Dickens's England (35 page)

TOM
inquired of the
covess
of the
ken
(who, by-the-by, was quite pleased with the
CORINTHIAN,
from the very liberal manner in which he had dropped his
BLUNT
at her house), the names of the dancers, of whom he had observed that –

Sure such a pair were never seen!

‘
Vy
, sir,' replied Mrs Mace, ‘that
are
black
voman,
who you
sees
dancing with
nasty Bob,
the coal-
vhipper
, is called
African Sall,
because she comes from foreign parts; and the little
mungo
in the corner, holding his arms out, is her child; yet I
doesn't
think
as how,
for all that,
SALL
has got any husband; but,
la
! sir, it's a poor heart that never rejoices,
an't
it, sir?' Our heroes had kept it up so gaily in dancing, drinking, etc., that the friend of the
CORINTHIAN
thought it was time to be
missing;
but, on mustering the
TRIO, LOGIC
was not to be found. A jack tar, about
three sheets in the wind,
who had been keeping up the
shindy
the whole of the evening with them, laughing, asked if it was the gentleman in the
green barnacles
[spectacles] their honours wanted, as it was very likely he had taken a voyage to
Africa
in the
Sally,
or else he was out on a cruise with the
Flashy Nance;
but he would have him beware of
squalls,
as they were not very
sound
in their rigging! It was considered useless to look after
LOGIC
, and a
rattler
was immediately ordered to the door; when
JERRY
,
TOM
and his friend bid adieu to
ALL-MAX
.

[Tom and Jerry here are the remote ancestors of the modern cartoon characters.]

Pierce Egan,
Life in London
(1821)

ANIMAL SPIRITS

‘What's to pay?' enquired Mr Jorrocks, as he reached the landing, of a forbidding-looking one-eyed hag, sitting in a little curtained corner partitioned from the scene of action by a frowsy green counterpane.

‘Oh, Mr Bowker's free here,' observed Bill to his gentle wife, drawing aside the curtain and exhibiting the interior. What a scene presented itself! From the centre of the unceiled, hugely-raftered roof of a spacious building hung an iron hoop, stuck round with various lengths of tallow candles, lighting an oval pit, in which two savage bulldogs were rolling and tearing each other about, under the auspices of their coatless masters, who stood at either end applauding their exertions. A vast concourse of ruffianly spectators occupied the benches rising gradually from the pit towards the rafters, along which some were carelessly stretched, lost in ecstasy at the scene below.

Ponderous draymen, in coloured plush breeches, with their enormous calves clad in dirty white stockings, sat with their red-capped heads resting on their hands, or uproariously applauding as their favourite got the turn. Smithfield drovers, with their badges and knotty clubs; huge-coated hackney coachmen; coatless butchers' boys; dingy dustmen, with their great sou'westers; sailors, with their pipes; and Jews with oranges, were mingled with Cyprians [tarts] of the lowest order, dissolute boys, swell pick-pockets, and a few simple countrymen. At the far end of the loft, a partition concealed from view bears, badgers, and innumerable bulldogs, while ‘gentlemen of the fancy' sat with the great round heads and glaring eyeballs of others between their knees, straining for their turn in the pit. The yells and screams of the spectators, the baying of the dogs, the growling of the bears, the worrying of the combatants, caused a shudder through the frames of Mr Jorrocks and the Yorkshireman.

A
volley of yells and plaudits rent the building as the white dog pinned the brindled one for the fourteenth time, and the lacerated animal refused to come to the scratch, and as the pit was cleared for a fresh ‘set-to', Slender Billy, with a mildness of manner contrasting with the rudeness of the scene, passed our party on, and turned out two coal-heavers and a ticket-porter, to place them advantageously near the centre. This was a signal for renewed uproar.

‘Make way for the real swells wot pay!' roared a stentorian voice from the rafters.

‘Crikey, it's the Lord Mayor!' responded a shrill one from below. ‘Does your mother know you're out?' enquired a squeaking voice just behind.

