3


THE PRINCESS VICTORIA IN 1830.
(From the Picture by Richard Westall, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)
FIFTY YEARS AGO
BY
WALTER J3ESANT
AUTHOR OF 'ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN' ETC.

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
By WALTER BESANT.
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THE WORLD WENT VERY WELL
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I
PREFACE.
It has been my desire in the following pages to present
a picture of society in this country as it was when the
Queen ascended the throne. The book is an enlarge-
ment of a paper originally contributed to 'The Graphic/
I have written several additional chapters, and have
revised all the rest. The chapter on Law and Justice
has been written for this volume by my friend Mr. W.
Morris Colles, of the Inner Temple. I beg to record
my best thanks to that gentleman for his important
contribution.
I have not seen in any of the literature called forth
by the happy event of last year any books or papers
which cover the exact ground of this compilation.
There are histories of progress and advancement;
there are contrasts; but there has not been offered any-
where, to my knowledge, a picture of life, manners, and
society as they were fifty years ago.
When the editor of 'The Graphic ' proposed that I
should write a paper on this subject, I readily con-
sented, thinking it would be a light and easy task, and
one which could be accomplished in two or three
weeks. Light and easy it certainly was in a sense,
vi FIFTY YEARS AGO
because it was very pleasant work, and the books to be
consulted are easily accessible; but then there are so
many: the investigation of a single point sometimes
carried one through half-a-dozen volumes. The two or
three weeks became two or three months.
At the very outset of the work I was startled to
find how great a revolution has taken place in our
opinions and ways of thinking, how much greater than
is at first understood. For instance, America was, fifty
years ago, practically unknown to the bulk of our
people; American ideas had little or no influence upon
us; our people had no touch with the United States;
if they spoke of a Eepublic, they still meant the first
French Eepublic, the only Eepublic they knew, with
death to kings and tyrants; while the recollection of the
guillotine still preserved cautious and orderly people
from Eepublican ideas.
Who now, however, connects a Eepublic with a
Eeign of Terror and the guillotine? The American
Eepublic, in fact, has taken the place of the French.
Again, though the Eeform Bill had been, in 1837,
passed already five years, its effects were as yet only
beginning to be felt; we were still, politically, in the
eighteenth century. So in the Church, in the Law, in
the Services, in Society, we were governed by the ideas
of the eighteenth century.
PREFACE vii
The nineteenth century actually began with steam
communication by sea; with steam machinery; with
railways; with telegraphs; with the development of
the colonies; with the admission of the people to the
government of the country; with the opening of the
Universities; with the spread of science; with the
revival of the democratic spirit. It did not really
begin, in fact, till about fifty years ago. When and
how will it end? By what order, by what ideas, will
it be followed?
In compiling even such a modest work as the pre-
sent, one is constantly attended by a haunting dread of
having forgotten something necessary to complete the
picture. I have been adding little things ever since I
began to put these scenes together. At this, the very
last moment, the Spirit of Memory whispers in my ear,
* Did you remember to speak of the high fireplaces, the
open chimneys—up which half the heat mounted—
the broad hobs, and the high fenders, with the fronts
pierced, in front of which people's feet were always cold?
Did you remember to note that the pin of the period
had its head composed of a separate piece of wire rolled
round; that steel pens were either as yet unknown, or
were precious and costly things; that the quill was
always wanting a fresh nib; that the wax-match did
not exist; that in the country they still used the old-
viii FIFTY YEARS AGO
fashioned brimstone match; that the night-light of the
period was a rush candle stuck in a round tin cylinder
full of holes; and that all the ladies' dress had hooks
and eyes behind ? *
I do not think that I have mentioned any of these
points; and yet, how much food for reflection is
afforded by every one! Keader, you may perhaps find
my pictures imperfect, but you can fill in any one
sketch from your own superior knowledge. Meantime,
remember this. As nearly as possible, fifty years ago,
the eighteenth century passed away. It died slowly;
its end was hardly marked.
King William the Fourth is dead. Alas! how many
things were dying with that good old king! The steam-
whistle was already heard across the fields: already in
mid-ocean the great steamers were crossing against wind
and tide: already the nations were slowly beginning
to know each other: Privilege, Patronage, and the
Power of Eank were beginning already to tremble, and
were afraid: already the working man was heard de-
manding his vote: the nineteenth century had begun.
We who have lived in it; we who are full of its ideas;
we who are all swept along upon the full stream of it—
we know not, we cannot see, whither it is carrying us.
W. B.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTEB PAGB
I. Great Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies ... 1
n. The Year 1837 18
III. London in 1837 30
IV. In the Street 45
V. With the People ........ 67
VI. With the Middle-Class . 85
^VII. In Society 110
VEIL At the Play and the Show 125
V IX. In the House 137
X. At School and University 154
XI. The Tavern .160
XII. In Club- and Card-land . 175
XIII. With the Wits 183
XIV. Journals and Journalists 209#
XV. The Sportsman. 214
XVI. In Factory and Mine 224
XVII. With the Men of Science 233
XVIII. Law and Justice 237
XIX. Conclusion ••••••••• 258
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATES.
The Princess Victoria in 1830. From the Picture by
Richard Westall, B.A., at Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Queen Victoria in 1839. Prom a Drawing by B. J.
Lane, AM.A.
Thomas Carlyle. From the Fraser Gallery .
The Queen's First Council—Kensington Palace, June
20, 1837. From the Picture by Sir David Wilkie, R.A.,
at Windsor Castle ........
A Show of Twelfth-Cakes. From Cruikshank's 1Comic
Almanack'' . .
Greenwich Park. From Cruikshantfs 'Comic Almanack'
The Chimney-Sweeps' Annual Holiday. From Cruik-
shanFs 1 Comic Almanack1 .
Beating the Bounds. From Cruikshantts 'Comic
Almanack''
Bartholomew Fair. From Cruikshank's i Comic Almanack''
Vauxhall Gardens. From CruikshanFs 'Comic Almanack'
In Fleet Street. Proclaiming the Queen. From Cruik-
shank's 1 Comic Almanack'
Leigh Hunt. From the Fraser Gallery ....
John Galt. From the Fraser Gallery
The Queen receiving the Sacrament after her Coro-
nation. Westminster Abbey, June 28,1838. From
the Picture by C. B. Leslie, B.A.^at Windsor Castle .
Theodore Hook. From the Fraser Gallery . . . .
Frontispiece
Vignette
PAGE
To face 1
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
56
64
94
100
xii
FIFTY YEARS AGO
PAGE
The Countess of Blessington. From the Fraser Gallery, To face 110
Count d'Orsay. From the Fraser Gallery . . . . „ 112
Sydney Smith. From the Fraser Gallery ,116
John Baldwin Buckstone. From the Fraser Gallery . . 126
Thomas Noon Talfourd. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 128
Mary Russell Mitford. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 130
Sir Walter Scott. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 132
Lord Lyndhurst. From the Fraser Gallery . . . . „ 138
William Cobbett. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 140
Lord John Russell. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 144
Edward Lytton Bulwer. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 148
Benjamin D'Israeli. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 150
Thomas Campbell. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 176
Samuel Taylor Coleredge. From the Fraser Gallery . „ 182
William Wordsworth. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 184
Rev. William Lisle Bowles. From the Fraser Gallery . „ 186
Pierre-Jean de Beranger. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 188
James Hogg. From the Fraser Gallery . . . . „ 190
Regina's Maids of Honour. From the Fraser Gallery . „ 192
Harriet Martlneau. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 194
William Harrison Ainsworth. From the Fraser Gallery „ 196
The Fraserians. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 198
John Gibson Lockhart. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 200
Samuel Rogers. From the Fraser Gallery. . . . „ 202
Thomas Moore. From the Fraser Gallery . . . . „ 204
Lord Brougham and Vaux. From the Fraser Gallery . „ 206
Washington Irving. From the Fraser Gallery . . . „ 208
John Wilson Croker. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 210
Cockney Sportsmen. From OruiJcshanFs iComic Almanack^ „ 218
Return from the Races. From GruikshanTc's *Comic
Almanack'' . . „ 220
Sir John C. Hobhouse. From the Fraser Gallery . . „ 226
A Point of Law. From CruikshanWs 1 Comic Almanack1 . „ 238
Michael Faraday. From the Fraser Gallery „ 258
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
WOODCUTS IN THE TEXT.
PAGK
Arrival of the Coronation Number op 'The Sun* ... 2
Lifeguard, 1837 . 4
General Postman 6
Napoleon at Longwood. From a Drawing made in 1820 . . 12
London Street Characters, 1837. From a Drawing by John
Leech 14
5 Great Cheyne Row. The House in which Ccurhjle Uvea* from
1834 to Us Death in 1881 16
The Duchess of Kent, with the Princess Victoria at the Age
of Two. From the Picture by Sir W. Beechcy, B.A., at Windsor
Castle 17
William IV. From a Drawing by HB 18
Peeler 20
The Spaniards Tavern, Hampsteap 22
Sir Robert Peel 24
A Parish Beadle. From a Drawing by George CruikshanJc in
* London Characters 9 26
Evening in Smithfield. From a Drawing made in 1858, at the
Gateway leading into Cloth Fair, the Place of Proclamation of
Bartholomew Fair 28
Fireman 31
Hackney Coachman. From a Drawing by George Cruilcshank in
6 London Characters1 34
The First London Exchange 34
The Second London Exchange 35
The Present Royal Exchange—Third London Exchange . . 35
Charing Cross in the Present Day. From a Drawing by Frank
Murray 37
Temple Bar 38
The Royal Courts of Justice 39
Lyons Inn in 1804. From an Engraving in Herbert's • History of
the Inns of Court' 41
Kennington Gate—Derby Day 42
xiv
FIFTY YEARS AGO
PAOB
The Old Boman Bath in the Strand . . . , . . 43
London Street Characters, 1827. From a Drawing by John
Leech 46
The King's Mews in 1750. From a Print by I. Maurer . . . 47
Barrack and Old Houses on the Site of Trafalgar Square.
From a Drawing made by F, W. Fairholt in 1826 . . .48
The Last Cabriolet-Driver. From a Drawing by George Cruik-
shank in ' Sketches by Boz 9 49
A Greenwich Pensioner. From a Drawing by George Cruikshank
in4 London Characters9 . . . . . . .52
An Omnibus Upset. From Cruikshank9 s * Comic Almanack * . . 53
Exeter Change 54
The Parish Engine. From a Drawing by George Cruihsharik in
* Sketches by Boz9 56
Crockford's Fish Shop. From a Drawing by F. W. Fairholt . 57
Thomas Chatterton 60
Third Begiment of Buffs 63
Douglas Jerrold. From the Bust by E. H. Bailey, B.A. ... 64
John Forster. From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry . . .65
Charles Dickens 66
The Darby Day. From Cruikshank's 1 Comic Almanack' . .76
Newgate—Entrance in the Old Bailey 77
In the Queen's Bench 79
G-eorge Eliot. From a Drawing in 6 The Graphic * . 86
La Pastourelle 89
Fashions for August 1836 98
Fashions for March 1837 98
Watchman. From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in 'London
Characters' 101
A Scene on Blackheath. From a Drawing by 4 Phiz1 in Grant's
* Sketches in London' 105
Maid-Servant. From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in 'London
Characters 9 107
Officer of the Dragoon Guards Ill
A Sketch in the Park — The Duke of Wellington and Mrs.
Arbuthnot c 115
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
paos
Lineman • 117
William Makepeace Thackeray 123
Liston as * Paul Pry.' From a Drawing by George Cruiksharik . 128
Charles Reade 130
T. P. Cooke in 'Black-eyed Susan » . ... 132
Vauxhall G-ardens 133
The 1 New * Houses op Parliament, from the River . . . 138
Lord Melbourne 140
Thomas Babington Macaulay 141
Lord Palmerston 142
Burdett, Hume, and O'Connell. From a Drawing by HB. . 143
Daniel O'Connell 146
O'Connell taking the Oaths in the House. From a Drawing by
* Phiz 1 in ' Sketches in London' 147
Edmund Kean as Biohard the Third 161
Old Entrance to the Cock, Fleet Street 163
The Old Tabard Inn, High Street, Southwark . . . . 173
Sign op the Swan with Two Necks, Carter Lane . . . 174
Sign op the Bolt-in-Tun, Fleet Street 174
Oxford and Cambridge Club, Pall Mall 176
United University Club, Pall Mall 177
Crockford's, St. James's Street 179
Charles Knight. From a Photograph by Hughes & Mullins . 184
Robert Southey 185
Thomas Moore 186
* Vathek' Beckford. From a Medallion 187
Walter Savage Landor. From a Photograph by H. Wafkins . 188
Ralph Waldo Emerson 189
Lord Byron 190
Sir Walter Scott 191
A Fashionable Beauty of 1837. By A. F. Ghalon, B.A. . . 193
Lord Tennyson as a Young Man. From the Picture by Sir T.
Lawrence, B.A 196
Matthew Arnold 200
Charles Darwin 201
xvi
FIFTY YEARS AGO
PAGH
Holland House . . . 208
Letting Children down a Coal-Mine. From a Plate in 'The
Westminster Review1 225
Childeen Working in a Coal-Mine. From a Plate in * The West-
minster Review * . 229
London Street Characters, 1837. From a Drawing by John
Leech 231
Marshalsea—The Courtyard. From a Drawing by C. A. Van-
derhoof 239


FIFTY YEARS AGO.
OHAPTEE I.
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, AND THE COLONIES.
I propose to set before my readers a picture of the
country as it was when Queen Victoria (God save the
Queen!) ascended the throne, now fifty years ago and
more. It will be a picture of a time so utterly passed
away and vanished that a young man can hardly under-
stand it. I, who am no longer, unhappily, quite so
young as some, and whose babyhood heard the cannon
of the Coronation, can partly understand this time,
because in many respects, and especially in the man-
ners of the middle class, customs and habits which
went out of fashion in London lingered in the country
towns, and formed part of my own early experiences.
In the year 1837—I shall repeat this remark several
times, because I wish to impress the fact upon every-
body—we were still, to all intents and purposes, in the
eighteenth century. As yet the country was untouched
2
FIFTY YEARS AGO
by that American influence which is now filling all
peoples with new ideas. Eank was still held in the
ancient reverence; religion was still that of the
eighteenth-century Church; the rights of labour were
not yet recognised; there were no trades' unions; there
were no railways to speak of; nobody travelled except

ARRIVAL OF THE CORONATION NUMBER OF 'THE SUN '—ONE PAPER, AND ONE MAN
WHO CAN READ IT IN THE TOWN
the rich; their own country was unknown to the
people; the majority of country people could not read
or write; the good old discipline of Father Stick and
his children, Cat-o'-Nine-Tails, Rope's-end, Strap, Birch,
Ferule, and Cane, was wholesomely maintained; land-
lords, manufacturers, and employers of all kinds did
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES 3
what they pleased with their own; and the BlueEibbon
was unheard of. There were still some fiery spirits in
whose breasts lingered the ideas of the French Eevolu-
tion, and the Chartists were already beginning to run
their course. Beneath the surface there was discon-
tent, which sometimes bubbled up. But freedom of
speech was limited, and if the Sovereign People had
then ventured to hold a meeting in Trafalgar Square,
that meeting would have been dispersed in a very swift
and surprising manner. The Eeform Act had been
passed, it is true, but as yet had produced little effect.
Elections were carried by open bribery; the Civil
Service was full of great men's nominees; the Church
was devoured by pluralists; there were no competitive
examinations; the perpetual pensions were many and
fat; and for the younger sons and their progeny the
State was provided with any number of sinecures.
How men contrived to live and to be cheerful in this
state of things one knows not. But really, I think it
made very little apparent difference to their happiness
that this country was crammed full of abuses, and that
the Ship of State, to outsiders, seemed as if she were
about to capsize and founder.
This is to be a short chapter of figures. Figures
mean very little unless they can be used for purposes
of comparison. When, for instance, one reads that in
the Census of 1831 the population of Great Britain
was 16,539,318, the fact has little significance except
when compared with the Census of 1881, which shows
4
FIFTY YEARS AGO
that the population of the country had increased in
fifty years from sixteen millions to twenty-four millions.
And, again, one knows not whether to rejoice or to
weep over this fact until it has been ascertained how
the condition of these millions has changed for better
or for worse, and whether the outlook for the future,
if, in the next fifty years, twenty-four become thirty-
six, is hopeful or no. Next, when one reads that the
population of Ireland was then
seven millions and three-quar-
ters, and is now less than five
millions, and, further, that one
Irishman in three was always
next door to starving, and that
the relative importance of Ire-
land to Great Britain was then
as one to two, and is now as
one to five, one naturally con-
gratulates Ireland on getting
more elbow-room and Great
LIFEGUARD, 1837
Britain on the relative decrease
in Irish power to do the larger island an injury.
The Army and Navy together in 1831 contained no
more than 277,017 men, or half their present number.
But then the proportion of the English military strength
to the French was much nearer one of equality. The
relief of the poor in 1831 absorbed 6,875,552/., but
this sum in 1844 had dropped to 4,976,090/., the
saving of two millions being due to the new Poor Law.

GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES 5
The stream of emigration had hardly yet begun to flow.
Witness the following figures:
The number of emigrants in 1820 was 18,984
1825 8,860
1832 103,311
1837 72,034
It was not until 1841 that the great flow of emi-
grants began in the direction of New Zealand and Aus-
tralia. The emigrants of 1832 chiefly went to Canada,
and as yet the United States were practically unaffected
by the rush from the old countries.
The population of the great towns has for the most
part doubled itself in the last fifty years. London had
then a million and a half; Liverpool, 200,000; Man-
chester, 250,000; Glasgow, 250,000; Birmingham,
150,000; Leeds, 140,000; and Bristol, 120,000.
Penal settlements were still flourishing. Between
1825 and 1840, when they were suppressed, 48,712
convicts were sent out to Sydney. As regards travel-
ling, the fastest rate along the high roads "was ten miles
an hour. There were 54 four-horse mail coaches in
England, and 49 two-horse mails. In Ireland there
were 30 four-horse coaches, and 10 in Scotland. There
were 3,026 stage coaches in the country, of which
1,507 started from London.
There were already 668 British steamers afloat,
though the penny steamboat did not as yet ply upon
the river. Heavy goods travelled by the canals and
navigable rivers, of which there were 4,000 in Great
6
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Britain; the hackney coach, with its pair of horses,
lumbered slowly along the street; the cabriolet was
the light vehicle for rapid conveyance, but it was not
popular; the omnibus had only recently been intro-
duced by Mr. Shillibeer; and there were no hansom
cabs. There was a Twopenny Post in London, but no
Penny Post as yet. There
was no Book Post, no
Parcel Post, no London
Parcels Deli veryCompany.
If you wanted to send a
parcel to anywhere in
the country, you confided
it to the guard of the
coach; if to a town ad-
dress, there were street
messengers and the 'cads'
GENERAL POSTMAN .
about the stage-coach
stations; there were no telegraphs, no telephones, no
commissionaires.
Fifty years ago the great railways were all begun,
but not one of them was completed. A map published
in the Athenaeum of January 23, 1836, shows the state
of the railways at that date. The line between Liver-
pool and Manchester was opened in September, 1830.
In 1836 it was carrying 450,000 passengers in the year,
and paying a dividend of 9 per cent. The line between
Carlisle and Newcastle was very nearly completed; that
between Leeds and Selby was opened in 1834; there

GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES 7
were many short lines in the coal and mining districts,
and little bits of the great lines were already completed.
The London and Greenwich line was begun in 1834 and
opened in 1837. There were in progress the London
and Birmingham, the Birmingham, Stafford, and War-
rington, the Great Western as far as Bath and Bristol,
and the London and Southampton passing through
Basingstoke. It is amazing to think that Portsmouth,
the chief naval port and place of embarkation for
troops, was left out altogether. There were also a
great many lines projected, which afterwards settled
down into the present great Trunk lines. As they were
projected in 1836, instead of Great Northern, North-
Western, and Great Eastern, we should have had one
line passing through Saffron Walden, .Cambridge,
Peterborough, Lincoln, York, Appleby, and Carlisle,
with another from London to Colchester, Ipswich,
Norwich, and Yarmouth; there was also a projected
continuation of the G.W.K. line from Bristol to Exeter,
and three or four projected lines to Brighton and Dover.
The writer of the article on the subject in the Athenceum
of that date (January 23, 1836) considers that when
these lines are completed, letters and passengers will
be conveyed from London to Liverpool in ten hours.
'Little attention,' he says, 'has yet been given to calcu-
late the effects which must result from the establishment
throughout the kingdom of great lines of intercourse
traversed at a speed of twenty miles an hour.' Unfor-
tunately he had no confidence in himself as a prophet,
8
FIFTY YEARS AGO
or we might have had some curious and interesting
forecasts.
As regards the extent of the British Empire, there
has been a very little contraction and an enormous
extension. We have given up the Ionian Islands to
gratify the sentiment of Mr. Gladstone, and we have
acquired Cyprus, which may perhaps prove of use.
We have taken possession of Aden, at the mouth of
the Eed Sea. In Hindostan, which in 1837 was still
partially ruled by a number of native princes, the flag
of Great Britain now reigns supreme; the whole of
Burma is now British Burma; the little island of Hong
Kong, which hardly appears in Arrowsmith's Atlas of
1840, is now a stronghold of the British Empire.
Borneo, then wholly unknown, now belongs partially
to us; New Guinea is partly ours; Fiji is ours. For
the greatest change of all, however, we must look at the
maps of Australia and New Zealand. In the former
even the coast had not been completely surveyed; Mel-
bourne was as yet but a little unimportant township.
Between Melbourne and Botany Bay there was not a
single village, settlement, or plantation It was not
until the year 1851, only thirty-six years ago, that Port
Phillip was separated from New South Wales, and
created an independent colony under the name of
Victoria; and for a few years it was a very rowdy and
noisy colony indeed.
In New South Wales, the population of which
was about 150,000, convicts were still sent out. In
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES 9
the year 1840, when the transportation ceased, 21,000
convicts were assigned to private service. There were
in Sydney many men, ex-convicts, who had raised them-
selves to wealth; society was divided by a hard line,
not to be crossed in that generation by those on the
one side whose antecedents were honourable and those
on the other who had 6 served their time.' Tasmania
was also still a penal colony, and, apparently, a place
where the convicts did not do so well as in New South
Wales.
Queensland as a separate colony was not yet in exist-
ence, though Brisbane had been begun; tropical Aus-
tralia was wholly unsettled; Western Australia was,
what it still is, a poor and thinly settled country.
The map of New Zealand—it was not important
enough to have a map all to itself—shows the coast-line
imperfectly surveyed, and not a single town or English
settlement upon it! Fifty years ago that great colony
was not yet even founded. The first serious settlement
was made in 1839, when a patch of land at Port
Nicholson, in Cook Strait, was bought from the natives
for the first party of settlers sent out by the recently
established New Zealand Company.
In North America the whole of the North-West
Territory, including Manitoba, Muskoka, British Co-
lumbia, and Vancouver's Island, was left to Indians,
trappers, buffaloes, bears, and rattlesnakes. South
Africa shows the Cape Colony and nothing else. Natal,
Orange Free State, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, Griqua-
IO
FIFTY YEARS AGO
land, Zululand are all part of the great undiscovered
continent. Considering that all these lands have now
been opened up and settled, so that where was formerly
a hundred square miles of forest and prairie there is
now the same area covered with plantations, towns, and
farms, it will be understood that the British Empire has
been increased not only in area, but in wealth, strength,
and resources to an extent which would have been con-
sidered incredible fifty years ago. It is, in fact, just the
difference between owning a barren heath and owning
a cultivated farm. The British Empire in 1837 con-
tained millions of square miles of barren heath and wild
forest, which are now settled land and smiling planta-
tions. It boasted of vast countries, with hardly a single
European in them, which are now filled with English
towns. In 1837, prophets foretold the speedy downfall
of an Empire which could no longer defend her vast
territories. These territories can now defend them-
selves. It may be that we shall have to fight for
empire, but the longer the day of battle is put off the
better it will be for England, and the greater will be
her might. To carry on that war, there are now,
scattered over the whole of the British Empire, fifty
millions of people speaking the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
In fifty years' time there will be two hundred millions
in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, Africa, Asia, New
Zealand, and the Isles, with another two hundred
millions in the States. If the English-speaking races
should decide to unite in a vast confederacy, all the
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES n
other Powers on the earth combined will not be able to
do them an injury. Perhaps after this life we shall be
allowed to see what goes on in the world. If so, there
is joy in store for the Briton; if not, we have been born
too soon.
Next to the extension and development of the
Empire comes the opening up of new countries. We
have rescued since the year 1837 the third part of
Africa from darkness; we have found the sources of
the Nile; we have traced the great Eiver Congo from
its source to its mouth; we have explored the whole
of Southern Africa; we have rediscovered the great
African lakes which were known to the Jesuits in the
seventeenth century; in Australia we have crossed and
recrossed the continent; the whole of North America
has been torn from the Eed Indians, and is now settled
in almost every part.
If the progress of Great Britain has been great, that
of the United States has been amazing. Along the
Pacific shore, where were fifty years ago sand and rock
and snow, where formerly the sluggish Mexican kept his
ranch and the Eed Indian hunted the bufialo, great
towns and American States now flourish. Arkansas
and Missouri were frontier Western States; Michigan
was almost without settlers; Chicago was a little place
otherwise called Fort Dearborn. The population of the
States was still, except for the negroes, and a few de-
scendants of Germans, Dutch, and Swedes, chiefly of
pure British descent. As yet there were in America
12 FIFTY YEARS AGO
few Irish, Germans (except in Pennsylvania), Nor-
wegians, or Italians. Yet the people, much more than
now our cousins, held little friendly feeling towards the

NAPOLEON AT LONGWOOD
(From a Drawing made in 1820)
Mother Country, and lacked the kindly sentiment which
has grown up of late years; they were quite out of
touch with us, strangers to us, and yet speaking our
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES 13
tongue, reading our literature, and governed by our
laws.
As soon as the battle of Waterloo was fairly fought
and Napoleon put away at St. Helena, the Continental
professors, historians, political students, and journalists
all began with one accord to prophesy the approaching
downfall of Great Britain, which some affected to deplore
and others regarded with complacency. Everything
conspired, it was evident, not only to bring about this
decline, but also to accelerate it. The parallel of Car-
thage—England has always been set up as the second
Carthage—was freely exhibited, especially in those
countries which felt themselves called upon and quali-
fied to play the part of Eome. It was pointed out that
there was the dreadful deadweight of Ireland, with its
incurable poverty and discontent; the approaching decay
of trade, which could be only, in the opinion of these
keen-sighted philosophers, a matter of a few years; the
enormous weight of the National Debt; the ruined
manufacturers; the wasteful expenditure of the Govern-
ment in every branch; the corrupting influence of the
Poor Laws; the stain of slavery; the restrictions of
commerce; the intolerance of the Church; the narrow-
ness and prejudice of the Universities; the ignorance
of the people; their drinking habits; the vastness of
the Empire. These causes, together with discontent,
chartism, republicanism, atheism—in fact, all the dis-
agreeablisms—left no doubt whatever that England was
doomed. Foreigners, in fact, not yet recovered from
14
FIFTY YEARS AGO
the extraordinary spectacle of Great Britain's long duel
with France and its successful termination, prophesied
what they partly hoped out of envy and jealousy, and
partly feared from self-interest. Therefore the poli-

LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1837
(From a Drawing by John Leech)
ticians and professors were always looking at this
country, writing about it, watching it, visiting it. No;
there could be no doubt; none of these changes and
dangers could be denied; the factories were choked with
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES 15
excessive production; poverty stalked through the
country; the towns were filled with ruined women;
the streets were cumbered with drunken men; the
children were growing up in ignorance and neglect in-
conceivable; what could come of all this but ruin?
Even—and this was the most wonderful and incredible
thing to those who do not understand how long a Briton
will go on enduring wrongs and suffering anomalies—
the very House of Commons in this boasted land of
freedom did not represent half the people, seats were
openly bought and sold, others were filled with nomi-
nees of the great men who owned them. What could
possibly follow but ruin—swift and hopeless ruin?
What, indeed? Prophets of disaster always omit one
or two important elements in their calculations, and it
is through these gaps that the people basely wriggle,
instead of fulfilling prophecy as they ought to do. For
instance, there is the recuperative power of Man, and
there is his individuality. He may be full of moral
disease, yet such is his excellent constitution that he
presently recovers—he shakes off his evil habits as
he shakes the snow off his shoulders, and goes on an
altered creature. Again, the mass of men may be in
heavy case, but the individual man is patient; he has
strength to suffer and endure until he can pull through
the worst; he has patience to wait for better times;
difficulties only call forth his ingenuity and his resource:
disaster stiffens his back, danger finds him brave.
Always, to the prophet who knows not Man, the case
♦ 3
16 FIFTY YEARS AGO
is hopeless. Always, to one who considers that by-
gazing into the looking-glass, especially immediately
before or after his morning bath, he may perceive his
brother as well as himself, things are hopeful. My
brother, have things, at your worst, ever been, morally,
so bad with you that you have despaired of recovery,
seeing that you had only to resolve and you were
cured? Have you ever reflected that while, to the
outside world, to your maiden aunts and to your female

5 GREAT CHETNE BOW
(The House in which Carlyle lived from 1834
to his death in 1881)
cousins, you were most certainly drifting to moral
wreck and material ruin, you have gone about the
world with a hopeful heart, feeling that the future
was in your own grasp? Even now the outlook of
the whole world is truly dark, and the clouds are
lowering. Yet surely the outlook was darker, the
clouds were blacker, fifty years ago. Eead Carlyle's
* Past and Present,' and compare. There may be other
dangers before us of which we then suspected nothing.

7. Gi^e^
'OF
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, THE COLONIES 17
But if we still preserve the qualities which enabled
us to stand up, almost alone, against the colossal force
of Napoleon, with Europe at his back, and which
carried us through the terrible troubles which followed
the war, we surely need not despair.

THE DUCHESS OF KENT, WITH THE PRINCESS VICTORIA AT THE AOE OF TWO
(From the Picture by Sir W. Beechey at Windsor Castle
18 FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTER E.
THE YEAR 1837,
The year 1837, except for the
death of the old King and the
accession of the young Queen,
was a tolerably insignificant
year. It was on June 20 that
the King died. He was buried
on the evening of July 9 at St.
George's Chapel, Windsor; on
the 10th the Queen dissolved
Parliament; on the 13th she
went to Buckingham Palace;
and on November 9 she visited
the City, where they gave her a
magnificent banquet, served in
Guildhall at half-past five, the
Lord Mayor and City magnates
humbly taking their modest
meal at a lower table. Both
the hour appointed for the
banquet and the humility of
the Lord Mayor and Aldermen point to a remote
period.

WILLIAM IV.
(From a Drawing by HB.)

THE QUEEN'S FIRST COUNCIL—KENSINGTON PALACE, JUNE 20, 1837.
(From the Picture by Sir David Wii.kie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)

THE YEAR 1837
19
The year began with the influenza. Everybody
had it. The offices of the various departments of the
Civil Service were deserted because all the clerks had
influenza. Business of all kinds was stopped because
merchants, clerks, bankers, and brokers all had influ-
enza; at Woolwich fifty men of the Eoyal Artillery
and Engineers were taken into hospital daily, with
influenza. The epidemic seems to have broken out
suddenly, and suddenly to have departed. Another
important event of the year was the establishment of
steam communication with India by way of the Eed
Sea. The ;Atalanta' left Bombay on October 2, and
arrived at Suez on October 16. The mails were brought
into Alexandria on the 20th, and despatched, such was
the celerity of the authorities, on November 7 by H.M.S.
'Volcano.' They reached Malta on the 11th, Gibraltar
on the 16th, and England on December 4, taking sixty
days in all, of which, however, eighteen days were
wasted in Alexandria, so that the possible time of
transit from Bombay to England was proved to be
forty-two days.
This was the year of the Greenacre murder. The
wretched man was under promise to marry an elderly
woman, thinking she had money. One night, while
they were drinking together, she confessed that she
had none, and had deceived him; whereupon, seized
with wrath, he took up whatever weapon lay to his
hand, and smote her on the head so that she fell back-
wards dead. Now mark: if this man had gone straight
20
FIFTY YEARS AGO
to the nearest police-office, and confessed the crime of
homicide, he would certainly have escaped hanging.
But he was so horribly frightened at what had happened,
that he tried to hide the thing by cutting up the body
and bestowing the fragments in various places, all of
them the most likely to be discovered. There was
another woman in the
case, proved. to have
been in his confidence,
and tried with him,
when all the pieces
had been recovered,
and the murder was
brought home to him.
He was found guilty
and hanged. And
there

never
was
a
PEELER
hanging more numer-
ously or more fashion-
ably attended. The
principal performer,
however, is said to
have disappointed his audience by a pusillanimous
shrinking from the gallows when he was brought out.
The woman was sent to Australia, where, perhaps, she
still survives.
There was also, this year, an extremely scandalous
action in the High Court of Justice. It was a libel
case brought by Lord de Eos, and arose out of a gam-

THE YEAR 1837
21
bling quarrel, in which his lordship was accused of
cheating at cards. It was said that, under pretence of
a bad cough and asthma, he kept diving under the
table and fishing up kings and aces, a thing which
seems of elementary simplicity, and capable of clear
denial. His lordship, in fact, did deny it, stoutly and
on oath. Yet the witnesses as stoutly swore that he
did do this thing, and the jury found that he did.
Whereupon his lordship retired to the Continent, and
shortly afterwards died, s.p., without offspring to lament
his errors.
There was a terrible earthquake this year in the
Holy Land. The town of Safed was laid in ruins, and
more than four thousand of the people were killed.
There was a project against the life of Louis-Philippe,
by one Champion, who was arrested. He was base
enough to hang himself in prison, so that no one ever
knew if he had any accomplices.
The news arrived also of a dreadful massacre in
New Zealand. There was only one English settlement
in the country; it was at a place called Makuta, in the
North Island, where a Mr. Jones, of Sydney, had a
flax establishment, consisting of 120 people, men,
women, and children. They were attacked by a party
of 800 natives, and were all barbarously murdered.
A fatal duel was fought on Hampstead Heath, near
the Spaniards Tavern. The combatants were a
Colonel Haring, of the Polish army, and another Polish
officer, who was shot. The seconds carried him to the
22
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Middlesex Hospital, where he died, and nothing more
was said about it.
The dangers of emigration were illustrated by the
voyage of the good ship 'Diamond,' of Liverpool. She
had on board a party of passengers emigrating to New
York. In the good old sailing days, the passengers

THE SPANIARDS TAVERN, HAMPSTEAD
were expected to lay in their own provisions, the ship
carrying water for them. Now the' Diamond ' met with
contrary winds, and was ninety days out, three times
as long as was expected. The ship had no more than
enough provisions for the crew, and when the passen-
gers had exhausted their store their sufferings were
terrible.


THE YEAR 1837
23
An embassy from the King of Madagascar arrived
this year, and was duly presented at Court. I know-
not what business they transacted, but the fact has a
certain interest for me because it was my privilege, about
four-and-twenty years ago, to converse with one of the
nobles who had formed part of that embassy, and who,
after a quarter of a century, was going again on another
mission to the Court of St. James. He was, when I saw
him, an elderly man, dark of skin, but, being a Hova,
most intelligent and well-informed; also, being a Hova,
anxious to say the thing which would please his hearers.
He recalled many incidents connected with the long
journey round the Cape in a sailing vessel, the crowds
and noise of London, the venerable appearance of King
William, and his general kindness to the ambassadors.
When he had told us all he could recollect, he asked
us if we should like to hear him sing the song which
had beguiled many weary hours of his voyage. We
begged him to sing it, expecting to hear something
national and fresh, something redolent of the Mada-
gascar soil, a song sung in the streets of its capital, An-
tananarivo, perhaps with a breakdown or a walk round.
Alas ! he neither danced a breakdown, nor did he walk
round, nor did he sing us a national song at all. He
only piped, in a thin sweet tenor, and very correctly,
that familiar hymn 'Eock of Ages,' to the familiar tune.
I have never been able to believe that this nobleman,
His Excellency the Eight Honourable the Lord Eaini-
feringalarovo, Knight of the Fifteen Honour, entitled
4
24 FIFTY YEARS AGO
to wear a lamba as highly striped as they are made,
commonly reported to be a pagan, with several wives,
really comforted his soul, while at sea, with this hymn
But he was with Christians, and this was a missionary's
hymn which he had often heard, and it would doubtless
please us to hear it sung. Thereupon he sang it, and
a dead silence fell upon us. Behold however, the

SIE ROBERT PEEL
reason why the record of this simple event, the arrival
of the embassy from Madagascar, strikes a chord in
the mind of one at least who reads it. There is little
else to chronicle in the year. The University of Dur-
ham was founded: a truly brilliant success have they
made of this learned foundation! And Sir Eobert Peel
was Rector of Glasgow University. For the rest,


THE YEAR 1837
25
boilers burst, coaches were upset, and many books of
immense genius were produced, which now repose in
the Museum.
Yet a year which marked the close of one period
and the commencement of another. The steamship
* Atalanta' carrying the bags to Suez—what does this
mean? The massacre in New Zealand of the only
white men on the island—what does this .portend?
The fatal duel at Hampstead; the noble lord convicted
of cheating at cards; the emigrant ship ninety days
out with no food for the passengers—what are these
things but illustrations of a time that has now passed
away, the passage from the eighteenth to the nineteenth
century? For there are no longer any duels; noble
lords no longer gamble, unless they are very young
and foolish; ships no longer take passengers without
food for them; we have lessened the distance to India
by three-fourths, measured by time; and the Maoris
will rise no more, for their land is filled with the white
men.
In that year, also, there were certain ceremonies
observed which have now partly fallen into disuse.
For instance, on Twelfth Day it was the custom
for confectioners to make in their windows a brave
show of Twelfth-cakes; it was also the custom of the
public to flatten their noses against the windows and
to gaze upon the treasures displayed to view. It was,
further, the custom—one of the good old annual cus-
toms, like beating the bounds—for the boys to pin
26
FIFTY YEARS AGO
together those who were thus engaged by their coat-
tails, shawls, skirts, sleeves, the ends of comforters,
wrappers, and boas, and other outlying portions of
raiment. When they discovered the trick—of course
they only made pretence at being unconscious—by the
rending, tearing, and destruction of their garments,
they never failed to fall into ecstasies of (pretended)
wrath, to the joy of the children, who next year re-

A PABISH BEADLE
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in 'London Characters')
peated the trick with the same success I think there
are no longer any Twelfth-cakes, and I am sure that
the boys have forgotten that trick.
On Twelfth Day the Bishop of London made an
offering in the Chapel Eoyal of St. James's in com-
memoration of the Wise Men from the East. Is that
offering made still? and, if so, what does his lordship
offer? and with what prayers, or hopes, or expecta-
tions, is that offering made?

