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[-284-] TEN O'CLOCK P.M.-A DISCUSSION AT THE "BELVIDERE," AND AN ORATORIO AT EXETER HALL.
Exists there, in the whole world, civilised or
uncivilised, a nation of
such inveterate grumblers as the English? We grumble at everything.
We are five-and-twenty millions of bears afflicted with perpetually sore
heads. Are we charged sixpence extra for a bed? is the tail of our
mutton-chop underdone? does our mockturtle soup disagree with us?
is a railway train late? or the requisite amount of hop deficient in our
pale ale? does an Italian itinerant split our ears while we are endeavouring to solve the Seventh Problem in the First Book of Euclid? does the
editor or manager refuse to return the manuscript of our poems or our
farces? do we buy a silk dress that turns out to be nine-tenths cotton?
are we surcharged by the commissioners of income-tax, (they say I make
a thousand a year, I say I don't make a hundred and fifty but may
difference of opinion never, et cetera)? forthwith we call for pen, ink,
and paper, and indite a letter to the "Times," that providential safety-valve for the great legion of grumblers. What are our public meetings
but organised arenas of grumbling? what the "leaders" in our Sunday
newspapers but extra facilities for grumbling after we have been
grumbling all the week? I think it was Mr. Horace Mayhew, in his
"Model Men and Women," who told the story of a waiter at a city
tavern, who took but one holiday in the course of the year, and then
enjoyed himself by paying a visit to another waiter at another tavern,
and assisting him in laying the knives and forks. In like manner the
ordinarily-understood holiday for the gentlemen of the daily press -
there being no diurnals published on Sunday - is Saturday; whereupon,
after lying in bed somewhat longer than usual on the sixth day's morning, they indulge in the dulce
desipere in loco, by writing stinging
leading articles in the journals which publish editions on the Sabbath.
This is due to their inveterate propensity for grumbling. And, mark
me, this licensed and acknowledged grumbling is the surest safeguard
of our liberties, and the safest guarantee for our not drifting from our
snug roadstead of constitutionalism, where we can ride at anchor, and
smile at the timid argosies and caravels of despotism, moored and chained
in the grim granite basins of the inner port, and all without launching [-285-] into the troubled oceans, full of breakers and white squalls, of utter
democracy. We seize upon a wrong, and grumble at it, till, after a few
months', and sometimes a few years' grumbling, we find that the wrong
exists no more, and that we have gained another Right. But we have
had no barricades ad interim, no fusillades, no bombardment of private
houses, no declarations of the "solidarity" of anybody, no confiscations,
no deportations, and no guillotinings. Our rulers, grown wise by experience of smashed windows, pelted heads, and occasional (when the
people were very hard driven) political annihilation, and hurling into
the limbo of red tapisrn, have of late years placed few or no restrictions
upon grumbling. The noble lord at the head of the Government daily
receives deputations, who grumble at his measures, or at the measures
he won't guarantee to propose, fearfully. In the Parliament House, no
sooner does our gracious Queen, in her silver bell-like voice, speak the
speech that others have written down for her (I daresay she could write
a much more sensible discourse herself), than Lords and Commons begin
to grumble about the sense of her words, and move amendments to the
address which is to be presented to her. Downstairs, all through the
session, parliamentary committees are grumbling at witnesses, and witnesses are grumbling at the committee ; and in outlying boroughs vicious
electors are grumbling at the members of the Commons' House of Parliament. The country newspapers and the London newspapers grumble.
The barristers grumble at the judge, and the judge at the jury. The
public grumbles at the way soldiers are treated by the officers, and the
soldiers (who are about the only citizens who are not addicted to
grumbling) go out and fight and win battles, at which we at home
grumble, because so many lives have been lost. And I daresay the
Prime Minister grumbles because he has the gout, and the Queen on
her throne grumbles because "Punch" caricatures the Prince Consort,
and "Punch" grumbles because the Prince Consort does not often
enough give occasion to be grumbled at. I grumble at being obliged
to write for your amusement, and you grumble because I am not half
amusing enough. We grumble at the cold dinners at school, at the
price of the marriage license, at the doctor's bill for our first child's
measles, at the cost of the funeral of Uncle John, who left us all his
money. We grumble because we have to live, and grumble when the
physician tells us that we must die. Does it not all resolve itself into
our purer, better Fielding's aphorism in " Vanity Fair"- "Ah!
vanitas vanitatum? Who of us has not his hobby, or, having it, is [-286-] satisfied? " Yet there is much virtue in having at least liberty to
grumble.
