In the days of the gay and graceless Charles, Bow-street was the
Bond-street of London. In the taverns of that quarter were the true
homes and haunts of the British poets. That they were much better for
all their drinking and worship of the small hours, I more than doubt.
Pope tried the pace, but found it killing, and had the wisdom to go and
live at Twickenham, and cease to play the part of a man about town.
Describing Addison's life at this period, he says, "He usually studied
all the morning, then met his party at Button's, and dined there, and
stayed there five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was
of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me. _I hurt
my health_, _and so I quitted it_." But the wits died off, and Tom's,
Will's, Button's became desolate, and in their place the Cyder Cellars
grew famous.
You know Maiden-lane, where an old hair-dresser had a son born to him,
who, under the name of Turner, won his way to the first rank amongst
English painters,--where Voltaire, "so witty, profligate, and thin,"
lodged at the house of a French peruke-maker, and corresponded with
Swift, and Pope, and the other literary men of the times,--where Fielding
laid the foundation of an eternal fame,--where Andrew Marvell refused
courtly bribes, and in sublime poverty proudly picked his mutton-bone:
there, some long time since, stood a mansion, the residence, in a green
old age, of that Nell Gwynne of whom, with a strange perversity, the
world speaks as kindly as if she were a Grace Darling, or a Florence
Nightingale, or a Margaret Fuller, or an Elizabeth Fry. A portion of the
old house still remains, with its ancient wainscotting. Well, on the
site of this mansion was, and is, the Cyder Cellars, the oldest house of
its class in London, actually referred to in a rare pamphlet now extant
in the British Museum, entitled "Adventures Under-ground in the Year
1750." In those days to drink deep was deemed a virtue, and the literary
class, after the exhausting labours of the day, loved nothing better than
to sit soaking all night in the Cyder Cellars, where all restraints were
thrown on one aide,--where the song was sung and the wine was quaffed,
and men were fools enough to think they were getting happy when they were
only getting drunk. I can understand why the wits went to the Cyder
Cellars then. Few of them lived in a style in which they would like to
receive their friends. In a place like the Cyder Cellars they could meet
after the theatres were closed, and the occupations of the day over, and
sup and talk and drink with more freedom than in any private house; and
no doubt many were the ingenuous youths who went to the Cyder Cellars to
see the learned Mr. Bayle, or the great Grecian Porson, or the eminent
tragedian Mr. Edmund Kean, and thought it a fine thing to view those
distinguished men maudlin, or obscene, or blasphemous, over their cups.
But the wits do not go to the Cyder Cellars now. Even the men about town
do not go there much. I remember when that dismal song, "Sam Hall," was
sung--a song in which a wretch is supposed to utter all the wretchedness
in his soul, all his sickness of life, all his abhorrence of mankind, as
he was on his way to Tyburn drop. Horrible as the song was--revolting as
it was to all but _blaze_ men, the room was crammed to suffocation,--it
was impossible often to get a seat, and you might have heard a pin drop.
Where are the crowds that listened to that song? My own companion--where
is he? A finer young man, with richer promise, I knew not. He had a
generous disposition, a taste for study, and was blessed with the
constitution of a horse; he had received a liberal education; his morals
had been carefully attended to; his parents were people of large
property, and this son I always deemed his mother's favourite son; and
now in his very prime, when he might have been a blessing to society,
when in his successful professional career his parents might have reaped
a reward, when the heart of some loving, tender, trusting woman might
have joyed in his love, when fair young children, calling him father,
might have clustered round his knees, he is dying, I am told, before
their very eyes, slowly, and with agony, from the terrible effects of
drink. And does it not really seem as if there were a curse attaching to
those connected with the trade? A week or two since, had you been
passing down Bridges-street into the Strand late on a Saturday night, or
early on a Sunday morning, on a door-step, in spite of the pouring rain,
you might have seen a woman, in her rags and loneliness, trying to gather
a few hours of sleep. She was too weak to pursue her unhallowed calling,
and had she been so disposed on that cold, wet night, it would have been
of little avail had she walked the streets. The policeman as he goes his
monotonous rounds tells her to move on. She wakes up, gets upon her
legs, hobbles along, and then, when he is past, again, weary and wayworn,
seeks the friendly door-step. The policeman returns; "What, here still?"
he exclaims. Ah yes! she has not power to move away. She is weak, ill,
dying. The friendly police carry her to the neighbouring hospital. "She
cannot be received here," says Routine, and she is taken to the
workhouse. Again she is taken to the hospital, admitted at last--for is
she not a woman, and a young one, too?--not more than twenty-five, it
appears,--and on her face, stained with intemperance and sin, there is
the dread stamp of death--in this case, perhaps, a welcome messenger; for
who would live, fallen, friendless, forsaken, with a diseased body and a
broken heart? "The spirit of a man can sustain his infirmity; but a
wounded spirit who can bear?" Peace be with her! in another hour or two
she will have done with this wretched life of hers, and have gone where
"the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." More than
usual official cruelty is visible in this case, for all that is given her
between her admission and her death is a simple cup of tea; and the
coroner's verdict very properly censures the hospital authorities. Well,
what connexion, you ask, is there with this girl's sad fate and the
jollity of the Cyder Cellars? Only this, that her father made the Cyder
Cellars so popular a place of resort. If I go there again I shall think
of Louisa Regan, who began life as the daughter of a successful publican,
who had been a governess in a nobleman's family, at the early age of
twenty-five rescued from the streets by policemen, and dependent on
charity for a bed on which to die. In the foaming cup, in the glitter of
the gas, while the comic singer was most comical, or the sentimental
singer most sentimental, I could not be oblivious of her fate. Is there
not poison in the bowl? Is there not madness in the merriment? To the
night so bright does there not come a dolorous morrow? You may sing and
laugh the hours away in the Cyder Cellars for a while, but you must pay
your reckoning, and then, I imagine, you will doubt whether the amusement
was worth the price. Youth generally pays too dear for its whistle.
Youth is finding this out; at any rate the days of the Cyder Cellars are
numbered, and now, with its Judge and Jury and _Poses Plastiques_, it
collects comparatively few.
Let me ask, need the amusements of our leisure hours be thus based on
false principles? Cambridge, in one of the pleasantest papers in the
"World," says, "Among the numbers who have changed a sober plan of living
for one of riot and excess, the greatest part have been converted by the
arguments in a drinking song." Life is real, life is earnest. It is a
battle-ground which requires heart and muscle, and where only the brave
can conquer; but if I drop for half-an-hour into a music hall, I learn
that pleasure is the great aim of life, and that gin can make me jolly
and a genius.