THJE YJ£AK 1837 27
At the commencement of Hilary Term the judges
took breakfast with the Lord Chancellor, and after-
wards drove in state to Westminster.
On January 30, King Charles's Day, the Lords went
in procession to Westminster Abbey and the Commons
to St. Margaret's, both Houses to hear the Service of
Commemoration. Where is that service now?
On Easter Sunday the Eoyal Family attended Divine
Service at St. James's, and received the Sacrament.
On Easter Monday the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and
Aldermen went in state to Christ Church, formerly the
Church of the Grey Friars, and heard service. In the
evening there was a great banquet, with a ball. A
fatiguing day for my Lord Mayor.
Easter Monday was also the day of the Epping
Hunt. Greenwich Fair was held on that and the two
following days. And in Easter week the theatres played
pieces for children.
On the first Sunday in Easter the Lord Mayor and
Sheriffs went in state to St. Paul's, and had a banquet
afterwards.
On May Day the chimney-sweeps had their annual
holiday.
On Ascension Day they made a procession of parish
functionaries and parochial schools, and beat the bounds,
and, to mark them well in the memory of all, they beat
the charity children who attended the beadle, and they
beat all the boys they caught on the way, and they
banged against the boundaries all the strangers who
4—2
28
FIFTY YEARS AGO
passed within their reach. When it oame to banging
the strangers, they had a high old time.
On the Queen's Birthday there was a splendid pro-
cession of stage coaches from Piccadilly to the Post
Office.
Lastly, on Seotember 3, Bartholomew Fair was

EVENING IN SMITHFIELD
(From a Drawing made in 1858, at the gateway leading into Cloth Fair, the place of
proclamation of Bartholomew Fair)
opened by the Lord Mayor, and then followed what
our modern papers are wont to call a carnival, but what
the papers of 1837 called, without any regard to pic-
turesque writing, a scene of unbridled profligacy,
licentiousness, and drunkenness, with fighting, both of


THE YEAR 1837
29
fists and cudgels, pumping on pickpockets, robbery and
cheating, noise and shouting, the braying of trumpets
and the banging of drums. If you want to know what
this ancient fair was like, go visit the Agricultural Hall
at Christmas. They have the foolish din and noise of
it, and if the people were drunk, and there were no
police, and everybody was ready and most anxious to
fight, and the pickpockets, thieves, bullies, and black
guards were doing what they pleased, you would have
Bartholomew Fair complete.
3o
FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTEE m.
LONDON IN 1837.
The extent of London in 1837, that is to say, of close
and continuous London, may be easily understood by
drawing on the map a red line a little above the south
side of Eegent's Park. This line must be prolonged
west until it strikes the Edgware Eoad, and eastward
until it strikes the Eegent's Canal, after which it follows
the Canal until it falls into the Eegent's Canal Docks.
This is, roughly speaking, the boundary of the great
city on the north and east. Its western boundary is
the lower end of the Edgware Eoad, Park Lane, and a
line drawn from Hyde Park Corner to Westminster
Bridge. The river is its southern boundary, but if you
wish to include the Borough, there will be a narrow
fringe on the south side. This was the whole of London
proper, that is to say, not the City of London, or London
with her suburbs, but continuous London. If you look
at Mr Loftie's excellent map of London,1 showing the
extent built upon at different periods, you will find a
greater area than this ascribed to London at this period.
That is because Mr. Loftie has chosen to include many
parts which at this time were suburbs of one street,
1 Loftie's History of London, Stanford, 1884.


LONDON IN 1837 31
straggling houses, with fields, nurseries, and market-
gardens. Thus Kennington, Brixton, and Camberwell
are included. But these suburban places were not in
any sense part of continuous London. Open fields and
gardens were lying behind the roads; at the north end
of Kennington Common—then a dreary expanse uncared
for and down-trodden—lay open ponds and fields ; there
were fields between Vauxhall Gardens and the Oval. If
we look at the north of London,
there were no houses round Prim-
rose Hill; fields stretched north and
east; to the west one or two roads
were already pushing out, such as
the Abbey Road and Avenue Eoad;
through the pleasant fields of Kil-
burn, where still stood the pictur-
esque fragments of Kilburn Priory,
the Baysvvater rivulet ran pleasantly;
it was joined by two other brooks,
one rising in St. John's Wood, and
flowing through what are now called Craven Gardens
into the Serpentine. On Haverstock Hill were a few
villas; Chalk Farm still had its farm buildings; Belsize
House, with its park and lake, was the nearest house to
Primrose Hill. A few houses showed the site of Kentish
Town, while Camden Town was then a village, clustered
about its High Street in the Hampstead Eoad. Even
the York and Albany Tavern looked out back and front
on fields; Mornington Crescent gazed across its garden

5
32
FIFTY YEARS AGO
upon open fields and farms; the great burial-ground of
St. James's Church had fields at the back; behind St.
Pancras' Churchyard stretched 'Mr. Agar's Farm;'
Islington was little more than a single street, with
houses on either side; Bagnigge Wells—it stood at the
north-east of St. Andrew's Burying-ground in Grays
Inn Eoad—was still in full swing; Hoxton had some of
its old houses still standing, with the Haberdashers'
Almshouses; the rest was laid out in nurseries and
gardens. King's Cross was Battle Bridge; and Penton-
ville was only in its infancy.
Looking at this comparatively narrow area, consider
the enormous growth of fifty years. What was Bow?
A little village. What was Stratford, now a town of
70,000 people? There was no Stratford. Bromley
was a waste; Dalston, Clapham, Hackney, Tottenham,
Canonbury, Barnsbury—these were mere villages; now
they are great and populous towns. But perhaps the
change is more remarkable still when one considers the
West End. All that great cantlet lying between Mary-
lebone Eoad and Oxford Street was then much in the
same state as now, though with some difference in detail;
thus, one is surprised to find that the south of Blandford
Square was occupied by a great nursery. But west of
Edgware Eoad there was next to nothing. Connaught
Square was already built, and the ground between the
Grand Junction Eoad and the Bayswater Eoad was just
laid out for building; but the great burying-ground of
St. George's, now hidden from view and built round,
LONDON IN 1837
33
was in fields. The whole length of the Bayswater Eoad
ran along market-gardens; a few houses stood in St.
Petersburg Place; Westbourne Green had hardly a
cottage on it; Westbourne Park was a green enclosure;
there were no houses on Notting Hill; Campden Hill
had only one or two great houses, and a field-path led
pleasantly from Westbourne Green to the Kensington
Gravel Pits.
On the west and south-west the Neat Houses, with
their gardens, occupied the ground west of Vauxhall
Bridge. Earl's Court, with its great gardens and mound,
stood in the centre of the now crowded and dreary
suburb; south of the Park stood many great houses,
such as Eutland House, now destroyed and replaced by
terraces and squares. But though London was then so
small compared with its present extent, it was already
a most creditable city. Those who want more figures
will be pleased to read that at the census of 1831 London
contained 14,000 acres, or nearly twenty-two square
miles. This area was divided into 153 parishes, con-
taining 10,000 streets and courts and 250,000 houses.
Its population was 1,646,288. Fifty years before it was
half that number, fifty years later it was double that
number. We may take the population of the year 1837
as two millions.
More figures. There were 90,000 passengers across
London Bridge every day, there were 1,200 cabriolets,
600 hackney coaches, and 400 omnibuses; there were
30,000 deaths annually. The visitors every year were
34
FIFTY YEARS AGO
estimated at 12,000. Among the residents were 130,000
Scotchmen, 200,000 Irish, and 30,000 French. These
figures convey to my own mind very little meaning, but
they look big, and so I have put
them down. Speaking roughly,
London fifty years ago was twice
as big as Paris is now, or the
present New York.
As for the buildings of Lon-
don proper, fifty years have
witnessed many changes, and
have brought many losses—more
losses, perhaps, than gains. The
Eoyal Exchange, built by Edward

HACKNEY COACHMAN
(Prom a Drawing by George cmik- Jerman in place of Sir Thomas
8hank in ' London Characters')
Gresnam s of 1570, was burnt to
the ground on January 10,1838. The present building,
designed by Sir William Tite, was opened by the Queen

THE FIRST LONDON EXCHANGE
in person on October 28,1844. Jerman's Exchange was
a quadrangular building, with a clock-tower of timber
LONDON IN 1837 35
on the Cornhill side. It had an inner cloister and a
1 pawn,' or gallery, above for the sale of fancy goods. It
was decorated by a series of statues of the Kings, from

THE SECOND LONDON EXCHANGE
Edward I. to George IV. Sion College, which until the
other day stood in the street called London Wall, was

THE PRESENT ROYAL EXCHANGE (THIRD LONDON EXCHANGE)
not yet wantonly and wickedly destroyed by those who
should have been its natural and official protectors, the
London clergy.
5*
36
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Things happen so quickly that one easily forgets;
yet let me pay a farewell tribute and drop a tear
to the memory of the most delightful spot in the
whole of London. The building was not of extreme
age, but it stood upon the ancient site of Elsinge Spital,
which itself stood upon the site of the old Cripple-
gate Nunnery; it was founded in 1623 by the will
of one Dr. Thomas White, Vicar of St. Dunstan's-in-
the-West; the place was damaged by the Great Fire,
and little of the building was older, I believe, than 1690,
or thereabouts. But one stepped out of the noise and
hurry of the very heart of London into a courtyard
where the air was instantly hushed; on the right hand
were the houses of the almsmen and women, though 1
believe they had of late ceased to occupy them. Above
the almshouses was the long narrow library crammed
with books, the sight and fragrance of which filled
the grateful soul with joy. On the left side of the
court was the Hall used for meetings, and open all day
to the London clergy for reading the magazines, reviews,
and papers. A quiet, holy place. Fuller wrote his
* Church History' in this college; the illustrious Psalma-
nazar wrote here his 6 Universal History'—it was after
he repented of his colossal lies, and had begun to live
cleanly. Two hundred and fifty years have witnessed
a long succession of London clergymen, learned and
devout most of them, reading in this library and meet-
ing in this hall. Now it is pulled down, and a huge ware-
house occupies its place. The London clergy them-
LONDON IN 1837
37
selves, for the sake of gain, have sold it. And, as for
the garish thing they have stuck up on the Embank-
ment, they may call it what they like, but it is not Sion
College.
Another piece of wanton wickedness was the de-
struction of Northumberland House. It is, of course,
absurd to say that its removal was required. The re-
moval of a great historic house can never be required.
It was the last of the great houses, with the exception

CHARING CROSS IN THE PRESENT DAT
of Somerset House, and that is nearly all modern,
having been erected in 1776-1786 on the site of the
old palace.
The Strand, indeed, is very much altered since the
year 1837. At the west end the removal of Northum-
berland House has been followed by the building of the
38 FIFTY YEARS AGO
Grand Hotel, and the opening of the Northumberland
Avenue: the Charing Cross Station and Hotel have
been erected: two or three new theatres have been
added: Temple Bar has been taken down—in any other
country the old gate would have been simply left stand-
ing, because it was an ancient historical monument;
they would have spared it and made a roadway oh
either side; the rookeries which formerly stood on the

TEMPLE BAB
north side close to the Bar have been swept away, and
the Law Courts stand in their place—where the rooks
are gone it is impossible to say. I myself dimly
remember a labyrinth of lanes, streets, and courts on
this site. They were inhabited, I believe, by low-class
solicitors, money-lenders, racing and betting men, and
by all kinds of adventurers. Did not Mr. Altamont
have chambers here, when he visited Captain Costigan
LONDON IN 1837
39
in Lyons Inn? Lyons Inn itself is pulled down, and on
its site is the Globe Theatre.
As for churches, there has been such an enormous
increase of churches in the last fifty years, that it seems
churlish to lament the loss of half a dozen. But this
half-dozen belongs to the City: they were churches
built, for the most part, by Wren, on the site of ancient
churches destroyed in the Fire; they were all hal-

THE ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE
lowed by old and sacred associations; many of them
were interesting and curious for their architecture: in
a word, they ought not to have been pulled down in
order to raise hideous warehouses over their site. Greed
of gain prevailed; and they are gone. People found
out that their number of worshippers was small, and
argued that there was no longer any use for them. So
40
FIFTY YEARS AGO
they are gone, and can never be replaced. As for their
names, they were the churches of Allhallows, Broad
Street; St. Benet's, Gracechurch Street; St. Dionis
Backchurch; St. Michael's, Queenhithe; St. Antholin's,
Budge Bow; St. Bene't Fink; St. Mary Somerset; St.
Mary Magdalen; and St. Matthew, Friday Street. The
church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, in which was
the grave of Sir William Walworth, disappeared in the
year 1831; those of St. Bartholomew by Eastcheap,
and of St. Christopher-le-Stock, which stood on either
side of the Bank, were taken down in the years 1802
and 1781 respectively. The site of these old churches
is generally marked by a small enclosure, grown over
with thin grass, containing one, or at most two, tombs.
It is about the size of a dining-room table, and you
may read of it that the burying-ground of Saint So-and-
so is still preserved. Indeed! Were the City church-
yards of such dimensions? The 'preservation' of the
burial-grounds is like the respect which used to be paid
to the First Day of the week in the early lustra of the
Victorian Age by the tobacconist. He kept one shutter
up. So the desecrators of the City churchyards, God's
acre, the holy ground filled with the bones of dead
citizens, measured off a square yard or two, kept one
tomb, and built their warehouses over all the rest.
All round London the roads were blocked everywhere
by turnpikes. It is difficult to understand the annoy-
ance of being stopped continually to show a pass or to
pay the pike. Thus, there were two or three turnpikes
LONDON IN i&M 41
in what is now called the Euston Eoad, and was then
the New Eoad; one of them was close to Great Portland
Street, another at Gower Street. At Battle Bridge,
which is now King's Cross, there were two, one on the
east, and one on the west; there was a pike in St. John
Street, Clerkenwell. There were two in the City Eoad,

LYONS INN IN 1804
(From an Engraving in Herbert's 'History of the Inns of Court')
and one in New North Eoad, Hoxton; one at Shoreditch,
one in Bethnal Green Eoad, one in Commercial Eoad.
No fewer than three in East India Dock Eoad, three in
the Old Kent Eoad, one in Bridge Street, Vauxhall; one
in Great Surrey Street, near the Obelisk; one at Kenning-
ton Church—what man turned of forty cannot remember
42
FIFTY YEARS AGO
the scene at the turnpike on Derby Day, when hundreds
of carriages would be stopped while the pikeman was
fighting for his fee? There was a turnpike named after
Tyburn, close to Marble Arch; another at the beginning
of Kensington Gardens; one at St. James's Church,
Hampstead Eoad. Ingenious persons knew how to
avoid the pike by making a long detour.
The turnpike has gone, and the pikeman with his

KENSINGTON GATE—DERBY DAY
apron has gone—nearly everybody's apron has gone
too—and the gates have been removed. That is a clear
gain. But there are also losses. What, for instance,
has become of all the baths? Surely we have not, as
a nation, ceased to desire cleanliness? Yet in reading
the list of the London baths fifty years ago one cannot
choose but ask the question. St. Annice-le-Clair used
to be a medicinal spring, considered efficacious in
LONDON IN 1837 43
rheumatic cases. Who stopped that spring and built
upon its site? The Peerless Pool close beside it was
the best swimming bath in all London. When was
that filled up and built over? Where are St. Chad's
Wells now? Formerly they were in Gray's Inn Koad,
near 'Battle Bridge,' which is now King's Cross, and
their waters saved many an apothecary's bill. There

THE OLD ROMAN BATH IN THE STRAND
were swimming baths in Shepherdess Walk, near the
almshouses. When were they destroyed? There was
another in Cold Bath Fields; the spring, a remarkably
cold one, still runs into a bath of marble slabs, repre-
sented to have been laid for Mistress Nell Gwynne in
the days of the Merry Monarch. Curiously, the list
from which I am quoting does not mention the most
44
FIFTY YEARS AGO
delightful bath of all—the old Eoman Bath in the
Strand. I remember making the acquaintance of this
bath long ago, in the fifties, being then a student at
King's. The water is icy cold, but fresh and bright,
and always running. The place is never crowded;
hardly anybody seems to know that here, in the heart
of London, is a monument of Eoman times, to visit
which, if it were at Aries or Avignon, people would go
all the way from London. Some day, no doubt, we
shall hear that it has been sold and destroyed, like Sion
College, and the spring built over.
CHAPTER IV.
IN THE STREET.
Let us, friend Eighty-seven, take a walk down the
Strand on this fine April afternoon of Thirty-seven.
First, however, you must alter your dress a little. Put
on this swallow-tail coat, with the high velvet collar—
it is more becoming than the sporting coat in green
bulging out over the hips; change your light tie and
masher collar for this beautiful satin stock and this
double breastpin; put on a velvet waistcoat and an
under-waistcoat of cloth; thin Cossack trousers with
straps will complete your costume; turn your shirt
cuffs back outside the coat sleeve, carry your gloves in
your hand., and take your cane. You are now, dear
Eighty-seven, transformed into the dandy of fifty years
ago, and will not excite any attention as we walk along
the street.
We will start from Charing Cross and will walk
towards the City. You cannot remember, Eighty-seven,
the King's Mews that stood here on the site of Trafalgar
Square. When it is completed, with the National
Gallery on the north side-, the monument and statue of
Nelson, the fountains and statues that they talk about,
there will be a very fine square. And we have cer-
46 FIFTY YEARS AGO
tainly got rid of a group of mean and squalid streets
to make room for the square. It is lucky that they
have left Northumberland House, the last of the great
palaces that once lined the Strand.

LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1827
(From a Drawing by John Leech)
The Strand looks very much as it will in your time,
though the shop fronts are not by any means so fine.
There is no Charing Cross Station or Northumberland
Avenue; most of the shops have bow windows and
IN THE STREET 47
there is no plate-glass, but instead, small panes such
as you will only see here and there in your time. The
people, however, have a surprisingly different appear-
ance. The ladies, because the east wind is cold, still
keep to their fur tippets, their thick shawls, and have
their necks wrapped round with, boas, the ends of
which hang down to their skirts,, a fashion revived by

THE KING'S MEW8 IN 17M
(From a Print by L Maurer)
yourself; their bonnets are remarkable structures, like
an ornamental coal-scuttle of the Thirty-seven, not the
Eighty-seven, period, and some of them are of sur-
prising dimensions, and decorated with an amazing pro-
fusion of ribbons and artificial flowers. Their sleeves
are shaped like a leg of mutton; their shawls are like
a dining-room carpet of the time—not like your
dining-room carpet, Eighty-seven, but a carpet of
6
48
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Haunting colour, crimson and scarlet which would
give you a headache. But the curls of the younger
ladies are not without their charms, and their eyes
are as bright as those of their grandchildren, are
they not?
Let us stand still awhile and watch the throng
where the tide of life, as Johnson said, is the fullest.

BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES ON THE SITE OP TRAFALGAR SQUARE
(Prom a Drawing made by P. W. Fairholt in 1826)
Here comes, with a roll intended for a military
swagger, the cheap dandy. I know not what he is by
trade; he is too old for a medical student, not shabby
enough for an attorney's clerk, and not respectable
enough for a City clerk. Is it possible that he is a
young gentleman of very small fortune which he is
.running through 9 He wears a tall hat broader at the
IN THE STREET 49
top than at the bottom, he carries white thread gloves,
sports a cane, has his trousers tightly strapped, wears a
tremendously high stock, with a sham diamond pin, a
coat with a velvet collar, and a double-breasted waist-
coat. His right hand is stuck—it is an aggressive
attitude—in his coat-tail pocket. The little old gentle-
man who follows him, in black shorts and white silk
stockings, will be gone
before your time; so will
yonder still more ancient
gentleman in powdered
hair and pigtail who walks
slowly along. Pigtails in
your time will be clean
forgotten as well as black
silk shorts.
Do you see that thin,
spare gentleman in the
cloak, riding slowly along
the street followed by a
mounted servant? The
people all take off their hats respectfully to him, and
country folk gaze upon him curiously. That is the
Duke. There is only one Duke to the ordinary Briton.
It is the Duke with the hook nose—the Iron Duke—
the Duke of Wellington.
The new-fashioned cabriolet, with a seat at the side
for the driver and a high hood for the fare, is light and
swift, but it is not beautiful nor is it popular. The

50
FIFTY YEARS AGO
wheels are too high and the machine is too narrow.
It is always upsetting, and bringing its passengers to
grief.
Here is one of the new police, with blue swallow-
tail coat tightly buttoned, and white trousers. They
are reported to be mightily unpopular with the light-
fingered gentry, with whose pursuits they are always
interfering in a manner unknown to the ancient
Charley.
Here comes a gentleman, darkly and mysteriously
clad in a fur-lined cloak, fastened at his neck by a brass
buckle, and falling to his feet, such a cloak as in your
time will only be used to enwrap the villains in a
burlesque. But here no one takes any notice of it.
There goes a man who may have been an officer, an
actor, a literary man, a gambler—anything; whatever
he was, he is now broken-down—his face is pale, his
gait is shuffling, his elbows are gone, his boots are
giving at the toes, and—see—the stout red-faced man
with the striped waistcoat and the bundle of seals
hanging at his fob has tapped him on the shoulder.
That is Br sheriff's officer, and he will now be conducted,
after certain formalities, to the King's Bench or the
Fleet, and in this happy retreat he will probably pass
the remainder of his days. Here comes a middle-aged
gentleman who looks almost like a coachman in his
coat with many capes and his purple cheeks. That is
the famous coaching baronet, than whom no better
whip has ever been seen upon the road. Here come a
IN THE STREET 51
pair of young bloods who scorn cloaks and greatcoats.
How bravely do they tread in their tight trousers,
bright-coloured waistcoats, and high satin stocks! with
what a jaunty air do they tilt their low-crowned. hats
over their long and waving locks—you can smell the
bear's grease across the road! with what a flourish do
they bear their canes! Here comes swaggering along
the pavement a military gentleman in a coat much be-
frogged. He has the appearance of one who knows
Chalk Farm, which is situated among meadows where
the morning air has been known to prove suddenly
fatal to many gallant gentlemen. How he swings his
shoulders and squares his elbows! and how the peaceful
passengers make room for him to pass! He is, no
doubt, an old Peninsular; there are still many like unto
him; he is the ruffling Captain known to Queen Eliza-
beth's time; in the last century he took the wall and
shoved everybody into, the gutter. Presently he will
turn into the Cigar Divan—he learned to smoke cigars
in Spain—in the rooms of what was once theEepository
of Art; we breathe more freely when he is gone.
Here comes a great hulking sailor; his face beams
with honesty, he rolls in his gait, he hitches up his wide
trousers, he wears his shiny hat at the back of his head;
his hair hangs in ringlets; he chews a quid; under his
arm is a parcel tied in red bandanna. He looks as if
he were in some perplexity. Sighting one who appears
to be a gentleman recently from the country, he bears
down upon him.
52
FIFTY YEARS AGO
4 Noble captain,' he whispers hoarsely, f if you like,
here's a chance that doesn't come everyday. For why?
I've got to go to sea again, and though they're smuggled
—I smuggled them myself, your honour—and worth
their weight in gold, you shall have the box for thirty
shillin'. Say the word, my cap-
tain, and come round the corner
with me.'
Honest tar! Shall we meet
him to-morrow with another
parcel tied in the same ban-
danna, his face screwed up
with the same perplexity and
anxiety to get rid of his valu-
able burden? You yourself,
a Greenwich pensioneb Eighty-seven, will have your
(From a Drawing by George Cruik- ponfidotlPP trfrvfe VOlir rinO".
shank in'London Characters') l/UUUUCllte HlOrk, )UU1
dropper, your thimble-and-pea,
your fat partridge-seller, even though the bold smuggler
be no more.
In the matter of street music we of Thirty-seven are
perhaps in advance of you of Eighty-seven. We have
not, it is true, the pianoforte-organ, but we have al-
ready the other two varieties—the Eumbling Droner
and the Light Tinkler. We have not yet the street
nigger, or the banjo, or the band of itinerant blacks,
or Christy's Minstrels. The negro minstrel does not
exist in any form. But the ingenious Mr. Eice is at
this very moment studying the plantation songs of

IN THE STREET 53
South Carolina, and we can already witness his humor-
ous personation of 'Jump, Jim Crow,' and his pathetic
ballad of ' Lucy Neal.' (He made his first appearance
at the Adelphi as Jim Crow in 1836.) We have, like
you, the Christian family in reduced circumstances,
creeping slowly, hand in hand, along the streets, sing-
ing a hymn the while for the consolation it affords.
They have not yet invented Moody and Sankey, and
therefore they cannot sing 1 Hold the Fort' or 1 Dare
to be a Daniel,' but there are hymns in every collection

3 ^© AN OMNIBUS UPSET
* (From Cruikshank's ' Comic Almanack')
which suit the Gridler. We have also the ballad-
singer, who warbles at the door of the gin-palace. His
favourite song just now is * All round my Hat.' We
have the lady (or gentleman) who takes her (or his)
place upon the kerb with a guitar, adorned with red
ribbon, and sings a sentimental song, such as 'Speed
on, my Mules, for Leila waits for me,' or 4 Gaily the
Troubadour ;' there is the street seller of ballads at a
penny each, a taste of which he gives the delighted
listener; there are the horns of stage coach and of
54 FIFTY YEARS AGO
omnibus, blown with zeal; there is the bell of the crier,
exercised as religiously as that of the railway-porter;
the Pandean pipes and the drum walk, not only with
Punch, but also with the dancing bear. The perform-
ing dogs, the street acrobats, and the fantoccini; the

EXETER CHANGE
noble Highlander not only stands outside the tobac-
conist's, taking a pinch of snuff, but he also parades
the street, blowing a most patriotic tune upon his bag-
pipe; the butcher serenades his young mistress with
the cleaver and the bones; the Italian boy delights all
the ears of those who hear with his hurdy-gurdy.
IN THE STREET
55
Here comes the Paddington omnibus, the first omni-
bus of all, started seven years ago by Mr. Shillibeer, the
father of all those which have driven the short stages
off the road, and now ply in every street. You will not
fail to observe that the knifeboard has not yet been in-
vented. There are twelve passengers inside and none
out. The conductor is already remarkable for his
truthfulness, his honesty, and his readiness to take up
any lady and to deposit her within ten yards of wher-
ever she wishes to be. The fare is sixpence, and you
must wait for ten years before you get a twopenny
'bus.
Now let us resume our walk. The Strand is very
little altered, you think. Already Exeter Change is
gone; Exeter Hall is already built; the shops are less
splendid, and plate glass is as yet unknown; in Holy-
well Street I can show you one or two of the old signs
still on the house walls; Butcher Eow, behind St. Cle-
ment Danes, is pulled down and the street widened; on
the north side there is standing a nest of rookeries and
mean streets, where you will have your Law Courts;
here is Temple Bar, which you will miss; close to
Temple Bar is the little fish shop which once belonged
to Mr. Crockford, the proprietor of the famous club;
the street messengers standing about in their white
aprons will be gone in your time; for that matter, so
will the aprons; at present every other man in the
street wears an aprbn. It is a badge of his rank and
station; the apron marks the mechanic or the serving-
56
FIFTY YEARS AGO
man; some wear white aprons and some wear leather
aprons; I am afraid you will miss the apron.
Fleet Street is much more picturesque than the

THE PARISH ENGINE
(From a Drawing by George Craikshank in Sketches by Boz')
Strand, is it not? Even in your day, Eighty-seven,
when so many old houses will have perished, Fleet Street
will still be the most picturesque street in all London.


IN THE STREET
57
The true time to visit it is at four o'clock on a summer
morning, when the sun has just risen on the sleeping
city. Look at the gables of it, the projecting stories
of it, the old timber work of it, the glory and the

crockford's fish shop
(From a Drawing by P. W. Fairholt)
beauty of it. As you see Fleet Street, so Dr. Johnson
saw it.
There is a good deal more crowd and animation in
Fleet Street than in the Strand. That is because we
are nearer the City, of course; the traffic is greater;
FIFTY YEARS AGO
the noise is much greater. As for this ring before us,
let us avoid it. A coachman fighting a ticket-porter
is a daily spectacle in this thoroughfare; those who
crowd round often get bloody noses for their pains,
and still more ofren come away without their purses-
Look! The pickpockets are at their work almost
openly. They have caught one. Well, my friend, our
long silk purses—yours will be square leather things—
are very easily stolen. I do not think it will repay you
. for the loss of yours to see a poor devil of a pickpocket
pumped upon.
You are looking again at the plain windows with
the small square panes. The shops make no display as
yet, you see. First, it would not be safe to ptut valuable
articles in windows protected by nothing but a little
thin pane of glass—which reminds me that in the matter
of street safety you will be a good deal ahead of us;
next, an honest English tradesman loves to keep his
best out of sight. The streets are horribly noisy. That
is quite true. You have heard of the roar of the
mighty city. Your London, EigHty-seven, will not
know how to roar. But you can now understand what
its roaring used to be. An intolerable stir and uproar,
is it not? But then your ears are not, like ours, used
to it. First, the road is not macadamised, or asphalted,
or paved with wood. Next, the traffic of wagons, carts,
and wheelbarrows, and hand-carts, is vastly greater
than you had ever previously imagined; then there is
a great deal more of porter work done in the street.
IN THE STREET 59
and the men are perpetually jostling, quarrelling, and
fighting; the coaches, those of the short stages with
two horses, and the long stages with four, are always
blowing their horns , and cracking their whips. Look
at yonder great wagon. It has come all the way from
Scotland. It is piled thirty feet high with packages of
all kinds: baskets hang behind, filled with all kinds of
things. In front there sit a couple of Scotch lasses
who have braved a three weeks' journey from Edin-
burgh in order to save the expense of the coach. Brave
girls! But such a wagon with such a load does not go
along the street in silence. It is not in silence either
that the women who carry baskets full of fish on their
heads go along the street, nor is the man silent who goes
with a pack-donkey loaded on either side with small coal;
and the wooden sledge on which is the cask of beer,
dragged along by a single horse, makes by itself as
much noise as all your carriages together, Eighty-seven.
And there is nothing, you observe, for the protec-
tion and convenience of passengers who wish to cross
the road. Nothing at all. No policeman stands in the
middle of the road to regulate the traffic; the drivers
pay no heed to the foot passengers; at the corner of
Chancery Lane, where the press is the thickest, the boys
and the clerks slip in and out among the horses and
the wheels without hurt: but how will those ladies be
able to get across? They never would but for the
crossing-sweeper—the most remunerative part of the
work, in fact, is to convoy the ladies across the road; if
6o
FIFTY YEARS AGO
he magnifies the danger of this service, and expects
silver for saving the lives of his trembling clients, who
shall blame him?
There are still left some of the old posts which divided
the footway from the roadway, though the whole is now
paved and—what, Eighty-seven? You have stepped
into a dandy-trap and splashed your feet. Well, per-
haps, in your day they will have learned to pave more
evenly, but just at pre-
sent our paving is a little
rough, and the stones
sometimes small, so that
here and there, after rain,
these things will happen.
Here we are at Black-
friars. This is the Gate
of Bridewell, where they
used to flog women, and
still flog the 'prentices
Yonder is the Fleet
Prison, of which we
have just read an account in the 'Pickwick Papers.'
They have cleared away the old Fleet Market, which
used to stand in the middle of the street, and they have
planted it behind the houses opposite the Prison. Come
and look at it. Let us tread softly over the stones of
Farringdon Market, for somewhere beneath our feet lie
the bones of poor young Chatterton. No monument has
been erected here to his memory, nor is the spot known

THOMAS CHATTERTON
IN THE STREET
61
where he lies, but it is somewhere in this place, which
is a tragic and mournful spot, being crammed beneath
its pavement with the bones of the poor, the outcast,
the broken down, the wrecks and failures of life, and
littered above the pavement with the wreckage and
refuse of the market. This place was formerly the
burial-ground of the Shoe Lane Workhouse.
We can walk down to the Bridge and look at the
river. No Embankment yet, Eighty-seven. No penny,
steamers, either. Yet the watermen grumble at the
omnibuses which have cut into their trade.
Here comes the lamplighter, with his short ladder
and his lantern.
Gas, of course, has been introduced for ever so long.
They have blindly followed the old plan of lighting,
and have stuck up a gas lamp wherever there used to be
an oil lantern. The theatres and places of amusement
are brilliant with gas, and it is gas which makes the
splendour of the gin-palace. The shops took to it
slowly, but they are now beginning to understand how
to brighten their appearance after dark. Go into any
little thoroughfare, however, and you will see the shops
lit with two or three candles still.
In the small houses and the country towns the
candles linger still. And such candles! For the most
part they are tallow: they need constant snuffing: they
drop their detestable grease everywhere—on the table-
cloth, on your clothes, on the butter and on the bread.
You, Eighty-seven, will be saying hard things of gas, but
7
62
FIFTY YEARS AGO
you do not know from what darkness, and misery of
darkness, it saved your ancestors.
As for the churches, they are not yet generally pro-
vided with gas. There is some strange prejudice against
it in the minds of the clergy. Yet it is not Papistical,
or even freethinking. In most of them, where they
have evening service, the pews are provided with two
candles apiece, stuck in tin candlesticks, with four
candles for the pulpit and four for the reading-desk.
The effect is not unpleasing, but the candles continually
require snuffing, and the operation is constantly attended
with accidents, so that the church is always filled with
the fragrance of smouldering tallow wicks. The repug-
nance to gas is so great, indeed, in some quarters, that
one clergyman, the Rector of Holy Trinity, Marylebone,
is going to commit all his vestrymen to the Ecclesiasti-
cal Courts because they have attempted to light the
church with gas.
Here is a City funeral in one of the burial-grounds
close to the crowded street; the clergyman reads the
Service, and the mourners in their long black cloaks
stand round the open grave, and the coffin is lowered into
it, and outside there is no cessation at all to the bustle
and the noise; the wagoner cracks his whip, the drover
swears at his cattle, the busy men run to and fro as if
the last rites were not being performed for one who has
heard the call of the Messenger, and, perforce, obeyed
it. And look—the mould in which the grave is dug is
nothing but bits of bones and splinters of coffins. The
IN THE STREET
63
churchyard is no longer a field of clay: it is a field of
dead citizens. You, friend Eighty-seven, will manage
these things better.
Here goes one of the long stages. Saw you ever a
finer coach, more splendidly appointed, with better
cattle? Ten miles an hour that coachman reckons
upon as soon as he is clear of
London. They say that in a
year or two, when all the rail-
ways are opened, the stage-
coaches will be ruined, the
horses all sold, and the English
breed of horses ruined. We
shall travel twenty miles an hour
without stopping to change
horses; the accidents will be
frightful, but those who meet
with none will get from Lon-
don to Edinburgh in less than
twenty-four hours. Next year
they promise to open the Lon-
3rd eegiment of buffs
don and Birmingham Eailway.
Here comes a soldier. You find his dress absurd?
To be sure, his tight black stock makes his red cheeks
seem swollen; his queer tall hat, with the neat red ball
at the top, might be more artistic ; the red shoulder roll,
not the least like an epaulette, would hardly ward off a
sword-cut; the coat with its swallow tail is no protec-
tion to the body or the legs; the whitened belt must

64
FIFTY YEARS AGO
cost an infinite amount of trouble to keep it fit for
inspection, and a working-man's breeches and stockings
would be more serviceable than those long trousers.
There are always brave fellows, however, ready to en-
list ; the soldier's life is attractive, though the discipline
is hard and the floggings are truly awful.

DOUGLAS JERROLD
(From the Bust by the late E. H. Bailey, R.A.)
My friend, it is half-past five, and you are tired.
Let us get back to Temple Bar and dine at the Mitre,
where we can take our cut off the joint for eighteen-
pence. About this time most men are thinking of
dinner. Buy an evening paper of the boy.


IN THE STREET 65
So: this is cosy. A newly sanded floor, a bright
fire, and a goodly company. James! a clean table-
cloth, a couple of candles, and the snuffers, and the last
joint up. What have you got in the paper? Mada-
gascar Embassy, Massacre in New Zealand—where the
devil is New Zealand ?—Suicide of Champion, who made
the infernal machine, Great Distress in the Highlands,
Murder of a Process-server
in Ireland, Crossing of the
Channel in a Balloon—I
hope that some day an
army may not cross it—
Letter from Syria, con-
cerning the recent Great
Earthquake, Conduct of
the British Legion in Spain,
Seven Men imprisoned for
unlawfully ringing the
Bells, Death of the Oldest
Woman in the World, aged
162 years, said to have
been the Nurse of George
Washington—a good deal of news all for one evening
paper. Hush! we are in luck. Here is Douglas
Jerrold. Now we shall hear something good. Here
is Leigh Hunt, and here is Forster, and here—ah! this
is unexpected—here comes none other than 'Boz' him-
self. Of course you know his name? It is Charles
Dickens. Saw one ever a brighter eye or a more self-

66
FIFTY YEARS AGO
reliant bearing? Such self-reliance belongs to those
who are about to succeed. They say his fortune is
already made, though but yesterday he was a reporter
in the House, taking down the speeches in shorthand.
Who is that tall young man with the ugly nose? Only
a journalist. They say he wrote that funny paper
called 'The Fatal Boots' in Tilt's Annual. His name is
Thackeray, I believe, but I know nothing more about
him.
Here comes dinner, with a tankard of foaming stout.
Is there any other drink quite so good as stout? After
you have taken your dinner, friend Eighty-seven, I shall
prescribe for you what you
will never get, poor wretch
—a bottle of the best port
in the cellars of the Mitre.
My friend, there is one
thing in which we of the
Thirties do greatly excel
you of the Eighties. We
can eat like ploughboys,
and we can drink like dray-
men. As for your nonsense
about Apollinaris Water,
we do not know what it
means; and as for your not being able to take a simple
glass of port, we do not in the least understand it.
Not take a pint of port? Man alive! we can take two
bottles, and never turn a hair.

