The Night Side of London Part 3

I do not give the name of the spirited proprietor, but in his advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt-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 a.s.sisted 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 cla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s. 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 Philh.e.l.lenists 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 a.s.sure 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 a.r.s.enal 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 cla.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton'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, b.u.t.ton'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 cla.s.s in London, actually referred to in a rare pamphlet now extant in the British Museum, ent.i.tled "Adventures Under-ground in the Year 1750." In those days to drink deep was deemed a virtue, and the literary cla.s.s, 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 _blaze_ 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 const.i.tution 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 pa.s.sing down Bridges-street into the Strand late on a Sat.u.r.day 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 n.o.bleman'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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 inst.i.tutions 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed away, and the wits wrote-

"Here lies Fred, Who was alive, And is dead,"

still the place had the prestige of fashion. It gradually a.s.sumed 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 Sabloniere 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 Inst.i.tution 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 _cafes_ 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 cla.s.sic 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 h.e.l.l. 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 _Cafe 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 a.s.sembled. But we pa.s.s 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 a.s.ses the English a.s.s 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 pract.i.tioner will always be under-bred so long as the night-house and the casino absorb the hours science imperiously claims. But pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d'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!

DR JOHNSON'S TAVERN.

Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, and the _Times_ are all eloquent in the praise of alcohol. It lifts us above this dull earth, it fires our genius, it gives to us the large utterances of the G.o.ds. Barry Cornwall tells us-

"Bad are the times And bad the rhymes That scorn old wine."

Leigh Hunt translates "Bacchus in Tuscany," and sanctions such lines as the following-

"I would sooner take to poison Than a single cup set eyes on Of that bitter and guilty stuff ye Talk of by the name of coffee;"

and the _Times_ everywhere inculcates the idea that, without wine, poetry and eloquence and wit were dumb and dead. Was Sidney Smith witty, was Sh.e.l.ley a poet, or was he who in old times drew away the Hebrew mult.i.tude from the crowded streets of Jerusalem out into the desert, whose food was locusts and wild honey, whose raiment was a leathern girdle-was he not eloquent, as he warned the terror-stricken mob that hung upon his lips of the wrath to come? Facts are not in favour of the wine-drinkers. Of Waller Dr Johnson writes, "In a time when fancy and gaiety were the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller was forgotten. He pa.s.sed his time in the company that was highest both in rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude him.

Though he drank water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth of Baccha.n.a.lian a.s.semblies; and Mr Saville said that 'no man in England should keep him company without drinking, but Ned Waller.'" "In Parliament," says Burnet, "he was the delight of the House, and, though old, said the liveliest things of any of them." The truth is, men have often reserved the outpourings of their mind for the social gla.s.s, and have fallen into the natural mistake of believing that it was the gla.s.s, and not the opportunity and the action of mind upon mind, that elicited a certain amount of joyous fun. I must quote an anecdote from Sir Walter Scott's Life to ill.u.s.trate my meaning. He tells us one of his school-fellows was always at the top of the cla.s.s. Young Scott found that when asked a question the lad alluded to was in the habit of fumbling one peculiar b.u.t.ton. Scott cut off that b.u.t.ton. The next time the poor fellow was asked a question, as usual he put his hand to fumble the friendly b.u.t.ton-alas! it was gone, and with it his power, and he speedily lost his place. The writers I have quoted, to be consistent, should argue it was the b.u.t.ton that made that lad sharp and clever.

But if you still doubt, let us test the thing practically. In Bolt-court, Fleet-street, there is a tavern bearing the honoured name of Dr Johnson. Dr Johnson lived in this court, and hence, I suppose, the sign; but the Doctor was a total abstainer. He found he could not be a moderate drinker, so he verily gave up the drink altogether. He told that precious a.s.s, Boswell, to drink water, because if he did that he would be sure not to get drunk, whereas if he drank wine he was not so sure; and Boswell, to whom the idea seems never to have occurred, prints the remark as an astonishing instance of his hero's sagacity. But I pa.s.s on to modern times. In this Dr Johnson's Tavern is situated "The City Concert Room." I suppose the City does not care much about concerts, as I have generally found it very thinly attended. It is a handsome room, and perhaps there are about fifty or sixty gentlemen, chiefly young ones, present. You do not see swells here as at Evans's. They are all very plain-looking people, from the neighbouring shops, or from the warehouses in Cheapside. Just by me are three pale heavy-looking young men, whose intellects seem to me dead, except so far as a low cunning indicates a sharpness where money is concerned. One of them is stupidly beery.

Their great object is to get him to drink more, notwithstanding his repeated a.s.surances, uttered, however, in a very husky tone, that he must go back to "Islin'ton" to-night. A lady at one end of the room, with a very handsome blue satin dress and a very powerful voice, is screaming out something about "Lovely Spring," but this little party is evidently indifferent to the charms of the song. Just beyond me is a gent with a short pipe and a very stiff collar. I watch him for an hour, and whether he is enjoying himself intensely, or whether he is enduring an indescribable amount of inward agony, I cannot tell. A little farther off is another gent with a very red scarf, equally stoical in appearance.

Behind me are two verdant youths, of limited means I imagine; but they have the pleasure of speaking to the comic singer, and take tickets for that interesting gentleman's benefit. But the comic singer comes forward, and sings with appropriate action of the doings of a little insect very partial to comfortable quarters. That song I have known fifteen years. I have heard Sharp sing it, Ross sing it, Cowell sing it.

Night after night in some drinking room in some part of London or other is a beery audience told-

"Creeping where no life doth be, A rare old plant is the lively flea."

