Dickens's England: Life in Victorian Times

by Pritchard, R. E.

  But the ships! Who shall describe those white-sailed camels? Who shall tell in graphic words of the fantastic interlacing of their masts and rigging, of the pitchy burliness of their bulging sides; of the hives of human ants who in barges and lighters surround them, or swarm about their cargo-cumbered decks? Strange sight to see, these mariners from every quarter of the globe; of every variety of stature and complexion, from the swarthy Malay to the almost albino Finn; in every phase of picturesque costume, from the Suliote of the fruitship in his camise and capote, to the Yankee foremast-man in his red shirt, tarry trousers, and case-knife hung by a strand of lanyard to his girdle. But not alone of the maritime genus are the crowds who throng the docks. There are lightermen, stevedores, bargees and ‘lumpers’; there are passengers flocking to their narrow berths on board emigrant ships; there are entering and wharfingers’ clerks travelling about in ambulatory counting-houses mounted on wheels; there are land rats and water rats, ay, and some that may be called pirates of the long-shore, and over whom it behoves the dock policemen and the dock watchmen to exercise a somewhat rigid supervision . . .

  But a clanging bell proclaims the hour of one, and the dock labourers, from Tower Hill to the far-off Isle of Dogs, are summoned back to their toil. Goodness and their own deplenished pockets only know how they have been lunching, or on what coarse viands they have fed since noon. Many have not fed at all.

  Two o’clock p.m. – Regent Street and High ’Change

  Regent Street is an avenue of superfluities – a great trunk-road in Vanity Fair. Fancy watchmakers, haberdashers and photographers; fancy stationers, fancy hosiers and fancy staymakers; music shops, shawl shops, jewellers, French glove shops, perfumery and point lace shops; confectioners and milliners; creamily, these are the merchants whose wares are exhibited in this Bezesteen [bazaar] of the world.

  Now, whatever can her ladyship, who has been shopping in Regent Street, have ordered the stalwart footman, who shut the carriage door with a resounding bang, to instruct the coachman to drive her to the Bank for? . . . She has a very simple reason for going into the City: Sir John, her liege lord, is on ’Change. He will be there from half-past two to three, at which hour High ’Change, as it may be called, closes, and she intends to call for him, and drive him to the West End again. . . .

  Going on ’Change seems to be but a mechanical and mercantile occupation, and one that might with safety be entrusted to some confidential clerk; yet it is not so; and the greatest magnates of commerce and finance, the Rothschilds, the Barings, the Huths, the legions of London’s merchant princes, are to be found chaffering in the quadrangle every day. In the old Exchange, they used to point out the particular column against which the elder Rothschild was wont to lean. They called the old man, too – marvellous diplomatist in financial combinations as he was – the Pillar of the Exchange. . . .

  Three o’clock strikes – or rather chimes – from the bell-tower of Mr Tite’s new building. The quadrangle of the Exchange is converted into an accurate model of the Tower of Babel. The mass of black-hatted heads – with here and there a white one, like a fleck of foam on the crest of a wave – eddies with violence to and fro. Men shout, and push, and struggle, and jostle, and shriek bargains into one another’s ears. A stranger might imagine that these money and merchandise dealers had fallen out, and were about to fight; but the beadle of the Exchange looks on calmly; he knows that no breach of the peace will be committed, and that the merchants and financiers are merely singing their ordinary paean of praise to the great god Mammon.

  Three o’clock p.m. – Debenham and Storr’s Auction Rooms

  Perhaps you would like to know what they are selling by auction at Debenham and Storr’s this sultry July afternoon. . . . And such a sale! Before I have been in the room a quarter of an hour, I witness the knocking down of at least twenty dress coats . . . six satin dresses, twelve boxes of artificial flowers, a couple of opera glasses, a set of ivory chessmen, eighteen pairs of patent leather boots . . . nine church services richly bound, a carved oak cabinet, a French bedstead . . . three boxes of watercolours, eight pairs of stays, a telescope, a box of cigars, an enamel miniature of Napoleon . . . a parrot cage, a Turkey carpet, a tent by Benjamin Edgington, two dozen sheepskin coats warranted from the Crimea, a silver-mounted dressing-case . . . a cornet-à-piston, a buhl inkstand . . . a poonah-painted screen, a papier-maché workbox, an assortment of variegated floss-silk, seven German flutes, an ivory casket, two girandoles for wax candles, an ebony fan, five flat-irons and an accordion . . .

