The man of pleasure

Front matter

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,limLMI- lil Lf.) IM »W. li Wl l l f l l l

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Chapter I Pages

His Characteristics and Vicissitudes 1-32

CHAPTER n

Sporting Resorts — Restaurants — Grandmotherly Legislation 33-52

CHAPTER HI

Gulls — Pigeons — Rooks 53-78

CHAPTER IV A Jovial Spirit— Bucks — Duellists 79-107

CHAPTER V

Some Reckless Spendthrifts 108-129

CHAPTER VI Pleasure-loving Undergraduates 130-154

CHAPTER VII Dancing Places — Music-Hails and the Old Gaiety 155-178

CHAPTER VIII Pleasure-loving Paris of the Past 179-208

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

lie — Pomare — Gr ousse — Hortense Schneider 209-235

PAGES

Famous Viveurs — Mabille — Pomare — Gramont Cader-

CHAPTER X

Offenbach — Famous Cocottes — La Paiva — The Bal des

Quatz' Alts 236-254

CHAPTER XI

Royalty at Play— Bluff King Hal— Charles II—

George IV 255-277

CHAPTER XII

The First Gentleman in Europe— English Exiles at

Calais— Barbey D'Aurevilly— D'Orsay 278-301

ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOURED PLATES

TO FACE PAOK

King George IV driving in Hyde Park Frontispiece

Vauxhall 44

Love, Law, and Physic 98

The Palais Royal 192

PLAIN PLATES

An Arduous Morning 12

£y George Gruikahank

The Dandies' Coat of Arms 28

By George Cruikshank

A Restaurant of the Past 34

Flowers and Fruit 44

By John Leech

The Juggernaut of the Turf 56

By Matt Morgan

Lounging at Covent Garden 88

Monstrosities of 1821 94

By George Cruikshank

Getting the Best of a Charlie 100

A Fashionable Man in 1800 102

From an old print

Preparing for a Duel 104

By George Cruikshank xii ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAGE

The Road to Euin 112 By Matt Morgan

An Unwelcome Visit 144

" Champagne Charlie " 162

Miss Kate Vaughan 168

Miss Nellie Farren 168

A Masquerade Supper 180

The Boulevard des Italiens in 1825 190 By George Cniikshank

The Caf6 Very 194 By George Cruikslmnk

A Smart Turn-Out 198

Monstrosities of 1818 204

Travelling in France ; or, Le Depart de la Diligence 219 By George Cnoikslianlc

Parisian Beauties of the Sixties 248

A Man of Fashion in 1700 268

From, an old print

A Morning Talk 288

"... A buck indeed ;

Sings, dances, fights, does everything but read " 294

From an old imnt

CHAPTER I

HIS CHARACTEBISTICS AND VICISSITUDES

Folly is a bad quality, but never to be able to endure it in others is perhaps a worse one.

Man, it may be asserted, is the only animal able to amuse himself; and since this faculty has been exclusively bestowed upon him, he is surely guilty of a sort of ingratitude — even of impiety — if he does not exercise it with sense and discretion.

Moralists may preach, and fanatics may rail, but true philosophy applauds more heartily a genial and clever man of the world who amuses himself than the grim-visaged individual who has never known a taste of real enjoyment or pleasure.

And this is easily understood, because, although one can tolerate, and perhaps admire, religious ascetics, it is otherwise with the carping, joyless, and eminently respectable crowd of individuals quite incapable of appreciating the joys of life. Such people seem to have come into the world during some cold, bleak, gloomy day. They grow up in the same cold, bleak atmosphere, and live in it all their lives. Their pettiness appears in everything they do or say. You may see it in their buying and in their selHng, in their talk and in their actions. In reahty, these poor creatures should arouse pity rather than dislike — since, if they look back, they can scarcely recall a single green spot in their lives. Most of them have made glad no single heart, nor shed one ray of sunshine upon man, woman, or child. All that can be said of them is that they are born, they live, and they die, and as soon as the grave closes over them they are forgotten.

