The Night Side of London Part 7

THE EAGLE TAVERN

Is situated in an appropriate locality in the City-road, not far from a lunatic asylum, and contiguous to a workhouse. From time immemorial the c.o.c.kneys have hastened thither to enjoy themselves. Children are taught to say-

"Up and down the City-road, In and out the Eagle, That's the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel."

And the apprentice or clerk, fresh from the country, and anxious to see life, generally commences with a visit to the Grecian Saloon-Eagle Tavern. As a rule, I do not think what are termed fast men go much to theatres. To sit out a five-act tragedy and then a farce is a bore which only quiet old fogies and people of a domestic turn can endure; and even where, as in the Grecian Saloon, you have dancing, and singing, and drinking added, it is not the fast men, but the family parties, that make it pay. There you see Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson, with their respective partners and the dear pledges of their well-regulated loves.

They come early, sit out _Jack Shepherd_ with a resolution worthy of a better cause, listen to the singing from the Music Hall, return again to witness the closing theatrical performances, and enjoy all the old stage tricks as if they had not heard them for the last fifty years. These worthy creatures see a splendour in the Grecian Saloon which I do not.

Then there are the juvenile swells. Anxious mothers in the country, fearing the contaminations of London and the ruin it has brought on other sons, lodge them in remote Islington, or Hoxton, still more remote. It is in vain they do so. The Haymarket may be far off, but the Grecian Saloon is near; and the young hopefuls come in at half-price, for sixpence, and smoke their cigars, and do their pale ale, and adopt the slang and the vices of their betters with too much ease. And then there are the unfortunates from the City-road, with painted faces, brazen looks, and gorgeous silks; mercenary in every thought and feeling, and with hearts hard as adamant. G.o.d help the lad that gets entangled with such as they! It requires no prophet to foretell his career.

Embezzlement-first with a view to replace the sum appropriated to guilty pleasures,-then, embezzlement hopelessly continued because once begun,-then discovery, and punishment, and shame, and despair. Youth must have its pleasures, I know. Young blood is not torpid like that of age; and song and woman will ever be dear till time furrows the brow and silvers the hair. But why need we seek them where the air is contaminated-where the evening's amus.e.m.e.nt will not bear the morning's reflection-where, though pleasure lead the way, scattering sweet flowers, vice and shame and premature old age bring up the rear? Look at those lads; they cannot have been long emanc.i.p.ated from school. The erect collar, the straight hat, the long coat, indicate the fact that they belong to the Young England party; and here, listening to indifferent songs, and witnessing inferior dramatic performances, and a.s.sociating with the refuse of the other s.e.x, they are learning to be men. What a manhood to look forward to! And if there be no excuse for them, there is still less for what I may call the domestic part of the audience,-the fat old women with their baskets filled with prog, the pursy old tradesmen that drop in to smoke a pipe, and the various tribes of gents and bagsmen on their way home from the city.

Let me say a word on our domestic life. When there is so little difference between the majority of men and women, why should the line of demarcation be so severely drawn? We talk very prettily about home, sweet home, and poets sing its love and purity and charms; and a popular picture is that which the artist draws when he groups together the gray-haired grandfather and grandmother, seated by the fire, and father and mother by their side, and brave lads and graceful girls around listening, by the warm light of the lamp, to some tale of manly struggle or Christian chivalry, or lifting up together the glad voice of song.

