Dickens's England (36 page)

Sauve qui peut
was then the word, and helter-skelter, old and young, Jew and Gentile, soiled doves and hereditary legislators dashed like the proverbial herd of swine towards the gates. Often did this stampede continue for a while, till straggling cabs, on the way to their stables, picked up the stragglers, and landed them in less disturbed districts. But the night was by no means over, not certainly the Derby night for roisterers like Lord Hastings.

‘We'll have a rasher of bacon, Bobby,' he explained, as they descended in Piccadilly Circus. ‘Why, it's barely five o'clock.'

One of the Old Brigade (D. Shaw),
London in the Sixties
(1908)

DERBY DAY

Races at Epsom: it is the Derby day, a day of jollification; Parliament does not sit; for three days all the talk has been about horses and their trainers. . . .

Epsom course is a large green plain, slightly undulating; on one side are reared three public stands and several other smaller ones. In front, tents, hundreds of shops, temporary stables under canvas, and an incredible confusion of carriages, of horses, of horsemen, of private omnibuses; there are perhaps 200,000 human heads here. Nothing beautiful or even elegant . . .

It is a carnival, in fact; they have come to amuse themselves in a noisy fashion. Everywhere are gypsies, comic singers and dancers disguised as negroes, shooting galleries . . . musicians of all sorts; and the most astonishing row of cabs, barouches, droskies, four-in-hands, with pies, cold meats, melons, fruits, wines, especially champagne. They unpack; they proceed to eat and drink; that restores the creature and excites him; coarse joy and open laughter are the result of a full stomach. In presence of this ready-made feast the aspect of the poor is pitiable to behold . . . Nearly all of them resemble wretched, hungry, beaten, mangy dogs, waiting for a bone, without hope of finding much on it. They arrived on foot during the night, and count upon dining off the crumbs from the great feast. . . .

However, a bell rings and the race is about to begin. The three or four hundred policemen clear the course; the stands are filled . . . The jockeys in red, in blue, in yellow, in mauve, form a small group apart, like a swarm of butterflies which has alighted. . . . Thirty-four run; after three false starts they are off; fifteen or twenty keep together, the others are in small groups . . . There is one imposing moment, when the horses are not more than two hundred paces off; in a second the speed becomes suddenly perceptible, and the cluster of riders and horses rushes onward, this time like a tempest. A horse of which little is known has won, and very narrowly; the betting against him was 40 to 1 . . .

We descend; there is hustling and crushing in the staircases, at the refreshment counters; but most of the carriages are provisioned for the day, and the people feast in the open air in small knots. Good humour and unreserved merriment . . . towards evening the carnival is in full swing. Twenty-four gentlemen triumphantly range on their omnibus seventy-five bottles which they have emptied. Groups pelt each other with chicken-bones, lobster-shells, pieces of turf. . . . There are humorous incidents: three men and a lady are standing erect in their carriage; the horses move on, they all tumble, the lady with her legs in the air; peals of laughter follow. . . . Gentlemen approach a carriage containing ladies and young girls, and stand shamefully [i.e., to urinate] against the wheels; the mother tries to drive them away with her parasol. One of our party who remained till midnight saw many horrors which I cannot describe; the animal nature had full vent.

Hippolyte Taine (trans. W.F. Rae),
Notes on England
(1872)

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR

[Held in Smithfield every August, for hundreds of years, until it was closed down in 1855.]

. . . What a shock

For eyes and ears! What anarchy and din,

Barbarian and infernal – a phantasma,

Monstrous in colour, motion, shape, sight, sound!

Below, the open space, through every nook

Of the wide area, twinkles, is alive

With heads; the midway region, and above,

Is thronged with staring pictures and huge scrolls,

Dumb proclamations of the Prodigies;

With chattering monkeys, dangling from their poles,

And children whirling in their roundabouts;

With those that stretch the neck and strain the eyes,

And crack the voice in rivalship, the crowd

Inviting; with buffoons against buffoons

Grimacing, writhing, screaming – him who grinds

The hurdy-gurdy, at the fiddle weaves,

Rattles the saltbox, thumps the kettledrum,

And him who at the trumpet puffs his cheeks,

The silver-collared Negro with his timbrel,

Equestrians, tumblers, women, girls and boys,

Blue-breeched, pink-vested, with high-towering plumes.

