CATHERINE-STREET

Strand, is a busy place by day-time (it does a great business in the newspaper line, and about four or five in the afternoon it is used by the acute newsboys of the metropolis as a kind of Change), but it is busier far by night, and the later the hour the more active and lively it grows. As you walk along the Strand any time in the afternoon and evening, have you not seen (to our shame be it said) a sight not visible in the chief thoroughfare of any other capital in Europe? The sight I allude to is that of girls, whose profession is but too evident from their appearance, stopping almost every man they meet, mildly, perhaps, in the early part of the evening – but, under the influence of drink, with greater rudeness and freedom as the night wears on. These girls, as you observe, are dressed in finery hired for the purpose; and following them, as a hawk its prey, you will perceive at a respectful distance old hags, always Jewesses, whose business it is to see that these girls do not escape with their fine dresses, and that they are active in their efforts to entrap young men void of understanding. Well, these women all live in the neighbourhood of Catherine-street. What a filthy trade the Jews and Jewesses of London drive! You may go into Elysiums, and wine-rooms, and saloons, in this district, and you will find them belonging to Jews – the waiters Jews – the wine, the women, the cigars, all in the hands of Jews – true to their ancient vocation of “spoiling the Egyptians.” Let me not be understood as joining in vulgar prejudices against the Jews. Without reading “Coningsby,” or “Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography,” I am ready to confess that there have been, and still are, great and gifted men born to the Jewish race; but I am speaking of the vile crew who earn an infamous livelihood by pandering to all that is degraded in man or woman – whose vulture eyes follow you up and down Catherine-street, and who, if they could, would rob you of your last farthing, and tear off from your back its last rag, and who by fair means or foul rear up prostitutes, and trade in flesh and blood. But pardon the digression, and yet not exactly is the subject a digression, when we remember Catherine-street and its neighbouring courts would be a very different locality, had not the Jews selected it as a fitting place for operation. In the days Consule Planco, as Mr Thackeray would write, in the hot youth of the Regency, before George IV. had become prematurely used up, and a moral people had erected a statue to the memory of the most dissolute king in Christendom as a lesson for England’s ingenuous youth and as an example for future royal princes, Catherine-street was gay indeed, if wine and profligacy in the lowest and worst reality of forms are ever gay. There was Mother H.’s, where bucks assembled, and reckless women danced and drank for a few short years ere they died wretchedly in parish poor-houses, or sought oblivion and repose in the dark waters of the neighbouring Thames. Up and down Catherine-street what wretchedness masked in smiles has walked – what sin in satin – what devilish craft and brutal lust, aye, and, what is worse than all, what unavailing repentance and regret!

A very fleeting population is that of Catherine-street. These women, commencing their life at eighteen, are few of them supposed to last more than eight years; and if you see them in the day-time, before they are painted and dressed up – with their red eyes and bloated faces, you will think few of them will last even that short time; but they pass on one by one to the spirit land, not as did Antigone, conscious of duty done, though wailing her unwedded state, nor as Jephthah’s high-souled daughter, for whom Hebrew maidens devoutly wept – but with body and soul alike loathsome and steeped in sin. Here in Catherine-street vice is a monster of a hideous mien. The gay women, as they are termed, are worse off than American slaves, and the men at the best are but drunken fools frittering away time and money and health, and rooting out from their hearts all trace of the divine that may be yet lingering there. The West is the more fashionable quarter, and the glory of Catherine-street is fled. Almost every house you come to is a public-house, or something worse. Here there is a free-and-easy after the theatres are over; there a lounge open all night for the entertainment of bullies and prostitutes, and pickpockets and thieves, greenhorns from the country or London-born; here a dancing saloon, which we are told in the advertisement no visitor should leave London without first seeing, and there a coffee-house where, when expelled from gayer places of resort, half intoxicated men and women take an early breakfast. All round you are bitter memories. Every stone you tread is red with blood; you can almost hear the last dying shriek of virtue, before, by means of the tempting purse or the hocussed draught, the poor victim – feebler in her struggles every hour – be lost for ever. Yet the gas burns brightly by night, and there is dancing, and wine, and songs, and in the small hours you may hear a hollow laughter, sadder even than cries and tears. Think what years and years of tedious culture must have elapsed to produce this concentrated essence of vice. How many must have died in the seasoning – how many must have turned back shuddering as they saw the dark ending to their infatuated career – how many weeping parents must have won back to decency and the observance of moral and social law – how many the want of pecuniary means must have compelled into a reluctant abstinence! Such a crop could only be reared in such a Sodom and Gomorrha as ours. That landlord, gloating over his ill-gotten gains, could not have sunk into so fallen a condition rapidly. It has taken years to make him what he is. There is no excuse for him, and he knows it. It is not for the honest refreshment of the weary or the bonâ fide accommodation of the public that his house is open. The real public have been in bed for hours. These men around us are here for immoral purposes. These women are on the same bad errand, and that they may better pursue their vocation, here they come and drink; but he sells his poison, thinking not of the mischief it will do, but of the gain it will bring. Is he not a degraded man, with his double chin, and dirty face, and low forehead? can you see in him one trace of benevolence or humanity? Do you doubt this? – spend your last farthing in his bar, pawn every article of clothing you have, and go with an empty pocket and in rags, and you will soon be ordered to the door. You see he is now turning out that wretched creature. He has allowed her to drink till she has no more money; but she solicited chance customers, and they treated her to gin, and so the landlord let her stop; but now she is so drunk as to interfere with his business, and he turns her houseless and friendless out into the streets. Let us watch her. She is too far gone to have any decency left. Drink and sadness combined have tortured her brain to madness. Her curses fill the air; a crowd collects; the police come up; she is borne on a stretcher to Bow-street, and in the morning is dismissed with a reprimand, or sentenced to a month’s imprisonment, as the sitting magistrate is in a good temper or the reverse. The longer we stop here the more of such scenes shall we see, for with such publicans and sinners Catherine-street abounds. I have known life lost here in these midnight brawls; yet by day it has a dull and decent appearance, and little would the passing stranger guess all its revelations of sorrow and of crime.