And after a pursuit very vividly pantomimed, the little stranger is suffered to be caught, and to tell the catcher that it is his father's ghost, doomed for a season to walk the earth and nip him most infernally, and so on. Now I am sure that every one in the room has heard this dozens of times before, yet old men are laughing as if it was an absolute novelty. Talk about alcohol brightening men's intellects! When I come to such places as this, it always seems to me to have a precisely contrary effect. Men could not sit and hear all these stale witticisms unless they drank. Sober, I am sure they could not do it, not even if they were paid for it; and yet all seem enraptured. I remark, however, one exception. Two waiters help to a seat by my side a very dirty little man with red eyes, and generally shabby appearance. The waiters set down by him a gla.s.s of grog, offer him a cigar, and then playfully shaking their fingers at him, as if to intimate he had better be quiet, leave him to his fate. After a few minutes of deep thought, he looks to me and beckons. I take no notice. He repeats the signal. I lean forward.

"Very o-old, sir."

"What do you mean?" we ask.

"The comic singer very o-old, sir."

We intimate as much.

"But get him on a fresh piece, sir, and see how he can go-o." Here our friend began rolling one arm rapidly round the other, to give us an idea of the comic singer's powers.

"Pity he don't give something new," repeats our friend. Another a.s.senting nod on our part and the conversation ceases. But we suppose it is with comic singers as with others. "A man who has settled his opinions does not love to have the tranquillity of his convictions disturbed," wrote Dr Johnson, and a comic singer does not like to have the bother of learning fresh songs. But the comic singer was applauded and encored, and then he treated us to a monologue, in which he describes how he, the drunken husband, stays out all night, and makes it up with his "old ooman" when he gets home; and in the course of his remarks of course he declares teetotalism is humbug, that there was truth in wine, but he'd be blessed if there was any in water; that the man who would drink the latter would be a muddy cistern-forgetting all the while the _tu quoque_ the water-drinkers would very fairly urge, on the authority even of Mr Henry Drummond; and then I came away, thinking that if drinking made men witty and light-hearted, I had been very unfortunate on the night of my visit. Once upon a time, as the writer was in the Cave of Harmony, the polite manager asked him his opinion of a new comic singer. Having given it, the red-faced little man turned to us with a sigh, and said, "Ah, sir, you have no idea what a dearth there is of comic talent now-a-days." And truly he was right. There is little fun and comedy and wit anywhere. I know not where they are; I know where they are not. You will not find them in the taverns where men sit all the evening listening to music for which they do not care, and drinking all the while. How should there be, since wine is now admitted to be the product of the laboratory, not of the grape?

THE SPORTING PUBLIC-HOUSE

Was inst.i.tuted for the combined purpose of encouraging drinking, and what its admirers term the n.o.ble art of self-defence. There was a time when boxing was in fashion; when but few of our n.o.blemen and gentlemen did not take lessons in the pugilistic art. "I can a.s.sert, without fear of contradiction," writes Pierce Egan, "that I furnished the present Duke of Buccleuch with a pair of boxing-gloves and all the volumes of 'Boxiana'

during his studies at Eton College." Prince George of Cambridge learnt the rudiments of the art from young Richmond; the late Duke of Portland was a pupil of that Jackson whose name is familiar to all readers of Byron. At the first public dinner of the Pugilistic Society, held at the Thatched House Tavern, 1814, a baronet, Sir Henry Smith, was in the chair; and it is a fact, when the war with France was terminated, and the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, accompanied by Blucher and Platoff, visited this country, that not anything they had witnessed appeared to interest them more than the sparring matches between Jackson, Tom Crib, Belcher, Old Dutch Sam, at a _dejeuner_ given by Lord Lowther at his mansion. Indeed, so delighted were those great masters of the art of war with the combats between those first-rate boxers, that Messrs Blucher and Platoff had a second exhibition by their own express desire at the Earl of Elgin's house. Actually even in the House of Commons Mr Wyndham favoured the House with a description, warm and glowing, of a recent contest between Richmond and Maddox, of which he had been a spectator; and it is not long since Mr Gully, a prize-fighter, represented Pontefract. The late George IV., when Prince of Wales, was also a spectator at the fight upon a stage on Brighton Downs between Tom Tyne, a distinguished boxer, with a publican of milling notoriety. The latter was killed by a blow on his temple, and died almost upon the instant. The royal debauchee never attended another, but his brother, the late William the Fourth, was often a spectator of the matches on Moulsey Hurst. In this respect the age has made progress. Our n.o.blemen no longer patronize the prize-ring. Our young princes have a purer taste. Yet the inst.i.tution, with all its brutality and blackguardism, still exists, and in the _Advertiser_, side by side with an article bewailing the spread of German neology in our dissenting colleges, or speaking evil of such earnest workers in the wide field of philanthropy as Maurice or Kingsley, you will read of one of the beastly prize-fights which still disgrace the land. But the _Advertiser_ is the publicans'

paper, and it is a fact easily understood, that the prize-fighter, when his day is over, generally keeps a public-house, which is generally called a sporting-house. A warm admirer of them writes, "Fun, civility, mirth, good-humour, and sporting events are the general theme of conversation to be met with over a cheerful gla.s.s at the above houses."

Ben Caunt's, in St Martin's-lane, is perhaps the princ.i.p.al one, but there are some five or six besides in various parts of the metropolis. Let us enter one. In spite of the a.s.surance of civility and good humour, I don't think you will stay long, but will feel on a small scale what Daniel must have felt in the lions' den.