Kitabı oku: «The Night Side of London», sayfa 9

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 —

 
“Ne’er blush with drink to spice the feast’s gay hour,
And, reeling, own the mighty wine-god’s power.”
 

So it is in Cremorne. If Corinth had her groves sacred to Aphrodite, so has Cremorne. It offends our modern sense of propriety to speak of such matters. English people only see what they wish to see. If you are true – if you look at real life and say what you think of it, you shock our modern sense of propriety. We may talk about drainage and ventilation, and the advantages of soap, but there we must stop. Keep the outside clean, but don’t look within. Thus is it our writers make such blunders. For instance, good-meaning Mrs Stowe, after she had written Uncle Tom, came here to be lionized, and to write a book about us. She did so, and a very poor book it was. But I must quote one passage from “Sunny Memories.” In writing of a visit she paid to the Jardin Mobile in Paris, she writes, “Entrance to this Paradise can be had, for gentlemen a dollar, ladies free; this tells the whole story. Nevertheless, do not infer that there are not respectable ladies there; it is a place so remarkable that very few strangers stay long in Paris without taking a look at it. And though young ladies residing in Paris never go, and matrons very seldom, yet occasionally it is the case that some ladies of respectability look in. Nevertheless, aside from the impropriety inherent in the very nature of the waltzing, there was not a word, look, or gesture of immorality or impropriety. The dresses were all decent, and, if there was vice, it was vice masked under the guise of polite propriety. How different, I could not but reflect, is all this from the gin-palaces of London! There, there is indeed a dazzling splendour of gas-lights, but there is nothing artistic, nothing refined, nothing appealing to the imagination. There are only hogsheads and barrels, and the appliances for serving out strong drink; and there for one sole end – the swallowing of the fiery stimulant – come the nightly thousands, from the gay and well-dressed to the haggard and tattered, in the last stage of debasement. The end is the same, by how different paths! Here they dance along the path to ruin with flowers and music – there they cast themselves bodily, as it were, into the lake of fire.” A more unfair comparison, I think, was never drawn; a drinking-shop is much the same everywhere, and in Paris as well as in London, people, to use Mrs Stowe’s own words, cast themselves bodily into the lake of fire. We have our Jardin Mobile, but of course Mrs Stowe never went there – as we have known good people confessing to entering theatres in Germany or France who on no account would have gone near one at home. If Mrs Stowe had confessed to going to Cremorne, she would have been cut, and so she went to the Paris Cremorne instead; but to write a true book on England, she should have gone to Cremorne. Look at Cremorne; is it not one, as Disraeli is reported to have said, of the institutions of the country? ¹ The gardens are beautiful, are kept in fine order, are adorned with really fine trees, and are watered by the Thames, here almost a silver stream. Though near London, on a summer evening the air is fresh and balmy, the amusements are varied, the company are genteel in appearance, and here, as in Paris, they dance along the path to ruin with flowers and music. If Mrs Stowe gives the preference to the Parisians, she may be right, but I am inclined to dispute the grounds of that preference. The gin-palaces are filled with our sots, with our utter wrecks, with all that is loathsome and low in man or woman. Your son, fresh from home and its sacred influences, is shy of entering a gin-palace at first. He goes there with a blush upon his cheek, and a sense of shame at his heart. He shrinks from its foul companionship, and when he has come out he resolves never to be what he has seen under those accursed roofs. But you take him to Cremorne, or you send him to the Lowther Arcade, or the Holborn Casino, and he is surrounded by temptation that speaks to him with almost irresistible power. The women are well-dressed and well-behaved. The drink does not repel but merely stimulates the hot passions of youth, and lulls the conscience. For one man that is ruined in a gin-shop there are twenty that are ruined at Cremorne.