THE BAL MASQUE,

In foreign lands, we are told, is something refined and delicate. I have been to some abroad which certainly were nothing of the kind; but in England, or rather in London, they are low, blackguard places, whether in the Holborn Casino, or Covent Garden, or the Grecian Saloon, or Vauxhall, or at Drury-lane. In 1723 they were put down by government. Steele wrote of them, that in his time, “the misfortune of the thing is, that people dress themselves in what they have a mind to be – and not what they are fit for.” I have seen the French men and women at Vauxhall, and if they do in Paris what they do there – why, then I doubt somewhat of the superiority even of French Bal Masqués. But in England a public Bal Masqué is a disgusting exhibition, to enjoy which every moral sense must be deadened, and then a man must be drunk and have his pockets well lined. The rustic flower-girls and simple hay-makers with whom you dance will drink champagne as if it were ginger-beer, and consume all the delicacies of the season as if they cost no more than bacon and beans.

The fun, as it is termed, generally commences about 11 p. m., by an immense mob of costermongers, tag-rag and bob-tail, forming themselves in a row under the surveillance of the police, to watch and criticise the appearance of the maskers, and specially to regale themselves with jokes should any unfortunate do the economical and arrive on foot. I hear people say they like London – they can do anything they like without being observed. I doubt that much. I advise the strong-minded female who tells me that, to walk down Cheapside in a Bloomer costume, and I will warrant she will have as great a mob accompanying her as followed Kossuth or any other hero to Guildhall. But to return to the Bal Masqué. I presume the company are arriving and the little boys are cheering, as only little boys can, right under cab wheels and in between the horses’ legs. Some of the company, to borrow an ancient witticism, go disguised as gentlemen – some buy a mask at the door for fourpence – others delight in monstrous noses and fearful moustache – others, especially those who have fancy dresses, appear as Charles II.s, Cardinal Wolseys, Shakspeares, Henry VIII.s, Scotch Highlanders, Australian Diggers, Monks, and look far better when they enter than they do when they make their exit in the early light of a summer morning. The same remark holds true of their female companions, who are mostly the same ladies that you meet in Regent-street in the afternoon, or hanging about the Hay-market all night, a class at no time remarkable for modesty, but whom we shall see in the course of the evening becoming bold and brazenfaced with excitement and wine. But the theatre is full – the guests are met – the band is assembled – the leader wields the baton – the sparkling chandeliers give a lustre to the scene, and away they bound to the music, whilst from the boxes and the gallery admiring crowds look down. Yes, there is a wild excitement in the hour, which stirs even the pulses of old blood. The women, as debardeurs, flower girls, sailor boys – many of them with faces fitting them for diviner lives, look beautiful even in their degradation and shame. Horace tells us, wherever we go black care gets up and rides behind. Is it so? Can there be sad hearts beneath those gay exteriors? Do those cheeks flushed and radiant eyes indicate that they belong to those whom all moralists have held infamous, all religions condemned, and whose existence our modern civilization perpetuates and deplores? Is man an immortal being, sent here for awhile to triumph over fleshly lusts and passions, to learn to trample as dross on the vanities of earth, and to set his affections on things above? Is it true that the most successful votaries of pleasure, from kingly Solomon to lordly Byron, have borne the same testimony to them, that they are not worth the gathering, that they are but as apples gathered by the shore of the Dead Sea, fair to the eye but deadly to the taste, and that in no way can they answer the need and aspirations of the heart of man, which is greater and grander than them all? Have we paid ministers of religion, bishops and archbishops, millions and millions of pounds to teach men these few self-evident truths, and yet do such orgies as those of which we write not merely exist but flourish, as if we had accepted the creed of the Atheist, – “Let us eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die”? To-morrow! who around us now thinks of to-morrow? Not the young rake chaffing and dancing before us, whose mirth is the delirium of forgetfulness and the intoxication of wine, whose to-morrow is Whitecross-street Prison or the Insolvent Debtors’ Court. Not that brazenfaced woman now arrayed in splendour, and surrounded by her admirers, whose to-morrow is old age, neglect, and a garret. Not those grey-headed gouty old sinners in the boxes, who have not the excuse of youth for the follies with which they desecrate old age. And certainly not that pale clerk, who has most probably embezzled his employer’s money, and who is frantically exclaiming, “Waiter, another bottle of champagne,” as he tells the women of his lot that he feels “a cup too low.” You say he has them to cheer him. Yes, till his money is gone. When he is at Bow-street, as assuredly he will soon be, I promise you they will not be the last to give evidence as to his possession of funds, or the manner of his spending them. There may be honour among thieves, there is none among women when they have once lost their own.