[-191-]
CREMORNE.
"IN a set of pictures illustrative of Greek customs, it
was quite impossible to leave out the hetaerae who gave such a peculiar
colouring to Grecian levity, and exercised so potent a sway over the life of the
younger members of the community. Abundant materials for such a sketch exist,
for the Greeks made no secret of matters of this kind; the difficulty has been
not to sacrifice the vividness of the picture of the ordinary intercourse
with these women to the demands of our modern sense of propriety," says Professor
Becker, in his truly admirable work on the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. In
the same
manner, and for the same reason, the modern sense of propriety is supposed to be in
the way of
any very graphic description of Cremorne; yet we have hetaerae almost as
bewitching as Aspasia
or the Corinthian Lais; and if our students, and learned clergy, and holy
bishops write long articles about the Athenian Dionysia [-192-]
only
held, once a year, why should we not speak of ours which last all the summer,
and the scene of which is Cremorne? At the Dionysia the most unbridled merriment
and drunkenness were the order of the day, and were held quite blameless. For a
while the most sober-minded bade adieu to the stringency of habit, following the
well-known Greek maxim-
"Ne'er blush with drink to spice the feast's gay
hour,
And, reeling, own the mighty wine-god's power."
So it is in Cremorne. If Corinth had her groves sacred to
Aphrodite, so has Cremorne. It offends our modern sense of propriety to speak of
such matters. English people only see what they wish to see. If you are true -
if
you look at real life and say what you think of it, you shock our modern sense
of propriety. We may talk about drainage and ventilation, and the advantages of
soap, but there we must stop. Keep the outside clean, but don't look within.
Thus is it our writers make such blunders. For instance, good-meaning Mrs Stowe,
after she had written Uncle Tom, came here to be lionized, and to write a book
about us. She did so, and a very poor book it was. But I must quote one passage [-193-]
from "Sunny Memories." In writing of a visit she paid to
the Jardin Mobile in Paris, she writes, "Entrance to this Paradise can be
had, for gentlemen a dollar, ladies free; this tells the whole story.
Nevertheless, do not infer that there are not respectable ladies there; it is a
place so remarkable that very few strangers stay long in Paris without taking a
look at it. And though young ladies residing in Paris never go, and matrons very
seldom, yet occasionally it is the case that some ladies of respectability look
in. Nevertheless, aside from the impropriety inherent in the very nature of the
waltzing, there was not a word, look, or gesture of immorality or impropriety.
The dresses were all decent, and, if there was vice, it was vice masked under
the guise of polite propriety. How different, I could not but reflect, is all
this from the gin-palaces of London! There, there is indeed a dazzling splendour
of gas-lights, but there is nothing artistic, nothing refined, nothing..
appealing to the imagination. There are only hogsheads and barrels, and the
appliances for serving out strong drink; and there for one sole end-the
swallowing of the fiery stimulant - come the nightly thousands, from the gay and
[-194-] well-dressed to the haggard and tattered, in the last stage
of debasement. The end is the same, by how different paths! Here they dance
along the path to ruin with flowers and music - there they cast themselves bodily,
as it were, into the lake of fire." A more unfair comparison, I think, was never
drawn; a drinking-shop is much the same everywhere, and in Paris as well as in
London, people, to use Mrs Stowe's own words, cast themselves bodily into the
lake of fire. We have our Jardin Mobile, but of course Mrs Stowe never went
there - as we have known good people confessing to entering theatres in Germany or
France who on no account would have gone near one at home. If Mrs Stowe had
confessed to going to Cremorne, she would have been cut, and so she went to the
Paris Cremorne instead; but to write a true book on England, she should have
gone to Cremorne. Look at Cremorne; is it not one, as Disraeli is reported to
have said, of the institutions of the country?* [* The Chelsea vestry complained of Cremorne, because it
injured the property in the neighbourhood ;-the defence was, that Mr Simpson had
spent £30,000 or £40,000 upon it; that he had given £1200 to the Wellington
fund, and £300 - the profits of one night's entertainment - to the fund for the
relief of the victims of the Indian mutiny.] [-195-] The gardens are beautiful, are kept in fine order, are
adorned with really fine trees, and are watered by the Thames, here almost a
silver stream. Though near London, on a summer evening the air is fresh and
balmy, the amusements are varied, the company are genteel in appearance, and
here, as in Paris, they dance along the path to ruin with flowers and music. If
Mrs Stowe gives the preference to the Parisians, she may be right, but I am
inclined to dispute the grounds of that preference. The gin-palaces are filled
with our sots, with our utter wrecks, with all that is loathsome and low in man
or woman. Your son, fresh from home and its sacred influences, is shy of
entering a gin-palace at first, he goes there with a blush upon his cheek, and
a sense of shame at his heart. He shrinks from its foul companionship, and when
he has come out he resolves never to be what he has seen under those accursed
roofs. But you take him to Cremorne, or you send him to the Lowther Arcade, or
the Holborn Casino, and he is surrounded by temptation that speaks to him with
almost irresistible power. The women are well-dressed and well-behaved. The
drink does not repel but merely stimulates the [-196-] hot passions of youth, and
lulls the conscience. For one man
that is ruined in a gin-shop there are twenty that are ruined at Cremorne.