CHAKLES DICKENS
CHAPTER V.
WITH THE PEOPLE.
When the real history of the people comes to be written
—which will be the History, not of the Higher, but of
the Lower Forms of Civilisation—it will be found that,
as regards the people of these islands, they sank to their
lowest point of degradation and corruption in the middle
of the eighteenth century—a period when they had no
religion, no morality, no education, and no knowledge,
and when they were devoured by two dreadful diseases,
and were prematurely killed by their excessive drinking
of gin. No virtue at all seems to have survived among
all the many virtues attributed to our race except a
bulldog courage and tenacity. There are glimpses here
and there, when some essayist or novelist lifts the veil,
which show conditions of existence so shocking that
one asks in amazement how therq could have been any
cheerfulness in the civilised part of the community for
thinking of the terrible creatures in the ranks below.
They did not think of them; they did not know of them;
to us it seems as if the roaring of that volcano must
have been always in their ears, and the smoke of it
68
FIFTY YEARS AGO
always choking their throats. But our people saw and
heard nothing. Across the Channel, where men's eyes
were quicker to see, the danger was clearly discerned,
and the eruption foretold. Here, no one saw anything,
or feared anything.
How this country got through without a revolution,
how it escaped the dangers of that mob, are questions
more difficult to answer than the one which continually
occupies historians—How Great Britain, single-handed,
fought against the conqueror of the world. Both vic-
tories were mainly achieved, I believe, by the might and
majesty of Father Stick.
He is dead now, and will rule no more in this
country. But all through the last century, and well
into this, he was more than a king—he was a despot,
relentless, terrible. He stripped women to the waist
and whipped them at Bridewell; he caught the 'pren-
tices and flogged them soundly; he lashed the criminal
at the cart-tail; he lashed the slaves in the plantations,
the soldiers in the army, the sailors on board the
ships, and the boys at school. He kept everybody in
order, and, truly, if the old violence were to return, we
might have to call in Father Stick again.
He was good up, to a certain point, beyond which
he could not go. He could threaten, 4 If you do this,
and this, you shall be trounced.' Thus the way of
transgressors was made visibly hard for them. But he
could not educate—he taught nothing except obedience
to the law; he had neither religion nor morals; there-
WITH THE PEOPLE
.69
fore, though he kept the people in order, he did not
advance them. On the other hand, under his rule they
were left entirely to themselves, and so they grew worse
and worse, more thirsty of gin, more brutal, more
ignorant. So that, in the long run, I suppose there
was not under the light of the sun a more depraved and
degraded race than that which peopled the lowest levels
of our great towns. There is always in every great
town a big lump of lawlessness, idleness, and hostility
to order. The danger, a hundred years ago, was that
this lump was getting every day bigger, and threatening
to include the whole of the working class.
Eemember that as yet the government of this realm
was wholly in the hands of the wealthier sort. Only
those who had what was humorously called a stake in
the country were allowed to share in ruling it. Those
who brought to the service of their native land only
their hands and their lives, their courage, their patience,
skill, endurance, and obedience, were supposed to have
no stake in the country. The workers, who contribute
the whole that makes the prosperity of the country,
were then excluded from any share in managing it.
It seems to me that the first improvement of the
People dates from their perception of the fact that all
have a right to help in managing their own affairs; I
think one might prove that the ideas of the French
Eevolution, when they were once grasped, arrested the
downward course of the People—the first step to dig-
nity and self-respect was to understand that they might
7o
FIFTY YEARS AGO
become free men, and not remain like unto slaves who
are ordered and have to obey. Then they began to
struggle for their rights, and in the struggle learned a
thousand lessons which have stood them in good stead.
They learned to combine, to act together, to form com-
mittees and councils; they learned the art of oratory,
and the arts of persuasion by speech and pen; they
learned the power of knowledge—in a word, the long
struggle whose first great victory was the Eeform Act
of 1832 taught the Pecple the art of self-government.
Fifty years ago, though that Act had been passed,
the great mass of the people were still outside the
government. They were governed by a class who de-
sired, on the whole, to be just, and wished well to the
people, provided their own interests were not disturbed,
as when the most philanthropic manufacturers loudly
cried out as soon as it was proposed to restrict the
hours of labour. It is not wonderful, therefore, that
the working classes should at that time regard all
governments with hostility, and Eeligion and Laws as
chiefly intended to repress the workers and to safeguard
the interests of landlords and capitalists. This fact is
abundantly clear from the literature which the working
men of 1837 delighted to read.
As regards their religion, there was already an im-
mense advance in the spread of the Nonconformist sects
and the multiplication of chapels. As for the churches, I
am very certain that the working man does not go much
to church even yet, but fifty years ago he attended ser-
WITH THE PEOPLE 71
vice still less often. A contemporary who pretends to
know asserts that nine out of ten among the working
men were professed infidels, whose favourite reading
was Paine, Carlile, and Eobert Taylor, the author of
'The Devil's Chaplain/ Further, he declares that not
one working man in a hundred ever opened a Bible.
I refrain from dwelling upon this state of things as
compared with that of the present, but it appears from
a census taken by a recent weekly newspaper (which,
however, omitted the mission churches and services in
school-rooms and other places) that about one person
in nine now attends church or chapel on a Sunday.
As regards drink, a question almost as delicate as
that of religion, it is reported that in London alone
three millions of pounds were spent every year in gin,
which seems a good deal of money to throw away with
nothing to show for it. But figures are always misleading.
Thus, if everybody drank his fair share of this three
millions, there would be only a single glass of gin every
other day for every person; and if half the people did,
not drink at all, there would be only one glass of gin a
day for those who did. Still, we must admit that three
millions is a sum which shows a widespread love of gin.
As for rum, brandy, and Hollands, the various forms of
malt liquor, fancy drinks, and compounds, let us reserve
ourselves for the chapter on Taverns. Suffice it here
to call attention to the fact that there was no blue
ribbon worn. Teetotallers there were, it is true, but in
very small numbers; they were not yet a power in the
72
FIFTY YEARS AGO
land; there was none of the everlasting dinning about
the plague spot, the national vice, and the curse of the
age, to which we are now accustomed. Honest men
indulged in a bout without subsequent remorse, and so
long as the drink was unadulterated they did themselves
little harm. Without doubt, if the men had become
teetotallers, there would have been very much more to
spend in the homes, and the employers would, also with-
out doubt, have made every effort to reduce the wages
accordingly, so as to keep up the old poverty. That is
what the former school of philosophers called a Law of
Political Economy. The wages of a skilled mechanic
fifty years ago seem to have never risen above thirty
shillings a week, while food, clothes, and necessaries
were certainly much dearer than at present. He had
savings banks, and he sometimes put something by, but
not nearly so much as he can do now if he is thrifty
and in regular work. It is quite clear that he was less
thrifty in those days than now, that he drank more,
and that he was even more reckless, if that is possible,
about marriage and the multiplication of children.
As for the material condition of the people, there
cannot be a doubt that it has been amazingly improved
within the last fifty years. It is not true, as stated in
a very well known work, that the poor have become
poorer, though the rich have certainly become richer.
The skilled working man is better paid now than then,
his work is more steady, his hours are shorter. He is
better clad, with always a suit of clothes apart from
WITH THE PEOPLE
73
his working dress; he is better taught; he is better
mannered; he has holidays; he has clubs; he is no
longer forbidden to combine; he can co-operate; he
holds meetings; he has much better newspapers to
read; his food is better and cheaper; he has model
lodging houses. Not only is he actually better; he is
relatively better compared with the richer classes, while
for the last ten years these have been growing poorer
every day, although still much richer than they were
fifty years ago. Moreover, it is becoming more difficult
in every line, owing to the upward pressure of labour,
to become rich.
His amusements no longer have the same brutality
which used to characterise them. The Eing was his
chief delight, and a well-fought battle between two ac-
complished bruisers caused his heart to leap with joy.
Unhappily the Eing fell, not because the national senti-
ment concerning pugilism changed, but by its own
vices, and because nearly every fight was a fight on
the cross; so that betting on your man was no longer
possible, and every victory was arranged beforehand.
There are now signs of its revival, and if it can be in
any way regulated it will be a very good thing for the
country. Then, there was dog-fighting, which is still
carried on in certain parts of the country. Only a
few years ago I saw a dozen dog-fights, each with its
ring of eager lookers-on, one Sunday morning upon the
sands between Eedcar and Saltburn. All round London,
again, there were ponds, quantities of ponds, all marked
74
FIFTY YEARS AGO
in the maps of the period and now all filled up and built
over. Some, for instance, were in the fields on the east
side of Tottenham Court Eoad. Hither, on Sundays,
came the London working man with ducks, cats, and
dogs, and proceeded to enjoy himself with cat-hunts and
duck-hunts in these ponds. There were also bull-and-
bear-baitings and badger-drawings. As for the fairs,
Bartholomew and Greenwich, one is sorry that they had
to be abolished, but I suppose that London had long
been too big for a fair, which may be crowded but must
not be mobbed. A real old fair, with rows of stalls
crammed with all kinds of things which looked ever
so much prettier under the flaring lamps than in the
shops, with Eichardson s Theatre, the Wild Beast Show,
the wrestlers and the cudgel-players, the boxers, with
or without the gloves, the dwarfs, giants, fat women,
bearded women, and monsters, was a truly delightful
thing to the rustics in the country; but in London it
was incongruous, and even in Arcadia a modern fair
is apt to lose its picturesque aspect towards nightfall.
On the whole, it is just as well for London that it has
lost its ancient fairs.
It is not in connection with working men, but with
the whole people, that one speaks of prisons. I do not
think that our prison system at the present day is every
thing that it might be. There have been one or two books
published of late years, which make one uncomfortable
in thinking of the poor wretches immured in these
abodes of solitary suffering. Still, if one has to choose
WITH THE PEOPLE
75
between a lonely cell and the society of the prison birds
by day and night, one would prefer the former. Some at-
tempts had been made in Newgate and elsewhere to pre-
vent the prisoners from corrupting each other, but with
small success. Those who were tried and sentenced
were separated from those who were waiting their trial;
the boys were separated from the men, the girls from
the women. Yet the results of being committed to
prison, for however short a period, were destructive of all
morals and the last shred of principle. Not a single girl
or woman who went into prison modest and virtuous but
became straightway ashamed of her modesty and virtue,
and came out of the prison already an abandoned
woman. Not a man or boy who associated with the
prisoners for a week but became a past master in all
kinds of wickedness. In the night rooms they used to
lock up fifteen or twenty prisoners together, and leave
them there all night to interchange their experiences—
and what experiences! Only those who were under
sentence of death had separate cells. These poor
wretches were put into narrow and dark rooms, re-
ceiving light only from the court in which the criminals
are permitted to walk during the day. They slept on
a mat, and in former days had but twenty-four hours
between sentence and execution, with bread and water
for all their food.
Transportation still went on, with the horrors of the
convict ship, the convict hulks, and the convict esta-
blishments of New South Wales and Tasmania. The
8
76
FIFTY YEARS AGO
'horrors' of the system have always seemed to me
as forming an unessential part of the system. With
better management on modern ideas, transportation
should be far better than the present system of hope-
less punishment by long periods of imprisonment. We
can never return to transportation as far as any colony
is concerned, but I venture to prophesy that the next
change of the penal laws will be the re-establishment of
transportation with the prospect of release, a gift ol
land, and a better chance for an honest life.
Meantime the following lines belong to Fifty Years
Ago. They are the Farewell of convicts about to sail
for Botany Bay:
THE DARBY BAY.

Come, Bet, my pet, and Sal, my pal, a buss, and then farewell—
And Ned, the primest ruffling cove that ever naiTd a swell—
To share the swag, or chaff the gab, well never meet again,
The hulks is now my bowsing crib, the hold my dossing ken.
Don't nab the bib, my Bet, this chance must happen soon or later,
For certain sure it is that transportation comes by natur;
His lordship's self, upon the bench, so downie his white wig in,
Might sail with me, if friends had he to bring him up to priggin; •
And is it not unkimmon fly in them as rules the nation,
To make us end, with Botany, our public edication %
But Sal, so kind, be sure you mind the beaks don't catch you tripping,
You'll find it hard to be for shopping sent on board the shipping:
So tip your mauns afore we parts, don't blear your eyes and nose,
Another grip, my jolly hearts — here's luck, and off we goes 1
WITH THE PEOPLE
77
Debtors' prisons were in full swing. There were
Whitecross Street Prison, built in 1813 for the exclusive
reception of debtors, who were before this crowded
together with criminals at Newgate ; Queen's Bench Pri-
son, the Fleet, and the Marshalsea. The King's Bench
Prison was the largest, and, so to speak, the most

NEWGATE—ENTRANCE IN THE OLD BAILEY
fashionable of these prisons. Both at the King's Bench
and the Fleet debtors were allowed to purchase what
were called the 4 Eules,' which enabled them to live
within a certain area outside the prison, and practically
left them free. They paid a certain percentage on their
7?
FIFTY YEARS AGO
*
debts. This practice enabled the debtor to. refuse
paying his debts, and to save his money for himself or
his heirs. Lodgings, however, within the Eules were
bad and expensive.
There was no national compulsory system of edu-
cation; yet the children of respectable working men
were sent to school. The children of the very poor,
those who lived from hand to mouth by day jobs, by
chance and luck, were not taught anything. If you
talk to a working man of sixty or thereabouts, you will
most likely discover that he can read, though he has
very often forgotten how to write. He was taught
when he was a child at the schools of the National
Society, or at those of the British and Foreign Society, or
at the parish schools, of which there were a great many.
There were also many thousands of children who went
to the Sunday School. Yet, partly through the neglect
of parents, and partly through the demand for children's
labour in the factories, nearly a half of the children in
the country grew up without any schooling. In 1837
there were forty per cent, of the men and sixty-five per
cent, of the women who could not sign their own names.
And there were already effected, or just about to
be effected, three immense reforms, the like of which
the nation had never seen before, which are together
working for a Eevolution of Peace, not of war, greater
than contemplated by the most sincere and most disin-
terested of the French Revolutionaries.
The first was the Reform of the Penal Laws.
WITH THE PEOPLE
79
In the beginning of the century the law recognised
223 capital offences. A man might be hanged for
almost anything: if he appeared in disguise on a
public road; if he cut down young trees; if he shot
rabbits; if he poached at night; if he stole anything
worth five shillings from a person or a shop; if he
came back from transportation before his time ; a gipsy,
if he remained in the same place a year. In fact, the
chief desire of the Government was to get rid of the
criminal classes by hanging them. It was Sir Samuel
Eomilly, as everybody knows, who first began to attack
this bloodthirsty code.
He was assisted by the
growth of public opinion
and by the juries, who
practically repealed the
laws by refusing to con-
vict.
It was not, again,
until the year 1836 that
counsel for a prisoner
under trial for felony was
permitted to address the
jury. In the year 1834,
there were 480 death sentences; in 1838, only 116. In
1834, 894 persons were sentenced to transportation for
life, and in 1838 only 266. Remember that this wicked
severity only served to enlist the sympathies of the
people against the Government.

IN THE QUEEN'S BENCH
So
FIFTY YEARS AGO
The second great step was the repeal of the Acts
which forbade combination. Until the year 1820, the
people had been forbidden to combine. Their only power
against employers who worked them as many hours a
day as they dared, and paid them wages as small as
they could, who took their children and locked them
up in unwholesome factories, was in combination, and
they were forbidden to combine. When the law—an
old mediaeval law—was repealed, it was found that any
attempt to hold public meetings might be put down by
force; so that, though they could not combine, the
chief means of promoting combination was taken from
them.
The third great step was the Extension of the
Suffrage, so that now there is no Briton or Irishman
but can, if he please, have his vote in the govern-
ment of the nation. It is not a great share which is
conferred by one vote, but it enables every man to feel
that he is himself a part of the nation; that the govern-
ment is not imposed upon him, but elected and ap-
proved by himself.
Considering all these things, have we any reason to
be surprised when we learn that, on the Queen's Acces-
sion, there was among the people no loyalty whatever?
Attachment to the Sovereign, personal devotion to the
young Queen, rallying round the Throne—all these
things were not even phrases to the working class. For
they never heard them used.
There was no loyalty at all, either to the Queen, or to
WITH THE PEOPLE
81
the institution of a limited Monarchyr, or to the Constitu-
tion^ or to the Church.
For a hundred and fifty years there had been no
loyalty among the people. Loyalty left the country
with James II. Not one of the Sovereigns who fol-
lowed him commanded the personal enthusiasm of the
people, not even Farmer George, for whom there had
been some kind of affection with something of contempt.
From 1687 until 1837, which is exactly one hundred
and fifty years, not one Sovereign who sat upon the
Throne of England could boast that he had the love of
the people. Not one wished to have the love of the
people. He represented a principle: he governed with
the assistance of a few families and by the votes of a
small class. As King he was a stranger. When he drove
through the streets, the people hurrahed; but they did
not know him, and they cared nothing for him.
Therefore the sentiment of loyalty had to be re-born.
It could only be awakened by a woman, young, vir-
tuous, naturally amiable, and resolved on ruling by con-
stitutional methods. Yet in some of the journals written
for, and read by, the working men, the things said con-
cerning the Queen, the Prince Consort, and the Court
were simply horrible and disgusting. Such things are
no longer said. There are still papers which speak of
the aristocracy as a collection of titled profligates, and
of the clergy as a crowd of pampered hypocrites, but
of the Queen it is rare indeed to find mention other
than is respectful. Her life and example for fifty years
82
FIFTY YEARS AGO
have silenced the slanderers. It has been found once
more possible for a Sovereign to possess the love of
her people.
The papers read by the working men were not only
scurrilous, but they were Eepublican and revolutionary.
The Kepublic whose example they set before themselves
was not the American, which is Conservative, for of this
they knew nothing. Let us clearly understand this. Fifty
years ago America was far more widely separated from
England than is China now. The ideal Eepublic was then
the earlier form of the first French Eepublic. These
people cared little for the massacres which accompanied
the application of Eepublican principles. I do not say
that they wished to set the heads of the Queen's Ladies-
in-Waiting on pikes, but they thought the massacres of
innocent women by the French an accident rather than
a consequence. They loved the cry of 'Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity,' and still believed in it. They
dreamed of a country which they thought could be
established by law, in which every man was to be the
equal of his neighbour—as clever, as skilful, as capable,
as rich, and as happy. The dream continues, and will
always continue, to exist. It is a generous dream—
there never has been a nobler dream—so that it is a
thousand pities that human greed, selfishness, ambi-
tion, and masterfulness will not suffer the dream to be
realised. Those who advocated an attempt to realise
it flung hard names at the Crown, the Court, the aris-
tocracy, the Church, the educated, and the wealthy.
WITH THE PEOPLE
83
Presently they began to formulate the way by which
they thought to place themselves within reach of their
object. The way was Chartism. They wanted to
carry six measures—Universal Suffrage, Annual Parlia-
ments, Vote by Ballot, Abolition of Property Quali-
fication, Payment of Members, and Equal Electoral
Districts. Very well; we have got, practically, four
out of the six points, and there are many who think
that we are as far off the Millennium as ever. Yet
there are, however, still among us people who believe
that we can be made happy, just, merciful, and dis-
interested by changing the machinery. Changing the
machinery! The old party of Eadicals still work them-
selves into a white heat by crying for change in the
machinery.
And now a thing which was never contemplated
even by the Chartists themselves—the really important
thing—has been acquired by the people. They are no
longer the governed, but the governors. The Govern-
ment is no longer a thing apart from themselves, and
outside them. It is their own—it is the Government of
the People of England. If there is anything in it
which they do not like, they can alter it; if there is
anything they agree to abolish, they can abolish it,
whether it be Church, Crown, Lords, wealth, education,
science, art—anything. They- may destroy what they
please: they may reduce the English to an illiterate
peasantry if they please.
They will not please. I, for one, have the greatest
84
FIFTY YEARS AGO
confidence in the justice, the common-sense, and the
Conservatism of the English and the Scotch. The
people do not, as yet, half understand their own power;
while they are gradually growing to comprehend it,
they will be learning the history of their country, the
duties and responsibilities of citizenship, the dangers of
revolution, and the advantages of those old institutions
by whose aid the whole world has been covered with
those who speak the Anglo-Saxon speech and are
governed by the English law.
My friends, we are changed indeed. Fifty years
ago we were, as I have said, still in the eighteenth
century. The people had no power, no knowledge, no
voice; they were the slaves of their employers; they
were brutish and ill-conditioned, ready to rebel against
their rulers, but not knowing how; chafing under laws
which they did not make, and restraints which kept
them from acting together, or from meeting to ask if
things must always continue so. We are changed
indeed.
We now stand upright; our faces are full of hope,
though we are oppressed by doubts and questions,
because we know not which path, of the many before
us, will be the wisest; the future is all our own; we
are no longer the servants; we are the Masters, the
absolute Eulers, of the greatest Empire that the world
has ever seen.
God grant that we govern it with wisdom!
CHAPTER VI.
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS.
The great middle-class—supposed, before tlie advent
of Mr. Matthew Arnold, to possess all the virtues; to
be the backbone, stay, and prop of the country—must
have a chapter to itself.
In the first place, the middle-class was far more a
class apart than it is at present. In no sense did it
belong to society. Men in professions of any kind,
except the two services, could only belong to society
by right of birth and family connections; men in trade
—bankers were still accounted tradesmen—could not
possibly belong to society. That is to say, if they went
to live in the country they were not called upon by
the county families, and in town they were not ad-
mitted by the men into their clubs, or by ladies into
their houses. Those circles, of which there are now
so many—artistic, aesthetic, literary—all of them con-
sidering themselves to belong to society, were then out
of society altogether; nor did they overlap and inter-
sect each other. The middle-class knew its own place,
respected itself, made its own society for itself, and
86
FIFTY YEARS AGO
cheerfully accorded to rank its reverence due. The
annals of the poor are meagre; only here and there
one gets a glimpse into their lives. But the middle-
class is much better known, because it has had pro-
phets; nearly all the poets, novelists, essayists, jour-
nalists, and artists have sprung from it. Those who
adorned the Thirties and the Forties—Hood, Hook, Gait,
Dickens, Albert Smith, Thackeray—all belonged to it;
George Eliot, whose country towns are those of the
Thirties and the Forties, was
essentially a woman of the
middle-class.
Middle-class life—espe-
cially in the country—was
dull, far, far duller than
modern life even in the
quietest country town. The
men had their business; the
women had the house. In-
comes ran small; a great
deal was done at home that
is now done out of it. There was a weekly washing-
day, when the house steamed with hot soap-suds, and
the 'lines' were out upon the poles—they were painted
green and were square—and on the lines hung half the
family linen. All the jam was made at home; the cakes,
the pies, and the puddings, by the wife and daughters;
the bread was home-made; the beer was home-brewed
(and better beer than good home-brewed no man need

GEORGE ELIOT
(Taken from the Drawing in 'The Graphic'
by permission)


WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS
87
desire); all those garments which are not worn outside
were made at home. Everybody dined in the middle
of the day. Therefore, in the society of the country
town dinner-parties did not exist. On the other hand,
there were sociable evenings, which began with a sit-
down tea, with muffins and tea-cakes, very delightful,
and ended with a hot supper. Tobacco was not ad-
mitted in any shape except that of snuff into the better
kind of middle-class house; only working men smoked
vulgar pipes; the Sabbath was respected; there was
no theatre nearer than the county town; the girls
had probably never seen a play; every man who
respected himself6 laid down' port, but there was little
drinking of wine except on Sunday afternoons; no one,
not even the ladies, scorned the glass of something
warm, with a spoon in it, after supper. . For the young
there was a fair once a year; now and then a travelling
circus came along; there was a lecture occasionally on
an instructive subject, such as chemistry, or astronomy,
or sculpture; there were picnics, but these were rare;
if there were show places in the neighbourhood, parties
were made to them, and tea was festively taken among
the ruins of the Abbey.
Fashion descends slowly; it is now the working
man who takes his wife into the country for tea: fifty
years ago he took his wife nowhere, and scorned tea.
Open-air games and sports there were none; no lawn-
tennis, Badminton, or anything of that kind in those
days; even croquet, which is now so far lost in the
88
FIFTY YEARS AGO
mists of antiquity that men of thirty are too young to
remember the rage for it, was actually not yet invented.
Archery certainly existed, and the comic writers are
always drawing pictures of the young ladies sticking
their arrows into the legs of people a hundred feet or
so wide of the target. But archery belonged to a class
rather above that which we are now considering.
There was not much sketching and painting. There
was no amateur photography; there was no catching
of strange creatures in ponds for the aquarium—a
fashion also now happily extinct; there was not, in
fact, any single pursuit, amusement, or game which
would bring young people together in the open air.
There was no travelling; the summer holiday had not
yet got down in the country. In London, to be sure,
everybody down to Bevis Marks and Simmery Axe
went out of town and to the seaside in July or August;
but in the country nobody thought of such a thing;
not the vicar's daughters, not the solicitor's wife, not
the family of the general practitioner; the very school-
master, who got his four weeks in the summer and his
three at Christmas, spent them at home in such joy
as accompanies rest from labour. With no outdoor
amusements, and with no summer holiday, how much
is life simplified! But the simplicity of life means
monotony—-faciunt vitam, balnea^ vina, Venus.
In the winter, things were somewhat different. In
some towns there was the county ball. At this func-
tion one had the pleasure of gazing upon ladies and
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS
89
gentlemen of the highest rank and fashion, and of ob-
serving that they kept to themselves like a Hindu caste,
danced with each other at the upper end of the room,
cast disparaging glances at the dresses of the ladies of
the lower end, and sniffed at their manner and appear-
ance. This was true joy. There were also occasional
dances at home, but these were rare, because people
had not learned how to meet and dance without making
a fuss over it, taking up carpets, putting candles in tin

IA PASTOURELLE
sconces, keeping late hours, and having a supper, the
preparation of which was mainly done by the ladies of
the house, and it nearly killed them, and drove the
servants—the genteel middle-class family often got
along with only one—to give notice. I think that the
dances which had gone out in London still lingered in
the country. There were, for instance, the Caledonians
as well as the Lancers; there were country dances with-
out end, the very names of which are now lost; the
gentlemen performed the proper steps with grace and
go
FIFTY YEARS AGO
agility, while the ladies were careful to preserve an
attitude supposed the only one possible for a lady
while dancing, in which the figure was bent forward,
the face was turned up with the chin stuck out, while
the hands were occupied in holding up the dress to the
regulation height. The elders, meanwhile, played long
whist at tables lit by candles which wanted snuffing
between the deals. The bashful youth of the party
was always covering himself with shame by his clumsi-
ness in snuffing out the candles, or, even if he succeeded
in taking off the red-hot ball of burnt thread, he too
often neglected to close the instrument with which he
effected the operation, and thereby mightily offended
the nostrils of the company. When there was no
dancing the younger members began with a 'little
music/ Their songs —how faded and stale they seem
now if one tries to sing them!—turned chiefly on the
affections, and the favourite poet was Felicia Hemans.
After the little music they sat down to a round game,
of which there were a great many, such as Commerce,
Speculation, Vingt-et-Un, Limited Loo, or Pope Joan.
The last was played with a board. I remember the
board—it was a round thing, lacquered, and like a
punch-bowl, but I think with divisions; as for the
game itself, and what was done with the board, I quite
forget, but both game and bowl lasted quite into the
Fifties. Are there any country circles now where they
still play Pope Joan with mother-o-pearl counters, and
after the game have a grand settlement, and exchange
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS 91
the counters for silver and copper, some with chuckles,
and others with outward smiles but inward rage?
People were extremely punctilious on the subject of
calls—one remembers the call in the ' Mill on the Floss.'
The call was due at regular intervals, so that even the *
day should almost be known on which it was paid or
returned. It was a ceremonial which necessitated a
great deal of ritual and make-believe. No one, for
instance, was to be surprised in doing any kind of
work. There was a fiction in genteel families that the
ladies of the house never did anything serious or
serviceable after dinner; the afternoon was supposed
^ to be devoted either to walking, or to making calls, or
to elegant trifling at home. Therefore, if the girls were
at the moment engaged upon any useful work—many
of them, poor things, never did anything but useful
work—they crammed it under the sofa, and pretended
to be reading a book, or painting, or knitting, or to be
engaged in easy and fashionable conversation. Why
they went through this elaborate pretence I have not
the least idea, because everybody knew that every girl
in the place was always making, mending, cutting-out,
basting, gusseting, trimming, turning, and contriving.
How#doyou suppose that the solicitor's daughters made
so brave a show on Sundays if they were not clever
enough to make up things for themselves? Everybody,
of course, knew it, and why the girls would not own up
at once one cannot now understand. Perhaps it was a
sort of suspicion, or a faint hope, or a wild dream,
92
FIFTY YEARS AGO
that a reputation for ladylike uselessness might enable
them to cross the line at the County Ball, and mingle
with the county people.
Are there still any circles of society in which, if a
lady with her daughters calls upon another lady with
her daughters, the decanters, biscuits, and glasses are
placed upon the table, and the visitors are asked whether
they will take port or sherry? This, fifty years ago,
was always done in country towns, and the visitors
always took a glass of port or sherry. In some houses
it was not port and sherry that were placed upon the
table, but ' red' and 6 white.' I do not know whether
the red was currant or raspberry, but I think that the
white was generally cowslip. When the visitors were
goue, the ladies got out their work again, threaded
their needles, and spent an enjoyable hour or two in
discussing the appearance, the dress, the manners, and
the resources of their visitors. But the visit did them
good, because it compelled company manners, which
are always good for girls, and it dragged them a little
out of themselves. They were too much en famille,
these girls; they were never separated from each other.
The boys got out to school or to business all day; but
the poor girls were always together. Side by side they
did their household duties, side by side they sewed and
dressmaked, side by side they walked, side by side they
prayed in the church, side by side they slept. Small
chance of happiness was theirs-^happiness is a separate,
distinct, individual kind of thing, in which one can con-
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS 93
suit one's own likes—until, in the fulness of time, there
came along the lover—a humdrum, commonplace kind
of lover, I dare say, but his sweetheart was as common-
place as himself—and she exchanged a house, where
she was a better kind of servant, for one of exactly the
same sort, in which she was the mistress. And when
one says mistress, it must be remembered that man was,
in those days, much more of a master in the house than
he is now allowed to be. I speak not at random, but
from the evidence of those who remember and from
study of the literature, both that written by the men
and that by the women. I am cercain that the husband,
unless he was hen-pecked—a pleasing word, now seldom
used—was always the Master and generally the Tyrant
in the house.
Let me, with some diffidence, approach the subject
of the Church in the country town. I never truly
understood the Church of fifty years ago until, in the
autumn of 1885,1 perambulated with one who is jealous
for Church architecture and Church antiquities the
north-east corner of Norfolk, where there are many
churches, and most of them are fine. In our pilgrimage
among these monuments we presently came upon one
at the aspect of which we were fain to sit down and
weep. It was, externally, an old and venerable structure,
which might have been made beautiful within. Plaster
covered the walls, and hid the columns; the interior of
the church was crowded with high pews, painted white,
and having along the top a sham mahogany kind of
9*
94
FIFTY YEARS AGO
hand-rail; the chancel was encumbered with these en-
closures, which hid the old brass-work; that which
belonged to the Squire was provided with red curtains
on brass rods to keep the common people from gazing
at the Quality. The reading-desk, pulpit, and altar were
covered with a cloth which had been red, but had long
before faded away into an indescribably shabby browp.
The pulpit was not part of the old three-decker, but
was stuck into the wall; the windows had lost their
old tracery; the painted glass was gone; the roof was
a flat whitewashed ceiling. The church, to eyes accus-
tomed to better things, presented a deplorable appear-
ance. My friend, pointing solemnly to the general
shabbiness, remarked, 'Donee templa refeceris' It was
the motto of the journal started early in the Forties by
a small knot of Cambridge men—among whom was
Mr. Beresford Hope, now, alas! no more—who desired
to raise and beautify public worship in the Anglican
faith, and also, I believe, to assert and insist upon
certain points of doctrine. And they clearly perceived
that, while the churches remained in their neglected
condition, and church architecture was at its then low
ebb, their doctrine was impossible. How far they have
succeeded not only the Eitualists themselves proclaim,
but also every other party in the Church, and even the
Nonconformists, who have shared in the increased
beauty and fitr?ess of public worship.
He who can remember the ordinary Church Services
in the early Fifties very well knows what they were in


WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS 95
%
the Thirties, except that in the latter there were still
some venerable divines who wore a wig.
The musical part of the service was, to begin with,
taken slow—incredibly slow; no one now would, who
is not old enough to remember, believe how slow it
was. The voluntary at the beginning was a slow
rumble; the Psalms were very slowly read by the
clergyman and the clerk alternately, the Gloria alone
being sung, also to a slow rumble. The choir was
generally stationed in the organ loft, which has been
known to be built over the altar at the east end—as at
St. Mary's, Cambridge—but was generally at the west
end. It was not a choir of boys and men only, but of
women and men. The ' Te Deum? was always 6 Jackson'
—from my youth up have I loathed c Jackson'; there
was just one lively bit in it for which one looked and
waited; but it lasted a very few bars; and then the
thing dragged on more slowly than ever till it came to
the welcome words, 6 Let me never be confounded.'
Two hymns were sung—very slowly; they were always
of the kind which expressed either the despair of the
sinner or the doubtful joy of the believer. I say
doubtful, because he was constantly being warned not
to be too confident, not to mistake a vague hope for
the assurance of election, and because, with the rest of
the congregation, he was always being told how few in
number wrere those elect, and how extremely unlikely
that there could be many of those few in that one
flock. Eead any of the theological literature of the
g6
FIFTY YEARS AGO
period, and mark the gulf that lies between us and our
fathers. There were many kinds of preachers, just as
at present—the eloquent, the high and dry, the low and
threatening, the forcible-feeble, the florid, the prosy, the
scholarly—but they all seemed to preach the same doc-
trine of hopelessness, the same Gospel of Despair, the
same Father of all Cruelty, the same Son who could at
best help only a few; and when any of the congregation
dared to speak the truth, which was seldom, these
blasphemous persons whispered that it was best to live
and enjoy the present, and to leave off trying to save
their souls against such fearful odds, and with the
knowledge that if they were going to be saved it would
be by election and by no merit or effort of their own,
while, if the contrary was going to happen, it was no
use striving against fate. Wretched, miserable creed!
To think that unto this was brought the Divine Message
of the Son of Man! And to think of the despairing
deathbeds of the careless, the lifelong terror of the
most religious, and the agony of the survivors over the
death of one ' cut off in his sins *!
What we now call the ' life' of the Church, with its
meetings, committees, fraternities, guilds, societies, and
organisations, then simply did not exist. The clergy-
man had an easy time; he visited little, he had an
Evening Service once a week, he did not pretend to
keep saints' days and minor festivals and fasts—none of
his congregation expected him to keep them; as for his
being a teetotaller for the sake of the weaker brethren,
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS
97
that would have seemed to ieverybody pure foolishness *
as, indeed, it is, only people now run to the opposite
belief; yet he was a good man, for the most part, who
lived a quiet and exemplary life, and a good scholar—
scholars are, indeed, sadly to seek among the modern
clergy—a sound theologian, a judge of good port, and
a gentleman. But processions, banners, surpliced choirs,
robes, and the like, he would have regarded as unworthy
the consideration of one who was a Churchman, a
Protestant, and a scholar.
To complete this brief study of the Church fifty
years ago, let us remark that out of 11,500 livings
which it possessed, 3,000 were under 100/. and 1,000
under 60/. a year, that there were 6,080 pluralists and
2,100 non-residents, that the Dissenters had only been
allowed to marry in their own chapels and by their
own clergy in the year 1831, that they were not ad-
mitted, as Dissenters, to the Universities, and that the
incomes of some of the Bishops were enormous.
As for Art, in the house or out of it, Art in pictures,
sculpture, architecture, dress, furniture, fiction, oratory,
acting, the middle-class person, the resident in the
country town, knew nothing of it. His church was
most likely a barn, his own house was four-square, his
furniture was mahogany, his pictures were coloured
engravings, the ornaments of his rooms were hideous
things in china, painted red and white, his hangings
were of a warm and comfortable red, his sofas were
horsehair, his drawing-room was furnished with a round
98
FIFTY YEARS AGO
table, on which lay keepsakes and forget-me-nots; but
as the family never used the room, which was generally
kept locked, it mattered little how it was furnished.
He dressed, if he was an elderly gentleman, in a spencer,
buttoned tight, a high black satin stock, and boots up
to his knees—very likely he still carried his hair in a
tail. If he was young, he had long and flowing hair,
waved and curled with the aid of pomade, bear's grease,


