Days and Nights in London: or, Studies in Black and Gray

When General Grant was in Moscow lately, an acrobat placed four bottles on a high table, and on top of these a chair, which he balanced sideways while he stood on his head on one corner of it. He kept repeating this, adding one chair at a time, until he got five on top of each other, and still showed no signs of stopping; but General Grant got up and walked away, saying he would rather read the death in the papers than witness it. Our music-hall audiences are far more appreciative of the amusements provided for them.

The stage, I have said, may not escape censure. It has its illustrious exceptions, but, as Mr. Chatterton has shown us, Shakespeare means bankruptcy, and the majority of adaptations from the French are, it is admitted on all hands, not of an improving character. The way also in which the powers of the licenser are administered is, to say the least, puzzling. It is impossible to represent some subjects on the stage without injury to the morals and the manners of the spectators. In Mr. Arthur Matthison’s adaptation of “Les Lionnes Pauvres,” the sin of adultery was, it is true, held up to execration; but the license was withheld because it was deemed undesirable to turn the English theatre into a spectacular divorce court. Another prohibited play was founded on “La Petite Marquise,” in which faithlessness to the marriage vow becomes a fine art, and virtue and honour and purity in woman is held up to ridicule. A lady who has married a man very much her senior, is represented as encouraging the advances of a seducer, who, when she throws herself in his arms, to avoid the expense of having to keep her, sends her back to her husband; and yet the man who forces this filth on the stage complains that he is badly treated, and questions whether the world has ever given birth, or ever will give birth, to any conception as obscene as that of the old man in “The Pink Dominoes” – a play which, it must be remembered, has had a most successful run upon the stage. At the theatre, the same writer observes, “I have beheld a young man hidden in a chest spring out upon a woman half dressed, while from her lips broke words I shudder to repeat. In peril I have watched with bated breath an attempt to commit a rape elaborately represented before the public. In ‘Madame! attend Monsieur,’ I have seen a woman take a shirt in one hand, and a shift in the other, and, standing in the very centre of the stage, walk up to the float, deliberately put the two together, then with a wild shriek, etc.;” and here the writer stops short. No one, of course, expects people will stop away from the theatre; but why cannot the tone of the place be a little higher, and the whole style of the amusement more worthy of a civilised community? Why cannot we have a less liberal display of legs and bosoms, and more generally in the matter of wit? There have always been admirers of good acting. Why should they be ignored, and the stage lowered to the level of the country bumpkin, the imbecile youth of the day, and his female friends?

