The Night Side of London

THE MOGUL,

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

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

“The gurls of dear Old England

Are the gurls of gurls for me-e-eh.”

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

CALDWELL’S

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

We would guard our readers against giving way to mawkish sentimentalism; that it is not our aim to excite. There are employers who are all they should be; there are milliners’ and dressmakers’ assistants who find their labour what all healthy labour is, a blessing, and not a curse. Nor is every dressmaker shut up in these hot-houses of disease beautiful, nor the daughter of one who has seen better days. It is true that some of these unfortunate girls are the daughters of “clergymen, medical men, and officers;” but it is because they partake of our common humanity – because they have human blood and human hearts – because life was given them that in it they might bless and be blessed – because, in their injuries and wrong, the human family and its Father above are injured and wronged – that we claim for them from society sympathy and redress. We say nothing of the moral danger to which, in a metropolis like this, they are peculiarly exposed. When sin offers so golden a bait, it shows that those who yet continue at their work deserve respect and aid. If some of them have fallen – if some of them, driven by despair, have walked our streets to gain their bread, let us blame the system which has made so infamous and wretched a mode of life seem a change to be desired. Let the cure be adopted; let the work now done be distributed among a larger number of hands; and in this country, at least, there is no lack of persons eager to be employed. In many of the fashionable establishments increased cost of production can be of but little moment. Let employers learn to practise humanity, and let our high-born and influential ladies see to it, that it is no thoughtlessness of theirs that compels their poorer sisters to toil with a sinking frame and a heavy heart. As a nation, we have worked out one problem in civilization; we have shown that the utmost wealth can exist side by side with the deepest poverty – the grossest ignorance with the most cultivated knowledge – the most elevating piety with the most debasing fetichism – the fairest virtue with the most revolting vice. Be it our nobler work to show to the nations of the earth how, while our higher classes live in refinement and wealth, there is no class, however humble, but can joy in the possession of social happiness and rights.

But what, you ask, has this to do with Caldwell’s? Only this, that of the class to which I have referred, I believe more may be found of an evening at Caldwell’s, than anywhere else in London. It is not all dressmakers who toil thus severely and unnaturally; and few of them are there who do not in the course of the year find time to pay Caldwell’s a visit. Who has not heard of Caldwell’s Soirées Dansantes? Are they not advertised in every paper? Are they not posted in gigantic bills in every street? In quiet country lanes, miles and miles away from town, do we not come across the coloured letters by which Mr Caldwell announces his entertainment to the world? Who is Mr John Caldwell? We will let him speak for himself. He has an establishment in Dean-street, Soho. The building cost him nearly four thousand pounds. On boxing-night he had as many as 600 customers, “and on average nights,” he tells us, “I have about 200.” The charge for admission is eight-pence. Mr Caldwell has a public-house just by, and from that supplies wine, and ale, and spirits. “I have never had a case of drunkenness in my place for years; I am very particular – I never let a drunken man remain.” On an average about thirty glasses of spirits are drunk in the dancing room in the course of an evening, and about forty glasses of beer. “I believe my place is carried on in as respectable a manner as can be. Some of the first noblemen come; there are some very respectable tradesmen round the neighbourhood, and a great many young people from the neighbourhood. The rooms are principally supported by the working classes.” The dancing saloon opens at eight, and is closed at a quarter to twelve. Such is the evidence given by Mr Caldwell himself before the select committee of the House of Commons on public-houses. As is perfectly natural, it is all coleur de rose. The union of the first noblemen and the élite of the working classes over spirits-and-water, or in the mazy dance, is a beautiful specimen of fraternisation, and the small quantity of beer and spirits drunk by 200 persons indicates an amount of sobriety rare in places of public amusement. I think Mr Caldwell has a little understated the case. I fear he forgot to tell the committee that the drinking at his place was in the refreshment-room down-stairs, not in the dancing-room above; while in the latter the small quantity he asserts is consumed, I am inclined to think, much more may be disposed of down-stairs. In the course of his own examination some disagreeable truths oozed out. We give a couple of questions and answers in proof of this. – Sir George Grey: “Do you mean to say that the dancing-saloon would have no sufficient attraction for the people unless there were connected with it the facility of obtaining spirituous liquors?” “I think not; the people want a glass of wine, or negus, or brandy-and-water”. Again, Mr Caldwell has been unable to procure a license on account of the opposition of the publicans in the neighbourhood. The Chairman asks, “Do you think the publicans would withdraw their opposition?” “Yes, they begin to find my house an advantage; when parties leave my rooms, they stand together at the corner of the streets, and say, We will have a parting glass. They do not all have it at my rooms.”