‘There's a brace of plummy ones!' exclaimed another, as Bowker and Jorrocks stood up together.

‘Luff, there! luff! be serene!' exclaimed Slender Billy, stepping into the centre of the pit, making a sign that had the effect of restoring order on the instant. Three cheers for the Captain were then called for by some friend of Bowker's, so he opened his pea-jacket; and while they were in course of payment, two more bulldogs entered the pit, and the sports were resumed. After several dog-fights, Billy's accomplished daughter lugged in a bear, which Billy fastened by his chain to a ring in the centre of the pit.

‘Any gentleman,' said he, looking round, ‘may have a run at this 'ere hanimal for sixpence'; but though many dogs struggled to get at him, they almost all turned tail on finding themselves solus with Bruin. Those that did seize were speedily disposed of, and, the company being satisfied, the bear took his departure, and Billy announced the badger as the next performer.

R.S. Surtees,
Handley Cross
(1854)

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING

(I)

On Saturday evening, the 24th of April, I went . . . to visit the low places' resort of the working classes of Leeds. We started soon after nine o'clock, and visited about a score of beer and public houses and as many lodging houses. We found the former crowded with lads and girls – a motley assemblage of thieves and youth of both sexes from the factories.

There were, on an average, about thirty in each house, and in each case ranged on the benches round the walls of the room, with a blazing fire, and well-lighted. I am confident that, of the 600 persons I saw in these places, not above one quarter, if so many, were turned of 25 years of age, and at least two-thirds were under age. In the beer-houses were several more children. In almost all there was a sprinkling of professed prostitutes. In some, perhaps a third of them, several men and boys were pointed out to me as professed thieves. . . .

In some of these places we found a fiddle or some other instrument being played: these places were thronged as full as they could hold. In another dancing was going on in a good-sized room upstairs, where I found a dozen couples performing a country dance; the females were all factory girls and prostitutes; obscene attitudes and language accompany and form the chief zest to this amusement.

Not one of these dancers, boys or girls, was above 20 or 21 years of age, and most of them 16 and 17. The prostitutes were easily distinguished from the factory girls by their tawdry finery and the bareness of their necks, although the costume and head-dress of the factory girls is not altogether dissimilar. In many of these places there was convenience upstairs for the cohabitation of the company below. . . .

The lodging houses we visited were situated chiefly up narrow alleys running out of the Kirkgate, and are intermixed with working-class brothels. These alleys are wholly without sewerage; there is a gutter down the middle, but no underground channel whatever; they are in a filthy state.

Report by C.J. Symons,
Parliamentary Papers,
Vol. XIV (1843)

(II)

Sunday, March 14th. Walked about the town [Wolverhampton], streets and outskirts, during church-time. Met men, singly and in groups, wandering about in their working caps or aprons, or with dirty shirtsleeves tucked up, and black smithy-smutted arms and grimed faces. Some appeared to have been up all night – probably at work to recover the time lost by their idleness in the early part of the week; perhaps drinking. Lots of children seen in groups at the end of courts, alleys and narrow streets – playing, or sitting upon the edge of the common dirt-heap of the place, like a row of sparrows and very much of that colour, all chirruping away . . .

Boys fighting; bad language and bloody noses. Women, in their working dresses, standing about at doors or ends of passages, with folded arms. Little boys sitting in holes in the ground, playing at mining with a small pick-axe. Girls playing about in various ways; all dirty, except one group of about half-a-dozen girls, near Little's Lane, of the age of from 9 to 15, who are washed and dressed, and are playing with continual screams and squeaks of delight, or jumping from the mounds of dirt, dung, and rubbish-heaps which are collected there, and cover a considerable space. . . .

