This is a comic age in which we live. We are overdone with funny
writers. The ghastliest attempts at liveliness surround us on every
side. I would not bring back the grave deportment and stately etiquette
of days gone by, nor could I if I would. But are we not running to
another extreme? Is there not a lack of reverence and dignity? If we
train up our youth to comic Blackstones, and teach them to extract fun
out of the grandest history done in modern Europe--the history of the
Anglo-Saxon race--of the race that has founded civil and religious
liberty, and still nurses it in the face of a frowning continent, what
can we expect? Men are what we make them. "Just as the twig is bent the
tree's inclined." A feeble and contemptible father is succeeded by a
feeble and contemptible son. Have no grand creed of your own to make
your daily path lustrous with the light of heaven. Crack your weak jest
and pun at all men have reverenced. Learn from _Punch_ to titter, no
matter the theme. And can you wonder that your son believes not in man's
honour or woman's love--in God or the devil, but solely in the Holborn
Casino and Cremorne? For instance, is not law one of the most wonderful
achievements of civilisation? I do not go so far as "the judicious
Hooker." I do not say with him that her seat is the throne of God, her
voice the harmony of the universe, but is it not wonderful to think of
the complex arrangements of which the judge seated in his robes on the
bench, administering law, is the outward sign. In the first place, man
must have learnt to give up a primary instinct of his nature--that of
self-revenge. Then the central power in the darkest parts of the land
must have become dominant. What ages must have past before law dared
meddle with privilege, or before its administrators could realize the
fact of the sanctity of the individual man, whether he starved in a
garret or feasted in a palace. And when the judges went on circuit, with
the gorgeous cavalcade of the olden time, what terror was struck into the
hearts of the rustics, and how patent became to them the strength and
dignity of law. Now why burlesque this? The idea is good and true, yet
the burlesque is permitted and exists, aye, even to this day.
It is years since I was at a Judge and Jury Club, but I believe their
character is in no degree changed. The one I speak of met in an hotel
not far from Covent-garden, and was presided over by a man famous in his
day for his power of _double entendre_. About nine o'clock in the
evening, if you went up-stairs you would find a large room with benches
capable of accommodating, I should think, a hundred, or a hundred and
fifty persons. This room was generally well filled, and by their
appearance the audience was one you would call respectable. The entrance
fee entitled you to refreshment, and that refreshment, in the shape of
intoxicating liquor, was by that time before each visitant. After
waiting a few minutes, a rustle at the entrance would cause you to turn
your eyes in that direction, when, heralded by a crier with a gown and a
staff of office, exclaiming, "Make way for my Lord Chief Baron," that
illustrious individual would be seen wending his way to his appointed
seat. The man I write of was then about thirty-five, but he appeared
much older, and in his robes of office and with his judicial wig had
almost a venerable appearance. Having seated himself and bowed to the
bar--one of them they called the double of Brougham had been a dissenting
minister (he is dead now--he died "game," they told me)--the Lord Chief
Baron called for "a cigar and glass of brandy and water, and, having
observed that the waiter was in the room and that he hoped gentlemen
would give their orders, the proceedings of the evening commenced. A
jury was selected; the prosecutor opened his case, which, to suit the
depraved taste of his patrons, was invariably one of seduction or crim.
con. Witnesses were examined and cross-examined, the females being men
dressed up in women's clothes, and everything was done that could be to
pander to the lowest propensities of depraved humanity. I do not believe
the audience could have stood this if it had not been for the drink. As
it was, I believe many a youth fresh from home felt a little ashamed of
himself that he should be in such company listening to such unmitigated
ribaldry, but these reflections were soon drowned in the flowing bowl,
and the lad, if he blushed at first, soon learned to laugh. I write of
the time when the railway mania had filled London with overpaid
engineers, and attorneys, and parliamentary witnesses, only too anxious
to see life, as they called it, and by whom this beastly entertainment
was frequented night after night. I dare not even attempt to give a
faint outline of the proceedings. After the defence, came the summing
up, which men about town told you was a model of wit, but in which the
wit bore but a small proportion to the obscenity. The jury were
complimented on their intelligent and lascivious appearance, all the
filthy particulars which had been noticed were referred to Dog Latin, and
poetical quotations were plentifully thrown in; and by twelve, amidst the
plaudits of the audience, the affair, so far as the Judge and Jury Club
was concerned, was over. Then there was supper for such as wished it,
and an entertainment to follow, either in the shape of a concert or of an
exhibition of _Poses Plastiques_. To these subsequent entertainments
ladies were generally admitted--and perhaps the less I say about them or
their proceedings the better. If I refer to them at all, it is but as an
illustration of the drinking customs of society. These Judge and Jury
Clubs after all are but an excuse for drinking. They are held at
public-houses--there is drinking going on all the time the trial
lasts,--nor could sober men listen unless they had the drink. I believe
an attempt has been made to introduce this kind of thing to the
provinces, but it has not answered. In all our provincial towns there
exists a public opinion which guarantees decency to a certain extent. In
the metropolis this public opinion does not exist. No one knows that I
frequent Judge and Jury Clubs, and I lose no social status if I do; and
some of the men who patronise them have no social status to lose. In one
of the lowest beershops in the New Cut the other day I saw it announced
that on Sunday night a Judge and Jury Club was held. It is too true that
we are, as Tennyson says,
"Fish that love the mud,
Rising to no fancy flies."
But man does not naturally revel in obscenity; the modesty of nature will
stick to him for years. But the Judge and Jury Clubs make you familiar
with the manners of the stews; and I solemnly believe that in Sodom and
Gomorrah nothing more filthy could have been talked about, and that this
side Pandemonium there is nothing more debasing or debased. If you wish
to see your son thoroughly depraved, send him to a Judge and Jury Club.
In a little while he will come back to you with every noble principle
blotted out, with a mind stored with pollution, and with a fitting
phraseology, ready to run a mad career of debauchery and vice. Some
fifteen years back the writer was at college, and one of his
fellow-students was a fine young fellow, the heir to a decent fortune,
and said to be connected with a noble family. The last time I was at the
Judge and Jury he was employed as one of the mock counsel; but he became
too intemperate even for that, and enlisted, and miserably died. They
have tragic ends, many of these frequenters of Judge and Jury Clubs, and
it is sad to think that, when the merriment is the loudest, and the drink
is most stimulating, and the fellowship most jovial, there is burlesque
even then.