pickpocket, the
swell mobsman, and the man about town, and women who shone in evening
dress, and were alike fair and frail. It is only within the last twenty
years that the Middlesex magistrates refused Mr. Bignell a licence for
the Argyle Rooms; that was not until Mr. Bignell had found it worth while
to invest 80,000 pounds in the place. Year after year noble lords and
Middlesex magistrates had visited the place and licensed it. Indeed, it
had become one of the institutions of the metropolis, one of the places
where Bob Logic and Corinthian Tom--such men still existed, though they
went by other names--were safe to be found of an evening. The theatre
was too staid and respectable for them, though dashing Cyprians, as they
were termed, were sure to be found at the refreshment saloon. When the
Argyle was shut up, it was said a great public scandal was removed.
Perhaps so; but the real scandal was that such a place was ever needed in
the capital of a land which handsomely paid clergymen and deans and
bishops and archbishops to exterminate the lust of the flesh, and the
lust of the eye, and the pride of life, which found their full
development in such places as the Argyle Rooms. It was a scandal and a
shame that men who had been born in English homes, and nursed by English
mothers, and confirmed by English bishops, and had been trained in
English public schools and Universities, and worshipped in English
churches and cathedrals, should have helped to make the Argyle Rooms a
successful public institution. Mr. Bignell created no public vices; he
merely pandered to what was in existence. It was the men of wealth and
fashion who made the place what it was. It was not an improving
spectacle in an age that sacrificed everything to worldly show, and had
come to regard the brougham as the one thing needful--the outward sign of
respectability and grace--to see equipages of this kind, filled with
fashionably dressed women, most of them

Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred--

driving up nightly to the Argyle, or the Holborn, or the Piccadilly, or
Bob Croft's in the Haymarket, with their gallants or protectors or
friends, or whatever they might term themselves, amidst a dense crowd of
lookers-on, rich or poor, male or female, old or young, drunk or sober.
In no other capital in Europe was such a sight to be seen. It was often
there that a young and giddy girl, with good looks and a good
constitution, and above all thing