III. – OUR MUSIC-HALLS

I fear the first impression made upon the mind of the careful observer is that, as regards amusements, the mass of the people are deteriorating very rapidly, that we are more frivolous and childish and silly in this way than our fathers. One has no right to expect anything very intellectual in the way of amusements. People seek them, and naturally, as a relief from hard work. A little amusement now and then is a necessity of our common humanity, whether rich or poor, high or low, sinner or saint; and of course, in the matter of amusements, we must allow people a considerable latitude according to temperament and age and education, and the circumstances in which they are placed. In these days no one advocates a Puritanical restraint and an abstinence from the pleasures of the world. We have a perfect right to everything that can lighten the burden of life, and can make the heart rejoice. It was not a pleasant sign of the times, however, when the people found an amusement in bull-baiting, cock-fighting, boxing, going to see a man hanged; nor is it a pleasant sign of the tunes when, night after night, tens of thousands of our fellow-countrymen are forced into shrieks of laughter by exhibitions as idiotic as they are indecent. A refined and educated people will seek amusements of a refining character. If the people, on the contrary, rejoice in the slang and filthy innuendoes, and low dancing and sensational gymnastics of the music-hall, what are we to think? The music-hall is quite an invention of modern days. In times not very remote working men were satisfied with going into a public-house – having there their quantum suff. of less adulterated beer than they can get now – and sometimes they got into good society at such places. For instance, we find Dr. Johnson himself a kind of chairman of an ale-house in Essex Street, Strand, where, for a small fee, you might walk up and see the Doctor as large as life and hear him talk. At a later day the bar-parlour, or whatever it might be called, of the public-house, was the place in which men gathered to talk politics, and to study how they could better themselves. When Bamford, the Lancashire Radical, came to town in 1817, the working men were principally to be found discussing politics in all the London public-houses. One such place he visited and describes: “On first opening the door,” he writes, “the place seemed dimmed by a suffocating vapour of tobacco curling from the cups of long pipes, and issuing from the mouths of the smokers in clouds of abominable odour, like nothing in the world more than one of the unclean fogs of the streets, though the latter were certainly less offensive and probably less hurtful. Every man would have his half-pint of porter before him; many would be speaking at once, and the hum and confusion would be such as gave an idea of there being more talkers than thinkers, more speakers than listeners. Presently, ‘order’ would be called, and comparative silence restored; a speaker, stranger, or citizen would be announced with much courtesy or compliment. ‘Hear, hear, hear,’ would follow, with clapping of hands and knocking of knuckles on the tables till the half-pints danced; then a speech with compliments to some brother orator or popular statesman; next a resolution in favour of Parliamentary reform, and a speech to second it; an amendment on some minor point would follow; a seconding of that; a breach of order by some individual of warm temperament, half-a-dozen would rise to set him right, a dozen to put them down; and the vociferation and gesticulation would become loud and confounding.” Such things are out of fashion nowadays. Political discussion requires a certain amount of intellectual capacity. In London there are but few discussion forums now, and the leading one is so fearfully ventilated and so heavily charged with the fumes of stale tobacco and beer, that it is only a few who care to attend. I remember when there were three very close together and well attended. I remember also when we had a music-hall in the City. It was not a particularly lively place of resort. We used to have “The Bay of Biscay” and “The Last Rose of Summer,” and now and then a comic song, while the visitor indulged in his chop or beef-steak and the usual amount of alcoholic fluid considered necessary on such occasions. But now we have changed all that, and the simple-hearted frequenter of Dr. Johnson’s Tavern half-a-century back would be not a little astonished with the modern music-hall, which differs in toto cælo from the public-house to which in old-fashioned days a plain concert-room was attached.

A glance at the modern music-hall will show us whether we have improved on our ancestors. In one respect you will observe it is the same. Primarily it is a place in which men and women are licensed to drink. The music is an after-thought, and if given is done with the view to keep the people longer in these places and to make them drink more. Externally the music-hall is generally a public-house. It may have a separate entrance, but it is a public-house all the same, and you will find that you can easily go from one to the other. In the music-hall itself the facilities for drink are on every side. There are generally two or three bars at which young ladies are retained to dispense whatever beverages may be required. In the stalls there are little tables on which the patrons of the establishment place their glasses of grog or beer. A boy comes round with cigars and programmes for sale. All the evening waiters walk up and down soliciting your orders. It is thus to the drink, and not to the payment made for admission, that the proprietor looks to recoup himself for his outlay – and that is considerable. A popular music-hall singer makes his forty pounds a week; not, however, by singing at one place all the week, but by rushing from one to the other, and the staff kept at any music-hall of any pretensions is considerable. Internally, the music-hall is arranged as a theatre – with its stage, orchestra, pit, galleries, and boxes.

“Don’t you think,” said the manager of one of the theatres most warmly patronised by the working classes, to a clerical friend of mine, “don’t you think I am doing good in keeping these people out of the public-houses all night?”

My clerical friend was compelled to yield a very reluctant assent. In the case of the music-hall nothing of the kind can be said in extenuation. It is only a larger and handsomer and more attractive kind of drinking shop. In one respect it may be said to have an advantage. Mostly of a night, about the bars of common public-houses and gin-palaces, there are many unfortunate women drinking either by themselves or with one another, or with their male companions. In the music-hall “the unfortunate female” element – except in the more central ones, where they swarm like wolves or eagles in search of their prey – is absent, or, at any rate, not perceptible. The workman takes there his wife and family, and the working man the young woman with whom he keeps company. There can be no harm in that? you say. I am not quite sure. Let me give one case as an illustration of many similar which have come under my own observation.

