Here and There in London
“In his ire Olympian Pericles
Thundered and lightened, and all Hellas shook.”
At other times, in his delineation of American manners, he proved himself almost an equal to Selsbee. Off the stage we have nowhere seen a better mimic than Gough, and this must give him great power, especially in circles where the stage is as much a terra incognita as Utopia, or the Island of Laputa itself. We have always thought that a fine figure of Byron, where he tells us that he laid his hand upon the ocean’s mane. Something of the same kind might be said to be applicable to Mr. Gough. He seemed to ride upon the audience – to have mastered it completely to his will. He seemed to bestride it as we could imagine Alexander bestriding his Bucephalus. Since then Mr. Gough has spoken in Exeter Hall nearly seventy times – has endured cruel misrepresentations – yet his attractions are as great, and his audiences as overflowing as over. The truth is, in his strength and weakness Gough is the very personification of an Exeter Hall orator. You may object to his exaggerations – you may find fault with his digressions – you may pooh-pooh his arguments – you may question the good taste of some of his allusions – you may wonder how people can applaud, and laugh at, or weep over, what they have applauded, or laughed at, or wept over a dozen times before: but they do; that no one can deny.
Gough spoke for nearly two hours. Evidently the audience could have listened, had he gone on, till midnight. We often hear that the age of oratory has gone by – that the press supersedes the tongue – that the appeal must henceforth be made to the reader in his study, not to the hearer in the crowded hall. There is much truth in that. Nevertheless, the true orator will always please his audience, and true oratory will never die. The world will always respond to it. The human heart will always leap up to it. The finest efforts of the orator have been amongst civilised audiences. It was a cultivated audience before whom Demosthenes pleaded; to whom, standing on Mars-hill, Paul preached of an unknown God. The true orator, like the true poet, speaks to all. He gathers around him earth’s proudest as well as poorest intellects. Notwithstanding, then, the march of mind, oratory may win her triumphs still. So long as the heart is true to its old instinct – so long as it can pity, or love, or hate, or fear, it will be moved by the orator, if he can but pity or love, or hate or fear himself. This is the true secret. This is it that made Gough the giant that he is. Without that he might be polished, learned, master of all human lore; but he would be feeble and impotent as the
“Lorn lyre that ne’er hath spokenSince the sad day its master chord was broken.”THE DERBY
Is there a finer sight in creation than a horse? I don’t speak of the wild horse of the prairie, as seen at Astley’s – nor of the wearied animal by means of which the enterprising greengrocer transports his wares from Covent-Garden to the Edgware-road – nor of the useful but commonplace looking cob on which Jones trusts himself timidly as he ventures on a constitutional ride, while his groom, much better mounted, follows scornfully behind – nor of the broken-down, broken-knee’d, spavined, blind roarer, all the summer of whose life has been passed in dreary drudgery, and for whom nought remains but the knacker’s yard, and the cold calculations of the itinerant vendors of cat’s-meat; but of a horse such as a monarch might pet, and the very queen of beauty might deign to ride – a horse such as Gamarra.
“A noble steed,Strong, black, and of the desert breed,Full of fire and full of bone,All his line of fathers known,Fine his nose, his nostrils thin,But blown abroad by the pride within.”And who that has ever laid his leg across such, and bounded along the turf, does not feel that the bare memory of it is a joy for ever, thrilling almost as Love’s young dream? Such was our good fortune once; now we creep into town on the top of a ’bus, and our hair is grey, and our pluck is gone, and our heart no larger than a pin’s head.
