If the drunkard is a married man, his offences and his wickedness are greater still; all that applies to the unmarried man applies to him, and in addition cruelty of the worst kind—cruelty so heartless and so unnatural that, though we know it, we can scarcely believe it possible. The fiercest and most ravenous beasts of prey (though not gifted with human feelings and intelligence) do not desert their mates, nor their young; but the drunkard who is married not only deserts both, but will, to gratify his filthy passion, drink away his income, drink away his status in society, drink away his future prospects, and thus reduce wife and children from the position in which they were born, and had heretofore moved, to want, penury and degradation. Still not contented, but prompted by the horrible love of drink, the married drunkard deprives his wretched, miserable wife of the trifle she earns weekly, striving to stave off actual starvation, sells or pawns everything the unhappy pair once possessed, and the wife dies in the streets of starvation, cold, and misery. This is the natural result of drunkenness when observed in its effects on the classes that live by their daily labour. Let us trace in a higher grade the effects produced by indulgence in this baleful habit. The drunkard before his marriage manages to conceal his practices not only from the young lady he woos to be his wife, but from her friends. He, however, soon shows his colours. If in the army the natural consequence is that he drinks himself out of his commission. By the generosity of his Colonel and brother officers, he is allowed to sell, and the proceeds are made over to his unfortunate wife, who is deeply compassionated by all the regiment. And shall this mean, selfish wretch, who has wrecked the peace and prosperity of those whom he has sworn to love and cherish—sworn on the altar of the Most High—not be answerable? Shall he who has kept his holy marriage vows by bringing privation and misery on those who should be nearest and dearest, not be answerable? Innocence and virtue toiling in distress appeal to Heaven strongly. Man may disregard, but there is One who will not disregard—One who has said: 'Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' A mother toiling to feed her children—toiling in an altered and reduced position, to which she has been brought by her drunken husband—is too sad, too noble a sight, not to attract the eye of mercy. If the destroyer has one spark of human feeling left, the knowledge of what he has done must be like the fire of hell in his heart and brain; but words in such a case are vain. 'Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay,' and to the Lord's vengeance such men must be left.
The effects of drunkenness, as exhibited by married and unmarried men, have been drawn from instances unhappily too well known to the author. Let us look now at the effects of this national sin, this degrading, despicable form of selfishness, regarded from a public point of view. What do the public prints tell us? What do we read of every day? Is there a crime that can be named that cannot be shown to have originated in drunkenness? Wife and child murder are actually common as one of these results. The vile husband comes home drunk, a quarrel ensues between him and his wife, and she—perhaps with her infant, or little boy or girl—is kicked to death by the infuriated savage. And what is too often the result? If the human brute expresses sorrow, and says he had taken a drop too much, he is allowed in some way or other to escape. Either the coroner and his jury bring in manslaughter, or the sapient judge and jury, by whom the ruffian is tried, find some legal reason to let him off, or the jury refuse to hang. They are too pitiful, but they have no pity for the unfortunate woman and her child or children. Drunkenness, as it is now regarded, is positively a protection to the murderer. Let us see how it acts in cases of less enormity than murder. Someone, man or woman, is beaten or kicked within an inch of his or her life, and the excuse invariably is that the beast had been drinking. Magistrates almost always ask this question. Policemen never fail to state that the man was, or was not, drunk. If the statement is that he was not drunk, it invariably acts as an aggravation of guilt; and, vice versâ, if the culprit is pronounced to have been drunk, it is at once received as a palliation. That which in common-sense is a positive crime, per se, is made by irrational custom to lessen and mitigate a greater crime.
The plea put forward to defend this practice is this: Would you punish severely the man who, from the influence of seductive company, or from any other cause, happens to get tipsy, even if he should commit manslaughter or other serious offence while under the effects of vicious stimulation? Certainly not. But this is mere sophistry. It is not an accident we have to consider; it is that of men who night after night deprive themselves of their senses by drink. In this case it appears clear that the fact of the man being drunk is a serious addition to his crime, as he has wilfully, and with his eyes open, deprived himself of his senses. This portion of the subject is too wide, too vast, for me to enter upon, as it necessarily touches the legal aspect of the question; and there are no doubt numberless legal gentlemen, gifted with fine and acute intellects, who are fully equal to the determination of the intricacies and difficulties of the question.