A girl one evening went with a friend, an omnibus conductor, to a music-hall. She was well plied with drink, which speedily took an effect on her brain, already affected by the gas and glare, and life and bustle of the place. The girl was a fine, giddy, thoughtless girl of the maid-of-all-work order. In the morning when she awoke she found herself in a strange room with her companion of the preceding night. What was the result? She dared not go back to her place. She was equally afraid to go home. I need not ask the reader to say what became of her. Let him question the unfortunate women who crowd the leading thoroughfares of a night how they came to be what they are. It is a fact, I believe, that no censorship is applied to music-hall performances, and that the only censorship is that of the audience. The audience, be it remembered, begins to drink directly the doors are opened, and remains drinking all the time till they are closed; and you may be sure that in a mob of two, or sometimes, as is the case, three thousand people, that the higher is the seasoning and the lower the wit, and the more abundant the double entendre, the greater is the applause, and the manager, who sits in an arm-chair at the back of the orchestra and in front of the audience, takes note of that. In the days of the Kembles, Mrs. Butler notes how the tendency of actors was not so much to act well as to make points and bring down the house. Especially does she deplore Braham’s singing as much to be censured in this respect, and as unworthy of his high powers and fame. In the music-hall this lower style of acting and singing becomes a necessity. The people go to be amused, and the actor must amuse them. If he can stand on his head and sing, immense would be the applause. If he is unequal to this, he must attempt something equally absurd, or he must have dogs and monkeys come to his aid; and perhaps after all he will find himself outrivalled by a Bounding Brother or a wonderful trapeze performer. If the music-hall proprietor in a northern city had prevailed on Peace’s mistress, Miss Thompson, to have appeared on his stage, what a fortune he would have made.

The other night I went into one of the largest of our music-halls, not a hundred miles away from what was once Rowland Hill’s Chapel. There must have been more than three thousand people present. Not a seat was to be had, and there was very little standing room. I paid a shilling for admission, and was quite surprised to see how entirely the shilling seats or standing places were filled with working men, many of whom had their wives and sweethearts with them. The majority, of course, of the audience was made up of young men, who, in the course of the evening spent at least another shilling in beer and “baccy.” In these bad times, when people, in the middle ranks of life are in despair at the hard prospect before them, here were these working men spending their two hundred pounds a night at the least at this music-hall.

When I managed to squeeze my way in it was about the hour of ten, when men who have to get up early to work ought to be in bed. The performances were in full swing, and the enthusiasm of the audience, sustained and stimulated by refreshment, was immense. A female or two were the worse for liquor, but otherwise by that time the intoxicating stage had not been gained. After some very uninteresting bicycling by riders in curious dress, a man disguised as a nigger sang a lot of low doggerel about his “gal.” In the course of his singing he stopped to tell us that his “gal” had a pimple and that he liked pimples, as they were signs of a healthy constitution. He then, amidst roars of laughter, pretended to catch a flea. He liked fleas, he said; a flea came in the daylight and looked you in the face like a man as it bit you; but a bug he hated. It crawled over your body in the dark and garroted you. Then he went on to speak in a mock-heroic style of the rights of women. He “spotted” some naughty ones present – an allusion received with laughter. He loved them all, male or female, married or single, and advised all the young men present to get married as soon as possible and then hang themselves. Ballet dancing of the usual character followed, and I came away.

It is said a paper recently sent a special correspondent to describe a London music-hall; the description was refused admission into the paper on the ground of indecency, and I can well believe it.

As to the profit made by the music-halls there can be no doubt. Take for instance the London Pavilion. I find the following newspaper paragraph: Sir Henry A. Hunt, C.B., the arbitrator in the case of the London Pavilion Music Hall, has sent in his award. M. Loibl claimed £147,000 for the freehold and goodwill, the building being required for the new street from Piccadilly to Oxford Street. The award is £109,300. The freehold cost M. Loibl £8,000, and his net profits in 1875 were £10,978; in 1876, £12,083; and in 1877, £14,189. Let me give another illustration. When the proprietor of Evans’ Supper Rooms was refused his license, his loss was estimated at £10,000 per annum. It surely evidently is more ready to pay liberally for the gratification of its senses, than for the promotion of its virtues.

