I once attended one of these shows in a North London slum. The people responsible for it have the impudence to send women-scouts to the West End thoroughfares at eleven o'clock every night, there to interfere with these girls, to thrust their attentions upon them, and, if possible, lure them away to a service of song--Brief, Bright, and Brotherly. It was a bitter place in a narrow street. The street was gay and loud with humanity, only at its centre was a dark and forbidding door, reticent and inhuman. There was no sign of good-fellowship here; no warm touch of the flesh. It was as brutal as justice; it seemed to have builded itself on that most horrible of all texts: "_Be just before you are generous._"
I went in at an early hour, about half-past ten, and only two victims had been secured. The place stunk of _The Church Times_ and practical Christianity. In the main room was a thin fire, as skimpy as though it had been lit by a spinster, as, I suppose, it had. There was a bare deal table. The seating accommodation was cane chairs, which I hate; they always remind me of the Band of Hope classes I was compelled to attend as a child. They suggest something stale and cheesy, something as squalid as the charity they serve. On a corner table was a battered urn and a number of earthenware cups, with many plates of thick, greasy bread-and-butter; just the right fare to offer a girl who has put away several benedictines and brandies. The room chilled me. Place, people, appointments, even the name--Midnight Crusade for the Reclamation of our Fallen Sisters--smacked of everything that is most ugly. Smugness and super-piety were in the place. The women--I mean, ladies--who manage the place, were the kind of women I have seen at the Palace when Gaby is on. (For you will note that Gaby does not attract the men; it is not they who pack the Palace nightly to see her powder her legs and bosom. They may be there, but most of them are at the bar. If you look at the circle and stalls, they are full of elderly, hard women, with dominant eyebrows, leering through the undressing process, and moistening their lips as Gaby appears in her semi-nakedness.)
The walls of the big bedroom were adorned with florid texts, tastefully framed. It was a room of many beds, each enclosed in a cubicle. The beds were hard, covered with coarse sheets. If I were a Fallen Brother, I hardly think they would have tempted me from a life of ease. And there were RULES.... Oh, how I loathe RULES! I loathed them as a child at school. I loathed drill, and I loathed compulsory games, and I loathed all laws that were made without purpose. There were long printed lists of Rules in this place, framed, and hung in each room. You can never believe how many things a Fallen Sister may not do. Certain rules are, of course, essential; but the pedagogic mind, once started on law-making, can never stop; and it is usually the pedagogic type of mind, with the lust for correction, that goes in for Charity. Why may not the girls talk in certain rooms? Why may they not read anything but the books provided? Why may they not talk in bed? Why must they fold their bed-clothes in such-and-such an exact way? Why must they not descend from the bed-room as and when they are dressed? Why must they let the Superior read their letters? And why, oh, why are these places run by white-faced men and elderly, hard women?