its exertions than this vulgar dancing-place. A jangling harp, a wheezy
flute, and a cracked-voice violin, with perhaps a dingy old drum, with
two perpetual black eyes in its parchment cheeks where the stick hits
them, like the wife of an incorrigibly drunken cobbler—instruments
such as you may hear tortured any night outside the Moguls in Drury
Dane: these would be quite good enough for the _ruffiani_ (by which
I do not at all mean “ruffians”) and _bona robas_ of a masquerade to
dance to. But this orchestra, numerous as it is, is composed of picked
men: it is an imperial guard of veterans in fiddling, bassooning, and
cornet-à-pistoning. Even the gentleman who officiates at the triangle,
is a solo player; and the fierce-looking foreigner who attends to the
side-drums, is the most famous _tambour_ in Europe. At beating the
_chamade_ he stands alone, and his roll is unrivalled. With shame I
speak it: you shall find among these artists in wind and artists in
string instruments, horns, and clarionettes, tenors and second violins,
who, during the operatic season, are deemed not unworthy to be ruled
by the Prospero wand of the kid-gloved Costa or swayed by the magic
fiddlestick of the accomplished Alfred Mellon. A pretty vocation for
them to have to fiddle and blow for the amusement of ne’er-do-weels in
tom-fools’ costumes, and bold-faced jigs in velvet trousers! Why, they
could take their parts in the symphonies of Beethoven and the masses of
Mozart. And thou, too, Jullien the Superb, _maestro_ of the ambrosial
ringlets, the softly-luxuriant whiskers and moustaches, _gracilis puer_
of the embroidered body-linen, the frogged pantaloons, the coat with
_moire antique_ facings, the diamond studs and sleeve buttons! couldst
thou not find a worthier tilt-yard for thy chivalrous gambadoes? Alas!
to some men, howsoever talented, charlatanism seems to adhere like a
burr, and will not depart. Jullien must have caught this stain at the
battle of Navarino or at the Jardin Turc, and it has abided by him ever
since. There is not the slightest necessity for this clever, kindly, and
really accomplished musician—to whom the cause of good and even classical
music in England owes much—to be a quack; but I suppose he can’t help
it. He was born under a revolving firework star, and would introduce
blue fire in the Dead March in “Saul.” So it is with many. They could be
Abernethies, but they prefer being Dulcamaras; they could be Galileos or
Copernici, they prefer the fame of Cagliostro or Katterfelto. There was
poor dear Alexis Soyer, as kind a hearted Christian as you might find, an
admirable cook, an inventive genius, a brave, devoted, self-denying man,
who served his adopted country better in the Crimea than many a starred
and titled C.B. He had no call to be a quack; there was no earthly reason
why he should inundate the newspapers with puffs, and wear impossible
trousers, or cloth-of-gold waistcoats, cut diagonally. The man had a vast
natural capacity, could think, ay, and _do_ things; yet he quacked so
continually, that many people set him down as a mere shallow pretender,
and some even doubted whether he could cook at all. He was, nevertheless,
a master of his difficult art, though in his latter days he did not
exercise it much. Grisier grew tired of fencing. Wordsworth did not write
much after he was laureate. Sir Edwin’s brush is passing idle now. But
I have partaken of succulent dainties cooked in their daintiest manner
by the cunning hands of the illustrious _chef_: and I tell you that he
could cook, when he chose, like St. Zita, the patroness of the Genoese
_cuisinières_. And I think I know, and that I can tell, a _compôte_ from
a cow-heel, having dined as well and as ill, in my time, as any man of my
age and standing.
What shall I say of the moving, living, kaleidoscope, twinkling and
coruscating in the vast _enceinte_? Indeed, it is very difficult to say
anything a bout the outward similitude of a _bal masqué_ that has not
been said a hundred times before. You have taken for granted the very
considerable admixture of plain evening costume, worn by the swells _et
autres_, which speckles the galaxy of gay costumes with multitudinous
black dots. After this, we all know what to expect, and whom to find.
