WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS.
The great middle-class--supposed, before the advent of Mr. Matthew
Arnold, to possess all the virtues; to be the backbone, stay, and prop
of the country--must have a chapter to itself.
In the first place, the middle-class was far more a class apart than it
is at present. In no sense did it belong to society. Men in professions
of any kind, except the two services, could only belong to society
by right of birth and family connections; men in trade--bankers were
still accounted tradesmen--could not possibly belong to society. That
is to say, if they went to live in the country they were not called
upon by the county families, and in town they were not admitted by the
men into their clubs, or by ladies into their houses. Those circles,
of which there are now so many--artistic, æsthetic, literary--all of
them considering themselves to belong to society, were then out of
society altogether; nor did they overlap and intersect each other. The
middle-class knew its own place, respected itself, made its own society
for itself, and cheerfully accorded to rank its reverence due. The
annals of the poor are meagre; only here and there one gets a glimpse
into their lives. But the middle-class is much better known, because
it has had prophets; nearly all the poets, novelists, essayists,
journalists, and artists have sprung from it. Those who adorned the
Thirties and the Forties--Hood, Hook, Galt, Dickens, Albert Smith,
Thackeray--all belonged to it; George Eliot, whose country towns are
those of the Thirties and the Forties, was essentially a woman of the
middle-class.
[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT
(Taken from the Drawing in ‘The Graphic’ by permission)]
Middle-class life--especially in the country--was dull, far, far
duller than modern life even in the quietest country town. The men had
their business; the women had the house. Incomes ran small; a great
deal was done at home that is now done out of it. There was a weekly
washing-day, when the house steamed with hot soap-suds, and the ‘lines’
were out upon the poles--they were painted green and were square--and
on the lines hung half the family linen. All the jam was made at home;
the cakes, the pies, and the puddings, by the wife and daughters; the
bread was home-made; the beer was home-brewed (and better beer than
good home-brewed no man need desire); all those garments which are
not worn outside were made at home. Everybody dined in the middle of
the day. Therefore, in the society of the country town dinner-parties
did not exist. On the other hand, there were sociable evenings, which
began with a sit-down tea, with muffins and tea-cakes, very delightful,
and ended with a hot supper. Tobacco was not admitted in any shape
except that of snuff into the better kind of middle-class house; only
working men smoked vulgar pipes; the Sabbath was respected; there
was no theatre nearer than the county town; the girls had probably
never seen a play; every man who respected himself ‘laid down’ port,
but there was little drinking of wine except on Sunday afternoons;
no one, not even the ladies, scorned the glass of something warm,
with a spoon in it, after supper. For the young there was a fair once
a year; now and then a travelling circus came along; there was a
lecture occasionally on an instructive subject, such as chemistry, or
astronomy, or sculpture; there were picnics, but these were rare; if
there were show places in the neighbourhood, parties were made to them,
and tea was festively taken among the ruins of the Abbey.
[Illustration: John Galt
-JOHN GALT-]
Fashion descends slowly; it is now the working man who takes his wife
into the country for tea: fifty years ago he took his wife nowhere, and
scorned tea. Open-air games and sports there were none; no lawn-tennis,
Badminton, or anything of that kind in those days; even croquet, which
is now so far lost in the mists of antiquity that men of thirty are
too young to remember the rage for it, was actually not yet invented.
Archery certainly existed, and the comic writers are always drawing
pictures of the young ladies sticking their arrows into the legs of
people a hundred feet or so wide of the target. But archery belonged
to a class rather above that which we are now considering. There was
not much sketching and painting. There was no amateur photography;
there was no catching of strange creatures in ponds for the aquarium--a
fashion also now happily extinct; there was not, in fact, any single
pursuit, amusement, or game which would bring young people together
in the open air. There was no travelling; the summer holiday had not
yet got down in the country. In London, to be sure, everybody down to
Bevis Marks and Simmery Axe went out of town and to the seaside in
July or August; but in the country nobody thought of such a thing; not
the vicar’s daughters, not the solicitor’s wife, not the family of the
general practitioner; the very schoolmaster, who got his four weeks in
the summer and his three at Christmas, spent them at home in such joy
as accompanies rest from labour. With no outdoor amusements, and with
no summer holiday, how much is life simplified! But the simplicity of
life means monotony--_faciunt vitam, balnea, vina, Venus_.