Such people despise amusement. They do not agree with, any more than they can understand, those ancients who held that they had lost a day if it were passed without laughter.

When their last hour comes, not one of them can say with honest pride, as did Rabelais while his friends were weeping around his death-bed: "Thank God, if I were to die ten times over I should never make you cry half so much as I have made you laugh."

There is no reason why any man, even one who works hard, should not enjoy the lighter side of life ; if he fail to do so, he shows a lack of vitality and intelligence.

The Due de Duras, observing Descartes seated one day at a luxurious table, cried out, " What ! do philosophers indulge in dainties?" "Why not?" replied Descartes. " Do you think that Nature produced all her good things for fools ?"

Some men, however, have a longing for too large a share of these same good things, and are content to be mere drones. There is, indeed, a similarity

A JOYOUS BUCCANEER 3

between mankind and the bees, not all of whom follow the hardworking example of the hive-bee, which, satisfied to live in a socialistic community, lays up stores of honey. In this industrious species the male has been reduced to something of the cypher to which apparently some female reformers wish to reduce man — he possesses no power or initiative, and is allowed but very limited scope in his love-affairs.

Far happier is the lot of that roving buccaneer of the garden — the burly, velveted bumble-bee — who, with only his whims to guide him, so joyously sails the seas of clover.

As an American poet* has so well sung, no amorous restrictions exist for him :

" He dares to boast along; the coast The beauty of Highland Heather, How he and she, with night on the sea, Lay out on the hills together.

" His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed ; He prospers after his kind.

And follows an instinct compass — sure The philosophers call blind.

" And that is why, when he comes to die. He'll have an easier sentence Than someone I know, who thinks just so, And then leaves room for repentance."

It is pleasant to think that no restrictive measures can ever cloud the existence of this joyous insect, who will continue to lead his devilmay-care existence as long as his species lasts.

* In " Songs from Vagabondia," by Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey.

In this respect, at least, he is more fortunate than the man of pleasure, who already seems to have been pretty well crushed out of existence. Modern civilization is cold and unsympathetic to a laughter-loving nature and roving ways ; besides which, at the present time an individual who has no serious occupation, whether millionaire or pauper, is apt to be despised.

Rightly, no doubt, every man is now supposed to justify his existence by doing something. A number of modern occupations, however, are even more pernicious than mere idleness. Business in the City, for instance, occasionally borders closely upon swindling ; while philanthropy is sometimes only a pretext for meddling with other people's affairs. Altruism, indeed, has become a profession, and ardent apostles of social reform, no matter what their methods, are sure to gain the approbation of many.

But in past days it was different, and the idler, who is now looked upon with a certain amount of contempt, had a good deal his own way — at least, in London and Paris. If he was a rich man, he often exercised considerable political power. One hundred years ago the avowed object of a certain number was the pursuit of pleasure — an ideal which to-day, when frankly expressed, provokes a torrent of contemptuous condemnation.

The most inveterate pleasure-seeker who ever lived was probably " Old Q." So much has been written of him — about his love of the fair sex, his careful diet as an old man, and his baths of asses' milk — that it would be superfluous to dwell in this place upon his career. For public opinion this

"OLD Q" 5

nobleman had the most profound contempt ; it never troubled him in the least.

He was not a stupid man, far from it. Clever and calculating, indeed, he imparted a cold-blooded common sense into his pleasures worthy of a modern American magnate of the Trusts.

As a young man he had seen so much rascality that the whole of humanity except " Mie-Mie," whom (like George Selwyn) he believed to be his daughter, seemed to him nothing but a mass of stupid or evil pawns, to be moved hither and thither about the chess-board of life by anyone possessed of brains.

He looked upon mankind as composed pretty much of puppets. When they were movable, he pulled them by the particular string which moved them ; when they were not useful, he turned coolly aside and thought of them no more.

Abuse and censure left him profoundly indifferent ; conventional Anglo-Saxon morality, which he regarded as based entirely on lies, he despised ; women he treated as means to pleasure, and men simply as creatures who could all be bribed, frightened, or coerced.

