[-180-]
CALDWELL' S.
A STRANGER, ignorant of our inner life, and unacquainted with
our social system, knowing only that we call ourselves a Christian people, and
that we boast that Christianity places woman in a peculiarly favoured position,
might dwell among us for awhile, and, seeing how woman is flattered and
followed, might imagine that our condition was perfect, and that here, at least,
woman, the weak, was sheltered by man, the strong. In the dazzling ball-room -
on the glittering promenade - he might meet the lovely and the fair, and deem
that they were no brilliant exception, but as they were sheltered and loved, so
were sheltered and loved all of their common sex. Grieved would he be to find
out his mistake; yet more grieved would he be to know that the graceful drapery
that added to the beauty that everywhere flashed upon his eye was wrought by
tender and delicate women, who, pale and wan, slave at the needle from [-181-]
morn till eve, and from eve till again the dim grey of morn gleamed in the east
- by women withered before their prime - by women who, for no crime, but from
their simple desire to live by the honest and honourable labour of their hands,
are shut up in heated and unhealthy rooms, debarred from social duties and joys,
and who know nothing of life but its wants and woes-by women who can find in
slavery itself nothing more forlorn than their melancholy fate - by women to the
majority of whom there is no honest way of escape from the lingering death that
besets them, but the grave.
We would guard our readers against giving way to mawkish
sentimentalism; that it is not our aim to excite. There are employers who
are all they should be; there are milliners' and dressmakers' assistants who
find their labour what all healthy labour is, a blessing, and not a curse. Nor
is every dressmaker shut up in these hot-houses of disease beautiful, nor the
daughter of one who has seen better days. It is true that some of these
unfortunate girls are the daughters of " clergymen, medical men, and
officers;" but it is because they partake of our common humanity - because
they have human [-182-] blood and human hearts -
because life was given them that in it they might bless and be blessed -
because, in their injuries and wrong, the human family and its Father above are
injured and wronged - that we claim for them from society sympathy and redress. We
say nothing of the moral danger to which, in a metropolis like this, they
are peculiarly exposed. When sin offers so golden a bait, it shows that those
who yet continue at their work deserve respect and aid. If some of them have
fallen - if some of them, driven by despair, have walked our streets to gain
their bread, let us blame the system which has made so infamous and wretched a
mode of life seem a change to be desired. Let the cure be adopted; let the work
now done be distributed among a larger number of hands; and in this country, at
least, there is no lack of persons eager to be employed. In many of the
fashionable establishments increased cost of production can be of but little
moment. Let employers learn to practise humanity, and let our high-born and
influential ladies see to it, that it is no thoughtlessness of theirs that
compels their poorer sisters to toil with a sinking frame and a heavy heart. As
a nation, we have worked out [-183-] one problem in
civilization; we have shown that the utmost wealth can exist side by side with
the deepest poverty - the grossest ignorance with the most cultivated knowledge
- the most elevating piety with the most debasing fetichism - the fairest virtue
with the most revolting vice. Be it our nobler work to show to the nations of
the earth how, while our higher classes live in refinement and wealth, there is
no class, however humble, but can joy in the possession of social happiness and
rights.
But what, you ask, has this to do with Caldwell's? Only this,
that of the class to which I have referred, I believe more may be found of an
evening at Caldwell's than anywhere else in London. It is not all dressmakers
who toil thus severely and unnaturally; and few of them are there who do not in
the course of the year find time to pay Caldwell's a visit. Who has not heard of
Caldwell's Soirées Dansantes ? Are they not advertised in every paper?
Are they not posted in gigantic bills in every street? In quiet country lanes,
miles and miles away from to town, do we not come across the coloured letters b
which Mr Caldwell announces his entertainment to the world? Who is Mr John
Caldwell? [-184-] We will let him speak for
himself. He has an establishment in Dean-street, Soho. The building cost him
nearly four thousand pounds. On boxing-night he had as many as 600 customers,
"and on average nights," he tells us, "I have about 200.