These thoughts come over me as I wend my way at Ten o'Clock at
night along the New Road - what do they call it now? Euston Road,
Pancras Road, Paddington Road - que scais-je - towards the suburban
district of Pentonville. It won't be suburban much longer; for Clerkenwell and
Islington , Somers Town and Finsbury, are hemming it in
so closely that it will be engulphed some of these days by a brick-and-
mortar torrent, like the first Eddystone Lighthouse. A. pleasant spot
once was Pentonville, haunted by cheery memories of Sir Hugh Myddleton, the New River Head,
Sadlers' Wells Theatre, and the "Angel" at Islington - which isn't (at least now-a-days, and I doubt if it ever was)
at Islington at all. They began to spoil Pentonville when they pulled
down that outrageously comic statue of George IV., at Battle Bridge.
Then they built the Great Northern Railway Terminus - clincher
number one ; then an advertising tailor built a parody of the Crystal
Palace for a shop-clincher number two (I am using a Swivellerism).
The pre-ordinate clincher had been the erection of the hideously lugubrious penitentiary. However, I suppose it is all for the best. The
next step will be to brick up the reservoir, and take down that mysterious
tuning-fork looking erection, which no doubt has something to do with
the water supply of London, and the New River Head; then they had
better turn the Angel into a select vestry-room or a meeting-house for
the Board of Works ; and then, after that, I should advise them to demolish the "Belvidere."
Whose connection with grumbling you shall very speedily understand. At this famous and commodious old tavern, one of the few in
London that yet preserve, not only a local but a metropolitan reputation, there is held every Saturday
evening - ten o'clock being about the
time for the commencement of the mimic Wittenagemotte - one of those
meetings for political discussion, and the "ventilation" of political
questions, whose uninterfered with occurrence, not only here, but in
Fleet Street, in Bride Lane, and in Leicester Square, so much did rouse
the ire of the sbirri, and mouchards, and unutterable villany of Rue de
Jerusalem spydom, in the employ of his Imperial Majesty, Napoleon
III.
I have run the gauntlet of most of these harmless symposia of
political talk ; and with all, save the Westminster Forum, I can claim
acquaintance. I have been one of the Alumni of Cogers or "Codger's"
[-287-] Hall, Bride Lane, where the gentleman who occupied the chair was addressed as "My Noble Grand" by the speaker. I have attended a
meeting at the Forum, held at the Green Dragon,* (* There is a curious story
about this "Green Dragon" tavern, a dim record,
embosomed in the musty records of the "State Trials." In a note to one of those
chronicles of crimes and suffering, it is hinted at that the daughter of the executioner of Charles the First was a barmaid at the Green Dragon in the reign of
Queen Anne.) Fleet Street, where
visitors are invited to join in the discussion; and where, one evening,
joining in the discussion as a stranger, the meeting objected to my
political views, and a vote passed the chair that I was to be thrown out
of the window; from which ignominious exodus I was only rescued by
the advent of' a friendly Templar, who had dropped in from chambers
to the Forum to oil his rusty eloquence in time for the coming Western
Circuit. I have dropped in, too, occasionally, at Mr. Wyld's Reading-
Room, in Leicester Square, and have listened to much drouthy eloquence on subjects home and foreign. But nowhere have I seen such
tableaux as the governmental journals of Paris have depicted, in the gloomiest of colours, as images of the political discussion meetings of
perfide Albion. Nowhere have I seen a bowl of blood on the table, the
chairman sitting on a barrel of gunpowder - to be subsequently used
for the conflagration of the Thames - the orator addressing his hearers
from the summit of a pile of ball-cartridges erected on a coffin; or dissentient members launching obuses, charged with fulminating mercury,
at an unpopular speaker's head. Dark and dangerous meetings, of
dark and dangerous men, do certainly take place in London. Oppressed,
despairing, starving, outlawed, outraged exiles, do meet in holes and
corners, do plot and conspire, do hurl, in speech, denunciation and
sarcasm, at despots. But you must not go to Fleet Street, to Bride
Lane, to Leicester Square, nor, least of all, to Pentonville, to find them.
The doors of those mysterious meeting-places are "tiled" as securely as
Freemasons' lodges. Now and then a traitor, by lies and hypocrisy,
gains admittance, but woe to the traitor if he be discovered in his
treason. He dies within the year.