But why should your son or mine, immediately he goes out into the world and leaves the parental roof, become a stranger to all this? If the Englishman's home be his castle, why should we cast out into the ditch, to lie down and die in its mire, all who are not of the family? Think of the thousands and thousands of young men who yearly come up to town, strangers to every one, and with no chance of getting into female society, except such as they find at such places as the Eagle. These women are not lovelier than you meet with in respectable houses-not better educated nor more correct in their principles; yet, as by natural instinct one s.e.x seeks the society of the other, we condemn our youth to the company of such. Paterfamilias is afraid the young men will pay attention to his daughters. Perhaps the young lady-daughters fancy it to be beneath them to be civil to their father's young men. Perhaps the young men themselves believe that an honourable connexion is beyond their means, and deliberately pursue a career of vice. In all these cases, in my humble opinion, very serious blunders are involved. The life of a bachelor under the circ.u.mstances I here allude to is quite as costly as that of a married man, without the stimulus to exertion which the latter has. Paterfamilias forgets that the young man he fears may be the suitor for his daughter's hand, though he is poor to-day, may be comparatively rich to-morrow; and the young ladies should remember that it is rather too much to expect that a young man just entering upon life will be able to launch out in the same style as those who for thirty or forty years have been pursuing a successful commercial career. It is our false pride that eats us up,-that makes us sneer at love in a cottage,-that turns our women into cross old maids, and our men into gay Lotharios, very disreputable and, to a certain extent, deliriously gay. I admit that we have much more outside respectability, but is society the better? Have we more true happiness? If Wordsworth is correct, "plain living and high thinking" go together. But our aim is high living, and I fear the thinking is very, very plain in consequence. We nurse up in our midst, and reverently wors.h.i.+p-and denounce as worse than an infidel every one who utters the truth respecting it-an aristocracy the richest and most luxurious in the world,-an aristocracy which would long ere this have become intellectually effete, did it not recruit its ranks from successful adventurers in the shape of lawyers; and the commercial cla.s.ses vying with this aristocracy in outward show, the effects are manifest all over the land, in the general attempts to live beyond one's means, and to get into a circle supposed to be superior to that in which originally we moved. In Germany they manage better; the n.o.ble and the trading cla.s.ses never have a rivalry, the gulf is impa.s.sable, and hence the home life is less pretentious and happier than ours. In England "the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." What we want is a return to the plain living and high thinking of an age gone by; less show and more reality; the destruction of the wall of part.i.tion, either of poverty or of false pride, and the widening and enhancing the charms of the domestic circle. If now and then the result is a marriage not very intelligible on pecuniary principles, let us consider even that as a lesser evil than that resulting from the companions.h.i.+p, on the part of our youths, with the women who infest such places as the Eagle, and without which it is clear such places could not pay.

I will call evidence as to the character of the amus.e.m.e.nts at the Eagle Tavern. In the parliamentary report on public-houses, I find Mr Balfour is examined respecting it. He says, "The most detrimental place of which I know, as far as women are concerned, is the Eagle Tavern in the City-road. There are gardens, and statues round the gardens, and everything to attract. There is a large theatre, and there are theatrical representations during the week. I have seen women there whom I have recognised next day as common street-walkers. The gardens are open, with alcoves and boxes on each side, and lads and young persons are taken in there and plied with drink. The house is opened on Sunday evening, but on Sunday evening there is no dramatic representation nor music. I have seen gentlemen come out drunk." On a Sunday night when Mr Balfour visited the place, he said, "There were various rooms. There is what is called the Chinese-room, the ball-room, and the concert-room.

They were all filled with persons drinking, and I saw a great number of female servants, and females of a certain description; there is no doubt upon that subject at all." Now, Mr Conquest, the present proprietor, must have read all this evidence, yet I do not see that he has taken any steps to reform the evil complained of. It pays, I suppose, and that is enough. Much money has been made by it. The late proprietor retired a wealthy man. The present proprietor, we presume, trusts to do the same, and if the establishment panders to vice, if women date their ruin to Sunday evenings there, if mothers see their sons robbed of all that would make them decent men owing to their visits there, what's the odds? cries the dram-seller, who, like another Cain, asks if he be his brother's keeper.

