteen years, and is now recognised as a friend wherever he goes, “thanks to you,” said the surgeon, “I can now walk along the place alone, and in safety, a thing I never expected to do;” and I believe that the testimony is true, and that it is in such districts the labours of the City missionary are simply invaluable. Down in those parts what we call the Gospel has very little power. It is a thing quite outside the mass. There are chapels and churches, it is true, but the people don’t go into them. I pass a great Wesleyan I chapel. “How is it attended?” I ask; and the answer is: “Very badly indeed.” I hear that the nearest Independent chapel is turned into a School Board school; and there is Rehoboth,—I need not say it is a hyper place of worship, and was, when Bluegate Fields was a teeming mass of godless men and women, only attended by some dozen or so of the elect, who prayed their prayers, and read their Bible, and listened to their parsons with sublime indifference to the fact that there at their very door, under their very eyes, within reach of their very hands, were souls to be saved, and brands to be snatched from the burning, and jewels to be won for the Redeemer’s crown. I can only hear of one preacher in this part who is really getting the people to hear him, and he is the Rev. Harry Jones, who deserves to be made a bishop, and who would be, if the Church of England was wise and knew its dangers, and was careful to avert the impending storm, which I, though I may not live to see the day, know to be near. But let us pass, on leaving Rehoboth, a black and ugly carcass, on the point of being pulled down by the navvy. I turn into a little court on my right, one of the very few the railway has spared for the present. It may be there are some dozen houses in the court. The population is, I should certainly imagine, quite up to the accommodation of the place. Indeed, if I might venture to make a remark, it would be to the effect that a little more elbow-room would be of great advantage to all. From every door across the court are ropes, and on these ropes the blankets and sheets and family linen are hanging up to dry. These I have to duck under as I walk along; but the people are all civil, though my appearance makes them stare, and all give a friendly and respectful greeting to the City missionary by my side.
All at once my conductor disappears in a little door, and I follow, walking, on this particular occasion, by faith, and not by sight; for the passage was dark, and I knew not my way. I climb up a flight of stairs, and find myself in a little crib—it would be an abuse of terms to call it a room. It is just about my height, and I fancy it is a great deal darker and dingier than the room in which a first-class misdemeanant like Colonel Baker was confined. The place is full of smoke. It is not at first that I take in its contents. As I stand by the door, there are two beds of an ancient character; between these beds is a very narrow passage, and it is in this passage I recognise the master of the house—a black-eyed, cheerful Chinaman, who has become so far naturalised amongst us as to do us the honour of taking the truly British name of Johnson. Johnson is but thinly clad. I see the perspiration glistening on his dark and shining skin; but Johnson seems as pleased to see me as if he had known me fifty years. In time, through the smoke, I see Johnson’s friends—dark, perspiring figures curled on the beds around, one, for want of room, squatting, cross-legged, in a corner—each with a tube of the shape and size of a German flute in his hands. I look at this tube with some curiosity. In the middle of it is a little bowl. In that little bowl is the opium, which is placed there as if it were a little bit of tow dipped in tar, and which is set fire to by being held to the little lamps, of which there are three or four on the bed or in the room. This operation performed, the smoker reclines and draws up the smoke, and looks a very picture of happiness and ease. Of course I imitate the bad example; I like to do as the Romans do, and Johnson hands me a tube which I put into my mouth, while, as I hold it to the lamp, he inserts the heated opium into the bowl; and, as I pull, the thick smoke curls up and adds to the cloud which makes the room as oppressive as the atmosphere of a Turkish bath. How the little pig-eyes glisten! and already I feel that I may say: “Am I not a man and a brother?” The conversation becomes general. Here we are jolly companions every one. Ching tells me the Chinese don’t send us the best tea; and grins all across his yellow face as I say that I know that, but intimate that they make us pay for it as if they did. Tsing smiles knowingly as I ask him what his wife does when he is so long away. Then we have a discussion as to the comparative merits of opium and beer, and my Chinese friends sagely observe that it is all a matter of taste. “You mans like beer, and we mans in our country like opium.” All were unanimous in saying that they never had more than a few whiffs, and all that I could learn of its effects when taken in excess was that opium sent them off into a stupid sleep. With the somewhat doubtful confessions of De Quincey and Coleridge in my memory, I tried to get them to acknowledge sudden impulses, poetic inspirations, splendid dreams; but of such things these little fellows had never conceived; the highest eulogium I heard was: “You have pains—pain in de liver, pain in de head—you smoke—all de pains go.” The most that I could learn was that opium is an expensive luxury for a poor man. Three-halfpenny-worth only gives you a few minutes’ smoke, and these men say they don’t smoke more at a time. Lascar Sall, a rather disreputable female, well known in the neighbourhood, would, they told me, smoke five shillings-worth of opium a day. Johnson’s is the clubhouse of the Chinese. He buys the opium and prepares it for smoking, and they come and smoke and have a chat, and a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter, and go back and sleep on board ship. Their little smoking seemed to do them no harm. The City missionary says he has never seen them intoxicated. It made them a little lazy and sleepy—that is all; but they had done their day’s work, and had earned as much title to a little indulgence as the teetotaler, who regales himself with coffee; or the merchant, who smokes his cigar on his pleasant lawn on a summer’s eve. I own when I left the room I felt a little giddy, that I had to walk the crowded streets with care; but then I was a novice, and the effect would not be so great on a second trial. I should have enjoyed a cup of good coffee after; but that is a blessing to which we in London, with all our boasted civilisation, have not attained. I frankly avow, as I walked to the railway station, I almost wished myself back in the opium den. There I heard no foul language, saw no men and women fighting, no sots reeling into the gutters, or for safety shored up against the wall. For it was thus the mob, through which I had to pass, was preparing itself for the services of the sanctuary, and the rest of the Sabbath.