The "Belvidere" is distinguished above its kindred discussion halls,
by its eminently respectable aspect. The subjects broached are bold
enough, and are as boldly treated; but you are puzzled to reconcile the
full-blown democracy of some of the speakers, with their mild, bank-
account-possessing, rate-and-tax-paying, housekeeping appearance. They [-288-]
TEN O'CLOCK P.M. : A DISCUSSION AT THE "BELVIDERE"
[-289-] bark but do not bite. The usages and prestige of the place, too, demand
a certain amenity in discussion and forbearance in reply, which throws
an extra tinge of respectability over the whole. Looking at this spacious, handsome room, panelled and pillared, comfortably and brilliantly
lit, with its doubled rows of mahogany tables covered with bottles and
glasses full of steaming compounds that do comfort the flesh outwardly
and rejoice the spirit inwardly - in strict moderation, mind; looking at
this burly, substantial auditory, ensconced in their cosy chairs, smoking
their cigars, and listening with attentive ears to the orator ; looking at
the thoughtful waiter slipping from table to table, administering refreshment and receiving orders with a subtle swiftness, yet taking, I
will be bound, an ardent mental interest in the discussion; looking at
the grave chairman in his comfortable high-raised fauteuil - you might
fancy this to be one of the parochial "representative councils", as vestries are now queerly christened, or a freemasons' lodge, when, "labour"
being over, "refreshment" commences, or an ordinary club of middle-class men accustomed to meet one another, and talk upon the topics of
the day over a social glass. And, in truth, were you to suppose this,
you would not be so very far out in your calculation. These are, indeed, vestrymen
- or representative councillors - freemasons, benefit-club,
middle-class men. But the topic of the night is invested with authority, and its discussion is subject to rules; and the highest compliment
I can pay to the "Belvidere" is that, if in that other Discussion Hall,
held between the months of March and August, in a green-leather and
oak-carving furnished chamber, nigh unto the crypt of St. Stephen's
Chapel, Westminster, as much sobriety, decorum, and persistence in
adhering to the matter in hand were shown, as in this convivial parliament, the business of the nation would progress much better, and we
should have much less cause to grumble at most things.
See a speaker on his legs - a fluent speaker, somewhat of a florid
speaker, occasionally somewhat of a violent speaker, though his violence
is strictly confined to words and gesticulations. What withering sarcasms he hurls at kings and ministers! How eloquently he tells those
tyrannical puppets that, when they are forgotten, when the force and
direction of personal satire is no longer understood, and measures are
felt only in their remotest consequences, his words shall still be found
to contain principles worthy of being transmitted to posterity! How
sneeringly he assures our rulers that they have but a copyhold interest
in the state, that they cannot waste, that they cannot alienate, and that [-290-] the fee-simple is in us! How menacingly he assures the monarchs of
the earth that the crowns which were gained by one revolution may be
lost by another! and how much, listening to his impassioned exordium,
to his whirlwind argument, to his scathing peroration, I become impressed with a notion that the orator has a capital memory, and has
been an assiduous student of certain letters, which were addressed, in
our great-grandmothers' time, to Mr. Woodfall, the printer of the
"Public Advertiser," by a mysterious correspondent - a correspondent
whose motto was, "Stat nominis umbra," and who chose to assume the
pseudonym of "JUNIUS."
In these orations you are sure to hear a good deal about Catholic
Emancipation, the Test and Corporation Acts, the Spa Fields Riots,
the Peterloo Massacre, the "Piccadilly Butchers," the "Dorsetshire
Labourers," Queen Caroline's Trial, Richmond the Spy, and similar
topics. They are not very amusing, perhaps, but they are of infinite
service in keeping juvenile politicians au fait with the political memorabilia of thirty or forty years since. I have even heard an ardent
reformer, with scarcely so much as a tuft on his chin, declaim in burning accents upon the great case of
Horne Tooke versus the House of Commons - "Once a priest forever a priest"
- on Jack Wilkes, Number Forty-five, and the question of general warrants, on the cruelty of
Lord Ellenborough to William Hone, the trial of Colonel Despard, and
the eventualities which might have followed the successful assassination
of Lord Sidmouth by Arthur Thistlewood.
