[-218-]
THE EAGLE TAVERN
Is situated in an appropriate locality in the City-road, not far
from a lunatic asylum, and contiguous to a workhouse. From time immemorial the
Cockneys have hastened thither to enjoy themselves. Children are taught to say-
"Up and down the City-road,
In and out
the Eagle,
That s the way the money goes,
Pop goes the
weasel."
And the apprentice or clerk, fresh from the country, and anxious to see life,
generally commences with a visit to the Grecian Saloon - Eagle Tavern. As a
rule, I do not think what are termed fast men go much to theatres. To sit out a
five-act tragedy and then a farce is a bore which only quiet old fogies and
people of a domestic turn can endure; and even where, as in the Grecian Saloon,
you have dancing, and singing, and drinking added, it is not the fast men, but
the family parties, that make it pay. [-219-] There
you see Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson, with their respective partners and
the dear pledges of their well-regulated loves. They come early, sit out Jack
Shepherd with a resolution worthy of a better cause, listen to the singing
from the Music Hall, return again to witness the closing theatrical
performances, and enjoy all the old stage tricks as if they had not heard them
for the last fifty years. These worthy creatures see a splendour in the Grecian
Saloon which I do not. Then there are the juvenile swells. Anxious mothers in
the country, fearing the contaminations of London and the ruin it has brought on
other sons, lodge them in remote Islington, or Hoxton, still more remote. It is
in vain they do so. The Haymarket may be far off, but the Grecian Saloon is
near; and the young hopefuls come in at half-price, for six- pence, and smoke
their cigars, and do their pale ale, and adopt the slang and the vices of their
betters with too much ease. And then there are the unfortunates from the
City-road, with painted faces, brazen looks, and gorgeous silks; mercenary in
every thought and feeling, and with hearts hard as adamant. God help the lad
that gets entangled with such as they! [-220-] It
requires no prophet to foretell his career. Embezzlement - first with a view to
replace the sum appropriated to guilty pleasures, - then, embezzlement
hopelessly continued because once begun, - then discovery, and punishment, and
shame, and despair. Youth must have its pleasures, I know. Young blood is not
torpid like that of age; and song and woman will ever be dear till time furrows
the brow and silvers the hair. But why need we seek them where the air is
contaminated-where the evening's amusement will not bear the morning's
reflection - where, though pleasure lead the way, scattering sweet flowers, vice
and shame and premature old age bring up the rear? Look at those lads; they
cannot have been long emancipated from school. The erect collar, the straight
hat, the long coat, indicate the fact that they belong to the Young England
party; and here, listening to indifferent songs, and witnessing inferior
dramatic performances, and associating with the refuse of the other sex, they
are learning to be men. What a manhood to look forward to! And if there be no
excuse for them, there is still less for what I may call the domestic part of
the audience, - the fat old women with their baskets [-221-]
filled with prog, the pursy old tradesmen that drop in to smoke a pipe, and the
various tribes of gents and bagsmen on their way home from the city.
Let me say a word on our domestic life. When there is so
little difference between the majority of men and women, why should the line of
demarcation be so severely drawn? We talk very prettily about home, sweet home,
and poets sing its love and purity and charms; and a popular picture is that
which the artist draws when he groups together the gray-haired grandfather and
grandmother, seated by the fire, and father and mother by their side, and brave
lads and graceful girls around listening, by the warm light of the lamp, to some
tale of manly struggle or Christian chivalry, or lifting up together the glad
voice of song. But why should your son or mine, immediately he goes out into the
world and leaves the parental roof, become a stranger to all this? If the
Englishman's home be his castle, why should we cast out into the ditch, to lie
down and die in its mire, all who are not of the family? Think of the thousands
and thousands of young men who yearly come up to town, strangers to every one, [-222-]
and with no chance of getting into female society, except such as they
find at such places as the Eagle. These women are not lovelier than you meet
with in respectable houses - not better educated nor more correct in their
principles ; yet, as by natural instinct one sex seeks the society of the other,
we condemn our youth to the company of such. Paterfamilias is afraid the young
men will pay attention to his daughters. Perhaps the young lady-daughters fancy
it to be beneath them to be civil to their father's young men. Perhaps the young
men themselves believe that an honourable connexion is beyond their means, and
deliberately pursue a career of vice. In all these cases, in my humble opinion,
very serious blunders are involved. The life of a bachelor under the