Paint, patches, spangles, and pearl-powder, tawdry gold and silver
(more brassy and pewtery, rather, I opine), and sham point lace. Sham
fox-hunters, mostly of a Hebrew cast of countenance, in tarnished scarlet
coats, creased buckskins, and boots with tops guiltless of oxalic acid,
brandishing whips that have oftener been laid across their own shoulders
than on the flanks of the “screws” they have bestridden; and screening
their mouths with palms covered by dubious white kid gloves, or with bare
dirt-inlaid knuckles protuberant with big rings of mosaic jewellery,
shouting “Yoicks,” and “Hark-away,” in nasal accents. Undergraduates,
in trencher caps and trailing gowns, worn by jobbernols, who know far
more about Oxford Street than the University of Oxford. Barristers, more
likely to be pleaded for than to plead. Bartlemy-Fair Field Marshals,
in costumes equally akin to his who rides on the lamentable white horse
before the Lord Mayor’s gingerbread coach, and Bombastes Furioso in
the farce. Charles the Seconds, with all the dissolute effrontery of
that monarch, but of his wit or merriment none. Red Rovers and Conrad
Corsairs, whose nautical adventures have been confined to a _fracas_ on
board a penny steamboat; Albanian, and Sciote, and Suliote Chiefs, with
due fez, kilt, yataghan, and lambrochines, in orthodox “snowy camise
and shaggy capote,” and who act their characters in a likelier manner
than their comrades, for they are, the majority, arrant “Greeks.” A few
Bedouin Arabs—a costume picturesque yet inexpensive: a pen’north of
Spanish liquorice to dye the face withal; a couple of calico sheets,
for caftan and burnous, with the tassel of a red worsted bell-pull
or so to finish off with, and you have your Abd-el-Kader complete.
Half-a-dozen Marquises, of Louis the Fifteenth’s time. Plenty of Monks:
robes and _cagoules_ of gray linen, a rope for a girdle, a pennyworth
of wooden beads for a rosary, and slippers cut down into sandals—these
are as cheap as effective. A Knight, in complete armour (pasteboard
with tin-foil glued thereupon); a Robinson Crusoe, always getting into
piteous dilemmas, with his goatskin (worsted) umbrella; a Bear, a Demon,
and a Chinese Mandarin. When I have enumerated these, I find that I
have noticed the _travestisements_ most prevalent among the English
male portion of the costumed mob. But there is another very appreciable
element in these exhibitions: the foreign one. A century has passed
since Johnson told us, in his mordant satire of “London,” that England’s
metropolis was—
“The needy villain’s general home,
The common sew’r of Paris and of Rome.”
It is astonishing to find how much foreign riff-raff and alien
scoundrelry will turn up at a masquerade. Leicester Square and Panton
Street, the _cloaques_ of the Haymarket and Soho, disgorge the bearded
and pomatumed scum of their stale _pot-au-feu_-smelling purlieus on
this dancing floor. They come with orders, and don’t sup; rather hover
about the Daughters of Folly and Sons of Silliness, to wheedle and
extort odd silver sums, with which to gamble at atrocious “nicks,” and
tobacco-enveloped gambling dens in Leicesterian slums, yet unrooted out
by lynx-eyed policemen. Homer not unfrequently nods in Scotland Yard.
“None are so blind as those that won’t see,” whisper the wicked. These
foreigners—shameless, abandoned rogues, mostly throwing undeserved
discredit upon honest, harmless _forestieri_; fellows who are “known
to the police” in Paris, and have a second home at the _Depôt de la
Prefecture_—affect the cheap, but thoroughly masquerade costume of
the _Pierrot_. Very easy of accomplishment, this disguise. About one
and ninepence outlay would suffice, it seemeth to me. Jerkin of white
calico, with immoderately long sleeves, like those of a _camisole de
force_ unfastened; galligaskins of the same snowy cheapness, and scarlet
slippers; any number of tawdry calico bows of any colour down the sides,
a frill round the neck, where the “jougs” of the pillory or the collar
of the garotte should be; the face, that should be seared with the
hangman’s brand, thickly plastered with flour, so that there would be
no room for the knave to blush, even if the light hand of a transient
conscience smote him on the cheek and bade him remember that he once
had a mother, and was not always aide-de-camp in waiting to Beelzebub;
a conical cap of pasteboard, like an extinguisher snowed upon; here you
have the _Pierrot_. The Englishman sometimes attempts him, but generally
fails in the assumption. In order to “keep-up” the character well, it
is necessary to play an infinity of monkey-tricks, to bear kicking with
cheerful equanimity, to dance furiously, and to utter a succession of
shrill screams at the end of every dance. Else you are no true _Pierrot_;
and these elegancies are foreign to our phlegmatic manners.