Most of my London readers know Southend. It is as pretty a place, when the tide is up and the weather is fine, as you can find anywhere near London. Standing on the cliff on a clear day it is a lovely panorama which greets your eye. At your feet rolls the noble river, to which London owes its greatness, and on which sail up and down, night and day, no matter how stormy the season may be, the commercial navies of the world. On the other side is the mouth of the Medway, with its docks and men-of-war; and farther still beyond rise those Kentish hills of which Dickens was so fond, and on the top of one of which he lived and died. Look to the right, and you see over the broad expanse of waters and the marshy land, destined, perhaps, at some distant day to be formed into docks and to be crowded with busy life. Look at your left, and the old town, with its pier a mile and a quarter long, really looks charming in the summer sun. Or you see the shingly beach, at one end of which—you learn by report of artillery-firing and the cloud of blue smoke curling to the sky—is Shoeburyness. Far away on the open sea, and on the other side, the tall cliffs of the Isle of Sheppey loom in the distance.
Lie down on the grass and enjoy yourself. What ozone there is in the atmosphere! What brightness in the scene! What joy seems all around! Is it not pleasant, after the roar and bustle and smoke and dirt of London, to come down here and watch the clouds casting their dark shadow on the blue waters; or to follow the gulls, dipping and darting along like so many white flies; or to see the feathery sails of yachts and pleasure-boats, floating like flakes of snow; or to mark the dark track from the funnel of yon steamer, on her way (possibly with a cargo of emigrants, to whom fortune had been unfriendly at home) to some Australian El Dorado—to which, if I only knew of it, I might probably go myself—
Where every man is free,
And none can be in bonds for life
For want of £ s. d.
Well, you say, this is a fairy spot, a real Eden, where life is all enjoyment, where health and happiness abound, if you could live but always there. My dear sir, in a few hours such a change will come over the spirit of the dream, such a diabolical transformation will be effected, so foul will seem all that now is so bright and fair, that you will flee the place, and, as you do so, I indignantly ask, What is the use of British law? and wherein consists the virtue of British civilisation? and of what avail is British Christianity, if in broad daylight, in the principal thoroughfares of the town, your eyes and ears are to be shocked by scenes of which I can only say that they would be deemed disgraceful in a land of savages? Let us suppose it midday, and the usual excursion trains and steamboats have landed some few thousand men, women, and children, all dressed in their best, and determined, and very properly, to enjoy themselves. What swarms you see everywhere! One day actually, I am told, the railway brought as many as eleven thousand. You say you are glad to see them; they have worked hard for a holiday; and, shut up in the factories, and warehouses, and workshops of the East-End, none have more of a right to, or more of a need of, the enjoyment of a sea air. Dear sir, you are right; and for a little while all goes on as you desire. The enjoyment is varied, and seems to consist of wading up to the knees in the sea, in listening to Ethiopian serenaders, in the consumption of oysters and apples, in donkey-riding, in the purchase of useless ware at the nearest caravan or booth, in being photographed, in taking a sail, or in strolling about the beach, and, as regards the male part of the excursionists, smoking tobacco more or less indifferent. But unfortunately the trains do not return before seven or eight o’clock, and of course the excursionists must have a drop of beer or spirits to pass away the time, many of them have no idea of a holiday, and really and truly cannot enjoy themselves without; and the publicans of Southend lay themselves out for the gratification of the excursionist in this respect. They have monster taps and rooms in which the excursionists sit and drink and make merry according to their custom. As the day wears on the merriment becomes greater, and the noise a little less harmonious. The fact is, all parties—men and women alike—have taken a drop too much; the publican begins to feel a little anxious about his property, especially as the two or three policemen belonging to the place—wisely knowing what is coming, and their utter inability to cope with a drunken mob, and the ridiculousness of their attempting to do so—manage to get out of the way, and to hide their diminished heads in a quieter and more respectable quarter of the town.
At length quarrels arise, oaths and coarse language are heard, and out in the street rush angry men to curse, and swear, and fight. The women, it must be confessed, are ofttimes as bad as the men, and I have seen many a heavy blow fall to the lot even of the sucking babe! In the brief madness of the hour, friends, brothers, relatives rush at each other like so many wild beasts, much to the amusement of the throng of inebriated pleasure-seekers around. No one tries to interfere, as most of the men and cardrivers, who make up the aboriginal population of the place, evidently enjoy the disgusting spectacle. Once I stopped four weeks in this place, and I began to tremble at the very sight of an excursionist. I knew that the chances were that before the day was over my little ones would have to look on the worst of sights. I saw one powerful fellow in three fights in the course of one day; in one he had kicked a man in a way which made him shriek and howl for an hour afterwards; in another case he had knocked a woman down; and I left him on the railway platform, stripped, and offering to fight anyone. I begged a policeman to interfere and take the brute into custody, and in reply was told that their rule was never to take a man into custody unless they saw the assault committed, a thing the Southend police very properly take care never to do; and yet on the occasion to which I refer the landlord of one of the best hotels in the place was in vain, for the sake of his respectable guests, begging the police to put a stop to the scene which he himself rightly described as pandemonium. I must admit the police are not inactive. There was a crowd round the beershop, from which a man hopelessly intoxicated was being ejected.
