THE BRITISH BEER-SHOP.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2585, 20 April 1877, Page 3

THE BRITISH BEER-SHOP.

. The British Beer-shop, writes the Atlantic Monthly, is a manifold, a mighty, a terrible, a pathetic phenomenon;;.: Go where you will in England, but particularly in the larger arid more prosperous cities, thlk'hydra every now' and then thrusts up one of its countless heads before* you, aU'So. similar in features that you can, .hardly distinguish between one and another, with the result that you are oppressed with a|earful sense of multitude, of unescapabl«3|^wer, and of a power which is evil. T|erje i? nothing terrifying in the staring sign, 'the great gleaming windows, and other recognisable characteristics of a single London or Liverpool drinking-salbon. Tired, per-

haps, with sight-seeing, you are rather pleased to find such a haven in your way, and you rush in gladly to revive-your forces with a draught of pale ale or porter. But after you have soon a thousand, after you have seen ten thousand, all naore or less alike in physiognomy, all gushing ironi morn to midnight with malt liquors and fiery ardent spirits, all frequented and often crowded by drinking men and women and even infants, you begin to feel a sentiment of doubt and distrust which is capable of rising to something like terror. It seems to the imagination as if some immeasurable beast underlay all England, shooling up through the crust of the Island innumerable glittering and drolling muzzles, all eager to poison and devour. You wonder how long the sturdy human breed here established can withstand this incessant hunger of a measureless monster. If you do not wish that there were no beer-shops at all, you do perhaps come to desire that there might be fewer. While they are many, they are little, these gin-palaces, or whatever one chooses to call them ; at least they seem small to an American by comparison with the continental bar-rooms which he can find in his native land. Exteriorly there is often a notable splendour of vast windows, sometimes of gilding, and by night of gas. But you enter and the scene changes ; the varnish and other embellishments have become soiled by hard low use; the floors are either muddy or gritty, and scored with [ the tramping of numberless customers; the seats, if there be any, show the rubbing and grime of much dirty clctbing. Over all the place there is a rude, uncompromising look of plain business, paying a high rent and figuring close for profits. Few are the decorative decanters, and numerous the workaday junk bottles in their rusty green or black. In many cases, also, the afterpart of the room exhibits vast mounds of barrels and hogsheads, as if Joseph had laid up granaries of ale and whiskey against a coming septennat of droughty years. Usually, a beer-shop has two or three massive, thudding doors, secured from slamming by straps; and: each one of them is labelled in large, distinct letters to indicate a special style of customers. At the very least there is a "public entrance" and a "jug and bottle entrance," or, in rakish irony, as it would seem, the "family antvance." To correspond with these doors she room within is divided- into compartments by high oaken or mahogany partitions which run from the wall to the bar. Behind the. bar stands the servitors, sometimes men, but very often women, and these mostly young women. The traveller is tempted at times to declare that all the pretty girls in England- are picked out for barmaids and- shopgirls. I ventured to inquire of one r6f these buxom Hebes what were her hours erf labor. She told me that shewas at her post from nine in the morning until eleven at night; that she had an hour's nooning, one day out every.fortnight, and the whole of Sunday until six, afternoon. She was astroug,, solid,: fair-faced girl, of twenty, with some color in her cheeks, the cool-lighted English blue eye, and hair of straight chestnut. Beside her toiled a comrade who was evidently her sister; also a woman of 30, who seemed to be the lady superior of the establishment; also a young man of twenty-five. They all.had a brisk, business-like, overWorked seriousness, unlighted by juvenile gaiety or flirtishness. - ' \ .