HOW LONDON IS AMUSED.
To pass from rum to amusement is a very easy and natural transition, for
unfortunately the people who drink are, as a rule, those who need and
will have amusement. Having done with liquor forever, I am glad to get
to a subject not quite so disagreeable.
London supports forty theaters proper; that is, forty theaters devoted
entirely to dramatic or operatic representations, and several hundred
places of amusement of all kinds, which may be classed as variety shows.
The regular theaters are a long way beyond those in America. I dislike
to acknowledge this, but candor and fairness compels it. I cannot tell a
lie, even for national pride. My hatchet is bright--it has never been
used much. The London theaters will not compare with those of any of the
large American cities in point of size, or convenience of access. They
are generally situated in out of the way places, and the halls and
entrances are as shabby as anything can be, but when you are once in
nothing can be more delightful. There is a softness in the appointments,
a perfection in the furnishing, a good taste generally that America has
not. We are splendid, but it must be confessed, rather garish and loud.
The character of the performances excels the style of the theaters.
Their pieces are put upon the stage with an attention to detail, and
with a strength of cast which we at home never see, even in the best.
[Sidenote: THE LONDON THEATERS.]
I witnessed a piece at the St. James, the time of which was the First
Charles. In a drawing-room scene musical instruments
[Illustration: ST. THOMAS HOSPITAL AND HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.]
were necessary. In America it would have been nothing singular had a
Chickering piano been used, and a parlor set in reps. Imagine the
delight of seeing a drawing-room furnished with furniture of the period,
with an old harpsichord, such as the ladies of the time used, with the
ancient zittern, and the gorgeous harp, with the chairs and couches
precisely as they were in the country house of the time. The costumes
were not mere guess work--they were designed and constructed by a
professional costumer, who made studies from pictures, and put upon the
stage men and women of King Charles' day. This was a delight, in and of
itself, that paid one for his time and expenditure, even if he cared
nothing for the play.
And then the acting. If there is any one thing in the way of amusements
that is utterly and fiendishly detestable, it is the acting of the usual
child. The mother or father who trains the ten year old phenomenon to
play children's parts, takes it as far away from childhood as he can
possibly, and the child does not play a child at all. He does, or tries
to do, _Hamlet_, in children's clothes. But nothing of the sort is
permitted in London. The child plays the child, and does it as it should
be done. It was a comfort to see two children on the floor in one scene,
playing at the game of "See-saw, Margery Daw," and doing it exactly as
children would do in real life, instead of mouthing the lines like an
old-style actor in "Macbeth."
And all the way down there was the same perfection in the acting as in
the setting of the piece. There was not one star and twenty "sticks," as
is the rule over the water, but the servant who merely said, "My lord,
the carriage waits," did that bit just as well as the hero or heroine of
the piece.
The Englishman is a very thorough sort of a man, and wants what he has
done well, according to his notion of what well is.
The places of amusement, other than the regular theaters, are of as
great variety as they are vast in number. The prevailing attraction is,
of course, the regular variety theater, which does not differ materially
from its brother in America. It is singular that the stock attraction at
the variety theater is the negro minstrel act. Minstrelsy originated in
America forty years ago, but it has as firm a hold upon England as it
has upon America, and a trifle firmer. No programme is complete without
it, and no part of the performances are so heartily enjoyed.
But their minstrelsy would drive an American negro crazy. It is
sufficient for a London audience to have a performer black his face and
hands, and put on a long-tailed coat, and striped trowsers, and sing
negro songs. The rich, mellow accent of the American African, the
rollicking humor, the funny grotesqueness, all that is wanting. At any
music hall you shall hear the songs popular in America sung by a cockney
with all the cockney peculiarities of speech, even to the misplacing of
the h's.
The leg business is even more common and more indecent than in America,
and variety performance is more highly flavored generally. Magic and
athletic performances are greatly in favor, albeit fine vocalism and
instrumental performance of a very high character must be interspersed.