  The articles sold this afternoon are all pawnbrokers’ pledges unredeemed, and this is one of Messrs Debenham and Storr’s quarterly sales, which the law hath given, and which the court awards. . . . There is not much difficulty in discerning who the people are who are really bidding and really buying. Here they come, bagged and bundled, and gesticulating and jabbering. . . . They nod and chuckle, and utter Hebrew ejaculations, and seem, all the while that the sale is proceeding, to be in an overboiling state of tremor and nervous excitement. A sale by auction is to them as good – better – than a play.

  Four o’clock p.m. – The Park

  Rotten Row, into which I wander . . . and where, leaning over the wooden rails, I contemplate the horsemen and horsewomen caracoling along the spongy road with admiration . . . I am glad to say that I am not by any means alone as I lean over the rails. Whether it is that they can’t or won’t ride, I know not; but I find myself surrounded by groups of exquisites, who, to judge by their appearance, must be the greatest dandies in London. . . . Such peg-top trousers! such astounding waistcoat patterns! such lofty heels to the varnished boots! such Brobdignagian moustaches and whiskers! . . . Ladies, too – real ladies – promenade in an amplitude of crinoline difficult to imagine and impossible to describe; some of them with stalwart footmen following them, whose looks beam forth conscious pride at the superlative toilettes of their distinguished proprietresses; some escorted by their bedizened beaux. Little foot-pages; swells walking three, sometimes four abreast; gambolling children; severe duennas; wicked old bucks . . . And the green trees wave around, around, around; and the birds are on the boughs; and the blessed sun is in the heavens, and rains gold upon the beauteous Danaës, who prance and amble, canter and career, on their graceful steeds throughout the length of Rotten Row.

  The Danaës! the Amazons! the lady cavaliers! the horsewomen! can any scene in the world equal Rotten Row at four in the afternoon, and in the full tide of the season? . . . Rotten Row is a very Peri’s garden for beautiful women on horseback. . . . Watch the sylphides as they fly or float past in their ravishing riding-habits and intoxicatingly delightful hats: some with the orthodox cylindrical beaver with the flowing veil; others with roguish little wide-awakes, or pertly cocked cavaliers’ hats and green plumes. . . .

  Only, from time to time, while you gaze upon these fair young daughters of the aristocracy disporting themselves on their fleet coursers, you may chance to have with you a grim town Diogenes, who has left his tub for an airing in the park; and who, pointing with the finger of a hard buckskin glove towards the graceful écuyères, will say: ‘Those are not all countesses or earls’ daughters, my son. She on the bay, yonder, is Laïs. Yonder goes Aspasia, with Jack Alcibiades on his black mare Timon: see, they have stopped at the end of the ride to talk to Phryne in her brougham. Some of those dashing delightful creatures have covered themselves with shame, and their mothers with grief, and have brought their fathers’ grey hair with sorrow to the grave. All is not gold that glitters, my son.’

  Five o’clock p.m. – The Club and the Van

  A modern London club is the very looking-glass of the time; of the gay, glittering, polished, improved utilitarian, material age. . . . A member may live on the fatness of the land, and like a lord of the creation, for twenty guineas’ entrance fee, and a subscription of ten guineas a year. He has a joint-stock proprietorship in all this splendour; in the lofty halls and vestibules; in the library, coffee-rooms, newsp
aper and card-rooms; in the secretary’s office in the basement, and in the urbane secretary himself; in the kitchen, fitted with every means and appliance, every refinement of culinary splendour, and from whence are supplied to him at cost price dishes that would make Lucullus wild with envy, and that are cooked for him, besides, by the great chef from Paris, Monsieur Nini Casserole . . . A man may, if he be so minded, make his club his home; living and lounging luxuriously, and grazing to his heart’s content on the abundant club-house literature, and enjoying the conversation of club friends. . . . Thus it is that, in the present generation, has been created a type peculiar thereunto – the clubman. . . .