FASHIONS FOR ATJGtTST, 1836
FASHIONS FOR MARCH, 1837
and oil; he cultivated whiskers, also curled and oiled
all round his face; he wore a magnificent stock, with a
liberal kind of knot in the front: in this he stuck a
great pin; and he was magnificent in waistcoats. As
for the ladies' dresses, I cannot trust myself to describe
them; the accompanying illustration will be of service
in bringing the fashion home to the reader. But this is
the effigy of a London and a fashionable lady. Her
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS
99
country cousin would be two or three years, at least,
behind her. Well, the girls had blooming cheeks, bright
eyes, and simple manners. They were much more re-
tiring than the modern maiden; they knew very little
of young men and their manners, and the young men
knew very little of them—the novels of the time are
full of the shyness of the young man in presence of the
maiden. Their ideas were limited, they had strong
views as to rank and social degrees, and longed earnestly
for a chance of rising but a single step; their accom-
plishments were generally contemptible, and of Art
they had no idea whatever. How should they have
any idea when, year after year, they saw no Art, and
heard of none? But they were good daughters, who
became good wives and good mothers—our own, my
friends—and we must not make even a show of holding
them up to ridicule.
One point must not be forgotten. In the midst of
all this conventional dulness there was, in the atmo-
sphere of the Thirties, a certain love of romance which
showed itself chiefly in a fireside enthusiasm for the
cause of oppressed races. Poland had many friends;
the negro—they even went so far in those days as to
call him a brother—was warmly befriended; the case
of the oppressed Greek attracted the good wishes of
everybody. Now, sympathy with oppression that is
unseen may sometimes be followed by sympathy with
the oppression which is before the eyes; so that one is
not surprised to hear that the case of the women and
IOO
FIFTY YEARS AGO
the children in the mines and the factories was soon
afterwards taken seriously in hand. The verse which
then formed so large a part of family reading had a
great deal to do with the affections, especially their
tearful side; while the tales they loved the best were
those of knights and fair dames of adventure and
romance.
A picture by Du Maurier in Punch once represented
a man singing a comic song at an 4 At Home.' Nobody
laughed; some faces expressed wonder; some, pity;
some, contempt; a few, indignation; but not one face
smiled. Consider the difference: in the year 1837 every
face would have been broadened out in a grin. Do we,
therefore, laugh no more? We do not laugh so much,
certainly, and we laugh differently. Our comic man of
society still tells good stories, but he no longer sings
songs; in his stories he prefers the rapier or the jewelled
dagger to the bludgeon. Those who desire to make
the acquaintance of the comic man, as he was accepted
in society and in the middle-class, should read the
works of Theodore Hook and of Albert Smith. To
begin writh. he played practical jokes; he continually
played practical jokes, and he was never killed, as
would now happen, by his victims. I am certain that
ws should kill a man who came to our houses and
played the jokes which then were permitted to the
comic man. He poured melted butter into coat pockets
at suppers; he turned round signposts, and made them
point the wrong way, in order to send people whither

OF
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS
101
they did not wish to go. It may be remarked that his
tricks were rarely original. He wrenched off door-
knockers; he turned off the gas at the meter; he tied
strings across the river to knock people backwards in
their boats; he tied two doors together, and then rang
both bells, and waited with a grin from ear to ear; he
rang up people in the dead of the night on any pretext;
he filled keyholes with powdered slate-pencil when the
master of the house was coming
home late; he hoaxed innocent
ladies, and laughed when they
were nearly driven mad with
worry and terror; he went to
masquerades, carrying a tray
full of medicated sweets—think
of such a thing !—which he dis-
tributed, and then retired, and
came back in another dress to
gaze upon the havoc he had

WATCHMAJJ
WrOUgllt. Again, it WaS a time (Prt>m a Drawing by George Craik-
shank in ' London Characters')
when candles were still carried
about the house, and, as yet, it was thought that gas
in bedrooms was dangerous. He dipped the candles
waiting for the ladies when they went to bed into
water, so that they spluttered and went out, and made
alarming fireworks when they were lit; and then, to
remove the horrible smell, the candles being of tallow,
he offered to burn pastilles, but these were confections
of gunpowder and water, and caused the liveliest
10
102
FIFTY YEARS AGO
emotions, and sent the poor ladies upstairs in an agony
of nervous terror.
There was no end to the tricks of this abominable
person. Once he received an invitation to a great ball,
which a Royal Personage was to honour with his pre-
sence. The Eoyal Personage was to be regaled in a
special supper-room, apart from the common herd.
The table had been laid in this room with the most
elaborate care and splendour: down the middle of the
table there meandered a beautiful canal filled with gold
and silver fish—a contrivance believed in those remote
ages to set off and greatly increase the beauty of a
supper table. Our ingenious friend quickly discovered
that the room was accessible from the garden, where
some workmen were still putting the finishing touches
to their work, the men who had constructed the
marquee, and had arranged the lamps and things. He
went, therefore, into the garden: he invited these
workmen to partake of a little refreshment, led them
into the Eoyal supper-room, and begged them to help
themselves, and to spare nothing: in a twinkling the
tables were cleared. He then put certain chemicals
into the canal, which instantly killed every fish: this
done, he returned to the ballroom, and waited for the
moment when the Illustrious Personage, the hostess on
his arm, should enter that supper-room, and gaze upon
those empty dishes.
On another occasion, he discovered that a respect-
able butler was in the habit of creeping upstairs, in
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS 103
order to listen to the conversation, leaving his slippers,
in position, at the head of the kitchen stairs. He
therefore hid himself while the poor man, after adjust-
ing the slippers, walked noiselessly upstairs. He then
hammered a tintack into the heel of each slipper, and
waited again, until a confederate gave the alarm, and
the fat butler, hurrying down, slipped one foot into
each slipper, and—went headlong into the depths
below, and was nearly killed. 4 Never laughed so
much in all my life, sir.'
At Oxford, of course, he enjoyed himself wonder-
fully. For, with a party of chosen friends, he met no
less a person than the Vice-Chancellor, at ten or eleven
at night, going home alone, and peacefully. To raise
that personage, lift him on their shoulders, crown him
with a lamp cover, and carry him triumphantly to the
gates of his own College, was not only a great stroke of
fun, but a thing not to be resisted. And he blew up
the group of Cain and Abel in the Quadrangle of Brase-
nose. And what he did with proctors, bulldogs, and
the like, passeth all understanding. It was at Oxford
that the funny man made the acquaintance of the
Major. Now the Major was in love, but he was no
longer so young as he had been, and his hair was
getting thin on the top—a very serious thing in the
days of long hair, wavy, curled, singed, and oiled, flow-
ing gracefully over the ears and the coat-collar. The,
Major, in an evil moment, commissioned the Practical
Joker, whose character, one would think, must have
io4
FIFTY YEARS AGO
been well known, to procure for him a bottle of a
certain patent hair-restorer. Of course, the Joker
brought him a bottle of depilatory mixture, which
being credulously accepted, and well rubbed in, de-
prived the poor Major of every hair that was left It
is needless to relate how, when he was at Eichmond
with a party of ladies, the introduction of the { maids
of honour' was a thing not to be resisted; and one can
quite understand how one of the young ladies was led
on to ordering, in addition to another ' maid of honour,'
a small Gentleman Usher of the Black Eod, if they had
one quite cold.
The middle-class of London, before the development
of omnibuses, lived in and round the City of London,
Bloomsbury being the principal suburb ; many thousands
of well-to-do people, merchants and shopkeepers, lived
in the City itself, and were not ashamed of their houses,
and filled the City churches on the Sunday. Some lived
at Clapham, Camberwell, and Stockwell on the south;
a great many at Islington, where a vigorous offshoot of
the great city ran through the High Street past Sadler's
Wells as far as Highbury; a few even lived at Highgate
and Hampstead. There were the * short' stages from
London to all these places, but, so far as can be gathered,
most of those who lived in these suburbs before the
days of the omnibus had their own carriages, and drove
to town and home again every day. On Sunday they
entertained their friends, and the young gentlemen of
the City delighted to hire horses and ride down. The
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS 105
comic literature of the time is full of the Cockney
horseman. It will be remembered how Mr. Horatio
Sparkins rode gallantly from town to dine with his
hospitable friends on Sunday.
The manners and customs of the Islington colony,
which may, I suppose, be taken for the suburban and

A SCENE ON BLACKHEATH
By 'Phiz
(From 'Sketches in London,' by James Grant)
Bloomsbury people generally—except that Eussell and
Bedford Squares were very, very much grander—may
be read in Albert Smith's ' Adventures of Mr. Ledbury,'
his 'Natural History of the Gent,' 4 The Pottleton
Legacy,' and other contemporary works. Very good
reading they are, if approached in the right spirit,
which is a humble and an inquiring spirit. Many
10*
io6
FIFTY YEARS AGO
remarkable things may be learned from these books.
For instance, would you know how the middle-class
evening party was conducted? Here are a few details.
The gentlemen, of whose long and wavy hair I have
already spoken, wore, for evening dress, a high black
stock, the many folds of which covered the shirt, and
were enriched by a massive pin; the white shirt-cuffs
were neatly turned over their wrists, their dress-coats
were buttoned, their trousers were tight, and they wore
straps and pumps. The ladies either wore curls neatly
arranged on each side—you may still see some old
ladies who have clung to the pretty fashion of their
youth—or they wore their hair dropped in a loop down
the cheek and behind the ear, and then fastened in
some kind of band with ribbons at the back of the
head. The machinery of the frocks reminds one of the
wedding morning in 4 Pickwick,' when all the girls were
crying out to be 'done up,' for they had hooks and
eyes, and the girls were helpless by themselves. Pink
was the favourite colour—and a very pretty colour too;
and there was plenty of scope for the milliner's art in
lace and artificial flowers. The elder ladies were mag-
nificent in turbans, and the younger ones wore across
the forehead a band of velvet or silk decorated with a
gold buckle, or something in pearls and diamonds.
This fashion lingered long. I remember—it must have
been about the year 1850—a certain elderly maiden
lady who always wore every day and all day a black
ribbon across her brows; this alone gave her a severe
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS
107
and keep-your-distance kind of expression; but, in ad-
dition, the ribbon contained in the middle, if I remem-
ber aright, a steel buckle—though a lady, one thinks,
would hardly wear a steel buckle on her forehead.
Sometimes there was a wreath of flowers worn like a
coronet, and sometimes, but I think hardly in Islington,
a tiara of jewels. In middle-class circles, the fashion of
evening dress was marred by a fashion, common to
both sexes, of wearing cleaned
gloves. Now kid gloves could
only be cleaned by one process,
so that the result was an effect
of turps which could not be
subdued by any amount of
patchouli or eau-de-Cologne.
There were, as yet, no cards
for the dances, and when a
waltz was played, everybody
was afraid to begin. Quadrilles
of various kinds were danced,
and the country dance yet lingered at this end of the
town. The polka came later. Dancing was stopped
whenever any young lady could be persuaded to sing,
and happy was the young man whose avocations per-
mitted him to wear the delightful moustaches forbidden
in the City and in all the professions. Young Templars
wore them until they were called, when they had to be
shaved. For a City man to wear a moustache would
have been ruin and bankruptcy.

MAID 8EBVANT
(From a Drawing by Crnikshank in
'London Characters')
io8
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Other portions of Albert Smith's works, if read with
discernment, will enable one to make discoveries of some
interest. One is that our modern 'Arry is really a
survival, not, as is sometimes believed, a growth of
modern days. His ally and mistress, 'Arriet, does not
seem to have existed at all fifty years ago; at least there
is no mention of her; but Arry flourished. He did
really dreadful things. He was even worse than the
Practical Joker. When he took Titus Ledbury abroad,
he went into the cathedrals on purpose to spill the holy
water, to blow out the candles, and to make faces at
the women kneeling at their prayers; he got barrel-
organs into lofts and invited men to bring grisettes and
dance all night, with a supper brought from the char-
cuterie; wherever there was jumping, dancing, singing,
and riot, 'Arry was to the fore. On board the steamer
he seized a bottle of stout and took up a prominent
and commanding position, where he drank it before all
the world, smoking cigars, and laughing loudly at the
poor people who were ill. At home, he wrenched off
knockers, played practical jokes, drank more stout, ate
oysters, chaffed bar-maidens, and called for brandy and
water continually. He was loud in his dress and in his
voice; he was insolent, caddish, and offensive in his
manners. Generally, one thinks, he would end his
career in Whitecross Street, or the Fleet, or the Queen's
Bench. Doubtless, however, there are still among us
old gentlemen who now sit at church on Sunday with
venerable white hair, among their children and grand-
WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS
109
children, and while the voice of the preacher rises and
falls, their memory wanders back to the days when they
danced and sang with the grisettes, when they wrenched
the knockers, when they went from the theatre to the
Coal Cellar, and from the Coal Cellar to the Finish; and
came home with unsteady step and light purse in the
grey of the morning.
The Debtors' Prison belonged chiefly to the great
middle-class. Before them stalked always a grisly
spectre, called by some Insolvency and by others Bank-
ruptcy. This villainous ghost seized its victims by the
collar and haled them within the walls of a Debtors'
Prison, where it made them abandon hope, and abide
there till the day of death. Everybody is familiar with
the inside of the Fleet, the Queen's Bench, the Marshal-
sea, and Whitecross Street. They are all pulled down
now, and the only way to get imprisoned for debt is to
incur contempt of court, for which Holloway is the re-
ward. But what a drop from the humours of the
Queen's Bench, with its drinking, tobacco, singing, and
noisy revelry, to the solitary cell of Holloway Prison!
The Debtors' Prison is gone, and the world is the better
for its departure. Nowadays the ruined betting-man,
the rake, the sharper, the profligate, the fraudulent
bankrupt, have no prison where they can carry on their
old excesses again, though in humbler way. They go
down—below the surface—out of sight, and what
they do, and how they fare, nobody knows, and very
few care.
no
FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTER VE.
IN SOCIETY.
As to society in 1837, contemporary commentators
differ. Eor, according to some, society was always
gambling, running away witli each other's wives, causing
and committing scandals, or whispering them, the men
were spendthrifts and profligates, the women extrava-
gant and heartless. Of course, the same things would
be said, and are sometimes said, of the present day, and
will be said in all following ages, because to the ultra-
virtuous or to the satirist who trots out the old, stale,
worn-out sham indignation, or to the isn't-it-awful,
gaping gobemouche, every generation seems worse than
all those which preceded it. We know the tag and the
burden and the weariness of the old song. As for my-
self, I am no indignant satirist, and the news that
certain young gentlemen have been sitting up all night
playing baccarat, drinking champagne, and * carrying
on' after the fashion of youth in all ages, does not
greatly agitate my soul, or surprise me, or lash me into
virtuous indignation. Not at all At the same time, if
one must range oneself and take a side, one may imitate

IN SOCIETY
in
the example of Benjamin Disraeli and declare for the
side of the angels. And, once a declared follower of
that army, one may be allowed to rejoice that things
are vastly improved in the space of two generations.
Of this there can be no doubt. Making easy allowance
for exaggeration, and refusing to see depravity in a
whole class because there are one or two cases that the
world calls shocking and
reads eagerly, it is quite
certain that there is less
of everything thatshould
not be than there used to
be—less in proportion,
and even less in actual
extent. The general
tone, in short the gene-
ral manners of society,
have very much im-
proved. Of this, I say
again, there can be no
° OFFICER OF THE DRAGOON GUARDS
doubt. Let any one, for
instance, read Lady Blessington's * Victims of Society.'
Though there is an unreal ring about this horrid book,
so that one cannot accept it for a moment as a faithful
picture of the times, such a book could not now be
written at all; it would be impossible.
Let us sing of lighter themes. Take, for instance,
the great subject of Swagger. There is still Swagger,
even in these days; cavalry officers in garrison towns are

112
FIFTY YEARS AGO
still supposed to swagger. Eton boys swagger in their
own little village; undergraduates swagger. The put-
ting on of 'side,' by the way, is a peculiarly modern
form of swagger: it is the assumption of certain quali-
ties and powers which are considered as deserving of
respect. Swagger, fifty years ago, was a coarser kind
of thing. Officers swaggered; men of rank swaggered;
men of wealth swaggered; gentlemen in military frogs
—there are no longer any military frogs—swaggered in
taverns, clubs, and in the streets. The adoption of
quiet manners; the wearing of rank with unobtrusive
dignity; the possession of wealth without ostentation;
of wit without the desire to be always showing it—
these are points in which we are decidedly in advance
of our fathers. There was a great deal of cuff and
collar, stock and breastpin about the young fellows of
the day. They were oppressive in their gallantry: in
public places they asserted themselves; they were loud
in their talk. In order to understand the young man
of the day, one may study the life and career of that
gay and gallant gentleman, the Count d'Orsay, model
and paragon for all young gentlemen of his time.
They were louder in their manners, and in their
conversation they were insulting, especially the wits.
Things were said by these gentlemen, even in a duelling
age, which would be followed in these days by a violent
personal assault. In fact, the necessity of fighting a
duel if you kicked a man seems to have been the cause
why men were constantly allowed to call each other, by


IN SOCIETY
implication, Fool, Ass, Knave, and so forth. So very
disagreeable a thing was it to turn out in the early
morning, in order to be shot at, that men stood any-
thing rather than subject themselves to it. Consider
the things said by Douglas Jerrold, for instance. They
are always witty, of course, but they are often mere in-
sults. Yet nobody seems ever to have fallen upon him.
And not only this kind of thing was permitted, but
things of the grossest taste passed unrebuked. For
instance, only a few years before our period, at Holland
House—not at a club, or a tavern, or a tap-room, but
actually at Holland House, the most refined and cul-
tured place in London—the following conversation once
passed.
They were asking who was the worst man in the
whole of history—a most unprofitable question; and
one man after the other was proposed. Among the
company present was the Prince Eegent himself. 61,'
said Sydney Smith—no other than Sydney Smith, if you
please—' have always considered the Duke of Orleans,
Eegent of France, to have been the worst man in all
history; and he,' looking at the illustrious guest, 4 was
a Prince.' A dead silence followed, broken by the
Prince himself. 6 For my own part,' he said, '1 have
always considered that he was excelled by his tutor, the
Abbe Dubois; and he was a priest, Mr. Sydney.' Con-
sidering the reputation of the Prince, and the kind of
life he'was generally supposed to be leading, one can
11
ii4
FIFTY YEARS AGO
hardly believe that any man would have had the im-
pudence and the bad taste to make such a speech.
We still constantly hear, in the modern School for
Scandal, remarks concerning the honour, the virtue, the
cleverness, the ability, the beauty, the accomplishments
of our friends. But it is behind their backs. We no
longer try to put the truth openly before them. We
stab in the back; but we no longer attack in front.
One ought not to stab at all; but the back is a portion
of the frame which feels nothing. So far the change is
a distinct gain.
Society, again, fifty years ago, was exclusive. Tou
belonged to society, or you did not; there was no over-
lapping, there were no circles which intersected. And
if you were in society you went to Almacks. If you
did not go to Almack's you might be a very interesting,
praiseworthy, well-bred creature; but you could not
claim to be in society. Nothing could be more simple.
Therefore, everybody ardently desired to be seen at
Almack's. This, however, was not in everybody's
power. Almack's, for instance, was far more exclusive
than the Court. Riff-raff might go to Court; but they
could not get to Almack's, for at its gates there stood,
not one angel with a fiery sword, but six in the shape
of English ladies, terrible in turbans, splendid in dia-
monds, magnificent in satin, and awful in rank.
They were the Ladies Jersey, Londonderry, Cowper,
Brownlow, Willoughby d'Eresby, and Euston. These
ladies formed the dreaded Committee. They decided
IN SOCIETY
"5
who should be admitted within the circle; all applica-
tions had to be made direct to them; no one was
allowed to bring friends. Those who desired to go to
the balls—Heavens! what lady did not ardently desire?
—were obliged to send in a personal request to be
allowed the honour. Not only this, but they were also

*A SKETCH IN THE PARK '—THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND MR8. ARBUTHNOT.
obliged to send for the answer, which took the form of
a voucher—that is, a ticket—or a simple refusal, from
which there was no appeal. Gentlemen were admitted
in the same way, and by the same mode of application,
as the ladies. In their case, it is pleasing to add, some
regard was paid to character as well as to birth and
rank, so that if a man openly and flagrantly insulted
n6
FIFTY YEARS AGO
society he was supposed not to be admitted; but one
asks with some trembling how far such rigour would
be extended towards a young and unmarried Duke.
Almack's was a sort of Eoyal Academy of Society, the
Academic diploma being represented by the admitted
candidate's pedigree, his family connections, and his
family shield. The heartburnings, jealousies, and mad-
dening envies caused by this exclusive circle were, I
take it, the cause of its decline and fall. Trade, even
of the grandest and most successful kind, even in the
persons of the grandchildren, had no chance whatever;
no self-made man was admitted; in fact, it was not
recognised that a man could make himself; either he
belonged to a good family or he did not—genius was not
considered at all; admission to Almack's was like ad-
mission to the Order of the Garter, because it pretended
no nonsense about merit; wives and daughters of simple
country squires, judges, bishops, generals, admirals, and
so forth, knew better than to apply; the intrigues,
backstairs influence, solicitation of friends, were as end-
less at Almack's as the intrigues at the Admiralty to
procure promotion. Admission could not, however, be
bought. So far the committee were beyond suspicion
and beyond reproach; it was whispered, to be sure,
that there was favouritism—awful word! Put yourself
in the position, if you have imagination enough, of a
young and beautiful debutante. Admission to Almack's
means for you that you can see your right and title
clear to a coronet. What will you not do—what


IN SOCIETY
117
cringing, supplication, adulation, hypocrisies—to secure
that card? And oh! the happiness, the rapture, of
sending to Willis's Rooms and finding a card waiting for
you! and the misery and despair of receiving, instead,
the terrible letter which told you, without reason
assigned, that the Ladies of the Committee could not
grant your request!
They were not expensive gatherings, the tickets
being only 7s. 6d. each,
which did not include sup-
per. Dancing began at
eleven to the strains of
Weippert's and Collinet's
band. The balls were
held in the great room at
Willis's, and the space re-
served for the dancers was
roped round. The two
favourite dances were the
Valse and the Galop—the
* sprightly galoppade,' as
it was called. Quadrilles were also danced. It may be
interesting to those who have kept the old music to
learn that in the year 1836 the favourite quadrilles were
L Eclair and La Tete de Bronze, and the favourite valse
was Le Remede contre le Sommeil. They had also
Strauss's waltzes.
The decline and fall of Almack's was partly caused
by the 4 favouritism ' which not only kept the place ex-

LINKMAX
n8
FIFTY YEARS AGO
elusive, but excluded more than was politic. The only
chance for the continued existence of such an institution
is that it should be constantly enlarging its boundaries,
just as the only chance for the continued existence of
such an aristocracy as ours is that it should be always
admitting new members. Somehow the kind of small
circle which shall include only the creme de la crime is
always falling to pieces. We hear of a club which is
to contain only the very noblest, but in a year or two
it has ceased to exist, or it is like all other clubs.
Moreover, a great social change has now passed over
the country. The stockbroker, to speak in allegory, has
got into Society. Eespect for Eank, fifty years ago
universal and profound, is rapidly decaying. There are
still many left who believe in some kind of superiority
by Divine Eight and the Sovereign's gift of Eank, even
though that Eank be but ten years old, and the grand-
father's shop is still remembered. We do not pretend
to believe any longer that Eank by itself makes people
cleverer, more moral, stronger, more religious, or more
capable; but some of us still believe that, in some
unknown way, it makes them superior. These thinkers
are getting fewer. And the decay of agriculture,
which promises to continue and increase, assists the
decay of Eespect for Eank, because such an aristocracy
as that of these islands, when it becomes poor, becomes
contemptible.
The position of women, social and intellectual, has
wholly changed. Nothing was heard then of women's
IN SOCIETY
equality, nothing of woman suffrage; there were no
women on Boards, there were none who lectured and
spoke in public, there were few who wrote seriously.
Women regarded themselves, and spoke of themselves,
as inferior to men in understanding, as they were in
bodily strength. Their case is not likely to be under-
stated by one of themselves. Hear, therefore, what
Mrs. John Sandford—nowadays she would have been
Mrs. Ethel Sandford, or Mrs. Christian-and maiden-name
Sandford—says upon her sisters. It is in a book called
c Woman in her Social and Domestic Character.'
* There is something unfeminine in independence.
It is contrary to Nature, and therefore it offends. A
really sensible woman feels her dependence; she does
what she can, but she is conscious of inferiority, and
therefore grateful for support' The italics are mine.
* In everything that women attempt they should show
their consciousness of dependence. . . . They should
remember that by them influence is to be obtained, not
by assumption, but by a delicate appeal to affection or
principle. Women in this respect are something like
children—the more they show their need of support,
the more engaging they are. The appropriate expression
of dependence is gentleness/ The whole work is exe-
cuted in this spirit, the keynote being the inferiority
of woman. Heavens! with what a storm would such a
book be now received!
In the year 1835 Herr Eaumer, the German his-
torian, visited England, and made a study of the
120
FIFTY YEARS AGO
English people, which he afterwards published. From
this book one learns a great deal concerning the manners
of the time. For instance, he went to a dinner-party
given by a certain noble lord, at which the whole
service was of silver, a silver hot-water dish being
placed under every plate; the dinner lasted until mid-
night, and the German guest drank too much wine,
though he missed 6 most of the healths/ It was then
the custom at private dinner-parties to go on drinking
healths after dinner, and to sit over the wine till mid-
night. He goes to an c At Home' at Lady A.'s. 'Almost
all the men/ he tells us, 4 were dressed in black coats,
black or coloured waistcoats, and black or white cravats.'
Of what colour were the coloured waistcoats, and of
what colour the coats which were not black, and how
were the other men dressed? Perhaps one or two may
have been Bishops in evening dress. Now the evening
dress of a Bishop used to be blue. I once saw a Bishop
dressed all in blue—he was a very aged Bishop, and it
was at a City Company's dinner—and I was told it had
formerly been the evening dress of Bishops, but was
now only worn by the most ancient among them. Herr
Eaumer mentions the 6 countless' carriages in Hyde
Park, and observes that no one could afford to keep a
carriage who had not 3,000/. a year at least. And at
fashionable dances he observes that they dance nothing
but waltzes. The English ladies he finds beautiful, and
of the men he observes that the more they eat and
drink the colder they become—because they drank
IN SOCIETY
121
port, no doubt, under the influence of which, though
the heart glows more and more, there comes a time
when the brow clouds, and the speech thickens, and
the tongue refuses to act.
The dinners were conducted on primitive principles.
Except in great houses, where the meat and game were
carved by the butler, everything was carved on the
table. The host sat behind the haunch of mutton, and
chelped' with zeal; the guests took the ducks, the
turkey, the hare, and the fowls, and did their part,
conscious of critical eyes. A dinner was a terrible
ordeal for a young man who, perhaps, found himself
called upon to dissect a pair of ducks. He took up
the knife with burning cheeks and perspiring nose;
now, at last, an impostor, one who knew not the ways
of polite society, would be discovered; he began to
feel for the joints, while the cold eyes of his hostess
gazed reproachfully upon him—ladies, in those days,
knew good carving, and could carve for themselves.
Perhaps he had, with a ghastly grin, to confess that he
could not find those joints. Then the dish was removed
and given to another guest, a horribly self-reliant
creature, who laughed and talked while he dexterously
sliced the breast and cut off the legs. If, in his agony,
the poor wretch would take refuge in the bottle, he had
to wait until some one invited him to take wine—hor-
rible tyranny! The dinner-table was ornamented with
a great £pergne of silver or glass; after dinner the cloth
was removed, showing the table, deep in colour, lustrous.
122
FIFTY YEARS AGO
well waxed; and the gentlemen began real business with
the bottle after the ladies had gone.
Very little need be said about the Court. It was then
in the hands of a few families. It had no connection
at all with the life of the country, which went on as if
there were no Court at all. It is strange that in these
fifty years of change the Court should have altered so
little. Now, as then, the Court neither attracts, nor
attempts to attract, any of the leaders in Art, Science,
or Literature. Now, as then, the Court is a thing apart
from the life of the country. For the best class of all,
those who are continually advancing the country in
science, or keeping alight the sacred lamp of letters,
who are its scholars, architects, engineers, artists, poets,
authors, journalists, who are the merchant adventurers
of modern times, who are the preachers and teachers,
the Court simply does not exist. One states the fact
without comment. But it should be stated, and it
should be clearly understood. The ivhole of those men
who in this generation maintain the greatness of our country
in the ways where alone greatness is desirable or memorable,
except in arms, the only men of this generation whose
memories will live and adorn the Victorian era, are
strangers to the Court It seems a great pity. An ideal
Court should be the centre of everything—Art, Letters,
Science, all.
As for the rest of society—how the people had drums
and routs and balls; how they angled for husbands;
now they were hollow and unnatural, and so forth—
IN SOCIETY 123
t
you may read about it in the pages of Thackeray.
And I, for one, have never been able to understand
how Thackeray got his knowledge of these exclusive
circles. Instead of dancing at Almack's he was taking
his chop and stout at the Cock; instead of gambling
at Crockford's he was writing 'copy * for any paper
which would take it. When and where did he meet
Miss Newcome and Lady Kew and Lord Steyne? Per-

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
haps he wrote of them by intuition, as Disraeli wrote
the * Young Duke.' * My son, sir,' said the elder
Disraeli proudly, 4 has never, I believe, even seen a
Duke.'
One touch more. There is before me a beautiful,
solemn work, one in which the writer feels his responsi-
bilities almost too profoundly. It is on no less important
a subject than Etiquette, containing Rules for the
1
124 FIFTY YEARS AGO
I
Conduct of Life on the most grave and serious occasions.
I permit myself one or two extracts:—
'Familiarity is the greatest vice of Society. When
an acquaintance says "My dear fellow," cut him imme-
diately.'
'Never enter your own house without bowing to
every one you may meet there.5
6 Never ask a lady any questions about anything
whatever.'
cIf you have drunk wine with every one at the
table and wish for more'—Heavens! More! And
after drinking with every one at the table !—c wait till
the cloth is removed.'
'Never permit the sanctity of the drawing-room to
be violated by a Boot.'
CHAPTEE VIIL
AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW.
Fifty years ago the Theatre was, far more than at
present, the favourite amusement of the Londoners.
It was a passion with them. They did not go only to
laugh and be pleased as we go now; they went as
critics; the pit preserves to this day a reputation, long
since lost, for critical power. A large number of the
audience went to every new performance of a stock
piece in order to criticise. After the theatre they
repaired to the Albion or the Cock for supper, and to
talk over the performance. Fifty years ago there were
about eighteen theatres, for a London of two millions.1
These theatres were not open all the year round,
but it was reckoned that 20,000 people went every
night to the theatre. There are now thirty theatres at
least open nearly the whole year round. I doubt if
there are many more than 20,000 at all of them
1 The following were the London theatres in the year 1837: Her Ma-
jesty's, formerly the King's: Prury Lane, Coyent Garden, the 'Summer
House/ or Haymarket; the Lyceum, the Prince's (now St. James's), the
Adelphi, the City of London (Norton Folgate), the Surrey, Astley's, the
Queen's (afterwards the Prince of Wales's), the Olympic, and the Strand,
the Cohurg (originally opened as the Victoria in 1833), Sadler's Wells, the
Royal Pavilion, the Garnck, and the Clarence (now the King's Cross).
126
FIFTY YEARS, AGO
together on an average in one night. Yet London has
doubled, and the visitors to London have been multi-
plied by ten. It is by the visitors that the theatres are
kept up. The people of London have in great measure
lost their taste for the theatres, beca/use they have gone
to live in the suburbs. Who, for instance, that lives in
Hampstead and wishes to get up in good time in the
morning can take his wife often to the theatre? It
takes an hour to drive into town, the hour after dinner.
The play is over at a little after eleven; if he takes a
cab, the driver is sulky at the thought of going up the
hill and getting back again without another fare; if he
goes and returns in a brougham, it doubles the expense.
Formerly, when everybody lived in town, they could
walk. Again, the price of seats has enormously gone
up. Where there were two rows of stalls at the same
price as the dress circle—namely, four shillings—there
are now a dozen at the price of half a guinea. And it
is very much more the fashion to take the best places,
so that the dress circle is no longer the same highly
respectable part of the house, while the upper boxes
are now ( out of it' altogether, and, as for the pit, no
man knoweth whether there be any pit still.
Besides, there are so many more distractions; a more
widely spread habit of reading, more music, more art,
more society, a fuller life. The theatre was formerly
—it is still to many—the only school of conversation,
wit, manners, and sentiment, the chief excitement which
took them out of their daily lives, the most delightful,


AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW 127
the most entrancing manner of spending the evening.
If the theatre were the same to the people of London
as it used to be, the average attendance, counting the
visitors, would be not 20,000 but 120,000.
The reason why some of the houses were open for
six months only was that the Lord Chancellor granted
a licence for that period only, except to the patent
houses. The Haymarket was a summer house, from
April to October; the Adelphi a winter house, from
October to April.
The most fashionable of the houses was Her Majesty's,
where only Italian Opera was performed. Everybody
in society was obliged to have a box for the season, for
which sums were paid varying with the place in the
house and the rank and wealth of the tenant. Thus
the old Duke of Gloucester used to pay three hundred
guineas for the season. On levee days and drawing-
rooms the fashionable world went to the Opera in their
Court dresses, feathers, and diamonds, and all—a very
moving spectacle. Those who only took a box in order
to keep up appearances, and because it was necessary
for one in society to have a box, used to sell seats—
commonly called bones, because a round numbered bone
was the ticket of admission—to their friends; sometimes
they let their box for a single night, a month, or. the
whole season, by means of the agents, so that, except
for the honour of it, as the man said when the bottom
of his sedan-chair fell out, one might as well have had
none at all.
128
FIFTY YEARS AGO
The prices of admission to the theatres were very-
much less than obtain at the present day. At Drury
Lane the boxes and stalls, of which there were two or
three rows only, were 7s. each; the pit was 3s. Qd.,
the upper boxes 2s., and the gallery Is. At Co vent

LISTON AS 'PAUL PBl'
(From a Drawing by George Cruikstaank)
Garden, where they were great at spectacle, with per-
forming animals, the great Bunn being lessee, the prices
were lower, the boxes being 4s., the pit 2s., the upper
boxes Is. Qd., and gallery Is. At the Haymarket the
boxes were 5s., the pit 3s., and the gallery Is. 6d.
The actors and actresses were many and good. At


AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW
the Haymarket they had Farren, Webster, Buckstone,
Mrs. Glover, and Mrs. Humby. At the Olympic, Ellis-
ton, Liston, and Madame Vestris. Helen Faucit made
her first appearance in 1835; Miss Fanny Kemble hers
in 1830. Charles Mathews, Harley, Macready, and
Charles Kean were all playing. I hardly think that in
fifty years' time so good a list will be made of actors of
the present day whose memory has lasted so long as
those of 1837. The salaries of actors and singers varied
greatly, of course. Malibran received 125/. a night,
Charles Kean 50/. a night, Macready 30/. a week,
Farren 20/. a week, and so on, down to the humble
chorister—they then called her a figurante—with her
12s. or 18s. a week.
As for the national drama, I suppose it had never
before been in so wretched a state. Talfourd's play of
'Ion' was produced about this time ; but one good play
—supposing 'Ion' to be a good play—is hardly enough
to redeem the character of the age There were also
tragedies by Miss Mitford and Miss Baillie—strange that
no woman has ever written even a tolerable play—but
these failed to keep the stage. One Mr. Maturin, now
dying out of recollection, also wrote tragedies. The
comedies and farces were written by Planche, Eeynolds,
Peake, Theodore Hook, Dibdin, Leman Eede, Poole,
Maddison Morton, and Moncrieff. A really popular
writer, we learn with envy and astonishment, would
make as much as 30/., or even 40/., by a good piece.
Think of making 30/. or 40/. by a good piece at the
13°
FIFTY YEARS AGO
theatre! Was not that noble encouragement for the
playwrights? Thirty pounds for one piece! It takes
one's breath away. Would not Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Wills,
and Mr. George Sims be proud and happy men if they
could get 30/.—a whole lump of 30/.—for a single
piece? We can ima-
gine the tears of joy
running down their
cheeks.
The decline of the
drama was attributed
by Eaumer to the entire
absence of any protec-
tion for the dramatist.
This is no doubt partly
true; but the dramatist
was protected, to a
certain extent, by the
difficulty of getting
copies of his work. Shorthand writers used to try—
they still try—to take down, unseen, the dialogue.
Generally, however, they are detected in the act and
desired to withdraw. As a rule, if the dramatist did not
print the plays, he was safe, except from treachery on the
part of the prompter. The low prices paid for dramatic
work were the chief causes of the decline—say, rather,
the dreadful decay, dry rot, and galloping consumption
—of the drama fifty years ago. Who, for instance,
would ever expect good fiction to be produced if it was



AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW 131
rewarded at the rate of no more than 30£, or even 300Z.,
a novel? Great prizes are incentives for good work.
Good craftsmen will no longer work if the pay is bad;
or, if they work at all, they will not throw their hearts
into the work. The great success of Walter Scott was
the cause why Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Charles
Keade, and the many second-rate novelists chose fiction
rather than the drama for their energies. One or two
of them, Dickens and Eeade, for instance, were always
hankering after the stage. Had dramatists received the
same treatment in England as in France, many of these
writers would have seriously turned their attention to
the theatre, and our modern dramatic literature would
have been as rich as our work in fiction. The stage
now offers a great fortune, a far greater fortune, won
much more swiftly than can be got by fiction, to those
who succeed.
As for the pieces actually produced about this
period, they were chiefly adaptations from novels.
Thus, we find 4 Esmeralda' and c Quasimodo,' two plays
from Victor Hugo's 6 Hunchback of Notre Dame ;'
4 Lucillo,' from 4 The Pilgrims of the Ehine,' by Lytton;
Bulwer, indeed, was continually being dramatised ; 4 Paul
Clifford' and 4Kienzi,' among others, making their appear-
ance on the stage. For other plays there were 4 Zampa'
or 4 The Corsair,' due to Byron; 4 The Waterman,'4 The
Irish Tutor,' 4 My Poll and my Partner Joe,' with T. P.
Cooke, at the Surrey Theatre. The comedy of the time
is very well illustrated by Lytton's 4 Money,' stagey and
132
FIFTY YEARS AGO
unreal. The scenery, dresses, and general mise-en-scene
would now be considered contemptible.
Apart from the Italian Opera, music was very well
supported. There were concerts in great numbers: the
Philharmonic, the
Vocal Society, and
the Royal Academy
of Music gave their
concerts at the
King's Ancient Con-
cert Rooms, Han-
over Square. Willis's
Rooms were also used
for music; and the
Cecilia Society gave
its concerts in Moor-
gate Street.
There were many
other shows, apart
from the well-known
sights of town.
Madame Tussaud's
Gallery in Baker
Street, the Hippo-
drome at Bayswater, the Colosseum, the Diorama in
Regent's Park, the Panorama in Leicester Square—
where you could see * Peru and the Andes, or the
Village engulfed by the Avalanche'—and the Panorama
in Regent Street attracted the less frivolous and those

T. P. COOKE IN 'BLACK-EYED 8C8AN 1


AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW 133
who came to town for the improvement of their minds.
For Londoners themselves there were the Yauxhall
Gardens first and foremost—the most delightful places
of amusement that London ever possessed except,
perhaps, Belsize. Everybody went to Vauxhall; those
who were respectable and those who were not. Far
more beautiful than the electric lights in the Gardens

