A stranger, ignorant of our inner life, and unacquainted with our social
system, knowing only that we call ourselves a Christian people, and that
we boast that Christianity places woman in a peculiarly favoured
position, might dwell among us for awhile, and, seeing how woman is
flattered and followed, might imagine that our condition was perfect, and
that here, at least, woman, the weak, was sheltered by man, the strong.
In the dazzling ball-room--on the glittering promenade--he might meet the
lovely and the fair, and deem that they were no brilliant exception, but
as they were sheltered and loved, so were sheltered and loved all of
their common sex. Grieved would he be to find out his mistake; yet more
grieved would he be to know that the graceful drapery that added to the
beauty that everywhere flashed upon his eye was wrought by tender and
delicate women, who, pale and wan, slave at the needle from morn till
eve, and from eve till again the dim grey of morn gleamed in the east--by
women withered before their prime--by women who, for no crime, but from
their simple desire to live by the honest and honourable labour of their
hands, are shut up in heated and unhealthy rooms, debarred from social
duties and joys, and who know nothing of life but its wants and woes--by
women who can find in slavery itself nothing more forlorn than their
melancholy fate--by women to the majority of whom there is no honest way
of escape from the lingering death that besets them, but the grave.
We would guard our readers against giving way to mawkish sentimentalism;
_that_ it is not our aim to excite. There are employers who are all they
should be; there are milliners' and dressmakers' assistants who find
their labour what all healthy labour is, a blessing, and not a curse.
Nor is every dressmaker shut up in these hot-houses of disease beautiful,
nor the daughter of one who has seen better days. It is true that some
of these unfortunate girls are the daughters of "clergymen, medical men,
and officers;" but it is because they partake of our common
humanity--because they have human blood and human hearts--because life
was given them that in it they might bless and be blessed--because, in
their injuries and wrong, the human family and its Father above are
injured and wronged--that we claim for them from society sympathy and
redress. We say nothing of the moral danger to which, in a metropolis
like this, they are peculiarly exposed. When sin offers so golden a
bait, it shows that those who yet continue at their work deserve respect
and aid. If some of them have fallen--if some of them, driven by
despair, have walked our streets to gain their bread, let us blame the
system which has made so infamous and wretched a mode of life seem a
change to be desired. Let the cure be adopted; let the work now done be
distributed among a larger number of hands; and in this country, at
least, there is no lack of persons eager to be employed. In many of the
fashionable establishments increased cost of production can be of but
little moment. Let employers learn to practise humanity, and let our
high-born and influential ladies see to it, that it is no thoughtlessness
of theirs that compels their poorer sisters to toil with a sinking frame
and a heavy heart. As a nation, we have worked out one problem in
civilization; we have shown that the utmost wealth can exist side by side
with the deepest poverty--the grossest ignorance with the most cultivated
knowledge--the most elevating piety with the most debasing fetichism--the
fairest virtue with the most revolting vice. Be it our nobler work to
show to the nations of the earth how, while our higher classes live in
refinement and wealth, there is no class, however humble, but can joy in
the possession of social happiness and rights.
But what, you ask, has this to do with Caldwell's? Only this, that of
the class to which I have referred, I believe more may be found of an
evening at Caldwell's, than anywhere else in London. It is not all
dressmakers who toil thus severely and unnaturally; and few of them are
there who do not in the course of the year find time to pay Caldwell's a
visit. Who has not heard of Caldwell's _Soirees Dansantes_? Are they
not advertised in every paper? Are they not posted in gigantic bills in
every street? In quiet country lanes, miles and miles away from town, do
we not come across the coloured letters by which Mr Caldwell announces
his entertainment to the world? Who is Mr John Caldwell? We will let
him speak for himself. He has an establishment in Dean-street, Soho.
The building cost him nearly four thousand pounds. On boxing-night he
had as many as 600 customers, "and on average nights," he tells us, "I
have about 200." The charge for admission is eight-pence. Mr Caldwell
has a public-house just by, and from that supplies wine, and ale, and
spirits. "I have never had a case of drunkenness in my place for years;
I am very particular--I never let a drunken man remain." On an average
about thirty glasses of spirits are drunk in the dancing room in the
course of an evening, and about forty glasses of beer. "I believe my
place is carried on in as respectable a manner as can be. Some of the
first noblemen come; there are some very respectable tradesmen round the
neighbourhood, and a great many young people from the neighbourhood. The
rooms are principally supported by the working classes." The dancing
saloon opens at eight, and is closed at a quarter to twelve. Such is the
evidence given by Mr Caldwell himself before the select committee of the
House of Commons on public-houses. As is perfectly natural, it is all
_coleur de rose_. The union of the first noblemen and the _elite_ of the
working classes over spirits-and-water, or in the mazy dance, is a
beautiful specimen of fraternisation, and the small quantity of beer and
spirits drunk by 200 persons indicates an amount of sobriety rare in
places of public amusement. I think Mr Caldwell has a little understated
the case. I fear he forgot to tell the committee that the drinking at
his place was in the refreshment-room down-stairs, not in the
dancing-room above; while in the latter the small quantity he asserts is
consumed, I am inclined to think, much more may be disposed of
down-stairs. In the course of his own examination some disagreeable
truths oozed out. We give a couple of questions and answers in proof of
this.--Sir George Grey: "Do you mean to say that the dancing-saloon would
have no sufficient attraction for the people unless there were connected
with it the facility of obtaining spirituous liquors?" "_I think not_;
_the people want a glass of wine_, _or negus_, _or brandy-and-water_".