“Here, policeman,” said the beershop-keeper, “take this man away, he has insulted me.” And the policeman complied with his request, and the poor fellow, who was too drunk to stand upright, speedily embraces mother earth. On another occasion a policeman displayed unusual activity. He was after a man who had stolen actually an oyster, and for this the policeman was on his track, and the man was to be conveyed at the expense of the country to Rochford gaol. Let me draw a veil over the horrors of the return home of an excursion train with its tipsy occupants, swearing eternal friendship one moment while trying to tear each other’s eyes out the next. It is bad enough to see the excursionists making their way back to the railway station; here a couple of men will be holding up a drunken mate, there are flushed boys and girls yelling and shrieking like so many escaped lunatics. Now let us retrace our steps. You can tell by the disorder and ruin all around where the excursionists have been, their steps are as manifest to the observer as an invading army. Is there no remedy for this state of things? Is a quiet watering-place, to which people go to recover health and strength, to be at the mercy of any drunken swarms who happen to have the half-crowns in their pockets requisite for the purchase of an excursion ticket? Of course this is a free country, and the right of a man to go to the devil his own way is a right of which I would be the last to deprive my fellow citizens; but an excursion train is a monster nuisance, of which our ancestors never dreamed, and for which in their wisdom they made no provision. Of course total abstinence is a remedy; but then the British workman is not a total abstainer, and that is a question which I am not about to discuss. All I want is to call attention to what is a daily scandal in the summer-time; and to bid good people remember—while they are talking of heathenism abroad—that heathenism at home, which, under the influence of strong drink threatens to destroy all that is lovely and of good report in our midst.
Lest it be said that I exaggerate, that I give an erroneous idea of the drinking customs of the working classes, let me quote the following confession of a working man, when examined before a coroner’s jury, as to the way in which he had spent his holiday last Good Friday:
“We went for a walk, and had two pints of beer on the road. We got as far as the Holloway Road Railway Station, and turned back. Deceased saw me home, and then left me.”
“Did he again call on you?”
“Yes; at about twenty minutes to three o’clock.”
“By appointment?”
“Yes, to go to the Alexandra Palace. We left my place about a quarter to three o’clock, and just had time for a drink at the public-house next door to where I am living. We had two half-quarterns of whisky neat. I there changed a sovereign. We then walked up the Holloway Road, and I called on my father-in-law. He asked me to stop to tea, but I said I was engaged to go to the Palace. Deceased and I then got as far as The Manor House, where we had two glasses of bitter beer. We went on farther to The Queen’s Head, which is the next public-house, and had some more drink. From there we went to Hornsey, stopped at a public-house, and had some whisky. We stopped again at The Nightingale, and had half-a-quartern of whisky each. We could see the Palace from where we then were, but did not know how to get there. We inquired the way, and as we were going along we met the deceased’s younger brother, with a lot of other boys, and we said a few words to them. Afterwards we went into a public-house just opposite the Palace gates, and had either some brandy or whisky, I don’t know which. We got chaffing with the man at the pay-office, saying that he ought to let us in at half-price, as it was so late, but he did not do so. We paid one shilling each to go in. We went into the building and strolled about, looking at different things, and had three pints of bitter ale at one of the stands. We then walked about again, and afterwards had some brandy. We then began to get rather stupefied, and after waiting about a little longer we had some more brandy. I know we stopped at almost every buffet there was in the Palace, and had something to drink at each of them. The lights were being put out as we left the Palace. Deceased had hold of my arm, and we went up to one of the buffets for the purpose of getting some cakes, or something to eat, but the barmaid refused to serve us. Deceased said to me, ‘I feel rather tidy, Joe,’ so I took hold of his arm, but in moving away we both fell over some chairs. We left the Palace, and deceased said to me, ‘Have you got any money?’ I said, ‘Yes; what I have got you are welcome to.’ I then gave him a two-shilling piece, out of my purse, which he put with the money he already had of his own. It must have been very late then. We lost our way, but I think I said to the deceased, ‘This is the way we came in.’ Then we both fell down again. I don’t remember getting away from there, or how I left deceased. I remember nothing else that took place. I don’t know how we got on the steps of the Grand Stand. I cannot remember seeing the boy Braybrook, nor how I got out of the grounds, or to my own home.”
“You say that you were drunk?”
“Yes, we were both drunk, almost before we got to the Palace.”
“You say that the deceased was also drunk?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t remember leaving the deceased upon the ground?”
“No, I cannot remember how I got my hands cut, or the bruise on the back of my head. I found my hat broken in the next morning, and my wife put it right for me.”
One fine summer day a friend agreed with me to go down the river. Sheerness was fixed on, not on account of its beauty, for that part near the harbour is by no means attractive, and like most of our naval and military stations it is full of low public-houses, which by no means add to its attractions, but simply on account of the fact that the place could be reached and the return journey made in the course of a day; that we could be on the water all the while, and that we should have a pleasant breathing space in the midst of a life more or less necessarily of toil. For people who cannot get away for a few weeks, who cannot rush off to Brighton, or Margate, or Scarborough, or Scotland for a month, it is a great treat to be able to go down to Sheerness and back for a day in a luxurious steamer, where everyone has elbow-room. And on the day in question it was a treat to us all in many respects; the day was fine, the boat in which we sailed was that favourite one the Princess Alice—now, alas! a name which sends a thrill of tragic horror through the land. To us and the public at that time she was known merely as the safest, and fastest, and pleasantest vessel of her class.
