up, ye sluggards—only they don’t wake up—the noble Viscount at the head
of the Government is speaking. He begins confidently enough, but somewhat
wearily, as though he were thoroughly tired of the whole business. But
he warms gradually, and he, in his turn, too, can say damaging things
about _his_ right honourable friend, head of the Opposition. But he never
says anything spiteful—is at most petulant (loses his temper altogether
sometimes, they say), and flings about some _bon mots_ that, were they
published in this week’s “Punch,” would cause a well-grounded complaint
of the growing dulness of that periodical. He speaks long, and to the
purpose, and you can see at once in what stead have stood to him his
long official career, his immense parliamentary experience. Recollect
that John Henry Temple, Viscount Palmerston, has sat in Parliament for
half a century, was Secretary-at-War while Wellington was yet wrestling
with Napoleon’s marshals in Spain, was one of the authors of the “New
Whig Guide,” has formed part of scores of administrations; and—one
of the hardest-worked men of his time—has yet found leasure to be a
beau and lion of fashion in Grosvenorian circles, and to be called
“Cupid”—Grosvenorian circles rather chap-fallen, crow’s-footed, rheumy
about the eyes by this time, rather fallen into the sere and yellow leaf,
now hessians and short waists have gone out, hoops and pegtops come in.
Drollest of all, to think that this smug elderly gentleman, voluble in
spite of tongue-clogging seventy, and jaunty in spite of evident gout,
but quite a decorous, father-of-family, select vestryman-looking ancient,
should be the “_terrible Palmerston_” the firebrand of the Continent, the
bugbear of foreign oligarchs, the grim “_Caballero Balmerson_” naming
whom Spanish contrabandistas cross themselves, the abhorred “Palmerstoni”
whom papal gensd’arme imagine to be an emerited brigand who has long
defied the pontifical authority from an inaccessible fastness in the
Apennines. I need not tell you anything more about his speech. You will
find it all in Hansard; and the newspapers of the day gave an accurate
summary of the cheers, the counter-cheers, the ironical cheers, the
“Hear, hears,” and the “Oh, oh’s” which accompanied the harangue,
together with the “loud and continuous cheering” (from his own side of
the House) which greeted its conclusion.
The longest lane, however, must have a turning; and this desperately long
drawn-out parliamentary avenue has its turning at last. There have been
frenzied shrieks of “Divide—divide!’ numerous bores who have essayed
to speak have been summarily shut up and coughed down; and at length
strangers are ordered to withdraw, and the division bell rings.
“On our re-admission,” we quote from the “Times” newspaper of 185—, the
results of the division were announced as follows:—
For the second reading of the bill 284
Against it 307
---
Majority against the Government 23
The bill was consequently lost.
Next day the Government presided over by the noble Viscount who wears
his hat, goes out of office—the “Times” giving it a graceful kick at
parting, and hinting that it was never anything more than a disreputable,
shameless, abandoned clique, whose nepotism had grown intolerable in the
nostrils of the nation. The Right Honourable Caucasian, who doesn’t wear
his hat, is sent for by a certain friend of his—a noble Earl, who is
generally considered a first-rate hand at making up a book for the Derby.
He in his turn is sent for by his Most Gracious Sovereign; and, for the
next three or four days, there is nothing but running about and getting
upstairs between Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Square, and Grosvenor
Gate; and at the end of that time, the right honourable Caucasian finds
himself snugly ensconced in Downing Street, with full liberty to wear his
gold robe again.
[Illustration: TWO O’CLOCK A.M.: THE TURNSTILE OF WATERLOO BRIDGE.]
Past, long past two in the morning. The much-suffering House of Commons
at last shut up, and deserted save by the police and the night watchmen.
The last cabs in Palace Yard driven away: the charioteers grumbling
horribly on their boxes, for they have members of Parliament inside, who
never pay more than the legal fare. Irish members walked round the corner
to Manchester Buildings or Victoria Street, there dwelling. Some members
do all but sleep in the House. As for the noble and defeated Viscount,
he trots cheerily home—scorning either cab or carriage—shouldering his
umbrella, as though nothing in the world had happened to ruffle his
equanimity.
* * * * *
And now, for the first time since this clock was set in motion, something
like a deep sleep falleth over London. Not that the city is all hushed;
it never is. There are night revellers abroad, night prowlers a-foot.
There is houseless wretchedness knowing not where to hide its head;
there is furtive crime stalking about, and seeking whom it may devour.