The regular attendants see this not. "It's a beautiful place," says Mrs Smith to Mrs Robinson, "a'nt it, my dear?" as they sit eating questionable sausage rolls, and indulging in bottled beer. They see the pictures in the balcony, and think the gas jets quite miraculous, and admire the weak fountains and ambitious grottoes-and they laugh even at the comic singer, a feat I cannot achieve anyhow. Evidently the Eagle Tavern audience is of the same genus as an Adelphi audience, a people easily moved to laughter, and much given to taking their meals with them,-a people not p.r.o.ne to look before or after,-who would be drowned rather than get up and walk into the Ark, and who see no chance of their own house being burnt down in the fact that their neighbour's house is in flames. I don't believe naturally men or women are these dull clods, but custom makes them such, and they see no danger, nor perhaps is there where they are concerned.

THE LUNATIC ASYLUM.

A few miles from the terminus of one of our metropolitan railways is an immense plot of buildings, looking more like a town than a single house.

It is a stately pile, beautifully situated, and I doubt not many a care-worn c.o.c.kney, as he has been hurried past it by the rail, has often wished that he had a little niche in it where he could come of a night after the day's toil was over, and smell the sweet flowers and the fresh gra.s.s; yet the place is a lunatic asylum, and whilst I write there are in it fourteen hundred men and women bereft of reason, unaccountable for their actions, and shut up away from their fellows. Very often the number is much greater, and yet this does not contain all the pauper lunatics of the metropolitan county. There is another equally large on another line of railway, and there are Wandsworth, Bedlam, and others in London itself.

It would do some of the noisy poor, who waste their time in low pot-houses talking of their rights-when all that a man has a right to is what he can get-good to look over such a place as Colney Hatch. There are pauper lunatics lodged in a palace, waited on by skilful male and female attendants, living in light and airy galleries, as clean as wax-work, with four meals a day, and with every want supplied. I am sure every Englishman must confess that our asylums and hospitals are the glory of our land. None can deny the active and practical character of the philanthropy of our days. You may depend upon it, nine-tenths of the men and women here were never so well fed, lodged, and cared for before.

Their day commences at six, and terminates at eight. Such of them as can be usefully employed are, in cleaning the wards, and in various domestic duties; but they have plenty of spare time-the women for sewing or knitting, and the men for out-door exercise or reading. In one ward I found some good books on the table, such as Boswell's Johnson, Gibbon's Life, popular works on science, and _Punch_ and several magazines. The only woman I saw reading was an old one, with a Bible before her. The women are by far more troublesome than the men. Directly I went into one ward, a middle-aged woman advanced towards me, with one arm uplifted, exclaiming, "Here comes my husband, King John." Another female, still plainer and more elderly, seemed inclined to address to me endearments of a still tenderer character. It was clear that they retained the instincts of their s.e.x without its clearness. Yet there were some to whom the novelty of a stranger offered no excitement-who sat huddled up by the window, with scowling eyes and dishevelled hair, flesh-and-blood pictures of despair. This one had led a gay life-what a termination for a votary of pleasure! That one had become what she was by drinking; this one again by the grand pa.s.sion, which underlies all history, past and present-all philosophy, objective or subjective-all religion, true or false. But, hark! it is a quarter to one, and that is the dinner bell.

We enter the hall, a room capable of holding seven or eight hundred persons. Some enormous Yorks.h.i.+re puddings, with some excellent beef, are borne by several eager a.s.sistants (patients) on to the tables in the middle of the room; they are immediately cut up, and each portion is enough for one person's dinner. When the tables set apart for the women are served, the door opens, and in rush the poor creatures in a manner that shows they have not lost their relish for food. On the men's side similar preparations are made, and then in they rush; and when all are seated, a blessing is asked, and dinner commences: it does not last long.

As soon as the patients have cut up their pudding, the knives and forks are carefully removed-and in a very few minutes a signal is made; they all rise-thanks are returned, and the meal is over-such as have not had enough generally managing to collar a bit of pudding as they march out.

This is very short work, you say, but it is quite long enough. You will hear a woman screaming now and then, short as it is, and an attempt will be sure to be made to get over to the men's side before the meal is over.