We had beautiful views of marshes well filled with cattle, and of fields waving with yellow corn, and with hills and green parks, and gentlemen’s seats and churches afar off; the river with its craft great and small going up or coming down is always a source of interesting study; and as the fine fresh air, to be encountered below Gravesend, gave us an appetite, we had a good dinner on board, well served and at a very moderate price; tea and shrimps at a later period of the day were equally acceptable; and many were the ladies and gentlemen who had come and found what they sought, a pleasant outing. There were also many little children who enjoyed themselves much, and the sight of whose pleasure was an unmitigated enjoyment to old stagers, like myself and my friend. Altogether it was a very agreeable day so far as the outward passage was concerned. It was true that there was an unnecessary demand for beer, even from the moderate drinker’s point of view, before the dinner hour. Bottled ale and stout may not be taken with impunity on an empty stomach; smoking may also be carried to excess, and as there are many persons who dislike the very smell of it, the mixture in the atmosphere was certainly far more than was desirable; but on a holiday on a Thames excursion boat one must give and take, and not be too prone to find fault. People often act differently abroad to what they do at home; we must allow for a little wildness on such an occasion on the part of the general public. It is not every day a man takes a holiday. It is not everyone who knows how to use it when he has it. To many of us a holiday rarely comes more than once a year, and gentlemen of my profession, alas! often do not get that.
Altogether we must have had at the least some seven or eight hundred people on board. They swarmed everywhere; indeed, at times there was little more than comfortable standing room, and the only locomotion possible seemed to be that directed towards the cabins fore and aft in pursuit of bottled beer.
In the morning we were not so crowded, but in the evening we began to experience inconvenience of another kind. It was at half-past ten a.m. that we left the lower side of London Bridge; it was nine o’clock in the evening when we arrived there again. All that time we had been on board the steamer, with the exception of an hour and a half spent at Sheerness, and all that time the demand for beer had been incessant. I never in all my life saw such a consumption. I remarked to a friend enough beer had been drunk to have floated apparently the Princess Alice herself. Everybody was drinking beer or porter, and the bottles were imperial pints and held a good deal. Of course there were music and dancing; and the girls, flushed and excited, drank freely of the proffered beverage, each moment getting wilder and noisier. Old ladies and old gentlemen complacently sipped their glass. It seemed to do them no harm. Their passions had long been extinct. They had long outlived the heyday of youth. All that the beer seemed to do for them was to give them a bit of a headache, or to make them feel a little more tired or sleepy, that was all. On the deck was a party of thirty or forty men who had come for a day’s outing; decent mechanics evidently, very respectably dressed. They kept themselves to themselves, had dined on board together, had taken tea together, and now sat singing all the way home, in dreadfully melancholy tones, all the old songs of our grandfathers’ days about “Remembering those out,” “The Maids of merry, merry England,” and then came a yell in the way of a chorus which would have frightened a Red Indian or a Zulu Kaffir. After every song there was a whip round for some more beer, till the seats underneath seemed to be choked up with empty bottles. They were all a little under the influence of liquor, not unpleasantly so, but placidly and stupidly; and as they listened with the utmost gravity while one or another of the party was singing, you would have thought they were all being tried for manslaughter at least. It is true they had a comic man in the party, with a green necktie and a billycock hat, and a shillalagh, who did his best under the circumstances, but he had to fight at tremendous odds, as hilarity was not the order of the day on that part of the deck.
I went down into the cabin in search of it there, but was equally unsuccessful. Every table was crammed with bottles of beer. Opposite me was a picture indeed; a respectable-looking man had drunk himself into a maudlin state, from which his friends were in vain endeavouring to arouse him. He was a widower, and was muttering something unpleasant about her grave, which did not seem to accord with the ideas of two gaily-dressed females—one of them with a baby in her arms—who hovered around him, as if desirous to win him back to life and love and duty, his male friends apparently having got tired of the hopeless task of making him understand that he had been brought out with a view to being agreeable, and to spending a happy day, and that he had no right to finish up in so unreasonable a manner. Now and then he appealed to me, declaring that he had no friends, or promising in reply to the playful appeal of his female friends to be a good boy and not to give them any more trouble, that it was no use trying. It was the women who stuck to him alone, now and then suggesting lemonade, and then forcing him up on deck with a view to a dance or a promenade. Some of the passengers around, as tipsy as himself, interfered; one of them, evidently a respectable tradesman, with his wife and children around, requesting the widower to sing “John Barleycorn,” assuring him that as he had lost his teeth it would have to be sung with a false set oh, a joke which the widower could not see, and the explanation of which at one time seemed about to end in a serious misunderstanding. Other parties besides interfered, and the confusion became hopeless and inexplicable. It ended in the weeping widower wildly embracing the female with the baby, and then making a mad rush on deck with a view to jump over—a feat, however, which he was easily prevented from accomplishing; and as I landed I saw the would-be suicide with his male and female friends contemplating a visit to the nearest public-house. It was really a melancholy spectacle, and one that ought not to have been permitted in the cabin of a saloon steamer. Quite as pitiable in its way was the sight of a couple who had unwarrantably intruded into that part of the steamer which is presumed