[Illustration: LA PASTOURELLE]
In the winter, things were somewhat different. In some towns there
was the county ball. At this function one had the pleasure of gazing
upon ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank and fashion, and of
observing that they kept to themselves like a Hindu caste, danced with
each other at the upper end of the room, cast disparaging glances at
the dresses of the ladies of the lower end, and sniffed at their manner
and appearance. This was true joy. There were also occasional dances at
home, but these were rare, because people had not learned how to meet
and dance without making a fuss over it, taking up carpets, putting
candles in tin sconces, keeping late hours, and having a supper, the
preparation of which was mainly done by the ladies of the house, and it
nearly killed them, and drove the servants--the genteel middle-class
family often got along with only one--to give notice. I think that the
dances which had gone out in London still lingered in the country.
There were, for instance, the Caledonians as well as the Lancers; there
were country dances without end, the very names of which are now lost;
the gentlemen performed the proper steps with grace and agility, while
the ladies were careful to preserve an attitude supposed the only
one possible for a lady while dancing, in which the figure was bent
forward, the face was turned up with the chin stuck out, while the
hands were occupied in holding up the dress to the regulation height.
The elders, meanwhile, played long whist at tables lit by candles which
wanted snuffing between the deals. The bashful youth of the party was
always covering himself with shame by his clumsiness in snuffing out
the candles, or, even if he succeeded in taking off the red-hot ball
of burnt thread, he too often neglected to close the instrument with
which he effected the operation, and thereby mightily offended the
nostrils of the company. When there was no dancing the younger members
began with a ‘little music.’ Their songs--how faded and stale they
seem now if one tries to sing them!--turned chiefly on the affections,
and the favourite poet was Felicia Hemans. After the little music they
sat down to a round game, of which there were a great many, such as
Commerce, Speculation, Vingt-et-Un, Limited Loo, or Pope Joan. The last
was played with a board. I remember the board--it was a round thing,
lacquered, and like a punch-bowl, but I think with divisions; as for
the game itself, and what was done with the board, I quite forget, but
both game and bowl lasted quite into the Fifties. Are there any country
circles now where they still play Pope Joan with mother-o’-pearl
counters, and after the game have a grand settlement, and exchange the
counters for silver and copper, some with chuckles, and others with
outward smiles but inward rage?
People were extremely punctilious on the subject of calls--one
remembers the call in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ The call was due at
regular intervals, so that even the day should almost be known on
which it was paid or returned. It was a ceremonial which necessitated
a great deal of ritual and make-believe. No one, for instance, was
to be surprised in doing any kind of work. There was a fiction in
genteel families that the ladies of the house never did anything
serious or serviceable after dinner; the afternoon was supposed to
be devoted either to walking, or to making calls, or to elegant
trifling at home. Therefore, if the girls were at the moment engaged
upon any useful work--many of them, poor things, never did anything
but useful work--they crammed it under the sofa, and pretended to be
reading a book, or painting, or knitting, or to be engaged in easy
and fashionable conversation. Why they went through this elaborate
pretence I have not the least idea, because everybody knew that every
girl in the place was always making, mending, cutting-out, basting,
gusseting, trimming, turning, and contriving. How do you suppose that
the solicitor’s daughters made so brave a show on Sundays if they were
not clever enough to make up things for themselves? Everybody, of
course, knew it, and why the girls would not own up at once one cannot
now understand. Perhaps it was a sort of suspicion, or a faint hope, or
a wild dream, that a reputation for ladylike uselessness might enable
them to cross the line at the County Ball, and mingle with the county
people.
Are there still any circles of society in which, if a lady with her
daughters calls upon another lady with her daughters, the decanters,
biscuits, and glasses are placed upon the table, and the visitors are
asked whether they will take port or sherry? This, fifty years ago,
was always done in country towns, and the visitors always took a glass
of port or sherry. In some houses it was not port and sherry that were
placed upon the table, but ‘red’ and ‘white.’ I do not know whether the
red was currant or raspberry, but I think that the white was generally
cowslip. When the visitors were gone, the ladies got out their work
again, threaded their needles, and spent an enjoyable hour or two in
discussing the appearance, the dress, the manners, and the resources
of their visitors. But the visit did them good, because it compelled
company manners, which are always good for girls, and it dragged them
a little out of themselves. They were too much _en famille_, these
girls; they were never separated from each other. The boys got out to
school or to business all day; but the poor girls were always together.