In some respects " Old Q " was unfortunate, for, had his life not lain in such pleasant and easy places, he would probably have accomplished much. As it is, his memory has been handed down to us as that of a mere debauchee and valetudinarian, who contrived to bring selfishness to its highest pitch of perfection.

In the earlier part of the last century there were quite a number of aristocratic viveurs, who, whilst not as vicious as the famous Duke of Queensberry, took pretty much his view of Hfe. They did not quite understand why they should be troubled about anything ; they got the cream of life, and felt secure against worldly misfortune. Many were clever men in their own way, and did not mind spending money at opportune moments by helping useful men who were in straits. They knew that the support of intelligent people likely to rise was of value, and that public opinion, at times likely to be troublesome, required a system of well -devised checks.

Hostile criticism disturbed them but little. They knew that they had only to wait a short while, and see the world come fawning back to their feet as meekly as ever. Unsuccessful people they rather despised, being imbued with a well-founded idea that the mainspring of power was money, and that people who did not know how to get money or to keep it were of small account.

Many a one was a good man of business, though people who did not know a great deal of him would hardly have believed it. Not a few were consummate masters of all those arts which foil an adversary and put inquiry oif the scent, till it goes hunting elsewhere in sheer weariness. When possible they never said either " Yes " or " No " distinctly, for they knew the irresistible spell which lies in courteous delay. A great asset of this class was a useful solicitor, who would never act without his client's instructions, and, of course, the client would never act till he had consulted the man of law. When occasion called, the latter was expert

THE OLD ARISTOCRAT 7

at writing formal letters about nothing, containing polite references to other letters of the same purport. The result was that, in the end, his correspondents usually found themselves in an inextricable maze, out of which it was difficult to get. In extreme cases, queer things were done through third parties ; and if people were so wrong-headed as to get angry, they found themselves face to face with all sorts of unpleasant predicaments, whilst the individual really concerned could never be brought to book.

Many of the old Peers who had led lives of uninterrupted ease and enjoyment were fine-looking men, who could not possibly have avoided being taken for anything else than aristocrats.

Victorian writers have well described the appearance of this type — his starched cravat of check pattern, in fine cambric, propping up collars like the blades of hatchets. His boots were polished as brightly as mirrors with blacking made from a recipe handed down from the days of the dandies. Usually he wore straps and a blue frock-coat, well buttoned over a very stately figure, upright as a dart, and showing signs of a spell in the Guards. There was not a crease nor a wrinkle in his dress from top to toe. Such jewelry as he wore, though costly, was simple and refined. A Breguet watch, with a chain of good design, two or three rings — amongst them a finely-cut signet — and a valuable pin, together with some costly studs and beautiful waistcoat buttons in the evening, accorded admirably with his well-groomed appearance. His equipages were faultless in taste. The quiet, unobtrusive brougham which waited for him of an afternoon at his Club was a model of easy-carriage building, and his horses matched to a hair and had the most perfect manners.

Life went very pleasantly with an aristocrat of this sort. He had always had convenient people ready to save him trouble, and all he regretted — when he regi'etted anything — was that the hand of Time could not be prevented from moving forward.

Modern changes, however, which allowed " low " people to get into Parliament, were little to his taste. He invariably deplored the passing of the good old days, when gentlemen disposed of pocket boroughs, and when the Reform Bill had not yet shifted the balance of power to the electorate.

He remembered the halcyon times when comfortable sinecures abounded, and when he could have sent his butler to Parliament by the vote of his steward, so that he might keep a rotten borough warm till his agent had got the regulation seven thousand pounds for it from some wealthy purchaser. His latter years were saddened because he could not always bring in his candidates and had no means of being perfectly sure that his tenants would vote straight.

" If that's what you call progress," he would remark drily, " I think the sooner we hear the last of it the better."