All moveables of wonder, from all parts,

Are here – Albinos, painted Indians, dwarfs,

The Horse of knowledge and the learned Pig,

The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,

Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl,

The Bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,

The Waxwork, Clockwork, all the marvellous craft

Of modern Merlins, wild Beasts, Puppet-shows,

All out-o'-the-way, far-fetched, perverted things,

All freaks of nature, all Promethean thoughts

Of man, his dullness, madness, and their feats

All jumbled up together, to compose

A Parliament of Monsters. Tents and Booths

Meanwhile, as if the whole were one vast mill,

Are vomiting, receiving on all sides,

Men, Women, three-years' children, babes in arms.

Oh, blank confusion! true epitome

Of what the mighty City is herself . . .

William Wordsworth,
The Prelude
(1850)

THEATRE AUDIENCES, AND A STAR

The most striking thing to a foreigner in English theatres is the unheard-of coarseness and brutality of the audiences. The consequence of this is that the higher and more civilised classes go only to the Italian Opera, and very rarely visit their national theatre. . . . English freedom here degenerates into the rudest licence, and it is not uncommon in the midst of the most affecting part of a tragedy, or the most charming ‘cadenza' of a singer, to hear some coarse expression shouted from the galleries in a stentor voice. . . . It is also no rarity for someone to throw the fragments of his ‘gouté', which do not always consist of orange-peels alone, without the smallest ceremony on the heads of people in the pit, or to shail them with singular dexterity into the boxes; while others hang their coats and waistcoats over the gallery, and sit in shirt-sleeves . . .

Another cause for the absence of respectable families is the resort of hundreds of those unhappy women with whom London swarms. . . . Between the acts they fill the large and handsome ‘foyers' and exhibit their boundless effrontery in the most revolting manner. . . . They beg in the most shameless manner, and a pretty, elegantly dressed girl does not disdain to take a shilling or a sixpence, which she instantly spends in a glass of rum, like the meanest beggar. And these are the scenes, I repeat, which are exhibited in the national theatre of England, where the highest dramatic talent of the country should be developed; where immortal artists like Garrick, Mrs Siddons, Miss O'Neil, have captured the public by their genius, and where such actors as Kean, Kemble and Young still adorn the stage. . . .

[3 December 1826]

The play concluded with a melodrama, in which a large Newfoundland dog really acted admirably; he defended a banner for a long time, pursued the enemy, and afterwards came on the stage wounded, lame, and bleeding, and died in the most masterly manner, with a last wag of the tail that was really full of genius. You would have sworn that the good beast knew at least as well as any of his human companions what he was about.

Prince von Pückler-Muskau (trans. S. Austin),
Tour by a German Prince
(1832)

POPULAR DRAMA

There is a range of imagination in most of us, which no amount of steam-engines will satisfy; and which The-great-exhibition-of-the-works-of-industry-of-all-nations itself will probably leave unappeased. . . . Joe Whelks, of the New Cut, Lambeth, is not much of a reader, has no great store of books, no very commodious room to read in, no very decided inclination to read, and no power at all of presenting vividly before his mind's eye what he reads about. But, put Joe in the gallery of the Victoria Theatre; show him doors and windows in the scene that will open and shut, and that people can get in and out of; tell him a story with these aids, and by the aid of live men and women dressed up, confiding to him their innermost secret, in voices audible half a mile off; and Joe will unravel a story through all its entanglements, and sit there as long after midnight as you have anything left to show him. . . .

A few weeks ago we went to one of Mr Whelks's favourite theatres, to see an attractive melodrama called
MAY MORNING, OR THE MYSTERY OF
1715,
AND THE MURDER
! We had an idea that the former of these titles might refer to the month in which either the Mystery or the Murder happened, but we found it to be the name of the heroine, the pride of Keswick Vale; who was ‘called May Morning' (after a common custom among the English peasantry) ‘from her bright eyes and merry laugh'. Of this young lady, it may be observed, in passing, that she subsequently sustained every possible calamity of human existence in a white muslin gown with blue tucks; and that she did every conceivable and inconceivable thing with a pistol that could anyhow be effected by that description of firearms. . . .