Adults seated smoking, or with folded arms, on the threshold of the door, or inside their houses, evidently not intending to wash and shave. Many of them sitting or standing in the house, with an air of lazy vacancy – they did not know what to do with their leisure or with themselves. One group of five adults very decently dressed; they were leaning over the rails of a pig-sty, all looking down upon the pigs, as if in deep and silent meditation – with the pigs' snouts just visible, all pointing up to the meditative faces, expecting something to come of it. No working men walking with their wives, either to or from church or chapel, or for the sake of the walk – no brothers and sisters. Until the issuing-forth of the children from the Sunday schools, with all those adults who had attended some place of worship, nothing seen but squalid disorder, indifference and utter waste, in self-disgust, of the very day of which, in every sense, they should make the most. With all this, no merriment – no laughter – no smiles. All dullness and vacuity. No sign of joyous animal spirits, except with the girls on the dirt-heap.

R.J. Horne,
Parliamentary Papers,
Vol. XV (1843)

FROM ‘JULLIEN'S GRAND POLKA'

Oh! sure the world is all run mad,

The lean, the fat, the gay, the sad, –

All swear such pleasure they never had,

Till they did learn the Polka.

C
HORUS

First cock up your right leg so,

Balance on your left great toe,

Stamp your heels and off you go,

To the original Polka. Oh!

There's Mrs Tibbs the tailor's wife,

With Mother Briggs is sore at strife,

As if the first and last of life,

Was but to learn the Polka.

Quadrilles and Waltzes all give way,

For Jullien's Polkas bear the sway,

The chimney sweeps on the first of May,

Do in London dance the Polka. . . .

A Frenchman he has arrived from France

To teach the English how to dance,

And fill his pocket – ‘what a chance' –

   By gammoning the Polka. . . .       [‘soft-selling']

But now my song is near its close,

A secret, now, I will disclose,

Don't tell, for it's beneath the rose,

A humbug is the Polka.

Then heigh for humbug France or Spain,

Who brings back our old steps again,

Which John Bull will applaud amain,

Just as he does the Polka.

Anon., music-hall song, mid-century

VAUXHALL PLEASURE GARDENS

The truth is, that of all the delights of the Gardens; of the hundred thousand
extra
lamps, which were always lighted; the fiddlers in cocked hats, who played ravishing melodies under the gilded cockle-shell in the midst of the gardens; the singers, both of comic and sentimental ballads, who charmed the ears there; the country dances, formed by bouncing cockneys and cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping, thumping and laughter; the signal that announced that Madame Saqui was about to mount skyward on a slack-rope ascending to the stars; the hermit that always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, so favourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout handed about by the people in the shabby old liveries; and the twinkling boxes, in which the happy feasters made-believe to eat slices of almost invisible ham; of all these things . . . Captain William Dobbin did not take the slightest notice.

He carried about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and having attended under the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs Salmon performed the Battle of Borodino (a savage cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had lately met with his Russian reverses), Mr Dobbin tried to hum it as he walked away.

William Makepeace Thackeray,
Vanity Fair
(1848)

CREMORNE PLEASURE GARDENS

Cremorne on a Derby night baffles description; progress round the dancing platform was almost impossible. The ‘Hermit's Cave' and the ‘Fairy Bower' were filled to repletion, and to pass the private boxes was to run the gauntlet of a quartern loaf or a dish of cutlets at one's head. Fun fast and furious reigned supreme, during which the smaller fry of shop-boys and hired dancers pirouetted within the ring with their various partners. But as time advanced, and the wine circulated, the advent of detachments of roysterers bespoke a not-distant row. A Derby night without a row was, in those days, an impossibility, and the night that our contingent started from the Raleigh was no exception to the rule. No man in his senses had brought a watch, and if his coat was torn and his hat smashed, what matter? . . .

The expected dénouement was not long in coming, and in a second, and without apparent warning, sticks were crashing down on top hats, tumblers flying in every direction, and fists coming in contact with anything or anybody whose proximity seemed to suggest it.

The fiddlers had meanwhile made a hasty retreat, the gas was put out, and with the exception here and there of an illumination (a dip steeped in oil) the free fight continued till a bevy of police appeared upon the scene.