CHAPTER XLIX.
Heroes mischievously gay, Lords of the street and terrors of the way,Flush'd as they are with folly, youth, and wine.--Johnson's London.
Hol. Novi hominem tanquam te--his humour is lofty, his discourseperemptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical,and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical.--Shakspeare.
I went a little after seven o'clock to keep my dinner engagementat---'s; for very young men are seldom unpunctual at dinner. Wesat down, six in number, to a repast at once incredibly bad, andridiculously extravagant; turtle without fat--venison withoutflavour--champagne with the taste of a gooseberry, and hock with theproperties of a pomegranate. [Note: Pomum valde purgatorium.] Suchis the constant habit of young men: they think any thing expensive isnecessarily good, and they purchase poison at a dearer rate than themost medicine-loving hypochondriac in England.
Of course, all the knot declared the dinner was superb; called in themaster to eulogize him in person, and made him, to his infinite dismay,swallow a bumper of his own hock. Poor man, they mistook his reluctancefor his diffidence, and forced him to wash it away in another potation.With many a wry face of grateful humility, he left the room, and we thenproceeded to pass the bottle with the suicidal determination of defeatedRomans. You may imagine that we were not long in arriving at thedevoutly wished for consummation of comfortable inebriety; and with oureyes reeling, our cheeks burning, and our brave spirits full ripe fora quarrel, we sallied out at eleven o'clock, vowing death, dread, anddestruction to all the sober portion of his majesty's subjects.
We came to a dead halt in Arlington-street, which, as it was thequietest spot in the neighbourhood, we deemed a fitting place for thearrangement of our forces. Dartmore, Staunton, (a tall, thin, wellformed, silly youth,) and myself, marched first, and the remainingthree followed. We gave each other the most judicious admonitions asto propriety of conduct, and then, with a shout that alarmed the wholestreet, we renewed our way. We passed on safely enough till we got toCharing-Cross, having only been thrice upbraided by the watchmen, andonce threatened by two carmen of prodigious size, to whose wives orsweethearts we had, to our infinite peril, made some gentle overtures.When, however, we had just passed the Opera Colonnade, we were accostedby a bevy of buxom Cyprians, as merry and as drunk as ourselves. Wehalted for a few minutes in the midst of the kennel, to confabulatewith our new friends, and a very amicable and intellectual conversationensued. Dartmore was an adept in the art of slang, and he found himselffairly matched, by more than one of the fair and gentle creatures bywhom we were surrounded. Just, however, as we were all in high glee,Staunton made a trifling discovery, which turned the merriment of thewhole scene into strife, war, and confusion. A bouncing lass, whosehands were as ready as her charms, had quietly helped herself to a watchwhich Staunton wore, a la mode, in his waistcoat pocket. Drunken as theyouth was at that time, and dull as he was at all others, he was notwithout the instinctive penetration with which all human bipeds watchover their individual goods and chattels. He sprung aside from theendearments of the syren, grasped her arm, and in a voice of querulousindignation, accused her of the theft.
"Then rose the cry of women--shrill As shriek of gosshawk on the hill."
Never were my ears so stunned. The angry authors in the adventures ofGil Blas, were nothing to the disputants in the kennel at Charing Cross;we rowed, swore, slanged with a Christian meekness and forbearance,which would have rejoiced Mr. Wilberforce to the heart, and we werealready preparing ourselves for a more striking engagement, when we weremost unwelcomely interrupted by the presence of three watchmen.
"Take away this--this--d--d woman," hiccuped out Staunton, "She hassto--len--(hiccup)--my watch"--(hiccup.)
"No such thing, watchman," hallooed out the accused, "theb--counter-skipper never had any watch! he only filched atwopenny-halfpenny gilt chain out of his master, Levi, the pawnbroker'swindow, and stuck it in his eel-skin to make a show: ye did, ye pitiful,lanky-chopped son of a dog-fish, ye did."
"Come, come," said the watchman, "move on, move on."
"You be d--d, for a Charley!" said one of our gang.
"Ho! ho! master jackanapes, I shall give you a cooling in thewatch-house, if you tips us any of your jaw. I dare say the young omanhere, is quite right about ye, and ye never had any watch at all, atall."
"You are a d--d liar," cried Staunton; "and you are all in with eachother, like a pack of rogues as you are."