To the reader, the author feels that he owes an apology for having in a light work, devoted chiefly to the worship of Momus, been led to say what he has said on legislative matters; the delict was not intentional, it arose naturally from the incident related, and from consideration of the dreadful evils of intemperance, and the defects of the statutes passed in reference to it. Yet, if from the melancholy details recorded with reference to gambling on the racecourse, and the miserable instances of drunkenness brought forward (which, be it remembered, are cases actually observed), one solitary individual be induced to reflect on the life-long misery which almost surely will result from pursuing either of these baneful paths, and he by this means is led to pause in his ruinous career, the effects of the fault may perhaps go far to obtain pardon for it. Nor can the author think that because his principal object is to amuse, he should altogether be debarred from sometimes assuming a graver tone. Examples of individual sorrows, failings or crimes, ought not to be altogether useless, seeing that they are pages of individual history, and all history we know teaches by example.
Having now offered his apology, and recorded his plea for a favourable judgment, his long digression draws to a close, and he returns to the fancy ball, the description of which was interrupted by feelings excited in consequence of the condition recorded of Captain S. Let us now forget the unhappy man, and mingle with the gay crowd.
It has been before observed that the 'Virgins of the Sun' attracted a good deal of rather quizzical notice on account of their leader, or high priestess, or whatever else she may have termed herself. Now it so happened that this lady unintentionally afforded new cause for the same sort of notice. She wore, as all the young ladies in her train did, a veil attached to her head-dress, from which it descended to her feet, falling in graceful folds about her person. As the room became warmer, in spite of the punkahs which were kept constantly going, for the dancers—among whom Mrs. W. (the quasi virgin) had distinguished herself—the veil became unbearable. Mrs. W. rejoiced in rather a superfluity of flesh; she was a sanguine, full-blooded woman, with a large endowment of adipose tissue. We would on no account be so vulgar as to say that she was a fat woman; all that can be asserted, with due regard to the bienséances, is that she was decidedly, very decidedly, stout. The heat, the dancing, and the lady's full temperament, made the veil insufferable; it was accordingly laid aside, then at once were displayed charms that it is most difficult to do justice to. A dress laced in to the last point of endurance, and at the back so liberally cut down that the view afforded was unusually extensive, may give some notion of the length and breadth of the prospect. The heat, the exercise, and the constitution of the lady may, to those who have carefully studied such natural phenomena, suggest that a lovely roseate hue, a truly infantine tint, overpowered the native alabaster of the skin. The effect of the painfully heroic efforts to obtain a waist had produced a strong line down the spine, and had, moreover, accumulated masses of roseate adipose tissue on either side of that line. The tout ensemble presented such a comical resemblance to something that may be imagined though it may not be uttered, that the whole room was in a titter.
'Did ever you see anything like it, in your life?' said Mrs. C. 'Why, to tell you the truth, my dear, I think I have,' said Mrs. O., laughing immoderately; 'have not you? Think now!' 'Oh,' said one of the young ladies, 'I never!' 'On my life,' said old Mrs. Fitslik, 'it's like nothing in the world but a baby's ——.' 'Well,' replied Mrs. O., 'if it is, it must be an unusually well-developed baby; but I suppose "Virgins of the Sun" may have unusually developed babies, if they have any.'
To repeat one hundredth part of the light sarcasms and gibes and ironical praises of Mrs. W.'s liberality, beauty, and good taste, would be impossible. The universal inquiry was, during the evening, 'Have you seen Mrs. W.'s infantine back? if you haven't, you had better do so without loss of time, for I'll be bound you'll never see anything like it again, except you go into the nursery.' These, and innumerable others like these, formed the staple of the chat amongst the fairer half of the creation, and from these the talk of the gentlemen may be surmised. Some of the remarks, no doubt, were witty and caustic enough; but as the author has gone quite as far as he desired on the broad gauge in order to expose a special instance of bygone female vanity and folly, he begs to relegate the sayings of the male observers to the Greek Kalends.