Fifty Years Ago - free ebook by Walter Besant

FIFTY YEARS AGO

BY WALTER BESANT AUTHOR OF ‘ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN’ ETC. PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE...

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PREFACE.

It has been my desire in the following pages to present a picture of society in this country as it was when the Queen ascended the throne. The book is an enlargement of a paper originally contributed to ‘The Graphic.’ I have written several additional chapters, and have revised all the rest. The chapter on Law and Justice has been written for this volume by my friend Mr. W. Morris Colles, of the Inner Temple. I beg to record my best thanks to that gentleman for his important contribution. I have

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CHAPTER I. GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, AND THE COLONIES.

I propose to set before my readers a picture of the country as it was when Queen Victoria (God save the Queen!) ascended the throne, now fifty years ago and more. It will be a picture of a time so utterly passed away and vanished that a young man can hardly understand it. I, who am no longer, unhappily, quite so young as some, and whose babyhood heard the cannon of the Coronation, can partly understand this time, because in many respects, and especially in the manners of the middle class, custom

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CHAPTER II. THE YEAR 1837.

WILLIAM IV. (From a Drawing by HB.) The year 1837, except for the death of the old King and the accession of the young Queen, was a tolerably insignificant year. It was on June 20 that the King died. He was buried on the evening of July 9 at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor; on the 10th the Queen dissolved Parliament; on the 13th she went to Buckingham Palace; and on November 9 she visited the City, where they gave her a magnificent banquet, served in Guildhall at half past five, the Lord Mayor and

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CHAPTER III. LONDON IN 1837.

The extent of London in 1837, that is to say, of close and continuous London, may be easily understood by drawing on the map a red line a little above the south side of Regent’s Park. This line must be prolonged west until it strikes the Edgware Road, and eastward until it strikes the Regent’s Canal, after which it follows the Canal until it falls into the Regent’s Canal Docks. This is, roughly speaking, the boundary of the great city on the north and east. Its western boundary is the lower end

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CHAPTER IV. IN THE STREET.

Let us, friend Eighty-seven, take a walk down the Strand on this fine April afternoon of Thirty-seven. First, however, you must alter your dress a little. Put on this swallow-tail coat, with the high velvet collar—it is more becoming than the sporting coat in green bulging out over the hips; change your light tie and masher collar for this beautiful satin stock and this double breastpin; put on a velvet waistcoat and an under-waistcoat of cloth; thin Cossack trousers with straps will complete yo

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CHAPTER V. WITH THE PEOPLE.

When the real history of the people comes to be written—which will be the History, not of the Higher, but of the Lower Forms of Civilisation—it will be found that, as regards the people of these islands, they sank to their lowest point of degradation and corruption in the middle of the eighteenth century—a period when they had no religion, no morality, no education, and no knowledge, and when they were devoured by two dreadful diseases, and were prematurely killed by their excessive drinking of

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CHAPTER VI. WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS.

The great middle-class—supposed, before the advent of Mr. Matthew Arnold, to possess all the virtues; to be the backbone, stay, and prop of the country—must have a chapter to itself. In the first place, the middle-class was far more a class apart than it is at present. In no sense did it belong to society. Men in professions of any kind, except the two services, could only belong to society by right of birth and family connections; men in trade—bankers were still accounted tradesmen—could not po

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CHAPTER VII. IN SOCIETY.

As to society in 1837, contemporary commentators differ. For, according to some, society was always gambling, running away with each other’s wives, causing and committing scandals, or whispering them, the men were spendthrifts and profligates, the women extravagant and heartless. Of course, the same things would be said, and are sometimes said, of the present day, and will be said in all following ages, because to the ultra-virtuous or to the satirist who trots out the old, stale, worn-out sham

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CHAPTER VIII. AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW.

Fifty years ago the Theatre was, far more than at present, the favourite amusement of the Londoners. It was a passion with them. They did not go only to laugh and be pleased as we go now; they went as critics; the pit preserves to this day a reputation, long since lost, for critical power. A large number of the audience went to every new performance of a stock piece in order to criticise. After the theatre they repaired to the Albion or the Cock for supper, and to talk over the performance. Fift

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CHAPTER IX. IN THE HOUSE.

On November 20, 1837, the young Queen opened her first Parliament in person. The day was brilliant with sunshine, the crowds from Buckingham Palace to the House were immense, the House of Lords was crammed with Peers and the gallery with Peeresses, who occupied every seat, and even ‘rushed’ the reporters’ gallery, three reporters only having been fortunate enough to take their places before the rush. 3 3 I am indebted for the whole of this chapter to Random Recollections of the Lords and Common

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CHAPTER X. AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.