"I'll tell ye what, young gemman," said another watchman, who was a morepotent, grave, and reverend senior than his comrades, "if you do notmove on instantly, and let those decent young omen alone, I'll take youall up before Sir Richard."
"Charley, my boy," said Dartmore, "did you ever get thrashed forimpertinence?"
The last mentioned watchman took upon himself the reply to thisinterrogatory by a very summary proceeding: he collared Dartmore, andhis companions did the same kind office to us. This action was notcommitted with impunity: in an instant two of the moon's minions,staffs, lanterns, and all, were measuring their length at the foot oftheir namesake of royal memory; the remaining Dogberry was, however,a tougher assailant; he held Staunton so firmly in his gripe, thatthe poor youth could scarcely breathe out a faint and feeble d--ye ofdefiance, and with his disengaged hand he made such an admirable use ofhis rattle, that we were surrounded in a trice.
As when an ant-hill is invaded, from every quarter and crevice of themound arise and pour out an angry host, of whose previous existencethe unwary assailant had not dreamt; so from every lane, and alley, andstreet, and crossing, came fast and far the champions of the night.
"Gentlemen," said Dartmore, "we must fly--sauve qui peut." We wanted nostronger admonition, and, accordingly, all of us who were able, set offwith the utmost velocity with which God had gifted us. I have some faintrecollection that I myself headed the flight. I remember well that Idashed up the Strand, and dashed down a singular little shed, fromwhich emanated the steam of tea, and a sharp, querulous scream of"All hot--all hot! a penny a pint." I see, now, by the dim light ofretrospection, a vision of an old woman in the kennel, and a pewter potof mysterious ingredients precipitated into a greengrocer's shop, "tevirides inter lauros," as Vincent would have said. On we went, fasterand faster, as the rattle rung in our ears, and the tramp of the enemyechoed after us in hot pursuit.
"The devil take the hindmost," said Dartmore, breathlessly (as he keptup with me).
"The watchman has saved his majesty the trouble," answered I, lookingback and seeing one of our friends in the clutch of the pursuers.
"On, on!" was Dartmore's only reply.
At last, after innumerable perils, and various immersements into backpassages, and courts, and alleys, which, like the chicaneries of law,preserved and befriended us, in spite of all the efforts of justice, wefairly found ourselves in safety in the midst of a great square.
Here we paused, and after ascertaining our individual safeties, welooked round to ascertain the sum total of the general loss. Alas! wewere wofully fully shorn of our beams--we were reduced onehalf: onlythree out of the six survived the conflict and the flight.
"Half," (said the companion of Dartmore and myself, whose name wasTringle, and who was a dabbler in science, of which he was not a littlevain) "half is less worthy than the whole; but the half is more worthythan nonentity."
"An axiom," said I, "not to be disputed; but now that we are safe, andhave time to think about it, are you not slightly of opinion that webehaved somewhat scurvily to our better half, in leaving it so quietlyin the hands of the Philistines?"
"By no means," answered Dartmore. "In a party, whose members make nopretensions to sobriety, it would be too hard to expect that persons whoare scarcely capable of taking care of themselves, should take care ofother people. No; we have, in all these exploits, only the one maxim ofself-preservation."
"Allow me," said Tringle, seizing me by the coat, "to explain it toyou on scientific principles. You will find, in hyd
rostatics, that theattraction of cohesion is far less powerful in fluids than in solids;viz. that persons who have been converting their 'solid flesh' into wineskins, cannot stick so close to one another as when they are sober."
"Bravo, Tringle!" cried Dartmore; "and now, Pelham, I hope your delicatescruples are, after so luminous an eclaircissement, set at rest forever."
"You have convinced me," said I; "let us leave the unfortunates to theirfate, and Sir Richard. What is now to be done?"
"Why, in the first place," answered Dartmore, "let us reconnoitre. Doesany one know this spot?"
"Not I," said both of us. We inquired of an old fellow, who wastottering home under the same Bacchanalian auspices as ourselves, andfound we were in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
"Which shall we do?" asked I, "stroll home; or parade the streets, visitthe Cider-Cellar, and the Finish, and kiss the first lass we meet in themorning bringing her charms and carrots to Covent Garden Market?"
"The latter," cried Dartmore and Tringle, "without doubt."
"Come, then," said I, "let us investigate Holborn, and dip into St.Giles's, and then find our way into some more known corner of theglobe."