  About five p.m. the ladies and gentlemen who, through the arbitrations of Mr Hall, Mr Jardine or Mr Henry, stipendiary magistrates, have settled their little differences with Justice, are conveyed to those suburban residences in which, for the benefit of their health and in the interests of society, it is judged necessary, par qui de droit, they shall for a stated term abide. The vehicle which bears them to their temporary seclusion enjoys different names, some technical, others simply humorous. By some it is called ‘Her Majesty’s Carriage’, from the fact that the crown and the initials ‘V.R.’ are painted on the panels. More far-fetched wags call it ‘Long Tom’s Coffin’. The police and the reporters, for shortness, call it ‘The Van’ . . . In that celebrated collection of dishonest epics, the ‘Drury Lane Garland’, in fit companionship with ‘Sam Hall’, ‘County Jail’, ‘Seven years I got for prigging [stealing]’, and the ‘Leary Man [crafty or con-man]’, I find a ballad on the subject of the Bow Street chariot of disgrace, of which the refrain is

  Sing Wentilator, separate cell,

  It’s long, and dark, and hot as well.

  Sing locked-up doors – git out if you can,

  There’s a crusher [policeman] outside the prisoners’ wan.

  And now the passengers destined for the lugubrious journey come tumbling out of the court door, and down the steps towards the van. Some handcuffed, some with their arms folded, or their hands thrust in their pockets in sullen defiance; some hiding their faces in their grimy palms for very shame. There are women as well as men, starved sempstresses and brazen courtesans in tawdry finery. There are wicked greybeards, and children on whose angel faces the devil has already set his indelible hand. . . .

  The Pharisee thanked Heaven that he was not ‘as that publican’. Down on your knees, well-nurtured, well-instructed youth, and thank Heaven for the parents and friends, for the pastors and masters, to whose unremitting care and tenderness, from your cradle upwards, you owe it that you are not like one of these . . . trundled with manacles on your wrists into this moving pest-house, whose halfway house is the jail, and whose bourne is the gallows.

  Six o’clock p.m. – To Dinner

  I am on the top of an omnibus, looking down on the people in the broughams and the cabs. Admire that youthful exquisite, curled and oiled, and scented into a sufficient semblance of the ‘Nineveh Bull’ . . . That gold-rimmed lorgnon you see screwed into his face, to the damaging distortion of his muscles, will not be removed therefrom – not during dinner, nor during the ‘little music’, the dancing, the supper, the shawling, the departure and the drive home to his chambers. He will eat in his eyeglass, and drink in his eyeglass, and flirt and polk in his eyeglass. I am almost persuaded that he will sleep in his eyeglass . . .

  Down and down again, glance from the omnibus summit, and see in that snug, circular-fronted brougham a comfortable couple, trotting out to dinner in the Alpha Road, St John’s Wood. Plenty of lobster sauce they will have with their salmon, I wager; twice of boiled chicken and white sauce they will not refuse, and oyster patties will they freely partake of. A jovial couple, rosy, chubby, middle-aged, childless, I opine . . . There is another couple, stiff, starched, angular, acrimonious-looking . . . After dinner the men will talk dreary politics, redolent of stupid retrogression, and the women will talk about physic and the whooping-cough. Yet another couple – husband and wife? A severe swell, with drooping moustaches of immense length, but which are half whiskers. Transparent deceit! A pretty lady – gauzy bonnet and artificial flowers, muslin jacket, skirts and flounces oozing out at the sides of the carriage; hair à la Eugenie, and a Skye terrier with a pink ribbon. I know what this means.

  Seven o’clock p.m. – A Theatre Green-Room, ‘Behind the Scenes’

  The walls are of a pale sea-green, of the famous Almack’s pattern; and the floor is covered with a carpet of remarkably curious design and texture, offering some noteworthy specimens of worsted vegetation run to seed . . . In one corner is a pianoforte with keys that are yellow and worn down, like the teeth of an old horse. There is a cheval glass, too, in tolerably good repair . . .

