I fear the first impression made upon the mind of the careful observer is
that, as regards amusements, the mass of the people are deteriorating
very rapidly, that we are more frivolous and childish and silly in this
way than our fathers. One has no right to expect anything very
intellectual in the way of amusements. People seek them, and naturally,
as a relief from hard work. A little amusement now and then is a
necessity of our common humanity, whether rich or poor, high or low,
sinner or saint; and of course, in the matter of amusements, we must
allow people a considerable latitude according to temperament and age and
education, and the circumstances in which they are placed. In these days
no one advocates a Puritanical restraint and an abstinence from the
pleasures of the world. We have a perfect right to everything that can
lighten the burden of life, and can make the heart rejoice. It was not a
pleasant sign of the times, however, when the people found an amusement
in bull-baiting, cock-fighting, boxing, going to see a man hanged; nor is
it a pleasant sign of the tunes when, night after night, tens of
thousands of our fellow-countrymen are forced into shrieks of laughter by
exhibitions as idiotic as they are indecent. A refined and educated
people will seek amusements of a refining character. If the people, on
the contrary, rejoice in the slang and filthy innuendoes, and low dancing
and sensational gymnastics of the music-hall, what are we to think? The
music-hall is quite an invention of modern days. In times not very
remote working men were satisfied with going into a public-house—having
there their _quantum suff._ of less adulterated beer than they can get
now—and sometimes they got into good society at such places. For
instance, we find Dr. Johnson himself a kind of chairman of an ale-house
in Essex Street, Strand, where, for a small fee, you might walk up and
see the Doctor as large as life and hear him talk. At a later day the
bar-parlour, or whatever it might be called, of the public-house, was the
place in which men gathered to talk politics, and to study how they could
better themselves. When Bamford, the Lancashire Radical, came to town in
1817, the working men were principally to be found discussing politics in
all the London public-houses. One such place he visited and describes:
“On first opening the door,” he writes, “the place seemed dimmed by a
suffocating vapour of tobacco curling from the cups of long pipes, and
issuing from the mouths of the smokers in clouds of abominable odour,
like nothing in the world more than one of the unclean fogs of the
streets, though the latter were certainly less offensive and probably
less hurtful. Every man would have his half-pint of porter before him;
many would be speaking at once, and the hum and confusion would be such
as gave an idea of there being more talkers than thinkers, more speakers
than listeners. Presently, ‘order’ would be called, and comparative
silence restored; a speaker, stranger, or citizen would be announced with
much courtesy or compliment. ‘Hear, hear, hear,’ would follow, with
clapping of hands and knocking of knuckles on the tables till the
half-pints danced; then a speech with compliments to some brother orator
or popular statesman; next a resolution in favour of Parliamentary
reform, and a speech to second it; an amendment on some minor point would
follow; a seconding of that; a breach of order by some individual of warm
temperament, half-a-dozen would rise to set him right, a dozen to put
them down; and the vociferation and gesticulation would become loud and
confounding.” Such things are out of fashion nowadays. Political
discussion requires a certain amount of intellectual capacity. In London
there are but few discussion forums now, and the leading one is so
fearfully ventilated and so heavily charged with the fumes of stale
tobacco and beer, that it is only a few who care to attend. I remember
when there were three very close together and well attended. I remember
also when we had a music-hall in the City. It was not a particularly
lively place of resort. We used to have “The Bay of Biscay” and “The
Last Rose of Summer,” and now and then a comic song, while the visitor
indulged in his chop or beef-steak and the usual amount of alcoholic
fluid considered necessary on such occasions. But now we have changed
all that, and the simple-hearted frequenter of Dr. Johnson’s Tavern
half-a-century back would be not a little astonished with the modern
music-hall, which differs _in toto cælo_ from the public-house to which
in old-fashioned days a plain concert-room was attached.
A glance at the modern music-hall will show us whether we have improved
on our ancestors. In one respect you will observe it is the same.
Primarily it is a place in which men and women are licensed to drink.
The music is an after-thought, and if given is done with the view to keep
the people longer in these places and to make them drink more.
Externally the music-hall is generally a public-house. It may have a
separate entrance, but it is a public-house all the same, and you will
find that you can easily go from one to the other. In the music-hall
itself the facilities for drink are on every side. There are generally
two or three bars at which young ladies are retained to dispense whatever
beverages may be required. In the stalls there are little tables on
which the patrons of the establishment place their glasses of grog or
beer. A boy comes round with cigars and programmes for sale. All the
evening waiters walk up and down soliciting your orders. It is thus to
the drink, and not to the payment made for admission, that the proprietor
looks to recoup himself for his outlay—and that is considerable. A
popular music-hall singer makes his forty pounds a week; not, however, by
singing at one place all the week, but by rushing from one to the other,
and the staff kept at any music-hall of any pretensions is considerable.
Internally, the music-hall is arranged as a theatre—with its stage,
orchestra, pit, galleries, and boxes.
“Don’t you think,” said the manager of one of the theatres most warmly
patronised by the working classes, to a clerical friend of mine, “don’t
you think I am doing good in keeping these people out of the
public-houses all night?”