Another favourite costume with the _bal masqué_ is that of the “Postillon
de Longjumeau.” He is as well-nigh extinct in France, by this chiming,
as our own old English post-boys. Railways shunted him off on to
oblivion’s sidings with terrible rapidity. Only, his Imperial Highness
Prince Jerome Napoleon—whom the Parisians persist in calling “l’Oncle
Tom,” because, say they, Napoleon I., his brother, was “_le grand
homme_” Napoleon III., his nephew, “_le petit homme_” so this must be
necessarily “_l’oncle-t-homme_”—or Tom—this mediocre old gentleman, who
throughout his long life has always been fortunate enough to be lodged,
and boarded, and pensioned at other peoples’ expense (they positively
carved out a kingdom for him once), still keeps up a staff of _postillons
de Longjumeau_, who, with much bell-ringing, whip-cracking, and “ha!
heu hooping!” guide his fat, white, hollow-backed Norman post-horses,
when his Imperial Highness goes down to St. Cloud or Chantilly in his
travelling carriage. It is a quaint, not unbecoming costume: glazed
hat, the brim built at an angle, broad gold band, cockade as big as a
pancake, and multicoloured streamers of attenuated ribbon; short wig,
with club well powdered; jacket with red facings and turn-up two-inch
tails; saucepan-lid buttons, and metal badge on the left arm; scarlet
vest, double breasted; buckskins, saffron-dyed; high boots with bucket
tops, and greased, mind, not blacked; long spurs, and whip insignificant
as to stock and tremendous as to lash. This is his Imperial Highness’s
postilion, and this, minus the spurs, is the postilion of the _bal
masqué_.
And the ladies? I am reticent. I am nervous. I draw back. “I don’t
like,” as the children say. Hie you to the National Gallery, and look at
Turner’s picture of “Phryne going to the bath as Venus.” Among the wild
crew of _bacchantes_ and _psoropaphæ_ who surround that young person, you
will find costumes as extravagant of hues, as variegated, as strike the
senses here. Only, among the masqueraders you must not look for harmony
of colour or symmetry of line. All is jarring, discordant, tawdry, and
harlequinadish. You are in error if you suppose I am about to descant at
length on the glittering semi-nudities gyrating here. Go to, you naughty
queans! you must find some other inventory-maker. Go and mend your ways,
buy horsehair corsets, “disciplines” and skulls if you will, and repair
to the desert, there to mortify yourselves. Alas! the hussies laugh at
me, and tell me that the only manner in which they choose to tolerate
horsehair is _en crinoline_. Go to, and remember the fate of a certain
Janet Somebody—I forget her surname—condemned by some Scotch elders,
in the early days of the Reformation, to stripes and the stocks, for
assuming a “pair of breeks.” Alack! the _débardeurs_ only mock me, and
tell me that I am a fogey.
Three quasi-feminine costumes there are, however, that shall be
pilloried here. There is the young lady in a riding-habit, who is so
palpably unaccustomed to wearing such a garment, who is so piteously
ill-at-ease in it, not knowing how to raise its folds with Amazonian
grace, and tripping herself up at every fourth step or so, that she is
more ridiculous than offensive. There is the “Middy:” a pair of white
trousers, a turn-down collar, a round jacket, and a cap with a gold-lace
band, being understood to fulfil all the requirements of that costume.
The “middy” sneaks about in a most woeful state of sheep-leggedness,
or, at most, essays to burst into delirious gymnastics, which end in
confusion and contumely. And last, and most abhorrent to me, there is
the “Romp.” Romps in their natural state—in a parlour, on a lawn, in
a swing, at a game of blind-man’s-buff, or hunt-the-slipper—no honest
man need cavil at. I like romps myself, when they don’t pull your hair
too hard, have some mercy on your toes, and refrain from calling you a
“cross, grumpy, old thing,” when you mildly suggest that it is very near
bed-time. But a romp of some twenty-five years of age, with a cadaverous
face, rouged, with a coral necklace, flaxen tails, a pinafore, a blue
sash, Vandyked trousers, bare arms, and a skipping-rope: take away that
romp, I say, quickly, somebody, and bring me a Gorgon or a Fury, the
Hottentot Venus or the Pig-faced Lady! Anything for a change. Away with
that romp, and cart her speedily to the nearest boarding-school where a
lineal descendant of Mother Brownrigge yet wields her birchen sceptre.