Such aristocratic pleasure-seekers, however, were often men endowed with sound common sense ; and as a rule they did nothing to scandalize society at large. They were essentially decorous by nature, and when they indulged in follies or vices took

BORN RUINED 9

good care that they should not arouse attention in troublesome quarters.

Very different were the spendthrifts who thrust their extravagances before the public gaze, eating their corn and drinking their wine before vintage or harvest.

Most of these heirs of unfulfilled renown were feather-brained men, who, exposed in youth to pernicious environment, passed their last years in a very uncomfortable manner.

Not a few who were deemed to be rich men had the excuse of being really born ruined through the extravagance of their ancestors, a fact which they only realized when no more money could be raised upon the estates of which they knew so little.

Very little effort seems to have been made in old days to give young sprigs of nobility a training likely to fit them for their position in life ; and in the case of an heir to great wealth, extravagance was regarded as quite a natural thing, and even, to some extent, as deserving of approval.

Occasionally, however, efforts were made to keep young men from getting into mischief.

About the most whimsical scheme ever devised was that imagined by a Duke of Argyll who, knowing that his illegitimate son, whom he put into the Guards, could not live comfortably on his pay, acted as follows :

Every morning the young officer found upon his chest of drawers a clean shirt, a pair of stockings ditto, and also a guinea. This extraneous allowance was meant to prevent him from gaming. But the sharks knew his connections, and, according to sporting phraseology, "had him to rights" — in a word, they tickled the Captain for a thousand. The Duke heard all about this disaster ; but took no notice of it, till his son's dejected appearance made some misfortune apparent. " Jack," said he, one day, at dinner, " what is the matter with you ?" The Captain changed colour, and at last reluctantly acknowledged what had happened. " Sir," said His Grace, "you do not owe a farthing to the blackguard ; my steward settled it with him this morning for ten guineas, and he thought himself lucky to get that, onlj?" saying that ' he was glad he had come oiFso well.'"

Some few spoke out very bluntly to their spendthrift relations.

The Earl of Peterborough, writing to a wild young fellow, gave the true style of censure, laconic, forcible, yet comprehensive : "A house in town ! — A house in the country ! — Hounds in Norfolk ! — Horses at Newmarket ! — A lady at Wimbledon ! — You idiot ! where, with all this, will your estate be ?"

Such cases, however, were exceptions. Rich young fellows, as a rule, found people only too ready to help them along the road to ruin. In this respect, things have changed but little ; the folly of indulgent parents and guardians still turns out many a spendthrift, and many an individual finds himself eventually confronted by misery owing to lessons of extravagance learnt in the nursery and at school.

There is no more perilous ordeal through which a young man can pass than that of being condemned to pass his youth in the sunshine of unshadowed prosperity. Frequently, his eyes blinded by a too

SPENDTHRIFTS 11

untempered brilliance, he becomes smitten with a moral sunstroke.

When, in addition to having been spoilt in childhood, a young man, adrift on the boundless ocean of ignorance, finds himself possessed of large means and surrounded by plenty of not very scrupulous persons ready to assist him to get rid of them in a pleasant manner, it is not extraordinary that in the course of a few years he should land himself in straitened circumstances.

Second thoughts — those adopted children of experience — occasionally save him ; and since idleness — that great Pacific Ocean of life — has ceased to be the ideal of the well-to-do class, the modern man of pleasure often finds salvation in occupation of a healthy or absorbing kind.

Idleness and lack of occupation were the main causes which produced spendthrift bucks, whilst the inheritance of great wealth at an early age was another.

The man who is obliged to be constantly employed to earn the necessaries of life and to support his family knows not the unhappiness he prays for when he desires wealth and idleness. To be constantly busy is to be always happy. A proof of this is that persons who have suddenly acquired wealth, broken up their active pursuits, and begun to live at their ease, often waste away and die in a very short time.

People who have worked hard all their lives are at sea without some regular occupation. Their existence then often becomes a mere effort to get rid of life without dying. Man must be employed at something. Without interests, indeed, Ufe is joyless. The tcedium vitce and the insupportable listlessness which arise from the want of something to do, soon blunt, if they do not destroy, the finer faculties of our nature ; for, having nothing to do, we soon become fit for nothing.