These variety performances are attended by all classes. The respectable
mechanic and his family, the professional man and his family, the thief,
pickpocket, and prostitute, are all mingled in one common mass, the only
division being the prices in different parts of the house. And here, as
everywhere, drinking goes on incessantly and forever. Waiters move about
through the audience, taking orders for beverages, and men and women
drink and guzzle, and men smoke during the entire performance. No matter
what else stops, the flow of beer never does. It is very like Time in
this particular, constantly moving.
The life of a variety actor is a very busy one after eight at night. If
he has any popularity at all he has engagements at three and even four
theaters. He sings one song and responds to three _encores_, then
throwing himself into a cab he is driven to another and to another, the
time of his appearance at each being fixed to a minute.
[Sidenote: AN ENGLISH IDEA OF A GOOD TIME.]
Singular as it may seem, the wretches who sing the most idiotic songs,
of the "champagne Charley" kind, compositions so utterly and entirely
stupid that one wonders that any audience would endure them for a
minute, are the most popular. They sing them in extravagant evening
costumes, in the most doleful and melancholy way, and call themselves
"comiques." One of them, probably the nearest approach to an idiot of
any man on the English stage, makes from two hundred to three hundred
dollars a week, and is in demand all the time.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A VARIETY HALL.]
But they have a good time at these theaters. To hear a woman sing a
slang song dressed--or rather undressed--is not calculated to inflict
much wear and tear upon the mind, and as all the performances are of the
alleged humorous order there is abundant room for chaff and talk of like
cheerful nature, which is further aided and promoted by the consumption
of beer. The parties seem to enjoy it, and I presume they do.
The low Londoner has very brutal tastes. His greatest delight is a prize
fight; a dog fight comes next in his estimation; a rat pit is
satisfactory in default of anything more bloody; a cock-fight will
answer as an appetizer; and a horse race is pleasing, though that shades
up into something too near respectability for him.
A dog fight in London is a sight that is worth seeing just once, if
studies of _in_human nature are what you want. The arena is always
behind a "sporting public," on whose tables in the parlor you shall
always find the flash and sporting papers of the metropolis, and the
walls of which are decorated with engravings of prize fights, portraits
of famous dogs, and highly colored lithographs of noted horse
encounters.
Gathered around the arena will be a hundred or more of "the fancy," who
were to me anything but fancy. They are the broad-jawed, soap-locked,
sturdy brutes, of the Bill Sykes type, beer-bloated and gin-inflamed,
who subsist by practices which, if not absolutely criminal, come as
close to it as possible.
The dogs are of the English bull variety, those plucky, tenacious brutes
who will die rather than yield, or even make any manifestation of pain.
At the signal the brute dogs are let loose upon each other, the human
dogs about expressing the keenest possible delight at any especial and
exceedingly bloody performance. The highest pleasure is attained, and
the wildest enthusiasm is evoked, when one dog gets the shoulder or jaw
of the other in his iron jaws, and holds it there, while the other
literally eats him up. Then wagers are laid as to which will hold out
the longest, and every movement is watched with the keenest solicitude,
and when the bloody drama ends in the death of one or both, and the
wagers are settled, the conversation flows naturally into a dog channel,
and the victories and defeats of past years are discussed, much as
soldiers discuss their achievements.
[Sidenote: PUNCH AND JUDY.]
Dogs of this breed, of approved courage and strength, are of great
value, and large sums of money are hazarded upon their performances. The
aristocratic dog fanciers can have a private match made for them at any
time for from one to five pounds.
Of course there are any quantity of aquariums and menageries, and
institutions of a supposed usefully scientific nature, which are largely
attended, but the variety theater, or music hall, as it is called, is
the stock amusement of the Londoner. He can drink to better advantage in
them than anywhere else, and that, after all, is the principal business
of his life.