To write about London, and to omit all mention of the Derby, were unpardonable. At the Royal Academy Exhibition this year, the rush to see Mr. Frith’s picture of the Derby was so great that a policeman was required to keep off the crowd. Horse-racing is the natural result of horse-riding. It is essentially the English sport. Taking Wetherby’s Calendar as our guide, we may calculate that in 1855 there were 144 meetings in Great Britain and Ireland, which were attended by 1606 horses, of whom only 680 were winners, fed by £60,000 of added money inclusive of the value of cups and whips, and diffusing £198,000 in added money and stakes more or less. If there were no light weights to ride, and no noblemen or wealthy commoners to run their horses, the horses would run of their own accord. There are horses, as there are men, who never will play second fiddle if they can possibly avoid it; and if horses run, men will look and admire, and the natural result is the Derby Day. A grander sight of its kind is perhaps hardly to be seen. For twelve months have the public been preparing for the event. For twelve months has the sporting and the betting world been on the qui vive. We do not bet, for we hold that the custom is absurd in a rich man, and wicked in one who is not so; but in every street in London, in every town in England, in many a quiet village, at the beer-shop, or the gin-palace, or the public-house, bets have been made, and thousands and thousands of pounds are depending on the event. As the time draws nigh the excitement increases. Had you looked in at Tattersall’s on the previous Sunday, you would have seen the betting of our West End swells and M.P.’s who legislate for the observance of the Sabbath, and who punish poor men for keeping betting-houses – fast and furious. On the previous night of the day when the Derby is run a motley population encamp on the Downs. There are booths where there are to be dancing, and drinking, and eating, and gambling. There are gipsies who are to tell fortunes, and acrobats who are to exhibit a most astonishing flexibility of muscle. There are organs, and singing girls, and a whole legion of scamps, who will pick pockets, or play French put, or toss you for a bottle of stout, or offer their book and a pencil to betters; and as the dim grey of morning brightens into day, their number increases in a most marvellous manner. On they come – ricketty carts laden with ginger beer – men with long barrows and short pipes, who have walked all the way from town, long trains of gigs and hansoms, and drags, and carriages, and ’busses, and pleasure vans, laden with pleasure seekers, determined to have a holiday. The trains bring down some thirty or forty thousand human souls, the road is blocked up and almost impassable. Many a party, who left town in good spirits, have come to grief. Here a wheel has come off. There the springs have broken. Here the dumb brute has refused to drag his heavy burden any further. There the team have been restive or the charioteer unskilful, and the coach has been upset. In a session in which unusually little business has been done, in the very midst of a ministerial crisis, parliament has adjourned, and senators, commoners, and lords, are everywhere around. That man with spectacles and long black stock, driving a younger son past us, is England’s premier, whose horse is the favourite – who has never yet won the Derby – who, it is said, would rather do so than have a parliamentary success – and who, it is also said, has offered his jockey £50 a-year for life should he win this race. That fat, greyhaired man is the Duke of Malakoff. Here is the Royal Duke, who is treading in his father’s steps, and will be wept by a future generation as the good duke and hero of a thousand City feeds. Let us look about us while the bell is ringing and the police are clearing the course. The Grand Stand alone holds some thousands. Then, as you look from it for a mile on each side, what a cluster of human heads! and behind, what an array of carriages and vehicles of all kinds! A most furious attack is evidently being made on the commissariat. The more dashing have baskets, labelled “Fortnum and Mason,” and it is clear that the liquids are stronger than tea. Be thankful those are not ladies, dressed elegantly though they be, who have drank so much champagne that their tongues are going rather faster than is necessary. You do not see many ladies; and the girls so gay, what is their gaiety? – is it truer than their complexions? Very beautiful at a distance, if you do not go close and see the rouge and pearl powder. But to-day is a holiday. Many here know nothing about a horse, care little about one; but they have come out for a day’s fresh air and for a pic-nic. They could not have had a finer day or chosen a better spot. The down itself, with its fresh green velvet turf, is delicious to tread: and as you look around, what a magnificent panorama meets your eye, fringed by waving woods and chestnut trees, heavy with their annual bloom! Then there are the horses taking their preliminary canter. What eager eyes are on them! How anxious are the betters now, making up their final books! At the corner, in the carriages, on the hill, or along the course, how brisk is the speculation. “Which is Tox?” “Is that Physician?” “Where’s Beadsman?” are the questions in every mouth. And one does not like this horse’s fore legs, or that horse’s hind ones. And criticisms of all kinds are hazarded. At length some twenty horses are got together at the post. “They’re off!” is the cry wafted across the plain. Up the hill they go. On the top they’re scarce visible. As they turn the corner they look like so many rats. And now, amidst a whirlwind of shouting and hurrahing, the race is over; and in two minutes and fifty-four seconds Sir Joseph Hawley, a Whig baronet, beats Lord Derby, the Conservative Premier, clears £50,000, while his jockey, for that short ride, earns as much as you or me, my good sir, may win by the labour of many a long year. Pigeons fly off with the result. The telegraph is at work. At the Sunday Times office, about four o’clock, the crowd is so great that you can scarce get along the street, and many a man goes home with a heavy heart, for some are hit very hard. “This is a bad day for all of us,” says one to me, with a very long face. “I have lost £150,” says another, and he does not look like a man who could afford to lose that sum, and the crowd disperses – some exultant – some despairing – all of them in a reckless mood, and ready for dissipation. The longer we stop now, the sadder shall we become. Go to Kennington-common, if you wish to see the moral effects of the Derby. Drop in at the places of gay resort at the West-end in the course of the night. Go in a little while after to Bow-street, or Portugal-street. For many a day will families mourn a visit to the Derby. I never saw so many wives, evidently belonging to decent tradesmen, so intoxicated as I saw on the last Derby. In the train but little intoxication was visible, but the coming home was the dark side – a side which the admirers of what they call our national sports are too ready to overlook, and which even Mr. Frith has failed to paint.