The curtain rose, and we were presently in possession of the following particulars. Sir George Elmore, a melancholy Baronet . . . in . . . an advanced stage of indigestion . . . was found to be living in a very large castle, in the society of one round table, two chairs, and Captain George Elmore, ‘his supposed son, the Child of Mystery, and the Man of Crime' . . . M.M. being then on the eve of marriage to Will Stanmore, a cheerful sailor with very loose legs. . . . The theatre resounded with applause, and Mr Whelks fell into a fit of unbounded enthusiasm, consequent upon the entrance of ‘Michael the Mendicant'. It soon came out that Michael the Mendicant had been hired in old time by Sir George Elmore, to murder his (Sir George Elmore's) elder brother – which he had done; notwithstanding which little affair of honour, Michael was in reality a very good fellow; quite a tender-hearted man; who, on hearing of the Captain's determination to settle Will Stanmore, cried out, ‘What! more bel-ood!' and fell flat – overpowered by his nice sense of humanity. In like manner, in describing that small error of judgment into which he had allowed himself to be tempted by money, this gentleman exclaimed, ‘I ster-ruck him down, and fell-ed in error!' and further he remarked, with honest pride, ‘I have liveder as a beggar – a roadersider vaigerant, but no ker-rime since then has stained these hands!' All these sentiments of the worthy man were hailed with showers of applause; and when, in the excitement of his feelings on one occasion, after a soliloquy, he ‘went off'
on his back,
kicking and shuffling along the ground, after the manner of bold spirits in trouble who object to be taken to the station-house, the cheering was tremendous.

Charles Dickens, ‘The Amusements of the People',
Household Words,
Vol I. (1850)

A ‘PENNY GAFF'

In many of the thoroughfares of London there are shops which have been turned into a kind of temporary theatre (admission one penny), where dancing and singing take place every night. . . . The ‘penny gaff' chosen was situated in a broad street near Smithfield; and for a great distance off, the jingling sound of music was heard, and the gas-light streamed out into the thick night air as from a dark-lantern, glittering on the windows of the houses opposite, and lighting up the faces of the mob in the road, as on an illumination night. The front of a large shop had been entirely removed, and the entrance was decorated with paintings of the ‘comic singers' in their most ‘humorous' attitudes. On a table against the wall was perched the band, playing what the costers call ‘dancing tunes' with great effect, for the hole at the money-taker's box was blocked up with hands tendering the penny. . . .

The visitors, with a few exceptions, were all boys and girls, whose ages seemed to vary from eight to twenty years. Some of the girls – though their figures showed them to be mere children – were dressed in showy cotton-velvet polkas, and wore dowdy feathers in their crushed bonnets. They stood laughing and joking with the lads, in an unconcerned, impudent manner, that was almost appalling. Some of them, when tired of waiting, chose their partners, and commenced dancing grotesquely, to the admiration of the lookers-on, who expressed their admiration in obscene terms, that, far from disgusting the poor little women, were received as compliments, and acknowledged with smiles and coarse repartees. The boys clustered together, smoking their pipes and laughing at each other's anecdotes, or else jingling halfpence in time with the tune, while they whistled an accompaniment to it. . . .

To discover the kind of entertainment, a lad near me and my companion was asked ‘if there was any flash dancing'. With a knowing wink the boy answered, ‘Lots! Show their legs and all, prime!' and immediately the boy followed up his information by a request for a ‘yennep' to get a ‘tib of occabot'. . . .

Singing and dancing formed the whole of the hours' performance, and, of the two, the singing was preferred. A young girl of about fourteen years of age danced with more energy than grace, and seemed to be well-known to the spectators, who cheered her on by her Christian name. When the dance was concluded, the proprietor of the establishment threw down a penny from the gallery, in the hopes that others might be moved to similar acts of generosity; but no one followed up the offering, so the young lady hunted after the money and departed. The ‘comic singer', in a battered hat and a huge bow to his cravat, was received with deafening shouts. Several songs were named by the costers, but the ‘funny gentleman' merely requested them ‘to hold their jaw', and putting on a ‘knowing' look, sang a song, the whole point of which consisted in the mere utterance of some filthy word at the end of each stanza. Nothing, however, could have been more successful. The lads stamped their feet with delight; the girls screamed with enjoyment. . . .