第17章 VARIETY PATTER.(1)

My first appearance at a Music Hall was in the year one thousand eight hundred and s--.Well,I would rather not mention the exact date.I was fourteen at the time.It was during the Christmas holidays,and my aunt had given me five shillings to go and see Phelps--I think it was Phelps--in Coriolanus--I think it was Coriolanus.Anyhow,it was to see a high-class and improving entertainment,I know.

I suggested that I should induce young Skegson,who lived in our road,to go with me.Skegson is a barrister now,and could not tell you the difference between a knave of clubs and a club of knaves.Afew years hence he will,if he works hard,be innocent enough for a judge.But at the period of which I speak he was a red-haired boy of worldly tastes,notwithstanding which I loved him as a brother.My dear mother wished to see him before consenting to the arrangement,so as to be able to form her own opinion as to whether he was a fit and proper companion for me;and,accordingly,he was invited to tea.

He came,and made a most favourable impression upon both my mother and my aunt.He had a way of talking about the advantages of application to study in early life,and the duties of youth towards those placed in authority over it,that won for him much esteem in grown-up circles.The spirit of the Bar had descended upon Skegson at a very early period of his career.

My aunt,indeed,was so much pleased with him that she gave him two shillings towards his own expenses ("sprung half a dollar"was how he explained the transaction when we were outside),and commended me to his especial care.

Skegson was very silent during the journey.An idea was evidently maturing in his mind.At the Angel he stopped and said:"Look here,I'll tell you what we'll do.Don't let's go and see that rot.Let's go to a Music Hall."I gasped for breath.I had heard of Music Halls.A stout lady had denounced them across our dinner table on one occasion--fixing the while a steely eye upon her husband,who sat opposite and seemed uncomfortable--as low,horrid places,where people smoked and drank,and wore short skirts,and had added an opinion that they ought to be put down by the police--whether the skirts or the halls she did not explain.I also recollected that our charwoman,whose son had lately left London for a protracted stay in Devonshire,had,in conversation with my mother,dated his downfall from the day when he first visited one of these places;and likewise that Mrs.Philcox's nursemaid,upon her confessing that she had spent an evening at one with her young man,had been called a shameless hussy,and summarily dismissed as being no longer a fit associate for the baby.

But the spirit of lawlessness was strong within me in those days,so that I hearkened to the voice of Skegson,the tempter,and he lured my feet from the paths that led to virtue and Sadler's Wells,and we wandered into the broad and crowded ways that branch off from the Angel towards Merry Islington.

Skegson insisted that we should do the thing in style,so we stopped at a shop near the Agricultural Hall and purchased some big cigars.

A huge card in the window claimed for these that they were "the most satisfactory twopenny smokes in London."I smoked two of them during the evening,and never felt more satisfied--using the word in its true sense,as implying that a person has had enough of a thing,and does not desire any more of it,just then--in all my life.Where we went,and what we saw,my memory is not very clear upon.We sat at a little marble table.I know it was marble because it was so hard,and cool to the head.From out of the smoky mist a ponderous creature of strange,undefined shape floated heavily towards us,and deposited a squat tumbler in front of me containing a pale yellowish liquor,which subsequent investigation has led me to believe must have been Scotch whisky.It seemed to me then the most nauseous stuff I had ever swallowed.It is curious to look back and notice how one's tastes change.

I reached home very late and very sick.That was my first dissipation,and,as a lesson,it has been of more practical use to me than all the good books and sermons in the world could have been.

I can remember to this day standing in the middle of the room in my night-shirt,trying to catch my bed as it came round.

Next morning I confessed everything to my mother,and,for several months afterwards,was a reformed character.Indeed,the pendulum of my conscience swung too far the other way,and I grew exaggeratedly remorseful and unhealthily moral.

There was published in those days,for the edification of young people,a singularly pessimistic periodical,entitled The Children's Band of Hope Review.It was a magazine much in favour among grown-up people,and a bound copy of Vol.IX.had lately been won by my sister as a prize for punctuality (I fancy she must have exhausted all the virtue she ever possessed,in that direction,upon the winning of that prize.At all events,I have noticed no ostentatious display of the quality in her later life.)I had formerly expressed contempt for this book,but now,in my regenerate state,I took a morbid pleasure in poring over its denunciations of sin and sinners.There was one picture in it that appeared peculiarly applicable to myself.

It represented a gaudily costumed young man,standing on the topmost of three steep steps,smoking a large cigar.Behind him was a very small church,and below,a bright and not altogether uninviting looking hell.The picture was headed "The Three Steps to Ruin,"and the three stairs were labelled respectively "Smoking,""Drinking,""Gambling."I had already travelled two-thirds of the road!Was Igoing all the way,or should I be able to retrace those steps?Iused to lie awake at night and think about it till I grew half crazy.

Alas!since then I have completed the descent,so where my future will be spent I do not care to think.

Another picture in the book that troubled me was the frontispiece.