Dickens's England (34 page)

Theatres of different kinds provided more popular entertainment. Until 1834, only the Haymarket, Covent Garden and Drury Lane could perform ‘legit.' full-length plays. More ‘popular' theatres such as the Adelphi, the Lyceum and the Coburg (now The Old Vic) provided melodramas, farces, harlequinades, burlesques and burlettas (one-acters with songs); the middle classes generally avoided such theatres because of the rowdy audiences and ubiquitous prostitutes. Lower still were the ‘penny gaffs', vulgar halls for the younger, poorer working class. Most successful, especially for the lower classes, were the music halls, that developed from concert rooms attached to public houses (one might note here how porter and gin were great, if destructive, solaces; laudanum – opium – was used surprisingly widely, by all classes).

The first true music hall was Charles Morton's The Canterbury in Lambeth in 1854, offering drink, food, comedy and song; the music hall also spread rapidly in the East End, and then to the West End: the Alhambra in Leicester Square in 1861, the London Pavilion in Piccadilly. By 1866, there were some thirty large London halls seating 1,000 or more, and some 200 smaller halls. Three hundred were to be found elsewhere: 10 in Sheffield, 9 in Birmingham, 8 each in Manchester and Leeds.

Popular throughout the middle of the century were the various entertainment gardens, such as the Vauxhall and Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea; these offered gardens, sideshows, spectacular or extraordinary displays (tightrope walkers, hot-air balloons, dioramas; unforgettably, the Montpelier Teagardens in Walworth offered a cricket match between eleven one-legged and eleven one-armed pensioners from Greenwich Hospital), as well as restaurants and dining alcoves, dance floors, shady walks and opportunities to meet sexual partners. Eventually they became too disreputable: the Cremorne closed in 1877.

Also providing ‘fresh air and fun' were boat-trips around the coast or down the Thames, and visits to the seaside (Brighton for the raffish, Broadstairs for Dickens and the sober middle classes, Margate and Blackpool for the workers); swimming was becoming popular – until at least the middle of the century men might bathe naked, while ladies wore voluminous bathing costumes. Excursions were organised by Thomas Cook, who in 1841 arranged a special train from Leicester (escaping a rowdy race meeting) to attend a temperance rally in Loughborough; by 1845 he could offer a pleasure trip to Liverpool, by 1855 to Calais to go to the Paris Exhibition, and by 1856, a Grand Tour in Europe.

Sports also were organised by the respectable middle classes, repressing traditional activities such as parish feasts and fairs, and cruel sports (bull and bear-baiting were proscribed in 1835, cockfighting in 1849, badger-baiting in 1850). Bare-knuckle fighting was slowly disciplined, with the Queensberry Rules in 1867. Order was brought to football, with Football Association rules established in 1863, and Lawn Tennis in 1874; the county cricket championship began in 1873.

With cheaper food, better pay, shorter working days and weeks, life had become easier and fuller for everyone.

Taking the average Englishman and the average Frenchman, the former goes oftener to the theatre, has more holidays, laughs more and spends more evenings where something beside a drink and smoke are to be had for his money, than the latter; and yet the average Frenchman is mistakenly held up as a devotee of amusement.

S. Fiske,
English Photographs by an American
(1869)

* * *

THE POET IN THE WORLD

Nay, if there's room for poets in this world

A little overgrown (I think there is),

Their sole work is to represent the age,

Their age, not Charlemagne's – this live, throbbing age,

That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,

And spends more passion, more heroic heat,

Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,

Than Roland with his knights at Roncesvalles.

To flinch from modern varnish, coat or flounce,

Cry out for togas and the picturesque,

Is fatal – foolish too. King Arthur's self

Was commonplace to Lady Guenever;

And Camelot to minstrels seemed as flat

As Fleet Street to our poets.

Never flinch,

But still, unscrupulously epic, catch

Upon the burning lava of a song

The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted Age;

That, when the next shall come, the men of that

May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say

‘Behold – behold the paps we all have sucked!

This bosom seems to beat still, or at least

It sets ours beating; this is living art,

Which thus presents and thus records true life.'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Aurora Leigh
(1857)

PROPER ART

Mr Podsnap's world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively observe, ‘Not English!' when Presto! with a flourish of the arm, and a flush of the face, they were swept away. Elsewise, the world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter past, breakfasted at nine, went to the City at ten, came home at half-past five, and dined at seven. Mr Podsnap's notions of the Arts in their integrity might have been stated thus. Literature: large print, respectively descriptive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five and dining at seven. Painting and Sculpture: models and portraits representing Professors of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five and dining at seven. Music: a respectable performance (without variations) on stringed and wind instruments, sedately expressive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five and dining at seven. Nothing else to be permitted to those same vagrants the Arts, on pain of excommunication. Nothing else To Be – anywhere! . . .

A certain institution in Mr Podsnap's mind which he called ‘the young person' may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was that, according to Mr Podsnap, she seemed always liable to burst into blushes when there was no need at all. There appeared to be no line of demarcation between the young person's excessive innocence, and another person's guiltiest knowledge. Take Mr Podsnap's word for it, and the soberest tints of drab, white, lilac and grey, were all flaming red to this troublesome bull of a young person.