to be kept solely for the use of those who pay first-class fares. One of them was indeed a study; he had been out for a day’s pleasure, and he showed in his person traces of very severe enjoyment; his clothes had been damaged in the process, and an eye had been brought into close contact with some very hard substance, such as a man’s fist, and the consequence was it was completely closed, and the skin around discoloured and swollen. He had never, so he said, been so insulted in his life, and once or twice he reascended the stairs with a short pipe in his hand, a picture of tipsy gravity, in order that he might recognise the ticket collector, with a view apparently to summon him before the Lord Mayor. His companion was a more blackguard-looking object still. A couple of the officers attached to the ship soon sent him forward, to mingle with a lot of men as disgusting in appearance and as foul in language as himself, but who had sense enough not to intrude where they had no right, and to keep their proper places. And thus the hours passed, and the sun sank lower in the horizon, and we rushed up the mighty river past outward-bound steamers on their way to all quarters of the globe, and found ourselves once more in town. The day had been a pleasant one had it not been for the indulgence in bottled beer, which seems to be the special need of all Londoners when they go up or down the river. If this state of things is to be allowed, no decent person will be enabled to take a passage on a river steamer on a St. Monday or a Saturday, especially if he has ladies or children with him. It does seem hard that people on board river steamers may drink to excess, and thus prove a nuisance to all who are not as beery as themselves. It may be, however, that the steam-packet companies promote this sale of intoxicating liquor in order to promote the cause of true temperance; if so, one can understand the unlimited activity of the ship stewards, as it becomes at once apparent to the most superficial observer that he who tastes the charmed cup has
Lost his upright shape,
And downwards falls into a grovelling swine.
If anyone doubts this let him proceed to Sheerness in a river steamer on a people’s day.
That we are a nation of shopkeepers I believe, not only on the evidence of the first Napoleon, but from what I see and hear every day. There are few people in the City who are born wealthy, compared with the number who do manage in the course of a successful mercantile career to win for themselves a fair share of this world’s goods. The other night I was spending the evening at the West-End mansion of a City millionaire. As I left, I asked a friend what was the secret of our host’s success, “Why,” was the answer, “I have always understood he began life with borrowing ten shillings.”
If that is all, thought I to myself, it is not difficult to make a fortune, after all. Accordingly, I negotiated a loan of a sovereign, thinking that if I failed with ten shillings I should be sure to succeed with double that number. At present, I regret to say, the loan has not been so successful in its results as I anticipated, and fortune seems as far off as ever. Should it turn out otherwise, and my wild expectations be realised, I will publish a book, and let the reader know how a sovereign became ten thousand pounds. And yet I believe such a feat has been often accomplished in the City and by City men. Everybody knows a man who walked up to town with twopence-halfpenny in his pocket, who lived to enjoy a nice fortune himself, and to leave his wife and family well provided for.
I met the other day in the Gray’s Inn Road a master-builder, who told me that he was going to retire from business and pass the evening of his days in quiet. I had known the man since he was a boy. I knew his father and his mother and all his family. If ever a fellow had a chance of going to the bad that poor boy had. His father was a drunkard; the poverty of the family was extreme; of schooling he had none whatever; yet he left the little village in Suffolk where he was born, resolved, as he told me, to be either a man or a mouse; and fortune favoured him beyond his most sanguine expectations. Yes, the streets of London are paved with gold, but it is not everyone who has sense to see it or strength to pick it up.
It is to be feared the large class who come into the streets to deal are not of the class who mean to rise, but who have seen better days. For instance, I often meet a porter selling Persian sherbet in the City, who seems to have dropped into that situation from mere laziness. He had a fair chance of getting on in life, but he never seems to have had pluck enough to succeed. Another man I know held a respectable situation as clerk; he appeared to me economical in his habits, he was always neatly dressed, he was never the worse for liquor, nor did he seem to keep bad company. All at once he left his situation, and rapidly went to the dogs. For a little while he borrowed of his friends; but that was a precarious source of existence, and now he may be seen dealing in small articles, on which it is to be hoped for his own sake the profits are large, as I fear the demand for them is small. Then there are the restless characters who take up street-selling partly because they like to gammon the public, partly because they dislike steady industry, and partly because I fancy they cherish expectations of another sort. These are the men who give away gold rings, who exhibit mice that have a wonderful way of running up and down the arms, who sell gutta-percha dolls which seem in their hands to have a power of vocalisation which leaves them at once and for ever as soon as you have purchased the puppet and paid for it and made it your own, who deal in cement which will make an old jug better than new, who retail corn-plasters which are an inevitable cure, and who occasionally deal in powders which are a sure means of getting rid of certain objectionable specimens of the insect tribe.
“But how do you use the powder?” asked a flat of a countryman who had been deluded into the purchase of sixpenny-worth of the invaluable powder. “How do you use it?” repeated the purchaser.
“Well, you see, you catch the animal and hold him by the back of the neck, and then when his mouth opens, just shove in the powder, and he’ll die fast enough.”
“But,” said the countryman, “I suppose I could kill the insect at once when I’ve caught him?”
“Well,” said the salesman, “of course you can, but the powder is, I repeat, fatal nevertheless.”