A staid, middle-aged gentleman follows the reformer, and proceeds,
genteelly, to demolish him. He is a staunch upholder of our ancient
institutions, and sneers at the presumptuous and levelling tendencies of
the age. He has some neat things to say about the "Pig and Whistle"
style of oratory, at which the ardent reformer winces, chews the end of
his cigar, and empties his glass indignantly ; and he concludes with a
glowing eulogium on church and state, our glorious constitution, and
our noble aristocracy.
Ere I leave these placid tribunes of Pentonville Hill, discharging
their harmless philippics at men high in place and power, I muse a
little over the tavern itself, and call to mind a certain story I once heard
respecting it, possessing what foundation of truth I know not, but
which, if not true, is assuredly ben trovato. Thus runs the dubious
legend: You remember the fair young daughter of England, the good
princess, the virtuous daughter of a wicked father, and in whom, from [-291-] her cradle to her marriage, the hope and love of this stolid but strong-
feeling nation were centred. You remember her husband: he is a king
at Brussels now. You remember how, when she died, all England
burst into a passionate lament; how thousands went into voluntary
mourning; how clergymen wept in the pulpit, when they discoursed on
her virtues; how an awful darkness and despair seemed to overshadow
the ill-governed land when the news came that the Princess Charlotte
was dead. There is little need to say that her husband (who, I am
glad to believe, loved her very truly and fondly) was at first inconsolable
for her loss, and grieved long and bitterly for her. But time was good
to him, and heaven merciful, and by degrees his sorrow wore away.
Still he was melancholy, pre-occupied, and loved nothing so much as to
be left alone. It was about this time that the then landlord of the Belvidere began to notice that about eleven o'clock almost every forenoon
during the week a gentleman in deep mourning, and on horseback,
would stop at the door of the tavern, leave his horse in charge of his
groom, enter the large room, call for a pipe and a pint of ale, and
quietly enjoy those refreshments for about the space of one hour. The
room would be at that early hour of the day almost deserted. The
one or two tradesmen who would occasionally drop in for a crust of
bread and cheese, and a peep at the "Times," would be bidden a civil
good morning - in a slightly foreign accent - by the stranger; but
he never entered into conversation ; he never read the newspaper ; he
"kep hisself to hisself," the waiter said. But he was so punctual and
so regular in his attendance, that the people of the house came to look
out for his daily visit in his suit of sables, and a special pipe was
laid, a special dish of tobacco prepared, and a special chair and spittoon
arranged, every day for his use. So things went on for many weeks;
till one luckless morning, just after the departure of the black horseman, a customer of the
house - I believe he was a commercial traveller,
who had just returned from a journey in the west of England, and who
had been enjoying his pipe and pint in the society of the taciturn stranger -
called the landlord on one side.
"Do you know who that chap is?" he asked.
"Not a bit," answered the host. "Comes here every morning
regular. Pint of mild sixpenny ; bird's-eye; gives the waiter twopence,
and goes away. Groom has a glass of ale sitting on his horse. Pays
his way like a gentleman."
"He's somebody," said the commercial traveller, significantly.
[-292-] "So I should think," returned the landlord, quietly.
"He's a high fellow," added the bagman, mysteriously.
"I shouldn't wonder," said the landlord, tranquilly.
"Why, bless your heart, man alive!" broke out, impatiently, his
interlocutor, "can't you guess who he is? He's Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg. I have seen his Royal Highness a hundred times, and
know him by sight as well as I do you."
The next forenoon, when the sable horseman arrived, he found a
roll of crimson baize laid down from the pales before the tavern to the
doorway, which was lined by American aloes in tubs. The staircase
was freshly carpeted; in the stranger's customary place was a table
covered with a crimson cloth, backed by a crimson chair with gilt legs.
The landlady, her daughter, and the barmaid, were all in holiday attire,
and when the unknown rang the bell, the landlord himself; in a blue
coat and brass buttons, and his hair newly powdered, brought him
the beer in a silver tankard, and a wax candle at which to light his
pipe. The black horseman said nothing, drank his ale, and smoked
his tobacco, paid his reckoning, made his way downstairs amidst a
profusion of bows and curtsies, mounted his horse, and - never came
again. So runs the legend. The commercial traveller may have been
wrong in his assertion, or may have been hoaxing the landlord; but I
incline to the belief that this was really Prince Leopold. Why not?
The incident is trifling enough ; yet there is something touching in
the picture of the good-natured young German brooding over his bereavement, yet consoling himself in the simple German fashion, over
his pipe and beer.