As to the morality of such places, that is not to be settled
dogmatically by me or by any one else. Tennyson talks of men fighting their
doubts, and gathering strength; in the same manner, men may fight temptation and
gather strength, and one man may merely spend a pleasant evening where another
may in the same interval of time ruin himself for life. The tares and the wheat,
in this confused world of ours, grow side by side. Unnaturally, we bring up our
sons only to pluck what we deem the wheat; and immediately they are left to
themselves, they begin gathering the tares, which we have not taught them are
such, and have for them at least the charm of novelty. It does not do to say
there is no pleasure in the world; there is a great deal. The grass is green,
though, it may be, sad sinners tread it. The sun shines as sweetly on carrion as
on the Koh-i-noor. The lark high up at heaven's gate sings as loud a song of
praise, whether villains or lovers listen to its lays. Places are what we make
them. I fear there are many blackguards at Cremorne; [-197-]
the women most of them are undoubtedly hetaerae, and yet what
a place it is for fun! How jolly are all you meet! How innocent are all the
amusements, - the ascent of the balloon - the dancing - the equestrian
performances - the comic song - the illuminations - the fire-works - the promenade on
the grass lawn or in the gas-lit paths; the impulses that come to us in the warm
breath of the summer eve, how grateful are they all, and what a change from
Cheapside or from noisy manufactories still more confined! By this light the
scene is almost a fairy one. Can there be danger here? Is there here nothing
artistic - nothing refined - nothing appealing to the imagination? Come here, Mrs
Stowe, and judge. You will scandalize, I know, that portion of the religious
public that never yet has looked at man and society honestly in the face, but
you will better understand the frightful hypocrisies of our domestic life; you
will better understand how it is that a religion which we pay so much for, and
to which we render so much outward homage, has so little hold upon the heart
and life. There is no harm in Cremorne, if man is born merely to enjoy himself -
to eat, drink, be merry, and die. I grant, it [-198-] is rather inconvenient for a young man who has his way to
fight in life to indulge a taste for pleasure, to launch out into expenses
beyond his means, to mix with company that is more amusing than moral, and to
keep late hours; and young fellows who go to Cremorne must run all these risks.
It may do you, my good sir, no harm to go there. You have arrived at an age when
the gaieties of life have ceased to be dangerous. You come up by one of the
Citizen boats to Chelsea after business hours, and stroll into the garden and
view the balloon, or sit out the ballet, or gaze with a leaden eye upon the
riders, and the clowns, and the dancing, or the fireworks, and return home in
decent time to bed; and if you waste a pound or two, you can afford it. But it
is otherwise with inflammable youth-a clerk, it may be, in a merchant's
warehouse on 30s. a-week, and it is really alarming to think what excitements
are thus held out to the passions, at all times so difficult to control. There
are the North Woolwich Gardens - there is Highbury Barn - all rivalling Cremorne,
and all capable of containing some thousands of idle pleasure-seekers. Vauxhall,
with its drunken orgies, is gone never to return - the place that
[-199-] knows it now will know it no more for ever- but such places
are what thoughtless people call respectable, are frequented by respectable
people; and amidst mirth and music, foaming up in the sparkling wine, looking
out of dark blue eyes, reddening the freshest cheeks, and nestling in the
richest curls, there lurks the great enemy of God and man. Young man, such an
enemy you cannot resist; your only refuge is in flight. Ah, you think that
face fair as you ask its owner to drink with you; it would have been fairer had
it never gone to Cremorne. A father loved her as the apple of his eye; she was
the sole daughter of his home and heart, and here she comes night after night to
drink and dance; a few years hence and you shall meet her drinking and cursing
in the lowest gin-palaces of St Giles's, and the gay fast fellows around you now
will be digging gold in Australia, or it may be walking the streets in rags, or
it may be dying in London hospitals of lingering disease, or, which is worse
than all, it may be living on year after year with all that is divine in man
utterly blotted out and destroyed. The path that leads to life is strait and
narrow, and few there be who find it.