London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) by Henry Mayhew Page A

knowing on what his success depended, lost no opportunity of increasing his laurels. The most obscene thoughts, the most disgusting scenes were coolly described, making a poor child near me wipe away the tears that rolled down her eyes with the enjoyment of the poison. There were three or four of these songs sung in the course of the evening, each one being encored, and then changed. One written about ‘Pine-apple rock’, was the grand treat of the night, and offered greater scope to the rhyming powers of the author than any of the others. In this, not a single chance had been missed; ingenuity had been exerted to its utmost lest an obscene thought should be passed by, and it was absolutely awful to behold the relish with which the young ones jumped to the hideous meaning of the verses.
    There was one scene yet to come, that was perfect in its wickedness. A ballet began between a man dressed up as a woman, and a country clown. The most disgusting attitudes were struck, the most immoral acts represented, without one dissenting voice. If there had been any feat of agility, any grimacing, or, in fact, anything with which the laughter of the uneducated classes is usually associated, the applause might have been accounted for; but here were two ruffians degrading themselves each time they stirred a limb, and forcing into the brains of the childish audience before them thoughts that must embitter a lifetime, and descend from father to child like some bodily infirmity.
    When I had left, I spoke to a better class costermonger on this saddening subject. ‘Well, sir, it is frightful,’ he said, ‘but the boys
will
have their amusements. If their amusements is bad they don’t care; they only wants to laugh, and this here kind of work does it. Give ’em better singing and better dancing, and they’d go, if the price was as cheap as this is. I’ve seen, when a decent concert was given at a penny, as many as four thousand costers present, behaving themselves as quietly and decently as possible.Their wives and children was with ’em, and no audience was better conducted. It’s all stuff talking about them preferring this sort of thing. Give ’em good things at the same price, and I
know
they will like the good, better than the bad.’
    My own experience with this neglected class goes to prove, that if we would really lift them out of the moral mire in which they are wallowing, the first step must be to provide them with
wholesome
amusements. The misfortune, however, is, that when we seek to elevate the character of the people, we give them such mere dry abstract truths and dogmas to digest, that the uneducated mind turns with abhorrence from them. We forget how we ourselves were originally won by our
emotions
to the consideration of such subjects. We do not remember how our own tastes have been formed, nor do we, in our zeal, stay to reflect how the tastes of a people generally are created; and, consequently, we cannot perceive that a habit of enjoying any matter whatsoever can only be induced in the mind by linking with it some aesthetic affection. The heart is the mainspring of the intellect, and the feelings the real educers and educators of the thoughts. As games with the young destroy the fatigue of muscular exercise, so do the sympathies stir the mind to action without any sense of effort. It is because ‘serious’ people generally object to enlist the emotions in the education of the poor, and look upon the delight which arises in the mind from the mere perception of the beauty of sound, motion, form, and colour – or from the apt association of harmonious or incongruous ideas – or from the sympathetic operation of the affections; it is because, I say, the zealous portion of society look upon these matters as ‘
vanity
’, that the amusements of the working-classes are left to venal traders to provide. Hence, in the low-priced entertainments which necessarily appeal to the poorer, and, therefore, to the least