The eloquent Montalembert sees in a Derby day what Virgil has described in the fifth Æneid. The Frenchman is too complimentary, it is true.
“Undique conveniunt Teucri mixtique Sicani.”
But pious Æneas sanctioned no such reckless revelry as too often is visible on the Epsom downs. Lord Palmerston compares the Derby to the Isthmian games; but as they were celebrated once in ten years, and were in honour of Neptune, the resemblance is not very clear. Pulteney, a statesman, in his day as eminent as the illustrious M.P. for Tiverton, published in the “World” a sketch of Newmarket; but the expense and waste of time of such places seemed to him perfectly frightful. It is well that his lordship has been defunct this hundred and fifty years. A horse race then was a much more sober affair than in these enlightened days – when every head is full and every tongue vocal with mental and moral reform.
VAUXHALL GARDENS
Vauxhall is alive. At one time it was thought dead, and people affirmed the fact to be an evidence of the improved state of the metropolis. (Moralists are too prone to be thankful for small mercies.) Had the fact been so, the inference was a fallacy; but we need not trouble ourselves about that, as the fact is otherwise. It is a mistake to suppose that progress is made only in one direction. Vauxhall is associated with the fast life of centuries. It was born in the general and fearful profligacy – the fearful price England paid for the Restoration. In 1661 Evelyn writes of it as a pretty contrived plantation. In 1665, in the diary of Pepys, we find entries of sundry visits to Fox-hall and the Spring Gardens, and “of the humours of the citizens pulling off cherries, and God knows what.” Again we are told, “to hear the nightingales and the birds, and here fiddlers, and there a harp, and here laughing, and there the people walking, is mighty diverting.” That respectable Secretary of the Admiralty also tells us of supper in an arbour, of ladies walking with their masks on, and his righteous soul was shocked to see “how rude some of the young gallants of the town are become,” and “the confidence of the vice of the age.” To Vauxhall Addison took Sir Roger de Coverley, and Goldsmith the Citizen of the World, who exclaimed, “Head of Confucius, this is fine! this unites rural beauty with courtly magnificence.” Here Fielding’s Amelia was enraptured with the extreme beauty and elegance of the place. Here Miss Burney gathered incidents for her once popular but now forgotten tales. And here Hogarth, for suggesting paintings, some of which still remain, was presented with a perpetual ticket of admission, and which was last used in 1836. Strange scenes have been done here. One of them is described by Horace Walpole, who graphically narrates how Lady Caroline Petersham stewed chickens over a lamp; and how Betty, the fruit girl, supped with them at a side table. All that is past. Dust and ashes are the fine lords and fine ladies who made Vauxhall the resort of folly and fashion – the fashion is gone, the folly remains. Yet never were there more funds subscribed for the conversion of the Jews, or more missionaries sent out to Timbuctoo.