Side by side they did their household duties, side by side they sewed
and dressmaked, side by side they walked, side by side they prayed in
the church, side by side they slept. Small chance of happiness was
theirs--happiness is a separate, distinct, individual kind of thing,
in which one _can_ consult one’s own likes--until, in the fulness of
time, there came along the lover--a humdrum, commonplace kind of lover,
I dare say, but his sweetheart was as commonplace as himself--and she
exchanged a house, where she was a better kind of servant, for one of
exactly the same sort, in which she was the mistress. And when one says
mistress, it must be remembered that man was, in those days, much more
of a master in the house than he is now allowed to be. I speak not at
random, but from the evidence of those who remember and from study of
the literature, both that written by the men and that by the women. I
am certain that the husband, unless he was hen-pecked--a pleasing word,
now seldom used--was always the Master and generally the Tyrant in the
house.
Let me, with some diffidence, approach the subject of the Church in the
country town. I never truly understood the Church of fifty years ago
until, in the autumn of 1885, I perambulated with one who is jealous
for Church architecture and Church antiquities the north-east corner
of Norfolk, where there are many churches, and most of them are fine.
In our pilgrimage among these monuments we presently came upon one
at the aspect of which we were fain to sit down and weep. It was,
externally, an old and venerable structure, which might have been made
beautiful within. Plaster covered the walls, and hid the columns; the
interior of the church was crowded with high pews, painted white, and
having along the top a sham mahogany kind of hand-rail; the chancel
was encumbered with these enclosures, which hid the old brass-work;
that which belonged to the Squire was provided with red curtains on
brass rods to keep the common people from gazing at the Quality. The
reading-desk, pulpit, and altar were covered with a cloth which had
been red, but had long before faded away into an indescribably shabby
brown. The pulpit was not part of the old three-decker, but was stuck
into the wall; the windows had lost their old tracery; the painted
glass was gone; the roof was a flat whitewashed ceiling. The church, to
eyes accustomed to better things, presented a deplorable appearance. My
friend, pointing solemnly to the general shabbiness, remarked, ‘_Donec
templa refeceris_.’ It was the motto of the journal started early
in the Forties by a small knot of Cambridge men--among whom was Mr.
Beresford Hope, now, alas! no more--who desired to raise and beautify
public worship in the Anglican faith, and also, I believe, to assert
and insist upon certain points of doctrine. And they clearly perceived
that, while the churches remained in their neglected condition, and
church architecture was at its then low ebb, their doctrine was
impossible. How far they have succeeded not only the Ritualists
themselves proclaim, but also every other party in the Church, and even
the Nonconformists, who have shared in the increased beauty and fitness
of public worship.
[Illustration: THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT AFTER HER
CORONATION--WESTMINSTER ABBEY, JUNE 29, 1838.
(From the Picture by C. R. Leslie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)]
He who can remember the ordinary Church Services in the early Fifties
very well knows what they were in the Thirties, except that in the
latter there were still some venerable divines who wore a wig.
The musical part of the service was, to begin with, taken
slow--incredibly slow; no one now would, who is not old enough to
remember, believe how slow it was. The voluntary at the beginning was a
slow rumble; the Psalms were very slowly read by the clergyman and the
clerk alternately, the Gloria alone being sung, also to a slow rumble.
The choir was generally stationed in the organ loft, which has been
known to be built over the altar at the east end--as at St. Mary’s,
Cambridge--but was generally at the west end. It was not a choir of
boys and men only, but of women and men. The ‘Te Deum’ was always
‘Jackson’--from my youth up have I loathed ‘Jackson’; there was just
one lively bit in it for which one looked and waited; but it lasted a
very few bars; and then the thing dragged on more slowly than ever till
it came to the welcome words, ‘Let me never be confounded.’ Two hymns
were sung--very slowly; they were always of the kind which expressed
either the despair of the sinner or the doubtful joy of the believer.