My clerical friend was compelled to yield a very reluctant assent. In
the case of the music-hall nothing of the kind can be said in
extenuation. It is only a larger and handsomer and more attractive kind
of drinking shop. In one respect it may be said to have an advantage.
Mostly of a night, about the bars of common public-houses and
gin-palaces, there are many unfortunate women drinking either by
themselves or with one another, or with their male companions. In the
music-hall “the unfortunate female” element—except in the more central
ones, where they swarm like wolves or eagles in search of their prey—is
absent, or, at any rate, not perceptible. The workman takes there his
wife and family, and the working man the young woman with whom he keeps
company. There can be no harm in that? you say. I am not quite sure.
Let me give one case as an illustration of many similar which have come
under my own observation.
A girl one evening went with a friend, an omnibus conductor, to a
music-hall. She was well plied with drink, which speedily took an effect
on her brain, already affected by the gas and glare, and life and bustle
of the place. The girl was a fine, giddy, thoughtless girl of the
maid-of-all-work order. In the morning when she awoke she found herself
in a strange room with her companion of the preceding night. What was
the result? She dared not go back to her place. She was equally afraid
to go home. I need not ask the reader to say what became of her. Let
him question the unfortunate women who crowd the leading thoroughfares of
a night how they came to be what they are. It is a fact, I believe, that
no censorship is applied to music-hall performances, and that the only
censorship is that of the audience. The audience, be it remembered,
begins to drink directly the doors are opened, and remains drinking all
the time till they are closed; and you may be sure that in a mob of two,
or sometimes, as is the case, three thousand people, that the higher is
the seasoning and the lower the wit, and the more abundant the _double
entendre_, the greater is the applause, and the manager, who sits in an
arm-chair at the back of the orchestra and in front of the audience,
takes note of that. In the days of the Kembles, Mrs. Butler notes how
the tendency of actors was not so much to act well as to make points and
bring down the house. Especially does she deplore Braham’s singing as
much to be censured in this respect, and as unworthy of his high powers
and fame. In the music-hall this lower style of acting and singing
becomes a necessity. The people go to be amused, and the actor must
amuse them. If he can stand on his head and sing, immense would be the
applause. If he is unequal to this, he must attempt something equally
absurd, or he must have dogs and monkeys come to his aid; and perhaps
after all he will find himself outrivalled by a Bounding Brother or a
wonderful trapeze performer. If the music-hall proprietor in a northern
city had prevailed on Peace’s mistress, Miss Thompson, to have appeared
on his stage, what a fortune he would have made.
The other night I went into one of the largest of our music-halls, not a
hundred miles away from what was once Rowland Hill’s Chapel. There must
have been more than three thousand people present. Not a seat was to be
had, and there was very little standing room. I paid a shilling for
admission, and was quite surprised to see how entirely the shilling seats
or standing places were filled with working men, many of whom had their
wives and sweethearts with them. The majority, of course, of the
audience was made up of young men, who, in the course of the evening
spent at least another shilling in beer and “baccy.” In these bad times,
when people, in the middle ranks of life are in despair at the hard
prospect before them, here were these working men spending their two
hundred pounds a night at the least at this music-hall.
When I managed to squeeze my way in it was about the hour of ten, when
men who have to get up early to work ought to be in bed. The
performances were in full swing, and the enthusiasm of the audience,
sustained and stimulated by refreshment, was immense. A female or two
were the worse for liquor, but otherwise by that time the intoxicating
stage had not been gained. After some very uninteresting bicycling by
riders in curious dress, a man disguised as a nigger sang a lot of low
doggerel about his “gal.” In the course of his singing he stopped to
tell us that his “gal” had a pimple and that he liked pimples, as they
were signs of a healthy constitution. He then, amidst roars of laughter,
pretended to catch a flea. He liked fleas, he said; a flea came in the
daylight and looked you in the face like a man as it bit you; but a bug
he hated. It crawled over your body in the dark and garroted you. Then
he went on to speak in a mock-heroic style of the rights of women. He
“spotted” some naughty ones present—an allusion received with laughter.
He loved them all, male or female, married or single, and advised all the
young men present to get married as soon as possible and then hang
themselves. Ballet dancing of the usual character followed, and I came
away.
It is said a paper recently sent a special correspondent to describe a
London music-hall; the description was refused admission into the paper
on the ground of indecency, and I can well believe it.
As to the profit made by the music-halls there can be no doubt. Take for
instance the London Pavilion. I find the following newspaper paragraph:
Sir Henry A. Hunt, C.B., the arbitrator in the case of the London
Pavilion Music Hall, has sent in his award. M. Loibl claimed £147,000
for the freehold and goodwill, the building being required for the new
street from Piccadilly to Oxford Street. The award is £109,300. The
freehold cost M. Loibl £8,000, and his net profits in 1875 were £10,978;
in 1876, £12,083; and in 1877, £14,189. Let me give another
illustration. When the proprietor of Evans’ Supper Rooms was refused his
license, his loss was estimated at £10,000 per annum. It surely
evidently is more ready to pay liberally for the gratification of its
senses, than for the promotion of its virtues.