The Beau Monde

Chapter 3 explores the world of elite leisure in both its high and low forms to uncover how the aristocracy continued to shape the West End in the first half of the nineteenth century. This chapter is devoted to nightlife and is intended to show that one purpose of pleasure districts was to construct the idea of the night-time economy. The chapter explores the world of gentlemens’ clubs and other locations of masculine pleasure before moving into an examination of opera, ballet, and gambling; both sources of aristocratic networks. The second half of the chapter then looks at the world of low life in the Covent Garden and Maiden Lane areas; territory of the ‘flash’ and the bohemians. Affluent gentlemen explored what they saw as the ‘underworld’. Here was a world of disreputable bars and spaces for popular song. There is a detailed analysis of venues such as the Cider Cellars which shaped the development of popular music and culture with its bawdy ballads.