VACXHALL GARDENS
of the 'Colonies' were the two hundred thousand
variegated oil lamps, festooned among the trees of
Vauxhall; there was to be found music, singing, act-
ing, and dancing. Hither came the gallant and golden
youth from the West End; here were seen sober and
honest merchants with their wives and daughters; here
were ladies of doubtful reputation and ladies about
whose reputation there could be no doubt; here there
'34
FIFTY YEARS AGO
were painted arbours where they brought you the
famous Vauxhall ham—* sliced cobwebs;' the famous
Vauxhall beef—4 book muslin, pickled and boiled ;' and
the famous Vauxhall punch—Heavens ! how the honest
folk did drink that punch!
I have before me an account of an evening spent at
Vauxhall about this time by an eminent drysalter of the
City, his partner, a certain Tom, and two ladies, the dry-
salter's wife and his daughter Lydia; 4 a laughter-loving
lass of eighteen, who dearly loved a bit of gig.' Do you
know, gentle reader, what is a4 bit of gig '? This young
lady laughs at everything, and cries,4 What a bit of gig!'
There was singing, of course, and after the singing there
were fireworks, and after the fireworks an ascent on the
rope. 4 The ascent on the rope, which Lydia had never
before witnessed, was to her particularly interesting.
For the first time during the evening she looked serious,
and as the mingled rays of the moon (then shining
gloriously in the dark blue heavens, attended by her
twinkling handmaidens, the stars), which ever and anon
shot down as the rockets mounted upwards, mocking
the mimic pyrotechnia of man, and the flashes of red
fire played upon her beautiful white brow and ripe
lips—blushing like a cleft cherry—we thought for a
moment that Tom was a happy blade. While we were
gazing on her fine face, her eye suddenly assumed its
wonted levity, and she exclaimed in a laughing tone—
44 Now, if the twopenny postman of the rockets were to
mistake one of the directions and deliver it among the
AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW 135
crowd so as to set fire to six or seven muslin dresses,
what a bit of gig it would be!"'
Another delightful place was the Surrey Zoological
Gardens, which occupied fifteen acres, and had a large
lake in the middle, very useful for fireworks and the
showing off of the Mount Vesuvius they stuck up on
one side of it. The carnivorous animals were kept in
a single building, under a great glazed cupola, but the
elephants, bears, monkeys, &c, had separate buildings
of their own. Flower shows, balloon ascents, fireworks,
and all kinds of exciting things went on at the Surrey
Zoo.
The Art Galleries opened every year, and, besides
the National Gallery, there were the Society of British
Artists, the Exhibition of Water Colours, and the British
Institution in Pall Mall. At the Eoyal Academy of
1837, Turner exhibited his 4 Juliet/ Etty a ' Psyche and
Venus,' Landseer a 6 Scene in Ghillingham Park,' Wilkie
the ' Peep o' Day Boy's Cabin,' and Eoberts the 4 Chapel
of Ferdinand and Isabella at Granada.'
There were Billiard Eooms, where a young man
from the country who prided himself upon his
play could get very prettily handled. There were
Cigar Divans, but as yet only one or two, for the
smoking of cigars was a comparatively new thing—in
fact, one who wrote in the year 1829 thought it
necessary to lay down twelve solemn rules for the right
smoking of a cigar; there were also Gambling Hells,
of which more anon.
13'
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Fifty years ago, in short, we amused ourselves very
well. "We were fond of shows, and there were plenty
of them; we liked an al fresco entertainment, and we
could have it; we were not quite so picksome in the
matter of company as we are now, and therefore we
endured the loud vulgarities of the tradesman and his
family, and shut our eyes when certain fashionably
dressed ladies passed by showing their happiness by
the loudness of their laughter; we even sat with our
daughter in the very next box to that in which young
Lord Tomnoddy was entertaining these young ladies
with cold chicken and pink champagne. It is, we
know, the privilege of rank to disregard morals in
public as well as in private. Then we had supper and
a bowl of punch, and so home to bed.
Those who are acquainted with the doings of Corin-
thian Tom and Bob Logic are acquainted with the
Night Side of London as it was a few years before
1837. Suffice it to say that it was far darker, far more
vicious, far more dangerous fifty years ago than it is
now. Heaven knows that we have a Night Side still,
and a very ugly side it is, but it is earlier by many
hours than it used to be, and it is comparatively free
from gambling-houses, from bullies, blackmailers, and
sharks.
CHAPTER IX,
IN THE HOUSE.
On November 20,1837, the young Queen opened her
first Parliament in person. The day was brilliant with
sunshine, the crowds from Buckingham Palace to the
House were immense, the House of Lords was crammed
with Peers and the gallery with Peeresses, who oc-
cupied every seat, and even c rushed' the reporters'
gallery, three reporters only having been fortunate
enough to take their places before the rush.1
When Her Majesty arrived and had taken her place,
there was the rush from the Lower House.
4 Her Majesty having taken the oath against Popery,
which she did in a slow, serious, and audible manner,
proceeded to read the Eoyal Speech; and a specimen
of more tasteful and effective elocution it has never
been my fortune to hear. Her voice is clear, and her
enunciation distinct in no ordinary degree. Her utter-
ance is timed with admirable judgment to the ear: it is
the happy medium between too slow and too rapid.
1 I am indebted for the whole of this chapter to Random MecoUeatiom of
the Lords and Commons) 1838.
138 FIFTY YEARS AGO
Nothing could be more accurate than her pronuncia-
tion; while the musical intonations of her voice im-
parted a peculiar charm to the other attributes of her

THE 1 NEW' H0U8E8 OF PARLIAMENT, FROM THE RIVER
(First stone laid 1840. Sir Charles Barry, architect)


IN THE HOUSE
i39
elocution. The most perfect stillness reigned through
the place while Her Majesty was reading her Speech.
Not a breath was to be heard: had a person, unblessed
with the power of vision, been suddenly taken within
hearing of Her Majesty, while she was reading her
Speech, he might have remained some time under the
impression that there was no one present but herself.
Her self-possession was the theme of universal admira-
tion.
4 In person Her Majesty is considerably below the
average height. Her figure is good; rather inclined,
as far as one could judge from seeing her in her robes
of state, to the slender form. Every one who has seen
her must have been struck with her singularly fine
bust. Her complexion is clear, and has all the indica-
tions of excellent health about it. Her features are
small, and partake a good deal of the Grecian cast.
Her face, without being strikingly handsome, is remark-
ably pleasant, and is indicative of a mild and amiable
disposition/
In the House of Lords the most prominent figures
were, I suppose, those of Lord Brougham and the Duke
of Wellington. The debates in the Upper House,
enlivened by the former, and by Lords Melbourne,
Lyndhurst, and others, were lively and animated, com-
pared with the languor of the modern House. The
Duke of Eutland, the Marquis of Bute, the Marquis of
Camden (who paid back into the Treasury every year
the salary he received as Teller of the Exchequer), the
140
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Earls of Stanhope, Devon, Falmouth, Lords Strangford,
Kolls, Alvanley, and Redesdale were the leaders of the
Conservatives. The Marquis of Sligo, the Marquis of
Northampton, the Earls of Eosebery, Gosford, Minto,
Shrewsbury, and Lichfield, Lords Lynedoch and
Portman were the leaders of the Liberals. With the

LORD MKLBOTTRNE
exceptions of Wellington, Brougham, Melbourne, and
Redesdale, it is melancholy to consider that these
illustrious names are nothing more than names, and
convey no associations to the present generation.
Among the members of the Lower House were
many more who have left behind them memories which
are not likely to be soon forgotten. Sir Robert Peel,


IN THE HOUSE
141'
Lord Stanley, Thomas Macaulay, Cobbett, Lord John
Eussell, Sir John Cam Hobhouse, Lord Palmerston, Sir
Francis Burdett, Hume, Roebuck, O'Connell, Lytton
Bulwer, Benjamin DTsraeli, and last sole survivor,
William Ewart Gladstone, were all in the Parliaments

TH0SIA8 BABINOTON MACAULAY
immediately before or immediately after the Queen's
Accession.
If you would like to know how these men impressed
their contemporaries, read the following extracts from
Grant's 'Random Recollections.'
* Mr. Thomas Macaulay, the late member for Leeds,
and now a member of Council in India, could boast of
142
FIFTY YEARS AGO
a brilliant, if not a very long Parliamentary career.
He was one of those men who at once raised himself to
the first rank in the Senate. His maiden speech elec-
trified the House, and called forth the highest com-
pliments to the speaker from men of all parties. He
was careful to preserve the laurels he had thus so
easily and suddenly won. He was a man of shrewd

LORD PALMERSTON
mind, and knew that if he spoke often, the probability
was he would not speak so well; and that consequently
there could be no more likely means of lowering him
from the elevated station to which he had raised him-
self, than frequently addressing the House.
'His speeches were always most carefully studied,
and committed to memory, exactly as he delivered
IN THE HOUSE 143
them, beforehand. He bestowed a world of labour on
their preparation; and, certainly, never was labour

BURDETT, HTJME, AND O'CONNELL
(From a Drawing by IB.)
bestowed to more purpose. In every sentence you saw
the man of genius—the profound scholar—the deep
144
FIFTY YEARS AGO
thinker—the close and powerful reasoner. You scarcely
knew which most to admire—the beauty of his ideas,
or of the language in which they were clothed.'
6 Lord John Eussell is one of the worst speakers in
the House, and but for his excellent private character,
his family connections, and his consequent influence in
the political world, would not be tolerated. There are
many far better speakers, who, notwithstanding their
innumerable efforts to catch the Speaker's eye in the
course of important debates, hardly ever succeed; or,
if they do, are generally put down by the clamour
of honourable members. His voice is weak and his
enunciation very imperfect. He speaks in general in
so low a tone as to be inaudible to more than one-half
of the House. His style is often in bad taste, and he
stammers and stutters at every fourth or fifth sentence.
When he is audible he is always clear; there is no
mistaking his meaning. Generally his speeches are
feeble in matter as well as manner; but on some great
occasions I have known him make very able speeches,
more distinguished, however, for the clear and forcible
way in which he put the arguments which would most
naturally suggest themselves to a reflecting mind, than
for any striking or comprehensive views of the sub
ject.'
'Of Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary, and
member for Tiverton, I have but little to say. The
situation he fills in the Cabinet gives him a certain
degree of prominence in the eyes of the country, which


IN THE HOUSE
145
he certainly does not possess in Parliament. His
talents are by no means of a high, order. He is very
irregular in his attendance on his Parliamentary duties,
and, when in the House, is by no means active in
defence either of his principles or his friends. Scarcely
anything calls him up except a regular attack on him-
self, or on the way in which the department of the
public service with which he is entrusted is ad-
ministered.
6 In person, Lord Palmerston is tall and handsome.
His face is round, and is of a darkish hue. His hair
is black, and always exhibits proofs of the skill and
attention of the perruquier. His clothes are in the
extreme of fashion. He is very vain of his personal
appearance, and is generally supposed to devote more of
his time in sacrificing to the Graces than is consistent with
the duties of a person who has so much to do with the
destinies of Europe. Hence it is that the "Times"
newspaper has fastened on him the sobriquet of Cupid/
'Mr. O'Connell is a man of the highest order of
genius. There is not a member in the House who, in
this respect, can for a moment be put in comparison
with him. You see the greatness of his genius in
almost every sentence he utters. There are others—
Sir Eobert Peel, for example—who have much more tact
and greater dexterity in debate; but in point of genius
none approach to him. It ever and anon bursts forth
with a brilliancy and effect which are quite over-
whelming. You have not well recovered from the
14
146
FIFTY YEARS AGO
overpowering surprise and admiration caused by one
of his brilliant effusions, when another flashes upon
you and produces the same effect. You have no time,
nor are you in a condition, to weigh the force of his
arguments; you are taken captive wherever the
speaker chooses to lead you from beginning to end.'

DANIEL O'CONNKLL
1 One of the most extraordinary attributes in Mr.
O'Connell's oratory is the ease and facility with which
he can make a transition from one topic to another.
"From grave to gay, from lively to severe," never costs
him an effort. He seems, indeed, to be himself insen-
sible of the transition. I have seen him begin his speech
by alluding to topics of an affecting nature, in such a
IN THE HOUSE
147
manner as to excite the deepest sympathy towards the
sufferers in the mind of the most unfeeling person
present. I have seen, in other words—I speak with
regard to particular instances—the tear literally glis-
tening in the eyes of men altogether unused to the

O'CONNELL TAKING THE OATHS IN THE HOUSE
(From a Drawing by ' Phiz' in 'Sketches in London')
melting mood, and in a moment afterwards, by a transi-
tion from the grave to the humorous, I have seen the
whole audience convulsed with laughter. On the
other hand, I have often heard him commence his
speech in a strain of most exquisite humour, and, by a
sudden transition to deep pathos, produce the stillness
148
FIFTY YEARS AGO
of death in a place in which, but one moment before,
the air was rent with shouts of laughter. His mastery
over the passions is the most perfect I ever witnessed,
and his oratory tells with the same effect whether he
addresses the "first assembly of gentlemen in the world,",
or the ragged and ignorant rabble of Dublin.'
'The most distinguished literary man in the House
is Mr. E. L. Bulwer, member for Lincoln, and author of
"Pelham," "Eugene Aram," &c. He does not speak
often. When he does, his speeches are not only pre-
viously turned over with great care in his mind, but are
written out at full length, and committed carefully to
memory. He is a great patron of the tailor, and he is
always dressed in the extreme of fashion. His manner
of speaking is very affected: the management of his
voice is especially so. But for this he would be a
pleasant speaker. His voice, though weak, is agreeable,
and he speaks with considerable fluency. His speeches
are usually argumentative. You see at once that he is
a person of great intellectual acquirements.'
'Mr. D'Israeli, the member for Maidstone, is per-
haps the best known among the new members who have
made their debuts. As stated in my "Sketches in
London," his own private friends looked forward to his
introduction into the House of Commons as a circum-
stance which would be immediately followed by his
obtaining for himself an oratorical reputation equal to
that enjoyed by the most popular speakers in that
assembly. They thought he would produce an extra-

IN THE HOUSE
149
ordinary sensation, both in the House and in the country,
by the power and splendour of his eloquence. But the
result differed from the anticipation.
6 When he rose, which he did immediately after Mr.
O'Connell had concluded his speech, all eyes were
fixed on him, and all ears were open to listen to his
eloquence; but before he had proceeded far, he
furnished a striking illustration of the hazard that
attends on highly wrought expectations. After the
first few minutes he met with every possible manifesta-
tion of opposition and ridicule from the Ministerial
benches, and was, on the other hand, cheered in the
loudest and most earnest manner by his Tory friends;
and it is particularly deserving of mention, that even
Sir Kobert Peel, who very rarely cheers any honourable
gentleman, not even the most able and accomplished
speakers of his own party, greeted Mr. DTsraeli's speech
with a prodigality of applause which must have been
severely trying to the worthy baronets lungs.
6 At one time, in consequence of the extraordinary
interruptions he met with, Mr. D'Israeli intimated his
willingness to resume his seat, if the House wished him
to do so. He proceeded, however, for a short time
longer, but was still assailed by groans and under-growls
in all their varieties; the uproar, indeed, often became
so great as completely to drown his voice.
6 At last, losing all temper, which until now he had
preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in the
midst of a sentence, and, looking the Liberals indignantly
FIFTY YEARS AGO
in the face, raised his hands, and, opening his mouth as
wide as its dimensions would permit, said, in remark-
ably loud and almost terrific tones—"Though I sit down
now, the time will come when you will hear me" Mr.
DTsraeli then sat down amidst the loudest uproar.
4 The exhibition altogether was a most extraordinary
one. Mr. DTsraeli's appearance and manner were very
singular. His dress also was peculiar; it had much of
a theatrical aspect. His black hair was long and flow-
ing, and he had a most ample crop of it. His gesture
was abundant; he often appeared as if trying with
what celerity he could move his body from one side to
another, and throw his hands out and draw them in
again. At other times he flourished one hand before
his face, and then the other. His voice, too, is of a
very unusual kind: it is powerful, and had every justice
done to it in the way of exercise; but there is some-
thing peculiar in it which I am at a loss to characterise.
His utterance was rapid, and he never seemed at a loss
for words. On the whole, and notwithstanding the
result of his first attempt, I am convinced he is a man
who possesses many of the requisites of a good debater.
That he is a man of great literary talent, few will dis-
pute/
Lastly, here is a contemporary judgment on Glad-
stone. The italics are my own.
4 Mr. Gladstone, the member for Newark, is one of
the most rising young men on the Tory side of the
House. His party expect great things from him; and

IN THE HOUSE
certainly, when it is remembered that his age is only
twenty-five, the success of the Parliamentary efforts he
has already made justifies their expectations. He is
well informed on most of the subjects which usually oc
cupy the attention of the Legislature, and he is happy
in turning his information to a good account. He is
ready, on all occasions which he deems fitting ones,
with a speech in favour of the policy advocated by the
party with whom he acts. His extemporaneous resources
are ample. Few men in the House can improvisate
better. It does not appear to cost him an effort to
speak. He is a man of very considerable talent, but
has nothing approaching to genius. His abilities are
much more the result of an excellent education, and of
mature study, than of any prodigality on the part of
Nature in the distribution of mental gifts, i" have no
idea that he will ever acquire the reputation of a great
statesman. His views are not sufficiently profound or
enlarged for that; his celebrity in the House of Com
mons will chiefly depend on his readiness and dexterity as
a debater, in conjunction with the excellence of his elocu-
tion^ and the gracefulness of his manner when speaking.
His style is polished, but has no appearance of the
effect of previous preparation. He displays considerable
acuteness in replying to an opponent; he is quick in
his perception of anything vulnerable in the speech to
which he replies, and happy in laying the weak point
bare to the gaze of the House. He now and then in-
dulges in sarcasm, which is, in most cases, very felici-
FIFTY YEARS AGO
tous. He is plausible even when most in error. When
it suits himself or his party, he can apply himself with
the strictest closeness to the real point at issue; when
to evade that point is deemed most politic, no man can
wander from it more widely.
4 The ablest speech he ever made in the House, and by
far the ablest on the same side of the question, was
when opposing, on the 30th of March last, Sir George
Strickland's motion for the abolition of the negro appren-
ticeship system on the 1st of August next. Mr. Glad-
stone, I should here observe, is himself an extensive
West India planter.
4 Mr. Gladstone's appearance and manners are much
in his favour. He is a fine-looking man. He is about
the usual height, and of good figure. His countenance
is mild and pleasant, and has a highly intellectual ex
pression. His eyes are clear and quick. His eyebrows
are dark and rather prominent. There is not a dandy
in the House but envies what Truefitt would call his
'fine head of jet-black hair.' It is always carefully
parted from the crown downwards to his brow, where
it is tastefully shaded. His features are small and
regular, and his complexion must be a very unworthy
witness, if he does not possess an abundant stock of
health/
So the ghost of the first Victorian Parliament
vanishes. All are gone except Mr. Gladstone himself.
Whether the contemporary judgment has proved well
founded or not, is for the reader to determine. For my
IN THE HOUSE
153
own part, I confess that my opinion of the author of
4 Eandom Eecollections' was greatly advanced when I
had read this judgment on the members. We who do
not sit in the galleries, and are not members, lose the
enormous advantage of actually seeing the speakers and
hearing the debates. The reported speech is not the
real speech; the written letter remains; but the fire of
the orator flames and burns, and passes away. Those
know not Gladstone who have never seen him and
heard him speak.
And as for that old man eloquent, when he closes
his eyes in the House where he has fought so long, the
voices around him may well fall unheeded on his ear,
while a vision of the past shows him once more Peel
and Stanley, Lord John and Palmerston, O'Connell and
Eoebuck, and, adversary worthiest of all, the man
whom the House at his first attempt hooted down and
*
refused to hear—the great and illustrious Dizzy.
FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTER X.
AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.
The great schools had no new rivals; all the modern
public schools—Cheltenham, Clifton, Marlborough, and
the like—have sprung into existence or into importance
since the year 1837. Those who did not go to the
public schools had their choice between small gram-
mar schools and private schools. There were a vast
number of private schools. It was, indeed, recognised
that when a man could do nothing else and had failed
in everything that he had tried, a private school was
still possible for him. The sons of the lower middle-
class had, as a rule, no choice but to go to a private
school. At the grammar school they taught Greek and
Latin—these boys wanted no Greek and no Latin;
they wanted a good 'commercial9 education; they
wanted to learn bookkeeping and arithmetic, and to
write a good hand. Nothing else was of much account.
Again, all the grammar schools belonged to the Church
of England; sons of Nonconformists were, therefore,
excluded, and had to go to the private school.
The man who kept a private school was recom-
AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 155
mended for his cheapness as much as for his success in
teaching. As for the latter, indeed, there were no local
examinations held by the Universities, and no means of
showing whether he taught well or ill. Probably, in
the five or six years spent at his school, boys learned
what their parents mostly desired for them, and left
school to become clerks or shopmen. The school fees
were sometimes as low as a guinea a quarter. The
classes were taught by wretchedly paid ushers; there
was no attention paid to ventilation or hygienic
arrangements; the cane was freely used all day long.
Everybody knows the kind of school; you can read
about it in the earlier pages of6 David Copperfield,' and
in a thousand books besides.
In the public schools, where the birch flourished
rank and tall and in tropical luxuriance, Latin and
Greek were the only subjects to which any serious
attention was given. No science was taught; of
modern languages, French was pretended; history and
geography were neglected; mathematics were a mere
farce. As regards the tone of the schools, perhaps we
had better not inquire Yet that the general life of
the boys was healthy is apparent from the affection
with which elderly men speak of their old schools.
There were great Head Masters before Arnold; and
there were public schools where manliness, truth, and
purity were cultivated besides Rugby. One thing is very
certain—that the schools turned out splendid scholars,
and their powers of writing Latin and Greek verse
FIFTY YEARS AGO
were wonderful. A year ago we were startled by
learning that a girl had taken a First Class in the
Classical Tripos at Cambridge. This, to some who
remembered the First Class of old, seemed a truly
wonderful thing. Some even wanted to see her
iambics. Alas! a First Class can now be got without
Greek iambics. What would they have said at West-
minster fifty years ago if they had learned that a First
Class could be got at Cambridge without Greek or
Latin verse? What is philology, which can be
crammed, compared with a faultless copy of elegiacs,
which no amount of cramming, even of the female
brain, can succeed in producing?
The Universities were still wholly in the hands of the
Church. No layman, with one or two exceptions, could
be Head of a College; all the Fellowships—or very
nearly all—were clerical; the country living was the
natural end of the Fellowship; no Dissenters, Jews, or
Catholics were admitted into any College unless they
went through the form of conforming to the rules as
regards Chapel; no one could be matriculated without
signing the Thirty-nine Articles—nearly twenty years
later I had, as a lad of seventeen, to sign that unrelenting
definition of Faith on entering King's College, London.
Perhaps they do it still at that seat of orthodoxy.
Tutors and lecturers were nearly all in orders. Most
of the men intended to take orders, many of them in
order to take family livings.
The number of undergraduates was about a third
AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY
of that now standing on the College books. And the
number of reading men—those who intended to make
their University career a stepping-stone or a ladder—
was far less in proportion to the number of 4 poll' men
than at the present day. The ordinary degree was
obtained with even less difficulty than at present.
There were practically only two Triposes at
Cambridge—the Mathematical and the Classical—in-
stead of the round dozen or so which now offer their
honours to the student. No one could get a Fellow-
ship except through those two Triposes. As for the
Fellowships and Scholarships, indeed, half of them were
close—that is to say, confined to students from certain
towns, or certain counties, or certain schools; while at
one College, King's, both Fellowships and Scholarships
were confined to ' collegers ' of Eton, and the students
proceeded straight to Fellowships without passing
through the ordeal of the Senate House.
Dinner was at four—a most ungodly hour, be-
tween lunch and the proper hour for dinner. For the
men who read, it answered pretty well, because it gave
them a long evening for work; for the men who did
not read, it gave a long evening for play.
There was a great deal of solid drinking among the
men, both Fellows and undergraduates. The former sat
in Combination Eoom after Hall and drank the good old
College port; the latter sat in each other's rooms and
drank the fiery port which they bought in the town.
In the evening there were frequent suppers, with milk-
15
FIFTY YEARS AGO
punch and songs. I wonder if they have the milk-
punch still; the supper I think they cannot have, be-
cause they all dine at seven or half-past seven, after
which it is impossible to take supper.
In those days young noblemen went up more than
they do at present, and they spread themselves over
many colleges. Thus at Cambridge they were found
at Trinity, John's, and Magdalene. A certain Cabinet
thirty years ago had half its members on the books of
St. John's. In these days all the noblemen who go
to Cambridge flock like sheep to Trinity. There seems
also to have been gathered at the University a larger
proportion of county people than in these later years,
when the Universities have not only been thrown open
to men of all creeds, but when men of every class find
in their rich endowments and prizes a legitimate and
laudable way of rising in the world. 4 The recognised
way of making a gentleman now,' says Charles Kingsley
in 4 Alton Locke,' 4 is to send him to the University.' I
do not know how Charles Kingsley was made a gentle-
man, but it is certainly a very common method of
advancing your son if he is clever. Formerly it meant
ambition in the direction of the Church. Now it means
many other things—the Bar—Journalism—Education
—Science—Archaeology—a hundred ways in which a
4 gentleman ' may be made by first becoming a scholar.
Nay, there are dozens of men in the City who have
begun by taking their three years on the banks of the
Cam or the Isis. For what purposes do the Univer-
AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 159
sities exist but for the encouragement of learning?
And if the country agree to call a scholar a gentleman
—as it calls a solicitor a gentleman—by right of his
profession, so much the better for the country. But
Kingsley was born somewhere about the year 1820,
which was still very much in the eighteenth century,
when there were no gentlemen recognised except those
who were gentlemen by birth.
With close Fellowships, tied to the Church of Eng-
land, with little or no science, Art, archaeology,
philology, Oriental learning, or any of the modern
branches of learning, with a strong taste for port, and
undergraduates drawn for the most part from the
upper classes, the Universities were different indeed
from those of the present day.
As for the education of women, it was like unto the
serpents of Ireland. Wherefore we need not devote a
chapter to this subject at all.
i6o FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTEE XI.
THE TAVERN.
The substitution of the Restaurant for the Tavern is of
recent origin. In the year 1837 there were restaurants,
it is true, but they were humble places, and confined
to the parts of London frequented by the French; for
English of every degree there was the Tavern. Plenty
of the old Taverns still survive to show us in what places
our fathers took their dinners and drank their punch.
The Cheshire Cheese is a survival; the Cock, until
recently, was another. Some of them, like the latter,
had the tables and benches partitioned off; others,
like the former, were partly open and partly divided.
The floor was sanded; there was a great fire kept up all
through the winter, with a kettle always full of boiling
water; the cloth was not always of the cleanest; the forks
were steel; in the evening there was always a company
of those who supped—for they dined early—on chops,
steaks, sausages, oysters, and Welsh rabbit, of those who
drank, those who smoked their long pipes, and those who
sang. Yes—those who sang. La those days the song
went round. If three or four Templars supped at the
THE TAVERN
161
Coal Hole, or the Cock, or the Rainbow, one of them
would presently lift his voice in song, and then be fol-
lowed by a rival warbler from another box. At the Coal
Hole, indeed—where met the once famous Wolf Club,

EDMUND KEAJJ A8 RICHARD TJIE THIRD
Edmund Kean, President—the landlord, one Rhodes
by name, was not only a singer but a writer of songs,
chiefly, I apprehend, of the comic kind. I suppose that
the comic song given by a private gentleman in character
—that is, with a pocket-handkerchief for a white apron,
162
FIFTY YEARS AGO
or his coat off, or a battered hat on his head—is almost
unknown to the younger generation. They see the
kind of thing, but done much better, at the music-halls.
Really, nothing marks the change of manners more
than the fact that fifty years ago men used to meet to-
gether every evening and sing songs over their pipes
and grog. Not young men only, but middle-aged men,
and old men, would all together join in the chorus, and
that joyfully, banging the tables with their fists, and
laughing from ear to ear—the roysterers are always
represented as laughing with an absence of restraint
impossible for us quite to understand. The choruses,
too, were of the good old 6 Whack-fol-de-rol-de-rido'
character, which gives scope to so much play of senti-
ment and lightness of touch.
Beer, of course, was the principal beverage, and
there were many more varieties of beer than at present
prevail. One reads of c Brook clear Kennett'—it used
to be sold in a house near the Oxford Street end of
Tottenham Court Eoad; of Shropshire ale, described as
'■dark and heavy ; * of the ' luscious Burton, innocent of
hops ;'«of new ale, old ale, bitter ale, hard ale, soft ale,
the 'balmy' Scotch, mellow October, and good brown
stout. All these were to be obtained at taverns which
made a speciality as they would say now, of any one
kind. Thus the best stout in London was to be had at the
Brace Tavern in the Queen's Bench Prison, and the Cock
was also famous for the same beverage, served in pint
glasses. A rival of the Cock, in this respect, was the Eain-
THE TAVERN
bow, long before the present handsome room was built.
The landlord of the Eainbow was one William Colls,
formerly head-waiter at the Cock, predecessor, I take
it, of Tennyson's immortal friend. But he left the
Cock to better himself, and as at the same time Mary—
the incomparable, the matchless Mary, most beautiful
of barmaids—left it as
well, gloom fell upon
the frequenters of the
tavern. Mary left the
Cock about the year
1820, too early for the
future Poet Laureate
to have been one of
the worshippers of her
Grecian face. Under
Colls's management the
Eainbow rivalled the
Cock in popularity.
The Cider Cellar, kept
by Evans of Co vent Gar-
den, had gone through a
period of decline, but
was again popular and well frequented. Mention may
also be made of Clitter's, of Offley's, famous for its lamb in
spring; of the Kean's Head, whose landlord was a great
comic singer,- of the Harp, haunt of aspiring actors; of
the Albion, the Finish, or the Eoyal Saloon, Piccadilly,
where one looked in for a 1 few goes of max'—what was

OLD ENTRANCE TO THE COCK, FLEET STREET
164
FIFTY YEARS AGO
max ?—in the very worst company that London could
supply.
It is the fashion to lament the quantity of money still
consumed in drink. But our drink-bill is nothing, in pro-
portion, compared with that of fifty years ago. Thus, the
number of visitors to fourteen great gin-shops in London
was found to average 3,000 each per diem; in Edin-
burgh there was a gin-shop for every fifteen families;
in one Irish town of 800 people there were eighty-eight
gin-shops; in Sheffield, thirteen persons were killed in
ten days by drunkenness; in London there was one
public-house to every fifty-six houses; in Glasgow one
to every ten. Yet it was noted at the time that a great
improvement could be observed in the drinking habits
of the people. In the year 1742, for instance, there
were 19,000,000 gallons of spirits consumed by a popu-
lation of 6,000,000—that is to say, more than three
gallons a head every year; or, if we take only the adult
men, something like twelve gallons for every man in the
year, which may be calculated to mean one bottle in five
days. But a hundred years later the population had
increased to 16,000,000, and the consumption of spirits
had fallen to 8,250,000 gallons, which represents a little
more than half a gallon, or four pints, a head in the
year. Or, taking the adult men only, their average was
two gallons and one sixteenth a head, so that each man's
pint bottle would have lasted him for three weeks. In
Scotland, however, the general average was twenty-
seven pints a head, and, taking adults alone, thirteen
THE TAVERN
gallons and a half a head; and in Ireland six and a half
gallons a head. It was noted, also, in the year 1837,
that the multiplication of coffee-houses, of which there
were 1,600 in London alone, proved the growth of
more healthy habits among the people.
But though there was certainly more moderation in
drink than in the earlier years of the century, the drink-
bill for the year 1837 was prodigious. A case of total
abstinence was a phenomenon. The thirst for beer was
insatiable; with many people, especially farmers, and
the working classes generally, beer was taken with break-
fast. Even in my own time—that is to say, when the
Q.ueenhadbeen reigning for one-and-twenty years or so—
there were still many undergraduates at Cambridge who
drank beer habitually for breakfast, and at every break-
fast-party the tankard was passed round as a finish. In
country houses, the simple, light, home-brewed ale, the
preparation of which caused a most delightful anxiety
as to the result, was the sole beverage used at dinner
and supper. Every farmhouse, every large country
house, and many town house keepers brewed their own
beer, just as they made their own wines, their own jams,
and their own lavender water. Beer was universally
taken with dinner; even at great dinner-parties some
of the guests would call for beer, and strong ale was
always served with the cheese. After dinner, only port
and sherry, in middle-class houses, were put upon the
table. Sometimes Madeira or Lisbon appeared, but, as
a rule, wine meant port or sherry, unless, which some-
i66
FIFTY YEARS AGO
times happened, it meant cowslip, ginger, or gooseberry.
Except among the upper class, claret was absolutely un-
known, as were Burgundy, Rhone wines, Sauterne, and
all other French wines. In the restaurants every man
would call for bitter ale, or stout, or half-and-half with
his dinner, as a matter of course, and after dinner would
either take his pint of port, or half-pint of sherry, or
his tumbler of grog. Champagne was regarded as the
drink of the prodigal son. In the family circle it never
appeared at all, except at weddings, and perhaps on
Christmas Day.
In fact, when people spoke of wine in these days, they
generally meant port. They bought port by the hogs-
head, had it bottled, and laid down. They talked
about their ceHars solemnly; they brought forth bottles
which had been laid down in the days when George the
Third was king; they were great on body, bouquet, and
beeswing; they told stories about wonderful port which
they had been privileged to drink; they looked forward
to a dinner chiefly on account of the port which followed
it; real enjoyment only began when the cloth was re-
moved, the ladies were gone, and the solemn passage
of the decanter had commenced.
There lingers still the old love for this wine—it is,
without doubt, the king of wines. I remember ten
years ago, or thereabouts, dining with one—then my
partner—now, alas! gathered to his fathers—at the
Blue Posts, before that old inn was burned down. The
room was a comfortable old-fashioned first floor, low of
THE TAVERN 167
ceiling; with a great fire in an old-fashioned grate; set
with four or five tables only, because not many fre-
quented this most desirable of dining-places. We took
with dinner a bottle of light claret; when we had
got through the claret and the beef, the waiter, who
had been hovering about uneasily, interposed. 4 Don't
drink any more of that wash,' he said; 'let me bring
you something fit for gentlemen to sit over.' He
brought us, of course, a bottle of port. They say that
the taste for port is reviving; but claret has got so firm
a hold of our affections that I doubt it.
As for the drinking of spirits, it was certainly much
more common then than it is now. Among the lower
classes gin was the favourite—the drink of the women as
much as of the men. Do you know why they call it' blue
ruin'? Some time ago I saw, going into a public-house,
somewhere near the West India Docks, a tall lean man,
apparently five-and-forty or thereabouts. He was in
rags; his knees bent as he walked, his hands trembled,
his eyes were eager. And, wonderful to relate, the face
was perfectly blue—not indigo blue, or azure blue, but
of a ghostly, ghastly, corpse-like kind of blue, which
made one shudder. Said my companion to me, c That is
gin.' We opened the door of the public-house and looked
in. He stood at the bar with a full glass in his hand.
Then his eyes brightened, he gasped, straightened him-
self, and tossed it down his throat. Then he came out,
and he sighed as one who has just had a glimpse of some
earthly Paradise. Then he walked away with swift and
i68
FIFTY YEARS AGO
resolute step, as if purposed to achieve something
mighty. Only a few yards farther along the road, but
across the way, there stood another public-house. The
man walked straight to the door, entered, and took
another glass, again with the quick grasp of anticipa-
tion, and again with that sigh, as of a hurried peep
through the gates barred with the sword of fire. This
man was a curious object of study. He went into twelve
more public-houses, each time with greater deter-
mination on his lips and greater eagerness in his eyes..
The last glass, I suppose, opened these gates for him and
suffered him to enter, for his lips suddenly lost their
resolution, his eyes lost their lustre, he became limp,
his arms fell heavily—he was drunk, and his face was
bluer than ever.
This was the kind of sight which Hogarth could
see every day when he painted 6 Gin Lane.' It was in
the time when drinking-shops had placards stuck outside
to the effect that for a penny one might get drunk,
and blind drunk for twopence. But an example of a
'blue ruin,' actually walking in the flesh, in these days
one certainly does not expect to see. Next to gin,
rum was the most popular. There is a full rich flavour
about rum. It is affectionately named ajfter the delicious
pineapple, or after the island where its production is the
most abundant and the most kindly. It has always been
the drink of Her Majesty's Navy; it is still the favourite
beverage of many West India Islands, and many millions
of sailors, niggers, and coolies. It is hallowed by histo-
THE TAVERN
169
rical associations. But its effects in the good old days
were wonderful and awe-inspiring. It was the author
and creator of those flowers, now almost extinct, called
grog-blossoms. You may see them depicted by the ca-
ricaturists of the Eowlandson time, but they survived
until well past the middle of the century.
The outward and visible signs of rum were indeed
various. First, there was the red and swollen nose; next,
the nose beautifully painted with grog-blossoms. It is an
ancient nose, and is celebrated by the bacchanalian poet
of Normandy, Olivier Basselin, in the fifteenth century.
There was, next, the bottle nose in all its branches. I
am uncertain, never having walked the hospitals, whether
one is justified in classifying certain varieties of the
bottle nose under one head, or whether each variety
was a species by itself. All these noses, with the red and
puffy cheeks, the thick lips, the double chins, the swell-
ing, aldermanic corporation, and the gouty feet, in list
and slippers, meant Bum—Great God Eum. These
symptoms are no longer to be seen. Therefore, Great
God Eum is either deposed, or he hath but few wor-
shippers, and those half-hearted.
The decay of the Great God Eum, and the Great
Goddess Gin his consort, is marked in many other ways.
Formerly, the toper half filled a thick, short rummer with
spirit, and poured upon it an equal quantity of water.
Mr. Weller's theory of drink was that it should be
equal. The modern toper goes to a bar, gets half a
wineglass of Scotch whisky, and pours upon it a pint
170
FIFTY YEARS AGO
of Apollinaris water. The ancient drank his grog hot,
with lemon and sugar, and sometimes spice. This
made a serious business of the nightly grog. The
modern takes his cold, even with ice, and without any
addition of lemon. Indeed, he squashes his lemon
separately, and drinks the juice in Apollinaris, without
any spirit at all—a thing abhorrent to his ancestor.
Again, there are preparations of a crafty and cryptic
character, once greatly in favour, and now clean for-
gotten, or else fallen into a pitiable contempt, and
doomed to a stumbling, halt, and broken-winged exist-
ence. Take, for instance, the punch-bowl. Fifty
years ago it was no mere ornament for the sideboard
and the china cabinet. It was a thing to be brought
forth and filled with a fragrant mixture of rum, brandy,
and cura<joa, lemon, hot water, sugar, grated nutmeg,
cloves, and cinnamon. The preparation of the bowl
was as much a labour of love as that of a claret cup, its
degenerate successor. The ladles were beautiful works
of art in silver—where are those ladles now, and what
purpose do they serve? Shrub, again—rum shrub—is
there any living man who now calls for shrub? You
may still see it on the shelf of an old-fashioned inn; you
may even see the announcement that it is for sale
painted on door-posts, but no man regardeth it. I
believe that it was supposed to possess valuable medi-
cinal properties, the nature of which I forget. Again,
there was purl—early purl. Once there was a club in
the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, which existed for
THE TAVERN
171
the purpose of arising betimes, and drinking purl before
breakfast. Or there was dog's-nose. Gentle reader,
you remember the rules for making dog's-nose. They
were explained at a now famous meeting of the Brick
Lane Branch of the Grand Junction Ebenezer Temper-
ance Association. Yet I doubt whether dog's-nose is
still in favour. Again, there was copus—is the making
of copus-cup still remembered? There was bishop: it
was a kind of punch, made of port wine instead of rum,
and was formerly much consumed at the suppers of un-
dergraduates; it was remarkable for its power of mak-
ing men's faces red and their voices thick; it also made
them feel as if their legs and arms, and every part of
them, were filled out and distended, as with twice the
ysual quantity of blood. These were, no doubt, valuable
qualities, considered medicinally, yet bishop is no longer
in demand. Mulled ale is still, perhaps, cultivated.
They used to have pots made for the purpose of warm-
ing the ale: these were long and shaped like an extin-
guisher, so that the heat of the fire played upon a large
surface, and warmed the beer quickly. When it was
poured out, spice was added, and perhaps sugar, and no
doubt a dash of brandy. Negus, a weak compound of
sherry and warm water, used to be exhibited at dancing
parties, but is now, I should think, unknown save by
name. I do not speak of currant gin, damson brandy,
or cherry brandy, because one or two such preparations
are still produced. Nor need we consider British wines,
now almost extinct. Yet in country towns one may
172
FIFTY YEARS AGO
here and there find shops where they provide for tastes
still simple—the cowslip, delicate and silky to the palate;
the ginger, full of flavour and of body ; the red currant,
rich and sweet—a ladies' wine; the gooseberry, possess-
ing all the finer qualities of the grape of Epernay; the
raisin, with fine Tokay flavour; or the raspberry, full of
bouquet and of beeswing. But their day is passed—the
British wines are, practically, made no more. All these
drinks, once so lovingly prepared and so tenderly che-
rished, are now as much forgotten as the toast in the nut-
brown ale, or the October humming ale, or the mead
drunk from the gold-rimmed horn—they still drink
something out of a gold-rimmed horn in the Hall of
Corpus Christi, Cambridge; or the lordly 'ypocras'
wherewith Sir Eichard Whittington entertained his
Sovereign, what day he concluded the banquet by
burning the King's bonds; or the once-popular mixture
of gin and noyau; or the cup of hot saloop from the
stall in Covent Garden, or on the Fleet Bridge.
The Tavern! We can hardly understand how large
a place it filled in the lives of our forefathers, who did
not live scattered about in suburban villas, but over
their shops and offices. When business was over, all of
every class repaired to the Tavern. Dr. Johnson spent
the evenings of his last years wholly at the Tavern;
the lawyer, the draper, the grocer, the bookseller, even
the clergy, all spent their evenings at the Tavern, going
home in time for supper with their families. You may
see the kind of Tavern life in any small country town

174
FIFTY YEARS AGO
to this day, where the shopkeepers assemble every
evening to smoke and talk together. The Tavern was
far more than a modern club, because the tendency of
a club is to become daily more decorous, while the
Tavern atmosphere of freedom and the equality of all
comers prevented the growth of artificial and conventional
restraints. Something of the Tavern life is left still in
London; but not much. The substantial tradesman is
no longer resident; there are no longer any clubs which
meet at Taverns; and the old inns, with their sanded
floors and great fireplaces, are nearly all gone. The
Swan with Two Necks, the Belle Sauvage, the Tabard,
the George and Vulture, the Bolt-in-Tun—they have
either ceased their existence, or their names call forth
no more associations of good company and good songs.
The Dog and Duck, the Temple of Flora, Apollo's Gar-
dens, the Bull in the Pound, the Blue Lion of Gray's
Inn Lane—what memories linger round these names?
What man is now living who can tell us where they
were?