A life of perpetual sameness, even if that sameness be luxurious ease, is little better than being in a dungeon. Nothing is more difficult to endure. It is recorded of a gentleman who shot himself that the only reason given in a letter he left behind was that he was tired of buttoning every morning and unbuttoning every night.

The great secret of life is to have something congenial to do. People who are always busy and take pleasure in some daily task are the least disturbed by the vicissitudes of existence. To be wealthy and idle shows lack of brains.

Few idle and rich people are ever really contented. They are petulant, fretful, irascible. Nature and Art appear to have few attractions for them. No wonder that under such conditions the springs of life rust out.

The lack of necessity for effort, which is often the result of great inherited wealth, also seems to paralyze the mental qualities. Individuals who have never been obliged to do any work easily acquire an entirely false outlook upon existence. They come, in time, to regard their prosperity as the result of some mysterious superiority over their fellowcreatures :

'* How easy 'tis, when Destiny proves kind, With full-spread sails to run before the wind !"

e4 o

CUTTING A DASH 13

On the other hand, how easy is the descent from affluence to poverty ! What degradations and criminahties has this not entailed !

The ideal of what is vulgarly known as " cutting a dash " did the harm in most cases ; the ideal of mere idleness — though of course a very unworthy one — was not so pernicious in its effects. Indeed, it may be questioned whether idleness has produced as much evil as is generally supposed. Although Vice, considered in the abstract, may be, and often is, engendered in idleness, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle the moment it becomes efficiently vicious.

As a matter of fact, in the stagnant abyss of a vacuous life, just as the most salutary things produce no good, so do the most noxious effect comparatively little evil ; and this is why — in the writer's opinion at least — the man of pleasure, not infrequently the very incarnation of sloth, has been too hardly treated by moralists unable to regard the world from a tolerant and broad point of view.

The pleasure-seeker has in many cases been a man who indirectly has benefited those with whom he has come in contact ; many a one, though careless and reckless, has been full of good-nature and kindly feeling. Many a one has suffered from the exercise of unlimited generosity. Indeed, when all considerations are taken into account, it is probably doubtful whether he has not, in his own peculiar fashion, unwittingly perhaps, played a useful part in the great drama of life.

Nor have his last years always been clouded by the consequences of that mental instability which is the chief characteristic of his type.

His sufferings as an old man have for the most part been overdrawn.

The true viveur as an old man is often far from morose : by the irony of fate, if possessed of any brains, he may be happier in the autumn of his life than many who have spent their best days in self-sacrificing effort. Looking back upon past years, he can recall the queer scenes and amusing characters it has been his lot to know. Or perhaps a lively recollection of all the pretty faces that have crossed his path may revive memories of certain pleasant summer days and joyous evenings passed when youth was at the prow and pleasure at the helm. But this is because the true pleasure-seeker, though his hair may fall off or turn grey, his sight fail and his limbs weaken, never really grows old ; and, be he never so broken down or feeble, his pulse will quicken and the blood course more swiftly through his veins at the sound of bright, sparkling music — at the sight of a pretty face. Then, for a few moments, his careless youth, as it were, returns ; and who shall say that the recollection does not make him bear the weight of years with more ease ?

If he is intelligent, he will have learnt that the world is a pleasant place for the wealthy and wily ; but that it nevertheless abounds with pitfalls, snares, and brambles.

If he muse over life, he will realize how man is but a strange mixture of all kinds of materials, grave to-day, and gay to-morrow ; in the depths of

HUMAN DESTINY 15

despondency this moment, and sailing in the car of hope the next. A queer compound, indeed !

" At ten, a child ; at twenty, wild ; At thirty, tame — if ever ; At forty, wise ; at fifty, rich ; At sixty, good — or never."

