One could not but admire Irving. He compelled admiration. But I never could enroll myself among the congregation of his worshippers. He had a magnetic and dominating personality; he was that strange portent—a gentleman of Nature’s own making; he was princely in his dealings; he was an accomplished stage-manager; his ideals were of the highest. But, in my opinion, he was never a great actor. He most nearly approached histrionic genius when cast for a part in which his outstanding mannerisms became utilized as qualities. In parts where they could not be made characteristic of the part, they were excrescences. Thus, I have always held that the actor’s best parts were Digby Grand in “Two Roses,” and Mathias in “The Bells”; and his most deplorable efforts, Othello and Macbeth.
But whatever his shortcomings, he deserved better of his day and generation than to have been made the subject of Mr. Brereton’s “Life.”
CHAPTER VII
THE PASSING OF THE PURITAN SABBATH
In the course of the decades of which I am writing, London became the centre of a silent, gradual, irresistible, and altogether welcome revolution. It witnessed the passing away of the Puritan Sabbath and the evolution of the Rational Sunday. So quietly did the change evolve itself that no man could mark the hour or the year of its completion. But the historian of the passing moment, the working journalist of the period affected, had at all events a unique opportunity of noting the events which led to our gradual emergence from the national gloom generated in these islands more than three centuries ago.
London in the sixties and early seventies was the saddest and most gloomy capital in Europe. In the morning church bells clanged over empty streets. An expression of misery might be read on the faces of the few hurrying pedestrians. A curious silence pervaded the thoroughfares. At the hours for repairing to church or chapel, sad-faced men and women, and demure little hypocrites of boys and girls in stiff Sunday best, made dutiful marches. After church came the awful midday meal of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and apple tart. The afternoon was usually devoted to sleep.
The proletariat as a rule remained in bed until the public-houses opened. Crowds of soddened creatures, suffering yet from the effects of Saturday night’s carousals, clustered round the doors of the gin-palaces, eager to obtain “a hair of the dog that bit them.” When at last the portals did open, a clamorous congregation besieged the bars, and one beheld, perhaps, the origin of the phrase which tells of those who do “a roaring trade.” In the Seven Dials, in Clare Market, across the water in Southwark and Blackfriars, the “pub” proclaimed itself as the most popular institution in all England. It is quite impossible for the younger generation to picture the scenes that were witnessed on Sunday nights just before and just after closing hour at these houses of refreshment. At that time Great Britain might easily have boasted of being the most drunken nation in the world. As the doors of the taverns swung open to admit or to vomit forth a votary, one caught a glimpse of pictures Hogarthian in their stark and shameless debauchery. I can recall even now the gust of hot, pestilent air that issued out, and caught the throat and nose of the passing citizen; the clamorous boom of a hundred excited conversations pierced and punctuated by the shrill declamation and hysterical shriek of women—sometimes suckling their young in the mephitic miasma of a moral hell.
And who can blame them? They had no other resource. Here, at least, they might woo a temporary forgetfulness. By hereditary custom amusement was taboo for ever for them and for their children. So they slept on a Sabbath during the close time for publicans, and then they proceeded in droves to their favourite houses of call, there to make beasts of themselves. The streets of London on Sunday night, when the time arrived for the eviction of the publican’s customers into the night, presented a sad spectacle. In some parts of the Metropolis the scenes enacted were a disgrace to even what small civilization existed in those regions. Brawls, assaults, free fights, licence, “language,” brought to a lurid close the hours of the holy day.
Thus the proletariat. And the more favoured classes—how of them? Well, they were—or such of them as were acquainted with Fellows of the Zoological Society—at liberty to visit the Zoo! By a great many worthy persons even this educational diversion was regarded with extreme disfavour. And I have known a father of a family, a gentleman of position, a person of business aptitudes, and in the ordinary affairs of life accredited with more than his share of common-sense, refuse to permit his daughters to make use of Fellows’ tickets admitting to the Gardens on Sunday. Quite gravely—and quite honestly, I believe—he explained his action on the ground that a visit to the Zoo on Sunday was a breach of the Commandment which adjures us to “keep holy the Sabbath day.” How many fathers would adopt that course to-day? And supposing the paternal prohibition were uttered, how many daughters do you suppose would regard it? The fact that rest may also mean recreation has become an article of the Londoner’s creed. The parks are now provided with excellent bands. The environs of the city are supplied with golf-links. The lawn-tennis courts of the suburbs are used on Sundays by those to whom the Sabbath is, perhaps, the only day in the week on which they can be sure of a game. In the evening there are concerts. The innocent gaiety of Society is catered for at a hundred West End restaurants and hotels. While the bike and the motor have taken roving Londoners farther afield for their well-earned seventh-day cessation from work. The Puritan Sabbath has died the death. The Rational Sunday has come to stay.
And what were the causes—immediate and remote—which have led up to this very important and desirable result? It was not effected by any systematic preaching of a propaganda. Moral and social reforms are not secured in that way. Politicians, keen to observe the tendency of public taste, sometimes attempt to run with it, and then accept the honour of having created it. Perhaps in the whole history of legislation no more delightful instance of this has been afforded than in some of the enactments of the Administration. They brought in a measure of spoliation called a Licensing Bill, and they included in their Finance Bill a crushing tax on spirits. The avowed object of both measures was declared by their authors to be to stamp out the curse of drink. Chadband himself never rose to such heights of hypocrisy, or uttered, with Puritan unction, such atrocious cant. The moment selected by Mr. Asquith and his friends for making Great Britain sober was the moment when it had become patent to the world that Great Britain had grown sober on its own account!
The efforts of the Sunday League must not be omitted in any attempt to assign their places to the influences at work in the emancipation of the English from the slavery of the Puritan Sabbath. The League came forward at what is called “the psychological moment” to supply a demand which the growing intelligence of the people had created. The first great impetus given to the rational observance of a seventh day was given by the general adoption of the bike by the youth of both sexes. This easy, safe, quick, and inexpensive mode of transit gave almost immediate pretext for revolt against the ancient domestic enactments. The call of the long white roads sounded in the ears of the boys and girls. Wider vistas opened up before them. Inaccessible places were brought near. Even the attractions of the Sunday dinner of roast beef no longer allured those who wished to be early afield. The roadster triumphed. The old restrictions were swept away like cobwebs.