Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/543

530 are pre-eminently institutions for the promotion of matrimony. When ladies discuss this subject, they appear invariably to lose sight of the story of the Grocer’s Apprentices. What happens when a lad is first introduced into an establishment for the retailing of raisins, figs, candied sugar, and sweeties of various descriptions? Is the lad debarred from the privilege of tasting the luxuries which it will henceforth be his duty to dispense to his employer’s customers? No; he is not only permitted, but rather encouraged, to take his fill; for it is certain that in a very short time he will be so disgusted with the lusciousness of those delicacies which had appeared to be so exquisite to his virgin palate, that he would prefer a hunch of bread and cheese to any of them. The same thing happens with the young men at the London Clubs. I will venture to say, that after his first six months of membership have expired, not one in a hundred cares one straw about the velvet sofas and upholsteries which have excited your indignation. It may indeed be that they permanently prefer the simpler repast which they find at their club to all the luxuries of your hospitable board. But surely this is not an evil of an anti-matrimonial tendency. Now, what happened to young men in London before the club system of this great capital had attained its present development? For their dinners they were bound to dive into some fetid holes redolent of the fumes of hot joints, and wet sawdust. The tablecloths were filthy—spotted with mustard-spots and blotches of gravy—the cutlery was not overclean; the glasses not uncommonly adorned with the marks of the waiter’s thumb. Let us, for argument’s sake, admit that the meat, when you got it, was fair enough in quality, but you bolted it in silence, or amused yourself during your repast with poring over yesterday’s newspaper, for the papers of the day were always ‘in hand.’ The whole affair was abominable; and nothing but the nerves and digestive powers of youth in its vigorous prime could have gone through with it.”

Mrs. John Baker here interrupted the speaker, and intimated, that even admitting Mr. Tickler’s facts as true, she was entitled to the triumph of the argument—as in very truth by force of the very discomforts and privations which Mr. H. T. had so eloquently described, the young men were forced into submission, and driven nolentes volentes into the arms of a loving wife, and the comforts of a respectable home.

“Not so, Mrs. Baker; not so. The process I describe was not at all calculated to promote an admiration for the ‘respectable’ in the youthful breast. Amusement after their day’s work the young men in London would have in one form or another, and I fear, in the majority of cases, that as you lowered the standard of comfort the amusement was taken in a more and more questionable form, and possibly the matrimonial fervour diminished. The young man about town in London of the present day is a great improvement, in my humble opinion, upon the Tom and Jerry type which found favour in the eyes of our fathers. At least in a London club a young gentleman associates with young gentlemen of his own class—his dinner is put before him with an attention to cleanliness and propriety of which, if English homes, almost of the humblest kind, are destitute, all I can say is, the English homes ought to be very much ashamed of themselves. It may probably surprise you to hear—but it is, notwithstanding, the truth—that 80 per cent.—I might even say more—of the dinners furnished every day to the members of the London Clubs collectively, are served at rates varying from 2s. 9d. to 3s. 6d.,—surely a charge which does not imply any very wild degree of luxury or extravagance. The older members will then retire to the news-room or the library, and doze in comfort over their paper, or their novel; and what would the poor old gentlemen do but for the resource of their club? The younger ones disappear in the smoking-room, where at least they meet with gentlemen like themselves, who—astounding as such an assertion may appear—would not, with rare exceptions indeed, tolerate any other subjects or forms of conversation than such as would be employed at your own dinner-table. Let us follow them up-stairs to the billiard-room. The time has happily gone by when it was supposed that a youth who would play a game at billiards was in a fair way to perdition—but even the bitterest opponents of that amusement can scarcely deny that it may be more safely indulged in amongst friends and gentlemen, members of the same club, than amongst the black-legs and sham-captains of the public billiard-tables. Of course there is a sprinkling of men whose acquaintance one would rather avoid in every club; but on the whole, as might have been expected from the constitution of the clubs, and the use of the ballot upon entry, the percentage of such is considerably smaller in the club than in general society.”

These doctrines were very heretical, and in violent contradiction of the Baker theory: they were warmly contested by Mrs. J. Baker and by the ladies present at every point; and at length Mrs. J. B. got so heated with the argument, that she lost sight of her own position as the mother of two nubile and unmarried daughters, and appealed triumphantly to the existence of so many unmarried young ladies of the greatest loveliness—of the highest education—of the tenderest feelings—who were now wasting their youth and early womanhood in cheerless celibacy, as a proof that the desire for marriage amongst men had decreased—which decrease she still attributed to the anti-matrimonial action of the London Clubs.

“In the first place, my dear Mrs. Baker,”—how saccharine in his contradictions was this insinuating lawyer!—“in the first place, I suspect that the extent of this most crying evil has been very much exaggerated. There are more unmarried young ladies and young men, no doubt, than there were twenty years ago; but also there is a greater number of married couples. I do not observe in the Returns of the Registrar-General that there is any falling off in the rate of increase of the population of Great Britain—even passing over the point of how far emigration may affect the returns. But let us admit, for argument’s sake, that the returns are maintained at their present amount by the marriages of the working classes, and that in