circumstances I here allude to is quite as costly as that of a married man,
without the stimulus to exertion which the latter has. Paterfamilias forgets
that the young man he fears maybe the suitor for his daughter's hand, though he
is poor to-day, may be comparatively rich tomorrow; and the young ladies should
remember that it is rather too much to expect that a young man just entering
upon life will be able to launch out in the same style as those who for thirty
or [-223-] forty years have been pursuing a
successful commercial career. It is our false pride that eats us up,-that makes
us sneer at love in a cottage,- that turns our women into cross old maids, and
our men into gay Lotharios, very disreputable and, to a certain extent,
deliriously gay. I admit that we have much more outside respectability, but is
society the better? Have we more true happiness? If Wordsworth is correct,
"plain living and high thinking" go together. But our aim is high
living, and I fear the thinking is very, very plain in consequence. We nurse up
in our midst, and reverently worship-and denounce as worse than an infidel every
one who utters the truth respecting it - an aristocracy the richest and most
luxurious in the world, - an aristocracy which would long ere this have become
intellectually effete, did it not recruit its ranks from successful adventurers
in the shape of lawyers ; and the commercial classes vying with this aristocracy
in outward show, the effects are manifest all over the land, in the general
attempts to live beyond one's meals, and to get into a circle supposed to be
superior to that in which originally we moved. In Germany they manage better;
the noble and the trading classes never [-224-] have
a rivalry, the gulf is impassable, and hence the home life is less pretentious
and happier than ours. In England "the toe of the peasant comes so near the
heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." What we want is a return to the
plain living and high thinking of an age gone by; less show and more reality;
the destruction of the wall of partition, either of poverty or of false pride,
and the widening and enhancing the charms of the domestic circle. If now and
then the result is a marriage not very intelligible on pecuniary principles, let
us consider even that as a lesser evil than that resulting from the
companionship, on the part of our youths, with the women who infest such places
as the Eagle, and without which it is clear such places could not pay.
I will call evidence as to the character of the amusements at
the Eagle Tavern. In the parliamentary report on public-houses, I find Mr
Balfour is examined respecting it. He says, "The most detrimental place of
which I know, as far as women are concerned, is the Eagle Tavern in the
City-road. There are gardens, and statues round the gardens, and everything to
attract. There is a large theatre, and there [-225-] are
theatrical representations during the week. I have seen women there whom I have
recognised next day as common street-walkers. The gardens are open, with alcoves
and boxes on each side, and lads and young persons are taken in there and plied
with drink. The house is opened on Sunday evening, but on Sunday evening there
is no dramatic representation nor music. I have seen gentlemen come out
drunk." On a Sunday night when Mr Balfour visited the place, he said,
"There were various rooms. There is what is called the Chinese-room, the
ball-room, and the concert-room. They were all filled with persons drinking, and
I saw a great number of female servants, and females of a certain description;
there is no doubt upon that subject at all." Now, Mr Conquest, the present
proprietor, must have read all this evidence, yet I do not see that he has taken
any steps to reform the evil complained of. It pays, I suppose, and that is
enough. Much money has been made by it. The late proprietor retired a wealthy
man. The present proprietor, we presume, trusts to do the same, and if the
establishment panders to vice, if women date their ruin to Sunday evenings
there, if mothers see [-226-] their sons robbed of
all that would make them decent men owing to their visits there, what s the
odds? cries the dram-seller, who, like another Cain, asks if he be his brother's
keeper.
The regular attendants see this not. "It s a beautiful
place," says Mrs Smith to Mrs Robinson, "a'nt it, my dear?" as
they sit eating questionable sausage rolls, and indulging in bottled beer. They
see the pictures in the balcony, and think the gas jets quite miraculous, and
admire the weak fountains and ambitious grottoes - and they laugh even at the
comic singer, a feat I cannot achieve anyhow. Evidently the Eagle Tavern
audience is of the same genus as an Adelphi audience, a people easily moved to
laughter, and much given to taking their meals with them, - a people not prone
to look before or after, - who would be drowned rather than get up and
walk into the Ark, and who see no chance of their own house being burnt down in
the fact that their neighbour's house is in flames. I don't believe naturally
men or women are these dull clods, but custom makes them such, and they see no
danger, nor perhaps is there where they are concerned.