The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners
and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the
subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination
may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent, among the small
gentility—the would-be aristocrats—of the middle classes. Tradesmen and
clerks, with fashionable novel-reading families, and
circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up small assemblies in
humble imitation of Almack’s, and promenade the dingy ‘large room’ of
some second-rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who
are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of
fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts
of some ‘fancy fair in high life,’ suddenly grow desperately
charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their
eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest
accident in the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to
be in a languishing condition: Thomson’s great room, or Johnson’s
nursery-ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies,
from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to
four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception
of these classes of society, however, and a few weak and insignificant
persons, we do not think the attempt at imitation to which we have
alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the
recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement; and
we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the hope
that it may possess some amusement for our readers.
If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives
home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to
have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never
does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes great pride in it
notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to
the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and
shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any
distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your
bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes
a walk round it, before he starts for town in the morning, and is
particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat.
If you call on him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before
dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind
the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short
distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a
large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are
loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young
gentlemen, who are holding parasols over them—of course only to keep
the sun off—while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid,
are strolling listlessly about, in the shade. Beyond these occasions,
his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness
of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to
dinner on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the
morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is
removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port,
he orders the French windows of his dining-room (which of course look
into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over
his head, and leaning back in his arm-chair, descants at considerable
length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to
impress you—who are a young friend of the family—with a due sense of
the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he
has exhausted the subject, he goes to sleep.
There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is
their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance
from town—say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other
road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back
garden. He and his wife—who is as clean and compact a little body as
himself—have occupied the same house ever since he retired from
business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son,
who died at about five years old. The child’s portrait hangs over the
mantelpiece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw
about, is carefully preserved as a relic.
In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden;
and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at
it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you
will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with
manifest delight. In spring-time, there is no end to the sowing of
seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which
look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun
has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot
about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has, is
the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end,
generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his
wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the
hyacinth-glasses in the parlour-window, and geranium-pots in the little
front court, testify. She takes great pride in the garden too: and when
one of the four fruit-trees produces rather a larger gooseberry than
usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass on the sideboard,
for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr.
So-and-so planted the tree which produced it, with his own hands. On a
summer’s evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and
emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted
themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily
together in the little summerhouse, enjoying the calm and peace of the
twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and
gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their
gayest flowers—no bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled
over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early
hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their
only recreations, and they require no more. They have within
themselves, the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety
of each, is to die before the other.
This is no ideal sketch. There _used_ to be many old people of this
description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still
more. Whether the course female education has taken of late
days—whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has
tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show
far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question
we should feel little gratification in discussing: we hope not.
Let us turn now, to another portion of the London population, whose
recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be
conceived—we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to
imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural
‘Tea-gardens.’
The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are
additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables
which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being
red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women—boys and
girls—sweethearts and married people—babies in arms, and children in
chaises—pipes and shrimps—cigars and periwinkles—tea and tobacco.
Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading
about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in
the next box facetiously observes, ‘cutting it uncommon fat!’)—ladies,
with great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths,
in their hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful
and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of
the aforesaid gentlemen—husbands in perspective ordering bottles of
ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish
disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities
of ‘shrimps’ and ‘winkles,’ with an equal disregard of their own bodily
health and subsequent comfort—boys, with great silk hats just balanced
on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if
they liked them—gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats,
occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their
own canes.
Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile, but they are all
clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those
two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so
confidentially, inserting a ‘ma’am’ at every fourth word, scraped an
acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in
admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them—that diminutive
specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black
feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are
walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party
in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the
visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother: a young
man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonious title of
‘Uncle Bill,’ who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some
half-dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice
the fact, for that is a matter of course here. Every woman in ‘the
gardens,’ who has been married for any length of time, must have had
twins on two or three occasions; it is impossible to account for the
extent of juvenile population in any other way.
Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother, at Uncle
Bill’s splendid joke of ‘tea for four: bread-and-butter for forty;’ and
the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper
‘pigtail’ on the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently ‘keeping
company’ with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints—such as ‘Don’t
forget me at the dinner, you know,’ ‘I shall look out for the cake,
Sally,’ ‘I’ll be godfather to your first—wager it’s a boy,’ and so
forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people, and delightful to
the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she is in perfect ecstasies,
and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they
have finished the ‘gin-and-water warm with,’ of which Uncle Bill
ordered ‘glasses round’ after tea, ‘just to keep the night air out, and
to do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch an as-tonishing hot
day!’
It is getting dark, and the people begin to move. The field leading to
town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily
along, the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company
generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of
going to sleep—the mothers begin to wish they were at home
again—sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for
parting arrives—the gardens look mournful enough, by the light of the
two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of
smokers—and the waiters who have been running about incessantly for the
last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their
glasses and their gains.