SIGN OF THE SWAN WITH TWO NECKS,
CARTER LANE
SIGN OF THE BOLT-1N-TUN,
FLEET STREET
CHAPTEE XII.
IN CLUB- AND CARD-LAND.
Club-land was a comparatively small country, peopled
by a most exclusive race. There were twenty-five clubs
in all,1 and, as many men had more than one club, and
the average membership was less than a thousand,
there were not more than 20,000 men altogether who
belonged to clubs. There are now at least 120,000,
with nearly a hundred clubs, to which almost any man
might belong. Besides these, there are now about sixty
second-class clubs, together with a great many clubs
which exist for special purposes—betting and racing clubs,
whist clubs, gambling clubs, Press clubs, and so forth.
Of the now extinct clubs may be mentioned the
Alfred and the Clarence, which were literary clubs.
The Clarence was founded by Campbell on the ashes of
the extinct Literary Club, which had been dissolved in
consequence of internal dissensions. The Athenseum had
1 The following is the complete list of clubs, tat en from the New Monthly
Magazine of the year 1835:—Albion, Alfred, Arthur's, Athenaeum, Boodle's,
Brookes's, Carlton, Clarence, Cocoa-tree, Crockford's, Garrick, Graham's,
Guards', Orieutal, Oxford and Cambridge, Portland, Royal Naval, Travellers,
Union, United Service, Junior United Service, University, West Indian,
White's, Windham.
176
FIFTY YEARS AGO
the character which it still preserves; one of the few
things in this club complained of by the members of
1837 was the use of gas in the dining-room, which pro-
duced an atmosphere wherein, it was said, no animals
ungifted with copper lungs could long exist. The Gar-
rick Club was exclusively theatrical. The Oriental was,

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE CLUB, PALL HALL
of course, famous for curry and Madeira, the Union
'had a sprinkling of City men in it, the United University
was famous for its iced punch, and the Windham was
the first club which allowed strangers to dine within its
walls. Speaking generally, no City men at all, nor any
who were connected in any way with trade, were ad-


IN CLUB- AND CARD-LAND 177
mitted into the clubs of London. A barrister, a phy-
sician, or a clergyman might be elected, and, of course,
all men in the Services; but a merchant, an attorney, a
surgeon, an architect, might knock in vain.
The club subscription was generally six guineas a
year, and if we may judge by the fact that you could
dine off the joint at the Carlton for a shilling, the clubs
were much cheaper than they are now. They were

UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB, PALL MALL
also quite as dull. Thackeray describes the dulness of
the club, the pride of belonging to it, the necessity of
having at least one good club, the habitues of the card-
room, the talk, and the scandal. But the new clubs ol
our day are larger: their members come from a more
extended area; there are few young City men who have
not their club; and it is not at all necessary to know a
man because he is a member of your club> And when
i?8
FIFTY YEARS AGO
one contrasts the cold and silent coffee-room of the new
great club, where the men glare at each other, with the
bright and cheerful Tavern, where every man talked
with his neighbour, and the song went round, and the
great kettle bubbled on the hearth, one feels that civili-
sation has its losses.
We have our gambling clubs still. From time to
time there comes a rumour of high play, a scandal, or
an action in the High Court of Justice for the recovery
of one's character. Baccarat is played all night by the
young men; champagne is flowing for their refresh-
ment, and sometimes a few hundreds are lost by some
young fellow who can ill afford it. But these things
are small and insignificant compared with the gambling
club of fifty years ago.
He who speaks of gambling in the year Thirty-seven,
speaks of Crockford's. Everything at Crockford's was
magnificent. The subscription was ten guineas a year,
in return for which the members had the ordinary club-
and coffee-rooms providing food and wine at the usual
club charges—these were on the ground floor—and the
run of the gambling-rooms every night, to which they
could introduce guests and friends. These rooms were
on the first floor: they consisted of a saloon, in which
there was served every night a splendid supper, with
wines of the best, free to all visitors. Crockford paid
his chef a thousand guineas a year, and his assistant five
hundred, and his cellar was reputed to be worth 70,000/.
There were two card-rooms, one in which whist, &jart£,
IN CLUB- AND CARD-LAND 179
and all other games were played, and a second smaller
room, in which hazard alone was played. Every night
at eleven the banker and proprietor himself took his seat
at his desk in a corner; his croupier, sitting opposite to
him in a high chair, declared the game, paid the winners,
and raked in the money. Crockford's 1 Spiders'—that
is, the gentlemen who had the run of the establishment
under certain implied conditions—introduced their

CROCKFORDS, 8T. JAMES8 STREET
friends to the supper and the champagne first, and to the
hazard-room next. At two in the morning the doors were
closed, and nobody else was admitted ; but the play
went on all night long. Crockford not only held the
bank, but was ready to advance money to those who
lost, and outside the card-room treated for reversionary
interests, post-obits, and other means for raising the
wind. The game was what is called 1 Frencli Hazard,'
16—3
i8o
FIFTY YEARS AGO
in which the players play against the bank. Thousands
were every night lost and won. As much as a million
of money has been known to change hands in a single
night, and the banker was ready to meet any stake
offered. Those who lost borrowed more in order to con-
tinue the game, and lost that as well. But Crockford
seems never to have been accused of any dishonourable
practices. He trusted to the chances of the table, which
were, of course, in his favour. In his ledgers—where
are they now?—he was accustomed to enter the
names of those who borrowed of him by initials or a
number. He began life as a small fishmonger just
within Temple Bar, and, fortunately for himself, dis-
covered that he was endowed with a rare talent for
rapid mental arithmetic, of which he made good use in
betting and card-playing. The history of his gradual
rise to greatness from a beginning so unpromising
would be interesting, but perhaps the materials no
longer exist. He was a tall and corpulent man, lame,
who never acquired the art of speaking English cor-
rectly,—a thing which his noble patrons—the Duke of
Wellington was a member of his club—passed over in
him.
Everybody went to Crockford's. Everybody played
there. That a young fellow just in possession of a great
estate should drop a few thousands in a single night's
play was not considered a thing worthy of remark; they
all did it. We remember how Disraeli's 6 Young Duke'
went on playing cards all night and all next day—was
IN CLUB- AND CARD-LAND 181
it not all the next night as well?—till he and his com-
panions were up to their knees in cards, and the man
who was waiting on them was fain to lie down and sleep
for half an hour. The passion of gambling—it is one
of those other senses outside the five old elementary-
endowments—possessed everybody. Cards played a far
more important part in life than they do now; the
evening rubber was played in every quiet house; the
club card-tables were always crowded; for manly youth
there were the fiercer joys of lansquenet, loo, vingt-et-un,
and ecarte; for the domestic circle there were the whist-
table and the round table, and at the latter were played
a quantity of games, such as Pope Joan, Commerce,
Speculation, and I know not what, all for money, and
all depending for their interest on the hope of winning
and the fear of losing. Family gambling is gone. If
in a genteel suburban villa one was to propose a round
game, and call for the Pope Joan board, there would be
a smile of wonder and pity. As well ask for a glass of
negus, or call for the Caledonians at a dance!
Scandals there were, of course. Men gambled away
the whole of their great estates; they loaded their
property with burdens in a single night which would
keep their children and their grandchildren poor.
They grew desperate, and became hawks on the look-
out for pigeons; they cheated at the card-table (read
the famous case of Lord De Eos in this very year); they
were always being detected and expelled, and so could
no more show their faces at any place where gentlemen
182
FIFTY YEARS AGO
congregated ; and sank from Crockford's to the cheaper
hells, such as the cribs where the tradesmen used to
gamble, those frequented by City clerks, by gentlemen's
servants, and even those of the low French and Italians.
They were illegal cribs, and informers were always get-
ting money by causing the proprietors to be indicted.
It was said of Thurtell, after he was hanged for murder-
ing Weare, that he had offered to murder eight Irish-
men, who had informed against these hells, for the
consideration of 40/. a head. When they were suffered
to proceed, however, the proprietors always made their
fortunes. No doubt their descendants are now country
gentry, and the green cloth has long since been folded
up and put away in the lumber-room, with the rake
and the croupier's green shade and his chaii, and the
existence of these relics is forgotten.


CHAPTEE XIII.
WITH THE WITS.
The ten years of the Thirties are a peiiod concerning
whose literary history the ordinary reader knows next
to nothing. Yet a good deal that has survived for fifty
years, and promises to live longer, was accomplished in
that period. Dickens, for example, began his career in the
year 1837 with his 'Sketches by " Boz " ' and the ' Pick-
wick Papers ;' Lord Lytton, then Mr. Lytton Bulwer, had
already before that year published five novels, including
'Paul Clifford' and 4The Last Days of Pompeii.' Tenny-
son had already issued the 'Poems, by Two Brothers/
and 'Poems chiefly Lyrical.' Disraeli had written
'The Young Duke,' * Vivian Grey,' and 4 Venetia.'
Browning had published 6 Paracelsus' and * Strafford ;'
Marryat began in 1834; Carlyle published the 6 Sartor
Eesartus' in 1832. But one must not estimate a period
by its beginners. All these writers belong to the fol-
lowing thirty years of the century. If we look for
those who were flourishing—that is, those who were
producing their best work—it will be found that this
decade was singularly poor. The principal name is
i84 FIFTY YEARS AGO
that of Hood. There were also Hartley Coleridge, Douglas
Jerrold, Procter, Sir Archibald Alison, Theodore Hook,
G. P. R. James, Charles Knight, Sir Henry Taylor,
Milman, Ebenezer Elliott, Harriet Martineau, James
Montgomery, Talfourd, Henry Brougham, Lady Bles-

(Prom a Photograph by Hughes <Sc Mulling, Regina House, Ryde, Isle of Wight)
sington, Harrison Ainsworth, and some others of lesser
note. This is not a very imposing array. On the other
hand, nearly all the great writers whom we associate
with the first thirty years of the century were living,
though their best work was done. After sixty, I take
it, the hand of the master may still work with the old

OF
WITH THE WITS 185
cunning, but his designs will be no longer new or bold.
Wordsworth was sixty in 1830, and, though he lived
for twenty years longer, and published the 'Yarrow
Eevisited,' and, I think, some of his 'Sonnets,' he hardly
added to his fame. Southey was four years younger.
He published his ' Doctor ' and 'Essays' in this decade,
but his best work was done already. Scott died in 1832;
Coleridge died in 1834; Byron was already dead ; James
Hogg died in 1835;
Felicia Hemans in the
same year; Tom Moore
was a gay young fellow
of fifty in 1830, the
year in which his life
of Lord Byron appear-
ed. He did very little
afterwards. Campbell
was two years older
than Moore, and he,
too, had exhausted
himself. Eogers, older
than any of them, had entirely concluded his poetic
career. It is wonderful to think that he began to
write in 1783 and died in 1855. Beckford, whose
'Vathek' appeared in 1786, was living until 1844.
Among others who were still living in 1837 were James
and Horace Smith, Wilson Croker, Miss Edge worth,
Mrs. Trollope, Lucy Aikin, Miss Opie (who lived to be
eighty-five), Jane Porter (prematurely cut off at seventy-

FIFTY YEARS AGO
four), and Harriet Lee (whose immortal work, the
* Errors of Innocence,' appeared in 1786, when she was
already thirty) lived on till 1852, when she was ninety-
six. Bowles, that excellent man, was not yet seventy,
and meant to live for twenty years longer. Be Quincey
was fifty-two in 1837, Christopher North was in full
vigour, Thomas Love Peacock, who published his first

THOMAS MOORE
novel in 3 810, was destined to produce a last, equally
good, in 1860; Landor, born in 1775, was not to die
until 1864; Leigh Hunt, who in 1837 was fifty-three
years of age, belongs to the time of Byron. John Keble,
whose 'Christian Year' was published in 1827, was
forty-four in 1837; L~L. E. L.' died in 1838. In America,
Washington Irving, Emerson, Channing, Bryant, Whittier,
and Longfellow,make a good group. In France, Chateau-

t


WITH THE WITS
187
briand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Beranger, Alfred de
Musset, Scribe, and Dumas were all writing, a group
much stronger than our English team.
It is difficult to understand, at first, that between
% the time of Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats, and
that of Dickens, Thackeray, Marryat, Lever, Tennyson,

fit v -
1~* ■;' jj
'VATHEK BECKFORD
(From a Medallion)
Browning, and Carlyle, there existed this generation
of wits, most of them almost forgotten. Those, how-
ever, who consider the men and women of the Thirties
have to deal, for the most part, with a literature
that is third-rate. This kind becomes dreadfully flat
and stale when it has been out for fifty years; the
dullest, flattest, dreariest reading that can be found on
188 FIFTY YEARS AGO
the shelves in the sprightly novel of Society, written in
the Thirties.
A blight had fallen upon novels and their writers.
The enormous success that Scott had achieved tempted
hundreds to follow in his path, if that were possible.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
(Prom a Photograph by H. Watkins)
It was not possible; but this they could not know, be-
cause nothing seems so easy to write as a novel, and no
man, of those destined to fail, can understand in what
respects his own work falls short of Scott's. That is
the chief reason why he fails. Scott's success, however,

WITH THE WITS
189
produced another effect. It greatly enlarged the num-
ber of novel readers, and caused them to buy up eagerly
anything new, in the hope of finding another Scott.
Thus, about the year 1826 there were produced as many
as 250 three- and four-volume novels a year—that is to
say, about as many as were published in 1886, when
the area of readers has been multiplied by ten. We
are also told that nearly
all these novels could com-
mand a sale of 750 to 1,000
each, while anything above
the average would have a
sale of 1,500 to 2,000.
The usual price given for
these novels was, we are
also told, from 200/. to 300/.
In that case the publishers
must have had a happy and
a prosperous time, netting
splendid hauls. But I think
that we must take these figures with considerable
deductions. There were, as yet, no circulating libraries
of any importance; their place was supplied by
book-clubs, to which the publishers chiefly looked for
the purchase of their books. But one cannot believe
that the book-clubs would take copies of all the rubbish
that came out. Some of these novels I have read;
some of them actually stand on my shelves; and I de-
clare that anything more dreary and unprofitable it is

BALPn WALDO EMERSON
190 FIFTY YEARS AGO
difficult to imagine. At last there was a revolt: the
public would stand this kind of stuff no longer. Down
dropped the circulation of the novels. Instead of 2,000
copies subscribed, the dismayed publisher now read 50,
and the whole host of novelists vanished like a swarm
of midges. At the same time poetry went down too.

LOKI> BYRON
The drop in poetry was even more terrible than that
of novels. Suddenly, and without any warning, the
people of Great Britain left off reading poetry. To be
sure, they had been flooded with a prodigious quantity
of trash. One anonymous ' popular poet,' whose name
will never now be recovered, received 100/. for his last
poem from a publisher who thought, no doubt, that the


WITH THE WITS
191
'boom' was going to last. Of this popular poet's work
he sold exactly fifty copies. Another, a4 humorous' bard,
who also received a large sum for his immortal poem,
showed in the unhappy publisher's books no more than
eighteen copies sold. This was too ridiculous, and from

*
SIR WALTER SCOTT
that day to this the trade side of poetry has remained
under a cloud. That of novelist has, fortunately for some,
been redeemed from contempt by the enormous success of
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and by the solid, though
substantial, success of the lesser lights. Poets have now
to pay for the publication of their own works, but nove-
192
FIFTY YEARS AGO
lists—some of them—command a price; those, namely,
who do not have to pay for the production, of their works.
The popular taste, thus cloyed with novels and
poetry, turned to books on popular science, on statistics,
on health, and on travel. Barry Cornwall's 'Life of
Kean,' Campbell's 4 Life of Siddons,' the Lives of Sale,
Sir Thomas Picton, and Lord Exmouth, for example,
were all well received. SoEoss's 4 Arctic Seas,' Lamar-
tine's 4 Pilgrimage,' Macfarlane's 4 Travels in the East,'
Holman's 4 Pound the World,' and Quin's 4 Voyage down
the Danube,' all commanded a sale of 1,000 copies
each at least Works of religion, of course, always suc-
ceed, if they are written with due regard to the religious
leaning of the moment. It shows how religious fash-
ions change when we find that the copyright of the
works of Robert Hall realised 4,000/. and that of Charles
Simeon's books 5,000/.; while of the Eev. Alexander
Fletcher's4 Book of Family Devotions,' published at 24$.,
2,000 copies were sold on the day of publication. I
dare say the same thing would happen again to-day if
another Mr. Fletcher were to hit upon another happy
thought in the way of a religious book.
I think that one of the causes of the decay of trade
as regards poetry and fiction may have been the bad-
ness of the annuals. You will find in any old-fashioned
library copies of the 4 Keepsake,' the 4 Forget-me-Not,'
the 4 Book of Beauty,' 4 Flowers of Loveliness,' Finden's
4 Tableaux,' 'The Book of Gems,' and others of that now
extinct tribe. They were beautifully printed on the

WITH THE WITS i93
finest paper; they were illustrated with the most lovely
steel engravings, the like of which could not now be

A FASHIONABLE BEAl'TY 0»
(By A. E. Chalon, R.A.)
had at any price; they were bound in brown and
crimson watered silk,most fascinationg to look upon; and
i94
FIFTY YEARS AGO
they were published at a guinea. As for their contents,
they were, to begin with, written almost entirely by
ladies and gentlemen with handles to their names, each
number containing in addition two or three papers by
commoners—mere literary commoners—just to give a
flavouring of style. In the early Thirties it was fashion-
able for lords and ladies to dash off these trifles. Byron
was a gentleman; Shelley was a gentleman; nobody
else, to be sure, among the poets and wits was a gentle-
man—yet if Byron and Shelley condescended to bid for
fame and bays, why not Lord Eeculver, Lady Juliet de
Dagenham, or the Hon. Lara Clonsilla? I have before
me the 'Keepsake' for the year 1831. Among the
authors are Lord Morpeth, Lord Nugent, Lord Por-
chester, Lord John Eussell, the Hon. George Agar Ellis,
the Hon. Henry Liddell, the Hon. Charles Phipps, the
Hon. Kobert Craddock, and the Hon. Grantley Berkeley.
Among the ladies are the Countess of Blessington,
'L. E. L.,' and Agnes Strickland. Theodore Hook supplies
the professional part. The illustrations are engraved
from pictures and drawings by Eastlake, Corbould,
Westall, Turner, Smirke, Flaxman, and other great
artists. The result, from the literary point of view, is a
collection much lower in point of interest and ability
than the worst number of the worst shilling magazine of
the present day. I venture to extract certain immortal
lines contributed by Lord John Eussell, who is not gene-
rally known as a poet. They are 'written at Kinneil,
the residence of the late Mr. Dugald StewTart.'


WITH THE WITS 195
To distant worlds a guide amid the night,
To nearer orbs the source of life and light;
Each star resplendent on its radiant throne
Gilds other systems and supports its own.
Thus we see Stewart, in his fame reclined,
Enlighten all the universe of mind;
To some for wonder, some for joy appear,
Admired when distant and beloved when near.
'Twas he gave rules to Fancy, grace to Thought,
Taught Virtue's laws, and practised what he taught.
Dear me! Something similar to the last line one
remembers written by an earlier bard. In the same
way Terence has been accused of imitating the old
Eton Latin Grammar.
Somewhere about the year ] 837 the world began
to kick at the c Keepsakes/ and they gradually got ex-
tinguished. Then the lords and the countesses put
away their verses and dropped into prose, and, to the
infinite loss of mankind, wrote no more until editors of
great monthlies, anxious to show a list of illustrious
names, began to ask them again.
As for the general literature of the day, there must
have been a steady demand for new works of all kinds,
for it was estimated that in 1836 there were no fewer
than four thousand persons living by literary work. Most
of them, of course, must have been simple publishers'
hacks. But seven hundred of them in London were
journalists. At the present day there are said to be in
London alone fourteen thousand men and women who
live by writing. And of this number I should think
that thirteen thousand are in some way or other con-
196 FIFTY YEARS AGO
nected with journalism. Publishers' hacks still exist—
that is to say, the unhappy men who, without genius
or natural aptitude, or the art of writing pleasantly,
are eternally engaged in compiling, stealing, arranging,
and putting together books which maybe palmed offupon
an uncritical public for prize books and presents. But
they are far fewer in proportion than they were, and
perhaps the next generation may live to see them extinct.
What did they write, this regiment of 3,300
litterateurs? Novelists, as we have learned, had fallen
upon evil times; poetry was
what it still continues to be,
a drug in the market; but
there was the whole range
of the sciences, there were
morals, theology, education,
travels, biography, history,
the literature of Art in all
lord tennyson as a young man its branches, archasology, an-
(From the Picture by Sir T. DJwrence) ^ modem ligature,
criticism, and a hundred other things. Yet, making
allowance for everything, I cannot but think that the
3,300 must have had on the whole an idle and un-
profitable time. However, some books of the year may
be recorded. First of all, in the ' Annual Eegister' for
1837 there appears a poem by Alfred Tennyson. I
have copied a portion of it:—
Oh! that 'twere possible,
After long grief and pain,
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!



WITH THE WITS
197
When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
Of the land that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces,
Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.
A shadow flits before me—
Not thee but like to thee.
Ah God! that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved that they might tell us
What, and where they be.
It leads me forth at evening,
It lightly winds and steals,
In a cold white robe before me,
When all my spirit reels
At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.
Then the broad light glares and beats,
And the sunk eye flits and fleets,
And will not let me be.
I loathe the squares and streets
And the faces that one meets,
Hearts with no love for me.
Always I long to creep
To some still cavern deep,
And to weep and weep and weep
My whole soul out to thee.
Books, indeed, there were in plenty. Lady Bles-
sington produced her i Victims of Society' and 6 Sunday
at the Zoo;' Mr. Lytton Bulwer his 4 Duchesse de la
Valliere,' 4 Ernest Maltravers,' and 4 Athens, its Eise
and Fall;' Miss Mitford her 4 Country Stories ;9 Cottle
his 4 Eecollections of Coleridge ;9 Harrison Ainsworth,
4 Crichton ;' Disraeli, 4 Venetia ;' Talfourd, * The Life
198
FIFTY YEARS AGO
and Letters of Charles Lamb ;' Babbage, a 'Bridgwater
Treatise;' Hook, 'Jack Brag;' Haynes Bay ley, his
'Weeds of Witchery'—a thing as much forgotten as
the weeds in last year's garden; James, his * Attila'
and c Louis XIV.;9 Miss Martineau, her book on
'American Society.' I find, not in the book, which I
have not read, but in a review of it, two stories, which
I copy. One is of an American traveller who had been
to Eome, and said of it, 6 Eome is a very fine city, sir,
but its public buildings are out of repair.' The other
is the following: 4 Few men,' said the preacher in his
sermon, 'when they build a house, remember that
there must some day be a coffin taken downstairs.'
'Ministers,' said a lady who had been present, 6 have
got into the strangest way of choosing subjects. True,
wide staircases are a great convenience, but Christian
ministers might find better subjects for their discourses
than narrow staircases.'
In addition to the above, Hartley Coleridge wrote
the * Lives of Northern Worthies ;' the complete poeti-
cal works of Southey appeared—he himself died at
the beginning of 1842; Dion Boucicault produced his
first play, being then fifteen years of age; Carlyle
brought out his * French Eevolution;' Lockhart his
* Life of Scott;' Martin Tupper the first series of the
6 Proverbial Philosophy;' Hallam his 6 Literature of
Europe;' there were the usual travels in Arabia,
Armenia, Italy, and Ireland; with, no doubt, the annual
avalanche of sermons, pamphlets, and the rest. Above

WITH THE WITS 199
all, however, it must be remembered that to this time
belong the ' Sketches by " Boz "' (1836) and the 'Pick-
wick Papers ' (1837-38). Of the latter, the Athenaeum
not unwisely remarked that they were made up of
'three pounds of Smollett, three ounces of Sterne, a
handful of Hook, a dash of a grammatical Pierce Egan;
the incidents at pleasure, served with an original sauce
piquante We earnestly hope and trust that
nothing we have said will tend to refine Boz.' One
could hardly expect a critic to be ready at once to
acknowledge that here was a genius, original, totally
unlike any of his predecessors, who knew the great art
of drawing from life, and depicting nothing but what
he knew. As for Thackeray, he was still in the chrysalis
stage, though his likeness appears with those of the
contributors to Fraser's Magazine in the portrait
group of Fraserians published in 1839. His first
independently published book, I think, was the ' Paris
Sketch Book/ which was not issued until the year
1840.
Here, it will be acknowledged, is not a record to be
quite ashamed of, with Carlyle, Talfourd,. Hallam, and
Dickens to adorn and illustrate the year. After all, it
is a great thing for any year to add one enduring book
to English Literature, and it is a great deal to show so
many works which are still read and remembered.
Lytton's 4 Ernest Maltravers,' though not his best novel,
is still read by some; Talfourd's 'Charles Lamb' re-
mains; Disraeli's fc Venetia;' Lockhart's ' Life of Scott'
200
FIFTY YEARS AGO
is the best biography of the novelist and poet; Carlyle's
'French Eevolution' shows no sign of being forgotten.
Between the first and the fiftieth years of Victoria's
reign there arose and flourished and died a new gene-
ration of great men. Dickens, Thackeray, Lytton, in
his later and better style; George Eliot, Charles Eeade,
George Meredith,Nathaniel Hawthorne, stand in the very
front rank of novelists; in the second fine are Charles

Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, Lever, Trollope, and a few living
men and women. Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne,
Matthew Arnold, are the new poets. Carlyle, Freeman,
Froude, Stubbs, Green, Lecky, Buckle, have founded
a new school of history; Maurice has broadened the
old theology; Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lockyer, and
many others have advanced the boundaries of science;
philology has become one of the exact sciences; a
great school of political economy has arisen, flourished,

WITH THE WITS 201
»
and decayed. As to the changes that have come upon
the literature of the country, the new points of view,
the new creeds, these belong to another chapter.
There has befallen literature of late years a grievous,
even an irreparable blow. It has lost the salon. There
are no longer grandes dames de par le monde, who

CHARLES DARWIN
attract to their drawing-rooms the leaders and the
lesser lights of literature; there are no longer, so far
as I know, any places at all, even any clubs, which are
recognised centres of literature; there are no longer
any houses where one will be sure to find great talkers,
and to hear them talking all night long. There are no
longer any great talkers—that is to say, many men
202 FIFTY YEARS AGO
there are who talk well, but there are no Sydney Smiths
or Macaulays, and in houses where the Sydney Smith
of the day would go for his talk, he would not be
encouraged to talk much after midnight. In the same
way, there are clubs, like the Athenaeum and the Savile,
where men of letters are among the members, but they
do not constitute the members, and they do not give
altogether its tone to the club.
Fifty years ago there were two houses which, each
in its own way, were recognised centres of literature.
Every man of letters went to Gore House, which was
open to all; and every man of letters who could get
there went to Holland House.
The former establishment was presided over by the
Countess of Blessington, at this time a widow, still
young and still attractive, though beginning to be
burdened with the care of an establishment too ex-
pensive for her means. She was the author of a good
many novels, now almost forgotten—it is odd how well
one knows the name of Lady Blessington, and how little
is generally known about her history, literary or per-
sonal—and she edited every year one of the 4 Keep-
sakes' or 'Forget-me-Nots.' From certain indications,
the bearing of which her biographer, Mr. Madden, did
not seem to understand, I gather that her novels did
not prove to the publishers the literary success which
they expected, and I also infer—from the fact that she
was always changing them—that a dinner at Gore
House and the society of all the wits after dinner were

WITH THE WITS 203
not always attractions strong enough to loosen their
purse-strings. This lady, whose maiden name was
Power, was of an Irish family, her father being engaged,
when he was not shooting rebels, in unsuccessful trade.
Her life was adventurous and also scandalous. . She
was married at sixteen to a Captain Farmer, from whom
she speedily separated, and came over to London, where
she lived for some years—her biographer does not ex-
plain how she got money—a grass widow. When Lord

HOLLAND H0U8E
Blessington lost his wife, and Mrs. Farmer lost her
husband—the gallant Captain got drunk, and fell out
of a window—they were married, and went abroad
travelling in great state, as an English milor of those
days knew how to travel, with a train of half-a-dozen
carriages, his own cook and valet, the Countess's
women, a whole batterie de cuisine, a quantity of furni-
ture, couriers, and footmen, and his own great carriage.
With them went the Count d'Orsay, then about two-
204
FIFTY YEARS AGO
and-twenty, and young Charles Mathews, then about
twenty, a protege of Lord Blessington, who was a friend
and patron of the drama.
After Lord Blessington died it was arranged that
Count d'Orsay should marry his daughter. But the
Count separated from his wife a week or two after the
wedding, and returned to the widow, whom he never
afterwards left, always taking a lodging near her house,
and forming part of her household. The Countess
d'Orsay, one need not explain, did not visit her step-
mother at Gore House.
Here, however, you would meet Tom Moore, the
two Bulwers, Campbell, Talfourd, James and Horace
Smith, Landseer, Theodore Hook, Disraeli the elder and
the younger, Eogers, Washington Irving, N. P. Willis,
Marryat, Macready, Charles Dickens, Albert Smith,
Forster, Walter Savage Landor, and, in short, nearly
every one who had made a reputation, or was likely to
make it. Hither came also Prince Louis Napoleon,
in whose fortunate star Count d'Orsay always firmly
believed. The conversation was lively, and the even-
ings were prolonged. As for ladies, there were few
ladies who went to Gore House. Doubtless they had
their reasons. The outer circle, so to speak, consisted
of such men as Lord Abinger, Lord Durham, Lord
Strangford, Lord Porchester, Lord Nugent, writers and
poetasters who contributed their illustrious names and
their beautiful productions to Lady Blessington's 4 Keep-
sakes.' Thackeray was one of the 6 intimates' at Gore


WITH THE WITS 205
House, and when the crash came in 1849, and the
place was sold up by the creditors, it is on record that
the author of 'Vanity Fair' was the only person who
showed emotion. 4 Mr. Thackeray also came,' wrote the
Countess's valet to his mistress, who had taken refuge
in Paris,' and he went away with tears in his eyes; he
is perhaps the only person I have seen really affected
at your departure.' In 1837 he was twenty-six years
of age, but he had still to wait for twelve years before
he was to take his real place in literature, and even then
and until the day of his death there were many who
could not understand his greatness.
As regards Lady Blessington, her morals may have
been deplorable, but there must have been something
singularly attractive about her manners and conversa-
tion. It is not by a stupid or an unattractive woman
that such success as hers was attained. Her novels, so
far as I have been able to read them, show no remark-
able ability, and her portrait shows amiability rather
than cleverness; yet she must have been both clever
and amiable to get so many clever men around her and
to fix them, to make them come again, come often, and
regard her drawing-room and her society as altogether
charming, and to write such verses upon her as the
following:—
Mild Wilberforee, by all beloved,
Once owned this hallowed spot,
Whose zealous eloquence improved
The fettered Negro's lot,
206
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Yet here still slavery attacks
Whom Blessingtbn invites;
The chains from which he freed the blacks
She rivets on the whites.
The following lines are in another strain, more
artificial, with a false ring, and curiously unlike any
style of the present day. They are by N". P. Willis,
who, in his 4 Pencillings/ describes an evening at Gore
House:—
I gaze upon a face as fair
As ever made a lip of Heaven
Falter amid its music—prayer:
The first-lit star of summer even
Springs scarce so softly on the eye,
Nor grows with watching half so bright,
Nor 'mid its sisters of the sky
So seems of Heaven the dearest light.
Men murmur where that shape is seen;
My youth's angelic dream was of that face and mien.
Gore House was a place for men; there was more
than a touch of Bohemia in its atmosphere. The fair
chatelaine distinctly did not belong to any noble house,
though she was fond of talking of her ancestors; the
constant presence of Count d'Orsay, and the absence of
Lady Harriet, his wife ; the coldness of ladies as regards
the place; the whispers and the open talk; these things
did not, perhaps, make the house less delightful, but
they placed it outside society.
Holland House, on the other hand, occupied a
different position. The circle was wide and the hos-
pitable doors were open to all who could procure an
introduction; but it was presided over by a lady the


WITH THE WITS
207
opposite to Lady Blessington in every respect. She
ruled as well as reigned; those who went to Holland
House were made to feel her power. The Princess
Marie Liechtenstein, in her book on Holland House, has
given a long list of those who were to be found there
between the years 1796 and 1840. Among them were
Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Byron, 'Monk' Lewis, Lord
Jeffrey, Lords Eldon, Thurlow, Brougham, and Lynd-
hurst, Sir Humphry Davy, Count Eumford, Lords
Aberdeen, Moira, and Macartney, Grattan, Curran, Sir
Samuel Romilly, Washington Irving, Tom Moore,
Calonne, Lally Tollendal, Talleyrand, the Duke of
Clarence, the Due d'Orleans, Metternich, Canova, the
two Erskines, Madame de Stael, Lord John Eussell, and
Lord Houghton. There was no such agreeable house
in Europe as Holland House. 4 There was no profes-
sional claqueur \ no mutual puffing; no exchanged
support. There, a man was not unanimously applauded
because he was known to be clever, nor was a woman
accepted as clever because she was known to receive
clever people/
The conditions of life and society are so much
changed that there can never again be another Holland
House. For the first thing which strikes one who con-
siders the history of this place, as well as Gore House,
is that, though the poets, wits, dramatists, and novelists
go to these houses, their wives do not. In these days
a man who respects himself will not go to a house where
his wife is not asked. Then, again, London is so much
208 FIFTY YEARS AGO
greater in extent, and people are so much scattered, that
it would be difficult now to get together a circle con-
sisting of literary people who lived near enough to
frequent the house. And another thing: people no
longer keep such late hours. They do not sit up talk-
ing all night. That is, perhaps, because there are no
wits to talk with; but I do not know: I think that
towards midnight the malice of Count d'Orsay in draw-
ing out the absurd points in the guests, the rollicking
fun of Tom Moore, or his sentimental songs, the repartee
of James Smith, and the polished talk of Lytton Bulwer,
all collar, cuff, diamond pin, and wavy hair, would have
begun to pall upon me, and when nobody was taking
any notice of so obscure an individual, I should have
stolen down the stairs, and so out into the open air
beneath the stars. For the wits were very witty, but
they must have been very fatiguing. 6 Quite enough of
that, Macaulay,' Lady Holland would say, tapping her
fan upon the table. 6 Now "tell us about something
>else.'