A little while ago there was an illustrated paper presumedly more fitted for the moral atmosphere of New York than London. Its chief sale, before it was suppressed by the law, was in the streets, where, with its doubtful engravings, it was a bit of a nuisance. Of course, the sale of Evening Hechoes, and Hextra Standards, is a thing one is obliged to put up with; nevertheless, one must often regret that so useful a trade cannot be pushed in a quieter and less ostentatious way. The ingenious youth, who devote themselves to the sale of a paper especially devoted to the interests of matrimony, are a real nuisance. How they pester many a lad that passes with their intimation that, by the purchase of their trumpery paper, they can secure an heiress with a thousand a year, as if such bargains were to be had any day, whereas, the truth is, that they are rather scarce, and that—whether with that sum or without—matrimony is a very serious affair. Unprotected females have to suffer a deal of impudence from these fellows. I saw a respectable, decently-dressed, manifest old maid, exceedingly annoyed and shocked by one of these fellows pursuing her half way up Cheapside, with his shouts, “Want a ’usband, ma’am?” “Here’s a chance for you, ma’am,” “Lots of ’usbands to be had,” and so on, in a way which she seemed to feel—and I quite understood her feelings—was singularly indelicate. What an insult to suppose that any virtuous and accomplished lady is in seed of a husband, when she has only to raise a finger and she has, such is the chivalry of the age, a score of adorers at her feet!
The newsboys are, of course, the most prominent of our street salesmen, and they affect the City for many reasons. In the first place, in and around the Mansion House there is a finer opening for business than anywhere else; and in the second place, a City business is often a very remunerative one. City men who have made their thousands on the Stock Exchange or elsewhere are not particular in the matter of change; and a fourpence or a sixpence is often the reward of the lad who is the first to rush up to a City swell as he leaves his office with a “third hedition of the Hecho” or a special Standard with some important telegram. In wet weather times go very hard with these poor fellows. On the contrary, when it is fine, business is brisk. They rely much on sensational telegrams. A war is a fine thing for them, and so is a case like that of the Claimant, or a spicy divorce case, or an atrocious murder. It is when such things as these occur that they flourish, and that their joy is abounding. They must make a good deal of money, but it goes as fast as it comes. An attempt was made to establish a news-room for these boys, and very nice premises were taken in Gray’s Inn Lane. The coffee and bread and butter were excellent, and the arrangements were all that could be desired. Nevertheless the undertaking was a failure, because it was not supported by the class for whose benefit it was especially intended. The news-boys did not like the confinement, the regular hours, the decent behaviour, the cleanliness and attention to little things required. They wanted beer and ’baccy, and other little amusements, more in accordance with their independent position in fife. As a rule I fancy they are honest; they certainly never cheat a man if they think they will be found out. I never had any difficulty in getting my change but once, and then I was in an omnibus, and the chances were in the boy’s favour. What is wonderful is that they do not meet with more accidents. How they rush after omnibuses as they urge on their wild career! Some of them are great radicals. “Allus reads The Hecho of a Saturday,” said one of them to me, “to see how it pitches into the haristocracy,” when the articles signed “Noblesse Oblige” were being published. It is to be wondered at now and then that their impertinence does not get them into grief. For instance, to the young man who has any respect for the fair sex, how disgusting to be told of women, good-looking, amiable and accomplished, well-to-do, and apparently possessed of every virtue under heaven, advertising for husbands. I suppose The Matrimonial News is a success; but, if so, certainly that is not a pleasant sign of the times. If people will buy it, the newsboys are not to be blamed for hawking it about. They take up what they think the public will buy. Last year they were retailing “The Devil,” price one penny, and this year they have taken up Town Talk, and an ingenious puzzle, called, “How to find out Lord Beaconsfield.” I wonder some of our publishers of real good illustrated literature do not try to push the sale of it in this way. I think it would pay. The public would then have the bane and the antidote side by side. Mr. Smithies might do much to increase the sale of The British Workman if he had it hawked about the streets.
As to the costermongers, their name is legion; and that they are a real service to the community must be evident to anyone who sees what their prices are and what are those of the fruiterers in the shops. They bring fruit within the reach of the community. In the summer-time we naturally require fruit. It is good for grown-up men and women, it is good for little children. In London they have no chance of tasting it were it not for the costermonger who floods the streets with all that is desirable in this respect; one day he has West India pineapples for sale; another bananas or shaddocks; another grapes, and apples, and pears, and apricots, and greengages, and plums. One day he deals in strawberries and another in cherries; and then, when the autumn comes on, what a tempting display he makes of filberts, and walnuts, and chestnuts! The amount of fruit thus poured in upon the market, much of which would have perished had it not been sold off at once, is really prodigious; and infinitely indebted to him are the poor clerks who lay in a pennyworth of apples or pears as they leave the office for the little ones at home. At one time I had a prejudice against these rough and noisy dealers; that prejudice has vanished since I have taken to dining in the City and indulging in “a penny lot” after dinner. What I admire is the way in which they do up strawberries, and cherries, and plums in little paper bags, which seem to contain as much again as they really do. Occasionally a man gets cheated, but that is when there is a woman in the case.