"The charge for admission is eight-pence. Mr Caldwell has a public-house
just by, and from that supplies wine, and ale, and spirits. "I have never
had a case of drunkenness in my place for years; I am very particular - I never
let a drunken man remain." On an average about thirty glasses of spirits
are drunk in the dancing room in the course of an evening, and about forty
glasses of beer. "I believe my place is carried on in as respectable a
manner as can be. Some of the first noblemen come; there are some very
respectable tradesmen round the neighbourhood, and a great many young people
from the neighbourhood. The rooms are principally supported by the working
classes." The dancing saloon opens at eight, and is closed at a quarter to
twelve. Such is the evidence given by Mr Caldwell himself before the select
committee of the House of Commons on public-houses. As is perfectly natural, it
is all coleur de rose. The union of the first noblemen
[-185-] and the elite of the working classes over
spirits-and-water, or in the mazy dance, is a beautiful specimen of
fraternisation, and the small quantity of beer and spirits drunk by 200 persons
indicates an amount of sobriety rare in places of public amusement. I think Mr
Caldwell has a little understated the case. I fear he forgot to tell the
committee that the drinking at his place was in the refreshment-room
down-stairs, not in the dancing-room above; while in the latter the small
quantity he asserts is consumed, I am inclined to think, much more may be
disposed of down-stairs. In the course of his own examination some disagreeable
truths oozed out. We give a couple of questions and answers in proof of this. -
Sir George Grey: " Do you mean to say that the dancing-saloon would have no
sufficient attraction for the people unless there were connected with it the
facility of obtaining spirituous liquors ?" "I think not; the
people want a glass of wine, or negus, or brandy-and-water." Again,
Mr Caldwell has been unable to procure a license on account of the opposition of
the publicans in the neighbourhood. The Chairman asks, "Do you think the
publicans would withdraw their opposition?" " Yes, [-186-]
they begin to find my house an advantage; when parties leave my rooms,
they stand together at the corner of the streets, and say, We will have a
parting glass. They do not all have it at my rooms."
Now this answer does not well coincide with Mr Caldwell's
former evidence. It is quite as much the drink as the dancing that is the
attraction, and as to his respectable tradesmen, and the fact of persons not
being tipsy, and that of some of the first noblemen coming there, all these
assertions are fairly open to criticism. It was only the other day I heard a
London magistrate declare that publicans never could tell when a person was
tipsy; and as to respectability, your Robsons, and Camerons, and Sadleirs are
always considered highly respectable. Ask the first person you meet about your
neighbours. What is the answer? Oh, they are a highly respectable family; they
are immensely rich. And as to noblemen coming into such places, I imagine that
would be precisely the reason why the judicious father of a pretty girl would
prefer her dancing anywhere rather than in Mr Caldwell's establishment in
Dean-street. I have not much faith in the benefits of that spe[-187-]cies
of the mixture of all ranks. Like the Irishman's reciprocity, it is all on one
side. Tennyson makes his hero tell Lady Clara Vere de Vere-
"At me you smiled, but
unbeguiled
I saw the
snare and I retired,-
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not
one to be desired."
But perchance a young maiden, led away by the excitement of the hour, could not
find it in her heart to address similar language to Lady Clara Vere de Vere's
brother. The last victim always believes that she is to be the exception to all
general rules; she may transgress, but not pay the penalty - pluck the forbidden
fruit, and for doing so not forfeit Eden - plunge wildly into sin, and sorrow,
and shame, and yet find peace in her heart and the light of heaven lying on her
path; but cause and effect are eternal, and, youth gone, and pleasure gone, and
the power to attract gone, and the inward sense of right succeeded by the stings
of conscience and the gnawing of remorse, what is left but to weep madly and in
vain for
" The tender grace of a day that
is dead "?
[-188-] But we are in
Caldwell's, - let us go into the gallery and look down. I know not the name of
the new dances, but how the women swim round the room, as the music now
hurriedly hastens, now softly dies away. The girl that dances here so modestly
to-night in twelve months will have lost her maiden shame, will be dressed in
silks and satins, will be dancing at the Argyll, and supping at Scott's or
Quin's. That girl they call Rose - and a rose she is, for she might shine in a
Belgravian drawing-room, and walks in beauty as a fairy queen - might have lit
up a home with her love, and made a brave heart proud; but here she comes, night
after night, and domestic life is to her tame after music and dancing such as
she has here. Beauty you will not find much of, nor that overdress which stamps
the character of the women at the Casino or the Argyll in unmistakeable terms;
and the men are the class you usually meet in these places. They may be
pickpockets, or they may be peers; you can scarce tell the difference in these
levelling days. If I had not Mr Caldwell's express assertion to the contrary, I
should certainly say that that Young fellow with a pint bottle of champagne in
his hand was decidedly drunk, - at any rate, [-189-] he
has very much the appearance of a tipsy person; but the waiters seem to be of Mr
Caldwell's opinion, and are still offering him more drink, and the women around
seem to think it is rather fun than otherwise. Ah! little do they reflect how
such as he, under the influences of drink, forget the decencies of life, the
claims of duty, forget even the common instincts of common humanity; so that the
wife, whom he has vowed to love, honour, and protect, is abandoned, and the home
forsaken, for the orgies of the public- house. Do the women around us ever
expect to be the wives and mothers of such, or have they, young and fair as many
of them seem, learnt already that recklessness as to the future which robs life
of all its glory, and incarcerates the soul in a living grave? I can see, even
here, a gaiety more sad than tears. But I need not continue my description;
dancing in public rooms in the metropolis is much the same everywhere. Of course
the place is all that Mr Caldwell says it is. I believe with him that it is as
respectably conducted as establishments of the kind can be; but at the same time
Mr Caldwell confesses it leads to drinking, and that is quite [-190-]
reason enough, independently of other obvious considerations, why I come
away thankful that no wife or sister of mine is amongst the parties nightly to
be met at Mr Caldwll's soirees dansantes.