As for amusements pure and simple, there was the "music-hall," which, quoting a mid-Victorian writer, was a place where held forth a "species of musical performance, a singular compound of poor foreign music, but indifferently executed, and interspersed with comic songs of a most extravagant kind, to which is added or interpolated what the performers please to term 'nigger' dances, athletic and rope-dancing feats, the whole accompanied by much drinking and smoking." Which will pass as a good enough description to apply to certain establishments of this class to-day, but which, in reality, loses considerable of its force by reason of its slurring resentment of what was in a way an invasion of a foreign custom which might be expected, sooner or later, to crowd out the conventional and sad amusements which in the main held forth, and which in a measure has since taken place. The only bearing that the matter has to the subject of this book is that some large numbers of the great public which, between sunset and its sleeping hours, must perforce be amused in some way, is to-day, as in days gone by, none too particular as to what means are taken to accomplish it.
There is a definite species of depravity which is supposed to be peculiarly the attribute of the lower classes. If it exists at all to-day, it probably does lie with the lower classes, but contemporary opinion points to the fact that it was not alone in those days the lower classes who sought enjoyment from the cockpit, the dog fight, the prize ring, or the more ancient bull-baiting, all of which existed to some degree in the early nineteenth century. Truly the influence of the Georges on society, of whatever class, must have been cruelly debasing, and it was not to be expected that the early years of Victoria's reign should have been able to eradicate it thoroughly, and though such desires may never be entirely abolished, they are, in the main, not publicly recognized or openly permitted to-day, a fact which is greatly to the credit of the improved taste of the age in which we live.
Formerly it was said that there was but one class of hotels in and near London of which the charges could be stated with any degree of precision. The old hotels, both at the West End and in the City, kept no printed tariff, and were not accustomed even to be asked beforehand as to their charges. Most of the visitors were more or less recommended by guests who had already sojourned at these establishments, and who could give information as to what they had paid. Some of the hotels declined even to receive guests except by previous written application, or by direct introduction, and would rather be without those who would regard the bill with economical scrutiny.
Of these old-fashioned hotels,—barbarous relics of another day,—few are to be found now, and, though existing in reality, are being fast robbed of their clientièle, which demand something more in the way of conveniences—with no diminution of comforts—than it were possible to get in the two or three private houses thrown into one, and dubbed by the smugly respectable title of "Private Hotel."
Other establishments did exist, it is true, in Dickens' time: "The Golden Cross" and "Morley's," "Haxell's," and others of such class, from which coaches still ran to near-by towns, and which houses catered principally for the country visitor or the avowed commercially inclined. But aside from these, and the exclusive and presumably extravagant class of smaller houses, represented by such names as "Claridge's," "Fenton's," "Limner's," et als., there was no other accommodation except the "taverns" of masculine propensities of Fleet Street and the City generally.
The great joint stock hotels, such as "The Metropole," "The Savoy," and "The Cecil," did not come into being until well toward the end of Dickens' life, if we except the excellent and convenient railway hotels, such as made their appearance a few years earlier, as "Euston," "King's Cross," and "Victoria." The first of the really great modern caravanserais are best represented by those now somewhat out-of-date establishments, the "Westminster Palace," "Inns of Court," "Alexandra," and others of the same ilk, while such as the magnificently appointed group of hotels to be found in the West Strand, Northumberland Avenue, or in Pall Mall were unthought of.
The prevailing customs of an era, with respect to clubs, taverns, coffee-houses, etc., mark signally the spirit of the age. The taverns of London, properly so called, were, in the earliest days of their prime, distinguished, each, for its particular class of visitors. The wits and poets met at "Will's" in Covent Garden, and the politicians at "St. James' Coffee-House," from which Steele often dated his Tatler. Later, in the forties, there were perhaps five hundred houses of entertainment, as distinguished from the ordinary "public house," or the more ambitious hotel.
The "dining-rooms," "à la mode beef shops," and "chop-houses" abounded in the "City," and with unvarying monotony served four, six, or ninepenny "plates" with astonishing rapidity, quite rivalling in a way the modern "quick lunch." The waiter was usually servile, and in such places as the "Cheshire Cheese," "Simpson's," and "Thomas'," was and is still active. He was a species of humanity chiefly distinguished for a cryptogrammatic system of reckoning your account, and the possessor of as choice a crop of beneath-the-chin whiskers as ever graced a Galway or a County Antrim squireen.
The London City waiter, as distinguished from his brethren of the West End, who are most Teutonic, is a unique character. Here is Leigh Hunt's picture of one:
"He has no feeling of noise; even a loaf with him is hardly a loaf; it is so many 'breads.' His longest speech is making out a bill viva voce,—'Two beefs, one potato, three ales, two wines, six and two pence.'"