I say doubtful, because he was constantly being warned not to be too
confident, not to mistake a vague hope for the assurance of election,
and because, with the rest of the congregation, he was always being
told how few in number were those elect, and how extremely unlikely
that there could be many of those few in that one flock. Read any of
the theological literature of the period, and mark the gulf that lies
between us and our fathers. There were many kinds of preachers, just as
at present--the eloquent, the high and dry, the low and threatening,
the forcible-feeble, the florid, the prosy, the scholarly--but they all
seemed to preach the same doctrine of hopelessness, the same Gospel
of Despair, the same Father of all Cruelty, the same Son who could at
best help only a few; and when any of the congregation dared to speak
the truth, which was seldom, these blasphemous persons whispered that
it was best to live and enjoy the present, and to leave off trying to
save their souls against such fearful odds, and with the knowledge that
if they were going to be saved it would be by election and by no merit
or effort of their own, while, if the contrary was going to happen, it
was no use striving against fate. Wretched, miserable creed! To think
that unto this was brought the Divine Message of the Son of Man! And to
think of the despairing deathbeds of the careless, the lifelong terror
of the most religious, and the agony of the survivors over the death of
one ‘cut off in his sins’!
What we now call the ‘life’ of the Church, with its meetings,
committees, fraternities, guilds, societies, and organisations, then
simply did not exist. The clergyman had an easy time; he visited
little, he had an Evening Service once a week, he did not pretend
to keep saints’ days and minor festivals and fasts--none of his
congregation expected him to keep them; as for his being a teetotaller
for the sake of the weaker brethren, that would have seemed to
everybody pure foolishness, as, indeed, it is, only people now run to
the opposite belief; yet he was a good man, for the most part, who
lived a quiet and exemplary life, and a good scholar--scholars are,
indeed, sadly to seek among the modern clergy--a sound theologian,
a judge of good port, and a gentleman. But processions, banners,
surpliced choirs, robes, and the like, he would have regarded as
unworthy the consideration of one who was a Churchman, a Protestant,
and a scholar.
To complete this brief study of the Church fifty years ago, let us
remark that out of 11,500 livings which it possessed, 3,000 were under
100_l._ and 1,000 under 60_l._ a year, that there were 6,080 pluralists
and 2,100 non-residents, that the Dissenters had only been allowed to
marry in their own chapels and by their own clergy in the year 1831,
that they were not admitted, as Dissenters, to the Universities, and
that the incomes of some of the Bishops were enormous.
[Illustration: FASHIONS FOR AUGUST, 1836
FASHIONS FOR MARCH, 1837]
As for Art, in the house or out of it, Art in pictures, sculpture,
architecture, dress, furniture, fiction, oratory, acting, the
middle-class person, the resident in the country town, knew nothing of
it. His church was most likely a barn, his own house was four-square,
his furniture was mahogany, his pictures were coloured engravings,
the ornaments of his rooms were hideous things in china, painted red
and white, his hangings were of a warm and comfortable red, his sofas
were horsehair, his drawing-room was furnished with a round table,
on which lay keepsakes and forget-me-nots; but as the family never
used the room, which was generally kept locked, it mattered little
how it was furnished. He dressed, if he was an elderly gentleman, in
a spencer, buttoned tight, a high black satin stock, and boots up to
his knees--very likely he still carried his hair in a tail. If he was
young, he had long and flowing hair, waved and curled with the aid of
pomade, bear’s grease, and oil; he cultivated whiskers, also curled
and oiled all round his face; he wore a magnificent stock, with a
liberal kind of knot in the front: in this he stuck a great pin; and
he was magnificent in waistcoats. As for the ladies’ dresses, I cannot
trust myself to describe them; the accompanying illustration will be
of service in bringing the fashion home to the reader. But this is
the effigy of a London and a fashionable lady. Her country cousin
would be two or three years, at least, behind her. Well, the girls
had blooming cheeks, bright eyes, and simple manners. They were much
more retiring than the modern maiden; they knew very little of young
men and their manners, and the young men knew very little of them--the
novels of the time are full of the shyness of the young man in presence
of the maiden. Their ideas were limited, they had strong views as to
rank and social degrees, and longed earnestly for a chance of rising
but a single step; their accomplishments were generally contemptible,
and of Art they had no idea whatever. How should they have any idea
when, year after year, they saw no Art, and heard of none? But they
were good daughters, who became good wives and good mothers--our own,
my friends--and we must not make even a show of holding them up to
ridicule.