As to the morality of such places, that is not to be settled dogmatically by me or by any one else. Tennyson talks of men fighting their doubts, and gathering strength; in the same manner, men may fight temptation and gather strength, and one man may merely spend a pleasant evening where another may in the same interval of time ruin himself for life. The tares and the wheat, in this confused world of ours, grow side by side. Unnaturally, we bring up our sons only to pluck what we deem the wheat; and immediately they are left to themselves, they begin gathering the tares, which we have not taught them are such, and have for them at least the charm of novelty. It does not do to say there is no pleasure in the world; there is a great deal. The grass is green, though, it may be, sad sinners tread it. The sun shines as sweetly on carrion as on the Koh-i-noor. The lark high up at heaven’s gate sings as loud a song of praise, whether villains or lovers listen to its lays. Places are what we make them. I fear there are many blackguards at Cremorne; the women most of them are undoubtedly hetæræ, and yet what a place it is for fun! How jolly are all you meet! How innocent are all the amusements, – the ascent of the balloon – the dancing – the equestrian performances – the comic song – the illuminations – the fire-works – the promenade on the grass lawn or in the gas-lit paths; the impulses that come to us in the warm breath of the summer eve, how grateful are they all, and what a change from Cheap-side or from noisy manufactories still more confined! By this light the scene is almost a fairy one. Can there be danger here? Is there here nothing artistic – nothing refined – nothing appealing to the imagination? Come here, Mrs Stowe, and judge. You will scandalize, I know, that portion of the religious public that never yet has looked at man and society honestly in the face, but you will better understand the frightful hypocrisies of our domestic life; you will better understand how it is that a religion which we pay so much for, and to which we render so much outward homage, has so little hold upon the heart and life. There is no harm in Cremorne, if man is born merely to enjoy himself – to eat, drink, be merry, and die. I grant, it is rather inconvenient for a young man who has his way to fight in life to indulge a taste for pleasure, to launch out into expenses beyond his means, to mix with company that is more amusing than moral, and to keep late hours; and young fellows who go to Cremorne must run all these risks. It may do you, my good sir, no harm to go there. You have arrived at an age when the gaieties of life have ceased to be dangerous. You come up by one of the Citizen boats to Chelsea after business hours, and stroll into the garden and view the balloon, or sit out the ballet, or gaze with a leaden eye upon the riders, and the clowns, and the dancing, or the fireworks, and return home in decent time to bed; and if you waste a pound or two, you can afford it. But it is otherwise with inflammable youth – a clerk, it may be, in a merchant’s warehouse on 30s. a-week, and it is really alarming to think what excitements are thus held out to the passions, at all times so difficult to control. There are the North Woolwich Gardens – there is Highbury Barn – all rivalling Cremorne, and all capable of containing some thousands of idle pleasure-seekers. Vauxhall, with its drunken orgies, is gone never to return – the place that knows it now will know it no more for ever – but such places are what thoughtless people call respectable, are frequented by respectable people; and amidst mirth and music, foaming up in the sparkling wine, looking out of dark blue eyes, reddening the freshest cheeks, and nestling in the richest curls, there lurks the great enemy of God and man. Young man, such an enemy you cannot resist; your only refuge is in flight. Ah, you think that face fair as you ask its owner to drink with you; it would have been fairer had it never gone to Cremorne. A father loved her as the apple of his eye; she was the sole daughter of his home and heart, and here she comes night after night to drink and dance; a few years hence and you shall meet her drinking and cursing in the lowest gin-palaces of St Giles’s, and the gay fast fellows around you now will be digging gold in Australia, or it may be walking the streets in rags, or it may be dying in London hospitals of lingering disease, or, which is worse than all, it may be living on year after year with all that is divine in man utterly blotted out and destroyed. The path that leads to life is strait and narrow, and few there be who find it.

THE COSTERMONGERS’ FREE-AND-EASY

Every class in London has its particular pleasures. The gay have their theatres – the philanthropic their Exeter Hall – the wealthy their “ancient concerts” – the costermongers what they term their sing-song.