CHAPTEE XIV.
JOURNALS AND JOURNALISTS.
There was no illustrated paper in 1837: there was no
Punch. On the other hand, there were as many London
papers as there are to-day, and nearly as many magazines
and reviews. The Times, which is reported to have
then had a circulation not exceeding 10,000 a day, was
already the leading paper. It defended Queen Caroline,
and advocated the Eeform Bill, and was reported to be
ready to incur any expense for early news. Thus, in
1834, on the occasion of a great dinner given to Lord
Durham, the Times spent 200£. in having an early
report, and that up from the North by special mes-
senger. This is not much in comparison with the
enterprise of telegraph and special correspondents, but
it was a great step in advance of other journals. The
other morning papers were the Morning Herald, the
Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post, of which Cole-
ridge was once on the staff, the Morning Advertiser,
which already represented the interest of which it is
still the organ, and the old Public Ledger, for which
Goldsmith had once written.
210
FIFTY YEARS AGO
The evening papers were tlie Globe, which had
absorbed six other evening papers; the Courier; the
Standard, once edited by Dr. Maginn ; and the True Sun.
The weeklies were the Examiner, edited by the two
Hunts and Albany Fonblanque; the Spectator, whose
price seems to have varied from ninepence to a shilling;
the Atlas ; Observer ; Bell's Life; Bell's Weekly Messenger;
John Bull, which Theodore Hook edited ; the New Weekly
Messenger; the Sunday Times; the Age ; the Satirist; the
Mark Lane Express; the County Chronicle ; the Weekly
Dispatch, sometimes sold for 8^d., sometimes for 6d.;
the Patriot; the Christian Advocate; the Watchman ; the
Court Journal; the Naval and Military Gazette; and the
United Service Gazette.
Among the reporters who sat in the Gallery, it is
remarkable that two-thirds did not write shorthand;
they made notes, and trusted to their memories; Charles
Dickens sat with them in the year 1836.
The two great Quarterlies still continue to exist, but
their power has almost gone; nobodj^ cares any more
what is said by either, yet they are as well written as
ever, and their papers are as interesting, if they are
not ^0 forcible. The Edinburgh Review is said to have
had a circulation of 20,000 copies; the Quarterly is said
never to have reached anything like that number.
Among those who wrote for the latter fifty years ago, or
thereabout, were Southey, Basil Hall, John Wilson
Croker, Sir Francis Head, Dean Milman, Justice Cole-
ridge, Henry Taylor, and Abraham Hayward. The West-

JOURNALS AND JOURNALISTS 211
minster, which also included the London, was supported
by such contributors as the two Mills, father and son,
Southwood Smith, and Eoebuck. There was also the
Foreign Quarterly, for which Scott, Southey, and Carlyle
wrote.
The monthlies comprised the Gentleman's (still living),
the Monthly Review; the Monthly Magazine-, the Eclectic;
the New Monthly; Fraser; the Metropolitan; the
Monthly Repository; the Lady's; the Court; the Asiatic
Journal; the East Lndia Review; and the United Ser-
vice Journal.
The weekly magazines were the Literary Gazette;
the Parthenon—absorbed in the Literary in 1842; the
Athenceum, which Mr. Dilke bought of Buckingham,
reducing the price from 8d. to 4:d.; the Mirror; Cham-
bers's Journal; the Penny Magazine; and the Saturday
Magazine, a religious journal with a circulation of
200,000.
All these papers, journals, quarterlies, monthlies,
and weeklies found occupation for a great number of
journalists. Among those who wrote for the magazines
were many whom we know, and some whom we have
forgotten. Mr. Cornish, editor of the Monthly Maga-
zine, seems forgotten. But he wrote 6 Songs of the
Loire,' the 'Gentleman's Book,' 'My Daughter's Book,'
the 'Book for the Million,' and a 4Volume of the
Affections.' Mr. Peter Gaskill, another forgotten worthy,
wrote, besides his contributions to the monthly press,
three laudable works, called 6 Old Maids,' 'Old Bache-
212
FIFTY YEARS J GO
lors,' and c Plebeians and Patricians.' John Gait, James
and Horace Smith, Allan Cunningham, Sir Egerton
Brydges, Sheridan Knowles, Eobert Hall, John Foster,
James Montgomery, S. C. Hall, Grattan—author of
4 Highways and Byways *—Marryat, John Mill, Peacock,
Miss Martineau, Ebenezer Elliott, and Warren—author
of 4 A Diary of a Late Physician '—all very respectable
writers, sustained this mass of magazine literature.
It will be seen, then, that London was as well sup
plied with papers and reviews as it is at present—con-
sidering the difference in population, it was much better
supplied. Outside London, however, the demand for
a daily paper was hardly known. There were in the
whole of Great Britain only fourteen daily papers; and
in Ireland two. There are now 171 daily papers in
Great Britain and fifteen in Ireland In country places,
the weekly newspaper, published on Saturday night and
distributed on Sunday morning, provided all the news
that was required, the local intelligence being by far the
most important.
As to the changes which have come over the papers,
the leading article, whose influence and weight seems to
have culminated at the time of the Crimean War, was
then of little more value than it is at present. The
news—there were as yet, happily, no telegrams—was
still by despatches and advice; and the latest news of
markets was that brought by the last ship. We will
not waste time in pointing out that Edinburgh was
practically as far off as Gibraltar, or as anything else
JOURNALS AND JOURNALISTS 213
you please. But consider, if you can, your morning
paper without its telegrams; could one exist without
knowing exactly all that is going on all over the world
at the very moment? We used to exist, as a matter of
fact, very well indeed without that knowledge; when
we had it not we were less curious, if less well in-
formed: there was always a pleasing element of un-
certainty as to what might arrive: everything had to
be taken on trust; and in trade the most glorious for-
tunes could be made and lost by the beautiful uncer-
tainties of the market. Now we watch the tape, day
by day, and hour by hour: we anticipate our views:
we can only speculate on small differences: the biggest
events are felt, long beforehand, to be coming. It is
not an unmixed gain for the affairs of the whole world
to be carried on under the fierce light of electricity, so
that everybody may behold whatever happens day after
day, as if one were seated on Olympus among the Im-
mortal Gods.
214
FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTER XV.
THE SPORTSMAN.
There were many various forms of sport open to the
Englishman fifty years ago which are now wholly, or
partly, closed. For instance, there was the P. E., then
flourishing in great vigour—they are at this moment
trying to revive it. A prize-fight was accompanied by
every kind of blackguardism and villainy; not the least
was the fact that the fights, towards the end of the
record, were almost always conducted on the cross, so
that honest betting men never knew where to lay their
money. At the same time, the decay of boxing during
the last twenty-five years has been certainly followed by
a great decay of the national pluck and pugnacity, and
therefore, naturally, by a decay of national enter-
prise. We may fairly congratulate ourselves, therefore,
that the noble art of self-defence is reviving, and
promises to become as great and favourite a sport as
before. Let all our boys be taught to fight. Fifty years
ago there was not a day in a public school when there
was not a fight between two of the boys; there was
not a day when there was not a street fight; did not
THE SPORTSMAN
215
the mail-coach drivers who accompanied Mr. Samuel
Welleron a memorable occasion leave behind them one
of their number to fight a street porter in Fleet Street?
There was never a day when some young fellow did not
take off his coat and handle his fives for a quarter of
an hour with a drayman, a driver, a working man. It
was a disgrace not to be able to fight. Let all our boys
be taught again and encouraged to fight. Only the
other day I read that there are no fights at Eton any
more because the boys 6 funk each other.' Eton boys
funk each other! But we need not believe it. Let there
be no nonsense listened to about brutality. The world
belongs to the men who can fight.
There were, besides the street fights, which kept
things lively and gave animation to the dullest parts of
the town, many other things which we see no longer.
The bear who danced: the bull who was baited: the
pigeons which were shot in Batter sea Fields: the badger
which was drawn: the dogs which were fought: the
rats which were killed: the cocks which were fought:
the cats which were thrown into the ponds: the ducks
which were hunted—these amusements exist no longer;
fifty years ago they afforded sport for many.
Hunting, coursing, horse-racing, shooting, went on
bravely. As regards game preserves, the laws were more
rigidly enforced, and there was a much more bitter
feeling towards them on the part of farmers then than
now. On the other hand, there were no such wholesale
battues; sport involved uncertainty; gentlemen did not
2l6
FIFTY YEARS AGO
sell their , game; rabbits, instead of being sent off to
the nearest poulterer, were given to the labourers as
they should be.
The sporting instincts of the Londoner gave the
comic person an endless theme for fun. He was always
hiring a horse and coming to grief; he was perpetually
tumbling off, losing his stirrups, letting his whip fall,
having his hat blown off and carried away, and generally
disgracing himself in the eyes of those with whom he
wished to appear to the best advantage. There was
the Epping Hunt on Easter Monday, where the sporting
Londoners turned out in thousands; there were the
ponies on hire at any open place all round London—at
Clapham Common, Blackheath, Hampstead, Epping. To
ride was the young Londoner's greatest ambition: even
to this day there is not one young man in ten who will
own without a blush that he cannot ride. To ride in
the Park was impossible for him, because he had to be at
his desk at ten; a man who rides in the Park is inde
pendent of the City; but there were occasions on which
everyone would long to be able to sit in the saddle.
Eowing, athletics, and, above all, the cycle, have
done much, to counterbalance the attractions of the
saddle.
It seems certain, unless the comic papers all lie, that
fifty years ago every young man also wanted to go
shooting. Eemember how Mr. Winkle—an arrant
Cockney, though represented as coming from Bristol—
not only pretended to love the sport, but always went
THE SPORTSMAN
217
about attired as one ready to take the field. The
Londoner went out into the fields, which then lay within
his reach all round the City, popping at everything.
Let us illustrate the subject with the following descrip-
tion of a First of September taken from the 'Comic
Almanack' of 1837. Perhaps Thackeray wrote it:—
'Up at six.—Told Mrs. D. I'd got wery pressing business at
Woolwich, and off to Old Fish Street, where a werry sporting
breakfast, consisting of jugged hare, partridge pie, tally-ho sauce,
gunpowder tea, and-csetera, vos laid out in Figgins's warehouse; as
he didn't choose Mrs. F. and his young hinfant family to know he
vos a-goin to hexpose himself vith fire-harms.—After a good blow-
out, sallied forth vith our dogs and guns, namely Mrs. Wiggins's
French poodle, Miss Selina Higgins's real Blenheim spaniel, young
Hicks's ditto, Mrs. Figgins's pet bull-dog, and my little thorough-
bred tarrier; all vich had been smuggled to Figgins's warehouse
the night before, to perwent domestic disagreeables.—Got into a
Paddington bus at the Bank. —Bow with Tiger, who hobjected to
take the dogs, unless paid hextra.—Hicks said we'd a rights to take
'em, and quoted the hact.—Tiger said the hact only allowed parcels
carried on the lap.—Accordingly tied up the dogs in our pocket-
handkerchiefs, and carried them and the guns on our knees.—Got
down at Paddington; and, after glasses round, valked on till ve got
into the fields, to a place vich Higgins had baited vith corn and
penny rolls every day for a month past. Found a covey of birds
feeding. Dogs wery eager, and barked beautiful. Birds got up
and turned out to be pigeons. Debate as to vether pigeons vos
game or not. Hicks said they vos made game on by the new hact.
Fired accordingly, and half killed two or three, vich half fell to the
ground; but suddenly got up again and flew off. Reloaded, and
pigeons came round again. Let fly a second time, and tumbled two
or three more over, but didn't bag any. Tired at last, and turned
in to the Dog and Partridge, to get a snack. Landlord laughed,
and asked how ve vos hoff for tumblers. Didn't understand him,
but got some waluable hinformation about loading our guns; vich
he strongly recommended mixing the powder and shot well up
together before putting into the barrel; and showed Figgins how to
2l8
FIFTY YEARS AGO
charge his percussion; vich being Figgins's first attempt under the
new system, he had made the mistake of putting a charge of copper
caps into the barrel instead of sticking von of 'em atop of the touch-
hole.—Left the Dog and Partridge, and took a north-easterly
direction, so as to have the adwantage of the vind on our backs.
Dogs getting wery riotous, and refusing to answer to Figgins's vhistle,
vich had unfortunately got a pea in it.—Getting over an edge into
a field, Hicks's gun haccidently hexploded, and shot "Wiggins behind;
and my gun going off hunexpectedly at the same moment, singed
avay von of my viskers and blinded von of my heyes.—Carried
Wiggins back to the inn : dressed his wound, and rubbed my heye
with cherry brandy and my visker with bear's grease.—Sent poor
W. home by a short stage, and resumed our sport.—Heard some
pheasants crowing by the side of a plantation. Resolved to stop
their cockadoodledooing, so set off at a jog-trot. Passing thro' a
field of bone manure, the dogs unfortunately set to work upon the
bones, and we couldn't get 'em to go a step further at no price.
Got vithin gun-shot of two of the birds, vich Higgins said they vos
two game cocks: but Hicks, who had often been to Yestminster
Pit, said no sitch thing; as game cocks had got short square tails,
and smooth necks, and long military spurs; and these had got long
curly tails, and necks all over hair, and scarce any spurs at all.
Shot at 'em as pheasants, and believe we killed 'em both; but,
hearing some orrid screams come out of the plantation immediately
hafter, ve all took to our 'eels and ran avay vithout stopping to
pick either of'em up.—After running about two miles, Hicks called
out to stop, as he had hobserved a covey of wild ducks feeding on a
pond by the road side. Got behind a haystack and shot at the
ducks, vich svam avay hunder the trees. Figgins wolunteered to
scramble down the bank, and hook out the dead uns vith the but-
hend of his gun. Unfortunately bank failed, and poor F. tumbled
up to his neck in the pit. Made a rope of our pocket-handkerchiefs,
got it round his neck, and dragged him to the Dog and Doublet,
vere ve had him put to bed, and dried. Werry sleepy with the hair
and hexercise, so after dinner took a nap a-piece.—Woke by the
landlord coming in to know if ve vos the gentlemen as had shot the
hunfortunate nursemaid and child in Mr. Smithville's plantation.
Swore ve knew nothing about it, and vile the landlord was gone to
deliver our message, got out of the back vindow, and ran avay
across the fields. At the end of a mile, came suddenly upon a


THE SPORTSMAN
219
strange sort of bird, vich Hicks declared to be the cock-of-the-woods.
Sneaked behind him and killed him. Turned out to be a peacock.
Took to our heels again, as ve saw the lord of the manor and two of
his servants vith bludgeons coming down the gravel valk towards us.
Found it getting late, so agreed to shoot our vay home. Didn't
know vere ve vos, but kept going on.—At last got to a sort of
plantation, vere ve saw a great many birds perching about. Gave
'em a broadside, and brought down several. Loaded again, and
killed another brace. Thought ve should make a good day's vork
of it at last, and vas preparing to charge again, ven two of the new
police came and took us up in the name of the Zolorogical Society,
in whose gardens it seems ve had been shooting. Handed off to the
Public Hoffice, and werry heavily fined, and werry sewerely repri-
manded by the sitting magistrate.—Coming away, met by the land-
lord of the Bog and Doublet\ who charged us with running off
without paying our shot; and Mr. Smithville, who accused us of
manslaughtering his nurse-maid and child; and, their wounds not
having been declared immortal, ve vos sent to spend the night in
prison—and thus ended my last First of September.'
Those who wish to know what a Derby Day was
fifty years ago may read the following contemporary
narrative:—
Here's a right and true list of all the running horses! Dorling's
correct card for the Derby day! Hollo, old un! hand us up one
here, will you: and let it be a good un: there, now what's to pay %
Only sixpence. Sixpence! I never gave more than a penny
at Hookem Snivey in all my days. May be not, your honour;
but Hookem Snivey aint Hepsom: and sixpence is what every
* gemman, as is a gemman, pays.
I can buy 'em for less than that on the course, and I'll wait till
I get there. Beg your honour's pardon They sells 'em a shillin'
on the course. Give you threepence. They cost me fippence ha'p'ny
farden.
Well, here then, take your list back again. Come, come;
your honour shall have it at your own price: 1 wouldn't sell it
nob'dy else for no sitch money : but I likes the sound of your wice.
Here, then, give me the change, will you ?—Oh, certainly:
but your honour's honcommon ard: Let's see: you want two-
21
220
FIFTY YEARS AGO
and-threepence : wait a moment, there's another gentleman calling
out for a card.
Hollo, coachman, stop, stop! Coachman, do you hear % stop
your horses this moment, and let me get down: The fellow's run
away behind an omnibus without giving me change out of my half-
crown.
That's alvays the vay they does on these here hoccasions: they
calls it catching a flat: Sorry I can't stop. Where's the new
police % Pretty police truly, to suffer such work as that!
Well, if ever I come to Epsom again! but let's look at the list:
it's cost me precious dear! Ascot, Mundig, Pelops! why, good
heavens, coachman! they've sold me a list for last year!
* Oh, ma! look there! what a beautiful carriage! scarlet and
gold liveries, and horses with long tails. And stodge-full of
gentlemen with mustaches, and cigars and macintoshes, and green
veils:
Whose is it, ma? Don't know, my dear; but no doubt belongs
to some duke, or marquis, or other great nob. Beg your pardon,
ma'am : but that carriage as you're looking at is a party of the sweD
mob.
And, oh my! ma: look at that other, full of beautiful ladies,
dressed like queens and princesses. Silks and satins and velvets,
and gauze sleeves and ermine tippets: I never saw such elegant
dresses:
And how merry they look, laughing and smiling! they seem de-
termined to enjoy the sport-: Who are they, ma 1 Don't know,
dear; but no doubt they're Court ladies. Yes, ma'am, Cranbourne
Court.
How do, Smith 1 nice sort of tit you've got there. Very nice
indeed: very nice sort of mare. Beautiful legs she's got, and
nicely-turned ancles, and 'pon my word, a most elegant head of hair.
How old is she? and how high does she stand? I should like
to buy her if she's for sale. Oh, she's quite young: not above
five-and-twenty or thirty; and her height exactly a yard and a half
and a nail:
Price eighty guineas. She'd be just the thing for you; capital
hunter as ever appeared at a fixture.-*—Only part with her on
account of her colour; not that / mind: only Mrs. S. don't like an
Oxford mixture,
Hehlo! you faylow! you person smoking the pipe, I wish you'd

THE SPORTSMAN
221
take your quadruped out of the way. Quadruped, eh? you be
blowed! it's no quadruped, but as good a donkey as ever was fed
upon hay.
Oh, my! ma: there's the course. What lots of people, and
horses, and booths, and grand stands! And what oceans of gipsies
and jugglers, and barrel organs, and military bands!
And was ever such sights of Savoyards and French women
singing and E-O-tables; And horses rode up and down by little
boys, or tied together in bundles, and put up in calimanco sLables;
And look at that one, they call him ^oney-parte. Did you ever
in all your lifetime see a leaner? And 1 Royal Dinner Saloons'
(for royalty the knives might have been a little brighter, and the
'inen a little cleaner);
And women with last-dying speeches in one hand, and in the
other all the best new comic songs; And, dear me! how funnily
that gentleman sits his horse; for all the world just like a pair of
tongs.
And—clear the course! clear the course! Oh, dear! now the
great Derby race is going to be run. Twelve to one! Ten to
one! Six to one! Nine to two! Sixteen to three! Done, done,
done, done!
Here they come! here they come! blue, green, buff, yellow,
black, brown, white, harlequin, and red! Sir, I wish you'd
stand off our carriage steps: it's quite impossible to-see through your
head.
There, now they're gone: how many times round % Times
round, eh % why, bless your innocent face! It's all over. All
over! you don't say so! I wish I'd never come: such a take in!
call that a Derby race!
After being stifled with dust almost, and spoiling all our best
bonnets and shawls and cloaks! Call that a Derby race, indeed!
I'm sure it's no Derby, but nothing but a right-down, regular Oaks.
But come, let's have a bit of lunch; I'm as hungry as if I
hadn't had a bit all day. Smith, what are you staring at 1 why
don't you make haste, and hand us the hamper this way?
We shall never have anything to eat all day if you don't stir
yourself, and not go on at that horrid slow rate. Oh, Lord! the
bottom's out, and every bit of meat and drink, and worse than all,
the knives and forks and plate,—
Stole and gone clean away! Good heavenlies! and I told you
21*
222
FIFTY YEARS AGO
to keep your eye on the basket, you stupid lout! "Well, so I
did, on the top of it, but who'd have thought of their taking the
bottom out?
Well, never mind: they'll be prettily disappointed: for you
know, betwixt you and me and the wall, Our ivory knives and
forks were nothing but bone; and our plate nothing but German
silver, after all.
What race is to be run next? No more, ma'am : the others
were all run afore you come. Well, then, have the horses put
to, Smith: I'll never come a Derbying again; and let us be off
home.
Oh, lawk! what a stodge of carriages! I'm sure we shall never
get off the course alive! Oh, dear! do knock that young drunken
gentleman off the box: I'm sure he's not in a fit state to drive.
There, I told you how it would be. Oh, law! you've broke my
arm, and compound-fractured my leg! Oh! for 'eaven's sake,
lift them two 'orrid osses off my darter I Sir, take your hands out
of my pocket-hole, I beg!
I say, the next time you crawl out of a coach window, I wish
you wouldn't put your foot on a lady's chest. Yell, if ever I seed
such a purl as that (and I've seed many a good un in my time), I'll
be blest.
Oh, dear! going home's worse than coming! It's ten to one if
ever we get back to Tooley Street alive.—Such jostling, and pushing,
and prancing of horses! and always the tipsiest gentleman of every
party mil drive.
I wish I was one of those ladies at the windows; or even one
of the servant maids giggling behind the garden walls. And oh!
there's Kennington turnpike! what shouting and hooting, and
blowing those horrid cat-calls!
Ticket, sir 1 got a ticket? No, I've lost it. A shilling, then.
A shilling! I've paid you once to-day. Oh, yes, I suppose
so : the old tale; but it won't do. That's what all you sporting
gentlemen say.
Hinsolent feller! I'll have you up before your betters. Come,
sir, you mustn't stop up the way. Well, I'll pay you again; but,
oh Lord! somebody's stole my purse! good gracious, what shall I
do! 1 suppose I must leave my watch, and call for it to-morrow.
Oh, ruination! blow'd if that isn't gone too!
Get on there, will you ?—Well, stop a moment. Will anybody
THE SPORTSMAN
223
lend me a shilling? No % Well, here then, take my hat: But if
I don't show you up in Bell's Life in London, next Sunday, morning,
my name's not Timothy Mat.
Well, this is my last journey to Epsom> my last appearance on
any course as a backer or hedger: For I see plain enough a
betting-book aint a day-book, and a Derby's a* very different thing
from a Ledger.
224
FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTEE XVI
IN FACTORY AND MINE.
I do not know any story, not even that of the slave-
trade, which can compare, for brutality and callousness
of heart, with the story of the women and children
employed in the factories and the mines of this realm.
There is nothing in the whole history of mankind which
shows more clearly the enormities which become possible
when men, spurred by desire for gain, are left uncon-
trolled by laws or the weight of public opinion, and
iplaced in the position of absolute mastery over their
fellow-men. The record of the slavery time is black in
the West Indies and the United States, God knows; but
the record of the English mine and factory is blacker
rstill. It is so black that it seems incredible to us. We
-ask ourselves in amazement if, fifty years ago, these
things could be. Alas! my friends, there are cruelties
as great still going on around us in every great city,
and wherever women are forced to work for bread.
For the women and the children are inarticulate, and
in the dark places, where no light of publicity pene-
trates, the hand of the master is armed with a scourge
IN FACTORY AND MINE
225
GETTING CHIM>BEN DOWN
A COAL MINI
(From a Plate in the West-
minster Review )
of scorpions. Let us therefore humble ourselves, and
read the story of the children in the mines with shame
as well as with indignation. The cry of the needle-
women is louder in our ears than the cry of the chil-
dren in the mines
ever was to our
fathers; yet we
regard it not.
Fellow - sinners
and partakers in
the crimes of
slavery, torture,
and robbery of
light, life, youth,
and joy, hear the tale of the Factory
and the Mine.
Early in the century—in the
year 1801—the overcrowding of
the factories and mills, the neglect
of the simplest sanitary precautions,
the long hours, the poor food, and
insufficient rest, caused the outbreak of a dreadful
epidemic fever, which alarmed even the mill-owners,
because if they lost their hands they lost their ma-
chinery. The hands are the producers, and the aim
of the masters was to regard the producers as so many
machines. Now if your machine is laid low with fever
it is as good as an engine out of repair.
For the first time in history, not only was the public

226
FIFTY YEARS AGO
conscience awakened, but the House of Commons was
called upon to act in the interests of health, public
morals, humanity, and justice. Strange, that the world
had been Christian for so long, yet no law had been
passed to protect women and children. In the Year of
Grace 1802 a beginning was made.
By the Act then passed the daily hours of labour
for children were to be not more than twelve—yet
think of making young children work for twelve hours
a day!—exclusive of an hour and a half for meals and
rest, so that the working day really covered thirteen
hours and a half, say from six in the morning until
half-past seven in the evening. This seems a good day's
work to exact of children, but it was a little heaven
compared with the state of things which preceded the
Act. Next, no children were to be employed under
the age of nine. Certain factories, proved to be un-
wholesome for children, were closed to them altogether.
Twenty years later Sir John Cam Hobhouse—may his
soul find peace !—invented the Saturday half-holiday
for factories. There was found, however, a loophole
for cruelty and overwork; the limitation of hours was
evaded by making the hands work in relays, by which
means a child might be kept at work half the night.
It was, therefore, in 1833 enacted that there should be
no work done at all between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30 a.m.:,
that children under thirteen should not work more than
forty-eight hours a week, and those under eighteen
should not work more than sixty-eight hours a week.


IN FACTORY AND MINE
227
Observe that nothing—not the light of publicity,
not public opinion, not common humanity, not pity
towards the tender children—nothing but Law had any
power to stop this daily massacre of the innocents.
Yet, no doubt, the manufacturers were subscribing for
all kinds of good objects, and reviling the Yankees con-
tinually for the institution of Slavery.
What happened next? Greed of gain, seeing the
factory closed, looked round, and saw wide open—not
the gates of Hell—but the mouth of the Pit, and they
flung the children down into the darkness, and made
them work among the narrow passages and galleries of
the coal mines.
They took the child—boy or girl—at six years of
age; they carried the little thing away from the light
of heaven, and lowered it deep down into the black and
gloomy pit; they placed it behind a door, and ordered
it to pull this open to let the corves, or trucks, come
and go, and to keep it shut when they were not passing.
The child was set at the door in the dark—at first they
gave it a candle, which would burn for an hour or two
and then go out. Think of taking a child of six—your
child, Madam!—and putting it all alone down the dark
mine! They kept the little creature there for twelve
interminable hours. If the child cried, or went to sleep,
or neglected to pull the door open, they beat that child.
The work began at four in the morning, and it was not
brought out of the pit until four, or perhaps later, in thfe
evening, so that in the winter the children never saw
228
FIFTY YEARS AGO
daylight at all. The evidence given before the Eoyal
Commission showed that the children, when they were
brought up to the pit's mouth, were heavy and stupefied,
and cared for little when they had taken their supper
but to go to bed. And yet the men who owned these
collieries had children of their own! And they would
have gone on to this very day starving the children of
light and loading them with work, stunting their
growth, and suffering them to grow up in ignorance
all their days, but for Lord Shaftesbury. This is what
is written of the children and their work by one who
visited the mines:—
To ascertain the nature of the employment of these children, I
went down a pit. . . . Descending a shaft, 600 feet deep, I went
some distance along a subterranean road which, I was told, was
three miles in length. To the right and left of one of these roads
or ways are low galleries, called workings, in which the hewers are
employed, in a state of almost perfect nudity, on account of the
great heat, digging out the coal. To these galleries there are traps,
or doors, which are kept shut, to guard against the ingress or egress
of inflammable air, and to prevent counter-currents disturbing the
ventilation. The use of a child, six years of age, is to open and
shut one of these doors when the loaded corves, or coal trucks, pass
and repass. For this object the child is trained to sit by itself in a
dark gallery for the number of hours I have described. The older
boys drive horses and load the corves, but the little children are
always trap-keepers. When first taken down they have a candle
given them, but, gradually getting accustomed to the gloom of the
place, they have to do without, and sit therefore literally in the dark
the whole time of their imprisonment.
When a child grew strong enough, he or she—
'boy or girl—was promoted to the post of drawer, or
thrutcher. The drawer, boy or girl alike, clad in a
IN FACTORY AND MINE 229
short pair of trousers and nothing else, had a belt tied
round the waist and a chain attached by one end to
the belt and the other to the corve, or truck, which
he dragged along the galleries to the place where it
was loaded for the mouth, the chain passing between
his legs; on account of the low height of the galleries
he had generally to go on all-fours. Those who were
the thrutchers pushed the truck along with their heads
and hands. They wore a thick cap, but the work

CHILDREN WORKING IN A COAL MINE
(From a Plate in the Westminster Review)
made them bald on the top of the head. When the
boys grew up they became hewers, but the women, if
they stayed in the pit, remained drawers or thrutchers,
continuing to the end of the day to push or drag the
truck dressed in nothing but the pair of short trousers.
This was a beautiful kind of life for Christian women
and children to be leading. So many children were
wanted, that in one colliery employing 400 hands there
were 100 under twenty and 56 under thirteen. In
another, where there was an inundation, there were 44
23o FIFTY YEARS AGO
children, of whom 26 were drowned; of these 11 were
girls and 15 boys; 9 were under ten years of age.
Again, in the year 1838, there were 38 children under
thirteen killed by colliery accidents and 62 young people
under eighteen.
When men talk about the interference of the State
and the regulation of hours, let us always remember this
history of the children in the Pit. Yet there were men
in plenty who denounced the action of the Government:
some of them were leaders in the philanthropic world;
some of them were religious men; some of them humane
men; but they could not bear to think that any limit
should be imposed upon the power of the employer.
In point of fact, when one considers the use which the
employer has always made of his power, how every
consideration has been always set aside which might
interfere with the acquisition of wealth, it seems as if
the chief business of the Legislature should be the
protection of the employed.
Again, take the story of the chimney-sweep. Fifty
years ago the master went his morning rounds accom-
panied by his climbing boys. It is difficult now to
understand how much time and trouble it took to
convince people that the climbing boy was made to
endure an extraordinary amount of suffering quite
needlessly, because a brush would do the work quite
as well. Consider: the poor little wretch's hands,
elbows, and knees were constantly being torn by the
bricks; sometimes he stuck going up, sometimes
9
IN FACTORY AND MINE
231
coming down; sometimes the chimney-pot at the top
fell off, the child with it, so that he was killed. He
was beaten and kicked unmercifully; his master would
sometimes light a fire underneath so as to force him to

LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1837
(From a Drawing by John Leech)
come down quickly. The boy's life was intolerable to
him. He was badly fed, badly clothed, and never
washed, though his occupation demanded incessant
cleanliness—the neglect of which was certain to bring
on a most dreadful disease. And all this because his
22
232 FIFTY YEARS AGO
master would not use a broom. It was not until 1841
that the children were protected by Acts of Parliament.
The men have shown themselves able to protect
themselves. The improvement in their position is due
wholly to their own combination. That it will still more
improve no one can for a moment doubt. If we were
asked to forecast the future, one thing would be safe to
prophesy—namely, that it will become, day by day,
increasingly difficult to get rich. Meanwhile, let us
remember that we have with us still the women and
the children, who cannot combine. We have protected
the latter; how—oh I my brothers—how shall we protect
the former?
CHAPTEE XVH.
WITH THE MEN OF SCIENCE.
On the science of fifty years ago, much might be written
but for a single reason—namely, that I know very little
indeed about the condition of science in that remote
period, and very little about science of to-day. There
were no telegraph wires, but there were semaphores
talking to each other all day long; there was no prac-
tical application of electricity at all; there was no tele-
phone—I wish there were none now; there were no
anaesthetics; there were no—but why go on? Schools
had no Science Masters; universities no Science Tripos;
Professors of Science were a feeble folk. I can do no
better for this chapter than to reproduce a report of a
Scientific Meeting first published in Tilt's Annual, to
which Hood, Thackeray, and other eminent professors
of science contributed, for the year 1836 :—
Extracts from the Proceedings of the Association of British
Illuminati, at their Annual Meeting, held in Dublin,
August, 1835.
Dr. Hoaxum read an interesting paper on the conversion of
moonbeams into substance, and rendering shadows permanent, both
of which he had recently exemplified in the establishment of some
public companies, whose prospectuses he laid upon the table.
234
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Mr. Babble produced his calculating machine, and its wonderful
powers were tested in many ways by the audience. It supplied to
Captain Sir John North an accurate computation of the distance
between a quarto volume and a cheesemonger's shop; and solved a
curious question as to the decimal proportions of cunning and
credulity, which, worked by the rule of allegation, would produce a
product of 10,000Z.
Professor Yon Hammer described his newly discovered process
for breaking stones by an algebraic fraction.
Mr. Crowsfoot read a paper on the natural history of the Book.
He defended their caws with great effect, and proved that there is
not a grain of truth in the charges against them, which only arise
from Grub Street malice.
The Rev. Mr. Groper exhibited the skin of a toad, which he dis-
covered alive in a mass of sandstone. The animal was found engaged
on its autobiography, and died of fright on having its house so
suddenly broken into, being probably of a nervous habit from
passing so much time alone. Some extracts from its memoir were
read, and found exceedingly interesting. Its thoughts on the 'silent
system 9 of prison discipline, though written in the dark, strictly
agreed with those of our most enlightened political economists.
Dr. Deady read a scientific paper on the manufacture of Hydro-
gin, which greatly interested those of the association who were
members of Temperance Societies.
Mr. Croak laid on the table an essay from the Cabinet Makers'
Society, on the construction of frog-stools.
Professor Parley exhibited his speaking machine, which distinctly
articulated the words lRepale/ Repale/' to the great delight of
many of the audience. The learned Professor stated that he was
engaged on another, for the use of his Majesty's Ministers, which
would already say,6 My Lords and Gentlemen ;' and he doubted not,
by the next meeting of Parliament, would be able to pronounce the
whole of the opening speech.
Mr. Multiply produced, and explained the principle of, his ex-
aggerating machine. He displayed its amazing powers on the
mathematical point, which, with little trouble, was made to appear
as large as a coach-wheel. He demonstrated its utility in all the rela-
tions of society, as applied to the failings of the absent—the growth
of a tale of scandal—the exploits of travellers, &c. &c.
The Author of the 'Pleasures of Hope' presented, through a
WITH THE MEN OF SCIENCE
235
member, a very amusing Essay on the gratification arising from the
throttling of crying children; but as the ladies would not leave the
room, it could not be read.
Captain North exhibited some shavings of the real Pole, and a
small bottle which, he asserted, contained scintillations of the Aurora
Borealis, from which, he stated, he had succeeded in extracting pure
gold. He announced that his nephew was preparing for a course of
similar experiments, of which he expected to know the result in
October. The gallant Captain then favoured the company with a
dissertation on phrenology, of which, he said, he had been a believer
for thirty years. He stated that he had made many valuable
verifications of that science on the skulls of the Esquimaux; and
that, in his recent tour in quest of subscribers to his book, his great
success had been mainly attributable to his phrenological skill; for
that, whenever he had an opportunity of feeling for soft places in
the heads of the public, he knew in a moment whether he should
get a customer or not. He said that whether in the examination of
ships' heads or sheep's heads—in the choice of horses or housemaids,
he had found the science of pre-eminent utility. He related the
following remarkable phrenological cases :—A man and woman
were executed in Scotland for murder on presumptive evidence;
but another criminal confessed to the deed, and a reprieve arrived
the day after the execution. The whole country was horrified; but
Captain North having examined their heads, he considered, from
the extraordinary size of their destructive organs, that the sentence
was prospectively just, for they must have become murderers, had
they escaped hanging then. Their infant child, of six months old,
was brought to him, and, perceiving on its head the same fatal
tendencies, he determined to avert the evil; for which purpose, by
means of a pair of moulds, he so compressed the skull in its
vicious propensities, and enlarged it in its virtuous ones, that the
child grew up a model of perfection. The second instance was of a
married couple, whose lives were a continued scene of discord till
they parted. On examining their heads scientifically, he discovered
the elementary causes of their unhappiness. Their skulls were un-
fortunately too thick to be treated as in the foregoing case; but,
causing both their heads to be shaved, he by dint of planing down
in some places, and laying on padding in others, contrived to produce
all the requisite phrenological developments, and they were then
living, a perfect pattern of conjugal felicity, 4 a thing which could
236 FIFTY YEARS AGO
not have happened without phrenology.' (This dissertation was
received with loud applauses from the entire assembly, whose phreno-
logical organs becoming greatly excited, and developed in an
amazing degree by the enthusiasm of the subject, they all fell to
examining each other's bumps with such eagerness that the meeting
dissolved in confusion.)
CHAPTER XVin.
LAW AND JUSTICE.
Five thousand three hundred and forty-fouk enact-
ments have been added to the Statute Book since the
Queen came to the throne, and the figures throw, a
flood of light upon the 'progress' of the Victorian era.
In order to realise where we were in 1837 we have
only to obliterate this enormous mass of legislation.
In the realm of law there seems then to be little left.
All our procedure—equitable, legal, and criminal—much
of the substance of equity, law, and justice, as we un-
derstand the words, is gone. 4 Law' had a different
meaning fifty years ago; 6 equity9 hardly had any mean-
ing at all; 6 justice' had an ugly sound.
The 4 local habitation' of the Courts, it is true, was
then much the same as it remained for the next forty-
five years. The network of gloomy little rooms, con-
nected with narrow winding passages, which Sir John
Soane built in 1820-1825, on the west side of West-
minster Hall, on the site of the old Exchequer Cham-
ber, with an exterior in imitation of Palladio's basilica
at Vicenza, but outrageously out of keeping with the
238 FIFTY YEARS AGO
glorious vestibule of William Eufus, was then the home
of law. The Court of Chancery met in a gloomy little
apartment near the southern end of the hall. Here the
Lord Chancellor sat in term time—there were then
four terms of three weeks each—with the mace and
crimson silk bag, embroidered with gold, in which was
deposited the silver pair of dies of the Great Seal,
and a large nosegay of flowers before him. It was,
in those days, only in the vacations that the Chancellor
sat at Lincoln's Inn. The Master of the Eolls and the
Vice-Chancellor of England also sat at Westminster
during the sittings, while in the intervals the former
presided over the Eolls Court in Eolls Yard and the
latter over the Court which had been built for him on
the west side of Lincoln's Inn Hall. The three Com-
mon Law Courts, moreover, during term time, sat twelve
days at Westminster and twelve days at the Guildhall,
while the Assizes were chiefly held during the vacations.
The High Court of Admiralty held its sittings at
Doctors' Commons, in both the Instance Court and
the Prize Court, practically throughout the legal year,
and so did the Ecclesiastical Courts. The Bankruptcy
Court was in Basing!] all Street; the Insolvent Debtors'
Court in Lincoln's Inn Fields, with an entrance from
Portugal Street. There were then no County Courts.
The ancient Hundred and County Courts, with their
primitive procedure, had long been disused. Certain
6 Courts of Conscience' or 4 Courts of Eequest' had,
it is true, been established for particular localities at