It is on record that Thomas Carlyle, chiefest among British prose writing
men, once in his life was present, in this very theatre, at a performance
of the Italian Opera. He stayed the ballet, even, and went away full of
strange cogitations. I would give one of my two ears (for be it known
to you I am stone-deaf on the left side, like most men who have led
evil lives in their youth, and could, wearing my hair long, well spare
the superfluous flap of flesh and gristle) if I could persuade Thomas
to visit a masquerade. There would be a new chapter in the next edition
of “Sartor Resartus” to a certainty. For all these varied fopperies
and fineries, dominoes, battered masks with ragged lace, sham orris,
draggle-tailed feathers, tin-bladed rapiers, rabbit-skin and rat’s-tail
ermine, cotton velvet, “pinked” stockings, frayed epaulettes, mended
skirts—all suggest pregnant thoughts of the Bag. _Tout cela sent son
marchand d’habits._ Not to be driven away is the pervading notion of
Old Clothes of Vinegar Yard and the ladies’ wardrobe shop, of the
ultimate relegation of these sallow fripperies to Petticoat Lane and
Rag Fair. Nor without histories—some grave, some gay, some absurd, some
terrible—must be these mended shreds of gaudy finery. They have been
worn by aristocratic striplings at Eton Montem—defunct saturnalia of
patrician “cadging.” Those dim brocades and Swiss shepherdess _corsages_,
have graced the forms of the fair-haired daughters of nobles at fancy
balls. Great actresses, or _cantatrici_, have declaimed or sung in those
satins, before they were disdainfully cast by, abandoned to the dresser,
sold to the Jew costumier, cut down into tunics or pages’ shoulder
cloaks, furbished up with new tags and trimmings. Real barristers and
gay young college lads have worn those wigs and gowns and trencher caps;
real captains have flaunted at reviews in those embroidered tunics and
epaulettes; swift horses have borne those scarlet coats and buckskins
across country, but with real fox-hunters inside. Where are the original
possessors? Drowned, or shot to death, or peacefully mouldering,
insolvent, or abroad, gone up to the Lords, or hanged. Who knows?
Perhaps they are lounging here as Swells, not recognising their old
uniforms and academics, now worn by sham Abraham men and _franc-mitous_.
Who can tell? Where is the pinafore of our youth, and the first shooting
jacket of adolescence? “_Où sont les neiges d’antan?_” Where are the last
winter’s snows?
But Thomas Carlyle wouldn’t come to this place, at his age and at this
time in the morning; and, between you and me, I think it high time
that we too should depart. In truth, the place is growing anything
but orderly. Champagne and incessant exercise on the “light fantastic
toe” have done their work. Dances of a wild and incoherent character,
reminding one of the “_Chaloupe_” the “_Tulipe Orageuse_,” and the
much-by-municipal-authorities-abhorred “_Cancan_” are attempted. The
masters of the ceremonies seem laudably desirous of clearing the _salle_.
Let us procure our great-coats, and flee from Babylon before the masquers
grew unroarious.
A stream of masquerading humanity, male and female, begins to pour
through the corridors and so out beneath the portico. It is time. Cabs
and broughams—the “swells” came in the broughams—sly, wicked little
inventions; policemen hoarsely shout and linkmen dart about.
* * * * *
I thought so. I knew how it would end. A row, of course. That big
_Postillon de Longjumeau_ has borne it with admirable temper for hours;
but the conduct of the Charles the Second Cavalier has been beyond human
forbearance. She—the cavalier is a she—has incited the _Pierrot_ (an
Englishman, for a wonder, and hopelessly gone in champagne) to knock the
postilion down. He wept piteously at first, but, gathering courage, and
not liking, perhaps, to be humiliated in the eyes of a _débardeur_ in
claret-coloured velvet, he kicked up wildly at the aggressor with his
boots. Then the cavalier scratched his face; then the claret-coloured
_débardeur_ fainted; then Mr. Edward Clyfaker, of Charles Street, Drury
Lane, thief, cut in cleverly from between the wheels of a carriage, and
picked Lord Holloway’s pocket of Miss Claypainter’s cambric handkerchief;
then A 22 drew his truncheon and hit an inoffensive fox-hunter a violent
blow on the head; then four medical students called out “Fire!” and an
inebriated costermonger, who had not been to the masquerade at all, but
was quietly reeling home, challenged Lord Claude Miffin to single combat;
then Ned Raggabones and Robin Barelegs, street Arabs, threw “cart-wheels”
into the midst of the throng; then the police came down in great force,
and, after knocking a great many people about who were not in the
slightest degree implicated in the disturbance, at last pitched upon
the right parties, and bore the pugnacious _Pierrot_ and the disorderly
Cavalier off to the station-house. It is but due to the managers of the
masquerade to state, that no such scandalous _melées_ take place within
the precincts of the theatre itself. The masters of the ceremonies and
the police on duty take care of that: but such little accidents will
happen, outside, after the best-regulated masquerades.
[Illustration: THREE O’CLOCK A.M.: THE NIGHT CHARGES AT BOW STREET.]
To the station-house, then, to the abode of captivity and the hall of
justice. The complaining postilion and his friends, accompanied by a
motley procession of tag-rag and bob-tail, press triumphantly forward.
Shall we follow also?