One point must not be forgotten. In the midst of all this conventional
dulness there was, in the atmosphere of the Thirties, a certain love
of romance which showed itself chiefly in a fireside enthusiasm for
the cause of oppressed races. Poland had many friends; the negro--they
even went so far in those days as to call him a brother--was warmly
befriended; the case of the oppressed Greek attracted the good
wishes of everybody. Now, sympathy with oppression that is unseen
may sometimes be followed by sympathy with the oppression which is
before the eyes; so that one is not surprised to hear that the case
of the women and the children in the mines and the factories was
soon afterwards taken seriously in hand. The verse which then formed
so large a part of family reading had a great deal to do with the
affections, especially their tearful side; while the tales they loved
the best were those of knights and fair dames of adventure and romance.
[Illustration: Yours faithfully
Theodore S Hook
-THEODORE HOOK-]
A picture by Du Maurier in _Punch_ once represented a man singing
a comic song at an ‘At Home.’ Nobody laughed; some faces expressed
wonder; some, pity; some, contempt; a few, indignation; but not one
face smiled. Consider the difference: in the year 1837 every face would
have been broadened out in a grin. Do we, therefore, laugh no more?
We do not laugh so much, certainly, and we laugh differently. Our
comic man of society still tells good stories, but he no longer sings
songs; in his stories he prefers the rapier or the jewelled dagger to
the bludgeon. Those who desire to make the acquaintance of the comic
man, as he was accepted in society and in the middle-class, should
read the works of Theodore Hook and of Albert Smith. To begin with, he
played practical jokes; he continually played practical jokes, and he
was never killed, as would now happen, by his victims. I am certain
that we should kill a man who came to our houses and played the jokes
which then were permitted to the comic man. He poured melted butter
into coat pockets at suppers; he turned round signposts, and made them
point the wrong way, in order to send people whither they did not
wish to go. It may be remarked that his tricks were rarely original.
He wrenched off door-knockers; he turned off the gas at the meter; he
tied strings across the river to knock people backwards in their boats;
he tied two doors together, and then rang both bells, and waited with
a grin from ear to ear; he rang up people in the dead of the night on
any pretext; he filled keyholes with powdered slate-pencil when the
master of the house was coming home late; he hoaxed innocent ladies,
and laughed when they were nearly driven mad with worry and terror; he
went to masquerades, carrying a tray full of medicated sweets--think of
such a thing!--which he distributed, and then retired, and came back in
another dress to gaze upon the havoc he had wrought. Again, it was a
time when candles were still carried about the house, and, as yet, it
was thought that gas in bedrooms was dangerous. He dipped the candles
waiting for the ladies when they went to bed into water, so that they
spluttered and went out, and made alarming fireworks when they were
lit; and then, to remove the horrible smell, the candles being of
tallow, he offered to burn pastilles, but these were confections of
gunpowder and water, and caused the liveliest emotions, and sent the
poor ladies upstairs in an agony of nervous terror.
[Illustration: WATCHMAN
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘London Characters’)]
There was no end to the tricks of this abominable person. Once he
received an invitation to a great ball, which a Royal Personage was
to honour with his presence. The Royal Personage was to be regaled
in a special supper-room, apart from the common herd. The table had
been laid in this room with the most elaborate care and splendour:
down the middle of the table there meandered a beautiful canal filled
with gold and silver fish--a contrivance believed in those remote
ages to set off and greatly increase the beauty of a supper table.
Our ingenious friend quickly discovered that the room was accessible
from the garden, where some workmen were still putting the finishing
touches to their work, the men who had constructed the marquee, and had
arranged the lamps and things. He went, therefore, into the garden:
he invited these workmen to partake of a little refreshment, led them
into the Royal supper-room, and begged them to help themselves, and
to spare nothing: in a twinkling the tables were cleared. He then put
certain chemicals into the canal, which instantly killed every fish:
this done, he returned to the ballroom, and waited for the moment when
the Illustrious Personage, the hostess on his arm, should enter that
supper-room, and gaze upon those empty dishes.
On another occasion, he discovered that a respectable butler was in the
habit of creeping upstairs, in order to listen to the conversation,
leaving his slippers, in _position_, at the head of the kitchen stairs.