I once penetrated into one of these dens. It was situated in a very low neighbourhood, not far from a gigantic brewery, where you could not walk a yard scarcely without coming to a public house. The costermongers are a numerous race. Walk the poor neighbourhoods on a Saturday night, and hear the cries, – “Chestnuts all ’ot a penny a score,” “Three a penny, Yarmouth bloaters,” “Penny a lot fine russets, a penny a lot,” “Now’s your time, fine whelks, a penny a lot.” Well, the itinerant vendors of these delicacies are costermongers. Or in the daytime see the long carts drawn by donkies loaded with greens and other vegetables, all announced to the public in stentorian lungs – these men are costermongers. Listen to those boys calling, “Ho, ho, hi, hi, – what do you think of this here? a penny a bunch, a penny a bunch. Here’s your turnips!” Those boys are costermongers’ lads. It is seldom they last long as men. They soon lose their voice, and how they pick up a living then no one can tell. Their talk is peculiar. Mr Mayhew tells us their slang consists merely in pronouncing each word as if spelt backwards. “I say, Curly, will you do a top of reeb (pot of beer)?” one costermonger may say to another. “It’s on doog, Whelkey, on doog” (no good, no good), the second may reply; “I’ve had a regular troseno (bad sort) to-day; I’ve been doing dab (bad) with my tol (lot) – han’t made a yennep (penny), s’ elp me – .” “Why, I’ve cleared a flatchenorc (half a crown) a’ ready.” Master Whelkey will answer perhaps, “But kool the esilop (look at the police), kool him (look at him). Curly: Nommus (be off), I am going to do the tightner” (have my dinner). Would you know more of them, come with me.

Just look at the people in this public-house. A more drunken, dissipated, wretched lot you never saw. There are one or two little tables in front of the bar and benches, and on these benches are the most wretched men and women possible to imagine. They are drinking gin and smoking, and all have the appearance of confirmed sots. They are shoemakers in the neighbourhood, and these women with them are their wives. “Lor’ bless you, sir,” exclaims the landlord, “they spend all they has in drink. They live on a penny roll and a ha’porth of sprats or mussels, and they never buy any clothes, except once in three or four years, and then they get some second-hand rubbish.” And here, when they are not at work, they sit spending their money. Are there none to save them? – none to come here and pluck these brands from the burning? I know they are short-lived; I see in their pale, haggard, blotched, and bloated faces premature death. The first touch of illness will carry them off as rotten leaves fall in November; but ere this be the case, can you not reveal to them one glimpse of a truer and diviner life? But come up-stairs into this concert-room, where about a hundred costermongers and shoemakers are listening to the charms of song. Talk about the refining influence of music! it is not here you will find such to be the case. The men and women and lads sitting round these shabby looking tables have come here to drink, for that is their idea of enjoyment; and whilst we would not grudge them one particle of mirth, we cannot but regret that their standard of enjoyment should be so low. The landlord is in the chair, and a professional man presides at the piano. As to the songs, they are partly professional and partly by volunteers. I cannot say much for their character. The costermongers have not very strict notions of meum and tuum; they are not remarkable for keeping all the commandments; their reverence for the conventional ideas of decency and propriety is not very profound; their notions are not peculiarly polished or refined, nor is the language in which they are clothed, nor the mode in which they are uttered, such as would be recognised in Belgravia. Dickens makes Mrs General in “Little Dorrit” remark, “Society never forms opinions, and is never demonstrative.” Well, the costermongers are the reverse of all this, and as the pots of heavy and the quarterns of juniper are freely quaffed, and the world and its cares are forgotten, and the company becomes hourly more noisy and hilarious, you will perceive the truth of my remarks. Anybody sings who likes; sometimes a man, sometimes a female, volunteers a performance, and I am sorry to say it is not the girls who sing the most delicate songs. The burdens of these songs are what you might expect. In one you were recommended not to go courting in the kitchen when the master was at home, but, instead, to choose the “airey.” One song, with a chorus, was devoted to the deeds of “those handsome men, the French Grenadiers.” Another recommended beer as a remedy for low spirits; and thus the harmony of the evening is continued till twelve, when the landlord closes his establishment, to the great grief of the few who have any money left, who would only be too happy to keep it up all night. Let me say a word about costermonger literature. I see Mr Manby Smith calculates its pecuniary value at twelve thousand a year. It is wretched in every way, – in composition, in printing, in cuts, and paper. These street ballads – we are all familiar with them – are sold by a class of men called patterers, and are written so as to bear on the events of the day. Thus, at the last Lord Mayor’s day we had a song sung in the streets, of which the following is a specimen: —

 
“Away they go, the high and low,
   Such glorious sights was never seen,
But still the London Lord Mayor’s show
   Is not as it has former been,
When old Dick Whittington was mayor,
   And our forefathers had to go;
They had not got no Peelers there,
   To guard great London’s Lord Mayor’s show.”
 

