in London," and its several dramatized versions by
Barrymore, Charles Dibdin, Moncrieff, and Pierce Egan, had been unknown.
The exhausted exchequers of four or five theatres were replenished; and
as in the days of the "Beggars' Opera" the favourite songs of that piece
were transferred to the ladies' fans, and highwaymen and abandoned
women became the heroes and heroines of the hour, so, in like manner,
the Cruikshanks' designs were now transferred to tea-trays, snuff-boxes,
pocket-handkerchiefs, screens, and ladies' fans, and the popular
favourites of 1821 and 1822 were "Corinthian Tom," "Jerry Hawthorn,"
"Bob Logic," "Bob the dustman," and "Corinthian Kate."

The success of "Life in London" was not regarded with equal satisfaction
by all classes of the community; the serious world was horribly
scandalized. Zealous, honest, fervid, and terribly in earnest, these
good folks, in their ignorance of the world and of human nature, only
added to the mischief which it was their honest wish to abate. They
proclaimed the immorality of the drama; denounced "Tom and Jerry" from
the pulpit; and besieged the doors of the play houses with a perfect
army of tract droppers. Anything more injudicious, anything less
calculated to achieve the end which these good people had in view, I can
scarcely imagine; for it is a well-known fact that the best method of
making a book or a play a "commercial success," in England, is to throw
doubts on its moral tendency.[58] The more respectable portion of the
press did better service to their cause by showing that, in spite of
their popularity, "Tom and Jerry" were doing mischief, and that the
theatres lent their aid to disseminate the evil, by nightly regaling the
female part of society "with vivid representations of the blackest sinks
of iniquity to be found in the metropolis." Called on to defend his
drama, Moncrieff, strange to say, proved himself no wiser than his
assailants. All he could allege in its behalf was that "the obnoxious
scenes of life were only shown that they might be avoided; the danger of
mixing in them was strikingly exemplified; and every incident tended to
prove"--what? why,--"_that happiness was only to be found in the
domestic circle_"! This was special pleading with a vengeance! Of course
all that the theatres really cared to do was to fill their exhausted
exchequers; while as for Bohemian Robert and his friend Egan, the idea
of making the "Life in London" a moral lesson neve