Oh, the flower-girls of the streets, what deceiving creatures they are! It is not that, like the flower-girls of Paris, they spoil a romance with pecuniary views, but it is that they cheat you through thick and thin, and sell you camellias made of turnips, and roses and azaleas equally fair to see and equally false and vain. Can I ever forget my friend Dr. R. and the little mishap that befell him when he assisted at a little dinner—at which I had the honour to be a guest—given by a Scotch poet to Scotch poets, and press-men, and barristers, in honour of the immortal Robert Burns? Crossing by the Mansion House, in the dim light of a winter evening, the doctor was accosted by a handsome lass, who offered to sell him a camellia. The lady pressed her suit, and the doctor fell. Granite in the discharge of duty, the doctor has a soft place in his heart, and that woman finds out at once. It is the old tale—the woman tempted and the doctor gave way. As he came proud and smiling into the drawing-room, the splendour of the doctor’s camellia arrested every eye. A near scrutiny was the result, and at length the doctor had to confess that he had been the victim of misplaced confidence in a London street flower-girl.
Then there are the men who deal in what they call pineapple sweetmeat; their barrows are adorned with paintings representing dimly the riches and luxuriance of the East.
Sunday brings with it its own peculiar dealers and trades. One of the sights of poor neighbourhoods is that of a large barrel, painted red, on wheels. At the top is a seat for the driver; at the other end there is a small shelf on which are placed a tray of water and a row of glasses. Some of these glasses look like porter with a head, and are retailed at prices varying from a penny to twopence. Outside, in great gilt letters, I read, “The Great Blood Purifier;” then we have another line, “Sarsaparilla, Hilder, King’s Road, Chelsea.” Another line is devoted to the announcement of “Dandelion and Sarsaparilla Pills.” Another intimates that sarsaparilla is the “Elixir of Life.” At the back, the door over the shelf contains a portrait of apparently a fine gay person, female of course, who has received signal benefit from the ardour with which she has swallowed the dandelion and sarsaparilla pills; and around her, as witnesses and approvers of such conduct on her part, shines a row of stars. The salesman is assisted by a small boy, who washes the glasses and places them on the rack, and in other ways makes himself generally useful. The salesman is by no means guilty of the trick of underrating his wares. Accordingly, he lifts up his voice like a trumpet as he deals out his pennyworths of the Elixir of Life. In some cases he is familiar, in others argumentative, in others bold as brass; and he gets a good many customers. The race of fools who rush in where angels fear to tread is by no means extinct. As I watched the poor skinny quadruped, groggy and footsore, I felt how hard it was that Sunday should shine no day of rest for him; but he had a good deal more go in him than you would have imagined from his appearance. All at once in the far distance appeared two respected members of the City police; the gentleman with the Elixir of Life closed his door, jumped up into his seat, pulled his small boy up after him, and was off like lightening. This Arab steed could run after him.
There are some people who are always grumbling. Hit them high or hit them low, you can’t please them. I don’t think I belong to that class. I like to look on the sunny side, remembering as the poet used to say when I was a good deal younger than I am now—
’Tis wiser, better far.
In the words of a still greater poet—
I take the goods the gods provide me.
And if the lovely Thais sits beside me, provided she does not lay a stress upon my head and purse (I am a married man, and the father of a family, and always hope to behave as such), I don’t object. He is not a wise man who quarrels with his bread and butter; he is a fool who expects to find no thorns amongst his roses. What I have gone through, dear madam—for it is to the ladies I appeal—what I have gone through, dear madam, is really astounding, at any rate to myself. How I have survived at all is “one of those things no fellah can understand.” Repeatedly ruin has stared me in the face. Repeatedly have my young affections run to waste. Repeatedly have I been crossed in love, and tramped up and down Cheapside and Fleet Street, a blighted being. At this very moment, if I may trust to my medical knowledge, I am now suffering from three distinct diseases, any one of which is mortal; and yet if you were to meet me in the street, or have a chat with me in a quiet café over a cigar, or sit next me at a City dinner, you would swear that I was one of those old fogies whom nothing troubles, without nerves or feelings, who vegetated rather than lived in the little tragi-comedy we call life. It may be that little personal details are uninteresting. I admit they are not matters of transcendent importance. You do not need master them if you are going up for your degree, or going in for a Civil Service examination. I mention these merely to show that I can put up with a good deal—that I am not easily put out of the way; and that I should be one of the last persons in the world to call anything a nuisance, unless it were really such. Under these circumstances, I may claim a right to be heard; and, when I state that I have no private aim, that, laying my hand upon my heart, my only motive is the public good, I believe that I shall not lift up my voice in vain.
