One of the peculiar institutions of the country is the square. Charles
Knight says:--"The Piazza, Place, Platz, of Italy, France, or Germany,
have little in common with it. Its elements are simple enough--an open
space of a square figure, houses on each of the four sides, and an
enclosed centre with turf, a few trees, and, it may be, flowers; and
there is a square." There are fashionable squares, all alive with the
sound of carriage-wheels and the chaste accents of a thousand flunkeys;
there are city squares, dull, dark places, with old red-brick houses, and
a stunted, smoke-dried shrub or two in the middle. Then there are
respectable squares, which never were fashionable, nor ever aimed to be
such; and then there are squares which were once fashionable, but now are
sadly gone out of repute. One of the chief of these is Leicester-square.
Do our readers remember how Queen Caroline found time to be the mother of
seven promising children, of whom the eldest, Frederick, Prince of Wales,
was a continual source of sorrow and vexation to both his parents? "He
resembled," writes Horace Walpole, with his usual sneer, "the Black
Prince only in dying before his father." Well, there was a house built
before the Commonwealth, called Leicester-house. Hither came this young,
dissipated, short-lived Prince, and fixed his court. When he passed
away, and the wits wrote--
"Here lies Fred,
Who was alive,
And is dead,"
still the place had the prestige of fashion. It gradually assumed the
shape of a square, and became the dwelling-place of men truly great. Sir
Isaac Newton resided near the square, in a house yet standing, and known
to fast men as Bertolini's, _alias_ the Newton Hotel. Where now we see
the Sabloniere Hotel, Hogarth once dwelt, and at a later time Sir Joshua
Reynolds lived on the opposite side of the square. In its neighbourhood
Sir Charles Bell made his discoveries respecting the nervous system, and
here the renowned John Hunter lived. In later times Wordsworth made it
the scene of his Moon-gazers; and if he could term it "Leicester's busy
square," still more is that epithet appropriate to it at the present
time. It is true that the Great Globe is not a success; that the
Panopticon failed; that the Western Literary Institution did not
flourish; that the place is not literary or scientific, nor even
business-like, for by daylight the shops look seedy, and the wares
exhibited are somewhat of the cheapest. But at night a change comes over
the spirit of its dream. Here, from cheap lodging-houses hard by, from
cold garrets or dark and dusty two-pair backs, crawl out to walk its
flagstones, or taint its air with the smoke of cheap cigars, men of all
nations and tongues--French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Poles--the
scoundrels and patriots of Europe. There is business here now; the air
is laden with the sickly odour of a thousand dinners. Hotels and _cafes_
and _restaurants_ are lit up and gay. Mr Smith opens the Alhambra on
Sundays and week-days for Music for the Million; and women, rouged and
dressed as much as possible like the nude figures, degrade our
conceptions of Venus, and Sappho, and the Syrens, and others of our
classic acquaintances, by the exhibition of them in questionable
groupings tolerated as _poses plastiques_. Wine-shades attract us; we
hear the clink of billiards. This house we know to be a betting
house--that to be a hell. A man runs up against us. He turns round and
apologizes. I catch a glimpse of his face. I see at once that he is a
billiard-room shark. Look at his pale face, his cold eye, his hard
mouth; and don't play with him, however civil. Above all, don't imagine
from his exterior that he is a gentleman. A gentleman does not wear
slop-shop clothes nor mosaic gold.
You wish to sit down. Well, as it is past the midnight hour, we will go
into this _Cafe Chansante_. At any rate the foreigners have more taste
than ourselves. The pretty young girls, French or German, at the bar
give the place a pleasant appearance, and the mirrors on all sides
reflect the gay forms and faces here assembled. But we pass into the
concert room, where some Spanish minstrels in national costumes are
singing national airs. As you are not musical and cannot understand
these distinguished foreigners, let us see who are here, the Swiss
Kellner, with his wonted civility, having first brought us a cup of
coffee and a cigar. I don't know why it is so, but it always struck me
that of all asses the English ass is the greatest. How conspicuous, for
instance, are those three young fellows sitting at the small marble table
in front of us. Most likely they are medical students. Of course they
are drinking and smoking, and have female companions, respecting whose
character there can be no doubt. How happy are they in their conceit--in
their insolent laugh at the foreigners round them--in their vulgar shouts
of derisive applause. Talk to them, and you will be astonished to find
how morally dead they are, how narrow is their range of thought, how
obsolete are all their ideas, how suppressed are all their sympathies:
not even the beer they drink can be heavier. Yet these lads are to teach
the next age its medical science--and in the last death-struggle, when we
would save the life we love, with broken hearts and streaming eyes we
shall appeal to them in vain. In England the general practitioner will
always be under-bred so long as the night-house and the casino absorb the
hours science imperiously claims. But pass on to this next table. Look
at this girl all radiant with beauty and smiles--beautiful even in spite
of her long-lost virtue and life of sin. For,
"You may break, you may ruin, the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."
The man seated by her side is in love with her. It may be for her love
he has given up mother, sister, betrothed, home, his fair name, his
prospects in life, his hopes of heaven; and she no more heeds his
passionate vows than does the rock the murmur of the waves at its feet;
and already her wanton eye glances round the room for other victims to
sacrifice to her vanity and pride. Oh, the deceit and craft and hardness
of women such as she! And yet on account of such in distant
village-homes there is sadness, and the mother and sister deny themselves
many a luxury, and grayhaired fathers mourn over their lost and
loved--their Benjamins--born and nurtured to come to such an end.
Perhaps at the next table the picture is reversed; that woman is
beautiful, and her face has a smile, and there is a flush upon her cheek,
and the wine has driven from her heart for a while bitter memories; but
she is not happy, though loud be her laugh; and if she dared to sit and
think of the hour when she fell, and of the mire and dirt along which she
has crawled, of what she is now in her rustling silks, and what she was
in her peasant dress then--eyes full of grief, and dim with tears, would
look into her own; and out of that gilded room, and away from all the
song and laughter and wine, would she not rush home to die? Yet if she
now sells herself to pay to-morrow's baker's bill, is she to be trod on
by the high-born beauty that goes up to God's altar with one for whom she
has no love, for an establishment that will make her bridesmaids yellow
with well-bred jealousy? But we are all gay here. Is not the room light
and cheerful? Is not the whole aspect all mirth-inspiring? Does not
dull care flee the flowing bowl? Jolly fellows are sitting and telling
each other tales which you would be sorry your sister should hear, and
which no mother would believe would be ever heard by son of hers without
a manly protest. Women are laughing and drinking as if theirs were not
lives of shame. Sated men about town languidly smoke, and the eye of the
gloomy refugee sparkles, and his heart beats quicker, as he hears the
song of his father-land. The hours hasten on--the company depart--the
wanton beauty, flushed with conquest, rides off in the Hansom, or it may
be in her private brougham, to her luxurious rooms; while her sister,
shivering in the cold night, begs us for two-pence with which to purchase
a bed of straw. Poor forlorn one! in another year thou wilt lie down in
another bed, only to wake up when the last trump shall sound!