Yet all has a solemn, ghastly, unearthly aspect; the gas-lamps flicker
like corpse candles; and the distant scream of a profligate, in conflict
with the police, courses up and down the streets in weird and shuddering
echoes.
The Strand is so still that you may count the footsteps as they
sound; and the pale moon looks down pityingly on the vast, feverish,
semi-slumbering mass. Here we stand at length by Upper Wellington Street;
a minute’s walk to the right will bring us to the “Bridge of Sighs.”
Which never sleeps! Morning, and noon, and night, the sharp, clicking
turnstile revolves; the ever-wakeful tollman is there, with his
preternaturally keen apron. I call this man Charon, and the river which
his standing ferry bridges over might well be the Styx. Impossible,
immobile, indifferent, the gate-keeper’s creed is summed up in one
word—“A halfpenny!” Love, hope, happiness, misery, despair, and
death—what are they to him? “A halfpenny for the bridge” is all he asks!
but “a halfpenny for the bridge” he must have.
“Please, sir, will you give me a halfpenny for the bridge?” A phantom in
crinoline lays her hand on my arm. I start, and she hastens through the
turnstile—
“Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of the world,”
perhaps. But I may not linger on the mysteries of the Bridge of Sighs.
They are among the “Secrets of Gas,” and the pictured semblance of the
place here must content you.
HOUR THE TWENTY-FOURTH AND LAST—THREE A.M.—A BAL MASQUE, AND THE NIGHT
CHARGES AT BOW STREET.
When the bad Lord Lyttelton lay on his last bed—thorn-strewn by
conscience—and haunted by the awful prediction of the phantom which
appeared to him in the semblance of a white dove, telling him that at a
certain hour on a certain night he should die, some friends who had a
modicum of human feeling, and wished that wicked lord well, thinking that
his agony was caused by mere terror of an impending event—half nervous,
half superstitious—advanced the hands of the clock One Hour, and when
the fatal one, as it seemed, struck, his Lordship started up in bed,
apparently much relieved, and cried out joyfully that he had “jockeyed
the ghost.” But when the _real time_ arrived, and the _real hour_ was
stricken on the bell, the prediction of the white dove was verified, and
the bad Lord Lyttelton, shrieking, gave up the ghost.
Moral: there is not the slightest use in playing tricks with the clock.
Were it otherwise, and were I not deterred by this awful warning in the
case of Lord Lyttelton, I would entreat some kindly friend to stand on
tiptoe, and just push the hour-hand of this clock of mine back, were it
but for one poor _stunde_ of sixty minutes. But in vain. As well ask Mr.
Calcraft to postpone his quarter-to-eight visit with a new rope, when the
law has consigned you to the tender mercies of that eminent functionary.
As well may Crown Prince Frederick entreat the Governor of Cüstrin to
defer the execution of wretched Lieutenant Katte, “till he can write to
the king.” As well may the unfortunate little Pants, hopelessly embroiled
for the fifth time this morning with his Greek Delectus, implore the
terrible Doctor Budd to spare him the rod this once. As well might I
write to the Postmaster-General to say that it will not be convenient for
me to deposit the last batch of newspapers in the window till half-past
six p.m.; or beg the London and North-Western Railway Company to delay
the departure of the Manchester night express till I have finished my
wine and walnuts at the Victoria Hotel, Euston Square. The fiat has gone
forth. _Missa est._ Judgment is over, and execution is come; and I may
say, with Lord Grizzle in “Tom Thumb:”
“My bodye is a bankrupt’s shop,
My grim creditor is death,”
who, like a stern sergeant, lays his hand on my collar, and bids me
follow him to jail in the king’s name. I wish I were Punch, for he not
only “jockeyed” the ghost, but the hangman, and the beadle, and Mr.
Shallabalah, and his wife, and the very deuce himself. I wish I were in a
land where time is indeed made for slaves, or where there are no clocks
to cast honest men off their hobbies.
“I wish I were a geese,
For they lives and dies in peace,
And accumulates much grease,
Over there.”
But I am not a Punch nor a “geese,” to endorse the touching transatlantic
locution, however much I may merit the singular application of the name.
I am only your humble servant to command, and this is the last hour of
“Twice Round the Clock,” so I must e’en essay to make a good end of it.