  There are yet a few green-rooms where the genus ‘swell’ still finds a rare admittance. See here a couple in full evening costume, talking to the pretty young lady in the low-necked dress on the settee; but the swell is quite a fish out of water in the green-room of these latter days. . . . Now and then a wicked old lord of the unrighteous evil-living school of British peers, now happily becoming rarer and rarer every day, will come sniggering and chuckling into a green-room, hanging on the arm of the manager, with whom he is on the most intimate terms, and who ‘My Lords’ him most obsequiously. He rolls his scandalous old eyes in his disreputable, puckered face, seeking some pretty, timid, blushing little flower, whom he may blight with his Upas gaze, and then totters away to his stage-box.

  Eight o’clock p.m. – A Pawnbroker’s Shop

  Now let us plunge into a labyrinth of narrow streets to attain our unfashionable goal, for, upon my word, our destination is a pawnbroker’s shop.

  Where the long lane from St Giles’s to the Strand divides the many-branching slums; where flares the gas over coarse scraps of meat in cheap butchers’ shops; where brokers pile up motley heaps of second-hand wares . . . where linen-drapers are invaded by poorly-clad women and girls demanding penn’orths of needles, ha’porths of buttons, and farthingworths of thread; where jean stays flap against the door-jambs and ‘Men’s Stout Hose’ gleam gaunt in the shop-windows; where grimy dames sit in coal and potato-sheds, and Jew clothesmen wrestle for the custom of passengers who don’t want to buy anything; where little dens, reeking with the odours of fried fish, sausages and baked potatoes, or steaming with reminders of à-la-mode beef and hot eel soup, offer suppers, cheap and nasty, to the poor in pocket; where, in low coffee-shops, newspapers a fortnight old, with coffee-cup rings on them, suggest an intellectual pabulum combined with bodily refreshment; where gaping public houses receive or disgorge their crowds of tattered topers; where ‘general shops’ are packed to overflowing with heterogenous odds and ends . . . where you have to elbow and jostle your way through a teeming, ragged, ill-favoured, shrieking, fighting population – by oyster-stalls and costermongers’ barrows – by orange-women and organ-grinders – by flower-girls and match-sellers – by hulking labourers and brandy-faced viragos, squabbling at tavern doors – by innumerable children in every phase of wizened, hungry semi-nakedness, who pullulate at every street-corner, and seem cast up on the pavement like pebbles on the seashore. Here, at last, we find the hostelry of the three golden balls, where the capitalist whom men familiarly term ‘my uncle’ lends money on the security of plate, jewellery, linen, wearing apparel, furniture, bedding, books . . .

  It is Saturday night, and they are deliriously anxious to redeem their poor little remnants of wearing apparel for that blessed Sunday that comes tomorrow, to be followed, however, by a Black Monday, when father’s coat, and Polly’s merino frock, nay the extra petticoat, nay the Lilliputian boots of the toddling child, will have to be pawned again. . . . The poor are so poor, they have at the best of times so very little money, that pawning with them is an absolute necessity; and the pawnbroker’s shop, that equitable mortgage on a small scale, is to them rather a blessing than a curse. Without that fourpence on the flat-iron, there would be very frequently no bread in the cup
board.

  Nine o’clock p.m. – In the New Cut

  There is a transpontine theatre, situated laterally towards the Waterloo Road, and having a northern front towards an anomalous thoroughfare that runs from Lambeth to Blackfriars, for which I have had, during a long period of years, a great esteem and admiration. This is the Royal Victoria Theatre [now called The Old Vic]. . . . These poor people can’t help misplacing their h’s, and fighting combats of six with tin broadswords. They haven’t been to the University of Cambridge . . . they can’t even afford to purchase a ‘Shilling Handbook of Etiquette’. Which is best? That they should gamble in low coffee-shops, break each other’s heads with pewter pots in public houses, fight and wrangle . . . or that they should pay their threepence for admission into the gallery of the ‘Vic.’ – witness the triumph of a single British sailor over twelve armed ruffians, who are about to carry off the Lady Maud to outrage worse than death; see the discomfiture of the dissolute young nobleman, and the restitution of the family estates (through the timely intervention of a ghost in a table-cloth) to the oppressed orphan? And of this nature are the vast mass of transpontine melodramas. The very ‘blood-and-murder’ pieces, as they are termed, always end with the detection of the assassin and his condign punishment. . . .