[-108-]
THE CYDER CELLARS.
IN the days of the gay and graceless Charles, Bow-street was the Bond-street
of London. In the taverns of that quarter were the true homes and haunts of the
British poets. That they were much better for all their drinking and worship of
the small hours, I more than doubt. Pope tried the pace, but found it killing,
and had the wisdom to go and live at Twickenham, and cease to play the part of a
man about town. Describing Addison's life at this period, he says, "He
usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button's, and dined
there, and stayed there five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I
was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me. I hurt my
health, and so I quitted it." But the wits died off, and Tom's,
Will's, Button's became desolate, and in their place the Cyder Cellars grew
famous.
You know Maiden-lane, where an old hair-[-109-]dresser
had a son born to him, who, under the name of Turner, won his way to the first
rank amongst English painters, - where Voltaire, "so witty, profligate, and
thin," lodged at the house of a French peruke-maker, and corresponded with
Swift, and Pope, and the other literary men of the times, - where Fielding laid
the foundation of an eternal fame,-where Andrew Marvell refused courtly bribes,
and in sublime poverty proudly picked his mutton-bone: there, some long time
since, stood a mansion, the residence, in a green old age, of that Nell Gwynne
of whom, with a strange perversity, the world speaks as kindly as if she were a
Grace Darling, or a Florence Nightingale, or a Margaret Fuller, or an Elizabeth
Fry. A portion of the old house still remains, with its ancient wainscotting.
Well, on the site of this mansion was, and is, the Cyder Cejj~rs, the oldest
house of its class in London, actually referred to in a rare pamphlet now extant
in the British Museum, entitled "Adventures Under-ground in the Year
1750." In those days to drink deep was deemed a virtue, and the literary
class, after the exhausting labours of the day, loved nothing better than to sit
soaking all night in the Cyder Cel-[-110-]lars,
where all restraints were thrown on one side, - where the song was sung and the
wine was quaffed, and men were fools enough to think they were getting happy
when they were only getting drunk. I can understand why the wits went to the
Cyder Cellars then. Few of them lived in a style in which they would like to
receive their friends. In a place like the Cyder Cellars they could meet after
the theatres were closed, and the occupations of the day over, and sup and talk
and drink with more freedom than in any private house; and no doubt many were
the ingenuous youths who went to the Cyder Cellars to see the learned Mr. Bayle,
or the great Grecian Porson, or the eminent tragedian Mr. Edmund Kean, and
thought it a fine thing to view those distinguished men maudlin, or obscene, or
blasphemous, over their cups. But the wits do not go to the Cyder Cellars now.
Even the men about town do not go there much. I remember when that dismal song,
"Sam Hall," was sung - a song in which a wretch is supposed to utter
all the wretchedness in his soul, all his sickness of life, all his abhorrence
of mankind, as he was on his way to Tyburn drop. Horrible as the song was -
revolt-[-111-]ing as it was to all but blazé men,
the room was crammed to suffocation,- it was impossible often to get a seat, and
you might have heard a pin drop. Where are the crowds that listened to that
song? My own companion - where is he? A finer young man, with richer promise, I
knew not. He had a generous disposition, a taste for study, and was blessed with
the constitution of a horse; he had received a liberal education; his morals had
been carefully attended to; his parents were people of large property, and this
son I always deemed his mother's favourite son; and now in his very prime, when
he might have been a blessing to society, when in his successful professional
career his parents might have reaped a reward, when the heart of some loving,
tender, trusting woman might have joyed in his love, when fair young children,
calling him father, might have c1ustered round his knees, he is dying, I am
told, before their very eyes, slowly, and with agony, from the terrible effects
of drink. And does it not really seem as if there were a curse attaching to
those connected with the trade? A week or two since, had you been passing down
Bridges-street into the Strand late on a Saturday night, or early on a Sunday [-112-]
morning, on a door-step, in spite of the pouring rain, you might have
seen a woman, in her rags and loneliness, trying to gather a few hours of sleep.
She was too weak to pursue her unhallowed calling, and had she been so disposed
on that cold, wet night, it would have been of little avail had she walked the
streets. The policeman as he goes his monotonous rounds tells her to move on.
See wakes up, gets upon her legs, hobbles along, and then, when he is past,
again, weary and wayworn, seeks the friendly door-step. The policeman returns;
"What, here still?" he exclaims. Ah yes! she has not power to move
away. She is weak, ill, dying. The friendly police carry her to the neighbouring
hospital. "She cannot be received here," says Routine, and she is
taken to the workhouse. Again she is taken to the hospital, admitted at last -
for is she not a woman, and a young one, too? - not more than twenty-five, it
appears,- and on her face, stained with intemperance and sin, there is the dread
stamp of death - in this ease, perhaps, a welcome messenger; for who would live,
fallen, friendless, forsaken, with a diseased body and a broken heart? "The
spirit of a man can sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who [-113-]
can bear?" Peace be with her! in another hour or two she will have
done with this wretched life of hers, and have gone where "the wicked cease
from troubling, and the weary are at rest." More than usual official
cruelty is visible in this case, for all that is given her between her admission
and her death is a simple cup of tea; and the coroner's verdict very properly
censures the hospital authorities. Well, what connexion, you ask, is there with
this girl's sad fate and the jollity of the Cyder Cellars? Only this, that her
father made the Cyder Cellars so popular a place of resort. If I go there again
I shall think of Louisa Regan, who began life as the daughter of a successful
publican, who had been a governess in a nobleman's family, at the early age of
twenty-five rescued from the streets by policemen, and dependent on charity for
a bed on which to die. In the foaming cup, in the glitter of the gas, while the
comic singer was most comica1, or the sentimental singer most sentimental, I
could not be oblivious of her fate. Is there not poison in the bowl? Is there
not madness in the merriment? To the night so bright does there not come a
dolorous morrow? You may sing and laugh the hours away in the [-114-]
Cyder Cellars for a while, but you must pay your reckoning, and then, I
imagine, you will doubt whether the amusement was worth the price. Youth
generally pays too dear for its whistle. Youth is finding this out; at any rate
the days of the Cyder Cellars are numbered, and now, with its Judge and Jury and
Poses Plastiques, it collects comparatively few.
Let me ask, need the amusements of our leisure hours be thus
based on false principles? Cambridge, in one of the pleasantest papers in the
"World," says, "Among the numbers who have changed a sober plan
of living for one of riot and excess, the greatest part have been converted by
the arguments in a drinking song." Life is real, life is earnest. It is a
battle-ground which requires heart and muscle, and where only the brave can
conquer; but if I drop for half-an-hour into a music hail, I learn that pleasure
is the great aim of life, and that gin can make me jolly and a genius.