MAID SERVANT
(From a Drawing by Cruikshank in ‘London Characters’)
Other portions of Albert Smith’s works, if read with discernment, will enable one to make discoveries of some interest. One is that our modern ’Arry is really a survival, not, as is sometimes believed, a growth of modern days. His ally and mistress, ’Arriet, does not seem to have existed at all fifty years ago; at least there is no mention of her; but ’Arry flourished. He did really dreadful things. He was even worse than the Practical Joker. When he took Titus Ledbury abroad, he went into the cathedrals on purpose to spill the holy water, to blow out the candles, and to make faces at the women kneeling at their prayers; he got barrel-organs into lofts and invited men to bring grisettes and dance all night, with a supper brought from the charcuterie; wherever there was jumping, dancing, singing, and riot, ’Arry was to the fore. On board the steamer he seized a bottle of stout and took up a prominent and commanding position, where he drank it before all the world, smoking cigars, and laughing loudly at the poor people who were ill. At home, he wrenched off knockers, played practical jokes, drank more stout, ate oysters, chaffed bar-maidens, and called for brandy and water continually. He was loud in his dress and in his voice; he was insolent, caddish, and offensive in his manners. Generally, one thinks, he would end his career in Whitecross Street, or the Fleet, or the Queen’s Bench. Doubtless, however, there are still among us old gentlemen who now sit at church on Sunday with venerable white hair, among their children and grandchildren, and while the voice of the preacher rises and falls, their memory wanders back to the days when they danced and sang with the grisettes, when they wrenched the knockers, when they went from the theatre to the Coal Cellar, and from the Coal Cellar to the Finish; and came home with unsteady step and light purse in the grey of the morning.
The Debtors’ Prison belonged chiefly to the great middle-class. Before them stalked always a grisly spectre, called by some Insolvency and by others Bankruptcy. This villainous ghost seized its victims by the collar and haled them within the walls of a Debtors’ Prison, where it made them abandon hope, and abide there till the day of death. Everybody is familiar with the inside of the Fleet, the Queen’s Bench, the Marshalsea, and Whitecross Street. They are all pulled down now, and the only way to get imprisoned for debt is to incur contempt of court, for which Holloway is the reward. But what a drop from the humours of the Queen’s Bench, with its drinking, tobacco, singing, and noisy revelry, to the solitary cell of Holloway Prison! The Debtors’ Prison is gone, and the world is the better for its departure. Nowadays the ruined betting-man, the rake, the sharper, the profligate, the fraudulent bankrupt, have no prison where they can carry on their old excesses again, though in humbler way. They go down—below the surface—out of sight, and what they do, and how they fare, nobody knows, and very few care.
CHAPTER VII.
IN SOCIETY.
As to society in 1837, contemporary commentators differ. For, according to some, society was always gambling, running away with each other’s wives, causing and committing scandals, or whispering them, the men were spendthrifts and profligates, the women extravagant and heartless. Of course, the same things would be said, and are sometimes said, of the present day, and will be said in all following ages, because to the ultra-virtuous or to the satirist who trots out the old, stale, worn-out sham indignation, or to the isn’t-it-awful, gaping gobemouche, every generation seems worse than all those which preceded it. We know the tag and the burden and the weariness of the old song. As for myself, I am no indignant satirist, and the news that certain young gentlemen have been sitting up all night playing baccarat, drinking champagne, and ‘carrying on’ after the fashion of youth in all ages, does not greatly agitate my soul, or surprise me, or lash me into virtuous indignation. Not at all. At the same time, if one must range oneself and take a side, one may imitate the example of Benjamin Disraeli and declare for the side of the angels. And, once a declared follower of that army, one may be allowed to rejoice that things are vastly improved in the space of two generations. Of this there can be no doubt. Making easy allowance for exaggeration, and refusing to see depravity in a whole class because there are one or two cases that the world calls shocking and reads eagerly, it is quite certain that there is less of everything that should not be than there used to be—less in proportion, and even less in actual extent. The general tone, in short the general manners of society, have very much improved. Of this, I say again, there can be no doubt. Let any one, for instance, read Lady Blessington’s ‘Victims of Society.’ Though there is an unreal ring about this horrid book, so that one cannot accept it for a moment as a faithful picture of the times, such a book could not now be written at all; it would be impossible.
M. Blessington