He therefore hid himself while the poor man, after adjusting the
slippers, walked noiselessly upstairs. He then hammered a tintack into
the heel of each slipper, and waited again, until a confederate gave
the alarm, and the fat butler, hurrying down, slipped one foot into
each slipper, and--went headlong into the depths below, and was nearly
killed. ‘Never laughed so much in all my life, sir.’
At Oxford, of course, he enjoyed himself wonderfully. For, with a party
of chosen friends, he met no less a person than the Vice-Chancellor,
at ten or eleven at night, going home alone, and peacefully. To raise
that personage, lift him on their shoulders, crown him with a lamp
cover, and carry him triumphantly to the gates of his own College,
was not only a great stroke of fun, but a thing not to be resisted.
And he blew up the group of Cain and Abel in the Quadrangle of
Brasenose. And what he did with proctors, bulldogs, and the like,
passeth all understanding. It was at Oxford that the funny man made
the acquaintance of the Major. Now the Major was in love, but he was
no longer so young as he had been, and his hair was getting thin
on the top--a very serious thing in the days of long hair, wavy,
curled, singed, and oiled, flowing gracefully over the ears and the
coat-collar. The Major, in an evil moment, commissioned the Practical
Joker, whose character, one would think, must have been well known, to
procure for him a bottle of a certain patent hair-restorer. Of course,
the Joker brought him a bottle of depilatory mixture, which being
credulously accepted, and well rubbed in, deprived the poor Major of
every hair that was left. It is needless to relate how, when he was
at Richmond with a party of ladies, the introduction of the ‘maids of
honour’ was a thing not to be resisted; and one can quite understand
how one of the young ladies was led on to ordering, in addition to
another ‘maid of honour,’ a small Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, if
they had one quite cold.
The middle-class of London, before the development of omnibuses, lived
in and round the City of London, Bloomsbury being the principal suburb;
many thousands of well-to-do people, merchants and shopkeepers, lived
in the City itself, and were not ashamed of their houses, and filled
the City churches on the Sunday. Some lived at Clapham, Camberwell, and
Stockwell on the south; a great many at Islington, where a vigorous
offshoot of the great city ran through the High Street past Sadler’s
Wells as far as Highbury; a few even lived at Highgate and Hampstead.
There were the ‘short’ stages from London to all these places, but, so
far as can be gathered, most of those who lived in these suburbs before
the days of the omnibus had their own carriages, and drove to town and
home again every day. On Sunday they entertained their friends, and the
young gentlemen of the City delighted to hire horses and ride down.
The comic literature of the time is full of the Cockney horseman. It
will be remembered how Mr. Horatio Sparkins rode gallantly from town to
dine with his hospitable friends on Sunday.
[Illustration: A SCENE ON BLACKHEATH
By ‘Phiz’
(From ‘Sketches in London,’ by James Grant)]
The manners and customs of the Islington colony, which may, I suppose,
be taken for the suburban and Bloomsbury people generally--except
that Russell and Bedford Squares were very, very much grander--may
be read in Albert Smith’s ‘Adventures of Mr. Ledbury,’ his ‘Natural
History of the Gent,’ ‘The Pottleton Legacy,’ and other contemporary
works. Very good reading they are, if approached in the right spirit,
which is a humble and an inquiring spirit. Many remarkable things
may be learned from these books. For instance, would you know how the
middle-class evening party was conducted? Here are a few details. The
gentlemen, of whose long and wavy hair I have already spoken, wore,
for evening dress, a high black stock, the many folds of which covered
the shirt, and were enriched by a massive pin; the white shirt-cuffs
were neatly turned over their wrists, their dress-coats were buttoned,
their trousers were tight, and they wore straps and pumps. The ladies
either wore curls neatly arranged on each side--you may still see some
old ladies who have clung to the pretty fashion of their youth--or
they wore their hair dropped in a loop down the cheek and behind the
ear, and then fastened in some kind of band with ribbons at the back
of the head. The machinery of the frocks reminds one of the wedding
morning in ‘Pickwick,’ when all the girls were crying out to be ‘done
up,’ for they had hooks and eyes, and the girls were helpless by
themselves. Pink was the favourite colour--and a very pretty colour
too; and there was plenty of scope for the milliner’s art in lace and
artificial flowers. The elder ladies were magnificent in turbans, and
the younger ones wore across the forehead a band of velvet or silk
decorated with a gold buckle, or something in pearls and diamonds. This
fashion lingered long. I remember--it must have been about the year
1850--a certain elderly maiden lady who always wore every day and all
day a black ribbon across her brows; this alone gave her a severe and
keep-your-distance kind of expression; but, in addition, the ribbon
contained in the middle, if I remember aright, a steel buckle--though
a lady, one thinks, would hardly wear a steel buckle on her forehead.