We have not been so badly off for public amusements during
our journeyings. We have been to the opera, to the theatre, a
dancing-academy, and to hear an oratorio. We have supped at Evans’s, and
“assisted” at a late debate in the House of Commons; yet I acknowledge,
mournfully, that scores of places of recreation exist in London to which
I could have taken you, and where we might have enjoyed ourselves very
rationally and harmlessly. I should have liked to induct you to the
mysteries of Canterbury Hall, the Polytechnic, Christy’s Minstrels,
and Madame Tussaud’s waxwork show. For I hold to this creed, sternly
and strongly, that public amusements—indoor and outdoor amusements—are
eminently conducive to public _morals_, and to the liberty and happiness
of the people. Music, dancing, and dramatic representations, free from
grossness and turbulence, are as healthful and innocent recreations as
Temperance Halls, lectures on the comet’s tail, or monster meetings
dedicated to the deification of the _odium theologicum_. From my little
parlour window at Brighton, I can see a huge yellow placard disfiguring
a dead wall with this inscription:—“Protestants! attend the Great
Meeting to-night!” Bother the Protestants, (on platforms) I say, and the
Pope of Rome too. What have we done that we are to be perpetually set
together by the ears by belligerent Protestants and rampant Romanists?
Is the whole framework of society to be shaken by controversies about
the cardinal’s red stockings or the rector’s shovel hat? They had best
both be swept into the dust-hole, I think, as having no more to do with
religion than my poodle, Buffo, has with the Gunpowder Plot. Will all
these roaring meetings—Protestants and Romanist, or Mumbo-Jumboical—where
blatant stump-orators, paid for their theology by the night, rant, and
stamp, and cook up those eternal Smithfield fires, help the sacred cause
of Christianity one iota? It is long since Sheridan expressed a hope that
there might be no more “scandal about Queen Elizabeth,” and now, I see,
they can’t let that poor old woman rest in her grave. Some zealous people
want to get up a sort of rider to “Guy Fawkes’s Day,” to commemorate the
tri-centenary of her accession. You stupid firebrands! Of course “the
Reformation was a blessing;” but do you know what will be the result of
this raking up of the Elizabethan scandal? Do you know that there are
such books as “Cobbett’s Legacy to Parsons,” and “Lingard’s History,”
besides “Foxe’s Martyrs,” and a “Thunderbolt for Rome”? Do you know that
it may be proved just six of one and half-a-dozen of the other about
Queen Bess? that while to some she is the Great Protestant Sovereign, the
Egeria of the Reformation, the Heroine of Tilbury Fort, to others she
is a vain, cruel, arrogant old beldame, no better than she should be?
who butchered Mary Stuart, and had Leicester poisoned; and who for every
Protestant her gloomy sister burned, had at least two Papists hanged,
drawn, and quartered, with the pleasant addition of their entrails
being torn out and consumed before their eyes! _Eh! laissons la_ these
horrible reminiscences, and thank Heaven that we live under the sway of
good Victoria, not that of ruthless Elizabeth or bloody Mary. Did the
wise, and merciful, and bounteous Creator, who made this smiling earth,
who has gladdened us with an infinity of good things for our solace and
enjoyment, and for all quit-rent has laid this law upon us that we should
love one another, in testimony of our greatest love for Him, who is
all love and tenderness; did He send us here to squabble and fight and
predict eternal perdition to one another, because there fall into our
hearts a differently-coloured ray of the divine Effulgence? There is a
flaming Protestant here with a broad-brimmed hat, and who is a vessel of
much consequence among his fellow-bigots, who told an honest butcher some
days since that if the Maynooth grant were renewed we should have “the
thumbscrews in three months;” whereupon the affrighted butcher plastered
all his joints over with handbills of the great Protestant Meeting, thus,
of course, losing all his customers of the other persuasion. I wish those
bells which are eternally jangling invitations for us to come and thank
Heaven that we are not “as that publican,” would ring a little tolerance
and charity into men’s hearts; would ring out a little more oblivion
of phylacteries and pew-rents in high places, and of the sepulchral
whitewash brushes. If the people who make all this noise and clamour,
and who howl out against rational amusements, led pure and virtuous
lives, and set good examples to their neighbours, this voice should not
be raised; but, alas! here is brother Dolorous at the bar of the court
of Queen’s Bench for peculation; here is Sister Saintly scourging her
apprentice; here are Messrs. Over-righteous in trouble for adulteration
of their wares.