Friend of mine, if you have the slightest hope or thought that
whither I am now taking thee is one of the gay and merry scenes of
London night-life, prithee dismiss the thought, for thou art in error.
Prithee pull up the collar of thy coat, stiffen thy neckcloth as much as
possible, take that wicked cigar from thy mouth, cast down thine eyes,
and assume a decorum, if thou have it not. We are going to Exeter
Hall.
Don't be alarmed: this is not the month of May or the season for
meetings in aid of missions to the Quashiboos, the Rumbatumbas, or
the Oolalooloo cannibals. We are not going to hear John B. Gough
lecture on temperance. We are going to hear an oratorio, conducted
by Mr. Costa-an oratorio in which Mr. Sims Reeves, Mr. Weiss, Miss [-293-] Dolby, and Madame Clara Novello, are to sing - and to listen to a band
and chorus brought to a degree of perfection which only the genius of
such a conductor could insure, or the gigantic resources of the Sacred
Harmonic Society command.
There would seem to be in an oratorio something essentially germane
to the English mind and character. The sounding recitative and
swelling hymns, the rolling choruses and triumphant bursts of
exultant music, have a strange affinity with the solemn, earnest,
energetic English people, slow to move to anger or to love, but,
when moved, passionately enthusiastic in their love, bloody and
terrible in their great wrath. The French can no more understand
oratorios than they can understand blank verse. I remember going to
see Mendelssohn's "Elijah" once in Paris. It was winter time, and the
performances took place in Franconi's great, windy, for-summer-built
horse-riding circus in the Champs Elysées. The band and chorus
shivered as they scraped and sang; the prima donna's nose and lips
were blue, and the music paper quivered in her hand; the contralto
looked exquisitely uncomfortable at not having to wear a page's dress
and show her legs. As for the audience, the ladies sat muffled up in
shawls and furs - it was a morning performance - and whispered
among themselves ; the men sucked the knobs of their canes, twirled
their moustaches, stared up at the chandeliers, and murmured, Quelle
dróle do musique / They didn't repeat that oratorio, and I don't
wonder at it. To the French it was neither fish nor flesh, neither
ecclesiastical nor secular. If the first, they might argue, give us the
chanting priests, the swinging censers dispensing fragrant clouds, the
red-cassocked altar boys, the twinkling tapers, the embroidered
canopies, and the swelling paeans of the concealed choristers. If the
last, let us have a drinking chorus, a laughing chorus, and a dagger
chorus, a prima donna to make her entrance on horseback, a contralto in tights, a ballet in the second act, and some red fire at the
end. But this is neither mass nor opera.
They think differently in England. To the seriously-inclined
middle classes the oratorio supplies the place of the opera. And it
behaves you to consider what a vast power in the state those serious
middle-class men and women are. It is all very well for us, men and
citizens of the world, yet living in a comparatively contracted circle of
acquaintances as cosmopolitan as ourselves; it is all very well for us,
who see "no harm" in sitting at home and reading the newspaper,
[-294-] while our wives go to church; who support Sunday bands, Sunday
steamboats, and Sunday excursion trains, and are agitating now for the
opening of museums, and galleries, and palaces on the Sabbath; who
talk lightly on serious topics, and call clergymen parsons ; it is all very
well, I say, for us, travelled, and somewhat cynical as we may be, to
pretend that the "serious" world is an amalgam of bigotry, hypocrisy,
and selfishness, and to ignore the solemn religious journals that
denounce hot dinner on Sundays, or a walk after it, or the perusal
of a secular book on the sacred day, as intolerable sins. Yet how
many thousands - how many millions - of sober, sincere, conscientious citizens are there, who are honestly persuaded of the sinfulness of many things which we consider harmless recreations
who would shrink back in horror, if they heard a tithe of the conversations that go on every night in hundreds of well-conducted London
drawing-rooms! who look upon dancing as an irreligious and Babylonish pastime! whose only light reading consists of tracts, missionary
chronicles, and memoirs of sainted cheesemongers, and the beatified
daughters of dairymen! I declare that I never see a theatre in a
country town - where, at least, two-thirds of the population consist of
such as I have described - without wondering at the lunacy of the
person who built it, without marvelling at the idiocy of every fresh
speculator who enters on the management. We may pretend to despise
the Puritan world, write books and farces against them, and quiz the
"Record" or the "Wesleyan;" but it is folly to ignore the vast
numerical strength of these same Puritans. They purchase such books
as "Memorials of Captain Headly Vicars" by thousands; they
subscribe thousands of pounds yearly in an almost insane hope of converting heathen barbarians to a better faith ; they give away millions
of tracts; they flood the platform and the auditory of every public
meeting. It won't do to ignore them. Cromwell's Ironsides and Sir
Harry Vane's Fifth-Monarchy Men have made too deep a mark upon
the people of England to be lightly passed over.