Sometimes there was a wreath of flowers worn like a coronet, and
sometimes, but I think hardly in Islington, a tiara of jewels. In
middle-class circles, the fashion of evening dress was marred by a
fashion, common to both sexes, of wearing cleaned gloves. Now kid
gloves could only be cleaned by one process, so that the result was an
effect of turps which could not be subdued by any amount of patchouli
or eau-de-Cologne. There were, as yet, no cards for the dances, and
when a waltz was played, everybody was afraid to begin. Quadrilles of
various kinds were danced, and the country dance yet lingered at this
end of the town. The polka came later. Dancing was stopped whenever
any young lady could be persuaded to sing, and happy was the young
man whose avocations permitted him to wear the delightful moustaches
forbidden in the City and in all the professions. Young Templars wore
them until they were called, when they had to be shaved. For a City man
to wear a moustache would have been ruin and bankruptcy.
[Illustration: MAID SERVANT
(From a Drawing by Cruikshank in ‘London Characters’)]
Other portions of Albert Smith’s works, if read with discernment, will
enable one to make discoveries of some interest. One is that our modern
’Arry is really a survival, not, as is sometimes believed, a growth
of modern days. His ally and mistress, ’Arriet, does not seem to have
existed at all fifty years ago; at least there is no mention of her;
but ’Arry flourished. He did really dreadful things. He was even worse
than the Practical Joker. When he took Titus Ledbury abroad, he went
into the cathedrals on purpose to spill the holy water, to blow out
the candles, and to make faces at the women kneeling at their prayers;
he got barrel-organs into lofts and invited men to bring grisettes
and dance all night, with a supper brought from the _charcuterie_;
wherever there was jumping, dancing, singing, and riot, ’Arry was to
the fore. On board the steamer he seized a bottle of stout and took up
a prominent and commanding position, where he drank it before all the
world, smoking cigars, and laughing loudly at the poor people who were
ill. At home, he wrenched off knockers, played practical jokes, drank
more stout, ate oysters, chaffed bar-maidens, and called for brandy
and water continually. He was loud in his dress and in his voice; he
was insolent, caddish, and offensive in his manners. Generally, one
thinks, he would end his career in Whitecross Street, or the Fleet,
or the Queen’s Bench. Doubtless, however, there are still among us
old gentlemen who now sit at church on Sunday with venerable white
hair, among their children and grandchildren, and while the voice of
the preacher rises and falls, their memory wanders back to the days
when they danced and sang with the grisettes, when they wrenched the
knockers, when they went from the theatre to the Coal Cellar, and from
the Coal Cellar to the Finish; and came home with unsteady step and
light purse in the grey of the morning.
The Debtors’ Prison belonged chiefly to the great middle-class. Before
them stalked always a grisly spectre, called by some Insolvency and
by others Bankruptcy. This villainous ghost seized its victims by the
collar and haled them within the walls of a Debtors’ Prison, where
it made them abandon hope, and abide there till the day of death.
Everybody is familiar with the inside of the Fleet, the Queen’s Bench,
the Marshalsea, and Whitecross Street. They are all pulled down now,
and the only way to get imprisoned for debt is to incur contempt of
court, for which Holloway is the reward. But what a drop from the
humours of the Queen’s Bench, with its drinking, tobacco, singing, and
noisy revelry, to the solitary cell of Holloway Prison! The Debtors’
Prison is gone, and the world is the better for its departure. Nowadays
the ruined betting-man, the rake, the sharper, the profligate, the
fraudulent bankrupt, have no prison where they can carry on their
old excesses again, though in humbler way. They go down--below the
surface--out of sight, and what they do, and how they fare, nobody
knows, and very few care.