You see enough to sadden you, but the worst cases you do not see-they are wisely concealed from the curious eye; it is enough to know that they are humanely tended. Why should we care to look on such? Going down a stair-case, I saw through a gla.s.s door a poor creature suffering from suicidal monomania; night and day she had to be watched, and such had been the case for years. In her sad face there was visible to the most superficial observer

"The settled gloom The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore."

Well might she wish to lay down her life, that her crazed brain had rendered insupportable.

It is a sad sight that of an a.s.sembly of insane men and women. At the asylum to which I refer they are very humane people, and very successful in their treatment of the distressing cases constantly occurring, and twice a year-at Christmas and Midsummer-they give an entertainment, at which the better-behaved lunatics attend, and seemingly enjoy themselves very much. I was recently at one, and when I arrived, found that a field adjoining the asylum had been set apart for the purpose. There were about five hundred lunatics, male and female, present, and besides there were several gentlemen and ladies present, spectators like myself. It was a lovely afternoon, and there was music and dancing, and playing cricket, and battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k, and all the various enjoyments of out-door life; but in all these matters I found the attendants appeared to take the initiative; still the poor creatures seemed to enjoy themselves much, and were happy in their way. Yet the pleasure-seeker will not go to such a spectacle again. I do not say the vulgar idea of the maniac was realized; on the contrary, the poor creatures seemed decent and very well behaved-but there was a pitiable want of fine physical development, there were in abundance crooked forms and stunted figures. You do not like to see what a poor thing is man when his reason is dethroned. Of course the refractory patients we do not see on such occasions, but, looking up at a window, I saw one woman's face-as she viewed the scene in which she might not partic.i.p.ate-so wild in its anger and hopeless in its despair, that that face haunts me yet. It set me thinking how a woman could get into that state. Perhaps her father and mother, ignorant of physiological laws, had married, and she had been the result; or the ignorance of her friends, or her own ignorance-or the compet.i.tion of modern life-or the wrongdoing of others-had precipitated a catastrophe which otherwise might never have occurred, and thus society pays indirectly for its ignorance far more than it would have to do for a genuine useful education. Think of what desolated homes these poor creatures form a portion. Remember what a fearful cost it is to the respectable hard-working amongst us, who can barely manage to make two ends meet, to have to rear such palatial residences for our pauper lunatics. The asylum of which I write in its erection cost the county an enormous sum-in its maintenance it does ditto-and I hear it is now in an insecure state, firm as it looks, and that the county of Middles.e.x will have to spend upon it some tens of thousands of pounds more.

I once visited this place in the winter-time; a large hall was lighted up, and there were some very pretty dissolving views exhibited, and there was dancing and music and eating and drinking going on. The room was covered with laurels and flowers and banners, and, of course, there were many ladies and gentlemen present, and the place had a cheerful air; and all confessed it was a good thing to give the poor creatures a little innocent amus.e.m.e.nt. But only think of dancing with lunatics-and such ugly ones too-and being held by the b.u.t.tonhole by some wild-eyed ancient mariner. Coleridge might have come here and written:

"He held him with his glistening eye, The wedding guest stood still, And listen'd like a child- The mariner has his will."

But if the wedding guest stays here long, he would not be in a fit state for the wedding-and still less would he be so if he goes over the building. What a contrast the present treatment of lunatics is to that which prevailed till lately! The exposure of the wretched system pursued at Bethlem, which took place in 1814, in consequence of the investigation of a parliamentary committee, appears to have been productive of great good. The visitors thus describe one of the women's galleries:-"One of the side-rooms contained about ten patients, each chained by one arm or leg to the wall, the chain allowing them merely to stand up by the bench or form fixed to the wall, or sit down again. The nakedness of each patient was covered by a blanket gown only. The blanket gown is a blanket formed something like a dressing gown, with nothing to fasten it in parts. The feet even were naked." Many women were locked up in cells, naked and chained, on straw, with only one blanket for a covering; and the windows being unglazed, the light in winter was shut out for the sake of warmth. In the men's rooms, their nakedness and their mode of confinement, continues the report from which we have already quoted, gave this room the appearance of a dog-kennel. At this period the committee for months together made no inspection of the inmates. The house surgeon was in an insane state himself, and still oftener drunk; and the keepers were often in the latter state; yet at this very time the governors spent 600 in opposing a bill for regulating mad-houses, and I dare say they cried out l.u.s.tily, No centralization!-no interference with vested interests! as enlightened Englishmen and parochial dignitaries are wont to do in our days.

