The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions; Or, Joints In Our Social Armour. James Runciman
I think they call it—is not merely an excrescence on the life of the middle class—it is the life; and work, thought, study, seemly conduct, are now the excrescences. Drink first, gambling second, lubricity third—those are the chief interests of the young men, and I cannot say that the interests of mature and elderly men differ very much from those of the fledglings. Ladies and gentlemen who dwell in quiet refinement can hardly know the scenes amid which our middle-class lad passes the span of his most impressionable days. I have watched the men at all times and in all kinds of places; every town of importance is very well known to me, and the same abomination is steadily destroying the higher life in all. The Chancellors of the Exchequer gaily repeat the significant figures which give the revenue from alcohol; the optimist says that times are mending; the comfortable gentry who mount the pulpits do not generally care to ruffle the fine dames by talking about unpleasant things—and all the while the curse is gaining, and the betting, scoffing, degraded crew of drinkers are sliding merrily to destruction. Some are able to keep on the slide longer than others, but I have seen scores—hundreds—stop miserably, and the very faces of the condemned men, with the last embruted look on them, are before me. My subject has so many thousands of facets that I am compelled to select a few of the most striking. Take one scene through which I sat not very long ago, and then you may understand how far the coming regenerator will have to go. A great room was filled by about 350 men and lads, all of the middle class; a concert was going on, and I was a little curious to know the kind of entertainment which the well-dressed company liked. Of course there was drink in plenty, and the staff of waiters had a busy time; a loud crash of talk went on between the songs, and, as the drink gathered power on excited brains, this crash grew more and more discordant. Nice lads, with smooth, pleasant faces, grew flushed and excited, and I am afraid that I occupied myself in marking out possible careers for a good many of them as I studied their faces. There was not much fun of the healthy kind; fat, comfortable, middle-aged men laughed so heartily at the faintest indecent allusion that the singers grew broader and broader, and the hateful music-hall songs grew more and more risky as the night grew onward. By the way, can anything be more loathsomely idiotic than the average music-hall ditty, with its refrain and its quaint stringing together of casual filthiness? If I had not wanted to fix a new picture on my mind I should have liked better to be in a tap-room among honestly brutal costers and scavengers than with that sniggering, winking gang. The drink got hold, glasses began to be broken here and there, the time was beaten with glass crushers, spoons, pipes, and walking-sticks; and then the bolder spirits felt that the time for good, rank, unblushing blackguardism had come. A being stepped up and faced a roaring audience of enthusiasts who knew the quality of his dirtiness; he launched out into an unclean stave, and he reduced his admirers to mere convulsions. He was encored, and he went a trifle further, until he reached a depth of bestiality below which a gaff in Shoreditch could net descend. Ah! Those bonny lads, how they roared with laughter, and how they exchanged winks with grinning elders! Not a single obscure allusion to filth was lost upon them, and they took more and more drink under pressure of the secret excitement until many of them were unsteady and incoherent. I think I should shoot a boy of mine if I found him enjoying such a foul entertainment. It was léze-Humanity. The orgie rattled on, to the joy of all the steaming, soddened company, and I am not able to guess where some of the songs and recitations came from. There are deeps below deeps, and I suppose that there are skilled literary workmen who have sunk so far that they are ready to supply the unspeakable dirt which I heard.
There was a merry crowd at the bar when this astounding function ceased, and the lively lads jostled, and laughed, and quoted some of the more spicy specimens of nastiness which they had just heard.
