Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/336

326[March 6, 1869] .

THE ROYAL PANDEMONIUM PALACE.

we are the most moral people on the face of the earth, was once almost the boast of the complacent Briton. Now, such a vaunting would be disclaimed as arrogance, and in something of this key: we have our faults, and failings, and vices; and in the metropolis, particularly, there is much to amend, scenes of rude vice, the squalor of wickedness, as it were, arising from the vastness and the complex organisation of the great city, which we call, with pardonable pride, the capital of the world. But in the English people, and the London people, there is a true moral sense, after all; and none of that coarse publicity, that flaunting of vice which so shocks us in Paris. We may justly thank Providence for having a police force, as well as a House of Lords, which, directed by a nice public opinion, takes care that vice shall pay the proverbial homage to virtue, or go at once to the Station. "No, sir," says Mr. Complacent Briton, "we may have a scandal now and again; but we have none of your brazen Paris morals over here. They must keep in the dark. Men are pretty much the same all the world over. I don't set up to be squeamish, but we won't have decency affronted here."

Some such remark Mr. Complacent Briton has often made to the observing foreigner, parting with him, perhaps, in the neighbourhood so congenial to aliens, or actually, perhaps, in sight of a mouldy square, towards the smaller hours; at one side of which rises a large illuminated lantern of Moorish pattern, all ablaze with windows, and stars, and devices, and through whose doors are pouring in and out streams of men and women. This flaming tabernacle, he will be told, is the ; and, as an acute Frenchman, he will take its measure, as it were, in a second—for it speaks in a language that he perfectly understands—and with a smile of delight will enter to spend his night there.

It seems like a great vicious beehive, all seething within and without, with life and humanity. The blaze and the light in which the insects revel suffuse it through and through. Round the openings rises the eternal din of arriving broughams and hansoms, their setting down and driving away. The far-off East-ender and shop boy, passing by, gazes with simplicity, and thinks this must be a very palace of delights, and is tempted in. Wiser men than he, who read their newspapers conscientiously, may be tempted in too, perhaps, even into bringing their wives and daughters, for have they not read in broadsheets that no more admirably "conducted" place exists, and that we are under the deepest obligations to its "enterprising" proprietor.

Light in floods is always enticing—it is beauty, richness, colour, gold, silver, jewels; and there is plenty of it here. Were there another intelligent foreigner, with misgivings as to whether all this were not a sham, a mere pinchbeck imitation of his dear Paris, which would break down on examination, and discover the uncouth John Bull morality underneath; his mind would be set at rest by a short study of the successively arriving hansoms, which stream up, each filled with what is termed "a lovely burden;" that is, with more ermine, and velvet, and bags of yellow hair, than would be quite agreeable to Mr. Complacent Briton. Each lovely burden descends briskly, pays her fare handsomely, and is gallantly helped out by a bearded, brawny officer of the establishment, dressed in gold lace, wearing earrings, who greets each with a natural familiarity, founded on an acquaintance of many thousand successive nights. The number of these burdens is something alarming. As it grows towards eleven, it becomes a perfect block; burden after burden is set down, and hurries in, fearful of losing a second, for the moments are golden. Up comes, too, the frequent brougham, dark and glistening—the lady from the opera—who drops the white-tied "votary of pleasure," and drives away. The votary of pleasure hurries in. Let us do the same.

Through the blaze at the entrance, we admire those noble soldiers, each about six feet two high, splendid men, privates in a corps, enrolled, no doubt, in defence of the order and morality of the house. They wear blue and gold tunics, with bright scarlet facings, scarlet and gold képis, and white belts, exquisitely pipeclayed. The uniform size of these heroes is something amazing; their great chests and stalwart arms seem suitable for ox-felling, for which they are not required. In a well conducted establishment like this, Mr. Complacent Briton will be told, where all classes are mixed up in the pursuit of rational pleasure, it is quite necessary to have strong men on the spot, who can rally in a moment, and stamp out the beginning of disorder. In a well-conducted establishment