Could we not do without lunatic asylums, if society gave up its drinking customs? Not exactly; but their number might be very much decreased.

Two-thirds of our lunatics become so through drink. "They are very bad at first, sir," said one of my informants to me, "but after a little while they get quieter, and perhaps they are cured in two or three months." And yet I find all these lunatics are supplied with beer.

"They has two half-pints a day, sir, and when they work they gets two half-pints more, and very good beer it is, sir," continued my informant, "as strong as any man need drink." Now is not this preposterous? Men who drink till they become lunatics should be taught to do without it; but they are allowed their beer even in the asylum, and when they go out they begin drinking again, and of course relapse. Thus we keep feeding our lunatic asylums, at the very time we profess to cure lunatics. I admit these places are in many respects well managed-that the buildings are commodious-that the attention is good-that the governors are humane, and the medical officers vigilant; but which is the truer humanity, to take care of the man when in a lunatic asylum, or to keep him out of it altogether?

THE END.

JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.

JUST PUBLISHED,

_Price_ 3_s._ 6_d._, _bound in cloth_, SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED,

THE LONDON PULPIT.

BY

JAMES EWING RITCHIE.

Contents: The Religious Denominations of London-Sketches of the Rev. J.

M. Bellew-Dale-Liddell-Maurice-Melville-Villiers-Baldwin Brown-Binney-Dr Campbell-Lynch-Morris-Martin-Brock-Howard Hinton-Sheridan Knowles-Baptist Noel-Spurgeon-Dr c.u.mming-Dr James Hamilton-W. Forster-H. Ierson-Cardinal Wiseman-Miall-Dr Wolf, &c. &c.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

The subject is an interesting one, and it is treated with very considerable ability. Mr Ritchie has the valuable art of saying many things in few words; he is never diffuse, never dull, and succeeds in being graphic without becoming flippant. Occasionally his strength of thought and style borders rather too closely on coa.r.s.eness; but this fault of vigorous natures is counterbalanced by compensatory merits-by an utter absence of cant, a manly grasp of thought, and a wise and genial human-heartedness. The book is a sincere book; the writer says what he means, and means what he says. In these half-earnest days it is a comfort to meet with any one who has "the courage of his opinions,"

especially on such a subject as the "London Pulpit."-_Daily News_.

"One of the cleverest productions of the present day."-_Morning Herald_.

"Mr Ritchie is just the man to dash off a series of portraits, bold in outline, strikingly like the originals in feature and expression, and characterized by bright and effectual colouring. We have here photographed a group of the most distinguished pulpit orators of the metropolis, of all religious denominations and sects."-_Civil Service Gazette_.

"The style of Mr Ritchie is always lively and fluent, and oftentimes eloquent. It comes the nearest to Hazlitt's of any modern writer we know. His views and opinions are always clear, manly, and un.o.bjectionable as regards the manner in which they are set forth. Many, no doubt, will not agree with them, but none can be offended at them. As we have already remarked, Mr Ritchie does not write as a sectarian, and it is impossible to collect from the treatise to what sect he belongs.

The tendency of these sketches is to introduce into the pulpit a better style of preaching than what we have been accustomed to."-_Critic_.

"Mr Ritchie has written in a graphic, nervous, and most just spirit."-_Court Circular_.