Now, I should not have mentioned such an unsavoury business as this, but that it illustrates in a curious way the fact that one is met and countered by the power of Drink at every turn in this country. Among that unholy audience were one or two worthies who ought by rights to have called the police, and forced the promoters of the fun to appear before the Bench in the morning. But then these magistrates had an interest in Beer, and Brewery shares were pretty well represented in the odious room, and thus a flagrant scandal was gently passed aside. The worst of it is that, after a rouse like this, the young men do not care to go to bed, so they adjourn to some one's rooms and play cards till any hour. In the train next morning there are blotchy faces, dull eyes, tongues with a bitter taste, and there is a general rush for "liveners" before the men go to office or warehouse; and the day drags on until the joyous evening comes, when some new form of debauch drowns the memory of the morning's headache. Should you listen to a set of these men when the roar of a long bar is at its height at night, you will find that the life of the intellect has passed away from their midst. The fellows may be sharp in a small way at business, and I am sure I hope they are; but their conversation is painful in the extreme to any one who wishes to retain a shred of respect for his own species. If you listen long, and then fix your mind so that you can pick out the exact significance of what you have heard, you become confounded. Take the scraps of "bar" gabble. "So I says, 'Lay me fours.' And he winks and says, 'I'll give you seven to two, if you like.' Well, you know, the horse won, and I stood him a bottle out of the three pound ten, so I wasn't much in." "'What!' says I; 'step outside along o' me, and bring your pal with you, and I'll spread your bloomin' nose over your face.'" "That corked him." "I tell you Flyaway's a dead cert. I know a bloke that goes to Newmarket regular, and he's acquainted with Reilly of the Greyhound, and Reilly told him that he heard Teddy Martin's cousin say that Flyaway was tried within seven pounds of Peacock. Can you have a better tip than that?" "I'll give you the break, and we'll play for a bob and the games." "Thanks, deah boy, I'll jest have one with you. Lor! wasn't I chippy this morning? I felt as if the pavement was making rushes at me, and my hat seemed to want a shoehorn to get it on or off for that matter. Bill's whisky's too good." "I'm going out with a Judy on Sunday, or else you'd have me with you. The girls won't leave me alone, and the blessed dears can't be denied." So the talk goes steadily forward. What can a bright lad learn there? Many of the assembly are very young, and their features have not lost the freshness and purity of skin which give such a charm to a healthy lad's appearance. Would any mother like to see her favourite among that hateful crowd? I do not think that mothers rightly know the sort of places which their darlings enter; I do not think they guess the kind of language which the youths hear when the chimes sound at midnight; they do not know the intricacies of a society which half encourages callow beings to drink, and then kicks them into the gutter if the drink takes hold effectually. The kindly, seemly woman remains at home in her drawing-room, papa slumbers if he is one of the stay-at-home sort; but Gerald, and Sidney, and Alfred are out in the drink-shop hearing talk fit to make Rabelais turn queasy, or they are in the billiard-room learning to spell "ruin" with all convenient speed, or perhaps they have "copped it"—that is the correct phrase—rather early, and they are swaggering along, shadowed by some creature—half girl, half tiger-cat—who will bring them up in good time. If the women knew enough, I sometimes think they would make a combined, nightly raid on the boozing-bars, and bring their lads out.
Some hard-headed fellows may think that there is something grandmotherly in the regrets which I utter over the cesspool in which so many of our middle-class seem able to wallow without suffering asphyxia; but I am only mournful because I have seen the plight of so many and many after their dip in the sinister depths of the pool. I envy those stolid people who can talk so contemptuously of frailty—I mean I envy them their self-mastery; I quite understand the temperament of those who can be content with a slight exhilaration, and who fiercely contemn the crackbrain who does not know when to stop. No doubt it is a sad thing for a man to part with his self-control, but I happen to hold a brief for the crackbrain, and I say that there is not any man living who can afford to be too contemptuous, for no one knows when his turn may come to make a disastrous slip.
Most strange it is that a vice which brings instant punishment on him who harbours it should be first of all encouraged by the very people who are most merciless in condemning it. The drunkard has not to wait long for his punishment; it follows hard on his sin, and he is not left to the justice of another world. And yet, as we have said, this vice, which entails such scathing disgrace and suffering, is encouraged in many seductive ways. The talk in good company often runs on wine; the man who has the deadly taint in his blood is delicately pressed to take that which brings the taint once more into ill-omened activity; but, so long as his tissues show no sign of that flabbiness and general unwholesomeness