It is human destiny always to be longing for something, and the gratification of one set of wishes but prepares the unsatisfied soul for the conception of another. The child of a year old wants little but food and sleep ; and no sooner is he supplied with sufficient allowance of either of those very excellent things, than he begins whimpering — or yelling, it may be — for the other. At three, the young urchin becomes enamoured of sugar-plums and tarts. At six, his imagination runs on kites, marbles, and tops, and an abundance of playtime. At ten a boy is ready for school, having got tired of toys, bird-nesting, and blackberry-hunting. At fifteen he wants a hunter. At twenty, he wishes to cut a dash, whilst love and sport occupy his mind. At twenty-five he usually wants a wife ; at thirty, he not infrequently longs to be single again. The rest of his life is passed either in making both ends meet or in adding to his fortune.

This description, of course, applies mainly to the individual who leads a regular life. The man of pleasure as a rule experiences many vicissitudes.

Not infrequently the extravagances of his youth hamper him throughout the rest of his existence ; but — in spite of worry and trouble — if he has ever known what the joy of living really is, he will always have a hankering for the delights which appealed to him as a young man.

About the best instance of a patrician viveur of this kind was the Prince de Ligne, who even as an old man retained a capacity for keenly enjoying life.

At the Congress of Vienna, though well stricken in years, he was conspicuous for his good-humour, and showed himself delighted with everything. " Le Congres danse," said he, alluding to the gaiety which then prevailed throughout the Kaiser Stadt. How different was the attitude of the old cynic Talleyrand, who, when asked how the negotiations were proceeding, merely rubbed his lame leg ! with him, also, love of amusement never became totally extinct.

As a matter of fact, our passions never wholly die. Often, in the last cantos of life's romance, they rise up again and do battle, like the heroes in old-fashioned books, who have been quietly inurned, and ought to be turned to dust.

A certain number of the men of pleasure of the past deserved no sympathy. These were the so-called splendid sinners who, leading despicable lives, were utterly careless of all the disastrous consequences of their escapades. The type in question has probably never been better described than by Samuel Warren, an author who, though he enjoyed great popularity in the last century, is little read to-day.

" Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," was the motto of such a debauchee who, neither stupid nor ill-educated, perversely took a sort of

THE VICIOUS BUCK 17

Satanic delight in the consciousness of being an object of regret and wonder amongst those who recognized and admired his mental gifts. Handsome, and possessed of attractive manners, rich, and with every social advantage, he deliberately did all he could to nullify the gifts which fortune had lavished upon him, till gradually his intellectual faculties were palsied and benumbed ; and, having vitiated and depraved his whole system both physical and mental, he was often, at thirty, broken in health, mind, and pocket.

The type in question has now, I fancy, disappeared ; calculating vice being eclipsed by mere foolishness. Rich young men of the present day, however, like the spendthrifts of the past, continue to indulge in reckless waste of money ; and once the taste has been acquired, it is so powerful as to reassert itself even after the victim has been in dire financial straits. In the days of the mining boom in California, one lucky spendthrift, who suddenly found himself possessed of six or seven thousand pounds — having filled his pockets with twenty-dollar gold pieces — on his arrival in the nearest town, proceeded to a " bar-room " and treated " the crowd " to champagne. The company present being unable to consume all the bar-keeper's stock, assistance was obtained from without, and the passers-by were compelled to come in. Still the supply held out, and not another drink could anyone swallow. In this emergency the ingenious giver of the treat ordered every glass belonging to the establishment to be brought out and filled. Then, raising his stick, with one fell swoop he knocked the army of glasses off the counter. One hamper of champagne, however, yet remained, and, determined not to be beaten, he ordered it to be opened and placed upon the floor, and jumping in, stamped the bottles to pieces with his heavy boots — severely cutting his shins, it is said, in the operation. But although the champagne was at last finished, he had a handful of gold -pieces to dispose of, and walking up to a large mirror worth several hundred dollars, which adorned one end of the room, he dashed a shower of heavy coins against it and shivered it to pieces. The hero of this story returned to the mines in the following spring without a cent, and was afterwards obliged to eke out a precarious livelihood by working as a common labourer.