Is situated in one of the leading thoroughfares, and is decorated in an
exceedingly handsome manner. The furniture is all new and beautifully
polished, the seats are generally exquisitely soft and covered with
crimson velvet, the walls are ornamented with pictures and pier-glasses,
and the ceiling is adorned in a manner costly and rare. Such places as
Simpson's or Campbell's in Beak-street, or Nell Gwynn's, almost rival the
clubs, and, indeed, are much smarter than anything they can show at the
Milton. Time was when men were partial to the sanded floor, the plain
furniture, the homely style of such places as Dolly's, the London
Coffee-house, or the Cock, to which Tennyson has lent the glory of his
name. Now the love of show is cultivated to an alarming extent. "Let us
be genteel or die," said Mrs Nickleby, and her spirit surrounds us
everywhere. Hence the splendour of the drinking-rooms of the metropolis,
and the studied deportment of the waiters, and the subdued awe with which
Young Norvals fresh from the Grampian Hills and their fathers' flocks
tread the costly carpets or sprawl their long legs beneath glittering
mahogany.
Let us suppose it is about nine or ten in the evening, and we step into
one of the numerous establishments which are to the respectable classes
what the gin-palace and the beer-house is supposed to be to the class who
are not. The reader must pardon my use of the word respectable. It is a
word which, from my heart, I abhor, and, as it is commonly employed,
merely denotes that a man has an account at a bank. There are but two
ways in which human actions can be contemplated--the worldly and the
philosophical or Christian. I use the term respectable merely in its
worldly acceptation, but I skip this digression and pass on. Undoubtedly
at the first blush it is a cheerful scene that first meets our eye. In
this box are two or three old friends discussing a bottle of claret, who
have not met perhaps since bright and boisterous boyhood, and who may
never meet again. Of what manly struggle, of what sorrow that can never
die, of what calm pleasures and chastened hopes, have they to tell! No
wonder that you see the tear glistening in the eye, though there is
laughter on the lip. Pass on; here are some bagsmen red with port, and
redolent of slang. In the next box are three or four young fellows
drinking whisky and smoking cigars, and of course their talk is of wine
and women; but there is hope, nevertheless, for woman is still to them a
something divine, and the evil days have not come when they see in her
nothing but common clay. Look at this retired old gentleman of the old
school sitting by himself alone; yet is he not alone, for as he sips his
port memories thicken in his brain, of ancient cronies now sleeping in
churchyards far away, of a sainted wife no longer a denizen of this dark
world of sin, of daughters with laughing children round their knees, all
rosy and chubby and flaxen-haired, of sons with Anglo-Saxon energy and
faith planting the old race on a new soil. Cross to this other side and
look at these reckless, dissipated fellows, whom the waiter has just
respectfully requested not to make so much noise, as it disturbs the
other gentlemen in the room. Possibly they are Joint Stock Bank
directors or railway officials, and after a few years it will be found
that for their revelry to-night a deluded public will have to pay. Here
are a host of city merchants discussing politics, and it is wonderful how
common-place is their conversation under the influence of alcohol.
"Palmerston is a great man, by ---, he is a great man, sir," says one.
"Yes, and no mistake," is the reply. "There is no humbug about
Palmerston," says another. And so they ring the changes, originating
nothing, gaining nothing, only getting redder in the face and more
indistinct in their pronunciation. At length they button over their
great coats, pay their bills, and generally very good-naturedly, but very
unsteadily, steer towards the door. It may be that a noisy discussion
takes place. One man a little more gone than the rest disturbs the
harmony of the evening by his flat contradictions, uttered somewhat too
rudely, and backed by a blow from the fist on the table, which breaks a
couple of glasses. But next morning he apologizes; "It was only my wine
contradicting your wine," he says, without any sense of shame. But this
rarely happens. The respectable classes have more command of their
temper, and do not get so idiotically drunk as the frequenters of low
public-houses, and so the _habitues_ are in no hurry to move and leave
the light and luxurious room for the muddy streets and the winter night.
But they must do so, and young men with their passions unnaturally
stimulated, and the conscience proportionately deadened, are left to the
temptations which await men who are out in the small hours; and old
fogies, believing that if they go to bed mellow, they live as they ought
to live, and die jolly fellows, find their way to their respective
dwelling-places in a state as lamentable as it is degrading. Yet next
Sunday you will see these men at church, and hear them joining in solemn
and contrite prayer. Do they think these purple faces tell no tales? Do
they think it is only the wife knows how they drink--in respectable
company--in respectable hotels? Do they forget that in the midst of
their revelry, under the flaming chandeliers, peering over the shoulders
of courteous waiters, listening to their vinous laughter and ancient
jokes, Death, with his dart, is there? Ay, and one night he will ride
home with his victim in the Hansom, and will see him placed, all smelling
with drink and under its influence, in the bed, side by side with his
wife, and next morning she will as usual give her husband the seidlitz
powder or soda water, and leave him to sleep for a short while longer,
and when she comes back will find that his is the sleep which knows no
waking. And then the inquest will be held--and a medical man will
perplex a plain case with useless show of knowledge, and a jury will
return a verdict of "Death from natural causes." You and I know
better--you and I know that if the man had not gone into the respectable
public-house he might have lived another ten years--that it was because
he went there night after night, and sat soaking there night after night,
that the blood-vessels became gorged and clotted, and that the wonderful
machine stood still. "Poisoned by alcohol" is the true verdict--by
alcohol sold and consumed in the respectable public-house. How long will
society sanction such places? How long will they retard the progress of
the nation by wasting energies, and time, and cash, and opportunities
that might have been devoted to nobler ends? How long with their
splendour--with their gilding and glass--with their air of respectability
and comfort, will they attract the unwary, ruin the weak, and slay the
strong man in his strength and pride?