This is the elegant public-house mode of describing delirium tremens.
There are bars of a quieter sort, and there are rooms where middle-aged topers meet, but these are, if possible, more repulsive than the clattering dens frequented by dissipated youths. Stout staid-looking men—fathers of families—gather night after night to sodden themselves quietly, and they make believe that they are enjoying the pleasures of good-fellowship. Curious it is to see how the fictitious assertion of goodwill seems to flourish in the atmosphere of the bar and the parlour. Those elderly men who sit and smoke in the places described as "cosy" are woeful examples of the effects of our national curse. They are not riotous; they are only dull, coarse, and silly. Their talk is confused, dogmatic, and generally senseless; and, when they break out into downright foulness of speech, their comparatively silent enjoyment of detestable stories is a thing to make one shiver. Here again good-fellowship is absent. Comfortable tradesmen, prosperous dealers, sharp men who hold good commercial situations, meet to gossip and exchange dubious stories. They laugh a good deal in a restrained way, and they are apparently genial; but the hard selfishness of all is plain to a cool observer. The habit of self-indigence has grown upon them until it pervades their being, and the corruption of the bar subtly envenoms their declining years. If good women could only once hear an evening's conversation that passes among these elderly citizens, they would be a little surprised. Thoughtful ladies complain that women are not reverenced in England, and Americans in particular notice with shame the attitude which middle-class Englishmen adopt towards ladies. If the people who complain could only hear how women are spoken of in the homes of Jollity, they would feel no more amazement at a distressing social phenomenon. The talk which is chuckled over by men who have daughters of their own is something to make an inexperienced individual redden. Reverence, nobility, high chivalry, common cleanliness, cannot flourish in the precincts of the bar, and there is not an honest man who has studied with adequate opportunities who will deny that the social glass is too often taken to an accompaniment of sheer uncleanness. Why have not our moral novelists spoken the plain truth about these things? We have many hideous pictures of the East-end drinking-bars, and much reproachful pity is expended on the "residuum;" but the evil that is eating at the very heart of the nation, the evil that is destroying our once noble middle-class, finds no assailant and no chronicler. Were it not for the athletic sports which happily engage the energies of thousands of young men, our middle-class would degenerate with appalling rapidity. But, in spite of athletics, the bar claims its holocaust of manhood year by year, and the professional moralists keep silence on the matter. Some of them say that they cannot risk hurting the sensibilities of innocent maidens. What nonsense! Those maidens all have a chance of becoming the wives of men who have suffered deterioration in the reek and glare of the bar. How many sorrowing wives are now hiding their heart-break and striving to lure their loved ones away from the curse of curses! If the moralists could only look on the mortal pathos of the letters which I receive, they would see that the maidens about whom they are so nervous are the very people who should be summoned as allies in our fight against a universal enemy. If our brave sweet English girls once learn the nature of the temptations to which their brothers and lovers are exposed, they will use every force of their pure souls to save the men whom they can influence from a doom which is death in life.
May, 1887.
FRIENDSHIP.
The memoirs that are now poured into the book-market certainly tend to breed cynicism in the minds of susceptible persons, for it appears that to many eminent men and women of our generation friendship was almost an unknown sentiment. As we read one spiteful paragraph after another, we begin to wonder whether the living men around us resemble the dead purveyors of scandal. The fashionable mode of proceeding nowadays is to leave diaries crammed with sarcasm, give some unhappy friend orders to wait until you are settled in the grave, and then confound your friends and foes by attacks which come to the light long after your ears are deaf to praise and blame. Samuel Wilberforce went into the choicest society that Britain could show; he was the confidant of many people, and he contrived to charm all but a few cross-grained critics. His good humour seemed inexhaustible; and those who saw his cherubic face beaming sweetly on the company at banquets or assemblies fancied that so delightful a man was never known before. But this suave, unctuous gentleman, who fascinated every one, from Queen to cottager, spent a pretty fair share of his life in writing vicious witticisms and scandals concerning the folk with whom he seemed to be on affectionate terms. At nights, after spending his days in working and bowing and smiling and winning the hearts of men, he went home and poured out all the venom that was in his heart. When his memoirs appeared, all the most select social circles in the country were driven into a serious flutter. No one was spared; and, as some of the statements made by Wilberforce were, to say the least, a little sweeping, a violent paper warfare began, which has hardly ceased raging even now. Happy and contented men who believed that the Bishop loved and admired them were surprised to find that he had disliked and despised them. Moreover, the naughty diarist had an ugly habit of recording men's private conversations; and thus a good many sayings which should have been kept secret became public property. A very irreverent wag wrote—
How blest was he who'd ne'er consent