Charles Dickens,
Our Mutual Friend
(1865)

FICTIONS FOR HEALTHY MINDS

[The sanatorium provides] ‘Only such novels as I have selected and perused myself, in the first instance,' said the doctor. ‘Nothing powerful, ma'am! There may be plenty that is painful in real life – but for that very reason we don't want it in books. The English novelist who enters my house (no foreign novelist will be admitted) must understand his art as the healthy-minded English reader understands it in our time. . . . All we want of him is – occasionally to make us laugh; and invariably to make us comfortable.'

Wilkie Collins,
Armadale
(1877)

QUICKENED SENSE OF LIFE

The service of philosophy, and of religion and culture as well, to the human spirit, is to startle it into a sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us – for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience but experience itself is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How can we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest numbers of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Failure is to form habits; for habit is relative to a stereotyped world; meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to human knowledge that seems, by a lifted horizon, to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange flowers, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliance of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy. . . .

High passions give one this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, political or religious enthusiasm, or the ‘enthusiasm of humanity'. Only, be sure it is passion, that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art's sake has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.

Walter Pater,
Studies in the History of the Renaissance
(1877)

ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY

‘You promised me, if you recollect,' said Tom to his friend, ‘that you would show me a bit of fun at this end of the Town; and we cannot have a better opportunity than the present moment.' ‘It shall be so,' replied the gentleman, smiling; ‘and as you have your
‘Highflyers'
at
ALMACK'S
[exclusive assembly hall] at the West End, we have also some
‘choice creatures'
at
ALL MAX
(vulgarly called
gin
) in the East; where you shall be in less than half an hour to judge for yourself.' . . .

Ceremonies
were not in use, and therefore no struggle took place at
ALL MAX
for the master of them. The parties
paired off
according to
fancy;
the eye was pleased in the choice, and nothing thought of about birth and distinction. All was
happiness,
everybody free and easy, and freedom of expression allowed to the very echo. The group motley indeed: Lascars, blacks, jack tars, coal-heavers, dustmen, women of colour, old and young, and a sprinkling of remnants of once fine girls, etc., were all
jigging
together, provided the
teaser of the catgut
was not
bilked
of his
duce
[twopence].
Gloves
might have been laughed at, as dirty hands produced no
squeamishness
on the heroines in the dance, and the scene changed as often as a pantomime, from the continual introduction of new characters.
Heavy wet
[porter, beer] was the cooling beverage, but frequently overtaken by
flashes of lightning
[gin]. The
covey
was no
scholard,
as he asserted, and therefore he held the pot in one hand and took the
blunt
with the other, to prevent the trouble of
chalking
[writing a bill] or making mistakes.
Cocker's
arithmetic in his bar was a dead letter, and the
publican's ledger
only waste paper;
book-keeping
did not belong to his
consarn;
yet no one could
read
his customers better than Mr Mace. (It is rather a curious coincidence, that the name of the proprietor of
ALL MAX
should be
Mace,
which is a slang term for
imposition
or
robbery!).
. . . On the sudden appearance of our ‘swell
TRIO'
and the
CORINTHIAN'S
friend among those unsophisticated sons and daughters of Nature, their
ogles
were on the roll, under an apprehension that the
beaks
[police] were out on the
nose;
but it was soon made ‘all right' by one of the
mollishers
[tarts] whispering, loud enough to be heard by most of the party, ‘that she understood
as how
the
gemmen
had only dropped in for to have a
bit of a spree,
and there was no doubt they
voud
stand a
drap
of
summat
to make them all
cumfurable,
and likewise prove good customers to the
crib
.' On the
office
being giving, the
stand-still
was instantly removed, and the
kidwys
and
kiddiesses
were footing the
double shuffle
against each other with as much
gig
as the
‘We we-e-e-e-eps'
exert themselves on the first of May [when young chimney sweeps dressed up and sang].

The orders of the
CORINTHIAN
had been obeyed like
winking
by the
knowing
Mr Mace; and the ‘fair ones' had, without hesitation,
vetted
both eyes with a
drap
of the right sort, and many of them had likewise proved jolly enough to have
tossed off
a third and a fourth glass. Lots of
MAX
were also placed on the table, and the
coveys
were not shy or behind-hand in helping themselves. The
spree
and the
fun
were increasing every minute, and the
‘TRIO'
made the most of it, with as much pleasure and satisfaction as the lowest
mud-lark
amongst the group.
LOGIC
(as the Plate represents) appeared as happy as a
sand-boy
. . . and was listening to the
jargon
of
Black
SALL,
who was seated on his right knee, and very liberally treating the
Oxonian
with repeated
chaste
salutes; whilst
Flashy
NANCE
(who had
gammoned
[cajoled] more seamen out of their
vills
and power than the ingenuity or palaver of twenty of the most knowing of the frail sisterhood could effect) was occupying
LOGIC'S
left knee, with her arm round his neck, laughing at the
chaffing
of the
‘Lady in black'
as she termed her . . .