LA W AND JUSTICE 239
the express request of the inhabitants, and these were
still being constituted in some of the large towns. Then
in London there were local Courts with a peculiar juris-
diction, such as the City Courts, which would fill a
chapter by themselves, and of which it is enough to

MARSHALSEA —THE COURTYARD
name the Lord Mayor's Court, the Sheriff's Courts of
Poultry Compter and Giltspur Street Compter, both
afterwards merged into the City of London Court. In
Great Scotland Yard there was the Palace Court, with
the Knight Marshal for judge, which anciently had
240
FIFTY YEARS AGO
exclusive jurisdiction in matters connected with the
Eoyal Household, but now was a minor court of
record for actions for debt within Westminster and
twelve miles round. The Court had its own prison in
High Street, Southwark—the Marshalsea of 'Little
Dorrit,' not the old historic Marshalsea, which was
demolished at the beginning of the century—that stood
farther north, occupying the site of No. 119 High Street—
but a new Marshalsea, built in 1811 on the site of the
old White Lyon, once a hostelry, but since the end of the
sixteenth century itself a prison. The Palace Court
came to a sudden end in 1849, owing to 'Jacob
Omnium * being sued in it. Thackeray tells the story
in c Jacob Homnium's Hoss :'—
Pore Jacob went to Court,
A Counsel for to fix,
And choose a barrister out of the four,
And an attorney of the six.
And there he sor these men of lor,
And watched them at their tricks.
0 a weary day was that
For Jacob to go through;
The debt was two seventeen
(Which he no mor owed than you),
And then there was the plaintives costs,
Eleven pound six and two.
And then there was his own,
Which the lawyers they did fix
At the wery moderit figgar
Of ten pound one and six.
Now Evins bless the Pallis Court,
And all its bold ver-dicks!
LA W AND JUSTICE 241
The sittings of the Central Criminal Court, which
was founded in 1834, were held, as they are still held, in
the Sessions House in the Old Bailey. Rebuilt in 1809
on the site of the old Sessions House which was de-
stroyed in the No-Popery riots of 1780, and of the old
Surgeons' Hall—where the bodies of the malefactors
executed in .Newgate were dissected—the building,
although sufficiently commodious for holding the
sessions of London and Middlesex, for which it was
originally intended, as the centre of the criminal juris-
diction of the kingdom, was never anything but a
makeshift. Since, however, its dingy Courts have re-
mained the same down to our own times, we can the
better realise the surroundings of the criminal trials
of those days. It was here that Greenacre was tried
in 1837. Bow Street was then in the zenith of its fame,
and was practically the centre of the police arrange-
ments of London.
Those were the palmy days of the Court of
Chancery. Reform was, as it had been for centuries,
in the air, and there, notwithstanding the efforts of
Lord Lyndhurst, it seemed likely to remain. Practically
nothing had been done to carry into effect the recom-
mendations of the Commission of 1826. At the time
of her Majesty's accession there were nearly a thousand
causes waiting to be heard by the Lord Chancellor, the
Master of the Rolls, and the Vice-Chancellor of England.
It was verily a 4 dead sea of stagnant litigation.' * The
load of business now before the Court/ remarked Sir
242
FIFTY YEARS AGO
Lancelot Shadwell, c is so great that three angels could
not get through it.' Think what this meant! Many
of these suits had endured for a quarter of a century,
some for half a century; 'the lawyers/ to use the
current, if incorrect, phrase of the time, 6 tossing the
balls to each other.' One septuagenarian suitor,
goaded to madness by the 4 law's delay,' had, a few
years before, thrust his way into the presence of Lord
Eldon, and begged for a decision in a cause waiting for
judgment which had been before the Court ever since
the Lord Chancellor, then nearly eighty, was a
schoolboy. Everyone remembers 'Miss Flite,' who
expected a judgment—' on the Day of Judgment,* and
Gridley 6 the man from Shropshire :' both are true
types of the Chancery suitors of fifty, thirty, twenty
years ago. It would be wearisome indeed to detail
the stages through which a Chancery suit dragged its
slow length along. The * eternal' bills, with which it
began—and ended—cross bills, answers, interrogatories,
replies, rejoinders, injunctions, decrees, references to
masters, masters' reports, exceptions to masters' reports,
were veritably 'a mountain of costly nonsense.' And
when we remember that the intervals between the
various stages were often measured by years—that every
death made a bill of review, or, worse still, a supple-
mental suit, necessary—we can realise the magnitude
of the evil. The mere comparison of the 6 bills' in
Chancery with the 6 bills of mortality' shows that with
proper management a suit need never have come to an
LA W AND JUSTICE
243
end. There is a story for which the late Mr. Chitty
is responsible, that an attorney on the marriage of his
son handed him over a Chancery suit with some
common law actions. A couple of years afterwards
the son asked his father for some more business. 4 Why,
I gave you that capital Chancery suit/ replied his
father; 4 what more can you want?' 4 Yes, sir,' said
the son; 4 but I have wound up the Chancery suit and
given my client great satisfaction, and he is in possession
of the estate.' 4 What, you improvident fool!' rejoined
the father indignantly. 4 That suit was in my family
for twenty-five years, and would have continued so for
so much longer if I had kept it. I shall not encourage
such a fellow.'
As in Butler's time it might still be said:—
So lawyers, lest the Bear defendant,
And plaintiff Dog, should make an end on't,
Do stave and tail with writ of error,
Reverse of judgment, and demurrer,
To let them breathe awhile, and then
Cry Whoop! and set them on again.
In fact, like 4 Jarndyce and Jarndyce/ hundreds of
suits struggled on until they expired of inanition, the
costs having swallowed up the estate. Such were the
inevitable delays fifty years ago, that no one could
enter into a Chancery suit with the least prospect of
being alive at its termination. It was no small part
of the duty of the respectable members of the legal
profession to keep their clients out of Chancery. It
244
FIFTY YEARS AGO
was, perhaps, inevitable that this grievance should have
been made the shuttlecock of party, that personalities
should have obscured it, that, instead of the system, the
men who were almost as much its victims as the
suitors should have been blamed. Many successive
Lord Chancellors in this way came in for much unde-
served obloquy. The plain truth was, they were over-
worked. Besides their political functions, they had
to preside in the Lords over appeals from themselves,
the Master of the Bolls, and the Vice-Chancellor; they
had some heavy work in bankruptcy and lunacy. The
number of days that could be devoted to sitting as a
Chancery judge of first instance was, therefore, ne-
cessarily small. That this was the keynote of the
difficulty was shown by the marked improvement
which followed upon the appointment of two additional
Vice-Chancellors in 1841. In that year, too, another
scandal was done away with by the abolition of the
Six Clerks' office—a characteristic part of the unwieldy
machine. The depositaries of the practice of the Court,
the Six Clerks and their underlings, the 'Clerks in
Court,' were responsible for much of the delay which
arose. The 4 Six Clerks' were paid by fees, and their
places were worth nearly two thousand a year, for which
they did practically nothing, all their duties being dis-
charged by deputy. No one, it was said, ever saw one of
the 'Six Clerks.' Even in their office they were not
known. The Masters in Chancery were, too, in those days
almost as important functionaries as the judges them-
LA W AND JUSTICE 245
selves. Judges' Chambers were not then in existence,
and much of the work which now comes before the
judges was disposed of by a master, as well as such
business as the investigation of titles, the taking of
accounts, and the purely administrative functions of the
Court. All these duties they discharged with closed
doors and free from any supervision worth talking
about. They, too, were paid by fees, their receipts
amounting to an immense sum, and it was to them that
the expense of proceedings was largely due. The
agitation for their abolition, although not crowned
with success until fifteen years later, was in full blast
fifty years ago.
At law, matters were little better. 'Justice was
strangled in the nets of form.' The Courts of King's
Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer were not only at
conflict with Equity, but in a lesser degree with each
other. The old fictions by which they ousted each
other's jurisdiction lasted down to 1831, when, by statute,
a uniformity of process was established. It seems now-
adays to savour of the Middle Ages, that in order to
bring an action in the King's Bench it should have been
necessary for the writ to describe the cause of action
to be 4 trespass,' and then to mention the real cause of
action in an ac etiam clause. The reason for this absurd
formality was that, 4 trespass' still being an offence of a
criminal nature, the defendant was constructively in the
custody of the Marshal of the Marshalsea, and therefore
within the jurisdiction of the King's Bench. In the
23
246
FIFTY YEARS AGO
same way a civil matter was brought before the Court
of Exchequer by the pretence that the plaintiff was a
debtor to the King, and was less able to pay by reason
of the defendant's conduct. The statement, although in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a mere fiction, was
not allowed to be contradicted. But the fact that the
jurisdiction of the Court of Common Pleas was thus
entrenched upon was less serious than it might have
been, since in that court the Serjeants still had exclusive
audience; and, distinguished as were the members of
the Order of the Coif, it is easy to understand that the
public preferred to have their pick of the Bar.
But a much more serious matter was the block in
the Courts. This perennial grievance seems to have
then been chiefly due to the shortness of the terms
during which alone legal questions could be decided.
Nisi prius trials only could be disposed of in the vaca-
tions. Points of law or practice, however, cropped up
in those days in even the simplest matter, and, since
these often had to stand over from term to term, the
luckless litigants were fortunate indeed if they had not
to wait for years before the question in dispute was
finally disposed of. The Common Law Procedure,
moreover, literally bristled with technicalities. It was
a system of solemn juggling. The real and imaginary
causes of action were so mixed up together, the fc plead-
ings' required such a mass of senseless falsehood, that
it is perfectly impossible that the parties to the action
could have the least apprehension of what they were
LA W AND JUSTICE
247
doing. Then no two different causes of action could be
joined, but each had to be prosecuted separately through *
all its stages. None of the parties interested were compe-
tent to give evidence. It was not until 1851 that the
plaintiff and the defendant, often the only persons who
could give any account of the matter, could go into the
witness-box. Mistakes in such a state of things were,
of course, of common occurrence, and in those days
mistakes were fatal. Proceedings by way of appeal
were equally hazardous and often impracticable. The
Exchequer Chamber could only take cognisance of
4 error' raised by a 4 bill of exceptions ;' and even at
this time the less that is said about that triumph of
special pleading the better. The House of Lords could
only sit as a Court of Error upon points which had run
the gauntlet of the Exchequer Chamber. But perhaps
the crowning grievance of all—a grievance felt equally
keenly by suitors at law and in equity—arose from the
limited powers of the Courts. If there were a remedy
at law for any given wrong, for instance, the Court of
Chancery could give no relief. In the same way, if it
turned out, as it often did, that a plaintiff should have
sued in equity instead of proceeding at law, he was
promptly nonsuited. Law could not grant an injunc-
tion; equity could not construe an Act -of Parliament.
There were then, as we have said, no County Courts.
The Courts of Eequests, of which there were not a hun-
dred altogether, only had jurisdiction for the recovery
of debts under 40s. We have already given an illustra-
248
FIFTY YEARS AGO
tion of the methods of Palace Court, which, may serve
as a type of these minor courts of record. Indeed, with
the exception of the City of London, which was before
the times in this respect, there was throughout the
kingdom a denial of justice. Those who could not
afford to pay the Westminster price had to go without.
For in those days all matters intended to be heard at
the Assizes were in form prepared for trial at West-
minster. The 6 record' was delivered to the officers
of the King's Bench, Common Pleas, or Exchequer, and
the cause was set down for trial at Westminster, nisi
prius in the meantime the judges happened to go on
circuit into the county in which the cause of action
arose,—in which event one of them would take down
the record, try the action with a jury of the county,
pronounce judgment according to the verdict, and
bring back verdict and judgment, to be enrolled in
due course at Westminster. In equity, things were
even worse. There was, except in the counties palatine
of Durham and Lancaster, no local equitable jurisdic-
tion. And it was commonly said, and said with obvious
truth, that no sum of less than 5001. was worth suing
for or defending in the Court of Chancery.
Divorce was then the 4 luxury of the wealthy/ An
action for the recovery of damages against the co-re-
spondent, and a suit in the Ecclesiastical Courts for a
separation 4 from bed and board/ themselves both
tedious and costly, after having been successfully pro-
secuted, had to be followed by a Divorce Bill, which
LA W AND JUSTICE 249
had to pass through all its stages in both Lords and
Commons, before a divorce a vinculo matrimonii could
be obtained. There is a hoary anecdote which usefully
illustrates how this pressed upon the poor. * Prisoner
at the bar/ said a judge to a man who had just been
convicted of bigamy, his wife having run away with
another man, * the institutions of your country have
provided you with a remedy. You should have sued
the adulterer at the Assizes, and recovered a verdict
against him, and then taken proceedings by your
proctor in the Ecclesiastical Courts. After their suc-
cessful termination you might have applied to Parlia-
ment for a Divorce Act, and your counsel would have
been heard at the Bar of the House/ 4 But, my lord/
said the disconsolate bigamist, 'I cannot afford to
bring actions or obtain Acts of Parliament; I am only
a very poor man.' * Prisoner/ rejoined the judge, with
a twinkle in his eye, 'it is the glory of the law of Eng-
land that it knows no distinction between rich and
poor/ Yet it was not until twenty years after the
Queen came to the throne that the Court for Divorce
and Matrimonial Causes was created.
Probate, too, and all matters and suits relating to
testacy and intestacy, were disposed of in the Ecclesias-
tical Courts,—tribunals were attached to the arch-
bishops, bishops, and archdeacons. The Court of
Arches, the supreme Ecclesiastical Court for the Pro-
vince of Canterbury, the Prerogative Court, where all
contentious testamentary causes were tried, as well as
250
FIFTY YEARS AGO
the Admiralty Courts, were held at Doctors' Common^.
It was a curious mixture of spiritual and legal func-
tions. The judges and officers of the Court were often
clergy without any knowledge of the law. They were
paid by fees, and, according to the common practice of
those days, often discharged their duties by deputy.
The advocates who practised before them were, too,
anything but 'learned in the law/ They wore in Court,
if of Oxford, scarlet robes and hoods lined with taffety,
and if of Cambridge, white miniver and round black
velvet caps. The proctors wore black robes and hoods
lined with fur. The procedure was similar to that in
vogue in the Common Law Courts, but the nomencla-
ture was entirely different. The substitute for punish-
ment was 'penance/ and the consequence of non-sub-
mission 4 excommunication/ which, in addition to spiri-
tual pains, incapacitated the delinquent from bringing
any action, and at the end of forty days rendered him
liable to imprisonment by the Court of Chancery. The
practical result was that both penance and excommu-
nication were indirect methods of extracting money
payments. But the whole system was full of abuses,
and when, twenty years later, these courts were shorn
of all their important functions, it was with the uni-
versal concurrence of the public. Until then there
were many who shared the opinion of De Foe's intelli-
gent foreigner, that 6 England was a fine country, but
a man called Doctors' Commons was the devil, for there
was no getting out of his clutches, let one's cause be
LA W AND JUSTICE
never so good, without paying a great deal of
money.'
In bankruptcy, a severity which was simply ferocious
prevailed. Traders owing more than 300/., and a
little later all traders, could obtain a discharge upon
full disclosure and surrender of all their property; but
even then the proceedings were protracted to an almost
interminable length. The machinery was both cum-
brous and costly. Down to 1831 the bankruptcy law in
London was administered by Commissioners appointed
separately for each case by the Lord Chancellor. In
that year a Court of Eeview was established, with a
chief.judge and two minor judges; and this to some
extent controlled and supervised the proceedings of
the Commissioners, now a permanent body. In the
country, however, the old procedure prevailed ; but the
amount of business done was ridiculously small, creditors
preferring, as they always probably will do, to write off
the bad debts rather than to attempt to recover them
by the aid of the bankruptcy law. The system, more-
over, bristled with pains and penalties. If a bankrupt,
as alleged, did not surrender to his commission within
forty-two days of notice; nor make discovery of his
estate and effects; nor deliver up his books and papers,
he was to be deemed a felon and liable to be transported
for life. An adjudication—the first stage in the pro-
ceedings—was granted upon the mere affidavit of a
creditor, a fiat was issued, the Commissioners held a
meeting, and, without hearing the debtor at all, declared
252 FIFTY YEARS AGO
him a bankrupt. It was thus quite possible for a
trader to find himself in the Gazette, and ultimately in
prison, although perfectly solvent. He had his remedies,
it is true. He could bring an action of trespass or false
imprisonment against the Commissioners. He could
make things uncomfortable for the assignee, by im-
peaching the validity of the adjudication. But in any
case a delay extending perhaps over many years was
inevitable before the matter was decided.
'Insolvent debtors,' as those not in trade were dis-
tinguished, were in yet worse case. Imprisonment on
4 mesne process' or, in plain English, on the mere affi-
davit of accreditor, was the leading principle of this
branch of the bankruptcy law; and in prison the debtor
remained until he found security or paid. The anomaly
which exempted real estate from the payment of debts
had been removed in 1825; and, since then, a debtor,
actually in prison, could obtain a release from confine-
ment by a surrender of all his real and personal property,
although he remained liable for all the unpaid portion
of his debts whenever the Court should be satisfied of
his ability to pay them. Everything, moreover, depended
upon the creditor. He still had an absolute option, after
verdict and judgment, of taking the body of the debtor
in satisfaction, and the early records of the Court for
the Belief-of Insolvent Debtors show how weak and
impotent were the remedies provided by the Legis-
lature. It was not until twenty years later that the full
benefits of bankruptcy were extended to persons who
LA W AND JUSTICE
253
had become indebted without fraud or culpable negli-
gence. Enough has already been said of the state of
the debtors' prisons. It is sufficient to add here that in
the second year of the Queen nearly four thousand per-
sons were arrested for debt in London alone, and of these
nearly four hundred remained permanently in prison.
It was, however, in the administration of the criminal
law that the harsh temper of the times reached its
zenith. Both as regards procedure and penalties, justice
then dealt hardly indeed with persons accused of crimes.
In cases of felony, for instance, the prisoner could not,
down to 1836, be defended by counsel, and had, there-
fore, to speak for himself. Now think what this meant!
The whole proceedings, from arrest to judgment, were
—for the matter of that they still are—highly artificial
and technical. The prisoner, often poor and uneducated,
was generally unaccustomed to sustained thought. The
indictment, which was only read over to him, was often
almost interminable in length, with a separate count for
each offence, and all the counts mixed and varied in every
way that a subtle ingenuity could suggest. Defences
depended as largely for their success upon the prisoner
taking advantage of some technical flaw (which, in many
cases, had to be done before pleading to the indictment),
as upon his establishing his innocence upon the facts.
But what chance had an illiterate prisoner of detecting
even a fundamental error when he was not allowed a
copy of the document? In fact, in the words of Mr.
Justice Stephen, the most eminent living authority upon
254
FIFTY YEARS AGO
the history of our criminal law, 6 it is scarcely a parody
to say that from the earliest times down to our own
days the law relating to indictments was much the
same as if some small proportion of the prisoners con-
victed had been allowed to toss-up for their liberty.'
There might, further, be the grossest errors of law,
as laid down by the judge to the jury, or of fact upon
the evidence, without the prisoner having any remedy.
Neither the evidence nor the judge's directions appeared
upon the face of the 'record,' and it was only for some
irregularity upon the record that a writ of error would
lie. A curious practice, however, gradually sprang up,
whereby substantial miscarriage of justice was often
averted. If a legal point of any difficulty arose in any
criminal case heard at the Assizes, or elsewhere, the
judge respited the prisoner, or postponed judgment, and
reported the matter to the judges. The point reserved
was then argued before the judges by counsel, not
in court, but at Serjeants' Inn, of which all the judges
were members. If it was decided that the prisoner had
been improperly convicted, he received a free pardon.
It was this tribunal which was in 1848 erected into the
Court for Crown Cases Eeserved.
The outcry against capital punishment for minor
felonies was still in full blast. The history of this
legislation is extremely curious. The value of human
life was slowly raised. It had, thanks to the noble
efforts of Sir Samuel Eomilly, ceased to be a capital
offence to steal from a shop to the amount of 5s.;
LAW AND JUSTICE 255
but public opinion was still more enlightened than
the laws. A humane judge compelled to pass sentence
of death upon a woman convicted of stealing from a
dwelling-house to the value of 4.0s., shocked when the
wretched victim fainted away, cried out, 'Good woman,
good woman, I don't mean to hang you. I don't mean
to hang you. Will nobody tell her I don't mean to
hang her?' Jurors perjured themselves rather than
subject anybody to this awful penalty. In 1833 Lord
Suffield, in the House of Lords, declared, '1 hold
in my hand a list of 555 perjured verdicts delivered at
the Old Bailey in fifteen years, for the single offence of
stealing from dwelling-houses; the value stolen being
in these cases sworn above the value of 40s.; but the
verdicts returned being to the value of 39s. only.'
Human life was, then, appraised at 5Z. But juries
were equal to the occasion. Disregarding the actual
amount stolen, they substituted for the old verdict
4 Guilty of stealing to the value of 39s/—{ Guilty of
stealing to the value of 4Z. 19s.' Here is an illustration.
A man was convicted at the Old Bailey of robbing his
employers to the amount of 1,000Z. The evidence was
overwhelming. Property worth 200Z. was found in his
own room ; 300£. more was traced to the man to whom
he had sold it. The jury found him guilty of stealing to the
amount of U. 19s. He was again indicted for stealing
25£, and again convicted of stealing less than 5Z. In
the remaining indictments the prosecutors allowed him
to plead guilty to the same extent. In the same way,
256
FIFTY YEARS AGO
for years prior to 1832, when the death penalty for
forgery was abolished—except in the cases of wills and
powers of attorney relating to the public funds—juries
refused to convict. 6 Prisoner at the bar/ said Chief
Baron Eichards to a man acquitted at Carnarvon
Assizes for forging Bank of England notes, ' although
you have been acquitted by a jury of your country-
men of the crime of forgery, I am as convinced of
your guilt as that two and two make four.' And the
jury privately admitted that they were of the same
opinion. In short, the severity of the penal code was
a positive danger to the community. Professed thieves
made a rich harvest by getting themselves indicted capi-
tally, because they then felt sure of escape. The sentence,
moreover, could not be carried out. It became usual
in all cases except murder to. merely order it to be
recorded, which had the effect of a reprieve. Here are
some figures. In the three years ended December
31, 1833, there were 896 commitments in London and
Middlesex on capital offences and only twelve exe-
cutions. In 1834, 1835, and 1836 there were 823
commitments and no executions. With the first year
of the Queen a more merciful rSgime was begun. Six
offences—forgery in all cases; rioting; rescuing mur-
derers; inciting to mutiny; smuggling with arms; and
kidnapping slaves—were declared not capital. But it
was not until 1861 that all these blots were finally
erased from the Statute Book.
Among other mediasval barbarities, the dissection
LA W AND JUSTICE
257
of a murderer's body was not abolished until 1861, but
it was made optional in 1832. Hanging in chains
was done away with in 1834. The pillory, a punish-
ment limited to perjury since 1816, was altogether
abolished in 1837. The stocks had been generally su-
perseded by the treadmill ten years earlier. Common
assaults and many misdemeanours were, on the other
hand, much more leniently dealt with in those days
than they are in our own. As late as 1847 a case
occurred in which a ruffian pounded his wife with his
fists so that she remained insensible for three days.
Yet, since he used no weapon, he could only be con-
victed of a common assault and imprisoned without
hard labour.
But it was not perhaps an unmixed evil that the
powers of the magistrates were then very limited.
The 6 Great Unpaid/ as they were then universally
known, were a bye-word. Their proceedings, both at
Petty and Quarter Sessions, were disgraced by igno-
rance, rashness, and class prejudice. Summary juris-
diction was then, fortunately, only in its infancy.
258
FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUSION.
The consideration of the country as it was would not
be complete without some comparison with the country
as it is. But I will make this comparison as brief as
possible.
In the Church, the old Calvinism is well-nigh dead:
even the Low Church of the present day would have
seemed, fifty years ago, a kind of veiled Popery. And
the Church has grown greater and stronger. She will
be greater and stronger still when she enlarges her
borders to admit the great bodies of Nonconformists.
The old grievances exist no longer: there are no
pluralists: there is no non-resident Vicar: the small
benefices are improved: Church architecture has re-
vived: the Church services are rendered with loving
and jealous care: the old reproaches are no longer
hurled at the clergy: fat and lazy shepherds they
certainly are not: careless and perfunctory they can-
not now be called: even if they are less scholarly,
which must be sorrowfully admitted, they are more
earnest.


CONCLUSION
259
The revival of the Church services has produced
its effect also upon Dissent. Its ministers are more
learned and more cultured: their congregations are no
longer confined to the humbler trading-class: their
leaders belong to society: their writers are among the
best litterateurs of the day.
That the science of warfare, by sea and land, has
also changed, is a doubtful advantage. Yet wars are
short, which is, in itself, an immeasurable gain. The
thin red line will be seen no more: nor the splendid
great man-o'-war, with a hundred guns and a crew of
a thousand men.
The Universities, which, fifty years ago, belonged
wholly to the Church, are now thrown open. The
Fellowships and Scholarships of the Colleges were
then mostly appropriated: they are now free, and the
range of studies has been immensely widened.
As for the advance in physical and medical science
I am not qualified to speak. But everybody knows
that it has been enormous: while, in surgery, the
discovery of anaesthetics has removed from life one of
its most appalling horrors.
In literature, though new generations of writers
have appeared and passed away, we have still with us
the two great poets who, fi,fty years ago, had already
begun their work. The Victorian era can boast of
such names as Carlyle, Macaulay, Th acker ay, Dickens,
Tennyson, and Browning, in the first rank of men of
letters; those of Darwin, Faraday, and Huxley in
26o
FIFTY YEARS AGO
science. Besides these there has been an immense
crowd of men and women who belong to the respect-
able second rank—to enumerate whom would take
pages. Who can say if any of them will live beyond
the century, and if any will be remembered in a
hundred years?
We have all grown richer, much richer. 4 The
poor,' says Mr. George, 4 have grown poorer/ That
is most distinctly and emphatically untrue. Nothing
could be more untrue. The poor—that is to say, the
working classes—have grown distinctly better off. They
are better housed; they are better fed; they are more
cheaply fed; they are better dressed ; they have a thou-
sand luxuries to which they were formerly strangers;
their children are educated; in most great towns
they have free libraries; they have their own clubs;
they are at liberty to combine and to hold public
meetings; they have the Post Office Savings Bank; and,
as for political power, they have all the power there is,
because you cannot give any man more than his vote.
Formerly they demanded the Six Points of the
Charter, and thought that universal happiness would
follow on their acquisition. We have now got most
of the Six Points, and we do not care much about the
rest. Yet happiness is not by any means universal.
Some there are who still think that by more tinkering
of the machinery the happiness of the people will be
assured. Others there are who consider that political
and social wisdom, on the possession of which by our
CONCLUSION
261
rulers tlie welfare of the people does mainly depend, is
outside and independent of the machinery.
Is it nothing, again, that the people have found out
their own country? Formerly their lives were spent
wholly in the place where they were born; they knew
no other. Now the railways carry them cheaply every-
where. In one small town of Lancashire the factory-
hands alone spend 30,000Z. a year in excursions. The
railways, far more than the possession of a vote, had
given the people a knowledge of their strength.
The civil service of the country is no longer in the
patronage of the Government. There are few spoils
left to the victors; there are no sinecures left; except
in the Crown Colonies, there are few places to be given
away. It is, however, very instructive to remark that,
wherever there is a place to be given away, it is inva-
riably, just as of old, and without the least difference of
party, whether Conservatives or Liberals are in power,
filled up by jobbery, favouritism, and private interest.
You have been told how they have introduced vast
reforms in Law. Prisons for debt have been abolished;
yet men are still imprisoned for debt. Happily I know
little about the administration of Law. Some time ago,
however, I was indirectly interested in an action in the
High Court of Justice, the conduct and result of which
gave me much food for reflection. It was an action
for quite a small sum of money. Tet a year and a
half elapsed between the commencement of the action
and its hearing. The verdict carried costs. The costs
262
FIFTY YEARS AGO
amounted to three times the sum awarded to the plaintiff.
That seems to be a delightful condition of things when
you cannot get justice to listen to you for a year and
a half, and when it may cost a defendant three times
the amount disputed in order to defend what he knows
—though his counsel may fail to make a jury under-
stand the case—to be just and right. I humbly sub-
mit, as the next reform in Law, that Justice shall have
no holidays, so as to expedite actions, and that the
verdict shall in no case carry costs, so as to cheapen
them.
As for our recreations, we no longer bawl comic
songs at taverns, and there is no Yauxhall. On the
other hand, the music-hall is certainly no improvement
on the tavern; the c Colonies' was perhaps a more
respectable Vauxhall; the comic opera may be better
than the old extravaganza, but I am not certain that it
is; there are the Crystal Palace, the Aquarium, and the
Albert Hall also in place of Vauxhall; and there are
outdoor amusements unknown fifty years ago—lawn
tennis, cycling, rowing, and athletics of all kinds.
There has been a great upward movement of the
professional class. New professions have come into
existence, and the old professions are more esteemed.
It was formerly a poor and beggarly thing to belong
to any other than the three learned professions; a
barrister would not shake hands with a solicitor, a
Nonconformist minister was not met in any society.
Artists, writers, journalists, were considered Bohemians.
CONCLUSION 263
The teaching of anything was held in contempt; to
become a teacher was a confession of the direst
poverty—there were thousands of poor girls eating out
their hearts because they had to 'go out' as gover-
nesses. There were no High Schools for girls; there
were no colleges for them.
Slavery has gone. There are now no slaves in
Christendom, save in the island of Cuba. Fifty years
ago an American went mad if you threw in his teeth
the 6 Institution ;' either he defended it with zeal, or
else he charged England with having introduced it
into the country: in the Southern States it was as
much as a man's life was worth to say a word against
it; travellers went South on purpose that they might
see slaves put up to auction, mothers parted from their
children, and all the stock h orrors. Then they came
home and wrote about it, and held up their hands and
cried, 6 Oh, isn't it dreadful?' The negro slavery is
gone, and now there is only left the slavery of the
women who work. When will that go too? And
how can it be swept away?
Public executions gone: pillory gone—the last man
pilloried was in the year 1830: no more flogging in the
army: the Factory Acts passed: all these are great
gains. A greater is the growth of sympathy with all
those who suffer, whether wrongfully or by misfortune,
or through their own misdoings. This growth of
sympathy is due especially to the works of certain
novelists belonging to the Victorian age. It is pro-
264
FIFTY YEARS AGO
ducing all kinds of good works—the unselfish devotion
of men and women to work among the poor: teaching
of every description: philanthropy which does not
stop short with the cheque: charity which is organ-
ised: measures for prevention: support of hospitals
and convalescent homes: the introduction of Art and
Music to the working classes.
All these changes seem to be gains. Have there
been no losses?
In the nature of things there could not fail to be
losses. Some of the old politeness has been lost,
though there are still men with the fine manners of our
grandfathers: the example of the women who speak,
who write, who belong to professions, and are, gene-
rally, aggressive, threatens to change the manners of
all women: they have already become more assured,
more self-reliant, less deferent to men's opinion—the
old deference of men to women was, of course, merely
conventional. They no longer dread the necessity of
working for themselves; they plunge boldly into the
arena prepared to meet with no consideration on the
score of sex. If a woman writes a bad book, for
instance, no critic hesitates to pronounce it bad be-
cause a woman has written it. Whatever work man
does woman tries to do. They boldly deny any in-
feriority of intellect, though no woman has ever pro-
duced any work which puts her anywhere near the
highest intellectual level. They claim a complete
equality which they have hitherto failed to prove.
CONCLUSION 265
Some of them even secretly whisper of natural
superiority. They demand their vote. Perhaps, be-
fore long, they will be in both Houses, and then man
will be speedily relegated to his proper place, which
will be that of the executive servant. Oh! happy,
happy time!
It is said that we have lost the old leisure of life.
As for that, and the supposed drive and hurry of modern
life, I do not believe in it. That is to say, the compe-
tition is fierce and the struggle hard. But these are no
new things. It is a commonplace to talk of the leisure
and calm of the eighteenth century—it cannot be too
often repeated that in 1837 we were still in that century
—I declare that in all my reading about social life in
the eighteenth century I have failed to discover that
leisure. From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria I have
searched for it, and I cannot find it. The leisure of
the eighteenth century exists, in fact, only in the brain
of painter and poet. Life was hard; labour was in-
cessant, and lasted the whole day long; the shopmen
lived in the shop—they even slept in it; the mill
people worked all day long and far into the night.
If I look about the country, I see in town and village
the poor man oppressed and driven by his employer:
I see the labourer in a blind revenge setting fire to
the ricks; I see the factory hand destroying the ma-
chinery; I see everywhere discontent, poverty, privi-
lege, patronage, and profligacy; I hear the shrieks of
the wretches flogged at the cart tail, the screams of the
266
FIFTY YEARS AGO
women flogged at Bridewell. I see the white faces of
the poor creatures brought out to be hung up in rows
for stealing bread; I see the fighting of the press-gang;
I see the soldiers and sailors flogged into sullen obedi-
ence; I see hatred of the Church, hatred of the govern-
ing class, hatred of the rich, hatred of employers—
where, with all these things, is there room for leisure?
Leisure means peace, contentment, plenty, wealth, and
ease. What peace, what contentment was there in
those days?
The decay of the great agricultural interest is a
calamity which has been coming upon us slowly,
though with a continually accelerated movement.
This is the reason, I suppose, why the country regards
it with so strange an apathy. It is not only that the
landlords are rapidly encountering ruin, that the
farmers are losing all their capital, and that labourers
are daily turned out of work and driven away to the
great towns ; the very existence of the country towns is
threatened; the investments which depend on rent and
estates are threatened; colleges and charities are losing
their endowments; worst of all, the rustic, the back-
bone and support of the country, who has always
supplied all our armies with all our soldiers, is fast
disappearing from the land. I confess that, if some-
thing does not happen to stay the ruin of agriculture
in these Islands, I think the end of their greatness will
not be far off. Perhaps I think and speak as a fool;
but it seems to me that a cheap loaf is dearly bought
CONCLUSION
267
if, among other blessings, it deprives the countryside
of its village folk, strong and healthy, and the empire
of its stalwart soldiers. As for the House of Lords and
the English aristocracy, they cannot survive the day
when the farms cannot even support the hands that till
the soil, and are left untilled and uncultivated.
There are, to make an end, two changes especially
for which we can never be sufficiently thankful. The
first is the decay of the old Calvinism; that gone, the
chief terror of life is gone too; the chief sting of death
is gone; the terrible, awful question which reasoning
man could not refrain from asMng is gone too.
The second change is the transference of the power
to the people. All the power that there is we have
given to the people, who are now waiting for a prophet
to teach them how best to use it. I trust I am under
no illusions; Democracy has many dangers and many
evils; but these seem to me not so bad as those others
which we have shaken off. One must not expect a
Millennium; mistakes will doubtless be committed, and
those bad ones. Besides, a change in the machinery
does not change the people who run that machinery.
There will be the tyranny of the Caucus to be faced
and trampled down; we must endure, with all his vices
and his demagogic arts, the professional politician whose
existence depends on his party; we must expect—and
ceaselessly fight against—bribery and wholesale corrup-
tion when a class of these professional politicians, poor,
268
FIFTY YEARS AGO
unscrupulous, and grasping, will be continually, by
every evil art, by every lying statement, by every
creeping baseness, endeavouring to climb unto power—
such there are already among us; we shall have to
awaken from apathy, and keep awake, those who are
anxious to avoid the arena of politics, yet, by educa-
tion, position, and natural abilities, are called upon .to
lead. Yet who, even in the face of the certain dangers,
the certain mistakes, of Democracy, shall say that great,
terrible, and most disastrous mistakes have not been
made by an Aristocracy? There is always hope where
there is freedom; let us trust in the common-sense of
the nation, and remain steadfast in that trust.
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