[-143-]
THE RESPECTABLE PUBLIC-HOUSE
Is situated in one of the leading thoroughfares, and is decorated in an
exceedingly handsome manner. The furniture is all new and beautifully polished,
the seats are generally exquisitely soft and covered with crimson velvet, the
walls are ornamented with pictures and pier-glasses, and the ceiling is adorned
in a manner costly and rare. Such places as Simpson s or Campbell's in
Beak-street, or Nell Gwynn's, almost rival the clubs, and, indeed, are much
smarter than anything they can show at the Milton. Time was when men were
partial to the sanded floor, the plain furniture, the homely style of such
places as Dolly's, the London Coffee-house, or the Cock, to which Tennyson has
lent the glory of his name. Now the love of how is cultivated to an alarming
extent. "Let us be genteel or die," said Mrs Nickleby, and her spirit
surrounds us everywhere. Hence the splendour of the drinking-rooms of the
metropo-[-144-]lis, and the studied deportment of
the waiters, and the subdued awe with which Young Norvals fresh from the
Grampian Hills and their fathers' flocks tread the costly carpets or sprawl
their long legs beneath glittering mahogany.
Let us suppose it is about nine or ten in the evening, and we
step into one of the numerous establishments which are to the respectable
classes what the gin-palace and the beer-house is supposed to be to the class
who are not. The reader must pardon my use of the word respectable. It is a word
which, from my heart, I abhor, and, as it is commonly employed, merely denotes
that a man has an account at a bank. There are but two ways in which human
actions can be contemplated - the worldly and the philosophical or Christian. I
use the term respectable merely in its worldly acceptation, but I skip this
digression and pass on. Undoubtedly at the first blush it is a cheerful scene
that first meets our eye. In this box are two or three old friends discussing a
bottle of claret, who have not met perhaps since bright and boisterous boyhood,
and who may never meet again. Of what manly struggle, of what sorrow that can
never die, of what calm pleasures and chastened hopes, have [-145-]
they to tell! No wonder that you see the tear glistening in the eye,
though there is laughter on the lip. Pass on; here are some bagsmen red with
port, and redolent of slang. In the next box are three or four young fellows
drinking whisky and smoking cigars, and of course their talk is of wine and
women; but there is hope, nevertheless, for woman is still to them a something
divine, and the evil days have not come when they see in her nothing but common
clay. Look at this retired old gentleman of the old school sitting by himself
alone; yet is he not alone, for as he sips his port memories thicken in his
brain, of ancient cronies now sleeping in churchyards far away, of a sainted
wife no longer a denizen of this dark world of sin, of daughters with laughing
children round their knees, all rosy and chubby and flaxen-haired, of sons with
Anglo- Saxon energy and faith planting the old race on a new soil. Cross to this
other side and look at these reckless, dissipated fellows, whom the waiter has
just respectfully requested not to make so much noise, as it disturbs the other
gentlemen in he room. Possibly they are Joint Stock Bank directors or railway
officials, and after a few years it will be found that for their revelry to-[-146-]night
a deluded public will have to pay. Here are a host of city merchants discussing
politics, and it is wonderful how common-place is their conversation under the
influence of alcohol.
"Palmerston is a great man, by ---, he is a great man,
sir," says one. "Yes, and no mistake," is the reply. "There
is no humbug about Palmerston," says another. And so they ring the changes,
originating nothing, gaining nothing, only getting redder in the face and more
indistinct in their pronunciation. At length they button over their great coats,
pay their bills, and generally very good-naturedly, but very unsteadily, steer
towards the door. It may be that a noisy discussion takes place. One man a
little more gone than the rest disturbs the harmony of the evening by his flat
contradictions, uttered somewhat too rudely, and backed by a blow from the fist
on the table, which breaks a couple of glasses. But next morning he apologizes;
"It was only my wine contradicting your wine," he says, without any
sense of shame. But this rarely happens. The respectable classes have more
command of their temper, and do not get so idiotically drunk as the frequenters
of low public-houses, and so the habitués are in no [-147-]
hurry to move and leave the light and luxurious room for the muddy
streets and the winter night. But they must do so, and young men with their
passions unnaturally stimulated, and the conscience proportionately deadened,
are left to the temptations which await men who arc out in the small hours; and
old fogies, believing that if they go to bed mellow, they live as they ought to
live, and die jolly fellows, find their way to their respective dwelling-places
in a state as lamentable as it is degrading. Yet next Sunday you will see these
men at church, and hear them joining in solemn and contrite prayer. Do they
think these purple faces tell no tales? Do they think it is only the wife knows
how they drink - in respectable company - in respectable hotels? Do they forget
that in the midst of their revelry, under the flaming chandeliers, peering over
the shoulders of courteous waiters, listening to their vinous laughter and
ancient jokes, Death, with his dart, is there? Ay, and one night lie will ride
home with his victim in the Hansom, and will see him placed, all smelling with
drink and under its influence, in the bed, side by side with his wife, and next
morning she will as usual give her husband the seidlitz powder or soda-[-148-]water,
and leave him to sleep for a short while longer, and when she comes back will
find that his is the sleep which knows no waking. And then the inquest will be
held-and a medical man will perplex a plain case with useless show of knowledge,
and a jury will return a verdict of "Death from natural causes.! You and I
know better - you and I know that if the man had not gone into the respectable
public-house he might have lived another ten years - that it was because he went
there night after night, and sat soaking there night after night, that the
blood-vessels became gorged and clotted, and that the wonderful machine stood
still. "Poisoned by alcohol" is the true verdict- by alcohol
sold and consumed in the respectable public-house. How long will society
sanction such places? How long will they retard the progress of the nation by
wasting energies, and time, and cash, and opportunities that might have been
devoted to nobler ends? How long with their splendour - with their gilding and
glass - with their air of respectability and comfort, will they attract the
unwary, ruin the weak, and slay the strong man in his strength and pride?