"Amen!" said Dartmore, and accordingly we renewed our march. We woundalong a narrow lane, tolerably well known, I imagine, to the gentlemenof the quill, and entered Holborn. There was a beautiful still moonabove us, which cast its light over a drowsy stand of hackney coaches,and shed a 'silver sadness' over the thin visages and sombre vestmentsof two guardians of the night, who regarded us, we thought, with a veryominous aspect of suspicion.
We strolled along, leisurely enough, till we were interrupted by amiserable-looking crowd, assembled round a dull, dingy, melancholy shop,from which gleamed a solitary candle, whose long, spinster-like wick wasflirting away with an east wind, at a most unconscionable rate. Uponthe haggard and worn countenances of the by-standers, was depicted onegeneral and sympathizing expression of eager, envious, wistful anxiety,which predominated so far over the various characters of each, as tocommunicate something of a likeness to all. It was an impress of sucha seal as you might imagine, not the arch-fiend, but one of hissubordinate shepherds, would have set upon each of his flock.
Amid this crowd, I recognized more than one face which I had often seenin my equestrian lounges through town, peering from the shoulders ofsome intrusive, ragamuffin, wagesless lackey, and squealing out of itswretched, unpampered mouth, the everlasting query of "Want your ossheld, Sir?" The rest were made up of unfortunate women of the vilestand most ragged description, aged itinerants, with features seared withfamine, bleared eyes, dropping jaws, shivering limbs, and all the mortalsigns of hopeless and aidless, and, worst of all, breadless infirmity.Here and there an Irish accent broke out in the oaths of nationalimpatience, and was answered by the shrill, broken voice of somedecrepit but indefatigable votaress of pleasure--(Pleasure! good God!)but the chief character of the meeting was silence;--silence, eager,heavy, engrossing; and, above them all, shone out the quiet moon, socalm, so holy, so breathing of still happiness and unpolluted glory,as if it never looked upon the traces of human passion, and misery, andsin. We stood for some moments contemplating the group before us, andthen, following the steps of an old, withered crone, who, with a crackedcup in her hand, was pushing her way through the throng, we foundourselves in that dreary pandaemonium, at once the origin and the refugeof humble vices--a Gin-shop.
"Poor devils," said Dartmore, to two or three of the nearest andeagerest among the crowd, "come in, and I will treat you."
The invitation was received with a promptness which must have been themost gratifying compliment to the inviter; and thus Want, which is themother of Invention, does not object, now and then, to a bantling byPoliteness.
We stood by the counter while our proteges were served, in silentobservation. In low vice, to me, there is always something too gloomy,almost too fearful for light mirth; the contortions of the madman arestranger than those of the fool, but one does not laugh at them; thesympathy is for the cause--not the effect.
Leaning against the counter at one corner, and fixing his eyesdeliberately and unmovingly upon us, was a man about the age of fifty,dressed in a costume of singular fashion, apparently pretending to anantiquity of taste, correspondent with that of the material. This personwore a large cocked-hat, set rather jauntily on one side,--a black coat,which seemed an omnium gatherum of all abominations that had come in itsway for the last ten years, and which appeared to advance equal claims(from the manner it was made and worn), to the several dignities of theart military and civil, the arma and the toga:--from the neck of thewearer hung a blue ribbon of amazing breadth, and of a very surprisingassumption of newness and splendour, by no means in harmony with theother parts of the tout ensemble; this was the guardian of an eye-glassof block tin, and of dimensions correspondent with the size of theribbon. Stuck under the right arm, and shaped fearfully like a sword,peeped out the hilt of a very large and sturdy looking stick, "in war aweapon, in peace a support."
The features of the man were in keeping with his garb; they betokenedan equal mixture of the traces of poverty, and the assumption of thedignities reminiscent of a better day. Two small, light-blue eyes wereshaded by bushy, and rather imperious brows, which lowered from underthe hat, like Cerberus out of his den. These, at present, wore thedull, fixed stare of habitual intoxication, though we were not longin discovering that they had not yet forgotten to sparkle with allthe quickness, and more than the roguery of youth. His nose was large,prominent, and aristocratic; nor would it have been ill formed, had notsome unknown cause pushed it a little nearer towards the left ear, thanwould have been thought, by an equitable judge of beauty, fair to thepretensions of the right. The lines in the countenance were marked as ifin iron, and had the face been perfectly composed, must have given toit a remarkably stern and sinister appearance; but at that moment, therewas an arch leer about the mouth, which softened, or at least altered,the expression the features habitually wore.