Now this answer does not well coincide with Mr Caldwell’s former evidence. It is quite as much the drink as the dancing that is the attraction, and as to his respectable tradesmen, and the fact of persons not being tipsy, and that of some of the first noblemen coming there, all these assertions are fairly open to criticism. It was only the other day I heard a London magistrate declare that publicans never could tell when a person was tipsy; and as to respectability, your Robsons, and Camerons, and Sadleirs are always considered highly respectable. Ask the first person you meet about your neighbours. What is the answer? Oh, they are a highly respectable family; they are immensely rich. And as to noblemen coming into such places, I imagine that would be precisely the reason why the judicious father of a pretty girl would prefer her dancing anywhere rather than in Mr Caldwell’s establishment in Dean-street. I have not much faith in the benefits of that species of the mixture of all ranks. Like the Irishman’s reciprocity, it is all on one side. Tennyson makes his hero tell Lady Clara Vere de Vere —

But perchance a young maiden, led away by the excitement of the hour, could not find it in her heart to address similar language to Lady Clara Vere de Vere’s brother. The last victim always believes that she is to be the exception to all general rules; she may transgress, but not pay the penalty – pluck the forbidden fruit, and for doing so not forfeit Eden – plunge wildly into sin, and sorrow, and shame, and yet find peace in her heart and the light of heaven lying on her path; but cause and effect are eternal, and, youth gone, and pleasure gone, and the power to attract gone, and the inward sense of right succeeded by the stings of conscience and the gnawing of remorse, what is left but to weep madly and in vain for

“The tender grace of a day that is dead”?

But we are in Caldwell’s, – let us go into the gallery and look down. I know not the name of the new dances, but how the women swim round the room, as the music now hurriedly hastens, now softly dies away. The girl that dances here so modestly to-night in twelve months will have lost her maiden shame, will be dressed in silks and satins, will be dancing at the Argyll, and supping at Scott’s or Quin’s. That girl they call Rose – and a rose she is, for she might shine in a Belgravian drawing-room, and walks in beauty as a fairy queen – might have lit up a home with her love, and made a brave heart proud; but here she comes, night after night, and domestic life is to her tame after music and dancing such as she has here. Beauty you will not find much of, nor that overdress which stamps the character of the women at the Casino or the Argyll in unmistakeable terms; and the men are the class you usually meet in these places. They may be pickpockets, or they may be peers; you can scared tell the difference in these levelling days. If I had not Mr Caldwell’s express assertion to the contrary, I should certainly say that that young fellow with a pint bottle of champagne in his hand was decidedly drunk, – at any rate, he has very much the appearance of a tipsy person; but the waiters seem to be of Mr Caldwell’s opinion, and are still offering him more drink, and the women around seem to think it is rather fun than otherwise. Ah! little do they reflect how such as he, under the influences of drink, forget the decencies of life, the claims of duty, forget even the common instincts of common humanity; so that the wife, whom he has vowed to love, honour, and protect, is abandoned, and the home forsaken, for the orgies of the public-house. Do the women around us ever expect to be the wives and mothers of such, or have they, young and fair as many of them seem, learnt already that recklessness as to the future which robs life of all its glory, and incarcerates the soul in a living grave? I can see, even here, a gaiety more sad than tears. But I need not continue my description; dancing in public rooms in the metropolis is much the same everywhere. Of course the place is all that Mr Caldwell says it is. I believe with him that it is as respectably conducted as establishments of the kind can be; but at the same time Mr Caldwell confesses it leads to drinking, and that is quite reason enough, independently of other obvious considerations, why I come away thankful that no wife or sister of mine is amongst the parties nightly to be met at Mr Caldwell’s soirées dansantes.

CREMORNE

“In a set of pictures illustrative of Greek customs, it was quite impossible to leave out the hetæræ who gave such a peculiar colouring to Grecian levity, and exercised so potent a sway over the life of the younger members of the community. Abundant materials for such a sketch exist, for the Greeks made no secret of matters of this kind; the difficulty has been not to sacrifice the vividness of the picture of the ordinary intercourse with these women to the demands of our modern sense of propriety,” says Professor Becker, in his truly admirable work on the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. In the same manner, and for the same reason, the modern sense of propriety is supposed to be in the way of any very graphic description of Cremorne; yet we have hetæræ almost as bewitching as Aspasia or the Corinthian Lais; and if our students, and learned clergy, and holy bishops write long articles about the Athenian Dionysia only held once a year, why should we not speak of ours which last all the summer, and the scene of which is Cremorne? At the Dionysia the most unbridled merriment and drunkenness were the order of the day, and were held quite blameless. For a while the most sober-minded bade adieu to the stringency of habit, following the well-known Greek maxim —