And we are told in another verse that —

 
“They will talk of Russia, France, and that,
   And mention how the money goes;
Each man will eat a pect of sprats,
   That’s the fashion at the Lord Mayor’s show.”
 

Some of these songs are indecent; almost all of them have a morbid sympathy with criminals. Thus Redpath in the following lines is almost made a martyr to his benevolence and Christian life.

 
“Alas!  I am convicted, there’s no one to blame —
I suppose you all know Leopold Redpath is my name;
I have one consolation, perhaps I’ve more,
All the days of my life I ne’er injured the poor.
 
 
“I procured for the widow and orphan their bread,
The naked I clothed, and the hungry I fed;
But still I am sentenced, you must understand,
Because I had broken the laws of the land.
 
 
A last fond adieu to my heart-broken wife —
Leopold Redpath, your husband, ’s transported for life;
Providence will protect you, love, do not deplore,
Since your husband never hurted or injured the poor.
 

* * * * *

 
“In London and Weybridge I in splendour did dwell,
By the rich and the poor was respected right well;
But now I’m going – oh! where shall I say —
A convict from England, oh! far, far away.
 

* * * * *

 
“I might have lived happy with my virtuous wife,
Kept away from temptation, from tumult and strife,
I’d enough to support me in happiness to live,
But I wanted something more poor people for to give.”
 

The street singers of the metropolis seized upon the Waterloo Bridge Tragedy as a fit subject for the exercise of their dismal strains. The following is printed verbatim, from an illustrated broadsheet vended “at the charge of one halfpenny:” —

 
“Oh such a year for dreadful murders
   As this before was never seen;
In England, Ireland, Britain over,
   Such horrid crimes has never been.
But this which now has been discovered
   Very far exceeds the whole,
The very thought makes men to shudder,
   How horrible for to unfold.
 
 
“See and read in every paper
   This dreadful crime, this mystery,
Worse, far worse, than James Greenacre’s
   Is the London mystery.
 
 
“His body it was cut to pieces —
   Oh how dreadful was his fate!
Then placed in brine and hid in secret —
   Horrible for to relate.
The head and limbs had been divided —
   Where parts was taken no one knows;
In a carpet bag they packed the body,
   Over Waterloo bridge they did it throw.
 
 
“It is supposed that a female monster
   Her victim’s body onward dragged,
With no companion to assist her,
   All packed within a carpet bag.
Justice determined is to take her,
   When without doubt she’ll punished be,
The atrocious female Greenacre
   Of the Waterloo Bridge Tragedy.”
 

The reader will see from these specimens how alien the costermonger race is in sympathy and life from the respectable and the well-to-do. Their songs are not ours, nor their aims nor conventional observances. What wonder is it that they leave their wretched cellars all dirt and darkness, and crowd round the public-house; or that at the costermongers’ house of call – in the midst of an atmosphere of gin and tobacco-smoke, and under the influence of songs of very questionable merit – the poor lads receive the education which is to stamp their character and to teach them to grow up Ishmaelites, with their hands against every one, and every one’s hand against them. Society will not educate its poor; wonder not then that they educate themselves, and that after a fashion not very desirable in the eyes of the friends of morality, of order, and of law.