Well, to waste no more words about it, of the nuisances of London it may be said their name is legion. In the first place, there are the streets. If you get out at Farringdon Street Station, and walk towards the Holborn Viaduct, it is of little use your having had your boots cleaned that morning—a little shower of rain, and the pavement is covered with mud. This ought not to be. Let us take another nuisance. All at once, as you walk along, you see a chimney vomiting forth clouds of smoke. This is a great nuisance, especially on a fine summer day, when the atmosphere of the City may be said to be almost clear; and this nuisance is the more unbearable as there is a law to put it down, which law is actually to a certain extent carried out. Let anyone take his stand on some spot where he can get a good view around him, and he will be sure to see some chimney, in spite of the law, darkening the sky and poisoning the air. Then there is the orange-peel, which has shortened many a valuable life, and quenched the light of many a home. Then there is the crowded traffic of the streets, which renders all locomotion impossible, and keeps you sitting, angry and fuming, in a cab, when it may be you are hurrying off to save a bill from being dishonoured, to keep an appointment with a rich aunt or uncle from whom you have great expectations, to have a last fond look at someone whom you dearly love. As to the disputed points as to the pavements, I have nothing to offer. To those who have to live and sleep in the City, asphalte, I should say, must be the greatest boon devised by the art of man. With asphalte you may talk pleasantly to a friend in Cheapside, you may get a reasonable night’s sleep in St. Paul’s Churchyard, or you may crack a joke without bursting a blood-vessel opposite the Mansion House itself. Be that as it may, as the question as to the comparative merits of asphalte, or granite, or wood will be settled by wiser heads than mine, I say no more; but what I complain of, and what is a nuisance to everyone, is the perpetual tinkering and repairing always going on in the streets, and the consequent blockade for a time of certain important thoroughfares. What with the drainage, and the water, and the gas pipes, and the telegraph wires, there is in most of the City ways as much bustle almost under the street as on it, and an ominous board with a notice from the Lord Mayor turns aside a tremendous traffic, and is a terrible nuisance as long as it lasts. Surely this waste of time and annoyance is, a great deal of it, unnecessary. All that is wanted is a little more contrivance and forethought. I was once discussing the subject with a leading City man and an M.P., as we were travelling together in a railway carriage on our way to a pleasant gathering of City people many miles away beyond the sound of Bow Bells. “Well,” said he, with a suggestive wink, “the thing is easily explained; the rule is, for the surveyor’s son to marry the contractor’s daughter, or something of that sort, and so between them they manage to play into each other’s hands, and always have done so.” Of course the M.P. was joking. No one could conceive it possible that our civic guardians, our common councilmen, our aldermen, our City officers, would allow themselves to be imposed on, and the public to be robbed in this way; but, alas! it is a pity that there should be ground for such a joke, that it should seem in any way to be founded on a fact. We are not so bad as we were, I admit, but that is no reason why we should not be better. Even now there are parts of London to which Gay’s lines are applicable when he writes:
Though expedition bids, yet never stray
Where no ranged post defends the rugged way;
Here laden carts with thundering waggons meet,
Wheels clash with wheels, and bar the narrow street,
The lashing whip resounds, the horses strain,
And blood in anguish bursts the swelling vein.
Something like this may be met with any day when the stones are greasy on Fish Street Hill, as the waggons turn up from Thames Street laden with the heavy merchandise of that quarter of the town. As I have quoted Gay, let me give another quotation from him. In one of his fables he writes:
How many saucy airs we meet
From Temple Bar to Aldgate Street.
Proud rogues who shared the South Sea prey,
And spring like mushrooms in a day,
They think it mean to condescend
To know a brother or a friend.
They blush to hear their mother’s name,
And by their pride expose their shame.
There are just such men as Gay wrote of to be met in our streets, and they are a nuisance, but the law of libel, in the interest of rogues who live by getting up bubble companies, is hard on the press, and I prefer to quote Gay to making original remarks of my own, remarks which may be true, which may be useful, but for which the proprietor of any paper that would publish them would have to pay heavily, at any rate in the way of costs.
Later in the day, one of the nuisances in the streets is “Those horrid boys.” They have come home from work, or school; they have had their tea, it is too early for them to go to bed, their fathers and mothers don’t know what to do with them at home, and so they loiter about the streets, and carry on their little games in them, much to their own satisfaction, but very much to the annoyance of everyone else. One of their favourite amusements is to run in groups, like so many wild Indians or a pack of wolves, howling and shrieking in a way very alarming. It is no use talking to them. It is no use putting the police on after them. The belated citizen, on his way home to the inevitable suburb, is frightened into fits ere he reaches his much-hoped-for haven of rest. And the small shopkeepers in the quiet streets—which they more especially affect—in terror rush to the door, believing either that there is a fire, or that Bedlam has broken loose, or that the Fenians have come. In some parts, as in Whitechapel, the wild girls of the streets are even worse.
There are many local nuisances in London; one of the chief of these is the conduct of the watermen about the landing-places near the Custom House. Females and foreigners, who have to take boats to the large steamers lying in the river, are frightfully plundered in this way. These men feel that they can rob you with impunity, and they abuse their privileges.
“Ah,” said one, after he had squeezed a five-shilling piece out of a poor foreigner for rowing him a few yards, “I’ll put up with it this time, but don’t do it again,” as if he, the boatman, and not the poor foreigner, had been the victim of a most atrocious fraud. Such fellows as these should be kept honest somehow. Who does not recollect that chapter in “Vilette,” in which Charlotte Brontë has recorded her waterside experiences? How she was landed by the coachman in the midst of a throng of watermen, who gathered around her like wolves; how she stepped at once into a boat, desiring to be taken to the Vivid; how she was fleeced by the waterman, as she paid an exorbitant sum, as the steward, a young man, was looking over the ship’s side, grinning a smile in anticipation of the row there would have been had she refused to pay. I had an experience somewhat similar myself. Perhaps I got off easily. In those dark wharves on that black river, here and there lit by a distant and dimly-burning lamp—at that midnight hour, when all good people are in bed, it is well that there is nothing going on worse than robbery in such a mild form. Had I been dropped overboard, I am sure few people would have known it; and I am not certain that I have no reason to be grateful to the lot amongst whom I found myself that they attempted nothing of the kind. Late at night there are many dark and lonely spots in the City suggestive of dark deeds. In some one walks with fear and trembling. Suspicious people have a knack of turning up in such dark places; and the police can’t be everywhere.