FIVE O’CLOCK P.M.: THE FASHIONABLE CLUB.
The great complaint against clubs is, that they tend towards the germination of selfishness, exclusiveness, and isolation; that they are productive of neglect of home duties in married men, and of irrevocable celibacy in bachelors. Reserving my own private opinion on this knotty point, I may say that it is a subject for sincere congratulation that there are no ladies’ clubs. We have been threatened with them sometimes, but they have always been nipped in the bud. It is curious to see how fiercely this tolerant, liberal, large-headed creature, Man, has waged war against the slightest attempt to establish a club on the part of the gentler sex. From the Parisian malecontents of the first revolution, who broke into the lady assemblies of the Jacobines and Tricoteuses, and broke up the clubs in question by the very expeditious process of turning the fair members into the street, after subjecting them to a castigation whose use is ordinarily confined to the nursery; from those ungallant anti-clubbists (they all belonged to clubs themselves, you may be sure) to Mr. Mark Lemon, who, in a petite comédie, brought the guns of satire to bear with terrible effect on an incipient agitation for lady clubbism, such institutions, on the part of the ladies, have always been put down, either by violence or by ridicule. The Tyrant Man is even, I am informed, disposed to look with jealousy on the “committees of ladies” which exist in connection with some deserving charities, and on the “Dorcas societies” and “sewing circles” of provincial towns; and all meetings to advocate the rights of woman, he utterly abhors.
I daresay that you would very much like to know the name of the particular club, the tableau of which adorns this sheet, and would feel obliged if I would point out the portraits of individual members: you would be very much pleased to be told whether it is the Carlton, the Reform, the Travellers’, the Athenæum, the Union, the United Service Senior or Junior, the Guards, the Oriental, the Oxford and Cambridge, the Parthenon, the Erectheum, the Wyndham, Whyte’s, Boodle’s, or the Army and Navy. No, Fatima; no, Sister Anne. You shall not be told. Clubbism is a great mystery, and its adepts must be cautious how they explain its shibboleth to the outer barbarians. Men have been expelled from clubs ere now for talking or writing about another member’s whiskers, about the cut of his coat, and the manner in which he eats asparagus. I have no desire for such club-ostracism; for though, Heaven help me, I am not of Pall Mall or St. James’s, I, too, have a club whose institutes I revere. “Non me tua fervida terrent, dicta, Ferox:” I fear not Jawkins, nor all the Borekins in Borekindom; but “Dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis:” I fear the awful committee that, with a dread complacency, can unclub a man for a few idle words inadvertently spoken, and blast his social position for an act of harmless indiscretion.
Clubs, after all, are rather pleasant institutions than otherwise, yet they have not escaped the lash of the moralist. Turning over, as I dismiss the subject, the leaves of my little old book, I come on the following passage: “Though the Promotion of Trade, and the Benefits that arise from Conversation, are the Specious Pretences that every Club or Society are apt to assign as a Reasonable Plea for their Unprofitable Meetings, yet more Considerate Men have found by Experience that the End thereof is a Promiscuous Encouragement of Vice, Faction, and Folly, and the Unnecessary Expense of that Time and Money which might much better be Employed in their own Business, or spent with much more Comfort in their Several Families.” I don’t say what the ladies’ verdict will be on this opinion, though I can divine it; but I take off my hat to the moralist, capital letters and all, and, leaving him to grumble, will be off to the club.
Stay, stay, siste viator: I have an appointment. When have I not? I begin to think that I am the Wandering Jew, and there is decidedly no rest for the soles of my feet. Still the cry is “onward.” Wherever that club of mine may be situated, it is clear that I must bend my course towards Bow Street, Covent Garden.
And why to Bow Street, an’t please you? To gaze upon the resuscitated glories of the Royal Italian Opera? To dine at Nokes’s succulent restaurant, where erst was the “Garrick’s Head?” To obtain an order for admission to the workhouse from the relieving officer of the Strand Union Office? To hire theatrical costumes at Mr. May’s? or to bail a friend out of the station-house? Not so. And yet my business has something to do with the metropolitan police. I wish to witness the departure of the Prisoners’ Van.
About five p.m. the ladies and gentlemen who, through the arbitration 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 this vehicle the malefactors who have in the course of the day been arraigned before the tribunal of the Bow Street Police-court, are conveyed to the various jails and houses of correction in and about the metropolis, there to undergo the several terms of imprisonment and hard labour, as the case may be, to which they have been sentenced. Sometimes the court sits late, and the van does not take its departure before half-past five; but five is the ordinary time when the great black, shining, cellular omnibus, drawn by two strong horses, with its policeman driver, and policeman conductor in a snug little watch-box, rolls away from Bow Street. It is a prison on wheels, a peripatetic penitentiary, a locomotive hulk. Criminals both in and out of prison regard it with a species of terror, not unmixed with admiration, and, as is their wont, they have celebrated it in that peculiar strain of ballad poetry for which London roguery has been so long distinguished. In that celebrated collection of dishonest epics, the “Drury Lane Garland,” in fit companionship with “Sam Hall,” “County Jail,” “Seven years I got for priggin’,” and the “Leary Man,” I find a ballad on the subject of the Bow Street chariot of disgrace, of which the refrain is—
“Sing Wentilator, separate cell,