Is situated in an appropriate locality in the City-road, not far from a
lunatic asylum, and contiguous to a workhouse. From time immemorial the
Cockneys have hastened thither to enjoy themselves. Children are taught
to say--
"Up and down the City-road,
In and out the Eagle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel."
And the apprentice or clerk, fresh from the country, and anxious to see
life, generally commences with a visit to the Grecian Saloon--Eagle
Tavern. As a rule, I do not think what are termed fast men go much to
theatres. To sit out a five-act tragedy and then a farce is a bore which
only quiet old fogies and people of a domestic turn can endure; and even
where, as in the Grecian Saloon, you have dancing, and singing, and
drinking added, it is not the fast men, but the family parties, that make
it pay. There you see Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson, with their
respective partners and the dear pledges of their well-regulated loves.
They come early, sit out _Jack Shepherd_ with a resolution worthy of a
better cause, listen to the singing from the Music Hall, return again to
witness the closing theatrical performances, and enjoy all the old stage
tricks as if they had not heard them for the last fifty years. These
worthy creatures see a splendour in the Grecian Saloon which I do not.
Then there are the juvenile swells. Anxious mothers in the country,
fearing the contaminations of London and the ruin it has brought on other
sons, lodge them in remote Islington, or Hoxton, still more remote. It
is in vain they do so. The Haymarket may be far off, but the Grecian
Saloon is near; and the young hopefuls come in at half-price, for
sixpence, and smoke their cigars, and do their pale ale, and adopt the
slang and the vices of their betters with too much ease. And then there
are the unfortunates from the City-road, with painted faces, brazen
looks, and gorgeous silks; mercenary in every thought and feeling, and
with hearts hard as adamant. God help the lad that gets entangled with
such as they! It requires no prophet to foretell his career.
Embezzlement--first with a view to replace the sum appropriated to guilty
pleasures,--then, embezzlement hopelessly continued because once
begun,--then discovery, and punishment, and shame, and despair. Youth
must have its pleasures, I know. Young blood is not torpid like that of
age; and song and woman will ever be dear till time furrows the brow and
silvers the hair. But why need we seek them where the air is
contaminated--where the evening's amusement will not bear the morning's
reflection--where, though pleasure lead the way, scattering sweet
flowers, vice and shame and premature old age bring up the rear? Look at
those lads; they cannot have been long emancipated from school. The
erect collar, the straight hat, the long coat, indicate the fact that
they belong to the Young England party; and here, listening to
indifferent songs, and witnessing inferior dramatic performances, and
associating with the refuse of the other sex, they are learning to be
men. What a manhood to look forward to! And if there be no excuse for
them, there is still less for what I may call the domestic part of the
audience,--the fat old women with their baskets filled with prog, the
pursy old tradesmen that drop in to smoke a pipe, and the various tribes
of gents and bagsmen on their way home from the city.
Let me say a word on our domestic life. When there is so little
difference between the majority of men and women, why should the line of
demarcation be so severely drawn? We talk very prettily about home,
sweet home, and poets sing its love and purity and charms; and a popular
picture is that which the artist draws when he groups together the
gray-haired grandfather and grandmother, seated by the fire, and father
and mother by their side, and brave lads and graceful girls around
listening, by the warm light of the lamp, to some tale of manly struggle
or Christian chivalry, or lifting up together the glad voice of song.
