And get a peer hawf-wit to trumpet yer praise,
You may catch whee you will, they’ll caress ye and bless ye,
It’s money, nit merit, they seek now-a-days.”
The Lasses of Carel.
Let us now shift the scene for awhile, and turn our attention once more to the Crystal Palace.
At last, the long looked-for shilling-day had arrived. Barriers had been placed up outside the building, so as to stem the expected crush, and a double force of police had been “laid on” from Scotland-yard, and the whole of the officials had been ordered to be at their posts an hour or two earlier than usual, so that by opening the door before the appointed time, the “rush” might be prevented. Even George Cruikshank himself, confident that a moiety of the metropolis, at least, would be congregated outside the building, had prepared a most vivid delineation of the probable consequences of the rush and crush—the cram and the jam—that every one expected to take place on the eventful occasion. If twenty thousand people attend at five shillings, surely, according to Cocker, said the Executive Committee, five times as many more will come when the charge of admission is five times less.
But alas for the vain hopes of this vain world! as all the speakers at all the “May meetings” invariably exclaim; for, on the eventful day, the hundred thousand visitors “in posse,” dwindled down to twenty thousand “in esse.” The two policemen who had been placed outside the gilt cage of the Mountain of Light, the extra “force” that was stationed beside the Queen of Spain’s jewels, the additional “Peelites” who had been quartered at every point and turn of the interior to direct the crowd which way to move, stared and grinned at one another as they saw the people saunter, one by one, into the building, instead of pouring in by tens of thousands, as had been anticipated. The Executive Committee knit their brows, and bit their thumbs, and then suddenly discovered the cause of the absence of the people. The masses are busy working for their bread, and are waiting for their holiday-time, when they always spend a large amount of their earnings in recreation and enjoyment; and if they come even by twenty thousands now, surely they will come by hundreds of thousands then.
Accordingly, the same farce, of barriers and police, is enacted again, with the same disappointment; for, to the inscrutable wonder of the Executive Committee, the number of visitors during the Whitsun holidays is even less than the week before, and then ensue various speculations as to the cause, and the following reason is, after much cogitation, gravely propounded in explanation of the anomaly:—“The self-denying patience of the people, their habitual tendency to postpone pleasure to business, and their little inclination to rush madly forward in quest of what can be seen as well, or better, a week or a month hence—these seem to be the natural and truest solutions of the result.”
Now, unfortunately for this pretty compliment, a trip to Greenwich Fair or Hampton Court, on this same Whit-Monday, would soon have convinced the Executive Committee that “the shilling folk” were neither remarkable for self-denial nor extreme patience in their enjoyments; while the general observance of “Saint Monday” by the operatives might have assured any one, in the least acquainted with their characters, that, far from being distinguished by any habitual tendency to postpone pleasure to business, they are peculiarly prone to make business give way to pleasure.
But it was necessary, in order to account for the disappointment, to put some sentimental gloss on the occurrence; and, therefore, men whose lives were passed in toil, and to whom pleasure is therefore the highest possible luxury—merely as rest to the body and recreation to the faculties—were made to prefer work to enjoyment; while patience, self-denial, and every virtue under heaven, were ascribed to people, who, as contra-distinguished from the moneyed classes, are ignorant of the advantages of saving, and who, getting their money hardly, are ever ready to taste the delight of spending it. This disposition to cant, and varnish matters over with a sickly sentimentality, angelizing or canonizing the whole body of operatives of this country, instead of speaking of them as possessing the ordinary vices and virtues of human nature,—as being the same patchwork of black and white,—the same chequered chessboard, fitted for the game and moves of life,—this tendency to put high and heroic motives on every-day conduct is the besetting sin of the age.