Vauxhall is one of the delusions of London life. It lives on the past – a very common practice in this country, where real knowledge travels very slowly. When Smith comes up to London, his first Sunday he goes to hear the Rev. Mr. Flummery, thinking he is the popular preacher. Ah, Smith! Flummery has ceased to be a popular preacher these twenty years. “What a sweet girl is gone!” exclaims old Jones, as he hears of the death of an ancient flame. Jones forgets the sweet girl had become an old maid of seventy, and had not a tooth in her mouth or a lock of hair on her head but what was artificial. So with Vauxhall. It lives as many a man, or newspaper, or magazine, or institution, on its name. Judge for yourself if you won’t take my word. A cab will take you there from the Strand in half an hour, and for the very moderate sum of one shilling the gate will be unlocked and entrance effected. The specialty of the place is the blaze of lights from thousands of lamps. Supposing you to have got over the bewilderment created by their lustre, to eyes not accustomed to such “hall sof dazzling light,” you perceive a kind of square (the precise definition of it I leave to the mathematicians) with a dancing platform in the middle, a supper room on one side, and boxes all round, where refreshments and seats are supplied. Opposite to the supper-room is a lofty orchestra, glittering all over with many coloured lamps; further on and behind are walks, and trees, and a fountain, with gigantic horses snorting water through their nostrils, and a space for fireworks, the demand for which on the part of the pleasure seekers of the metropolis, if we may judge by the supply, is insatiable. Let us not forget also the Rotunda, a large building with pit, boxes, and gallery, chiefly devoted to horsemanship, neither worse nor better than what is usually seen at such places. The comic singing is a feature of the place. Popular comic songs are not very fresh, nor very witty nor refined, and require, when delivered in public, a good deal of elocution. The point must be apparent, and the emphasis clearly enunciated, but they are much the same here as elsewhere. When you have heard one or two of them, you have heard them all. So much by way of description. The people who come here are the people whose pleasures are of the lowest character; who are dependent on others; whose life is all outward rather than inward. They are not readers nor thinkers, you may be sure, but the class precisely to whom such places are as hurtful as they are attractive. If a man is to be known by the company he keeps, what are we to think of the habitués of Vauxhall? for after all life is, or ought to be, to us all a stern reality – a battle-field – a victory – not a pleasure garden, or a Vanity Fair; and even in London you may mix with better society than that of painted Traviatas or tipsy men. Smoking, dancing, drinking, is not all life; yet for such purposes Vauxhall solely exists. I much question, if London alone were concerned, so great is the rivalry in this particular style of amusement, whether Vauxhall would be a success; but the provincial element is amazingly strong. I account for that as follows. The railway system has done this for London. It has filled it with strangers. From the wilds of Connemara, from the distant Land’s End and remote John o’Groat’s, old and young, male and female, rich and poor, wise or foolish, come in shoals to see London and its sights. Now Vauxhall, and its illumination, and its slice of ham, have been the wonder of generations, and to Vauxhall away they rush. Their speech betrayeth them. Look at them. This party is from Lancashire. From the flowery fields of Somersetshire that party have come. Wales has sent her exciteable sons, and Scotland her reckless prodigals, for there are such even ayont the Tweed. Here we have some five or six – a father and mother, a daughter and her husband, and it may be a brother. Those giants were never reared within the sound of Bow bells, and to be impertinent to either the old lady or the young one were the height of folly. Their fashions are not ours, yet are they wondrous jolly; and, woe is me, the head of the family is exhibiting an agility as he bounds up and down as an elephant might, which is unbecoming his years. How is this? Why actually in a remote corner of the pocket, in the innermost depths of that ancient coat, there is a bottle of raw gin, which the old satyr puts to his own mouth, and then hands it to the rest of his party, by whom, in a similar manner, it is applied, till what is left would not hurt the conscience of a teetotaller to drink. It is well his “missus” is there to pilot him home, and the sooner he gets back to his Yorkshire wilds the better. Yet we have a sprinkling of town life. The reader must remember Vauxhall occupies altogether eleven acres of ground, and on one occasion upwards of 20,000 persons paid for admission. Look at that faded pair. Some forty years ago they were fast, as times went, and here they have come to have a peep at the old place, and to wonder how they cared so much about it then. There stands an old fogy of the Regency. Of what hideous debauch can he tell; and here stuffed, and painted, and bewigged, made up from top to toe, he has come to mourn, not to moralise, over the past. A sad sight is he; but sadder still are those pale-faced ones, of elaborate hair, and exquisitely fitting costumes and bewitching Balmorals, now dancing, now chaffing, now drinking, now uproariously merry, but all the time with wanton wiles seeking their human prey in the excitement of music, and laughter, and wine.
