Naturally in this connection I must speak of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the great philanthropist of the Victorian era, a nobleman whose long
and honourable life was spent in the service of man and the fear of God. He was somewhat narrow-minded, an Evangelical Churchman of a now almost extinct type, not beloved by Cobden and the Free Traders, occasionally very vehement in his utterances, a man who, if he had stuck to the party game of politics, would have taken a high place in the management of public affairs. I knew him well, and he was always friendly to me. In his prime he must have been a remarkably handsome man, tall, pale, with dark hair and a commanding presence. Perhaps he took life a little too seriously. To shake hands with him, said his brother, was a solemn function. But his earnestness might well make him sad, as he saw and felt the seriousness of the great work to which he had devoted his life. He had no great party to back him up. The Dissenters regarded him with suspicion, for he doubted their orthodoxy, and in his way he was a Churchman to the core. He was too much a Tory for the Whigs, and too Radical a philanthropist for the old-fashioned Tory fossils then abounding in the land. On one occasion Lord Melbourne, when dining with the Queen in his company, introduced him to royalty as the greatest Jacobin in her dominions. In Exeter Hall he reigned supreme, and though dead he still lives as his works survive. He was the friend of all the weak, the poor, the desolate who needed help.
He did much to arouse the aristocracy to the discharge of their duties as well as the maintenance of their rights. All the world is the better for his life. It was a miracle to me how his son, the eighth Earl, came to commit suicide, as he always seemed to me the cheerfullest of men, of the rollicking sailor type. I often met him on board the steamer which took us all down the river to the Chichester and Arethusa, founded by the late Mr. William Williams in 1843—a good man for whom Earl Shaftesbury had the most ardent esteem—as refuges for homeless and destitute children to train up for a naval career.
London poverty and London vice flourished unchecked till long after Queen Victoria had commenced her reign. When I first knew London the streets after dark were fearful, and a terrible snare to all, especially the young and idle and well-to-do. The public-houses were kept open till a late hour. There were coffee-houses that were never closed; music-halls, where the songs, such as described in Thackeray’s “Cave of Harmony,” were of a most degrading character; Judge and Jury Clubs, where the low wit and obscenity of the actors were fearful; saloons for the pickpocket, the swell mobsman, and the man about town, and women who shone in evening dress, and were alike fair and frail. It is only within the last twenty years that the Middlesex
magistrates refused Mr. Bignell a licence for the Argyle Rooms; that was not until Mr. Bignell had found it worth while to invest £80,000 in the place. Year after year noble lords and Middlesex magistrates had visited the place and licensed it. Indeed, it had become one of the institutions of the metropolis, one of the places where Bob Logic and Corinthian Tom—such men still existed, though they went by other names—were safe to be found of an evening. The theatre was too staid and respectable for them, though dashing Cyprians, as they were termed, were sure to be found at the refreshment saloon. When the Argyle was shut up, it was said a great public scandal was removed. Perhaps so; but the real scandal was that such a place was ever needed in the capital of a land which handsomely paid clergymen and deans and bishops and archbishops to exterminate the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, which found their full development in such places as the Argyle Rooms. It was a scandal and a shame that men who had been born in English homes, and nursed by English mothers, and confirmed by English bishops, and had been trained in English public schools and Universities, and worshipped in English churches and cathedrals, should have helped to make the Argyle Rooms a successful public institution. Mr. Bignell created no public vices; he merely pandered to
what was in existence. It was the men of wealth and fashion who made the place what it was. It was not an improving spectacle in an age that sacrificed everything to worldly show, and had come to regard the brougham as the one thing needful—the outward sign of respectability and grace—to see equipages of this kind, filled with fashionably dressed women, most of them
Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred—
driving up nightly to the Argyle, or the Holborn, or the Piccadilly, or Bob Croft’s in the Haymarket, with their gallants or protectors or friends, or whatever they might term themselves, amidst a dense crowd of lookers-on, rich or poor, male or female, old or young, drunk or sober. In no other capital in Europe was such a sight to be seen. It was often there that a young and giddy girl, with good looks and a good constitution, and above all things set on fine dresses and gay society, and weary of her lowly home and of the drudgery of daily life, learned what she could gain if she could make up her mind to give her virtue; many of them, indeed, owing to the disgusting and indecent overcrowding in rustic cottages and great cities having but little virtue to part with. Then assailed her the companionship of men of birth and breeding and wealth, and the gaiety and splendour of successful vice.
I knew of two Essex girls, born to service, who came to town and led a vicious life, and one became the wife of the son of a Marquis, and the other married a respectable country solicitor; the portrait of the lady I have often seen amongst the photographs displayed in Regent Street. The pleasures of sin, says the preacher, are only for a season, but a similar remark, I fancy, applies to most of the enjoyments of life. It is true that in the outside crowd there were in rags and tatters, in degradation and filth, shivering in the cold, wan and pale with want, hideous with intemperance, homeless and destitute, and prematurely old, withered hags, whom the policemen ordered to move on—forlorn hags, who were once habitués of the Argyle and the darlings of England’s gilded youth—the bane and the antidote side by side, as it were. But when did giddy youth ever realise that riches take to themselves wings and fly away, that beauty vanishes as a dream, that joy and laughter often end in despair and tears? The amusements of London were not much better when the music-hall—which has greatly improved of late—came to be the rage. One has no right to expect anything intellectual in the way of amusements. People require them, and naturally, as a relief from hard work, a change after the wearying and wearisome drudgery of the day. A little amusement is a necessity of our common humanity, whether rich or poor,
saintly or the reverse. And, of course, in the matter of amusements, we must allow people a considerable latitude according to temperament and age, and their surroundings and education, or the want of it; and it is an undoubted fact that the outdoor sports and pastimes, in which ladies take part as well as men, have done much to improve the physical stamina and the moral condition of young men. Scarcely anything of the kind existed when I first knew London, and the amusements of the people chiefly consisted in drinking or going to see a man hanged. At one time there were many debating halls, where, over beer and baccy, orators, great in their own estimation, settled the affairs of the nation, at any rate, let us hope, according to their own estimation, in a very satisfactory manner. In Fleet Street there was the Temple Forum, and at the end, just out of it, was the Codgers’ Hall, both famous for debates, which have long ceased to exist. A glance at the modern music-hall will show us whether we have much improved of late. It is more showy, more attractive, more stylish in appearance than its predecessors, but in one respect it is unchanged. Primarily it is a place in which men and women are expected to drink. The music is an afterthought, and when given, is done with the view to keep the people longer in their places, and to make them drink more. “Don’t