Again, Mr Caldwell has been unable to procure a license on account of the
opposition of the publicans in the neighbourhood. The Chairman asks, "Do
you think the publicans would withdraw their opposition?" "_Yes_, _they
begin to find my house an advantage_; _when parties leave my rooms_,
_they stand together at the corner of the streets_, _and say_, _We will
have a parting glass_. _They do not all have it at my rooms_."
Now this answer does not well coincide with Mr Caldwell's former
evidence. It is quite as much the drink as the dancing that is the
attraction, and as to his respectable tradesmen, and the fact of persons
not being tipsy, and that of some of the first noblemen coming there, all
these assertions are fairly open to criticism. It was only the other day
I heard a London magistrate declare that publicans never could tell when
a person was tipsy; and as to respectability, your Robsons, and Camerons,
and Sadleirs are always considered highly respectable. Ask the first
person you meet about your neighbours. What is the answer? Oh, they are
a highly respectable family; they are immensely rich. And as to noblemen
coming into such places, I imagine that would be precisely the reason why
the judicious father of a pretty girl would prefer her dancing anywhere
rather than in Mr Caldwell's establishment in Dean-street. I have not
much faith in the benefits of that species of the mixture of all ranks.
Like the Irishman's reciprocity, it is all on one side. Tennyson makes
his hero tell Lady Clara Vere de Vere--
"At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare and I retired,--
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired."
But perchance a young maiden, led away by the excitement of the hour,
could not find it in her heart to address similar language to Lady Clara
Vere de Vere's brother. The last victim always believes that she is to
be the exception to all general rules; she may transgress, but not pay
the penalty--pluck the forbidden fruit, and for doing so not forfeit
Eden--plunge wildly into sin, and sorrow, and shame, and yet find peace
in her heart and the light of heaven lying on her path; but cause and
effect are eternal, and, youth gone, and pleasure gone, and the power to
attract gone, and the inward sense of right succeeded by the stings of
conscience and the gnawing of remorse, what is left but to weep madly and
in vain for
"The tender grace of a day that is dead"?
But we are in Caldwell's,--let us go into the gallery and look down. I
know not the name of the new dances, but how the women swim round the
room, as the music now hurriedly hastens, now softly dies away. The girl
that dances here so modestly to-night in twelve months will have lost her
maiden shame, will be dressed in silks and satins, will be dancing at the
Argyll, and supping at Scott's or Quin's. That girl they call Rose--and
a rose she is, for she might shine in a Belgravian drawing-room, and
walks in beauty as a fairy queen--might have lit up a home with her love,
and made a brave heart proud; but here she comes, night after night, and
domestic life is to her tame after music and dancing such as she has
here. Beauty you will not find much of, nor that overdress which stamps
the character of the women at the Casino or the Argyll in unmistakeable
terms; and the men are the class you usually meet in these places. They
may be pickpockets, or they may be peers; you can scared tell the
difference in these levelling days. If I had not Mr Caldwell's express
assertion to the contrary, I should certainly say that that young fellow
with a pint bottle of champagne in his hand was decidedly drunk,--at any
rate, he has very much the appearance of a tipsy person; but the waiters
seem to be of Mr Caldwell's opinion, and are still offering him more
drink, and the women around seem to think it is rather fun than
otherwise. Ah! little do they reflect how such as he, under the
influences of drink, forget the decencies of life, the claims of duty,
forget even the common instincts of common humanity; so that the wife,
whom he has vowed to love, honour, and protect, is abandoned, and the
home forsaken, for the orgies of the public-house. Do the women around
us ever expect to be the wives and mothers of such, or have they, young
and fair as many of them seem, learnt already that recklessness as to the
future which robs life of all its glory, and incarcerates the soul in a
living grave? I can see, even here, a gaiety more sad than tears. But I
need not continue my description; dancing in public rooms in the
metropolis is much the same everywhere. Of course the place is all that
Mr Caldwell says it is. I believe with him that it is as respectably
conducted as establishments of the kind can be; but at the same time Mr
Caldwell confesses it leads to drinking, and that is quite reason enough,
independently of other obvious considerations, why I come away thankful
that no wife or sister of mine is amongst the parties nightly to be met
at Mr Caldwell's _soirees dansantes_.