THE POLICE-COURT

Is an attractive lounge to the seedy, the disreputable, the unwashed. Evidently it is a grand and refreshing and popular sight to see justice doled out in small parcels – to see the righteous flourish, and the wicked put to shame. I fear, however, it is a feeling of a more personal nature that is the chief attraction, after all. Jones goes to see what a mess Davis gets into; Smithes to see if Scroggins keeps “mum” like a brick; the many, to retail a little scandal at the expense of their neighbours, – if at the expense of a friend, of course so much the better. A little before ten a crowd is ranged round the police-office, waiting to see the prisoners, who have been locked up all night, marched into the court, which generally commences its operations at ten. The court itself offers very little accommodation to the most thinking public. At one end of the room is the presiding magistrate; below him is the clerk; on the right of the magistrate is the box for complainant and witnesses. Opposite him is the dock in which the defendant is placed; behind some boards, over which only tall people can see, is the public; and on the magistrate’s right are the reporters – or, rather, the penny-a-liners – who write on “flimsy,” and leave “copy” on spec. at all the daily paper offices. Let me say a word about these exceedingly seedy-looking individuals connected with the fourth estate. That they are not better dressed is, I take it, their own fault, and arises from that daring defiance of conventionalism which is so great a characteristic of the lower orders of gentlemen connected with the press. Let me say, en passant, the public owe these men much. It is they who labour with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, and that deserves to be successful, to describe the cases heard in the police-courts in the most racy and tempting terms. In their peculiar phraseology, every bachelor who gets into a scrape is a gay Lothario, and every young woman that appeals to justice is lady-like in manners and interesting in appearance. The poor wretch that crawls along the street, all rouged and decked out in finery not her own, is “a dashing Cyprian.” Every Irishman is described as “a native of the Green Isle;” every man in a red coat, “a brave son of Mars;” every sailor, “a jolly tar;” and a man with a little hair on his chin, or under it, is invariably “bearded like the pard;” and if anything causing a smile occurs, – and sometimes on the gravest occasions justice will even grin, – the court is – so they always put it – convulsed with laughter. Knights of the pen, a police-case loving-to-read public should be grateful to you! By the side of the reporters often sit some three or four of those mischief-makers, pettifogging attorneys; men who, in their own opinion, only require a clear stage and no favour, and the mere formality of a call to the bar, to rival, if not surpass, the fame of a Scarlett, or a Brougham, or a Lyndhurst, or an Erskine, or even of a Coke himself; and truly if to bully, to suppress what is true, and insinuate what is false – if to gloss over the injustice done by a client, and to proclaim aloud that of the opposite party – if to speak in an emphatic manner and at a most unmerciful length – if to browbeat witnesses, mislead the court, and astonish the weak nerves of their hearers, constitute a fitness for legal greatness, these gentlemen have only to enter their names at any of the Inns of Court, and eat the requisite number of dinners, to win at once undying reputation. At the dock appears the trembling culprit, guarded sedulously by the police, who quietly assume his or her guilt, and do all they can in endeavouring to make out a case, – occasionally going so far in their zeal as to state things not exactly true, the esprit de corps of course leading them to aid each other whenever they have a chance.

In a low neighbourhood the principal cases heard are those arising from intoxication. On this particular morning we will suppose the court opens with what is very common, an assault case between two Irish families who were hereditary foes, and who, emigrating, or rather, like Eneas, “driven by fate,” from the mother country at the same time, locate, unfortunately for themselves, in the same neighbourhood, – and who, in accordance with the well-known remark of Horace, continue in St Giles’s the amicable quarrels of Tipperary, to the amusement of a congenial neighbourhood, which likes a good fight rather than not, but to the intense terror and annoyance of all such of her Majesty’s lieges as are well disposed. As generally happens, the case, after a considerable amount of hard swearing on both sides, is dismissed, leaving to each party the inestimable privilege of paying costs. This case creates great interest; complainants and defendants are well-known performers, and the mob comes to see them as people go to see Wright at the Adelphi. When it terminates, the Guelphs and Ghibelines leave the court to discuss the oft-told tale in the nearest public-house. The remaining cases are those of sailors and navvies, charged with being drunk and disorderly, of robberies committed by prostitutes when their victims were stupified by beer, and of ragged urchins with precocious developments, the head and front of whose offending was that they “heaved” stones, or that they declined to “move on” when particularly requested to do so by the police. Poor little outcasts, they are better off in jail than on the streets; and they know it, and own to an astonishing number of convictions, and gladly look forward to the time when they shall be able to achieve greater enormities and manlier offences against law. These cases are soon disposed of; in the majority the magistrate hears the complaint, and simply tells the little urchin he “may go down.” But let us not leave yet. That is a publican, and he has a charge against this decent-looking woman, – she is not a drunkard; – let us listen.