"Sir," said he, (after a few minutes of silence,) "Sir," said he,approaching me, "will you do me the honour to take a pinch of snuff?"and so saying, he tapped a curious copper box, with a picture of hislate majesty upon it.
"With great pleasure," answered I, bowing low, "since the act is aprelude to the pleasure of your acquaintance."
My gentleman of the gin-shop opened his box with an air, as hereplied--"It is but seldom that I meet, in places of this description,gentlemen of the exterior of yourself and your friends. I am not aperson very easily deceived by the outward man. Horace, Sir, could nothave included me, when he said, specie decipimur. I perceive that youare surprised at hearing me quote Latin. Alas! Sir, in my wandering andvarious manner of life, I may say, with Cicero and Pliny, that the studyof letters has proved my greatest consolation. 'Gaudium mihi,' says thelatter author, 'et solatium in literis: nihil tam laete quod his nonlaetius, nihil tam triste quid non per hos sit minus triste.' God d--nye, you scoundrel, give me my gin! ar'n't you ashamed of keeping agentleman of my fashion so long waiting?" This was said to the sleepydispenser of the spirituous potations, who looked up for a moment with adull stare, and then replied, "Your money first, Mr. Gordon--you owe usseven-pence halfpenny already."
"Blood and confusion! speakest thou to me of halfpence! Know that thouart a mercenary varlet; yes, knave, mark that, a mercenary varlet." Thesleepy Ganymede replied not, and the wrath of Mr. Gordon subsided into alow, interrupted, internal muttering of strange oaths, which rolled andgrumbled, and rattled in his throat, like distant thunder.
At length he cheered up a little--"Sir," said he, addressing Dartmore,"it is a sad thing to be dependant on these low persons; the wise amongthe ancients were never so wrong as when they panegyrized poverty: itis the wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man'scurse, the melancholy man's halter."
"You are a strange old cock," said the unsophisticated Dartmore, eyeinghim from head to foot; "there's half a sovereign for you."
The blun
t blue eyes of Mr. Gordon sharpened up in an instant; he seizedthe treasure with an avidity, of which the minute after, he seemedsomewhat ashamed; for he said, playing with the coin, in an idle,indifferent manner--"Sir, you show a consideration, and, let me add,Sir, a delicacy of feeling, unusual at your years. Sir, I shall repayyou at my earliest leisure, and in the meanwhile allow me to say, that Ishall be proud of the honour of your acquaintance."
"Thank-ye, old boy," said Dartmore, putting on his glove before heaccepted the offered hand of his new friend, which, though it wastendered with great grace and dignity, was of a marvellously dingy andsoapless aspect.
"Harkye! you d--d son of a gun!" cried Mr. Gordon, abruptly turningfrom Dartmore, after a hearty shake of the hand, to the man at thecounter--"Harkye! give me change for this half sovereign, and be d--dto you--and then tip us a double gill of your best; you whey-faced,liverdrenched, pence-griping, belly-griping, paupercheating,sleepy-souled Arismanes of bad spirits. Come, gentlemen, if you havenothing better to do, I'll take you to my club; we are a rare knot ofus, there--all choice spirits; some of them are a little uncouth, it istrue, but we are not all born Chesterfields. Sir, allow me to ask thefavour of your name?"
"Dartmore."
"Mr. Dartmore, you are a gentleman. Hollo! you Liquorpond-street of ascoundrel--having nothing of liquor but the name, you narrow, nasty,pitiful alley of a fellow, with a kennel for a body, and a sink for asoul; give me my change and my gin, you scoundrel! Humph, is that allright, you Procrustes of the counter, chopping our lawful appetites downto your rascally standard of seven-pence half-penny? Why don't you takea motto, you Paynim dog? Here's one for you--'Measure for measure, andthe devil to pay!' Humph, you pitiful toadstool of a trader, you haveno more spirit than an empty water-bottle; and when you go to h--ll,they'll use you to cool the bellows. I say, you rascal, why are youworse off than the devil in a hip bath of brimstone?--because, youknave, the devil then would only be half d--d, and you are d--d allover! Come, gentlemen, I am at your service."