Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/337

Charles Dickens] where a vast quantity of liquor is drunk, and where vast numbers of the class on whom liquor has a decided effect, attend, the strong men act promptly before the police can be troubled, and with a creditable roughness cast out anything like drunkenness, upon the streets, when of course it is some one else's business to deal with it. On any idiotic cries, or challenges to fight, the strong men rush up, seize the disturber by the throat, and hustle him out in a second. For the place must be well conducted.

What a scene inside!—vestibules blue, gold, and white, all champagne and glorified bars, and velvet sofas, and little pigeon-hole boxes, and painted Houris serving drinks. The crash of music comes from within; charming gentlemen are in crowds, all apparently devoted to lovely burdens, who seem to be never weary of accepting homage in the shape of what the Bar of England, behind which the Houris stand, can offer. Inside, what a spectacle!—loftiness, decoration, majesty, size, and a dim dome-like spaciousness not to be surpassed. Even the Frenchman owns that his dear Paris cannot boast its equal. Think of the noble stage, with its enormous opening, the grand orchestra in front, nearly a hundred strong, crashing out; then gallery after gallery ascending, as it were, to be lost in the cathedral-like roof, lost in the mists of too much light! But one may think more of the enormous crowd with which that vast tabernacle is bursting, with which it is boiling over—not the "sea of heads," still and steady, which is known to theatres, but an ever-circulating mass, floating to and fro, indistinct, undistinguished to a great degree. There is lovely burden after lovely burden, itself to another great degree glittering with the jewels and gold of the quality to which the burden itself is partial. They seem happy and in the highest spirits, and well may bless the kindly patronage which affords them this magnificent shelter and gaily encourages their presence; but at the same time regulates them with a firm hand, the hand of the strong men. For this is "a well-conducted place of amusement," and every young gentleman who is making his manners, or marring his head. comes to the Royal Pandemonium.

Down in the great area, what eating and drinking, what glittering silver tankards—or seeming silver—what Bass, what Allsopp, what innumerable "sodas"! Animated and crowded as that huge space appears, it is in truth the dullest part of the house; for here are herded the stupid homely souls who come merely to look at the magnificent entertainments provided on the stage, and for whom, I suspect, the proprietor has a befitting contempt. Even the strong men in their scarlet and blue uniform—handsome Life Guardsmen they look too—we can see despise these clodhoppers, who know nothing of life, and who do not come to see life. They do not order champagne wine for themselves, or for lovely burdens. They do not command costly suppers; they pay their shilling or so at the doors. Yet they are scrupulously treated; not for the world would the least disrespect be offered to them, or to the humdrum wives and daughters whom they bring with them to stare at the show. Nothing can be more generous than this treatment, for no sort of account can be found in it; to carpers like the present writer, the proprietor of this well-conducted place of amusement can retort, "Look down there at my patrons—the pure wives and daughters of England. They come to me. What are these idle charges?"

Well may they stare at the noble scenery that seems to run riot in fancy and colouring, at the endless troops of dancing seraphs, who seem to live, quite naturally, above in golden branches, to float in the air, and hang from clouds in the most natural way. So with the orchestra, its general leading them facing the audience. As we survey this motley crowd, all engaged in what is called harmless pleasure, it is impossible not to consider it a school of some sort, open every night in the year, and which is teaching all the young gentlemen and ladies who resort there lessons of some description.

The scholars, if we consider the hour during which the academy is open, resort there in thousands, some nearly every night, and for some their studies have quite a fascination. Some arrive from the opera in full dress—with opera hat, white tie. Every one newly come from the country repairs there at once, eager to see a little scholastic life. But it offers far more advantages to the mere youth—clerk or shopboy—who has here a career not to be pursued under other circumstances, so advantageously. In this splendid realm he gains an importance, a spurious manabout-township, at a cheap cost. He can ruffle it like a real gallant, according to his degree. Here he can generously "stand" refreshment, and purchase the converse and the smiles of lovely burdens; from here he