It is by no means incompatible, I hope, with the broad line of argument
I have striven to adopt in these papers, if I honestly declare that the
tableau I am about to describe has not in any way my approval, nay is, in
many respects, much to be reprobated and deplored. I describe it—in its
least repulsive details—simply because it is a very noticeable feature
in modern London life. To have passed it over would have been dishonest
and hypocritical, and I set it down in my catalogue of subjects at the
outset of my task, actuated then, as I am now, by a determination to
allow no squeamishness to interfere with the delineation of the truth—so
long as that truth could be told without offence to good manners and
in household language. A modern masquerade in London is, to tell the
honest truth, anything but an edifying spectacle. There is certainly no
perceptible harm in some hundreds of persons, of both sexes, accoutred
in more or less fantastic dresses, meeting together in a handsome
theatre, and, to the music of a magnificent band, dancing till three
or four o’clock in the morning. But the place is not harmless: people
go there to dissipate, and _do_ dissipate. The _salle de danse_ of a
grand masquerade is a re-union of epicurean passions—an epitome of vice
painted and spangled. And I take a masquerade triumphantly as an argument
against the precisians and sour-faces, who would curtail the amusements
of the people, and viciously thwart them in their every effort to amuse
themselves. Look you here, gentlemen of the vestry—arch moralists of the
parish! look you here, good Mr. Chaplain of Pentonville, who have got
your pet garotter safe in hold for his sins! This is no penny-gaff, no
twopenny theatre, no cheap concert or dancing academy—not so much as a
“free-and-easy” or a “sixpenny hop.” Shopboys don’t rob the till to come
to a _bal masqué_ at her Majesty’s Theatre. Your pet garotter didn’t
throttle the gentleman in the Old Kent Road in order to procure funds to
dance with Mademoiselle Euphrosine de la Galette, of the Rue Nôtre Dame
de Lorette, Paris, and attired in a ravishing _débardeur_ costume. There
is, to be sure, a floating population of Bohemians—citizens of the world
of London, belonging to the theatres, _enfants perdus_ of the newspaper
press, and so on, who are admitted gratis to a masquerade: these last
Zouaves of social life, have free admission to coroners’ inquests, public
dinners, ship launches, private views of picture exhibitions, night
rehearsals of pantomimes, and royal marriages. The modern newspaper man
is, in print, the embodiment of Mr. Everybody; in private he is Mr.
Nobody, and doesn’t count at all. Lord Derby is afraid of the journalist
in print, but in the flesh his Lordship’s footman would look down upon
him. “Honly a littery man, let him knock agin,” Jeames would say. So we
go everywhere, even as though we were in the “receipt of fern seed.” Even
the House of Commons has invented a pleasant fiction for the benefit of
the gentlemen of the press, and humorously ignores their presence during
the debates. The Empress Julia bathed before her male slave. “Call _that_
a man,” she cried, contemptuously. In the like manner, no account is
taken of the journalist’s extra card of admission or extra knife and
fork. He goes under the head of “sundries,” though he makes sometimes a
rather formidable figure in the aggregate.
But to the general public—the social Zouaves are but a drop of water in
the sea—a _bal masqué_ is a very expensive affair, and a luxury not to be
indulged in without a liberal disbursement of cash. First, ticket, half
a guinea. Mademoiselle de la Galette’s ticket, if you be _galant homme_,
five shillings more, if she be in costume; half a guinea if in domino.
Next, costume for yourself, variable according to its extravagance—a
guinea at least. At any rate, if you are content to appear in plain
evening dress, there are clean white kid gloves and patent leather
boots to be purchased. And the supper; and the wine, for champagne
is _de rigueur_, at twelve and fifteen shillings a bottle! (You will
observe that whenever I grow fashionably dissipated, I begin to chatter
French.) And Mademoiselle de la Galette’s _bouquet_, and the intermediate
refreshments, ices, coffee, lemonade, and what-not; and the cabs and the
wild revelry in the wicked Haymarket purlieus afterwards. You see I
have led you to the very end of the chapter, and that a night at a _bal
masqué_ will make an irremediable hole in a ten-pound note.
