I know a good Englishman, whose abode is about nine miles distant from Brighton. Every Saturday he pays a little anonymous visit to this town.
“What on earth takes you to Brighton every Saturday?” said one of his sisters laughingly to him one day.
——“My dear child, I go to have my hair cut,” replied the sly dog, without wincing.
Next best to the whole truth, is the truth.
I know another, who, Briton though he be, begins to feel the effects of the motion of the Ocean, as he invests in a railway ticket at Charing Cross. Yet this does not prevent his passing a couple of days at Boulogne about once a fortnight. He has never satisfactorily explained the reason of these little trips to me. All I know is, that if you want to tease him, you have only to say to him: “You have been to Boulogne, I think?” or, “Do you know Boulogne?”
There are no recognised houses of ill-fame in England, a fact of which the virtuous John is immensely proud. Not that there is much cause for it. If English law refuses to officially recognise vice and to regulate it within four walls, it tolerates it in the open air, in the streets, and above all, in the parks; and I cannot see what public morality gains by it, unless it be the encouragement to deny, even in the face of evident facts, something which is not recognised by law, and the satisfaction of knowing that Nemesis follows the nocturnal frequenters of the parks, in the shape of colds in the head ... and the rest. I have spoken elsewhere of the processions of Regent Street and the Strand, of the fair that is held in the shameless crowd that swarms about the Haymarket and in the parks, from sunset to two in the morning. I will not return to the subject; it would be out of place to dwell long on the matter and enter into sickening details. Thanks to the efforts of Lord Dalhousie, one of the most popular and intelligent members of the House of Lords, it is probable that before long one of the most hideous sights of London—a sight certainly unique in Europe, will no longer meet the eyes of people unfortunate enough to be out of doors after nightfall. Lord Dalhousie will, I think, succeed in passing an Act of Parliament which will close the career of the streets to girls under sixteen. That will be a grand improvement.
By-the-bye, it is high time that I should repair, whilst I think of it, a grave error that I committed. I said, alas! I even put it down in black and white, that there was a Society in England for the protection of animals, and I was ill-inspired enough to add, “a Society for the protection of women does not yet exist.” Well, it appears it does. You would never have thought it, would you? Nor I either. Nothing is more certain, however: this Society has existed for years, it appears. Consequently, the other day, on taking up my paper, I was not surprised to see that a London magistrate had not feared to fine a brute of a husband ten shillings, for having smashed his wife’s head with the tongs.[4] My compliments to a Society that inspires such terror in a magistrate of the great city. After such an example as that, few husbands will be opening their wives’ heads to see what there is inside. Let me hasten to make my most humble apologies to the Society.
[4] See [Appendix (b)].
All writers of books upon England mention the fact that, in the lower classes, a man gets rid of a lawful wife for the sum of a few shillings, and the critics never fail to cry “Exaggeration!” “Caricature!” Of course I did not escape the usual diatribes on the subject. I can understand being charged with having exaggerated, for I have remarked this year in the papers, two cases of wives having been sold for sixpence and a pint of beer respectively, whereas I had said that the price of the transaction varied from half-a-crown to ten shillings.
The article is going down, it is evident.