The street amusements are beyond any possibility of enumeration or
description. You will not walk a dozen blocks without seeing the very
absurd and very brutal Punch and Judy, which has delighted England for
centuries, and seems to be immortal. One would naturally suppose that
when a boy had laughed at two wooden figures manipulated by a man inside
of a box, knocking each other on the head, with squeaks and idiotic
dialogue, every day up to his twenty-first year, would naturally pass it
by ever afterward, but it is not so. I have seen venerable men, who were
doubtless bank presidents or clergymen, or something of the eminently
respectable kind, stop in front of a Punch and Judy show, and laugh as
heartily at the ancient performance as they did when they were boys in
roundabouts. And they would stand out the performance, and at its
conclusion give the performer their two pence, and go away as if they
had been amused.
There never has been any change in Punch and Judy from the time it was
brought to England from Italy. The fun is now, as then, in Punch
knocking Judy on the head with his stick, and the shrieks of Judy with
an expression on her face of enjoyment. That is all there is of it, and
all there ever has been. And singular as it may seem, it is the first
amusement of an English boy, and it delights him till he dies. He
enjoyed it at eight, and just the same at eighty. No doubt he has a
vague idea that he will find a Punch and Judy show in heaven when he
reaches it.
But Punch and Judy shows are not all the amusements of the great city.
Garden hose not being common, owing to the fewness of gardens and the
limited use of water, the hand organ flourishes in all its native
ferocity, the grinders being, as over the water, Italian noblemen with
their wives. And they are just as dirty and grimy here as there. The
mixed brass and string banditti perambulate the streets making the day
and early night hideous, and in the side streets where the policeman is
infrequent the street juggler plies his vocation.
[Illustration: THE MAGIC PURSE.]
[Sidenote: MUSICAL NUISANCES.]
One, for instance, has a common purse with four shillings. He places the
four shillings in the purse, the country yokel sees them placed therein,
and he chinks the purse. So far as the countrymen's eyes and ears go
there can be no doubt as to the fact of the four shillings being in the
purse. Then the fakir offers to sell the purse to the countryman for
sixpence, which, were the shillings actually inside, would certainly be
a bargain. The countryman pays the sixpence, and straightway opens the
purse, but he does not find the sixpence therein. It is as empty as his
head. He finds that he has paid sixpence for a purse dear at a penny,
and he retires amid the jeers of the populace.
As the clever juggler only finds a few victims each day, and as from
each he makes only ten cents, I don't see how he expects to ever retire
from business and live upon his hard earned capital. The skill,
knowledge of human nature, and hard work necessary to the successful
prosecution of this little swindle would make him rich, with half the
wear and tear. But such men would rather work a day to swindle somebody
out of sixpence than to earn a dollar by honest work in a quarter of the
time. That is why I shall never go into the business of juggling with
four shillings and a penny purse. It is disreputable, and then it
doesn't pay.
Couples of negro minstrels are a common sight on the streets, one armed
with a banjo, and another with a concertina, that he plays with an
atrocious disregard of time and tune, which under a despotism would
consign him to a block. They roam from house to house and play, as they
call it. The helpless family, worried to the very verge of madness,
throw them sixpence, and they move on. They stand and play till they get
their sixpence. The race is not as it was in Jem Bagg's day. He played
the clarionet. "Ven the man tosses me a sixpence," was his remark, and
says 'Now, my good man, move hon,' I gently says to him, says I, 'I
never moves hon for a sixpence. I knows the vally of peace and quietness
too much for that, and then, hif 'e doesn't throw me another sixpence, I
tips him my corkscrew hovertoor, and that halways fetches 'im.'"
In this degenerate day either the street musicians have forgotten their
"corkscrew overtoors," or they are satisfied with less money. A sixpence
moves them on now certainly, but woe be to you if you are short the
sixpence.
Next door to me lives a deaf man who is a bachelor. It is his delight to
have the musicians come to this house. He sits in the doorway, and they
play and play, and he assumes an ecstatic expression, and they wonder
why he doesn't order them to "move on," but he doesn't. It amuses him,
and they play, till, lost in amazement at his powerful endurance, they
put up their instruments sadly and move on of their own accord. I get
very little amusement out of him now. The majority of the fiends have
found him out.
[Illustration: THE MAN WHO WAS MUSIC PROOF.]