IV. – MORE ABOUT MUSIC-HALLS

The journeyman engineer tells us one day as he was walking along with a mate in the country, he spoke of the beauty of the surrounding scenery and of the magnificent sight which met their eyes. “Oh, blow the sights of the scenery,” said his companion, “the sight for me is a public-house.” It is the same everywhere. I was once travelling in a third-class carriage from Newry to Belfast, when I heard the most atrocious exclamations from a party of young men seated at the other end, all offering to break each other’s heads in the name of the Holy Father. On my intimating that it was a pity young men should thus get into that state to a respectable farmer by my side, his only reply was, “Sure, what’s the good of a drop of drink if it don’t raise something?” Once upon a time I spent a Sunday in a little village inn in North Wales. To my disgust there stumbled into the little parlour a young man, dressed respectably, who had evidently been heavily drinking. As he lay there with his stertorous snore, all unconscious of the wonder and the beauty of the opening day, it seemed to me that it was a sad misuse of the term to say, as his friends would, that he had been in search of amusement. As a reverend divine took his seat in a train the other day there stumbled into it a couple of young fellows, one with his face very much bruised and cut about – who soon went off to sleep – while his companion explained to the minister that they had both of them been enjoying themselves. In the more densely populated and poorer districts of the metropolis there is an immense deal of this kind of enjoyment.

To see the people enjoying themselves, I went the other night down the Whitechapel and Commercial Road district. As I turned the corner of Brick Lane I asked a tradesman of the better class if he could direct me to a very celebrated music-hall in that neighbourhood. “It is over that way,” said he with a strong expression of disgust. “It’s a regular sink of iniquity,” he added. As I was not aware of that, I merely intimated my regret that it was so largely patronised by working men, and that so much money was thus wasted, which might be applied to a better purpose. “Well, you see,” said my informant, “they don’t think of that – they know there is the hospital for them when they are ill.” On my remarking that I was going to Brick Lane prior to visiting the music-hall, he intimated that I had better button up my coat, and when I said that when out on such expeditions as I was then engaged in, I never carried a watch and chain worth stealing, he remarked that if the people did not rob me, at any rate they might knock me down. However, encouraged by his remarks that the people were not so bad as they were, I went on my way.