“Call Phil. Bird,” says the superintendent.

As Phil. Bird is in court, there is no need to call him, but he is called in stentorian tones nevertheless. Policemen, like other men, love to hear the sound of their own voices. Phil. immediately steps into the witness-box. That he is a favourite with the beer-drinking public around is clear as soon as he kisses the Bible, and promises – a promise lightly made, and lightly broken – to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, “So help me God.”

“Well, Bird,” says the magistrate, “will you state your complaint?”

“Certainly, your honour,” is the reply. “I was in my shop on Saturday, when that woman (pointing to the trembling female in the dock) came in kicking up a row, and asking for her husband; well, she spoke to her husband, and wanted to get him away, but her husband did not choose to go; and as she would not leave quietly, I was obliged to go and speak to her, upon which she turned round, abusing me, saying I had robbed her of her husband, that I had got his money, and kept making a great many remarks which I was not going to submit to, especially as she had got quite a crowd of people together, and it was interfering with my business; so I called in policeman Brown, and gave her in charge.”

Policeman Brown corroborates the testimony. He has yet to win his spurs, and is glad of an opportunity of distinguishing himself; besides, he has drunk too much of Phil. Bird’s fine sparkling ales to refuse to do him a little friendly turn when he has a chance.

“Mr Bird’s house is a well-conducted house, I believe, Mr Superintendent?” says the magistrate, more from habit than with any view of eliciting information.

“Good, your worship,” is the answer, – “impossible to be better.” The superintendent, perhaps, has received a small cask of Devonshire cyder, as a mark of private friendship and personal esteem, from the complainant, and this might, though I would fain hope not – but flesh is grass, and a superintendent of police is but flesh after all – have influenced the nature of his reply. This is the more probable, as one bystander whispers to another, that he believes Phil. Bird’s is the worst house in the street, a remark which seems to excite the cordial approbation of the party to whom it is addressed – a remark also which the superintendent hears, and which leads him to cry “silence” in his loudest voice and sternest manner. The whisperer is cowed at once.

Phil. Bird looks gratefully at the superintendent; the latter is grateful in O’Connell’s sense, and has a lively sense of favours to come.

“And the woman, what about her?” asks the magistrate.

“I believe generally she’s very well behaved,” says policeman Brown, as if on the present occasion she had been guilty of an enormous offence.

“Do you know anything against her?”

“Not as I know of, yer worship.”

“Well,” says the magistrate, addressing the poor washerwoman, nervous and “all of a tremble,” as she afterwards confidentially informs a friend, looking as if she expected immediate sentence of death passed upon her, “what do you say to the charge? Mr Bird says you went and created a disturbance in his shop; now you had no business to do that, you know.”

“I know I hadn’t, sir,” said the poor woman; but here she burst into tears.

Had she been alone with the magistrate, who is a kind-hearted man, and wishes to do what is right, she would soon have found her tongue, and her warm appeal, told with natural eloquence, because told out of a full heart, would soon have reached his own; but she is frightened – her energies are paralysed, – she cannot speak at all.

“Oh, Brown,” says the magistrate, as if a bright thought struck him, “was the woman sober?”

“Well, I can’t swear that she was drunk,” said Brown, reluctantly.

This by no means helps to soothe the poor woman’s nerves, but it drives her to speak in her own behalf.

“Your worship,” she exclaims, “I was as sober as you are now” – she might have added, but she did not, “and a good deal more sober than policeman Brown.” “I did go to Phil. Bird’s, but it was to fetch my husband out, who had been inveigled in there, and had been led into spending all the money he had, and getting drunk.”

“Well, my good woman, the publican must be protected. You should not have created a disturbance. I shan’t inflict a fine, but you must pay the costs. You may go down.”