In a commodious gas-lit box, surrounded by books and papers, and with
a mighty folio of loose leaves open before him—a book of Fate, in
truth—sits a Rhadamanthine man, buttoned up in a great-coat often;
for be it blazing July or frigid December, it is always cold at three
o’clock in the morning. Not a very pleasant duty his: sitting through
the long night before that folio, smoking prohibited, warm alcoholic
liquids only, I should suppose, to be surreptitiously indulged in:
sitting only diversified by an occasional sally into the night air, to
visit the policemen on their various beats, and learn what wicked deeds
are doing this night and morning—a deputy taking charge of the folio
meanwhile. Duty perhaps as onerous as that of the Speaker of the House of
Commons: but, ah! not half so wearisome. For the Rhadamanthine man in the
great-coat has betimes to listen to tales of awful murder, of desperate
burglaries, of harrowing suicides, of poverty and misery that make your
soul to shudder and your heart to grow sick; and sometimes to more jocund
narratives—harum-scarum escapades, drunken freaks, impudent tricks,
ingenious swindles, absurd jealousy, quarrels, and the like. But they
all—be the case murder, or be it mouse-trap stealing—are entered on that
vast loose folio, which is the charge-sheet, in fact; Rhadamanthine man
in great-coat being but the inspector of police on night duty, sitting
here at his grim task for some fifty or sixty shillings a week. Harder
task than sub-editing a newspaper even, I am of opinion.
He has had a busy time since nine last evening. One by one the “charges”
were brought in, and hour after hour, and set before him in that little
iron-railed dock. Some were felonious charges: scowling, beetle-browed,
under-hung charges, who had been there many times before, and were likely
to come there many times again. A multiplicity of Irish charges, too:
beggars, brawlers, pavement-obstructors—all terribly voluble and abusive
of tongue; many with squalid babies in their arms. One or two such
charges are lying now, contentedly drunken heaps of rags, in the women’s
cells. Plenty of juvenile charges, mere children, God help them! swept
in and swept out; sometimes shot into cells—their boxes of fusees, or
jagged broom-stumps, taken from them. A wife-beating charge; ruffianly
carver, who has been beating his wife with the leg of a pianoforte. The
wretched woman, all blood and tears, is very reluctant, even now, to give
evidence, and entreats the inspector to “let Bill go; he didn’t mean no
harm.” But he is locked up, departing to durance with the comforting
assurance to his wife that he will, “do for her,” at the first convenient
opportunity. I daresay he will, when his six months’ hard labour are
over. There was a swell-mob charge, too, a dandy _de première force_,
who swaggered, and twisted his eye-glass, and sucked his diamond ring
while in the dock, and declared he knew nothing of the gentleman’s watch,
he was “shaw.” He broke down, however, while being searched, and on the
discovery of the watch—for he had missed the confederate who usually
“covered” him—subsided into bad language, and the expression of a hope
that he might not be tried by “old Bramwell,” meaning the learned judge
of that name. Short work has been made with some of these charges, while
the disposal of others has occupied a considerable time. As the night
grew older, the drunk and disorderly and drunk and incapable charges
began to drop in; but one by one they have been disposed of in a calm,
business-like manner, and the “charges” are either released, or, if
sufficient cause were apparent for their detention, are sleeping off
their liquor, or chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies, in the
adjacent cells.
“I thought the _ball masky_ would bring us some work,” the inspector
remarks to the sergeant, as the _Pierrot_ is carried, and the cavalier
is dragged, and the postilion and his friend stalk indignantly—the whole
accompanied by a posse of police, into the station: “Now, then, F 29,
what is it?”
F, or X, or Z, or whatever may be his distinguishing letter or numeral,
gives a succinct narrative of the row, so far as he is acquainted with
its phases, very much in the style of the _Act d’Accusation_ of a French
_procureur imperial_, which is always as damaging as it conveniently
can be made against the person in custody. The postilion follows with
_his_ statement, the cavalier breaks in with an indignant denial of
all he has said, violently insists upon charging the postilion with
murder and assault, and ultimately expresses a desire to know what he,
the inspector, thinks of himself, a wish to tear F 29’s eyes out, and
ardent ambition to “polish off the whole lot.” “Don’t all speak at
once,” remonstrates the inspector, but they _will_ all speak at once,
and the _Pierrot_, waking up from an intoxicated trance, asseverates, in
broken accents, that he is a “p-p-p-p-pro-f-f-fessional man, and highly
res-pe-pe-p-pectable,” and then sinks quiescent over the front of the
dock, in an attitude very much resembling that sometimes assumed by the
celebrated Mr. Punch.