But why should your son or mine, immediately he goes out into the world
and leaves the parental roof, become a stranger to all this? If the
Englishman's home be his castle, why should we cast out into the ditch,
to lie down and die in its mire, all who are not of the family? Think of
the thousands and thousands of young men who yearly come up to town,
strangers to every one, and with no chance of getting into female
society, except such as they find at such places as the Eagle. These
women are not lovelier than you meet with in respectable houses--not
better educated nor more correct in their principles; yet, as by natural
instinct one sex seeks the society of the other, we condemn our youth to
the company of such. Paterfamilias is afraid the young men will pay
attention to his daughters. Perhaps the young lady-daughters fancy it to
be beneath them to be civil to their father's young men. Perhaps the
young men themselves believe that an honourable connexion is beyond their
means, and deliberately pursue a career of vice. In all these cases, in
my humble opinion, very serious blunders are involved. The life of a
bachelor under the circumstances I here allude to is quite as costly as
that of a married man, without the stimulus to exertion which the latter
has. Paterfamilias forgets that the young man he fears may be the suitor
for his daughter's hand, though he is poor to-day, may be comparatively
rich to-morrow; and the young ladies should remember that it is rather
too much to expect that a young man just entering upon life will be able
to launch out in the same style as those who for thirty or forty years
have been pursuing a successful commercial career. It is our false pride
that eats us up,--that makes us sneer at love in a cottage,--that turns
our women into cross old maids, and our men into gay Lotharios, very
disreputable and, to a certain extent, deliriously gay. I admit that we
have much more outside respectability, but is society the better? Have
we more true happiness? If Wordsworth is correct, "plain living and high
thinking" go together. But our aim is high living, and I fear the
thinking is very, very plain in consequence. We nurse up in our midst,
and reverently worship--and denounce as worse than an infidel every one
who utters the truth respecting it--an aristocracy the richest and most
luxurious in the world,--an aristocracy which would long ere this have
become intellectually effete, did it not recruit its ranks from
successful adventurers in the shape of lawyers; and the commercial
classes vying with this aristocracy in outward show, the effects are
manifest all over the land, in the general attempts to live beyond one's
means, and to get into a circle supposed to be superior to that in which
originally we moved. In Germany they manage better; the noble and the
trading classes never have a rivalry, the gulf is impassable, and hence
the home life is less pretentious and happier than ours. In England "the
toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his
kibe." What we want is a return to the plain living and high thinking of
an age gone by; less show and more reality; the destruction of the wall
of partition, either of poverty or of false pride, and the widening and
enhancing the charms of the domestic circle. If now and then the result
is a marriage not very intelligible on pecuniary principles, let us
consider even that as a lesser evil than that resulting from the
companionship, on the part of our youths, with the women who infest such
places as the Eagle, and without which it is clear such places could not
pay.
I will call evidence as to the character of the amusements at the Eagle
Tavern. In the parliamentary report on public-houses, I find Mr Balfour
is examined respecting it. He says, "The most detrimental place of which
I know, as far as women are concerned, is the Eagle Tavern in the
City-road. There are gardens, and statues round the gardens, and
everything to attract. There is a large theatre, and there are
theatrical representations during the week. I have seen women there whom
I have recognised next day as common street-walkers. The gardens are
open, with alcoves and boxes on each side, and lads and young persons are
taken in there and plied with drink. The house is opened on Sunday
evening, but on Sunday evening there is no dramatic representation nor
music. I have seen gentlemen come out drunk." On a Sunday night when Mr
Balfour visited the place, he said, "There were various rooms. There is
what is called the Chinese-room, the ball-room, and the concert-room.
They were all filled with persons drinking, and I saw a great number of
female servants, and females of a certain description; there is no doubt
upon that subject at all." Now, Mr Conquest, the present proprietor,
must have read all this evidence, yet I do not see that he has taken any
steps to reform the evil complained of. It pays, I suppose, and that is
enough. Much money has been made by it. The late proprietor retired a
wealthy man. The present proprietor, we presume, trusts to do the same,
and if the establishment panders to vice, if women date their ruin to
Sunday evenings there, if mothers see their sons robbed of all that would
make them decent men owing to their visits there, what's the odds? cries
the dram-seller, who, like another Cain, asks if he be his brother's
keeper.
The regular attendants see this not. "It's a beautiful place," says Mrs
Smith to Mrs Robinson, "a'nt it, my dear?" as they sit eating
questionable sausage rolls, and indulging in bottled beer. They see the
pictures in the balcony, and think the gas jets quite miraculous, and
admire the weak fountains and ambitious grottoes--and they laugh even at
the comic singer, a feat I cannot achieve anyhow. Evidently the Eagle
Tavern audience is of the same genus as an Adelphi audience, a people
easily moved to laughter, and much given to taking their meals with
them,--a people not prone to look before or after,--who would be drowned
rather than get up and walk into the Ark, and who see no chance of their
own house being burnt down in the fact that their neighbour's house is in
flames. I don't believe naturally men or women are these dull clods, but
custom makes them such, and they see no danger, nor perhaps is there
where they are concerned.