The great schools had no new rivals; all the modern public schools—Cheltenham, Clifton, Marlborough, and the like—have sprung into existence or into importance since the year 1837. Those who did not go to the public schools had their choice between small grammar schools and private schools. There were a vast number of private schools. It was, indeed, recognised that when a man could do nothing else and had failed in everything that he had tried, a private school was still possible for him. The s

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CHAPTER XI. THE TAVERN.

The substitution of the Restaurant for the Tavern is of recent origin. In the year 1837 there were restaurants, it is true, but they were humble places, and confined to the parts of London frequented by the French; for English of every degree there was the Tavern. Plenty of the old Taverns still survive to show us in what places our fathers took their dinners and drank their punch. The Cheshire Cheese is a survival; the Cock, until recently, was another. Some of them, like the latter, had the ta

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CHAPTER XII. IN CLUB- AND CARD-LAND.

Club-land was a comparatively small country, peopled by a most exclusive race. There were twenty-five clubs in all, 4 and, as many men had more than one club, and the average membership was less than a thousand, there were not more than 20,000 men altogether who belonged to clubs. There are now at least 120,000, with nearly a hundred clubs, to which almost any man might belong. Besides these, there are now about sixty second-class clubs, together with a great many clubs which exist for special p

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CHAPTER XIII. WITH THE WITS.

The ten years of the Thirties are a period concerning whose literary history the ordinary reader knows next to nothing. Yet a good deal that has survived for fifty years, and promises to live longer, was accomplished in that period. Dickens, for example, began his career in the year 1837 with his ‘Sketches by “Boz”’ and the ‘Pickwick Papers;’ Lord Lytton, then Mr. Lytton Bulwer, had already before that year published five novels, including ‘Paul Clifford’ and ‘The Last Days of Pompeii.’ Tennyson

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CHAPTER XIV. JOURNALS AND JOURNALISTS.

There was no illustrated paper in 1837: there was no Punch . On the other hand, there were as many London papers as there are to-day, and nearly as many magazines and reviews. The Times , which is reported to have then had a circulation not exceeding 10,000 a day, was already the leading paper. It defended Queen Caroline, and advocated the Reform Bill, and was reported to be ready to incur any expense for early news. Thus, in 1834, on the occasion of a great dinner given to Lord Durham, the Time

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CHAPTER XV. THE SPORTSMAN.

There were many various forms of sport open to the Englishman fifty years ago which are now wholly, or partly, closed. For instance, there was the P. R., then flourishing in great vigour—they are at this moment trying to revive it. A prize-fight was accompanied by every kind of blackguardism and villainy; not the least was the fact that the fights, towards the end of the record, were almost always conducted on the cross, so that honest betting men never knew where to lay their money. At the same

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CHAPTER XVI. IN FACTORY AND MINE.

I do not know any story, not even that of the slave-trade, which can compare, for brutality and callousness of heart, with the story of the women and children employed in the factories and the mines of this realm. There is nothing in the whole history of mankind which shows more clearly the enormities which become possible when men, spurred by desire for gain, are left uncontrolled by laws or the weight of public opinion, and placed in the position of absolute mastery over their fellow-men. The

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CHAPTER XVII. WITH THE MEN OF SCIENCE.

On the science of fifty years ago, much might be written but for a single reason—namely, that I know very little indeed about the condition of science in that remote period, and very little about science of to-day. There were no telegraph wires, but there were semaphores talking to each other all day long; there was no practical application of electricity at all; there was no telephone—I wish there were none now; there were no anæsthetics; there were no—but why go on? Schools had no Science Mast

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CHAPTER XVIII. LAW AND JUSTICE.

Five thousand three hundred and forty-four enactments have been added to the Statute Book since the Queen came to the throne, and the figures throw a flood of light upon the ‘progress’ of the Victorian era. In order to realise where we were in 1837 we have only to obliterate this enormous mass of legislation. In the realm of law there seems then to be little left. All our procedure—equitable, legal, and criminal—much of the substance of equity, law, and justice, as we understand the words, is go

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CHAPTER XIX. CONCLUSION.

The consideration of the country as it was would not be complete without some comparison with the country as it is. But I will make this comparison as brief as possible. In the Church, the old Calvinism is well-nigh dead: even the Low Church of the present day would have seemed, fifty years ago, a kind of veiled Popery. And the Church has grown greater and stronger. She will be greater and stronger still when she enlarges her borders to admit the great bodies of Nonconformists. The old grievance

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VALUABLE AND INTERESTING WORKS FOR PUBLIC & PRIVATE LIBRARIES,

Published by HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, New York. ☛ For a full List of Books suitable for Libraries published by Harper &amp; Brothers , see Harper’s Catalogue , which may be had gratuitously on application to the publishers personally, or by letter enclosing Ten Cents in postage stamps . ☛ Harper &amp; Brothers will send their publications by mail, postage prepaid, on receipt of the price . MACAULAY’S ENGLAND. The History of England from the Accession of James II. By Thomas Babington Ma

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