For this reason the persons (of the male sex) who visit such a gathering
must be divided into three classes: theatrical and literary nobodies,
coming there for nothing and not caring much about the place now they
are come; young bucks about the town with more money than wit, who will
exist, I am afraid, in every civilised age; and lastly and chiefly,
the “Swells.” I use the term advisedly, for none other can so minutely
characterise them. Long, stern, solemn, languid, with drooping tawny
moustaches, with faultlessly made habiliments, with irreproachable white
neckcloths, with eyes half-closed, with pendant arms, with feet enclosed
in mirror-like patent boots, the “swells” saunter listlessly through the
ball-room with a quiet consciousness that all these dazzling frivolities
are provided for their special gratification—which indeed they are. As
it is _l’œil du maître qui engraisse le cheval_, so it is the “swell”
who makes the _bal masqué_ pay. Never so many orders may Mr. Nugent give
away; but if the “swell” be not in town or muster not in force on the
eventful night, there will be wailing in her Majesty’s Theatre, and woe
in M. Jullien’s cash-box. It must be somewhat of a strong till that can
stand this _tiraillement_. As regards the ladies who are the partners
in the mazy dance of these splendid cavaliers, I may say, once for all,
that they are Daughters of Folly; Mademoiselle de la Galette and her
condisciples, English and French, are there, multiplied five-hundred
fold. I don’t think your pet garotter, good Mr. Chaplain, would be very
successful as a Hercules at the feet of these Omphales.
[Illustration: THREE O’CLOCK A.M.: A BAL MASQUE.]
I wonder how many sons and scions, or cousins or nephews, or
multitudinous misty offshoots of the titled men who govern us, who own
our lands, our waters, and the birds of the air, the beasts of the
field, and the fish of the sea, are here. I wonder how many threads of
connection there are in this ball-room theatre between these butterflies
and the ermine and the lawn of the House of Peers. How many, how much?
Bah! There is young Reginald Fitzmitre, the Bishop of Bosfursus’s son,
talking to that charming _titi_ in the striped silk skirt and crimson
satin trousers. Reginald is in the Guards. Bishops’ sons are fond of
going into the Guards. Yonder is little Pulex, whose brother, Tapely
Pulex, is Under-Secretary for the Egregious Department. There Lord Claude
Miffin has just stalked in with Sir Charles Shakeypegs (who is old enough
to know better); and upon my word, here comes that venerable sinner
Lord Holloway, with little Fanny Claypainter on his arm. It won’t do,
my Lord; you may disguise yourself as closely as you will in a domino
and a mask with a long lace beard, but I know you by that side-wise
waggle of your Lordship’s head. The Earl of Holloway has been a very
gay nobleman in his time. He married Miss Redpoll, the famous English
_contraltro_, drew her theatrical salary with very great punctuality
every Saturday afternoon at three o’clock, and beat her, people said. He
was the honourable Jack Pilluler then. Years elapsed before he came into
the title and Unguenton Park. _She_ died. Advance, then—advance then, my
noble swells—to adopt the style of the gentlemen with the thimble and
pea. Advance, this is all for your delectation. Meanwhile, let your most
noble and right reverend fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins meet
in either House of Parliament, meet at Quarter Sessions, or on borough
bench, and make or expound laws against the wicked, thriftless, hardened,
incorrigibly dissipated Poor. No beer for them, the rogues! No fairs,
no wakes, no village feasts, no harvest-homes, no theatres, concerts,
dances, no tobacco, no rabbits, no bowls, no cricket—but plenty of law,
and plenty of nice hard labour, and wholesome gruel, and strengthening
stone-breaking, and plenty of your sweet aristocratic wives and daughters
to force their way into poor men’s cottages, ask them questions for
which I wonder they don’t get their ears boxed, pry into their domestic
concerns, peep into their cupboards, and wonder at their improvidence in
not having more to eat and drink therein.
Stand we in the orchestral hemicycle, and watch the garish, motley scene.
Questions of morality apart, one must have jaundiced eyes to deny that,
as a mere spectacle, it is brilliant and picturesque enough. All that
M. Jullien’s _bizarre_ taste and fancy could suggest, or the cunning
skill of experienced scenic decorators carry out, has been done here
to make the place gay, dazzling, and effective. Wreaths of artificial
flowers, reflecting the highest credit upon the paper-stainer and the
paper-cutter’s art, mask the somewhat _fanées_ ornaments of the tiers of
boxes; homely corridors and staircases are pleasantly disguised under a
plentitude of scarlet baize and drugget; the chandelier is of abnormous
size, for any number of glittering festoons have been added to its
crystal abacot; devices in glass and devices in gas twinkle and radiate
on every side: nor is music’s voluptuous swell wanting to incite us to
“chase the glowing hours with flying feet,” and make all things go “merry
as a marriage bell.”