But the serious world, and that section who are worldly, meet on
neutral ground at an Exeter Hall oratorio. The religionists see no
sin in listening to sacred music; the mundane come to listen with
delight to the immortal strains of Handel, of Haydn, and of Mendelssohn. "When shall their glory fade" asked Tennyson, singing of the
Six Hundred at Balaclava. When shall the glory of our great oratorio
writers decay? Never - I hope.
[-295-] A resident at Bethlehem Hospital - he wasn't either a doctor or a
keeper, but wore, habitually, a strait-waistcoat, took shower-baths very
frequently, and kept his head close shaved - once divided the world into
two classes : people who were mad, and people who would be mad. I, too - but out of Bedlam, thank heaven
! - have made a somewhat analogous classification. I divide the world into people who have and have
not seen Ghosts. I belong myself to the first class. I am continually
seeing ghosts. I shake hands in the street with friends who have been
dead these ten years. A dear dead sister comes and sits by mc at night
when I read, and tells me, with a kiss, that I am a good boy for coming
home so early. I was troubled some years ago with a man with his
head off, who, in that unseemly position, and holding his head on his
knees, sat continually before me. I dismissed him at last as being an
unworthy hallucination, and not a genuine ghost. I meet a good many
ghosts now - friendly ghosts, pleasant ghosts - but chiefly do they
favour me with their company at places of public entertainment. It
may be that I am a bad listener to music or theatrical dialogue, that
I am absent in mind, and distrait; but so surely as I go to a theatre or
concert, so surely do I fall a conjuring up mind-pictures, till the theatre
or the hall, and its occupants, quite fade away, and I find myself in
entirely different company, talking to people who are mouldering in
their graves, or who are thousands of miles away.
And so the oratorio goes on, the assemblage paying a grave and
decorous attention to the music, and bearing themselves far more like a
congregation than an audience. They are so devotedly rapt in the
magnificent performance, that I expect every moment to hear the vast
mass of them join in the choruses; and when, at the first bar of the
sublime "Hallelujah Chorus," the hearers all stand up, the singers in
the orchestra seem to me like priests. In truth, I think that to hear
an oratorio, chastens and purifies the mind, and that we go away from
those grand performances wiser and better men. There is a natural
disinclination to return - at least, immediately - to frivolous and trivial
pursuits, after listening to those solemn and ennobling strains. I know
that some exist upon whom music has no effect whatsoever; but I
believe that the vast majority of mankind are influenced for good or
evil by the sound of music. The most heartless woman in the world
whom I know, cries when she hears "Kathleen ma vourneen." Napoleon could never listen to "Lascio
ch'io piango la cruda sorte, without
crossing himself. How grandly does John Dryden set forth this theory [-296-]
TEN O'CLOCK P.M. : AN ORATORIO AT EXETER HALL
[-297-] in his immortal St. Cecilian Ode! with what exquisite art has he
shown us Alexander moved to alternate joy, pride, shame, weeping,
frenzy, as old Timotheus sweeps the lyre in varied strains!
Now, in sober broughams and in hack-cabs - driven, I hope, by
regenerated cabmen, who give tickets before they are asked for them,
and never charge more than thirty per cent. above the legal fare - or
haply, if the night be fine, on foot, the serious audience, well cloaked
and bonneted, leave the hall. For half an hour afterwards, the Exeter
Hall side of the Strand, both east and west, is dotted with serious
groups in search of the last omnibus, or, perchance, boldly walking
home. I wonder how many of the serious ones know anything of the
thoroughfare. They may traverse it at noonday, or pass down it every
morning for twenty years in omnibuses on their way to the city; but
do they know anything of the night aspect of that most mysterious of
London thoroughfares? It is better, perhaps, that they should not.
Minute by minute they grow scarcer, and by ten minutes to eleven
there are no serious groups in the Strand. They are all gone home to
supper-hot ones, very probably, for the serious world is not at all un-addicted to good
living - and sober. I, too, have liberty to go and sup,
if I so choose; but not, alas! to bed. Still have I work to do, and for some hours.
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