Apparently the improvement of which my informant spoke was of a very superficial character. Coming from the Aldgate Station at the early hour of six, I found every drinking shop crammed, including the gaudy restaurant at the station, and descending to the filthiest gin-palace, there were the men drinking, and if they were not drinking they were loafing about in groups of by no means pleasant aspect. When at a later hour I returned, the sight was still sadder, as hordes of wild young girls, just emancipated from the workshop, were running up and down the streets, shrieking and howling as if mad. As most of the shops were then closed, the streets seemed almost entirely given over to these girls and their male friends. In the quarter to which I bent my steps the naval element was predominating, and there were hundreds of sailors cruising, as it were, up and down, apparently utterly unconscious that their dangers at sea were nothing to those on land. Men of all creeds and of all nations were to be encountered in search of amusement, while hovered around some of the most degraded women it is possible to imagine – women whose bloated faces and forms were enough to frighten anyone, and to whom poor Jack, in a state of liquor, is sure to become a prey. To the low public-houses of this district dancing-rooms are attached, and in them, as we may well suppose, vice flourishes and shows an unabashed front. I must say it was with a feeling of relief that I found a harbour of refuge in the music-hall. Compared with the streets, I must frankly confess it was an exchange for the better. On the payment of a shilling I was ushered by a most polite attendant into a very handsome hall, where I had quite a nice little leather arm-chair to sit in, and where at my ease I could listen to the actors and survey the house. The place was by no means crowded, but there was a good deal of the rough element at the back, to which, in the course of the evening’s amusement, the chairman had more than once to appeal. From the arrangements made around me, it was evident that there was the same provision which I have remarked elsewhere for the drinking habits of the people. There was a side bar at which the actors and actresses occasionally appeared on their way to or from the stage, and affably drank with their friends and admirers. The other day I happened to hear a thief’s confession, and what do you think it was? That it was his mingling with the singers off the stage that had led to his fall. He was evidently a smart, clever, young fellow, and had thought it a sign of his being a lad of spirit to stand treat to such people. Of course he could not afford it, and, of course, he had a fond and foolish mother, who tried to screen him in his downward career. The result was he embezzled his employer’s money, and, when that was discovered, imprisonment and unavailing remorse were the result. To the imagination of raw lads there is something wonderfully attractive in the music-hall singer, as, with hat on one side and in costume of the loudest character, and with face as bold as brass, he sings, “Slap, bang! here we are again!” or takes off some popular theatrical performer or some leading actor on a grander stage. On the night in question one singer had the audacity to assume as much as possible the character of the Premier of our day, not forgetting the long gray coat by which the Earl of Beaconsfield is known in many quarters. Comic singing, relieved by dancing, seemed to be the staple amusement of the place, and when one of the female performers indecently elevated a leg, immense was the applause. All the while the performances were going on, the waiters were supplying their customers with drink, and one well-dressed woman – evidently very respectable – managed a couple of glasses of grog in a very short while. But mostly the people round me were quiet topers, who smoked and drank with due decorum, and who seemed to use the place as a kind of club, where they could sit comfortably for the night, and talk and listen, and smoke or drink, at their pleasure. It is hardly necessary to say that the majority of the audience were young men. The attendance was not crowded. Perhaps in the east of London the pressure of bad times is being felt. The mock Ethiopian element, next to the dancing, was the feature of the evening’s amusements which elicited the most applause. It is a curious thing that directly a man lampblacks his face and wears a woollen wig, and talks broken English, he at once becomes a popular favourite.

A few nights after I found myself in quite another part of London – in a music-hall that now calls itself a theatre of varieties. It was a very expensive place, and fitted up in a very costly manner. You enter through an avenue which is made to look almost Arcadian. Here and there were little rustic nooks in which Romeo and Juliet would make love over a cheerful glass. Flunkeys as smart almost as Lord Mayors’ footmen took your orders. It was late when I put in an appearance, and it was useless to try and get a seat. It was only in the neighbourhood of the refreshment bar that I could get even standing room, and being a little taller than some of the stunted half-grown lads around me, could look over their heads to the gaudy and distant stage. I did not hear much of the dialogue. Old Astley, who years before had lived in that neighbourhood, and knew the art of catering for the people, used to remark when the interest of the piece seemed to flag, “Cut the dialogue and come to the ’osses,” and here the stage direction evidently was to set the ballet-girls at work, and it seemed to me that the principal aim of the piece was to show as many female arms and legs as was possible. I am not of Dr. Johnson’s opinion that it is indecent for a woman to expose herself on the stage, but I was, I own, shocked with the heroine of the evening, whose too solid form in the lime-light – which was used, apparently, to display all her beauties – was arrayed in a costume, which, at a distance, appeared to be of Paradisaical simplicity, more fitted for the dressing-room of the private mansion than for the public arena of the stage. There was, I doubt not, animated dialogue, and the swells in the stalls, I daresay, enjoyed it; but for my shilling I could see little, and hear less; and weary of the perpetual flourish of female arms and legs, I came away. What I did most distinctly hear were the orders at the bar for pale ale and grog, and the cry of the waiter, as he pushed on with his tray well filled, of “By your leave,” to the crowd on each side – all of whom had, of course, a cigar or short pipe in their mouths, and were evidently young men of the working class. That evening’s amusement, I am sure, must have taken some two or three hundred pounds out of their pockets. But I saw no one the worse for liquor, though the public-houses all round were crowded with drunken men and women; for the morrow was Sunday, and who can refuse the oppressed and over-taxed working man his right to spend all his week’s wages on a Saturday night?