THE PENNY GAFF
Do my readers know Shoreditch? I do not mean the Eastern Counties Railway Station, but the regions dark and dolorous lying beyond. In an old map of London, by my side, dated 1560, I see it marked as a street with but one row of houses on each side, and the five windmills in Finsbury Fields not far off. Here stood the Curtain Theatre. In Stowe’s time there were in Shoreditch “two publique houses for the acting and shewe of comedies, tragedies, and histories for recreation.” Here, according to the learned and indefatigable Mr. Timbs, “at the Blue Last public-house, porter was first sold, about 1730.” And here still, if I may judge from the immense number of public-houses all round, the consumption of porter and other intoxicating liquors is still carried on on a somewhat extensive scale. Hard working and businesslike as Shoreditch is by day, with its clothes marts and extensive shoe depôts, by night it is a great place for amusement. Here are theatres where melodrama reigns supreme. Close by is the renowned Britannia Saloon. And here concerts exist where, over their beer, the listeners are regaled with the sentimental and comic songs of a generation long gathered to its fathers. To me I confess there is somewhat of pathos in these places. What tales cannot that ancient landlord tell! The young, the beautiful, the brave he has outlived, where are they?
But let us pass on to the penny theatre, a place not hard to find in this region of shell-fish and fruit-pie shops, those sure indications of a neighbourhood rather poor and very wild. We pay our money at the door, and then follow the direction given us by the businesslike young woman who takes the fee, “First turn to the left, and then to the right.” But instead of being allowed to enter at once, we have to wait with several others, chiefly boys, very dirty, who regard us apparently with no very favourable eye, till a fresh house is formed. Our new acquaintances are not talkative, and we are not sorry when our turn comes to enter the dirty hole set apart for the entertainment of the Shoreditch youth. We climb up a primitive staircase, and find ourselves in a gallery of the rudest description, a privilege for which we have to pay a penny extra. Here we have an ample view of the stage and the pit, the latter chiefly filled with boys, very dirty, and full of fun, with the usual proportion of mothers with excited babies. The performance commences with a panorama of American scenery, with some very stale American criticisms, about the man who was so tall that he had to go up a ladder to shave himself, and so on; all, however, exciting much mirth amongst the youthful and apple-eating audience. Then a young lady, with very short petticoats and very thick ancles, dances, and takes all hearts by storm. To her succeeds one who sings about true love, but not in a manner which the Shoreditch youthdom affects. Then a fool comes upon the stage, and keeps the pit in a roar, especially when he directs his wit to the three musicians who form the orchestra, and says ironically to one of them, “You could not drink a quartern of gin, could you?” and the way in which the allusion was received evidently implied that the enlightened but juvenile audience around me evidently had a very low opinion of a man who could not toss off his quartern of gin. Then we had the everlasting niggers, with the bones, and curiously-wrought long coats, and doubtful dialect, and perpetual laughter, which the excited pit copiously rewarded. One boy tossed a button on the stage, another a copper, and another an apple; and so pleasing was this liberality to the supposed young men of African descent, that they did not think it beneath them, or inconsistent with their dignity as professionals, to encourage it in every possible way. And well they might. Those gay blacks very likely had little white faces at home dependent on the liberality of the house for next day’s crust. But the treat of the evening was a screaming farce, in one act, in which the old tale of “Taming the Shrew” was set forth in the most approved Shoreditch fashion. A husband comes upon the stage, whose wife – I would not be ungallant, but conscientious regard to truth compels me sorrowfully to declare – is an unmitigated shrew. She lords it over her husband as no good woman ever did or wishes to do. The poor man obeys till he can stand it no longer. At length all his manhood is aroused. Armed with what he calls a persuader – a cudgel of most formidable pretensions – he astonishes his wife with his unexpected resistance. She tries to regain the mastery, but in vain; and great is the delight of all as the husband, holding his formidable instrument over his cowed and trembling wife, compels her to obey his every word. All the unwashed little urchins around me were furious with delight. There was no need for the husband to tell the audience, as he did, as the moral of the piece, that the best remedy for a bad wife was to get such another cudgel for her as that he held in his hand. It was quite clear the little Britons around me had resolved how they would act; and I fear, as they passed out to the number of about 200, few of them did not resolve, as soon as they had the chance, to drink their quartern of gin and to whop their wives.
