[-166-]
BOXING NIGHT.
I AM rather out of conceit with Christmas boxes. I have been wished the
compliments of the season by no less than six individuals this very morning, and
for those good wishes I, poor man though I be, with family of my own to work
for, have had to pay half-a-crown each. I grow suspicious of every smiling face
I meet. I walk with my hands in my pocket, and my eyes cast down. I wonder how
it fares with my strong-minded wife at home. I know she will have had a rare
battle to fight. She will have had the Postman - and the Dustman - and the Waits
- and the Sweep - and the Turncock - and the Lamplighter - and the Grocer's lad
- and the Butcher's boy; and if she compounds with them at the rate of a
shilling a-piece, she may bless her stars. I feel that I cannot stand much of
this kind of work, and that for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year I shall
have to pay rather handsomely. Stop at home - tie up your [-167-]
knockers-say you are sick or dead, or a shareholder in the Royal British
Bank, still you cannot escape the tender mercies of a London Boxing day. Mind, I
have not one word to say of the various good wishes and gifts offered by friends
and relatives to each other as pledges of esteem and goodwill. I would be the
last to find fault with the customs originating in the warm heart of love, and
honoured by the sanction of the whole civilized world. By all means let us
reverence them ten-fold. But I have a right to complain that I am compelled to
pay for mercenary goodwill, and that on me, or such as me, a tax is levied which
does no good in most cases, and frequently does an immense amount of harm. When
I read, as I am sure to do, in the police reports of the next day, that,
"yesterday, being the day after Boxing day, the time of the magistrates was
chiefly occupied with cases of drunkenness," am I not right in wishing that
I had kept the money in my own pocket? Some of my friends would do that, but
then for the next twelve months they are hampered and inconvenienced in a
thousand ways. As wise man, I choose the least of two evils, but I am an
unwilling victim nevertheless. But [-168-] a truce
to my meditations; let us look at London on a Boxing night. By daylight you
would scarce know London. A new race seems to have invaded the streets, filled
the omnibuses, swarmed in the bazaars and the Arcade, choked up the
eating-houses and the beer-shops. Smith with his Balmoral boots, Brown with his
all-round collar, Jones with his Noah's Ark coat, Robinson with the straight
tie, which young England deems the cheese, delight us no more with their snobby
appearance and gentish airs; to-day this is the poor man's holiday. You can tell
him by the awkwardness with which he wears his Sunday clothes, by the startling
colour of his ties, by the audacious appearance of his waistcoat. If he would
only dress as a gentleman dresses, he would look as well, but he must be fine.
Well, it matters little so long as he be happy, whether he is so or not; and let
him pass with his wife and children, all full of wonder and delight as they
stare in at the shop windows and think everything-how happy are they in the
delusion! - that all that glitter is gold. Let us wish them a merry Christmas
and a happy New Year.
And now the dull, dark day, by the magic power of gas, has
been transformed into gay and [-169-] brilliant
night. The thousands who have spent the day sight-seeing are not satiated, and
are flocking round the entrances of the various theatres. Let us stand on the
stage of the Victoria, and see them to the number of fifteen hundred mounted
upon the gallery benches. Through the small door near the ceiling they come down
like a Niagara,and you expect to see them hurled by hundreds into the pit. What
a Babel of sounds! It is in vain one cries "Horder! " "Ats
off!" "Down in front!" "Silence!" Boys in the gallery
arE throwing orange peel all over the pit; Smith halloos to Brown, and Brown to
Smith; a sailor in a private box recognises some comrades beneath, and
immediately a conversation ensues; rivals meet and quarrel; women treat each
other to the contents of their baskets - full of undigestible articles, you may
be sure, with a bottle of gin in the corner. The play - it is that refreshing
drama, the "Battersea Brigand" - proceeds in dumb-show; but the
pantomime, the subject of which is, "Wine, War, and Love, and Queen Virtue
in the Vistas of Light or Glitter," - with what a breathless calm that is
ushered in. It is an old silly affair. Harlequin, clown, and [-170-]
pantaloon, are they not all very dreary in their mirth? Yet the audience
is in a roar of laughter, and little babes clap their tiny hands, and tears of
laughter chase each other down the withered cheeks of age. This night in every
theatre of London is a similar scene witnessed. The British public is supposed
to be unusually weak at Christmas, and tricks that were childish and stale when
George the Third was king, and jokes venerable even in Joe Miller's time, are
still supposed to afford the most uproarious amusement to a people boasting its
Christianity, its civilisation, and enlightenment. Of all conventionalisms those
of the stage are the most rigid, antiquated, and absurd.
But the thousands outside who did not get in - what are
they about? Look at that respectable mechanic; you saw him in the morning as
happy as a prince, and almost as fine; he stands leaning against the lamp-post,
apparently an idiot. His hat is broken-his coat is torn-his face is bloody - his
pockets are empty; not a friend is near, and he is far away from home. It is
clear too what he has been about. Come on a few steps further - three policemen
are carrying a woman to Bow-street. A hooting [-171-] crowd
follow; she heeds them not, nor cares she that she has lost her bonnet-that her
hair streams loosely in the wind-that her gown (it is her Sunday one) is all
torn to tatters - or that her person is rudely exposed. The further we go, and
the later it grows, the more of these sad pictures shall we see. Of course we do
not look for such in Regent-street, or Belgravia, or Oxford-street, or the
Strand. Probably in them we shall meet respectable people staggering along under
the influence of drink-but they are not noisy or obstreperous-they do not curse
and swear-they do not require the aid of the police. We must go into the low
neighbourhoods - into St Giles', or Drury-lane, or Ratcliffe-highway, or the
New-cut, or Whitechapel - if we would see the miseries of London on Boxing
night. We must take our stand by some gin-palace. We must stay there till the
crowds it has absorbed and poisoned are turned loose and maddened into the
streets. Then what horrible scenes are realized. here an Irish faction meet, and
men, women, and children engage in a general melee, and cries of murder
rend the air, and piercing shrieks vex the dull ear of night. There two mates
are stripped and [-172-] fighting, who but this
morning were bosom friends, and who to-morrow would not harm a hair of each
other's heads. Here a mechanic with a bloody head is being borne to the
neighbouring hospital, to lie there a few months at the public expense, while
his family are maintained by the parish. Again, we meet two wives nursing young
babes scared into unnatural silence, clenching their fists in each other's
faces, and with difficulty restrained from acts of more savage violence by their
drunken husbands. Their day's holiday has come to this. In the metropolis in
1853, the number of public-houses was 5729 - the number of beer-shops 3613.
These figures give a total of 9342. If on this night we suppose on an average
one fight in the course of the evening takes place in each of these drinking
shops, we can get some idea of what goes on in London on a Boxing night. In
passing at midnight down Drury-lane, I see three fights in a five minutes' walk.
Enlightened native of Timbuctoo, will you not pity our London heathens and send
a few missionaries here!