Pre-Wolfenden

By CYRIL RAY THE call-girl system will boom, we are told, if the Wolfenden recom- mendations sweep clean the streets : has any dows of Soho and Shepherd Market—Trench Lessons by Miss Flogg : 42, 24, 36'?

Let me commend • to some enterprising pub- lisher the notion of reviving The Man of Pleasure's. Illustrated Pocket-Book, an annual vade-mecum, the 1850 issue of which I keep in my study—in a locked drawer—to dip into when- ever I have had a smug sufficiency of the more stern and unbending writers of the period. (Only Surtees needs no corrective.) Its title-page pro- claims its function 'displaying at one glance the varied attractions of this great metropolis; with correct details of the saloons, club and night houses, ball concert and billiard rooms, casinos, comical clubs, theatres, introducing houses . . rendering it a Complete and Gentlemanly Night Guide,' and the 'other end of the small, leather- bound volume, where there is a gusset for a Pencil, forms a pocket for 'cards of address of a select few attractive lasses of this our "little vil- lage." , The good Queen had been on the throne for thirteen years, and married for most of them to Albert, also the Good; but there was still a dog- fighting and rat-killing house in Bunhill Row, Where the visitor 'will find a night not ill spent, at least if he has spirit enough to be interested in a display of good old English "pluck" both in men and dogs. Admission to the killing matches, At Jessop's, in the Strand, could be found, according to the Guide, 'all the most nobby ladies in town s s and also some of the right sort of swells.' No doubt this was a cut above similar establishments on the other side of the water, wherethe Surrey Saloon, for instance, was kept by 'George Nash, a dashing blade,' and 'fre-

quented by the better sort of girls on. the Surrey sider ,„ the metropolis'—though 'Mary Weeland,

''"as the Snowdrop, a frequenter of the Surrey' often slipped away to the wine-and-supper rooms opposite Astley's—`a prime piece of luscious love- liness and whose astringent qualities have given all Pleasure that have got her good graces.' Astringent?

Tiresome of the Snowdrop to be now at this

address,

now at that; but there were ladies of the

town who were more constant in their profes- sional inconstancy. Under the general, poetic heading of Taphian Bowers' are listed some score of names and addresses, provocatively enriched with engravings,' ranging from those of Miss Fowler, Church Street, Soho (who 'previous to the first faux pas which led to the present state of her affairs, exhibited her beautiful person in Earned Cranbourne Alley, known by the appella- tion of the Fairy Queen. . . . She is a bewitching girl; is to be met with at her residence here described, and is to be had by bidding for'), to Miss A. Parks, Beaufort Place, New Road ('the house will be known by the Venetian blinds generally drawn down'): 'She makes no scruple of getting as much as she possibly can from her foreign visitors, but will not refuse five pounds from a British hand.'

Is there a touch—the merest touch—of Vic- torian hypocrisy about the tribute to Miss Jane Wilmott, of York Place, Knightsbridge : name on brass plate ('She is seldom guilty of those vices which we so frequently censure, and which defile the sex more than any other : we mean drinking and swearing')? Mme. Lemiercier's Wandsworth Road establishment is 'to be found by a brazen plate on the door, signifying, "A

Seminary for Young Ladies." This we dub the artful dodge.' As for Madame Maurin's stay- and

corset-making house in Waterloo Road, 'this caper is about the neatest stitch we have tumbled to . . . everything is kept very dark here, and snug'S the word. No cully is admitted here before daylight has mizzled, and then he Must hook it before "daylight does appear," and then scarper by the back door.'

In case the vocabulary should perturb the intending client, a glossary, 'The Modern Flash Dictionary,' is appended, including many terms that have since risen to relative respectability— diddle, rumpus, sidle, yokel—and many more which have not. Some of the words have passed out of currency—to the language's loss?

Angelicas: Young, unmarried ladies.

Dimber mot : An enchanting girl.

Fogle: Handkerchief. Snuge: Thief under bed. Cucumbers: Tailors. Scandal broth : Tea. Wooden rug: Pillory.

Bibliographers tell me that these annual volumes, although they were published in fairly large editions, substantially bound, and so relatively recently, are pretty rare : outraged Vic- torian widows, finding them among their deceased husbands' effects, would fling them indignantly on the fire. Not that the publisher, the helpful and well-meaning Mr. Ward, would have wished his Gentlemanly Night Guide to fall into the hands of married men. So I assume from the sfact that his office in the Strand, when not described as `Ward's Sporting and Parisian Repository,' was austerely advertised as a 'Bachelor's Repository of the Arts.' This we dub the artful dodge.